While Shakespeare’s Hamlet concludes tragically with all of the main characters dying in the final act, Players’ Theatre’s production of Fortinbras launches into a raucous comedy, picking up from where Hamlet left off.

The play, written by Lee Blessing, opens in the final scene of Hamlet, with the lifeless bodies of Claudius (Ben Mayer-Goodman), Gertrude (Tamara Lam), Laertes (Alex Grasic), and Hamlet (Seb Mattey) strewn across the floor. Ostric (Alex Friesen), the courtier, is frozen in shock, while Horatio (Maka Ngwenya) is seen leaning over Hamlet’s body, exchanging a few last words with Hamlet before he finally dies. This dark beginning is a pointed choice made by director Claire Hill in order to create continuity between both plays. “I wanted the audience just to feel surrounded by this darkness,” Hill told The Daily in an interview. “I wanted the whole death and darkness and despair of Hamlet’s ending to really come through in the beginning before the comedy of Fortinbras came through.”

Focusing on the play’s comedic aspects was not the only unique directorial decision: unlike traditional depictions of Horatio, Players’ Theatre casted a woman. This choice adds a fresh layer to the character’s later interactions with Fortinbras (Oscar Lecuyer), who at one point makes advances toward her in the hopes of convincing her to support his new reign.
Following the initial scene, Fortinbras enters, impulsive and assumptive, with a flair for the dramatic. Horatio, the play’s moral compass, tries desperately to explain to him the true story behind all the dead bodies on the floor. Unbelieving of Horatio’s account of Hamlet being haunted by his father’s ghost, Fortinbras comes up with his own absurd version of events – involving a Polish spy – which he deems more believable for the public.

Lecuyer masterfully depicts the shift in Fortinbras’ character from blatant confidence to a state of indecision and self-doubt.

The chemistry between the actors is evident – the quick repartees, especially between Fortinbras and Horatio, is paced to perfection by both actors, supported by eye rolls and exasperated sighs from Horatio and melodramatic exclamations from Fortinbras.

Fortinbras’ ridicule toward ghosts soon comes back to haunt him, quite literally, as the ghosts of all the dead reappear and torment him in varying ways. Claudius and Gertrude, who were buried in sacred ground despite their wicked actions (in order to corroborate Fortinbras’ version of the story) return as cheery phantoms who spend their time asking Fortinbras to re-bury their bodies elsewhere.
Ophelia returns as a seductive ghost, concerned with keeping the true sequence of events hidden from the public. Her father, Polonius, returns as well, only to keep silent for most of the play before finally warning Fortinbras to speak the truth and to stay away from his dead daughter. Hamlet, too, arrives as a ghost and demands that the truth be told about his story.

Throughout the play, the audience witnesses Fortinbras’ struggle to balance pressure from ghosts and his own plans for ruling the kingdom successfully. Lecuyer masterfully depicts the shift in Fortinbras’ character from blatant confidence to a state of indecision and self-doubt.

Speaking with The Daily, Hill noted that the play purposefully contrasts Hamlet’s deliberate decision-making process with Fortinbras’ impulsive nature when it comes to ruling a kingdom.

Fortinbras’ ridicule toward ghosts soon comes back to haunt him, quite literally, as the ghosts of all the dead reappear and torment him in varying ways.

“In [Shakespeare’s] Hamlet, Hamlet thinks a lot and he doesn’t act, and in Fortinbras, [Fortinbras] acts a lot but doesn’t think very much, and I want people to see the consequences of both of those things and find a balance in between,” Hill said. “They have very similar beginnings, because Hamlet’s father was killed and his uncle took the throne, and the same thing happened to Fortinbras – his father was killed by Hamlet’s father, and his uncle took the throne instead of Fortinbras. […] So I want people to see how similar beginnings [can] lead to very different paths.”

With an incredible cast that prioritizes the laughs in the dark context of Hamlet’s bloodshed and subsequent hauntings, Players’ Theatre production of Fortinbras entertains greatly.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Polonius and Ophelia were characters present in the opening scene as dead bodies. In fact, they were not present. The Daily regrets the error.

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Council approved a $50 fee increase and the implementation of an additional $500 supplement per student enrolled in the BFSS program. The supplement would accommodate fluctuations in the exchange rate between Canadian and U.S. dollars, with the excess returned to students.

Council also discussed AGELF’s upcoming strike against the Quebec government’s austerity measures from March 30 to April 3.

“During that week, there will be picket lines in front of every class offered within the department,” explained AGELF representative Sandrine Jaumard in an email to The Daily.

At Council, Jaumard asked students to refrain from breaking the picket lines by entering classrooms. During the discussion, the Department of English Student Association (DESA) representative added that DESA membwwers would meet with faculty members to discuss a possible strike in their department.

Arts Senator Jacob Greenspon discussed the lack of transparency during the Senate meeting regarding the allocation of a government grant for students with disabilities. According to Greenspon, University officials determined that they had the right to redistribute funds at their discretion, and in fact cut the budget of the Office of Students with Disabilities (OSD).

