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Learn more:

Anishinabek News: Nipissing First Nation teaches Anishinaabemowin on YouTube  https://anishinabeknews.ca/2024/08/29/nipissing-first-nation-teaches-anishinaabemowin-on-youtube/

 

Tanya Talaga is Rewriting Canadian History Her Way

 

In The Knowing, her third non-fiction book, Talaga travels back in time—and unearths a few family secrets in the process

 

By Katie Underwood

August 22, 2024

Tanya Talaga has made a career of telling the unvarnished truth about Canada, to Canada. In her bestselling books, Seven Fallen Feathers and All Our Relations, Talaga, a Globe and Mail columnist of Anishinaabe and Polish descent, turned her incisive eye on systemic problems like racism in policing and the suicide epidemic among Indigenous youth. But when it came to the personal, to her own family, Talaga always found more questions than answers.

In The Knowing, her third non-fiction book, out August 27, Talaga runs toward, not from, her history, filling in the gaps in her own ancestral line. It’s a lineage severed several times, as her First Nations relatives were forcibly sent to government- and church-sponsored residential schools, asylums and new families entirely as part of the Sixties Scoop. After years spent digging into the past, she’s learned a few things: about her grandmothers, about Canada’s past and that, when it comes to family, you can never really know the whole story. 

The Knowing revisits the colonial history of Canada, as well as the history of your own matriarchal line. What made you decide to weave in your own  family details? 

All Indigenous families share the same history; we all have people who are missing. I didn’t want to write a trauma porn book, talking about everyone else’s pain. Elder Sam Achneepineskum from Marten Falls First Nation once gave me some advice: our ancestors need to know who’s speaking. We need to tell people who each of us are, so everyone can understand what happened. 

 

...Figuring it all out, the how did we get here—that helps me a lot.  It’s reclamation. One person I met, Paula Rickard, is a professional genealogist who lives in Moose Factory, Ontario.  She’s built out a family tree of the James Bay coast that now has something like 12,000 names.  When I was just starting out, I messaged her Facebook page, and she responded with, “You know we’re related, too, right?” 

KEEP READING : https://www.macleans.ca/culture/tanya-talaga-is-rewriting-canadian-history-her-way/

Almost Dead Indians (excerpt)

What did tribes make of the INVASION?

“Try as he might to comprehend the life on the far side of the ocean that the white man described, the brown man was unable.  Such a life was beyond belief.  He could not envision one man or a small group of men and women owning all the land, all the animals, all who dwelt upon it, all the produce, man’s labor and his harvest, and men’s lives. But he felt sorry for his friend.” – Basil Johnston, THE MANITOUS (1995), Chapter 11, AUTTISSOOKAUNUK, describing the strangers with light complexions who landed on the brown man’s land and described Europe.  Tribes had no concept for what he described, which was colonization and slavery.

(👆this is my favorite quote)

What has been written about the European’s arrival is for the most part sinister.  In rock art, scrolls and oral history, tribes recorded, understood and remembered the events of early colonial contact by means of symbolic images: Manitous (or spirits), floating islands, flying and underwater ships, giant birds, thunder and lighting, sounds of music in the air, a strange white whale, dreams, premonitions and warnings.  Early tribes viewed Puritan disregard for ritual to mean earthly disaster and punishment.  The tribes believed these aliens were Manitous possessing a powerful spirit.  (This is according to missionaries who knew the tribes here in the northeast.  And of course, this was written from their perspective…) (I use “Indian” in this text, as they did.)

Anishinaabe say:  After the French came the Zhaaganaash (“Off-shore ones”) of Great Britain.  But out of the Zhaaganaash came the Gichi-ookomaan (“Big-Knives”)—the Virginians (i.e. pre-Americans) _{via WIKI}   Wonder if the Anishinaabe have a word for serial killers?

The Indians lack of material wealth and simple lifestyle was viewed as a character flaw; Puritans could not comprehend their apparent lack of interest in wealth.  (The “Indian” had no concept of being owned or owning land.)

**

You and me: we are not supposed to know.    

President Thomas Jefferson

 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, December 29, 1813  

 “This unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilize, have by their unexpected desertion and ferocious barbarities justified extermination and now await our decision on their fate.”  

Jefferson owned many slaves, had offspring with slaves, and had a fancy plantation, of course. (In Virginia)

These are real crimes and real atrocities against Indigenous First Nations People yet no one involved has been charged or put in prison?  Their goal? 

When details of the Indian Adoption Projects were sealed and files were closed after adoptions, a child would not have his/her name or tribal identity anymore, with their birth certificate altered and falsified.  Tribal membership might exist for some adoptees on paper but with secrecy and sealed files, the adult adoptee would never know or be able to find out.  

