our home on Native land.

rivery bog

leafy dew

Sometimes the governing bodies of this country disappoint me into speechlessness. (This happens more than I like to really think about.) Being up here in the Yukon right now, I am especially realizing the repercussions of the refusal of Canada's representatives to support the U.N. declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. Our Indian and Northern Affairs minister is making feeble excuses, stating 'oh, it doesn't really specify what the country is responsible for doing, blah blah blah, we don't know how to balance it with the rights of others, the Canadian constitution is good enough already, blah', which seems to me to really translate as 'we're grasping at any excuse not to give indigenous peoples any more self-determination and rights to their own decision-making processes'.

Reading this article, I agree very much with Beverley Jacobs -- the Canadian government is afraid. And since it passed in the world anyway, hopefully it will indeed aid in burgeoning self-government development in many parts of Canada anyway, and might force our backward, Bush-worshipping conservative government into facing their fears of indigenous self-determining government.