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I will be attending the online event to acclaim Leah Gazan as the Winnipeg Centre NDP candidate for the next federal election. Since I am yet again offering support for a member of parliament who is in the NDP caucus, I felt it worth discussing my current thoughts  on the NDP.   Who I've met... When I first became political in the 1990's I was partisan, and an active volunteer for the Green Party of Ontario and Canada. I had no interest in meeting or talking with politicians, because -- well -- they all needed to go because they were all bad (and none of them were Green, so that went without saying). I ended up meeting Hon. Mauril Bélanger because of a mutual friend, not because he was a politician. In 1997 when I moved to the Ottawa South, I wrote him a letter and we started to engage in conversations.  In 1998 I joined the federal Progressive Conservative party to vote for David Orchard. And thus began my transition from being focused on political parties to noticing ...

One of the articles assigned for NS 115 students this week is an essay by Jessica Kolopenuk titled Provoking Bad Biocitizenship . ( https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.1152 ) I do not have a background in biology or the medical sciences: that is the domain of my wife who teaches high-school biology to possible future doctors and scientists. I have spent decades involved in democratic reform, starting in the 1990's. I am inspired by the essay to think about how I might slide it into a domain that I am more actively engaged in. What is Democracy? Everyone thinks they know it when they see it, but lets copy a dictionary definition to have a common start. a : government by the people especially : rule of the majority b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections Provocation 1: Canadian Confederation was not an example of a democracy Prior t...

I have written about UNDRIP and Uyghurs and China vs Hong Kong, Canada vs Haudenosaunee Confederacy ., and how I consider the narrow focus on China to be misplaced whether we are talking about Hong Kong or the Uyghurs. Michael Chong recently tabled a motion which he called "Religious Minorities in China" that I want to write about.  I first want to document some of the biases that caused me to initially form the opposite opinion to Michael Chong. Michael Chong's biases I have been following Michael Chong's political interventions since I met him in the context of his Conservative Party leadership campaign . I really liked what I heard so I re-joined the Conservative party (sorta - I had been a member of the Progressive Conservative party) and voted for him as #1 on my ballot. I have noticed a growing focus on China in his interventions in the house, growing to the point where he seems to talk about China more than he talks about Canada. While there are other sources,...

Last evening I watched An Evening with Desmond Cole , hosted by the Canadian Museum of History. I read "The Skin We're In", and watched different interviews. This one was particularly inspiring. This will partly be because Desmond Cole has been on a tour of this highly successful book, and with each presentation he will be getting interesting questions to think about himself. The questions given him by Adrian Harewood and some of the students watching were not easy ones. Adrian challenged Desmond with far more than a discussion of his book. The two most interesting answers for me were about Canada, and about the chapter on Canadian colonialism.   Do you love Canada?   Using a quote from James Baldwin, Adrian asked Desmond about whether he loved Canada. I don't have the quote handy, but this quote conveys the theme: “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” - James Baldwi...

I find discussions on these issues from many Canadians, including in the federal parliament, to be -- well -- irrational, and full of "I know you are, but what am I" type childish behavior. I've already written China vs Hong Kong, Canada vs Haudenosaunee Confederacy , but the focus of certain politicians is now directed at the Indigenous Uyghurs rather than post-British-occupation Hong Kong. The Uyghurs are an indigenous peoples that have a history in that region dating back thousands of years. They call the region East Turkestan (or Uyghurstan), and reject the name Xinjiang (Sinkiang, meaning "New Frontier" in Mandarin Chinese). Many converted to Islam in the 10'th century, but that doesn't take away from their status as Indigenous peoples, and should not misdirect the focus of discussion toward religion. Even the type of name imposed by China should sound extremely familiar to Canadians, given we have a province called "New Found Land" on one...

As part of the NS 161 course, we have been assigned chapters from âpihtawikosisân (Chelsea Vowel)'s book INDIGENOUS WRITES: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada .  Last week's lecture included an interview that Tasha Hubbard (one of our professors) did of Chelsea Vowel, where they discussed how the book came out of some of the work she was doing on her blog creating "Indigenous Issues" Primers ., as well as on her twitter and other social media. They discussed how, if she was going to do this all over again, she would have avoided the use of the term "Indigenous Issues" as they are really Canadian issues. These primers discuss things all Canadians are involved in, and it is not narrowly about some subset of the population on this land. I've heard it said in another way, which is that there never was an "Indian problem", only a "settler-colonial problem". Repeating my confession I haven't read every single ...

I've been writing about association fallacies , and how they are leading to errors in analyzing UNDRIP, Bill C-15, and related laws. Who created UNDRIP UNDRIP is the result of decades of work, starting from the late 1970's, by Indigenous peoples worldwide.  This included many representatives of Turtle Island Nations and peoples.  The goal was to create policy which would regulate the behavior of nations which are not Indigenous nations. It should not surprise anyone to know that the most offending nations, known collectively as CANZUS (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States) would be actively opposing this human rights initiative. These foreign/foreigner created nations exist as an ongoing expression of White Supremacy . These are nations where their colonization projects were so successful (meaning, so horrible and genocidal ) that the foreign population and their descendants greatly outnumber the Indigenous population. Genocide is not what democracy looks like,...

In my last article I discuss some of the mistakes that settlers regularly make when trying to understand and help with policies that impact Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island. With regards to Bill C-15 , I am most concerned that some settlers have read emotional statements made by a subset of Indigenous individuals that are justifiably upset with Canada for the ongoing genocide against Indigenous peoples. These settlers will then incorrectly believe that it is helpful to protecting the rights of indigenous people to also be angry at Canada and oppose Bill C-15 and any other activity Canada might take relating to changing Canadian law to conform with UN human rights declarations. While I respect and understand Indigenous people who simply want Canada to get out of the way and allow them to live their lives in peace, I do not believe settlers should allow themselves to think the same way.  Whether settlers support Canada or any of its institutions, they are still part of and uphold...