Australia Gives a Voice to Reason - "In a historic national vote last month, Australians decisively rejected a constitutional amendment that would have created a permanent Indigenous group — the Voice — to advise government. It was a nasty fight. Opponents argued the measure would divide the country by race when all should be equal, would add another unelected layer of government with undefined and possibly untrammelled power, and would fail to grapple with the real problems suffered by Australia’s Indigenous people. The “Yes” camp merely attacked, calling anyone who disagreed ignorant and racist... The sole jurisdiction to go Yes was the Australian Capital Territory, Canberra. All the money, guilt-mongering and intimidation had been ignored and the Australian electorate had looked at the proposed constitutional amendment and said, in every single state, emphatically No. I quietly toasted the result and breathed an oxygen-deprived sigh of relief. Meanwhile, the Yes campaign’s many friends in the Australian media disgorged gushers of spite, accusing No voters of narrow-mindedness, misinformation, telling “Trump-like lies,” lack of vision, ill-will and racism. It was the same the world over; there was scarcely a balanced article to be found, much less one explaining in measured, rational terms why an Australian of goodwill and intelligence would choose to vote No... The Voice was to be a permanent body of selected (not necessarily elected) Aboriginals who would advise Parliament, Cabinet and all levels of the bureaucracy on all aspects of policy and lawmaking that affected Aboriginals. The natural questions posed included, what national policymaking bodies would the Voice have access to, and what defines a policy that affects Aboriginals? The wording of what the Voice was to be came directly from an Aboriginal working group charged with this task. Its wording was broad and, if implemented, would have resulted in the examination of virtually all policies and laws affecting or “relating to” Aboriginal people... It seemed that all policy areas, even including things like Australia’s Central Bank and questions of national defence, would fall within the Voice’s scope... Aboriginal Australians have an average eight years’ shorter life expectancy than the total Australian population, higher incarceration rates, well over twice the suicide rate and other serious health and social problems. Many Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals could not understand how any of these would be improved by another layer of bureaucracy. The proposal also made me wonder how this body would be protected from becoming the pawn of other groups who could manipulate the Voice for their own aims. Legitimate questions, I felt, required thoughtful answers. Clearly, many other No-leaning and uncommitted voters felt the same way. The government’s basic responses were to tell the people to “trust it” to define the body and its powers after the referendum, and to belittle legitimate and informed commentary as misinformation. The more questions that went unanswered, the lower the support fell, even before the campaign officially began... Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, an Aboriginal woman from Alice Springs, the famous Northern Territory town in the very geographical centre of Australia, was appointed the Opposition’s official spokesperson and became the most effective No campaigner. She, like many in our country, has a mixed-race background and objected to an official new political body that would divide the country by race. Nampijinpa Price’s view was that we are all Australians and must be legally and constitutionally equal. A Voice in which only one race would be able to influence national policy forever would be counterproductive. “Whether you’ve been in this country for 60,000 years or became an Australian 60 seconds ago, you are equal in our Constitution”.. In addition, her lived experience was that more bureaucracy would not help anyone except for the bureaucrats and lawyers. She argued for an audit on the many billions of dollars spent annually on Aboriginal programs without any significant life improvement. Nampijinpa Price was also brave enough to do the almost unthinkable: speaking some hard truths about how life for Aboriginals had actually been improved after the arrival of Europeans. For speaking out in these ways, the Yes campaign labelled her the “Coloured Help” and accused her of being used as a “black fella to punch down other black fellas.”... As the campaign progressed and Yes support continued to fall, the Yes campaign resorted to insults and threats... Yet with each insult or overheated claim, support for the No side rose and the Yes forces appeared more desperate. The Yes campaign kept rolling out celebrity and corporate endorsements as if the Constitution was some sort of reality TV program... “Well-meaning leaders at the forefront of Indigenous affairs for the past 40 years haven’t managed to move the dial enough to significantly improve the lives of the most vulnerable Indigenous people,” wrote Janet Albrechtsen, a prominent columnist for The Australian newspaper and one of the few mainstream journalists sympathetic to the No side, on September 9 (article behind paywall). “A very large industry has a track record of very poor outcomes. Cementing a lobby group into the Constitution won’t alter that direction.”... Clause 3 of the proposed insertion to the Constitution explicitly left it to Parliament to make future laws concerning the Voice’s “functions, powers and procedures.” Any future government would thus have full authority to grant the Voice more and more authority over more and more areas. So, even if there was no Indigenous veto today, there might well be one in future... Australia’s constitutional insertion was a formula for possibly never-ending political strife... As the polling booths opened, it became clear that the Yes campaign had grown desperate. The Australian Electoral Commission’s signs indicating polling locations were a distinct purple colour pattern. The Yes campaign’s signs placed at the polling locations were the same colour scheme... On exiting, voters were offered “Yes” buttons to “show people how you voted.”... there is something highly positive in Australians’ No vote. The country’s voting population had faced a deluge of politicians, academics, Aboriginal activists, media mouthpieces, celebrities and corporate leaders telling them to do something based on a combination of vague platitudes, guilt, insults and threats. The population questioned, listened and decided that all these people were wrong. That is something to celebrate."
