1062 replies to this topic

[VicHockeyFan]

The solution would be to have a functioning community.

Interesting side note.

Part of that nation, 35 members live on Barnston Island. 15 white people also live there, on reserve.

155 people in total live on the Island.

Barston Island has a free car ferry that runs daily from 6:30 am to midnight and longer on the weekends.

Edited by VicHockeyFan, 15 September 2017 - 08:12 AM.

[amor de cosmos]

The management plan for Island View Beach is on hold for the foreseeable future after a last-minute appeal by the Tsawout First Nation for more consultation.

“I think I can report that this item is going to be tabled almost indefinitely,” Capital Regional District parks committee chairman Mike Hicks told board members last week.

In July, CRD directors were caught off guard and forced at the last minute to postpone consideration of the plan — seven years in the making — after receiving a letter from Chief Harvey Underwood saying his nation was opposed to the plan.

The letter, received the day it was to be considered for adoption, said the proposed management plan did not recognize the Tsawout’s Douglas Treaty and Aboriginal rights to access and use resources in the park and did not provide a decision-making role for the Tsawout First Nation “in the management of our traditional lands that are included within the park.”

After receiving the letter, CRD representatives including Hicks, CRD chairwoman Barb Desjardins and chief administrative officer Bob Lapham met with Underwood, his council and Tsawout elders. It quickly became clear that more work had to be done with the Tsawout, Hicks said.

http://www.timescolo...plan-1.22775411

Edited by amor de cosmos, 17 September 2017 - 08:36 AM.

[amor de cosmos]

A Victoria-based filmmaker wants the city to establish an Indigenous Walk of Fame to acknowledge Aboriginal storytellers and actors in the industry.

Steve Sxwithul'txw has been part of the film and television industry for about 10 years. In that time, Sxwithul'txw has produced two Leo Award winning programs: Warrior Games and the latest Tribal Police Files.

He created Kwassen Productions in 2009, a First Nations company with the goal of making the industry more accessible on Vancouver Island.

While traveling the continent, Sxwithul'txw was shocked to see the lack of acknowledgement of Indigenous people in film. But he sees the landscape changing.

"You'll see more storylines changing to embrace the Indigenous outlook, ways of being, themes, those kind of things," he said.

"We're seeing that starting to take over and more of our actors are starting to get involved in these types of films and television projects."

http://www.cbc.ca/ne...maker-1.4404621

[Nparker]

lanforod, on 11 Jan 2018 - 08:37 AM, said:

...I've kind of always done it more Sah WASS en, but with a hint of that starting T...

Other local first nation words that are written "Ts" are pronounced your way. For example, "Tsawout" is not pronounced "Tuh-saw-out".

[amor de cosmos]

this collection could be up there with the HBC archives, Marshall McLuhan's collected papers & the archive of papers that led to the discovery of insulin  
 

Her life was steeped in classical music, but Ida Halpern was passionate about the songs of British Columbia's Indigenous people, music she set out to prove was equal to that of Bach and Mozart.

Halpern's more than 500 recordings, transcriptions and handwritten notes comprise a unique Indigenous collection at the Royal B.C. Museum. The work was recently nominated for a United Nations world memory program designation to safeguard cultural treasures against neglect, destruction and collective amnesia.

Some of the songs are available to the public in digital form while many others are part of what is an ongoing effort by the museum to reconnect the music with their communities, says museum archivist Genevieve Weber.

Among the recordings available are songs by Chief Mungo Martin, a renowned Indigenous artist and leader whose totems and big house stand at Thunderbird Park on the museum's grounds.

Weber said she experienced the cultural and historical significance of Halpern's work last summer when a relative of former Kwakwaka'wakw chief Billy Assu called about songs to use for her wedding.

Assu, from Quadra Island, was one of the first Indigenous leaders to permit Halpern to record songs, said Weber. Halpern spent years trying to record Indigenous songs but was rejected on grounds they were sacred and could only be heard by the community, she said.

Assu recognized in the late 1940s the songs would die with him because Indigenous people were not permitted to speak their own language at residential schools and their potlatch ceremonies, where many of the songs were performed, were declared illegal until 1951.

https://www.theglobe...rticle37571065/

Edited by amor de cosmos, 18 January 2018 - 08:27 AM.

[spanky123]

Radiolab is a very popular and well produced free podcast that focuses on deep dives into topics of curiosity. www.radiolab.org

 

Recently they featured a podcast on the origins of football and how it has evolved over the years. In particular they took a look at how a US "residential school" football team had overcome adversity and used their ingenuity, persistence and skill to not only contend at a national level, but also shape many of the rules and play that we see in professional and college football today.

 

My first thought was wow, it is amazing how US and Canada view sensitive issues like the residential school system. Without trying to rank one system vs another, it is fair to say that in the US children were also taken from their families, forced to learn English at the expense of their own native language, stripped of their culture and many students died of disease and abuse. In the US the narrative though is to focus on how adversity has been overcome, how students used their education to better the lives of their kin, how they beat the white man at the very game he created. Where is any of that here? I heard a local FN band member say recently that it will take 7 generations for them to overcome the psychological impact of residential schools. Surely there must have been people or groups who overcame this impact and went on to do great things. People that FN children can look up to rather than being told all of the time that they are failures because of what happened to a relative they never knew or met. 

 

It is no wonder that the US whips us in productivity and innovation.

[VicHockeyFan]

I mostly agree.  Look, look what happened in Europe in WW2 or the Eastern Bloc afterwards.  Millions killed, raped, brutalized, suppressed and displaced.  It really sucked.  

