Dr. Pam Palmater interviews Chief Mike Sack of Sipekne’katik First Nation for her excellent Warrior Life Podcast and Youtube channel. Lots of information here that isn’t as readily available as it should be.
What happens when a Mi’kmaw and settler university student share car rides on their way to university and other places? They talk, and the settler learns some hard lessons about colonial oppression, systemic racism and white privilege.
It’s auction time again! Due to Covid, this year’s auction will be online. We’re going to follow the lead of the 1492 Land Back Auction and use facebook as a platform.
Press release: Activist group Solidarity Kjipuktuk/Halifax will hold a demonstration to call attention to how Clearwater Seafood’s megafishery operation threatens Mi’kmaw livelihood fishing. Protestors will gather Thursday, November 5 from 7:30am to 9am at the Clearwater Seafood retail location on the Bedford Highway.
In mid-October, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) seized around 200 lobster traps from Mi’kmaq fishers in Unama’ki (Cape Breton, Nova Scotia). “It’s a struggle for them. They’re not making a lot of money, but it’s not about the money,” Bernadette Marshall told Robin Tress “It’s about the treaty right, and we’ve waited long enough.”
Sadie Beaton: I’ve been struck lately by one of white supremacy’s more insidious mechanisms- the illusion of disentanglement. How whiteness allows some of us to opt out of the recognition that we are fully enmeshed in and with this world. It’s a dangerous kind of privilege for those of us who benefit (on the surface), as Ross Gay describes, to ”pretend the possibility of disentanglement.” This pretending, it seems to me, is the very opposite of Peace and Friendship.
Robin Tress with an excellent article on the self-regulated Mi’kmaq fisheries and the RCMP: “Looking closely at the history of policing of Indigenous movements, and now the policing of the settler fishers enacting violence, intimidation, and vandalism, one thing becomes clear: When Indigenous people protest, they are considered enemies of the state. When settlers protest, they are treated as sensitive stakeholders critical to the resolution of the conflict.”
Mercedes Peters: “We as Mi’kmaq have rights that predate the existence of Canada. And as settlers began to move into our territory centuries ago, we made treaties with them—not to create rights, but to remind settlers that we had them, to protect our rights. We are taught as Mi’kmaq, not only to be memory-holders for ourselves, but to remind Canadians who live in Mi’kma’ki of the agreements that govern our territory, and the responsibilities they have.”
Raina Young: The violence and harassment against Mi’kmaq fishers is despicable, racist behaviour. Even more concerning is the failure of the police to stop it, revealing deeper systemic racism. Imagine if it were the other way around, and Mi’kmaq fishermen were harassing white people. Such behaviour would never be tolerated. The RCMP would step in immediately. The hypocrisy and double standards show a clear racist bias.
Close to 1000 people came together this Sunday afternoon at the Grand Parade in downtown Halifax in support of the beleaguered Mi’kmaq fishers along Nova Scotia’s French Shore.