Mitch Case “Everyone has the right to feel good about who they are, and for us, with all that we have been through since the coming of the visitors to our island, this place given to us by the creator – it’s been a long time that we have not felt that way, but everyone, and there is no exception… Read more »
By Allyson Stevenson[1] When I began this blog on January 29th, I had just returned to my office at the University of Regina after speaking about my research on an inspiring panel of powerful First Nations women leaders in Treaty 4 territory that included Chief Lynn Acoose, Chief Roberta Soo-Oye Waste, Dr. Priscilla Settee, and Dakota Elder Diane McKay. “The… Read more »
Last month, the Graphic History Collective released Remember/Resist/Redraw poster #22 by Lianne Charlie and Siku Allooloo. Through the lens of Allooloo’s family story, the poster (which is based on a photo of Allooloo’s grandparents) looks at the history of Inuit relocation. Between the 1920s and 1960s, Canadian officials relocated Inuit families to the high arctic as a means to establish… Read more »
Matthew McRae The City of Winnipeg recently tore down the Thomas Scott Memorial Orange Hall, located in the city’s historic Exchange District. News coverage about the demolition has focused a lot on the loss of architectural heritage. This is important, but it’s only one part of the story. There’s also the story of who the building is named after: Thomas… Read more »
By Catherine Murton Stoehr There is a hard disconnect between the actual treaties that the Mi’kmaq, Great Lakes Nations, and Metis forced through strength of arms and today’s “reconciliation moment.” And it is this: no Indigenous person in the history of this place ever wanted large numbers of non-Indigenous Canadians to live here. Not out of dislike or insularity but… Read more »
Sarah Rotz, Daniel Rück, and Sean Carleton On February 7, militarized RCMP arrested and removed Wet’suwet’en land defenders from their unceded territories, triggering demonstrations and blockades across the country. With large parts of the country’s rail traffic at a standstill, and shipping vessels unable to move goods, people are seeing that peaceful civil disobedience can #ShutDownCanada. As solidarity actions spread,… Read more »
We like to think that the abuses of the past might have been avoided if only decision makers and the public had known about them. In these cases, the information was available, and change did not come.
This is part of an ongoing series of reflections from the Manitoulin Island Summer Historical Institute (MISHI) By: Natalie Cross, Alyssa Kaminski, and Urvi Maheshwari Beginning an undergraduate education can be uncomfortable. After several years of attending classes, however, the experience becomes common, perhaps banal. For the most part we attend three hours of classes per course each week. They… Read more »
James FitzGerald The Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver has been described as Canada’s Poorest Postal Code and one of the country’s densest populations of substance-using and low-income communities. Largely due to the disappearances and murders of so many of its women and girls, the DTES has also become known as ground zero for disproportionate violence against Indigenous women, as… Read more »
This is part of an ongoing series of reflections from the Manitoulin Island Summer Historical Institute (MISHI) By Philip Girard During MISHI 2019 I stayed in Gore Bay and drove to M’Chigeeng each day. While making the drive on the first day, and every day thereafter, I noticed a half-dozen large stork-like birds in a meadow along the way. I… Read more »