The Dominion - Ideas

What if Natives Stop Subsidizing Canada?

Tim McSorley — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:01:13 +0000

This piece was originally posted on the Media Co-op. For more #IdleNoMore coverage, click here.

MONTREAL—There is a prevailing myth that Canada's more than 600 First Nations and native communities live off of money—subsidies—from the Canadian government. This myth, though it is loudly proclaimed and widely believed, is remarkable for its boldness; widely accessible, verifiable facts show that the opposite is true.

Indigenous people have been subsidizing Canada for a very long time.

Conservatives have leaked documents in an attempt to discredit chief Theresa Spence, currently on hunger strike in Ottawa. Reporters like Jeffrey Simpson and Christie Blatchford have ridiculed the demands of native leaders and the protest movement Idle No More. Their ridicule rests on this foundational untruth: that it is hard-earned tax dollars of Canadians that pays for housing, schools and health services in First Nations. The myth carries a host of racist assumptions on its back. It enables prominent voices like Simpson and Blatchford to liken protesters' demands to "living in a dream palace" or "horse manure," respectively.

It's true that Canada's federal government controls large portions of the cash flow First Nations depend on. Much of the money used by First Nations to provide services does come from the federal budget. But the accuracy of the myth ends there.

On the whole, the money that First Nations receive is a small fraction of the value of the resources, and the government revenue that comes out of their territories. Let's look a few examples.

Barriere Lake

The Algonquins of Barriere Lake have a traditional territory that spans 10,000 square kilometres. For thousands of years, they have made continuous use of the land. They have never signed a treaty giving up their rights to the land. An estimated $100 million per year in revenues are extracted every year from their territory in the form of logging, hydroelectric dams, and recreational hunting and fishing.

And yet the community lives in third-world conditions. A diesel generator provides power, few jobs are available, and families live in dilapidated bungalows. These are not the lifestyles of a community with a $100 million economy in its back yard. In some cases, governments are willing to spend lavishly. They spared no expense, for example, sending 50 fully-equipped riot police from Montreal to break up a peaceful road blockade with tear gas and physical coercion.

Barriere Lake is subsidizing the logging industry, Canada, and Quebec.

The community isn't asking for the subsidies to stop, just for some jobs and a say in how their traditional territories are used. They've been fighting for these demands for decades.

Attawapiskat

Attawapiskat has been in the news because their ongoing housing crisis came to the attention of the media in 2011 (MP Charlie Angus referred to the poverty-stricken community as "Haiti at 40 below"). More recently, Chief Theresa Spence has made headlines for her ongoing hunger strike. The community is near James Bay, in Ontario's far north.

Right now, DeBeers is constructing a $1 billion mine on the traditional territory of the Āhtawāpiskatowi ininiwak. Anticipated revenues will top $6.7 billion. Currently, the Conservative government is subjecting the budget of the Cree to extensive scrutiny. But the total amount transferred to the First Nation since 2006—$90 million—is a little more than one percent of the anticipated mine revenues. As a percentage, that's a little over half of Harper's cut to GST.

Royalties from the mine do not go to the First Nation, but straight to the provincial government. The community has received some temporary jobs in the mine, and future generations will have to deal with the consequences of a giant open pit mine in their back yard.

Attawapiskat is subsidizing DeBeers, Canada and Ontario.

Lubicon

The Lubicon Cree, who never signed a treaty ceding their land rights, have waged a decades-long campaign for land rights. During this time, over $14 billion in oil and gas has been removed from their traditional territory. During the same period, the community has gone without running water, endured divisive attacks from the government, and suffered the environmental consequences of unchecked extraction.

Sour gas flaring next to the community resulted in an epidemic of health problems, and stillborn babies. Moose and other animals fled the area, rendering the community's previously self-sufficient lifestyle untenable overnight. In 2011, an oil pipeline burst, spilling 4.5 million litres of oil onto Lubicon territory. The Lubicon remain without a treaty, and the extraction continues.

The Lubicon Cree are subsidizing the oil and gas sector, Alberta and Canada.

What will Canada do without its subsidies?

From the days of beaver trapping to today's aspirations of becoming an energy superpower, Canada's economy has always been based on natural resources. With 90% of its settler population amassed along the southern border, exploitation of the land's wealth almost always happens at the expense of the Indigenous population.

Canada's economy could not have been build without massive subsidies: of land, resource wealth, and the incalculable cost of generations of suffering.

Overall numbers are difficult to pin down, but consider the following: Canadian governments received $9 billion in taxes and royalties in 2011 from mining companies, which is a tiny portion of overall mining profits; $3.8 billion came from exports of hydroelectricity alone in 2008, and 60 per cent of Canada's electricity comes from hydroelectric dams; one estimate has tar sands extraction bringing in $1.2 trillion in royalties over 35 years; the forestry industry was worth $38.2 billion in 2006, and contributes billions in royalties and taxes.

By contrast, annual government spending on First Nations is $5.36 billion, which comes to about $7,200 per person. By contrast, per capita government spending in Ottawa is around $14,900. By any reasonable measure, it's clear that First Nations are the ones subsidizing Canada. (2005 figures; the amount is slightly higher today.)

These industries are mostly take place on an Indigenous nation's traditional territory, laying waste to the land in the process, submerging, denuding, polluting and removing. The human costs are far greater; brutal tactics aimed at erasing native peoples' identity and connection with the land have created human tragedies several generations deep and a legacy of fierce and principled resistance that continues today.

Canada has developed myriad mechanisms to keep the pressure on and the resources flowing. But policies of large-scale land theft and subordination of peoples are not disposed to half measures. From the active violence of residential schools to the targetted neglect of underfunded reserve schools, from RCMP and armed forces rifles to provincial police tear gas canisters, the extraction of these subsidies has always been treated like a game of Risk, but with real consequences.

Break the treaty, press the advantage, and don't let a weaker player rebuild.

Idle? Know More.

The last residential school was shut down in 1996. Canadians today would like to imagine themselves more humane than past generations, but few can name the Indigenous nations of this land or the treaties that allow Canada and Canadians to exist.

Understanding the subsidies native people give to Canada is just the beginning. Equally crucial is understanding the mechanisms by which the government forces native people to choose every day between living conditions out of a World Vision advertisement and hopelessness on one hand, and the pollution and social problems of short-term resource exploitation projects on the other.

Empathy and remorse are great reasons to act to dismantle this ugly system of expropriation. But an even better reason is that Indigenous nations present the best and only partners in taking care of our environment. Protecting our rivers, lakes, forests and oceans is best done by people with a multi-millenial relationship with the land.

As the people who live downstream and downwind, and who have an ongoing relationship to the land, Cree, Dene, Anishnabe, Inuit, Ojibway and other nations are among the best placed and most motivated to slow down and stop the industrial gigaprojects that are threatening all of our lives.

Movements like Idle No More give a population asleep at the wheel the chance to wake up and hear what native communities have been saying for hundreds of years: it's time to withdraw our consent from this dead end regime, and chart a new course.

Dru Oja Jay is a writer, organizer, Media Co-op co-founder. Co-author of Paved with Good Intentions and Offsetting Resistance.

Barriere Lake Protest

DeBeers Victor Mine

A New Guide to Making Beautiful Trouble

dawn — Wed, 23 May 2012 05:20:43 +0000

"It's like an Anarchist Cookbook for the 21st century, but without the bombs"

VANCOUVER—Every chair, couch space and rolling computer seat, as well as some floorspace and standing room, were needed to accommodate the dozens of people who came out to the Purple Thistle Centre on Tuesday evening for the Vancouver launch of Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution.

Along with local contributor Harsha Walia, co-editors Dave Oswald Mitchell and Andrew Boyd were in town to discuss the book, a sort of encyclopedia for creative activism. More than 70 artists, authors, organizers and other shit-disturbers contributed entries.

"It's like an Anarchist Cookbook for the 21st century, but without the bombs," quipped Boyd. His other marketing brainstorm likens the book to the offspring of 1960s Yippies founder, activist prankster and writer Abbie Hoffman and community organizer Saul Alinsky, author of the seminal 1971 book Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals.

Boyd's joking aside, the comparison of Beautiful Trouble to Alinsky's Rules for Radicals has its merits. Both works focus on strategic planning and organizing for effective actions and campaigns. To that end, each of the modular entries in Beautiful Trouble's four main categories—tactics, principles, theories, and case studies—is accompanied by sidebar references to other entries in the various sections as well as to books and websites for further reading.

"It actually came from the field of architecture," said Mitchell of the book's modular organization, derived from the concept of pattern language in architecture. "It puts the tools into people's hands so that they can apply them to their situation."

The collective organizing experience and activist knowledge of those gathered at the youth-run Purple Thistle would likely add up to a few centuries' worth. As people commented on slideshow photos of past actions, such as a famous snapshot of a lunch counter sit-in for racial desegregation in the southern United States, co-editors Boyd and Mitchell described some of the tactics, principles and theories at play in each example.

Local South Asian activist and writer Harsha Walia participated in the Beautiful Trouble project, contributing the entries "Challenging Patriatchy as You Organize" and "Consensus is a Means, not an End" to the Principles section of the book. She had not seen the final edited version of the publication before Tuesday.

"It was all kind of compiled in this wiki-type thing," Walia said of the process for contributors. She added that the book really encourages strategic thinking, reflecting that often when people are organizing, they are not really focused on the differences between strategy, tactics, goals and so forth.

"There's all kinds of ways that we don't really think things through," said Walia.

One of the tactics discussed at the launch was Prefigurative Intervention, an action that creates "a little slice of the future we want to live in." Its common uses are listed in the book as follows: "To give a glimpse of the Utopia we're working for; to show how the world could be; to make such a world feel not just possible, but irresistable."

Walia shared her reflections from a seat at the back of the room alongside some of the women who participated in the tent city that took place during the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. At the end of the tent city, housing was found for some 80 homeless participants, but Walia considers it to have been more than just a successful direct action.

"The community that developed at the tent city was a prefigurative community," she said. "A lot of people refer to it as a place of freedom."

Boyd envisions that people will use Beautiful Trouble in two different ways: as an introduction to new ideas for people who are new to activism, and as a sort of reference book for "veterans."

"It's like a network of ideas and principles and tools," he commented, describing the book as "rhizomatic."

"I don't think that it really works reading it cover-to-cover," added Mitchell. "You just sort of navigate by association."

The launch of the book Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution will be followed by the launch of a website in the same vein as the design and purpose of the print publication. In fact, blank module formats are included in the book so that anyone can outline a tactic, principle, theory or case study to submit a new entry to the web-based project.

"We will be able to continue to add modules as they come up," explained Mitchell, adding that the website will be just as important as anything in book in that it will encourage activists to think in strategic terms.

Because publisher OR Books is printing the book on demand, Beautiful Trouble will likely not be available at many bookstores anytime soon but can be ordered online.

