Category Archives: Equity

“Let Freedom Ring” events for culmination of 50th Anniversary of March on Washington and MLK dream

AP/ Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., waves to supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 28 August, 1963, on The Mall in Washington, DC, upon giving the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.

The King Center, July 16, 2013– The King Center and the 50th Anniversary Coalition are calling on people and organizations across America to help culminate the 50th anniversary of The March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech with “Let Freedom Ring” bell-ringing events at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on August 28th, a half-century to the minute after Dr. King delivered his historic address. In other nations, there will be bell-ringing ceremonies at 3:00 p.m. in their respective time zones.

“We are calling on people across America and throughout the world to join with us as we pause to mark the 50th anniversary of my father’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech with ‘Let Freedom Ring’ bell-ringing events and programs that affirm the unity of people of all races, religions and nations,” said King Center C.E.O. Bernice A. King. “My father concluded his great speech with a call to ‘Let freedom ring,’ and that is a challenge we will meet with a magnificent display of brotherhood and sisterhood in symbolic bell-ringing at places of worship, schools and other venues where bells are available from coast to coast and continent to continent.”

Local groups are encouraged to present diverse commemorative programs, which bring people together across cultural and political lines to celebrate the common humanity in creative and uplifting ways in the spirit of the dream. Ms. King especially urges that all of the programs involve children and young people, since children are mentioned in several passages of her father’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

There will be a “Let Freedom Ring” Commemoration & Call to Action” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on August 28th.  The program begins with an interfaith service from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the Tidal Basin, followed by the “Let Freedom Ring” Commemoration and Call to Action at the nearby Lincoln Memorial from 1:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. that includes the bell-ringing ceremony at 3:00 p.m.

Groups are already planning bell-ringing events in places as diverse as Concord, New Hampshire, Allentown PA, Lutry Switzerland and Tokyo Japan. Governors of the 50 states have been asked to support the bell-ringing, and many have already responded enthusiastically, with more expected to join the effort.  The King Center requests that all groups planning programs submit a brief description of your 50th anniversary ‘Let Freedom Ring’ bell-ringing event to website@thekingcenter.org.

“Let Freedom Ring” will conclude seven-days of events commemorating the March on Washington and Dr. King’s Dream speech. For the millions who can’t come to Washington, D.C. for the seven-day program, the local ‘Let Freedom Ring’ programs will provide a unique opportunity to get involved in a poignant nation-wide and global day of unity in their respective home towns.

“Our World, His Dream: Freedom – Make it Happen” is the theme for the “Let Freedom Ring” commemoration and call to action.  This theme is undergirded by the three sub-themes: “Freedom to Prosper in Life;”  “Freedom to Peacefully Co-Exist;” and “Freedom to Participate in Government.”

For more information about the 50th Anniversary of the I Have A Dream speech, please contact The King Center (Atlanta, GA) at 404-526-8944, sklein@thekingcenter.org or visit the websitewww.mlkdream50.com.  To stay in touch with updated details, participate with the following:  Twitter twitter.com/DCMARCHMLK50; Facebook www.facebook.com/Mlkdream50; Pinterest pinterest.com/mlkdream50/; and Intstagram mlkdream50.  The Hashtag is  #mlkdream50.

George Mason University course to examine Trayvon Martin case

Holly Hobbs, Fairfax Times, July 18, 2013– As the nation reflects on the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, a college course this fall will offer an academic look at the case’s impact outside of the courtroom.

George Mason University Professor Rutledge Dennis, a professor of sociology and anthropology, will teach “From Homer Plessy to Trayvon Martin: Issues in Race, Culture, and Politics,” which he said would look at historic cases involving race and their impacts on society. The course title has been abbreviated on Mason’s website: Plessy to Martin: Race and Politics.

“I hope our students will get out of it a sense of how racial, political and cultural issues impact how we interact,” Dennis said.

While the course aims to introduce students to historic themes through a contemporary example, Dennis and the university garnered much criticism online, mostly from conservative bloggers and media outlets like The Daily Caller, The National Review and Red Alert Politics.

“I have received a lot of nasty, hateful emails about this course because people assume it’s a course [only] about Trayvon Martin,” Dennis said. “Trayvon Martin is just one case.”

The course begins with coverage of the landmark 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case, which upheld “separate but equal” racial segregation of public facilities. Students also will study other historic cases, such as the 1931 arrests of the “Scottsboro Boys,” a group of nine black teenagers who were accused of raping two white women in Alabama. The course includes a number of contemporary high-profile trials like the 1992 trials of Los Angeles police officers accused of beating construction worker Rodney King and the murder trial of former NFL running back O.J. Simpson, which ended in 1995.

Many of the trials included in the course syllabus occurred before most current undergraduate students were born. The Trayvon Martin case offers a current example and context for undergrads, Dennis said.