Do “Supernatural Dens” Override Crown Sovereignty? The B.C. Supreme Court Thinks So - "ruling by the B.C. Supreme Court in Gitxaala v. British Columbia (Chief Gold Commissioner). It declares B.C.’s profoundly fair and transparent 164-year-old mining tenure law to be in breach of the province’s constitutional duty to consult with Indigenous people. In doing so, the court substitutes native sovereignty for the national variety. It is thus one more in a long string of rulings and laws undermining the moral and legal certainty of Canadian democracy. The foreseeable result of this discreditable process is the progressive delegitimization of national sovereignty throughout the country... the unhindered ability of free miners to stake claims and do the work required to keep them is a key component of the North American mining industry, as well as in many other parts of the world. It is an egalitarian approach that enables all manner of geological ideas to be tested and new participants to enter the industry. In turn, it promotes mineral developments that provide well-paying jobs – including to Indigenous people. And it is based on two fundamental and long-standing principles of Canadian law. First, that the Crown owns all land that has not otherwise been sold or granted to individuals; second, that all subsurface minerals are the exclusive property of the Crown to be allocated as it sees fit. Both concepts have been upended by Gitxaala. In 2021 and 2022 respectively, the Gitxaala and Ehattesaht First Nations of B.C. filed petitions with the B.C. Supreme Court claiming the province’s time-honoured claim-staking procedure was unconstitutional because it violated the government’s “duty to consult” with the Indigenous population. This still-evolving and vaguely defined process is entirely the invention of Canada’s courts and is intended to identify and reduce any purported harm that may be suffered by such groups as a result of natural resource exploitation or construction of major projects or infrastructure. It covers not merely the lands of First Nations reserves, but any lands where an Indigenous group may claim an interest, such as past hunting areas, encampments or places of spiritual significance; in other words, potentially anywhere and everywhere... sometimes an independent miner’s competitors are the very native groups being consulted... The time-honoured legal certainty, anonymity and fairness of B.C.’s mining tenure law has thus been demolished by a legion of spiritual beings that can only be seen by the plaintiffs. As a result, it appears the native community now has a veto over all mining activity in British Columbia... By imposing a duty to consult at the earliest possible stage of mineral exploration, the native community now appears to control the very foundation of the province’s entire $7.3 billion-per-year mining industry. Is there any role left for government to play? Despite this existential threat to its own legal supremacy, B.C.’s NDP government made only a half-hearted attempt at defending itself... This is a clear violation of the supreme lawmaking authority of the federal and provincial governments and represents a virtual usurpation of Crown legitimacy and power. But Ross’s reasoning is no outlier. Throughout the judiciary, legal organizations and government itself, the notion that Indigenous Canadians have the right to essentially secede from the rest of the country by imposing their own laws – and ignoring Canadians ones – has taken hold with surprising force and swiftness. Gitxaala is simply one more iteration of this secessionist phenomenon driven by the Canadian judiciary and supported by our legal system... Such a deliberate undermining of the foundations of Canadian law and sovereignty by Canadian lawyers and judges seems stunning. But it is by no means novel or new. It is a process that began with section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which “recognized and affirmed” the existing treaty and other rights of the “aboriginal peoples of Canada.” This immediately undermined the stated goal of the Constitution to treat all Canadians equally, by creating extra rights for some, with often absurd results when these conflicting rights collide... the Justin Trudeau government passed its sovereignty-surrendering UNDRIP Action Plan, designed to “Indigenize” all areas of federal jurisdiction. In both cases, governments are actively ceding their own authority to a parallel form of native government. And with unknown results for the entirety of Canada. In Reflections on the Revolution in France, political philosopher Edmunt Burke wrote that a government “cannot renounce its share of authority.” To do so is to “destroy the fabric of the state,” which becomes “disconnected into the dust and powder of individuality.” Gitxaala is one more revolutionary attack on the fabric of a Canadian state that seems all too eager to renounce its own authority."
