#barb kentner

[firsteveningstar]

It’s been a couple days since the Gerald Stanley verdict, and, it still feels pretty raw.

If you’ve been online you’ve likely seen articles about the case. What you aren’t necessarily seeing is the hate that is coming with them. The comments are abhorrent - laced with incorrect information about the case, racism towards Indigenous people and plain ignorance. We’ve seen a lot of generalized hate about our people, been compared to dogs, and implied that we don’t deserve the same rights as “true Canadians”. Many Indigenous activists have been taking a lot of online abuse, myself included. In fact, I have personally been told that...

* It’s really too bad that his ancestors didn’t wipe out mine like they should have because then I would have never been born.

* That I should just cease to exist or be dead already. Which is hard to swallow as an Indigenous woman when in Canada there are thousands of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

* That it’s too bad I didn’t attend residential school then they wouldn’t have to deal with me being such a problem because I’d act like a “real Canadian”.

* That if the Government had just sterilized me like they should’ve continued to do to Indigenous women I wouldn’t have had to worry about my son’s life because I wouldn’t have one.

* And if I want to keep him safe he should just stay on the Reservation (which btw we don’t live on) and off peoples land. And, I find the irony in that last statement is astounding.

And, that’s just the highlight reel. And, what I’ve received is mild in comparison as I’ve seen friends receive a lot worse.

In fact, two hashtags were created #SettlerCollector and #TrollCollector for us to use so allies would step in and take on some of the emotional labour on this - more on allies in a moment. And, one of our media sites was hacked- taking it offline after an article was posted criticizing the case.

It’s all meant to silence us. If we are berated enough, if we are scared enough, the we might be silent and things can go back to the status quo because we will stop pushing for change.

Unfortunately unfollowing/ignoring this case isn’t an option. Not if we want change. We’re finding comfort in one another - in our collective grief/mourning; anger and desire for change; as well as love, support and hope in each other’s words. We’re driven by the fact that this case impacts our lives and our future generations lives.

Systematic racism and a judicial system that is failing Indigenous people is nothing new. It’s not a system built for us. And we’ve seen that time and time again even just recently with Tina Fontaine and Barb Kentner. We’re accustomed to it, and Colten sadly won’t be the last without real action.

We’re trying to survive. We’re trying to ensure basic human rights are bestowed upon us. We’re seeking to improve a judicial system that isn’t biased against us whether that be as a defendant or as a victim seeking justice.

Now during all this, please remember we’re trying to live our lives while this impacts our lives. I’ve been going to work and going through the motions, albeit a little less “myself”. I’ve been closely guarding over my son, as I’m cognizant of the fact that some of what I’ve been hearing might get to him and I need to counteract every ounce of that with love, and praise. And, I’ve been showing up for my community.

Which brings me back to allies. I’ve noted a lot of silence from so called allies which is a tough pill to swallow and hard not take personally. Some mean well but haven’t quite figured out the role quite yet. Some want praise for being a good ally. Alternatively, some inadvertently make the situation about them. Some ask invasive questions in trying to understand. And some are downright amazing using their privilege without overshadowing any voices, checking in but not pushing boundaries as they’re aware that we’re on edge. With everything going on above, it’s important that allies do their own work and don’t put any more of a burden on Indigenous individuals right now.

We’re trying to survive. We’re trying to heal. We’re demanding change.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Barb Kentner wants a Big Mac. For the past two days, she has been lying in Thunder Bay Regional Hospital, periodically thinking of eating one last burger. In late January, the Anishinaabe woman was hit in the stomach by a rusting trailer hitch in Thunder Bay’s east end, in an unprovoked assault. It was hurled at her from a moving vehicle. “I got one,” someone is alleged to have yelled from the car as it peeled off into the night. She has been in and out of the hospital ever since.

Doctors have told Barb, a member of the Waabigon Saaga’igan Anishinaabeg (Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation), that she will not live much longer. Her liver has ceased functioning. Nothing more can be done; so they try to keep her comfortable. If the cold that had taken her to hospital three days earlier worsens to pneumonia, her death could come in a matter of hours. She is 34 years old.

Continue Reading.

[weareallmixedup]

TW: death, violence, anti-indigenous racism/sexism.

