Let's Talk About Reconciliation

Let's Talk About Reconciliation was an event at the Vancouver Public Library on February 21st that was facilitated by Jules Koostachin (former Aboriginal Storyteller in Residence at VPL). It was great to be at a table with union women - Michelle from CUPE 4879, Aliza from CUPE 391, Debra from CUPE 728 and Laurie formerly of the BC Fed. 

 The evening was one in a series that was a partnership with UNESCO. The purpose of the evening was to put people in a room - indigenous and non-indigenous to talk about healing. The purpose of having the event in the public library centres around that they are the beacons of knowledge and spaces for contemplation. It wasn't lost on the room that the event was on the same day as International Mother Language Day - as we talked about the revitalization of indigenous languages in BC (the province had made an announcement the day prior about investing $50million in indigenous languages). 

 For the evening's main event, Jules curated and put together a program of Canadian indigenous all found on the NFB database. 

 After the films Jules led us in a discussion about the films we watched in relation to the questions at our tables. As always, these events are always a learning opportunity and spending a couple of hours watching films I wouldn't have seen before was worth the 2+ hours we were there.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflections : 2017 CUPE National Convention

Image
The 2017 CUPE National Convention took place in Toronto, October 2-6. Every 2 years CUPE members from across Canada gather to set the course of the national union for the next two years. Prior to the opening of convention, each sector meets for a couple of hours to get caught up with the goings on across the country.  As co-chair of the CUPE National Library Workers' Committee I was happy to wish the convention a happy "Canadian Library Month." I decided to use the signs created by National to profile and introduce people to our members who work in libraries. Throughout the week I got to know our library workers and allies about what their work/library means to them and I invite y'all to take a look. :) Highlights: Equality Forum: Art as Resistance Against Precarity One of the best experiences in the labour movement I had was at the 2016 Summer Institute for Union Women where each session we had featured a local spoken word artist. Art allows history to breat
Read more

2019 BCNDP Convention - Women's Rights Committee Convention

Image
BCNDP Women's Rights Committee Convention We started our BCNDP convention experience off by attending the Women's Rights Committee (WRC) convention which occurs prior to the opening plenary.  We were fortunate to have Rhiannon Bennett, from Delta, give the territorial acknowledgement. She started off by holding up a purse and a scarf, and acknowledged that both of which belonged to Maurine Karagianis. She asked "is it enough to acknowledge these items of Maurine's if I have them, for her to access the economy ?" Nope. We, the NDP need to do better - it's not about shame or guilt, but about acknowledging the privilege of what we've been given. She talked to us about the resilience of indigenous peoples and how they've been able to save their languages in the face of being being jailed for speaking their languages, having needles poked into their tongues in residential school, and other horrific things. Rhiannon brought humour and heart to her te
Read more

Labor Notes Comes to Town: Vancouver Trouble Makers School!

Image
"Where I come from we are not called troublemakers or shit disturbers, we are human rights defenders. When we stir some shit it's for the working class!" Chris Sorio, Migrante BC So in April 2018 I went to Chicago and attended the Labor Notes Conference for the first time and it changed my life. It was the first time I had gone to a conference so big, so unapologetically socialist, so full of a class analysis, focusing on organizing, on movement building, on workers' power! To put the "movement" back in the labour movement! It was not about which position you held in the union, it was about the collective working together to fight against the right and the boss and workers to take ownership of their unions. I wrote extensively about it on this blog - here , here , here  and the session with the West Virginia Teachers got their own post . It was at that conference I met a ton of awesome activists from BC. The Vancouver crew met at the Canada caucus a
Read more