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  • VIDEO: Island Indians’ last stand against forces of nature and commerce

    Isle de Jean Charles, 2010 (stacykranitz.com)

    Quick plug for a Kickstarter project trying to raise funds for a doc about a small, beleaguered Indigenous community on Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana.

    According to filmmakers Evan Abramson and Carmen Elsa Lopez, the area’s

    coastal marshland is eroding at the equivalent of one football field every 30 minutes … Only a half-mile of Isle de Jean Charles is left — and it’s slowly sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. … In the old days, barrier islands protected the twenty four square mile isle from hurricane damage. But since oil and gas companies began carving canals in the 1930s, saltwater has soaked into the marshlands, attacking and eroding everything in its path. With its barrier islands gone, Isle Jean Charles is left unprotected to the fury of hurricanes. Five hurricanes in the last decade alone.

    Key to the film is the conflict between “man of the sea” Edison Dardar and Chief Albert Naquin; the former fiercely protective of his people’s right to stay on the island, the latter resignedly promoting re-location in the face of seemingly overwhelming forces of nature and commerce. Based on what I’ve seen so far in the following ‘trailer,’ I imagine some viewers could come away with some degree of sympathy for both men’s perspectives, as each advocates what they personally believe is in the best interests of their community. That said, it appears the film will focus mostly on Dardar’s side of things, as you’ll see here:

    So where would your Kickstarter contributions go?

    Your money will go towards travel, car rental, hiring a second editor, post-production (sound mixing, color correction, festival submissions, DVD printing) as well as a donation to the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaws for future hurricane relief. … [W]e’re confident we can bring awareness to the issue of coastal erosion due to industry negligence. We hope the tribe will get Federal recognition and a greater chance to be included in the Morganza-to-the-Gulf Hurricane Protection Project. The island was excluded because it’s too costly to include within the levee walls.

    According to its KS page, this project “will only be funded if at least $10,000 is pledged by Saturday Apr 9, 5:16pm EDT.” As of Saturday Mar 19, 3:30 EDT, they’ve received $3,736 with 21 days to go.

    [ Image via Stacy Kranitz; See more of her work at stacykranitz.com ]

  • AUDIO: Cindy Blackstock reacts to Human Rights Tribunal’s dismissal of child welfare complaint

    Here’s an interview I did today for URBAN NATION LIVE (heard live weekdays at 12 noon central time on Aboriginal hip-hop station STREETZ FM) with Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada.

    She reacted to the recent dismissal by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal of her organization’s attempts (supported by the Assembly of First Nations) to secure equitable child and family service dollars for children living on-reserve, that is, at a level equal to that offered by provinces.

    Dismissed on what grounds? Well, as I state in the introductory script,

    A human rights complaint alleging that Indian Affairs Canada discriminates in the way it funds child and family services on-reserve has been rejected.

    According to the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, children living on-reserve receive, on average, fewer dollars in child welfare benefits than off-reserve children.

    But in its dismissal of the Society’s claims, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal argues the on- and off-reserve comparison is invalid because it involves different services by different providers. First Nations get services paid for by the federal government, while children elsewhere get services via provincial governments.

    Cindy Blackstock is the Society’s executive director. She joins us from Ottawa.

    As you will hear, Blackstock will not stop until the playing field for First Nations children is level with kids in the rest of Canada, a fight that seems to enjoy continually growing support:

    [audio:https://mediaindigena.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/CFSTribunal2.mp3|titles=CFSTribunal2]

    [ Interview: © STREETZ FM 2011 ]

  • Must juries look like their communities? You be the judge

    Must juries look like their communities? You be the judge

    How well do you know the guy next door? Do you understand why he’s always up at night — sometimes all night — yelling and shouting? Is it a fight between brothers, or husband and wife, or father and son?  Do you know if they’re simply arguing about what music they plan to play ’til the dawn breaks?

    Maybe you’re the good natured type and you put a pillow over your head and let it go because you were young once too. Or, maybe you slap on your yodelling CD and let that run at full volume in retaliation.

