Murdered and Missing Women of Canada

Missing Sisters

As the Indigenous Peoples of this land,--- I hesitate to say, 'of Canada', because as Indigenous People, we have never truly experienced inclusion within Canada--- we suffer collectively. That is to say that we suffer collective and common truths. We suffer in ways that we cannot always describe.
However, those of us who have women, murdered or missing without a trace, from our families, and from our communities, have begun to describe this form of suffering both for ourselves and for the world. Our voices spill out across a land that is peopled by a society that has, in large part, replied with a cool reticence to become involved in this issue.

Although there has been some police action around this issue, there is obviously not enough being done to find the truth and solution to this lingering tragedy that we live with. And as Indigenous People, we do live infused with the socially dynamic realities of this issue. This is an issue that haunts each of us as we go through our daily lives. It has created tensions within our lives that we may not always be aware of. These tensions come to bare upon us within our lives over the long term. As such they affect the dynamics of our families, the way we think, and our general day to day comfort level. In some ways it affects who we are and how we relate to the world around us.
This is an issue that occurs in, and that is relevant to, Indigenous communities, both rural and urban, all across Canada. By extension it is an issue that is relevent to Indiegenous People at the international level. History has proven repeatedly that ,'types of abuse', perpetrated against Indigenous People around the world, have common roots found in the interest of the subjection and the relegation of Indigenous People away from the realm of humanity.

The extent and the longevity of this issue make it an issue that stands as an assault against the humanity of the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, and of the world. Although it may not as yet have been perceived as such, this is an issue that diminishes the level of humanity to be attached to the concept of 'Canadian Society.'
In the interest of maintaining our personal humanity as Indigenous Peoples, and the humanity of our memories of our missing loved ones, it is our responsibility to ourselves as individuals, and to each other, to move this issue beyond these lingering shadows of history. We must place this issue, and keep it, front and center on the stage of the Canadian Consciousness. It is up to each of us to pursue efforts of, and within our Leadership, at all levels across this land, to ensure that this issue be given no rest until we are satisfied with the results.

Greg Robinson, (Haisla Nation)

Color The Sun

Down streets of post-Cambrian cobblestone
On spirit horse back
Social spurs jangle
Desert dust, the wind-borne ode of rider across endless open landscape
Colors a blistering sun

Drum beat reverb
Down through steep sided valley
Eagle spreads long-feathered wings

Dipping off mountain crag
Enters crash dive
Down, down, down

Slowly pulling out
Veers away from
Sheer faced rock wall
Scans depth of spiritual river waters
Wanders with us out across this fabric weave of cultural time

Voices in chant, dance once again with evergreens
A long slow rhythmic drift across the ages
Northwest Coast dugout canoe spurned by thrust of cedar paddle
Quietly they smile, and...
In silence, call us homeward.

Greg Robinson June, 2009.

Art Bio(2009)

ART BIOGRAPHY: Greg Robinson

My name is Greg Robinson. I am a member of the Haisla Indigenous Community of Kitamaat Village, BC, Canada. I was born in the summer of the year 1956.
My late father was 'The Hamaas', Hereditary Chief of the Haisla, and Chief of the Haisla Beaver Clan. The Haisla are the northern most segment of the Kwakiulth Tribe. My mother, who is a descendant through her mother, of the Killer Whale Clan of the Tsimpshian community of Hartley Bay, BC, was born in Kitamaat and both adopted into the Haisla Eagle Clan and raised, by her grandfather David Shaw, who was a carpenter and dugout canoe builder. David built a canoe that was eventually painted by Bill Reid, and is now on display in the UBC Museum of Archaeology in Vancouver, BC., Canada.

