[antiwar-van] Updated: Honouring Ten Years of the Grassy Narrows Blockade

[Harsha W.]

Honouring Ten Years of the Grassy Narrows Blockade

FB link: https://www.facebook.com/events/464995640206530/

Tuesday December 11, 2012
from 6:30 to 8:30 pm
YWCA 733 Beatty Street
(NOTE: not the YWCA on Burrard Street)
right next to Stadium Skytrain Station
Vancouver, Unceded Coast Salish Territories

* Territorial opening by Cease Wyss: T’Uy’Tanat-Cease Wyss is Skwxw’u7mesh
ethnobotanist, media artist, educator, and food security activist. She has
stood up with other Indigenous Peoples to fight for native peoples’ rights
to hunt, gather, and fish in their traditional territories.

* Film "Way of Life" by Tadashi Orui. This short film follows the struggle
of Grassy Narrows Asubpeeschoseewagong asserting Indigenous hunting,
fishing and gathering way of life in the face of clear cutting, mercury
poisoning, the legacy of residential schools, and historic and current
treaty violations.

* Judy Da Silva is an Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows) land defender.
On a given day you can find Judy home-schooling her five children,
organizing women’s gatherings or traditional powwows, educating youth,
taking Canadian government officials to task, blocking logging trucks from
entering her traditional territory, and taking on some of the world’s
biggest multinational corporations.

* Oceanside Dakota Drum Group: All Oceanside Dakota members, past and
present, are sundancers and ceremonialists, so we try hard to understand
balance and walk in a humble and balanced manner. Although our songs are
mainly in the Dakota/Lakota language, we honour and respect all styles and
nations.

* Garry Thomas Morse is an Indigenous poet with several published works.
Discovery Passages (2011) was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award
for Poetry and finalist for the BC Book Prize. The book has been named
"one of the best aboriginal books from the past decade" by CBC.

* Crystal Smith is from the Haisla and Tsimshian nations. She is a young
mother and a poet.

* Herb Varley: According to the laws and customs of the Nisga’a, his name
is Gwin ga’adihl amaa goot. He has been a board member of the Urban Native
Youth Association and is currently a president of the Downtown Eastside
Neighborhood Council.


On December 2, 2002, two young Anishnaabwekwe from Grassy Narrows
Asubpeeschoseewagong went out to the woods in the snow to start what is
now one of the longest running Indigenous blockades in the recent memory
of Turtle Island (one of the other longest running Indigenous resistance
camps, for over 12 years, is here in B.C - Sutikalh).

In the decade since the blockade began, the community continues to
maintain a moratorium on clearcutting in their traditional territories.
For ten years now, despite the ongoing threat of logging, grandmothers,
mothers, trappers and youth have held off some of the world's largest
paper corporations. The community has also taken the Ontario government to
task for inaction on the ongoing effects of mercury poisoning on their
families and ecosystems.

Join us on December 11th to mark an important anniversary in the fight to
defend and affirm Indigenous self-determination and to protect the water,
air, land, and creatures that we all depend on.

Learn more: http://freegrassy.org/

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Accessibility: this building has about 10 stairs to the front entrance and
a side ramp to the front entrance. the room is on the ground level with
double doors. there are two wheelchair accessible bathrooms.

Refreshments served and childcare available on-site.



-- 
Harsha Walia

https://twitter.com/HarshaWalia
https://www.facebook.com/NoOneIsIllegalNetwork



-- 
Harsha Walia

https://twitter.com/HarshaWalia
https://www.facebook.com/NoOneIsIllegalNetwork