Amazon men in their 80s have the arteries of Americans in their 50s

Westerners could learn a lot about vascular health from the Tsimane in the Amazon, say researchers who report Bolivian rainforest inhabitants have the world’s lowest levels of age-related hardening of the arteries.

Source: Amazon men in their 80s have the arteries of Americans in their 50s – Health – CBC News

CBC News

By Amina Zafar

Mar 17, 2017

Lancet study shows diet low on processed carbs, saturated fats and active living boost heart health

A study in Friday’s issue of the medical journal The Lancet compares the vascular health of the Tsimane, a forager-horticulturalist population that hunts for wild, lean game, with the arteries of Westerners. (Michael Gurven)

The Tsimane living in the Amazon have the lowest reported levels of age-related hardening of the arteries in the world, say researchers who encourage Westerners to learn from these Bolivian rainforest inhabitants. 

Atherosclerosis was thought to be a natural part of aging. Even  Egyptian mummies have shown signs of plaque buildup in the arteries.

For the study in Friday’s medical journal The Lancet, cardiologists focused their low-radiation CT scanners on the Tsimane, a forager-horticulturalist population that eats mainly wild, lean game, plantain, rice and maize, and fruits and nuts.

The findings were presented Friday at the American College of Cardiology’s scientific meeting in Washington.

For a U.S. middle-aged man, the chance of having calcium in heart arteries is about equal to his age, and women in the U.S. trail that by 10 years, said study author Dr. Gregory S. Thomas, medical director of the Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in California.

Thomas didn’t believe anthropologists who have worked closely with the Tsimane for nearly 20 years when they told him they suspected Indigenous Brazilians had no age-related atherosclerosis, so researchers designed a study to test it out.

Anthropology Prof. Hillard Kaplan of the University of New Mexico and his team asked 705 adults averaging age 58 to travel for days by boat and SUV out of the rainforest, and get scanned for coronary blockages. They also had their weight, age, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood glucose and inflammation markers checked.

Most Tsimane live too far from a town that has a store to buy sugar or processed foods regularly. (Ben Trumble)

Kaplan said undertaking the study involved fostering a special relationship with the Tsimane over decades.

“They trust us that we really do care about their best interests. Our arrangement with the tribal council is that we provide medical assistance regardless of whether you’re involved in our study.”

Nearly nine in 10 Tsimane had no risk of heart disease (596 of 705 people, or 85 per cent), 13 per cent had low risk and three per cent had moderate or high risk, according to the Lancet study.

Among those 75 or older, nearly two-thirds (31 of 48, or 65 per cent) had almost no risk and eight per cent had moderate or high risk — the lowest recorded levels of coronary artery disease of any population, the researchers said.

Tsimane women typically walk more than 16,000 steps a day. (Courtesy Michael Gurven)

“We’re just thrilled with the results,” Thomas said, given its implications for slowing the progression of atherosclerosis.  

Thomas said he was so impressed with the findings that he said even he would start doubling the amount of exercise he does.

Source of pride 

The average man in the study does 17,000 steps a day and a woman does 16,000, mostly from walking to farm, hunt, fetch water and parent large families, Thomas said.

The typical American, meanwhile, executes 6,000 steps — the ideal for maximum health benefits is 10,000, he said.

It’s remarkable that the Tsimane’s rate of progression of aging-related atherosclerosis can be so slow in their 80s, Thomas and Kaplan said. 

The researchers found the average 80-year-old Tismane has the arteries of an American in his 50s.

“They’re changing slowly, but what we’re seeing is the beginnings of changes in their physiology,” Kaplan said.

About 17 per cent of their diet is wild game, such as peccary (a species of wild pig), monkey, rodents, deer and pheasant-like birds. Another seven per cent of their food intake is freshwater fish, including piranha and large catfish. They get the bulk of their other calories from plants.

While cause of death of Egyptian mummies isn’t clear, heart attacks are rare among Tsimane, said study co-author Michael Gurven, a professor of anthropology at the University of California Santa Barbara.

