POETRY

Panic arises
My heart is pounding
As fast
As horses hooves
Pound around the racetrack

I take a pill
Hoping it will calm me down
I gulp
Like a fish out of water

I take another pill
Wanting calm to surround me
Once and for all

Tears spill
My head pounds

I lay down
Too tired to do or say
Anything

The pills take effect
I fall asleep
At last

With one last thought
Before my eyes close

What will tomorrow
Bring?

Events

Events:

Thursday November 20, 2014-Bundle Teaching with Amy Desjarlais! This THURSDAY, 2pm-4pm . The teaching will be followed with an activity and sharing circle to learn about what you carry in your own bundle.@ the Native Women’s Resource Centre. Everyone welcome!

Thursday November 20, 2014-3pm- Transgender Day of Remembrance Flag Raising@ Toronto City HallThis year the trans flag will be raised at Toronto City Hall for the first time. Join the community at Toronto City Hall for the proclamation and ceremony.

Thursday November 20, 2014-Explore the challenge with us in a discussion of This Changes Everything, by Naomi Klein. Please come even if you haven't had a chance to look at the book.

Thursday, November 20, 6:45-8:45 p.m. (Please be prompt.)

Community Centre 55, 97 Main St. (south of Gerrard)

TTC tokens available upon request.

If you plan to come, write info@eastendnotar.org to receive a short introductory text.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

** At the meeting, connect with our subcommittee on municipal work against Line 9.

** Check out our blog:  NEB panel member calls process a ‘public deception'.

Meet us on Facebook: Toronto East End Against Line 9 and our blog www.eastendnotar.org

Saturday, November 22, WORN Fashion Journal will get your inner kitten out of the alley and onto the dance floor with our BLACK CAT BALL. Dovercourt House

805 Dovercourt Rd, Toronto

Scratch at the door: 9:00 PM

Meow for a taxi: 2 AM

Black and White Dress desired but not required.

ADMISSION PRICE - $15

Includes admission and a dangerously delicious copy of WORN Issue 19/20.

ADVANCE TICKETS $15 – AVAILABLE HERE

http://www.eventbrite.ca/e/worn-fashion-journal-presents-the-black-cat-ball-tickets-14106511957

A limited amount of tickets will be available at the door - orders yours now.

THIS IS A LICENSED EVENT.

For more information on this and other WORN events, contact events@wornjournal.com.

Saturday November 29, 2014- 6pm- Speak For Tears: A Vigil for Missing and Murdered  Women, Men and Children. Join Us as we hold a Candle Light Vigil for Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women, Men, and Children on Saturday, November 29th @ Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto.

Speakers Include Jenn Mt. Pleasant, Leighann Ford, actress Tantoo Cardinal and More.

Stay tuned for more details.

Weekly Events

Events:

November 11, 2014-10:00m Honouring Our Native Veterans on Remembrance Day. Old City Hall

November 14, 2014- 6pm-Shameless Magazine 10^th Anniversary Gala and Inaugural Shamie Awards

When: Friday, November 14th, 2014
Where: Urban Space Gallery @ 401 Richmond st. West
Time: 6:00-9:00 pm
19+ event
Venue is accessible.

Unfortunately, due to lack of interpreter availability, we regret to announce that there will be no ASL interpretation at this event.

Every dollar we raise goes directly to funding Shameless magazine, helping fuel our mission to bring needed alternative voices to the media landscape.

Tickets are $20, and can be bought online (https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/shameless-magazines-10th-anniversary-gala-the-shamie-awards-tickets-13402313681) or at the door.

November 14, 2014- 7-9pm- Book Launch: Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition

Historical Materialism Toronto invites you to join us for the Toronto launch of:

Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition
by Glen Coulthard

Joined by: Lee Maracle, discussant

When: Friday, November 14th, 7 – 9 pm
Where: Beit Zatoun - 612 Markham St. (Bathurst subway station)

November 15, 20141-4pm- Spiderwoman Theater – A Retrospective & Panel (FREE) University of Toronto, Multi Faith Centre 569 Spadina Ave. Native Earth Performing Arts, Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance (IPAA) and Native Women in the Arts present SpiderWoman Theatre-

November 15-16, 2014-9:00am-5pm-INTERSECTION: Entrepreneurship & Indigenous Arts ConferenceCost: Free

Registration: https://intersection-conference.eventbrite.ca/

Program: http://www.research.ocadu.ca/research-and-innovation/home

INTERSECTION will be a unique gathering of Indigenous artists, entrepreneurs, academics and students, telling success stories. The keynote speaker is Dr. Jessica Metcalfe. Stemming from enduring appropriation of Indigenous material culture, Dr. Metcalfe will speak about how her blog Beyond Buckskin applied entrepreneurship as a platform to address local and global social issues. Three distinct panels will expand discussions on emerging business ideas and social innovation approaches. A series of practical workshops using design thinking and a NEW flourishing business model methods will allow attendees to practice and test their ideas for scaling up and sustainability.

