The Road Home
Hubbards, NS
Drives faster sideways
Than the speed of lover’s fights
Angels can’t keep up
RL
Beautiful Calm Driver
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Author Archives: Blog Woman!!!
Mourning Light
Lawn, Newfoundland, 8/05/15
Sad pleas for comfort
Within poems, unanswered
Solace is within
RL
For a friend…. looking for love in not the right places
Shut Up and Dance
Old commands repeat
Swallowing nearly complete
Peace will reign again
RL
Own Your Past Canada – A Simple Guide How To
There were a lot of opinions flying after the recent release of the TRC summary of the Truth and Reconciliation report, but sadly, it was hard to discern which one was the majority – acknowledgement or denial.
————————–The Past Shows Us the Way————————— aaronpaquette.net
This report was several years in the making and outlines the history and consequences of the genocide effort Canada inflicted upon its Indigenous peoples from 1876 until presently.
The opinions that followed seemed to hold mostly two views – one that included a good deal of understanding, and support for the recommendations for Canada to acknowledge and manage the issues related to the Indigenous communities.
The other was this example, written by a Sudbury, Ont resident. I felt it encapsulated some very common views about Canada’s Indigenous history. He began his piece by asserting that, yes, Canada did bad things:
… “However, the inflammatory statements made are just a little over the top. ‘Cultural genocide’ sounds much worst (sic) than what really happened”.
He goes on to assert that the First Nations people chose to live on reserves and the …“ills that come with that”. Continuing on, he states what many of us hear daily:
…“a lot of negative assertions and accusations thrown at the government of the day, as well as the churches involved”. After all …“Let’s give credit to our leaders of a hundred years ago for realizing native people were living in a perpetually unsustainable cycle of poverty and violence, and at least tried to do something about it”.
Then he concluded his thoughts with this statement:
“Many other cultures have been assimilated without being so accused. These cultures have melded into our own, yet retained some identifying remnants that we share, enriching the culture of Canada. We are all better for it”
I’m at a loss to understand why a newspaper would publish such an opinion when the full summary outlining the facts of history and the point(s) of the TRC is readily available to the public, and certainly for this paper’s editors. Unless, this was a lesson to show how much ignorance must still be countered within the country.
I won’t bother going over every detail of his inaccuracies because frankly, it was entirely inaccurate and again, the facts in point are readily available from simple internet searches, university resources, libraries and even the actual government department that oversees the affairs of the Indigenous.
What I prefer to highlight is this ongoing effort to continue to publicly obscure historical fact, which is really current, as the Indian Act of 1876 is in fact, still in effect.
The idea that assimilation is an effort that must still be completed underscores the need to realize that not all cultures adopt the European model of success adapted to the North American version, and indeed, why should they?
What this continent needs to do is stop attempting to tell other cultures, and in particular the actual original inhabitants of these lands, how they need to be living. What this country needs to do is really quite simple and that is live up to the agreements in the treaties.
The sad history, and the reason genocide came into being was, simply put, for the stealing of the land and resources that were negotiated for in the treaties — still in effect today, much to the chagrin of many an assimilation apologist. In fact, treaties are still being negotiated even now.
Then there is the other side of the equation, which is written within the very Indian Act created for the genocide efforts. It states very clearly, promises to the Indigenous for coercing them onto those reserves. Those promises have yet to be half-way lived up to.
If Canada wants to truly end this travesty, living up to the honour it brags about around the world is the start. Too many people think that becoming “equal” means becoming the same. There is a difference between equal rights, the rights for all people, and the Indigenous rights bargained for on their homelands since the beginning.
RL
http://www.thesudburystar.com/2015/06/21/sudbury-letter-report-unfair-to-canada
The Blacker the Pot… Guest Comment by Paul Curran
“Ahhh, Robyn, well said. Bravo”. Well, when you’re getting an opening like that in reply to one of your posts, you know you’re going to do some reading. I’m one of a great many bloggers who enjoy getting the insights from one of our favorite readers and occasional guest blogger, Paul Curran. When I read through his entire reply to my last post “Hello Kettle, Black Pots Steam & Trumpet”, I had to share his unique and enlightening view, and so I decided his was a comment that was really a post of its own. I hope you enjoy his thoughts that expanded on my post about hypocrisy.
Ahhh, Robyn, well said. Bravo. Matthew 18:15-17 “15“ – Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault is between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. 16. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’[a] 17 And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.” Basically, after you have tried, walk away and do not keep company with those who will not listen.
You know Robyn that when you are making a stew for nourishment in that pot – the longer it simmers, the blacker the pot gets and yet the tastier the stew. The outside blackness can be a result of making excellent nourishment to feed the soul. Mind you if boiled dry and ignored all can be ruined in a black pot. So, the blackness can mean two very different things – or as another old adage goes to make an omelette one must break some eggs. I agree you are right on about teachers teaching what they need to learn. and in perfection, those who teach for the best reasons do so because they know they need to learn and in fact pursue learning simultaneously.
One blogger that comes to mind is Beth over at http://ididnthavemyglasseson.com. She is continuously learning about life and she teaches for a living. I had a French teacher at work (1/3 of our customers were French so the company sponsored lessons for management who dealt with these customers)who was amazing. I spoke to her one day and it turns out that although she had two degrees in languages and was fluent in six languages (she was a university professor), she was spending her evenings learning German because she said she could not teach properly unless she could see the students perspective and she could only do that if she was learning too.
We were also training in a new computer language for the company main frame – a much more efficient language. This teacher was also excellent and could answer any question from the trenches so i asked how that could be so when he taught full time. His answer was telling – he said that he could only teach while he was doing the job and all the learning that goes with it so he worked 40 hours a week teaching and 40 hour programming.
Interestingly enough, given that mistakes make the pot black, I think those who are the best at what the do have leaned through mistakes – many mistakes, so very black. At one point Babe Ruth was the home run king of baseball – and yet what many do not mention is that he was simultaneously the strike out king. His pot was black from trying and from learning from his mistakes. Thomas Edison once said to a reporter that he did not fail 1,000 times when he was looking for a workable light bulb filament, but rather he found 1,000 ways it didn’t work.
So, as is typical of real life, differential equations and quantum mechanics, there can be more than one correct answer as to why the pot is black and the answers are sometimes diametrically opposed. (Just as the square root of 4 can be either 2 or -2.) She who makes many mistakes in the learning process has a black pot and he who continuously makes mistakes because he doesn’t learn from them also has a black pot. They are both understandable and immediately identifiable. The ones that make me wary are those whose pots are supposedly clean – they know not of what they speak or they are hiding their mistakes. Both of which make me nervous.
-Paul Curran
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