Woody Guthrie and Left Settler-Colonialism Woody Guthrie died in late-1967, a few months after I was born. Many people understand him to be one of the great “American” (yes, the quotes are deliberate) folk singers and song-writers, and many of those people are also aware that Guthrie was an avowed socialist and anti-fascist. His guitar famously displayed the regular message, threat, or promise: “This machine kills fascists.” Believe it or not, there was a time when this was not an unusual sentiment, way …
Category: Short Rants
On July 1st, 2021 the Canadian Historical Association (CHA) — which represents some 650 professional historians across the country — released a statement saying that Canada’s “long history of violence and dispossession” directed at indigenous peoples …
Tha Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) followed the corporate media newswire framing for its headline on May 11, 2021: Israelis are “killed” with the active voice; Palestinians “die” with the passive voice. Even the headlines are colonial. …
Hard to believe 20 years has passed since this little festival in Quebec City against the FTAA. We had a fairly large contingent of Winnipeggers, lots of folks from the Mondragon and G7 Welcoming Committee collectives, …
I’ve heard a lot of Canadians get indignant over the years about charges that this has always been, and continues to be, a fundamentally racist and colonial society. They were indignant when Maclean’s published a piece …
Musings in the wake of Joseph Boyden’s fall from grace, 2016. One of the things I remember most from my first creative writing class with David Arnason at the U of Manitoba (way back in 1985-86) …