“The Trayvon Martin case is important academically because race and issues around race are academic issues,” Dennis said, adding that the humanities often study gender and class; so why not race? “While this case did not begin as a racial case, it ended as one.”

Mason Provost Peter Stearns says criticism of curriculum is not a common occurrence for the university, but it is also not unheard of.

“Regularly, university faculty deal with topics that have different viewpoints. [Previously] George Mason University has been accused of being too liberal and too conservative,” he said. “One of the challenges in teaching is you want to make sure students understand the historical context and themes. But we also want to make sure they can apply this knowledge to current issues.”

Dennis said he hopes his course will offer students the opportunity to debate why Martin’s death and Zimmerman’s trial sparked intense media coverage and debate.

“I think it got attention for many people because we have an unarmed teenager who was shot by someone of another ethnic group,” Dennis said. “Young black men have been taken advantage of by the system. … And this becomes, for many, another example of a young black man being taken advantage of by the system.”

As of Wednesday, 16 students had registered for Dennis’ class (AFAM 390), which is cross-listed as both an African and African American Studies and Sociology/Anthropology course.

#IdleNoMore torches still burning : : Sovereignty Summer events planned

Jonathan Charlton, The StarPhoeinix, June 17, 2013–  The Idle No More movement may have slipped off the front pages, but there is still support below the surface.

“I think we’re at a place where we’ve generated momentum, got people around the world excited, have people active in their own communities and on a global level,” said Alex Wilson, an education professor at the University of Saskatchewan.

Wilson, Sheelah McLean, Erica Lee and Sylvia McAdam, leaders of Idle No More, gave a seminar about the movement and their personal experiences at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) conference Saturday.

It was one of the best-attended talks of the week and they received a standing ovation. Other academics posed for pictures with them, bought Idle No More T-shirts and asked the women to sign them.

The movement is ambitious and wide in scope, but the women said it focuses on environmental, democratic and social justice issues.

“The end goal will be the day after there is no racism, the day after there’s no sexism, the day after there’s no homophobia, the day after there’s no systemic inequalities in society. It’s ongoing and ever changing,” Wilson said.

Idle No More has more events planned for what’s being called Sovereignty Summer.

“Really Sovereignty Summer is about encouraging people to do events in their own communities in their own way,” said Lee, a 23-year old youth representative, “because part of Idle No More is about encouraging people to break out of this idea of pan-Indianism, like we’re all the same monolithic tribe.”

But they also want to educate the Canadian public about aboriginal issues and improve relations between the two groups.

“For so long, we’ve only been told one side of Canadian history – so it’s not people’s fault for being ignorant of indigenous issues, because they’re not taught in school,” Lee said.

 

Read More: The StarPhoenix

First Nations leaders demand apology for nutritional experiments

CBC News, July 17, 2013– First Nations leaders are demanding an apology from the federal government after it was revealed that Canada ran nutritional experiments on malnourished aboriginal children and adults during and after the Second World War.

Recently published research by Canadian food historian Ian Mosby has revealed that at least 1,300 aboriginal people — most of them children — were used as test subjects in the 1940s and ’50s by researchers looking at the effectiveness of vitamin supplements. [See “Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942–1952″]

The research began in 1942 on about 300 Cree in Norway House in northern Manitoba. Plans were later developed for research on about 1,000 hungry aboriginal children in six residential schools in Port Alberni, B.C., Kenora, Ont., Shubenacadie, N.S., and Lethbridge, Alta.

Vivian Ketchum, whose mother attended St. Mary’s Residential School in Kenora, told CBC News that hearing of the experiments has brought her sorrow and anger to a new level. “Immediately my thoughts were to my parents. Like, I thought the residential school issues [were] bad enough, and now this on top of it?” Ketchum said Wednesday.

Mosby said his research puts the spotlight on a little-known event that was perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of government policy toward aboriginal people. “It shows Canadians the mentality behind Canada’s Indian administration during this period,” he said. “It seems that little good came out of the studies in terms of scientific knowledge.”

‘Abhorrent and completely unacceptable’

In a statement, the federal government said officials are looking into the matter. “If this story is true, this is abhorrent and completely unacceptable,” the statement read in part.

Read More: CBC News

Elizabeth Warren’s Student Loan Fairness Act goes to vote

Huffington Post, July 9, 2013– Elizabeth Warren’s proposal, presented in May, would offer the same interest rate on federal Stafford loans as the one that banks receive from the Federal Reserve. Under her plan, the rate on government-issued student loans would fall from 6.8 percent to 0.75 percent, saving students thousands over the life of their loans.”

“The proposal in Congress to extend current rates does not do enough to help students with mounting debt,” the professors’ letter reads. “Congress should address this urgent problem by passing Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s bill to let students borrow money at the same low rate as banks.”

