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SEPT. 30 - National Day for Truth and Reconciliation - đšđŠ
Spunkie
I come from downtown. Posts: 5,546
"The National Day of Truth and Reconciliation is a statutory holiday. The third annual...day, which coincides with Orange Shirt Day, is meant to bring awareness and reflection on the legacy of Canadaâs residential school system, which aimed to erase the languages and cultures of the Indigenous peoples of this land." - CBC
KiÊsuÊk kykyit. As a Ktunaxa intergenerational residential school survivor, waiting for family child remains to return home from school, I thought I'd post a list of learning resources compiled by Indigenous advisors to deepen understandings.Â
See my adapted list and links below.
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10-30-1991 Toronto, Toronto 1 & 2 2016, Toronto 2022
It also reminded me of something that always strikes me as unsettling which is that, as bad a the indigenous were treated in Canada, it was so bad in the lower 48 states here that some tribes and clans tried to escape to Canada. But do we have such a day of recognition here in the U.S.?" Nooooo, not really. We have "Native American Day" which most people have never heard of and is barely recognized if at all. Oh, but we have "Columbus Day" and "Thanksgiving." That's beyond sad.
10-30-1991 Toronto, Toronto 1 & 2 2016, Toronto 2022
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There are some none native writers who have some some fine work writing about the history of indigenous peoples (Kent Nerburn is one I particularly like), but this fellows suggestion lead me to discovering some really excellent Native American writers including James Welch, Paul Chaat Smith, and the prolific Novelist/poet.essayist Sherman Alexie, whose books were banned in Arizona sin 2012, and whose Reservation Blues is particularly fine. Â
More just stating like it is with a little bit of sarcasm.
Years ago I recall hearing Gord Downie talk about the First Nations issue "Â we cannot call ourselves strong and free if we still ignore the hurt and pain that an entire nation of people feel"
At that time not knowing much about this issue being from South of the border, I recall being blown away about how bad it was, literally tearing children from the arms of parents.
Police think a landfill holds womenâs bodies. Why wonât they search it?
The two women had been missing for more than seven months when police called their loved ones to a meeting.
The families of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran had taped up missing person posters and canvassed the areas around Winnipeg, Manitoba, where the Indigenous women spent time. No bit of intel was too small for cases R22-23037 and R22-50231. âHave you seen this woman?â theyâd ask anyone. Some said they had.
But those tips led nowhere. So as the meeting with police last December approached, Kirstin Witwicki, a cousin of Harrisâs, was uneasy but holding out hope. âYou make bargains in your head,â she said, âto rationalize things that you know donât make logical sense.â
What came next was a grim âblur of information.â
Harris, 39, and Myran, 26, members of the Long Plain First Nation, had been the victims of a serial killer who had preyed on Indigenous women, police said. Investigators had determined in June, soon after their disappearances, that their remains had been dumped in the Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg, police said, but it wasnât safe or feasible to search it.
Other forensic analysts dispute that conclusion. Now the families are locked in a dispute with authorities over whether to search â and the treatment of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls generally.
Refusing to search, family members and their advocates say, betrays Canadaâs pledges to reconcile with Indigenous people and address the disproportionately high rates of violence against Indigenous women and girls, which a national inquiry recently called a âgenocide.â
âWe can easily talk about reconciliation,â said Cathy Merrick, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. âBut thereâs no action with it, so itâs meaningless.â
Canadian officials have âmade so many promises to Indigenous people,â said Jorden Myran, who was raised with Marcedes and calls her a sister. âThis is just showing that nothing has changed. ⊠If this was a White woman in the landfill, there would have been no question that there would have been a search.â
Police charged Jeremy Skibicki, 35, in December with first-degree murder in Harrisâs and Myranâs deaths. He was already in custody for allegedly killing Rebecca Contois, 24, from the Crane River First Nation. Her obituary noted her âgreat love for animals.â
Skibicki has also been charged with murdering an unidentified woman who police say was Indigenous. Elders have named her Buffalo Woman. Her remains have not been located.
Skibicki has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Police recovered Contoisâs remains from a garbage bin in Winnipeg and the Brady Road landfill. Conditions for searching that landfill, Winnipeg police forensics chief Cam MacKid told reporters in December, were âpreferable.â
The debris was loose, he said, not compacted. Only a few hours had passed between when Contoisâs remains were dumped and when police became aware of it.
Waste at the Prairie Green landfill, in contrast, is covered with thousands of tons of wet heavy construction clay and compacted by heavy machinery, MacKid said. The presence of asbestos poses safety risks. The number of animal bones presents another challenge.
Further complicating matters, police say they believe the remains of Harris and Myran had spent 34 days in the landfill before investigators realized it. During that time, some 10,000 truckloads of waste were dumped there.
âWhen it comes up that there might be human remains at a landfill, we approach that with the mind-set that weâre going to be searching,â MacKid told reporters. But after studying the site, he said, âwe made the very difficult decision as a service that [it] wasnât operationally feasible to conduct a search.â
Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson has backed that decision.
