[Indigsol] IPSMO Newsletter, Jan. 25 - Feb. 7

[Indigenous Peoples' Solidarity Movement -Ottawa]

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IPSMO Newsletter
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Meetings, Events, Articles
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The Indigenous Peoples’ Solidarity Movement of Ottawa acknowledges that
the city of Ottawa exists on stolen Omàmìwinini (Algonquin) land.
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IPSMO is a grassroots organization that directly supports indigenous
peoples in diverse struggles for justice. We also work within communities
to challenge the lies and half-truths about indigenous peoples and
colonization that dominate Canadian society. The organization is open to
both indigenous and non-indigenous people, and focuses on local and
regional campaigns.
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Newsletter Table of Contents
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0) Anti-Olympics Organizing

1) Fri Feb 12: No One Is Illegal, Canada Is Illegal contingent in Take
   Back our City Mass Festival and March on day of Olympic Opening
   Ceremonies.
2) Sun Feb 14: 19th Annual Missing and Murdered Women's Memorial March
3) Mon Feb 15 (**ONGOING**): Rally for Homes and Support the Olympic
   Tent Village

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1)	IPSM Ottawa Updates

1a)  IPSM Ottawa workshop

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2)	Meetings

2a) Upcoming organizing meetings

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3)	Events

3a)  Exile Free Skool, Sat. Jan 30 at 1pm
3b)  Workshop: Indigenous Solidarity for Settlers, Sat., Jan. 30 at 2pm
3c)  Decolonial Study Group, Sat., Feb. 13 at 1pm
3d)  No Justice, No Peace: IPSMO Letter Writing Night, Monday, Feb. 1st


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4)	Articles

4a) Bolivia launches traditional medicines programs
4b) Avatar and the true Defenders of the Land
4d) Haitian Earthquake: Made in the USA: Why the Blood Is on Our Hands
4e) All Eyes on Us! Capitalizing on the 2010 Olympics to Call
    International Attention to the 500+ Missing and Murdered Indigenous
    Women

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Newsletter
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0)	Anti-Olympics Organizing

1) Fri Feb 12: No One Is Illegal, Canada Is Illegal contingent in Take
   Back our City Mass Festival and March on day of Olympic Opening
   Ceremonies.
2) Sun Feb 14: 19th Annual Missing and Murdered Women's Memorial March
3) Mon Feb 15 (**ONGOING**): Rally for Homes and Support the Olympic
   Tent Village

For information about additional events, please do visit:
http://olympicresistance.net/content/schedule
http://dtesjustice.wordpress.com/



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1) Updates

1a)  IPSM Ottawa workshop

This weekend the IPSM Ottawa participated in the Global Apartheid
conference at Ottawa University.  We presented our new workshop,
“Indigenous Solidarity for Settlers”.  This workshop looks at colonization
and decolonization from an anti-oppressive framework, examines what it
means to do solidarity organizing, and, finally, looks at the solidarity
work that we have been doing with the Algonquin community of Barriere Lake
in order to draw out lessons from this organizing.

If you or your group would be interested in this workshop, contact us at:
ipsmo at riseup.net

We will be presenting this workshop again at Exile Infoshop’s upcoming
Free Skool on Saturday, Jan. 30 from 2pm to 3pm.  Exile is located at 256
Bank. St.

We will also be hosting a letter writing night on indigenous issues, and
to prisoners and political prisoners and our monthly decolonial study
group will be meeting on Saturday (not Sunday) Feb. 13 at 1pm.


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2) Meetings

2a) Upcoming organizing meetings

The IPSM Ottawa took a short break from mid-December to mid-January, but,
although we haven’t had any open meetings, we are back organizing again. 
We are currently planning for the upcoming year.  If you have any
suggestions as to what we should be doing, let us know: ipsmo at riseup.net.

There will be more updates coming soon.


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3) Events

3a) Exile Free Skool

Free Workshops brought to you by Umi Cafe and Exile Infoshop!!