More than 1,000 college professors from 568 higher education institutions around the country have signed a letter calling on Congress to pass legislation authored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that would dramatically lower interest rates on federal student loans.

Student Debt Crisis Team, July 9, 2013– The U.S. Senate is finally expected to vote tomorrow on whether to keep interest rates low on students loans.  

Because they failed to reach a deal by the July 1st deadline, rates have doubled from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. Unless reversed, this means the average student will owe an extra $1,000 per year of their loan, affecting nearly 7 million borrowers.   

In light of soaring education costs and a tough economy for recent graduates, now more than ever is the time to keep college affordable.
  

Please make this message clear by sharing this image now: 
http://bit.ly/13HiPMu

Thank you for making your voices heard!

Sincerely,


Rob, Natalia, Kyle, Aaron & The 
Student Debt Crisis Team
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Chan v UBC discrimination case sent back to BC Human Rights Tribunal

The University of British Columbia’s petition to dismiss Dr. Jennifer Chan’s complaint of racial discrimination must go back to the BC Human Rights Tribunal says a 29 May 2013 BC Supreme Court’s judgment. The BCHRT’s decision on 24 January 2012 to hear the Chan v UBC and others [Beth Haverkamp, David Farrar, Jon Shapiro, Rob Tierney] case was moved to the Supreme Court for a judicial review. In addition to the BCHRT decision and Supreme Court judgment, the Ubyssey’s (UBC student newspaper) feature article provides a background to the case.

In the Supreme Court judgment, Madam Justice Loo argues that the BCHRT must assess whether “the complaint has been appropriately dealt with in another proceeding.” A decision within the BCHRT to hear the case must address UBC’s argument that “internal university processes [used to hear Chan’s appeals] qualified under the Code as ‘proceedings’ that had appropriately addressed the substance of” Chan’s complaint. Chan “asserts that she has exhausted the internal complaint mechanism of UBC and that it was flawed.”

News and Views from the Center for the Study of Education and Work

News and Views from the
Centre for the Study of Education and Work (CSEW), OISE/UT
http://www.csew.ca

NEWS & VIEWS
‘PUSHED TO THE EDGE,’ SEATTLE’S LOW WAGE WORKERS JOIN SWEEPING MOVEMENT
By Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams In the seventh action in just eight weeks across the United States, fast food workers in Seattle are walking off the job Thursday joining a sweeping movement of low-wage workers who have been “pushed to the edge and are now taking a stand.” “We work in one of the fastest growing industries in the nation, and our companies are making huge – even record – profits, but we barely earn enough to pay for basics like rent, food and transportation to and from work.” -Caroline Durocher, striking worker Repeating the calls made by striking workers in other cities, the Seattle workers are demanding a living wage of $15 per hour and the right to form a union without intimidation. Read more: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/30-7

THE COST OF A BARGAIN From The Maytree Foundation As Alan Broadbent writes in this month’s Maytree Opinion, we all have become used to the notion that we can get most things cheap or free. But when we are faced with the true cost of things, we don’t like it. We only have to look at areas such as housing, transit or maintenance of public spaces to see what happens when we expect high quality while preserving the fiction that we can have things cheap. Read more: http://maytree.com/spotlight/the-cost-of-a-bargain.html

THE CASE FOR A CANADA SOCIAL REPORT By Ken Battle and Sherri Torjman, The Caledon Institute The demise of the National Council of Welfare, announced in the 2012 Federal Budget, has punched a huge hole in Canada’s social policy database. The Council’s annual Welfare Incomes and Poverty Profile reports have for decades provided invaluable information on welfare and low income. Rather than simply lamenting this loss, the Caledon Institute of Social Policy is acting to rescue this important data by taking over its preparation and distribution. The welfare and poverty information will form part of a new Canada Social Report. Read more: http://www.caledoninst.org/Publications/Detail/?ID=1011

HEALTH CARE SPENDING IN ONTARIO CONTINUES TO DECLINE By Doug Allan, The Bullet Contrary to the hysteria from conservatives, health care spending continues to decline as a percentage of the provincial budget. Last year, health care accounted for 38.5 per cent of total expenditures, this year the government plans to bring it down to 38.3 per cent. This continues the trend downward since 2003/04 when health care accounted for 40 per cent of total expenditures. The Ontario provincial Budget reports that program spending is going up an impressive sounding 2.99 per cent and health care spending is going up 2.3 per cent. Although that sounds like a larger than expected increase in these days of austerity, these figures are, unfortunately, misleading. The reason is that last year funding fell well short of the Budget plan and the government is now playing catch-up. Read more: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/826.php

VIDEO – CSEW’S D’ARCY MARTIN GIVEN UNITED ASSOCIATION FOR LABOR EDUCATION’S 2013 LIFELONG ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Watch the video: http://vimeo.com/65786753

 

