Not Keeping Sweet

The phrase referenced in my title is used mostly these days by evangelical Christians (like the Quiverfull Duggars) and Mormons (especially the polgyamist communities) The words may vary a bit, but 'keep sweet' is meant (by far in the majority) for women and children and is directed at their behaviour.

Their job, should they want it or not, is to always be obedient to the commands of their community leaders and always maintain a cheerful, 'happy to obey' mien whatever their inner mental states, because to do otherwise, to be complaining and rebellious, to question and doubt and contradict, brings shame on the reputation of the men divinely ordained to lead their households and communities.

Those who don't 'keep sweet' face a range of punishments until they learn to fake being happy or surrender to Stepford wife robotic joy. The problem is not, so they are told, that the system is failing them, it's that they are failing the system. It's the ultimate tiger trap in the positive thinking guilt trip.

Positive thinking is great, but the more systemic blocks are placed in the way of success, the more that bizarre goals identified as 'success' are set, the more someone's inner survival system will be balking at jumping through razor-edged hoops too small for them to fit, or it will be psychologically melting down repeatedly trying to overcome rigged circumstances with inadequate support and resources. Balking is not negative thinking. That's a reality check.

That's the trouble with evolving large group societies out of group loving critters like humans, who can also anticipate suffering and death.

So, the hypothesis gets set up again and again, is it better for survival inside a society to...

A/ 'keep sweet' and think positive so some day you'll be the very best at what you do and what you do is what you're told (which is always possible to be what you merit if what you merit is what you're told you merit) .

B/ balk against a rigged game and demand a rewrite of societal rules that promotes more participants in the society gaining survival factor by positive merit.

Historically, option B events have had the crap lethally kicked out of them a lot by the societal leaders in position to judge option A. Survival conditions have to have serious diminishing returns to go against the framework of a society by individuals. One of the classic ways of 'keeping sweet' aka 'being shut the fuck up' is to be dead. It takes many, many feet in the streets to shift B to a positive outcome. Fall of the Berlin Wall. Collapse of the Soviet Union. Latin America. Arab Spring.

But here we are again on a local level. G20. Occupy seedpoints. And now, Attawapiskat. The band didn't keep sweet. They were swiftly judged, warning them to get back to option A.

They're not going. This is serious B-ball. Attawapiskat isn't the first or the only community in Canada to have nothing to lose, but it has finally gained international attention amid international unrest against the wealthy and powerful, and by that, it's hurting Harper's pride while he's lecturing other countries on how *their* little people are not keeping sweet.

What can possibly go wrong?

(edited to take out a sentence fragment that should have been deleted before posting and sprinkle a few commas around)

Contemptuous Cuts

Funny priorities those Cons have.

Over at Jason Kenney's ministry For Keeping Heathens And Scary Dusky-Skinned Folks Out Of Canada, approximately 1,000,000 applications for residency are stuck in backlog limbo. But MinJKenney is queening around the country, claiming the backlog was caused by the Liberals - or implicitely, civil servants working inefficiently under Lib government, but who are now up to speed in spite of staff cuts because the Cons are better taskmasters.

Their lies never end, do they?

Thus Diane Finley follows suit, using her ministry to slash programs that benefit Dusky-Skinned Folks In Canada Who Aren't Dead Yet, also known as Aboriginal and First Nations citizens.

[...] Human Resources and Skills Development [has cut] $490,000 [in funding] to Wapikoni Mobile.

Over the past seven years, this non-profit organization has included the participation of over 2,000 aboriginal youth in 19 communities in Quebec and has helped them to produce over 600 films and musical productions. These productions have been seen all over the world and the producers have been awarded 40 national and international awards for their work.

From here.

So far nothing has appeared in the press or media in the rest of Canada. Le Devoir has been on the story and Radio-Canada has interviewed Manon Barbeau, the force behind this brilliant and successful program.

For the last eight years, an exceptional and pioneering media experience has given new means of expression and a sense of hope to aboriginal youth on reserves in Quebec.

