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After two hundred years of slavery in Canada, only now do we have our first institute of slavery studies. It's about time to talk about anti-Black racism in Canada.

If you're unsure how anti-trafficking laws harm migrant sex workers, or how sex work isn't trafficking, start here.

Southern Alberta, also home to Métis Nation Region 3, is bound by Treaty 7, a living document signed on Sept. 22, 1877 between the Crown and five First Nations communities:

  • the Blackfoot Confederacy (the Káínaa (Blood), Siksiká (Blackfoot), and the Piikáni (Piegan))

  • the Îyârhe [ee-YAH-hhay] Nakoda (Stoney: Bearspaw, Chiniki, and Wesley)

  • the Tsúùtínà (Sarcee is considered an offensive term by most of the Tsuut'ina Nation)

 

These First Nations communities generally understood it to be a peace treaty to share, not surrender, their traditional lands.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 presented a roadmap forward that refers to the UN's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) to address Canada's colonial, anti-Indigenous genocidal past and present. As of June 2021, eight to thirteen of the 94 calls to action have been implemented.

I can continue petitioning and protesting for the land and water rights of Indigenous Peoples in "Canada" by amplifying what they believe is best for the land and for their right to clean water and safety on their own land. I can continue challenging my biases and learned discrimination towards Indigenous persons and support their knowledge, stories, and well-being inside and outside my classrooms. I will not euphemize the ongoing Indigenous genocide, history and effects of residential schools, unaddressed MMIW2S, nor other issues pertaining to Indigenous Peoples. I can volunteer for Indigenous-led initiatives like Bear Clan Patrol. I will continue learning about past and current Indigenous issues and accomplishments on my own, and if I do seek the expertise and knowledge of Indigenous persons, to compensate and respect them for their energy and time.

How is Canada still hurting Indigenous people through environmental racism, land dispossession, violence, and murder?

Briarpatch, a fiercely independent mag, has an issue on what Land Back is all about.

Here's a documentary.

A website with resources.

MMIWG2S

Cathy Park Hong's essays in Minor Feelings:

 

"Hong succinctly notes one of the key aspects of white supremacy in action: pitting non-white communities against one another in order to sow distrust as a means of preserving the current system." - Julia Shiota

How safe would you feel if you were Transgender and living in Canada?

Transgender and a person of colour?

Disclosure documentary (on Netflix)

Paris Is Burning documentary (on Netflix)

Plastic pollution and climate change since COVID:

short

detailed

Writings I've enjoyed: poetry / novel / essays

Noor Naga's If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English

Becky Chamber's A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarer's #2)

Olga Ravn's The Employees

River Halen's Dream Rooms

Mieko Kawakami and Sam Bett and David Boyd's Breasts and Eggs

Alyssa Songsiridej's Little Rabbit

Isabella Wang's Pebble Swing

Kyŏng-sook Shin and Ha-Yun Jung's The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness

Tsering Yangzom Lama's We Measure the Earth With Our Bodies

Sigrid Nunez's The Friend

Marjorie M Liu and Sana Takeda's Monstress (graphic novel series)

Alexia Arthurs's How to Love a Jamaican (short stories)

Maisy Card's These Ghosts Are Family

Avni Doshi's Burnt Sugar

Min Jin Lee's Pachinko

Room Magazine's Indigenous Brilliance Issue

CV2 Magazine's Fall 2022 Issue and The Open Issue (summer 2022)

Nicole Dennis-Benn's Patsy

Elaine Castillo's America Is Not the Heart

Alicia Elliott's A Mind Spread Out on the Ground

Bahar Orang's Where Things Touch: A Meditation on Beauty

Jenny Offill's The Department of Speculation

Omar El Akkad's What Strange Paradise

Francesca Ekwuyasi's Butter Honey Pig Bread

Bora Chung and Anton Hur's Cursed Bunny (short stories)

Rabih Alameddine's An Unnecessary Woman

Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's The Disordered Cosmos

Weike Wang's Chemistry

Cathy Park Hong's Minor Feelings and Engine Empire

Souvankham Thammavongsa's How to Pronounce Knife (short stories)

Sharon Bala's The Boat People

Ian William's Personals and Reproduction

Raven Leilani's Luster

stephanie roberts's rushes from the river disappointment

Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)

Micheline Maylor's Whirr & Click and Little Wildheart

Joshua Whitehead's Making Love With the Land and Jonny Appleseed

adrienne maree brown's Emergent Strategy

Alexander Chee's How to Write an Autobiographical Novel and Edinburgh 

and The Queen of the Night

Ocean Vương's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and Night Sky With Exit Wounds

Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House and Her Body and Other Parties (short stories)

Felicia Rose Chavez's The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop

Matthew Salesses' Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear and Craft in the Real World

Miriam Toews's All My Puny Sorrows

Zadie Smith's Feel Free and White Teeth

Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere

Heather O'Neill's The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and Lullabies for Little Criminals

Ursula Le Guin's Conversations on Writing (with David Naimon)

and Steering the Craft

Kim Thúy and Sheila Fischman's Ru

Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch

Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being

Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl

Yōko Ogawa and Stephen Snyder's The Diving Pool (three novellas) and

The Housekeeper and the Professor and Hotel Iris

Han Kang's The Vegetarian and Human Acts

Kōbō Abe and E. Dale Saunder's The Woman in the Dunes

Ryū Murakami' and Ralph McCarthy's In the Miso Soup

Lisa Feldman Barrett's How Emotions Are Made

Natsuo Kirino and Stephen Snyder's Out

Junot Díaz's Drown (short stories)

 

Last updated: June 2023

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