“Barbara Kentner was the victim of a drive by assault on January 28th by a Caucasian man who shouted “I got one” after throwing a very large trailer hitch at her body from the passenger side of a moving vehicle.  18 year Brayden Bushby has since been charged with Assault Causing Bodily Harm with a Weapon and was released February 21st on bail.   Barbara was walking home with her sister when it happened.  They did not know the man prior to the assault.   In Thunder Bay racism is an ongoing problem.  In the Indigenous community, having objects thrown at them while walking is all too common. The assault was not labeled a hate crime.   Barb has been in the hospital since January and hasn’t healed from her wounds.  Her organs are shutting down and her health is deteriorating rapidly.  Doctors have done all they can and by her own wishes she has returned home to die in the care of loved ones. My name is Deanne Hupfield.  I grew up with Barb and her family.  I’ve created this Gofundme to help support the family in their final days with Barb. Barb is going to pass soon and my heart is broken for her and her family.  Through this Gofundme I hope to give Barb some peace of mind knowing that her family is financially supported through this traumatic event.  The funds raised will be used to offset costs of the funeral and family members’ travel to Thunder Bay before she passes.   Any little bit will help.  Our timeline to raise the funds is critical.   Miigwech. (Thank you in the Ojibway Language)

- Deanne Hupfield”

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Please signal boost this GoFundMe page and donate what you can. Barbara Kentner has been given only weeks left to live and her family is in urgent need of the support. - Liz

[handandbanner]

A True Love for the Land and Place We Call Home

I'm thankful for everyone who could find expression of their humanness *and* acknowledge Indigenous humanity through yesterday's activities. I observed that some felt that they were achieving this through celebrating, others through abstaining, resisting or some combinations of approaches. Even without forcing a moral equivalence in approaches to diffuse important tension, I am thankful that in my own home we could continue to navigate July 1st by finding room for individual authentic expressions. The boys and my oldest especially are celebrators, for the same reasons that most children who have been exposed to Columbia Lake festivities would be. This morning they woke up with the red face-paint still on their faces from yesterday’s afternoon of fun with their father. For the past years, I have been an abstainer and I wouldn’t say it's in solidarity necessarily, because no Indigenous person has told me not to walk down to the fireworks. There has just been a gradual pulling away. The first time I came to the big city for the fireworks was as a teenager when some friends drove us in for the festivities. And then nine years ago on July 1st we moved into our place on White Elm where the elevated landscape of West Waterloo provides a perfect distance view of Columbia Lake and with our boxes still packed in our new residence and the living room lights turned off, we ended the moving-in day by watching the fireworks from our living room window. In the years after as new parents we would meet up with friends/family at Columbia Lake pulling the older one, then a toddler, in his red wagon and by doing so forming his celebrator identity. My abstaining was a slow quiet pulling away over a few years, over a few conversations and a few critical moments.  One such conversation involved an Indigenous person sharing with me some years back how they felt nothing but pain during Canada Day.  Also, a moment in the past few years when I remember having a visceral realization that I was living in a situation that was in many ways like Apartheid South Africa with regards to the conditions that many Indigenous communities face.  Even so my pulling away always felt more like preference on how to spend my day and express my humanness than a public position, kind of like a personal fast. This year felt different because of all the public discourse and debate and visible activism, which I am also glad for.

Many of us end up settling in this part of the world for different reasons.  I am thankful that my parents had the desire, drive and opportunity to want to study and live in different parts of the world.  Growing up for me immigration with all it’s challenges felt like adventure, from early childhood in Kenya to South Africa years and then finally to Canada at 13 years of age some 20ish years ago.  I remember thinking this was just another stop in the countries I will get to live in.  But Creator had other plans and this was going to be home, where I would come into adulthood and start a family.  When I reflect with gratitude of the lands that I have lived in throughout my life, I often reflect on certain random images, scents and sounds from memory that cause me to feel a loving attachment for the places I have called home.  For my early childhood in Kenya I think of red dusty earth and purple jacaranda tree flowers fallen on cement slabs in the courtyard where we played hopscotch.  In South Africa, I think of rollerblading on interlocking red brick sidewalks, and the sound of low harmonies of men during indigenous communal singing.  Having lived most of my life in Canada, many of my present-day place-based images, sounds and scents are based on the memories that I have gathered on this land.  I think of the smell of a hockey rink and it’s one of the little things I love about bringing my boys to their activities at local rinks.  The smell takes me back to New Years free-skate nights in small town Ontario with my local church community, to pretending to care about the game as part of our nights-out with dorm mates in college and that feeling of independence, it also takes me back to bringing knitting and watching our fiancés and husbands play not so well in small town leagues prior to having kids.  Loving attachments is also felt for this land when I think of the sites of driving to the lakes and ice cream shops near cottages.  When also I think of sights and sounds of walking through leaves in the Fall and the scenery of changing seasons riding in a yellow school bus in the country every morning from Harriston to Palmerston Ontario.  I think of the smell of fertilized fields which never bothered me for some reason while driving in the country and I think of buying flowers by the side road from Mennonite pop-up market stands.  I think of the small Elora wedding dress shop where I tried on my dress with my sisters and best friends.  I think of the bustle and struggle in the city; the libraries, the gardens, the buses and the joy of engaging in an array of activities with my sons.  These are the memories that flood me when reflect on the gratitude of living on this land.  It was interesting to me when I observed in some of the public discourse how some were struggling with the diverse postures that others were taking towards July 1st festivities, invocations of the necessity of gratitude were used by some celebrators to push back against other important difficult postures of abstaining or resisting that some individuals were choosing to take during our collective moment.

