@prefix ns0: . @prefix edm: . @prefix dcterms: . @prefix dc: . @prefix skos: . ns0:identifierAIP "36ec68b2-a354-4872-9c8a-541f0f944d3e"@en ; edm:dataProvider "CONTENTdm"@en ; dcterms:isReferencedBy "http://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?bid=1213576"@en ; dcterms:isPartOf "Kinesis"@en ; dcterms:issued "2013-08-15"@en, "1996-12-01"@en ; edm:aggregatedCHO "https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/kinesis/items/1.0045598/source.json"@en ; dc:format "application/pdf"@en ; skos:note " S \\P Speefcf Cofiediois Serial DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 Nix those Nikes...pq 6 CMPA $2.25 News About Women That's Not In The Dailies Attack on Aboriginal Justice Centre Vancouver takes on APEC Fighting homophobia: It's Elementary Metro Days of Action in Ontario Inside KINESIS #301-1720 Grant Street Vancouver, BC V5L 2Y6 Tel: (604)255-5499 Fax:(604)255-5511 Kinesis welcomes volunteers to work on all aspects of the paper. Our next Writers' Meeting is Tues Jan 7 for the Feb issue and Mon Feb 3 at 7 pm at Kinesis. All women welcome even if you don't have experience. Kinesis is published ten times a year by the Vancouver Status of Women.lts objectives are to be a non- sectarian feminist voice for women and to work actively for social change, specifically combatting sexism, racism.classism, homophobia, ableism, and imperialism. Views jexpressed in Kinesis are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect VSW policy. All unsigned material is the responsibility of the Kinesis Editorial Board. EDITORIAL BOARD Fatima Jaffer, Lissa Geller (on leave), wendy lee kenward, Agnes Huang PRODUCTION THIS ISSUE Dorcas, Rachel Rosen, Marlene del Hoyo, Sandra Kerr, Judy Miller, Nancy Pang, Coral Mcintosh, June Pang, Anne Webb, Caitlin Byrne, Fatima Jaffer, Lisa Valencia-Svensson, Celeste Wincapaw, Shannon e. Ash, Agnes Huang Advertising: Sur Mehat Circulation: Audrey Johnson, Chrystal Fowler Distribution: Fatima Jaffer Production Coordinator: Swee Sim Tan Typesetter: Sur Mehat FRONT COVER Singing \"No to Apec\": Monica Urrutia, Mable Elmore, Jane Ordinario, Charlene Sayo, Cecilia Diocson, Hetty Alcuitas and Sheila Farrales [see page 3\\. Photo by Fatima Jaffer PRESS DATE November 28, 1996 SUBSCRIPTIONS Individual: $20 per year (+$1.40 GST) or what you can afford Institutions/Groups: $45 per year (+$3.15 GST) VSW Membership (includes 1 year Kinesis subscription): $30 per year (+$1.40 GST) SUBMISSIONS Women and girls are welcome to make submissions. We reserve the right to edit and submission does not guarantee publication. If possible, submissions should be typed, double spaced and must be signed and include an address, telephone number and SASE. Kinesis does not accept poetry or fiction. Editorial guidelines are available upon request. DEADLINES All submissions must be received in the month preceding publication. Note: Jul/Aug and Dec/Jan are double issues. Features and reviews: 10th News: 15th Letters and Bulletin Board: 18th Display advertising (camera ready): 18th (design required): 16th Printing by Horizon Publications. Kinesis is indexed in the Canadian Women's Periodicals Index, the Alternative Press Index, and is a member of the Canadian Magazine Publishers Association. ISSN 0317-9095 Publications mail registration #6426 News Solidarity rally against APEC 3 by Fatima Jaffer Remembering the Dili massacre 4 by Wei Yuen Fong J *\\ Vancouver Aboriginal Justice Centre loses funding 5 W | *ljf ' by Agnes Huang ^^jM^mmm^^a^^^^m Nike exploits workers in Vietnam 6 Aboriginal justice centre . by Fatima Jaffer Features Indigenous struggles in the Cordilleras 10 by Bernice See as told to Fay Blaney The potential of bartering systems 12 by Shannon e. Ash Commentary An analysis of the Metro Days of Action . by Andrea Ritchie and Bev Bain Centrespread Sovereignty struggles in Hawai'i by Haunani-Kay Traskas told to Michelle Sylliboy Arts It's Elementary, talking about lesbian and gay issues 17 reviewed by Robyn Hall Janis Ian at the Cultch 18 by Janet Askin Reviews from the Vancouver International Writers' Festival 19 by Cy-Thea Sand A quick chat with Daisy Zamora 19 by Monica Vanschaik The view from A Hot Roof 20 by Laiwan An interview with Beth Goobie, Scars of Light 21 as told to Cathy Stonehouse Two CDs from Susan Crowe 23 reviewed by Emma Kivisild Regulars As Kinesis Goes to Press 2 Inside Kinesis 2 What's News 7 compiled by Fatima Jaffer, Sandra Kerr and Shannon e. Ash Movement Matters 9 compiled by Caitlin Byrne Bulletin Board 25 compiled by Lisa Valencia-Svensson Susan Crowe DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 As Kinesis goes to press, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples has released its final report-five years later, 3,500 plus pages and 440 recommendations long. So far, the response from Aboriginal leaders has mostly been positive. Viola Thomas, president of the United Native Nations, an organization representing Aboriginal people in BC, says the report is quite comprehensive and broad in scope, and contains a lot of good recommendations. What is important now, she says, is to continue the lobbying process to ensure recommendations are implemented. The report has not received a warm reception from the federal government, and likely won't receive one from a lot of misinformed \"mainstream\" Canadians. It will be a challenge and responsibility for all of us to support justice and self-detemination for First Nations people. The provincial government's standing committee on the BC Treaty Commission and the Nisgaa Agreement is set to arrive in Vancouver to hold hearings in early December. Some Aboriginal groups will be making presentations at the hearings—being held across the province—and others will be holding a parallel action to express their dissatisfaction with the treaty process currently in place. Throughout, Aboriginal women have not been adequately included in treaty- making, land claim and self-determination discussions. Recently, Kinesis learned that efforts made to solicit women's perspec tives on the treaty-making process culminated in a report called \"Aboriginial Women and the Treaty Process.\" Prepared by Kathy Absolon, Elaine Herbert and Kelly MacDonald for the Ministry of Women's Equality, it was completed last March but appears to be sitting on someone's desk at the ministry collecting dust. When Kinesis asked Minister of Women's Equality Sue Hammell about the status of the report, she replied she had just had her attention drawn to its existence, but hadn't seen it yet. She said it would be a high priority for her to follow-up on the issue. Kinesis will follow-up with her on that. There was good news for women out of Victoria recently. The BC provincial government admitted it erred when it changed the Workers' Compensation Act in 1993. The amendment resulted in hundreds of women, whose husbands had died in workplace accidents, being denied access to pensions because they had remarried before April 7,1985. The case brought against the government by 270 women was boosted by a recent court ruling in their favour. As for the status of women on a federal level...in early November, Hedy Fry, secretary of state for the Status of Women, released a report on the role of the Status of Women. The report was the result of consultations held last Spring with an invited list of stake-holders—individual women, women's organizations, and non-profit organizations serving women. As a part of the report, Hedy Fry announced the creation of a $1.2 million Independent Policy Research Fund (EPRF) to study the impact of government policy on women. Don't be fooled-this isn't the federal Liberal government committing new resources towards advancing women's equality. No, the money for this fund comes out of the dismantling of the CanadianAd- visory Council on the Status of Women in the Liberals' February 1995 budget. Fry says she is committed to making the IPRF \"independent, relevant, accessible...\" But what about \"feminist,\" we ask (which is what many women pushed for during the consultations.) The fund will be administered by a five-member committee, chosen from women nominated by SWC's constituents. Nomination deadline is December 18. Nominate feminists, we say. Still on the federal scene, Reform Party leader splashed onto the headlines of the mainstream Dailies with his announcement that, if elected government, his party would hold a national referendum on abortion. We know what his vote would bespeaking of anti-abortionists...two of them tried to crash a recent International Women's Day organizing meeting held at the Vancouver Status of Women. The two women, from the anti-choice group PRICE (Patients Rights Informed Consent Ethics), disrupted the meeting and were asked to leave. (At last year's IWD event, the women deceptively got a table at the info fair and set up their anti-choice propaganda.) Our appreciation to the following supporters who became members, renewed their memberships or donated to Vancouver Status of Women in November: Cathy Aikenhead * Liz Bennett * Jennifer Bradley * Susan Boyd * Elizabeth Brumberg * Dorothy Chunn * Veronica Delorne * Margaret Denike * Ellen Dixon * Michelle Dodds * Nancy Edwards * Marion Fisher * Margaret Fulton * Christopher Gainor * Beverly Gartrell * Noga Gayle * Carole Gerson * Lynn Giraud * Penny Goldsmith * Barbara Grantham * Marion Gropper * Leona Gum * Vivian Guthrie * Cheryl Heinzl * Heidi Henkenhaff * Jo Hinchliffe * Janet Kellough-Pollock * Deirdre Kelly * Else Kennedy * Karen Kilbride * Sonya Kraemer * W. Krayenhoff * Joan Lawrence * Karen Malcolm * Catherine Malone * Alyson Martin * Patricia Matson * Margaret McCoy * Florence McDowell * Judith Miller * Myrtle Mowatt * Lauri Nerman * Carol Pettigrew * Michele Pujol * Arvilla Read * Robin Rennie * Adrianne Ross * Kame Rule * Mary Schendinger * Marion Smith * Shannon Steele * Penelope Tilby * Neysa Turner * Sheryl Ty * Gale Tyler * Judith Walker * Sue Watson * Susan Wendell * Barbara Wild * Kim Zander And a special thank you to our donors who give every month. Monthly donations assist VSW in establishing a reliable funding base to carry out our programs, services and Kinesis throughout the year. Thanks to: Wendy Baker * Barbara Curran * Nancy Duff * Jody Gordon * Erin Graham * B. Karmazyn * Sadie Kuehn * Barbara Lebrasseur * Lolani Maar *Sheilah Thompson Corrections Big ooops! We accidentally mis-placed the Women Work Society of Victoria, BC. In our Movement Matters' story \"Women Work Society\" in the November 1996 issue of Kinesis, we announced that the Society, a wing of the Single Parent Resource Centre, was created this year to help single mothers and low-income women start businesses and gain independance. However, we wrote it is located in Vienna (Austria) and not Victoria. We got a tongue-in-cheek letter from them saying \"Maybe the Austrians have a similar group...but could you please put this group back where it belongs?\" Yeah, shucks, okay. The women refused to leave and tried to provoke the IWD women by photographing and tape-recording them. The meeting had to be re-scheduled to prevent the PRICE women from further harassing the IWD organizers. Needless to say IWD organizers are extremely upset. Some are planning to file harassment charges against the anti-choice women. (Our sources tell us that PRICE consists only of four or five very persistent anti-choice women who are determined to make a nuisance of themselves.) There is a positive side to this story..the turnout for the organizing meeting-the first one for IWD 1997-was incredible: over 35 women showed up, representing diverse communities of women. It is a clear sign that feminist organizing in this city is alive and strong! Finally as Kinesis goes to press, here's an update on a couple of stories Kinesis reported on in our November 1996 issue: Anti-choice protester Maurice Lewis has decided to appeal the BC Supreme Court ruling upholding the province's Access to Abortion Services. And a US federal court judge has issued a restraining order against Proposition 209—California's anti-affirmative action ballot initiative approved by voters last month—because he believes it is unconstitutional. That's all for this month...and year...as Kinesis goes to press. Have a happy winter and a warm read. It's cold. We're cold. We have colds. Truly, the weather in Vancouver is amazingly grey. It's colder than we remember from past winters. Still, neither the barometer 's constant plunge, the lack of heating in the building nor ill health kept us from working on this issue. So a big thanks to all those who struggled through sheets of cold Northern-monsoon rains and street- lakes to get to the production room to help get Kinesis out. It will be our last cold winter at our Grant Street location. Vancouver Status of Women and Kinesis are moving! We will open again in a new location, as yet uncertain, at the end of February. We'll keep you posted. But rest assured we will continue to be accessible to our volunteers and the women who use our services. Meanwhile we'll need lots of help organizing and cleaning the office and packing up stuff. If you are interested in helping out, please callAudrey at 255-5511. It's going to be a sad task for those of us who have been around at this location for some of those six years. Ah, if the (thin) walls could talk, the stories they could tell, the herstories they have recorded... Speaking of herstories...we celebrated VSW's 25 th anniversary in November, with many from VSW's past, present (and future) in attendance. Due to some difficult decisions made by VSW's Coordinating Collective and the anniversary organizing committee, there was a gap in terms of reflecting adequately on the work done in the late 70s and much of the 80s. We are not qualified to fill that gap, but as we look through the archives and old copies of Kinesis, we can say that those were some of the most vibrant and interesting years of activism, analysis building, decision making, developments in feminist thought and action, and radicalization of the movement. We hope there will be other opportunities to celebrate those achievements. The Kinesis Editorial Board is setting up a committee to develop ideas and actions around promoting Kinesis subscriptions and sales in March, around International Women's Day. If you're interested in helping spread News About Women That's Not in the Dailies around in various ways, call Agnes at 255-5499. We'd like to say a string of thank yous to women new to Kinesis who gave their volunteer time and energy to this issue. New writers are Bernice See, Andrea Ritchie, Bev Bain, Haunani-Kay Trask, Monica Vanschaik, Daisy Zamora, and Beth Goobie. New production volunteers are Coral Mcintosh and Celeste Wincapaw We'd also like to thank our photographers and graphics-searchers this issue-big thanks to Sheila James, Lani Montreal, Fanny Yuen and Mary Gellatly (and Dina Ladd, Melanie Liwanag-Aguila and Andrea Ritchie) for the photos from Metro Days of Action. Thanks also to Lisa Valencia-Svensson for finding the graphics for the story on page 10-11. That's all for now. We're closed in December, hence the double issue this month. But fear not, we'll be back with more in January, rejuvenated and ready for a new year of recording news about women's movements for social change! Until then, have a great December! DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 News APEC and global capitalist imperialism: No no no, absolutely not! by Fatima Jaffer On a wet Monday morning in November, over one hundred people came together on the streets of Vancouver to march and rally in solidarity with people in the Philippines who were protesting the opening of the 4th annual leaders' summit of APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) [see Kinesis, October 1996]. The summit, being held this year at Subic Bay in the Philippines, brought together 17 leaders of the 18 member countries. The group aims to create the world's largest free trade zone by the year 2020. While hundreds of thousands of people were in the streets of Manila, carrying banners and shouting slogans such as \"Resist Imperialist Globalization\" and being prevented by police cordons from reaching Subic Bay, the protestors in Vancouver marched along the streets of the Downtown Eastside to the Philippine consulate. Curious passers-by stopped to stare at demonstrators—mostly representatives of various women's, workers', seniors', student, people of colour, anti-poverty, and Downtown Eastside organizations. There were speeches about why we need to organize against APEC, and how similar protests were being held in the other Asian and Pacific Rim APEC countries that day. The demonstrators then marched on, wheeling a huge papier-mache skull wearing a hat painted in the stars and stripes of the American flag; people carried banners and chanted. At the Canada Trade and Convention Centre, in the presence of dozens of police, we rallied in front of what we heard is the proposed site of next year's APEC leaders' summit. Each APEC country gets the opportunity to chair and host APEC. Next year is Canada's turn. APEC leaders' will descend on Vancouver in November 1997. The rally began with speeches from members of the NO! to APEC Coalition, the group which hosted the Vancouver demonstration. NO! to APEC stands for the Network Opposed to Anti-People Economic Control and is made up of grassroots groups-women's, youth, student, people of colour, anti-poverty, environmental and social justice -and community centres. \"In the Philippines,\" Jane Ordinario of the SIKLAB, an organization for Filipino workers abroad, a key member of NO! to APEC, told the rally, \"APEC means the further export, not only of its raw materials and natural resources, but of its working people being exploited in the global market of capitalism.\" Ordinario, who is also a staff person with the Philippine Women's Centre, was referring to the Philippines' number one export: people. About 2,000 people leave the Philippines each day for work in other countries. Most are women. Of the 45,000 who come to Canada each year under specific migrant worker immigration programs, the majority are domestic workers. People in the Philippines are among many who stand to lose from APEC's continued path toward trade liberalization, a term that means the free movement of trade, money, and therefore profits over borders. In fact, APEC primarily serves the interests of the corporate elite in the US and those in some member nations. APEC was formed in 1989 as a loose trading group. But when the US hosted the first APEC Summit in 1993, the Americans pushed for formalization of APEC as atrading bloc. This was partly to prevent bids by Japan and Malaysia to control Asian and Pacific Rim trade and economic development in free trade blocs that would exclude the US. Since, APEC primarily serves to supplement and speed up the work of the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, which impose policies that encourage the flooding of poorer \"developing\"countries with surplus or overpriced products and services, in exchange for underpriced raw materials and migrant labour power. The countries in APEC are: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States. No! to APEC protesters march to the Canada Trade and Convention Centre. Demonstrators march alongside the skull of Uncle S(c)am (the US) on Granville Street, downtown Vancouver. At the rally, SEKLAB's Ordinario also spoke about the attempts in the Philippines to detain and deport foreign delegates who are in the Philippines to expose APEC as a mechanism of imperialist countries to increase profits at the expense of people and resources in the region. Delegates from South Africa and Vietnam, in particular, were held in temporary detention. South Africa has already formally objected to the detention of its citizens, said Ordinario. Flor de Maria Salguero, a women's organizer in the maquiladoras (free trade zones) of Guatemala, who was in Vancouver to share information about organizing efforts, told people at the rally that thousands of women in Guatemala were demonstrating that same day against violations of human, labour and women's rights in the maquiladoras. \"I'm uniting over what's happening here today with what's happening to women in my country...we are denouncing the violations of the rights of all women.\" Salguero held up a long-sleeved sweater and told the crowd that the sweater cost $40 in Canada. \"The person who made it received 35 cents in Guatemala. She has to make 1,400 of these a day.\" Salguero said there are 90,000 women workers in the maquiladoras, over 50 percent of whom are under 15 years old. Working conditions and the health of workers are primary concerns, she said. While Guatemala is not presently in APEC (it apparently falls beneath the standards of APEC economy requirements), Salguero urged solidarity between workers in all countries. \"There can be no borders on humanity,\" she concluded. Many of the speakers drew parallels between APEC and NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement). Terrie Hendrickson of End Legislated Poverty said ELP stood in solidarity against APEC because it understood the impact free trade has had on people. \"Look at the increased unemployment and the decrease in social programs since NAFTA was passed... You just have to look at the streets of major cities in this country to see increased homelessness due to so- called global restructuring...\" Hendrickson said. \"Free trade pits the workers of one country against another, leading to lower wages and poorer conditions. That is why ELP says no to APEC.\" Vancouver Status of Women's Ema Oropeza pointed out that over 1.4 million jobs were lost between 1989 and 1994 as a result of free trade agreements, including more than 500,000 in the manufacturing sector. Over 78 percent of these workers were women. She added that the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), the union representing factory garment workers in Canada, says it lost 60 percent of its membership in Ontario alone after NAFTA came into effect. \"Free trade benefits those who have no conscience about making profits through exploiting women, indigenous peoples and their land, and the environment.\" said Oropeza. \"APEC makes the Free Trade Agreement look like a dime-bag deal in Pigeon Park,\" said Bud Osborne of the Carnegie Centre, referring to pot deals in an area of the Downtown Eastside. The Downtown Eastside is Canada's lowest income urban neighbourhood. It has a vibrant community of activists, social workers, single mother families, Aboriginal people, people of colour, sex trade workers, mental health patients, drug users and dealers, and homeless people. Osborne pointed out that the communities of people living in the Downtown Eastside have been the first to feel the effects of Vancouver's preparations for the APEC conference. \"The Downtown Eastside community of vulnerable and afflicted human beings is being destroyed by global economic Continued on next p DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 News Remembering the Dili massacre: Flowers never forget by Wei Yuen Fong Carnations—273 carnations—placed at the steps of the Indonesian consulate in Vancouver served as a reminder of the 273 East Timorese people known to have been killed when the Indonesian military stormed a cemetery in Dili. On November 12, 1991, hundreds of innocent civilians were gunned down by Indonesian soldiers at the Santa Cruz cemetery in the capital of East Timor. While 273 people are known to have been murdered, it is estimated that, in fact, more hundreds East Timorese are still missing. The average age of those murdered was 20; the youngest was 10. To commemorate the 5th anniversary of the massacre, over 200 people gathered at the Vancouver Art Gallery on November 16. One of the speakers that day was Bella Galhos, who herself escaped being killed in the massacre by climbing over the cemetery wall. Many of her friends were not so lucky. Galhos fled East Timor for Canada. She is now living in Ottawa and continuing the fight for East Timor self-determination. \"I want to remember my friends who died beside me five years ago, and all the peo ple who have died since Indonesia invaded our country [in 1975],\" she told the crowd at the art gallery. And referring to the recent awarding of the Nobel Peace Price to East Timor independence activist Jose Ramos-Horta, Galhos added: \"It's important to celebrate the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf [of all the victims of the Dili Massacre. ] All those people just wanted peace for East Timor.\" After the rally, protestors marched to the Indonesian consulate and read out the name of a known victim of the massacre attached to each carnation. Also in front of the consulate, Galhos and a friend sang the very moving Timorese independence song. And others made impromptu speeches and yelled out chants that called on multinational corporations and national governments to end their role in the continuing oppression of East Timorese people. One such chant was: \"Nike, Nike listen up/Your complicity has to stop/It's about time you realize/You're involved in genocide.\" (\"Nike\" was also substituted with [\"Canada\"] \"Chretien\" and [Indonesian president General] \"Suharto.\") The demonstration in Vancouver was a culmination of East Timor Awareness Week, involving a series of talks by Bella Galhos, a film night, candlelight vigils and protests. East Timor Awareness Week actions were organized in several places across Canada by the East Timor Alert Network (ETAN), a national association of Canadians supporting independence for East Timor, and including churches, trade unions and women's organizations. Overall, ETAN-Vancouver organizers say, more than a thousand people attended events during the week. They added that likely thousands more heard about East Timor self-determination and Canada's complicity in the oppression of East Timorese people on Radio Free Timor! programming all week on Vancouver's Cooperative Radio and from other media coverage. ETAN says the Canadian government has refused to support self-determination for East Timor, and had authorized export permits in 1995 for over $362 million in military equipment bound for Indonesia. ETAN is calling on the Canadian government to publicly support self-determi nation for East Timor; to ban all%iilitary- related sales from Canada to trleTndone- sian government; and to push for the release of all political prisoners in East Timor and Indonesia. On the Thursday after the rally, two members of ETAN-Vancouver returned to the Indonesian consulate to hand-deliver the carnations to the consul-general in person. They were refused a meeting with him, and told by consulate staff to leave the flowers and get out, otherwise they'd call the police. As the ETAN members were leaving, one consulate official pointed to the flowers and said loudly: \"Don't worry, they will be in the garbage by morning.\" For more information about the Dili Massacre, the struggle of East Timorese people for independence, and about participating in a letter-writing campaign, contact ETAN: PO Box 33733, Stn D, Vancouver, BC, V6J 4L6; tel: (604) 261-7930; fax: (604) 325-0086. APEC, from previous page forces-the same forces that are destroying real communities all around the world.