ABOUT CSEW (CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION & WORK, OISE/UT):
Head: Peter Sawchuk Co-ordinator: D’Arcy Martin The Centre for the Study of Education and Work (CSEW) brings together educators from university, union, and community settings to understand and enrich the often-undervalued informal and formal learning of working people. We develop research and teaching programs at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (UofT) that strengthen feminist, anti-racist, labour movement, and working-class perspectives on learning and work. Our major project is APCOL: Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning. This five-year project (2009-2013), funded by SSHRC-CURA, brings academics and activists together in a collaborative effort to evaluate how organizations approach issues and campaigns and use popular education. For more information about this project, visit http://www.apcol.ca. If you have any questions about the list, or have an event you would like to promote or news to share, send an email to csew-broadcast-oise-l@listserv.utoronto.ca. Messages will be reviewed before posting. For more information about CSEW, visit: http://www.csew.ca

Let Students Pay the Same Interest Rates as the Big Banks!

As you know, on July 1st of this year, the interest rate on federal subsidized Stafford Loans is set to double, from 3.4% to 6.8%.  If Congress does nothing, current and prospective students will be forced to pay an additional $1000 per year, per loan, on top of the exorbitant costs they already face with skyrocketing tuition that force students to borrow that much more simply to obtain a quality education.

In response to this looming interest rate hike, Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced her first piece of stand-alone legislation in the Senate, called the “Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act” which seeks to set the interest rate on federal student loans at .75%, the same rate at which the big banks are able to borrow at the Federal Reserve discount window.

Please sign Senator Warren’s Petition in Favor of her Bill to Let Students Borrow at the Same Rate as the Big Banks!

As Senator Warren has said, it is fundamentally unfair to make students borrow for their educations at a rate that is nine times higher than the rate at which the big banks that nearly destroyed our economy are allowed to borrow.  The federal government made over $30 Billion in profits off the backs of students last year alone – this practice has to stop!

Even if you aren’t going to be personally affected by this looming rate hike, as someone who cares about the growing issue of student debt, it is important that we stand in solidarity with current and prospective students to protect their interests.

While this is just one front in the battle against the growing student debt crisis, it is imperative that we take a firm stand here to make sure that the student debt crisis doesn’t get any worse!

Please stand with Senator Warren and sign her petition today!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support.  Now, let’s get Elizabeth Warren’s back and help protect current and prospective students from being fleeced on their student loans!

Sincerely,
Robert Applebaum, Co-Founder & Executive Director,

StudentDebtCrisis.org
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We Too Are #IdleNoMore : UBC’s Non-Indigenous Scholars and the Politics of Engaging Indigeneity

We Too Are “Idle No More”:
UBC’s Non-Indigenous Scholars and the Politics of Engaging Indigeneity

Monday
May 27, 2013
8:30am to 5:30pm

FREE and open to the public

A Centre for Culture, Identity and Education (CCIE) Project; in collaboration with the Office of the Associate Dean of Indigenous Education

RSVP : http://tinyurl.com/cwvyqoy
DATE:  Monday, May 27, 2013
VENUE: University of British Columbia, Longhouse, Sty-Wet-Tan
1985 West Mall
Map: http://bit.ly/aiSPhB
TIME: 8:30am to 5:30pm, 5:30 – 6:30 Mingler and further discussion

Welcome:  Elder Larry Grant

Opening Plenary Panel: Blye Frank, Dean of Education & Jo-ann Archibald, Associate Dean of Indigenous Education.

Closing Plenary Panel: Anna Kindler- Vice Provost, Academic & Linc Kesler- Senior Advisor to President on Aboriginal Affairs

This symposium will involve plenary and regular panels composed of non-indigenous administrators, faculty, graduate students and staff from a variety of units across UBC addressing the details and politics of engaging Indigeneity, with responses from Indigenous administrator and scholar discussants. While the project originates from the Faculty of Education, the aim is to provide an overview and details of work on academic and administrative topics and projects on indigeneity across UBC.  

Symposium Details:

Co-sponsors: Faculty of Education – Year of Indigenous Education, Indigenous Education Institute of Canada, Department of Educational Studies, Department of Language and Literacy Education, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, First Nations Studies Program, Department of English, Department of Anthropology, Department of Art History Visual Art and Theory and Belkin Art Gallery, Office of the Provost and Vice President, Academic

Academia’s Indentured Servants

Sarah Kendzior, Aljazeera, April 11, 2013– On April 8, 2013, the New York Times reported that 76 percent of American university faculty are adjunct professors – an all-time high. Unlike tenured faculty, whose annual salaries can top $160,000, adjunct professors make an average of $2,700 per course and receive no health care or other benefits.

Most adjuncts teach at multiple universities while still not making enough to stay above the poverty line. Some are on welfare or homeless. Others depend on charity drives held by their peers. Adjuncts are generally not allowed to have offices or participate in faculty meetings. When they ask for a living wage or benefits, they can be fired. Their contingent status allows them no recourse.