Thatâs not sitting well with the victimsâ families, who note authoritiesâ willingness to conduct complex searches elsewhere, including the year-long search in 2002 of a 14-acre pig farm in British Columbia owned by the countryâs most prolific serial killer. It uncovered the DNA of 33 women.
With $368,000 in funding from the federal government, the families and their advocates tapped several forensic analysts to conduct their own study on whether a search of the Prairie Green landfill might be possible.
In a report released in July, the analysts concluded that there are âconsiderable risksâ to such an operation, including exposure to toxic chemicals such as asbestos and asphyxiants such as methane, but they can be mitigated. A search, they said, is âfeasible.â
They also said it could take as long as 36 months and cost as much as $184 million in Canadian dollars â $135 million in U.S. dollars â and âa successful outcome is not guaranteed.â
Still, analysts said, not searching could cause âconsiderable distressâ to victimsâ families.
âItâs pretty clear to most who have read the study that risks can be mitigated, and the search can be conducted safely,â Kristopher Dueck, a forensic consultant who co-chaired the study, told reporters.
Winnipeg police declined to answer questions from The Washington Post.
Stefanson, leader of Manitobaâs Progressive Conservatives, has leaned into the dispute, featuring it prominently in newspaper ads and on billboards ahead of the provincial election Tuesday.
At a debate in September, Stefanson asked New Democratic Party leader Wab Kinew about his support for a search.
âWhy are you willing to put $184 million and Manitoba workers at risk for a search without a guarantee?â she asked.
Kinew, who is Indigenous, accused Stefanson of using the dispute to âdivide us.â
âAt this moment in the provinceâs history, I think itâs time for us to live up to that phrase: âEvery child matters,ââ he said. âI will balance respect and dignity for these families while also being responsible with the public purse.â
Stefanson has suggested the federal government could take a role. Canadaâs chief liaison to Indigenous people called her position âheartless.â
âThe federal governmentâs willing to help,â Marc Miller said in July, when he was minister of Crown-Indigenous relations. âBut ⊠the government of Canada canât nationalize a garbage dump or the waste disposal system of the city of Winnipeg.â (Miller has since moved to minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.)
Stefanson did not respond to a request for comment.
Indigenous women make up 5 percent of women in Canada, but they represented 24 percent of all women homicide victims from 2015 to 2020.
A government-appointed commission said in 2019 that the deaths and disappearances of Indigenous women and girls in Canada amounted to a ârace-based genocide.â
The panel issued 231 recommendations, framed as âcalls to justice.â Indigenous leaders have said implementation has been slow.
âTheyâre sitting on somebodyâs shelf collecting dust,â Merrick said.
The Harris and Myran families as well as their supporters have set up camps in Winnipeg to honor the women. Elroy Fontaine recently visited Camp Morgan. The body of his older sister, Tina Fontaine, was found in a Manitoba river in 2014 weighed down with rocks. The death of the 15-year-old girl galvanized public attention to the plight of Indigenous women and girls.
The Harris and Myran families traveled to Ottawa in September to meet with federal officials and to demonstrate on Parliament Hill. But they see little progress.
Gary Anandasangaree, Millerâs successor as minister of Crown-Indigenous relations, called the dispute âheart-wrenching.â He urged officials to avoid politicizing it.
âOur government will continue to work in partnership with Indigenous leaders, families, survivors, and communities to support healing and closure,â he said in a statement to The Post.
Harris and Witwickiâs grandmother attended the Portage-la-Prairie residential school, a government-funded, church-run institution that sought to assimilate Indigenous children into White European culture. Residential schoolchildren were punished for speaking their languages or practicing their traditions.
The trauma of that experience, Witwicki said, has been passed down from one generation to the next. Harris struggled with substance abuse and homelessness, her family members have said.
âUnfortunately, she didnât really have it easy, but she was always very vocal, very feisty, very caring,â Witwicki said. âShe had hopes and dreams like everyone else, but the life she was born into [was shaped] by colonization, and unfortunately, that contributed to her ending.â
Jorden Myran has fond memories of going on âadventuresâ with her sister, a âkindhearted personâ who âloved to play jokes and prank people.â
She is hopeful that the election will bring a change in power and a search of the Prairie Green landfill. If not, she said, âwe will go in there with our very own people and dig.â
Winnipeg police think landfill holds bodies of missing Indigenous women - The Washington Post
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Another one I really liked (actually, other than Indian Killer, I love all Alexie's books) that you might like too is this one, both heartbreaking and redemptive:
Ahh man, Gord Downie. What a great guy. Very sad too lose him too soon.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
"The Squamish Nation is asking for Mount Garibaldi (on the way to Whistler/Pemberton) be officially recognized by its historic Sáž”wx̱wĂș7mesh snĂchim name "Nch'ḵayÌ" (in-ch-KAY), which has been used for thousands of years.
It was named in the 1860s by Captain George Henry Richards of the Royal Navy survey to commemorate Italian General Giuseppe Garibaldi, who helped unify Italy in the same decade (but never visited)." - CBC
PJ-"Just gimme some truth".