May 18, 2016
As a white person in Canada, especially one writing about a topic that intersects with Indigenous issues, I have found Métis writer Chelsea Vowel’s blog âpihtawikosisân invaluable. Vowel is a legal researcher who somehow explains complex issues with total clarity without ever being anything less than gripping or undercutting her politics.
April 11, 2016
Here’s yet another condo development framed as a modern repeat of Canada’s 19th C colonial pioneer era. It’s called “Venue” and it’s in Whalley, a small town centre within Surrey, a large, racially mixed Vancouver suburb mostly known for farming.
June 21, 2015
Happy National Aboriginal Day everyone!
Wab Kinew, always concise, does 500 years of ‘Canadian’ history in 2 minutes.
December 20, 2014
In a direct line from my earlier post on the heritage hipster style as a settler colonial aesthetic, here is another exhibit in the colonial museum of fashion: Ralph Lauren using genocide-era vintage photographs of native men in western dress as part of its recent marketing campaign.
October 14, 2014
Men in British Columbia, 1859, one in a newly discovered collection of early photographs of white settlers and First Nations in B.C. Via Vancouver Sun © Royal British Columbia Museum, reprinted with permission
An abridged version of this essay has been published in the May/June 2015 issue of Briarpatch Magazine
I am probably as bored of casual hipster-slagging as you are.
December 28, 2012
I am in full support of Idle No More and Chief Theresa Spence’s now perilous hunger strike in a tipi across from Canada’s Parliament buildings in Ottawa. Chief of the beleaguered town on Attawapiskat in Ontario, where inadequate housing has led to a level of misery that attracted even UN censure, Spence is engaged in a desperate gambit to force PM Harper to speak with her.
September 27, 2012
Great video from CBC’s George Stromboulopoulos show and its Soap Box series. It’s “5 First Nations Stereotypes” by the entertaining Wab Kinew.
Wab, host of the Doc Zone series 8th Fire, is also a CBC News Winnipeg reporter on CBC Television, and a hip-hop artist, named by the Winnipeg Free Press as one of the top artists to watch from Manitoba.
September 7, 2012
Roy Henry Vickers‘ gallery in Tofino, BC. The face of the building, similar to the style of a First Nations longhouse or “plank house,” was painted and handcarved by the artist, whose background is Haida, Heiltsuk and Tsimshian.
February 5, 2011
Storm sewer cover by Coast Salish (Musqueam) artist Susan Point and her daughter Kelly Cannell, depicting four small eggs in the centre, spinning out to tadpoles that become frogs radiating out to the edges. Point is a Vancouver-based Coast Salish artist and master carver whose work has been commissioned for the Vancouver International Airport, the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology and the Smithsonian in Washington.
December 21, 2009
The late Amelia Charlie, prominent designer and promoter of the Cowichan sweater
Above is an example of the Cowichan sweater (photo courtesy Cowichan Tribes).
