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by C. L. Cook
"I used to be a victim. Now I'm a threat!" - Harriet Nahanee 1935- 2007
Not everyone in Vancouver cheered when the city was elected to host the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Advocates for the largely forgotten residents of the Downtown East Side issued dire predictions of displacement during the course of the games, and the further gentrification of the neighbourhood afterwards. Afterall, it was something those living in the city back in the eighties already experienced with that other global bread and circus extravaganza that brings misery to the poor and marginalized citizens wherever it goes: the travelling Expo(s).
Not everyone in Vancouver cheered when the city was elected to host the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Advocates for the largely forgotten residents of the Downtown East Side issued dire predictions of displacement during the course of the games, and the further gentrification of the neighbourhood afterwards. Afterall, it was something those living in the city back in the eighties already experienced with that other global bread and circus extravaganza that brings misery to the poor and marginalized citizens wherever it goes: the travelling Expo(s).It was Expo '86 that landed upon the East Side's head with
both feet back then, creating all the negative social side-effects
predicted, and proving a detriment to all without the money to make
their own private killing - which was most everyone.
And, those familiar voices from back in the day, and the next generation of Vancouver's poverty warriors came out, again warning what the Olympics would mean for thousands of the city's residents; but the die was cast, the monied who stood to reap more were photographed for the television viewers, and quoted in all the newspapers.
Harriet's
hellish "school days" were spent in Port Alberni, Vancouver Island, just across the strait from the City of
Vancouver. There her education consisted of witnessing and suffering
unimaginable trauma; suffering torture, and threats of imminent death,
and other kinds of unspeakable degradation; experiencing as a child the
things the occupants of places like Guantanamo Bay, and Bagram Airbase,
and Abu Ghraib prison would be well familiar. All conducted with the
complicity of the Canadian government, and blessed by the Christian
churches.
And, those familiar voices from back in the day, and the next generation of Vancouver's poverty warriors came out, again warning what the Olympics would mean for thousands of the city's residents; but the die was cast, the monied who stood to reap more were photographed for the television viewers, and quoted in all the newspapers.
"It will be a wonder for Canada," chimed the State and corporate media, from their distant haunts in Winnipeg and Toronto, making the city's acceptance of the games an inevitability.
But
there is more at issue than simply the de-localization of Vancouver's
undesireables, - call it class-cleansing - much of the more destructive
effects of the 2010 five ring circus occurs outside the city limits, on
the highway to the mountains, and the land through which the determined
expansion of that throughfare will pass. And, this is where Harriet
Nahanee made her last stand.
Harriet
Nahanee was a survivor. She survived the ethnic cleansing, a holocaust
by any measure, of her people. Then called 'Indians,' the First Nations
people of what is today called Canada were systematically wiped out.
Those that survived were herded onto "reserves," while the young were
legally stolen from their families and sent to "Residential Schools,"
schools run through the aegis of the Catholic, United (Anglican), and
lesser churches. These "religious" institutions were contracted to
essentially erase any cultural vestige remaining in the savage native
youngsters, making of them useful citizens.
Harriet's
hellish "school days" were spent in Port Alberni, Vancouver Island, just across the strait from the City of
Vancouver. There her education consisted of witnessing and suffering
unimaginable trauma; suffering torture, and threats of imminent death,
and other kinds of unspeakable degradation; experiencing as a child the
things the occupants of places like Guantanamo Bay, and Bagram Airbase,
and Abu Ghraib prison would be well familiar. All conducted with the
complicity of the Canadian government, and blessed by the Christian
churches.Kevin
Annette, a former reverend to the church in Port Alberni, "defrocked"
for exposing the systemic horror the church and State created there,
describes his friend, Harriet Nahanee's final fight thus:
"Harriet was murdered by Judge Brenda Brown, who condemned her, a seventy two year old woman with severe asthma, to imprisonment for two weeks in a cold, unhealthy prison cell for the "crime" of defending her land. Harriet was legally killed by the same colonial system that jailed and tortured her at age ten in the United Church's Alberni Indian Residential School. That system has finally closed her mouth; but as Harriet reminded us so often, it was never able to claim her spirit."