SYLLABUS:

At Exile:

1-2 pm: How to Winterize Yer Bike
2-3pm: Indigenous Solidarity for Settlers (presented by IPSMO)

At Umi:
3:30-4pm: Vegan Baking with Auntie Loo
4-4:45pm: How to Write to Prisoners

7pm at UMI CAFE:

"Who Am Eye"
Spoken Word event and book release featuring the work of political
prisoner, Akili Castlin

$5/PWYC
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3b) Workshop: Indigenous Solidarity for Settlers, Sat., Jan. 30 at 2pm


The goal of the workshop is to educate non-indigenous people about the
importance of indigenous solidarity and to teach people and learn from
them about what solidarity means and how to do it. The IPSM Ottawa is a
predominantly settler organization that works toward building a movement
of non-indigenous people actively supporting indigenous people struggling
for justice and decolonization.

Exile Infoshop at 2pm
256 Bank St.
http://www.ipsmo.org
ipsmo at riseup.net
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3c) Decolonial Study Group, Sat., Feb. 13 at 1pm

Decolonial Study Group

Sat., Feb. 13 at 1pm
Exile Infoshop
256 Bank St. (2nd Floor)
Sorry this location is not wheelchair accessible
Everyone Welcome!
ipsmo at riseup.net
http://www.ipsmo.org

For this study group we will have a presentation by Fred Isaac (Mi'kmaq)
about the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Following his presentation there
will be discussion.

There will also be assigned readings which will address the Royal
Proclamation of 1763.

The Decolonial Study Group is a new project of the IPSM Ottawa. We will be
deepening and broadening our understanding and analysis of indigenous
struggles for decolonization, social justice and revolution. We will be
doing this through readings, workshops, oral presentations, movies and so
on.

All of the readings for the next study group are to be determined.

There will be core articles which we ask everyone to read, as well as
additional articles and information for people who have the time and the
interest to get deeper into the subject matter. And everyone is welcome
whether they've done the readings or not!
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3d) No Justice, No Peace: IPSMO Letter Writing Night

Monday, Feb. 1 at 7pm
Exile Infoshop, 256 Bank St.
Contact us if want to attend and have mobility issues.
http://www.ipsmo.org
ipsmo at riseup.net
Snacks will be provided

The IPSM Ottawa will be holding monthly letter writing nights where we
invite people to come and to write letters about various indigenous
issues, as well as to beging corresponding with prisoners and political
prisoners.

Our first letter writing night will be focusing on writing letters about
the current situation in Barrier Lake, as well as writing to prisoners and
to political prisoners.

We will provide contact information for different prisoners and political
prisoners.

Some Background on Barriere Lake and section 74:

http://barrierelakesolidarity.blogspot.com/

"On Friday, October 30, 2009, Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl sent
notice to the Algonquins of Barriere Lake that he will not recognize their
legitimate leadership, but instead impose elections on the community in
April, 2010 by invoking a section of the Indian Act that would abolish the
customary method they use to select their leaders.

The attempt at assimilation would be a violation of Barriere Lake's
constitutionally-protected Aboriginal right to their customary system of
government."

Section 74 of the Indian Act gives INAC the power to unilaterally impose
band council elections regardless of whether the community wants them.
Barriere Lake is one of 25 indigenous communities that governs itself
according to it's traditional governance system.

The use of section 74 by INAC is something that hasnn't been seen recently
and underscores the fact that, despite all of the empty rhetoric on the
part of the Canadian government about "new relationships" and
"reconcilliation" between the Canadian government and Indigenous Nations,
Canadian colonialism is alive, well and more than happy to assert control
over indigenous people.

For more information on political prisoners:

http://www.abcf.net/

http://breakallchains.blogspot.com/

On Section 74 of the Indian Act:

(for the full Indian Act) http://laws.justice.gc.ca/PDF/Statute/I/I-5.pdf

ELECTIONS OF CHIEFS AND BAND COUNCILS

Elected councils 74. (1) Whenever he deems it advisable for the good
government of a band, the Minister may declare by order that after a day
to be named therein the council of the band, consisting
of a chief and councillors, shall be selected by elections to be held in
accordance with this Act.

(2) Unless otherwise ordered by the Minister, the council of a band in
respect of which an order has been made under subsection (1) shall
consist of one chief, and one councillor for every one hundred members of
the band, but the number of councillors shall not be less than two
nor more than twelve and no band shall have more than one chief.

