Friday's online content:

You are on Indian land

WATCH ONLINE: Intercontinentalcry.org

You Are on Indian Land was one of the first films in Canada to give voice to the concerns of Indigenous People. Watch this film, cause little has changed.

Produced in 1969, the film documents a protest that was led by Mohawks from the Haudenosaunee community of Akwesasne on December 20, 1968.

At the time, community members were being forced to pay duty on purchases they made in the United States, despite the fact that the Jay Treaty of 1794, also known as the “Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation”, affirmed that they were not required to do so.

The issue surrounding the Treaty has yet to be resolved, as a protest earlier this year reminds us.

The recent protestwas quite different from the one that took place 40 years ago. In ‘68 members from the community blocked off the bridge linking Canada to the United states, which literally cuts through Akwesasne. Confrontation ensued.

“While the news media focused on altercations with the police”, says Albert Ohayonas on the NFB website, filmmaker Mort Ransen took a decidedly different approach. “Ransen showed what led to these altercations and let the Mohawks of the Reserve speak for themselves and tell their own story.”

===
Press Release , Thurs. Oct. 29

Six Nations Youth Leader to address Aboriginal Claim to Grand River Territories

Indigenous Sovereignty Week event to focus on Two Row Wampum Treaty, Six Nations land claims, and implications for Kitchener-Waterloo and other communities on the Grand River

KITCHENER—October 25-31 has been declared Indigenous Sovereignty Week by Defenders of the Land, a national network of Indigenous communities, activists and supporters. The featured local event features two speakers who will address the failing land claims negotiations at Six Nations and the implications for communities along the Haldimand Tract, which encompasses the Grand River, and is under claim by Six Nations. Both speakers will suggest the Two Row Wampum, a treaty between the Iroquois Confederacy and early European settlers, as the appropriate basis on which to model good relations between a sovereign Six Nations and the Canadian State and its municipalities.

This event, being held at the KW Community Centre for Social Justice (KWCCSJ) at 63 Courtland, is on Thursday October 29 at 7pm and is titled, ‘Solidarity with Six Nations: Living on the Grand River Territory.’

Alex Hundert, representative from AW@L (the local activist collective that organized the event) said, “this event is important because people in KW need to recognize that we live on Six Nations’ land; because people in this country need to wake up and recognize how morally bankrupt our land claims process is, and that we should all be embarrassed at this country’s total failure to make any progress towards signing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

Featured speaker, Melissa Elliott is co-founder of Young Onkwehonwe United (YOU), a rising youth group at Six Nations that has been campaigning for stronger youth representation in their community. Elliott has also sat as the youth delegate on the Six Nations land claims negotiations team. Elliot is a strong advocate for Six Nations sovereignty and for a nation-to-nation relationship between Six Nations and the Canadian State (and its municipalities) based on the Two Row Wampum Treaty.

Also speaking, Jim Windle is co-founder of Two Row Understanding through Education (TRUE) in Brantford, and is also the editor of the Tekawennake newspaper which serves Six Nations. TRUE is a growing Brantford-based citizens’ group which seeks “knowledge, justice and understanding of our responsibilities towards our Six Nations neighbours, according to the Two Row Wampum Treaty.”
TRUE are co-sponsors of a rally in support of Six Nations land rights, recently announced for November 7 in Brantford. Jim Windle, as well as AW@L representative Alex Hundert, will be speaking at the rally whose timing is meant as a challenge to the Brantford injunction against protests against land developments by Six Nations.

The KW Community Centre for Social Justice is a radical space in downtown Kitchener. The space contains an ‘infoshop’ and radical bookstore, as well as a fully functional meeting and event space. The KWCCSJ regularly hosts speaking events, book tours, workshops, concerts, film screenings, meals, and other community events. The KWCCSJ is operated by AW@L, a community based direct action and education collective made up of student activists and community organizers.

###
Links for additional information:

Indigenous Sovereignty Week: http://www.defendersoftheland.org/isw
Six Nations land claims: http://www.sixnations.ca/LandsResources/ClaimSummaries.htm
Two Row Wampum: http://www.akwesasne.ca/tworowwampum.html
KWCCSJ: http://www.peaceculture.org/drupal/node/381

===
Wednesday's online content:

Indigenous Resuregence and Traditional Ways of Being

Watch Online: Intercontinentalcry.org

Gerald Taiaiake Alfred: Resurgence of Traditional Ways of Being from ASU Libraries on Vimeo.

University of Victoria Professor of Indigenous Governance Gerald Taiaiake Alfred talks about the “Resurgence of Traditional Ways of Being: Indigenous Paths of Action and Freedom.”

On March 23, 2009, Kanienkeha (Mohawk) Educator, Author and Activist Gerald Taiaiake Alfred took part in the Simon Ortiz and Labriola Centre Lecture series on Indigenous Land, Culture and Community.

Recorded at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ, Taiaiake spoke for one full hour about the “Resurgence of Traditional Ways of Being: Indigenous Paths of Action and Freedom.”

Author of such books as Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom and Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors, Taiaiake Alfred is known for his leadership and groundbreaking research in the fields of Indigenous governance and decolonization, and also for his incisive social and political criticisms (some of which you can find at his blog, http://www.taiaiake.com).

He is also a major source of inspiration for indigenous rights activists in Canada, and the growing number of Indigenous People dedicated to Indigenous Resurgence and Reclamation of our cultures, identities, languages, and rights as separate and distinct from Canada’s colonial landscape.
===

Tuesday's Online content:

Tar Sands Documentary: Downstream

Watch Online: Intercontinentalcry.org

The Aboriginal community of Fort Chipewyan is located downstream from one of the most polluting oil operations in the world – the tar sands. Downstream follows Dr. John O’Connor* as he fights for the lives of residents who are dying from rare forms of cancer.