At this relatively late stage in my life, I am learning to more diligently express my personal artistic vision. For me this process has involved a very steep learning curve, from being totally computer illiterate in 1999 to teaching myself computer graphics. I have always had a desire to describe the images and the statements that billow across my mind’s eye. My first efforts began in 1976, with the purchase of a Pentax 35 millimeter SLR camera, and figuring out how to use it. But it is only in the recent few years that I have begun a more serious practice of developing my personal expression. I began by learning through self-study, the basics of North West Coast form line design. Teaching myself to work with computer graphics software, I began to integrate these two art forms.
The more I learn, the more aware I become of how much more there is to learn. But also and more importantly, the more potential I can see in both myself and others around me, as well as in the tools that continue to evolve with time. And although it is at times overwhelming, I cannot help but to become increasingly exited at the constantly growing list of the things that I want to do. A major restriction that I have to deal with, and that serves to contain my personal development, is poverty. I do however, continue to work against this constraint.
I occasionally hear people complaining about how bored they are. I find it incredible that anyone can possibly be bored in this day and age! There is absolutely no time to be bored.

Canada a 'genocidal state': former Arab Federation VP

Happy Canada Day?

The following is an article published in The National Post Newspaper, on thursday, July second, 2009. Here is a man who obviously has some very deep convictions. It is apparent that he has taken the time to make himself aware of what is perhaps the most basic, and long standing of all Canadian national social, and political Issues. It is also apparent that Mr. Shaban has chosen to represent his deep, personal convictions, in a very open and honest fashion. The widely negative response to Mr. Shaban's open and honest portayal of the truth, simply reveals the level of denial that remains prevalent here in Canada, around the historic,and ongoing subjection of The Indigenous Peoples of this land.
This particular case reveals how successive waves of immigrants to Canada, continue to be infused with the historic Canadian practise of the denial of Indigenous rights, including human rights. What this says is that each successive wave of immigrants to Canada serve, to some extent, to reinforce the denial. Further, it is a testament that those who stand and speak this truth to the masses will be quashed.

Greg Robinson, New Westminster, BC, July,4th, 2009(blog: West Coast Indigenous Perspective).

Canada a 'genocidal state': former Arab Federation VP: "mvallis@nationalpost.com"

Open Flight

OPEN FLIGHT
by Thomas G. Robinson



The ocean air was cool to breathe, coming ashore in wild gusts off vast stretches of the Pacific. My hair flailed in time and rhythm with trees and grasses of the shoreline. A heavy, rolling, curling surf tumbled and roared. Infinitely wild, it leapt and bounded up the solid rock beachhead, blasting a relentless profusion of spray cascading high into the air, and drenching all in a salty briny bath.
Bright sunrays of midday beamed through water droplets hanging on my eyelashes, glinted into a constantly morphing kaleidoscopic blaze of rain bowed light. Above the deafening roar rose the shrill cacophonic choir of the climbing, diving gulls.

My brother was, in some ways, a lot like those gulls. He had a sharp, buoyant humor that would carry you up beyond the clutches of the staid reality, like those gulls dash over and beyond the ocean swells with the ease of their graceful flight. His soft laughter would carry you above the dull grinding roar of the daily slog.
There was a time when my brother would have braved those waves with gusto and excitement and even glee. He would guide his craft steeply up, over those breakers, and away from the shoreline toward the total freedom of the open sea. It was always freedom that he had desired most. More than money, more than possession for possession's sake, more than any fame or anything that fame had to offer.
Freedom is something that is in itself totally free of cost, yet it can be at once a thing of such great expense. It is a simple thing, yet a thing not so simple, but yet a thing profound.
It is something with different meaning for each who might take time to consider the point.
Freedom.
In the end, my brother did find his freedom, freedom from all things earthly. He found freedom from this life. In his youthful folly, he dared the reality of chemical poisoning,
and pushed the line a little too far. For that daring, he paid the ultimate price. He found his freedom in the endlessness of death.

Northwest Coast Landfall: Our Spiritual Heritage

Finish It Off...or Not.

The Universe Awaits

Picture in your mind's eye, a long road winding onward before you. This road stretches out across the horizon as far as your mind's eye can see. Although you have always been curious about what you might experience as you moved along that road, you have never stepped out to explore that road. The 'reason' that you have always allowed yourself to beleive, is that there is a gate that blocks your entrance to that road. You have always heard yourself say that the gate is closed and you do not have the key to open this gate.
This image repsresents that gate. And, that gate, is your gate. If you look closely, you may notice that there is no latch or other device locking this gate into its 'closed' state. The gate, 'Just Is'.
Here, the reality is, that the very effort of lifting your hand to open this gate, is the key to moving beyond this gate.
If you do not take this first step, your journey will never open before you.

