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It’s been a lonely year for many. Many relationships have been tested, undergoing great stress in confined conditions with diminished finances. Often, they have broken down, leaving people even more alone, with the accompanying depression and other mental-health problems.
It’s getting warmer outside, and I’ve taken the time to get my deck chairs out to sit under the warmth of the sun. After a strange winter of seeing the inside my house all the time due to the pandemic restrictions, it feels good to be under a clear blue sky again in the backyard.
As the pandemic tide rises on the third wave of Covid’s newest strain, it makes me think of something I wrote a year ago. I mentioned that the virus would evolve into different variants, and guess what? I was right.
It’s remarkable how some people in decision-making positions can be so tone-deaf to the public conversation. In Quebec, we’ve seen the furor over police abuse of Indigenous women in Val-d’Or, the resulting Viens commission report, and the shocking story of Joyce Echaquan dying in a Joliette hospital as she listened to racist slurs from the nurses whose job it was to treat her.
A few months after the death of Joyce Echaquan, Mireille Ndjomouo, a 44-year-old Black woman, posted a shocking video on Facebook from the Charles-Le Moyne Hospital in Longueuil on Montreal’s South Shore.
It’s been several days in isolation as I sit here surfing YouTube and trying to figure out what to watch. I’ve eaten about everything on the restaurant menu several times as I try not go stir crazy and jump out the window into the inviting snow outside.
Attawapiskat is mourning the loss of two Elders who were deeply loved and admired by many in the community.
The “personhood” granted to municipalities and corporations has always stuck in my craw. After all, they seem to be exempt to the rules of law compared to those who actually are born, drink their mother’s milk and learn the rights and wrongs most humans are taught.
Cree culture has always been about sharing and taking care of each other. Sometimes we forget other peoples have the same values as what we see doesn’t always show that
Flying back from a trip a year ago, we disembarked at the same time as passengers from a plane coming from Beijing. The crew and all passengers were wearing masks. I remember telling my friend how dystopian it looked, and we cracked some jokes about it.
