excited?

This song describes so much in my life right now. If I talk to you on a regular basis than you would understand what is going to happen in a couple of days. I am going home back to beautiful Toronto. I already have a love-hate-relationship, but this year unlike any before will be most unusual; it will be the first time in my life that I will be visiting my parents in different households. They aren’t divorced, I don’t know what they want to call it, but it basically is. It makes me angry just thinking about how things are going to be. For a while I had my man mask on that things like this wouldn’t effect me, but I can’t lie to myself anymore, it already has.

So while studying for my French Exam (which is tomorrow) I was taking a break from studying and chilling out and listening to my ipod when this song came on. Turmoil that is upsetting is the best way to describe the situation. This song describes so much in my life right now. I hope you enjoy it as much as I am- it’s on repeat.

all nighter

I will never being an all nighter for a while. I did one on Wednesday night and literally didn’t sleep at all, it made me feel like a ghost on Thursday. I tried to get my Cuba paper done for my politics class done but it didn’t work. I e-mailed the prof before class and spoke to him in class and he gave me a week extension. Which is good and bad, but now he is going to expect exceptional work, but I am up to the challenge.

 

I have a final exam for my history of India class today and will need to study my tail off. I might be going back home on as early as Wednesday, we will see though.

the end,

The only fundamental constant in life is the self. Everything else changes. We get attached to things outside of our self and that causes friction. I strive to accept change and embrace it.

The end of most of my first term classes is actually just the start of new ones, but for one class in particular INDG 305 my project will be continued and I am excitied about it. Last week I presented to the class what my findings were. It was not what I wanted to show them for a multiple reasons, but I think it still got the message across. I showed the class the covers for the dvds that I had watched one was about the “Ogopogo” or “Natikia.” I don’t have that DVD infront of me and I think I have mispelt it- sorry about that. It is going to take a while for me to learn the spelling for a language that just now I am get properly introduced to. The other dvd was about how important woman are to the life of women in the West Bank peoples. A class mate of my the day in our class asked me if I am going to look at this from a purely Kelowna lense or if I am going to look at this through an Okanagan or an Okanken perspective, and at the time I said I was only going to look at this from a Kelowna perspective. But the more I think I about it the more crucial I think that I should do this for the entire Sylix nation which is hundreds of kilometres long and goes into the US. Baby steps- I am only one person after all, and I find it hard enough by public transit to get on the West side.

The other day I picked up a new book at our library book called, “75 Report of the Okanagan Histortical Society,” and guess what? Well I know you know what I am going to say it has literally no reference to the Sylix tribe. I looked in the table of contents and it only talks about the white history of Kelowna. What the heck, is the entire Okanagan as blantent about its history as Kelowna is? Going back to my presentation, I talked about a couple of films that were about “Okanagan history” and the same thing, no reference or misreferencing the natives in this “beautiful city.” The more and more I think about how beautiful this place really is I continue to get dogged down by the mis telling of history.

Me personally, I have had a lot of friends that have come here for 1 or 2 years and then have got the grades what they need and transfer to Vancouver. Myself I was also originally thinking about doing that, but I then decided not to. I wonder why, because there the history is easier to cover up since it is often referred to as the “best place in the world to live.” Where as in the Okanagan this is the bible belt of BC, and is SUV country. I hope through the discovering of what is known but is not taught about will make UBCo a a better place to be educated at, Kelowna a better place to live- likewise with the Okangan and make BC the place were progress in proper retelling of history takes place, and not lies.

 

my dad’s friend

My dad’s friend asked me what my project for indigenous justice he asked me some interesting questions,

 

He brought an interesting notion that the change of my hometown Toronto’s identity is changing rapidly. The “experts” say that within a 10-20 year span White people will be the minority. He told me he studied a couple years at UOFT (University of Toronto) and studied sociology he is a good family friend.*

He asked me to tell him my project in 20 words… with what he believed to be key questions,

Kelowna

• maybe the indians / indigenous ppl were here /there first?

• whats the history of Kelowna?

• when was first white man?

• did the hudsons bay co come there?

• did the railroad/fur trade , logging?

• what role does waterway play landscape /

• is it K in a valley

• whats the mayor like?

• male female/ has there ever been a female mayor/

• when was first mayor elected?

• how many people?

• how do you define the term identity?

• what portion of popln is native and what white and other?

   

  indians were here first. Its’ a known fact. The firest white man came here was a missionary sent from France, in the late 19th century. the thought of fur trade greatly diversified the valley and interrupted the traditional being. Hudsons Bay Company was not here directly but the Pacific fur trading company was… logging still plays a very big part of kelowna’s economy, there is a fur trade downtown. Water is essential to humans surviving and so in the traditional way of living there is said to be this majestic spirit that lives in the lake (lake Okanagan). It can be concluded in todays terms that without the survival of this spirit water will dissappear and so will humans living. Water in the lake comes from mountain runoff and as a result the water is gone in a couple hundred of years, the mayor was female (very intrigued by native culture) but recently there was this new mayor elected who is said to be a lot more conservative, cranky old man. Kelowna was offically made into a city in 1905. there is this film named Terra Incongita that was made for Kelowna’s 100th birthday but did not make the short list for the celebration of the cities birthday. It was readapted for the cities benefit. Inidgenous people make up a large minority of Kelowna’s population, after all Indigenous people through out all of Canada is reasserrting itself in canada’s population with reproduction and culture. Kelowna is a city the size of Barrie or so.

  Being 4 hours away from Vancouver, it is the biggest city in this valley with a population of 150,000 indigenous population.. I don’t know what the percentage of are native but there is the native indengious and there is also a large population of Metis. The entire valley has a large population from India more particular Sikhs community.

