An Onkwehonwe in Kanata

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.

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...

And in this case, wishing it wasn’t doesn’t change the fact that it is. I was initially going to avoid the entire issue of the Douglas Creek Estates land claim in Caledonia, bordering the territory of the Six Nations of the Grand River that’s currently the subject of so much media coverage and resistance/anger/misunderstanding/utter governmental bullshit that’s been happening for the last five years, but I simply can’t. How can I? It is an undeniable fact that this land was stolen, despite our protests, despite our formal complaints and attempts to forestall the process, practically from underneath us. And in this world, where so much of our lives as aboriginal people is dictated by the statues of the Indian Act, what is left to us but an act of defiance, of resistance, of the outright fuck-you to the white culture that stole it in the first place? Seriously. Sorry for your luck you fucktard developers and you oh-so-politely racist denizens of Squatterdonia, but it’s ours. Hate to di...

I’ve always been extremely interested in power. The trappings of it, the scramble for it, what is power, why do we want it, how can I get it, is it just primate dynamics played out in a human forum… et cetera ad nauseum. I like power. I like how it feels, how it looks, what it means. I like it when I get to exercise it in whatever little sphere of influence I have, I hate it when I have none. It’s an interesting thing. My people have always been interested in power. We even have a word for it – orenda, or the “soul of all things” – which I am given to understand is kind of a bad translation, as this is one of those purely Haudenosaunee concepts that really doesn’t have an equivalent in English. It is the philosophy that every human being is invested with his or her own power, a life-force that is equal parts aura, destiny, force of will, strength of character, and personal charisma. Probably the closest comparison is karma, but even that kind of falls short. Men and women equally are ...

One of the things about being the staff representative for a union is that you end up being equal parts paralegal, confidante, shit disturber, therapist, cheerleader, and career counselor. Lately I’ve been doing a large amount of the latter. I was thinking about that the other day, and came to the realization that career counselling needs to be more prominent, especially in indigenous communities. We need to have role models about how to have a career. The vast majority of us come out of homes where, if you were lucky, Dad was an ironworker or a factory worker, Mom was in healthcare but more likely stayed at home and occasionally went strawberry-picking or picking tobacco (if you lived on Six, that’s what your mom did). You might have had a relative who was in the DIAND bureaucracy, or aunties that were teachers, but what about other professions? Where are all the lawyers, the bankers and economists, the designers, the professors, the doctors, the journalists, the IT and telecommunicat...