The mayor is misreading the events of the Northwest Rebellion and romanticizing a nasty moment in our country’s history
“The red coats we know, but who are those little black devils?” This was the question posed by a Métis prisoner after the Battle of Fish Creek. Thus was born the nickname of the military unit that would later be known as the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, one that had been sent west to help crush…
The initial Mackenzie Valley Pipeline site selection process demonstrated how industry can be utterly insensitive to impacted communities
Over the past few weeks, we’ve heard a lot about the Coastal GasLink pipeline project route in northern B.C. Some historical perspective might inform the debate. We’ve read that the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs have a favoured alternate route but for various reasons the company can’t support it. Given that I haven’t been on site and…
Over the past two weeks, my wife and I have twice encountered Wet’suwet’en protesters in the B.C. Lower Mainland. I wondered what the hell was being accomplished if people like me were getting angry? The first encounter saw us turned away from the 9 a.m. ferry from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay – we had important…
On Tuesday, while activists reportedly tried to “arrest” Premier John Horgan at his house in British Columbia, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to the House of Commons, stressing the need for “patience” as rail blockades continue to prevent freight and passenger movement across Canada. The #ShutDownCanada movement is in full swing across the country, with…
Divide-and-conquer tactics have been used by colonial powers for hundreds of years to get Indigenous groups to succumb to their wishes
Canadians take pride in our identity as a peaceful nation that celebrates diversity. These are indeed wonderful ideals but to be authentic, they need to be lived. In 1990, a community in Quebec wanted to expand its golf course and claimed the right to traditional Indigenous lands. The Mohawk people blocked this process and when…
It’s time First Nations adopted property rights, economic development and self-governance
The saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same” should not be applied to First Nations bands. Those bands that have maintained the same tired model that has failed for decades are still failing. Ones that have adopted property rights, economic development and self-governance have improved drastically. Unfortunately, most judges, activists and…
The government has compounded the problem of stalled pipeline projects by adopting UNDRIP, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People
In 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a stunning decision with profound impact on the future development of our country. For more than a century, Indigenous title had been limited to the immediate environs around settlements. The court ruling vastly expanded it to “tracts of land that were regularly used for hunting, fishing or…
There are good reasons why other countries and previous Canadian governments have consistently refused to fully implement the UN declaration on Indigenous rights
British Columbia has become the first province to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). And except for the opposition of a determined group of Conservative senators, the federal government would have adopted UNDRIP as actionable law before last fall’s federal election. Re-elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already announced…
Divorcing a spiritual practice from its religious meaning is problematic and a forcible whitewashing of something deeply and fundamentally complex
By David Hunt and Brian Dijkema Cardus Most court decisions are a zero-sum game. One side’s win is the other’s loss. But this was not the result recently at the B.C. Supreme Court in Nanaimo. Both sides, and the public, lost in Servatius versus Alberni School District No. 70. One side wanted smudging ceremonies and…
Psychotic episodes can occur for a variety of reasons, not all of them having to do with mental illness
Hallucinations and delusions are the first things many people imagine when they hear about mental illness. They think of people who hear voices, see imaginary people or think they are someone they’re not. While hallucinations and delusions are not the hallmark of every mental illness, they can occur as a symptom of several disorders. Schizophrenia…