An Onkwehonwe in Kanata

An abridged Ganyonhon:yonk -- The Thanksgiving address: Teyethinonhwerá:ton ne Onkwe’shón:’a We give thanks to the people. Teyethinonhwerá:ton ne Yethi’nisténha Ohwéntsya We give thanks to our mother the earth. Teyethinonhwerá:ton ne Kahnekarónnyon We give thanks to the waters. Teyethinonhwerá:ton ne Kentsyonkshón:’a We give thanks to the fish. Teyethinonhwerá:ton ne Ohonte’shón:’a We give thanks to the grass and vegetation. Teyethinonhwerá:ton ne Ononhkwa’shón:’a táhnon Ohtehra’shón:’a We give thanks to the medicines and the roots. Teyethinonhwerá:ton ne Kahikshón:’a We give thanks to the fruits. Teyethinonhwerá:ton ne Tyonnhéhkwen We give thanks to the foods. Teyethinonhwerá:ton ne Otsi’nonwa’shón:’a We give thanks to the insects. Teyethinonhwerá:ton ne Okwire’shón:’a táhnon Karonta’shón:’a We give thanks to the bushes and the trees. Teyethinonhwerá:ton ne Otsi’ten’okón:’a We give thanks to the birds. Teyethinonhwerá:ton ne Teyowerawénrye We give thanks to the winds. Teyethinonhwerá:...

I have been extremely lazy over this past summer, occupied by my little routine of work/home/sleep/fun. But mostly it’s because I have been enjoying the fact that I live in Toronto and have been immersed in how much I love living here. I love this city. I have always felt at home here – in fact, I have been an urban dweller for far longer than I lived on the reserve. I left that home for this one when I was 17 and have remained here, reveling in my life as an urban Indian, since that point. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I have been blessed over the course of my career to visit other Canadian and American cities and can honestly say that there is no where else I could even think about living in. I love Toronto. This is a beautiful, living organism, a vibrant and exciting place, pulsing with great expectations for the future. The thing that I love best however is when the ghosts of the past brush against me when I ride my bike home at twilight along Front Street. I can feel the v...

TEDxDU - Aaron Huey - 5/13/2010 | Owe Aku International Justice Project | Causes This video encapsulates almost everything I have ever tried to convey to non-indigenous people about what happened to us. And this young man understands it. Please watch.

So I have to apologize for my silence on the blogging front, but I have a damn fine excuse. I was hospitalized for eight days in St Michael’s Hospital here in downtown Toronto about three weeks ago for what ended up being a bleed in my small bowel, brought on by an abscess which was ostensibly caused by some kind of parasite. It was the worst experience of my life. I was scoped, probed, x-rayed, CT-scanned, poked with at least seven different IV sites, and given three different kinds of intravenous antibiotics. It was not up there with my favourite experiences, to say the least. I also learned that I could never be a junkie because I got bored with the amount of morphine they were letting me have. I’m just now getting back to feeling normal. It cut the legs out from under me in a way that I didn’t anticipate, and made me realize just how much I take the normal functioning of my machine, my body, for granted. I will try not to do that again. However, I cannot say enough about the staff ...

Unless it was done by a policeman or an aristocrat --“Know your Rights” by The Clash I’ve given myself enough time to absorb the implications of the fact that Michael Bryant is essentially absolved in the death of Darcy Allen Sheppard, and can speak about it without frothing or feeling like I may explode. I’m not going to dwell at length about the whole sordid affair, in which Bryant doesn’t even have to go to trial because it has been determined that Sheppard was on a homicidal/suicidal rampage that night and was essentially the architect of his own misfortune. However, I have to point out that had that been the other way around – there is no damn way Sheppard would have been absolved. Perhaps at the end of a long, convoluted process – but highly doubtful. Essentially the message is, in the end, that in this country, a white dude can kill a Metis guy and have it be the victim’s fault. Somehow it always is made to be that way when the circumstances are in a white person causing the dea...

I’ve been reading a lot about the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the controversy around Canada’s – and the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand’s -- refusal to sign on and finally got around to reading a copy of the Declaration to check it out for myself. The majority of the document is a nice feel-good declaration – not a law, not an edict, not even a proclamation – but a declaration around the rights of indigenous people to not be the subject of a genocide, that we have the right to preserve our customs, religions, etc., and to address the very real aftermath of colonizatio. Article 28.1 is most likely, in my eyes, the stickler for the Harper Government (because let’s face it, that’s who is in charge right now and who is behind the refusal to be a signatory). It also has problems with Articles 19 and 26, regarding consultation of public policy and the re-opening of historical agreements, but as sure as I’m sitting here, it’s Article 28 that sticks in t...

Stephan Hawking, noted celebrity physicist was quoted the other day as saying that contacting alien life is too risky. "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet," he says. Any alien species might burn through the resources of its home planet and search for new areas to exploit. "Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach," Hawking says. Far from being a benign visit by benevolent aliens, it might be more like Christopher Columbus' first trip to America, "which didn't turn out every well for the native Americans," he says. Well no duh, huh. And who would want to be oppressed? It sucks. Imagine all those poor white people, chained and broken, forced onto little plots of land to eke out what pitiful survival they could until the galactic masters either got bored with them and finished the job or simply d...