Mitchell and Boyd have moved on to book launch events in other cities and will be in Edmonton on May 23, but hopefully the discussions about strategic and creative activism that they inspired on Tuesday evening will continue in Vancouver.

Sandra Cuffe is a Vancouver-based journalist and regular contributor to the Vancouver Media Co-op, where this article was originally published.

Beautiful Trouble

The Kingdom of Hastings and Main

mccabe.melissa — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:05:42 +0000

A dispatch from the In our Own Voices writing project

VANCOUVER—In the fall of 2008, I lost my sister to brain cancer. Only one month later, I lost one of my lifetime friends to a heart attack. A few months after that, I lost another close friend to lung cancer. All these deaths happened in a five-month period. In March 2009, the mother of a good friend of mine passed away. Together these losses led me to decide to retire on my 60th birthday.

Because I have many health issues, I decided to try to do things that I wanted to instead of working and getting older and sicker. In April 2009, I told my boss that I would work until April 29th, my 60th birthday. I transferred my co-op shares to my daughter and grandchildren, who had recently moved back to Canada from Turkey, and they moved into my townhouse. I sold my car, paid off my debts, and made my will.

In June, I made the decision to move to a small apartment in Vancouver and apply for early CPP benefits. I also applied for BC Housing and with the help of a friend and an outreach worker at Saint James Society, I sent out about 40 to 50 housing applications to all available social housing in Vancouver. On June 20, 2009, I was called by the Neighbourhood Housing Society and interviewed for the Oasis, located at 40 East Hastings, where I moved into on July 4, 2010.

I had moved into the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood.

I explored the new area. I found a new doctor, who helped treat the depression that I had succumbed to. In the spring of 2009 I came to the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre where I found new friends and the resources to help me apply for social assistance as a "Person With Disability." I was lucky because, since changes to provincial regulations in June 2002, approximately 16,000 women had been removed from social assistance in BC. With the help of an advocate, I was able to get coverage for a medical top-off on my CPP after it had initially been turned down. We contested the decision, and after submitting all the paperwork and a doctor’s note, I was accepted.

I joined the DTES Power of Women Group and through the group and my own experiences, I have made a number of observations about the neighborhood in which I now live.

Here in the Kingdom of Hastings and Main, unlike other neighborhoods in Vancouver, I have found that there is a very defined hierarchy in place. We have many factions and groups that compete for wealth and control of this land. It starts with “Castle City Hall” which is led by King Gregor Robertson and his cronies. King Gregor has many lords and serfs. He also has many advisors to help control and tax his subjects.

The King’s land covers many areas and territories. He carefully takes good care of the lords that live in rich areas like Point Grey, Kerrisdale, and Shaugnessey. With the help of his lords—many of whom are lawyers, real estate industrialists, and property developers—the King plans his ways to control poorer areas like our Kingdom of Hastings and Main. The King has a large army to quash any uprising or protests from us serfs. They are called the Vancouver Police Department (VPD). The King arbitrarily changes any laws that he feels are required for his army to do his bidding.

The King uses his lords and advisers to plan his strategies to increase property values to enable more taxes and larger numbers of subjects to fill coffers. He is a wise King so his lords develop and profit by these actions, and thus stay loyal to him. His lords know that the poor serfs like myself are starting to rebel because of this, so to quell our anger they have used gentrification to push out us serfs and take over our neighborhood with condominium development outpacing social housing by a rate of three-to-one.

It is bad enough that we serfs have to combat this erosion of affordable housing and services, but there are other groups that feed upon us. One such group is the money-hungry drug dealers that control our Kingdom’s pathways. This group conspires to bring further hardships upon us serfs. They get many people hooked on the poisonous goods that they offer. I have noticed that every cheque day the drug dealers are placed in front of the cashing stores and banks where the serfs cash our cheques. This group collects their pounds of flesh from the many poor that have succumbed to the lifestyle of drugs in order to overcome the hopelessness of living in poverty.

Now the King tells us that we are protected by his army (the VPD), but I believe that his army is corrupt. How else can we explain that month after month, year in and year out, I see the same evil faces continuing to exploit us? Could it be that the Kings’ soldiers are being paid off by the dealers so that they only charge the serf women that hold drugs and money for these dealers?

I often witness the VPD’s harassment of these serfs and can only wonder if the army uses this random targeting to show us their strength so we will not oppose them. I believe we must continue to resist both the actions of the VPD and the control of King Gregor and his cronies.

In closing, although I have found an enjoyable life through volunteering and the POW group that I belong to, I know of the hardship of others. I know of the poverty, drug addiction, and housing conditions, along with the abuse and homelessness that people suffer in the Downtown Eastside. I am working hard to better the conditions down here for all of us.

Charlene is a 62-year-old transgender woman who has found a wonderful retirement, a new life and great friends in the Downtown Eastside.

This story was originally published on the Vancouver Media Co-op as part of the Downtown Eastside Power of Women “In Our Own Voices” writing project. For more information and to read more stories, please visit http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group

Charlene

Being an Addict and Working the Streets on Skid Row

mccabe.melissa — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 13:01:44 +0000

A dispatch from the In our Own Voices writing project

VANCOUVER—When I was about 15 years old I ran away from my parent’s home in Burnaby. My parents were alcoholics and there was a lot of abusive behaviour and yelling in our home.

This is common in a lot of Native homes, but I think this is because our parents are mimicking the behaviors of abuse that they learned in residential schools. Residential schools were a terrible nightmare. White people were in charge of the schools and their main purpose was to ‘beat the Indian out of us’. It was a means of controlling Native people and trying to subordinate us to White society. Young Native people were ripped from their homes, beaten when we spoke our own languages, and denied the right to our history, our culture, and the safety and wisdom of our families. My dad used to get beat up badly in the residential school that he was in, and so he behaved the same with us.

One night my sister and I decided we had had enough of our parents’ drinking and fighting. We jumped out of the window and took nothing except the clothes on our back. I remember thinking: “What are we going to do and where are we going to go?” We hitchhiked all the way from Burnaby to Main and Hastings, the heart of the Downtown East Side (DTES).

Once we got to Main and Hastings, we ran into two older guys who allowed us to stay with them and introduced us to pot and alcohol. But of course, we could not stay with them for free. We had to have sex with these two men. They would get us drunk and then force themselves on us. Although they took advantage of us sexually, we stayed with the two men, because we felt it was safer than the alternative of being alone on the streets or back in our parents’ abusive home. As with many other women fleeing parental or partner violence, my sister and I became re-victimized as women without homes and vulnerable in our relationships with men.

The police were often looking for us because we were reported as missing by our family. Until we became legally recognized as adults, the police would track us down and drag us back home, where we would get locked into our rooms. Because the abuse at home did not stop, we kept running away. The police never asked us why we kept running away; they just keep dragging us back to the same situation that we were running from.

At the age of 16, I started hooking (working on the street as a sex worker) in the DTES. I learned how to talk to guys, how to ask for money, and how much to charge. But I did not know much about safety—such as using condoms to protect against STIs and pregnancy. I had four abortions while working on the street. Working the street was also very dangerous because you never knew if you would come back alive. According to a 2001 PACE report, one-third of surveyed women in the survival sex-trade in the DTES said they had survived an attack on their life. A guy could beat you, rape you, or murder you. I feel lucky that I wasn’t one of serial killer Robert Pickton’s victims, though I know that I easily could have been. I remember hearing that he was driving around the area where I was working. I knew three of the women who were murdered on his farm.

One night a guy picked me up in his van. He grabbed me by my hair while I was in the backseat and tried to rape me. I was screaming so loudly that someone walking by knocked at the van door. The guy opened the back door, pushed me out, and drove away. I never reported this incident because I was too scared and believed that the violence committed against me was my own fault. Also, I do not trust the police. They judge those of us who live in the DTES, particularly the working girls. My friend who once tried to report an incident was told by the police: “You are a hooker. What do you expect?” Just like many other people in our society, the police stigmatize women in the sex trade, which is exactly why men prey on street-level sex workers as targets for violence and know that their crimes will either not get reported or not be taken seriously.

But working the street was the only way to make enough money to support myself and to get my own place, away from those two men. I was also addicted to drugs by then, which I did to forget the violence of my parent’s home and the pain of the streets. I started by snorting cocaine. Then I started smoking crack in a pipe. Doing drugs is fun at first; it helps ease the everyday pain of just wanting to end your life. But over time, I started to realize how dangerous it was—three of my personal friends overdosed and died. Over 4,700 injection drug users live in this neighbourhood, and until recently, overdose deaths here outstripped all other North American cities.

It is not just the probability of overdosing that worried me, but also the risks associated with the street-level drug trade. People are often trying to steal your drugs. If you have a drug debt with your dealer, they show no mercy. Women have all of the hair on their heads shaved off, are kidnapped and tortured for days, or are pushed out of their windows. I knew a woman who was raped all night by several different men because she owed money to the drug dealers.

After 15 years, I realized I wanted a better life for myself and I believed that I deserved it. Even though I had a drug habit and needed money to survive, I decided to get out of the sex-trade. My boyfriend at the time helped me realize that I could get other work and take better care of myself. So I started volunteering and working on furthering my skills. I am proud of myself now.

I really wish my life had turned out differently, but I had few options back then. So that no one else has to go through what I had to go through, I believe there should be housing available for young girls so they do not end up homeless or in an unsafe housing situation. If I had a younger sister, I would do everything possible to prevent her from entering the sex-trade. I believe it is important for young girls to know that the street is disappointing and dangerous.

The government should make it easier to get on welfare and raise the welfare rates so women do not have to work the streets to survive. Welfare for a single person without disability is $610, made up of $375 for rent and $235 for support. Even in the DTES, average rents in slum buildings are above $450, forcing people to rent in unsanitary housing and leaving us hardly enough money for food. Our society should also make it easier for people who live in the DTES to work because no one is willing to hire people who have the DTES as their address or who have no address at all. Finally, I think people should have more understanding and compassion towards us. We should not be judged for who we are or what we do for trying to support ourselves when no one else even seems to cares whether we live or die.

Diane (not her real name) lives in the Downtown East Side and is happy to have a life where she can start over. She wishes others could do. She likes the DTES Power of Women Group.

Photo by Tre Lan CC 2.0

Daily Struggle and Resistance in the Downtown Eastside

mccabe.melissa — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 14:50:04 +0000

A dispatch from the In our Own Voices writing project

VANCOUVER—I could not help wondering what life would have been like if I had stayed back East, as I walked on Hastings and Main Street on a gray, rainy, rather typical Vancouver day. My reverie was broken by an ugly sight before me near Pigeon Park. A man and a woman were walking just in front of me and appeared to be having a casual conversation. Suddenly, without any warning sign to me or the woman, the man took a fast sideways kick to the woman’s face. I shall probably always remember the bewildered look on her face and the sight of her blood stained eye and dress. Of course such acts of violence are taking place all over the world, but in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver they occur so often in public rather than in private.