No one forces a scholar to work as an adjunct. So why do some of America’s brightest PhDs – many of whom are authors of books and articles on labour, power, or injustice – accept such terrible conditions?

“Path dependence and sunk costs must be powerful forces,” speculates political scientist Steve Saidemen in a post titled “The Adjunct Mystery“. In other words, job candidates have invested so much time and money into their professional training that they cannot fathom abandoning their goal – even if this means living, as Saidemen says, like “second-class citizens”. (He later downgraded this to “third-class citizens”.)

With roughly 40 percent of academic positions eliminated since the 2008 crash, most adjuncts will not find a tenure-track job. Their path dependence and sunk costs will likely lead to greater path dependence and sunk costs – and the costs of the academic job market are prohibitive. Many job candidates must shell out thousands of dollars for a chance to interview at their discipline’s annual meeting, usually held in one of the most expensive cities in the world. In some fields, candidates must pay to even see the job listings.

Given the need for personal wealth as a means to entry, one would assume that adjuncts would be even more outraged about their plight. After all, their paltry salaries and lack of departmental funding make their job hunt a far greater sacrifice than for those with means. But this is not the case. While efforts at labour organisation are emerging, the adjunct rate continues to soar – from 68 percent in 2008, the year of the economic crash, to 76 percent just five years later.

Contingency has become permanent, a rite of passage to nowhere….

Is academia a cult? That is debatable, but it is certainly a caste system. Outspoken academics like Pannapacker are rare: most tenured faculty have stayed silent about the adjunct crisis. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it,” wrote Upton Sinclair, the American author famous for his essays on labour exploitation. Somewhere in America, a tenured professor may be teaching his work, as a nearby adjunct holds office hours out of her car. On Twitter, I wondered why so many professors who study injustice ignore the plight of their peers. “They don’t consider us their peers,” the adjuncts wrote back. Academia likes to think of itself as a meritocracy – which it is not – and those who have tenured jobs like to think they deserved them. They probably do – but with hundreds of applications per available position, an awful lot of deserving candidates have defaulted to the adjunct track.

Read More: Aljazeera

Edmonton students’ views on symbols of #IdleNoMore, Occupy expressed in artwork

Heather McIntyre, Metro Edmonton, April 18, 2013 — The use of symbols in relation to movements, such as Idle No More and Occupy, have become pieces to admire at the Art Gallery of Alberta. The AGA Ledcor Theatre Foyer currently holds art from students in the Modern Languages and Cultural Studies department at the University of Alberta.

The students’ assignment initially was to focus on Occupy – hence the exhibit being called Occupy The Gallery! – but as the Idle No More movement grew, many students turned to it, including Erin Hunt and Mohamad Mahfouz.

“It’s just taking a movement and what we were learning as symbolism and symbolic interaction, and looking in our own community and engaging with things that were happening in our own community,” said Hunt. Hunt’s piece is four photographs of nature within a sanded wood frame.

“The part of the Idle No More movement that I identified with the most was environmental protection,” said Hunt. “I’m giving people the opportunity to identify with nature through the pieces I chose through the photographs I took, and to almost challenge them to take on the same kind of declaration that I did.”

Mahfouz focused on land, but chose to do so through a video, which consists of a woman wandering through the woods, “appreciating it while also lost.”

“Then a feather magically falls from the sky and she picks it up… and then eventually she finds her way, and reaches the downtown view and holds the feather up saying ‘This is where I belong,’” he said. “Then the feather lands on the ground firmly, to symbolize roots.”

The exhibit opened earlier this month, and will remain at the gallery until April 28.

Read More: Metro Edmonton

Phil Fontaine speaks to University of Winnipeg students on #IdleNoMore

CBC News, March 13, 2013— It has been weeks since Idle No More protests have made headlines, and now a former national chief is saying the movement needs to change direction to get things moving again.

Phil Fontaine, the former chief of the Assembly of First Nations in Canada, spoke to University of Winnipeg students alongside federal Liberal leader Bob Rae on Wednesday.

Fontaine lauded the efforts of the Idle No More movement while speaking to students but said those behind the grassroots movement should now try to align with chiefs to move forward.

“I think it would be a mistake to marginalize the chiefs in this very important process, and so the point I was making is, I think they have to work together,” said Fontaine.

The Idle No More movement was sparked by opposition to Bill C-45, an omnibus budget bill that had far-reaching implications for the Indian and Environmental Assessment Acts.

The grassroots movement said the bill endangered the environment and infringed on treaty rights.

But the movement was at times at odds with aboriginal leadership, pointing to quick progress made by Idle No More protests that took chiefs years to achieve.

Indigenous Studies students Carl Balan and Allan Cochrane attended Fontaine and Rae’s talk Wednesday but said they weren’t convinced the movement should change direction.