 

*Some of these notions have been already  been repeated but I feel like repeating them*

reflection, meeting with the (fromer)mayor

(This was started on Wednesday- so keep in mind the delay.)

Sitting in a starbucks- with an earl grey tea and christmas music playing in the background. *

Today i strolled into the mayors office right on time- right at 9’oclock. I told them I was Logan Schunk and I had a meeting with Mayor Sheppard, the secretary to whom I had been sending a couple of e-mails back and forth said “oh Hi I am Jan.” She was stressed you could tell. I wonder if she lost her job as well, since the re-election of an old and often hated face back as mayor of Kelowna. Jan asked almost immeditately I would like coffee or tea, to which I replied no thank-you. Then I sat down and the secretary went into the office and told the mayor that I was here. It was only a couple of minutes then the mayor came out and greeted herself to me. She again asked me if I wanted tea or coffee (I really did) but being pilote I said no thank-you. So we sat down in the informal desk away from the clutter of her computer and her work space. Though right beside her was a chair that had a bag on it. Inside this bag you could see things that once used to be on the wall like childrens drawing but had since been removed. I wasn’t aware of it but she told me she was just going to be mayor for another 2 weeks. I told her my project and she was like oh wow, maybe you should talk to the mayor of the West side since they are directly reflected by the WFN, right away though I told her though that I will be looking at how Kelowna’s protrayed and the history that is taught of this place and how the simplistic history of Kelowna has been borrowed and stolen by the indigenous peoples. To which she said that its not really the responsibility of the municipal (city) level government to enforce such policies but rather the provincial and the federal governments. I came up that the cities reinforce what the provinces and the federal government put through in legislature. She said that is true, but the only problem with that argument is that there is laws that have been in law since the early days of Confederation. Indian Act section 91(24) comes to mind. If you know of other laws, please do share with me…

She seemed rushed but before our 45 minute talk ended she handed me a book entitled “Kelowna: A Pictorial History.” I have yet had an opporunity to look at it but assuming it is from  the Okanagan museum it probably misportraies Indigenous peoples and puts the settler society as the all being and superior race. I will read it and find out and let you know. All in all I would say the interview that I had with her was well worth it, I learned little but atleast I was able to meet someone in her position. She is regarded many in the community to be a lot more Liberal than the up and coming mayor.. For those of you who are interested in reading more about what her platform was etc, here it is, http://www.kelowna.ca/CM/page525.aspx

She told me if I ever had more questions about anything she would be willing to meet in the near future. Now I’d like to talk to the new mayor. Though at this pace this probably won’t happen until After the New Year. I can only visualize what he thinks about my project, it’ll be a lot like this, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8915179/Russian-newsreader-claims-that-Barack-Obama-finger-incident-was-misunderstanding.html. But I have to keep an open mind so time will ultimately decide this.

*It’s already the tail end of November and I am already kind of sick of Christmas music*

lacking behind

T’is crunch time in the world of academia . Therefore, that would explain the lack of posting on my blog as of late. Though in a day or so the empty space on this website will soon be overwhelmed with blogs. So prepare yourself. In the meantime, here is a video to keep yourself busy, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2SUaoVy_iU

 

Cheers

Link

it really is amazing

Can’t wait to make to a documentary like that,

I forgot to mention,

I have a meeting with the (former) mayor tomorrow 9am. She might have great resources for me to reach with for my on-going vidoe documentary and coming closer to “me-search.” Will update everyone tomorrow about it, I wonder if she’ll let me interview her and record it.

Where did the time go?

“The Search for Ogopogo – the lake demon – Continues

The original intent of this blog was to address my lack of weekly writings for my Indigenous class-305, but now it has expanded and included much more.
This was an original essay that I started writing on Monday November 14,2011 but I have since edited and expanded on,

I did not want this to happen, nor did I want it to take place (not writing weekly journals for INDG 305). However, now that it has I will write all the time. I believe it has occurred for a couple of combination of factors; not being the best at writing which I was afraid of the criticism by others. Everyone has pride, and I was afraid that my pride would be tarnished, but after putting myself in the shoes of others I have realized that I have nothing to lose. The only way to get better is by practising and taking risks. Putting yourself out there and having others either say they hate or they love your writing. Just like the way they do in the Indigenous community, for instance in a West Bank First Nation documentary it says, In the continuing changing world the voice of indigenous women has been undermined… but are very important in the stories… we need to listen. The thing is though, there aren’t very many people who understands this, as a result we are continuing living questioning each other beliefs instead why don’t take the time to understand each other better and then perhaps incorporate our identities and belief systems to the ones that are already established.

victory rose

Today in my Indigenous justice class we watched this documentary called,

“When your hands are tied.” The film takes place on a first nations land in the South of the United States (near Phoenix).  If you have never seen it I totally recommended it. It gives great insight into how Indigenous people in the U.S. are re-building themselves and gives great insight into life into the community of a community of this sort. It talks about how Inidgenous communities are adopting what the mass society uses in this case, rap music and adopting it to spread their message for their people. If the settler community was capable of understanding this that they are the only ones that don’t get it, but yet they are the ones that are the problem then perhaps there would be better understanding between the two groups. There are many things that I found interesting from the celebration of when a woman turns into a woman to the image of men needing to look a certain way. This is all interesting in the sense that even though one does not try to be but is pressured by society. For my project there was a gentlemen sittind down he talked about how there is only 1 history, only 1 story, and the people who have manifested this are the ones that have been hurt. I will need to re-watch it again. Again, I totally recommend it to anyone.