Slow Summer
There was an article in the Vancouver Sun by Vaughn Palmer last weekend, about how quiet it was around the BC Legislature this summer. It could be because they kept things so quiet this spring. Mentioned in the article, iirc, is the truckers’ strike, the nurses and doctors, the upcoming Olympics costs, etc. etc. but not a thing about our aboriginal folk.
For two months in the spring, Haida and non-Haida alike blocked roads and halted major logging on Haida Gwaii.
The Island Spirit Uprising, as it was called, pushed the provincial government to begin high level negotiations with the Haida leadership.
Elsewhere in the MM news: A First Nations activist arrested at gunpoint in Vancouver last month has been elected to a senior position with one of B.C.’s largest aboriginal organizations. David Dennis of Port Alberni is the new vice president of the United Native Nations, which represents nearly 100,000 off-reserve Aboriginal people in B.C. One thing the arrest and then release does show, is some light on the INSET or “Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams”. An odd branch, for some reason Youth and Aboriginal Communities are under the same priorities as Organized Crime, Terrorism, and International Policing.