Mi’kmaw peoples pay a heavy price for the failure of Canada to uphold the rule of law. The failure to respect court decisions like the Marshall case results in ongoing breaches of our inherent, Aboriginal and treaty rights, not just in terms of enforced poverty and overincarceration, but also the violence by those who have long benefitted from the spoils of centuries of racist and genocidal laws, policies and practices.

Bushby’s trial is already a tragedy, no matter the outcome. But how is this crime connected to a broader system of settler colonial violence that snatches away so many Indigenous lives? And how can we move beyond the half-hearted rhetoric of reconciliation to imagine the real, substantial transformations that need to take place to ensure something like this never happens again?

Liquor control tends to be far more about control than liquor. It has been part and parcel of a network of genocidal policies of colonialism: residential schools, forced relocation, family separation, police violence, and ongoing dispossession. Rather than relinquish colonial management of Indigenous peoples, the state reconstitutes liquor control as a means of justifying continued interventions.

To mark the 30th anniversary of “Oka,” and as global movements to end systemic racism rage on, CD’s Sean Carleton had the opportunity to speak with legendary Toronto hip hop icon Wesley Williams (better known as Maestro Fresh-Wes or Maestro) about his music and the song “Nothing At All” specifically—and what they can teach us today, if we take the time to listen.

This marks the sixth installment in an ongoing curated series that asks contributors to imagine the perils and possibilities that will ground our collective response to or emergence from the COVID-19 crisis. The sixth edition is about the Arctic, with contributions from Crystal Gail Fraser, Julia Christensen, and James Wilt.

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the 1990 Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawake Siege where the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation were denied their fundamental human rights without any just recourse. 30 years later, the Rotinonhseshá:ka are still fighting the same issues, while Canada, Québec and Oka collude to continue their land fraud under the auspices of development.

This marks the fourth installment in an ongoing curated series that asks contributors to imagine the perils and possibilities that will ground our collective response to or emergence from the COVID-19 crisis. The fourth edition is about infrastructure, with contributions from Hannah Muhajarine, Deb Cowen, Adele Perry, Dayna Nadine Scott, and Michael Mascarenhas.

Canadian Dimension spoke with Karrie Auger, an amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton) organizer with Free Lands Free Peoples and its Prairie Province Prisoner Support Fund, an emergency fund that has raised over $23,000 to distribute to “recently released prisoners, those still inside, and the families of people still incarcerated in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.”

Governments won’t simply give us what we want—we must force the change we need. It is going to take all of us working together to keep up the pressure and not stop until we see the radical transformation that is required. Anything less will result in continued police racism and brutality and the loss of more Black and Indigenous lives.

The province of Alberta may eventually be forced to repeal Jason Kenney and the UCP’s Bill 1—the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act—but in the meantime, standing in opposition to this draconian legislation that infringes on Indigenous rights must mean standing on the front lines with the communities who will be most detrimentally affected by it.