The Queen's Journal, Volume 148, Issue 13

the journal Vol. 148, Issue 13

Queen’s University

Friday, November 13, 2020

Situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples.

Since 1873

A breakdown of barriers: Indigenous veterans and the World Wars PHOTOS BY MAIA MCCANN

ILLUSTRATION BY

ASHLEY CHEN

R aechel H uizinga Editor in Chief Zoogipon Ikwe didn’t know her great-grandfather served in the First World War until she began researching her own genealogy.

“I put a post up about him on a website and this lady from Turtle Mountain contacted me and said ‘hey, we’ve been looking for this guy, he disappeared off our register. We don’t know where he went to.’ I said ‘oh, that’s my grandfather.’”

Ikwe is an Algonquin and Ojibwe woman who lives in Kingston.

She works as an Indigenous Navigator at the Cancer Centre of Southeastern Ontario.

“I see patients who have cancer and I help them with accessibility and breaking down barriers and advocacy,” she said in an interview with The Journal. “I also do a lot of traditional, spiritual counselling with my medicine bundle.”

After the War, Ikwe’s grandfather came to Quebec, where he met her grandmother. He was originally from the Turtle Mountain Chipewa reserve in North Dakota.

“I found the form he filled out to join the military, the little card he had to fill out, and it was so cool to see his writing,” she said. “I imagine it probably wasn’t his writing. It was probably someone else’s writing and he made a scribble.”

Nov. 8 is Indigenous Veterans Day. While not formally recognized by the federal government, it’s nationally recognized as a separate day of commemoration for Indigenous veterans.

In Canada, Veterans Affairs estimates there are 12,000 Indigenous veterans, but exact statistics are unknown. Only 7,000 names are recorded on the Aboriginal Veterans Tribute Honour List, which was last updated on Nov. 12, 2020.

“When you think about it, a lot of times when [Indigenous folks] joined the War effort, they also lost their native status,” Ikwe said.

“They call that enfranchisement.

They would often be promised land and Canadian status in exchange for their service.” queensjournal.ca

Ikwe said that sometimes Indigenous veterans didn’t return home after fighting in the World Wars.

“But others did go home, so there’s a lot of pride that goes around veterans.”

For Ikwe, though, it’s not about military service.

“To me, I see them as victims of politics, really,” she said. “They’re heroes in the way that they gave their lives for something they believed in, but in my opinion, they and their families are victims of the government and colonization.”

Many benefits offered to World War veterans were denied to Indigenous veterans, and today, not much has changed.

“My friend is a veteran,” Ikwe said. “He’s younger. He served and was discharged medically, but there’s nothing for him.

There’s nothing for veterans, let alone Indigenous veterans around here.

He’s been having trouble finding support and things like that.”

Scott Sheffield, a history professor at the University of Fraser Valley, has dedicated more than two decades of research to Indigenous contributions to the World Wars and Indigenous veterans.

He echoed Ikwe in saying there’s not much support available to both World War and recent Indigenous veterans.

“After the War, Indigenous veterans were in many ways forgotten until the 1970s and 80s and 90s when they again came into the public eye,” he told The Journal. “There’s been steps that have been constructed since then to include Indigenous people in national acts of remembrance.”

He pointed to recent Remembrance Day ceremonies which saw Indigenous representatives laying wreaths, as well as Indigenous-specific commemorative events.

See Veterans page 3 @queensjournal

Four Directions talks importance of visibility on campus. Page 4 Navigating the colonialist

McGill sets example with scholarship

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Page 11

nature of curriculum

for Indigenous athletes

Billie the Kid

Indigenous representation

Page 9

Page 13

discusses her poetry

@queensjournal

in film and TV

@queensjournal

@thequeensjournal

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News

Friday, November 13, 2020

Vigil held in memory of Anthony Aust Julia Harmsworth Assistant News Editor This story was first published Nov. 9. Read it online at queensjournal.ca.

PHOTOS BY MAIA MCCANN

More than 200 people attended the vigil in Springer Market Square on Sunday.

Aust’s brother is a student at Queen’s.

Attendees held protest signs throughout the vigil.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission Task Force releases third report According to report, Queen’s has hired 100 Indigenous staff and faculty members Julia Harmsworth Assistant News Editor

reconciliation), wrote in the report.

“Indigenous and LGBTQ2S communities on our campus have The Queen’s Truth and been faced with ongoing violence Reconciliation Commission and racism. At the same time, Task Force (TRCTF) released its we have experienced immense third annual Implementation support as evidenced by the Report in September.

Solidarity march and the multitude According to the report, the of statements of support.”

University is currently fulfilling The task force was established each of the 25 recommendations in response to the national for institutional change TRC’s final report on Canada’s outlined in the task force’s Indian Residential School system 2016 final report. released in December 2015. The The University did not respond report included 94 calls to action, to The Journal’s request for including some directed explicitly comment in time for publication. at post-secondary institutions.

There are currently 468 In their work, the task force Indigenous students enrolled members aim to answer the in undergraduate and graduate TRC’s calls to action, develop programs, including 113 proposals to support the Indigenous graduates in 2019 and Indigenous community at 100 Indigenous staff and faculty Queen’s, and enhance Indigenous members at Queen’s, according to representation in academics the report. and research.

“It has been a challenging and “The time for statements has difficult year on many fronts,” now passed and we are working Kanonhsyonne (Janice Hill), towards actions to combat racism associate vice-principal and violence, to create a culture (Indigenous initiatives and of equity and inclusion on our

campus,” Hill wrote.

According to the report, there are currently 23 Indigenous students enrolled in the Queen’s Faculty of Law JD program because of expanded recruitment efforts.

For the 2019-20 year, the percentage of applications submitted by self-identified Indigenous students was up by two per cent, the percentage of offers made to Indigenous students was up by 19.4 per cent, and the percentage of acceptances from Indigenous students was up by 24.4 per cent.

New Indigenous faculty members were hired in the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Faculty of Arts and Science last year, increasing Indigenous faculty representation.

There are currently 43 faculty members at Queen’s conducting Indigenous research and 16 committees working to advance and support Indigenous initiatives at Queen’s, according to the report.

“It is necessary for this work to continue and for all of us to dig even deeper to unearth systemic inequities within the institutions and governing bodies that we live in to identify pathways towards equity and inclusion,” Hill wrote.

According to the report, priorities for next year involve Indigenous space, Indigenous pathways, learning opportunities, and advancement efforts.

The School of Graduate Studies is considering offering a fast track pathway option for Indigenous students in its

Summer Undergraduate Research Program and the Faculty of Arts and Science is hoping to create two new Indigenous positions in its Indigenous Studies programming.

The University is also planning to develop an Indigenous Hub and a space for the Faculty of Arts and Science Indigenous Advisor.

“Each day we all have something to be thankful for so I encourage everyone to consider that as we face these challenges and I also encourage that we all work together for the greater good,” Hill wrote.

News

Friday, November 13, 2020

‘They still fall through the cracks of Canada’s Veterans Affairs programs’ ... continued from front “Some [events are] supported by Veterans Affairs Canada, and others have been more grassroots from [Indigenous] communities and veterans themselves, like the National Aboriginal Veterans Memorial in Ottawa, like Indigenous Veterans Day on Nov. 8. Those are both grassroots phenomena.”

Sheffield said advocacy efforts to recognize Indigenous contributions to the World Wars began with Indigenous groups and, in particular, the Saskatchewan First Nations Veterans Association.

“It was the one that really started to lead the charge in the late 1970s,” he said. “They were very much the first agency to start trying to get some historical research done into, for instance, grievances that their veteran membership had around access to Veterans benefits.”

He said the Association began encouraging the formation of other Indigenous veterans’ organizations in other parts of Canada.

“This sort of gained momentum through the 1980s. They were making enough noise that the governments finally started to pay attention in the 1990s,” Sheffield said. “They really deserve a lot of the credit for helping to raise the profile and put this on the national agenda. Subsequently, their cause has been taken up by other broader Indigenous leadership like the Assembly of First Nations, who were involved in the national round table process that was eventually a result of that activism which was established in 1999.”

Sheffield added, however, that on the ground for Indigenous veterans who served in Korea, U.N. peace operations, and Afghanistan, there’s still no specific programming designed to meet their unique needs.

“They still fall through the cracks of Canada’s Veterans Affairs programs,” he said.

Sheffield said this was particularly evident in 2019, when he was asked to give testimony to a standing house committee tasked with investigating current Indigenous veteran programming.

“What I heard there from [Indigenous] veterans who were also testifying the same day that I was there was that there’s nothing. Many of these veterans live without ever talking to Veterans Affairs, or they’re without any real understanding of the programs available and Veterans Affairs itself doesn’t reach out. It kind of creates a one-size-fits-all kind of program, but it’s not as simple as that.”

The Devil is in the Details

Sheffield said the Canadian government learned a lot from the “not very good job” it had done for First World War veterans.

“Canada’s Veterans Charter was a broad array of benefits that the federal government began to establish well before the end of the War,” he said. “It was very thoughtful, very thorough, very flexible, and very generous.”

The first-tier benefits, he said, were the ones granted to soldiers as they demobilized and left the service at the end of the War.

Queen’s releases new Campus Wellbeing Framework

Framework looks at community wellness during the age of COVID-19 Julia Stratton Staff Writer Wellbeing is a critical factor in the success of individuals, the community, and the University, according to Queen’s new Campus Wellbeing Framework.

The Campus Wellbeing Framework is the product of six months of consultations with 1,800 students, staff, and faculty at Queen’s in 2019-20 to advance wellbeing on campus.

The framework outlines a set of guiding principles and priority focus areas to make Queen’s a better place to live, learn, and work for everyone in the community.

While a draft of the framework was released in February, the Queen’s community also had the opportunity to provide specific feedback about campus wellness during COVID-19 over the spring and summer to be incorporated into the final document with adjustments for social

This included benefits like $100 to buy civilian clothes and gratuity pay distributed at a rate based on the veterans’ months of service.

“That first range of benefits, Indigenous veterans would have had equal access to,” Sheffield said. “Every soldier was treated equally in the forces, and they exited that way as well. Where the major problems came was in the second tier of benefits.”

The second tier of benefits, he said, helped veterans with re-establishment.

“Let’s say you’d been working the army service core and you learned how to drive and maintain trucks and you wanted to set up a delivery company. You could borrow from that [veterans grant] to purchase a truck and start a business. You could use it to set up a household, buy pots and pans, that sort of thing.”

Sheffield said most Canadian veterans would’ve had access to a Veterans Affairs counsellor to receive advice about which option was the best for them.

“They would have chatted with their buddies at the legion hall over a beer about what they were doing,” he said. “The onus was on the veteran to figure it out and apply for the right programs. But status Indian veterans were told, ‘you don’t do that, you go back to your reserve and talk to your Indian agent.’ And the problem was the Indian agents actually weren’t trained in Veterans benefits, how to fill out the forms, and they didn’t always offer useful advice to the Indian veterans under their charge.”

Sheffield said Indigenous veterans were sometimes only told about the programs their agents thought they should take, not

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about all their options.

“Some of them had racist assumptions about the men under their charge.

They didn’t think they’d be able, for instance, to take advantage of the education provisions.”

He said the Indian Affairs agents didn’t have adequate funding for on-reserve housing at the end of the Second World War. “They kind of warped the Veterans Land Act grants to help make up for their lack of on-reserve housing funding,” Sheffield said.

“A[n Indigenous] veteran could get a house, which was in some ways good, it could help his quality of life.”

He said that while Indigenous veterans were able to access more money, those funds didn’t translate into a successful career establishment which could help him support his family.

“I know it’s a complicated problem, trying to explain the grievances and concerns around Veterans benefits. The devil is very much in the details. It was in that extra layer of bureaucracy that Indian Affairs introduced into the equation and in narrowing the opportunities for status Indian veterans to get the most out of their Veterans benefits.”

The Third Tier

The third tier of benefits, according to Sheffield, were the training benefits.

“You could either go to vocational school or to university, depending on your credentials and your pre-war education background,” he said. “It would provide a living allowance and pay your tuition and textbook costs. That was important for a lot of veterans and Canadian universities ballooned in size with the wave of veterans seeking education after the War.” Read the full story online at queensujournal.ca/news

distancing guidelines.