\" The area has seen a three-times increase in police patrols as part of the gentrification of the area and attempts to clean-up eyesores, much like the \"clean-up\" of poor peoples that Vancouver experienced prior to the opening of Expo 86. As with Expo 86, it is expected that thousands of media people, business people and tourists from around the world will converge on Vancouver during the 1997 APEC Summit. Pigeon Park, outside Vancouver's community Co-op Radio station, was once home to many of the area's homeless and addicts. By late November, the park had been emptied of people. Police cars sit on every other street corner in the area. Harrassment by police of local residents is a daily occurrence. NO! to APEC organizers say there was a similar \"clean-up\" in the Philippines in the year leading up to the 1996 APEC Summit. Demolition of squatter camps, considered eyesores by the Philippine government, affected more than 25,000 families. There was also forcible and illegal displacement of hundreds of thousands of urban poor by police to make way for high scale development projects, such as a park to mark the APEC Summit in Metro Manila. Osborne pointed out that the effects of free trade agreements like NAFTA and APEC are also similar in poor communities across the world: \"an increase in violence,...property crimes, service cutbacks, desperation, suicide, [and] overburdened community organizations in conflict with one another for ever-dwindling re- Throughout the rally outside the Convention Centre, there were attempts by the NO! toAPEC organizers to bring out members of BC's unions who were coinciden- tally attending the BC Federation of Labour's annual convention inside the Centre. Demonstrators were refused entry into centre by security officers. BC Fed Community Relations Officer Dennis Blanchford repeatedly told us that the BC Fed would not endorse the rally, speak at it, nor allow a speaker from NO! to APEC to attend its convention to educate its members about APEC. Blanchford said BC Fed would be debating a motion pertaining to APEC, but did not specify what it said. Fatima is a lesbian, feminist and anti-racist activist living in Vancouver. An obvious sign. Signs of trouble ahead if APEC gets its way. APEC is anti-democratic, anti- woman, anti-worker, anti-...! DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 Vancouver Aboriginal Justice Centre: News LSS cuts centre funding by Agnes Huang Justice for Aboriginal people was dealt a blow when the Legal Services Society of BC decided to terminate its funding agreement with the Vancouver Aboriginal Justice Centre. On November 4th, the Chief Executive Officer of LSS, David Duncan, walked into the VAJC office and handed its staff and board members a letter detailing the reasons for the termination. LSS claims that the VAJC is in arrears of its agreements with LSS and responded too late to their concerns. However, the VAJC tried to address LSS's concerns in a letter dated October 22nd, challenging some of its charges, and making attempts to set up process to deal with LSS's allegations that VAJC, at times, had acted in a \"disrespectful and unprofessional\" manner. The termination of the contract is to be effective January 3, but Duncan also said that LSS would immediately be withholding any further payment of monies to the VAJC. Essentially that has left the Centre without any operational funding to pay staff and other costs, and put their clients in jeopardy. \"When a person walks into the Centre, they walk in as a whole person and not just what qualifies them for legal aid...\" -Bernice Hammersmith The VAJC was opened in 1994, after years of lobbying by Aboriginal leaders to convince LSS of the need to fund Aboriginal-specific legal services in Vancouver. The Centre is housed in the Downtown Eastside area, which has a large population of Aboriginal peoples. The VAJC is one of the 15 Native Community Law Offices (NCLOs) spread across the province. NCLOs operate with independent boards and receive the majority of their funding from LSS. Still, less than one percent of LSS's total budget (more than $80 million) goes to services provided by and for Aboriginal people, even though Aboriginal peoples are the most over-represented people in the Canadian justice system. Among the stated purposes of the VAJC are: to act as an advocate for Aboriginal people in relation to legal rights and to provide them with quality legal representation; to provide and promote public legal eduction about Aboriginal rights; and to provide valuable and quality training for Aboriginal law students, paralegals and other support staff. Rhonda Johnson, a staff lawyer at the VAJC, says the Centre has never turned away any clients. She says the Centre finds alternatives for those clients who don't qualify for legal aid. Clients denied legal aid are referred to paralegals working at the VAJC, to UBC law students and their supervising lawyer who run a free legal clinic out of the the Centre, or to one of the Aboriginal lawyers who do pro-bono (free) work for clients of the VAJC. In addition, the VAJC takes in over a thousand legal aid cases a year alone. Bernie Hammersmith, Vice-Chief Counsellor of the board of the VAJC, says the Centre has always been committed to delivering justice services for Aboriginal people in a broader sense, not just to giving legal aid. \"When a person walks into the Centre, they walk in as a whole person and not just what qualifies them for legal aid. There's all kinds of issues they're dealing with, such as housing, poverty, inherent rights...\" says Hammersmith. \"We don't just look after people legally. Sure, we help them survive the legal system. However, there are all these other systems that people have to survive as well. \"With closures of centres like this, it only adds to the problems; it doesn't look for solutions,\" says Hammersmith. \"To shut us down is a slap in the face for any real treatment of Aboriginal people in this province.\" On the Friday following Legal Services' decision, the VAJC held a public gathering and press conference. Over 150 people jammed into the reception area and stairs of the VAJC. Most of the people who came out to support the Centre were from the Aboriginal community. But there were also a significant number of people from women's organizations, anti-poverty groups and community organizations in the Downtown Eastside. The gathering participated in traditional prayers, a smudge, and songs celebrating the courage of Aboriginal people and women in particular. The speeches from clients, Elders, staff, board members and friends of the Centre carried a central message: the importance of the Centre in their lives, and the critical need for its continued existence. At the press conference that followed, Hammersmith said the primary issue in the shut-down of the VAJC is control. \"You will hear excuses from LSS such as lack of professionalism, disrespectful conduct, mismanagement, poor communication and lack of fiscal responsibility. These are merely pretexts, all without any foundation in reality, which are being used as smoke and mirrors to accomplish the ultimate objective of controlling the activities and operations of the Centre.\" Viola Thomas, president of the United Native Nations and a former staff member of the VAJC and Native Programs at LSS, spoke at length at the press conference about how LSS's action is an example of systemic racism. Theresa Tait, Charlotte Smith, Viola Thomas, AnneWannock, and Rhonda Johnson at the gathering in support of the Vancouver Aboriginal Justice Centre. She said she finds it disheartening that Legal Services is willing to shut down the VAJC and to allege that the Centre has been disrespectful to LSS. \"When you examine the past relationship between LSS and Aboriginal peoples, you'll find that in the past two years, there have been two out-of-court settlements with Aboriginal women who had worked at LSS, where Legal Services violated human rights law. Now LSS is alleging the VAJC has been disrespectful,\" Thomas said. At the end of the press conference, Rhonda Johnson read an excerpt of a letter received that day from LSS board chair, Pinder Cheema. In it, Cheema said the board would not reconsider its decision, and hoped the VAJC would wind down its operations in an quick and orderly manner. David Duncan confirmed to Kinesis that LSS considered the matter to be purely a contractual one, and that the board had no intention of reviewing its decision. When asked what LSS is doing to ensure that Aboriginal people will have access the culturally appropriate services, Duncan replied that LSS is currently consulting with theAboriginal community. He would not specify the process or timeline of the consultations. After receiving LSS's letter, the VAJC wrote to the provincial Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh appealing LSS's decision. Ministry commmunications spokesperson Toby Louie toldKz'nesis that theAG's office had received the letter but that the ministry was not prepared to intervene in what it considered to be an internal operational matter between LSS and the VAJC. However, the UNN's Thomas says the Attorney General has the ability to intervene in this situation. \"Legal Services has violated the LSS Act with respect to the right of Aboriginal people to have culturally appropriate services, not to mention its own previous board motions upholding the same,\" she says. It is the Attorney General office which appoints the Legal Services Society board. Kinesis asked whether theAG's ministry would consider directly funding the VAJC. Louie responded that \"The province is not prepared to provide funding to more than one venue for legal aid,\" and that the province has a statutory obligation to deliver legal aid services through LSS. He added that, in the VAJC's letter, the Centre did not ask that a direct funding arrangement with theAG's office be negotiated. But the VAJC's Hammersmith confirmed that the VAJC plans to seek a new relationship with the province which \"recognizes that Aboriginal people require culturally distinct legal and justce services, and one which provides for greater security in the funding base for the services the Centre provides.\" Already, the VAJC has gathered over two thousand signatures on a petition calling for a direct funding arrangement that it will send to the provincial government. As Kinesis goes to press, the VAJC is preparing to take Legal Services to court over the matter. The funding agreement between LSS and the VAJC was to have run until the end of April 1997. The immediate concern for the VAJC is how to keep its doors open for the people who need its services, and for the community that supports it. The VAJC has put out an urgent appeal to the community to write letters of support, sign its petition, and make financial donations. For more information or to send letters of support and donations, contact the VAJC: 191 Alexander St, Vancouver, BC, V6A 1N3; tel: (604) 684-2121; fax: 684-2177. Agnes Huang is a Chinese feminist activist living in Vancouver. DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 News Exploitation of women workers in Asia: Nix those Nikes by Fatima Jaffer Women with old Nike shoes are being urged to mail them off to the company that made them: the US-based multinational Nike Corporation. The \"mail-your-old- Nikes-back\" campaign is part of an organized boycott of Nike products launched in solidarity with the mostly women workers who make Nike shoes in factories in Vietnam, Indonesia, China and Pakistan. Nike employs mostly women workers in these countries, who work in boot-camp style assembly lines making $120 shoes for 20 cents an hour. There are numerous infractions of labour laws and the women workers are often targetted with physical and sexual abuse. One of the activist groups spearheading the boycott is the Nike in Vietnam Action Group (NVAG), an ad hoc coalition of volunteers in New York with members nationwide that focuses on the exploitation of women workers, mostly in Vietnam. NVAG says the boycott of Nike products has already begun to pay off. As a result of the pressure activists in the North are putting on Nike, the corporation is slowly changing. It has also begun a process of establishing dialogues with the nongovernmental organizations lobbying it to change, including NVAG. Recently, CBS television news in the US broadcasted an investigative report on Nike's labour practices in Vietnam. NVAG is among groups that have cited the information given in the CBS news report in their protest letters to the Nike Corporation. Nike responded by claiming CBS's report was inaccurate. NVAG conducted its own investigation, contacting various people including lawyers in both Vietnam and the US. NVAG found that not only was Nike in violation of several Vietnamese laws, it was also in violation of its own code of conduct. According to facts gathered by NVAG: • Workers in Nike manufacturing plants in Vietnam make on average 20 cents per hour. Team Leaders at Vietnam's Nike plants make only $42 per month, below Vietnam's legislated minimum wage of $45. Nike claims the $45 minimum wage figure applies only to Saigon and not to Cu Chi, where the Nike factory is located. However, according to Vietnam's legal code which came into effect this July, the minimum wage applies to foreign-invested ventures in all areas, including Cu Chi district. Nike also claims that the workers are paid a lower wage because Vietnamese law allows for a training wage less than the minimum wage. Vietnam's legal code, however, specifies that the training wage can be paid only for a \"trial-period\" of 30 days, whereas many workers at the Nike factories in Cu Chi district are paid the training wage for at least 90 days. • Fifteen Vietnamese women told CBS News that they were hit by their supervisors for bad sewing. Two women were sent to hospital afterward. As well, 45 women say they were forced by their supervisors to kneel down with their hands up in the air for 25 minutes. Nike claims it immediately disciplined the supervisors. But at a shareholders meeting in September, Nike Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Phil Knight minimized the first incident, stating incorrectly that only one worker was struck—on the arm, and not on the head, as the women had reported. • A Nike plant supervisor fled Vietnam after he was accused of sexually abusing several women workers. Nike claims the supervisor was fired and sent back to Korea. In effect, this translates to Nike enabling the supervisor to leave Vietnam to avoid facing criminal charges for his acts. Meanwhile, the government of Vietnam has instigated extradition procedures against the supervisor to bring him back to Vietnam to stand trial. • Women workers are forced to work overtime to meet a [unrealistically high] daily quota. Most workers at Nike plants in Vietnam are forced to work more than 600 hours of overtime per year—well above Vietnam's legal limit of 200 hours per year. This is partly because Nike is in control of its subcontractors. Nike dictates the price per shoe and even the cost of operation to its subcontractors in Vietnam, Indonesia, China and Pakistan, which forces them to set high quotas for their workers and to pay low wages. A British non-governmental organization has estimated that the labour cost involved in making one pair of Nike shoes is only $3, yet the shoes may sell for $100 US. • While Nike can afford to give some of this profit margin back to its factory workers, Nike is not investing in the \"third world.\" Nike claims to be responsible for the economic development of Japan, Taiwan and Korea, which is where 90 percent of Nike shoes were manufactured in the 1980s. However, as soon as the local minimum wage was raised in these countries, the corporation shifted its shoe and apparel manufacturing plants to countries in the Asia Pacific that offer the lowest wages— Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, China and Pakistan. Nike also does not contribute to its supplier countries either through worker training or human resource investment. By continually shifting its operation to countries in the Asia Pacific with the lowest wages, Nike is not only keeping to 19th century imperialism, which removed profits from the South and into the North, but also to the trade mandates of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) [see page 3, this issue]. The Nike in Vietnam Action Group has members all over the US and works with solidarity groups in Canada. Their e-mail address is nike-protest@saigonxom. They are asking people to boycott Nike products and write letters and/or send old pairs of Nikes to: Nike CEO, Phil Knight (or its Labour Practice Department head, Dusty Kidd), Nike Corporation, Nike World Headquarters, One Bowerman Dr, Beaverton, Oregon, 97005 USA. Information for this article came from the Campaign Against Labour Exploitation in Vietnam via the internet. For more information, check out their web site: http:// www.saigon.com/~nike. Fatima Jaffer is a regular writer for Kinesis. Thanks to Thuyen Nguyen of NVAG for .the information. Thanks! Vancouver Status of Women celebrated its 25th anniversary in style on Saturday, November 2, 1996 at the Vancouver Public Library. The fundraising party was also a book launch for Politically Speaking, by Judy Rebick and Kike Roach, published by Douglas & Mclntyre. Over 200 people attended what will undoubtedly be remembered as the feminist social event of the year. The evening was marked with inspiration and reminiscences from the likes of Rosemary Brown, Gene Errington, and Fatima Jaffer and Agnes Huang. Good food, fabulous entertainment and lots of fun rounded out the festivities. VSW thanks all those who attended and all those who helped make our silver anniversary event a success. Special Thanks to: Rosemary Brown * Jolene Clark * Jean Elder * Gene Errington * Erin Graham * Agnes Huang * Fatima Jaffer * Meredith Kimball * Laiwan * Shona Moore * Susan Penfold * Marion Pollack * Judy Rebick * Kike Roach * Joan Robillard * Rochelle Rocco * Sawagi Taiko * Elizabeth Shefrin * Helen Shore * Natasha Tony 25th Anniversary Volunteers Balbi Basran Kalia * Christine Cosby * Chrystal Fowler * Melissa Fowler * Hillary Hall * Jennifer Johnstone * Barbara Kuhne * Jane Loop * Bridgette Rivers Moore * Rachel Mulloy * Kathleen Oliver * Ema Oropeza * Nancy Pang * Esther Shannon * Roberta Sciaretta * Jehn Starr * Michelle Sylliboy * Gale Tyler * Claire Walsh and Alana * Elsie Wong * Pauline Youngs 25th Anniversary Committee Audrey Johnson * Alex Maas * Joanne Namsoo * Nancy Pollak * Barbara Pulling * Gayla Reid * Melina Udy Community Supporters Brussels Chocolates * Canadian Union of Public Employees * Hospital Employees Union * BC Federation of Labour * Douglas & Mclntyre * Lotus Miyashita Designs * Over the Moon Chocolate Co. * Printcrafts of BC Ltd. * Purdy's Chocolates * Ed's Linens * The Sony Store-Port Coquitlam DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 What's News Sri Lankan women \"disappear\" by Fatima Jaffer Krishanti Kumaraswamy was detained one September morning by the Sri Lankan armed forces on her way back home from school after writing an examination. That was the last time people saw her alive. Her mother, Rasammah went out in search of her daughter with the help of her son, Krishanti's 16-year-old brother Pranaban, and a neighbor, Kirupakaran Sithamparan. They had been told by people in the area that Krishanthy was seen being arrested by the army at the sentry point. The three went to the sentry point, and were seen entering the army camp later that afternoon. They were not seen alive again either. Surviving relatives inquired about all four people at the sentry point, but soldiers denied taking any of them into custody. Days later, people found the bodies of all four in an abandoned house. The only surviver of the Kumaraswamy family, Krishanthy's sister Prishanthi, wrote a public letter to the Sri Lankan president, Chandrica Kumarathunga calling for an investigation. The government gave the bodies back to the family under the condition that they be cremated within two hours. No one has been allowed access to the autopsies performed by the government. So far, no one has been charged with any offences. The four \"disappearances\" were also brought to the attention of the Sri Lankan president by a member of parliament. The Deputy Minister of Defence reportedly asked for two weeks to provide a response. There has been no reply to date. The disappearances of Krishanthy, her mother, brother and neighbour are four among six such disappearances within days of each other in the Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka. In fact, there have been numerous reports of arbitrary arrests, torture, rape, disappearances and extrajudicial executions in the region since late 1995. That was when the Sri Lankan armed or \"security\" forces regained control from the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam (a group fighting for sovereignity for the minority Tamil people in Sri Lanka). The reports have been hard to verify due to strict control on travel to and from the area. Only a few journalists have been permitted to visit the peninsula. Those who were allowed in were given limited freedom of movement. A Human Rights Task Force (HRTF) was officially set up to safeguard the welfare of detainees during this period. It was to have regional offices in various parts of the country, but has reportedly not been allowed to open an office in the Jaffna peninsula. As a result, the HRTF is unable to investigate reports of disappearances in this area. Human rights activists say that the lack of presence of the HRTF or any other civilian groups has led to a feeling among those in the security forces deployed in Jaffna peninsula that they can act with impunity. Human rights activists are urging the Sri Lankan government to open an HRTF office in Jaffna and to allow HRTF officers to visit places of detention on a regular basis, thus preventing widespread torture and disappearances. They say having an office for the HRTF would provide an on-the-spot channel of communication for the civilian population to make complaints and inquiries regarding the security forces. Activists are also calling for security forces to be instructed at all times to adhere to Sri Lankan presidential directives issued in mid-1995 to safeguard the welfare of people arrested and detained. Further, they are asking that observers be allowed to visit the areas as additional preventive measures against further human rights violations. Amnesty International is following the case of the disappearances of Krishanthy Kumaraswamy, Rasammah Kumaraswamy, Pranaban Kumaraswamy and Kirupakaran Sithamparam, and of Subramaniam and Ganeshu Sri Ram from Kaitadi. For further information, contact the Amnesty International office nearest you. To protest the disappearances and lobby for a Human Rights Task Force Office to be set up in Jaffna peninsula, write the High Commissioner for Sri Lanka, His Excellency Walter Fernando, at 333 Laurier Ave. W, Ottawa, KIP 1C1, or call (613) 233-8440, or fax (613) 238-8448. compiled by Sandra Kerr Rise in child labour in the south The International Labour Organization (ILO), a United Nations agency, reports that from the brothels of Asia to the carpet factories of Pakistan, almost twice as many children ages five to 14 (250 million) as previously thought (73 million) are employed in countries in the south. About 250 million children are employed in all, half of them full-time. The ILO report, based on in-depth surveys and interviews, estimates 153 million children are working inAsia, 80 million in Africa, and 17.5 million in Latin America. The ILO also called for a new international accord that would ban the harshest forms of child labour: prostitution, slavery, and work in hazardous industries. (The new accord would replace the 1976 child-labour covention, which has only been ratified by 49 UN member countries.) Michel Hansenne, director-general of ILO, states that child labour only perpetuates an endless cycle of illiteracy and poverty. He added that \"slavery\" is still practised in parts of South Asia, Southeast Asia and West Africa, where children are \"sold\" by their impoverished families and forced to work in factories and as prostitutes. The ILO notes that child trafficking for the sex industry is increasing despite better international awareness, purportedly as a result of the AIDS scare causing men— many of whom are from countries in the north—to want to have unprotected sex with \"pure\" individuals, namely young girls and boys. The reported number of child prostitutes in Asia is about one million and rising, and the numbers are on the rise in Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe. As well, sex networks have resulted in children being taken from their home countries to countries in Europe and the Middle East. Hong Kong woman wins back wages A woman in Hong Kong has won her appeal for back wages against her former employer, Wellcome Supermarket, after the DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 High Court ruled she had been fired from her job without cause. The company was ordered to pay Chong Sau-yun back wages in the amount of HK$5,580 (Cdn. $945). In her ruling, Justice Doreen Le Pichon said she found Chong's story more credible than the employer's, and pointed to the absurdness of her dismissal. The judge overturned a previous ruling by the Labour Tribunal against Chong. Chong worked at Wellcome as a cleaner and lived above the supermarket. Some of the market's customers were her neighbours and she often said hello to them. Chong was fired 'on the spot' for talking to customers after working there for just over three months. Wellcome's management also charged that Chong picked discarded lucky draw coupons and had used those tickets herself, which was a breach of company rules. Chong countered those allegations, saying that picking up the tickets was part of her job as a cleaner and that she \"threw them in the dustbin.\" Factory linked to cancer in women workers Excessive noise, stressful conditions and radioactivity resulting in reproductive cancer-related illness and death are the conditions faced by women working at the Yasaki Emi Export Processing Zone and the Bonding, Pre-Assembly and Final Assembly Departments of the Yasaki Emi Electronic Company in Imus, Philippines. The company has been in operation for six years. Since 1995, two reproductive-cancer related deaths have been reported, as have numerous operations on women working in the factories to remove cancer inflicted ovaries and malignant uterine cysts. Intense heat emissions from wires are the suspected cause of the various forms of radioactivity linked to illness and death among workers. Thelma Gloria, vice president of the Kristong Manggagawa Union, noted many of the workers could be afflicted with work- related cancer of the reproductive organs and are in peril because of these poor working conditions. Conversely, the company continues to ignore these facts and thrives on the backs of these women's work. To this day, gross violations of health and safety standards continue on the part of the Yasaki Emi management. Pay equity in Quebec put on hold An onslaught of protests by business leaders in Quebec has led the provincial government to introduce amendments to proposed private sector pay equity legislation. The amendments essentially extend the time frame for employers to create pay equity plans. Originally, businesses were expected to immediately start the process of implementing pay equity plans when the legislation came into effect on January 1,1997. Under the new bill, employers will have an additional year to start the process. After that, companies will have four years to develop plans and set up pay equity committees and another four years to implement the plans. Pay equity is not expected to be fully implemented until 2006. However, companies in financial difficulty will be applying for an extension of up to three years. Small businesses—where many women work—won't be affected. The new legislation applies only to companies with more than 50 employees, covering just 52 percent of the total number of businesses in Quebec. The pay equity legislation has long been opposed by business leaders who contend the program would cost too much. But Louise Harel, the minister responsible for the status of women in Quebec, challenges that claim and says she will continue to fight the \"good fight\" in spite of continued pressure from business leaders and cabinet seesawing. The bottom line is that women in Quebec still earn 30.7 percent less than men. Two-tiered justice in Manitoba Aboriginal people from reserves in northern Manitoba marched to Winnipeg to protest against what they say is a two- tiered justice system for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. The demonstrators showed up at the provincial legislature to express their frustration to Justice Minister Rosemary Vodrey. They were protesting the slow progress in the investigation of the death of Dorothy Martin, a Cree woman from Le Pas. In their statements, a number of people drew parallels and connections to the killing of another Cree woman from Le Pas, Helen Betty Osborne, 25 years ago. Osborne was brutally murdered and it took 15 years before anyone had to stand trial for her death. At the conclusion, only one of three men charged with her murder was convicted. Dorothy Martin was killed in a struggle over a shotgun on April 26. The accused, her common-law husband, Gerald Robert Wilson, faces only minor weapons charges. Aboriginal leaders charge that the police and Crown have been dragging their feet in laying murder charges in the case because the accused is the son of the sheriff in Le Pas, Gerald Wilson. \"The justice system is unfair and the officials that are there for us are not there,\" Vivien Young, Martin's sister, said at the rally. Phil Fontaine, leader of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, described the justice system as being absolutely incapable of dealing fairly and justly with Aboriginal people. The demonstrators also pointed out that Sheriff Wilson was found to have withheld information—a confession—in 1971 in the Osborne murder case which hindered the conviction of the men who murdered her. Wilson did not produce the information until 1986. He was demoted, but later reinstated after the conclusion by provincial officials that, at the time, there was no legal obligation for him to report a murder confession. Manitoba premier Gary Filmon told members of the legislature that the Martin case is being taken seriously. And the RCMP have told Vivien Young that they are waiting for the results of blood-spatter tests, which they say will be completed by the end of December, before proceeding with the case. What's News, continued on next page What's News compiled by Shannon e. Ash Multiculturalism funding tightened Some anti-racism activists are voicing concerns that the federal government's new multiculturalism policies may result in organizations with programs deemed \"controversial, confrontational or too political\" losing their funding or being deemed ineligible for multiculturalism grants. Their concerns follow comments last month by Hedy Fry, the secretary of state responsible for multiculturalism, that multicultural groups seeking federal funding will have to prove they will use the money to promote specific government goals, such as improving race relations. The announcement came in the wake of a report commissioned by the federal government. The survey, by the private group Brighton Research, states that Canadians don't understand the purpose of much of Canada's multicultural policy and suspect it's a program for \"special interests.