[VicHockeyFan]

Nikki Sanchez, a University of Victoria PhD student studying Indigenous governance, said the Boushie family wanted people joining together after the verdict to have “peace in their hearts.”

She said the family described their son as “an optimist who brought joy to their family, who brought them pride and who was taken from them too soon.”

http://www.timescolo...eath-1.23170819


I’ll tell you what Boushie and his crew did that day. They blew out a tire on their uninsured truck. Then instead of calling the CAA or friends and family for help they drove the truck on one rim.

They went onto one farm and smashed out the window of a truck in an attempt to steal it. They failed.

So they went to the next farm over and tried to steal an ATV, and then crashed into the farmers vehicle.

Only after this drunken rampage did Stanley grab a gun to try to maintain order and defend against the threat of these reckless menaces.

Probably nobody deserved to die, but all the tumultuous actions before the gun was brought into it is what caused the events leading to the death.

Edited by VicHockeyFan, 11 February 2018 - 05:47 AM.

[Bingo]

No body deserved to die, but what would you do if your family was threatened on your home property?  

[Cassidy]

Although folks are free to gather together in order to protest the verdict, there is absolutely nothing in the reports of the trial that point to a skewed verdict because the deceased was First Nations.

 

There is an unmitigated and dangerous boldness to what Boushie and his friends were doing that day, essentially stealing anything that caught their eye, and doing so whether the owner was present or not.

Boushie and his friends were drunk, fearless and unconcerned with the ramifications of their actions.

 

The bottom line is they drove onto the farm in order to steal valuable equipment, and the presence of Stanley (and his son) seemed not to deter them, and indeed the sheer boldness of what Boushie and his friends were doing caused Stanley to fear for the lives of his family. 

 

Stanley calmly testified in a believable and logical manner, and the jury quite properly saw fit to exonerate him of any crime.

 

It was an appropriate and just verdict.

[jonny]

Messy case. Stanley's reaction wasn't right, but I can understand why he grabbed a gun. City folk wouldn't get that.

The PM and Justice Minister's reactions are abhorrent.

Is it not racist to claim Stanley's reaction was based upon racism, with zero facts to support that claim?

[VicHockeyFan]

And of course this is how they live on the reserve:

 

https://www.theglobe...rticle32451940/

 

Later that day Ms. Baptiste hesitates before inviting a reporter into her home. She describes the field of raw sewage beneath the trailer, as their system hasn't been hooked up for about two years.

 

"Our water's shut off. Our sewer's not hooked up…There are three broken windows that have not been fixed for two years," she says.

 

In the harsh Saskatchewan winter they all sleep in the living room with the oven door open and blankets stuffed in the broken windows to block the wind.

 

"We've asked for help but we're talking to deaf ears," Ms. Baptiste said.

 

[Cassidy]

Those kinds of articles are usually missing far more facts than they’re reporting.

Personal accountability is never mentioned, and is always missing.

[Nparker]

...Personal accountability is never mentioned, and is always missing.

This.

[spanky123]

No body deserved to die, but what would you do if your family was threatened on your home property?  

 

So the PM and minister believe that a jury of non-aboriginals, having spent days in court reviewing all of the witness testimony, cannot fairly judge a case. And they think that we are the racists?!

Edited by spanky123, 11 February 2018 - 11:46 AM.

[spanky123]

And of course this is how they live on the reserve:

 

https://www.theglobe...rticle32451940/

 

The sad thing is that the Government has probably paid to have the sewage connected a half dozen times by now.

[tjv]

And of course this is how they live on the reserve:

 

https://www.theglobe...rticle32451940/

That's nice, and of course they all have jobs too?  They all have income to pay to have their sewage hooked up and get that broken window fixed?     Why should they expect the taxpayers to fix THEIR problems?

 

Get with the rest of the world, I take pride in my house, make sure its painted, windows fixed, sewage hooked up, etc.  Every time I drive thru one of the reserves here I shake my head and they want more.  Over my dead body!

[Rob Randall]

Messy case, yes but you can't deny the way the cops treated the mother was brutal. No way a white woman would suffer that kind of degradation.

 

Plenty of blame all around on this one.

[Cassidy]

We've repeatedly read the mothers take on how the cops allegedly treated her ... but considering she's also painting Coulton as an optimistic saint of the family, and the First Nations hope for the future ... I'm not so sure I'd be willing to take what I read from her at face value.

 

I'm sure she loved her son, and a human life was lost ... but there are an awful lot of folks with a serious agenda trying to control the narrative in this story ... and there are a lot of Boushie supporters who very conveniently omit any discussion of what Boushie and his friends were doing on Stanley's ranch in the first place.

 

It's not like this was some random "walk-up" shooting that took place in the nearest town ... this was an accidental shooting that took place during the course of a violent attempted robbery on private property.

The only reason the accidental shooting occurred is because Stanley caught Boushie and his friends in the middle of that attempted robbery ... the MOST important part of the entire narrative, and one which the jury obviously agreed with.

 

All actions have associated consequences, a fact that the thieves in the car either choose to overlook, or weren't taught by their parents.

As a result, tragedy ensued ... as it very often does when you try to steal something from somebody who is obviously not going to stand by and allow that to happen.

[VicHockeyFan]

It’s not just simple theft. It sounded like sudden mayhem on the Stanley property. Stanley testified that he did not know if his wife was in their vehicle when it was rammed.