PHOTO BY DANIEL GREEN At its centre, the framework emphasizes The framework followed six months of consultations. that “campus wellbeing is rooted in a culture of care, inclusion and respect, enhance and embrace a culture of wellbeing, Although this is an individual task, the social connectedness.” care and inclusion, respecting diversity and framework personal wellbeing should be The framework was developed by embracing our differences.” facilitated and promoted within the Provost Advisory Committee made The framework puts forward four focus one’s community. up of student leaders, faculty, senior areas for enhancing wellbeing in the Queen’s Having spaces online and in person that administrators, and community health community: culture, social connection, foster wellbeing is another important aspect experts; supported by the Campus Wellness personal wellbeing, and places. of the framework.

Council; and endorsed by the University’s Culture refers to creating an inclusive “When we consider equity, inclusion, Senior Leadership Team. culture at Queen’s that values wellbeing. the presence of natural elements and It’s centered around the Okanagan Charter, “Each member of the Queen’s community opportunities for social connection in the which is designed to “create a culture of has a responsibility to respect and advance design of our places, we can have a profound compassion, wellbeing, equity, social justice the university values of care, equity, impact on our wellbeing.” […] and strengthen the ecological, social and inclusion, and support with respect to The recommendations encourage economic sustainability of our communities diversities, including ethnicity, race, gender, the community to facilitate and promote and wider society.” Queen’s adopted the sexual orientation, exceptionality and all aspects of personal health across charter in January 2019. socioeconomic status.” a wide range of dimensions including Importantly, the framework is meant The framework emphasizes that social physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, to enable and inspire wellness on campus connection is imperative to wellbeing social, occupational, financial, and without being prescriptive. The Queen’s because “[h]umans need social connection.” environmental health. community is encouraged to apply the “We heard from the campus community The framework also acknowledges the guiding principles and priority focus areas that belonging is influenced by our identities importance of equity, diversity, inclusivity, outlined in the document as appropriate, and experiences and by perceptions of and indigeneity (EDII) as values imperative but they’re designed to be adapted across campus cultural relevance (including to fostering the wellbeing of all members of diverse situations and settings. familiarity, knowledge and feelings of the Queen’s community.

The framework also positions campus validation) and responsiveness (programs “Together, we can encourage and support wellbeing as a community effort, instead of and practices).” an inclusive culture of wellbeing that as an individual task.

Maintaining personal wellbeing inspires and enables all who live, learn and “Each of us has a role and responsibility to is essential to health and wellbeing. work at Queen’s to thrive.”

News

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Four Directions is working to have the flagpoles installed in the next month.

PHOTO BY MAIA MCCANN

‘[I]t’s inspiring to think about the leadership Indigenous students have shown on campus’ Director of Indigenous Student Centre discusses importance of visibility on campus Cassidy McMackon Assistant News Editor Following the racist incidents throughout the past year at Queen’s, Four Directions Indigenous Student Centre is installing a permanent display of Indigenous flags in front of the centre following various acts of vandalism.

The permanent installment of flags will be hung in front

of both Four Directions buildings on two flagpoles, with each flagpole displaying three flags. The flags to be displayed are the Haudenosaunee Confederacy flag, Anishinaabe Nation flag, the Métis flag, a Two-Row Wampum flag, the LGBTQ+ Pride flag, and the Trans Pride flag.

In an interview with The Journal, Director of Four Directions Kandice Baptiste discussed the meaning and significance of each flag.

Baptiste said the Haudenosaunee Confederacy flag and Anishinaabe Nation flag recognize the two nations Queen’s recognizes as the territory the institution sits on.

“We hang these flags to reflect on those nations and the

Queen’s researcher creates platform to support LGBTQ2+ cancer patients LGBTQ2+ cancer patients.

Meghan McInnis, a PhD candidate in psychology at Queen’s, Amanda Bolderston at the University of Alberta, and Evan Taylor at the University of the Fraser Valley created the online Queering Cancer platform to support LGBTQ2+ cancer patients and their caregivers.

Julia Harmsworth “There is definitely a gap in the Assistant News Editor information that these patients are receiving,” McInnis said in A researcher at Queen’s is part an interview with The Journal. of the team working to support “They’re receiving information

Queering Cancer website includes database, story collection, and community forum

history of those folks prior to colonization,” Baptiste said.

The Two-Row Wampum explores the relationship between the Haudenosaunee and the European settlers.

“The flag is reflective of the Haudenosaunee and Dutch settlers and was expanded to include

Friday, November 13, 2020 the English, French, and other settlers,” Baptiste said.

“That Wampum teaches us about our relationship together.

The white in the belt is meant to symbolize the river of life, and the two purple rows are meant to symbolize both the settler ship and the Indigenous canoe, which is meant to remind us that we are meant to have peaceful relationships and not interfere with each other.”

Baptiste said the LGBTQ+ Pride and Trans Pride flags were hung with the Indigenous flags as an act of solidarity in response to the students affected by the racist and homophobic incident at Chown Hall incident last fall.

“Because of the way the Chown Hall incident was both racist towards Indigenous students and was also a homophobic and transphobic attack, we felt it was critical for us to show support for queer and trans folks and students on this campus by flying those flags in particular, and letting students know that we are a safe space for them, and in particular for students who are living at the intersections of those identities,” Baptiste said. “Our Two-Spirit students and our Indigenous and queer and trans students are centred in that.”

“It’s critical for folks to be visible and there be support for communities that have historically been marginalized, so that was our thinking when we decided to hang [the Trans and LGBTQ+ Pride flags].”

Four Directions is currently working with Queen’s Physical Plant Services to have the flagpoles installed in the next month, however a date for the

McInnis said there’s been “lots” of positive response to the website online.

that’s not really specific to them.

A lot of the information out there is really geared towards cisgender, heterosexual people.”

The website includes three sections: a searchable database of resources related to LGBTQ2+ cancer patients, a community support forum, and a collection of stories written by LGBTQ2+ cancer patients.

“There’s some really great information out there, but it can be really difficult to find,” McInnis said.

“We’re hoping that [by] directly putting it all in one place, it’ll be more accessible to the people who are looking for it.”

McInnis said the website is largely targeted at providing individuals with a sense of support and community in addition to information.

“There’s definitely a lack of support groups for queer and trans people specifically to talk about their cancer experiences,” McInnis said. “So we’re hoping

that this community forum will give them that space to connect with each other and share experiences.”

In 2018, the team applied for a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute of Gender and Health (IGH). IGH funded the team’s attendance at a Design Jam event in Vancouver, where the idea for Queering Cancer started.

The team had originally planned an in-person workshop, but McInnis said the idea evolved into a website because the team thought it would be more accessible.

Since the website’s launch on Oct. 27, the team has received messages from health care providers asking how they can share this information with their patients.

The team has been directing healthcare providers to more healthcare-specific resources, like Rainbow Health Ontario.

installation of the flagpoles has yet to be confirmed.

The Centre hung a Métis and LGBTQ+ flag in the windows of the centre in October 2019, following the racist Chown incident to show solidarity for the students affected by the hateful note. This past July, the flags were damaged in a hate crime.

The installment of the flagpoles is meant to be a permanent display of Indigenous and LGBTQ+ flags following the hate crimes of the past year.

Despite the challenges faced throughout the past year, Baptiste told The Journal she was proud of the strength displayed by Indigenous students at Queen’s.

“When I think about this past year I think about community, and I think about the students who have accessed [Four Directions] and the strength and resilience that they have shown in responding to these incidents, enduring these incidents and taking leadership in response to these incidents,” Baptiste said.

“It is critical that Indigenous students have and continue to push us all to make change at the institution to make it a safer place for them.”

Baptiste said she feels lucky to be the director of the Centre and have the ability to bear witness to the “incredible students” and support them in using their voices on campus.

“It’s easy to think about lots of negative things that have happened on campus, but I think it’s inspiring to think about the leadership Indigenous students have shown on campus.”

PHOTO BY DANIEL GREEN

“It’s been exciting to see people find our website, reach out with other resources they want us to share, or other ideas they have for us,” McInnis said. “We’ve been really happy with it so far.”

According to McInnis, the team is working on sustainability in the coming weeks to keep the website going. The database will be updated as new relevant resources come out.

The website also includes a contact form through which users can submit stories for the collection and ideas for the website.

McInnis said there’s been “lots” of positive response to the website on social media that speaks to the need for the resource.

“That was what we were hoping for: that there would be a need for it and that people who were looking for it and do have that need would be able to find it. And it seems like they are.”

News

Friday, November 13, 2020

Elly Gotz joined the community over Zoom from Toronto.

PHOTO BY CASSIDY MCMACKON

Hillel Queen’s hosts Holocaust survivor

On Remembrance Day, Elly Gotz spoke about his Holocaust experiences, importance of fighting injustice Cassidy McMackon Assistant News Editor Hillel Queen’s hosted Elly Gotz on Nov. 11 to tell the story of how he survived the Holocaust.

Gotz, who speaks to approximately 18,000 students every year, spoke about some of his experiences throughout the Holocaust, including time he spent living in a ghetto, as well as time in Dachau, a Nazi concentration camp just outside Munich.

He joined the Queen’s and Kingston communities at the event from Toronto.

“It’s wonderful to be here even though we are all locked up like birds in cages,” Gotz

said, greeting attendees over video chat platform Zoom. “But it’s not too bad. We are in a free country, and we can make it. I was locked up for four long years during the war.”

Gotz was born on March 8, 1928 in Kovno, Lithuania. As a young boy, he attended a Yiddish school where he developed a passion for science, math, history, and reading. He was 12 years old in 1940 when soldiers from the Soviet Union invaded Lithuania and declared that Jews were no longer to be considered Lithuanian citizens. One year later, the Nazis began their occupation of Lithuania and forced all 30,000 Jews living in Kovno to move into the Kovno ghetto.

Gotz and his family—his mother, father, aunt, uncle, and baby cousin—spent three

History of Katarokwi

Katarokwi was Ojibwe territory before anyone else settled on this land.

Zoogipon Ikwe is an Indigenous Navigator at the Cancer Centre of Southeastern Ontario.

She provided this brief history of Katarokwi in an interview with The Journal.

This territory was originally Ojibwe territory way back before anybody came and settled here. The Mohawks were in northern New York state, and then this was Ojibwe territory. It was a territory where we would come and hunt and leave again. It wasn’t really like a territory that we occupied all the time, so then when the Beaver Wars happened—do you know about the Beaver Wars? Well, the thing about the Beavers Wars is that you could get a gun for however many pelts was the length of the stock of the barrel. So, England started making these guns with really long

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years living in the Kovno ghetto. Throughout this time, his family bore witness to several atrocities committed against Lithuanian Jews by the Nazis. By 1944, just 8,000 Jews remained in the Kovno ghetto.

Gotz and his family eventually boarded a train in Kovno and were taken to concentration camps, with Gotz and his father being separated from his mother and taken to Dachau. Gotz and his father spent 10 months working in Dachau until the camp was liberated on April 29, 1945.

Upon liberation, they were both reunited with his mother.

Despite disclosing several horrors to the audience, Gotz stressed the importance of relationships during the Holocaust.

“I survived and my father survived because we helped each other,” Gotz said.

“Sometimes when we were ready to die, the thought that [our deaths] would cause pain to the other helped us to survive.”

Gotz spoke to the importance of Holocaust education in his address, saying the Holocaust should be understood as a learning experience of what hatred can do.

“I want you to know what hatred does; genocide,” he said. “We thought after the Holocaust, there wouldn’t be any more. We were wrong. There are recent genocides in Rwanda, in Armenia, and in Bosnia. What is it with a world that we can’t live in peace with each other? What is it that we can hate?”

“We mustn’t be bystanders; when we see injustice, we must fight it.”

In an email interview with The Journal, Hillel Queen’s also noted the importance of Holocaust education at universities.

“Teaching and learning about the Holocaust highlights aspects of human behaviour that affect all societies, such as the susceptibility to scapegoating and the desire for simple answers to complex problems; the potential for extreme violence and the abuse of power; and the roles that fear, peer pressure, indifference, greed and resentment can play in social and political relations,” Yos Tarshish, assistant director of Hillel Queen’s, wrote.

“It also demonstrates the dangers of prejudice, discrimination and dehumanization, be it the antisemitism that fueled the Holocaust or other forms of racism and intolerance.”