About seven per cent of the Tsimane diet is freshwater fish. (Jonathan Stieglitz)

“Lifestyle does matter,” Gurven said. “Take the big picture — what are the little things we can do that might make a difference? Some of them aren’t new, like not smoking. That’s a big one. But even in terms of what we eat, if we eliminated soda and eliminated sugar, that could go a long way potentially,” given how saturated fats and processed carbs seem to be dietary culprits for heart disease.

While highly processed foods now make up more than half of the average Canadian family’s food purchases, experts advise urgent changes to fight rising rates of obesity, including cooking wholesome ingredients from scratch with a close eye on portion sizes. 

Gurven’s suggestions to squeeze in more physical activity include:

• Take the stairs.
• Improvise a standing desk.
• Cut back on sedentary time.

Cardiologists not involved in the research agree up to 80 per cent of premature heart disease and stroke is preventable through lifestyle behaviours.

The Tsimane enjoy a vibrant culture with improving rates of death and infectious diseases, but often face discrimination for their lifestyle from others in the Bolivian society, the anthropologists said.

“When we present some of these types of findings, the Tsimane take pride in it,” Gurven said.

Canada lacks prevalence data nationally or provincially on atherosclerosis, according to Heart & Stroke, a non-profit charity. Statistics Canada reports more than 1,600 deaths per year from atherosclerosis.

In response to the mummy findings, the British Heart Foundation noted calcified arteries could also be caused by other ailments. 

Canada: 200,000 litres of oil spills onto First Nations land near Stoughton – Saskatchewan

A pipeline leak has spilled about 200,000 litres of oil near Stoughton, Sask. The breach occurred on First Nations land about 140 kilometres southeast of Regina.

Source: 200,000 litres of oil spills onto First Nations land near Stoughton – Saskatchewan – CBC News

CBC News

Jan 23, 2017

Saskatchewan government was notified of pipeline breach on Friday

Doug MacKnight of the province’s Ministry of the Economy said the pipeline is on reserve land belonging to the Ocean Man First Nation. He said it’s not clear how long land reclamation will take. (Radio-Canada)

About 200,000 litres of oil spilled near Stoughton, Sask., last week.

The pipeline breach occurred on First Nations land about 140 kilometres southeast of Regina. The spill covered an approximately 20-metre radius.

Some 200,000 litres of oil has spilled near Stoughton, Sask., the provincial government said Monday. (Government of Saskatchewan)

The provincial government was notified of the spill on Friday evening “as soon as the leak was detected,” a government email said. Media were notified Monday afternoon.

The pipeline was shut down when the breach was discovered, and the spill is fully contained. The source of the leak is not yet known. 

The oil did not enter any water sources but covered agricultural land, the email said. The site was described as a low-lying area with a frozen slough.

The spill has not affected air quality or wildlife as of yet, the government said.

Cleanup, led by Calgary-based Tundra Energy Marketing Inc., began on Saturday. As of Monday, 170,000 litres of oil had been recovered, the email said.

Doug MacKnight, assistant deputy minister with the Economy Ministry’s petroleum and natural gas division, said there are multiple pipelines in the area of the leak. Until the site is excavated Wednesday, it will not be known which one is responsible. However, the Tundra-operated pipeline is thought to be the source. 

Reclamation work

Chief Connie Big Eagle of the Ocean Man First Nation visited the site last weekend. Representatives from Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada have taken the federal lead in the response.

The spill involved 200 cubic metres of oil, or about 1,260 barrels of oil. (Google Maps)

“The first phase of getting the oil out of there should happen fairly quickly, but how long it’ll take to bring it back, that’s some reclamation work that’s going to have to get done,” MacKnight said. 

Typically the company operating the pipeline is required to remediate and reclaim the land back to its original state, MacKnight said. Any compensation would have to be discussed between the federal government, the company operating the pipeline and the band.

The spill comes seven months after a 225,000-litre Husky oil spill, in which some entered the North Saskatchewan River. 

It is unclear if there has been an inspection done on the pipeline in recent months, MacKnight said. If there had been any inspection, responsibility would be company’s, he added.