The next day I had arranged to meet a man who had requested my help. It was a simple request, “I heard you do advocacy and I need someone to go with me to the welfare office. I have an appointment there, and I am afraid that if I go alone that I will end up hitting a worker!” When I joined him at the office, he told the receptionist that he would like to bring someone in with him to the welfare worker’s office. When the welfare worker came out somewhat later than the appointment time, I was a little surprised by his attire and his attitude. I thought to myself, “Do they deliberately try to look tough to intimidate the clients?” He was wearing an open neck shirt, well-worn jeans, and heavy boots. He had a muscular build and was tall and surly.

“Well I see you are living common-law now” he growled. His client explained in a far more polite tone that I was there to help him. I fully understood why the man had asked for a witness, as I sensed that the welfare worker would have been far worse in attitude and behaviour if I was not there to accompany my friend.

Life in the Downtown Eastside is very often like this—tinged with violence from strangers, service providers, and the police. We suffer particularly from the cruelty of poverty. Living in poverty erodes one’s feeling of adequacy and diffuses one’s confidence and sense of self-worth. It is a struggle to maintain one’s dignity when one has to tolerate sneers and jeers from the public. The stereotype of poverty is an addicted person who lives in the Downtown Eastside. But the faces of poverty are diverse and can be found all over BC, which has the highest child poverty rate, the highest cost of housing, and the lowest minimum wage.

In particular, single parents endure crushing levels of poverty in this province. Fifty-six percent of lone parent families headed by women are poor, compared with 24 percent of those headed by men. One-third of BC welfare recipients are single-parent families, 88 percent headed by women. Single parents do our best to provide a good home for our children. If we are forced to accept housing that we do not find adequate for our needs, there is a tendency in many cases to blame ourselves and to feel guilty, although we are trying our best to care for our family.

These days, Vancouver City Council continues to support the real estate developers. Most recently, City Council made the decision to remove the neighbouring area of Chinatown from the Downtown Eastside planning process, and subsequently agreed to let developers build 12 to 15 story buildings and condominiums in historic Chinatown. Remember that historic Chinatown is home to many low-income seniors, and is an area where Chinese stores flourish as a direct result of anti-immigrant sentiment which disallowed Chinese people from renting in other parts of Vancouver throughout the 20th century. This recent Vancouver City Council decision to allow condominium towers in Chinatown was made despite one thousand petition signatures opposed to the plan and concerns raised by hundreds of Chinatown residents in City Council meetings. As a resident of Chinatown myself, I attended and spoke at one of these City Council meetings and voiced my opinion against this plan. Let it be clear to the powers-that-be that I have no intention of moving out or being kicked out from my home in Chinatown! (Well, unless I win the lottery maybe.)

And even though the very roof over our heads is constantly under threat by the greed of developers and the government who seek to control us, we still carry on with persistence. We support the homeless, victims of violence, those with addictions, and people suffering from mental health. We demonstrate, talk to politicians, send delegations to City Council, and raise awareness to the public.

Daily, we remind ourselves that our oppressors cannot take our power away. Our power can only be taken from us if we give it away. Not even involuntarily or unintentionally will we relinquish our power! We remember that “What does not kill us only makes us stronger.” The Twisted Sister’s Song “We’re Not Gonna Take It” often runs through my head. Yes, our earning capacity might not be up to many others in society, but we are not ruthless, we do not worship money, we keep our values, and we have a rich spirit. On the other hand, those who have a poverty of spirit number many, and among them you will find politicians, police officers, and big businesses. They think they are strong, but we believe we are stronger.

Joan Morelli has resided in Canada for over thirty years and has raised her children on limited wages. She has been a tireless activist, actor, and writer in the Downtown Eastside for approximately two decades. As long as she breathes she truly believes that we must fight for housing and that housing is a universal right, and that no one should have to live and suffer in poverty.

Joan Morelli

The Foster Home System Damaged Me

mccabe.melissa — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 12:53:31 +0000

A dispatch from the In our Own Voices writing project

VANCOUVER—I was born in 1957 and in my early years I lived in a cabin with my mother and six siblings in Quesnel, BC. When I was eight years old, our mother took off and left us alone for three days. My younger siblings had no diapers and we were eating dry oatmeal. As a result, the neighbour called the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD). When MCFD apprehended us and took us into their custody, we were all separated from one another except for one of my brothers and I who remained together.

I was brought up in 15 foster homes. Two of the homes I was in were reasonably okay, while in the others I suffered neglect, starvation, and physical and verbal abuse.

In the worst foster home that I was in, the foster father would touch me. When I was washing the dishes, he would come up behind me and touch my breasts and my genitals. I would tell him not to and move his hand away, but he would keep doing it. To this day I still get scared when people come up behind me.

The foster father would also sexually abuse my brother and me at night. We slept in the basement on hard cots with one sheet separating the two of us and we could hear everything that was happening to the other person. At the age of 12, I became pregnant as a result of the rapes by my foster father. When the foster father found out that I was pregnant because of him raping me, he forced my brother to have sex with me and then told the MCFD’s social worker that I was pregnant because of my brother. MCFD forced me to have an abortion.

Although that was the worst foster experience that I endured, it was certainly not unique. Sometimes foster parents would send us to bed without dinner, and then we would wait until we could sneak into the freezers at night. We hardly got any clothes, although all the foster families get clothing allowances from MCFD for us. Beatings were commonplace in a significant majority of the homes. In one foster home, I was beaten with belts and wooden sticks to my head. Today, I have a serious learning disability and I think my disability is due to the head injuries that I sustained from the beatings, compounded by Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

My entire childhood I was too afraid to sleep. I remember vividly all the nights I would lay awake and stare at the sky, wishing I could just fly out the window. I was even scared to have showers, because it would mean being naked and vulnerable.

My brother ran away. He stole food and clothes to survive, which landed him in jail frequently. When I got older I would run away as well, and I started drinking and doing drugs. I even tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge, but a passerby grabbed me and MCFD put me back in the same foster home. I could never understand why MCFD would keep putting us back in the same foster homes that we had to run away from. They must have known something was wrong, but they just ignored it.

I know that many other women have similar stories. Currently in BC, over 9,271 children are living in foster care, more than half of whom are Aboriginal. As a recent PIVOT Legal Society report concluded: “The child welfare system continues to fail to address the systemic factors impacting children’s well-being, such as poverty, the legacy of colonialism and the lack of social supports for single mothers. We conclude that as long as those systemic factors are ignored, BC’s government is not in a position to claim that it is genuinely acting in the best interest of children.”

Recently, my brother and I tried to take these issues to provincial court. The court said they could not do anything because MCFD was not legally responsible for our mistreatment, abuse, and assault. The court said that we would have to file criminal charges against each individual foster parent. But I believe it is the government’s responsibility for ensuring we were placed in an appropriate and caring environment after apprehending us.

My entire life has been affected by my apprehension and subsequent foster home experiences. I feel damaged and inadequate. I was not taught a lot of things that children learn in a supportive family environment, like cooking, cleaning, reading and writing. I am upset that the court never helped me seek justice. I am furious that social workers do not actually care for children, or believe them when they tell MCFD about the negative experiences in their foster homes.

Today, I am happy that I am alive. I have a good husband, three cats, a home and a life that I am grateful for. I have not done drugs or alcohol in years, and I still feel at home in the DTES. I have friends here who do not judge my disability and do not call me ‘slow’ or ‘stupid’. I am not stupid, I am a survivor.

Debbie V. is a volunteer at the Downtown Eastside Womens’ Centre and proud member of the DTES Power of Women Group.

Debbie V. DTES Power of Women member.

The Intergenerational Impact of Child Apprehension

mccabe.melissa — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 12:45:36 +0000

A dispatch from the In our Own Voices writing project

VANCOUVER—At the age of 12 years old is when the abuse in my parents’ home started. My siblings and I were subjected to physical and emotional abuse and violence by my parents. We had many visits from the Ministry of Child and Family Development (MCFD) but my siblings and I were forced to lie about the abuse because we were afraid that telling the truth would result in even more abuse.

In 1994, at the age of 15, I was pregnant and gave birth to my first child. The abuse from my parents continued, until I could not take it anymore and I ran away from home. The following day I was taken into MCFD’s foster care and from then onwards, I was moved from home to home. I lost custody of my son, who was also placed into the foster system, thus perpetuating an intergenerational cycle of child apprehension and misery in the foster system.

I have read a report that in BC, young women who have been permanently apprehended by MCFD are four times more likely to become pregnant than young women who have never been in the foster care system. I, too, became pregnant with my second child while in foster care. During my pregnancy, the foster mother slept all day, and I was responsible for our meals and all the cleaning. I was constantly kicked, my hair was pulled, and I was kicked in my stomach. I made phone calls to MCFD, the police, and youth advocates for more support for my unborn baby and I, but to no avail. Instead, when I gave birth, MCFD apprehended my second child as well. Since they were both apprehended, I have not seen my two sons, nor do I know anything about their well-being.

Finally, at the age of 18, I moved into an independent living situation where I had my own living quarters with my own facilities for cooking and cleaning. At the age of 19, I landed my first job as a home supporter worker and was able to financially support myself. That is when I started drinking heavily, almost every night.

At the age of 19, I was pregnant again with my daughter, who is now eight years old. A few years later, I gave birth to my second daughter, who is now four years old. I was the primary parent for both of my daughters until MCFD got re-involved in my life. I did everything MCFD asked of me as a young, single, low-income parent. I did the best that I could to support my daughters. I quit drinking and I never did drugs.

Then in 2009, MCFD made several visits to my home alleging that I was constantly yelling at the girls and that on one occasion I had hit them. On Sep 14, 2009, a MCFD social worker advised me that the ministry was apprehending the girls and that the matter was now before the courts.

Since then, I have been going to every court date and every visit with my daughters, even though the ministry was making it very difficult for me to have visits. I went to a parenting program that they wanted me to attend. While MCFD is falsely pointing fingers at me, I find that the foster parents are completely negligent in caring for my children. In 2010, my youngest daughter had an infected hang-nail and a 101 degree fever. The foster parents refused to take her to the doctor, so during a court date I had to show the social worker a photograph of my girl. The ministry then granted me permission to take my daughter to the emergency room, where she was placed on an IV and antibiotics for a week.

This year, my lawyer and I attended a “mediation” with the ministry. I attempted to get answers as to how they were able to apprehend my children without any proof to back up their allegations of me abusing my girls. The ministry did not provide any answers. They simply said that their intention was to seek a continuing custody order to keep my children in the foster system and will be going to court to seek an extension. I then advised my lawyer and the ministry that it was my intention to have my girls come home with me. We are waiting to set trials for next year.

