Topics – Action

The Stanley Mission walkers are trekking from northern Saskatchewan to Parliament Hill to defend lands and waterways against the Conservative government’s assault on the environment and the rights of Indigenous people.

Briarpatch has always been a labour of love, the key to its unlikely success, as past editor Dave Mitchell notes. “It consistently leads with the heart, and so it’s able to produce quality journalism with a tragic fraction of the masthead depth of most publications.”

Treaties are not about the cession of land but rather a commitment to stand with one another.

As Pauline Marois’ Parti Québécois tries to repackage the Charest government’s neoliberal policies, resistance to the massive Plan Nord project is escalating among the northern Innu people and their allies. Even as band councils enter negotiations with the Canadian government, grassroots activists inspired by Idle No More are fighting for Indigenous autonomy and their traditional territories.

The first issue was photocopied in March or April 1971 at the Saskatoon Family Service Bureau (where I was working at the time) on one of the early machines that used rolls of that grey, waxy paper.

Crass sees “collective liberation” – a term borrowed from an essay by bell hooks – as a “vision of what we want and a strategic framework to help us get there.”

I am often conflicted as an educator. As a Native woman, I consider the current system of education in Canada to be inherently colonial, and I hate my role in perpetuating it.

There are two schools of thought. One is that government should be neutral and provide funds for magazines. The other is that if you’re reliant on government for funding, chances are that you’ll back off from criticism, which we never did, and we paid the price.

Through the intersections of social centres, strategies for change emerge.