\" Brighton Research concluded that direct grants to \"ethnic\" organizations should stop and that future funding should go to Canada-wide public agencies for projects \"related to identity, citizenship and social justice.\" Fry says that while she does not agree with all the report's recommendations, she does support funding being based on fulfilling the government mandate for \"multiculturalism,\" rather than being given to an organization just for being an ethnic cultural group. She added that the government \"isn't going to gut multiculturalism,\" but wants to ensure the $18.6 million given to ethnic organizations produces \"tangible results.\" Examples given of programs the government would support are legal educational materials for new immigrants, and a program teaching anger management skills to Vietnamese youth. Later, Fry also announced $24 million for the establishment of a Canadian Race Relations Foundation, promised for years, based in Toronto. As well, she has stated that lesbian and gay groups may be eligible for multicultural funding, under the goal of improving relations and reducing anti-gay violence. Innu vote to move from Davis Inlet Innu people living at Davis Inlet, a tiny island community off the coast of Labrador, have voted to relocate their community to the mainland. More than 97 percent of the ballots cast on October 29 approved the agreement between the Innu Nation and the Newfoundland and federal governments. > ' Under the agreement, the community will move to Sango Bay, a mainland area 18 kilometres south of its current location. Says Innu Chief Katie Rich, \"...we have overwhelming support from the community to sign the agreement. For us to heal, we need to get away from Davis Inlet.\" This is not the first time the Innu people have been moved. In 1967, the federal government forcibly relocated the Innu people to their current, isolated community at Davis Inlet. The move to Sango Bay is not expected to happen for at least four years. The critical situation for the Innu people at Davis Inlet gained national attention more recently when reports surfaced of a number of teenagers getting high off gasoline fumes and talking about committing suicide. The Innu have also been engaged in a long battle with the federal government to get the military to stop low-level flying over their land. Davis Inlet leaders have blamed the isolation of their community for problems such as poor housing, sanitation, and substance abuse. The new Sango Bay site is to provide running water, sewers, room to expand, and easier access to the mainland. Child poverty in Canada While a recent study indicates that most Canadian children are relatively well- off, it also shows that a substantial and growing number of children—20 percent, or 1.4 million children—are living in poverty. This is a major conclusion from the Canadian Council on Social Development's study. The Progress of Canada's Children 1996, drawn from Statistics Canada data. The reason the majority of kids are doing well, says Katharine Scott, the project director, is that \"government, communities and families have put an enormous investment into the well-being of our children.\" However, she says, the positive situation for most kids is largely due to the social programs and institutions which are now under attack by funding cuts. \"Our concern is that there are a number of danger signs on the horizon, and without continued investment in public education, health programs, and other community services, the well-being of kids today could actually deteriorate in the future,\" says Scott. For example, funding for kindergarten classes is being cut, depriving children of access to high-quality preschool programs. As well, the study reports that the \"market income\" of the poorest one fifth of Canadians fell by 29 per cent from 1984 to 1994. The study did show that including unemployment insurance, child benefits and other government transfers received resulted in a modest increase in total income over the same period [for that population]. Currently, the federal government is proposing a new child benefit plan, that might replace child welfare benefits with the new benefit being made available to people working poor as well. But Scott notes that this government initiative to combat child poverty comes amid two years of federal cuts to social programs, including UI. The Council's study indicates that even though most children have two parents who work outside the home, family income has dropped, particularly for young families. Another conclusion is that while 80 percent of children under the age of 12 live with two biological parents, the number of single parents is increasing, and single parent households—most of which are headed by women—are much more likely to be poor. Parti [Poverty lies from Harris In early November, a number of women from women's groups, unions and student groups showed up at Queen's Park, the provincial legislature of Ontario, in aprons to present Premier Mike Harris with a bag of oatmeal and a one-way ticket back to his home town of North Bay. The women staged the action in response to comments made by Harris about hungry children and their mothers. The day before, in announcing a new breakfast program for students,Harris made it a point to deny there was any link between this need and the government's 22 percent cut to social assistance. Instead, he blamed children coming to school hungry on mothers no longer being \"in the kitchen with a hot breakfast cooking when everybody woke up.\" Later that same day, during a debate about the breakfast program, another Conservative goverment MPP, Tony Spina, told New Democratic Party MPP, Marilyn Churley to \"go home and take care of your own children.\" Judy Darcy, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), says the Ontario government has a very outdated way of thinking about child poverty and hunger. \"Their agenda is about turning back the clock on women's rights; it's about turning back the clock on children; it's about literally taking food from the mouths of hungry children in this prov- Part 2: Poverty lies from Klein Meanwhile inAlberta, Family and Social Services Minister Stockwell Day was busy bragging that the province's lowest welfare caseload in 14 years was a result of Albertans on welfare \"achieving independence thanks to our employment training programs and restructured benefits.\" The number of Albertans receiving social assistance has dropped by 56.8 percent since March 1993, according to the Conservative government. Like Harris, Alberta premier Ralph Klein has drastically slashed funding for welfare and introduced stricter eligibility criteria. As well, his government has been dismantling the province's other social programs, all the while wholeheartedly promoting the right-wing corporatist agenda of driving down wages. Anti-poverty activists inAlberta aren't sharing the Conservative's toast to \"success,\" saying that the decline in the number of people receiving welfare does not mean a corresponding decrease in the number of people living in poverty. In fact the opposite is more likely to be true. Terry Wilson, the executive director of the Calgary Inter-Faith Food Bank, says demand at the Food Bank rose six percent in the first 10 months of 1996, and more than a quarter of households using the Food Bank are working at jobs that pay so little they can't make ends meet. \"It's not just a question of going off welfare, it's a question of sustainable employment,\" Wilson adds. Ontario women lose \"Spouse in the house\" case According to an Ontario court, women can be made economically dependent on their common-law male partner. The court upheld the legality of Ontario's \"spouse in the house\" rule for people receiving welfare. The new regulations, introduced in October 1995 by Mike Harris' Conservative government, state that a live-in partner of the opposite sex is a \"spouse\" and has an obligation to support the welfare recipient. The regulation also puts the onus on a woman to prove that no spousal relationship exists the minute she moves in with a man. The three-judge panel of the Division Court said that the \"Spouse in the house\" rules are within the provincial legislature's power, but one judge agreed that the rules violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Two of the judges ruled the the Charter challenge was premature and that the complainants should have taken their case to Ontario's social assistance review board. The third judge ruled the legislation was unconstitutional because it discrimates against sole-support parents. The four women who brought forward their cases had lost social assistance benefits because they were living with men. Before the new rule, welfare recipients could live with a partner of the opposite sex for up three years before that person was deemed a spouse. Because of the new regulation, over 10,000 people—89 percent of whom are women—have been deemed ineligible for social assistance. Rogers cuts community cable access Rogers Cable is closing two Vancouver-area Community Television studios and three neighbourhood television offices, leaving many areas without local access. The staff of the Vancouver East Neighbourhood Television Office was given notice on November 19 that they must close the office in less than a month; the office locks were then changed. The more than 50 production volunteers who work out of the Vancouver East office were not consulted or warned of the coming closures. Neither were the many Eastside groups and centres which have benefited from this access. The Vancouver East office has produced award-winning community cable shows. Community access TV is often the only way independent TV producers and community groups can be seen and heard on television. The office has also provided women volunteer technicians secure and safe access at all hours of the day and night to the production equipment. The Rogers volunteers believe the move is a result of an anticipated CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission) ruling that will end Rogers' cable TV monopoly. The volunteers criticize the CRTC for neglecting to protect grassroots community access to TV. The CRTC has the power to mandate that all future cable TV providers unite to continue community television, but instead, say the volunteers, \"it is putting a shameful emphasis on corporate interests over community interests.\" The Vancouver East Community TV producers are asking people to call or write to the CRTC and Rogers Cablesystems to complain about the closures. CRTC: 530-580 Hornby St, Vancouver, BC, V6C 3G6; tel: (604) 666-2111; fax (604) 666-8322. Rogers Cablesystems: Attention: Vera Piccini or Glenn Wong, 1600- 4710 Kingsway, Burnaby, BC, V5H 4M5; tel (604) 439-1111; fax (604) 431-1000. Please fax copies of letters to (604) 251-6073. Movement Matters listings information Movement Matters is designed to be a network of news, updates and information of special interest to the women's movement. Submissions to Movement Matters should be no more than 500 words, I typed, double spaced and may be edited for length. Deadline is the 18th of the month preceding publication. compiled by Caitlin Byrne December 6th memorials in Vancouver A number of events will be held in Vancouver on Friday, December 6th—the national day of action against violence against women—to remember all women who died as a result of male violence. FREDA, the Feminist Research, Education, Development and Action Centre, will be holding a ceremonial event from noon to 1:30pm at Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre, Room 1420 Seagal Centre. The event will feature songs and poetry readings. (For more information call FREDA at (604) 291-5197.) Later in the day, from 4:30 to 6:00pm, a memorial service will be held in the theatre of The Gathering Place, 609 Helmcken St, to honour the women who have died in Vancouver's Downtown South, Downtown Core and West End. Speakers will include women from the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre and PACE, an organization advocating on behalf of sex trade workers. As well, a prayer and a smudge ceremony will be performed by Harriet Nahanee, an Aboriginal spiritual leader. (For more information call Emily Howard at (604) 665-2391.) After the rally, women will march to the Vancouver Art Gallery to join in the candlelight vigil organized by WAVAW, Women Against Violence Against Women. The vigil, starting at 6:30pm, will feature speakers from the Philippine Women Centre, Pacific Association of First Nations Women and WAVAW. Names of the 14 women murdered at Ecole Polytechnique as well as names and stories of other women murdered by men will be publicly read. This will be followed by a musical performance. Candles will be available by donation. Childcare services and bus fare reimbursement will be provided. An American Sign Language interpreter will translate the speeches and stories. For more information and bus fare reimbursement contact WAVAW Monday to Friday 9:00am to 5:00pm at (604) 255-6228 (voice) and (604) 258-0110 (TTY). Housing needs of domestic workers The Philippine Women Centre in Vancouver recently produced a report called the Housing Needs Assessment of Filipina Domestic Workers. The assessment, the first of its kind in Canada, extensively outlines the housing-related needs and issues of over 50 Filipina domestic workers living and working in their employers' homes throughout the Lower Mainland in BC. A Participatory Action Research (PAR) method was used where the participants were involved in planning, designing and carrying out the project.The women's stories regarding the challenges they face as women marginalized by class, race, and gender reflect the urgent need for Canada to scrap its Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). The major findings of the report detail the conditions of women as live-in employees. It addresses issues such as lack of proper accommodation, lack of privacy, isolation, loneliness, and employers' disregard for their cultural customs and habits. Some women opt to live out on the weekends but usually face overcrowded living spaces, high rents and safety concerns. The assessment reviews the strategies and capacities women have to meet their own housing needs and lists recommendations for the future. To order copies of the needs assessment, contact the Philippine Women Centre: 451 Powell St, Vancouver, BC, V6A 1G7; tel/fax: (604) 215-1103. The report costs $10 and funds raised from sales will go towards supporting the Centre and its work. Please add $2 for postage and handling. Black history cultural events in Vancouver Zampro, a collective of Black lesbians, recently formed in Vancouver to program a series of events for Black History Month in February. Throughout the month, Zampro will host a literary event and a film and video series which truly depict the lives of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered persons, who are not adequately represented in Vancouver's cultural scene. The events will stimulate broad based dialogue in the Black community and beyond, and foster progressive anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, anti-imperialist politics in today's right -wing Blacklash. Presently, Zampro is soliciting work from film and video producers in Canada and the US. The collective seeks writers to read their works and plans on having a panel discussion on Black lesbian and gay history and politics. Among the films and videos being considered for screening are: Black Nation/ Queer Nation, directed and produced by Shari Frielot; Dionne Brand's new film Listening for Something; and Thomas Allen Harris' video Vintage: Families of Quality. As well, Zampro hopes to feature films on the life and words of Audre Lorde. To ensure the events can take place, Zampro is putting out a call for donations of venues to screen works and hold their literary event, money, letters of support, and publicity of their activities. Individuals or organizations wanting to support Zampro can contact E. Centime Zeleke or Nadine Chambers at 1631 Grant St, Vancouver, BC, V5L 2Y4; tel: (604) 253-3710;fax: (604) 255-5511; or e-mail: cfrocoop@vcn.bc.ca. Eyes On Mexico gathering Eyes on Mexico is organizing a gathering for Vancouver on Saturday, December 7th, to discuss challenging neo-liberal- ism and developing alternatives to the corporate agenda. The day-long event will be held simultaneously with gatherings in other parts of the world. The gathering will be conducted \"in the spirit of the Zapatista Encounter\" held in Chiapas, Mexico, last August. The First Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and against Neo-liberalism brought together groups and individuals from over 40 countries to discuss the effects of neo-liberal policies, and to develop concrete strategies to create an alternative social, economic, political and cultural vision. The December 7th gathering will feature presentations by Eyes on Mexico, and workshops on themes such as Zapatismo, democratic process, global economic restructuring, and APEC (the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation). In the afternoon, there will be small group discussions on alternatives in the spirit of participatory democracy. A closing plenary will bring together the various discussions and ideas for action. The gathering will take place at Britannia Community School, 1661 Napier St, from 10:00am to 5:00pm. Registration will begin at 9:00am. For further information call 253-0304 or 254-1463. Women's Health Collective turns 25 In 1971, a woman extremely dissatisfied with the service she received from her doctor ran an ad in a newspaper inviting women to meet and share their similar experiences. The advertisement drew plenty of responses; from them, the Vancouver Women's Health Collective (VWHC) was born. Over the past 25 years, the VWHC has provided self-help clinics, a woman's health information and referral library, a help phoneline, and support group workshops. VWHC has consistently taken an active role in the health care reform process. Since 1971, it has taken the lead in helping women make healthy choices about their health care which usually results in less surgery and medication, greater user satisfaction, and a better educated population, less dependent on the medical system. Today, VWHC continues to \"help women to help themselves\" in accessing their health care needs through various activities. These include ongoing free counselling sessions, special events and workshops on current women's health issues, outreach projects such as the health advocates training project, and networking with many organizations on a local, provincial and national level. To celebrate its previous and continuing success, the VWHC is hosting a 25th Anniversary fund-raiser event, Wednesday, December 4th, 8:00pm at Richard's on Richard's. Seattle singer Laura Love will be there to perform from her new CD. As well, the VWHC will unveil the \"Women's Health Information Network (WHIN)\", a computerized women's health information database. For tickets and information call the Vancouver Women's Health Collective at (604) 736-4234. Women in the Downtown Eastside The Downtown Eastside Women's Centre in Vancouver is putting out a call for donations of money, food and unwrapped gifts during the holiday season. Throughout the year the Centre provides hot meals, laundry, showers, and other immediate services for women. In addition there is a legal advocate, crisis counsellor and victim assistance worker to assist the women. Each year in December, the Centre holds a holiday party for the women who use the drop-in centre. The party will include a Christmas dinner, presents, and a food basket for over 300 women and their children. Non-perishables, baked goodies, Christmas candy, candy canes, turkeys, Safeway gift certificates and suitable gifts for food baskets are greatly needed and appreciated, as are toys and games for children of all ages and gifts for adult women such as small housewares, warm clothing size large, linens, and toiletries. (If you wish to contribute gifts, please make sure they are new and unwrapped.) Please drop of donations to the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, 44 E. Cordova St. For more information please call Cynthia at (604)681-4786. Benefit party for Indian Homemakers' The Indian Homemakers' Association of BC will be hosting a \"Benefit Night\" at the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre, 1607 E. Hastings St. on Friday, December 6 from 6:00pm to 10:00pm. There will be a raffle (50-50 draw), a silent auction, a fashion show, local traditional music and a traditional dinner. Tickets are $5 per person, $10 per family, and $3 for seniors and students. Admission includes dinner and a chance to win door prizes. The Benefit will support the work of the Association, which is a non-profit charitable organization that provides programs and services to the grassroots Aboriginal community Vancouver. The Association is also currently looking for gifts, non-perishable food and donations to give to families in need during the holiday season. Send gifts or donations to the Indian Homemakers' Association ofBC, 208-175 E. Broadway, Vancouver, BC, V5T1W2, or drop by in person. If you wish to make a sizable contribution, arrangements can be made to pick it up. Please call Crystal Philips at (604) 876- 0944. Women map Grandview Woodland community Our Own Backyard: Mapping the Grandview Woodland Community is inviting a wide range of community groups and individuals in the Commercial Drive neighbourhood to express their perceptions and experiences of the neighbourhood through visual, oral and written forms. This process will allow people to identify what is important to them in their community; build community awareness, identity and involvement; and acknowledge the diversity within the community. The project is a collaborative project between Britannia Community Education, the Institute for Humanities at Simon Fraser University and local residents of Vancouver's Eastside. As a vital part of the neighbourhood, women are strongly encouraged to produce maps which will contribute to developing a grassroots imagery of place. Women may get involved in various ways: by creating their own maps, attending public map- making workshops, or helping to organize women-only workshops. When completed, the maps will be exhibited throughout the neighbourhood and documented in local library archives. For more information, call Karen Martin, Co-ordinator, Our Own Backyard at 254- 9276. DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 Feature Indigenous peoples'sovereignty struggles in the Philippines: Feature Undermined by corporate greed by Bernice See and Fay Blaney Bernice See works at the Cordillera Women's Education Centre (CWEC) in the Cordillera region in the Philippines. Fay Blaney is Homalco First Nations. She is a member of the Aboriginal Women's Action Network in Vancouver and a vice-president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. See and Blaney met and talked in Nicaragua last October. Both were there as members of WOMEN, the Women's Observer Mission for the Elections in Nicaragua. Fay Blaney: Bernice, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and where you come from? Bernice See: I come from the Cordillera region in the Philippines, and I am here [in Nicaragua] as a representative of INNABUYOG. INNABUYOG is a federation of different women's organizations in the Cordilleras. Most involved, if not all, are indigenous women. I act as the secretary general. I also work in an NGO which services all these organizations. The name INNABUYOG is derived from one of the languages in the region and means \"self-help.\" All indigenous communities have the system of helping each other during times of heavy work on the farm, helping each other to survive, build homes, open new areas for settlement or rice fields, or whatever. Blaney: As indigenous peoples, we share so much in common in terms of the history of our people and our cultures. Could you tell us a little bit about the history of colonization in the Cordilleras? See: In 1521, Spaniards invaded our country They landed in central Philippines and subjugated the people there. By the end of the 16th century, they had established their government in most of the islands, and set up their government in central Philippines. Then the Spanish went up north and subjugated the people in the lowlands. They discovered there was gold and jewelry along the coast and were told it came from the mountains, so they tried to invade the mountains. They sent several expeditions, but were unsuccessful, so they simply established a Catholic church in some areas. Despite more than 300 years of Spanish colonialism, these mountainous areas, that they named \"The Grand Cordilleras,\" were never under their control. Although they may have established forts in certain areas, they never imposed their rule on the people. During the same period, the lowland peoples were subjugated, learning the culture and religion of the colonizers. As part of the divide and rule tactic, the Spanish called the mountain peoples \"pagans, savages, barbarians.