    Say you start work at 5 in the morning and you can’t take it anymore and you’re ready to rip their door off the hinges to end the shouting. And if you do rip the door off the hinges, are you justified?  Or just deranged?

    Could be that you know there’s been a problem next door. A fight over custody. Money trouble. Betrayal. Maybe it’s dementia. Bipolar disorder. A bad reaction to meds that generates unnatural aggression.

    How well do you know the guy next door and do you have the right to judge what he’s done and for what reasons?

    And right now, just who has the right to decide in such matters is a serious issue for a murder trial underway in a Thunder Bay, ON courtroom. A guy named Andre Wareham has killed another guy in an apartment building.

    Wareham says it was self-defense. But the trial can’t begin because a judge has ruled the pool of potential jurors doesn’t include enough Aboriginal representation. It’s a shortage that’s been a sensitive matter in other trials in the area. The feeling seems to be that if First Nations people are not part of the jury, the community isn’t being fairly represented.

    But what’s on trial in a murder case?  Is the question truly about who did it?  Or is it about whether what was done is truly murder?  Is it about coming to some agreement that murder is what the community — fully and appropriately represented — says it is?  Or is it about a particular community being supportive of its own because you know the other side is particularly unsupportive?

    And what does a jury of your peers mean? If I live in Thunder Bay, is it this many Aboriginals and that many non-natives?  How does that work in Toronto?  Does that change when the defendant is Aboriginal and the victim is not, or the victim is First Nations and the defendant is not?

    Can any one of us set aside our intuitive beliefs about injustice to pronounce a fair ruling on another?  If you were on trial, is there a particular group of jurors you would instinctively be wary of? Would that be a reflection of race, age, gender?

    These are questions that can see us slide into discrimination territory. The answers suggest we are all inadequate judges. The solution seems to be that, if we share those inadequacies around, we’ll come to some answer that collectively mitigates our respective biases. It doesn’t take into account group think, intimidation, rebelliousness or just plain apathy — all of which can occur when you’re working with a small group of people who have the power to decide the fate of another.

    I suspect jury trials are all about spreading the responsibility for momentous judgements across the yoke of several backs so no one individual has to bear it alone. In the end, trials make blame-layers of us all.

  • The Urban Heartbeat of Mother Earth

    The steady beat builds to a booming thump. The bodies on the dance floor writhe along, anticipating the peak. There’s a short beat break, and a half-second later it kicks back in with the wails of a Northern Cree pow wow anthem soaring above the club rhythm. The crowd erupts.

    This is the Electric Pow Wow at Ottawa’s Babylon nightclub, one of the most popular regular events in the nation’s capital over the past two years. It’s the brainchild of what’s now called A Tribe Called Red – a collective of four unique and dedicated young Ottawa-based Aboriginal DJs. They are Bear Witness (Ehren Thomas), Dee Jay Frame (Jon Limoges), DJ Shub (Dan General) and Dee Jay NDN (Ian Campeau). Their music is a complex blend of old and new, but Campeau describes it simply as “traditional pow wow music mixed with contemporary dubstep or club music.”

    “We wanted to showcase to the Native population that there were Native DJs in Ottawa and we were doing something positive and fun,” says Campeau, on how the movement started. It went from a bi-monthly club party to a touring showcase. “After the first one went so well, we kept throwing them and they got bigger.”

    A Tribe Called Red has taken the Electric Pow Wow right across Canada, and just returned from a show in Philadelphia. They’re now planning a full-fledged North American tour and have their sights set on Europe. Red Skin Girl will see an official release next month.

    The 29-year-old Campeau, an Anishinaabe who has roots in Nipissing First Nation, believes their beats strike a chord within urban Aboriginal people that’s never really been sounded. “I think it’s a natural progression and almost a necessity for our urban Native community,” he says. “Here in Ottawa alone we have a 30,000 Aboriginals in our city. We create a comfortable space that our urban population can say is theirs.”