In the meantime, I start weekly 1-hour supervised visits with my daughters this month. If all goes well, MCFD will increase my visits after one month. I will also be able to attend all the girls’ doctors’ appointments and extracurricular activities. I recently attended a meeting with MCFD and the foster parents to arrange visits and access to my daughters. The foster mother said that if she had to supervise the visits then she would consider sending the girls to another home! I am so frustrated by her attitude and MCFD allowing my daughter’s to be shuffled around like this.

Over the past two years, I have been left feeling hopeless and alone. I feel like I am being ganged up on by MCFD. I have resorted to smoking cigarettes to keep my stress levels down. I wonder, how can I ever be happy without my girls at home with me? Since coming to the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre I have gotten a lot of support and I have learned that I am not the only one whose children have been apprehended by MCFD. Other women have advised me that it is possible to win against MCFD, which brings me hope.

But my question remains unanswered: why are so many single mothers, especially Aboriginal, being targeted by the MCFD? I found out that as of September 2009, only eight per cent of children in BC are Aboriginal, but approximately 53 per cent of the children being apprehended are Aboriginal. We are stereotyped as abusive, but physical abuse and sexual abuse are not the primary reasons that children are apprehended. In fact, physical harm by a parent was only cited as a ground for removal in ten per cent of child protection cases in the Lower Mainland. Apprehensions are generally the result of a parent’s struggle with poverty; 65 per cent of all child apprehensions are from single parents on welfare.

Serious harm is being done by keeping families apart and by tearing children away from their mothers without just cause. More times that not, siblings are separated from each other and placed in different foster homes. It is not only the children who are harmed, but also the mothers, who then suffer from severe depression and sometimes spiral further into addictions. We should do more to unite against MCFD abuses. It is time that these injustices end.

Courtney is a volunteer at the Downtown Eastside Womens' Centre as well as a member of the DTES Power of Women Group.

Courtney, DTES Power of Women group

My Story of Domestic Violence and Child Apprehension

mccabe.melissa — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:34:42 +0000

A dispatch from the In our Own Voices writing project

VANCOUVER—I was abused by my ex-partner, who is also my children’s father, for ten and a half years. I had four children with him—Angela, Rosalie, Mike and Jackson. I was beat all throughout my first pregnancy, and as a result my girl Angela was born a month early. She did not develop properly and was born with her heart on the right side of her body. She was a Mother’s Day baby, born on May 13, 1973, at 5 lbs 11 oz. I named her Angela Michelle because she looked just like an angel. She only lived to the age of 16 and died on January 17, 1990, in Prince George.

It is for her and in her memory that I tell this story.

You might be wondering why I stayed in a violent relationship for that long? I grew up without a dad and was often called a "bastard." I was always taunted with sayings such as, "Do you even know who your dad is?" It hurt a lot to be bullied and I did not want my own children to go through the same experience. So I silently suffered the abuse. At the time I did not realize that it was equally bad, if not worse, for my children to witness the violence of their father beating up their own mother.

I tell this story for the women who are still in abusive relationships so that they will have the courage to get out. Anyone who controls you and physically and emotionally hurts you does not love you. We have to understand that violence against women is always unacceptable, and as Native women we are five-times more likely than other women to die as the result of violence.

I became an alcoholic while I was in the relationship. The alcohol would numb the pain of being beaten; it would numb me for when he got home in the evenings so I could tolerate all the kicks and punches; it would numb me against his false accusations of me cheating on him when he was the one cheating on me with other women.

As a result of my drinking, the Ministry of Child and Family Development (MCFD) became involved in my children’s lives. I had several visits from MCFD over the years and they told me to stop drinking and to get counseling, but I could not stop drinking. They also told me to leave my ex-partner, but I had nowhere to go. For years, MCFD kept apprehending my children. Sometimes they would take my children away for a few weeks; sometimes it was for a few months.

Then in December 1981, in a surprise visit, MCFD workers came to my home. I was not home, but my children’s father was supposed to be home. However he had left them alone in the house and the upstairs neighbour called MCFD. MCFD apprehended my children, this time seeking a permanent order. That meant that my young children, ages one to five, were going to essentially be kidnapped from me forever.

I broke down and started drinking even more heavily. I felt that if I did not have my children, then I had nothing to live for and would rather drink myself to death. One night in March 1982 I drank so much that I felt my heart was going to stop. That night I decided that I did not actually want to die an alcoholic and that I had to fight for my children.

I quit drinking cold-turkey. I went for alcohol counseling at the Native Courtworkers Society and also enrolled at Native Education Society to get my GED. I finally left my partner. After a few months I was able to get two-hour supervised visits with my children every six to eight weeks, but only after I appealed the decision by MCFD to deny me visits entirely.

After I won my right to supervised visits, I decided to appeal MCFD’s decision to apprehend my children permanently. I did not even know that I could appeal this decision until I was informed by an advocate at Native Courtworkers that I could. I realized that MCFD had not informed me of my basic legal rights as a parent and did not actually care to fulfill their responsibility and mandate to keep families together. I felt that as a survivor of violence and as a Native woman, I was being re-victimized by being labeled as a bad mother who was unable to protect her children.

After four years of fighting in the Court system, I finally won my case and my children were given back to me in 1986. Throughout the four years I often felt like giving up but I knew I had to fight for my family. The MCFD social worker reported to the Court that I was ‘not showing love and affection’ to my children. But the Court-ordered psychologist determined that there was lots of affection between us and said that it was clear that my children wanted to come back home. I thank Dr. Diane Mitchell for helping me win my case by recommending that my children be returned. It is frustrating though that we have to rely on these professionals to validate us.

The whole system of child apprehension is grossly unfair and unjust. From my experience and those of other women I know, it seems that the Ministry is interested in keeping children in the foster system rather than returning them to their parents. Most of the children in MCFD’s custody are Native children. In BC, Native children are 6.3 times more likely to be removed from their homes than non-Native children. I believe this is both a continuation of the residential school experience—where children are torn away from their families and communities are destroyed—as well as a consequence of residential schools, which has forced Native families into social dysfunction with rampant alcohol and drug use and abuse in the home. I feel like the odds are stacked against us, but still we continue on.

I am now 29 years sober and my three beautiful children—Rosalie and Michael and Jackson—are parents themselves. Once I had my children back, I told my boys to never hit a woman because it is like hitting your mother. I still live with the guilt about what happened to my deceased daughter Angela. I also felt responsible when my other daughter Rosalie was in an abusive relationship worse than mine. I felt that she thought it was okay to be abused because she watched me take it. But now my daughter Rosalie is happy and has a beautiful eight-year-old daughter named Kayla. My son Michael is 31 years old and has been clean from heroin for several years now. He is working and has a two-year-old daughter named Tayla. My youngest son Jackson is 30 years old and recently graduated from the Academy of Learning. He has a wonderful ten-month-old baby girl named Gianna. I am so proud of my children and thank the Creator for every new day. Love to all my family and friends.

B. has lived in Vancouver for 35 years. She is from Bella Bella. She is currently 29 years sober and volunteers at the Downtown Eastside Womens’ Centre. She loves being part of the DTES Power of Women Group because the group fights for everything she has been through—from violence and abuse to child apprehension—and gives her a voice! She also marches in the February 14th Womens’ Memorial March Committee for her murdered sister and niece.

Recently, B. was in the hospital for two months due to double pneumonia. She went through surgery for her right lung on December 28, 2010. She feels lucky to be alive and would like to thank all her family and friends for their prayers and visits, which meant a lot to her.

This story is part of the Downtown Eastside Power of Women “In Our Own Voices” writing project. For more information and to read more stories, please visit http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group

B. Photo by Joe Philipson

Mental Health and Police Violence

mccabe.melissa — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 14:17:38 +0000

A dispatch from the In our Own Voices writing project

VANCOUVER—The heart of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) is home to survivors of the war on terror: the terror of poverty, physical and spiritual abuse, child apprehension, addictions, and residential schools - all of which quietly destroy the human spirit. Yet in spite of its image as the poorest urban postal code in the country, the DTES has the highest number of art galleries per capita in the country. This seeming contradiction becomes more understandable when one looks more deeply into the neighbourhood. The DTES is made up of the most extremes in our society —brutality and indifference on the one hand, and selfless generosity and compassion on the other hand.

My entry into the world of the DTES started four years ago when I spiraled into homelessness due to a mental illness that was later diagnosed as bipolar, anxiety, and ADHD. It seems that it runs in my family and I had battled it in the form of depression for much of my adolescent and adult life. A bout of hypomania took me from working at a university and living a comfortable middle-class existence in one of Vancouver’s priciest neighbourhoods to becoming homeless.

In this province, there are 15,500 adults with severe addictions or mental illness who are homeless. When one is mentally unstable and doesn’t have stable housing, keeping track of health appointments takes a backseat to overt survival. People are too busy foraging for food, waiting in line for a shelter bed, pandhandling for a few dollars, or searching for clothes or cardboard to protect against the rain and snow. Under such stressful situations, even the most mentally stable and capable will become unstable!

Soon enough, I secured housing in a single-room occupancy with a shared bathroom. I was very fortunate because I had kitchen facilitates in my room and the building was well-maintained, both of which are rarities. I realized that once a person is tagged with the stigma of mental illness, life changes substantially. One's credibility, trust, and reason immediately diminishes before the eyes of others, particularly authority figures like police, doctors, and lawyers. We become invisible. In the Downtown Eastside, it is even more evident: the poor who are seen but not heard, the walking wounded who are over-medicated on illicit or prescription drugs. The DTES is overrun with different agencies that provide services to its vulnerable low-income community. However for someone who is mentally unwell working through the agencies and maintaining continuity to obtain services is such an impossible labryinth to negotiate that so many people fall through the cracks.

But home is where the heart is and the DTES is very much home now. What fascinates me about this 'slum' neighbourhood is the beauty of the trees and plants, and correspondingly, the people. Though I have moved to a new apartment in the West End and have just finished professional mental health peer support trainings and advocacy programs, I spend most of my time in the DTES.

The most prominent memory I have of the DTES is of a hot August afternoon when the police had roped off a whole block with their yellow tape. Why? Because someone was about to jump off a 6-storey building. I was with our beloved Power of Women facilitator-activist Harsha who asked 3 of the 10 attending police officers if a net was being called for the person. The police officers responded with condescension, stating that he did not know what Harsha was talking about and tried to shut her up by intimidation. I quietly observed the abuse coming from the police officer to someone who only wanted to help.

What interrupted the exchange between them was another officer yelling at a partly-conscious older man on the sidewalk to get on the other side of the yellow tape. The police officer then proceeded to lift the man up, handcuff him, and drag him across the intersection. In trying to balance himself, the older man lost one of his shoes. There was such an overwhelming display of disrespect and indifference shown to this man that it was hard to remain silent. Many of us started commenting on the negativity of the police, which in turn made the police even more confrontational.

Eventually, another police car drove up and five police officers proceeded to the trunk. What emerged from the trunk were two rifles and a two-person SWAT team also stepped out of the car. I gasped. That was how they were going to deal with a person wanting to jump off a building! That single incident exposed the attitude of the police towards anyone that they deem mentally unbalanced- a John Wayne shoot-em-up mentality. I understand why the people in the DTES do not trust the police. The police consider people living in the DTES as expendable human beings and treat them with such disdain.

This is what residents breathe and live with on a daily basis—fear and intimidation by the police. For what, you ask? For being poor, for being poor and indigenous, for being poor and of colour, and the most vulnerable are those who are poor, indigenous, and women. Meanwhile, the real criminals – the monied few who rape the land and destroy hearts of peace – authoritatively rule over us as their banks create financial messes and their police and military try to squash us.

Last year, the DTES witnessed an intensification of the violation of civil and human rights by the police upon vulnerable homeless men, women, and youth. Just before the Olympic Games, more police officers were hired in the DTES and they indiscriminately ticketed harassed, intimidated, and arrested people. We witnessed this almost every day in the DTES and heard horror stories of homeless friends being dragged off in police cruisers for no reason.

To try and protect our most vulnerable DTES residents, members of the DTES Power of Women group - in conjunction with anti-poverty and anti-Olympic activists - were able to create and host an Olympic Tent Village in a fenced-off vacant lot in the DTES during the Olympics. Hundreds of homeless men, women, and children moved into the Olympic Tent Village and were given tents and were protected from the intimidation of the police. The now world-renowned Olympic Tent Village lasted four weeks and demonstrated to us what true democracy can do: create a liveable space of peace and harmony where each member-resident listens, speaks, is heard and then decides collectively at a daily community meeting what self-rule looks. What I have learned so wisely from so-called 'mentally-unbalanced-loser-morally-corrupt' DTES residents is what social justice really is. The grace, joy, and utopian home of the Olympic Tent Village is something that I shall carry for all the days of my life.

Shurli is a member of the DTES Power of Women Group. She advocates for social justice by ending poverty; by ending the marginalization of Indigenous and mentally or physically-challenged people; by providing safe affordable housing, wholesome food, education, and meaningful work to all; and by living peacefully with respect and dignity for all Life in harmony with Nature.

Shurli Chan

Childhood Abuse Brought Me to the Downtown Eastside

mccabe.melissa — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 14:00:30 +0000

A dispatch from the In our Own Voices writing project

VANCOUVER—In 1954, when I was six years old, I came to Canada from Germany. Ever since then I have lived in Vancouver. When I was growing up, my father abused me physically, mentally, and sexually. My mother did nothing to protect me. At the age of 13, I ran away from home and stayed with my friends in New Westminster until I turned 17. I was pregnant and went back home to Vancouver to give birth to a baby girl in 1966. She was apprehended in 1967 by the Ministry of Child and Family Development (MCFD). She was only 9 months old.

Shortly after that, at the age of 19, I ended up in the Downtown Eastside. I found myself sinking into a depression and was constantly tormented by the horrific memories of my father’s abuse. I started using alcohol and drugs such as LSD, and entered into several abusive and exploitative relationships with men.

In 1969, I moved to Winnipeg with a man. I quit drugs and had two children. But the relationship did not work out and I returned to the Downtown Eastside with one of my daughters in 1978. I ended up in another relationship, but this man began assaulting my young daughter. I did not know about this right away, as soon as I found out I broke up with him. But by then, MCFD was re-involved in our lives because they already a file on me, and my daughter was apprehended and taken away from me.

I started drinking again and even tried heroin. It was hard to survive without enough money. I hardly ate. I relied heavily on food banks and collected recyclable bottles to make some extra dollars. I thought about prostituting myself, but I felt too ashamed and was worried that if my children found out, that they would look down on me. I was homeless and stayed at the Triage Shelter and Lookout Shelter.

My favourite hangouts on the street were on Main and Hastings, Hastings and Abbott, as well as Hastings and Dunlevy. All the people there were also drinking and doing drugs and I felt like I fit right in. It was the only life I knew. In the bars, I would always meet men. They saw me sitting alone and would ask if they could join me, and I would let them. The men were never young and always offered me drinks. When they told me to come home with them, I would tell them that I had a disease.

Now, almost twenty years later, I am clean and sober and have housing. But the issues in the Downtown Eastside, and the struggles that bring women to the Downtown Eastside, persist. Thousands of people still sleep on the streets or are in shelters because of a lack of affordable housing, and every year the Homelessness Count goes up. According to BC Housing’s own data, there has been an overall net increase of only 280 new social housing units over the past five years. Meanwhile, hundreds of condominiums are going up for the rich, supported by City Council and the dollars of the real estate industry, which displaces and pushes us out of our own neighbourhood.

Why is it so hard to treat us as human beings? The government has the ability and the capacity—but not the political will—to ensure the elimination of poverty. I challenge any politician to switch places with us. Sleep in the alley, stand in a food line, and live off $6 a day; then perhaps they will understand our pain. We need housing. We need safety for women. We need more services like detox centres and health support teams. We need the police to stop their brutality, stop their illegal searches, stop beating poor people up, and stop arbitrarily arresting residents of the Downtown Eastside.

For all these reasons, I like to be involved in supporting the Downtown Eastside. In 2006, I was involved with other women in starting the night shelter for the Downtown Eastside Womens' Centre (DEWC). We occupied the DEWC - which at the time only operated in the daytime - because we did not want the doors to close on homeless women who were getting kicked out and had nowhere to go. So we staged a sit-in at the DEWC after-hours and refused to leave. All night, we made beds for women with donated blankets and served food. After about 4-6 weeks of operating the shelter as volunteers and doing lots of media events and rallies, BC Housing funded a night-time shelter.

Another major accomplishment that I was involved in was the Olympic Tent Village, which the DTES Power of Women Group and others organized during the Olympics. We were opposed to the Olympics because $7 billion was going to towards a big sporting party for tourists, while the Downtown Eastside was becoming poorer and homelessness had tripled. The Olympic Tent Village, which began on February 15 2010, was a safe place for Downtown Eastside residents, away from the cameras and the police.

Every day I would help prepare meals for the site and gather donations. One day there was a young homeless woman with her daughter who arrived at the Tent Village. She would stay in a corner because she was afraid that she could get reported to MCFD as homeless and then her daughter would get apprehended. So I would take food to her tent and bought a toy for her daughter. Everyone was fed and happy and people felt free at the Olympic Tent Village. We even had activities like singing and drumming and storytelling. After one month, about 80 people got housing as a result of the pressure and advocacy at the Olympic Tent Village.

Though the institutions that govern and rule the Downtown Eastside are ugly, as you can see, the residents of the Downtown Eastside have so much beauty and strength.

Madeline A. volunteers at the Downtown Eastside Womens' Centre and is a member of the DTES Power of Women Group. She likes talking to other women and listening to women when they want to talk about their problems and tries to assist everyone she can.

Madeline A.

The Strength to Carry on

mccabe.melissa — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:49:20 +0000

Residential school survivor speaks out as part of In Our Own Voices writing project

The stories that make up the In Our Own Voices writing project are the fruits of weeks of exercises, workshops, drafts and revisions. They are personal stories, written by members of the Power of Women Group, who organize out of the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre.

These are stories of incredible hardship, resistance, struggle, courage, and resilience; of grappling with and sometimes overcoming fear, addictions, abuse, and illness; and of persistent state violence and racism, dealt liberally and frequently, and usually without a modicum of justice.

Stella's is just one of the voices that you’ll find on the Vancouver Media Co-op site this month. In the place of fragments, a passing nod at a rally or a quick hello on the street, readers can walk beside these brave, powerful women.

—Dawn Paley

VANCOUVER—I was six years old when I was taken away from my parents and grandparents in Ahousat, BC and forced into a residential school. The Department of Indian Affairs came to our reserve every year in the 1950s, taking Native children away and placing them in residential schools to learn the White way of life.

In residential schools, under the federal policy of “aggressive assimilation,” we were stripped of our language, our culture, and our customs. We had to scrub ourselves clean until we were White. It is estimated that approximately 150,000 Native children were removed from our communities and forced to attend residential schools, with the last school closing only as recently as 1996.

I was forced to attend the Christie Indian Residential School and then the Mission City St. Mary’s Residential School. I felt like I was in a concentration camp. In these schools, we were punished for speaking our language. Our punishment was being kept in isolation in a dark room for the whole day. Often we would be fed food from the garbage and be forced to drink raw cow milk. We were strapped and beaten until we were too sore to stand.

If we did not get up on time in the mornings, the nuns would drag us across the floor, beat us, and make us go without breakfast. I remember every morning they would wake us up by saying: “You are not on the reserve; you are in White Man’s land. Indians are liars, filthy and good for nothing. You don’t want to live like an Indian.”

When we were silent, they made us talk. But when we talked, they did not like what we had to say and persistently hit us while repeating: “God doesn’t like you talking like that.” We were too scared to do anything. We would often go without food and there would be no activities. At nighttime we would often see the children taken out of their dorm rooms and they would come back crying and bleeding.

I was incredibly lonely in the residential schools. The priests and nuns did not like us making friends with each other. Even brothers and sisters were kept apart and forced to act like strangers with one another. From the time I was placed in residential schools, I did not have a single kind word said to me. No one appreciated me for the individual I was, or the culture I came from.

All I remember is being punished for anything and everything. I still have horrible flashbacks. I grew up with a tremendous amount of shame and loss of dignity. I believe that residential schools were prisons for young children.

I managed to get out of residential school earlier than the other children because one day my brother managed to sneak a phone call to my grandparents and told them to come get me. The nuns had beaten me so badly across my head with a stick and a ruler that my ears would not stop bleeding. My grandparents got me out of the school for a special doctor’s visit. The doctor determined that I had permanently lost my hearing in both ears. My grandparents were furious and kept me at home, refusing to send me back to the residential school. When the school called the Indian band office looking for me, my grandparents told the school and the Indian agents that the nuns had given me a severely damaged ear. The officials hung up the phone and did not try forcing me back.

When I was older, I moved to the Downtown Eastside. Almost 60 per cent of Native people and 72 per cent of Native women now live in urban settings with the erosion of the land base of our communities and Indian Act regulations limiting women’s access to housing on the reserves. I, too, drifted here from the Island and found work at a fish plant. Since then, this neighbourhood has become my permanent home.

Like me, most people here carry deep scars. It is hard to describe all the different experiences that women have, for example the history of abuse that has brought many of us here to the DTES, the brutality of child apprehensions that many of us have borne as a direct result of poverty, the fact that many of us do not know our parents because of the legacy of residential schools and colonization has destroyed our families, the chronic and often fatal illnesses such as AIDS and Hepatitis C that break our bodies, the grief of living through the deaths of our missing and murdered sisters, and much more. People who drive by us every day to work have no idea what nightmares we live with. My heart wants to shatter when I hear some of the stories about why people have turned to drugs and alcohol.

