The Roundtable Podcast 71: Who Would Have Thought?
• Week of 07.09.2014
Scottish Independence? | Another War in Iraq? | NATO vs. Russia? | What’s Up with England? | #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly | Feature Article: Why Do Rebel Groups Love the Toyota Hilux? | Music: Robert Plant, “Little Maggie” | Canadians for a New Partnership | Brian Mulroney Says He’d Establish a Royal Commission to Investigate Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women | The Great Redford Portrait Contest | Doug Ford: the Black-and-White, All-or-Nothing Absolutist | Crested Butte, Montana, Becomes a Budweiser Commercial for $500,000
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The Roundtable Podcast 70: War & Religion
Full Circle: the Aboriginal Healing Foundation & the Unfinished Work of Hope, Healing & Reconciliation
An excerpt from my book Full Circle: the Aboriginal Healing Foundation & the Unfinished Work of Hope, Healing & Reconciliation, Chapter 3, “Long-Term Visions & Short-Term Politics.”
THE MANDATE of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was conceived as two related components: healing and reconciliation. As a funding agency, the AHF supported these with money and community support workers and other clerical services. Another large part of the Foundation’s work and legacy subsisted in its research agenda, which by 2010 had produced 20 studies all focused upon the Indian Residential School System and its current-day manifestations. The research was meant to advance one objective above all others: healing. The topics explored were enormously complex and included fetal alcohol syndrome, incarceration, domestic violence, sexual offenses and addiction. Behind the complex subjects however were practical questions: what relationship does the Indian Residential School System have to the realities of current-day life? Is there an underlying and perhaps even unifying agent which may account for the many apparent diverse forms of physical and emotional turmoil we can discern in indigenous communities? When communities undertake to solve their problems for themselves, what works, and why? Such were the sort of concrete prospects to which the research agenda was directed.
Coming Fall 2014—”Residential Schools: with the Words and Images of Survivors”
The First Nations Financial Transparency Act and Business as Usual in Ottawa
THE RON GIESBRECHT story is an everyone-saw-it-coming affair, and that’s among the reasons why the First Nations Financial Transparency Act has engendered both its champions and detractors. “This is the greatest piece of legislation passed by our parliament, I believe, in a long time,” Derek Fildebrandt (of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation) has been reported as saying. You can imagine him salivating these recent and delicious months, in anticipation of the handful of uncloseted Chiefs à la Giesbrecht, just as you can imagine the few rueful and disgraced Chiefs lamenting a lapsed age of innocence.
My Top Ten Posts of All Time, by Social Media Shares (2010–2014)
The following are my most widely-shared posts on Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Reddit, Pinterest, Email, Press This and Google+
Consummatum Est: a story
“I have been ready to die for an eternity now.”
THE KNIFE IN BOTH hands, I give a quick thrust and pierce the skin of my throat. The snap reminds me, all this time later, of the German wieners of my youth. Now I’ll lie here on the floor for what will seem an eternity. But like every other time, I won’t die. I won’t even bleed, or feel pain.
The End of Month Roundup
HOWDY, and welcome to the End-of Month-Roundup—which for the month of July is coming to you at the beginning of August. That’s because this was a busy and exciting month. Let’s review.
If you’ve been watching this site, you know that two books of mine were released this month. One of them, the 20th Anniversary Edition of Real Things Real People Are Really Doing, is available as a download here. Copies of the other, Full Circle: the Aboriginal Healing Foundation & the unfinished work of hope, healing & reconciliation, can be had by contacting me.
Me Reading at the AFN
Subscribe and Win!
GREETINGS, friends and comrades! To celebrate the release of the 20th Anniversary Edition of Real Things Real People Are Really Doing, this Wednesday at noon I’ll be drawing two names at random from among my monthly newsletter subscribers. Each of these two winners will receive a signed copy of the 1st Edition Real Things Real People Are Really Doing, as well as my latest book Full Circle: The Aboriginal Healing Foundation & The Unfinished Work of Hope, Healing & Reconciliation.
The 20th Anniversary Edition of Real Things Real People Are Really Doing will be available Wednesday at 8 a.m. as a download at waynekspear.com. Included will be a 2014 introduction and a new, hitherto unpublished story called “Consummatum Est.” Click on the button below to subscribe. I’ll contact the winners on Friday to get a mailing address. Every subscriber will receive my monthly newsletter, special book deals, my unyielding gratitude—and maybe even some free books!
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The Roundtable Podcast 69
• Week of 20.07.2014
Rob Ford’s nephew, Mikey Ford, running for councillor in Doug Ford’s Etobicoke riding | Remove a letter, ruin a band | Mike Duffy | Israeli troops battle Hamas in 2nd day of ground offensive, as Palestinian death toll tops 330 | Music: Future, “Shit” | Ukraine says Russia helping separatists destroy evidence at Malaysia Airlines crash site | Finish the Headline | Protests and crowd-funding can’t prevent N.B. Morgentaler clinic from performing final abortions | Peter MacKay’s Privacy Deficit Turned These Lives Upside Down
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RTRPARD at 20: Yes, I have a book that’s old enough to buy booze
LATER THIS MONTH, I’ll be releasing a special 20th anniversary edition of my 1994 hit collection of stories entitled Real Things Real People Are Really Doing. Available as a download at waynekspear.com—for a limited time only!—this 20th anniversary edition will include a new story and my reflections on the making of RTRPARD. What a time it was. My only regret is that my book can’t actually drink beer. Look for it July 30, 2014.
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Why Would Anyone Want to Be the National Chief of the AFN?
THE ASSEMBLY of First Nations 35th Annual General Assembly, held last week in Halifax, was remarkable more for what wasn’t said than what was. The name of the former national chief was seldom spoken, and the consensus appeared to be for a reconstitution of the leadership as quickly as possible, better to put behind the recent—and unprecedented—disruption.
Life Itself, a review
I WAS NOT A devotee of Roger Ebert, but Life Itself makes me wish I’d paid more attention to a career that transversed more than five decades.
Journalism, Essays, Broadcasting, Books 