March 11, 2010
Review: The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book by Gord Hill
In The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, Vancouver-based writer Gord Hill blends his visual and literary talents to tell the story of aboriginal life since the arrival of Europeans in the Western Hemisphere in 1492. If the book’s title isn’t enough to tell you what perspective Hill, a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation, is taking, the names of the book’s three sections certainly will: Invasion,... [More >>]
March 10, 2010
Counting the Vancouver 2010 Olympics’ broken promises
One of Pivot Legal Society's Red Tents on the streets of Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Photo by The Blackbird. The five-ring circus has rolled out of Vancouver, but the tents are still up. Hundreds of red tents, which became as much a symbol of our 2010 Games as those maple leaf mittens, won’t be coming down until we get our housing legacy. That’s the pledge of Pivot Legal Society,... [More >>]
March 1, 2010
Supervised injection sites work—but the feds still don’t get it
The evidence in favour of safe-injection sites is overwhelming, but the federal government appears determined to shut Insite down. Despite ongoing efforts by the Harper government to shut it down, Insite, the Vancouver-based supervised-injection site, is alive and thriving, with over 10,000 registered users and around 800 daily visitors. To Mark Townsend, an Insite representative, it’s a success... [More >>]
February 17, 2010
Interview: sealskin clothing designer and lawyer Aaju Peter
Europe’s sealskin ban threatens her runway-ready apparel—and maybe the entire Inuit way of life Aaju Peter. Illustration by David Donald. A majority of the 27 member states of the European Union voted to ban the trade of seal product imports such as pelts, oil, and meat last July. The ban comes into effect in August 2010. Although the EU did allow a partial exemption for Inuit populations,... [More >>]
January 20, 2010
Innu village of Sheshatshiu out of crisis, into the classroom
A new school in Sheshatshiu, Labrador, has revolutionized teaching and re-energized the whole town. Photo courtesy Innu Nation via Flickr. Many Canadians associate Sheshatshiu with images of children sniffing gas from paper bags. The troubled central Labrador Innu community received nationwide attention in the ’90s as a place in crisis. Now, years later, with the opening of the new Sheshatshiu Innu... [More >>]
January 19, 2010
A modest proposal: turn all Aboriginal lands into the 11th province
Historic treaty boundaries between Canada and Aboriginal peoples. Not representative of any proposed outline for an Aboriginal province; vast areas of Canada have never been formally surrendered or ceded by Aboriginal peoples. Courtesy Ministry of Natural Resources. Click to Enlarge The Royal Proclamation of 1763 included a clause prohibiting British colonists from purchasing “Lands of the Indians,”... [More >>]
January 13, 2010
Olympic Countdown: Aboriginal groups clash with the Games — and with each other
B.C. Aboriginal groups are divided on the Olympic issue Four First Nations communities overlap Vancouver Olympic Sites from Vancouver to Whistler. British Columbia’s First Nations are divided in their support for the Olympics. On one side, the chiefs and band councils of four indigenous communities—the Lil’wat, Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh—have endorsed the Games and set up the Four... [More >>]
January 11, 2010
Olympic Countdown: Interview with 2010 Watch’s Christopher Shaw
Christopher Shaw. Photo by Flickr user The Blackbird. Used with permission. Christopher Shaw’s day job is professor of ophthalmology at the University of British Columbia, but since Vancouver launched its bid for the Olympics more and more of his time has been spent campaigning against the Games—first as the founder of No Games 2010 and now as lead spokesperson for 2010 Watch. Shaw’s book, Five... [More >>]
December 10, 2009
Night confronts darkness of the North—both literal and metaphorical
Abbie Ootova and Linnea Swan workshopping "Night" in Pond Inlet, Nunavut. Photo courtesy Human Cargo. For a playwright from Toronto, creating a play about Canada’s North is a daunting task. How do you talk about a culture that, though Canadian, is as foreign as one from the other side of the world? How do you approach difficult issues like suicide when you’re not just an outsider, but... [More >>]
December 7, 2009
CAVE puts a human face back on Canada’s hundreds of missing women
Canada has a problem: since the early 1980s, over 500 Aboriginal women have been either murdered or reported as missing. It’s a shocking figure that’s motivated a pair of self-identified “survivors of the sex industry” to form the Coalition Against Violence Everywhere, an organization dedicated to stopping the violence by challenging the common narrative that the murdered and missing women... [More >>]
