Category: Chief Big Screen TV

Small Victories

I’d rather that the Supreme Court ruled that aboriginal title doesn’t apply to government land either, since the acceptance of that precedent has already saddled taxpayers with billions of dollars in undeserved payouts, but at least someone finally drew a line in the sand.

The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld a ruling that Aboriginal title cannot be declared over private land, in a decision the federal government says will have an impact on the Cowichan Tribes case in British Columbia.

 

Smoke Signals

Sam Cooper;

When Winnipeg police laid out the largest drug seizure in Manitoba history last week — more than 525 kilograms of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl, 14 firearms, and $825,000 in cash — the bricks of narcotics and the row of guns drew the cameras. A quieter item in the evidence locker did not: 1.35 million contraband cigarettes.

To a former senior Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) organized crime investigator who has spent decades tracing the illicit tobacco trade, that detail was perhaps the most revealing thing in the multi-agency probe. Illegal cigarettes, he told The Bureau, are the connective tissue of the networks that flood hard drugs from China and Mexico into Canadian communities. If tobacco produced on Indigenous lands fueling fentanyl production does not register with citizens, he says, the one billion in tax dollars lost every year in Ontario alone should at least raise eyebrows.

“In that April 21 column, I tried to imagine how Canadian media outlets would square this circle.”

Jonathan Kay;

A month ago, I offered some predictions about how Canadian journalists would cover the five-year anniversary of the country’s infamous “unmarked graves” social panic, which began on May 27, 2021. On one hand, this kind of important landmark would be difficult for news outlets to ignore. (After all, this was considered the Canadian “Story of the Year” at the time.) On the other hand, any intellectually honest retrospective that these outlets produced would require at least some passing explanation as to why the entire Canadian media establishment had fallen hook, line, and sinker for a story that turned out to be fake—something that most journalists have so far proven unwilling to do.

On Wednesday, it will have been exactly five years since the Kamloops First Nation in British Columbia claimed it has found 215 unmarked graves of Indigenous children on the grounds of the community’s former residential school. In the weeks that followed, gullible reporters transformed the narrative into a kind of horror-movie script, complete with mass murdering priests and midnight burials.

It all turned out to be complete nonsense. In five years, not a single actual grave has been found.

Ransom Demands

I’m aware of the arguments that colonialists stole land from indigenous folks, but I didn’t know that they deserve some form of reparations for the ocean winds that we are apparently stealing as well. Can anyone make this make sense?

“We’ve seen a lot of positive momentum in advancing economic reconciliation in renewable energy projects as well as other sectors,” congress co-chair Bob Gloade, chief of the Millbrook First Nation in Nova Scotia, said in a statement.

“However, there is a lot of work left to be done. There needs to be committed focus on integration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous businesses in the offshore wind energy sector.”

The Calls Are Coming From Inside The House (Bumped)

IMPORTANT CORRECTION🚨

CONSERVATIVE CONFERENCE DID NOT BEGIN WITH LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT…🚨 THIS IS FALSE NEWS…🚨

CONSERVATIVE CONFERENCE INVITED 🏳️‍⚧️ GENDERWANG 🏳️‍⚧️ IDEOLOGUE WHO BEGAN WITH LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT…

Pleasing your enemies does not turn them into friends: The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies”. 

Left Coast, Lost Cause

Tom Fletcher;

It appeared to be a timely bit of good news in BC’s glacial 35-year modern treaty talks, when David Eby’s NDP government introduced two new treaties for provincial approval in April, with a third expected to follow shortly.

That moment of apparent progress came as Eby was forced into a series of humiliating back-downs on his efforts to rein in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and its threat to upset the legal basis of British Columbia’s existence. The political leadership of BC’s 203 indigenous communities simply vetoed Eby’s proposed changes and deferrals, raising the question of whether the province has lost its authority to govern.

Treaties hammered out over decades with the K’omoks First Nation on Vancouver Island and the Kitselas First Nation on the northwest coast were tabled in the BC legislature for ratification, with a third treaty for the Kitsumkalem First Nation in the northwest expected to follow. The protests began even before they were introduced.

Left Coast, Lost Cause

Jonathan Kay;

On 24 October 2019, B.C.’s left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) government enacted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), requiring the government to take “all necessary measures” to ensure its laws are consistent with UNDRIP. British Columbia thereby became the first jurisdiction on the planet that not only endorsed UNDRIP in the abstract (as Trudeau and other national leaders had done) but actually cemented its guarantees into law. In 2021, the province added a further legislative amendment explicitly requiring that “every Act and regulation must be construed as being consistent with UNDRIP.”

Behind the scenes, then-Premier John Horgan and his cabinet were assuring legislators that the law would simply ensure that B.C. took advice and guidance from Indigenous groups. But as judges (predictably) concluded, that’s absolutely not what the law says.

More Pavilions At Folkfest

One day a Canadian Prime Minister will stand up in Parliament to say, “Wasn’t us who stole your land”.

Shovel Ready Projects

My advice: if at all possible, shovel and shut up. Most of Canada has ancient indigenous graves all over it if you know where to look. I’m personally aware of an unmarked grave in the same spot where an old Indian campsite used to be in my neighborhood.

A couple say they’re on the hook for hundreds of thousands dollars after Indigenous ancestral remains were found on their property in Wainfleet, Ont.

“They learned that burial site investigation is hefty work. One quote estimated 27 days, a crew of six, 100 square meters of dirt sifted through screens, and local indigenous oversight. The total: $319,000.”

If It Weren’t For Fake Hate

There’d be no hate at all.

On Tuesday, the president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, Frank Star Comes Out, made headlines by claiming that four members of his tribe were unlawfully detained by ICE and calling for their immediate release. He also claimed that the federal government tried to force him to “enter into an immigration agreement with ICE.”

To coin a phrase, “That’s not entirely accurate.”

Mr. Star Comes Out apparently felt that Native Americans were being left out of all the victimization of oppressed minorities in Minnesota and decided to shoulder his way onto the stage.

Democrats and the media leapt at the story that Native Americans, “Americans” before anyone else got here, were being rounded up by evil ICE and thrown into a detention camp.

The only problem with this juicy news item was that it wasn’t true.

ICE never even encountered any Ogala Sioux and never asked for an immigration agreement. The tribe only gave ICE the first names of the supposed detainees. It’s not unreasonable to speculate that the entire “incident” was a publicity stunt, a set-up from the start.

“ICE did NOT ask the tribe for any kind of agreement; we have simply asked for basic information on the individuals, such as names and date of birth, so that we can run a proper check to provide them with the facts,” Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said.

Money For Nothing

The sheer magnitude of this taxpayer largess boggles the mind. And yet many reserves are without potable water. My guess is that most of the money is going to lawyers and “consultants”. It’s long past the point where this needs to stop, but a population browbeaten by the residential school mythology seems tragically incapable of raising any objections.

When the Liberals first took power in 2015, their own estimates showed that total federal government spending on what they deemed “Indigenous priorities” was about $11 billion. Within 10 years, this had nearly tripled. By 2024, internal Department of Finance estimates were showing that planned “investments in Indigenous Priorities” were set to hit $32 billion.

Put another way, it would take Manitoba’s entire annual economic activity just to cover the increase in federal Indigenous spending since 2014.

 

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