\" The lowland peoples came to consider the mountain people, who were collectively called Igorots, as different from them. This minority-majority dichotomy had been established between the mountain peoples [a minority of the population] and the lowland peoples [the majority] when Spain ceded its colonies to the American colonial government in 1898. These same policies of discrimination continued under American rule. The Philippine islands were claimed by the Spanish colonizers in the name of the King of Spain. When the Americans took over, they continued this doctrine that the territory was claimed in the name of the state. This conflict continues up to the present. The Americans passed laws in order to gain the right to exploit resources. The Americans were looking for markets for the excess amount of goods produced in the US, and for sources of raw materials for their industries. They passed the Land Registration Act in 1902, which stated that all lands must be registered within a certain period of time or else they would be declared public land. And in 1905, they also passed the Mining Act, which gave equal rights to both Philippine and American citizens to exploit mineral resources. With respect to the Land Registration Act, the Igorots consider the land as something that is not to be owned, although they do have a system of private ownership. Lands which have been invested in with labour, which have been developed continuously for a certain period of time, are considered private property. But Igorots also have what we call family or clan lands—these may be woodlots which a family or a clan has taken care of. A great part of the territory of a community is considered communal. Everybody has free access to the resources there. At the same time, everybody has a collective responsibility to maintain these resources. With the Land Registration Act, it seemed odd that there was this so-called state requiring people to register ownership of land that was already recognized in the community. We knew who owned certain lands and the exact boundaries. That is the conflict in the concept of land. Land is not simply the soil or the surface; it includes the air above the waters and whatever minerals are underneath. One of the features of the Mining Act was to segregate the surface rights and the mineral rights: mineral rights took prec- Clearing the mountainsides for cash crops edence over surface rights. When the time comes that the mining company needs the surface, it has the right to \"compensate\" the people there and drive them away. All of these laws were just declared without any consultation with the people. With these laws, we were declared squatters in our own land. Until now, these laws have never been repealed. In the 1970s under the Marcos dictatorship another law was added, the so-called Forestry Act. This Act stated that land 18 degrees in slope is considered public land, which means that the state has the right to dispose of it. This law was based on American law in which 18 degrees is the slope on which you cannot use a tractor. If an area is deemed public land, you cannot go there and cultivate it because it's supposed to be a forestry area. All of our communities are more than 18 degrees in slope because we are in a very mountainous area. The big issue now is the Mining Act of 1995. This law, passed without consultation with the people, gives foreign and national mining companies the right to reach a Financial and Technical Assistance Agreement (FTAAs) with the government to exploit 81,200 hectares for mining. It gives them right to what we call \"easement rights\", they can ease off the surface inhabitants. It gives them water rights and so many other rights that the communities do not have any more rights at all. In the 1970s, the Marcos dictatorship, along with the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank, planned to dam the major river system which passes through two provinces in our region [the Chico Dam project]. The people banded together under the indigenous peace pact system to successfully oppose this endeavour. Women were in the forefront of the main struggles. One good thing which came out of this is that communities became politicized. We would like to hold onto the militancy in organizing communities and the commitment of the people to defend the land. Land is a central issue in the struggle of indigenous peoples. We are in the midst of a campaign to inform communities about the implications of the Mining Act. There are about 57 applications for these financial and technical agreements in the Cordilleras, covering about 80 percent of our lands. The Act allows for bulk mining and strip mining. Jobs have been promised to people, but we know they are not going to employ anybody. We know that our land will be degraded, and will never be able to return to a usable state. Our material culture will be lost. We call this ethnocide and development aggression. Blaney: With things like laws and government policies, how do you translate that into a form that people can use and understand at the community level? How do you organize? See: With the mining issue, the foreign mining companies went to some communities with the government agents regulating the mining concessions to \"consult\" with the people. These consultations were so one-sided that they painted glowing pictures of the development they would bring into the community. In communities which had been organized in the past or which are within the Cordillera People's Alliance, community representatives inquired with us about the mining concessions or FTAAs with the government. Some communities had actually agreed to allow their communities to be claimed. In April this year, we had a regional mining conference and called on most of the communities affected by the applications for FTAAs. We provided information on the mining law. Many communities are now calling on us to conduct educational campaigns for them. Some of the communities affected by these applications are also communities which were involved in the struggle against the Chico Dam project. Usually the municipal officials may agree to allow the companies to come in, but they don't consult with the people. They simply say they are elected representatives and so they can make decisions for the people. We know that many communities are very far from each other, so we don't know the degree of consultation the officials are conducting among their constituencies. Blaney: Can you describe what community life is like? It sounds very similar to the type of day-to-day lifestyle Aboriginal people in Canada had before contact, where you didn't need a wage economy. Your work was towards gathering food, developing culture, all the things that create an autonomous nation, a self-determining nation. See: li we look at Cordillera society at the present, because of colonization there are already varying modes of production. But a traditional Igorot community would be one that is self-sustaining and self-reliant. The environment may be harsh because we are a tropical country and at the same time our terrain is so mountainous that we do not have much land area to cultivate crops on. Whatever land is available is utilized for several purposes. In a typical traditional community, people are subsistence farmers. They have permanent gardens and rice fields. If you look at the production system in a subsistence rice production economy, the women play a very important role there since they are the subsistence farmers. Many of our communities have a warrior tradition so the men were hunters, warriors and the council of elders in the community. We still have these councils existing in many communities side-by-side with the government council. We don't produce all the food we need, so there is also bartering between communities. Salt was taken from the lowlands. It was a very precious commodity before the roads and transportation systems came. Many of our cultural traditions were changed by the American colonizers. For example, they imposed Protestantism and their own government systems and public schools on our communities. They also sent our children to live in dorms while they went to the American schools. Blaney: Did that affect the language at all? See: Even though they used English in the schools, we have maintained our language. Although Christianity was there, we practised our own animist traditions side- by-side with it. There was some sort of coping mechanism in the communities because, although traditions were eroded, some still remain. But with the introduction of the cash economy, many communities changed. For Pounding rice example, a wide area along a highway was transformed into a commercial vegetable production area. This area had been logged over by a forestry company, which was a subsidiary of a mining company, because mining companies needed logs for timbering inside the tunnels. After that, people transformed the lands into vegetable areas, growing temperate vegetables like cabbages, lettuce, potatoes—cash crops— which the American colonists wanted. The downstream areas have all been destroyed by silt, so the rice fields are now gone. Above the tunnels in the mining communities, there is no more water so you cannot plant crops there. Some rice fields are even being transferred to commercial vegetable production in more interior ar- 10 Blaney: Regarding the shift in economy, why did some of the communities go along with what the mining companies and other corporations were trying to do in their communities? That happens in our communities as well, where they divide the community and set each part against the others. See: That's exactly what is happening now and what happened before. In the mining areas the people were very hospitable. Traditionally, small-scale mining was gold panning in the river banks or small tunnelling in the mountainsides called dugholes. The dugholes might be owned by a family but everybody was welcome to share in the wealth of the earth. If someone didn't have a dughole, they could go into your dughole and request some ore. When the American and Canadian prospectors came, they requested to be in the community and were allowed. They were even given areas to open their own dugholes. What the people didn't know was that there was this mining law of 1905 which allowed the foreigners to claim areas as mining concessions. When the foreigners found out that the dugholes were so rich with minerals, they staked wide areas, whole communities, as mining claims. They brought in machinery, fenced off areas, and the hosts were now at ■> the mercy of the foreign mining companies. This is how the law drove people from their land. The whole area became the property of the company and the community suddenly had no rights to the land. One company has already extracted so much from underground, it now wants to go into strip mining because it's too expensive to go deeper into the earth. It wants to economize to maintain and even increase its profits. The company wants to drive out communities so it can strip mine the mountain, and the technology is now available for it to be able to extract every last ounce of ore from the earth. This conflict has also heightened because of the economic crisis [in the Philippines]. The company is retrenching a lot of people. From 5,000 people before, it now employs only 300 miners because it has machines to do the work of the miners. Blaney: What organizing are you doing to try and stop people from being driven off their lands? See: Some small scale miners are self- organized. But when the confrontation came to a head, some asked for assistance from our organization. We are giving them a background of the history since many of us do not know how we were disenfranchised from our land. We are giving them leadership training so they are able to articulate their own issues. We are giving them paralegal training in a human rights framework as defined by us so that they will be able to explore several options in their struggle. Many people have been barricading the bulldozers from coming into their communities, and many have been arrested. The problem is, the Philippine government says companies have the right to do this because they have a claim over the area. Even though the government is run by our >&■ 1 9 March to end triple-discrimination—national, class and ethnicity own people—because basically the Philippine population is all indigenous—they are working against our people in the community. Blaney: They've become institutionalized. Can you tell me a little bit about what happened in Beijing [at the 4th World Conference on Women in September 1995]? I understand you met with a lot of other indigenous women there. See: It was interesting to be at the NGO [non-governmental organization] forum in Huairou. We had an indigenous women's tent. We knew that indigenous women had not been visible at many international conferences, so we thought we should have a specific tent for indigenous women to come together. We conducted several caucuses. The major one was a round table discussion involving lots of leaders from the different countries sharing their history and their present struggles. Everybody agreed we should come up with an indigenous women's declaration. Another interesting thing was that the struggles of the indigenous peoples all over the world—which women carry with them—are all the same. Our histories, our development was jeopardized because of the entry of colonial powers. Some indigenous people were not allowed to speak their own language. Many indigenous communities, especially in Asia, are not recognized as indigenous; they are simply called national minorities, but are not given any special rights. Most indigenous peoples were not allowed to practise their own religion, culture, traditions because they were supposed to be assimilated into the so-called mainstream. That happened in our country. During the American colonial period, they put up this Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes to assimilate us in the north, the mountain people in the south who call themselves Lumas, and the Moro people who are Islamic. When the Philippine government took over after the second world war, this bureau was transformed into the Commission of National Integration. The government claims it does not have an integrationist, assimilationist approach, but of course it does. The problem is also that we are also being mainstreamed into the global [capitalist] economic order. This is dangerous because they want monoculture, monoeconomic production, all these mono things to make us all uniform, under one power and one framework of development. These are the things that indigenous peoples have to consider: the right to self-determination, the right to our ancestral territories, the right to be different. Blaney: Are you going to maintain the links that you established in Beijing? See: We are maintaining the contacts. This trip to Nicaragua is very helpful because, especially here in Latin America, we are getting in contact with the women. As well, the Cordillera People's Alliance, of which INNABUYOG is a member, has several contacts among indigenous peoples all over the world because it is active in the UN Working Group for Indigenous Populations. We are widening and strengthening these contacts, especially in terms of information sharing. Our basic issue that we share with these people is the issue of global imperialism. Even if you are in a remote area of the world—and many indigenous peoples are in remote areas of the world— you'll always be caught in the agenda of the WTO, the World Trade Organization. We know we cannot escape this because most governments signed the GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade]. As indigenous peoples we have to take this on. As indigenous women struggling for our rights within our own societies, we have to be involved in national and international issues because these things link us together. Blaney: In the colonial process we've internalized a lot of the patriarchal system. Indigenous women are oppressed by our own men within our communities. Can you comment on that? See: We have to restudy our culture and our herstory so that we will see what women-friendly traditions we have. We've discovered that in our communities childcare was, to a large degree, a shared responsibility. As well, wife battering was taboo in our traditional societies, and rape was considered as murder, punishable by death. We have to reclaim these traditions that are women-friendly and transform negative ones. Women are very active in trying to transform the negative traditions and propagate the positive ones for our women. There are definitely patriarchal systems existing in our society. We don't claim that [our traditional society was] entirely women-friendly, but at the same time we know we have to unify the community because we have a bigger enemy out there to fight. As activists in the communities we have to balance all of these. At certain stages we may address exclusively women-specific issues, but at other stages, we might be addressing broader community issues. This is what we are doing in our organizing and education work. We call this integrating the women's struggle into the whole struggle of the people. Being so marginalized, we cannot afford to have a completely autonomous women's movement. We have to be part of our liberation movement. DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 11 Feature A tool for social and economic empowerment: Bartering for change by Shannon e. Ash Suzy Hamilton is a freelance writer living in Nelson, British Columbia. In 1993, dismayed by the editorial stance that the major BC newspaper which employed her (the Province) had taken on the anti-clearcut logging protests at Clayoquot Sound, she knew she had to put some of her writing energy into something positive. \"I wanted to publish an environmental and social justice newspaper in Nelson but couldn't figure out how to get the advertisers to support it... I didn't want them dictating the content,\" says Hamilton. \"I was standing in the supermarket line and saw [a magazine article] on hometown money in Ithaca, New York...The minute I saw it, I knew a barter system was going to fund this newspaper.\" Along with a few friends, Hamilton ordered an information package on the Ithaca barter system and proceeded to set up the Kootenay Barter System. With some start-up money they printed a \"barter buck\": paper currency, called \"scrip.\" Kootenay Barter Bucks were first issued in April 1994. She now publishes the Kootenay Barter Bulletin, a newspaper that serves as both a bulletin board for the barter system and carries articles on environmental and social justice issues. A workshop on bartering This past July, Hamilton gave a workshop on barter systems at the Community Development Institute. This second annual \"school\" for people active in social and environmental concerns, sponsored by SPARC (Social Planning and Research Council) of BC, was held in Nelson this year. I attended the workshop and also had a chance to talk to Hamilton afterwards. In the workshop, the two main formal barter systems in existence today—HOURS and LETS—were discussed, with the Kootenay Barter System used as a case study. (Informal barter has always existed, even under corporate capitalism.) Both the benefits of the two formal systems, and barriers and problems were talked about. Formal barter systems can allow indirect exchange: bartering a good or service to someone, without necessarily getting its return value (in the form of goods or services) from that specific person; one can earn credit or scrips that one traded with others in the system. In Nelson, the system helps fund a community newspaper. What else can a formal community money system do? \"It can provide work for the under- and unemployed,\" says Hamilton. \"It can give a sense of self-esteem to those who can't find work but yet are very talented. It can recognize and inventory the skills within a community...whether people are working at a nine to five job or not. It can also be used as a way to influence social change, to streamline your money to particular projects that you believe in. So there's a lot of social implications as well as an economic implication.\" She adds that \"[The barter system] acknowledges that everybody has something to offer...which we don't acknowledge in our society right now. We put people down for their lack of ability to do the work that we have prescribed they can do. That's a backwards way of doing things.\" The HOURS system The Kootenay Barter System is based on the HOURS system, which was born out of the environmental movement in Ithaca, New York. The HOURS system issues paper scrip that represents time, rather than money. The amount of hours is printed on each bill—in the Kootenay system, there are one hour, half hour, and quarter hour denominations. Each hour is valued as equivalent to ten Canadian dollars. However people can negotiate to be paid more per hour (for example, one and a half hours in barter bucks in exchange for one hour of work). In the Kootenays, people were signed up, and potlucks were held to get the system going, with grants of scrip. The Barter Bulletin lists services and goods offered and wanted. Participants pay a fee for listings and receive a subscription to the Bulletin. Advertisers in the Bulletin can pay with barter bucks, and the newspaper pays its workers in barter bucks. The Kootenay system has been run as an independent business, and has a fairly loose structure. Hamilton recommends a non-profit organization (as opposed to a business) as the best model for a system. The most difficult part, says Hamilton, is getting retailers signed up. Some local businesses will take barter bucks, but most want some cash payment as well. The LETS system The Local Exchange and Trading System (LETS) was developed by Michael Linton of Courtenay BC in 1983. It has spread to other Canadian communities, including Victoria, and to Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe. LETS is a system of accounts. Each member has an account in the LETS registry. When a transaction occurs (goods/services provided or received), a person phones the coordinator (usually on voice mail or an answering machine) and asks that their account be credited or debited for the transaction. All transactions go on a computer; there is software designed for LETS. A newsletter/directory is necessary. People can have different accounts in different communities. LETS can also be integrated with other money systems; for example, an alliance with a credit union could allow people to have their LETS accounts at the same place as their federal money accounts. However, some people have concerns about being too closely allied with the dominant money system and new \"smart card\" systems. Another type of barter system discussed during the workshop was \"Community Way,\" which is being developed in several communities (including Vancouver and Toronto) as a way for social service and community organizations to raise funds. In this system, businesses would issue local currency, granting it to these organizations. The public could purchase the local money with federal money that the non-profits need. The public then uses this local money to purchase goods and services from participating businesses. Concerns were raised by workshop participants about the power of business in this system; business decides which or ganizations get local money, and sets the terms and conditions of receipt. However, the public can choose which businesses to support, based on public knowledge of what the businesses are doing. The barriers to bartering Both LETS and HOURS systems need manipulation, caution Hamilton and Victoria LETS coordinator Stephen Demeulenaere; they do not run themselves. Action must sometimes be taken to correct imbalances in the system: people with too much or too little credit/scrip, and \"passive\" members who rarely participate. One problem, says Hamilton, is that some people don't trade a variety of services or items, or don't actively seek out people with whom to trade. Hamilton describes the imbalance in the system as caused by the lack of demand for \"luxury\" items and services, such as massage or writing services, and jewellery. There is great demand for repair services and items such as food, clothing, and furniture. In a sense it is still a market system, shaped by supply and demand, she says. Those whose services are not in demand may be left out, while those in great demand may have a lot of credit but nowhere to spend it. Hamilton thinks people should allow themselves to spend barter credits on \"luxuries\" if they do so with federal money. In a small, contained cultural or geographic community, barter bucks work well. LETS may be more appropriate for larger communities. In Calgary, the system gained the support of a number of nonprofit organizations. Barter systems are also lacking in providing access to vital needs such as food and housing, although there has been some advancement. The weekly Nelson farmer's market allows food to be bought with barter bucks after 2 pm (the market's official closing). And the Ithaca barter system now has the local credit union involved; people can use scrip in payment on mortgages and some other fees. An economic alternative? When I interviewed Suzy Hamilton, I brought up criticisms I'd heard about barter systems: that they only involve a small group, are not accessible if you don't have anything to trade, and are not really an economic alternative. Hamilton responded by saying that: \"The system we're working under now is not an economic alternative, because we've got a growing number of poor people... Money is getting scarcer, jobs are getting fewer, and more and more young people are spending [large amounts] on their college education and face few work prospects. Having a few barter bucks in your pocket is not going to solve this, but those barter bucks...represent a huge attitude shift. \"The unwillingness of peope to change their attitudes is immense. If they've got a job, they're not going to care about other people who don't...When you get into a system like this, you're changing your thinking. You're understanding that you can only go as fast as the slowest hiker. \"...I don't think we're going to see [the system's effect] over three or four years. Getting people used to the idea of trading their skills and goods for something other than money will take a longer period of time...I would say the economics of it aren't going to have as much impact as the social implications.\" Both Hamilton and Demenlenaere commented on women's \"staying power\" in barter organizations. \"I would have to say it's a women's system, really, because women have been doing this trading back and forth, so they can accomplish other things outside the home,\" says Hamilton. \"They've been bartering with each other to take care of the kids, or do their chores, or clean their house, and they've been doing this for a long time.\" \"We found there are many people who expect a lot from the barter system, and if it doesn't meet their expectations, they're gone...\" she adds. \"This is not a product where if it has maybe one loose screw then it's defective; this only works if we make it work. Women seem to understand it better, and stay in the system longer.\" For more information about the Kootenay barter system write to PO Box 843, Nelson, BC, V1L 6A5. There will be a LETS system starting up in Vancouver in the very near future, as early as December 1996. The Vancouver LETS group will be signing up members and applying for non-profit society status. To contact Vancouver LETS: phone (604) 451-5463, fax: (604) 451-5453, or write to Vancouver LETS 141- 6200 McKay Ave, Box 795, Burnaby, BC, V5H 4M9. Shannon e. Ash is a writer in Vancouver. She also cooks really well, has some books to trade, and would really like some lined rubber boots for the winter. DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 Commentary Metro Days of Action in Toronto: Where do we go next? by Andrea Ritchie and Bev Bain In late October, Canada's largest city rose up and fought back against the rightwing tide sweeping the province, the country and the globe in one of the largest demonstrations in the nation's history. Toronto's Metro Days of Action were organized in response to the corporate- driven policies of the current Conservative government in Ontario, which have included brutal cuts to social assistance rates; funding for women's shelters, centres and services; non-profit housing; and organizations representing and serving the province's communities of colour, First Nations, and people with disabilities. Since taking power almost a year and a half ago, Ontario's Tories have dramatically rolled back workers' rights, social programs, employment equity, and environmental protections in an almost daily barrage of funding cuts and regressive legislation. The Toronto strike was the fifth in a series of one-day shutdowns of Ontario cities, part of widespread and ongoing opposition to the Tories' policies. Other strikes were held in London, Hamilton, Peterbor- Suong Au and Karen Dick of UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial andTextile Employees. ough, and Kitchener-Waterloo. The Metro Days of Action, timed to coincide with the Conservative Party's policy convention in Toronto, were a week-long series of rallies, public forums and workplace actions, which culminated in a one day city-wide strike and a massive demonstration by more than a quarter of a million people. For two sunny days in late October, Toronto was alive with resistance, people filling the streets in protest, and high spirits. The question that remains, a month after the success of the Metro Days, is what the political and strategic significance of this mass action really was. For us, juxtaposed with feelings of being a part of something significant in terms of sheer numbers and broad range of the groups of people that came together, was an uneasiness about the message that was being sent. Amid cries of \"This is just the beginning!