Issues, ethics, memory
A CBC news team has published a story about the RCMP’s spying on Indigenous leaders in the 1970s and 80s. A sub plot to the story is the frustration that the CBC journalists encountered in their year’s-long effort to obtain information from the RCMP Security Service files. This is a frustration with which I am only too familiar. Canada's Access to Information system is broken and must be fixed.
In July 2022 Pope Francis visited Canada at the invitation of Indigenous leaders and their communities. He apologized for the Catholic Church’s co-operation in what he called Canada's "devastating" policy of Indigenous residential schools.
Canadian expatriate David Frum defends John A Macdonald against his detractors. I analyze Frum's case.
Former Truth and Reconciliation commissioners addressed a webinar attended by 1,000 settler allies on Bill C-15 and residential schools. I was a participant.
A group of Conservative Senators are attempting to prevent an important piece of legislation from becoming law. Bill C-262 would ensure Canadian laws are consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This bill passed resoundingly the House of Commons on May 30 by a vote of 206-79, with only the Conservatives... Continue Reading →
The United We Roll convoy of trucks on its way from Alberta to Ottawa makes for good television coverage, but the deep sense of grievance and anger on display does beg questions. Here are some of them. What about global warming? Those in the convoy demand that Ottawa simply clear the way for the construction... Continue Reading →
Increasingly it is Indigenous writers who are telling the story of their peoples’ relations with European settlers, which is as it should be. I am thinking, for example, of Tanya Talaga’s Seven Fallen Feathers and her more recent book All Our Relations, which is based upon her Massey Lectures delivered on CBC Radio in November... Continue Reading →
I had just begun reading a biography of Martin Luther King when the not guilty verdict was rendered in the Gerald Stanley murder trial. As is now widely known, Stanley shot and killed an Indigenous youth named Colton Boushie at close range after a vehicle containing Boushie and four others entered Stanley’s farm yard near... Continue Reading →
When they were campaigning for election in 2015 Justin Trudeau’s Liberals promised that they would adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, but it appears that they are now less eager to do so. Inherent rights It took 23 years of effort and negotiation for Indigenous peoples to have... Continue Reading →
My wife Martha and I joined walkers in May for the final three days of a Pilgrimage for Indigenous Rights, a 600-kilometre trek from Kitchener, Ontario to Ottawa. The walkers encountered warm support from individuals and churches along the route but a few of us received one bit of push back from a middle-aged settler,... Continue Reading →
Pulpit and Politics 