Seventeen years have passed since the United Nations proclaimed August 9 the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. It’s a day meant to promote and protect the rights of Indigenous peoples. To recognize the achievements and contributions they’ve made to the world around them. They’re achievements James Anaya knows like the back of his […]
Today on Urban Nation LIVE, home to my alter-media-ego on Winnipeg’s STREETZ FM, I had the opportunity to discuss the provocative thesis of my friend Chris Powell‘s new book, “Barbaric Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Genocide.” An assistant professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba, Powell’s thesis is provocative because he applies the book’s radical premise — that “civilization produces genocides” — not only to places like Rwanda and Nazi […]
An Ontario government report released several weeks ago confirms what many Indigenous people already know: that First Nations children are still vastly overrepresented in Canada’s child welfare systems. In fact, statistics show that there are more First Nations children in government care today than at the peak of Indian residential schools. In his report, “Children […]
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 […]
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 […]