You see, as well as the threat to
the people of spirit still surviving the pogroms of Brutish Columbia's
past, destructive greed grabs in the guise of "development" have come
to be viewed at this late date, in this ill society, as the exemplary
traits of superior citizenship. At least, those that do profit that way
are thought so by the likes of provincial Premier, Gordon Campbell, a
former real estate "developer," and his spiritually pint-sized
compatriot, reputed "architect" and Mayor of the province's second city
Victoria, Alan Lowe. Between this pair, anything without a box store,
or fast food franchise already on it seems to be thought land for the
taking. And take is what they've managed to allow.
Though
none of the first nations of what is now called British Columbia ceded
their lands through treaty, they are theoretically still the owners of
the land, that has done little to slow the rampant destruction - er,
development - of the ancient forests of the province, some of the last
of their kind remaining on the planet, or helped raise living standards
for the indigenous population, too many of whom live in a squallor more
familiar to sub-Saharan Africa.
But,
recent years have seen determined court challenges from within First
Nations circles that have given the trans- national corporations pause
in their usual plundering of B.C. With that in mind, it appears the
nabobs overseeing what's left to profit from here have revisited the
roots of conquest and revived the oldest colonial method in dealing
with uppity locals: Divide and Rule.
Rev. Kev Annette instructs:
"I saw Harriet for the last time on April 15, 2006, at our annual Aboriginal Holocaust Remembrance Day Rally outside Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Vancouver. She told me that the Squamish chiefs had threatened to kill her again. "Why this time?" I asked.
"They're planning to sell off more of our land to the Olympics people. Some highway they're going to cut through our land. I told them I'd be out there trying to stop it."
"Who threatened you?" I said.
"Who doesn't matter" she replied, matter of factly. "They're all the same, those sellouts. They're whiter than the whites. They've been trying to get me for years. But I'm going to get them first."
Harriet tried to do so, too, with a recent Supreme Court lawsuit that sought to stop the Squamish chiefs from being able to sign away the land of their own people: an action akin to telling the fox that chickens are off the menu. Suddenly, Harriet was doing more than just telling what she knew: she was directly challenging the very foundation of the systematic land theft and ruination we like to call Canada. Harriet was threatening to cut the strings of the Emperor's loyal Indian puppets."
True to
her word, Harriet Nahanee stood at the roadblock, in the cold weather,
asthma and all. She refused to give ground to the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police, and was arrested; arrested for breaking a court order
not to return to the roadblock at the Eagle Ridge Bluffs, and sent,
under the so-called "Contempt of Court" order, to the squallid men's
detention facility, the Surrey Pretrial Centre, to spend her fourteen
days sentence.
Harriet, a 72 year old woman in frail health sent,
despite pleas to the court citing her poor health, to spend a fortnight
with accused murders, thieves, rapists, and muggers, in the dank
recesses of a system she had, throughout her long life, seen kill her
people with impunity.
As indeed they have done again.
Do
I hold that court in contempt too?
Betty Krawcyzk, Canada's adopted
Great Grandmother, repeatedly imprisoned for her efforts to protect
some of what remains of this land's glorious natural heritage,
petitioned the court prior to sentencing.
She said:
"I am very worried about Mrs. Harriet Nahanee. Mrs. Nahanee is not well. She has asthma and is suffering the after effects of a recent bout of flu that has left her very weak."
Not too weak in the eyes of Canadian Justice.
Harriet Nahanee: Dead, by order of the court.
for photos credits and more, please see here...
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written by a guest, February 28, 2007
Hych'ka. I am grateful to our elders, Mrs. Harriet Nahanee, Betty Krawcyzk and others who continue teaching us the value of our cultural heritage--the land we live on and our part in it. While collectively we do not yet recognize the importance of these lessons, they have a great impact on the world. WE MUST USE OUR VOICES and rise up against the colonial system that continues to condemn those who seek to bring us closer to an interconnected world.
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