There are three interesting workshops this year, check them out!
2:15
Resisting 2010: No Olympics on Stolen Land
4:00
From Gaza to Gustafsen: The Links Between the Intifada & Indigenous Sovereignty
5:30
Peoples History of Kanada: Chapter 2 - Internment, Displacement & Stolen Generations
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Read the details about our 2009 workshops below.
Resisting 2010: No Olympics on Stolen Land
at 2:15
This workshop will cover a range of perspectives on the 2010 Winter Games and their impact on our communities.
Far from being simply about ‘sport’, the history of the Olympics is one rooted in displacement, corporate greed, fascism, repression, and violence. The effects of the upcoming
Games are clear - theft of indigenous lands; increasing homelessness and gentrification of poor neighborhoods; privatization of public services; exploitative working conditions especially for migrant labour; unprecedented military and police presence and repression; ballooning public debt; and destruction of the environment. Come learn about the issues and get involved in challenging the corporate circus when it hits town in 2010!
Panelists:
The Olympic Resistance Network
ORN is primarily based in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories, and exists as a space to coordinate anti-2010 Olympics efforts. Organizing through the ORN is largely being done under the primary slogan and understanding of “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land,” although this is an opportunity for a large convergence of groups including anti-capitalist, Indigenous, anti-poverty, labour, migrant justice, housing, environmental justice, civil libertarian, anti-war, and anti-colonial.
Micheal Vonn
Vonn is the Policy Director of the BC Civil Liberties Association. The BCCLA is Canada’s leading civil liberties group,actively working on issues such as police accountability, prevention of torture, privacy protection and freedom of expression.
Christopher Shaw
Shaw was involved in anti-globalization organizing and served as a “street medic” in demonstrations from Quebec City to the present. He was the provincial Green Party media chair from 2003 to 2005 and is now the media spokesperson and policy analyst for the Work Less Party. He is currently active with the Olympic Resistance Network.
From Gaza to Gustafsen: The Links Between the Intifada & Indigenous Sovereignty
at 4:00
This workshop will focus on the connections between the political struggles in the occupied territories of Palestine and the movement for Indigenous Sovereignty in the unceded territories of Canada. After the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, more than half of the Palestinian population at the time were driven off their homeland. Similarly, in Canada, after European invasion, many Indigenous peoples were removed from their traditional territories and forced onto reservations, where current living conditions have been described as analogous to third world countries.
The connectivity between these two also includes being subjected to models of “social control”, and permanent internal colonialism. This has contributed to systems of apartheid that include checkpoints, ID/ status cards, the attempted annihilation of culture and the destruction of traditional lands and livelihood.
Like Palestinian liberation groups, who continue the “Intifada” in the name of not being systematically decimated as a people, Native Sovereigntists have also been criminalized and their steadfast resistance and struggle for self-determination has been met with excessive military repression and violence.
Panelists:
Gord Hill
Hill from the Kwakwaka’wakw nation, has been involved in indigenous anti-colonial and anti-capitalist resistance since 1987. He is a writer, artist, public speaker and organizer currently maintaining the No2010.com website and WarriorPublications.com
Hanna Kawas
Kawas was born in Bethlehem, Palestine and is a long-time Palestinian activist and broadcaster. He is the chair of Canada Palestine Association (www.cpavancouver.org) and founder and cohost of the Voice of Palestine on Co-op Radio (www.voiceofpalestine.ca) Hanna has been without a Canadian passport for over 10 years due to the refusal of Canadian authorities to inscribe Palestine as his country of birth. (See PDF: http://cpavancouver.org/bdenied.pdf)
Invincible
Please see performers section for full bio of Invincible.
Peoples History of Kanada: Chapter 2 - Internment, Displacement & Stolen Generations
at 5:30
Part 2 of our series The People’s History of Kanada will highlight the commonalities shared between three communities who suffered grave injustices at the hands of the Canadian government. Over the past several decades, the Canadian government has attempted to reconcile these shameful acts, by way of formal “apologies” and restitution.
Residential Schools:
In B.C., the first Indian Residential School was established in 1861 and was operated by the Roman Catholic Church. In 1920, Canada amended the Indian Act, making it mandatory for aboriginal parents to send their children to residential schools. Funded under the ”Indian Act” by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, the schools were run by churches of various denominations. This bold state-funded enterprise was for the most part carried out in western Canada with tremendous bureaucratic and missionary zeal for over a century. The attempt to force assimilation involved punishing children for speaking their own languages or practicing their own faiths and this punishment often came in the form of mental, physical and sexual abuse. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, and a lack of medical care led to high rates of tuberculosis, and death rates of up to 69 percent, an obvious attempt at cultural genocide.
Internment of Japanese Canadians:
Following the attack by Japan on the United States at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and spurred on by a history of anti-Asian and racist sentiments, the federal government used the War Measures Act to pass Orders-in-Council to expel, incarcerate, dispossess, disperse and deport “persons of Japanese racial origin.” 22,000 people, 75% of whom were Canadian citizens, and some whose families had been in Canada for three generations or more, were expelled from their homes in B.C., had their property seized and sold (the proceeds from which were used to pay for their own internment) and were herded off to internment and labour camps in the Interior of B.C.; sugar-beet and other farms in Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario; and labour and Prisoner of War camps in Ontario. The conditions of all these sites were extremely poor. In 1945, after the war was over, the Canadian government deported 4,000 people to Japan. By 1947, the government had dispersed over 13,000 Japanese Canadians east of B.C.
Komagatu Maru: (Please see full editorial)
The Komagata Maru was a ship chartered by Sikh businessman Gurdit Singh to challenge Canada’s racially motivated continuous-journey regulation. The ship arrived in Burrard Inlet on May 23, 1914, where for two months the passengers and the authorities were involved in a heated legal battle. In the end, only 24 passengers were given permission to legally stay in Canada. The ship was then forced to sail back to India with the remaining passengers still on board.
Panelists:
Chin Banerjee
Now retired from the Department of English at SFU, Chin has been an activist in the Indian community since the 1970’s, focusing on the struggle against racism in Canada and social justice and human rights issues in Canada and India. He is Secretary of South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy and President of South Asian Film Education Society.
Dr. Hari Sharma
Sharma is President of South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy and is a long-time political activist and author in Canada and India.
Kat Norris
Kat Norris has been an activist since the mid 70’s when she joined the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. A survivor of Kuper Island Residential School, she continues to use her voice as coordinator of the Indigenous Action Movement, keeping Indigenous issues in the news, most notably the deaths of Frank Paul, Kyle Tait and housing issues in the Downtown Eastside. Her free time is spent writing, painting, doing spoken word, and pow wow dancing.
Mona Oikawa
Mona Oikawa is Associate Professor in the Race, Ethnicity and Indigeneity Program at York University (http://www.atkinson.yorku.ca/SSocialS/rei). Her current researcsh examines the relationship of Japanese Canadians to a history of colonialism in Canada. Her book, Cartographies of Violence: Women, Memory, and the Subject(s) of the “Internment” is forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press. Mona has worked for over 30 years in community organizing.