\", \"We are building a movement!\", \"No Justice, No Peace!\" and \"Hey Mike, Hey Mike, how would you like a general strike!\", we had to ask ourselves: what issues, vision and alternatives were being put forward, and what kind of movement would emerge after the dust of these two heady days had settled and the good feelings had died down? But first, the details: Although excitement about the protest was running high leading up to the Metro Days, it seemed that the issues motivating the action were conspicuously absent from the mainstream media coverage. Its primary focus was on what services would be shut down, and particularly whether or not Toronto's transit system, the TTC, would be closed despite a court injuction against protesters won by TTC management. The media also focused on how emergency services would be handled, and what businesses were doing to cope with the shut down—how employees would be sleeping on cots and matresses in offices, or booking into hotels downtown to avoid difficulties getting to work on the day of the strike. The cuts and rollbacks and their devastating impact over the past year and a half, were definitely not at the forefront of public debate. Nevertheless, excitement was at a pitch on the eve of the protests: pickets went up as early as Thursday night at the central postal plant as the shift changed—the mainstream media broadcast images of jubilant postal workers kicking off the strike. Pickets continued through the night, as people successfuly gathered at TTC yards at 2:30 am to prevent the morning shift from coming in, despite the injunction. By 5:00 am, pickets were up at most postal services and government buildings, as well as private workplaces (Oshawa food terminal, Ford, Nestles Enterprises, AT&T, CN Tower Restaurant, Bombardier Havilland, Loomis Courier Services, Honeywell Ltd, Air Canada and Canadian Airlines, Laidlow Transit Limited, Art Gallery of Ontario, and many more). By 7:00 am, the TTC was still not running, and news of protest actions across the Descending on Queen's Park—the provincial legislature city was trickling in: provincial and federal government offices were shut down, municipal services were cancelled, and hospitals were only providing emergency service. Taxis and dumptrucks clogged major highways by driving down them, three abreast, at ten kilometres per hour. Otherwise, the predicted traffic chaos didn't happen: the protest had worked, the large majority of people had stayed at home. The streets of Toronto were empty except for protesters and roving pickets. Spontaneous demonstrations and marches continued throughout the day, including bands of cyclists blocking intersections by conducting bike \"sit-ins\", frustrating those who did dare to drive into the downtown core. About 1,700 people marched to a noon rally in North York in a rare mobilization of Toronto's suburban communities. At 11:00 am, over 5,000 people gathered at the Toronto Stock Exchange for the first major rally in the downtown core. Some people broke through the doors, filling the atrium with loud chanting which echoed throughout the building. The announcement that there would be no TTC service that day was met with proud cheers. Later, the ralliers marched up to the provincial Education Ministry at Bay and Wellesley, where the Canadian Federation of Students had organized a demonstration, with about 30,000 people. Throughout the day, people stopped by \"Harrisville\", a tent city behind Queen's Park coordinated by local anti-poverty organizations, to hear speakers and music. Friday's shutdown was so successful that the media went out of its way to minimize and undermine the effect of the strike. \"Business as usual,\" screamed the headlines. The stories were full of disinformation about picketers swinging baseball bats and violence on the line, and tales of people who tried to get to work and couldn't because of protesters. Nevertheless, anyone on the streets that day knew that it was by no means business as usual in the city, and that the protest was firm, strong, and peaceful. Saturday's march began in the south end of Toronto near the Metro Convention Centre where Ontario premier Mike Harris and his soldiers of the Common Sense Continued on page 16 DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 Indigenous peoples'sovereignty struggles tfi Ha\\ mm Reclaiming oufNaoauage and our land by Haunani-Kay Trask as told to Michelle Sylliboy Haunani-Kay Trask is descended of the Pi'ilani line of Maui and the Kahakumakaliua line ofKaua'i. She is a prolific writer and poet. Her books includeLight in the Crevice Never Seen (Calyx Books, 1994), and From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii (Common Courage Press, 1993). As well, in 1993, she produced an award winning film, Act of War, about the overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation by the United States in 1893. Active in the sovereignty movement, Trask is a member ofKa Lahui Hawaii, a native Hawaiian initiative for self government. Currently, she works as a professor of Hawaiian Studies and the Director of the Centre for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii. Michelle Sylliboy is from the Mi'kmaq Nation. Originally from Wunama'kik (Cape Breton), she has been living in Vancouver since 1990. She is an artist and poet currently studying at Emily Can. Trask and Sylliboy had the opportunity to talk last October over a smoked salmon dinner while Trask was in Vancouver to read at the Vancouver International Writers' Festival. Michelle Sylliboy: What is your role as a poet in Hawaii? Haunani-Kay Trask: If you look at it traditionally, poets documented what was called a mo'okuauhau, which is the genealogy of the people. Their job was to keep the history of the people orally. When our language was banned in 1896, all of our newspapers and school systems, including our traditional ways of teaching, disappeared, and were supplanted by English ways. Hawaiians lost our language on both written and oral levels. We were silenced because we didn't think anymore in Hawaiian or chant or recite the genealogies anymore. My father's generation isn't even bilingual like my grandfather's; they are now English-only people. Many Hawaiians were forced to go to schools where they had to speak English and learn the English language. Even so, what they learned was substandard English. By the time it came to my generation, writing was considered a haole thing, a Western thing. Hawaiians writing poetry is really an amazing feat because number one, we aren't supposed to be able to write, and number two, we're so oral that many of us—even those of us who are now writing, chanting and thinking in Hawaiian—still don't want to write it down. But writing is resistance on lots of levels. For us, it's kind of an amazing survival strategy, because we're not supposed to be writing period, and certainly not in English. I've had to learn Hawaiian as a second language and I have learned that all these feelings I have have names in Hawaiian. I didn't know that. We'd lost the power to communicate on a very basic human level, and the references between the land and our language. There are no references in English for all kinds of things we have in Hawaii. For example, islands have very specific cloud formations. Our divinities, our gods, are reflected in the various parts of the land, including the clouds. But I didn't learn any of this until I re-learned the Hawaiian language. I learned that the trees and the fruits are manifestations of divinities. So when you refer to coconut or breadfruit trees, or any number of other things indigenous to Hawaii, those are all manifestations of different gods. All that was lost to us, so to write in English and still try to communicate the spiritual and metaphorical references to nature is very difficult. English is not the language connected to the land. When I write now, I have to use more and more Hawaiian words to describe Hawaiian things. My glossary is getting longer and longer. But I don't know Hawaiian well enough to connect the words into thoughts and feelings, so they're pretty much confined to just description. My students and friends keep telling me to stop writing in English, and write in Hawaiian, but the acquisition of a written language is very difficult. Although I've studied my language and can understand Hawaiian, I'm not competent enough to write in Hawaiian, especially poetry. I don't think I'll ever learn Hawaiian well enough to write in it—I'm too old. I think the next generation is doing a lot better than me, but it makes me angry. It's a wound that will never heal because I don't have the time to heal it. Sylliboy: We have a written language in my culture, and so for me writing is a vital part of my being. It has always been there for my people, but the way it was used and abused by the colonizers—and how they re-translated history and texts—just devastated our people. When I hear of people who come from an oral background, it hurts very much to think of how colonialism has inaccurately recorded the histories and stories of indigenous peoples. It's also quite interesting what a difference geographical location makes. For us, if you lived near a city, the dominant language you used was English. We were lucky; we lived far enough away from the nearest city, so I grew up speaking my language. And I'm really glad my dad wasn't in school long enough to lose his language, like some other kids of his generation did. Trask: The same is true in Hawaii. The rural communities have more native speakers; Honolulu...forget it. There's so few native speakers there except among people who moved to Honolulu from the rural areas for employment or other reasons. It is true that urbanization takes everything away from you. That's what rural people hate because then their kids come back from school and they don't act the same, they don't talk the same. I went to a school only for Hawaiian children that brought in students from all over the archipelago. The great thing about it was that it was for Hawaiians; the bad thing was that it was a missionary school. We had Christian education every Thursday; we had church every Sunday. The girls all had to wear white dresses, white socks, white shoes, and for the boys it was a totally military school. (That has more to do with Pearl Harbour and Hawaii's military colonial status, than Christianity.) You don't realize until you're much older how totally shaped and formulated Hawaiians are by what happened to the US during various periods of its history. One of the influences was militarization, because part of the second world war happened in the Pacific. Because we're in the middle of the North Pacific, we had all these military bases. That changed our history, our relationship to the world superpowers, and our relationship to the American military. We have a national military cemetary in Hawaii, and people from all over the Pacific who died in World War II are buried there. Having this as part of your history leaves a people with a feeling you're nonexistent in the history of the twentieth century—you're just a little dot that happened to be very important at one moment in the history of the superpowers. And then when you try to save your language and your culture, other people get upset because you were supposed to all have died out, [laughter]—died out culturally or physically through all the various wars Hawaii was engaged in. The fact that I write at all, when I think about the history of Hawaii is amazing. The fact that we have a sovereignty movement is amazing. I have four nephews and nieces who all speak fluent Hawaiian—they're bilingual. The language is in an incredible state of revival, and there's no shame attached to speaking Hawaiian as there was when I was growing up. Then, people who spoke Hawaiian were strange and sad because they couldn't speak English or spoke broken English. Now it's the opposite. There's all this pride by people who are under twelve. And they make fun of people like me and say: \"Poor Auntie, she doesn't speak Hawaiian.\" Of course, it was our generation which built the language schools they go to, but that's okay, [laughter] Sylliboy: When I read your poems and other writings, I realize that everything you talk about happened here too. There's no difference between us other than you're Hawaiian and I'm Mi'kmaq. Trask: It's wonderful that Native people say that to me, because when you're writing you think that it's so specific to yourself. And then I've had people from the Okanagan Nation, the Mi'kmaq Nation, the Maori Nation, tell me they understand and relate to my writings. Where does that connection come from? The history of colonialism of the world; that's where. Nobody can really understand unless they've actually been through it. You can't talk about the things we talk about as Native people unless you've suffered it because your subject would be completely different. You wouldn't talk about things like language. That's why I can't read writings by most White people at all. Not because they don't write well; they do. They write beautifully; it is their language. But it's boring to me. Sylliboy: Can you talk a bit about the sovereignty movement in Hawaii? Trask: The sovereignty movement in Hawaii is about twenty years old and has three essential positions. One is total inde- Haunani-KayTrask and Michelle Sylliboy pendence from the US, but scratch that— that will never happen unless we're willing to wage a war. The second one is total cooperation with the state, which is what we have now, and which is not sovereignty. And the third one is the one which our organization, Ka Lahui Hawai'i supports, which is a nation within a nation with definable boundaries, a land base, a government, a nation-to-nation relationship with the state and the federal government, control over taxation, over the school system, everything. Sylliboy: Do Hawaiians have a connection with First Nations peoples' treaty negotiations in British Columbia? Trask: Well, the first thing is we don't have any treaties. We were invaded, occupied, overthrown, so we're closer to Puerto Rico in that sense. The US just put this all- white sugar planting aristocracy in place, did away with our language, and took our lands. All of the lands that our current sovereignty movement lays claim to are government lands of the Kingdom of Hawai'i. We are making no claims against private property, which is very important because Americans are obsessed with private property. Sylliboy: Canadians too. Trask: Yeah. It's that thing about \"if it's mine I don't care what happens two inches beyond it, but just don't touch anything inside that line.\" They have a very narrow sense of what they call property and what we call land. Ceded lands are really stolen land. For example, the University of Hawai'i sits atop stolen government lands of the Kingdom of Hawai'i. So we make claims against it. We have a plan. Start out with monetary negotiations. First, what are we owed for those years that the colonizers had the land? Second, what do we get as perks? I want every Hawaiian who wants to go to the University of Hawaii to go for free: free tuition, free housing, free parking, [laughter] because parking actually costs more than the dorms now. I think we could negotiate these, but there'd have to be some recognition that the overthrow was wrong, that Hawaiians were injured by the overthrow, that there has to be recompense for the injury, and that we have to get on it right now. Hawaiians are out-migrating at an enormous rate and those living in beach villages on public lands are being evicted. Meanwhile, tourism is expanding at an incredible rate—so that means more large- scale resorts. There used to be one hotel here, one there. Now it's 2,000 acres of re- zoned—formerly sugar cane—land turned into tourist land. When you upzone land, the value of it goes up, so the profit margin goes up. If we don't have some kind of settlement soon, from my point of view, we're going to lose more people to out-migration and to criminality, because poverty gives rise to theft and all kinds of criminal behaviour. Our prison population is already about 60 percent native Hawaiian. Sentenc ing is twice as long even for the same crime, petty theft for example. And we're going to see more family violence, family disintegration. Hawaiians have a very high rate of child abuse but a very low rate of child neglect. It took a long time to figure out a cultural explanation for that. I think it goes back to \"individualism\" [imposed by Americans]: Hawaiians don't like being alone, but there's so many internal problems in the family that you get high rates of violence and abuse. We've got all kinds of social problems, but we're not going to be able to address them unless we get a land base. Native people need a place, and that place has to be where their heart is, where their genealogy is, where their history is. Once the state gives us a land base we can control and manage, we know we're going to be beset by lawsuits, similar to what Aboriginal peoples in the US and Canada are having to deal with. Here for example, there's a trust called the Hawaiian Homelands Trust, which is kind of like reserves. The state of Hawai'i has been administering it since 1959 and it's supposed to have set aside 200,000 plus acres for Hawaiians to occupy. Well, the state leased those lands to other individuals and agencies, so only 60,000 acres are available for native Hawaiians. We have a waiting list of twenty-two thousand families. The Department of Hawaiian Homelands says they needed the money, so that's why they leased the land. The Trust wasn't set up to make money; it was set up to give Hawaiians land. Some of us in the sovereignty movement have told the state government, \"You don't have to put in roads and water and electricity just give us the land.\" The state is very reluctant. Part of the sovereignty movement is focused on land, and another part on cultural sovereignty. We want the opportunity to open our own language schools, to educate our children in our own language. Right now there is a language school, but it's all privately funded by the parents, the people least able to pay. What we'd like as part of reparations— restitution really—is to get monies from the state to maintain the school. Now, can the state afford it? They say no. Well, they've got airports,municipal projects, public high schools, refuse dumps on our land. All of those could be taxed to raise revenues for us. The State of Hawai'i doesn't want to pay. So it has decided to work with the federal congressional delegation from Hawai'i and [US president] Bill Clinton to say this is what we're going to give Hawaiians. They've set up a \"false front nation\"—a \"government\" created by the state, instead of a true indigenous nation—that's not going to have any land. We already have one called the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which was founded in 1980 by the State of Hawai'i. It has turned into exactly what those of us in the sovereignty movement said it would: a huge boondoggle for nine trustees. They have control of all this money Governor MililaniTrask of the Kingdom of Hawai'i (right) and Professor Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa marching for sovereignty. and they use it pretty much for their own benefit. If the state gave me $600 million, I'd spend all of it on Hawaiians. I'd just go out there and build them houses,get them water, or whatever else they needed. But [state- created agencies] never do that. Never mind investing money—investing money is a capitalist enterprise. You invest it and you get a two or ten percent return, and then you take that profit and build houses. Well, forget it. Everybody will be dead or out-migrated or too sick to benefit if we wait that long. We fight about what should be done with monies that are given by the state in reparations all the time. What we have is a resource distribution problem; we have a government problem; and we have a consciousness problem. We've done more than anybody towards raising people's consciousness about the overthrow. The US invaded and took away our land base in 1893, but for years, we all grew up not knowing about this. The gift of my generation is books and films and consciousness about that event. If we live long enough, we'll get to a place where we're actually sitting down across the table from the American government and the State of Hawai'i and say, \"okay now we're going to do something.\" We just had a false election—what's called a demonstration election in the third world—where the State of Hawai'i created a question on the ballot, which they misnamed a plebiscite, asking if Hawaiians should elect delegates to form a native Hawaiian government. Our position as the lead sovereignty group was to boycott the election. There were 60,000 eligible voters and only 22,000 voted. Of those, only 13,000 voted yes. So our position is we won—we told the Hawaiian people to boycott [the plebiscite]. We had no newspaper, no radio station, no money, but obviously many people listened to us because they didn't vote. Those people who supported the plebiscite also claimed victory. The local news papers supported them but didn't report our press conference. Now, the government Hawaiians are planning to hold a constitutional convention on December 14. So our next strategic decision is to decide if we should invade the convention, put forward our agenda and take it over, or say forget it and go in our own direction. It's a very serious moment for us as a sovereignty group. We don't know yet what we're going to do. Sylliboy: It's seems that they're working on a pretty tight timeframe. Trask: That's exactly what's wrong with it. We've been colonized for a hundred years, and now here's a self-government proposal. Why are we rushing it? Thaf s one of our critiques of the plebiscite process. Hawaiians look at us in the sovereignty movement and wonder who they should believe—the state or us. Do you think we get paid for this? No, so we must be telling the truth. Why else would we do it? We aren't getting anything for it, except death threats, hate calls and unbelievable attacks in the newspapers...but that's another whole interview. Racism in Hawai'i is alive and well. All the propaganda that we are a paradise of race relations...Lies, all lies. The University of Hawai'i sits atop stolen government lands of the Kingdom of Hawai'i. So we make claims against it. Commentary Days of Action, continued from page 13 Revolution [Ontario Tories] were meeting to count their victories. [Ed note: The \"Common Sense Revolution\" is the Ontario Tories' name for its neo-conservative political agenda for the province]. Their \"revolution\" is being waged eco- nomically and ideologically against women, poor people, immigrants and refugees, people of colour, First Nations people, people with disabilities, children, and workers. It is a \"revolution\" that is meant to hasten the pace of global economic restructuring in the interest of the corporate elites. Despite the focus on the Harris government, it is a \"revolution\" which has been carried forward by Margaret Thatcher in Britian, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Newt Gingrich in the United States, Ralph Klein in Alberta and now Mike Harris in Ontario. As far as Harris and his cohorts were concerned, the war was already won. The people of Ontario represented by their respective unions and community organizations came out and filled the streets from the lakeshore to Queen's Park to tell Harris they would not let him destroy their province. There is no question that the more than 250,000 people who showed up to march and voice their discontent through boisterous chants, songs, and speeches clearly made an impact. When you have a large proportion of the people in a province out on the street telling the government to take its economic policies and shove them you know where, you can bet something is terribly wrong. The economic war waged by the Ontario government is directly aimed at those who are vulnerable. However, unlike previous economic policies, which sometimes frustrated the middle class but were then followed by some form of compensation, the economic policies of the Harris government go right to the heart of the middle class. They threaten pension and job security for workers and attack the health care and education systems, making this particular class conscious of its vulnerability. In North America, we talk about workers as if they were poor people, but unlike workers in the South, many of the workers in North America protected by unions are really part of the middle class. The Days of Action against Harris were spearheaded by the middle class who at this point have the most to lose. Poor people, it seems, might have already lost—issues once at the forefront of the debate such as welfare cuts and workfare are no longer central. So then, what was the impact of these days of protest? Were any links forged between poor people, the middle class, women, labour, women of colour, lesbians, and people with disabilities? Labour and the mainstream social justice organizations played a significant role in the organizing of the Metro Days of Action. Organizers said the aim of these days of protest was to build a mass movement to fight the policies of the Harris government. But the organizers also hinted that the building of a new political party or the rebuilding of the Ontario New Democratic Party from this mass movement was another goal. \"Democracy\" was the watchword of the day. Starting from the ground up as a process of building has always been a strategy of grass- Friday, October 25... Meanwhile, several blocks south, mounted police guard the Toronto Stock Exchange Protest in front of McDonald Block where a number of provincial government offices are located The picket lines went up in front of government offices on Wellesly St. roots organizing and makes a lot of sense. However, none of the speeches we heard spoke to concrete strategic ways of building from the ground up. We struggled with the idea of a mass movement and what that means especially when many critical issues and their relevance for women of colour, lesbians and gays, the poor, people with disabilities were not being raised by those chosen to speak speak at the rally. And while there were a few speeches from people from those communities (Joan Grant Curnmings of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women was one), they too did not provide an analysis of issues or present alternatives to the Harris agenda. It was clear that the aim of the protest was to present a united front of labour and other groups. However, this united front also resulted in a submerging of analysis and strategies related to countering workfare, cuts to welfare benefits and mothers' allowance; cuts to women's shelters, rape crisis centres and other women's services; cuts to services for immigrants and people of colour; the threat of taking back gains made by the lesbian and gay communities; and cuts to services for people with disabilities. Despite the efforts to present a united front, it is clear, given the government's dismissive response to the protests, that they knew that neither the labour movement nor the rest of the sectors are united on alternatives to counter the Tories' offensive. We have had several days of action across Ontario and, after each, we are left with the burning question—what's next? First of all, we should not stop the actions and the disruptions even though Harris and his capitalist friends may deny the impact of a citywide shutdown and claim that it only gives them more time to play golf. The truth is, these actions have been significant. However, these days of protest will not stop the global economic destruction by the New Right unless we have a comprehensive strategic plan. And it should be a plan that clearly articulates the issues and their impacts for women, women of colour, poor people, people with disabilities, workers, lesbians and gays, youth and children. Bev Bain is an instructor in the Assaulted Women and Children Counselling Advocate Program at a college in Toronto, an anti-racist and anti-oppression trainer and group facilitator, a Black feminist, a lesbian, and an activist in the anti-violence movement. She is also a past Executive Director of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Andrea Ritchie is a young(ish) white-skinned Black lesbian feminist who hails from Jamaica and Montreal and many points in between. She has worked in the women's, labour, and social and environmental movements. She worked with Bev Bain at NAC. She currently lives in Toronto. Are you an illustrator? contribute your skills to Kinesis 255~5499 DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 Arts Talking about lesbian and gay issues in school: \"It's no big whoop! jj by Robyn Hall IT'S ELEMENTARY: Talking About Gay Issues in School Directed by Debra Chasnoff Produced by Helen Cohen Women's Educational Media, San Francisco, California 1996 It's Elementary: TalkingAbout Gay Issues in School was screened in Vancouver this past October at the Vancouver International Film Festival. The film, produced by Helen Cohen and directed by Academy Award winning director Debra Chasnoff through their non-profit production company Women's Educational Media, documents how elementary and middle school students in several schools in the United States respond when teachers use creative ways to stimulate discussion about homosexuality and heterosexism. Early in the documentary, a boy makes the simple yet profound comment about lesbians and gays: \"It's no big whoop!