Thoughts on BC Politics and More

I have had a few nasty messages that suggest I am not the real deal. They suggest that I am some kind of sell out, or that I am an Apple (Red on the outside and white on the inside). Let's be completely honest about the majority of people's romantic vision of what an Indian is ... in particular, the left leaning, Liberal, social justice warriors who visualize all of us Indian men completely naked except for a loincloth, riding a magnificent stallion on the plains. Our long hair is blowing in the wind and we hold a long sharp spear high in the air and we chase down a herd of buffalo for dinner. A bald eagle is soaring above us, and our pet wolf is running by our side. You can probably see that image in your eyes because all of our lives, Hollywood has painted that picture for you. The mass majority of people would never say anything negative about an Indian guy like me as long as I am living a minimalist life style as a keeper of the land....

A recent town hall in Vernon highlighted the two solitudes of opinion surrounding the so-called “homeless” problem happening across BC, and to a lesser extent across Canada right now. One body of opinion focuses on the well-being of the “homeless” while the other focuses on the harm the so-called “homeless” are creating. Perhaps the first thing to recognize is that the problem has been misnamed. It is not a homeless problem. A mass homelessness problem, as the term is commonly understood, is a product of an economic and / or climactic catastrophe.   One example would be the dustbowl years of the 1930s, in which economic and climactic collapse brought destitute families from the prairies to settle in makeshift camps across BC, then the land of promise just as California was the promised land in Steinbeck's “Grapes of Wrath.” We had squatter camps here in Vernon in the 30s too, but they were families striving to live, and maybe even get ahead, in circumsta...