Regulations (3) The Governor in Council may, for the purposes of giving
effect to subsection (1), make orders or regulations to provide (a) that
the chief of a band shall be elected by

(i) a majority of the votes of the electors of the band, or
(ii) a majority of the votes of the elected councillors of the band from
among themselves, but the chief so elected shall remain a councillor; and
(b) that the councillors of a band shall be
elected by
(i) a majority of the votes of the electors of the band, or
(ii) a majority of the votes of the electors of the band in the electoral
section in which the candidate resides and that he proposes to represent
on the council of the band.

(4) A reserve shall for voting purposes consist of one electoral section,
except that where the majority of the electors of a band who were present
and voted at a referendum or a special meeting held and called for the
purpose in accordance with the regulations have decided that the reserve
should for voting purposes be divided into electoral sections and the
Minister so recommends, the Governor in Council may
make orders or regulations to provide for the division of the reserve for
voting purposes into not more than six electoral sections containing as
nearly as may be an equal number of Indians eligible to vote and to
provide for the manner in which electoral sections so established are to
be distinguished or identified.

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4) Articles

4a) Bolivia launches traditional medicines programs

http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2010/01/bolivia-launches-traditional-medicines.html

Bolivia launches traditional medicines programs

Rick Kearns, Jan 14

LA PAZ, Bolivia - The Bolivian government is promoting traditional
indigenous medicine by sponsoring two intercultural pharmacies and by
pledging $10 million towards the development of a larger "pharmaceutical
enterprise" according to press statements.

Bolivia's Health Minister Ramiro Tapia announced Dec. 29 the opening of
the two pharmacies that will offer "ancestral medicine" prescribed by
traditional healers known as kallawayas as well as modern Western drugs
ordered by contemporary physicians.

The conference began with a blessing ceremony where kallawayas "prayed for
good results to Pachamama (mother earth)" and burned sweet herbs, coca
leaves and other items of significance in Andean indigenous cultures.

"The initial launch will take place in La Paz," said Amilcar Rada,
medications director for the Ministry of Health, "but the two first
Inter-institutional Intercultural Municipal Pharmacies will operate in the
Andean towns of Patacamaya and Orinoca [which is the hometown of President
Evo Morales]."

Rada explained that the intercultural pharmacies will offer remedies
developed by modern laboratories that are registered with the Health
Ministry, and that in the connected health centers there will be modern
doctors and kallawayas that will be available for consultation. He noted
that the Health Ministry has already registered traditional medicines such
as coca leaf syrup, maca (an Andean tuber) powder used as a stimulant,
valerian root oil, which is a sedative or calmative used for anxiety, and
torunco ointment that is used for treating rheumatism.

Rada also noted that the Ministry is in the process of registering other
traditional medicines "by regions and type of products for each illness
and in accordance with the peoples' needs." In the week following the
press conference about the pharmacies, the Health Ministry also announced
that the Bolivian government would invest $10 million into a
pharmaceutical enterprise involving the traditional remedies.

The Health Minister, on behalf of the government, signed an agreement with
a group of kallawayas and a representative of the Major University of San
Andres that will allow researchers to investigate and then formally
register natural medicines that are being used in Bolivia already but
without any official monitoring or control.

Tapia said the agreement was put together for the purpose of reasserting
the value of traditional medicines "as was ordered by the new
Constitution."

He also stated that national surveys indicated that 60 percent of
Bolivians turn to natural prescriptions before going to a modern
physician.

"What we will be doing is to guarantee access to formally registered
medications, that are scientifically proven and lawfully dispensed," said
Igor Pardo, a director at the Health Ministry.

"On top of that the state will recover the initiative in a time when many
are complaining that some of these same natural elements are being
patented by foreign entities."

Towards that end, the university's faculty of pharmaceutical science and
biochemistry will develop a germplasm - defined as "the hereditary
material of germ cells" - bank and a herbarium where scientists would
collect and study a variety of plant specimens to be potentially used by
the intercultural medications industry.

Pardo also noted that upon winning the election in 2006, Morales has
directed the Health Ministry to develop programs connecting Western
medicine with indigenous practices. Since the onset of this policy, modern
doctors in Bolivia have often turned to kallawayas to accompany them on
journeys to remote Andean regions to assist in delivering babies; and it
is in those areas that people traditionally have more trust in natural
healers. That same mandate led Morales to institute a Vice Ministry of
Traditional and Intercultural Medicine that was charged with "promoting,
protecting and looking after the preservation and strengthening of
traditional medicines, in accordance with the knowledge and wisdom of the
indigenous cultures," according to Bolivia's Health Ministry Web site.

