Truth be told, former Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin is no friend or symbol of truth for Ktunaxa. I was in her court when she wouldn’t pronounce Ktunaxa correctly & her ruling justified the destruction of our sacred site as something we would get over.
I’m interested in poltical writing that actually addresses the edifice of settler loathing towards Indigenous peoples. Crafting narratives of justice for an country so grossly bereft of it is violent a exercise of fiction. Publishers must provide space for that.
Ktunaxa Nation v British Columbia was a brutal, violent & reprehensible demonstration of the injustice of Canadian law towards Ktunaxa and our territory. The country failed to meet even the basic standard of human rights in that case. That was McLaughlin’s court in 2017.
As our leader stated then, “With this decision, the Supreme Court of Canada is telling every indigenous person in Canada that your culture, history and spirituality, all deeply linked to the land, are not worthy of legal protection from the constant threat of destruction,”
“This judgment should be alarming to Canadians...We brought forward our most private and sacred beliefs in the hopes the court would earnestly, and in good faith not just listen, but hear them.” Kathryn Teneese, Ktunaxa Nation Council Chair.
While McLaughlin’s court could not hear Ktunaxa beliefs, Cdn publishing- predominantly newspapers, magazines and journals- have not heard us either. There has been little to nothing published about that case, the significance of Qat’muk or Ktunaxa ideologies since 2017.
But hey-it hasn’t been all bad. @hotdocs produced ‘Last Resort’ in 2017 as part of their ‘In the Name of All Canadians’ doc.This film is good medicine and tells the story about Ktunaxa efforts to have Charter protection for Indigenous spiritual beliefs. https://www.tvo.org/video/documentaries/in-the-name-of-all-canadians
This is McLaughlin mispronouncing Ktunaxa in the opening moments of our Supreme Court hearing. 😬
Some say ‘ya but Ktunaxa is a hard word to pronounce & n8tvs r annoying anyhow etc. etc.’

Look, if you can understand & pronounce notwithstanding, jurisprudence, habeas corpus or mens rea you can absolutely figure out how to pronounce Ktunaxa during a case of national interest
Providing uncritical space for political writing that effuses Canadian exceptionalism without accountability for its violence & erasure is a means of nation building no different than a Macdonald railroad, a Trudeau pipeline or a Don Cherry rant. A parade by any other name.
Thankfully, we didn’t need the Supreme Canada Court or the province of British Columbia to protect Qat’muk. Many, many people, nations, animals and spirits came together to protect the place where grizzly bear goes to dance. Truth be told, that outcome was never in doubt. Taxa
You can follow @Skink00ts.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: