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A Day in the Life of a Banned Canadian: Conversing with Kevin Annett
by Sarah J. Miller Sarah J. Miller is the pseudonym of an award-winning syndicated journalist. In her words, “I’m assuming an uncharacteristic anonymity in this case because of threats made against me if I proceeded with an investigative piece about Reverend Annett. Such warnings actually perked my curiosity about the man and the shit storm [...]
Stranger in a Strange Land: Notes on a Trip through Florida amidst a Sort of Primary Madness
Terry and his wife and four kids live in a tiny, barely functioning house in the poorer part of Daytona Beach. He’s been out of work for over a year and they’re down to living off food stamps and whatever they can borrow from friends and family. And next week, the rent is due. Nevertheless, [...]
Can a “White Man” Speak about the Crimes of his own Culture?
An Open Letter to Pastor Kathy Nelson and the Dismantling Racism Committee of the Peace United Church of Christ in Duluth, Minnesota Dear friends, Recently, I was told that your months-old invitation to me to preach to your congregation on February 5 has been withdrawn because of the alleged protests of two unidentified “native men”, [...]
Is it Nothing to You? Another Hero Falls Ricky Lavallie: 1960-2012
Ricky Lavallie: 1960 – 2012 By Kevin D. Annett Ricky Lavallie is dead. He was a 51 year old native man, and was the sole witness to the murder by three Vancouver policemen of another key aboriginal activist in our network, Johnny Bingo Dawson. The sudden death of Ricky Lavallie on January 3 has wiped [...]
Waking up to what we Are, and What we can Be: Thoughts on this Week’s Latest Panic
When our adversary loses his liberties, it’s called justice. When we lose ours, it’s called dictatorship. – Ammon Henacy I’ve been advised by people apparently in the know that America officially became a police state this past week, with the passing of President Obama’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Meanwhile, across the waters, friends in [...]
Singing a Farewell Lament to Ourselves at the End of a World, and at the Birth of Another: Understanding 2012
New Year’s Eve in Nanaimo, as the rain falls quietly on a year’s memories, and on an unhurried dawn. The old adage is true, it seems: that as we age, the years come and go more quickly, but so do the lessons of our life. Tonight, they crowd me as I gaze out at the [...]
Why do Primates Kill their own Kind? A Christmas Epistle to Anglican Archbishop Fred Hiltz
Dear Fred, You may have heard of Crazy Walter, since he collapsed the pomp and dignity of one of your predecessors on a memorable spring day in 1990, at the Vancouver seminary I attended. Walt went on to a street corner preaching in Toronto and the kind of insane joy so unfamiliar to the Church [...]
‘Tis the Season to be Brain Dead, but Listen up Anyway: A Holiday Message and an Invitation to Anglican Bishop Bob (“The Shredder”) Bennett and other assorted Scrooges
Dear Bob, I hear you’ve told all your staff they’ll be fired if they talk to anyone about the documents you’re sitting on, concerning your Mush Hole Indian residential school where we’ve been unearthing tiny bones that are likely human. That’s pretty harsh, Bob. It is Christmas, after all. And it’s not as if [...]
The Bone that Could Change Everything: A Time to End our Complicity in Murder, and Reinvent Canada
by Kevin D. Annett The tiny bone weighs hardly anything, and yet it is the weightiest evidence in Canadian history. The forensic specialists are nearly definite that it’s the upper thigh bone of a small child, maybe four or five years old. This month, their tests will confirm what I felt was true when I [...]
The Mush Hole Missing Children Investigation
Why two kids to a grave doesn’t matter: More than innocence is buried To have come so far, and suffered so much, to finally hold the reason for it all in my hand. The truth has become as immediately hard and real as these brown bone shards themselves, from a hip, a leg, a spine: [...]