\" With this statement he accomplishes one of the film's major goals: to counter the right- wing hysteria opposed to any mention of homosexuality (in a positive way, at least) in schools. It's Elementary is designed as a tool for social change and is targeted at straight and gay parents. Its other major goal is to en- courage early education as a way of preventing anti-gay violence, homophobia and heterosexism. Chasnoff and Cohen filmed six teachers at six different schools, talking to students of varying ages in a classroom setting about lesbians and gays. The students in the film ranged from ages five to 13. The interactions between the students and teachers, and between students and students, are at the core of the film. It's Elementary shows that it is possible, and important, to have meaningful discussions about homosexuality and homophobia with children, starting at a young age. Chasnoff says she was inspired to make the film when her oldest son entered elementary school. She was concerned about the quality of information he would receive at school about his own lesbian mothers. By second grade her son reported that his classmates had already begun using gay or \"faggot\" as an insult on the playground. As Chasnoff has said: \"They don't necessarily know what it means, but they know that it's bad.\" In the film, the teachers facilitate the discussion in various ways. Methods used include brainstorming, asking the students to debate each other about gay marriage, and talking about famous lesbians and gays. The filmmakers visited one elementary school that played host to a photo exhibit about lesbian and gay families, and a school that held an assembly on gay pride day. It's Elementary does not particularly focus on lesbian and gay teachers, or on the lesbian and gay communities. The film makes the point that homophobia is of concern to everyone and that teaching children respect for lesbians and gays is teaching them respect for all people. Although some of the teachers shown are gay, many are not. One teacher, a het erosexual woman (known by parents to have recently remarried) says she feels responsible for raising these issues in class because her lesbian colleagues fear parents' reactions if they generate the discussion. The dialogue with the kids is the key structuring element of the film (and funny). One girl's jaw literally drops in disbelief over and over as her teacher \"outs\" Melissa Etheridge, Elton John and others. Another girl convinces two boys of how unfair it was that they couldn't get married if they wanted to. In the end the boys realize \"they'd be mad\" about it too. The children's attitudes differed with their age. The younger children were generally more open to the idea of fairness. The older children identified more with homophobic social attitudes, and talked about the complexities of dealing with homophobia among their families and peers. Discussions like those shown in the film do not erase the anti-lesbian and anti- gay information kids get from other sources, such as media and family, but they create a space for dialogue. They normalize the idea of talking about lesbians and gays in a positive way, and provide better information to kids than they might get elsewhere. It's Elementary also counters one of the major objections parents and teachers have with discussing homosexuality in school: talking about sex. As one teacher in the film, Cora Sangree says: \"I don't think talking about gay and lesbian sex is appropriate with elementary school kids. And I don't think they'd really have any interest in hearing about it from their teacher...But talking about people in different communities, biases and discrimination and how that affects peoples lives is appropriate.\" The him demonstrates how age-appropriate teaching can work. For example, the film shows a group of young lesbian and gay volunteers speaking to a class of grade eight students. This strategy allows the students to ask questions of people closer to their age, and the speakers act as role models for the lesbian and gay youth who may be in the class. Also, for this particular class, the students were mostly African- and Hispanic-American, as were the volunteer speakers. When asked what she learned through the discussion, one girl said she realized that all gay people weren't white, even though the lesbians and gays shown on TV are overwhelmingly so. It's Elementary could be criticized for avoiding a discussion of the homophobic social context that makes such a film necessary, but this kind of discussion would not have fit with the strategy of the film. The film focuses on one solution to stem homophobia and tries to show that it is everyone's responsibility to be part of that solution. It should be noted that the schools were chosen for the film because they are \"gay- friendly\"; that is, ones in which teachers were already talking about lesbian and gay issues with students. Some of the schools included are private schools, like a Quaker school called the Cambridge Friends School Debra Chasnoff (right) and Helen Cohen answer questions from a group of first graders about It's Elementary. photo by Phyllis Christopher \"The pink triangle is okay to wear! ...if you are a lesbian, it is okay. No one is supposed to make fun of you... Hey, hey, ho, ho! Homophobia has got to go!\" wrote Tori, one of the children featured in It's Elementary, under her drawing of lesbian and gay families. photo courtesy Women's Educational Media in Cambridge, Massachussetts. It may prove more difficult to have these types of discussions in schools controlled by districts with more anti-gay sentiments. Chasnoff says that lesbians and gays must be included when \"American values\" of tolerance and respect for individual freedom are discussed. She links homophobia with other oppressions, especially racism. The film's strategy succeeds if it convinces parents that teaching lesbian and gay issues in school is not about special rights or interests, but about fairness and respect for all. \"When you come to an issue of gay and lesbianism I think people, because of their religious beliefs, sometime fall from behind the banner (of no discrimination), but I have to say to them that if I'm going to protect your religious beliefs, then I'm asking you to respect the stance I take in tolerance for others,\" says elementary school principal Jane Hand. However, in focusing on people's \"common ground,\" the film tends to erase any differences between lesbians and gays and heterosexual people. By doing so, it avoids the complexity of lesbian and gay life and identity, and concentrates on aspects of lesbian and gay culture that are easily understood, such as gay pride day and pink triangles. Still, It's Elementary will prove to be a useful tool for teachers and parents who are interested in having these discussions in school. The film also raises our hopes of what we should be able to expect from our educational system, and about the part teachers and schools can play in creating a less discriminatory world for lesbians and gays. To purchase or booklt's Elementary, contact: Women's Educational Media, 2180 Bryant St, Suite 203, San Francisco, CA, 94110 USA; tel: (415) 641-4616; fax: (415) 641-4632; e-mail: wemdhc@aol.com. Robyn Hall is a regular contributor to Kinesis. DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 Arts Jan is Ian in concert: Mesmerizing performance by Janet Askin The Janis Ian concert that my partner and I attended in Vancouver was one of the best I have ever attended (in the top ten out of hundreds and hundreds!) I went with rninimal expectations as I was unsure what the evening would bring. Although I was familiar with Janis Ian's history, political stance and writings published in the Advocate [a US-based lesbian and gay magazine], I was not familiar with her music. My partner, who is ten years older than me and a music afficianada to boot, was very enthusiastic about going to the show. She kept listing song titles but wouldn't go so far as to hum the melody of any of the tunes. I knew that Janis Ian had written and recorded \"Society's Child,\" a song about the pressures on a white girl dating a black boy, in the mid 1960s, when barely a teenager, I knew. I also knew that the song was viewed as a militant protest and banned by radio stations across the US until conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein heard the song and featured it on a CBS television special and Ian gained overwhelming popularity, and was nominated for a spe cial Grammy (the first of her nine nominations), I knew. What I did not know was how mind bogglingly gifted a performer Ian is. Playing solo to a near sold out crowd at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, with no set, props or gimmicks, unassuming in her black tights, Converse runners and black t- shirt bearing the logo: \"Godlike,\" she started her 75 minute set with a bang with \"Ready for the war.\" After the thunderous applause had died down, she talked to the audience in a funny, friendly and extremely comfortable fashion, creating a feeling of intimacy and good vibes that few performers ever pull off, let alone with the virtuousity that Ian appeared to effortlessly command. Sharing with us the first of many humorous and poignant anecdotes she interspersed between songs, she told a hilarious story of trying to find corporate sponsorship for her tour and not wanting to be sponsored by a capitalist conglomerate or worse. She said all she ever got for her efforts were a free pair of runners (the ones she was wearing.) PROJECT COORDINATOR Vancouver Status of Women needs a project coordinator to revise and oversee production of the 1997 edition of the Single Mother's Resource Guide. The term of the position is for 16 weeks. All applicants must be currently on or eligible for Employment Insurance, or must have been on unemployment insurance anytime within the past three years, or the past five years due to parental leave. The position is to start as soon as possible. Affirmative action principles will be in effect. Aboriginal women and women of colour are strongly encouraged to apply. Preference will be given to a single mother. Wage = $15/hour. The applicant will: • Work with staff to research, update and compile information on resources and services available to single mothers in the Lower Mainland. • Write contents of the Guide • Coordinate and oversee production with designer and printers • Contact and process orders from agencies using the Guide • Develop and implement a publicity and distribution strategy • Develop and implement an evaluation questionnaire to accompany the Guide Qualifications: • Strong research and writing skills • Familiarity with single mothers' issues and services • Ability to work independently • Experience with computers • Desktop publishing an asset Vancouver Status of Women is a leading feminist, non-profit organization which undertakes education, advocacy and service work to ensure the full participation of women in the social, economic and political life of our communities. Application deadline December 9,1996 Please mail or deliver resumes to Vancouver Status of Women, #301, 1720 Grant Street (at Commercial Drive) or Fax 255-5511. (Only those shortlisted for an interview will be contacted.) As she started strumming her guitar again, the crowd enthusiastically shouted out request after request to which she responded with good humour: either playing the request, stating that she would rather play something from her new CD Revenge, or explaining that she thought someone else had done such a good job with one of the songs she had written that she never learned how to play it. When she played her song \"Jessie\" (which Roberta Flack made into a top 10 hit in 1973), you could literally hear a pin drop. From the balcony where we were sitting I had a good view of both the stage and of the entire audience. I have rarely seen an audience so mesmerized and transfixed by a performance. I observed many people smiling, tapping their feet and crying from the sheer beauty of the musical experience shared that evening. I worry that I am gushing or will run out of adjectives to describe Ian, but her playing custom made Santa Cruz guitar (with Bell strings) made me weep. It was one of those performances where one guitar sounds like three guitars or a guitar, drums and vibes. It would be remiss of me not to mention that the acoustics were fantastic and the sound technicians did a wonderful job of supporting her performance. photo by Eleonora Alberto The warmth of her playing, intensity of expression, technical prowess, engaging rhythms and pure sound were entrancing, as was the stunning guitar on \"Welcome to Acousticville,\" \"Good day to die\" and \"This train still runs. \"Vocally, her style seemed effortless, yet her range was immense dipping from a deep power to a restrained angelic lilt. I was most struck by the efficient simplicity of her lyricism, embodying emotion but not sentimentality. I learned that evening that her songs have been recorded by a huge number of other artists, ranging from Etta James to Amy Grant to Cher to Mel Tor me. Although I enjoyed every single one of the songs she performed, I was especially attracted to the harder-edged songs of her newest release, Revenge. It was a thoroughly enjoyable concert given by a woman whose politics are admirable and integrity uncompromising despite working in the mire of \"show biz.\" Ian's music is like warmed jam that you want to savour slowly one drop at a time and yet devour quickly because it is so damn good. Janet Askin is a social activist, singer/songwriter and dedicated volunteer currently living and working in East Vancouver. DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 Arts The Vancouver International Writers (& Readers) Festival: Characters choose the writer by Cy-Thea Sand At this year's Vancouver International Writers (& Readers) Festival held in October, Cy-Thea Sand had the opportunity to catch several of the events featuring women novelists, poets and activists. Below, she provides Kinesis with her review of the readings and words of Anne Michaels, Joy Fielding, Belle Yang, Jane Gardam and Daisy Zamora. Anne Michaels at the Freddy Wood Through public appearances, writers gather readers to the shore of their vision. Unfamiliar as we may be with their work in particular, we are gradually introduced to the revelations, designs and rhythms an artist may have spent years with. Some perform this magic better than others, and I am delighted to say Anne Michaels does it extraordinarily well. Her evocatively textured novel, Fugitive Pieces, draws her audience in easily enough, but the added treat in listening to this poet and novelist is her voice. Melodious, intense and brushed with grace, it in vites the audience into a revelry of pure pleasure whether or not one has read this, her debut novel, which was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Fugitive Pieces is the story of Jakob Beer, a young boy rescued from the Holocaust in Poland during World War II, the man who saves him, and the professor inspired by his poetry. After Michaels' finished reading, the audience became quiet, rapt, enveloped by both the power of the narrative and the storyteller herself. Watching Michaels on stage reminds me of the original meaning of the word \"virgin\": a woman whole unto herself. Michaels approaches her text with such focus and concentration I entertain the paradox that though the room is warmed by a hundred or more people, the writer is actually reading to herself. Fugitive Pieces resounds with rich archaeological and geological images. After the reading, Michaels responds to a question about the significance of her love affair with the earth by saying simply that her characters' redemption lies in it. She also tells us that it was her characters who helped motivate her through the decade it took to produce the novel. When a woman in the audience asks Michaels why she chose to tell the story through male rather than female characters, she responds by saying—without rancour or condescension—that there was nothing political about the decision and that her characters chose her. (This reminds me of Alice Walker's description of the walks she takes with her characters during which she listens with as much calm as she can muster to what they are trying to tell her.) Michaels adds that by using the male perspective she was able to explore female characters in a different and satisfying way. Two days later, Michaels passes me while I'm on my way to another festival event. It's an unusual impulse for me, but I want to stop her, shake her hand and thank her for the beauty and compassion Fugi- Anne Michaels photo by David Laurence tive Pieces dramatizes, and for drawing me so lovingly into a world where, to quote her book: \"Questions without answers are embarked on slowly.\" Continued on page 20 Nicaraguan poet Daisy Zamora: Everyday life in poetry by Monica Vanschaik Daisy Zamora is a poet, a painter, a psychologist, and a professor of literature. Born in Nicaragua in 1950, she fought in the Sandinista National Liberation Front. After the triumph of the revolution in 1979, she was appointed Vice-Minister of Culture and the Director of the Institute of Social and Economic Studies. She has also been an active member of groups working on women's issues. She is the author of three volumes of poetry in Spanish, and two in English; her most recent work in English is Open Message. The North American audience for Daisy Zamora's writings has been increasing rapidly since she appeared in Bill Moyer's documentary called The Language of Life, broadcast for PBS in 1995. Zamora recently came to Vancouver to read at the Vancouver International Writers' Festival. After one of her readings, Monica Vanschaik caught up with Zamora and asked her a few questions for Kinesis. Monica Vanschaik: Can you talk about the work you have done with women in Nicaragua? Daisy Zamora: Women in Nicaragua have organized ourselves around a broad movement called The Women's National Coalition. This movement organizes Daisy Zamora photo courtesy Festival Communications women from all political parties, individual women, as well as women from feminist organizations. What we Nicaraguan women want is to develop a new way of doing politics. Because of the recent elections that took place [in October], we unanimously decided to formulate a minimum agenda [of demands] and present it to all the presidential candidates. Our main purpose was to have a voice in the country's national matters. The newly elected president, Dr. Arnoldo Aleman [of the right-wing Neo- Liberal Party, which defeated the Sandinista government], was the only candidate who refused to sign our agenda. Nevertheless, women who are members of the Neo-Lib- eral Party as well as Coalition members, are actively trying to influence the party internally. The fact that Aleman refused to sign the minimum agenda, signifies he is not willing to make commitments to any sector [women, workers, indigenous peoples, and so on] of Nicaraguan society. Regardless, we are determined to fight for our demands until what we want is accomplished. Another interesting aspect of the Coalition is that we are trying to encourage civil organizations and the population in general have sufficient strength to excert pressure on the Nicaraguan political process to ensure matters are not just decided by compromises made betwen [political] parties. Vanschaik: Why do you think your poetry has been so well-received in North America? Zamora: I believe it's because my poetry talks about life, women, family experiences, and anything that is human: love, pain, death. I believe my poetry is accessible. In North America, people live in in a permanent fantasy: in a Disneyland sold by the media. In North America, as well as in Latin America, the media presents a way of life that is not available to everyone. This has meant a permanent anguish for many North Americans trying to obtain those standards. In the case of Latin America, [Uruguayan writer and activist] Eduardo Galiano says that \"if the North American way of life that is sold by the media throughout the world was established, in six months, all the planet's resources would be used up.\" Maybe poetry that deals with deeply human issues is the kind that attracts those people who see on television a world that is not possible within their own homes. As mothers and as couples, we are all faced with everyday problems, and the act of living together generates conflicts. That is the topic I talk most about in my poetry. Monica Vanschaik was born in La Serena, Chile. She has lived in Vancouver for two years and is a member of the editorial collective of Aquelarre, a bilingual Latin American magazine. This interview was conducted in Spanish and translated into English by Magaly Varas. Thanks also to Pat Ortiz for her input into the translation. DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 Arts A review ofk Hot Roof; Surprisingly clever look at oppression, and fun too by Laiwan A HOT ROOF Directed by Lee Min-Yong Soon Film Company South Korea, 1996 A Hot Roof is a refreshing satire that cleverly avoids being rhetorical or depressing. The well-written screenplay, which won the Choonsa Award, surpasses the many sad attempts by Hollywood to write intelligent, meaningful comedy. Screened at this year's Vancouver International Film Fest, Lee Min-Yong's debut film is inspiring particularly for its woman-centred, progressive perspective which is so contrary to Western expectations, especially of a film made by an Asian man and coming from the \"third world.\" The story begins with the hottest heatwave of the year in Seoul, Korea. The oppressive heat makes the tenants of a closely built, badly-ventilated apartment complex find relief under the shade in the central courtyard. The women sit chatting and eating watermelon under one awning, while some of the men sit under another playing cards and joking among themselves. Suddenly, one of the tenants, Chong Hee, flees from the apartment building into the courtyard followed by her abusive husband. He, with belt in hand, wildly pur sues her to continue the beating in drunken jealousy. All the tenants are unexpectedly witness to something that otherwise would remain behind closed doors. The women are shocked and outraged and call on the men to assist Chong Hee. The men do not want to get involved and comment that it's none of their business. So the women take action and intervene. Propelled by a shock and embarrassment of their wives' action, the men attempt to stop them. A big hitting and kicking brawl ensues, so much so that the riot police arrive. On the way to the hospital, Chong Hee's husband dies and the women are to be arrested for murder. During the general chaos, the women slowly and quietly disperse from the courtyard despite police warnings, and ten of them flee to the apartment's roof. With nothing but the scorching sun, some water and little shade, they barricade themselves from the law and their impending arrest. Some might compare this storyline to Marleen Gorris' 1982 feminist classic, A Question of Silence, but that would be like comparing apples with oranges. Apart from the thematic similarity that portrays a group of women killing a man, Gorris' film is serious, stylish and unabashedly A Hot Roof photo courtesy Vancouver International Film Festival feminist (with its distribution limited to festivals and alternative venues), while Lee's film is a broad comedy that has played commercial theatres in Asia. It is possible that only in the 90s can an issue like this be handled with humour and slapstick. For me, the enjoyment of this film is its intelligent development of every character and subplot beyond the superficial level. It succeeds to skillfully juggle pertinent and serious issues—spousal battery, abuse of power and police, poor and cramped urban housing, the uncreativity of jobs, inequality at work and home, and questions of gender—to mix them in with an exuberant fun and playful jab at all pretensions. It is the integrity and compassion of the filmmaker and the fun the actors have on screen that really pulls it all together. Much of the script surprised me because of the care put into detailing the characters, emotions and ethical issues while still maintaining its pathos. This being an Asian Continued on page 22 The Vancouver International Writers (& Readers) Festival Continued from page 19 Real Women: Joy Fielding, Belle Yang and Jane Gardam The Celtic Festival oilmbolc marks the moment when the dark of winter begins its release to the light of spring. I like to think of it as a metaphor for creativity, and at this Writers Festival event the influence of time and the power of change were expressed through the works of three writers whose creative expression varies greatly in style and subject. The theme of the workshop was authenticity, and each writer in turn offered what rings true for her in the life of the imagination. Joy Fielding, considered by some to be Canada's most successful suspense novelist, read from her domestic thriller scheduled for release next summer. Missing Pieces concerns murder, mayhem, the trouble with daughters, the trouble with sisters, and the problem of serial killers who prey on women and girls. Fielding's first person narrative has the punchy prose of American detective and mystery writing and the authenticity of modern middle class urban life. Many women in the audience laughed heartily at Fielding's sardonic digressions into the perils of menopause, aging and family dynamics, but I found my attention getting lost—she went off track once too often for me. As well, Fielding's feisty prose dangles the story's central, murderous event like a BelleYang photo by Laning Yang soap opera teaser until I could hear her publicist yelling \"Stay tuned for the next installment...