Some interesting things...

... do happen in Canada.

On this day, nineteen years ago, in an area near Oka, Quebec, a small but many months long protest escalated into The Oka Crisis. This was a very dramatic land claims dispute between between the Mohawk Nation of Kanesatake and Canadian security forces (Quebec provincial cops and the Canadian Army) after the Mohawk Warrior society reclaimed a burial ground from the developer of a golf course.

Not my photo: image from here.

It's interesting to me because it involved many aspects of social life in Canada: human rights, protest, racism, political arrogance, cultural difference, social oppression, censorship of the media, gender, colonialism, violence, a police state, land disputes, First Nations sovereignty, etc, etc... Very juicey stuff, imo.

I highly recommend the documentary 'Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance' by Alanis Obomsawin which you can watch online, here or rent from many places. In England, even my two bit local library had it.

Edit, adding! It can be viewed with captioning here... though the NFB site can be a bit slow at times.

Here's a sort of trailer to the film:




I will likely post more about Alanis Obomsawin cos she kicks ass. And maybe I'll say something nice about the National Film Board of Canada as it could kick ass if it wasn't constantly having its funding cut.

There. I've done my Canadalove post for the month. Now, back to the bitching. ;-)