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  • One little planet. One BIG farm.

    Since the ’30s, the days of the family farm have been numbered. The dustbowl sucked young farmers off the land faster than you can say “plague of grasshoppers.” But there were always dirt die-hards who hung on — even flourished — once the rain fell again and the insecticide giants and genetically modified crop scientists bent their heads to the task.

    So there still are family farmers. Still those glorious fields of gold you drive past down rural roads, the wind buffeting the hand you trail out the window, the radio booming out Northern Cree Singers tunes. Yet the dominant trend toward corporate farms — big business owners operating on a mass scale, ploughing and seeding tracts of land not for the benefit of rural economies, but for shareholders in urban boardrooms — has never halted. Those entities dug in and wheeled and dealed and cultivated hectare after hectare until all the eye could see on some of those country drives was the outdoor factory floor of industrial farming.

    In the United States, corporatisation of the land met with more resistance. Nine midwestern states have, over time, adopted restrictions by statute or constitutional mandate. Corporate farming has been viewed with suspicion in some regions.

    But here in Canada, one corporation called One Earth Farms is sowing its oats and barley and wheat and whatnot all over Alberta and Saskatchewan and Manitoba, for the financial betterment of its majority owners in Toronto and, it turns out, some of its First Nations partners too.

    The land comes from First Nations. The venture comes from Bay Street. It started with the friendship of a man in a suit — Eric Sprott — and former Assembly of First Nations National Chief Phil Fontaine. Sprott brought in another businessman, Kevin Bambrough, who Fontaine in turn introduced to Blaine Favel, former leader of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians. And from there, One Earth became a partnership in which Fontaine and Favel are directors under CEO Larry Rudd, who is also currently a director of Viterra, the largest grain company in Canada.

    One Earth is 58% owned by Sprott Resources Corporation, making it more business than farmer’s tan.  Such is the nature of cropping and ranching in the corporate world:

    “Sprott Resource Corp. invests and operates through its subsidiaries in the natural resource sector. We currently have investments and operations in oil and gas, agriculture and agricultural nutrients as well as a large position in physical gold bullion. … We are dedicated to generating consistently superior returns on capital for our shareholders … by acquiring or starting attractive businesses at the right time, growing the value organically or through accretive acquisitions and by maintaining financial flexibility to be responsive to the needs of our businesses and to capitalize on new opportunities.”

    It’s interesting to note that one of the big investors in One Earth Farms Corporation is an entity called the CAPE fund. It’s a $50 million private-sector investment fund founded by the family of former Prime Minister Paul Martin — and 21 of Canada’s leading companies.

    CAPE Fund says its mission is to “further a culture of economic independence, ownership, entrepreneurship and enterprise management among Aboriginal peoples, on or off reserve, through the creation and growth of successful businesses.”

    So, in theory, all this cheery portfolio talk should translate to more First Nations in charge of their own farms and farm profits, even with Sprott Resources holding a 58% controlling ownership in One Earth.  And that’s a good thing, right?

  • INTERVIEW: How Families of Sisters in Spirit works to help relatives of missing/murdered women cope

    Tolley (left) & Gilchrist

    As part of Urban Nation LIVE‘s on-site, week-long coverage of Women’s Worlds 2011 in Ottawa, I got to sit down with Bridget Tolley and Kristen Gilchrist, two of the driving forces behind Families of Sisters in Spirit, a “volunteer, grassroots, non-profit organization led by families of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls.”

    The following are parts one and two of our complete conversation.

  • INTERVIEW: Anishinabe rapper helps take Ojibwe language into new territory

    Tall Paul

    Had the distinct pleasure of interviewing a talented young man the other day on Urban Nation LIVE, a Minnesotan rapper who performs under the mantle of Tall Paul.

    His video for the track “Prayers in a Song,” performed at a 2010 pow-wow near Leech Lake, MN, caught my eye and ears for its seemingly impromptu feel, balanced off by the self-assured flow of lyrics. Below is the UN interview, preceded by a transcription of the introduction.

    My next guest has proven just how flexible and compatible hip hop and Aboriginal languages can be.

    And no further proof of this ‘fuseability’ is needed than a YouTube video making the rounds in Indian country on-line.

    In his track entitled ‘Prayers in a Song,’ rapper Tall Paul of the duo Point of Contact lays down some bilingual lyrics in Anishnaabemowin and English.

    And here to tell us more about himself, the song and the inspiration is the man himself, Tall Paul.