“I was extremely optimistic to hear some of these ways forward, but it was the same old talking about the past,” said Balan.

Cochrane said he wasn’t impressed with Rae’s suggestion the movement lacked focus.

“To close in on any one issue opens up the possibility for the federal government to come up with a quick fix,” said Cochrane.

He said what’s more important is a change to the status quo.

For now, Idle No More organizers are maintaining their focus on grassroots protests, with more events planned for next week.

Conestoga students kick off final weeks of term with #IdleNoMore powwow

Linda Givetash, The  Record — To give students a boost in the final weeks of the academic term, Conestoga College hosted a powwow Saturday.

The annual event, held at the recreation centre at the Doon campus, brought a sense of home to the campus for aboriginal students and taught non-aboriginal community members about the culture.

“The powwow is a really good time for (students) to bring their families together and a lot of students do better after this powwow,” said Myeengun Henry, manager of aboriginal services for the college. “We have students from way up north and they miss their families … so when their families come and visit them, they get rejuvenated.”

Members of aboriginal communities from across the province and even the U.S. came to the event. It included traditional ceremonies, food, dance, crafts and more.

The powwow comes right at the end of reading week for students, marking the final half of the term. Henry said it brings students back to campus and gets them in the mindset for school after the week off.

Keeping an eye on her four-year-old son running around the recreation centre, community and criminal justice student Tina Allardyce, 28, said she has volunteered with the powwow for the last three years to help promote her culture on campus.

“It’s great that it’s a part of Conestoga College … and that we can bring our community and the Native members of the community in Kitchener-Waterloo here,” she said. “The more people that come out to learn and experience the aboriginal traditional culture is amazing.”

The education the powwow provided for non-aboriginal visitors reflects the current state of the Idle No More movement that launched in November. Henry explained that although the movement is no longer in the spotlight, activism and public awareness is ongoing.

“Idle No More has moved to a different thing now,” Henry said. “Instead of being on the streets and doing rallies, we’re starting to take them to institutions and schools to allow people to ask questions on what is about.

Read More: The Record

#IdleNoMore Lecture Series at U Saskatchewan

Idle No More Discussion Series
What’s it all about?
University of Saskatchewan
Weekly, February 25 – April 3

INM Poster4

#IdleNoMore Teach-in Week (March 2-8) at UNBC

 Idle No More Teach-In Week at UNBC
March 2-8 2013

http://www.womennorthnetwork.com/images/stories/idlenomore.pdf

Idle No More as a Social Movement has been prominent in media and social media within the last several months, and is generating a great deal of interest in students and faculty both here at UNBC, across post-secondary institutions in Canada and worldwide. It is a grassroots movement begun by four First Nations women in Saskatchewan in response to the ecological and socio-political challenges generated as a result of Bills C-38 and C-45 and other actions recently initiated by the current federal government.

Idle No More has quickly become the leading voice for indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians speaking out against the government’s drastic and unilateral modifications to treaty and environmental legislation. Specific areas of concern include changes to the regulations governing environmental assessment of proposed resource developments, fisheries, protected waterways, and private ownership of treaty land. Three Idle No More Rallies have been held locally in Prince George on January 12, January 26 , and one February 14 @ 4:00 at City Hall.

Many universities and colleges are sponsoring or have sponsored teach-ins on Idle No More in an effort to have actual realistic educated opinions on the issues at stake. These teach-ins have involved faculty and students from different disciplines, as well as key politicians and Indigenous community members addressing issues arising from the omnibus bills. Some forums have been interdisciplinary and some have been discipline specific.

We are organizing an Idle No More Teach-In Week at UNBC to be held March 2-8 2013. We plan to create places and spaces on campus to have informed faculty and students, both Indigenous peoples and allies, share their research, programs, experiences, stories, poetry, music and art, focused primarily on our responsibility to honor and defend the lands and waters at this time. The academic and artistic events will coincide with other campus events for the first week of March being sponsored through the First Nations Center, NUGSS and The Women’s Center. All members of the UNBC, including the Regional Campuses are welcomed to attend these events in person or through distance delivery. As much as possible events will be video recorded and made available for viewing through social media like utube.

The preliminary Schedule of Events is available here:http://www.womennorthnetwork.com/images/stories/idlenomore.pdf.

If you want to get involved or want to chat about how you can become involved in Idle No More UNBC Teach-In please contact Fyre Jean graveli@unbc.ca.

Read More: PovNet

#IdleNoMore @ Douglas College

New Westminster News Leader, Grant Granger, February 19, 2013 — The Idle No More First Nations movement arrived at Douglas College’s New Westminster campus on Tuesday.

At a rally organized by the Douglas Students’ Union, speakers called for the federal government to abandon its omnibus Bill C-45 that many First Nations leaders believe will pave the way for pipelines and other infringements on native land, native rights and the environment throughout the country.