The official site also lists policy objectives such as "strengthening
traditional medicine through investigations into the factors involved with
treatment of illnesses from the perspective of rural peoples, and to
protect traditional medical knowledge through legislation that would
recognize intellectual property rights of those healers."
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4b) Avatar and the true Defenders of the Land

By Ben Powless

http://rabble.ca/news/2010/01/avatar-and-true-defenders-land
After seeing the film Avatar, the recent release by James Cameron dealing
with allegorical Indigenous Peoples on an alien planet that humans seek to
colonize, displace and finally eliminate in order to access the rich
resources in their territories, a few reflections emerge. The first is a
more than passing resemblance to the actual reality of Indigenous Peoples
in Canada and beyond, the bounty of whose land and resources have cost
them great suffering at the hands of colonizers and would-be-saviours. The
second interesting element is to reflect on the state of actual
Indigenous-colonizer relations, and the state of Indigenous resistance to
the colonizing project.
It is clear that the government is engaged in a head-on collision course
to extinguish Aboriginal rights, to continue the work of assimilation, and
expand the economic, environmental and cultural colonialism that Canada's
history is based upon. Vancouver this November saw the gathering of a
number of the Indigenous communities and leaders across the country that
have banded together to confront the rising tide of colonialism coming
from government and aided by its corporate partners. These attacks on
Indigenous rights and cultures across Canada have sparked the beginning of
a new grassroots movement across Canada, with the goal of connecting
Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, under the banner of a group
referred to as the "Defenders of the Land."
In the past year, many projects have been developed or expanded, with
direct impacts on Indigenous Peoples, their livelihoods and environments.
Chief among these is the expansion of the tar sands megaproject, which
threatens to irreversibly destroy the land and pollute the waters in the
Athabascan watershed of northern Alberta. Other famous and not-so-famous
examples are springing up across Turtle Island, including the land
reclamation in Six Nations territory, the resistance to mining in Big
Trout Lake (Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug), or recent protests against the
Olympic legacy and devastation arising from many Indigenous communities.
These are only the tip of the iceberg in what for many years has often
been a loose and disjointed movement for Indigenous rights and freedoms.
Government and corporate interests have made it increasingly clear that
the stakes are life or death, as Indigenous communities find themselves on
the frontlines of global struggles to access increasingly scarce resources
such as oil, metals, even trees. In response, Indigenous leaders, men and
women, elders and youth alike gathered last year for the first Defenders
of the Land gathering, held in Winnipeg at the Native Friendship Centre,
to begin working together in a united way to respond to the recent attacks
on their human rights. This gathering in November brought together many of
the same people from last year, totaling over 80 representatives from
communities in struggle, as well as a number of allied NGOs and solidarity
groups from across the country. There were a mix of elders present, male
and female community activists alike, as well as a strong representation
of Indigenous youth who have taken up the struggle as their own.
This recent gathering heard testimony of how land-claims are failing, of
many communities in legal disputes with different governments, of leaders
being sent to jail for practicing their sovereignty, of barricades and
blockades being the only methods left at some communities' disposal.
However, the real point from the gathering, after hearing many stories of
desperation and depravation, was seeing how many communities had not given
up, but were just starting the real work of educating their people,
figuring out ways to work together, and planning grassroots strategies to
protect their futures. Another sign of the times was the amount of
grassroots support from solidarity groups and other civil society groups
from across the country who were supportive of the project.
Over three days of feasting together, of group discussions, presentations,
of tears and laughter, participants were charged with deciding on how best
to collaborate in this movement. It was clearly seen that there was a need
for something resembling a network to be formed, that could best represent
the interests of the communities in question. Many felt that such a
network needed to be structured to support those communities most in their
times of crisis, such as when the blockades or bulldozers arrive, but also
provide ongoing assistance to ensure that situations need not escalate to
the point of crisis. This would be additional to the ongoing educational
work, such as the "Indigenous Sovereignty Week" events held in dozens of
communities across the country in October, and to be continued in the
coming year.
A network is forming. A movement is being built. Indigenous and
non-Indigenous are all coming together in an unprecedented manner to face
unprecedented challenges. The circle is growing, as more and more begin to
understand what is at stake, and how our struggles are related. The rising
problems of violence, of education, of environmental degradation, of
governance, of health, etc. all have common roots, and a common solution
in the restoration of sovereignty to Indigenous Peoples, a long-term
project which will require much hard work on the frontlines, in the
classrooms, on the streets and in the home. The Defenders of the Land aim
to be one part of this ambitious project, a crucial one bringing together
the voice of the previously voiceless, the communities most at risk, those
who have had their languages and lands taken.
In the final event of the film -- you might want to skip this part if you
haven't seen it -- there's an all out, fight-to-the-death war between the
humans and Indigenous aliens, as it becomes clear the humans will not stop
their endless greed. The comparison is more than passing, as Indigenous
groups around the world find themselves in the last places with resources
of value, and must now act to protect themselves from the new waves of
colonialism. In Peru this summer, I worked with a number of Amazonian
Indigenous Peoples who lost loved ones trying to protect their
environment, culture and sovereignty from foreign oil and mining
companies. They live in a real life Utopia, threatened by the plundering
of the bounty beneath their feet.
However, as opposed to the movie, this time it won't be the friendly white
man who emerges as saviour, it will be Indigenous Peoples united, with the
support of allies from all communities, representing the last and best
hope for our collective future. This struggle is only really just
beginning, and playing itself out in many different theatres, but we have
not the time to sit back and watch. It is time for the true Defenders of
the Land to take centre stage, and for everyone else to take on supporting
roles.
Ben Powless is Mohawk from Six Nations in Ontario. He is currently
studying Human Rights Indigenous and Environmental Studies at Carleton
University in Ottawa. Read his blog on  rabble.ca. For more photos of the
Defenders of the Land gathering visit Ben's Flickr album.
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4c) Haitian Earthquake: Made in the USA: Why the Blood Is on Our Hands