The Downtown Eastside is the poorest part of town. Low-income housing in the DTES is of such sub-standard quality that many prefer to sleep on the streets. Problems in the single-room occupancies include: absence of heat, toilets, and running water; presence of mold, bedbug infestations and rats; and illegal practices by landlords including refusal to return damage deposits, entering rooms without permission, and arbitrary evictions.

In the DTES Power of Women Group, we support our people to get proper homes. The government should provide a living wage and a decent home for all people so that we have somewhere to stay and so that no one has to work the street. A lot of our young people are working for drug dealers. Women who owe drug debts have much harm come to them, sometimes even death, like the murder of 22-year-old Ashley Machisknic last year. A lot of girls who have to work in the sex-trade are further abused by their clients and their pimps and often don’t get paid.

And then there is the constant harassment on the street by police officers. I have seen officers walk by and kick people while they are passed out or sleeping on the street. Our people are not able to defend themselves against guns and tasers. It hurts me to see people slammed to the pavement by police officers just because they are poor and nobody cares what happens to poor people.

But the hidden truth of the Downtown Eastside is that despite the poverty, criminalization, and trauma, we all care for each other and socialize with one another. Especially in the DTES Power of Women Group, where we are like one family and support the community on issues such as police brutality, child apprehensions, violence against women, and housing. Whether people are sober or high on drugs, we listen to each other’s dreams and desires to make this neighbourhood a better place for ourselves.

Stella's is just one of the voices that you’ll find on the Vancouver Media Co-op site this month. Readers can walk beside these brave, powerful women. This story is part of the Downtown Eastside Power of Women “In Our Own Voices” writing project. For more information and to read more stories, click here.

Stella August, from the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation, was born in 1945 in Ahousat, BC. She is a long-time resident of the Downtown Eastside. When she joined the DTES Power of Women Group she learnt that as a woman in this neighbourhood, she has a voice and a collective group through which to support her people. She is also a member of the Feb 14th Womens’ memorial march Committee.

Dawn Paley is a journalist and organizer with the Vancouver Media coop, where the full version of her introduction can be read. Stories from In Our Own Voices can be read on the VMC.

POW members at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre

The Downtown East side Power of Women Group Present In Our Own Voices Writing Project

When Guns Go Green

hillarybain — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 11:54:21 +0000

Lockheed Martin dives into the "renewable" electricity game

HALIFAX—Tom Rand needs a trillion dollars. With that trillion, Rand, the venture capitalist with an eco-twist, believes he could wean the world off of its fossil fuel addiction, curb greenhouse gas emissions and make renewable energy financially competitive.

Rand sits on the board of several green energy companies and businesses, has designed an award-winning, low-emissions hostel in downtown Toronto and has written “Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit,” a green energy primer. Rand is also an accomplished speaker and headlined April’s “Renewable Energy Conference” in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The problem, although Rand would not call it that, is that he doesn't particularly care where his trillion comes from, so long as it comes. So while some might cringe at seeing the world’s largest weapons manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, as a sponsor of the conference, Rand lets the money talk.

“The only way we're going to be able to solve this problem [climate change],” says Rand, “is to get the people with the capacity to build this stuff at scale at the table. So, people like GE, Lockheed Martin, Siemens, BP, Duke Energy...these are all companies who could either be friend or foe. The most helpful thing for us to do is to say 'How do I make you a friend? How do I bring you on board?'...It's just not pragmatically useful to have those people not on your side. It doesn't make things any easier.”

“Past sins forgiven,” says Rand. “Come on in, help us out...I think is the approach.”

Tamara Lorincz, of the Halifax Peace Coalition, is not so ready to forgive Lockheed's sins, past or present.

“Anything Lockheed Martin might do on a renewable energy front pales in comparison to the plundering of the climate by its weapons systems,” says Lorincz. “If Lockheed Martin truly cared about renewable energy and a sustainable future, it would stop producing the weapons systems that use so much fossil fuel, and pushing for military spending and war spending that degrades the environment and contributes to climate change.”

Lorincz, the self-proclaimed mosquito in Lockheed Martin's ear, recently drew blood when her Access-to-Information request revealed that the many billions—continuously escalating, according to experts—that the Harper Government plans on spending on F-35 stealth fighters would net them 65 engine-less aircraft. The story went global.

“Each stealth fighter holds 10,000 pounds of jet fuel," says Lorincz. "Jet fuel is extremely carbon intensive and will cause climate change, and will use our dwindling fossil fuels. They have no credibility on renewable energy and they are not needed on renewable energy.”

So, while Tom Rand won't ask the question, I will.

Who the hell invited the war pigs to the table?

“I can say that our presence here is based on our interest in renewable energy, and reducing greenhouse gas consumption and environmental damage,” says Steve Marsden, Lockheed Martin’s representative at the conference. “And to the extent that our activities in renewable energy will accomplish that, I think that's a good thing.”

Things were far more black and white, good versus evil, in the days when Lockheed's F-117s were dropping thousands of tons of ordinance on Iraq, or when their Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense program had the world in American cross-hairs. Then, Lockheed Martin was simply the biggest arms manufacturer and exporter the world had ever known, a peddler of products that caused untold suffering and mayhem.

Lockheed Martin is still the world's biggest arms manufacturer and exporter. The Canadian military still consumes thousands of barrels of oil per day. But the Lockheed Martin website, aside from lauding missile defense systems and F-35 fighters, loudly toots on the suddenly-popular green horn. F-22 Raptor diagnostics systems now have a completely paperless approach, in that no paper will be used when diagnosing what ails the F-22 Raptor. Copper-beryllium, the dust of which can cause severe lung damage, has also been eliminated from the F-35 assembly line.

Lockheed Martin has also been awarded a contract by the provincial government of Nova Scotia, in consort with Irving Shipbuilding and Atlantis Resources Corporation, to build an experimental tidal turbine to be tested in the Minas Passage, near Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. The turbine is expected to cost between $10 and $15 million, and is expected to generate 1 megawatt of power. Lockheed Martin is going green, and coming to the Bay of Fundy.

So, who the hell invited the war pigs to the table?

The NDP provincial government of Nova Scotia, that's who.

The invitation comes in the form of the Renewable Electricity Plan (REP), released by the Nova Scotia Department of Energy in 2010. The REP includes a mandate to create 25 per cent renewable electricity by 2015, and 40 per cent renewables by 2020.

Ostensibly, the REP is meant to wean Nova Scotia off its dirty coal habit. Realistically, it opens a veritable Pandora's box of options that, upon closer inspection, do not appear renewable at all. These include large-scale biomass operations that threaten to decimate Nova Scotia's already fragile forests, as well as an increased interest in natural gas exploration, which most likely would involve the environmentally-catastrophic technique known as “fracking.”

Tidal power, to be gathered from the Bay of Fundy, weighs heavily in the dreams of the REP, and this is where Lockheed Martin's so-called expertise comes in.

The Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy (FORCE), a berthing station for turbines in the Minas Passage, can accommodate up to four tidal turbines. FORCE has been built using millions of taxpayer dollars. So far, only one turbine has ever been berthed at FORCE, and the Fundy tides knocked it off-line in only seven days. This is the place where the magic is supposed to happen.

Never mind that the old Annapolis Royal Generating Station has been chugging along in the Annapolis sub-basin, at an output of 20 megawatts, for almost 30 years. The NDP government, and now Lockheed, appear to have their sights set on the Herculean task of harnessing some of the most massive tides in the world. But as they say at FORCE, “One day the world will ask...Is it Fundy-tested?” It remains to be seen whether this line will be spoken as the butt-end of a joke.

The REP doesn't even touch on solar energy, considering it an "emerging" technology. Considering that FORCE has not generated its first kilowatt of energy to the grid, and yet is being offered an extremely favourable rate of return should it ever do so, and considering that the power-generating properties of solar energy have been well-proven around the world, the Department of Energy appears to be flagrantly selective in its use of the word "emerging." REP is also very restrictive on wind projects, another of the areas where smaller players stand to make a go of the energy game.

Neal Livingston, co-founder of Black River Ltd., thirty-year veteran in the solar, wind, and small-hydro installation business, isn't getting swept away by the tidal wave.

“The Premier is 100 per cent in bed with big business and the old boys' network in Nova Scotia in terms of designing this policy,” says Livingston. “And that's why you see tidal being so prominent in their thinking, because they've bought into a whole corporate structure that isn't about you and I having the ability to generate power. It's all restricted.”

According to Livingston, the REP stresses the notion of COMFIT (Community Feed-In Tariff), which essentially ties the hands of renewable energy entrepreneurs, and favors big-time investors. COMFIT has strict rules as to who can sell power back to the grid, and more than likely this isn't you. Communities, co-ops, universities, and Aboriginal groups are fine. But if you can't find 25 of your closest friends to co-sign with you on a small-scale wind farm, forget it.

“It’s going to be a mess in two ways,” says Livingston. “One way is that very, very few people are going to own [renewable energy sources] and thus be able to produce their own electricity. This is much like the current situation, with Nova Scotia Power owning everything,” he says. “And also, if you want to be a smaller player you have to work under a whole set of crazy rules which make it not a very interesting place to do it.”

For Lockheed Martin, however, Nova Scotia is the perfect place to get their feet wet in the renewable energy game.

Miles Howe hails from Ottawa, Ontario, and currently calls Halifax home. He has a Masters degree in Sociology, plays a wicked harmonica, and ferments a mean kimchi.

Green Guns

Fear: An Olympic Legacy

Moira Peters — Fri, 28 May 2010 05:21:09 +0000

How the security apparatus rules our world

Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isn’t Always Better
Matt Hern
New Star Books: Vancouver, 2007

ROME, ITALY—East Vancouver author Matt Hern wasn’t talking about Vancouver’s 2010 Olympic Games when he penned Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isn’t Always Better several years ago, but he may as well have been.

Indeed, the book should have been required reading for each security agency linked to the three levels of government as it contemplated delivering a “safe and secure” Winter Olympics without descending into total security hysteria. Alas, the book never made the must-read list of the Integrated Security Unit (ISU), the organization created by the RCMP to coordinate Games security.

The ISU’s mandate, at least as they understood it, was to ensure that absolutely nothing could go wrong during the Olympics and Paralympics. The ISU began by considering possible “threats” based on the evaluations of the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC) of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). ITAC identified three key concerns: foreign-inspired terrorism, crime, and domestic protests—and pretty much in that order. However, long before the Games had arrived, the order had shifted and the fear of protest became paramount. Vocal critics of the Olympics found themselves followed, monitored, surveilled, visited, and, in more than a few cases, intimidated and threatened by undercover ISU agents.

