Thursday, February 02, 2006
the forecast of Jesus
So the real update is that somehow my dad wrangled my mom into letting me keep the money. [1] So I will be ok afterall, but I still ended up just dumping everything on her today anyways, which makes me feel awful. I did ask her to ask my dad to sit me down and talk about financial management though, so that will be good. I feel a lot better about things, and it is not even because I now have the money, but that really I'm overreacting. And yeah, sometimes I overeact, but sometimes if no one talks me down from that, which my mom is good at, I'll stay up there and continue to freak out about everything going wrong and it all being my fault. Because sometimes, believe it or not, things are not my fault, but I make them my fault. I don't know where I've learned that little trick, but it's amazing.
"Oh my god! These earthworms are wiggling all over the sidewalk in the rain! They'll be killed!"
"Oh geez....my fault. I'm sorry."
So admittedly, this letter that still continues to sit on my desk, waiting for me to read it one more time so it can crush my soul into tiny bits, is still bothering me. I had an appointment for yesterday, but the priority of the practicum-goers of this semester takes precedence over monster people who eat children and fail their practicum, so I got bumped to February 7th. For a while now since that letter, I think I've just been in denial or something of it. I read it twice, and acknowleged that it would definately be harmful to keep reading it, because honestly, nothing educational can be gleaned from it that I haven't already realized, and haven't already cried about. And then I felt like my resolve to do better and kick ass had been hardened, and that I would be fine, but so help me, today was not a day of "hard-ass resolving to do better." Sometimes that little piece of paper with doodling on the back makes me want to just give up and move to an abandoned villa in Mexico where I can write my days away and smoke peyote. If I smoked peyote. Maybe I'd just smoke Marlboros.
I went to another keynote speaker of International week today, and I had a startling realization. It was called "Our Missing Sisters", and it was about all the missing aboriginal women across Canada. The number is at 470, and we never hear about them. There is a Canadian Aboriginal women's advocacy group run out of Ottawa, but they don't do anything outside of Ottawa, which is where our speaker comes in. Now there is a --fuck--I'll have to update this later with actual facts and whatnot, right now I'm too tired---chapter in Edmonton primarily, because we are actually the city that is the cause of the most concern in Canada. Our Aboriginal population is on the verge of surpassing the Aboriginal population in Winnipeg, at 50, 000.
The bottom line I guess, is that it was a good presentation, but I felt it could have been a lot better. I've realized lately that by making issues comfortable to talk about, that people are more inclined to be apathetic. I argue that the way that the media has progressed, we operate on a system of change affected the best through shock and discomfort. This woman was too gentle on the statistics (she decided we probably "didn't want to hear them." Like holy crap woman, why are you here then?), and just-- For the seriousness of the issue, she did it no justice. That said though, out of all the things I've heard on this matter (regarding specifically the Picton murders, and the murders of Aboriginal women in Edmonton), she and her organization seem to be the ones doing the most to bring awareness about, and being the most effective at it. Like, I really have to hand it to them and her, because they've been very aggressive, and very successful at getting their concerns across.
Some interesting things:
A police department in Saskatoon was found to have been using photocopied pictures of missing Aboriginal women for target practice.
An Aboriginal woman in Grand Prairie who phoned 9-1-1 to report that her estranged husband was breaking into her house to kill her, did not get help. No emergency crews were sent, and her body was found 12 days later by her adult children who were concerned as to her whereabouts.
One of the speaker's employees at a woman's shelter went outside to get some air in a back alley, and realized that since she was aboriginal, if she was killed right then and her body was found in a back alley, they would assume her to be a prostitute.
Almost 2/3 of the prostitutes in Edmonton (out of about 500 known) are Aboriginal.
She told us a story about a little girl whom she'd met, who had been in elementry school and been teased about being Native. The teasing got so bad that she was embarrassed to be Aboriginal, and to the point where she was sent to culture counselling because she was found in the bathroom with a bottle of bleach, at 6 years old, trying to "change the color of her skin."
At the end of the presentation, I asked the speaker if there were even any Aboriginal Advocacy groups up in northern Alberta. There aren't. I've since been sort of churning it around all day that one should be started. When I think about Cold Lake and the underlying area around it, and the lack of resources or information, and general apathy/racist attitudes held as normal there, it could be really helpful to start changing attitudes somehow, through a group like this. Even if it was doing presentations at schools, or at town meetings or writing angry letters to a few of the town counsellors whom I know from personal experience are racist, and MLA's and such. I guess I need to define more where to start exactly though. But I'm definately thinking about it a lot.
