Land protectors in Labrador continue their resistance against Muskrat Falls. Just because the national and Nova Scotia press stopped reporting doesn’t mean all is quiet. We talk with Ossie Michelin about the Nova Scotia connection. Ossie’s 96-year old aunt was just served with a court order for visiting a protest site.
Seven years after Andrella David, a Black resident of Upper Hammonds Plains, was falsely accused of shoplifting at the Tantallon Sobeys store, the company finally made the commitments the community had been asking for. All it took was for the Sobeys’ lawyers to step aside, says an overjoyed Rev. Lennett Anderson.
Premier McNeil has said he didn’t know that a government lawyer was calling the Mi’kmaq a conquered people in court, and the duty to consult non-existent. The language may have been more subdued, but that same lawyer made the same argument in June, and that he held these controversial views was widely known.
Arguing in court that the Sipekne’katik Band is a conquered people and that therefore the duty to consult does not apply is exactly the wrong thing to do for the McNeil government, writes contributor Art Bouman. But he isn’t surprised, it’s all about money and fossil fuels.
Nova Scotia definitely has made progress in terms of teaching students about Indian Residential Schools, treaties, and the contributions made by First Nations, Inuit and Métis to Canada. But there is much more work to do, and a petition with 1700 signatures delivered at Province House yesterday serves as a reminder. Teaching the teachers would be a good start, says KAIROS Atlantic.
Sometimes no news is good news, but that is not the case with the Town of Amherst’s inability to call a meeting to deal with councillor and mayoral hopeful George Baker’s racist slur.
George Baker, the Amherst councillor who uttered a racist slur, was in serious trouble before. That time the town weathered the storm, and doing so may well be the towns current strategy as well. That would be a bad idea, says the Amherst resident who lodged the original complaint.
Amherst can’t manage to censure a racist councillor in its midst, who meanwhile congtinues his run for mayor. Yesterday a police board meeting scheduled to discuss a reprimand was cancelled due to lack of quorum.
Dr. Julius Garvey, son of famous Jamaican pan-Africanist thinker and politician Marcus Garvey, spoke in Halifax late last week. Reporter Art Bouman checked it out and came back with this report.
This weekend’s weekend video is Seeking Netukulimk, by Martha Stiegman. Learn about Mi’kmaq treaties and stewardship of the land in this lyrical documentary by a master documentary maker.