PHOTO BY CASSIDY MCMACKON

barrels so the Native people had to give and moving back. Oh, the word Katarokwi them more and more beaver fur pelts and means ‘the place we go to get limestone.’ beaver fur was a craze in England at the time. It’s a Mohawk word. In Algonquin, we call There was a lot of pressure on harvesting it Awkadanagwig, and what that means is beaver in the area of Quebec and sort of ‘here and beyond.’ So this is a place where north-eastern Ontario. So, we took off to people always came. They traded, they go because of the beaver wars to avoid the trapped what they could, and this is also conflict and probably some of them left to part of the Treaty with the Mississauga’s and go hunting beaver. With the empire loyalists the Mohawks and it’s called the Dish with coming and 1812 and all that stuff going One Spoon, Wampum Belt. So what that on, Mohawks moved north and started is, is the Dish is the territory and the Spoon coming more this way and then during the is what we use to eat with, and the idea 1812 when they built Fort Henry and they is that we will share this territory for our built the Murney towers and all that. There mutual benefits and we’ll be peaceful was a Mohawk settlement right around and share it. And we’re using a Spoon where the parking lot is across from KGH. because a knife is sharp, so it’s They found artifacts there so the Mohawks this idea of peacefully co-existing camped out at the fort around Murney and using resources but not Tower. And they were, of course, trading overusing resources.

Clark Hall Pub to stay closed for the entire 2020-21 year “What’s not to miss about the centre of the universe!”

EngSoc President reflects on closure of student pub Rida Chaudhry Contributor As COVID-19 continues to limit public gatherings, the Engineering Society announced Clark Hall Pub will remain closed for the 2020-21 school year.

The pandemic has brought many unprecedented difficulties to the Queen’s community and changes to the services available to students. The pub, which initially closed March 18, didn’t get the chance to open its doors to the public at all this year because of the pandemic restrictions.

Run by the Engineering Society, Clark Hall Pub is the oldest student-run pub in Canada and has contributed to many of the longstanding traditions in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science.

Some engineering students think of this location when reminiscing some of their favourite memories at Queen’s.

“Clark’s really closing, huh?” Nate Nethercott, Sci ’21, said in an interview with The Journal. He said the Pub has had an impact on his Queen’s experience.

“It was a cool feeling to see all alumni and students gathering there on Homecoming or St. Patrick’s Day.” Since the Pub is so community-oriented and relies on interpersonal connections, the operations would not have been able to adhere to COVID-19 guidelines.

“The management team and prospective staff were kept in place in hopes that we would be able to operate in the winter semester,” Spencer Lee, EngSoc President, told The Journal. “The announcement of continued remote delivery throughout the academic year meant that operations would not be permitted.”

Lee also spoke about the impact the closure has had on student-staff.

“The students who were selected to become Clark Hall Pub staff in 2020/2021 never were able to be trained and become employees of the pub. Our management team were employed on a part time basis until the closure announcement was official.”

From weekly trivia night to promoting student bands, Clark Hall Pub was a hub for Queen’s students.

“What’s not to miss about the centre of the universe!” Lee said. journal_news@ams.queensu.ca

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Friday, November 13, 2020

Alysha Mohamed Assistant Arts Editor “When we think of Indigenous peoples, we think of the past,” said Anne Godlewska, professor in Geography and Planning.

“But there’s been a sustained process of assimilation which has not stopped.”

In 2018, Godlewska spearheaded a research project studying how much Queen’s students know about Indigenous realities in Canada.

She said her interest in Indigenous studies was heightened in 2007, when she realized her current undergraduate students had no more Indigenous education than what she was taught in high school more than 25 years ago.

Despite efforts to integrate Indigenous education into the Canadian school system, leaked Alberta proposals from this October recommended eliminating all references to residential schools and “equity” for elementary aged students.

The United Conservative Party of Alberta has been criticized for these regressive suggestions, but the proposal highlights where Indigenous education stands on the government’s list of priorities—proving Canada has a long way to go in teaching children about Indigenous history.

“The fundamental reason Canadians haven’t learned very much is because it’s a very, very uncomfortable present and past […] Canada exists as a result of the dispossession of Indigenous people. Canada develops resources through the further dispossession of Indigenous people,” Godlewska said.

Key findings from Godlewska’s study proved that many Queen’s graduates are deeply uninformed about Indigenous presence; a desire to recognize Canada as a positive and multicultural society makes it difficult for some to understand colonialism as a continuity, and there is a clear trend of situating Indigenous peoples and cultures in the distant past.

Taylor Day, JD ’22, was immersed in her Mohawk language and culture until she started attending an American public school in Grade 6.

“Going to school on reserve all those years is what taught me about my culture,” Day said. “I was in the Mohawk singing group and our Christmas shows were cultural stories instead of Santa Claus.

But when I went off reserve for middle and high school, there was absolutely nothing.”

Day, Nandoh, and Lind all described a willingness from their educators to delve into other genocides, acts of terror, and racism, but a refusal to acknowledge the continued ways their own nation benefits from the further colonialism and oppression of Indigenous peoples.

“We would learn about 9/11 every year and not an ongoing tragedy that continues to happen,” Day said.

A similar experience happened at Lind’s private school in Ontario.

“We did an entire Black History

“There’s little awareness of the legal and political actions that Indigenous peoples have been taking for hundreds of years,” Godlewska said. “The emphasis is never on Indigenous communities.”

“My class gave me the bare minimum on Haudenosaunee people, and then described what happened when the Europeans arrived,” Day said. “It was all based on post-contact.”

Day also described the experience of being asked to sing an upbeat song called ‘Elbow Room,’ which explained, from a Eurocentric perspective, why Americans continued to take over more land.

Doing so, the nuanced, diverse cultures whose ancestral territories and governance predate colonial nations were sidelined, along with intergenerational trauma, current Indigenous activism, and any history prior to colonial contact.

“I remember

a survey of students in our Business Ethics and CSR course last year and many commented that they felt their education had been lacking.

We provided about 480 business students with an opportunity to participate in the KAIROS Blanket Exercise, an experiential approach to learning about Indigenous and settler history.”

Humphreys-Blake noted that the response from students was overwhelmingly positive—many said it was “the most comprehensive and impactful education they had received in their schooling to date.”

Motivated by a passion for social justice and a desire to learn about Indigenous histories in Canada, Lind said she experienced an enriching education in Indigenous

Features

‘When we think of Indigenous peoples, we think of the past’: Students and educators confront the lack of Indigenous education in school systems

Colonialism in the grade school system

Louise Nandoh, ArtSci ’23, and Emily Lind, MSc ’22, both reflected on the lack of Indigenous education during their upbringings.

Nandoh said the only exposure she had to Indigenous education was in a Grade 12 elective from a passionate teacher who was interested in the subject.

“I don’t understand how we can go to school and learn about Canadian history without talking about Indigenous history,” Nandoh said. “Many of us are appropriating their culture without even realizing it.”

Lind echoed this statement, recalling that while she attended a liberal private school in Ontario, her exposure to Indigenous culture was practically non-existent.

There are parallels between the American and Canadian school systems, challenging the Canadian myth of diversity and multiculturalism—which often hides our similarly racist and colonial history.

Month and my school literally tried to collect six million pebbles to commemorate the Holocaust, but we had virtually nothing on Indigenous studies.”

“To make things worse, I lived 45 minutes away from a Mohawk territory and I didn’t know anything about it.”

History is consistently retold from the point of settler contact, and the idea of Indigenous communities as a present, vital part of our current Canadian society is completely foreign.

This idea of Indigenous peoples being a distant part of history reinforces white-settler narratives that continue to sideline Indigenous voices.

“Canadian students have the most difficulty with the whole concept of Indigenous sovereignty,” Godlewska said.

“If you don’t understand that, if you’re not willing to consider that the Government of Canada is not the final arbitrator of Indigenous rights, you cannot understand the complex issues.”

Godlewska also noted one of the major issues in the current education system is the lack of knowledge about the Indian Act, which is part of a long system of assimilation policies in Canadian history.

Mi’kmaw scholar and professor Bonita Lawrence described the Indian Act as systems of control that “enable settler governments to define who is ‘Indian,’ and control access to Native land […] functioning discursively to naturalize the colonial world.”

In addition to this, Godlewska said that even when colonial “historical” narratives are taught in classrooms, there is no education of current Indigenous activism.

putting up a fight and thinking, ‘these kids do not get it,’” she said.

“It’s a genocide.”

“It wasn’t until my undergrad that I learned about the Sixties Scoop and missing and murdered Indigenous women,” Day said.

Indigenous education at Queen’s

In terms of Indigenous education at Queen’s, Godlweska said there are “major problems,” but the University is doing “better and better.”

She described the need for Indigenous content to be woven throughout general courses, while also having specific courses taught by Indigenous professors.

For example, she recommended having an Indigenous professor teaching Indigenous literature in the English department.

She also said limited information in general classes is not enough to equip students with knowledge on complex issues like reconciliation, pipeline blockades, and ongoing colonialism.

“When students go into classes, if that’s the only contact student have with the topic, it’s simply not enough,” said Godlewska. “In many ways, I feel uncomfortable teaching and speaking about this. We need more Indigenous faculty.”

Karen Humphreys-Blake, a professor in the Smith School of Business, echoed Godlewska’s concerns about the lack of Indigenous content in courses at Queen’s.

“Unfortunately, many students come to university without much education regarding Indigenous history,” Humphreys-Blake wrote in a statement to The Journal.

“My colleagues and I conducted

topics because of her drive to take courses and certificates outside of her field of study.

Nandoh said the emphasis is on the student to seek out courses directly related to Indigenous content.

“I don’t think it’s accessible enough,” Nandoh said.

There are currently certificates at Queen’s tailored toward fostering an understanding of Indigenous history and activism, however, the impetus is on students to research, seek out, and commit to these opportunities outside of their course requirements.

“It’s entirely possible to do an entire degree and come out with very little breadth in education,” Godlewska said. “In Canada, there isn’t a commitment to liberal arts.”

Godlewska’s 2018 report described the vast majority of courses with Indigenous content at Queen’s being concentrated in social science and humanities programs, with far fewer being available to students in the sciences.

“The vast majority of students consider that the principal barrier to their knowledge is inadequate coverage in school, college, and university, reinforcing the need for better education,” reads the report.

“Troublingly, a fifth of students consider that the topics are not relevant to them.”

With one fifth of graduating Queen’s students disregarding “the topics” altogether, there is a discrepancy between the reality of dynamic Indigenous communities and students’ willingness to even acknowledge their existence.

However, Godlewska said criticism cannot fall on individual students who are the product of education systems that teach

through a white lens.

These are learned behaviours taught from elementary school to university. Colonial education systems are creating another generation who have rarely been exposed to Indigenous voices or content, perpetuating a cycle of blindness, incomprehension, and ignorance.

Shifting the needle on education

Evidently, students have been receiving a limited education that disregards and sidelines Indigenous content.

Learning an introduction of Indigenous culture in elementary schools and incorporating realities of colonialism as students grow up may be the only way to raise an informed generation, thus catalyzing true inclusivity, Nandoh said.

“The Minister of Education s h o u l d incorporate Indigenous culture and history in almost every

ILLUSTRATION BY ASHLEY CHEN

history class,” Nandoh said. “It should start in middle school and build as we grow older.”

When considering Indigenous students, the need for accurate, decolonialized education is even more compelling.

“When I got to middle school, I wanted to continue to take Mohawk—but I could only take Spanish or French,” Day said.

“Because I took another language, I lost a lot of my Mohawk.”

For Indigenous education to be engrained in school curriculums, Godlewska said there needs to be Indigenous involvement in decision-making processes.

“Education is a very conservative institution,” Godlewska said.

“If you want to change a curriculum, the administrators and committee members are not Indigenous—and any Indigenous input comes from invited guests with limited influence. This needs to shift.”

As suggested by Godlewska, curriculums need to situate Indigenous voices at the forefront of their content and balance historical trauma with Indigenous agency, brilliance, and activism.

Day, Nandoh, and Lind all advocated for more exposure to Indigenous content in education in grade school curriculums and introductory university courses.

Additionally, as described by Godlewska, institutions should be offering courses taught by Indigenous professors who have not only academic credentials, but meaningful lived experiences.