[1] Read: exercised some logical thinking power. ¶ 12:41 AM
So the real update is that somehow my dad wrangled my mom into letting me keep the money. [1] So I will be ok afterall, but I still ended up just dumping everything on her today anyways, which makes me feel awful. I did ask her to ask my dad to sit me down and talk about financial management though, so that will be good. I feel a lot better about things, and it is not even because I now have the money, but that really I'm overreacting. And yeah, sometimes I overeact, but sometimes if no one talks me down from that, which my mom is good at, I'll stay up there and continue to freak out about everything going wrong and it all being my fault. Because sometimes, believe it or not, things are not my fault, but I make them my fault. I don't know where I've learned that little trick, but it's amazing."Oh my god! These earthworms are wiggling all over the sidewalk in the rain! They'll be killed!"
"Oh geez....my fault. I'm sorry."
So admittedly, this letter that still continues to sit on my desk, waiting for me to read it one more time so it can crush my soul into tiny bits, is still bothering me. I had an appointment for yesterday, but the priority of the practicum-goers of this semester takes precedence over monster people who eat children and fail their practicum, so I got bumped to February 7th. For a while now since that letter, I think I've just been in denial or something of it. I read it twice, and acknowleged that it would definately be harmful to keep reading it, because honestly, nothing educational can be gleaned from it that I haven't already realized, and haven't already cried about. And then I felt like my resolve to do better and kick ass had been hardened, and that I would be fine, but so help me, today was not a day of "hard-ass resolving to do better." Sometimes that little piece of paper with doodling on the back makes me want to just give up and move to an abandoned villa in Mexico where I can write my days away and smoke peyote. If I smoked peyote. Maybe I'd just smoke Marlboros.
I went to another keynote speaker of International week today, and I had a startling realization. It was called "Our Missing Sisters", and it was about all the missing aboriginal women across Canada. The number is at 470, and we never hear about them. There is a Canadian Aboriginal women's advocacy group run out of Ottawa, but they don't do anything outside of Ottawa, which is where our speaker comes in. Now there is a --fuck--I'll have to update this later with actual facts and whatnot, right now I'm too tired---chapter in Edmonton primarily, because we are actually the city that is the cause of the most concern in Canada. Our Aboriginal population is on the verge of surpassing the Aboriginal population in Winnipeg, at 50, 000.
The bottom line I guess, is that it was a good presentation, but I felt it could have been a lot better. I've realized lately that by making issues comfortable to talk about, that people are more inclined to be apathetic. I argue that the way that the media has progressed, we operate on a system of change affected the best through shock and discomfort. This woman was too gentle on the statistics (she decided we probably "didn't want to hear them." Like holy crap woman, why are you here then?), and just-- For the seriousness of the issue, she did it no justice. That said though, out of all the things I've heard on this matter (regarding specifically the Picton murders, and the murders of Aboriginal women in Edmonton), she and her organization seem to be the ones doing the most to bring awareness about, and being the most effective at it. Like, I really have to hand it to them and her, because they've been very aggressive, and very successful at getting their concerns across.
Some interesting things:
A police department in Saskatoon was found to have been using photocopied pictures of missing Aboriginal women for target practice.
An Aboriginal woman in Grand Prairie who phoned 9-1-1 to report that her estranged husband was breaking into her house to kill her, did not get help. No emergency crews were sent, and her body was found 12 days later by her adult children who were concerned as to her whereabouts.
One of the speaker's employees at a woman's shelter went outside to get some air in a back alley, and realized that since she was aboriginal, if she was killed right then and her body was found in a back alley, they would assume her to be a prostitute.
Almost 2/3 of the prostitutes in Edmonton (out of about 500 known) are Aboriginal.
She told us a story about a little girl whom she'd met, who had been in elementry school and been teased about being Native. The teasing got so bad that she was embarrassed to be Aboriginal, and to the point where she was sent to culture counselling because she was found in the bathroom with a bottle of bleach, at 6 years old, trying to "change the color of her skin."
At the end of the presentation, I asked the speaker if there were even any Aboriginal Advocacy groups up in northern Alberta. There aren't. I've since been sort of churning it around all day that one should be started. When I think about Cold Lake and the underlying area around it, and the lack of resources or information, and general apathy/racist attitudes held as normal there, it could be really helpful to start changing attitudes somehow, through a group like this. Even if it was doing presentations at schools, or at town meetings or writing angry letters to a few of the town counsellors whom I know from personal experience are racist, and MLA's and such. I guess I need to define more where to start exactly though. But I'm definately thinking about it a lot.
[1] Read: exercised some logical thinking power. ¶ 12:41 AM