“This act is pretty much going to erase all of our strides as aboriginal people,” Mique’l Dangeli, a UBC doctoral student doing a PhD in First Nations studies, told the gathering. “They pretty much clear the way for Enbridge to exploit our lands without consultation with the First Nations especially on our reservations.”

Dangeli grew up in Metlakalta, Alaska on Annette Island just south of Ketchikan while her husband Mike was raised a short distance away on land that straddled the U.S.-Canadian border. They now live in Burnaby.

“These huge (omnibus) bills bury the issues,” said Mique’l.

The Idle No More Movement was started in Saskatoon in November by Jessica Gordon, Sylvia McAdam, Sheelah McLean and Nina Wilson to call attention to the damage the legislation could do to First Nations rights and lands, as well as to the environment. It has spread across the country and also received international attention with solidarity protests supporting the cause in the United States, Stockholm, London, Berlin, Auckland and Cairo.

“It took meticulous reading by those four women to realize the implications,” Dangeli told the audience of about 200 in the Douglas College atrium.

Dangeli’s husband Mike, an artist, carver, dance group leader and business manager, said the legislation should concern everybody because Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government wants to be able to make moves however the Conservative majority sees fit.

“They’re getting rid of protected lakes and streams to make way for pipelines,” said Mike, whose powerful voice and loud drum boomed throughout the cavernous atrium as he spoke, and performed a traditional song and dance. “It’s not about yes or no [to the projects], it’s about asking. How would you feel if they wanted to put it right through your backyard or your front yard for that matter?”

And it could be even in the backyard he lives in now, considering Kinder Morgan is proposing an expansion of its Alberta-to-Burrard Inlet pipeline which could mean coming right through Robert Burnaby Park, he said.

Douglas College student Sheena Wong, one of the event’s organizers, was dressed in a traditional red-and-black cloak as she rallied the crowd.

“They’re selling our land to foreign countries,” said Wong. “I will not stand by and watch him (Harper) sell our land out from underneath us.”

Organizer Madison Paradis-Woodman said the intent of the event was to educate everyone of how the changes in social and environmental policy will affect all walks of life. He estimated there were 350 people throughout the day who absorbed the positive energy of the speakers, the drummers and the singers.

“I have never felt so proud to be an indigenous person. If anything this movement is proof of the power we can receive when we stand not behind people but in front of people and stand for environmental and social justice,” he said. “Just seeing people from all walks of life come out and participate and take something out of it, that made me feel good inside.”

Read More: New Westminster News Leader

#IdleNoMore @ U Maine: Building multi-ethnic and multi-generational networks of women

“We have reached a nexus point where Indigenous land rights, environmental justice and human survival all collide.” “It is here, at this point of collision, that we have the opportunity to facilitate real change as the various collectives — like we’re seeing around this room — of effective parties are thrown together in a literal fight for human survival.” Sherri Mitchell, Director, Land Peace Foundation

The Maine Campus, Dominique Scarlett, February 18, 2013 — On Wednesday, Feb. 13, the Women’s Studies program hosted “Idle No More: Building Multi-Ethnic and Multi-Generational Networks of Women,” the third in a series of their Women in Curriculum, or WIC spring lunch lectures, in the Bangor Room of the Memorial Union.

Sherri Mitchell, the director of the Land Peace Foundation, and Maria Girouard, assistant coordinator for student development at the University of Maine’s Wabanaki Center, presented the lecture, which focused on the “Idle No More” movement, recent controversial Canadian legislation and the need for supportive allies within the movement.

“Idle No More” is a grassroots movement that protests legislative abuses to the rights of aboriginal and indigenous people in Canada, which consist of First Nations, Metis and Inuit people.

“We have reached a nexus point where Indigenous land rights, environmental justice and human survival all collide,” Mitchell said during the presentation. “It is here, at this point of collision, that we have the opportunity to facilitate real change as the various collectives — like we’re seeing around this room — of effective parties are thrown together in a literal fight for human survival.”

The movement was formed in late 2012 by a group of female activists who organized a series of “teach-ins,” a form of non-violent protest where participants engage in free discussion about a controversial topic, to protest the induction of Canada’s C-45 bill.

The activists believe the controversial bill weakens environmental protection laws — particularly those that protect navigable waterways, many of which surrounded land that belongs to the First Nations.

“We have one planet. The type of destruction that we are facing respects no boundaries, it knows no division,” Mitchell said. “Therefore, if we hope to survive, we must eliminate all divisions between us. We must be allies and work collectively to stop these archaic practices of domination in the greed-driven industry that is threatening our planet and destroying all life.”

Mitchell argued that several policy measures, led by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, violate the rights of the indigenous and aboriginal people of Canada.