If Nature Is Sacred, Capitalism Is Wicked

Source: If Nature Is Sacred, Capitalism Is Wicked | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

Common Dreams

by Jake Johnson

October 03, 2016

The conflict between capitalism and the environment is the fight of the century. (Image: Flood Wall Street)

In his remarkable study When Corporations Rule the World, David Korten recounts a meeting he attended ahead of the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The meeting was led, Korten notes, by indigenous leaders who were anxious about the direction in which global environmental policy was being steered. They were also, quite justifiably, worried about who was doing the steering.

“In the conference’s preparatory meetings,” Korten writes, “corporatists…proposed that to save nature we must put a price on her.”

“Under capitalism, everything is a business opportunity — catastrophes, from tsunamis to wars, are no exception.”

It’s a familiar story: Capitalism, we are often told, can be made green. Incentives can be established. The corporations previously leading the way in pollution, plunder, and exploitation can, with a few adjustments, become the world’s leaders in the development of clean energy and pave the way to a sustainable future.

As is often the case, it is those who have seen up close the harm done by corporate greed who most quickly see through the facade.

“These indigenous leaders recognized that this proposal would accelerate the monopolization by the richest among us of the resources essential to human life,” Korten observed. “Their position was clear and unbending. Earth is our Sacred Mother and she is not for sale. Her care is our sacred responsibility. Her fruits must be equitably and responsibly shared by all.”

This conflict between capitalism and the environment is not, of course, uncharted terrain. Naomi Klein, in her bestselling book This Changes Everything, argues that an economic order predicated on the relentless pursuit of profit is incompatible with a world in which natural resources are used with the necessary care and restraint.

It truly is, as the subtitle of Klein’s book notes, “capitalism versus the climate.” Terrifyingly, capitalism is winning.

Under capitalism, everything is a business opportunity — catastrophes, from tsunamis to wars, are no exception. In fact, as Klein documented in her earlier book The Shock Doctrine, disasters are not viewed by business leaders as problems to be solved; rather, they are seen as circumstances of which they must take advantage.

But capitalism does not merely wait on the sidelines for these opportunities to arise. “An economic system that requires constant growth, while bucking almost all serious attempts at environmental regulation, generates a steady stream of disasters all on its own, whether military, ecological or financial,” Klein notes.

Disasters of the kind Klein describes have become commonplace during the neoliberal period, in which markets have been deregulated, public services have been privatized, governments have become unresponsive to the needs of the citizenry, and trade accords have empowered corporations to run roughshod over sovereign nations in pursuit of profit. The exploitation of the global poor in the process is a given — as Arundhati Roy observed in a piece condemning the government of India for sanctioning the displacement of indigenous communities in an effort to clear the way for corporate mining projects, it’s now just “business as usual.”

“The battle lines,” she wrote, “are clearly drawn.”

Similar such cases, in which poor people are seen as disposable and their communities as capitalism’s waste dumps, abound.

In North Texas, the “birthplace of modern hydraulic fracturing,” residents have been suffering the consequences of living near the operations of the oil and gas industry for years — consequences that include, but aren’t limited to, heart problems, breathing troubles, and birth defects.

“I’ve been trying to sell my house,” one resident told the Center for Public Integrity. “I’ve got to get out of here or I’m going to die.”

In 2015, Scientific American reported an unsurprising fact, by now almost a truism: It is the poor, disproportionately poor people of color, who have been forced to bear the brunt of the often devastating ills imposed by fracking. Unsurprising, and far from new: “Residents in these poor counties have been under assault for generations,” Alex Lotorto of Energy Justice said.

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, has been thoroughly documented, and rightly so. Less prominent has been coverage of East Chicago, Indiana, where for decades residents’ homes have rested on lead-contaminated soil. As the New York Times reported in August, “the companies responsible for the contamination” were sued by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2009, but this is little comfort for the more than 1,000 people — including over 600 children — now forced to find a new place to live.

It is impossible to quantify the harm done in such circumstances; but, needless to say, those responsible for the harm harbor few qualms about their actions. One executive reportedly said aloud what most already knew was the case: Poor communities are intentionally targeted because they lack the resources to mount effective resistance.

