Category Archives: Idle No More

#IdleNoMore social movements #ubc #occupyed

CBC News, October 24, 2014– Idle No More was one of the largest Indigenous mass movements in recent history, sparking hundreds of teach-ins, rallies and protests across the country. On Friday night in Saskatoon, a group of educators and grad students learned about how it all came together.

People involved in the movement addressed members of the Canadian History of Education Association. Lynn Lemisko with the Association says there’s a history of teach-ins, like Idle No More, being used as a resistance movement.

“It’s a powerful example in the way in which resistance can be done in a peaceful way through dancing and just gathering together and demonstrating,” Lemisko said.

Lemisko says mass social movements can be successful even if they don’t result in clear, measurable outcomes, such as legislative changes. She says they heighten awareness and help develop critical thinking. And she says educators are interested in how the Idle No More Movement changed the social and political landscape in Canada.

“Is this something that we can borrow and use in our own lives in our own ways that we want to support social justice resist and reconcile?” Lemisko asked. Lemisko says a similar effort could be hard to duplicate. She says some mass movements just happen because there are forces that come together at a particular moment in time for whatever reason.

Read More: CBC News

Aboriginal rights forum Dalhousie U #idlenomore #edstudies #bced #ubc #ubced #bcpoli

IDEALaw: Aboriginal Rights in the Spotlight

Canadian Civil Liberties Association–January 25, 2014–On January 24th-25th 2014 academics, practitioners, community members, and students have been gathering at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University to discuss and examine the state of Aboriginal rights in Canada. The biennial IDEALaw conference has never seen a comparable response in numbers and media interest. The line up of speakers, cultural events, and discussion focus of the conference has created a buzz in Halifax.

Organized by students, the conference attempts to address a number of pressing issues facing Aboriginals. Environmental concerns, poverty and criminal law issues, and police and institutional responses to protest are all on the bill. The conference was develped to encourage discussion and openness to new approaches, different perspectives, and engaging the public in legal and political action in response to community concerns. While the conference is ongoing, all talks thus far have addressed the chilling effects of organised and concerted rights abuses on the civil liberties and human rights of Aboriginals in Canada and abroad.

The conference opened with a fascinating and rousing talk by Sheila Watt-Cloutier on human rights. Her experience as head of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and own experiences as an advocate for Inuit in Canada and overseas gave a fascinating and “on the ground” perspective on alternative ways to perceive climate change. Her commentary on and analysis of the success attached to the ICC’s Petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Seeking Relief from Violations Resulting from Global Warming Caused by Acts and Omissions of the United States set the tone for continued discussion into the night. Of particular interest to most was the role of democratic and social rights and their protection in communities facing significant and overwhelming changes due to environmental impact.

Read More: CCLA

January 28 National Day of Teach-ins focused on First Nations Education Act #idlenomore #ubc #bced #bcploi #occupyeducation #edstudies

IDLE NO MORE + DEFENDERS OF THE LAND
TEACH-INS
JANUARY 28, 2014

Idle No More— As we begin a new year, we invite Idle No More groups to organize local teach-ins on January 28th based around the First Nation Education Act and the broader Termination Plan that it represents.  We recognize that every Nation and community has their own unique stories, struggles, and practices and we hope that every teach-in is rooted in the on-the-ground realities that are the heart of the movement. When we include our local allies and supporters to attend, help, and promote local teach-ins we believe this adds strength to the bundle of arrows we continue to build through education.

As a support to teach-in organizers we are developing educational tools to use at local teach-ins that will focus on the  First Nation Education Act and the broader Termination Plan of the Canadian government.  Please feel free to use these tools, or to develop your own!  We are also hoping that each teach-in will create a quick list of local struggles or issues and that we can share these lists to help guide the Idle No More movement.

We need to support one another as we continue to fight for our lands, water, sovereignty, and our future generations.  We hope that these teach-ins help to deepen and strengthen our roots and prepare us for the work that lies ahead.