  • Geronimo Lives: An interview with Dallas Goldtooth of the 1491’s

    In my other incarnation as host/producer of Urban Nation LIVE on Winnipeg’s STREETZ FM, I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Dallas Goldtooth of the 1491’s about their awesome video/poem, “Geronimo E-KIA.”

    I enjoyed it so much I thought I’d include the audio here for those who may have missed the original broadcast. Here is my introduction:

    Early last month, the much-despised Osama Bin Laden was tracked down and killed by U.S. Navy Seals in Pakistan.

    In confirming their kill, the Seals sent a short, coded message to President Barack Obama. It read:

    “Geronimo-E K.I.A. [Killed in Action].”

    To many Indigenous people, the use of the legendary warrior’s name as a stand-in for the notorious Bin Laden was a grievous insult. And for my next guest, that code inspired more than outrage — it led to a poem, one that’s actually gone kind of viral on YouTube.

    Dallas Goldtooth is a member of the 1491s, a sketch comedy troupe based in Minnesota and Oklahoma. And he joins me now by phone in a somewhat undisclosed location…

    [soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/17368197″]

    Obviously, my radio interview offers the audio of the poem only. To see it in all its visual glory, watch below.

  • Inuit innovator pursues his own musical ‘M.O.’

    Mosha Folger / M.O.

    A spoken word performance for former Governor General Michaëlle Jean has turned into a new hip-hop career for an Inuit artist — he rapped, she liked it, and he’s been going strong ever since.

    Mosha Folger (aka M.O.) is the son of an Inuk mother and Brooklynite father. With his two younger sisters, he was raised in both Iqaluit and North Vancouver.

    He says turning to hip-hop was an easy and natural progression from spoken word. He simply placed beats under his writing.

    Just a few years later and Mosha is releasing his second album, String Games. A duo effort with west-coast rapper Geothermal MC, it’s a highly-anticipated follow-up to his first album Eskimocentricity, which he released in 2009.

    Mosha says he raps about issues that are close to him: identity, northern politics and suicide.

    “My writing has been generally infused with my being half-breed,” he says. “I have always struggled in my life with this.”

    Moving from a “very Inuit environment” to a large urban environment, Mosha says he felt “slightly different” from his peers.

    “It became a struggle about how to be the only Inuk kid,” he notes. “The only way to do it in that environment was to try to fit in.” He focused more on extra-curricular activities like wrestling than his Inuit identity.

    “Every year I would attend my Social Studies class and do a fifteen minute presentation on the Inuit, and that was my connection to my culture.”

    But by the end of high school, he began to acknowledge his identity, despite feelings of being ‘too southern.’

    Mosha says his music pushes the cultural and identity norms of what it means to be Inuit — even though he admits it might offend some, including Inuit elders.

    String Games features Mohawk songstress Kinnie Star on the track, ‘Muskox’, which deals with suicide. Other special guests on the album include ‘Whitey,’ ‘Shanuna,’ ‘Hyper T,’ ‘Scractch’ and ‘Ritallin.’

    Aside from his music, Mosha is currently filming a short documentary called Anaana (the Inuktitut word for mother). It tells the story of his mother’s formative years at Fort Smith Indian Residential School in the Northwest Territories, near the Alberta border. It’s a personal account of the so-called ‘intergenerational effects’ residential school had on him as a child and to this day as an adult: “Something that happened to her at 13 is affecting me at 30,” he says.

    Sadly, like so many others, Mosha’s mother experienced abuses of all kinds. “She had a lot of things to deal with, so she drank. She died because of it, at barely 41 years old,” he says.

    Mosha says he spent years trying to figure out what he did to cause his mother to leave, even though when was she was around she was often abusive. “She didn’t know how to deal with having a child. I never [had] a mother”.

    Still dealing with this abandonment, he says it’s slowly starting to become easier for him. A parent himself from his first marriage, Mosha is learning how to be a good parent.

    He shares his passion of spoken word and hip-hop by facilitating workshops to Inuit, First Nations and Métis youth at Tungasuvvingat Inuit, the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre and at the Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health.

    He will also be heading to Inuvik to promote String Games and to facilitate more workshops. And this past March, he presented at the 10th anniversary New Sun Conference on Aboriginal Arts at Ottawa’s Carleton University, a conference dedicated to promoting artists, affirming contemporary Indigenous experience and increasing cross-cultural understanding — topics Mosha can practically rhyme in his sleep.