China Canada FIPPA

Elizabeth May's press conference after the China FIPPA was quietly passed on a Friday.  Please listen to the whole thing - Elizabeth May is amazing.  She says this treaty trumps court decisions.

 

 

 

Why would Mr. Harper pass this thing?  Perhaps he's attempting to do an end run around the rights of First Nations.  The Tyee suggested that was the case in an article yesterday.

Perhaps most importantly, the deal fails to protect aboriginal rights under the Constitution. The implications of this omission are profound. While our federal government has a duty to consult First Nations, Chinese state-owned companies can sue Canada through a secret international arbitration panel for any such accommodation that impacts their economic interests. http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2014/09/25/Harper-Skins-Constitution/

And even if we abrogate this tomorrow, we're in thrall to it for the next sixteen years. 

Voting and Discrimination

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2010/07/01/north-first-nations-right-to-vote-60-years.html#socialcomments

Fifty years ago, the Canadian government granted First Nations people the right to vote in federal elections without losing their treaty status.

Wow  - within living memory, Canada  discriminated -  legally - agaisnt First Nations peoples.  Changing the law was a good idea.  But,as Americans have also discovered, legislating egalitarinaism does nothing to change racist attitudes.  (Read the comments on the above article for a samll taste.) What does?  I'm not sure -  not at all.  However,  I'm going to push for a series of educational seminars on First Nations history and racism through my church.   I'm hoping that knowledge leads to changed attitudes.
And, as a part of those seminars, i'm going to include the following:

http://www.afn.ca/article.asp?id=4866

•We can agree that Canada has moved forward. We welcome the Apology to residential school survivors. We welcome the commitment to work with us to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

•Yet we can also agree that we need to move much further ahead, and we must travel together. Where we have made gains, it is because we have worked together as partners who both recognize and respect one another.

•The key to all our efforts is active and honest participation by First Nations in setting the direction forward.

•Participation is a founding principle of the UN Declaration. It is a founding principle of the Treaties we signed to forge this country.

•I stand here today to make it clear that First Nations are ready and willing to work with any and all partners on a better, brighter future for all our people and all Canadians.

Happy Canada Day! May ourour future be more inclusive, eglitarian, and sustainable.

Poetry

The Past Speaks Pictograph Hunting

We went out this morning –
on a brilliant blue summer day –
the three of us - pictograph hunting –
Monica showed us we walk on time – unknowing –
we found lithics scattered in a field - everywhere - chalcedony; chert, basalt –
red; black; brown; translucent -
un – number - able flakes and pieces –
once we learned to see them –
how many have I trod under – un -seeing?
And how many earth ovens have I walked past, blind?
How many house pits have I missed?
before I learned to see –
that I live on stolen land .
Before I learned to hear, would I have understood that the First People tell stories -
- stories of a wall of ice to the north – in the old time?
We didn’t take any shards –
as Chris said –
they belong to the people who made them –
we’ve stolen enough without taking these as well -
Monica wondered why people take points and put them on their mantelpieces –
I think –
they do it because those shards hold the magic of the old time –
people borrow a past where existentialism was yet to come –
yearn for a time when no split existed between sacred and profane –
they seek the numinous – as do I.
It isn’t that I didn’t want to take the awl I found –
but a voice asked me - rather sharply -
“What do you want it for?”
and I had no answer - to that question from the old time.
But a new question surfaced in my mind – with the acerbic response –
My question –
Will the land shape us too?
If we listen, will we belong here?
Will the land recognize me?
When I walk through the heavy heat of summer to the creek,
If I listen deeply enough, if my heart is open enough,
will the earth be glad to see me?
Will it?