Greg Robinson, Haisla Nation, 06, 2009

A Blue Light

It has been said that blue is the color of the soul. The soul of our ancestry has always been directly connected to the land and to all aspects of nature, including the waters and the skies. Through our Indigenous ancestry we have a direct and undeniable connection to our Traditional Territories. We must not allow ourselves to be persuaded to allow others to sever this connection.

Shaman's Moon

To me, the concept of a 'Shaman' within West Coast Traditional Cultural practise, represents a 'voice' or 'a spiritual aspect' of the community that appeared and evolved within the historic community, and was based in the will, the ability and the power of the human mind to overcome adversity. The Shaman played the role of attempting to activate that power within the individual and the community. Today there are aspects of the potential of the human mind that remain unexplored; which is to say that a rational mind must remain open at least to the contemplation of such potential.

TGR 2009

Time Passing

Spirit/Digital World

The digital world is perhaps a place of infinite potential. It is a place where all things digital may be created and all things may be altered or 'changed'. A place where all is malleable.
In historical North West Coast Indigenous Culture, there was a portion of the socio-psychological structure that had, as one of its pillars, a belief in what has been labelled, 'The Spirit World'. In this world, anything was possible. The rationale of everyday reality did not always apply. In this world, 'shape shifting,' and physical transformation from a given form to another given form, was accepted as part of the underlying and basic reality of all things.
As such, the historical Northwest Coast Indigenous 'Spirit World' and the present day 'Digital World' share somewhat of a inherent commonality.
This area of commonality is at present in the midst of a eye opening developmental stage. A cross-section of the Northwest Coast community of artists presently find themselves, to varying degrees, and in various fashion, involved in digital activity.
Indigenous writers work their magic on keyboards of blue-tooth laptop computers. Singers, drummers, and dancers, can be viewed displaying their cultural expression via digital television. Multi-media artists of the latest 'tuned-in' generation, using the latest versions of such software programs as Photoshop CS4, and Corel Draw X4, meticulously shape their digital creations on duo core high end desktops and laptops.
Where a historic clash of cultures, has in the past, left Indigenous Culture and Western Culture at divergent odds, these two cultures now share a increasingly happy union in the digital world.
Greg Robinson
May 05, 2009

Kildala Sun Spirits

This image is based on a photo that I took while living on Kildala Arm for five months in 1982. Kildala Arm lies within the Traditional Territories of The Haisla People.

Ever present in the historic, day-to -day lives of The Haisla, were considerations of the 'Spirit World', and its inhabitants.

Since times of pre-Western contact, The Haisla People have navigated these waterways and these lands, hunting and gathering, in their ongoing quest for survival. Through this effort they developed a deep and abiding spiritual connection to the land.

This connection remains.

Shine On

A Tribute To Survivors of the Canadian Indian Residential Schools

This is an image that was inspired in me over a long period of time. That period of time began when, as a child of six years, I witnessed a elderly man in my home community, mourning the accidental death of his son.

His son had died the previous evening in a boating incident that had claimed the lives of a number of community members. The accident involved the abuse of alcohol.
In various ways, the repercussions of that incident continue to echo down through time in our community. It claimed the lives of some of the most talented young people in our community. We will never know what those individuals may have contributed to the future of our community. Since that time, alcohol, drugs, substance abuse, suicide and other forms of violence have claimed the potential and the lives of other members of our community. Some of those people were individuals who had much humanity to offer to the world around them.
This reality is all too common within the Greater Indigenous Community of this land now known as Canada. As Indigenous Peoples here in this Land, we have all been touched in many ways by such tragedy and loss. The many ramifications of such suffering have come to haunt our collective psyche.
One common thread that runs through such experiences within the Indigenous Community is the connection that some or all of those involved have, to the now infamous, 'Indian Residential Schools of Canada.' Many who study these matters believe that the roots of a large portion of such suffering may be traced back to the historic experiences of Indigenous People during the calamitous years of the Residential Schools. The schools that were instigated by the Federal Government of Canada, in collusion with various Churches of this land.