by Ted Rall

January 14, 2010

As grim accounts of the earthquake in Haiti came in, the accounts in
U.S.-controlled state media all carried the same descriptive sentence:
"Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere..."

Gee, I wonder how that happened?

You'd think Haiti would be loaded. After all, it made a lot of people rich.

How did Haiti get so poor? Despite a century of American colonialism,
occupation, and propping up corrupt dictators? Even though the CIA staged
coups d'état against every democratically elected president they ever had?

It's an important question. An earthquake isn't just an earthquake. The
same 7.0 tremor hitting San Francisco wouldn't kill nearly as many people
as in Port-au-Prince.

"Looking at the pictures, essentially it looks as if (the buildings are
of) breezeblock or cinderblock construction, and what you need in an
earthquake zone is metal bars that connect the blocks so that they stay
together when they get shaken," notes Sandy Steacey, director of the
Environmental Science Research Institute at the University of Ulster in
Northern Ireland. "In a wealthy country with good seismic building codes
that are enforced, you would have some damage, but not very much."

When a pile of cinderblocks falls on you, your odds of survival are long.
Even if you miraculously survive, a poor country like Haiti doesn't have
the equipment, communications infrastructure or emergency service
personnel to pull you out of the rubble in time. And if your neighbors get
you out, there's no ambulance to take you to the hospital--or doctor to
treat you once you get there.

Earthquakes are random events. How many people they kill is predetermined.

In Haiti this week, don't blame tectonic plates. Ninety-nine percent of
the death toll is attributable to poverty.

So the question is relevant. How'd Haiti become so poor?

The story begins in 1910, when a U.S. State Department-National City Bank
of New York (now called Citibank) consortium bought the Banque National
d'Haïti--Haiti's only commercial bank and its national treasury--in effect
transferring Haiti's debts to the Americans. Five years later, President
Woodrow Wilson ordered troops to occupy the country in order to keep tabs
on "our" investment.

>From 1915 to 1934, the U.S. Marines imposed harsh military occupation,
murdered Haitians patriots and diverted 40 percent of Haiti's gross
domestic product to U.S. bankers. Haitians were banned from government
jobs. Ambitious Haitians were shunted into the puppet military, setting
the stage for a half-century of U.S.-backed military dictatorship.

The U.S. kept control of Haiti's finances until 1947.

Still--why should Haitians complain? Sure, we stole 40 percent of Haiti's
national wealth for 32 years. But we let them keep 60 percent.