Read More: Idle No More

#IdleNoMore “Got Land? Thank An Indian” truth-telling protest Jan 28 #ubc #ubced #bced #bcpoli #criticaled

Idle No More + Defenders of the Land
Day of Action
January 28, 2014

Idle No More, For Immediate Release– Idle No More and Indigenous teen who wore “Got Land? Thank an Indian” shirt call on people everywhere to wear it as act of truth-telling protest

Tenelle Starr will appear as honorary guest at Neil Young concert in Regina on Friday

(Turtle Island/Canada ) – A 13 year old Indigenous teenager, Tenelle Starr, prevented initially from wearing a sweatshirt at her school in Balcarres near Regina that read “Got Land? Thank an Indian” is now calling, along with the Idle No More movement, for people everywhere to don the shirt as an act of truth-telling and protest.

Now and up to a January 28 Day of Action, Tenelle and Idle No More and Defenders of the Land are encouraging people across the country to make the shirt and wear them to their schools, workplaces, or neighbourhoods to spark conversations about Canada’s true record on Indigenous rights. They have created a website (http://www.idlenomore.ca/got_land) where people can get stencils to make a shirt, to buy it, and upload photos of themselves wearing it.

“Everyone can wear the shirt.  I think of it as a teaching tool that can help bring awareness to our treaty and land rights. The truth about Canada’s bad treatment of First Nations may make some people uncomfortable, but understanding it is the only way Canada will change and start respecting First Nations,” says Tenelle, an Idle No More supporter who has participated in many Idle No More rallies with her mother.

Tenelle will also be appearing as an honorary guest at the Neil Young Honour The Treaties concert in Regina on Friday night. Chief Allan Adam and the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation have gifted her and her mom with tickets to pay respect to her courage.

Since the media started reporting on Tenelle’s acts, she has has been attacked on her facebook page by an online hate group that has threatened her safety, forcing her to disable her facebook account.

The January 28 National Day of Action is also a day of Teach-ins to raise awareness about the federal Harper government’s attack on native education through the First Nations Education Act and his continuing agenda to “terminate” or abolish Indigenous peoples rights, sovereignty and status as Nations and dispossess them of their lands and resources.

Read More: Idle No More

#IdleNoMore anniversary sees divisions emerging #occupyeducation #bced #yteubc

Daniel Schwartz, CBC News, November 10, 2013– Idle No More, the indigenous movement that began a year ago today, says it has a database of 254,000 supporters. Some, however, are concerned about the direction its founders want to go.

A Saskatoon teach-in on Nov. 10, 2012 marked the founding — by Jessica Gordon, Sheelah McLean, Sylvia McAdam and Nina Wilson — of Idle No More, which initially focused on opposing a federal omnibus bill, now law, and its perceived threats to land, water and aboriginal rights.

Nevertheless, Idle No More hit a chord and, by also making skillful use of social media, quickly became one of the most significant protest movements Canada has seen in a long time.

“Our biggest strength is that we always left it open,” Pam Palmater, who was a spokeswoman for Idle No More in its early days, told CBC News in a recent interview. “Idle No More was to individuals whatever they wanted it to be.”

Palmater is the chair of indigenous governance at Ryerson University in Toronto, and was a candidate for national chief of the Assembly of First Nations in 2012.

“The movement became so successful, because there was no leader.”

Now, she and others are critical of some prominent members for trying to control the notably leaderless organization and its name.

“[We] don’t want to get caught up in copyrighting the Idle No More movement or setting up an office or an organization, really going down the road that is what has really killed every other kind of movement,” she said.

“For me, it’s never about the name or who started it or who owns it or any of those things,” Palmater explained. “For me it’s about the spirit of the Idle No More movement.”

Palmater said another group, the Indigenous Nationhood Movement, is headed in the direction she’d like to see Idle No More go.

That group “is talking about action on the ground, real resistance, going out and living on the land and protecting territories and exercising jurisdiction and reclaiming and reoccupying, so it’s not just about protest anymore, it’s changing,” Palmater said. She considers herself part of both movements.

Gerald Taiaiake Alfred of the Indigenous Nationhood Movement wrote earlier this year that “the limits to Idle No More are clear, and many people are beginning to realize that the kind of movement we have been conducting under the banner of Idle No More is not sufficient in itself to decolonize this country or even to make meaningful change in the lives of people.”

