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  • Top 10 Settler Excuses for Colonialism


    While I may not totally agree with all of its arguments, and some of it is clearly Australia-specific, this set of replies by the blog Blackfellas to the “Top Ten Colonist Self Justifications” offered by white Australians is hilarious. I have no doubt Aboriginal peoples in Canada and the US can easily adapt these rationalizations to this part of the world.

    The list nails the usual litany of excuses trotted out by some non-Aboriginal people when confronted with the possibility that they may in some small way benefit from the fruits of colonialism past and present.

    I’ve only presented the self-justifications. Visit Blackfellas to see their amusing replies.

    Top 10 Colonist Self Justifications

    1. I didn’t steal anything.
    2. You have to move forward.
    3. Aboriginals must share responsibility for where they are today.
    4. I was born here.
    5. We all have equal rights.
    6. Look what Aboriginals did with ATSIC. †
    7. Government spends a billion dollars a year on Aboriginals.
    8. Aboriginals don’t work.
    9. We gave you the right to vote.
    10. We must all move forward together.

    † Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, a now-defunct national Aboriginal organization: ATSIC was disbanded in 2005 after being mired in controversy, replaced by the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples.

    I invite readers to supply their own replies (or excuses) in the comments section below for the Canadian context.

    Let me start it off: “Uh, didn’t our Prime Minister say ‘We’re sorry’?” Hey, that works for Australia too!

    [ Image via UFO Research Queensland ]

  • Introducing AGENDA INDIGENA: A space for debate

    A brief announcement highlighting the addition of a new MI feature, AGENDA INDIGENA.

    AGENDA INDIGENA is the organic extension of a debate initiated back in May, where a critical review of the book Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry led to a series of posts by a variety of voices. But not everyone could follow these interlinked posts easily or conveniently, and so, necessity spawned invention yet again.

    Let us know what you think, and if you want to spark a debate here at MI, drop us a line at editor [at] mediaindigena [dot] com.

  • Rubber revival delivers cultural, economic bounce for Indigenous Amazonians

    Awesome story in The Ecologist of how the tradition of Amazonian rubber-tapping has been successfully revived among Indigenous people in Brazil thanks in part to the critical assistance of local NGO Poloprobio.

    By “joining scientific research with the rubber-tappers’ empirical knowledge,” the partnership innovated a better processing method that doesn’t rely on electricity or machinery, thereby allowing people to earn a living close to home.

    Since 2002, the Encauchados de Vegetais da Amazônia project

    has already involved more than 600 Indians and rubber-tappers in Amazonian communities. The initiative, given a prize in 2008 by the Development Programme of the United Nations, is generating better income and quality of life for the forest people, while preventing deforestation by the expansion of cattle and crop farming.

    To see how the rubber is actually extracted and manufactured into various products, check out this fascinating video (with audio presumably in Portuguese):

    [ Image via dinettestyles.com ]

  • AUDIO: First Nations students underfunded; Winnipeg mayoral race’s silence on Aboriginal issues

    Behold the latest mediaINDIGENA segment on STREETZ 104.7 FM, which is originally broadcast live every Tuesday at noon central, 1 pm eastern, on-air and on-line.

    This week, Rick Harp and THE WORD host Lady V discussed the growing funding gap for First Nations post-secondary students, and, why Winnipeg’s mayoral race had been silent (to date, anyway) on Aboriginal issues.

    MI on STREETZ: Sept. 7, 2010

    [audio:https://mediaindigena.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/MI-StreetzFM-Sept-7-10.mp3|titles=MI-StreetzFM-Sept-7-10]

    POST-SCRIPT: Besides being oddly and annoyingly hyper on last week’s segment, I mistakenly quipped (@ 8:59) that incumbent mayoral candidate Sam Katz promised “77 new cops” if re-elected, when in fact it would be 77 new positions overall including 58 new police officers. The other 19 positions would additionally staff the city’s 911 call centre. I regret the error.

  • Indigenous film directors screening at this year’s TIFF


    As promised, here are all the Indigenous artists screening at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), which gets underway Thursday, Sept. 9 and runs for a total of 11 days. Non-Torontonians should look for these movies down the road at an Indigenous film festival near you, if not a mainstream theatre. Each film title link will take you to the TIFF site, where time, dates and venues are listed.

    • File Under Miscellaneous marks Mi’kmaq director Jeff Barnaby’s second appearance at TIFF, with fellow Mi’kmaq Glen Gould once again serving as lead actor. Inspired by the Pablo Neruda poem “Walking Around,” this short film follows one spiritually exhausted and assimilated native man as he visits “a dystopian clinic.”
    • Wapawekka, by La Ronge, SK-born director Danis Goulet, chronicles a father and son’s final visit to the family cottage, exposing a generation gap that cuts across along cultural and geographical lines.
    • Matariki, a first-time feature by Maori director Michael Bennett, explores the colliding problems and fears of 8 people and five intersecting stories, taking the audience into “the gritty shadows of a crime in-progress, the harsh neon of a hospital room and the soft intimate lamplight of a lover’s bed.” (Learn more on the film’s website.)
    • Finally, making back-to-back appearances at TIFF, Algonquin director Caroline Monnet will screen her short Warchild, in which a young man reflects on his troubled past and hopeful future during “a solitary portage between the barren wilderness and a desolate city.”

    There are also films featuring Indigenous peoples or themes as explored by non-Indigenous directors:

    • The short film, The Closer You Get to Canada (dir. John Bolton, Canada), is the “darkly comic story [of] “two old friends trapped in a futuristic American seniors’ residence [who] try to escape to Canada.” It’s adapted from a story by Cherokee author Thomas King and stars Gordon Tootoosis.
    • The feature-length work Even the Rain / Tambien la lluvia (dir. Iciar Bollain, Spain) tells a story within a story: a film crew arrives in Cochabamba, Bolivia set to make a movie about Colombus’ voyage to the New World and the subjugation of Indigenous peoples, but are soon caught up in city-wide protests against the privatization of water. As fact and fiction blur, Even the Rain draws subtle parallels between past and present exploitation of Latin America.
    • Meek’s Cutoff (dir. Kelly Reichardt, USA) depicts a wagon team of three families traversing the Oregon Trail in 1845 who become lost. Suffering hunger, thirst and fear, their encounter with a local Native man (played by actor/stuntman Rod Rondeaux) forces them to reassess everything they thought they knew about his people.
    • In Tracker (dir. Ian Sharp, Britain), an ex-Boer war guerrilla in 1902 New Zealand is sent out to bring back a Maori man (played by Temeura Morrison of Once Were Warriors and Star Wars prequels fame) wrongly accused of killing a British soldier.

    Other films that might resonate with Indigenous-oriented audiences include Marimbas from Hell / Las Marimbas del Infierno (farcical tale of traditional Guatemalan instrument’s jarring re-invention) and Amigo (one village’s experience during the early 1900s US occupation of Philippines) by the ever-excellent John Sayles.

    [ Still from File Under Miscellaneous via twitchfilm.net ]