The underlying objective of those 'Indian Residential Schools' was to separate indigenous children from their families, and from their community as soon as possible after weaning from their mothers. The children were placed into the 'care' of the Indian Residential School System; a place of systematic isolation from the influence of Indigenous Culture. The intent being to thereby allow the 'death by suffocation' of the collective Indigenous Cultures of Canada.
This was a premeditated, Nazi-style, planned process of genocide that was implemented within those schools;the political purpose of which, was to eliminate Indigenous languages and Culture from The Indigenous Peoples of this land. The ultimate, and devious reasoning behind this particular plan? Kill the language-kill the culture.

Since the strength and unity of any cultural community is its language, this process would fragment, and kill Indigenous Cultural Community.
Further, since our connection to our Traditional Homeland Territories is cultural in nature, this process would destroy the ties of Indigenous Peoples to our traditional homelands, thus freeing up our Territories, Lands, and Resources to the whim of the Government of Canada and the non-Indigenous people of the land.
On the face of it, student life within The Indian Residential School System was painted by Canadian Government and Church Officials as a positive and wholesome experience. The reality weighed heavily to the contrary.

Experiences and case studies of former students of the, 'Canadian Indian Residential School System', have been heavily documented. Such studies have uncovered an extensive number of atrocities perpetrated by many of those who were charged with the day to day functions and operations of those 'schools'. They include murder, rape, buggery, child molestation, savage physical beatings, as well as various other malevolent forms of psychological and social violence. These experiences proliferated over a period of many decades, and encompassed the children of multiple generations within the Indigenous Community. As a direct result, the Indigenous Community was, to a large extent, left in a state of social and psychological trauma.

For many of the children who were made, via process of Canadian Law, to attend those institutions, they were in fact to become schools of unconscionable brutality, massively debilitating psychological pain, and incredible unending suffering. Indeed, the roads that first brought the students to those schools ultimately became for all too many, roads to death.

The Indigenous Community of Canada has thus been historically infused at various levels, with a broad river of social, psychological, physical, emotional and spiritual pain, suffering, anguish and torment. This pain and suffering, which was initially fostered in our people by their experiences during their time spent in the Residential Schools, affected not only those who actually attended those schools, but through the process of 'inherited pain', has come to affect succeeding generations of the Indigenous Community across the width and breadth of this land.
This process continues at present, and will continue, into and beyond the foreseeable future.

Inherited Pain is basically psychological, emotional, spiritual and even physical pain that is passed from one generation to the next, through social and psychological interaction. Hence the term, 'Generational Trauma'.
This generational trauma continues to affect many with the insatiable need to seek escape, through substance abuse, as well as through the use of other social and psychological mechanisms.

Individuals seek escape from the torment of first hand, second hand, and even third hand emotional memories. The same memories that are presently carried by each new generation. Although we were not there to experience the pain first hand, the people who did go through the experiences passed down to us the negative, abusive energies that they received from their experiences in the schools. This is the associated generational pain that is inherited by succeeding generations, affecting even those of us who did not attend the Residential Schools. For the most part, this negative energy has mutated and shape-shifted to such an extent that on the surface it may not be easily recognizable as an off-shoot of the historic Residential School experience. However, the roots of that experience do remain very much alive.

Driven by an unrelentingly subjective social and political machine, which is the collective Institution of Canada, some among us have, at various points in time, visited the cold darkness of apparent defeat. We have felt the wretched clutches of poverty and destitution. We have measured corridors of annihilation. We have crept along the borderlines, the fringes of imminent endings. Amid the deepest depths of our anguish and our agony, we have lain at the threshold of death and said please, take me.
At those times and in those places, we took resolve. We drove ourselves once again to drag one foot and place it before the other. We, as individuals, and we as a Peoples, have carried on through the deepest stretches of an immense darkness. Through monumental efforts, based in what can be seen as being our common spiritual strength, we, the Indigenous Peoples of this land, have endured.