Behind the Orange Shirt - "Phyllis Webstad's The Orange Shirt Story, published in 2018, is in school libraries across Canada. The cover depicts young Phyllis in an orange shirt confronted by two black-habited Catholic nuns, one with scissors in her hand, the other clutching a rosary behind her back. Inside the book, illustrations show four black-habited nuns greeting her outside the school, a nun removing her orange shirt, a nun cutting her hair, and a nun hovering over her while she prays at bedtime. The text states that the nuns made her shower, took her orange shirt away, gave her other clothes to wear, and cut her hair short. This was a routine procedure when children arrived at residential schools across Canada in September. In his book From Truth Comes Reconciliation, Rodney Clifton, who worked at Stringer Hall, the Anglican student residence and hostel in Inuvik, explains that it was a practical necessity for the students’ health and well-being... The Orange Shirt Story does not provide this much-needed context, and makes it appear that giving Phyllis Webstad and other children from remote Indian reserves in the Cariboo a shower, a change of clothing, and a haircut on their arrival at St. Joseph's in September were callous acts perpetrated by 'cold and unfriendly' nuns... Why does Phyllis Webstad shy away in subsequent accounts from stating that it was nuns who took her orange shirt away when she had stated so emphatically in The Orange Shirt Story that nuns were responsible? In that regard, it may be significant that in Beyond The Orange Shirt Story, Phyllis Webstad mentions Gloria Manuel, an Indigenous staff member who she says was kind to her... In fact, there were many Indigenous staff throughout the years of the residential school system. The schools couldn’t have run without them. In 1961, 8.9% of the total teaching staff were Indigenous. 96 status Indian teachers were employed in day schools, and 25 in residential schools. Those figures, of course, do not include the many hundreds of Indigenous staff members like Gloria Manuel who were employed in other capacities in the schools over the years. The foregoing facts raise an obvious question: Was it actually lay staff members, and perhaps even Indigenous lay staff members, who gave Phyllis Webstad a shower and haircut, and took her orange shirt away when she arrived at St Joseph's? If so, The Orange Shirt Story has clearly misinformed the Canadian public, and in particular, Canadian schoolchildren... Phyllis Webstad has been telling her story for a decade... During that decade, Canadians have come to believe that Phyllis Webstad’s experience at St Joseph’s was a horrific one. In fact, in the CBC Kids interview, Phyllis Webstad herself used the word ‘horrific’, and she has on some occasions made horrific claims based on hearsay, not on the basis of what she herself experienced as a six-year-old in 1973/4. But in believing that Phyllis Webstad had a horrific experience at St. Joseph’s, have Canadians been deceived? Her detailed account in Beyond The Orange Shirt Story reveals nothing which would justify the use of the word ‘horrific’... In contrast, life for children living on the Dog Creek Reserve could be truly horrific... Phyllis Webstad needs to level with Canadians, and tell them (1) whether it really was nuns who greeted her at the school, forced her to shower, took her orange shirt away, and cut her hair, or whether it was lay staff members, and perhaps Indigenous lay staff members, (2) that her school year with a teacher she liked in Williams Lake was a happy one, (3) that her parents had both abandoned her, and that she had no one to care for her on the reserve apart from an aging grandmother, and (4) that childhood on the reserve, as experienced by her aunt, was horrific, as opposed to her own year at St. Joseph’s, which was not horrific at all."
Of course, when indigenous men kill indigenous women, this is still white men's fault
Meme - Jonathan Kay @jonkay: "Umm... What kind of "meetings" are these people attending ?"
"A Call Out to the Allies
Submission to The Social Lens: A Social Work Action Blog by Bindi Bennett, Professor, Federation University, Australia.
For Aboriginal people, walking into a meeting that is heavily dominated by white settlers is intimidating and is usually a high-risk situation. To be honest, even if the meeting has people of colour attending, waging war against the colony and colonisation as a vessel for continued attempted genocide is dangerous to those at the heart of the battle. It is not if microaggressions occur, but when. A good example is a meeting I recently attended. I had spent the morning challenging inequity within a major organisation created by Westernisation, Colonisation and White supremacy. I had ruffled white fragility. As a result of this, a white settler"
UBC Social Work @SocialWork_UBC: "Bindi Bennett of @FedUniAustralia addresses what it means to be an Ally in this submission to The Social Lens:"
Disagreeing with liberals on a race-related issue = white fragility
Candice Malcolm on X - "Q: Were the Oct 7 attack justified?
A: Yes, from what I’ve learned here in Canadian schools from indigenous scholars, it was. They taught me violence is necessary.
Canada is in big trouble."
Inflammatory rhetoric is only problematic when it doesn't come from a "minority"
City report confirms Etobicoke coat of arms is offensive - "The plan to remove the coat of arms for the former City of Etobicoke from the local civic centre will move ahead, after city staff delivered a report Tuesday that confirmed it “does not reflect its values of reconciliation and inclusion.” The coat of arms has been the subject of numerous complaints, since as far back as 2017. Created in 1977, the symbol for the former City of Etobicoke depicts an Indigenous man on the left and explorer Étienne Brûlé on the right. Underneath the Indigenous man is the word “Tradition” and under the explorer is “Progress." The concerns raised about the coat of arms "relate to the use of stereotypical and offensive Indigenous imagery and language," said the report, which went on to say that, in consultation with the Human Rights Office and Indigenous Affairs Office, it was determined the coat of arms should be removed... At council's Executive Committee meeting on Tuesday, Holyday pointed out that the Etobicoke coat of arms is in a number of places. He then displayed several other coats of arms from across Canada, which also depict Indigenous people. “Here you have the former municipality in the City of Toronto, that actually has an Ojibwe name in its title, trying to honour some of the history of the land in its coat of arms, and here we are putting it away," said Holyday in remarks at the meeting. "I just think it’s bigger than the small report that’s here, and decisions like this belong with council and not staff.""
So there's no problem with the boil water advisories on reservations
Cultural Cringe - am I going mad? : AusPublicService - "I'm not sure how to preface this. I work in state government, and my agency has been going hardcore with First Nations cultural experiences and performances at events recently. Recently however, at an all staff event, we were 'treated' to a First Nations employee reading a religious prayer. It sounded like a variation of a prayer with an overt christian basis. All staff present were essentially ordered to stand for this proceedings. As an atheist I was really quite uncomfortable about this, but would have been the only one who didn't stand. I'm not someone who proselytises my atheism, and am a live and let live kind of guy, but I really don't think this sort of religious pressure to participate has a place in the government service. I'm aware that most parliaments open with prayer, but I think this is different. Am I going nuts?"