In a final note, Godlewska spoke to a larger truth about scholarship, education, and the narratives we teach.

“Scholarship needs to be situated in its time and place. And in this time and place, Indigenous topics are vitally important.”

Friday, November 13, 2020

queensjournal.ca

EDITORIALS

The Journal’s Perspective

THE QUEEN’S JOURNAL

Canada must address anti-Indigenous racism within medicine

Protests broke out this summer when an Indigenous woman named Joyce Echaquan died in a Quebec hospital, shortly after live streaming on Facebook. In the video, she detailed racist verbal abuse she’d suffered and worried she’d been given too much morphine.

While the autopsy has yet to be released, the racism Echaquan faced in the hospital’s care is horrifying and unacceptable, regardless of whether or not it directly caused her death.

Racism within the medical field isn’t a new problem. Many Indigenous peoples don’t trust hospitals or doctors to properly care for them. While this is partly because of stories like Echaquan’s, where Indigenous peoples suffer maltreatment, it’s also because hospitals were created to be white settler spaces.

While Euro-western medicine takes a biomedical approach, Indigenous peoples have always relied on a traditional, more holistic, way of healing. To address the needs of Indigenous peoples properly, hospitals must be willing to listen to Indigenous peoples’ concerns and needs and broaden their understandings of medicine.

In addressing Echaquan’s death, the Premier of Quebec gave his condolences and acknowledged the history of Indigenous

racism within the country, yet claimed that her death “doesn’t mean the Quebec nation is racist.”

The Canadian government can’t coddle white settlers’ feelings of discomfort when speaking about incidents like this one; it must instead push to have conversations about the prevalence of racism.

The only way to prevent other deaths like Echaquan’s is to tackle racism within medicine head-on. While the protests this past summer have helped bring issues of racism to the forefront, change won’t happen unless people in positions of power, like government officials, decide to not only address the issue, but act on it.

The racist sentiments Echaquan faced aren’t a rare, random occurrence—they’re consequences of a

system that was purposefully designed to cater to a specific group of people: white settlers. Canada can’t just review the hospital Echaquan died at; it needs to review medical institutions across the country.

The way we teach medicine should also be broadened. There is no one-size-fitsall when it comes to medical care; schools must recognize that and work to make Indigenous peoples and other minorities feel as safe as possible within health workers’ care.

Above all, Canada must be willing to listen to Indigenous communities about their needs and concerns.

Instead of ignoring these voices or refusing to acknowledge ILLUSTRATION BY ASHLEY CHEN s y s t e m i c racism, Canada must allow these communities to guide reform going forward.

No patient should ever feel unsafe in the care of hospital workers. The fact that many Indigenous peoples do is a failure and a glaringly obvious form of systemic racism. The longer Canada drags its feet in addressing—and reforming—this issue, the more people will suffer.

—Journal Editorial Board

During the pandemic and online classes, Queen’s must continue offering support for students

With classes now online, many students are restricted to their homes when completing course work this year, whether in the University District or scattered across the globe. To support all its students’ needs and ensure success, regardless of location, Queen’s needs to maintain and increase the quality of its student resources.

While there’s a heightened demand for mental health support during the COVID-19 pandemic and online classes, there’s also a newly heightened disparity between students who can and can’t access services through Queen’s while taking courses remotely.

In offering various mental health services available to students remotely—including having the AMS Peer Support Centre and counselling services from Student Wellness Services available online—Queen’s has adapted to support students as it would in regular years.

However, when students are off-campus, access to online services can be a struggle.

International students will likely face barriers in accessing Queen’s services due to significant differences in time zones.

Likewise, students in remote rural areas might experience poor internet connection, making both classes and support services inaccessible.

Queen’s should also provide more

adequate academic support to ensure students are still receiving the same quality education as they would have on campus.

Whereas in previous years students could simply drop into a professor’s office hours or visit QSAS in the back of Stauffer, online access to these services forces students assidy c ackon to wait longer for the help they need.

If Queen’s truly hopes to maintain a similar quality of student experience to previous years, it must take student needs into consideration, especially when preparing remote supports. By requiring professors and TAs to hold drop-in office hours for students, as well as creating support networks among students in different provinces and countries, Queen’s would better look PHOTO BY MAIA MCCANN after the overall remote With courses changing structurally, academic experience. asynchronous lectures being significantly While the University has adapted on a shorter than traditional in-person ones, major scale to allow for students to continue and courses such as ARTH 292 having learning online, it needs to not only maintain course content significantly limited, students its current remote services, but continue across multiple faculties have had to adjust to improve them to keep the student to new ways of learning. experience up to par with past years.

While supports such as QSAS (Queen’s Student Accessibility Sevices) and tutoring Cassidy is a fifth-year Philosophy are still being offered, the inability to access student and one of The Journal’s Assistant these services in person further contributes News Editors. to the overall barriers to support services.

C

MM

•7

Volume 148 Issue 13 www.queensjournal.ca @queensjournal Publishing since 1873

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8 • queensjournal.ca

OPINIONS

OPINIONS

Friday, November 13, 2020

Your Perspective

PHOTO BY JODIE GRIEVE

Emily Clare believes students are part of the solution, not the problem

Stop the bad press about Queen’s students

Negative headlines won’t foster a healthy relationship between students and locals Being a student in 2020 has come with its fair share of added stresses.

When COVID-19 forced many universities, including Queen’s, into predominantly remote learning, it caused a major shift in the experiences of many students. Eight months of public scrutiny regarding the behaviour of Queen’s students isn’t making anything easier.

Even if the discomfort of Kingston locals is justifiable given the stress of the pandemic, a constant focus on the students’ mistakes, rather than their successes, only serves to widen the divide between the town and the students.

“By fueling the public with eye-catching headlines that shame Queen's students rather than celebrate their successes, the press will be responsible for the separation between the city of Kingston and Queen's

Making headlines is old news for Queen’s students. Maclean’s magazine once deemed Queen’s “a notorious party school” and in 2016, the school was subject to national criticisms after photos of a racist party held by students circulated online.

In February of 2020, right in

the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, Queen’s students were once again in the spotlight after hosting a virus-themed party and posting photos with insensitive captions—ultimately leading to the resignation of a student trustee who attended the party.

The history of partying and insensitivity displayed by Queen’s students has created a stereotype associated with the school. Many Kingston locals regularly express their distaste for the institution’s pupils online, often referring to them as spoiled and disrespectful.

“With its beautfiul landscapes, gorgeous architecture, and vibrant community, Kingston is undeniably a great place to study."

Unfortunately for many students, the negative headlines ignore those who are practicing social distancing and working hard for their education during this global pandemic. There is a fine line between reporting and feeding into a narrative. By fueling the public with eye-catching headlines that shame Queen’s students rather than celebrate their successes, the press will be responsible for the separation between the city of Kingston and Queen’s University.

With its beautiful landscapes, gorgeous architecture, and vibrant

community, Kingston is undeniably a great place to study. Integration into Kingston itself is a core part of the Queen’s experience. It is the public’s right to voice their concerns, however, they must ensure this city remains a safe space for Queen’s students.

“Many members of the public, often eager to judge the students for reckless behaviour, seem to forget that we are all humans, too."

In September, about 2,300 students were invited to live in the university’s residences by Queen’s administration despite all undergraduate classes being shifted online. Many of these young students left their hometowns to study in a new and unfamiliar city. Since then, the handful of students living on campus who have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus have been accused of being self-centered and behaving irresponsibly.

These standards of criticism should be upheld for all members of the community and not just Queen’s students. Accountability is crucial to maintaining a healthy relationship between students and the city. Headlines that focus solely on the errors of students are hypocritical and imply they are the only ones at fault during this pandemic.

The impact of these headlines on students cannot be ignored.

Living away from family during a pandemic is challenging enough without being publicly shamed.

Many members of the public, often eager to judge the students for reckless behaviour, seem to forget that we are all humans, too.

It must also be understood that many Queen’s students are not represented by the stereotypes created by the press. Rather than partying, lots of students are working hard to adjust to an online learning platform while struggling to pay their unadjusted tuition fees. During this particularly difficult year of study, some empathy from the public would go a long way.

“Positive headlines celebrating the successes of the students will encourage the continuance of good behaviour and reinforce a sense of belonging to those living in Kingston."

It’s the responsibility of the University’s administration to ensure they create an environment on campus that’s safe and sustainable for both students and Kingston locals. In turn, students have a responsibility to follow the rules and mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

Unlike many Canadian cities, Kingston has maintained a green

community status for a number of weeks based on its relatively low number of active COVID-19 cases.

The majority of students have adjusted their lives to respect the guidelines, which includes a decline in parties. Most students refrained from in-person gatherings on Homecoming weekend, with many opting for COVID-friendly virtual celebrations instead. Unfortunately, these successes seemingly went unnoticed by the general public as negative headlines have persisted.

Positive headlines celebrating the successes of the students will encourage the continuance of good behaviour and reinforce a sense of belonging to those living in Kingston. In the long term, this will also allow students to build a relationship with the beautiful city while permitting a safe and healthy environment for everyone.

The overgeneralization of Queen’s students must end. The Kingston and Queen’s communities need each other now more than ever.

Emily Clare is a fifth-year Arts & Science student.

Have an opinion? Email journal_letters@ams.queensu.ca

Arts

Friday, November 13, 2020

ARTIST PROFILE

queensjournal.ca • 9

Storytelling and being heard: Indigenous Poet Billie the Kid discusses storytelling through spoken word poetry

Billie the Kid is a spoken word poet.

Billie the Kid discusses her craft Julia Stratton Staff Writer Billie Kearns, Sci ’19, commonly known as Billie the Kid, is a K’ai Taile Dené and Nehiyaw spoken

SUPPLOED BY BILLIE KEARNS

word poet and storyteller.

Kearns began writing spoken word poetry in Grade 10 while attending high school in Ottawa.

She was inspired by a week-long workshop in her literary arts class taught by Canadian poet Ian Keteku.

“Previously I’d heard about spoken word and thought: ‘I’m not sure if this is the type of poetry for me’ and then he came in and I was

totally floored,” Kearns said.

“Before high school I was pretty quiet. But in high school I started coming out of my shell,” she added.

“Once I actually started admiring spoken word as an artform, when I started performing, I was like ‘oh I get to be on stage and say exactly what I want to say exactly how I want to say it.’”

What Kearns values most about performing her poems is “being able to inhabit a different part of myself because who I am on stage is different from who I am hanging out with my friends.”

But for her, storytelling is more than a means of self-expression.

“Storytelling is a duty and a way of passing things on and letting stories live,” she said.

Kearns talked about how storytelling and spoken word poetry helped her learn more about her K’ai Taile Dené culture and form her identity.

“When I was younger, I used to write more about exploring that identity and that was a big part of me processing that,” she said. “More recently, [I’m] exploring the ways that spoken word and slam feel connected to Dené traditions and traditional Dené storytelling.”

When she started writing poetry at 16, she said to herself: “everyone’s doing love poems, I’m not going to do a love poem.”

For this reason, she chose not to perform any love poems for a long time.

“I would always write whatever in my notebook, so sure, I wrote a love poem in my notebook but I’m not going to perform it. That’s a different thing,” she said. “You get to choose what stays in your notebook and what you talk about on stage.”

But during her four years at Queen’s, she matured as an artist and now feels more comfortable sharing private emotions in her work.

“I don’t need that rule anymore,” she said. “Whatever story I feel compelled to write about is what I write about.”

According to Kearns, new experiences and emotions enrich her poems.

In fourth year, Kearns took a creative writing seminar and was told to write either a love poem or an elegy. “The elegy wasn’t going well so I decided to do a love poem,” she said.

“I wrote it, and I was actually quite happy with it and then I started performing it,” she said.

While she shied away from love poems as a teenager, her time at Queen’s taught her to embrace all aspects of her inner voice. “There’s actually this boy that made me feel a thing,” she said.

Kearns has been performing

since she started writing spoken word poetry at 16. Her first competition was the Ottawa Youth Poetry Slam Team. Then, as her career as a spoken word poet evolved, she was sent to the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word on the Ottawa Poetry Slam Team.

Kearns said the festival was a great way to meet many spoken word poets from across the country and “hear people with narratives very similar to yours or even narratives totally different to yours.”