Thankfully, we have seen in recent weeks that this doesn’t have to be the case — that, when the opposition is sufficiently organized, corporate plunder can be obstructed. Though under-reported in mainstream outlets, the fight over the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline provides a case in point.

North Dakota’s Standing Rock Sioux tribe, joined by many other tribes and activists, has for weeks engaged in direct action in response to Energy Transfer Partners’ desire to move forward with the project, arguing that it would place at risk both the water supply and sacred land. State officials have responded with striking intensity.

“In recent weeks, the state has militarized my reservation, with road blocks and license-plate checks, low-flying aircraft and racial profiling of Indians,” wrote David Archambault II, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. “The local sheriff and the pipeline company have both called our protest ‘unlawful,’ and Gov. Dalrymple has declared a state of emergency.”

Last week, as Common Dreams reported, over twenty protesters were arrested in “a military-style raid” which “interrupted a peaceful prayer ceremony.”

Far from dispiriting, such a vicious response to nonviolent demonstrations of this kind show how threatening organized protest is to corporations and their partners in government; though they claim to fear chaos, disorder, and violence, what corporate forces really fear is mass solidarity expressed through courageous acts of civil disobedience.

“Radical change cannot take place in the absence of mass anti-capitalist movements that recognize the interplay between economic interests and environmental degradation.”

Of course, the protests at Standing Rock are not isolated acts, and they are, as Sarah Jaffe observes, “bigger than one pipeline.”

“We all have similar struggles, where this dependency this world has on fossil fuels is affecting and damaging Mother Earth,” David Archambault II told Jaffe. “It is the indigenous peoples who are standing up with that spirit, that awakening of that spirit and saying, ‘It is time to protect what is precious to us.'”

Never has such action been more necessary.

The science tells us that we have reached a critical moment; as Naomi Klein has argued, “no gradual, incremental options are now available to us.” Researchers agree, and some have joined the call for “radical change” that goes far beyond the agreements reached in Paris.

But such radical change cannot take place in the absence of mass anti-capitalist movements that recognize the interplay between economic interests and environmental degradation. The leaders of the struggle for a sustainable, equitable future will not, therefore, be corporate executives and billionaire philanthropists, with their deep ideological commitments to the economic order that so enriched them and their businesses. Rather, leading the way will be the indigenous communities that have for so long been forced to endure relentless dispossession in the name of business.

As Noam Chomsky has observed, “The countries that have driven indigenous populations to extinction or extreme marginalization are racing toward destruction.” And, he adds, “countries with large and influential indigenous populations are well in the lead in seeking to preserve the planet.”

If “water is life,” as the Sioux saying goes, an economic system that poisons water for profit is life’s contradiction — it is a system of destruction, a “suicide economy,” that must be dismantled.

“Ultimately, the ‘success’ or otherwise of the Paris climate talks appears unlikely to challenge the fundamental dynamics underlying the climate crisis. Dramatic decarbonisation based around limits upon consumption, economic growth, and corporate influence are not open for discussion,” conclude scholars Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg. “Until this changes, the dominance of corporate capitalism will ensure the continued rapid unraveling of our habitable climate.”

Jake Johnson is an independent writer. Follow him on Twitter: @wordsofdissent

60% of First Nation children on reserve live in poverty, institute says – Aboriginal

Come on Justin, enough is enough, let’s deal with this once and for all. This is a stain on Canada’s psyche.

Indigenous children in Canada are more than twice as likely to live in poverty than non-Indigenous kids, according to new findings released Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Source: 60% of First Nation children on reserve live in poverty, institute says – Aboriginal – CBC

http://www.cbc.ca

By Kristy Kirkup, The Canadian Press

May 17, 2016

Indigenous children in Canada more than twice as likely to live in poverty than non-Indigenous kids

Poverty rates are highest for First Nations kids on reserves in Manitoba at 76 per cent and Saskatchewan at 69 per cent, according to a new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. (Getty Images)

Indigenous children in Canada are more than twice as likely to live in poverty than non-Aboriginal kids, according to new findings released Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The study, which delves into poverty rates on reserves and in the territories as measured by income, documents the dire conditions being experienced by status First Nations children, including 60 per cent of those who live on reserves.

