This week: the racket of Reconciliation. It’s been some six years since the TRC issued its final report, complete with 94 Calls to Action. Has Canada listened? How would we know? Well, a couple of years ago we spoke to a couple of scholars who took on precisely those questions, generating a kind of ‘report card’ on Reconciliation. And suffice it to say, Canada didn’t do so hot back in 2019. Did they up their game in 2021?
To find out, host/producer Rick Harp has reconvened Reconciliation reckoners Eva Jewell (Research Director at Yellowhead Institute, and Assistant Professor of Sociology at X University) and Ian Mosby, (Assistant Professor of History at X University) to hear their insights into what keeps that needle barely moving, and why they worry survivors’ pain is now a new profit centre for settlers.
// CREDITS: Our opening/closing theme is 'nesting' by birocratic.
Displeasure Island. So distressed is an Ontario cottage owner that Indians could regain a significant say over some nearby islands in Georgian Bay, he’s somehow convinced his human rights are under attack.
Ridiculous, right? Not to The Sudbury Star, a regional rag which not only took this settler shitshow seriously, it signal boosted their manifesto. An online screed warning readers that, once thousands of islands worth hundreds of millions of dollars are given to natives with "no connection to these islands," thousands of non-native boaters, kayakers, canoers and vacationers "will no longer be able to access thousands of kilometers of shoreline."
Joining host/producer Rick Harp to interrogate this property rights propaganda and its call to circle the wagons on the water are roundtable regulars Brock Pitawanakwat (Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies at York University) and Ken Williams (assistant professor with the University of Alberta’s department of drama).
// CREDITS: "Wavestate-Unheil-4" by Endzeiter; our opening/closing theme is 'nesting' by birocratic. SFX: "Native Shaker 01.wav" by Sandyrb
In this latest “rapid roundtable” on multiple topics via Clubhouse, Kim TallBear (professor in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta) and Brock Pitawanakwat (Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies at York University) join host/producer Rick Harp to discuss: the postponement of an Indigenous papal visit due to Omicron; how to support those reeling personally and professionally due to their defraudment by pretendians; the University of Saskatchewan formally asks a Métis political organization to vet the identity of applicants for Métis-specific jobs at the U of S; and their thoughts on the most recent MEDIA INDIGENA deep dive, "Trust, Truth and Treaties."
>> CREDITS: 'Microship' by CavalloPazzo (CC BY-SA 4.0)
On this week’s Indigenous round table: the gulf in understanding between settlers and First Nations people over treaties. A gap recently reinforced by none other than CBC Kids, the junior wing of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, after it hosted a 'debate' about whether Indigenous peoples should even get land back. A debate it grounded in the myth that treaties were all about First Nations losing their lands and rights.
Joining host/producer Rick Harp to discuss the persistence and perils of such noxious notions—iffy ideas internalized by kids of all ages—are roundtable regular Ken Williams and special guest Sheldon Krasowski, author of No Surrender: The Land Remains Indigenous, who also serves as the director of research at the Office of the Treaty Commissioner in Saskatchewan, and adjunct faculty in Indigenous Studies at the University of Saskatchewan.
// CREDITS: Our theme is 'nesting' by birocratic.'