Category: Great Healing Forward

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

Great Healing Forward We Are All Treaty People 7 Comments

National Post- ICBC’s Indigenous hotline and driving tests do a disservice to reconciliation

Based on its “Reconciliation Action Plan,” ICBC now has a driver’s license phone line just for Indigenous people. The obvious question — why? — goes unanswered. “This new phone line is staffed by a team of supportive and knowledgeable ICBC employees who recognize the historical and contemporary barriers Indigenous people face when trying to obtain a B.C. driver’s licence,” reads the Crown corporation’s website.

The New Aryans

Great Healing Forward We Are All Treaty People 17 Comments

When public discourse devolves into an obsession with blood and soil, things never turn out well.

The Supreme Court of Canada, in its 2016 Daniels decision, which declared that Metis persons were potentially entitled to unspecified rights traditionally granted only to Indian Act Indians and Inuits, gave its seal of approval to the application of Aryan race theory in Canada to the situation of Aboriginal peoples generally.

The Court wrote that if a person possesses “sufficient racial and social characteristics to be considered a “native person”, that individual will be regarded as an “Indian”.

The Court defined legal rights based on considerations of “mixed ancestry” and “Native hereditary basis”- race terms.

It even made an uncritical reference to “Indian blood”, as if it were a biological fact, when in fact it is scientifically nonsensical.

Cycling To The Races

Great Healing Forward Insufferable Twits More Pavilions At Folkfest 22 Comments

Who knew that an inequitable distribution of bicycle infrastructure was indicative of racism? It’s anyone’s guess as to what an equitable distribution might be or how one could even determine that. If you have an opportunity to build bridges, why not just burn them instead by making prospective allies feel like chumps?

But until white allies in the biking community recognize diversity in cycling and see it as more than just a sport but a way of life, Williams says, those disparities will persist.

But the biggest and most important thing an ally can do is shut up, listen, and amplify the voices of Black and brown folks, who are often silenced, Williams says.

By 1 p.m., the predominantly Black and brown mechanics she’d hired had already tuned up more than 50 [bikes].

One supposes that any white mechanics were instructed to fix the damned bikes in silence.

Photographic Memories

Great Healing Forward We Are All Treaty People 16 Comments

If these kind of bizarre claims had been made on nearly any other subject, or by a less favored racial group, one would expect them to be dismissed until at least a shred of evidence turned up. But any demand for evidence, it seems, is merely evidence of a colonialist mindset.

A Haida elder and residential school survivor is leading a proposed class action lawsuit against the Catholic Church and one of its priests over what she alleges are “false and deeply hurtful” denialist comments.

Jones said she recalls being placed in a boxcar to look after Indigenous babies, who were all “crying really hard.” While at the school, Jones says she remembers witnessing the deaths or disappearances of other children, something that continues to haunt her.

Jones said she was given the task of looking after babies who were tied up in iron cribs, who she remembers were “all of the sudden” gone one day.

“Reflecting” On A Narrative

Great Healing Forward Insufferable Twits We Are All Treaty People 29 Comments

How anyone can take these people seriously anymore is beyond me. Every time the issue of residential school graves crops up, things just get weirder and weirder as the gap between accusations and efforts to discover the truth gets wider and wider.

Spearing is leading the team that has used ground-penetrating radar and aerial and terrestrial sensors to identify 93 sites of “potential human burials” near the former residential school by Williams Lake First Nation.

At a press conference led by Chief Willie Sellars on Tuesday, Spearing said the sites show “reflections” that suggest human burials, but added the only way to confirm the findings would be through excavation. She said the investigation is still in its early stages and the findings are preliminary.

Inconvenient History

Great Healing Forward Little Known Facts More Pavilions At Folkfest We Are All Treaty People 27 Comments

Paleolithic cultures necessarily live in perfect harmony not only with nature, but with each other, right? If there is any conflict in such cultures, it must be due to residential schools or the 60s sweep or some such. So what explains deadly conflict that occurred over a century prior to European settlement, the memories of which continued to create divisions between aboriginal communities well into the present?

They show elders relaying their tales of ambush and murder while in the midst of daily activities, cutting up a seal or cleaning fish on the beach.

One elder tells of a slaughter so extensive that the Inuit called the place where the rotting bodies were left Annarnituq – Bloated Island. It’s visible in the distance as a boy runs toward it through the wild grass.

There is enough residual enmity that people in the area convened in 2011 for a ceremony initiated by Cree trapper Ron Sheshamush to try to heal the rift once and for all.

 

Soviet Medicine

Great Healing Forward nannystate Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough 28 Comments

Every so often, you run across an op ed which is a perfect example of “seeing, and yet not seeing”. It amazes me that this doctor can work every day in the collapsing single payer medical system and yet not recognize that it is precisely the stubborn adherence to this doctrine that is causing the collapse. He claims to desire “real action, real change”, but cannot or will not expand on his weary bromide.

Long gone are the days of the early pandemic, when our neighbours banged their pots and pans in appreciation every evening. Now we are yelled at every single shift about the long wait times. We are verbally and physically assaulted so regularly that the B.C. provincial health authority recently mandated violence-prevention training. All these things, it’s just too much.

Revolutionary violence

Freespeechers Great Healing Forward More Pavilions At Folkfest 9 Comments

Lenin used to make a phony distinction between revolutionary violence and counter-revolutionary violence, the former being appropriate and the latter completely unacceptable. It’s not likely that we’ll ever see these revolutionaries arrested for anything, much less having their bank accounts frozen. The crown is far too busy prosecuting Tamara Lich anyway.