Poverty rates are highest for First Nations kids on reserves in Manitoba at 76 per cent and Saskatchewan at 69 per cent, the study found.

The rates of poverty on-reserve worsened between 2005 and 2010, the researchers found, citing long-standing barriers such as underfunded schools and child welfare services that stand in the way of kids achieving their full potential.

Senior economist David Macdonald, who co-authored the report, said the figures clearly show deplorable rates of child poverty on reserves in Canada.

“One of the interesting things is that despite the fact that we have seen strong economic growth in the 2000s in Alberta in particular, as well as Saskatchewan and Manitoba, we are just not seeing that filter down to the on-reserve level,” he said.

“We are to some degree seeing it trickle down to the off-reserve population … but we are just not seeing the benefits on reserve.”

In order to come up with its figures, the institute updated its findings from a previous report examining child poverty rates based on the 2006 census, using data collected during the 2011 National Household Survey.

“It is important to point out that Statistics Canada reports on poverty rates do not include people who live on a reserve or people living in the territories where roughly half of all Inuit people are located,” the report said.

“Because this data is excluded, official poverty rates in Canada are lower than they would be if these populations were counted. Poverty rates for Indigenous people, especially status First Nations and Inuit, are reported to be much lower than a full count would indicate is truly the case.”

Study co-author Daniel Wilson said he is hopeful measuring and reporting on the problem will help to end “policy-making in a void of information.”

The study also contains immediate suggestions for a poverty reduction plan for reserves including calls to improve direct income support and bolster employment prospects.

“These first steps will not eliminate the enormous gap in circumstance between children in Canada but they may slow or reserve a worsening trend of increasing poverty among First Nations children on reserve,” the report said.

“If we are to restore some hope to communities suffering from a pandemic of adolescent suicide, it is one place to start.”

The Liberal budget tabled in March made substantial investments on housing, clean water and education for First Nations, the study noted, but the bulk of that money is not scheduled to be spent for a few years yet.

“It will take some time to tell whether these initiatives sufficiently combat chronic overcrowding in houses, boil water advisories and substandard schooling,” the report said.

“However, the investment signals a welcome change in approach to Indigenous issues.”

Justin Trudeau on Indigenous Issues in Canada: The VICE News Interview (9 min)

May 2, 2016

Dozens of isolated indigenous communities in Canada have recently declared states of emergency due to suicide epidemics, unclean water, and a lack of adequate infrastructure.

Amid these crises, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a historic visit last week to Shoal Lake 40, an isolated First Nations reserve that has been without clean water for two decades. It is extremely rare for sitting prime ministers to visit reserves, and the trip, organized with the local chief and council of Shoal Lake 40 in coordination with VICE and the office of the prime minister, will be part of an upcoming VICELAND documentary on the issues plaguing indigenous communities.

Trudeau spent several hours with the residents of Shoal Lake 40 before speaking to VICE News about the government’s complex relationship with First Nations, and what his new Liberal government says it will do to help solve the many problems the communities face.

Read “How VICE Brought Canada’s Prime Minister to a Remote Indigenous Community“ – http://bit.ly/1Y3se9B

Read “Justin Trudeau: ‘We Have Discriminated Against Indigenous Children for Generations'” – http://bit.ly/1SXFaiW

Canada’s Attawapiskat crisis: ‘We’ve failed First Nations youth’

Source: Attawapiskat crisis: ‘We’ve failed First Nations youth’ – Al Jazeera English

http://www.aljazeera.com

Megan O’Toole

18 Apr 2016

 Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins spoke with Al Jazeera about the recent wave of indigenous suicide attempts.

A march and candlelight vigil was held in Attawapiskat after 11 people attempted suicide in a single night [Chris Wattie/Reuters]

The Canadian First Nations community of Attawapiskat declared a state of emergency this month after 11 people tried to kill themselves in a single night, bringing the total number of suicide attempts since September to more than 100.