Read More: CBC News

Decolonizing initiatives to accompany police presence at #UBC #yteubc #idlenomore #bced #occupyeducation

Wei Laii, The Ubyssey, November 6, 2013– As a student who had studied at UBC, I am very displeased with the lack of new educational initiatives in response to the six reported cases of sexual assault against young women on the UBC campus.

I do not need armed officers with a saviour complex to harass me about how I can make their jobs easier and become more grateful by policing myself. I resist slut profiling, racial profiling and all other tactics informed by colonial oppression.

Granted, not all officers have been resistant to practicing anti-oppressive solidarity and responsibility. However, we need to look to recent news and examine our police force as an institution with an organizational culture of colonial oppressive values — including but not limited to gender policing, systemic sexual assault against indigenous women and the colonial construction of their bodies such acts require, and insidious systemic misogyny within the RCMP.

It’s important to acknowledge that we need a lot more than increased arrests, criminalization and demonization of perpetrators of violence. An increased police presence alone does not ensure students’ feelings and realities of safety, physical, emotional and cultural. At best, police presence is a bandage solution that makes some students feel safer, others less safe and retraumatized, and it may deter public acts of physical violence.

In our society, systems of oppression include but are not limited to white settler colonialism, ableism, Eurocentricism, heterosexism, cissexism and hegemonic masculinities.

In the cases of UBC Vancouver and UBC Okanagan, the operation of some of these systems on both campuses have been documented in “Implementing Inclusion,” a report released by UBC in May 2013. The report presents “the substance of concerns voiced to [UBC] during the consultation process that pertain to the lived experiences of students, alumni, staff and faculty at both campuses” and includes concerns about race and ethnicity, gender and transgender and disability. If not to become a place of advocacy in the world, UBC must at least become a place of good mind, by dealing with oppression in its own backyard where students are suffering and ill.

Read More: The Ubyssey and Tumblr

#IdleNoMore second wave planned for winter #occupyeducation

Charles Hamilton, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, October 13, 2013– Supporters of Idle No More say the movement is stronger than ever, even though it has largely disappeared from the media spotlight.

“Idle No More is not dead. It never was,” said Max FineDay, president of the University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union.

“Just because you don’t see flash mobs in the middle of the street or in malls doesn’t mean the First Nations community isn’t working toward nation building, revitalizing language and culture, and all these things Idle No More stands for.”

FineDay was one of about 200 supporters who showed up Oct. 7 for a round dance on the university campus, which was organized via social media. The Idle No More movement spread to communities across Canada last winter, as aboriginal groups protested the federal government’s omnibus Bill C-45, which they say infringed on their sovereignty and relaxed important environmental protections. It passed, but organizers at the round dance said the movement is bigger than any one bill.

There are still bills going through Parliament that affect indigenous sovereignty and affect the lands and the water and that will affect all of us

“There are still bills going through Parliament that affect indigenous sovereignty and affect the lands and the water and that will affect all of us,” Sylvia McAdam, one of the four women who founded Idle No More, told the crowd after the dance.

The Saskatoon event was one of more than 50 actions that took place across the country and in the United States to mark the 250th anniversary of King George III’s Royal Proclamation, which set out policy for the Crown’s relationship with aboriginal people in North America.

The 1763 proclamation set rules for European settlement in North America, recognized First Nations’ land rights and laid the groundwork for the treaty process. Even though the Royal Proclamation was of special significance for aboriginal peoples living on the land that would become Canada, supporters and organizers say Idle No More now has global reach.

“Over the summer, the movement gained momentum on a global level,” said Alex Wilson, an Idle No More organizer and professor at the University of Saskatchewan.

“I think one of the strengths of the movement is that each community can look at those global issues and can take action in their own way.”

Read More: Saskatoon StarPhoenix

#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

Education, the biggest loser in the BC election, negative politics hardly to blame #bcpoli

The BC NDP may have ‘snatched defeat from the jaws of victory’, but education is one of the biggest losers in this week’s election of the fourth consecutive Liberal majority government in the province. In addition to education, the handful of biggest losers in the election includes labour, students, youth, and the increasing volume of people scraping to get by in general.