Senator Don Plett says he was stopped and harassed by “probably 30 or 40” protesters as he drove into a building for the meeting. They blocked traffic and insisted drivers take pamphlets, and targeted him as he attempted to drive around them.

“They actually jumped on to my car. They were banging on my windows, they were laying on the hood of my car and they were trying to prevent me from moving,…”

“And when they had asked PPS (Parliamentary Protective Service) over at the House why they weren’t being given any help the answer was, we don’t have enough staff. They seemed to have enough staff to stop all the hot tub parties and barbecues when we had some friendly protesters here and now they don’t have enough staff when many of us feel very unsafe.”

Temporary relief

Alternative Subsidy Great Healing Forward 28 Comments

I’m all for tax cuts, but I really can’t see the point of cutting gasoline taxes for a period of six months. Does the Manitoba NDP believe that the trend towards rising living costs is going to reverse by then? I’d like to know what crystal ball they’re looking at.

In any case, 14 cents per liter in gas tax revenue is roughly what the Manitoba government devotes to road maintenance and construction. If Wab is anything like his predecessors this move leads me to believe that they’re going to cut the highways budget. They always do.

The tax cut is to remain in place until inflation subsides, although the government has not yet determined how low inflation would have to fall before reinstating the tax. The tax holiday would last at least six months, Sala said, and could be extended depending on economic circumstances.

Prosecution for nothing

Great Healing Forward Let Them Eat Taser Surveillance State 23 Comments

Canadian taxpayers ought to be livid that crown attorneys have wasted this much time on a trial that is clearly going nowhere.

An Ottawa police liaison officer testifying in the trial of Chris Barber and Tamara Lich agreed on Wednesday that none of the protesters he communicated with indicated they were participating in the “Freedom Convoy” because they were influenced by the high-profile organizers.

…he told the court there were multiple groups and factions attending the demonstrations.

Blonde said he believes that not all protesters had the same “wishes or desires,” but that they had the same “general reasoning” for demonstrating.

The Crown is seeking to prove that Lich and Barber exerted influence over protesters’ actions.

 

Recession blues

Great Healing Forward Great Moments In Socialism It's Probably Nothing 6 Comments

As we’re all aware, the last three years have seen unending supply chain snarls and production backlogs for a variety of reasons. We might be seeing these forces coming back into equilibrium, but don’t break out the champagne just yet.

The backlogs are lessening not because productive capacity and plant performance is finally rising to meet demand, but instead because demand is falling to a level at which supply chain snarls just don’t matter as much. The marginal consumer is tapped out.

Caterpillar Inc.’s stock tumbled to the lowest level since early June after the company said its order backlog shrank in the third quarter, a sign the market sees as slowing demand for its iconic yellow machinery in the coming months.

The year-on-year decline of $1.9 billion is the first since the third quarter of 2020, when Caterpillar was grappling with the effects of Covid-19 shutdowns on its sales…

Stalling out

Great Healing Forward Great Moments In Socialism 10 Comments

When regime water carriers like the CBC start to run stories about an imminent recession, that’s a pretty good indication that they’ve run out of ways to sugar coat bad news and are coming to the same conclusion that many SDA readers arrived at months ago.

Soaring inflation has eroded purchasing power, and climbing interest rates have clobbered households. Now, cracks have begun to appear in the data, and economists expect those cracks to grow. GDP contracted in the second quarter of this year.

Next week, new data is expected to show economic growth flat-lined in July and perhaps contracted again in August. Some of that can be chalked up to specific factors, including labour actions like the port strike in B.C. or wildfires.

But before any of that, momentum was clearing being sapped out of the Canadian economy.

Let them eat cheaper cake!

Great Healing Forward Great Moments In Socialism 8 Comments

I won’t object to any tax cut, but this one strikes me as too little, too late, coming from a government which happily shut down restaurants during the pandemic, ultimately forcing many into bankruptcy.

Dining out in Manitoba would cost less under a re-elected Progressive Conservative government, the party says, announcing plans Friday to ditch the provincial sales tax on restaurant meals.

The Tories say the move would give the restaurant industry a much-needed boost after being hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it would make dining more affordable.

We’re all gonna die!!

Climate Cult Great Healing Forward 37 Comments

We used to be bombarded with the message that global “boiling” was not quite here yet, but it was nonetheless imminent. That didn’t seem to generate the requisite hysteria, so the message has been amped up. Apparently, “boiling” has now arrived. Who knew?

Protection racket

Great Healing Forward We Are All Treaty People 23 Comments

“It’d be a shame if something happened to all those nice trees you want to plant….”

It seems that Canada is not the only country in which politically favored groups regularly shake down various agencies for what this news item accurately describes as ransom.

Dumpster fire

Great Healing Forward We Are All Treaty People 22 Comments

Since no one is going to dig up Prairie Green landfill to look for the equivalent of needles in a haystack, these continuing protests are simply another excuse to browbeat the white colonialist regime for alleged past sins. Now that a judge has ordered the protesters to remove the blockade, the inevitable and absurd comparisons to the truck convoy protest have come out of the woodwork:

Val Vint said it was frustrating to see the blockade at the Brady landfill ordered to end after a matter of days, drawing a comparison with a protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and public health orders that was allowed to block streets in downtown Winnipeg for weeks last year.

Organizations that couldn’t be bothered to dig three feet to find an alleged known grave can’t grasp why anyone wouldn’t instantly agree to spend $180 million to dig up an entire landfill:

“That’s bullshit. Because the feasibility study was conducted by experts. We had an anthropologist on the technical working group,” Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Cathy Merrick said in an interview on Wednesday.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation