UPDATE: Comment from education department spokesperson Jasmine Flemming added Friday, June 18. The correspondence course material arrived on shalan joudry’s doorstep in the spring, requested from Nova Scotia’s education system for joudry’s teenage daughter, Malaika. But it wasn’t until Wednesday night, June 16, that Malaika felt ready to tell her mom about the blatantly racist […]
First Nations
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The Wet’suwet’en struggle is far from over
Sixty-five kilometres up a logging road near Houston, British Columbia, just beyond a river from which you can drink directly, lies an unceded territory actively defended by its original people. To enter, you need to go through a free, prior, and informed consent protocol designed to keep people out who do not benefit the land […]
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Football and Canada’s duty to consult Indigenous nations
As problematic as football is, with the Washington R*****ns and the Kansas City Chiefs, the game holds a special place in my heart. For those of you who don’t know, my father is a residential school survivor and without getting into the nitty-gritty traumas of his experiences, it left him with a deficit when it […]
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Unendorsed Nocturne exhibit vandalizes Halifax waterfront
An anonymous photo-booth cutout of John A. MacDonald was drilled down into the Halifax waterfront during Nocturne last Saturday night, standing for a brief period in opposition to the art festival’s anti-colonialism theme. The cutout was a defence of John A. MacDonald and his relations with Indigenous peoples. It featured an “I’m OK with John […]
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White noise
This summer, I was walking along a street in the south end of Halifax with a few pals. As we walked down the tree-lined streets next to houses I couldn’t fathom of ever owning, they started hollering and causing a ruckus. It was late, they had been drinking, I was DD and I immediately felt […]
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Reconciling energy and Indigenous rights
In 2007, Canada was one of four countries to vote against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (with New Zealand, the United States and Australia). With its single-minded focus on making Canada an “energy superpower,” albeit only with fossil fuels, the Harper government feared the declaration’s concept of “free, prior and informed” […]
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DNA does not define us
I’m ambiguously brown. By that I mean I have brown skin and almond-shaped eyes. I get those from my dad who is Mi’kmaq. I also have curly hair, freckles and thin lips from my mom, whose grandparents came from Scotland. “Where are you from?” is a very common question in my day-to-day as people try […]
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Relying on a statue in a park to tell our history is lazy
Thousands of tourists will visit Halifax this summer and return home without learning an inkling of its history, all because a statue is locked in storage in Burnside. I kid, of course. If you’re a tour guide or historian who needs a statue to accurately and comprehensively share the story of Halifax, you need to […]
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Hell or high water
“I always feel bad that it takes a crisis to bring that all into balance,” says Ken Paul about the struggle between Indigenous fishers and the federal government. “But sometimes that’s what necessary.” The director of Fisheries and Integrated Resources for the Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nation Chiefs was one of the Indigenous leaders […]
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History lessons and white academia
“White teachers taught in residential schools, why shouldn’t white profs teach about its history?” It’s a satirical headline from Walking Eagle News, written about the recent controversy at Mount Saint Vincent University and the lack of Indigenous voices in academia. But the joke also speaks to the uneasy and ongoing tradition of white Canadians taking […]
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Smudge for sale
I learned to pick my medicines from my white, Acadian stepmother. I was around 14 years old when we walked out to the salty marsh grass with a handful of tobacco. As we walked to the spot near her home where sweetgrass still grows, she explained to me the concept of respecting Mother Earth; how […]
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Cornwallis statue is history
Edward Cornwallis is coming down off his pedestal, at least for a while. Halifax Regional Council voted Tuesday to remove the controversial bronze statue of the city’s founder and place it into temporary storage. There it will remain until a more permanent solution can be agreed upon in the spirit of truth and reconciliation. “We […]