In the end, nearly $1 billion was spent on Games security; thousands of police from across the country patrolled Vancouver and thousands more soldiers patrolled cold, wet, mountain slopes. Close-circuit cameras (CCTV) in the downtown core monitored people 24 hours a day and the city and province passed egregious laws that violated our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And despite all of this, the authorities could not, or chose not to prevent the breaking of a few Hudson’s Bay windows during the second day of the protests.

In hindsight, it all sounds ridiculous. And it was. Any half-bright ISU agent (and there were a few) or any Vancouver Police Department deputy chief could have done a more realistic assessment of the real threats and responded appropriately—and far more parsimoniously—by realizing that the assessment itself was badly overblown. The massive preparations were so over-the-top and out-of-proportion that the entire plan should have been significantly scaled back.

But nothing was scaled back. All threats were considered massive and the response even more so.

Indeed, the state of mind that sees anything and everything as a potential threat is precisely the subject of Watch Yourself. And Hern’s book taps into they ways we respond when we let fear rule our world. This mindset dictates that kids need to be safeguarded from being kids; forget protecting your child from playground equipment and strangers, we need intrusive policing and scores of cameras to keep them safe. We need constant surveillance for our own safety, and adults need to have their habits controlled for their own good too. We have become, in effect, the perfect example of the ultimate security state that is ruled, not by a dark authoritarian presence, but by our own fears. And, one might say, such fears enable and nurture the apparatus that feigns security.

Although Hern did not address the Olympic madness—the five ring circus—his book foreshadows the mentality of a security-obsessed society. “l’d say that the Olympics were a monumental exercise in total securitization,” he told me over the phone after the Vancouver Organizing Committee shut up shop and left town. “Not just the billion-dollar, multi-layered policing effort, nor the sea of CCTVs, nor the endless security guards, nor the reaction to protest, nor the bewildering array of security agencies from all over the globe...” a point well made, I thought, “but all these in combination and the willingness of our elected officials and civic leaders to mobilize a huge swath of citizens—city workers, volunteers, bus drivers, garbage collectors, the media—into a comprehensive exercise in discipline and abhorrence of anything not officially corporatized and cleansed.”

In barely a few breaths, Hern had summarized the detriments of the 2010 Winter Games and pin-pointed its greatest legacy: fear.

He continued: “The effort largely succeed[ed] in moving huge chunks of capital from the common wealth into privatized hands and continued to cleanse the city of working class, radical, alternative and affordable possibilities by insisting on a relentlessly ‘safe,’ contained, controlled, clean and tourist-slash-investor friendly ethic where nothing out of order is permitted.”

I write this from Rome, a city that is alive in ways that Vancouver may never be in spite of the aching need to feel world-class. Indeed, much of this angst drove the Olympic venture from the beginning. While we still debate the role of police in Canadian society and worry that kids might fall off the jungle gym, here in Rome kids play outside unsupervised and wander into bars with their parents while people picnic with wine in full view of the constabulary. And who could care less? The streets are filled with people day and night, drunk and sober, happy and sad. Romans have not yet let their fear blind them to the possibilities of being human—a vista that is remarkably refreshing coming from “no fun” Vancouver.

Maybe if we listened to Hern (or simply heeded our own better instincts) and accepted that some risk is the price for being human, we can escape our self-imposed state of fear, a state that is not only sterile, but also soul-destroying.

Chris Shaw is a Vancouver-based neuroscientist, academic and author. He wrote Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games, published in 2008 by New Society Publishers.

For a recent example of Canada's security apparatus at work, see the Vancouver Media Co-op's latest coverage of protests and police response at the G8 University Summit in Vancouver over the weekend. Check out the Vancouver Observer's case-in-point of security using fear at these protests.

Watch Yourself

From Queen Charlotte to Haida Gwaii

dru — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 05:18:39 +0000

The ascent of the Haida and the struggle with Canada

All that We Say is Ours: Guujaaw and the Reawakening of the Haida Nation
Ian Gill
Douglas & McIntyre: Vancouver, 2009.

MONTREAL—Metaphors greet you everywhere in Haida Gwaii. Visiting the storied archipelago cradled by northwest British Columbia last summer, I walked into the office housing the Haida’s renewable energy project—a bold plan to build Canada’s first offshore wind farm. The Haida aim to install more than a hundred 50-metre turbines on their coastline, in partnership with the province and a private energy company. At a price tag of $2 billion, of which the Haida would cover $240 million, it is projected to power 130,000 homes on Haida Gwaii and throughout BC. Despite criticism about the costs and the technological uncertainties of gigantic turbines, the Indigenous nation’s leadership has forged ahead confidently.

As I sat down to peruse some pamphlets, I was disturbed by a screeching noise. The secretary insisted it was construction outside. But as I looked around the office, I located its real source: a replica wind-turbine, barely a half-metre in height, was grinding and whining on its gears, struggling to achieve its purpose as window decoration.

Fanciful towers, a floundering toy—the irony of the episode was inescapable, and a poignant reminder of the tension between the Haida nation’s enormous ambitions and the mundane obstacles they must still overcome. The obstacles are those faced by Indigenous communities across this country: poverty and economic dependency, cultural and linguistic dislocation, low education rates and poor health—the constellation of problems spawned by decades of dispossession and debilitating government policies. The Haida, however, have refused to be hindered as they unwind the past and remake their future, a story well told in Ian Gill's recently published All That We Say is Ours.

Haida Gwaii (or the Queen Charlotte Islands) has long been celebrated for its natural splendour and cultural heritage. Its 150 islands, often called the Galapagos of the north, have a biological diversity rivaled by few places in the world. Magnificent cedars, spruce and hemlock and unique species of plants and wildlife flourish in old-growth forests many thousands of years old. These have supported and inspired the Haida's carvings, totem-poles, and the ornate clothes worn during potlatch ceremonies. The dramatic red and black lines of their crest designs—Eagle, Raven, Killer Whale—are immediately recognizable. It is a delightful surprise to discover the Haida's language does not in fact have a word for "art." It's as if its creation were second-nature to them. Today, Haida art graces Canada's paper money; a massive bronze sculpture of a canoe sculpted by Bill Reid sits in front of the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC.

But if Canada has embraced the culture of Indigenous peoples, especially the Haida, it has been a great deal more resistant to their political claims. The provincial and federal governments jealously guard their exclusive reign over the land. The outcome for First Nations' traditional territories has usually been straightforward: its undisturbed apportioning-off to private industry. In Haida Gwaii, the old growth treasures proved irresistable to timber barons, who brought industrial logging to the islands in the early 1900s. Enormous, tough spruce trees became the favoured material for WW2 fighter planes. As part of British Columbia's "resource industrial complex," Gill writes, forestry operations were guaranteed deep support from politicians, in exchange for healthy contributions to government coffers. All the big corporate names— MacMillan, Rayonier, Brascan—eventually took part in the lucrative island industry. They laid bare hillsides with mechanized savagery, moving assuredly to take more and more, from one island to the next.

The Haida began to mount a challenge in the 1970s. One of the most famous wilderness battles anywhere was launched by an act of “kitchen table cartography,” as Gill puts it. Over a late night in a hamlet, Gary Edenshaw—soon to be known as Guujaaw—and an American adventurer named Thom Henley drew a line on a Haida Gwaii map, imagining that all the southern islands below it would be spared full-scale liquidation. The Islands Protection Committee, a meeting of minds between Haida and non-Native island sympathizers, was born that morning. By 1985, pictures of dozens of Haida—including elders on the front line—being arrested during marathon logging blockages were beaming across the country and the world.

Though intertwined with its famous cultural revival, the story of the Haida’s political renaissance is not widely known. Gill, a veteran journalist who has been travelling to Haida Gwaii for a quarter century and made it the subject of two previous books, is well placed to tell it. At the centre of the story is Guujaaw, the President of the Council of the Haida Nation, who has become a kind of reluctant symbol of the Haida's cultural and political transformation.

Gill chronicles Guujaaw's younger exploits, as he drifts from one end of the archipelago to the other, defying the stormy Pacific Ocean on paddling adventures, mapping cultural landmarks in the old-growth forests, and collecting the oral stories and songs of Haida elders. His peers meanwhile scoured the museums of the world to rediscover the artistic techniques of their forebears. As they pieced together their culture and traditions, the Haida began to emerge from the long shadow cast by government bureaucrats, white missionaries and disease. These forces had parceled off Haida lands, asphyxiated their culture and decimated their population, which plummeted from tens of thousands before contact to a mere 350 by 1900. As I visited workshops and studios across the islands, I saw the fruits of the Haida labour in the confident gazes of skilled young artists—sculptors, carvers, or jewelry makers—who have overcome the despair and aimlessness that are all too common symptoms of teenage life on reservations.

I met Guujaaw at his favourite cafe in Skidegate, one of the islands' two reserves. It is within view of a magnificent $26 million art centre and museum, composed of five longhouses, a canoe and carving studio and a hall for traditional ceremonies, which opened for business in the summer of 2009. (In keeping with noted obstacles hindering Haida ambition, the staff complained to me that it was already suffering financially.)

A woman seated next to us offered to buy "Mr. President" his coffee, with a playful servility reserved for a statesman who is also a master carver, poet, drummer, paddler, and everyday trickster. Guujaaw's mischievousness is legendary. He has tried to use a Haida passport to slip into Hungary; declaims about Haida history paralleling that of the the ancient Middle eastern Essene tribe; and writes endless streams of missives, including one to Weyerhauser, the multinational company whose logging has devastated Haida Gwaii, nominating himself to serve as their director. Like the conniving and waggish Raven of Haida mythology, Guujaaw's mischief has always been in the service of serious ends. Guujaaw helped spearhead the first wave of activism in Haida Gwaii in the 1970s and 1980s, which culminated in a 1987 agreement with Canada and BC to create the 147,000-hectare South Moresby national park "reserve,” known also as Gwaii Haanas. Buoyed by their success, the Haida have kept up their protest. Through court challenges and blockades, they have won protection over an even greater territory, via a land-use planning process that will see them share co-management with outside governments. Today, Gwaii Haanas' northern boundaries almost perfectly match the far-fetched line originally drawn by Guujaaw years ago.

"We've gone from having no say over the resources, to now having half of the landscape under protection, all of it to be eco-managed," Guujaaw told me. "We have knocked down the logging to one-third of what it once was." The Haida have also recently negotiated management plans for wildlife and marine life, extending to the waters surrounding Haida Gwaii.

But the Haida's goal is more profound than environmental protection of their territories. They are staking claim to its fundamental ownership. The Haida's challenge—embodied most explicitly in a court writ that asserts their Title to the entirety of the archipelago—hinges on a "gaping hole in the colonizer's paperwork," Gill writes. During early colonization in British Columbia, the business and political elites of the day refused to adhere to the 1763 Royal Proclamation, binding to this day, which required them to sign formal land surrender treaties with Indigenous nations before proceeding with settlement. This has left the overwhelming majority of lands in the province legally unsettled, undermining the "certainty"—a euphemism for unchallenged sovereign control—that government and industry rely on for secure and profitable investment and development.