With more than a decade of labour disputes over the Liberals’ irresponsible and often careless bargaining practices, the BC Teachers’ Federation is now bracing once again to enter the fray of contract negotiations. The past dozen years of degraded labour relations included a range of arbitrations and trips to courts to stave off the Liberals’ intentions of stripping bargaining rights from teachers and alarming erosions of their academic freedom and civil liberties writ large.

Blind to the stunning turn of election fortunes this week, universities in the province were holding their breath for the NDP’s promises to invest millions in education. Flush in the face, now there is not much more for the Presidents to do but go begging for more or just morph into real estate, as UBC has, and build more, oh yes, and raise tuition. In the backyard of the provincial legislature, the University of Victoria is cutting staff and raising tuition once again.

Actually, most universities in the province, such as UBC, raise tuition 2% annually to build on the students’ backs. Smarting from the trend, students are realizing that they are “paying significantly more” and “getting less,” as Melissa Moroz of the Professional Employees Association observed. Students are also waking up to the hard facts of the fictitious economy presented to them in low res 3D: the job market for youth is actually the worst in decades and sinking to new lows. Indicators for the summer 2013 summer job market point to bleak months ahead while university graduates are left praying and hoping for mere job ads as jobs for University grads become the stuff of the past. Education PhDs, for example, anxiously open the CAUT Bulletin and University Affairs month after month only to find blank columns and a job ad section less than full enough to fold a single paper airplane.

Meanwhile back on the mainland, students at Capilano University are burning and destroying their artwork in protest of impending cuts of entire arts programs. This past year, strikes and other forms of labour action at SFU and UBC marked the sign of the times of universities, over-extended and under-funded, unable or unwilling to pay fair wage increases. Next month begins an arbitration between the Faculty Association of UBC and the University to settle a contract bargaining dispute now in its second year. There isn’t much to bargain for or with, as for the Liberals, the universities’ staff, students, and faculty remain net zero workers.

Politics in British Columbia: 14 May election results.

What happened? With all due respect NDP (and I voted NDP), please quit the laughable fiction suggesting that their negative campaign simply overshadowed our positive campaign–their power out-spun our truth. For sure, the NDP was out-campaigned and badly so. Out-witted and out-strategized would be other ways of describing this. What’s worse than a Liberal? A smug Liberal. But hey, at least we have the Vancouver-Point Grey and Vancouver Fairview ridings, two of the few flies on the windshield of that ostentatious red parade float!

Visibly fussed the day after the election, the best the NDP could muster up was the simplistic negative v positive excuse. Even some among the left press, such as The Georgia Straight, could find nothing to say but to parrot the NDP: “It’s sad, but negative politics rule” the Straight began its “NDP Grapples with Stunning Loss” story. NDP candidate George Chow, who went down in defeat in the Vancouver-Langara riding, decried that they lost because “negativity works.” George Heyman, who displaced the Liberal Minister of Health in the Vancouver-Fairview riding went as far as to mystifyingly say that the Liberals’ “negative campaign” “turns people off.” One does not have to be a strategy or policy wonk to know that the Liberals hardly ran a negative campaign and those who argue they did appear clueless, or more generously are understandably squeezing sour grapes from what’s left of the BC NDP’s election machinery. A federal NDP MP joined in nonetheless: the Liberals’ victory “shows the power of negative politics,” he said. C’mon now, who are we trying to kid? The ridings that went red and went to the Liberals– nay, all of us–deserve a believable and better explanation from the NDP for what happened on election day.

What happened? Is not BC a conservative province and the Liberals just as well neoliberals or neocons? Isn’t liberalism and neoliberalism basically the same at this point in time? The glove fits the hand that feeds business, if not business as usual. We know that Canada as a whole has become quite comfortably conservative. In BC, Gordon Campbell brought the Liberals to victory in 2001 and the province took a right turn that obviously sits right with a majority of the people. In this week’s election on 14 May, there were pockets of ‘vote the bums out’, such as in my riding where we did vote out the Liberals’ very astute strategist and standing Premier Christy Clark. But for the most part, if you lean left toward NDP, election night sadly trended from ‘vote the bums out’ to ‘vote the bums in’.

Now, as #IdleNoMore confronts #IdleForeverMore, it is going to be an interesting four more years in BC.

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

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