Whiners.

Despite having been bled dry by American bankers and generals, civil
disorder prevailed until 1957, when the CIA installed President-for-Life
François "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Duvalier's brutal Tonton Macoutes
paramilitary goon squads murdered at least 30,000 Haitians and drove
educated people to flee into exile. But think of the cup as half-full:
fewer people in the population means fewer people competing for the same
jobs!

Upon Papa Doc's death in 1971, the torch passed to his even more dissolute
19-year-old son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The U.S., cool to Papa
Doc in his later years, quickly warmed back up to his kleptomaniacal
playboy heir. As the U.S. poured in arms and trained his army as a
supposed anti-communist bulwark against Castro's Cuba, Baby Doc stole an
estimated $300 to $800 million from the national treasury, according to
Transparency International. The money was placed in personal accounts in
Switzerland and elsewhere.

Under U.S. influence, Baby Doc virtually eliminated import tariffs for
U.S. goods. Soon Haiti was awash predatory agricultural imports dumped by
American firms. Domestic rice farmers went bankrupt. A nation that had
been agriculturally self-sustaining collapsed. Farms were abandoned.
Hundreds of thousands of farmers migrated to the teeming slums of
Port-au-Prince.

The Duvalier era, 29 years in all, came to an end in 1986 when President
Ronald Reagan ordered U.S. forces to whisk Baby Doc to exile in France,
saving him from a popular uprising.

Once again, Haitians should thank Americans. Duvalierism was "tough love."

Forcing Haitians to make do without their national treasury was our nice
way or encouraging them to work harder, to lift themselves up by their
bootstraps. Or, in this case, flipflops.

Anyway.

The U.S. has been all about tough love ever since. We twice deposed the
populist and popular democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. The second time, in 2004, we even gave him a free flight to the
Central African Republic! (He says the CIA kidnapped him, but whatever.)
Hey, he needed a rest. And it was kind of us to support a new government
formed by former Tonton Macoutes.

Yet, despite everything we've done for Haiti, they're still a fourth-world
failed state on a fault line.

And still, we haven't given up. American companies like Disney generously
pay wages to their sweatshop workers of 28 cents an hour.

What more do these ingrates want?

Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central 
Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis
of America's next big foreign policy challenge.
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4d) All Eyes on Us!

Capitalizing on the 2010 Olympics to Call International Attention to the
500+ Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

By Carmen Teeple Hopkins

The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) has confirmed that there
are over 500 Indigenous women who are missing or who have been murdered in
Canada over the past 30 to 40 years.  The disappearances and deaths of
Indigenous women have received very little attention compared to their
white counterparts, as well as inaction from the police, media, public,
and government. This has led to considerable impunity of the state and
perpetrators.

In particular, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) is an area that is
known for an extremely high number of Indigenous women who have
experienced violence.  It is also one of Canada’s most impoverished
neighbourhoods. Vancouver has been at the forefront of organizing annual
memorial marches every February 14 to honour women who are missing or have
been murdered from the DTES.  Although the Vancouver march is meant to
acknowledge all women, Indigenous women are overrepresented in the DTES,
and as a group that experiences violence.   Beginning in 1991, February
14, 2010 will mark the nineteenth annual Vancouver memorial march. 
February 14, 2010 will also highlight day three of the 2010 Olympic winter
games.

Since then, however, organizers have refused to be sidestepped by the
Olympics and have made it clear that the march will take place.

Gladys Radek is a long-time activist around Indigenous women’s issues, one
of the organizers of Vancouver’s memorial march, as well as co-organizer
of the Walk4justice.   Like many Indigenous women, she is personally
affected by this violence.  Her niece, Tamara Chipman, has been missing
from what has been nicknamed, the Highway of Tears (a 700 km long part of
Highway 16 between Prince Rupert and Prince George, BC known for a high
number of disappearances of Indigenous women) since September 2005.

Radek outlines that the goal of the February 14, 2010 Vancouver memorial
march will be to honour the missing/murdered women “with the eyes of the
world on us”.  She estimates that the world is going to be amazed to learn
that Canada has been able to hide the extremely high number of
disappearances and murders, a phenomenon that has often been referred to
as a national shame or Canada’s “dirty little secret”.  Radek sees the
role of the media as one that “gets the word out” about these women, many
of whom are Indigenous.