It appears that was the plan.   

 

FILM: I Have Lived Four Lives | STAR KNOWLEDGE

Wilfred Buck by Lisa Jackson | 92 min
Press kit: mediaspace.nfb.ca/epk/wilfred-buck
New trailer: vimeo.com/942488273/38a2dbba43

 

Wilfred Buck is an Ininiw (Cree) astronomer, author, educator, Knowledge Keeper and lecturer originally from Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN). He graduated from the University of Manitoba with two degrees in Education and has 25 years of experience as an educator, working with students from kindergarten to university. Considered the foremost authority on Indigenous astronomy in the world, Wilfred is the author of Tipiskawi Kisik: Night Sky Star Stories (2018), the semi-autobiographical I Have Lived Four Lives (2021) and Kitcikisik (Great Sky): Tellings That Fill the Night Sky (2021).

A new film by Director Lisa Jackson, Wilfred Buck: I Have Lived Four Lives. 

MORE:  https://www.canada.ca/en/national-film-board/news/2024/05/cree-elder-and-astronomer-overcomes-a-harrowing-history-to-take-us-to-the-stars-lisa-jacksons-wilfred-buck-opens-in-canadian-cities.html

The film was screened in June featuring a live Q&A with filmmaker Lisa Jackson.

Weaving together moments of his life today as an expert in Indigenous cosmology and his past as a troubled young child and teen, charismatic Cree Elder Wilfred Buck shares his embodied wisdom and profound reflections on colonial trauma in this expertly crafted adaptation of his autobiographical memoir, I Have Lived Four Lives.

When his family is cruelly torn from their land during the Sixties Scoop, Buck is left to survive on his own, falling into the darkness of addiction, until he discovers the cosmological teachings of his people and finds his way, guided by the celestial beings that become his compass and the focus of his life’s work. Using archival footage, stylized re-enactments, poetic imagery and vérité, director Lisa Jackson brilliantly jumps between genres to craft a constellation of Buck’s key life moments and memories, charting his journey to a knowledge system that survived colonization by going underground, now revived by Buck’s endless curiosity and marvel of the Ininew night sky.

About Lisa Jackson

Lisa Jackson is an Anishinaabe (Aamjiwnaang) filmmaker whose work has garnered two Canadian Screen Awards, been nominated for a Webby and screened at top festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Berlinale and Hot Docs. Her NFB VR experience Biidaaban was viewed by more than 25,000 people, while her film Indictment won Best Doc at imagineNATIVE and is one of CBC’s top watched documentaries. She won the 2022 Chicken & Egg Award and the 2021 DOC Vanguard Award, and has an MFA from York University.

You can hear Buck tell the Mista Muskwa story here: https://soundcloud.com/scifri/wilfred-buck-tells-the-story-of-mista-muskwa

 

This webinar is the first of what will become a series. Facilitators recommended also learning from  Native Skywatchers, the Anishinaabe Sky Star Map, and resources from Elder Wilfred Buck.

WEBINAR:  https://windspeaker.com/buffalo-spirit/webinar-explores-indigenous-ways-knowing-stars

Star Knowledge Why do we accept as universal the teachings of constellations by their Greek names and stories? Indigenous peoples have their own stories and names for the star formations. These stories capture teachings about the land, medicines, animals and our relations. We don’t need to replace the Indigenous worldview. It’s just as valid.

 

 

 

Blood Quantum use is controversial

 

How a US colonial notion of ‘blood quantum’ for tribal membership is threatening Indigenous nations

"Blood quantum" is a U.S. colonial notion to identify whether someone is Indigenous and to which tribal band they belong. Its use is controversial.

READ MORE

 

👇

More: Wisconsin’s story doesn't start with Jean Nicolet. A brief history of forced relocation and 'landcestry.'

More: 28 site names that slur Indigenous women are being removed in Wisconsin. Here's what's happening next.

Indigenous academics argue that all First Nations in the U.S. will soon have to address blood quantum to deal with declining enrollments.

Quick Note: Google is harvesting data - but as far as we know, there is not another platform to use for this blog... STAY TUNED!

BAD RIVER - MOVIE Trailer #protectgreatlakes

Bad River Trailer - Quannah ChasingHorse and Edward Norton Narration from 50EGGS on Vimeo.

 

Please see this FILM...

