By Dave Oswald Mitchell Briarpatch Magazine August 2008

"If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? . . . what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us."

Franz Kafka

"I'm watching things speed up in my own city, Vancouver, as legislators tighten the noose around society's most defenceless members. In the lead-up to 2010's Olympic orgasm for developers, the city council has passed laws to keep street people from sitting on park benches or reclining in parks. Behind this crazy-making effort to create a ‘civil city' is a conception of humans as rubbish."

Geoff Olson, "The Future Isn't What It Used To Be," Common Ground, July 2007

"The law in its majesty prohibits rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges."

Anatole France

By Ava McDougall* Briarpatch Magazine August 2008

*Author's note: With the exception of Jason Devine and Bonnie Collins, all anti-racist activists quoted in this article have been given pseudonyms. The writer's name has also been changed. The reason for this should be obvious: neo-Nazis are dangerous, and those who organize to stop them put themselves at risk.

Even more dangerous than neo-Nazis, though, is the prospect that the actions of a few extremists could distract attention from the systemic discrimination and violence that indigenous peoples, people of colour and queer people (to name just a few of our society's marginalized groups) encounter every day.

Blatant racism may infuriate or disgust us, but so too should elevated rates of poverty, violence, and poor health among members of oppressed groups-the real-world consequences of systemic racism and discrimination. Neo-Nazi organizing in our communities demands our attention, but so do these more subtle but far more widespread manifestations of racism.

Responding to the Canadian government's establishment of an Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Churchill argues for the need to situate the formation of this commission within the broader history of indigenous/settler relations in North America, and within a legal understanding of the crime of genocide.

"Residential Schools were one of many attempts at the genocide of the Aboriginal Peoples inhabiting the area now commonly called Canada. Initially, the goal of obliterating these peoples was connected with stealing what they owned (the land, the sky, the waters, and their lives, and all that these encompassed). . . . A variety of rationalizations (social, legal, religious, political, and economic) arose to engage (in one way or another) all segments of Eurocanadian society in the task of genocide. For example, some were told (and told themselves) that their actions arose out of a Missionary Imperative to bring the benefits of the One True Belief to savage pagans; others considered themselves justified in land theft by declaring that the Aboriginal Peoples were not putting the land to "proper" use; and so on. The creation of the Indian Residential Schools followed a time-tested method of obliterating indigenous cultures, and the psychosocial consequences these schools would have on Aboriginal Peoples were well understood at the time of their formation."

Roland Chrisjohn, Sherri Young and Michael Maraun, The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada, Theytus Books Ltd, Penticton, 1997.

Truth is one thing, and reconciliation is something else entirely. The two terms have somehow become fused, however, to the point where they usually come out as just one word: truthandreconciliation. Kind of like some other fusions that I've encountered in my life -- innocentamericans, for example. I had thought innocent was a qualification that had to be earned, and you didn't just have it by virtue of some national identity. It's nonsensical, and I would suggest that truthandreconciliation might be as well.

You see, were the truth to be expressed, internalized and acted upon, there might be a basis for reconciliation. People and communities can indeed reconcile within and among themselves, but that process is fundamentally different from the sort of superficial blather of the dominant society which is the primary promoter of the truthandreconciliation process in Canada, especially with regard to the ongoing effects of the system of residential schooling imposed for well over a century upon First Nations children.

Apologies mean little if we do not address the fundamental wrong that has occurred-in this case, colonialism and genocide. I had a formative experience with this idea that might help to illustrate this point. In 1993 I was asked to serve on a tribunal on the rights of indigenous Hawaiians-or Kanaka Maoli, as they call themselves. Their rightful territory is the entire Hawaiian archipelago.

What does the Mohawk cultural resurgence at Tyendinaga have to teach us about Aboriginal youth suicide prevention?

By Jonah Gindin Briarpatch Magazine June/July 2008

When it's truly alive, memory doesn't contemplate history, it invites us to make it.

-Eduardo Galeano.

On June 29, 2007, Mohawks from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory near Belleville, Ontario, erected blockades on the Canadian National rail line, local Highway 2, and Highway 401-the busiest thoroughfare in the country. This marked the second time in six months that the community blocked the rails in defence of their land. In the days before June 29, which had been declared a National Day of Action by the Assembly of First Nations, Mohawk spokesperson Shawn Brant explained to the CBC why the community could no longer wait on distant negotiations. "We bury our children in this country every day," he said. "We have to force them to drink polluted water. We're sick and tired of it. It's going to end-June 29 is going to mark the time when First Nations people are going to be in a different relationship with the rest of the country."

Fort Chipewyan, a tiny northern Alberta hamlet perched on the shores of Lake Athabasca, is historically notable as the location of the province's oldest European settlement, a trading post opened by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1788.

Mention Fort Chipewyan today, though, and what's likely to come to mind for most Albertans is not the 18th century fur trade, but cancer.

The community's residents, mostly indigenous Cree, Dene (Chipewyan) and Métis, are dying in alarming numbers from a variety of cancers and autoimmune disorders such as lupus and Graves' disease. The situation was first exposed in 2006 when the town's doctor, John O'Connor, went public with his findings that in this small community of 1,000, he had diagnosed at least three cases of a rare bile duct cancer that normally afflicts only one out of 100,000 Canadians.

Before going to the media, O'Connor had been trying for two years to convince the provincial authorities that something was very wrong in Fort Chipewyan. To this day, the province has taken little action, dismissing O'Connor's concerns with a brief statistical report that found the rate of cancer in the hamlet, although 30 per cent higher than the rate for Alberta as a whole, was not statistically significant enough to be considered "elevated." The report was heavily criticized by academics such as ecologist Kevin P. Timoney for its questionable statistical methodology and lack of peer review.

"Let them demonstrate, just as long as they continue to pay their taxes."

-Alexander Haig