The spike this month snapped the world’s attention to the tragedy unfolding in the remote coastal community of around 1,500 people in northeastern Ontario. The crisis has since deepened, with another five children reportedly attempting suicide on Friday, leading local MP Charlie Angus to denounce “a spiralling situation that is taking us into unknown territory”.

Although the surge is alarming, the crisis itself is not new. For decades, Attawapiskat and other First Nations communities throughout Canada have experienced high rates of suicide, amid long-standing social problems that include systemic poverty, family violence, educational failures and substance abuse.

Al Jazeera spoke with Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins, who recently visited Attawapiskat, about why life in the community has degenerated to this extent, and what is being done to address the problem.

Al Jazeera: Why has the situation in Attawapiskat escalated to the point where more than 100 people have attempted suicide in a matter of months?

Eric Hoskins:  There’s a whole set of circumstances – whether it’s inadequate housing, or a lack of income opportunities, or the massive and continuing negative impact of the residential schools saga – that have all contributed to making this situation that we’re finding today.

We’ve been investing in mental health services, but part of the challenge has been that for the last decade, the level of coordination with our federal partners and the commitment from the federal government has not been what we believe it should have been, so that made it more challenging for us to approach this in a coordinated way.

The resources that we’ve provided to date at all levels of government have been clearly inadequate. We’ve failed the youth in First Nations communities, particularly those in the remote, northern, fly-in communities. And that’s not unique to Ontario – that’s something that we all share nationally as well.

Al Jazeera: When you visited Attawapiskat last week, what was the mood like?

Hoskins: It’s clearly a community in crisis. We heard a cry for help coming from the leadership representing this community.

On the one hand, we saw frontline healthcare workers who were clearly overwhelmed. We found a band council and a local chief who were doing everything they could to manage this enormous challenge and crisis, but they were also clearly exhausted and in desperate need of support.

We spent a few hours with the band council and the local chief, and also with dozens of youth from the community, which was incredibly impactful. We heard from the mother of a 14-year-old girl who tragically took her life last October. It was very moving and very distressing, but it was also incredibly empowering.

It was amazing to hear from the youth, who were obviously in great distress and very anxious and concerned – but despite that, they knew where the community and themselves needed to go. They knew what kinds of support they needed, and mapped out a plan for us that they believed would take the community from a place of hopelessness to a place of hope for the future.

Al Jazeera: What was involved in that plan, and what concrete steps will the province take to help alleviate the fundamental social and economic problems plaguing Attawapiskat?

Hoskins: This is really challenging, and it goes far beyond health – it’s the social determinants of health.

In the immediate short term, we announced $2m in funding, some going to youth supports, and the majority going to a team of 13 health-care workers to deal with this surge and provide immediate support to the individuals, but also their families, who have reached the point where they attempted to take their own lives. 

But almost all of our conversations were focused on the medium and long term. It’s become clear that there’s a need for all levels of government and not-for-profit organisations to do a better job of coordinating what we’re doing together so it has a maximum impact.

There’s no question that’s going to require additional resources to deal with everything from access to clean water, to decent housing – because the housing is so inadequate, it’s dilapidated, and there’s mould, and they’re crowded and the windows are boarded up – to education, to income support and revenue sharing. It’s important that First Nations communities be able to benefit from the resource extraction and economic activity that occurs in their areas.

The number one request of youth was to have a youth centre and to have programmes and activities that would help them reconnect with the land and their culture and their history, so we’re looking at that.

Obviously none of this is going to happen overnight, but it’s almost like the stars have aligned, so we have a responsibility to not get caught up in jurisdictional discussions, which have stopped action in the past. We must come together, all of us at all levels, and start to chip away at these seemingly enormous challenges.

Al Jazeera: On the federal side, First Nations representatives have called for a national strategy to combat indigenous suicide. Do you support this proposal, and what would that look like?