“[Harper’s] goal is to completely get rid of all people that identify as indigenous or aboriginal in Canada so that nobody has that status, because there are certain protections that are afforded under the law as a result of that status,” Mitchell said.

She spoke of the implementation of a three-tier policy strategy that, through several proposed and passed policy measures, negotiates with First Nations to sign new agreements that terminate their status as First Nations, eliminate funding and remove all funding for legal consultation.

She spoke of the steps that everyone could take to become involved in the environmental, indigenous and aboriginal rights movements.

“Educate yourself about the issues, attend informational sessions, do the research, talk to people, seek advice from the group for which you’re being an ally [and] listen to their critique of what you’re doing,” Mitchell said.

Read More: The Maine Campus

UM Student union throws support behind #IdleNoMore

Winnipeg Free Press, February 14, 2013 — The University of Manitoba Students’ Union (UMSU) endorsed the Idle No More movement and pledged to provide resources and supports to local organizers, an UMSU news release said today following a teach-in at the U of M by the aboriginal student representative.

“Students recognize and understand that Indigenous people and communities continue to confront the systems of colonization and oppression established by successive Canadian governments,” UMSU president Bilan Arte said in the news release.

“As an organization committed to social justice and increasing access to higher education, it is natural for UMSU to support the Idle No More movement in its efforts to educate and inform the rest of the country on the issues facing Indigenous people in Canada.”

UMSU is the largest students’ association in Manitoba with more than 25,000 undergraduate student members.

Ryerson University professor Pam Palmater, key spokesperson for Idle No More, said in an interview with Postmedia News:. “We’re in this for the long haul. It was never meant to be a flashy one month, then go away. This is something that’s years in the making,”

U of Toronto Student Torbold Rollo on #IdleNoMore

Georgia Straight, Torbold Rollo, February 1, 2013 — IT IS SOMETIMES quipped that democracy is like two wolves and a lamb voting on dinner. This Darwinian image of vulnerable minorities falling prey to a “tyranny of the majority” is why few believe that democracy can be reduced to participation in elections. If democracy has value it is because it allows people to have a meaningful say in the rules that govern them. Anything that precludes or impairs this “voice” is anti-democratic by extension.

The Idle No More indigenous rights movement is a democratic movement par excellence. It seeks to challenge those mechanisms of Canadian governance that preside over the lives of indigenous peoples and in this sense their demand for self-government—what ancient Greek theorists called “autonomy”, from auto (self) andnomos (rule)—is a genuinely democratic aspiration. Canadians are coming to see this more clearly as the movement articulates its recommendations. (No surprise, then, that “Idle No More” was just voted “Best Democratic Moment of 2012” in a poll conducted by the research group on democracy, Samara.)

What exactly precludes and impairs the autonomy of indigenous peoples? The Indian Act stands out as the most glaringly anti-democratic impediment to self-government. Not simply because it shatters the 60 or so original indigenous nations along with their traditional governments and traditional territories into the 614 arbitrary “bands” now scattered across Canada on tiny “reserves”, but also because band leadership has no real say in political and legislative life on those reserves. Although they are elected, chief and council have no democratic authority to govern because they are constrained from above by the Indian Act rather than from below by their people. They are replaceable managers, in essence, not law-makers. Real authority resides in the enforcement of the Indian Act by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. The whole arrangement is insultingly arbitrary from a democratic perspective.

Read More: Straight.com

#IdleNoMore alive and well, University of Alberta forum hears

Edmonton Journal, Alexander Zabjek, February 8, 1013 — The Idle No More Movement is not dead, dying, or dormant.

That was the message at a University of Alberta forum Friday that attracted more than 300 participants and nine speakers, including Chief Theresa Spence of Attawapiskat in northern Ontario.

Spence, via video link from her home community, was making her first major public appearance since ending her six-week fluid-only diet in Ottawa two weeks ago. Spence started her protest around the same time as Idle No More gained speed but the two protests were separate entities with separate tactics, although Spence often seemed to dominate headlines.

On Friday, however, Spence urged First Nations leaders to work with the Idle No More movement and other grassroots organizations. She said she was glad to be back in her home community and spoke relatively briefly, alongside Danny Metatawabin, her spokesperson during her protest,

“In retrospect, I see (she) really drew attention to Canada’s indigenous people, not just in Canada but outside Canada. People started to hear about this First Nations chief in Canada who is on a hunger strike in this country that is supposed to be such a great place to live,” said speaker Tanya Kappo, of the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation, after the forum.

Kappo was the first person to use the Twitter hashtag #idlenomore in December and has spoken extensively about the Conservative government’s Bill C-45 and the effect it will have on laws governing navigable waterways. She addressed the crowd with personal stories of activism, including the time she explained to her young son why she couldn’t in good conscience attend Alberta’s centennial celebrations.

Read More: Edmonton Journal