Tag Archives: Apartheid

Indigenous Nations History, Politics

First Nation Leaders Call Upon Conservative Party To Drop Aaron Gunn As A Candidate

First Nations leaders are calling upon the Conservative Party of Canada to drop Aaron Gunn, candidate for North Island-Powell River, due to a series of tweets he made between 2019 and 2021.

More than 150,000 First Nation, Métis and Inuit children were taken out of their homes and forced to attend residential schools between the 1870s and 1997. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission called the residential school system “cultural genocide” in its final report released in 2015.

Gunn tweeted: “Why are the report authors (and now Trudeau) sensationalizing truly horrific events, that need to be examined honestly, with a loaded word like ‘genocide’ that does not remotely reflect the reality of what happened.”  

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Arts

Ann Mortifee: A South African Pilgrimage

  Ann Mortifee was born in Zululand. While she’s been in Canada most of her life, the first 10 years were spent on a sugarcane farm where she was surrounded by the Zulu and Xhosa peoples.

“My grandfather had been in Africa during the Boer War. He had stayed on and had become a farmer.  It was in KwaZulu, then called Zululand and I felt I owed a debt on behalf of our family,” she explained.  

“Apartheid was a terrible thing. In fact that’s why my father left South Africa.” 

The family moved to Vancouver, but Ann still felt connected to the land of her birth. 

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Arts

Ann Mortifee: ‘Dreaming I am Ann’

Ann Mortifee is probably the most famous musician on Cortes Island, which is more of a compliment than it sounds like because there are a lot of talented musicians on Cortes. However from the start of our interview, it was apparent this story was about a lot more than singing. I had this bizarre feeling to lead with the question, ‘When did you start becoming Ann Mortifee?’ 

Her answer came out of the memories of a 4-years-old girl.

AM:  “It happened maybe a hundred times in my childhood. I had the same dream. I’d be standing somewhere looking into a bedroom and there’d be someone lying in the bed. I’d go, ‘Oh no, I’m starting to dream of her again.’ Then I would get this anxious feeling, ‘I’m going to get stuck there in the dream and I’m going to believe it’s real.’ This dream gets more and more upsetting to me. I can feel myself starting to fall asleep and that I’m in a dream.” 

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