Hoskins: I think that’s a great idea. It speaks to the reality that this is regrettably present in First Nations reserves right across this country, particularly in those northern, remote, fly-in reserves. I wholeheartedly support a national strategy to look at this in all its aspects, alongside the social determinants, such as housing and economics.

This is about putting supports in place to prevent young people from the pain being so bad that suicide is something they would actually consider.

Al Jazeera: Considering that the treatment of First Nations communities has been an ongoing problem in Canada for decades, why should anyone be convinced that after the Attawapiskat story fades from the headlines, anything will substantively change?

Hoskins: My perspective on this is that this is such a tremendous moral and ethical and historic obligation. There’s no guarantee that this time will be different, but if those of us who believe we have an opportunity, as well as an obligation, collect that fortitude to move forward, I truly believe we can begin to make the progress that’s so necessary.

But when you look at the conditions, Canada is sixth on the human development index; First Nations communities are number 63. The conditions are so appalling and so inadequate. We have a moral and historic responsibility to address that.

It’s easy to look back at the failure it has been, but it can’t prevent us from trying to find that resolve to hopefully make this time different than the past.

This has really captured Canada’s attention, and I hope it is that catalyst to make us realize not just how serious and in crisis many of the communities are, but to make us finally say we can do this if we work together and bring the resources forward.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Follow Megan O’Toole on Twitter: @megan_otoole

Source: Al Jazeera

John Pilger: Australia’s Day for secrets, flags and cowards

Source: John Pilger: Australia’s Day for secrets, flags & cowards — Secret History — Sott.net

With permission of

http://www.sott.net

John Pilger
Global Research
Thu, 21 Jan 2016

On 26 January, one of the saddest days in human history will be celebrated in Australia. It will be “a day for families”, say the newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Flags will be dispensed at street corners and displayed on funny hats. People will say incessantly how proud they are.

For many, there is relief and gratitude. In my lifetime, non-indigenous Australia has changed from an Anglo-Irish society to one of the most ethnically diverse on earth. Those we used to call “New Australians” often choose 26 January, “Australia Day”, to be sworn in as citizens. The ceremonies can be touching. Watch the faces from the Middle East and understand why they clench their new flag.

It was sunrise on 26 January so many years ago when I stood with Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians and threw wreaths into Sydney Harbour. We had climbed down to one of the perfect sandy coves where others had stood as silhouettes, watching as the ships of Britain’s “First Fleet” dropped anchor on 26 January, 1788. This was the moment the only island continent on earth was taken from its inhabitants; the euphemism was “settled”. It was, wrote Henry Reynolds, one of few honest Australian historians, one of the greatest land grabs in world history. He described the slaughter that followed as “a whispering in our hearts”.

The original Australians are the oldest human presence. To the European invaders, they did not exist because their continent had been declared terra nullius: empty land. To justify this fiction, mass murder was ordained. In 1838, the Sydney Monitor reported: “It was resolved to exterminate the whole race of blacks in that quarter.” This referred to the Darug people who lived along the great Hawkesbury River not far from Sydney. With remarkable ingenuity and without guns, they fought an epic resistance that remains almost a national secret. In a land littered with cenotaphs honouring Australia’s settler dead in mostly imperial wars, not one stands for those warriors who fought and fell defending Australia.

This truth has no place in the Australian consciousness. Among settler nations with indigenous populations, apart from a facile “apology” in 2008, only Australia has refused to come to terms with the shame of its colonial past. A Hollywood film, Soldier Blue, in 1970 famously inverted racial stereotypes and gave Americans a glimpse of the genocide in their own mythical “settlement”. Almost half a century later, it is fair to say an equivalent film would never be made in Australia.

© freedocumentaries.org

In 2014, when my own film, Utopia, which told the story of the Australian genocide, sought a local distributor, I was advised by a luminary in the business: “No way I could distribute this. The audiences wouldn’t accept it.”

He was wrong — up to a point. When Utopia opened in Sydney a few days before 26 January, under the stars on vacant land in an Indigenous inner-city area known as The Block, more than 4,000 people came, the majority non-Indigenous. Many had traveled from right across the continent. Indigenous leaders who had appeared in the film stood in front of the screen and spoke in “language”: their own. Nothing like it had happened before. Yet, there was no press. For the wider community, it did not happen. Australia is a murdochracy, dominated by the ethos of a man who swapped his nationality for the Fox Network in the US.

