An Onkwehonwe in Kanata

I have to confess, this election is totally bringing out a major schizophrenic split in me. On one hand, my left-leaning, democratic socialist trade union side is going -- rock the vote, the NDP is gonna bring an orange wave of change, let’s do this! I’m gleefully giddy about the prospect of a major thumbs-down to the bullshit right-wing rhetoric the Conservative Party of Canada has been shovelling down the throat of people in this country. An NDP government would be an amazing thing to see. On the other hand, my Haudenosaunee side is rolling her eyes, going yeah whatever. How does this matter? The settlers are voting on yet another regime that will only reinforce the oppressive systems that deny me and my people our inherent right to sovereignty and self-determination. Our rights have been dictated by the racist and colonialist Indian Act which determines what is an "Indian" in this country. In order to resist the Indian Act definition of what I am in Canada, I proclaim ...

...and the indignity of having to buy your own land back. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of owning property. My husband and I are actually thinking of taking the plunge and becoming first time homebuyers here in Tkaronto. Relatively speaking, the costs of buying a property go beyond the actual purchase. I know it makes good sense, but in my heart of hearts, I can’t help but think about the weirdness of having to buy a piece of land that your ancestors once roamed freely over, and in an area where once we hunted, fished, farmed, and had settlements (and yeah, I know everybody thinks this was Mississauga territory, but it wasn’t. The British bought some land from them because they happened to have moved in while we were a little occupied in the south of Lake Ontario fighting something called the American Revolution. Our ancient settlements and burial grounds haunt the GTA). I can’t help but think… is this settler mentality? The idea that you can “own” property… it’s so fr...

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...

-- if I have to read another bunch of bullshit racist crap from the so-called good citizens of this nation as spewed out in the comments sections of the Globe and Mail or the CBC any longer, I may go postal. I really don't understand why these sorts of things are allowed. What is the point, what is the purpose? What is this kind of vitriol contributing to? Overall debate, policy setting -- what??? It's just dangerous, ugly poison spewing out over the web and does nothing but create negativity. It's ugly. It's essentially the equivalent of all that hateful propaganda put out by totalitarian regimes throughout history, except that average people are espousing this shit and that's what makes it worse. I don't need to see it any more. I think they should be shut down. This is my rant of the day.

Humanity likes its tribes. We try to pretend we’re beyond that, so modern, so technologically and emotionally advanced, but the Olympics are really just a giant display of tribalism writ large. It was never more apparent to me than watching the hockey game yesterday. I found it extremely interesting that all of my onkwehonwe friends could put aside our unease and our unrest at having to be indigenous people in this colonial construct, and for a couple of hours unite with everyone else across this northern part of Turtle Island. There we were, wearing our hearts on our sleeves right beside our settler neighbours watching the beauty of that fast, skillful game played between two political and cultural entities, those players being the true avatars of our national prowess and passion. And what a glorious victory that was, in overtime against the giant eagle to the south who played with military precision, roughshod menace, and with the heart of that rebellious spark that gave rise to thei...

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...

Or the key to saving the savages is to become a savage and show them how to save themselves. I saw Avatar today. And while I cannot deny how breathtaking the movie was, how seamless the special effects imagery and how mind-blowing the depiction of a fully-realized alien biosphere was, I had a major problem with the story. Not the least of which was the whole white man as saviour thing. That was just plain insulting. I normally love this kind of thing, with cool special effects and world-building visuals going on, but I found this movie just bugged me. I couldn’t turn off my critical mind and just enjoy it. It made me feel schizoid -- on one hand I thought it was visually breath-taking but mostly it just creeped me out. And that had everything to do with the story line. I think Cameron was attempting, albeit clumsily and in a heartfelt way, to be anti-colonial, anti-imperalist, but some of the assumptions that the film made were unsettlingly racist. It was Dances With Wolves a...