\" Belle Yang is a painter as well as a writer. She studied at the Academy of Traditional Chinese Painting in Beijing from 1986 to 1989 and her books include Baba: A Return to China Upon my Father's Shoulders and The Odyssey of a Manchurian. Both her works explore history and family narratives, with The Odyssey telling the story of her father's flight from his home village during China's civil war. Born in Taiwan and now living in the US, Yang says she eventually plans to write about the Tienanmen Square massacre [when the Chinese government used the military to crack down on the student-led democracy movement] which occurred while she was studying in China. She spoke of the propensity of Chinese rulers to burn books to erase both the memory and power of previous dynasties, and of the significance of hunger in Chinese culture, explaining to the mainly Caucasian audience that Chinese people greet each other not with comments or questions about the weather but by asking: \"Have you eaten?\" Her prose is both lovely and nourishing—a beautiful blend of visual and literary talent. English writer Jane Gardam says she never knows what she will read to an audience until the very last minute. For this event, she decided on an unpublished fable and \"took a risk\" by reading one of a series of what she calls her \"grotesques,\" even though she is not yet sure what this means. What she read was a surrealistic tale about two sisters, their Ethiopian connection, and the glorious geese which litter their lives. Her prose is lyrical and dense, so I am not surprised that Gardam's novel God on the Rocks was a runner-up for the Booker Prize in 1987. Her unassuming, low-key wit was charming as she explained her belief that her characters come from God, that in the act of creation [and witnessing it] \"you're taken charge of.\" The mainly female audience wanted to know more about the process of writing and the how-to of creativity, but Gardam quietly, almost reverently, asserted that it's all a mystery. Who's Listening Anyway: Daisy Zamora and others At an event featuring five poets from several different countries—Who's Listening Anyway—the creative process was linked directly to politics, and poetry revered as fundamentally necessary for the human spirit. One of the readers, Daisy Zamora, a Nicaraguan poet, painter and teacher, spoke of poetry as the key to her country's revolutionary fervour, offering hope for what she fears is a dark future for her homeland [see interview previous page.] Zamora who writes in Spanish and English read for the Festival audience selections in both languages. It is Zamora's poem about the perils of being born a woman that I will remember long after the Festival venues are swept, programs recycled, and flights caught back to England, Toronto, the US and Latin America. The poem speaks of women's second-class status: its ominous undertones of menace and danger—accentuated by Zamora's taut facial muscles and intense persona—shot through the Waterfront Theatre like a bullet, pinning me to my seat and reminding me of the role of the writer in exposing oppression. Cy-Thea Sand is a Vancouver writer. 20 DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 Arts Interview with Beth Goobie: The different spaces of healing eth Goobie is the author of Scars of Light [NeWest Press, Edmonton, Alberta 1994], which won the 1994 Pat Lowther Award, awarded by the League of Canadian Poets for best book of poetry by a woman. Scars of Light comes out of her experience growing up in an Ontario-based ritually abusive cult, and is described by Lorna Crozier as a \"terrifying and necessary book.\" Beth Goobie is also the author of Can I Have My Body Back Now, Please?, a collection of fiction, and numerous titles for young adults, including Mission Impossible, which was nominated for the 1994 Governor-General's award. Cathy Stonehouse spoke to Goobie when she was in Vancouver in September for a series of readings organized by Chad Norman of the League of Canadian Poets. These readings were among the first she has given outside of her home province of Alberta. i am going back to find the body. where was it i left it — robed and scarlet in a church window, in the neighbour's pear tree, juice from torn skins running sweet down the back of the throat? from creed as told to Cathy Stonehouse Cathy Stonehouse: You say in your bio that you began remembering the ritual abuse more or less the same time that Scars of Light was published. Could you say something about how the writing of the book and your healing process coexisted? Beth Goobie: At the back of the book it says I began to remember in 1993. I'd always remembered, but we're not taught to understand the texture of the inside of our heads as memory. There were always fragments. I didn't know they were memory; I thought they were fantasy, imagination, impossible things. They'd always been there and many of them were repetitive; sometimes the head was missing, or something like that. What basically happened was that I collapsed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 1989, and I had a lot of time to myself. In the first year I wrote about six books, almost all of them about sexual abuse, and at the end of it I thought, geez, this must have something to do with me! (Laughs) So I began to approach that awareness. Because of all the cult programming I'd been through, it was very important to me that it was my process, so I didn't go into therapy, and I didn't even begin reading any of the incest literature for about a full year. But I kept writing, and I kept pushing, and I got a few more fragments here and there; actually, quite a few more fragments. Then after about a year I began to read, and found that very helpful. There's some really shitty literature out there and there's some very important stuff. I read a whole bunch of stuff for about eight months and then I went into therapy. It was very important to me never to recover memories in therapy. Not because I had any concerns about brainwashing or hypnosis—I had no concerns in this area, I think the human mind knows itself—it was just very important to me to own every aspect of my recovery. My therapist gave me a couple of tools I could use and I began to work two or three hours a day on my own again. I had time because I was receiving disability pay and began to work two to six hours a day on memory recovery. The memories became longer and longer, clearer and clearer, and I began to be able to hear them more clearly: there was a full voice instead of a monotone. You can get them as a sort of a robotic voice coming to you, then after a time you will be able to hear the voice tones and inflexions, and the faces will become more clear. I've never had a flashback; it's been a very gradual process. My understanding of it is that I'm changing the biochemistry of my brain. I'm rerouting electrical circuits, very basic electrical circuitry, and I'm changing my brain tissue, every time I write, every time I remember. When you block memory you actually compartmentalize your brain: there are barriers set up made of some biochemical substance. When you write you begin to work against that, to erode and dissolve it, but not in a violent way. It's important to understand that it's a very...I don't even know a word, we don't even have words that are positive and gentle for this... Stonehouse: Yes, we lack a language for these experiences. Goobie: ...it's almost like there's plaque or something, and you can gently make it into a clear membrane that gradually lets you in. You explore certain areas of your brain. It's a very physical process. Both writing and remembering do that. It's a very complimentary and gradual process, and a very conscious one for me. A lot of people approach it because they get flashbacks, whereas I had an awareness first, and so far I have been able to not have flashbacks. I don't know if that will change. Stonehouse: I find it remarkable that you were able to sit down and write a book with such eloquence and beauty at a time when I know a lot of people find it hard to trust what they're going through. The writing is very embodied, as if this narrative just emerged from you quite whole. Goobie: Other parts of me have that denial and protection, but I'm not a part that has been burdened with that. I have always believed that my other parts were in charge, in control and were my friends. I have always believed they were stronger than I was and that I was here to learn from them. That was my basic premise at all times, whether those other parts were two or fifteen or fifty-five; it didn't matter to me. A really strong growing awareness for me was that the body was the locus of truth and reality, and that I didn't have a clue what that was for me. In my mid- twenties, after I rejected Christianity as being one of the most vicious attacks on children out there, I began to have a growing understanding that my reality was in my body, but I wasn't in my body; really all of my writings for teens and adults have been directed at that understanding. My first book was Could I Have My Body Back Noiv, Please, which I wrote before I really consciously approached the sexual abuse, but it's definitely all about it. There's stuff that also points to ritual abuse very clearly, and to multiplexity. I'd say the reality and the respect of the body is also very strong in my teen work. Stonehouse: How do you see the relationship between your writing for young adults and your poetry? Goobie: The teen voice is very very strong in my poetry. One of the areas [of my own life] I approached first was adolescence. I had worked mostly with teens, from ages eleven to seventeen, [as a counsellor] in group homes. I just thought adolescence had so much to do with joy and pride and rage, and they were under such attack by society, by so many attempts to control and define and limit them, because it's such an explosive age. It's a time period in which you could explore so many things. I've always found that age and that voice to have so much to do with my own desire to heal and to explore, and to be so intelligent! Teenagers are just brilliant; they have really interesting minds. Stonehouse: In Scars of Light you write very eloquently and compassionately about the different parts of you that helped you survive the abuse. Do you see a relationship between the kind of psychic creativity that keeps a child alive and the creativity you're now using in your writing? Goobie: Well, splitting is about hope. The energy of hope is about wanting to stay alive and be alive. Writing and recovery are that energy backwards. I've found that one of the most important things to understand about cult programming is that they program so much for backwards, splitting you from forwards to backwards, and backwards is where all your recovery power is. When you can bring backwards and forwards together, you're together. So one of the main ways to counteract cult programming is to simply do things backwards, to balance the energy and heal. Sometimes I wear my clothes backwards, practise walking around backwards, writing backwards, because it brings all of that together. We really need to explore backwards and inside-out and upside-down. All these things are different spaces, and that's where our healing is, in all the places that are the opposite to our normal directions, movements and words. Stonehouse: It seems to me that one of the ways in which cult abuse manages to thrive is through this incredible split or dualism between what we label as good and what we label as evil. I felt in reading Scars of Light that you talked really well about the experience of being in your everyday life but with the cult experience very much present in your body, and vice versa. Do you feel like the book has been adequately read, understood? Continued on next page DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 i created my own innocence, i came apart. i delegated knowledge to the selves who carried the queen of spades in their thighs, delegated forgetting to selves who had to shut spades and clubs out of childhood ABCs, hide 'n' seek, little house on the prairie, jesus. they could not coexist. from knowledge Continued from previous page Goobie: People who review the book carry that fundamental split that society has with them, and many times I find they aren't able to read what I'm saying. I keep being told the book is about the healing light. In fact, the book is about the lies, deceptions and the illusions of the light; it's about the healing dark. It's very much about the strength, power and healing that's in the dark. When you go into the dark, you live without being able to see the surface and you have to feel your way around. You have to be in your body because you can't be in your eyes—eyes leave the body—so you have to feel your way around by fingertip, you have to taste it and smell it and hear it to stay alive, to know. Once you have worked there and found your power, your strength, your pain and your joy, then you can walk out into light-filled areas and see the lies a long way away. You can also see the beauty of the truth out there, and own both. You need both. Stonehouse: How has the media responded to the book? Goobie: The majority of media have dealt with it by not reviewing it, because that's the most effective way to ensure that people don't get to hear the details. If you are getting a backlash of reviews, you're a little more fortunate than if the media chooses to ignore you, because it's much more effective simply to ignore. I have had some reviews, and all of them have been strongly supportive: Fireweed and Arc and C magazine in Edmonton, to name a few. Stonehouse: Would you like to say anything about the censorship you've experienced as a writer speaking out about ritual abuse? Goobie: Well, I'm here in Vancouver and Victoria because there was someone who decided he didn't like the censorship around not so much the issue, but around a writer. He just kept working until finally he found venues which would host readings and then brought me out here. It wasn't for the issue itself; it was because he doesn't believe in shutting someone down. That's the basic issue: if you allow anyone to be shut down, it could happen to you tomorrow. He's the only person who's asked me to do a reading, in spite of the award, inside or outside of Alberta. I have done a few readings, but I have had to initiate and prod that process along myself. Stonehouse: What kinds of concerns did you have around going public? Was it something that you thought long and hard about? Goobie: I wanted my name on it, and I wanted my face on it. It was part of my life and I was a writer, so I was writing about being alive. I did not want to dissociate from it: whatever that brought would come. There is no safety in life; there are no guarantees. You could be killed on the corner by a bus, and you know every year 3,000 people are wiped out in monsoons in the Philippines. I am no more or less valuable than any one of those people, and I am not leading my life to stay safe or to remain alive until I'm ninety. I'm living for now and that means that everything I am is with me. Stonehouse: How has it been since the book came out for you, being public as a ritual abuse survivor? Goobie: When I've been allowed to be public! The reviewers and the radio show hosts have been supportive. Other than that, there's been a huge silence in terms of interactions with me. I still am continuing to get some poetry and books accepted, but there is a huge silence, especially inAlberta. What that means for the people who are being silent, I can't say. Stonehouse: Wfriat would you say to ritual abuse survivors who are beginning their healing process? Goobie: You.have all the answers in your own flesh and blood, and brain tissue. Commit. Believe yourself as much as you can at every point. There is no such thing as false memory. And you're alive: that's an incredible accomplishment. Stonehouse: How is it for you to be living in a society where there is so much denial about the reality of abuse and, in particular, cult abuse? Goobie: I'm living in a world where I believe there's much more tenderness and love than violence and hatred, otherwise I wouldn't be alive. I don't believe it's a survival instinct—\"I'm going to remain alive at all costs\"—because my experience of cult programming is that every single child would have chosen to die rather than continue, but we're not allowed to. So I don't believe that the \"life wish\" is predominant. I believe it's the wish to be tender and caring, and to receive that, that keeps us alive. I think every human being is born loving their own flesh, and if you get to the point where you hate human flesh enough to torture and mutilate someone else, you've been taught that, every step of the way. I don't believe in people being born [psychopathic], so what are we doing to human beings? What are we allowing to be done to our most important citizens, who have no legal rights, and why have we ensured that? Why aren't we out in the streets, screaming our heads off, to get it changed? We all have something invested in silencing kids or we would be out there, overthrowing governments, to make sure their lives changed. Stonehouse: Is there anything else you'd like to add? Goobie: One thing that would enable people to feel less fear around cult survivors is understanding how very complex and structured and high-tech the prograrnming is. Yes there are violent personalities in a cult survivor, but they have been programmed to only emerge after a very long and complex series of triggers—they're not going to pull out a butcher knife and stab you on a street corner. Once they understand that, perhaps that will enable people to relax. Anybody who knows they're a cult survivor has taken enormous steps in healing, no matter how little they know. They have done enormous healing work in their brains. Wfhat happens basically is that people turn around and punish them for that: if you don't know, people like you. When you do know, people don't like you. Well, you're much safer once you start knowing. Cathy Stonehouse is a Vancouver writer, whose first book of poetry, The Words I Know, was published in 1994 by Press Gang Publishers. A review of ^ Hot Roof Continued from page 20 mainstream film made me optimistic about women and filmmaking in Asia. But at the same time, it made me sad about how the Hollywood monopoly shows so much insular and alienating mediocrity in the West. Lee has intricately woven several stories around the plot of these ten women trapped on the roof: from the satirical portrait of the fascist commanding police officer who attempts to handle everything by barking orders — both for the explosive roof situation and to his wife (who by watching media coverage of the seige becomes aware of her own power); to the two bungling thieves trapped in an apartment who reveal that they are two men in a power struggle with emotional and physical abuse analogous to the husband/wife situation; to the sad picture of the grandmother who is abused by her son and his family living together in an all too cramped flat; to the tongue-in-cheek portrait of the president of the neighbourhood women's club—where her speeches and attempts at logical meetings fail in the face of the reali ties of anger and passion; to an exploration of the class differences between the working bar girls and the women's club president and the proper housewives... These are only a few of the subplots, but almost throughout, the follies of men are lampooned. Especially funny is the secret agent who is sent in to solve the problem with his high-tech phallic toys. A true surprise for me was seeing issues of gender-bending also explored. Among the ten women, one of them, Soomee, is revealed to be a \"man\" by the fascist captain. Feeling betrayed, all the women on the roof castigate and physically threaten Soomee. One physically rips the front of Soomee's dress to reveal that, yes, she has a man's chest. Soomee in despair sobs that she has always felt and believed she was a girl, and the women's anger fade as they begin to discuss and comprehend the various levels and disguises of oppression. As the four days and nights on the roof unfold, the women discover their complexi ties and similarities. They feel a sense of solidarity they never knew before. A solidarity created, not because they are forced to unite as they are surrounded by riot police and media crews, but because they begin to articulate to each other where they have come from, revealing their dreams, desires, anger and fears. This solidarity also spreads across the country as women and women's organizations speak out in the media against violence against women and in support of the ten women on the roof. Lee's support of organized feminism is clear in his film. The highlight for me was watching an intrepid group of women on the ground tiptoe in the thick of night to cut the electricity supply of the police, gas the watchguards into unconsciousness, scale the building across the courtyard with athletic prowess ...just to send across, on ropes and pulleys, food and media coverage of the seige to the women on the roof. As soon as they are arrested, the intrepid group reveal themselves to be defiant women with a swagger in their walk and whose long hair fall out of their black toques as they raise their fists in solidarity... A wonderful scene! The best thing is that in the end none of the ten women die—contrary to Hollywood trend. Instead crowds and crowds of placard holding, singing women with fists raised in solidarity, stream into the apartment complex area and outnumber the police. In the face of such overwhelming support, the ten women feel safe enough to leap off the roof, not to their demise, but into giant airbags waiting below—a spoof on many a film ending. This film is unlikely to return to Vancouver, but you may find it in Korean/ Asian video rental stores. It's worth the look. Laiwan is an interdisciplinary artist and writer, born in Zimbabwe of Chinese origin. 22 DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 Arts Vancouver singer/songwriter Susan Crowe: CDs that beg for constant rotation by Emma Kivisild THIS FAR FROM HOME River Records, 1994 THE DOOR TO THE RIVER Carvus Records, 1996 Susan Crowe's second CD, The door to the river, was released in November, and has already been enthusiastically received by the media: a four-star review in the Vancouver Sun and Juno Award predictions on the CBC. In homes like mine, it was snatched up immediately with just as much enthusiasm. More music from Crowe feels like a precious gift to me. Originally from Nova Scotia, Crowe now lives in Vancouver. An earlier (mid 80s) singing/ songwriting career was stymied, she says, by a lack of confidence, but she returned to it with This far from home, her first CD, in 1994. I know Susan Crowe as a friend now. However, I didn't know her at all when I started listening almost constantly to This far from home. In fact, I was a bit leery of the genre—solo singer/songwriter with guitar, not what I usually listen to. What drew me in is in some ways ineffable—a beautiful deep voice, haunting memorable tunes, and lyrics that strike a magical bal- ance between \"Heartache is my specialty...\" and there are a lot of songs of heartache here. photo by David Cooper sadness, cynicism, and hope. I kept listening. Over and over again. Crowe's music doesn't stand up to repeated listening, it begs for it. There seem to be endless levels to her songs, growing complexities in the lyrics, and music that brings me back like an addict. As the title implies, This far from home is about longings for many faraway things. The title track aches for home ('A stranger amid strangers/ A stone among these stones'), and \"On your way to Mars\" aches for connection ('You promised you would write me/1 looked out for a card/ But here I am, wondering where you are.') \"Heartache is my specialty,\" Crowe said in a re- | cent interview and there are a lot of songs of heartache y here. But heartache is a compli- / cated thing and Crowe doesn't shy away from any of it: Songs about dead loved ones; caring for the ill, as well as the longings of a woman waiting for a new life to begin. Underlying all of this is a sensibility that can't be described as anything but spiritual. There are songs about the human condition, and two in particular on This far from home stand out for me as zeroing in completely on the puzzle of my life, with no questions answered. T think I know, I think I know/ I just can't find a way to let it go' (from \"I know\"), and 'I'd like to lift myself from this mess/ I'd like to close my eyes and find I worry less/ I'd like to just say yes' (from \"Faithless\"). There is humour, too. I see it in the oblique lament of a lesbian teen knowing she can't ever fit in: 1 wish I was like the other girls/And never longed for you,' and in the frustration of looking for meaning in the mass media: 'How do I get to the higher plain/ To accept the things I can't explain or see/ They never show this on TV' The title track of Crowe's second CD, The door to the river, plays a humorous riff on the edge of everyone's wrenching search for mercy: 'The devil woke up thirsty/ With very deep desire/ To call in with a fever/ To walk away from fire.' I think about accessibility when I hear this, about diving into questions despite myself, about the sudden discovery that I was always wondering about these things. The door to the river is less \"produced\" than This far from home, unusual for second albums. The vocals feel even closer, and the backup instrumentation is lovely. The heartache is still present, with all its attenuated sorrow: 'Still, you do not come.' And in a delightful twist, Crowe turns it around in \"I'm not there\": 'So don't wait at night, don't call my name/ Don't wistfully wonder do I look the same/ The longer I live, the better I learn/ There are places from which I will never return.\" I have favourites already. \"Your one and only life\" is an anthem for living in the present. \"Come with me\" takes an essential tension in relationships—come with me, stay with me—far beyond familiar \"I'm leaving\" songs, to a place where love is something other than mere devotion. I haven't had two years to live with this album the way I have had with Crowe's first one. Right now it is nestled in the CD player, nudging its way into constant rotation. A treasure. Emma Kivisild is a writer and artist living in Vancouver. jjP it \\ Western Canada's /; iKm * Lesbian & Gay \\ntfm& Bookstore lf4< ART EMPORIUM Celebrating our brand new location at 1238 Davie Street Come visit us at our new store with over twice the space and fully wheelchair accesible. Check out our large variety of books, magazines, cards, music, calendars & much much more. Little Sister's Book & Art Emporium 1238 Davie Street, Vancouver B.C. V6E 1N4 Internet Address:www:lsisters.com [Telephone (604)669-1753 Phone Orders 1-800-567-1662 Fax 685-0252, SINGLE MOTHER'S RESOURCE GUIDE More than 60% of single parent house- Now government is cutting the lifeline for holds headed by women live in poverty. many women raising children by themselves. That's why VANCOUVER STATUS OF Vancouver Status of Women needs your WOMEN published the SINGLE MOTH- help to produce the next issue of the Single ER'S RESOURCE GUIDE in 1991 to help Mother's Resource Guide. single mothers become economically and The Guide is an information tool that in- sociallv self-sufficient. forms and empowers women about their rights Since then over 30 000 copies have been and the resources available to them and their distributed FREE to single mothers in the children. Single moms, lawyers, counsellors, Lower Mainland. social workers all agree that it is an invaluable tool. Your donation will help us update, print and distribute FREE another 20 000 copies to women. Please make your cheque or money order payable to Vancouver Status of Women - SMRG '97 and mail it to Vancouver Status of Women, #301 - 1720 Grant Street, Vancouver, B.C. V5L 2Y6 (all donations are tax deductible) DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 ALTERNATIVES is Canada's foremost environmental journal since 1971. Thought-provoking articles go beyond band-aid solutions to consider concrete alternatives for a wide range of environmental issues. Look to Alternatives for reports of environmental happenings, provocative opinion pieces, and reviews of the latest eco-books. BRIARPATCH is Saskatchewan's award- winning political magazine which provides an alternative view on issues and events in Canada and the world. Essential reading for those interested in politics, unions, the environment, women's rights and international affairs. We publish articles the mainstream media won't touch. Ten times a year. From political zines to hilarious comics, from small press books to indie music, BROKEN PENCIL maps the ephemeral world of independently produced Canadian culture. Featuring hundreds of reviews, interviews with creators, and excerpts from everywhere, Broken Pencil puts the reader in touch with the creators and their work. UNITE Principled. Radical. Independent. For over 30 years, CANADIAN DIMENSION has been a place where activists can debate issues, share information, recount our victories and evaluate our strategies for social change. Our pages are open to all progressive voices - debate makes the movement stronger. And it makes for lively reading! \"... savvy, articulate... a fresh perspective.