In 2005, Dr. John O’Connor spoke out publicly about the unusually high levels of cancer he was witnessing in Fort Chipewyan, a community of 1,200 located in northern Alberta. Dr. O’Connor, a fly-in physician for the community, reported “clusters” of prostate, colon and lung cancers, as well as white blood-related issues, and 3 cases of an incurable and rapidly lethal form of cancer known as “cholangiacarcinoma” (cancer of the bile duct). Normally, cholangiacarcinoma only affects one in every 100,000 people.

Soon after O’Connor sounded the alarm, raising questions about the impacts of tar sands development, Health Canada and Alberta Health and Wellness filed charges against him with the College of Physicians and Surgeons, accusing him of “engendering mistrust, blocking access to files, billing irregularities, and raising undue alarm in the community — serious charges which could’ve resulted in his license being temporarily suspended or possibly permanently withdrawn,” explains a 2008 report in the National Review of Medicine.

In December 2007, the College of Physicians and Surgeons dismissed the all but one of the charges, that he raised “undue alarm” in the community. The claim is “moot” as far as Dr. O’Connor is concerned. He was, after all, just doing his job.

Dr. O’Connor’s findings have since been confirmed by Alberta Health Services, even though they (all levels of government) went out of their way to make it appear as if there was no connection whatever to the tar sands.

His findings were also supported by the 2007 study ” Water and Sediment Quality as Related to Public Health Issues” in Fort Chipewyan by Dr. Kevin Timoney. The study found high levels of arsenic, aluminum, chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, led, phosphorous, selenium, titanium, and phenols in the waters of the Athabasca river, “high levels of arsenic, cadmium, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH’s) and resin acids in the sediment, as well as high levels of mercury in tested fish.”

A new paper by Dr. Kevin Timoney and Dr. Peter Lee, Does the Alberta Tar Sands Industry Pollute? The Scientific Evidence?, recently published in the Open Conservation Biology Journal, identifies 11 sources of pollution from the tar sands: (1) permitted (licensed) discharges to air and land; (2) seepage from tailings ponds; (3) evaporation from tailings ponds; (4) leaks from pipelines; (5) major spills of bitumen, oil, and wastewater; (6) stack emissions; windblown (7) coke dust(8) dry tailings, and (9) tar sands dust; (10) outgassing from mine faces; and (11) ancillary activities such as transportation, construction of mines, ponds, roads, pipelines, and facilities, and landscape dewatering.”

Despite this and other empirical evidence surrounding the tar sands, there are no signs that the industry will be letting up any time soon. In fact, tar sands development continues to rise—the government standing mute as the environment is obliterated, as the rights and health of the local population is sacrificed, and efforts are undermined to hold them and their partners, the oil industry, accountable.

*[i recognize that it is problematic to show a film that follows a white doctor in order to tell a story about an indigenous community, but this is what is available online for free]
===

Today:

The Scars of Mercury

A Documentary about Grassy Narrows by Tadashi Orui
KW Community Centre for Social Justice (KWCCSJ), 63 Courtland
Tuesday, October 27, 7pm

‘The Scars of Mercury’ explores the processes that threaten the destruction of a traditional and contemporary Indigenous hunting, fishing and gathering way of life, through residential schools, relocation, treaty violations, and clear-cutting, with a special focus on mercury poisoning.

A paper mill in Dryden, Ontario started discharging inorganic mercury into the English-Wabigoon river system in 1962. Methyl-mercury accumulated in the fish through the food web, a more toxic form of mercury. Fish is the staple and sacred diet of the Ansshinaabek people in that region, particularly walleye. By late 1969, the fish had levels of methyl-mercury 40 times higher than the safety guideline. Methyl-mercury causes serious damage to the central nervous system.

In 1975, Dr. Masazumi Harada, a mercury-poisoning specialist from Japan examined Indigenous residents who continued to eat fish. The majority of the residents had mercury levels under the safety guideline and mild symptoms of mercury poisoning. After the mill stopped discharging mercury completely in 1975, a monitoring program by the Canadian government indicated a steady decrease of mercury levels in residents.

Three decades later, Dr. Harada examined the residents again. The symptoms of the residents had progressed from mild to worse, even though their mercury levels had remained under the safety guideline.

Is the safety guideline reliable? This documentary explores an issue of importance worldwide, when people are exposed to low-levels of mercury over an extended period of time. The residents of Wabaseemoong (Whitedog independent Nations) and Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinaabek (Grassy Narrows First Nation) communities have often been told their neurological symptoms are simply the result of substance abuse and diabetes.

For more info on Grassy Narrows visit: freegrassy.org and ipsm winnipeg
===

Monday's Online content:

Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance

Watch Online:
270 Years of Resistance, by Alanis Obomsawin

On July 11, 1990, the Mohawk Peoples of Kanehsatà:ke stood up against a legacy of fraudulent theft when the Municipality of Oka, in collusion with the Federal and provincial governments, tried to make way for the expansion of a 9-hole golf course and a new condominium project.

In the weeks and months that followed, Canada’s glowing image was tarnished forever. Many of us were shown for the first time the kind of treachery and brute force ways of the Canadian Government. Treachery and brute force that continues to this day.

The Oka Crisis also showed us just how entrenched racism is among Canadian citizens, particularly at the Mercier Bridge on August 28, 1990 — when a violent mob assaulted a convoy of Mohawk Elders, Women, and Children seeking refuge away from their community. The police stood by and watched. Alanis Obomsawin produced a documentary about this event, titled “Rocks at Whiskey Trench.”

Obomsawin also produced the film Kanehsatake 270 Years of Resistance, which takes us through the history and the events that took place at OKA.