The star Indigenous AFL footballer Adam Goodes wrote movingly to the Sydney Morning Herald demanding that “the silence is broken”. “Imagine,” he wrote, “watching a film that tells the truth about the terrible injustices committed against your people, a film that reveals how Europeans, and the governments that have run our country, have raped, killed and stolen from your people for their own benefit.

“Now imagine how it feels when the people who benefited most from those rapes, those killings and that theft – the people in whose name the oppression was done – turn away in disgust when someone seeks to expose it.”

Goodes himself had already broken a silence when he stood against racist abuse thrown at him and other Indigenous sportspeople. This courageous, talented man retired from football last year as if under a cloud — with, wrote one commentator, “the sporting nation divided about him”. In Australia, it is respectable to be “divided” on opposing racism.

On Australia Day 2016 – Indigenous people prefer Invasion Day or Survival Day – there will be no acknowledgement that Australia’s uniqueness is its first people, along with an ingrained colonial mentality that ought to be an abiding embarrassment in an independent nation. This mentality is expressed in a variety of ways, from unrelenting political grovelling at the knee of a rapacious United States to an almost casual contempt for Indigenous Australians, an echo of “kaffir”- abusing South Africans.

Apartheid runs through Australian society. Within a short flight from Sydney, Indigenous people live the shortest of lives. Men are often dead before they reach 45. They die from Dickensian diseases, such as rheumatic heart disease. Children go blind from trachoma, and deaf from otitis media, diseases of poverty. A doctor told me:

“I wanted to give a patient an anti-inflammatory for an infection that would have been preventable if living conditions were better, but I couldn’t treat her because she didn’t have enough food to eat and couldn’t ingest the tablets. I feel sometimes as if I’m dealing with similar conditions as the English working class of the beginning of the industrial revolution.”

The racism that allows this in one of the most privileged societies on earth runs deep. In the 1920s, a “Protector of Aborigines” oversaw the theft of mixed race children with the justification of “breeding out the colour”. Today, record numbers of Indigenous children are removed from their homes and many never see their families again. On 11 February, an inspiring group called Grandmothers Against Removals will lead a march on Federal Parliament in Canberra, demanding the return of the stolen children.

Australia is the envy of European governments now fencing in their once-open borders while beckoning fascism, as in Hungary. Refugees who dare set sail for Australia in overcrowded boats have long been treated as criminals, along with the “smugglers” whose hyped notoriety is used by the Australian media to distract from the immorality and criminality of their own government. The refugees are confined behind barbed wire on average for well over a year, some indefinitely, in barbaric conditions that have led to self-harm, murder, suicide and mental illness. Children have not been spared. An Australian Gulag run by sinister private security firms includes concentration camps on the remote Pacific islands of Manus and Nauru. People often have no idea when they might be freed, if at all.

The Australian military — whose derring-do is the subject of uncritical tomes that fill the shelves of airport bookstalls — has played an important part in “turning back the boats” of refugees fleeing wars, such as in Iraq, launched and prolonged by the Americans and their Australian mercenaries. No irony, let alone responsibility, is acknowledged in this cowardly role.

On this Australia Day, the “pride of the services” will be on display. This pride extends to the Australian Immigration Department, which commits people to its Gulag for “offshore processing”, often arbitrarily, leaving them to grieve and despair and rot. Last week it was announced that Immigration officials had spent $400,000 on medals which they will award their heroic selves. Put out more flags.

For more by John Pilger, visit www.johnpilger.com

Notes

On January 26, Indigenous Australians and their supporters will march from The Block in Redfern, Sydney, to the Sydney Town Hall. The march will begin at 10 am.

On Thursday February 11, Grandmothers Against Removals will address a rally in Canberra. This will start at 12 noon at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, then march to Parliament House.

Comment: Australia Day or Invasion Day?