“You all share this love of performing and writing. I have made some really beautiful friends and have learned a lot from them.”

Currently, Kearns is involved with Voices of Today, which is a poetry festival for youth, run by youth. She said it’s important that “youth shape the community the way they want to.”

Kearns started with Voices of Today while she was a student but has taken on a larger role now that she’s graduated.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Voices of Today Poetry Festival has transitioned to an online setting. The event has no entry fee and all presentations are pre-recorded, so performers don’t have to worry about internet connection which is often a barrier in many rural Indigenous communities and communities up north, she said.

These changes allow for the festival to be accessible to all.

For Kearns, spoken word poetry is all about telling stories and being listened to. “To really feel like ‘oh wow, people actually like my poetry and they connect to it,’” and “to have people remember something that I said—that’s what anybody wants.”

The Journal puzzles out recurrence of hilarious art restoration fails

Nathan Gallagher Arts Editor Eight years ago, in Spain, a well-meaning elderly lady made a disastrous decision to paint over a beloved painting of the son of God, transforming the work into what’s been dubbed Potato Jesus by some, Monkey Christ by others.

The Monkey Christ fiasco drew international attention to Borja, the small town in Spain where it all went down, and Cecilia Giménez, the would-be restorer, faced ire, derision, and mockery from the global community.

But the original 19th century work, Ecce Homo, which Giménez painted over, was never a priceless artefact as the media frenzy suggested. Rather, it held sentimental value to parishioners of the church it resided in. Ironically, Monkey Jesus has drawn more tourism to Borja than ever before, boosting the town’s fledgling economy, and making the botched version far more valuable than the original hidden beneath it.

While all’s well that ends well in this case, the fable of Monkey Christ calls into question how Giménez’s blunder was allowed to happen in the first place. One might assume there’d be strict protocols when it comes to restoring centuries-old

artworks—the kind of protocols that’d prevent a random local from taking their best crack at it.

In Giménez’s case, she had permission from the priest and conducted her work in the open with witnesses. According to her, she wasn’t finished the restoration job yet when the media uproar began, but, looking at the two images side-by-side, it’s hard to imagine more time would’ve yielded a better result.

Besides, serious art conservators insist completely painting over an original work is never the goal of restoration, no matter what state of disrepair it’s in. Instead, they carefully clean grime off old works and meticulously fill in cracks if need be. When handled by a trained professional, art restorations are typically successful at preserving the work and bringing it close to its original appearance.

Yet, botched art restorations are alarmingly common.

In 2018, more misguided restorers at the San Miguel de Estella church in Navarra, Spain degraded a 16th century wooden carving of a knight into a wonky cartoon character. As with the Jesus Monkey, this restoration was undertaken by a local craftsperson with good intentions instead of an expert.

More recently, in the Northern

Botched art restorations keep cropping up in Spain.

Spanish city of Palencia, a botched statue restoration has gone viral.

In this case, an alleged professional was hired to retouch a smiling woman’s face on the side of a building which had suffered from erosion. The result took the realistic carving style of the original and turned it into what looks like a playdough face molded by a really talented toddler.

While the trend would make it seem like some group of people is pulling an elaborate prank on the art community of Spain, these isolated events each happened as

a result of poor planning and a lack of care.

Perhaps it would be best to change our approach to art conservatism and add a lot more oversight and community decision-making to the process. In addition, we ought to put a greater emphasis on preserving old art and sculptures to prevent damage from occurring.

Alternatively, we could be a lot more restrictive when it comes to selecting ancient artworks for remastering. You may know that ancient marble statues

ILLUSTRATION BY TESSA WARBURTON

crafted by Roman societies were originally painted over. But today, these sculptures are recognized the world over for their iconic pale marble appearance and lifeless eyes.

While experts might see these statues as being ravaged by time, others regard their current state as more beautiful than the originals.

Would we ever dare to repaint these sculptures, rebuild the colosseum or realign the Leaning Tower of Pisa? After all, there is a haunting beauty to old and damaged things.

Arts

10 • queensjournal.ca

Friday, November 13, 2020

BOOK REVIEW

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is a stunning meditation on trauma, decolonization, and love Alicia Elliott balances personal reflection and Indigenous realities in debut book

Alysha Mohamed Assistant Arts Editor Tuscarora author Alicia Elliott starts her debut book, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, by comparing depression to colonialism.

The feelings of death, mourning, pain, and loss are present in both experiences; she uses her personal journey with depression, layered with intricate metaphors and poetic musings, as a foil to the present realities of Indigenous communities grappling with the effects of colonization.

Elliott does not hold back in her analysis of colonialism and Eurocentrism. Her writing is raw and hurts to read, likely because it is so unapologetically truthful.

There is no condolence ceremony, she describes, for those “mourning themselves” in the aftermath of colonialism. “There’s no collective condolence ceremony for our people […] those who need help to see our beauty and hear our songs and speak our language.

But maybe, one day,” she writes, “there can be.”

Her opening essay encompasses the heart of the book—a balance between candid personal reflection and analysis of Indigenous history, all linked together through her complex Haudenosaunee identity.

She delves into her personal struggle of being mixed-race, how internalized racism impacted both her childhood and her experience with motherhood, and her experience with de-colonial romantic love.

Elliott uses the essay on recurring head lice to reveal a much deeper analysis of poverty on reservations; similarly, her essay on weight gain reveals a deeper truth about the inability of Indigenous families to

afford nutritious food.

Nothing about the essays are simple, which is why her writing is so captivating. Every statement is an interconnected web of race, class, identity, and history that cannot be separated or boiled down to a single theme.

Elliott does not shy away from writing the most complex feelings of shame and resentment, admitting hard truths that most writers would run from.

“As much as it made me sick to admit it, internalized racism had warped me so much that I was actually relieved that my child didn’t look like my father, my aunts, my uncle, my grandmother,” writes Elliott in her essay on being mixed-race.

“Now my kid could, if they chose, deflect the sharp, parasitic legacy of shame and violence they’d inherited and disappear into whiteness.”

Because of her honesty, I felt comfortable addressing my own ignorance, condescension, and bias toward Indigenous communities in Canada. I realized the importance of decolonizing my mind to understand the complex realities of our country; I saw my internalized racism sticking out in the spaces between her writing.

This collection has been called “hard, vital medicine” by Warren Cariou, “a stunning, vital triumph of writing” by David Chariandy, and “fire with warmth, light, rage, and endless transformation”

by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.

When I read it, the book was all of the above.

I had the profound experience of being truly seen as a woman of colour—with the knowledge that I am still an outsider to

Elliott’s novel compares colonialism to depression.

Indigenous culture—as if Elliott had climbed inside my body and felt the ridges of my bones, putting the feelings I could never articulate into writing.

I can only imagine the validating experience of experiencing her words as an Indigenous reader.

Elliott presents herself as a flawed, honest, sexual woman who acknowledges and battles her childhood trauma.

She refuses to be a simple archetype of Indigenous culture, and this in itself is wildly powerful.

Most importantly, she writes with love. She writes with love for her culture, her

community, and her family, regardless of how flawed they are. She writes with love for herself while acknowledging she is the product of intergenerational trauma and colonialism.

This idea is vividly encapsulated in her essay On Seeing and Being Seen.

“If you can’t write about us with a love for who we are as a

PHOTO BY ALYSHA MOHAMED

people, what we’ve survived, what we’ve accomplished despite all attempts to keep us from doing so,” writes Elliot, “if you can’t look at us as we are and feel your pupils go wide, rendering all stereotypes a sham, a poor copy, a disgrace—then why are you writing about us at all?”

POEM

We Agreed That I Should Leave You in Toronto Billie the Kid We sit on the couch in your apartment and the clock pushes August away, hands squeezing the thick air to rain.

Two hours left before my bus back to Kingston and we’re still dragging songs into the last Spotify playlist we’ll make together. You slide into a black hoodie and Icona Pop swells through your speakers.

It hits me that I’ll never kiss the cold off your face in the fall or

melt the red off your cheeks with my palms. I’ll remember the sweat of June from your fingers, how I pulled salt and dirt from your knuckles

with my mouth. You pop the cork off a miniature of pear brandy, flash a grin through your hood, excited to try the notes of something you find peculiar. When I leave, you’ll keep the small bottle around just long enough to fall for the taste before the brandy runs dry.

Pear brandy and autumn vibes feature into Billie the Kid’s first love poem.

ILLUSTRATION BY TESSA WARBURTON

You lick your lips – this means you want me to kiss you. I shove your back against the couch, attempt to suck the grin out from your jaws. I gather the fleece on your shoulders in my fist, imagine the brandy smells like crunching leaves.

Sports

Friday, November 13, 2020

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At McGill, a case study in scholarships for Indigenous student-athletes by countless Indigenous communities in Canada as early as the 17th century.

The shape of the game was far different in its early days: matches would last entire days, pitches sometimes spread up to nearly 10 kilometres long, and there were no out-of-bounds. But the core Matt Scace of the game—which involved Managing Editor passing a ball with netted sticks in pursuit of scoring on an opposing In 2016, McGill’s lacrosse team welcomed team—has remained a constant its first Indigenous student-athlete to the feature of the game. program, Kieran McKay. In the 1700s and 1800s, European The team’s current Head Coach, Nicolas colonists started adapting lacrosse.

Soubry, said it was an inflection point for Most notably, Canadian dentist then-head coach, Tim Murdoch.

William George Beers founded the “I think it was a wake-up call that we’re Montreal Lacrosse Club in 1856—in not really doing our job recruiting and the process, he shortened the length getting our message out there that we of the game, redesigned the stick want [Indigenous] players,” Soubry told and ball, and shrunk the number of The Journal. players on the field. Within the next In 2017, while Canada was celebrating 10 years, lacrosse became Canada’s the 150th anniversary of Confederation, national sport, even receiving the Murdoch brought up the idea of installing a endorsement of Queen Victoria—and scholarship for Indigenous student-athletes effectively distancing lacrosse from on McGill’s lacrosse team with Jim Calder, a its Indigenous roots.

PHOTOS BY MAIA MCCANN board member of the Canadian Lacrosse This history of settler Canadians Queen’s currently doesn’t have a scholarship for Indigenous athletes.

Foundation. Pulling from various donors, a taking ownership over the sport was, university-supported online fundraising in part, what propelled the team to start and I’m just hopeful for the future. I was “Fundraising for [Athletic Financial page, and other sources, Murdoch and the scholarship. just pleased we were able to get this funded Awards]’s are and has been a priority Calder reached the necessary goal of “It was really a colonization of the sport,” before I leave the program. I hope it gives for Athletics & Recreation over the past $80,000 to endow the fund, allowing it to be Soubry said. “I think something we wanted a little bit more incentive for Indigenous number of years and we are always talking distributed in perpetuity. to do was understand that and try to, with student-athletes to come to McGill, especially to alumni about the opportunities and When total donations hit the $80,000 the small amount we have, give back to the lacrosse players,” he said, noting Zawada support that AFA’s provide to studentmark, the scholarship became one of the community that gave us this sport. That was and Kane as two additional Indigenous athletes, and we will continue to do so. We first of its kind in Canada. While it was kind of the idea behind it.” students to join the team since he arrived would welcome the opportunity to establish intended for Indigenous players on the Despite fears of being unable to raise in 2016. awards for Indigenous student-athletes,” Dal lacrosse team, the terms state that if there enough funds for the scholarship, support He said the scholarship’s dual purposes Cin wrote. aren’t any Indigenous players on the team blew in from all directions, getting it on its of recognizing the game’s history while As the scholarship becomes a mainstay in a given year, it will still be awarded to an feet just over a year after fundraising began. tangibly serving future Indigenous students for McGill’s lacrosse team, Soubry said he Indigenous student-athlete on another team. For the 2019-20 academic year, it was is encouraging. hopes Indigenous representation continues “We were basically looking for anyone distributed for the first time, being awarded “I personally don’t think [lacrosse is] to increase, which he believes will have a to help us with our idea that we should to three Indigenous players on the lacrosse recognized as much as it should be […] I further-reaching impact on the team. be helping our student athletes come to team: Hunter Zawada, Kerry Kane, and the think it’s a great way to have a way to honour “A lot of teams in the U.S. and Canada, McGill and enjoy the sport that they created, team’s first Indigenous player, McKay. Each the game in Canada while benefitting the there’s a lot of teams that don’t have that and that is so much a part of their culture student received $2,000 for the year, which future generations of players who will Indigenous influenc e, and I think the more that we as a community don’t understand Soubry said he hopes will increase over time. benefit from the scholarship itself,” he said. we have that on our team, it’s going to completely,” Soubry said.