The Wapikonimobile is a mobile video production unit – or rather three of them – travelling from community to community, providing video training and supervising the making of short films. For youngsters confronted with substance abuse, an epidemic of suicides and an almost complete lack of job prospects, this was an extraordinary opportunity, and they took advantage of it. Some 2000 of them learned production skills, and made some 450 films expressing their own realities. Some of those films had real cinematic qualities and were shown in festivals here and abroad.

But now, the federal Department of Human Resources has cancelled its half-million dollar grant, about half of the Wapikonimobile’s total budget– at a time when the production units should already have been on the road. Young people in numerous communities who have been looking forward to this experience for a whole year now find themselves without anything to do for the summer and without the means for expressing themselves. For what reason? Because, according to the minister, other projects offer better prospects for creating jobs and teaching skills.

Quebec’s excellent daily Le Devoir, which broke the Wapikonimobile story yesterday, has another story today (July 19th) revealing that the arts and the community and aboriginal sectors are hard hit by other little publicized Human Resources cutbacks as well. This is surely a sign of where things are going under the majority conservative government.

From here.

Write to Contempt Party Minister Diane Finley. Keep it polite. Be supportive of the program. Explain why you want your tax money to support Wapikoni Mobile and ^NOT the distribution of bibles to schools on reserves.

Oh. Wait. Perhaps you shouldn't mention that last bit. It may not be strategic.

Grand merci to Karyn who located source material in English.

First Nations and the VanOC

Co-habitation is always fraught with conflict, unresolved issues and, occasionally, opportunities to set aside disputes and differences.

The upcoming Olympic©™ Winter Games in BC are such an occasion. In spite of the sometimes violent, often acrimonious history between the people native to Canada and the various ethnic groups who immigrated here, there seems to exist a precarious agreement among some of their descendants to make the best of the situation. The BBC's take:

The Games, set to attract international attention, have a particular importance for Canada's aboriginal peoples, as many of the sporting events will take place on their ancestral land.

The peoples involved - the Lil'wat, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations - who live on and share the land, have joined forces. Together with the Vancouver Olympic Committee (Vanoc), they will be hosting the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games in a partnership that is making Olympic history.

This is the first time that aboriginals have been official partners in the Olympics and have been involved in every aspect of the Games starting from the bidding process. [...] Tewanee Joseph, head of the umbrella group known as the Four Host First Nations, sees the Vancouver Winter Olympics as a great time for aboriginals to rebrand themselves in a positive way.

"What people will learn is that we're business people, we're entrepreneurs, we're visual artists and we're performing artists. You know our culture is really living and thriving today and it's been through challenges," says Mr Joseph. "We no longer want to be seen as just Dime Store Indians, just beads and feathers. I think for us those stereotypes are very important for us to break."

Despite all the potential positive attention on their culture, many of British Columbia's aboriginals still feel that the decision to hold the Olympics in Vancouver (and the resort town of Whistler) was wrong.

"A lot of First Nations considered the land to be stolen," says Josh Anderson from the Lil'wat Nation. [...] For aboriginals like Rose Henry, of Sliammon heritage, and Jayson Fleury, who is Saulteaux-Cree, the idea that Vanoc is spending [billions of dollars] on the Games is upsetting.

They both belong to the Olympic Resistance Network (ORN) whose motto is "No Olympics on Stolen Native Land." They believe that some of that money should be spent on issues like homelessness and addiction.

"If you go to Vancouver's downtown eastside, you will see that most of the homeless are First Nations people and they are from this area," says Mr Fleury. "So their rights, their livelihood are not being honoured in any fashion."

"It is costing us a lot more than just the dollars," adds Ms Henry. "Many of our community members are paying with their lives with the inadequate housing and healthcare and so the rippling effects go beyond the 17-day party that's going to be happening here that we can't afford."

From here. One wonders if the ReformaTory government will wait until after the Games to launch another legal appeal against Insite.

The Devil is a Christian invention and these days, he's a Moozlim.

Maisy Odjick and Shannon Alexander vanished from the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg community near Maniwaki in September 2008, leaving behind their wallets and clothing.