The conference will:
- Highlight successful examples of Triple bottom line (Financial, Social, Environmental) enterprise
- Provide practical tools and workshops for students and aspiring entrepreneurs - Provide success stories of income generation for organizations looking for ways to replace government funding
- Address intersections and breakdown barriers between creative and business types

intersection.conference@gmail.com

November 15 2014-9:30pm-Bold As Love Presents: Lal Sweet 16th Anniversary with guest Moe Clark! @ the Gladstone Hotel. Come celebrate lal's sweet 16 anniversary, new video and website launch with special guest Moe Clark (from Montreal)

BOLD AS LOVE is a new music series curated and dedicated to supporting and uniting POC and Indigenous Artists on the same stage! Everyone is welcome!

$8-20 Sliding Scale

djs: Pursuit Grooves / Deejay LEllo Mello L'Oqenz

Review-The Comeback

Review: The Comeback

By: Christine Smith (McFarlane)

The Comeback is a timely book in the sense that it is written at a time in which the political landscape of Canada is changing in both the non-Aboriginal world and the Aboriginal world.

John Ralston Saul delves into many theories and explanations of why Canada is shaped the way that it is in his new book The Comeback. He also calls upon all Canadians to rebuild their relationship with Aboriginal people because it is the centrality of Aboriginal issues and peoples that has the potential to open up a more creative way of imagining ourselves and a more honest narrative for Canada.

In The Comeback, he writes “for the last hundred years Aboriginal peoples have been making a comeback- a remarkable comeback from a terrifyingly low point of population, of legal respect, of civilizational stability, a comeback to a position of power, influence and civilizational creativity” but I beg to differ on this statement and find it to be misleading.

I find it to be misleading because as a First Nations woman, I believe that the current state of affairs in Canada is not about a comeback. First Nations people have always been present and we have always had our rights and have known where they come from. Furthermore, a comeback from a terrifyingly low population is not a result of our own actions, but a result of the dominant takeover of European peoples-colonization.

Our ways of life, our economic well being, social well- being and food sources were jeopardized. European diseases that were brought through contact were particularly destructive and Aboriginal peoples lives were lost. I have always understood that there is a deep contradiction in the reality and the mythology of Canadian life. Saul backs this up by stating “it was in the forty years before the European civil war began that Canadians of European origin decided that “Indians,” “Half-breeds” and “Esquimaux” were among the destined losers when faced by our superiority-our Darwinian destiny.”

Our Canadian history can also be viewed through a racialized lens. Saul writes “The structures within which Aboriginals must work have been artificially put in place by governments, largely by London and Ottawa, actively supported by provincial governments. He goes on to say “And what are these structures?  Treaty versus non-Treaty Indians. Status versus non-Status Indians based on what are effectively complex calculations of blood.”

When looking at history and the definition of who is Aboriginal and who is not, I find it interesting that Saul states in his book A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada that Canada is a Metis civilization heavily influenced and shaped by Aboriginal ideas, but then in The Comeback he states “Canadians who do not think of themselves as Aboriginal will go on misleading themselves as to what is now happening.” This leads me to think that he believes everyone is Aboriginal or maybe I am just misunderstanding this viewpoint, because we (First Nations) are the original peoples of this land, and it is not those who have come and settled in what we now call Canada.

He goes onto to say that “our standard national history portrays the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century as an era of creativity and nation building,” but it was also at the exact time, in the same country, Indigenous peoples were dying or suffering or not reproducing because of the terrible conditions to which they had been reduced, and doing most of this in small communities, out of the sight and mind of the largely European Canadian population.”

Another commentary I am uncomfortable with is the idea that Indigenous peoples have made a comeback due to the events of 2012 and the Idle No More Movement. I believe that everything began a lot sooner than that. There are several pivotal moments in Aboriginal history that paved the way for us to be where we are today. You just need to think of the example of OKA and the voices of solidarity then.

John Ralston Saul writes a wide narrative that may seem pivotal when it comes to speaking of citizens rights and the rebuilding of relationships that were central to the creation of Canada, but I believe it will take a lot more work for the general Canadian public to reach a point where they will understand First Nations peoples and the issues at hand. It’s more than just getting the narrative right, and it is more than just being informed and conscious. We do not see ourselves as victims and it is not sympathy that we want. Taiaike Alfred argued that “reconciliation can mean something if it starts from the position of restitution. And I believe that is something to begin with.

Lastly, the whole term 'comeback' rings false because it is the Euro-Canadian opinion of First Nations people where they see us in society.

The Comeback by John Ralston Saul is published by the Peguin Group, Penguin Books Canada and is 294 pages.