Still, the award covers team fees, with some As it stands, the scholarship remains help us develop into maybe better people Starting the scholarship during the left over. one of the few—if not the only—of its kind or more understanding people outside of country’s 150th anniversary allowed the McKay, who came to McGill from in Canada. lacrosse,” Soubry said. team to recognize, in a small way, that the Richmond, B.C., said he hopes to see the In a statement to The Journal, Leslie Dal “Because that’s the goal of university origination of the game stretches far further scholarship have effects on the program Cin, executive director of Queen’s Athletics sport: to graduate as someone who’s back than 150 years. in the long run—and has already seen the and Recreation, said the department is be evolved or developed into someone who’s Modern-day lacrosse, Canada’s national potential benefits borne from it. open to creating awards for Indigenous more knowledgeable about the world summer sport, descends from games played “There’s nothing really like it in Canada, student athletes. around them.”

Still in its early years, scholarship presents the first model of its type in Canada

The Queen’s Journal vs Western Gazette: Fantasy Football series—Week Ten The Journal’s start ’em sit ’em picks for Week Ten Liam Varvaris, Jack Burnham Contributors The dog days are over. The Journal beat out The Gazette with 46 net points to their 16.5 last week, bringing the series to 2-1 in the Mustangs favour. Whether we credit the win to extra research or our Editor in Chief ‘manifesting’ a win for us, we aren’t sure—but we’re looking to repeat our success this week and even out the series.

Starters ($73)

along with a good share of receptions. The Jaguars have an awful front seven; they’ve Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals given up the fifth-most points to running face off against Josh Allen and the Buffalo backs and Aaron Jones is one of the NFL’s Bills. This matchup should be a shootout most underrated in the position. Jones is a and has the potential to be the highest- must-start in a game the Packers should scoring game this week. We’re giving Kyler handle with ease. the edge, as he’s been more consistent than DK Metcalf and the Seattle Seahawks take Allen this season and has a slight advantage on the L.A. Rams this week, in what should in picking up some more yardage on the be a tightly contested rivalry matchup. The ground. Either way, both quarterbacks Rams defence is strong, but Metcalf has should be great and this game will be a fun been a must-start every week, regardless of one to watch. the matchup—he’s only had one week this Aaron Jones and the Packers are looking season below 15 fantasy points and eight to take advantage of the Jacksonville games with over 90 receiving yards. As long Jaguars, one of the worst teams in the as Russell Wilson is throwing Metcalf the league. The Jags are in full rebuild mode on ball, start him, especially in a division game both sides of the ball, whereas the Packers where Seattle’s star players will have to and Aaron Rodgers have been firing on come up big to win. all cylinders. Aaron Jones should be a safe T.J. Hockenson and the Lions are set bet for a touchdown or two this week, to play the Washington Football Team

this week. Washington has given up the fifth-most fantasy points to tight ends this season. This bodes well for Hockenson who, despite Detroit’s struggles, is cementing himself as one of the best tight ends in the league. He has five or more receptions in the past three games and has found the endzone five times this season. Against a defence that struggles against the position, look for Hockenson to build on his strong sophomore season in a competitive game between the league’s basement dwellers.

Simply put, the Baltimore Ravens’ defence is one of the biggest reasons they’re a Super Bowl contender this season. They’re the best Fantasy defence so far and have the pleasure of playing the struggling New England Patriots offence this Sunday.

Continued on page 12 ...

Sports

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Taylor Black and McKinley Hunt discuss their transition to playing Premiership Rugby in England Dharmayu Desai Contributor When the OUA announced its season cancellations, studentathletes were understandably disappointed. Some, however, have found other means to keep playing the sports they love, with an aim to get to the next level.

Representing Canada and Queen’s, women’s rugby’s Taylor Black and McKinley Hunt have been playing professionally with the Exeter Chiefs in England’s top rugby division amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

With limited opportunities at home, Black and Hunt decided to move to England—where many sports are still permitted—to train for the upcoming World Cup in 2021, joining the Chiefs for their inaugural season. Taking advantage of online courses, they have continued their student-athlete lifestyles in England, albeit from another time zone.

At the time of the interview, uncertainty threatened the continuation of the Chief’s season as another lockdown loomed over England. Since, despite lockdowns in the U.K., their status as an elite team exempted them from the shutdown and will continue to play.

To gain insight into their situation, The Journal connected with Black and Hunt to discuss their experiences playing rugby and the transition to England from Canada.

Black and Hunt both described how rugby became dominant in their lives during high school, and how Queen’s provided a perfect combination of academics and athletics for their future.

Much of Black’s decision to come to Queen’s was tied to

Continued from page 11 ...

With Cam Newton at the helm, the Patriots offence has been wildly inconsistent this season.

The Ravens have the personnel to stop the run this week and put lots of pressure on Cam Newton, who hasn’t been particularly careful with the ball thus far.

Bench ($89)

Kirk Cousins and the Minnesota Vikings hit the road this week to take on Chicago as the Vikings look for their fourth win of the season.

Cousins has taken at least one sack in each game this season and has remained inconsistent in his play, racking up 10 interceptions through eight games. Meanwhile, the Bears boast a defence ranked fourth against quarterbacks and have beaten the Vikings four of the last five times the teams have met.

Joe Mixon and the Cincinnati Bengals take on the undefeated Pittsburgh Steelers this week in

Taylor Black (left) and McKinley Hunt (right).

Friday, November 13, 2020

McKinley Hunt, who’s completing her Masters of Education at Queen’s, has found the selfdirection and flexibility in the program helpful.

“I was very much attracted to the concurrent education program at Queen’s, it’s one of the most highly ranked programs in the country and Queen’s [has] always had a great reputation for being strong in women’s rugby,” Hunt noted.

Hunt reiterated the challenges of playing during a pandemic and in a new setting—while some things come naturally, some adjustments have taken some getting used to.

“I do really like how rugby focused this country is, everyone is so excited that we are here playing rugby, and are willing to help in any way possible. A thing that’s taken a little getting used to is sometimes with the accents on SUPPLIED BY MCKINLEY HUNT the pitch, it’s hard to understand what people are saying, but that’s getting better,” she said.

Hunt has enjoyed rugby in England, with more funding and support available to women compared to Canada. Even with an impending lockdown, she was confident the games would continue. “[The lockdown is] definitely “The team’s getting together adding a layer of complexity to our well, we definitely have the most training environment, but we are international players over here. considered elite sport so it’s not We have girls from the US, Japan, really changing our daily training Scotland, Canada and some New routine,” Hunt said.

Zealand girls joining us as well. So, Consequently, Hunt cited to mend all the different styles of various things that Canada can play together will definitely take learn from England to grow some time,” Black said. the sport.

Although in-person viewing is “I think more government restricted, online streaming has funding and just trying to increase kept an audience alive. the public awareness of the “It’s getting a lot of publicity on sport, and really encourage and social media; I think there’s a lot invite young girls to play, as well of people that are really excited as broadcasting it so people can about this league getting up and become fans [would help].” going and the competition rising.

As the season continues, Black Essentially, it’s bringing people and Hunt are set to play the from all over the world together,” Durham Sharks on Nov. 14.

Black said.

Parallel to the shift from in-person viewership, studying has also gone completely online Want to write? Email during COVID-19. Time zones can journal_sports@ams.queensu.ca. be challenging with long training days that come with elite rugby.

Queen’s women’s rugby teammates cross the pond Head Coach Dan Valley, who had been her rugby coach at Oakville Trafalgar High School. Although she arrived at Queen’s as a top recruit, Black’s athletic career began in what some might view as the antithesis to rugby.

“I guess I was in rugby for about 3 years before I picked it up as my dominant sport. Before that I was actually really competitive in ballet, a bit different,” Black said.

It’s safe to say that Black made a good choice in Rugby—despite only being a second year, she’s already represented Canada’s Women’s 15’s team at the Women’s Rugby Super Series, and was named a U Sports All-Canadian last season. While Black will be returning to a familiar Canadian uniform, this year’s World Cup prep has been different than before.

While preparing for the Pittsburgh. Mixon has surpassed 70 rushing yards in a game only once this season, which came in a win against the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week Four. The Steelers defence is particularly dominant, ranking first in the league against the run, and the Bengals have yet to win a game on the road.

Mike Evans and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers take on the Carolina Panthers on the road this week, looking to bounce back from a devastating loss to the New Orleans Saints that saw the Buccaneers muster only a field goal. Mike Evans’ targets have been in the single digits since Week Two and he hasn’t gone over 70 yards in a single game since Week Four. The Panthers pass-defence is ranked sixth in the league and with Brady having other targets in Godwin and Brown, Evans just isn’t getting the ball like he used to.

Mark Andrews and the Baltimore Ravens take on the New England Patriots this week

2021 Rugby World Cup, Black explained how the team was forced to stop practice due to the pandemic and move overseas to continue training.

“When rugby shut down in Canada and they started reopening it in England, [the national team] started shipping us all out, trying to get us opportunities with teams here,” Black said.

The Canadian women’s rugby team has created numerous opportunities, with 12 players playing in English leagues and about 10 in France. Both Hunt and Black referred to the transition to the Chiefs as smooth, with lots of support from the community at Queen’s and Exeter.

As far as rugby goes, Black pointed out that the level of play is comparable to Queen’s, but cited some differences in style of play—particularly an increased physicality and speed of play.

on the road as the Patriots look to build on a win against the Jets during a Monday night prime-time matchup last week.

Andrews has never had over 10 targets in a single game this season and has yet to have a 60-yard game. He hasn’t had a touchdown since Week Six and now faces

a defence ranked first against tight ends.

The Jacksonville Jaguars take on the Green Bay Packers this week on the road with the colder weather being yet one more factor benefitting the home team. The Packers have an offence ranked 11 overall

PHOTO BY JODIE GRIEVE

with a combination of Aaron Jones, Davante Adams, and Aaron Rodgers dominating this season.

In contrast, the Jaguars have a defence ranked 28 overall with their only win in nine games coming against the Indianapolis Colts in Week One.

LIFESTYLE

Friday, November 13, 2020

Lifestyle

O Canada: The reality of anti-Indigenous discrimination We live in a racist country, and it’s irresponsible to pretend otherwise Shelby Talbot Lifestyle Editor In the weeks leading up to the US election, die-hard Trump supporters took to social media to announce they’d be moving to Canada if the incumbent president wasn’t re-elected. Canadians took offence. We pointed out that Americans whose beliefs aligned with Trump’s wouldn’t find Canada’s strict gun laws and absence of legal restrictions on abortion agreeable. But what we failed to acknowledge—something that’s often glossed over in our conversations denouncing America’s sociopolitical climate—is a systemic failing we do share with the present-day US: Canada is racist, too.

Earlier this week, a 2018 security video showing a First Nations woman being knocked unconscious and dragged along the floor by her arms to a cell at a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) detachment in Manitoba made headlines across the country. Genesta Garson, a member of Tataskweyak Cree Nation, was only 19 years old when she was

picked up by officers on the suspicion of being drunk. She left the facility far worse off than she arrived: in an ambulance.

No formal investigation into the incident was launched, and Garson says she was bullied into withdrawing her complaint against the officers involved after the RCMP repeatedly showed up at her home and place of work.

Garson’s experience is one of many instances of v iolenc e a nd discrimination against Indigenous people in Canada committed by the RCMP. This past June, an RCMP officer in Nunavut was caught on camera hitting a 22-year-old Inuk man with the door of a moving truck before arresting him for public intoxication.

That same month, CBC News reported that more than 30 cases of alleged mistreatment of and violence against Inuit women by the RCMP were compiled by the Legal Services Board of Nunavut in letters to the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP calling for a systemic review of policing in Nunavut.

Any Canadian who’s surprised to learn of the RCMP’s abhorrent treatment

queensjournal.ca

of Indigenous people shouldn’t be. The branch of law enforcement was created by parliament to assert sovereignty over Indigenous peoples and their lands—the institution is sick at its roots, a foundation built on nearly 150 years of racism and supremacy.