Family members say they've had little help from Quebec provincial police, who initially believed the girls ran away. "Two teenagers don't just disappear off the face of this Earth with nothing. They had no ID, they had no clothes except for the ones on their back," said Odjick [Maisy's mother Laurie], as she fought back tears.

"There was no support, there was no investigation. Search teams weren't involved."

Throughout the investigation, native activists have criticized police for not taking the case seriously because the girls are Aboriginal.

If the girls' relatives had reported that the girls had been forcibly converted to Islam, perhaps an immediate Canada-wide alert would have been issued, as it has happened in the UK for this girl.

But then, Maisy and Shannon are not the pallid-skinned daughters of an Islamophobic community, are they?

Yeah - I'm being sarcastic. It's not just young Aboriginal women or girls that are at risk; any curious or vulnerable adolescent can become the target of a sexual predator or forced into service for prostitution networks.

Logue, the youth intervention co-ordinator for the Ottawa Police Service, isn’t sounding the alarm just yet. There aren’t hard numbers to support the theory, but the anecdotal evidence coming from the street is enough to prompt police and their partner agencies to discuss preventative measures.

Castille Troy, executive director of Minwaashin Lodge, fears the girls are being trafficked to other large Canadian cities and possibly out of the country. Being lured into prostitution isn’t specific to Aboriginal girls, but Troy points out a variety of factors, including urban culture shock, addictions and other mental health issues, that pull them into the dangerous lifestyle.

“There are predators out there just waiting for girls,” Troy says. “It’s an extremely dangerous situation for girls to find themselves in.”

The issue of Aboriginal women disappearing has been a cross-country concern for years. The Native Women’s Association of Canada has counted more than 510 cases of missing or murdered Aboriginal females over the past three decades.

We wrote here that Robert Pickton said that the Bible was his inspiration for his crusade against those he considered evil. A form of Christian "honour" killing of marginal women, it would seem.

Body Bags Sent to Manitoba Reserves as Prep for H1N1

This is beyond horrifying. Mere months after federal officials dithered about what public health resources and material support should be provided to Aboriginal Reserves in Manitoba, this happens.

Aboriginal leaders in Manitoba are horrified that some of the reserves hardest hit by swine flu in the spring have received dozens of body bags from Health Canada.

The body bags — which were sent to the remote northern reserves of Wasagamack, St. Theresa Point and Garden Hill — came in a shipment of hand sanitizers and face masks.

Chief Jerry Knott of Wasagamack First Nation said his community's nursing station received about 30 body bags.

"This disturbed our community members and continues to be a major concern. We had asked for funding so we can get organized and to ensure medicines, hand sanitizers and other preventative kits were in place but, instead, we are shocked to receive the body bags," he said. "To me, this is unacceptable and I am demanding an answer.

Stephen Harper's New Conservative Government: incompetent, callous, or both?

Always Look On The (b)Right Side of Life!

Inside the Queensway's Kady O'Malley liveblogs the H1N1 hearing: (Flu) shots all round!

ToeDancer who frequently comments at DAMMIT JANET! and who is a veritable source of wisdom and knowledge spotted this observation from Conservative MP Cathy McLeod cited by O'Malley:

Hey, did you know we were “really lucky to have SARS”? Because we were, according to the Conservative MP up now ... — it allowed us to prepare for *this*. Why, going on that logic, aren’t we lucky to be facing a possible H1N1 outbreak, since you never know when the bubonic plague might make a return appearance?

Oh my. I guess that McLeod felt prodded to speak up, given that MP Carolyn Bennett expressed strong concern about the fact that much of the preparation work was being done via conference call, and asked how well the government is measuring and testing capacity to revise “the plan”, while MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis suggested that the government was putting a “rosy face” on its readiness, but witnesses delegated by native communities were presenting a completely different version of reality, including the startling revelation that some Manitoba communities are being forced to hold fundraising drives for flu kits.

The hearing was concluded by a rousing chorus of "Always Look On The Bright Side of Life" by the members of Stephen Harper's Conservative Government.

Kidding.