There has been a growing anti-Olympics movement in Vancouver and other
parts of British Columbia.  One central aspect to this momentum is: “No
Olympics on Stolen Land”, a slogan that refers to the illegal state and
corporate use of land in Vancouver and outside of Vancouver to build
facilities for the Olympics, when Indigenous title to the territory has
never been ceded.  Many groups have begun to organize around the decrease
of low-income housing over the past couple of years, while Vancouver
prepares for the Olympics, a city that has seen an increasing homeless
population and one that the police will likely displace as the Olympics
near.

While Radek states that the organizing committee of the Vancouver memorial
march “is very strong in building allies”, she also mentions that the
memorial march will likely not fall under the typical anti-Olympic
organizing that will be occurring simultaneously in Vancouver.  She
comments that the march has always been and will continue to be about the
women.  The march doesn’t accept agency banners or flags, but rather,
focuses on the women and families most affected by this violence.   While
anti-Olympic activists and supporters are welcome to participate in the
march, they are asked to respect the principles and history of the march:
remembering and honouring the women.

Entering its nineteenth year of existence, the 2010 memorial march in
Vancouver is not being organized as a direct response to the Olympics, but
will instead use the Olympics to further its cause, one that many
Indigenous women have been fighting for over decades.

Furthermore, it has been predicted that women and children in Vancouver
will experience a 10% to 36% rise in violence during the Olympic games.
Alarmingly, gender-based anti-violence organizations and support services
in Vancouver have been told that they will not receive additional funding
amidst the possible increase in numbers.  With this in mind, it becomes
especially important to support the February 14 organizing being done
across the country in 2010.

Groups across Canada have been working for many years to end violence
against Indigenous women.  Vancouver’s February 14 march has inspired
solidarity marches in other cities, including Toronto, London, Sudbury,
Thunder Bay, Regina and Winnipeg.  The year 2010 will mark Toronto’s fifth
annual rally, organized by local group, No More Silence.

Radek has encouraged support and solidarity to take place outside of
Vancouver.  She wants to see February 14 actions across the country and
ensure that they are being held in all major hubs and cities.

Emphasizing the importance of family members of missing/murdered
Indigenous women being involved in this work, she believes it is important
for family members to know that they are not alone and to become familiar
with the organizations that are already involved in this activism.  Radek
also encourages groups outside of Vancouver to find ways to send family
members and other supporters to Vancouver for the February 14, 2010 March.

The use of shaming Canada’s international reputation as a ‘peacekeeping’
country has been very important to some of Indigenous  women’s activism
over the past decades.  For instance, sexism within the Indian Act which
meant that Indigenous women would lose status upon marriage to non-status
men (which did not operate vice versa for men with status upon marriage to
non-status women) took many years of struggle to change, but the
accumulated organizing climaxed when Sandra Lovelace took her case to the
United Nations toward the end of the 1970s.  The international
embarrassment to Canada was a major factor in a 1985 change to the Indian
Act that attempted to remedy the sexism.

Such changes to the Indian Act exemplify how Indigenous women have
strategically used international institutions and opportunities to their
advantage.  The 2010 Vancouver Olympics offers another possibility for
international shame that Indigenous women are capitalizing on through
political organizing.

There is certainly credence and a history of resistance by Indigenous
women that gives weight to the utilization of the world’s gaze on Canada
that Vancouver will see within the months to come.  For those outside
Vancouver, let’s join them in solidarity on February 14, 2010 to send a
message to the international community that this violence cannot continue.

The Toronto NMS rally and march will take place on Sunday February 14,
2010 at 12pm noon at the Toronto Police Headquarters at Bay and College. 
A feast will follow the event at the Centre for Women and Trans People
(University of Toronto) at 563 Spadina Ave.  For more information please
contact: nomoresilence at riseup.net or learn about NMS on Facebook.

No More Silence (NMS) is a group based out of Toronto that has existed for
almost six years.  NMS consists of Indigenous women and allies who create
inter/national networks to end violence against Indigenous women.  NMS
situates this violence within an understanding that Canada is a white
settler colony state and colonialism continues to operate in many
different ways today.   NMS believes that all people have a responsibility
to work toward decolonization, and to support struggles for Indigenous
sovereignty.

Carmen Teeple Hopkins is a member of No More Silence
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