The government's preferred method for dealing with this jurisdictional headache has been to pick up where other provinces left off in the early 20th century: extinguishment by treaty. Taking advantage of First Nations' poverty, the government presses them to legally relinquish all their traditional lands in exchange for some cash and the right to call five per cent of it their own. The Haida have shunned these "modern treaty" negotiations, using other means to chip away at the edifice of outside control over their islands.

"It has taken a combination of courts, blockades, building alliances, planning and general artful strategems against the trickery and deceit of successive provincial governments," says Guujaaw.

In recent years the Council of the Haida Nation has even managed to win the support of the islands' municipalities, who have pledged "common cause" with the Haida title case. It is an almost unheard of alliance between First Nations and rural, resource-dependent non-Native communities. There is more than a little clear-eyed self-interest at play—loggers figure they may soon be working under Haida watch—but it is still surprising given the Haida leadership's refusal to give an inch on their title.

"Our people would rather hold onto the notion that this is Haida land, even if this means having no real authority over it, than to have to surrender and end up with just a little authority," says Guujaaw.

"All over the land people have hunted and died. There they remain at rest. No part of that can be surrendered."

Famed Indian fighter Geoff Plant, who the government has dispatched to deal with especially tenacious First Nations, was forced to up the ante with the Haida, dangling 20 per cent of their land as an exchange for their title. This is well beyond what any other Indigenous community has been offered, but Guujaaw dismisses it as "mere mischief." Considering the strength of the Haida's position, his is probably an apt description.

The Haida have already won a landmark decision in the Supreme Court in 2004, when the top judges ruled that governments must consult and accommodate First Nations when they are asserting unextinguished Aboriginal rights. (This in part led to the land-use planning process.) The Title case, which is currently in abeyance, will likely soon restart its long, meandering but inevitable course to Ottawa’s highest court chambers. It will be met there with the unyielding response of the government's own legal rejoinder: "British Columbia does not admit the existence of the 'Haida Nation'."

But if the steady, incremental concessions from the Supreme Court are any indication, it is only a matter of time before a First Nation, likely in BC, wins a full declaration of title. The Haida stand a good chance of being the first. When or if this happens, it may radically reshape relations between governments and Indigenous peoples in Canada and beyond.

Though Gill gives a riveting account of the passage of these events, Guujaaw is no fan of the book, especially what he considers its fixation on the trivial private details of Haida life. He recoils at the thought of becoming the hero of the Haida story. As quoted by Gill, Guujaaw believes himself “fairly normal. Everybody should be fighting for the land, everybody should have a relationship with the land, everybody should be doing something cultural.”

Gill’s book remains an informed and articulate plea to heed the example of the Haida—who are energetically and creatively fusing ancient and modern ways of organizing cultural and economic life. As Gill points out, Indigenous peoples may very well hold the planet’s riches in their hands: they occupy 20 per cent of the world’s land surface; comprise 90 per cent of its cultural diversity; and steward 80 per cent of its biological diversity. If the Haida cannot figure out a sustainable form of relation with the 21st century world, we may have nowhere else to turn.

Gill doesn’t shy away from addressing the difficult issues, such as what the new economies Guujaaw and the Haida leadership talk about building will actually look like. The Haida now have their own forest tenure and are looking to buy the largest Tree Farm License on the islands. But just about every non-Native resource industry labourer with whom I hitched rides hee-hawed about the Haida's dismal early logging efforts. The Naikun wind farm has also recently bogged down in divisive debates, and even more basic economic strains present themselves. Some local Haida criticize Guujaaw and the Council of the Haida Nation for draining millions in the court cases while neglecting programs that would support communities mired in poverty: in Skidegate the unemployment rate is near 40 per cent; in Old Massett, the reserve on the island's northern end, it is in excess of 60 per cent.

Whatever the challenges, the Haida seem on an unrelenting path to reconstitute their nation—raising totem poles, relearning their Indigenous tongue, repatriating their ancestors’ human remains, and defending their lands by the many means necessary. These are the Haida ways of "creating magic," in the words of Haida lawyer Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson.

This past December, Guujaaw signed an agreement with premier Gordon Campbell to officially rename their homeland from "Queen Charlotte Island" to "Haida Gwaii," a long-time wish of the Haida. When Campbell visits the islands later in 2010 he will symbolically return the colonial name to the mainland during his flight home. A name may only be a name, but this ceremonious gesture is a telling sign of the Haida's reawakening as a nation. They know who they are, and they are ready to claim what is theirs. Time will tell if Canada is willing to reckon with such a people.

Martin Lukacs is a writer and activist in Montreal. He hitchhiked to Haida Gwaii in July, 2009.

All That We Say is Ours

The Raven and First Men

Land and Rights in Canada

dawn — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:47:03 +0000

Don't let Harper play hockey with human rights

COLDSTREAM, BC—We have reached a very critical time in our struggle for our land and human rights as Indigenous Peoples. The Canadian government knows this and has been doing everything in their power to trick us into extinguishing our Aboriginal Title through negotiations under their policies—including their Comprehensive Land Claims and Self-Government Policies. Canada’s courts have been the alternative to negotiations, and there we have had measured success. But the establishment Indigenous organizations, like the Assembly of First Nations, have been stuck with what the government is dictating to them.

As Indigenous Peoples we need to think about what to do now. In early August 2009, Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl sent a strong message to the British Columbia Treaty Commission (BCTC) Common Table, a group of First Nations from different BCTC negotiating tables who came together to raise concerns regarding consistent obstacles they all faced in negotiating land claims agreements in BC. He said that the federal government will not change the existing Comprehensive Land Claims and Self-Government Policies.

The federal government has ignored all objections from groups who do not negotiate and groups who are inactive in their negotiations. Now they have stated clearly to those actively negotiating that they will not review their land and self-government policies.

It is important for Indigenous Peoples who have not signed treaties surrendering their Title to realize that we are all under the federal Comprehensive Land Claims and Self-Government Policies. We must realize that any land claims and self-government agreement will be determined by these policies. Right now, this will mean that the best deal Indigenous Peoples can get is the Nisga’a, Tsawwassen or Maa-nulth Final Agreements. This requires the extinguishment of Aboriginal Title, according to what the government has put on the table under the Comprehensive Land Claims and Self-Government Policies. Indigenous Peoples will have to give up their tax-exemption, take their land in fee simple, and agree to be under provincial control.

There needs to be a fundamental change in Canada’s Land Claims and Self-Government Policies. These policies need to address the direct link between Aboriginal Title and our human rights as Indigenous Peoples. Canada must abandon their existing policy of extinguishment and assimilation and adopt a plan of recognition and co-existence. This dramatic change must be forced on the federal government by direct action from Indigenous
Peoples and our supporters. We get a lot of support for taking direct action. We just need faith and courage to stand up for our rights.

The 1980 Constitution Express, an international grassroots campaign that involved sending a train with hundreds of Indigenous protesters from the west coast to Ottawa, secured section 35(1) in the Canadian Constitution 1982. We need similar collective action to get Aboriginal Title recognized.

A lot has changed since the 1980s.

The Delgamuukw case judicially recognized Aboriginal Title in 1997. The World Trade Organization and the North America Free Trade Agreement recognized that Canada’s policy not to recognize Aboriginal Title was a subsidy to Canada’s resource industries. The British Columbia government now has to report Aboriginal Title as a contingent liability in their annual balance sheet. And the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples despite the fact that Canada voted against the Declaration.

Our real problem is that the federal and provincial governments do not want to recognize Aboriginal Title because it ousts their jurisdiction over our Aboriginal Title territory. They want to continue to mutually and exclusively make all decisions regarding our land. Everything comes from the natural wealth of our land. We need to unite, not around our weakest positions in negotiations, but around the strongest defenders of our land. In British Columbia, participating under the BCTC over the last 16 years has had dismal results: it has produced only the Tsawwassen and Maa-nulth Final Agreements, plus the rebuked Common Table Report and the rejected BC Recognition and Reconciliation Act.

Introduced in the spring of 2009, the proposed BC Recognition and Reconciliation Act was originally praised by the BC First Nation Leadership Council, a grouping of the Union of British Colombia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), the First Nations Summit representing those involved in the BCTC process, and the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations. The proposed Act did not recognize Aboriginal Title, and for this reason was rejected by the BC All Chiefs Assembly in August 2009. All the Recognition Act recognized was that Crown Title also existed where Aboriginal Title existed. It would have been nothing more than a Bill of Sale for the BC government. The Chiefs and People saw through it and rejected provincial legislation resoundingly.

The term “recognition” was manipulated by the province just like “self-government” has been manipulated by the federal government. I remember my late father George Manuel really struggled to develop the term “self-government” when he was president of the Union of British Colombia Indian Chiefs. But after the federal government came up with their “self- government” policy, he rejected the term “self-government” because weasel word doctors at the Department of Indian Affairs totally undermined what self-government meant from my father’s perspective.

The province had me in the same boat: I have been fighting for recognition of Aboriginal Title, but I too was forced to fight against the “recognition” offered by the province under the Recognition and Reconciliation Act. This can be confusing because fighting for “recognition” sometimes requires us to fight against words that favour the status quo at our expense. Any definition or term must be decided by us and not the federal and provincial governments.

Indigenous Peoples must realize that these circumstances require us to have strong leadership. We need to assert our Aboriginal and Treaty Rights and not demand money for more programs and services. We need a fundamental change from the existing Aboriginal Land Policies and a National Treaty Policy. We need to take action before the 2010 Winter Olympics against Canada’s Human Rights Record. Our lack of opportunity and our impoverishment are directly related to the fact that Canada does not recognize our Aboriginal and Treaty Rights. Recognition of Aboriginal and Treaty Rights is a fundamental aspect of our Human Rights as Indigenous Peoples.

We cannot support the 2010 Winter Olympics unless Canada adopts and implements the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. First Nations that have agreed to allow the 2010 Winter Olympic Torch through their territory should seriously reconsider that decision in view of how Canada is playing sports with our Human Rights as Indigenous Peoples. Canada will be using any endorsements by First Nations at the international level to polish its image, and to persuade people that Canada’s Indigenous Peoples still support the government despite the fact that Canada voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

We need to be strong. The 2010 Winter Olympics and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a direct link that connects Canada’s human rights record at the international level. Canada will not change its mind unless we insist, through band council resolutions, not to support the Torch Relay, and to engage in direct action. We must stand up for change. We cannot let Prime Minister Harper play political hockey with our human rights.

Arthur Manuel is the spokesperson of the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade.

George Manuel.Parliament