BAD RIVER is a full length documentary that takes us into the heart of an epic battle the Bad River Ojibwe are waging to save Lake Superior. Acclaimed New Yorker writer, Bill McKibben calls the film "a powerful chronicle… and a hopeful picture of the emerging possibilities for power” Narrated by Quannah ChasingHorse and Academy-Award nominee, Edward Norton. Opening in select @amctheatres across the US MARCH 15. 

For ticket and venue information https://www.badriverfilm.com/dates/ #badriverfilm #environment #water #waterislife #nature #socialjustice #indigenous #firstnations #river #greatlakes #protectgreatlakes

 

The ‘60s Scoop stole so much from my family. Here’s how I’m reclaiming what’s lost.

HIDE CAMP: Unlike past generations, I was raised not to feel ashamed of being Anishinaabe. Now, I’m learning what my mother and grandmother couldn’t.

By Alessia Passafiume | Dec. 11, 2022

I asked my dad to skin me a deer.

For as long as I can remember, my father, uncles and grandfather — who immigrated to Canada from Italy 55 years ago — have spent weeks away hunting moose, deer, turkey, rabbits, and if you consider fishing hunting, they do that, too.

I’ve thought about joining them on hunts for years — heading to Bass Pro to deck myself out in hunting gear, sitting with them in tree stands in the bush and scoping out a deer or moose to bring back to my grandfather’s house to process after a week or so of outdoor living in their trailer. Usually, the hides would be chopped into bits and discarded in the compost while they masterfully sliced the meat into different cuts.

But as someone who is not keen on sharing close quarters with men in the trailer, and whose understanding of Italian is dismal, I’m starting another tradition this year: I asked them to save me the skins to transform into usable leather — something long practised by generations of my mother’s side of the family who are Anishinaabe.

I gave them specific instructions to remove as much of the flesh as they could, and to save me the brain and legs — the brain to soften the hide, the legs to make tools with if my experience permits.

In May, I spent a week at Niizh Manidook Hide Camp — a Two Spirit hide-tanning camp in aptly-named ‘Bucktown,’ or Delaware Nation at Moraviantown in southwestern Ontario. The goal was to learn and reclaim traditional hide-tanning techniques lost in my family through the ‘60s Scoop and residential schools.

I grew up and continue to live two hours from my community of Chippewas of the Thames First Nation, and as the first generation in my immediate family not to be raised to feel ashamed of being Anishinaabe, the importance of reclaiming these practices is not lost on me.

---

I wouldn’t have known about the camp had it not been for my friend Kierstin Williams, an Anishinaabekwe herself from Garden River First Nation and Batchewana First Nation, up north in Sault Ste. Marie — “Moose Country,” as a mug in her apartment refers to it.

“Want to go to a camp to tan hides?” she asked me earlier this spring. “I’m in,” I replied, still unsure of what a hide camp actually entailed, but I was excited to learn once we got there.

I packed camping gear, drawing inspiration from my dad’s pre-hunt shops, picking up a fisherman’s hat from Canadian Tire just in case. And while I didn’t make that trip to Bass Pro, I did make one to Walmart’s men’s section to stockpile T-shirts I wouldn’t mind ruining.

As I prepared for the trip, I was filled with self-doubt. I feared I wouldn’t belong amongst the group and questioned why the hosts, Beze Gray and Hunter Cassag, both experienced hide-tanners, artists and advocates — with Gray being one of a group suing the provincial government over climate change — approved my application.

“Surely they didn’t mean to accept me,” I thought.

Really, it was a projection of me not always accepting myself.

KEEP READING

 

‘Give us the records’: New head of NCTR says VATICAN needs to hand over school documents

 VIDEO

archive photo TRC

The confirmation of unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools has led to a global awakening on the effects of the harmful policy says the executive director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR.)

Stephanie Scott, who has been with the NCTR since 2016, had only been in her new leadership position for a little over two months when 215 remains were located in unmarked graves on the former site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Scott remembers being in bed when the texts started rolling in about the news. Despite being aware of the existence of the graves, “it was still horrendous news to get.”

The NCTR will not be part of a delegation heading to the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis – but if she was going her message would be “give us the records.” The Catholic church ran 65 residential schools.

She says negotiations with the church for over one thousand boxes of documents have been going on for years. The NCTR has been given access to five of those boxes.

As for the apology by the Pope, on Canadian soil, Scott says it would be wonderful to see the Pope “in a pipe ceremony, acknowledging our  peoples and cultures and the harms that took place and really understanding what they tried to destroy and how important that is for our people to continue on the path of reconciliation.” SOURCE

 

Read More: 

‘We are not going to forget that history’: Kukpi7 says there is much work to do at former Kamloops school 

Kamloops: Stories of Survival