Heredity or hoax? - "When Louis Côté became suspicious of a Toronto-based laboratory that tests people's DNA to determine their ancestry, he decided to try an experiment by submitting a sample from his girlfriend's dog for analysis. According to the results, Côté shares more than a friendship with Snoopy the chihuahua; they share the exact same Indigenous ancestry... "I know somebody who bought over a quarter of a million [dollars] to do some renovations and saved over 35-grand in taxes""
Liberals get upset when governments recognise race... unless it benefits the liberal agenda
Meme - "I have no concept of land ownership, but I want that land back we didn't own, which we "stole" from another tribe by defeating them in battle. The land you later "stole" from us by winning all those wars which we lost. ~Sincerely, Heap big chief. Runs With Scissors.*
Meme - "Can someone explain why we still have statues up of the losing side? Last time I checked, the real Americans won. *Native American*"
Only the Confederacy can be mocked
Evergreen new name of community with former racial slur in its name - "One of the seven areas in New Brunswick with a racially offensive word in its name will finally be renamed. The province announced on Thursday that the tiny northern community of Squaw Cap will be renamed Evergreen – a name suggested and chosen by the residents of the area in a vote. A nearby mountain will be renamed Meto’mqwijuig Mountain – the original Indigenous name for the feature documented in historical records, according to the province... Tourism, Heritage and Culture Minister Tammy Scott-Wallace announced the new names in a release Thursday morning. “Changing the names of geographical features is a complex process, but it is important to eliminate the use of derogatory names in the province,” according to the news release. “This is not about erasing history but ensuring that our province is a safe and welcoming place to live, for all.”"
This is supposedly about not erasing history, but I read 4 other news articles and none of them mentioned the current name. I read the government press release and it only had a redacted version of the name
Meme - "In 1487, 5 years before Columbus' arrival, the Aztec people sacrificed as many as 84,000 men, women, and children at the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan... HAPPY INDIGENOUS PEOPLE'S DAY!"
Covenant Chain: Mohawk men in tobacco smuggling case cite treaty, win in Quebec court - "Two Mohawk men from Kahnawake, near Montreal, have been granted a stay of proceedings in a tobacco smuggling case after a judge ruled their treaty rights were infringed. Derek White and Hunter Montour were arrested in 2016 as part of a cross-border police operation called Project Mygale in connection with tobacco that was smuggled into Quebec. Following a trial in 2019, White and Montour were found guilty of criminal offences, including failing to pay taxes on tobbaco products. But the pair had requested a stay of criminal proceedings, claiming the government had violated their treaty rights and their ancestral rights relating to the tobacco trade. In a 366-page written decision rendered today, Quebec Superior Court Justice Sophie Bourque concluded that an overarching oral meta-treaty known as the Covenant Chain is binding and guarantees the defedants the right to trade tobbacco. Bourque ruled that, as a result, the federal Excise Act did not apply against the two men and ordered a stay on the convictions."
Arbitrage opportunity!
Meme - Liberal: "White people stole your land!"
Native American: "That means you should give it back and leave"
Liberal: "No, it means we need to invite some more Afghan Refugees to live on your land with us!"
The extinction of the Australian pygmies - "No one today with a lay interest in Aboriginal anthropology, and few of those doing introductory courses in the subject, would ever find out that Australia had a pygmy people. What, then, has been going on? Why would these people have been expunged from popular memory? How did the Australian pygmies become extinct within the public consciousness? There have been two main reasons. We explain them in detail below but, briefly, they were: first, a vitriolic debate within the academic discipline of anthropology in which the view prevailed that there was nothing remarkable about these people; second, the emergence in the 1960s of the radical Aboriginal political movement, which found the existence of a pygmy people an inconvenient counter-example to one of its central doctrines. As a result, these indigenous Australians have been subject to an airbrushing from history that makes even that of the old Bolshevik leadership of the USSR in the 1930s look mild by comparison... the moral appeal of the activists’ case would have been weakened by the notion that there had been several waves of Aboriginal migrants, each of whom had violently dispossessed the other. Rather than a story of aggressive white imperialists disrupting an arcadian Aboriginal people living in harmony with one another and their environment, the long term history of Australian habitation would have resembled more that of humanity at large where the stronger have pushed aside the weaker, irrespective of the colour of either side. Hence, instead of a simple moral tale of goodies and baddies, the history of this continent would have reflected more the hard reality of the human condition everywhere."
