Briarpatch Articles

As precarious work becomes the norm, labour activists need to combine the best of our traditions with new approaches that respond to the changing realities of work. To do that, we look to the history of community unionism, worker centres, and whole worker organizing.

An interview with the judges of Briarpatch’s 10th annual Writing In The Margins contest: Larissa Lai, Pat Kane, and Sonnet L’Abbé.

With more people working and shopping remotely, the rural post office is not just a quaint village fixture; it is vital infrastructure. But will decision-makers, focused on vote-dense urban Canada, pay attention?

Amid COVID-19 and a global uprising against police brutality, the already intense demands and pressures that Black women face at work have become crushing. Hawa Mire convened a roundtable on Black women’s labour during these times

Amid calls to defund and ultimately abolish the police, we spoke to the people who are already working on replacing the police with crisis workers in Canada.

Following the deaths of three workers to COVID-19, the experience of migrant farmworkers in Canada has received unprecedented media attention. As a result, workers are winning long-overdue changes to their conditions. This timeline charts the wins and losses of migrant agricultural workers in Ontario during seven months of COVID-19.

Amazon has made a name for itself in pioneering new strategies for worker exploitation. The best way to fight back is to build worker power from below.

Three months after Foodora couriers won the right to unionize – a historic win for app-based workers – Foodora announced it was leaving Canada. Five worker leaders talk about the highs and lows of the campaign, and what’s next for Foodsters United.

An interview with Ginnifer Menominee on treaty holders, ceremonial jurisdiction, and Land Back in Guelph.

An interview with Haisla/Heiltsuk author Eden Robinson about her relationship to land, the importance of independent journalism in covering Indigenous movements, and why she donates monthly to Briarpatch.

After a long legacy of power and control by Parks Canada, this story imagines how Lands and Peoples could once again live in healthy reciprocity.

Why the Canadian government and industry are doing everything they can to avoid consulting with hereditary leadership on Wet’suwet’en yintah

Historically, Black and Indigenous trans women were honoured within our communities. Today, Land Back means undoing transmisogyny in our movements and restoring the cultural importance of non-colonial gender identities.

I wonder what it would mean to walk freely on my own lands without fear of surveillance by white prairie settlers and criminalization by the institutions that serve their interests.

Indigenous sex workers continue to pave the way for sexual liberation. How is this fundamental to Land Back?

To make the link between hunting, land use, and Land Back, Alex Wilson spoke to three Indigenous women hunters about patriarchy, spirituality, and the joys of being on the land. 

In all of our interviews with nêhiyawêwin-speaking Elders, learners, and teachers across Treaty 6, we learned that the land is integral to Indigenous language revitalization, as the land and the language are inherently and intrinsically connected.

European political traditions would have us believe that being sovereign means asserting exclusive control over a territory, whereas Prairie NDN political traditions teach us that it is through our relationship with others that we are sovereign.

From land trusts to mushroom permitting, here are some examples of what Land Back looks like on the ground

The land has always been here and Indigenous Peoples have always been reclaiming parts of it. So Canada’s challenge is how to keep us off of it, and how to keep us from holding onto the idea that it’s right for us to reclaim it.