    And it’s a space that’s getting positively crowded. Their hometown shows are always filled to capacity with a diverse cross-section of the urban Native and non-Native demographics: students, musicians, artists, and politicians. Urban Aboriginal people are the fastest growing group in Canada, and A Tribe Called Red are only too proud to provide their soundtrack.

    “It has been overwhelming!” says Campeau, and the response has been predominantly positive. “We had one person say ‘I don’t know about the word Pow Wow being thrown around in a place where booze is being sold. But I really like the music!’ That’s the only negative response we’ve heard.”

    But Campeau believes having modern Aboriginal-rooted dance music in city clubs goes even further for their newer, younger fans. Culture shock is still a huge hurdle for young people moving from the rez to the city, and he says their effort is to establish a traditional sense of community in the urban sprawl. And like any infectious groove, their songs and videos go viral online.

    “A huge highlight for me since we started this was hearing that young people from Northern Manitoba were sharing our music,” he says. “Another was having someone from Seattle thank us for making the ‘Woodcarver’ track.” (About John T. Williams, the woodcarver shot and killed by Seattle police)

    If anything, the artists in A Tribe Called Red want hope and positivity to spread, despite the ongoing difficulties Aboriginal people across the country face. “It might be a little harder for us,” Campeau concludes. “But with determination and imagination anything is possible. I just want young people to remember that, and I hope they hear it in our music.”

    For the latest on A Tribe Called Red, find them on Facebook and Twitter.

  • Government blames sex workers for violence used against them

    Government blames sex workers for violence used against them

    I had planned to write my first post here about something light-hearted (I’m working on pieces about yoga and an awesome art project). Much of my time is spent thinking about violence in our communities, so I wanted to take on some more positive issues, reminding us of our strengths and possibilities as Indigenous people.

    But today I saw that the Canadian government is fighting the recent Ontario court decision by Superior Court Justice Susan Himel, which ruled criminalizing sex work creates higher risk of violence, by saying that it is not the government’s obligation to protect women who choose to put themselves in harm’s way. And this I could not stay silent about.

    In a federal briefing filed yesterday with the Ontario Court of Appeal, government lawyers say that Parliament

    “is not obliged to minimize hindrances and maximize safety for those that [engage in prostitution] contrary to the law.”

    As an Aboriginal woman, this concerns me. This concerns me because women from our communities represent the vast majority of street-level sex workers across Canada, and men and transgender people from our communities remain invisible despite their involvement.

    It concerns me because violence against Aboriginal people – of all ages and genders – goes ignored on a national scale. This “blame the victim” mentality is what allowed a serial killer to operate for years in Vancouver’s downtown east side without any response from police. The violence there was expected, seen as normal, excusable. This is the case in many other communities that have high Aboriginal populations. It’s not as though I think more policing is the answer. But I do think that criminalizing sex workers and blaming them for other people’s violent actions is what enables the high rates of violence in the first place.

    What is the government saying by arguing in court that it’s not their job to protect sex workers? They are placing the blame on the victims of violence, who may already be struggling with the impact of poverty and neglect in their lives. Is that their fault too?

    This is not about the capacity of the police to provide protection or respond to violence. This is about the stigma around sex work, and the unclear stance the Canadian government has always had about it in their laws. It’s kind of legal, but kind of not. It’s not illegal to engage in sex work, but it’s illegal to live off the profits from it or to negotiate fees for it. This wishy-washy legal stance is finally being clarified through recent court cases, hopefully resulting in sex workers not having to fear arrest for doing something they’re going to do anyway. Why do the perpetrators of violence never fear for their arrest? Why do they never even figure in conversations about these issues? The perpetrators remain invisible, while the victims are marked by both the physical abuse and the social stigma resulting from violent acts.

    So what can we do about this? We can start by talking about these issues in our communities. We can start talking about the real issues facing our community members, like quality of life, access to health care, safe housing and family supports. We need to remove the stigma around sex work so that we can better support our relations. If your auntie is working in the trade, how can you support her? Clearly the government and the police don’t have her back, so how can you?