One more week!

The next seven days will determine my life in many facets. I take solice in the fact that there were many others before me who have walked these scarey steps and have come out victorious in the sense that they have achieved something.

It is this something which can be interepreted in many different ways. For me, I would like to think that it would be that those who walk out of this event, will be the wiser about one important fact:

That the 500 plus missing/murdered Aboriginal women of Canada did not choose their fates.

Of the other things we will be discussing of course, I certainly would like to hope that there is some absorption of the facts presented. And of what ends do our means provide any hope for the future?

The one thing that I would like to see come out of this, I have given this question much thought, because I want those in attendance to go away thinking what a great idea it is to have these things. Perhaps first and foremost on my wish list - perhaps a royal commission on the missing/murdered Aboriginal women of Canada?

Why not? Who said I couldn't ask? I could at least ask. I will ask.

Second, the cirriculum in Canada has the tiniest amount of Native "history", especially regarding the interaction that is now between these two people. Or about what roles were so helpful in the early parts of Canada. The tiniest amount leads one to think that we were here waiting for the "white man" to come so we can be his "au paires" in this new frontier, to be dismissed once they were able to take care of themselves.

Third - I have found in talking to a few immigrants, is that their knowledge of this interaction between Natives and the Government, is virtually unknown to them. The first thing they know is that we get status - they don't - and then they think how unfair it is when they see "us" squandering it away - or using it wastefully - where on earth did they get that thought?

I guess the truth would hurt. Of the billions that are "poured" into the leaky bucket of Indian Affairs - much of it stays in Indian Affairs - and doesn't really reach the Indians. So, as far as I am concerned, this thought process is part of the canadian experiement on the Native people.

As they go down their checklist of torturous tactics - they found that they had to stop taking our kids and putting them into sexual bordello's for the perverted priests (was this a harsh way to say it??? oops), or denying the women status and removing her from all her identity into another world that did not accept her, or let's see, we haven't tried turning all of society against them that they will be forced to give up these special treats we graciously allow them to have so that they will be forced to assimilate.

Tsk Tsk Tsk

Hhhmmm..so much to discuss...what is my speech going to say...not really sure at this point, but I have to be honest, nothing scares me more than putting words together to speak for this live audiance.

In sisterhood,

G