Happy National Aboriginal Day

Hate vandalism stuns reserve
Spray-painted swastikas, SS symbols mar Aboriginal Day

As dawn was waiting to break on National Aboriginal Day, vandals attacked a Native cultural centre on a West Quebec reserve.

In the dead of night, they covered the centre’s beige stucco walls with black spray paint, screaming “white power” alongside swastikas and “SS” symbols.

They overturned picnic tables, ripped down tents and trashed a teepee, leaving Kitigan Zibi, a community about 130 km north of Ottawa, aghast and grappling with its first taste of a hate crime.

I have to wonder what comes next, and how this will be viewed by the rest of Canada.

Another image found in a CTV news article.

This entry was posted by stageleft on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 and is filed under Aboriginal Issues, Canada, Canadian Politics, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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12 Responses to “Happy National Aboriginal Day”

  1. stageleft on June 22nd, 2007 at 11:25 am

    Other than the following, seemingly qualified, post

    And when and if the perps are caught they should face the harshest penalties allowed under Canadian Law. At the same time you will have to excuse me if I have this gut feeling that the timing of the vandalism is suspicious. The day before National Aboriginal Day when it would get maximum press coverage

    (emphasis mine)

    The Canadian blogosphere remains quiet.

  2. Arwen on June 22nd, 2007 at 11:53 am

    That’s horrifying.

  3. balbulican on June 22nd, 2007 at 12:12 pm

    It’s inevitable, and linked to the discussion we had a few weeks ago about what happens when cultures begin to tolerate, or even endorse, hate. It’s become fashionable in many circles – de rigueur, in fact – to embrace hate. Unfortunately, hatred never stays neatly in one little box.

  4. Throbbin on June 22nd, 2007 at 12:28 pm

    I took a peek over at unhyphenated-Canadians blog.

    I guess its still promising that on his blog I did not see a single comment…on any article…at all.

    Good to know that society is digitally isolating people like him/her.

    Don’t bother with linking to fools like this SL – you’re only helping their hit-counter.

  5. Red Jenny on June 22nd, 2007 at 12:51 pm

    Both sides benefit? I guess its like burglary. Both the burgler who makes off with the goods and the person whose home has been violated benefits, right? Or like sexual assault? What’s good for the raper is good for the victim? Yes, swastikas on a native cultural centre is a win-win situation.

  6. stageleft on June 22nd, 2007 at 1:01 pm

    Scratch that, it appears that my comment has appeared, with an answer even.

    Actually I did comment on his post and asked what he meant by “the timing of the vandalism is suspicious” – the comment has yet to appear.

  7. stageleft on June 22nd, 2007 at 1:26 pm

    Imagine that, a moderated blog, such a pain in the arse to try and carry on a conversation in. But it is plain where s/he’s going with the idea – as I just said over there

    Ah… I see where you’re going with this now, a ’round about way of saying “maybe they did it to themselves to get some media attention”.

    Can you imagine what that sort of thinking would get you if it was uttered in relation to some swastikas splashed across the walls of other ethnic community centre?

  8. balbulican on June 22nd, 2007 at 1:28 pm

    I look forward to his next post on the suicide of Dudley George.

  9. dirk on June 22nd, 2007 at 6:56 pm

    SL said…”Can you imagine what that sort of thinking would get you if it was uttered in relation to some swastikas splashed across the walls of other ethnic community centre?”….

    No kidding,not only that can you imagine the uproar if this had been another ethnic group’s building.But then they are only “Indians”

  10. stageleft on June 22nd, 2007 at 7:50 pm

    Unfortunately dirk, you speak a sad Canadian truth…… have a look through the blogosphere, there’s little or nothing there.

    I didn’t really expect to see anything on the Blogging Tories aggregator – and they didn’t disappoint.

    CanConv has my post, so does Progressive Bloggers, but I think I’m it.

    Even the Blogging Dippers seem to be looking the other way.

  11. Candace on June 24th, 2007 at 2:59 pm

    That’s appalling! I’ve been busy working late on a gone-badly-sidewise s/w implementation and just saw this.

    I hope they catch whoever did it and subject him/her/them to the same treatment the guy peeing on the memorial in Ottawa got, and then some.

  12. Adrian MacNair on July 3rd, 2007 at 6:29 pm

    Aboriginal Day was great. I went to Trout Lake with the family and there was a whole bunch of native stuff going on. My son got a handmade necklace and so did my wife. He went around proudly displaying a “real Indian arrowhead”. I tried to correct him about the whole Indian terminology thing, but the natives didn’t seem to care. They all thought he was cute.

    Then we went on a canoe ride with a Squamish guide who sang songs in their native language. There was lots of heritage costumes and whatnot. A real celebration of culture, I gotta say.

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