Institutionalized discrimination, systemic racism, and police brutality are not issues reserved for our neighbours south of our border. The white-washed rhetoric that claims ‘racism doesn’t exist in Canada’ is not only grossly irresponsible, but dismissive of the realities of Indigenous peoples and First Nations across our country, underserved and harmed by the federal and provincial governments.

Neskantaga, a First Nation in Northern Ontario, has been forced to evacuate most of its people for weeks due to contaminated water. They have been living under the longest-standing boil water advisory in the country, denied the basic

ILLUSTRATION BY TESSA WARBURTON

human right of clean, safe drinking water.

Last month, mobs of non-Indigenous commercial fishermen vandalized two lobster facilities, burning a van and seizing catch, despite Nova Scotia RCMP being on-scene. The attack was part of an ongoing attempt by the fishermen to shut down the Sipekne'katik First Nation’s new lobster fishery operating outside of the commercial fishing season, ignoring the Mi’kmaq

• 13

peoples’ right under treaty to do so.

Contrastingly, the RCMP launched raids against unarmed, peaceful protestors on Wet'suwet'en land in February, enforcing a court injunction meant to end disruption to the Coastal GasLink pipeline’s construction through unceded Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs’ territory against their consent. They dismantled protestor checkpoints and made numerous arrests.

The RCMP spent $9.5 million on enforcing the Coastal Gaslink injunction for the 2019-20 fiscal year—an absurd amount of money spent furthering the interests of the federal government and bulldozing the rights of Wet'suwet'en people.

It’s impossible to look at these instances of violence and discrimination against Indigenous people in Canada, only a fraction of what these communities have suffered in just the past few years, and claim that we live in a country that isn’t racist. Anti-Indigenous racism has existed in Canada since its first days, and it pervades our present. And our response to this injustice, as a nation, is inadequate.

Touting Canada as a progressive haven in response to the Trump supporters looking to move here after the US election is a product of unacceptable willful ignorance. It’s our damagingly passive Canadian politeness sweeping the plights of Indigenous peoples through the cracks rather than facing up to the rude, uncomfortable truth that our country is deeply flawed.

Instead of being quick to jump to our country’s defense on Twitter, let’s stop putting Canada on a pedestal and cast our judgement inward. We live in a racist country—if discrimination is what those Trump voters are hoping to find here in Canada, they’ll feel right at home.

The history of Indigenous representation in film and television

A look back at the highs and lows of Indigenous characterization Kirby Harris Assistant Lifestyle Editor It’s not controversial to state that Hollywood has a representation problem. In over 100 years of productions, positive and well-rounded Indigenous characters have been notably missing from film and television. The history of Indigenous representation is a long and messy one, with the absence of Indigenous voices in Hollywood resulting in decades of misrepresentation.

In the early years of film, Westerns were the bulk of Indigenous representation on screen. In these portrayals, hostile “Indians” were often pitted against cowboy protagonists played by big names like John Wayne. The popular early 20th-century genre was defined by its Indigenous characters, despite them being used as little more than bodies for the wild west heroes to slaughter.

However, it wasn’t long before the genre took a turn for the better. Little Big Man, released in 1970, turned the stereotypical Indigenous portrayal on its head. The film has been described as a revisionist Western, with Indigenous characters shown sympathetically and the United States military forces as the villains. The film starred Canadian actor, Chief Dan George, who

was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role.

Revisionist westerns were popularized in the 1960s and 70s, bringing an improved perspective to the ‘Cowboys vs.

Indians’ narrative.

Outside of the Western genre, there was little Indigenous representation in film and television for much of the 20th century. Once Westerns depleted in popularity, it was hard to find film and television with even the mention of an Indigenous character. The most prominent genre outside of Westerns to feature Indigenous characters was animation.

Disney’s Peter Pan featured incredibly problematic portrayals of Indigenous people in 1953, which has since been acknowledged by the studio. Peter Pan is one of the select films that now features a non-skippable disclaimer before viewing on Disney+, explaining the racist nature of certain scenes.

Other animated films featuring Indigenous characters released in the 1990s and early 2000s were met with a controversial response.

Pocahontas, Brother Bear, and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron all featured sympathetic Indigenous representation, but still relied heavily on stereotypes.

Pocahontas has been criticized for misrepresenting and romanticizing the truly horrifying story of the girl it’s based on, while Brother Bear plays into Disney’s unfortunate tradition of turning people of colour into animals for the bulk of their screen time.

There has also been a significant

amount of Indigenous Islander representation in animation, with Lilo & Stitch and Moana garnering a more positive response.

In the 2010s, Indigenous representation in film and television has grown and developed in Hollywood. The decade saw a general push for more non-white, non-straight, and non-male representation in popular films, resulting in more screen time for Indigenous characters. While there has been widespread improvement in the quality of the representation, there’s still a long way to go. In 2015, a dozen Native American actors walked off the set of Netflix’s satirical western The Ridiculous Six due to the script being disrespectful toward Indigenous peoples.

Netflix responded to backlash by defending the jokes as satirical, claiming the cast was “in on the joke.”

However, some filmmakers are more willing to listen. The blockbuster film Wonder Woman, released in 2017, is one of the biggest films in recent history to have an Indigenous supporting character.

Canadian actor Eugene Brave Rock played Chief Napi, a Blackfoot demi-god who accompanies the title character in her journey across Europe. The actor said he was originally worried about his character relying on stereotypes, but when he approached the director with his concerns, she gave him “unprecedented” control of his character. It’s clear this is a landmark of positive Indigenous representation in Hollywood: listening to Indigenous voices.

In the third season of CBC’s

Anne with an E, a television show based off L.M.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, Indigenous characters were introduced along with a storyline about residential schools. The show made certain not only to cast Indigenous actors, but seek out Indigenous screenwriters to bring the story to life.

The story is centered around Ka’kwet, a 12-year-old Mi’kmaq girl who is taken to a residential school in Nova Scotia and is able to escape and return home. Unfortunately, almost as soon as she is home, she’s captured again and brought back to the school. The story is painful, but it’s an honest representation of the experiences of generations of Indigenous people in Canada. The season ends with Ka’kwet’s parents travelling to Nova Scotia with the aim of bringing their daughter home, but to no success. The story is then cut short, as Anne was cancelled at the end of the third season—a decision which has been criticized for being damaging for Indigenous viewers, who are made to relive the worst parts of their history only to never have it resolved.

To read the rest of this article, go to queensjournal.ca/ lifestyle

LIFESTYLE

14 • queensjournal.ca

Friday, November 13, 2020

In global politics, this fall feels like a step backward for women It’s exhausting to be caught in the cycle of current events of repeatedly jeopardized women’s rights Shelby Talbot Lifestyle Editor I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone use the word ‘feminist’ as an insult.

I’ve been told feminism is greedy, it oppresses men, it’s obsolete. We have the vote—what more could we possibly want?

I’m exhausted by the narrative that women in North America have achieved perfect, utopian equality. Important strides have certainly been made toward elevating women’s rights, but we’re still far from living in a world where we don’t need inclusive feminism—just look at the state of global politics in the past month.

Watching the U.S. election results roll in over the course of last week was an incredibly frustrating experience. Donald Trump has received over 72 million votes—that’s 72 million Americans who’ve decided Trump’s treatment of LGBTQIA+ people, racialized groups, and women aren’t dealbreakers.

October 2016 saw the publication of the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump can be heard bragging about grabbing women “by the pussy” in 2005. He was still elected President that November, just one month later.

The rhetoric surrounding Trump’s blatant sexism and mistreatment of women paints as clear a picture as any that

present-day women aren’t free from discrimination. His supporters have dismissed the Access Hollywood tape as ‘locker room talk.’ But ‘jokes’ about sexual assault aren’t salacious fun—the fact that this is even considered by some to be a valid excuse for Trump’s words speaks volumes about their perception of women. Sexual violence is a gravely serious issue that disproportionately affects women: results from a 2019 survey by Statistics Canada found that 30 per cent of Canadian women 15 years of age and older have experienced sexual assault compared to eight per cent of men.

At least 26 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct since the 1970s, and he was still elected President of one of the most influential countries in the world. If that doesn’t set a devastatingly harmful precedent for how little we value the experiences of women, I don’t know what does.

Since entering office, Trump has worked tirelessly to kneecap women’s rights, including blocking laws that promote equal pay in the workplace and dismantling reproductive health services. Most recently, he nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, and her confirmation represents a significant threat to American women.

Barrett is not a feminist icon.

Throughout her confirmation hearings, she refused to say whether she would uphold reproductive rights, including access to safe abortion and birth control. Her addition to the Supreme Court puts cornerstones of women’s rights, such as affordable childcare, pay equality, and Roe v.

Wade—the landmark Supreme Court ruling which protects a pregnant

woman's right to have an abortion without excessive government restriction—in jeopardy.

Across the ocean, hundreds of thousands of women in Poland have taken to the streets for nearly three weeks to protest the Polish government's tightening of an already severe abortion law. Poland had the fourth-strictest abortion law in Europe before the change; now, people can only access abortion for two reasons: threats to the person’s life, or rape.

Here in Canada, the thousands of Indigenous women and girls who were murdered or have disappeared across the country span decades. They are victims of a Canadian genocide, one that has gone

Women's rights aren't guaranteed.

greatly unaddressed and ignored.

Some days, the news cycle feels like an endless barrage of proof that even in countries touted as progressive, women’s experiences continue to be devalued, our bodies still policed, our safety dismissed. Here in North America, the fight for women’s rights is far from over.

Being told women have achieved complete equality, that feminism is an outdated, unnecessary tool that should be retired, is not only discouraging—it hurts. Watching women’s rights around the world fall into question time and again is sickening, and it’s made worse when it goes unacknowledged.

ILLUSTRATION BY EZRI WYMAN

Remembering Alex Trebek

‘Jeopardy!’ host passes away at 80, leaving a lasting legacy in the cultural landscape of television Simone Manning Assistant News Editor On Nov. 8, beloved Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek passed away after a battle with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Trebek, age 80, hosted the long-running quiz show for 37 years, presenting a record-breaking 8,200 episodes.

Trebek announced his diagnosis in March of 2019 in a video message posted on the social media page of Jeopardy!. In his steady, collected manner, he addressed his audience directly from the set of the show, noting with humour that he would continue hosting—as he was contractually obligated until the year 2022.

In a tweet shared by the Jeopardy! account, Executive Producer Mike Richards said Trebek had taped shows up until two weeks before his passing, which are set to air through to Dec. 25 with a special recorded message by Trebek to play on the final episode.

Amid speculation, the show has not stated whether a new host will be announced in the near future.

Born in Sudbury, Ontario, and an alumnus of the University of Ottawa, Trebek rose to notability following a stint at the CBC during his college

years. He hosted an impressive number of shows including Music Hop, Reach for the Top, The Wizard of Odds, Double Dare, and The $128,000 Question.

In 1985, Trebek began his steady position at the helm of the Jeopardy! revival. In the era of flashy, tech-based reality television and overproduced dramas, Jeopardy! has been a comforting constant, quietly playing in the background of living rooms across Canada and the US. The show garnered 35 Emmy Awa rds, a Lifet ime Achievement award for Trebek, as well as a Peabody in 2011—the first time in 50 years a quiz show ha s been honoured as a “model of integrity and decorum.”

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY SHELBY TALBOT

Outliers presented themselves over the nearly 40-year runtime, including the record-breaking $2.5 million earnings over 74 straight wins by Ken Jennings in 2004, rivalled only by the rise of James Holzhauer in the spring of 2019.

"Alex wasn't just the best ever at what he did," Jennings wrote in a statement on Twitter. "He was also a lovely and deeply decent man, and I'm grateful for every minute I got to spend with him."

The loss of this cultural icon cannot be overerstated. Beneath the statement of his passing on Twitter, thousands of condolences poured in from fans around the world, sharing countless anecdotes and thanking Trebek for childhood

memories of viewing the show with family.

Contestants found small ways to show their support of Trebek over the months following his diagnosis, with contestant Dhruv Gaur betting $1,995 of his $2,000 on a heartfelt Final Jeopardy answer reading “We love you Alex” in November 2019.