\"- The Globe and Mail. In its 20th year, FUSE a offer a dynamic c of artistic, social and political concerns that span the gamut from race and representation to gay/ lesbian politics, from the effects of pop culture outside the mainstream to cultural nationalism, CEIST is home to the Honourary Canadian Awards, the Trans-Canada Phrase Book, the Canadian Mall Writing Competition, the Who the Hell is Peter Czowski survey, and the very best in story, picture, essay, memoir, crossword, toon and little-known fact. In print since 1990. \"A publication that is, in this country, inimitable.\" - Toronto Star GREEN TEACHER is a forum for teachers and parents seeking to promote environmental and global awareness among young people from K to 12. It offers perspectives on the role of education in creating a sustainable future, practical cross- curricular activities, reviews of the latest teaching resources, and successful ideas from green educators. As Canada's largest national feminist magazine, HERIZONS explores women's health issues, the law, work and culture, and entices readers with provocative reviews and columnists. Unabashedly feminist, Herizons is written in a way that is relevant to the daily lives of women. Canada's much-needed answer to Ms. LATIN AMERICA CONNEXIONS/CONEXION LATINA provides commentary on the struggle for peace and justice in Latin America, and promotes a continent-wide, internationalist vision. This bilingual publication includes current accurate analysis of Latin American events, and information about resources, campaigns and organizations. NEW INTERNATIONALIST magazine turns the issues inside out and explains what's really going on. Ifs the best guide to the major issues from the arms trade to AIDS, from human rights to hunger. Each month, Nl tackles one subject, and gives you the facts and the arguments. To influence what's happening to you, you need to know what's NEW MARITIMES is regional politics, environment, labour, culture and history, all from a refreshing perspective. Regular columns on Maritime books, political economy and Third World issues. This bimonthly is a unique adventure in radical regionalism that, into its second decade, still refuses to bow to the powers that be. OUR TIMES is Canada's pro-labour magazine. Each issue features voices of union and community activists across the country who are concerned with the welfare of workers. Our Times is an excellent educational resource for those interested in labour issues. Don't miss out! Published six times a year. PEACE MAGAZINE is a multi-partisan voice for peace, conflict resolution and non-violence in our homes, in playgrounds and between nations. For over a decade, our magazine has been a forum on how to create a more peaceful and just world. \"Your solace in conflicting times.\" - Broken Pencil RUNGH means colour. Rungh is a forum of critical commentary exploring contemporary culture and politics abroad and at home. Rungh negotiates with a culture made out of the dilemmas, hopes and differences between the struggle against racism and other social movements for dignity, well being and emancipation. One of Canada's hottest independent literary quarterlies, SUB-TERRAIN features the work of writers, artists and photographers from Canada, the US and foreign locations. Each issue is a stimulating fusion of fiction, poetry, graphic art, commentary and book reviews. \"Eschews geography in favour of a borderless world\" - Vancouver Mag. NEW CITY MAGAZINE believes in a distinct and sustainable Canadian urban culture and identity. Featuring articles, stories and histories about the city and its people, it is a critical forum on the modern city. New City strives to build a better understanding of urban maladies and the possibilities for change. OUTLOOK provides a Jewish secular-humanist perspective on political and cultural issues. It features original articles, stories, and reviews by writers from Canada, the USA, Israel, France, Germany and Eastern Europe. Promoting peace in the Middle East and the world, Outlook supports multiculturalism and promotes self-determination of all peoples. -,r,v. THIS MAGAZINE is a 30- year-old national magazine of politics and culture. A 1996 winner of two gold and one silver National Magazine Awards for investigative journalism and political criticism. This Magazine prints fearless reporting, showcases groundbreaking literature, and critiques culture - high and low - with attitude, personality and style. BEST OF THE ALTERNATIVE PRESS Looking for an adventure in magazine reading? Order a sample copy of the best of Canada's other press by simply filling out the request form below. •••••< Q. REQUEST S< FORM © To place your order, please: 1/ Indicate the magazine(s) you wish to Alternatives Broken Pencil Fuse Green Teacher Lat. Amer. Connexions New Internationalist Our Times Peace Magazine Sub-Terrain Briarpatch Canadian Dimension Geist Herizons New City New Maritimes Outlook Rungh This Magazine 2/ Fill out your name and address. 3/ Calculate your payment. The first magazine you request costs $5.00, each additional magazine is $2.50. For example, if you order three magazines, your payment would be $5.00 + 2 x $2.50 m $10.00. GST is included. Please make your cheque or money order payable to Chaos Consulting. 4/ Mail this form with your payment. Send to: Chaos Consulting-BOAP, PO Box 65506, Stn F, Vancouver, BC, V5N 5K5. For inquiries only (no orders), e-mail chaos@axionet.com or fax:(604)875-1403. DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 Bulletin Board read this! INVOLVEMENT Bulletin Board listings have a maximum of 50 words. Groups organizations and individuals eligible for free space in the Bulletin Board must be, or have non-profit objectives. Other free notices will be items of general public interest and will appear at the discretion of Kinesis. Classifieds are $8 (+$0.56 GST) for the first 50 words or portion thereof, $4 (+$0.28 GST) for each additional 25 words or portion thereof and must be prepaid. Deadline for all submissions is the 18th of the month preceding publication. Note: Kinesis is published ten times a year. Jul/ Aug and Dec/Jan are double issues. All submissions should include a contact name and telephone number for any clarification that may be required. Listings will not be accepted over the telephone. Kinesis encourages readers to research the goods and services advertised in Bulletin Board Kinesis cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information provided or the safety and effectiveness of the services and products listed. Send submissions to Bulletin Board, Kinesis, #301-1720 Grant Street, Vancouver, BC, V5L 2Y6, or fax: (604) 255-5511. For more information call (604) 255-5499. IMIIIIM Ml Sangam Grant R.P.c. REGISTERED PR0FFESSI0NAL COUNSELLOR Private Practitioner, Workshop + Group Therapist phone (604) 253-5007 when the musk changes so Joes the dance... WebWeaver Internet guide, researcher, trainer Ann Doyle, MLS Tel: 604-254-8462 Email: ann_doyle@mindlink.bc.ca URL: http://mindlink.net/ann_doyle WANNA GET INVOLVED? With Kinesis? We want to get involved with you too. Help plan our next issue. All women interested in what goes into Kinesis—whether it's news, features or arts—are invited to our next Story Meetings Tues Jan 7 and Mon Feb 3 at 7 pm at our office, 301-1720 Grant St. For more information or if you can't make the meeting, but still want to find out about writing for Kinesis, give Agnes a call at (604) 255-5499. No experience is necessary. Childcare subsidies available. CALLING ALL VOLUNTEERS Are you interested in finding out how Kinesis is put together? Well...just drop by during our next production dates and help us design and lay out Canada's national feminist newspaper. Production for the February 1997 issue is from Jan 22-28. No experience is necessary. Training and support will be provided. If this notice intrigues you, call us at 255-5499. Childcare subsidies available. VSW WANTS YOU! Want to get more involved but not sure where to begin? Join us—become a volunteer at Vancouver Status of Women. VSW volunteers plan events, lead groups, raise funds, answer the phone lines, organize the library, help connect women with the community resources they need, and get involved in other exciting jobs! The next volunteer orientation will be on Wed, Jan 15, 7pm at VSW, 301-1720 Grant St. For more info, call 255-5511. Please call before the orientation to confirm attendance. Childcare subsidies available. INVOLVEMENT VSW ON THE MOVE The Vancouver Status of Women and Kinesis is planning to move its office at the end of February 1997. Volunteers are needed to help us pack and move. If available please call 255-5511. OFFICE MATE WANTED The Vancouver Status of Women is looking for another feminist organization interested in sharing office space with VSW in the Vancouver area. Must be able to move at the end of February 1997. For further details call Audrey at 255-5511. FUNDRAISING FOR VSW Volunteers are needed to join the Finance and Fundraising Committee at the Vancouver Status of Women. The next major event to be planned is the annual Recommending Women fund raiser. The committee's next meeting is Tues Dec 17 at 6pm at VSW, 301-1720 Grant St. For more info call Audrey at 255-5511. VSW PROGRAMMING COMMITTEE Women are invited to join the Vancouver Status of Women's Programming Committee and become involved in planning an event called How Politics and Elections Affect Women's Daily Lives. VSW is also looking for women's ideas and participation to decide what women in our community need and want to organize. To join the committee or for more info about VSW's programs, call Ema at 255-5511. v^ l ptHpvY r*_s/ I * Coming Out Emma h * Grief and Tigerheart Udi If Loss * Relationship M.S.W. Issues TM 1 » Childhood Trauma COUNSELLING THERAPY fir J * Family CONSULTATION Ifemv ■ Issues il fl Sliding J Scale Fees Inquiries Call i JK7Hjw' 327-4437 ImL? i Welcome Vancouver, bc \\r*k] X*?z *HiV— 1 EVENTS MARLENE SCHIWY New York writer Marlene Schiwy will be in Vancouver to read from her new book A Voice of Her Own: Women and the Journal-Writing Journey Tues Jan 7 at 7:30pm at Women In Print, 3566 W. 4th Ave. Aimed at both new and longtime diarists, the book invites readers to share the journeys other women have made toward selfhood and encourages them to begin a journey of their own. For more info call (604) 732- 4128. SHARON LIM Malaysian-American writer Sharon Lim will read from her memoire Among the White Moon Faces on Mon Jan 13 at 7:30 pm at Women In Print, 3566 W. 4th Ave, Vancouver. In this moving account of a Malaysian childhood and the making of an Asian-American woman, Lim journeys across cultural, political and geographic borders to trace her development as a teacher, mother, scholar and writer. For more info call (604) 732-4128. THIN CITIES Lola MacLaughlin's newest and most contemporary choreography, Thin Cities, will be performed Dec 11-14, 8pm at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, 1895 Venables St. Three pieces will be presented, including \"Unclaimed Treasures: Essie, Ena and Maude,\" a tribute to MacLaughlin's Irish roots. For tickets and more info call the VECC at (604) 254-9578. FRIENDS OF DIGNITY FUNDRAISER Friends of Dignity is holding a fundraiser in Vancouver in aid of single parent families living in poverty Sun Dec 1, 7pm at the Anza Club, 3 W. 8th Ave. An evening of music, food and dance, the event will feature the local talent of Beverley Elliott, Paula Wolfson, Dorothy Dittrich and Kim Kuzma, and will be hosted by well-known comedian and former Zero Avenue host, Christine Lippa. For tickets and more info call (604) 669-2673. MONIQUE GENTON Artspeak Gallery presents The Science of Swimming, the first solo exhibition of Vancouver-based artist Monique Genton until Dec 14 at 233 Carrall St, Vancouver. There will also be an Artist Talk on Wed Dec 4 at 7:30pm. Genton's photobased painting and video projection installation represents the fractured female subject, silenced by the scientific gaze, who then reclaims her female identity through the metaphor of swimming. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday noon-5pm. For more info call (604) 688-0051. Relationship Therapy DANA L. JANSSEN, M.Ed. Reg. Clinical Counsellor Relationship Therapy Individual Counselling Integrative Body Work Oak & 8th Ave. V; Tel: (604) 731-2867 »»:»lsls>g- - ■ Ii Hi -f Let me go down in the mud Ave. 875-9516 paintings about queer motherhood and pop culture DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 Bulletin Board EVENTS WOMEN'S HEALTH COLLECTIVE IS 25 The Vancouver Women's Health Collective is celebrating its 25th anniversary Wed Dec 4 at Richard's on Richard's, 1036 Richards, Vancouver. Featured will be the Laura Love Band and the launching of the Collective's new Women's Health Information Network. For more info call (604) 736-4234. CATHY SISLER Cathy Sisler will be presenting her travelling exhibition La Femme ecran The Reflexive Woman until Dec 14 at the Front Gallery, 303 E. 8th Ave, Vancouver. Gallery hours are Tues to Sat 12 - 5pm. The Opening Reception will take place Tues Nov 12 at 8pm and a Performance will be held on Wed Nov 20 at 8pm. For more info call (604) 876- 9343. GLOBAL ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING Eyes on Mexico will hold an open discussion about the impact of global economic restructuring on our communities, and alternative possibilities. In the Spirit of the Zapatistas will be held Sat Dec 7 at Britannia Community Centre, 1661 Napier, Vancouver, and will be one of the many simultaneous worldwide gatherings. Registration is at 9am and admission is free. For free childcare, call (604) 255-8230 by Dec 4. For more info call (604) 253-0304. VOICES FROM EACH GENERATION The Native Education Centre, Service Providers Adult/ Advocacy Network (SPAN) and The Justice Institute of BC are sponsoring a provincial conference for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal service providers, administrators and policy-makers involved in providing services to First Nations communities. Voices From Each Generation: Healing the Effects of Generational Trauma will be held Feb 20-22 at the Landmark Hotel, 1400 Robson St, Vancouver. The conference will provide an opportunity for voices of different generations of Aboriginal people to be heard. Registration fee is $250 before Dec 31, $300 after Jan 1 .To register by credit card, EVENTS call (604) 528-5590 or fax (604) 528-5653. Registration in person or by mail may be done at the Registration Office, Justice Institute of BC, 715 McBride Blvd, New Westminster, BC, V3L 5T4. SHARON MCGOWAN Capilano College's film and lecture series features Sharon McGowan and her latest work, When Mary Tyler Moore takes Mr. Grant's job: Women Producers in Canada Wed Jan 22 at 7:30pm. McGowan is an award-winning producer and director with over twenty years working in film and television, and is best known for the feature film The Lotus Eaters. The screening will be held at Capilano College, Room CE148, 2055 PurcellWay, North Vancouver. For more info call Margaret Denike at (604) 984-4953. MURIEL DUCKWORTH BIO Femwood Publishing will be launching Muriel Duckworth: a very active pacifist, a biography written by Marian Douglas Kerans, Sun Dec 8, 2-4pm at People's Coop Books, 1391 Commercial Dr, Vancouver. Duckworth, who resides in Halifax, has been active in the peace and women's movement for over 50 years and is the founder of Voice of Women. For more info call (604) 254-0393. GROUPS HOLIDAY BAKE SALE Seattle's Radical Women is holding its eighth annual Fabulous Feminist Gastronomic Delights Bake Sale in December. Holiday-wrapped culinary confections will be delivered to your home or office party in the Seattle area only. Call (206) 722-6057 or (206) 722- 2453 for a list of items. Orders must be received by Dec 14 and will be delivered or available for pick-up Dec 18-23. RADICAL WOMEN SEATTLE Radical Women will be holding a general meeting on Thur Dec 5 at 7:30pm at the New Freeway Hall, 5018 Rainier Ave S, Seattle. Dinner is included, with a vegetarian option, at 6:30pm for a $6 donation. All women are welcome. The meeting is wheelchair accessible. For rides or childcare call (206) 722-6057 or (206) 722-2453. RADICAL WOMEN Radical Women in Vancouver is holding weekly evening study groups called Recipe for Winning Women's Rights: Revolutionary Politics! every Wed from 7-8:30pm at Rebel Centre, 2278 E. 24th Ave, Vancouver. Topics for open debate and freewheeling discussion include the interconnections of race, sex, sexuality and class, and the revolutionary possibilities of women's leadership in action. Wheelchair accessible. For more info, call (604) 874-2943, 874-9048; or fax BY/t.an^ft GROUPS It's that time of year again! RRSP SEASON • Excellent rates on fixed and variable terms • RRSP loans available • No user fees Deadline: March 1st, 1997 Come in now, don't wait for the deadline! or call us at 254-4100 Your RRSP investment at CCEC will help promote economic development in your community. CCEC Credit Union il Drive, Vancouver, BC V5N 5P9 Fax 254-65 ARTTHERAPY VOICES for Survivors Support Society is hosting an evening of Art Therapy for Survivors Thurs Dec 5 from 7:30- 9:30pm at the VOICES office, 27A-250 Willingdon Ave, Burnaby. The session will be facilitated by Tatjana Jansen, Certified Art Therapist, and will be a process oriented workshop. Clay, paints and pastels will be provided. No previous art experience is necessary. Cost is by donation. Childcare subsidies available. To reserve a place in the workshop call or fax 298-4516. For more info call Shona Steven at 983-3554. SELF-DEFENSE VOICES for Survivors Support Society will be holding a Self-Defense for Women workshop in two sessions Thurs Jan 16 & 23 from 7-9pm at the VOICES office, 27A-250 Willingdon Ave, Burnaby. The workshops, led by self-defense and assertiveness instructor Laurie Schuerbeke, will provide women with practical skills on how to prevent assault as well as physical defense techniques. Cost is by donation. Childcare subsidies available. To reserve a place in the workshop call or fax 298-4516. For more info call Shona Steven at 983-3554. WOMEN AND HEALTH Struggling with life issues? In need of a safe space and a compassionate ear? The Vancouver Women's Health Collective is offering free counselling. Call (604) 736-4234 to schedule an appointment. WOMEN AND DOCTORS Have a health concern? Looking for a new doctor? Do you want good health information? Call the Vancouver Women's Health Collective Information Centre at (604) 736-5262. FREE LEGAL ADVICE The UBC Law Students' Legal Advice Program offers free advice in neighbourhood clinics throughout the Lower Mainland in BC, including two special legal clinics for women. The program will run in the evening from Jan 6-Mar 21. Advice is offered on many subjects, including small claims, landlord-tenant disputes, welfare, UIC, WCD, employer- employee relations, and uncontested divorces. For clinic times and locations, call (604) 822-5791. :ht for. § I OUR COMMUNITIES! OUR PUBLIC SERVICES! A message- from the Public Service Alliance of Canada • (604) 430-5631 DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 Bulletin Board SUBMISSIONS CHILDREN OF EXILE Carol Camper, creator and editor of Miscegenation Blues: Voices of Mixed Race Women, is seeking submissions for an anthology of women and men of colour who were raised in white families or institutions, tentatively titled Children of Exile. Essays, articles, letters, journals, artwork, photography, interviews, et cetera are welcomed. Send submissions to Carol Camper c/o Sister Vision Press, PO Box 217, Stn E, Toronto, ON, M6H 4E2. Deadline is Jan 30. SPIRIT MATTERS Seeking personal essays/ stories from lesbians and gays for Spirit Matters: When Being Lesbian or Gay Is a Spiritual Path. For detailed submission guidelines, send self-addressed stamped envelope to D. Douglas, Spirit Matters, Suite 664,101-1001 W Broadway, Vancouver, BC, V6H 4E4. Deadline is Feb 15. QUEERWORKS Out West Performance Society, Vancouver's first professional lesbian and gay theatre company, is calling for submissions of queer-themed scripts to produce in their 97-98 season. Everything from 15-minute plays to evening- length scripts will be considered and works which have not been produced before are of special interest. Send Bed & Breakfast A Beautiful Place Centre yourself in the comfort and tranquility of B.C.'s Super Natural Gulf Islands. Healthy Breakfasts Hot Tub & Sauna 5 acres of forested foot paths with ponds ocean and mountain views A Memorable Escape (604) 537-9344 1207 Beddis Road, Salt Spring Island, B.C. V8K 2C8 SUBMISSIONS scripts to The Dramaturgical Committee, Out West Performance Society, PO Box 93582, Nelson Park Postal Outlet, Vancouver, BC, V6E 4L7. Include SASE and sufficient postage if you would like your script returned. All submissions will receive a written response. Deadline is Dec 15. ESSSAY COMPETITION The National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL) announces its Eleventh Annual Essay Competition with the theme Access to Justice: Moving from Words to Action. All students at recognized post-secondary Canadian institutions are welcome to apply. Papers may be written in either English or French, must be 2,500- 10,000 words, submitted on 8 112 x 11\" paper, typewritten and double-spaced. At least three copies should be sent. Prizes are $500, $300 and $100 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. Send submissions to: NAWL, 604-1 Nicholas St, Ottawa, ON, K1N 7B7. For more info contact NAWL at (613) 241 -7570 or at the above address. Deadline is May 31. BRONWEN WALLACE AWARD The Writers' Development Trust is calling for submissions of short fiction prose (under 2,500 words) for the Bronwen Wallace Award. Respecting the wishes of Bronwen Wallace, writers must be under 35. As well, they should be unpublished in book form, but have had their work appear in at least one independently edited magazine or anthology. Prize is $1,000. Send submissions by mail to: The Bronwen Wallace Award, c/o The Writers' Development Trust, 24 Ryerson Ave, Suite 201, Toronto, ON, M5T 2P3. Deadline is Jan 15. INTERNATIONAL ANTHOLOGY Sister Vision Press in Toronto is seeking submissions for the First International Anthology of Lesbians, Bisexuals and Gay Men of African Descent. The anthology is intended to make links and cross boundaries of culture, language, geography, history, home, identity and gender. Sister Vision is looking for testimonies, short stories, essays, photographs, recipes, interviews and poetry. Send contributions to Sister Vision Press, PO Box 217, Stn E, Toronto, ON, M6E 4E2. Deadline is Jan 31. BREAST CANCER CONFERENCE The first World Conference on Breast Cancer to be held at Queen's University in Kingston, ON next July is seeking submission for paper presentations and workshops. Topics to be addressed include prevention, medicine, genetics, lesbians and breast cancer, alternative therapies, environmental links, law among others. For more info contact: Janet Collins, Executive Director, World Conference on Breast Cancer, 841 Kingston, ON, K7L 1G7; tel: (613) 549- 1118; fax: (613) 549-1146. For background info on the conference, visit its website at: http://www.ads- online.on.ca/CFAS/Calendar/ Breast_Cancer.hmtl. j^KP9| y / CLASSIFIEDS COUNSELLING FOR WOMEN A feminist approach to sexual abuse, depression, grief and loss, sexual orientation issues and personal growth. Sliding fee scale. Free initial appointment. Call Susan Dales, RPC, at 255- 9173. WOMEN'S SELF-DEFENSE Women Educating in Self-defense Training (WEST) teaches Wenlido. In Basic classes, you learn how to make the most of mental, physical and verbal skills to get away from assault situations. Continuing training builds on basic techniques to improve physical and mental strength. By women, for women. For info, call 876-6390. HOUSE FOR RENT A furnished house in Victoria is available to rent from January-July 1997. Rent is $1,000 per month plus utilities. Five minutes from downtown. LR, DR, 2 bedrooms and a study/bedroom, fireplace, garden, quiet street, close to schools. Non-smokers. Call Michele at (604)721-7293. SUZO HICKEY Let Me Go Down in the Mud, Vancouver-based artist Suzo Hickey's series of paintings will be exhibited from January 21 to February 8 at the grunt gallery, 116-350 E. 2nd Ave, Vancouver. The opening reception will be held on January 21 at 8pm. Hickey's paintings, which incorporate humorous and conversational text, explore the intersection of lesbian motherhood, aging and popular culture. For more information call (604) 875- 9516. Photo by Rachel Rocco. CLASSIFIEDS CITYVIEW CO-OP Cityview Co-op has one, two and three bedroom suites for $565, $696, $795 per month and refundable share purchase. Carpets, blinds, appliances, parking and laundry room. Children and small pets welcome. Please send a business size SASE to Membership Committee, Cityview Housing Co-op, 108-1885 E. Pender St, Vancouver, BC, V5L1W6. PRO-CHOICE PRESS Subscribe to Pro-Choice Press, the BC Coalition for Abortion Clinics' quarterly bulletin with news and information on the fight for abortion rights. $10 per year for individuals; $25 for groups- includes membership in the Coalition. To subscribe, write to 219-1675 W. 8th Ave, Vancouver, BC, V6J 1V2; call (604) 736-2800; or fax: (604) 736-2152. WOMEN IN PRINT BOOKS & OTHER MEDIA Discountsjor book clubs , 3566 West 4th Avenue ♦ Vancouver BC Special orders Voice 604 732-4128 welcome Fax 604 732-1129 m 10-6 Daily ♦ 12-5 Sunday DECEMBER/JANUARY 1997 i 4/97 .IBRARY PROCESSING CTR - SERIALS £0& EAST MflLL, U.B.C. 'ANCOUVER, BC V&T 1Z8 Life without Kinesis can be wrenching. Fix it with a subscription One year D$20 +$1.40 GST Two years D$36 + $2.52 GST Institutions/Groups D$45 +$3.15 GST Name\" □ Cheque enclosed D Bill me D New D Renewal D Gift D Donation For individuals who can't afford the full amount g for Kinesis subscription, send what you can. * Free to prisoners. J? Orders outside Canada add $8. i Vancouver Status of Women Membership g (includes Kinesis subscription) f D$30 +$1.40 GST I Address— Country Telephone _ Postal code_ Fax Published ten times a year by the Vancouver Status of Women #301 -1720 Grant Street Vancouver, BC V5L 2Y6"@en, "Preceding title: Vancouver Status of Women. Newsletter.

Date of publication: 1974-2001.

Frequency: Monthly."@en ; edm:hasType "Periodicals"@en, "Newspapers"@en ; dcterms:identifier "HQ1101.V24 N49"@en, "HQ1101_V24_N49_1996_12"@en ; edm:isShownAt "10.14288/1.0045598"@en ; dcterms:language "English"@en ; edm:provider "Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library"@en ; dcterms:publisher "Vancouver : Vancouver Status of Women"@en ; dcterms:rights "Images provided for research and reference use only. Permission to publish, copy, or otherwise use these images must be obtained from the Digitization Centre: digitization.centre@ubc.ca"@en ; dcterms:source "Original Format: University of British Columbia. Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. HQ1101.V24 N49"@en ; dcterms:subject "Women--Social and moral questions"@en, "Feminism--Periodicals"@en ; dcterms:title "Kinesis"@en ; dcterms:type "Text"@en ; dcterms:description ""@en .