Indigenous Spending in Budget 2022 - "Overall spending increases announced in Budget 2022 were more moderate than federal spending increases during the pandemic years of 2019-2021. Federal Indigenous spending, however, continues to grow faster than overall spending. It is projected to rise from about $25 billion in fiscal 2021-22 to about $35.5 billion in 2026-27, an increase of 42 percent in nominal dollars. Indigenous spending continues to rise as a proportion of the federal budget, from 6.1 percent in 2019-20 to 7.7 percent in 2026-27—an increase of 26 percent in seven years. Indigenous spending is increasingly driven by the negotiated settlement of class actions, such as those for Indian residential schools, Indian day schools, Indian hospitals, and boil-water advisories on Indian reserves. The biggest of these settlements is the $40 billion child welfare settlement announced in December 2021. The impact of this settlement upon Indigenous spending is difficult to observe because, under the principles of accrual accounting, much of it is backdated to earlier years. The Trudeau government has missed all its previous budgetary targets for Indigenous spending, so the increases announced in Budget 2022 will probably prove to be underestimates, especially if class actions continue to put unpredictable pressures on Indigenous funding commitments."
Nothing will ever be enough
Meme - Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630: "This was posted by a prominent account FIFTY ONE MINUTES AGO. The SJW technique is just to never stop lying - "Hands Up, Don't Shoot!" - knowing that some will always believe it."
Brandi Morin @Songstress28: "This is pretty disgusting. Given it's reconciliation month, given the 215 children whose graves were found at Secwpemc. I imagine they will protest- this is a sacred site. Reconciliation is a BULLSHIT facade for the feds."
"Readers added context: No graves were found at Secwpemce. The story is widely considered to have been a hoax."
Canadian mother and twins charged with pretending to be Inuit - "Three women in Canada have been criminally charged after allegedly pretending to be Inuit to receive benefits from indigenous organisations. According to police, two 25-year-old sisters committed fraud by posing as adopted Inuit children... Amira and Nadya Gill and their mother, Karima Manji, defrauded two local organisations of "funds that are only available to Inuit beneficiaries by obtaining grants and scholarships" between October 2016 and September 2022."
They didn't get the memo that they would be discriminated against as Inuit
Co-founder of queer Indigenous artists' collective in Wisconsin is unmasked as a white woman - "Kay LeClaire, who also went by the name Nibiiwakamigkwe, also identifies as 'two-spirit,' which is a term many Indigenous people use to describe a non-binary gender identity. LeClaire has allegedly been profiting from the identities of Indigenous peoples... She has claimed Métis, Oneida, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Cuban and Jewish heritage, but AdvancedSmite reportedly used online records and resources to find LeClaire's true lineage – German, Swedish and French Canadian"
Commentary: Trans Mountain is not a 'white supremacist' project - "Certain environmentalist organizations will say anything to stop certain pipeline projects, even at the expense of Indigenous communities seeking to secure a future through partnerships with energy companies... the author confidently asserts that, “Trans Mountain was always a white supremacist project.” This, of course, would be news to the 73 Indigenous groups in Alberta and British Columbia that have signed 66 mutual benefit agreements with the expansion project as of January 2021. One would also think that white nationalist organizations in Canada would be interested to know that a project that benefits Canadians of all racial and ethnic backgrounds and demonstrates multicultural co-operation is being portrayed as somehow part of their plans. Of course, nowadays we are seeing certain activists and academics throwing out these ideologically charged jargon words all the time to the point where they lose any meaning. But the real question is how a project that demonstrates for all to see how Indigenous communities are exercising self-determination is somehow “white supremacist”?"