For 35 years, Trebek remained a reliable, even-tempered host, change presenting itself only through the passage of time as his hair turned from black to grey. Taping multiple shows a day, Trebek took moments during commercial breaks to converse with audience members, and despite the rigid, rigorous formatting of the show, he found time to gently scold contestants for incorrect answers, rap lyrics of hip hop icons in his careful diction, and fire the occasional, light-hearted zinger at the nerdiest participants.

Trebek built a lasting legacy on the principles of equal opportunity, intelligence, and the unprecedented notion that possessing obscure, wide-reaching knowledge is the truest form of cool.

In 2019, Sam Anderson wrote in The New York Times, “Despite the diagnosis, Alex Trebek continued to work, to put on his suits and read his clues.”

“It was a dignified refusal to surrender to doom,” he added. “He was the squarest possible existentialist hero: a man who holds the answer to every single trivia question, but not to the great final question of death—and yet he keeps showing up anyway, reading his clues, giving us every last answer he can.”

Friday, November 13, 2020

queensjournal.ca

felt the harrowing effects of social isolation and quarantine.

In true Kardashian fashion, Kim Kardashian decided it would be an appropriate time to relieve her family’s stress by renting out an entire island for her 40th birthday bash. The news came days before Kendall Jenner threw a Halloween-themed birthday party with an alleged guest list of 100 attendees.

With the virus surging

across the world, people need to be abiding by public health guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Regardless of your social standing or economic status, we should all be working together to stop the spread of this deadly virus. The Kardashians are no exception.

In an Instagram post, Kim claimed to be “humbled” by her privilege while sharing pictures of extravagant outings and activities

her partygoers had on the private island.

Kim’s post feels like a tone-deaf attempt to validate herself for being the self-absorbed social icon who prioritizes partying over the health and safety of those around her.

Perhaps it’s time to remind the Kardashians and other A-listers the pandemic isn’t over, and our circumstances won’t improve unless we collectively continue to socially distance and act responsibly.

When people with massive fortunes and social platforms behave in a way that flies in the face of the interests of public health, it’s incredibly disheartening. While there's been an onslaught of criticism coming from other celebrities and the public, they seem unbothered by the bad press. It’s frustrating to see people like the Kardashians behave this way and feel zero repercussions.

Rather than spending a copious amount of money on a lavish getaway, Kim could have tastefully directed her funds to those who are struggling to provide for themselves during the pandemic. Just as well, Kim could use her social media platform to inspire others to stay home.

It’s moments like these that remind us that celebrities aren’t just like us: they believe they have the privilege to flaunt

they could so much as meet Clare.

Clare cancelled several group dates and time with the other guys because she only wanted to be with Dale, and didn’t seem to clue into the other guys’ frustration. And—spoiler—by the end of episode four, after two weeks of dating, Clare and Dale were engaged.

Naturally, many viewers were outraged by Clare’s outright refusal to play the series’ game by its rules. And while Clare did seem to feel guilty about wasting the other guys’ time, she didn’t really see where she went wrong.

That being said, while Clare didn’t follow the traditional path of The Bachelorette lead, she probably followed the natural path of most human beings. Yes, her falling for Dale at first sight didn’t sit well with me as a fan of the show, but it’s unsurprising that dating 31 guys at once didn’t work out for her.

Perhaps—and I’m sure this will come as a huge surprise—going on The Bachelorette is an odd, unnatural way to find a husband. But who knows, the show seems to have worked for Clare.

Honestly, I wasn’t mad at the turn of events in The Bachelorette’s season 16. I found the real stars of the season to be the remaining 30 guys, not Clare or Dale. For the most part, they seemed like genuinely good people who wanted to open up to

Clare—they just weren’t given the chance.

As a product of missing out on time with Clare, the guys ended up spending a great deal of time with one another, and some beautiful bromances developed.

They supported each other through this unprecedented shared experience, and it was lovely to watch.

Some standouts were Blake, a guy from Hamilton, Ontario, who my housemates declared has a “serial killer walk” and looks like a sad Frankenstein; the chef with “Soup Nuts” tattooed

across his knuckles; and Kenny the boy band manager—yes, boy band manager.

My personal favourite was Bennett, the Harvard alum who rolled in with a scarf and a Bentley, looking perpetually on the verge of uttering the phrase “old sport.”

On Tuesday, the producers brought in Tayshia, the new Bachelorette, to appease the remaining guys, and I’m glad they did. They were definitely cheated by Clare’s early departure from the show, and Tayshia seems genuinely

The famous family's vacation is a show of privilege.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY TESSA WARBURTON

The Kardashians are setting a poor example for pandemic behaviour The family’s disregard for public health is unacceptable Emily Clare Staff Writer It has been almost eight months since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic. Everyone has

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health regulations, ignore the safety of others, and prioritize their lifestyle over the spread of coronavirus.

Despite the example set

by Kim and her family, we can be smarter by staying home and saving the Bahamas for a time where there’s not an ongoing pandemic.

Now is the time to set a precedent for others.

Not every A-lister is as flagrantly ostentatious as the Kardashian-Jenner clan, but enough are. All we can do is hope they will do better in the future and unsubscribe from their self-centered narratives.

Instead of continuing to fuel the Kardashian fire, we should redirect our focus to those use their platforms for the good of others. For example, Taylor Swift has actively used her position to influence others to do their part to stop the spread of COVID-19 and has quietly donated money to fans who have faced financial stresses due to the pandemic.

We shouldn’t engage with the Kardashian-Jenner’s posts, purchase their products, or watch their content. They’ve demonstrated their money isn’t going anywhere useful, and their influence isn’t being used productively. If anything, these stunts prove it’s time to stop keeping up with the Kardashians for good.

interested in getting to know all of them.

Somehow, this season of The Bachelorette proved that the show is both inorganic and effective; it demonstrated that most people probably can’t fall for 30 people at once, but that it’s possible to find love on the show—Clare seems to have done so.

Who knows, maybe I should’ve expected things to take a weird turn this s e a s on — a f t er all, it fits in with the rest of 2020’s absurdity.

Clare & Dale’s romance highlights the odd format of ‘The Bachelorette’

The real stars of the show’s 16th season have been the bromances Julia Harmsworth Assistant News Editor As the almighty Chris Harrison has stated many, many times, this season of The Bachelorette is “unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.”

The reality series’ latest season has not only contended with COVID-19, but with something practically unheard of in Bachelorette history: the lead falling in love with a single person well before the end of her season on the show.

Season 16 of The Bachelorette premiered on Oct. 13, featuring 39-year-old The Bachelor alumna Clare Crawley as the lead. It was originally supposed to premiere May 18, but was delayed due to the coronavirus’s impact on production.

Per Bachelorette tradition, the first episode saw Clare meet 31 potential husbands.

Not per tradition, however, seconds after meeting the oh-so-tall ex-Party City model Dale Moss, Clare decided she’d met her husband.

W hat fol lowed wa s a whirlwind of constant Clare-and-Dale time—to the dismay of the 30 other contestants who’d lost two weeks of their lives quarantining before

Clare wasn't a typical Bachelorette.

ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN RAISBECK

16 • queensjournal.ca

Friday, November 13, 2020

POSTSCRIPT

PHOTO BY JODIE GRIEVE

Rohini is working to be confident in her natural hair.

Learning to embrace my natural hair Coming to appreciate my curls and ditch my straightener Rohini Datta Contributor One of the most tumultuous relationships I’ve had in my life is the one I have with my hair.

It might sound superficial, but my perception of my hair runs much deeper than a few bad hair days. When you grow up never seeing your type of hair represented in the media and very rarely amongst your peers, it’s difficult not to start resenting your hair for making you feel different.

I have what’s considered classic Indian hair: it’s very thick and most definitely not straight.

In elementary school, my mother used to pull my hair back into two tight braids every day to avoid the knots that would form while I was running around during recess. At the time, I never gave my hair much thought. Sure, some days I wished I could wear something other than braids and I didn’t have to deal with the frizz that would inevitably form around my temples, but it stayed out of my face and didn’t otherwise bother me.

Then came middle school. It was the sixth grade, and my peers had started styling their own hair.

It looked exactly how I’d always wished mine would: thin, glossy, and straight.

I ditched the braids and started trying to wear my hair down or

casually throw it up in a ponytail during the day like I’d seen so many of my friends do with seemingly no effort.

But mine never looked quite right. I would go to the washroom during the day, look in the mirror, and realize my hair had become frizzy and the kinks I’d hoped to brush out had never completely disappeared.

I was in awe when "I first let my hair dry

without a blow dryer or running a comb through it hundreds of times and curls formed

I would feel jealous when my classmates would come to school with their hair dripping wet from their morning shower, knowing that I was too afraid to let other people see my natural hair right after it dried. I would ask my friends what products and techniques they used, foolishly thinking if I just followed exactly what they did I too would have the pin-straight hair I so desired.

After months of begging, I got a straightener for Christmas.

Finally, my hair looked the way I’d always wanted it to. It looked pretty—or at least what I considered to be pretty.

Sure, styling with a flat iron meant sitting in front of the mirror for an hour every night, a cloud of smoke rising from my head as I fried every strand of my curls. But for straight hair, that was a price I was willing to pay.

There’s nothing wrong with straightening your hair. But for

me, looking back, the heat damage wasn’t worth having hair that, honestly, I’m not sure I ever really liked. It was hair I only wanted because it fit what Western culture has imposed on me as the standard of beauty for my entire life.

In high school, as schoolwork increased, I had less time to spend in front of the mirror making sure every strand of my hair was perfectly straight. I transitioned to putting light curls and waves into my hair with a straightener and started looking at ways to reduce the amount of time I spent doing my hair.

I began experimenting with curly hair treatments. I was in awe when I first let my hair dry without a blow dryer or running a comb through it hundreds of times and curls formed. Real curls.

I wish I could say I started wearing my hair naturally and never put a straightener on it again. Unfortunately, even after discovering my hair was curly, I was still too self-conscious to wear it that way.

"

But for whatever reason, maybe because I’d been cementing the idea that my thick, curly hair wasn’t pretty in my head for almost a decade, the compliments didn’t change how I felt about it

I continued to vigorously heat style my hair into second-year, until the lack of time and energy I

had after going to school, cooking for myself, and doing homework once again forced me to choose between sleep and styling my hair. I chose sleep, but that didn’t mean I felt good going to class with my natural hair—it was just a product of poor time management and exhaustion.

apprehensive " I remain of the day when

someone makes a rude comment about my natural hair that could set me back years in my hair journey

When I started to step out in my natural curls from time to time, not a single person told me they looked bad—people would actually compliment my hair.

But for whatever reason, maybe because I’d been cementing the idea in my head that my thick, curly hair wasn’t pretty for almost a decade, the compliments didn’t change how I felt about it.

There was a turning point this spring, and it came with my return home in March. With nowhere to go and no one to see, I couldn’t justify styling my hair on a daily basis. After months of putting next to no heat on my hair, I saw my curls starting to become more prominent.

During those months stuck at home, I, like many others, took to the habit of scrolling endlessly through TikTok. With the app’s specific—and sometimes frighteningly accurate—algorithm, curly-haired TikTok found me.

I learned a lot from that

community: there are specific shampoos and conditioners to use for curly hair; investing in a simple, micro-fiber towel could help rid the frizz I’d hated all these years; and certain leave-in conditioners were my friends.

Armed with my new knowledge, I let my hair breathe for months on end and my curls saw the light of day.

Although I am definitely moving in what I consider to be the right direction for myself and my hair, I can’t declare a complete victory yet. While I’ve managed to significantly cut back how often I heat style my hair, I’m aware it’s because of how comfortable I feel with my family, close friends, and housemates—the only people I’ve been seeing for the past eight months.

I remain apprehensive of the day when someone makes a rude comment about my natural hair that could set me back years in my hair journey.

The real test of my confidence will be when in-person classes and activities resume, and I am faced with strangers every day.

Hopefully, these past months I’ve spent appreciating my natural hair are enough to overcome the years of insecurity.

If you’re like me and your hair type doesn’t adhere to white-centric beauty standards, there are hair routines and products out there for you.

Granted, they’re less marketed and harder to find, but I’ve learned that, with the right resources, you can find them—or, in my case, let TikTok find them for you. I’ve come to accept that my hair is the hair I have for life, so I might as well start appreciating it now.