https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/carrie-bourassa-indigenous
Some highlights:
White woman pretends to be indigenous, everybody claps:
> With a feather in her hand and a bright blue shawl and Métis sash draped over her shoulders, Carrie Bourassa made her entrance to deliver a TEDx Talk at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon in September 2019, where she detailed her personal rags-to-riches story.
> “My name is Morning Star Bear,” she said, choking up. “I’m just going to say it — I’m emotional.”
> The crowd applauded and cheered.
She invents a stereotypical upbringing to aggrandize herself and make it seem like a win for her (in the form of grants, career opportunities, etc.) is a win for all indigenous people:
> “I’m Bear Clan. I’m Anishinaabe Métis from Treaty Four Territory,” Bourassa said, explaining that she grew up in Regina’s inner city in a dysfunctional family surrounded by addiction, violence and racism.
> She said her saving grace was her Métis grandfather, who would often sit her on his knee and tell her “you’re going to be a doctor or a lawyer.”
> “He would make me repeat it over and over as there was chaos going on, usually violence,” Bourassa said. “And why would he make me say that? Because there was nobody in my family that had ever gone past Grade 8.”
She makes claims to additional and more bespoke ancestry and starts acting more like how white people want her to act:
> Caroline Tait, a Métis professor and medical anthropologist at the U of S, has worked with Bourassa for more than a decade.
> She said early on in Bourassa’s career, she only identified as Métis. But more recently, Tait said, Bourassa began claiming to also be Anishinaabe and Tlingit. Tait said she also began dressing in more stereotypically Indigenous ways, saying the TEDx Talk was a perfect example.
> “Everybody cheers and claps, and it’s beautiful,” said Tait. “It is the performance that we all want from Indigenous people — this performance of being the stoic, spiritual, culturally attached person [with] which we can identify because we’ve seen them in Disney movies.”
Indigenous colleagues become suspicious and examine her ancestry:
> “We start to see that no, as a matter of fact, [Bourassa’s ancestors] are farmers,” Tait said. “These are people who are Eastern European people. They come to Canada, they settle.”
> Tait said genealogical records show that Bourassa’s supposed
... keep reading on reddit ➡
Today is especially not the fucking day to be debating over whether Canada is "doing enough" for Indigenous people. The simple fact of the matter is: they are not.
You're not fooling anyone by asking insensitive questions to "understand" what's going on. I see the comments left by those people, and they try to debate every single thing that contradicts their beliefs. Stop. Do your own fucking research.
Somehow it has become canon that one of my daughter's stuffed animals is a professor of indigenous Canadian studies, a topic that I don't actually know anything about. I guess I need help learning about the topic so I can supply better dialog for her. The animal is a moose in case that helps.
Check out this video taken recently of the Canadian Coast Guard VANDALIZING indigenous lobster traps while the DFO looks on, doing NOTHING.
There are LAWS BEING BROKEN by Canadian Federal Officers, but ZERO OUTRAGE from Canadians. They all justify this ongoing offence by stating that the situation is "complicated". Then they try to point to the states! But shit like this DOESN'T HAPPEN in the states, because their government is at least marginally accountable to the people! Clearly, Canada's isn't.
A story from the Economist about the Senakw project being built by the Squamish Nation in Vancouver.
> “It’s easier to elect a pope than to approve a small apartment building in the city of Vancouver,” says Ginger Gosnell-Myers, of Nisga’a and Kwakwak’awakw heritage, and formerly the city’s first-ever indigenous-relations manager. Such is the power of local nimbys that it is difficult to build new homes, and legions of young people are doomed to live with their parents for years, if not decades. But on some land the normal rules do not apply. No one can tell the Squamish First Nation, an indigenous group, what to build on their territory. > > One patch of its reserve is in Kitsilano, a ritzy part of Vancouver. Despite being close to the city centre, it is full of single-family homes and duplexes. Residents fiercely resist the construction of tall buildings. But they cannot stop the Squamish from erecting 59-storey skyscrapers. This year could see the ground broken for Senakw—12 towers containing 6,000 flats, mostly for renting. It would be the largest private indigenous development in Canada. > > Extra homes are sorely needed. Vancouver is the second-most-expensive city in the world, after Hong Kong. Tough zoning rules mean that the supply of new homes cannot meet demand. The Squamish, however, are free to build bigger, faster and cheaper than other landowners. Khelsilem (who goes by one name), the Squamish’s spokesman, says a typical project of this size would spend five to ten years in the planning process. He expects Senakw to take two, provided the federal government responds quickly to the Squamish’s request for a long lease on their land.
> ... In 2019 the city vowed to put up 20,000 new rental units. Senakw would meet roughly a quarter of that target, points out Ms Gosnell-Myers. “The Squamish Nation is more responsive to average Vancouverites than Vancouver city hall.”
Been hearing stories about boundary-crossing sexual behaviours and worse in native communities and apparently the women are just supposed to put up with it. Wtf is that about?