Without question from any corner, our collective being carries the deep-set scars of our historic experiences, at the hands of the Federal and other institutions of this land of Canada. Yet still we persist.
Political leaders of Canada have, for whatever their true reasons, presented to the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, their public apologies for the 'Tragedy' of our historic experience. Be that as it may. We the Indigenous Peoples of this land must continue along our path, living through and working to overcome this negative place in our history.
Many Indigenous People have since been able to move through the pain. Many have risen above the pain. Many of those now move forward building success into their lives, while also helping others around them to rise up and to move forward. By no small measure, the basis of success within our communities has been rooted within the inherent and incredible spiritual strengths and resilience of the Indigenous Peoples of this land.
As Indigenous People, there is a light that shines within each of us. It is the same light that tells us who we are, and what we are about as Indigenous individuals. The same light that was very nearly extinguished by both direct, and indirect efforts of various institutions of this land, up to and including the Federal Government of Canada. That light is the spirit fire light of our Indigenous Culture. It is the guiding light of our traditional heritage. It is a light that shines because those who have gone before us have found their way through the deepest of their darkness, and prevailed. It is a light that shines because those same people have refused to allow that light to die. It is a light that shines as a beacon to those among us who may now find ourselves in places of darkness within our own lives. It is a light that draws us forward toward shores of a brighter reality in our future. Each day that passes, more Indigenous people find themselves in places of darkness. And each day, more Indigenous People realise the beacon of light that shines within themselves. Each day more Indigenous People take the personal initiative. They make the decision to rise up and to move onward. Placing one foot before the other, they move with a positive and a determined effort toward building a brighter place in their lives.
The choice to follow this light has always been, and continues to be, there for each of us to make as individuals. The prerogative is ours. Ultimately, the greatest strength of our traditional culture has always been in a unified effort of community action toward the positive, successful resolution of a given obstacle. The foundation of our future reality as a Peoples is to be found in our choices and in our actions today. We each continue to have as an option, the possibility of helping one another to overcome times of darkness, and to let our individual, and our collective light shine on ever more brightly.
Greg Robinson, Haisla Nation, June 8, 2009.

Spirits of Kildala Fog

In 1982 I spent five months living alone in a small cabin on Kildala Arm, near Kitamaat Village. One morning I awoke to a thick blanket of fog filling the bay. Throughout the morning I watched as the sun began to break through, and the fog bank slowly dispersed. I took this photo from the shore of Atkins Bay and later, digitally added the dugout-canoe images.
Before my time, such sights were common place along these waterways. In 1983 I took photos of the last two dugout canoes to have been used for traditional Oolichan food-fish harvesting on the Kildala River.

Behold, We Are Spiritual Beings

Ancestral Waters

The blood and the toil of our forefathers
connects us in a very real and present way,
to our lands and to our waters.

New World

The elements of this seascape image include a sailing ship, and a west Coast style dugout canoe with the sun hanging in the sky in the background. The 'sun' is actually a representation of an atom splitting while in the midst of a nuclear reaction. This imagery portrays the cataclysmic effects of the onslaught of 'Western Culture' upon Indigenous Cultures of the Americas.

Greg Robinson, 2004

Note: This image was composed entirely through digital media. It was the first such effort that I produced. Unfortunately the image has not reproduced very well here in this minimized version. The original image was sized for printing at 11 inches by 14 inches.

Standing Through Time

West Coast Indigenous Perspective

West Coast Indigenous Perspective

This publication is intended to provide the reader/viewer with the open-ended street level perspective of a Canadian North West Coast Indigenous Person. I do not have much of a formal education beyond the twelfth grade, and the views that I express here are strictly my own personal views unless otherwise stated. Some of the posts that I will provide here will be in the form of essays and short srories, some will be in the form of poetry, that I have written or will write. Some will be attached to photographs and/or art work that I will have produced personally, unless otherwise stated. Some of the items that I will submit here may be personal in nature, while others will contain a more broad perspective. In order to develop a more well rounded understanding of given issues, I may suggest books to read, movies to view, music to listen to etc.
My overall intent here is to provide you with somewhat of a glimpse into particular slices my world as one Canadian West Coast Indigenous Person, and perhaps some of my 'reasons for being,' as it were.

Greg Robinson
June 29, 2009, New Westminster, BC, Canada.