For some reason, I don’t and never have been able to understand how the string of images, sounds and scents that make up the experience of living on this land cannot naturally tie into a deep love and concern for Indigenous Peoples.  For me it would be in deep conflict and desecration of all the blessings that Creator has bestowed upon me and my children as guests of Turtle Island not to strive to understand that on July 1st and on every other day of the year my happiness and freedom is bound up with the realities and conditions of the Inuit, Metis and First Peoples of Canada.  It would make sense to me that shared experiences of lakes, side-road flower market-stands and hockey rinks would naturally extend over the generations to a practice of care and love for all humans inhabiting the land.  It is fascinating to me that some celebrators would question our gratitude as people taking up postures of abstaining or resisting as if true gratitude is not driven by holistic concern for this land.  I can’t imagine experiencing Lake Huron from teenage years to womanhood and not wondering about suffering of Barb Kentner in Thunder Bay as she waits to die from an injury after a targeted act of anti-Indigenous racist violence and the grief of her daughter.  Are we experiencing the same Lake Huron? Do you not feel the connection? I haven’t traveled as much as I would have loved to, having lived in relatively simple means this 20 years in Canada but recently I got a chance to see the West Coast and was awestruck by the juxtaposition of mountain, city and ocean enveloped in beautiful rain.  I also once did drive among winding jeweled towns on hills in Quebec by the St Laurence and saw wales emerging and submerging. Wasn’t this land we share created to cradle better lived experiences rather than unrepentant and ongoing cruel dehumanization of an entire People? If you can’t make the connection, were you ever taught to love this place, yourself, your children, Creator or anything at all? In my tradition, the requirement to sacrifice one’s own humanity to gain nationality is a form of idolatry.  I dream of the East Coast and try to not give up hope of affording to visit because I heard stories of thick fog and fairy-tale like cliffs, and even before knowing about Canada, sitting on the cement slabs among the purple flowers, I was introduced to what sounded like a magical P.E.I where another deep feeling little girl with red pigtails existed marginalized and full of imagination.  I wonder now if this little talkative, globally beloved, literary character who seemed full of conviction and care for justice, would she have wondered about Barb Kentner’s well-being in her last days of life or would her freckled-faced whiteness also render her silent and demand her humanity be limited?  Whether it is through imagination or travel, this land and the stories that have lived here are beautiful.  I have only been here for 20 years but I am so overwhelmed with gratitude and struck by the beauty of this place that it is impossible not to care about the oldest and ongoing lived experiences of communities on this land.  I don’t think one must be particularly special or good to make these connections.

My three-year-old walked in earlier this morning with the red maple leaf face paint still on his cheek. “Happy Canada Day! Happy Fireworks Day!”, he announced in a post celebration euphoria.  He forms another image that will settle into my memory of loving and belonging on this land.   And then I thought to myself, maybe it is a special combination of the Kenyan purple jacaranda flowers, the indigenous South African baritone singing mixed in with scenery of changing seasons from the rural Ontario school bus that results in a concoction of lived experience that makes it possible to link my humanity to those of people in far away places whose stories and struggles are printed on newspapers.   But sitting on the same bed where I birthed my sons, nine years after the first July 1st fireworks in our residence White Elm residence, I hope this is not the case. I hope not because for this traveler life seems to have come to a long stop station and the images that the three-year-old with his maple-leaf painted face will be exposed to will be more repetitive and will not likely expand many distant lands.  Yet my desire is for him to still be expanded enough to recognize and honor the humanity of even those whose stories have been pushed to the margins.  So, for all these reasons for me this year was hopeful because  I saw fellow settlers on social media choosing to want to approach Canada Day in myriad of ways that bent towards acknowledging the voices and experiences of the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island.  Abstaining, resisting, grieving, calls to decolonization, reconciliation and other forms of acknowledgment for me signaled a desire to grow into our humanity and nurture a true love for the land and the place we call home.

****Names of places, bodies of water and territories used in this post use Colonial Names.  I look forward to expanding my knowledge of traditional names of territories on land and bodies of water in Turtle Island.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

More than three years after Barbara Kentner's death, her sisters are hoping for justice in a case that hundreds of First Nations chiefs from across the country see as a test of Canada's commitment to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

Kentner, a 34-year-old mother and member of Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, died nearly six months after being struck by a trailer hitch thrown at her from a passing car.

The charge against Brayden Bushby, 21, was reduced from second-degree murder to manslaughter and aggravated assault earlier this year, sparking outrage from First Nations leaders. There is no mandatory minimum sentence for manslaughter in Canada unless it involves a firearm. If convicted, Bushby could face a sentence ranging from probation to life in prison.

"Barb was Barb. It's hard to explain your sister, you know?" Melissa Kentner said. "You fight. You argue. You love each other. She was always a loving, caring person. She always thought about others."

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada @onpoli