VP Academic Erin Sobat also brought up concerns regarding the Student Services budget. “Student Services has taken a cut to its annual revenue and is being forced by the University to eat further into its surplus money to account for this deficit,” Sobat explained in an email to The Daily. Surplus reserves, which were planned to be spent over a number of years, are now being depleted at an accelerated rate due to cuts in annual revenues and increasing costs.

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Plan Nord was initially proposed by the Liberal government led by Jean Charest in 2011, but was shut down by Pauline Marois after the Parti Québécois (PQ) came into power in 2012. The PQ has traditionally held an antagonistic position toward the mining sector. Recently, however, with the comeback of the Liberals, a revised version of the project has started to gain steam once again. This version, which encompasses 72 per cent of the land area of Quebec, an area twice the size of France, is expected to create significant economic benefits for the province, including the creation of 20,000 jobs. These jobs, however, would come at the expense of severe environmental damages and a high potential for changes in social structures in surrounding communities, many of which are Indigenous. Additionally, despite the government’s promise that 50 per cent of the mineral rich areas would remain untouched with regard to Plan Nord resource extraction and would be preserved, the other 50 per cent, or 36 per cent of Quebec, is left to be exploited by private mining companies. Environmental agencies and people living in the region have raised questions about the intentions for this half of the plan since its announcement, but have not been able to receive concrete answers.

Mining consequences
Mining activities often cause changes in the environment that directly affect communities living in the area – including risks such as airborne chemicals and chemicals leaking into underground aquifers. Currently, little research exists on the location of Quebec’s (and Canada’s) groundwater and aquifer deposits, making it difficult, if not impossible, to account for the quality of these water sources as mining operations expand the Northern territory. Furthermore, Quebec has about 3 per cent of the world’s freshwater, which would make potential leaks and pollution detrimental. Roussos Dimitrakopoulos, a professor in the department of mining and materials engineering at McGill, spoke to these risks in an interview with The Daily. “I think the questions of toxins in the air is quite a minimal thing – I don’t think that there’s a major issue if we operate properly. The question of materials seeping into the ground – yes, it does happen, it can always happen. The question is, do we invest in studying the groundwater and the aquifers?” When mining companies begin new projects, they generally set up environmental and health safety guidelines to follow, or use one provided by their auditors. While this does not eliminate the environmental destruction caused, it mitigates damages, and ensures the safety of both mine workers and those in the surrounding communities. It is important to note, however, that these safety measures are not always completely safety-proof, and in the case a dam breaks, major pollution of the surrounding water sources will occur. Such was the case at the Mount Polley mine in B.C. in August, when 25 million cubic metres of contaminated water and mine waste were flooded into the land and contaminated fresh water supplies.

Despite this, Dimitrakopoulos explained that the success of these guidelines is heavily dependent on the size of the company. He distinguished between three types of mining companies: large, medium, and small. According to him, while the larger ones were more likely to adhere to the guidelines and thereby reduce the environmental impact and safety hazards, medium-sized and smaller mining companies were generally less financially capable of complying with guidelines. “The question of accidents – if something goes wrong, then that varies not because we don’t know what to do, it varies because of mismanagement, in a sense.” So now, in addition to the environmental destruction that would be caused regardless by mining activities, there is now a separate dimension regarding the severity of the damage that will be inflicted on both the environment and local communities.

“It’s like we are giving up our traditional practices, our customs, our lifestyles [that] the mining will take, that we will give up our rights.”
– Denise Jourdain, Innu elder and anti-plan Nord activist

Indigenous voices
Northern Quebec – the land covered under the Plan Nord project – is comprised of territory belonging to various groups of First Nations and Inuit communities, including the Innu, the Cree, the Naskapi, the Algonquins, and the Atikamekw. Various Indigenous groups and individuals have voiced concerns regarding the project, while others actively support it. Some concerns lie with not being fully informed or involved in the process. Last October, Jobie Tukkiapik, president of Makivik Corp., met with Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, where Tukkiapik said that an openness in discussion, as well as the government playing an active role in preserving Indigenous culture, were his primary concerns. “We’re not opposed to development, but we feel like we need to be fully involved,” Tukkiapik said in the article from Nunatsiaq Online. “There needs to be a sense of belonging.” He continued, “We know what people’s priorities are now. Our culture and language cannot be lost.”

Chief Gilbert Dominique of the Innu First Nation echoed these sentiments in an article in the Montreal Gazette last October. “We’ve said it many times: we’re not against development. We just want it to be done in a way that is respectful of our way of life and the environment, and that there be economic benefits for First Nations,” Dominique believes that Plan Nord would be a way for his community to combat social problems that are systemically faced by many Indigenous communities, including higher levels of unemployment than the general population and unequal access to medical services.

Denise Jourdain, an Innu elder and anti-Plan Nord activist, spoke to The Daily about the negative impacts the project would have both on the environment and on the culture of Innu communities living in the North. “[Plan Nord] is very personal for me – in my perspective, I wonder if it’s a trick of the provincial government to get us to sign treaties that Plan Nord is a natural resource development project on our ancestral territories,” Jourdain told The Daily in French. “It’s like we are giving up our traditional practices, our customs, our lifestyles [that] the mining will take, that we will give up our rights.”

Virginia Wabano, president of the Cree Women of Eeyou Istchee Association, agreed with Jourdain’s sentiments, noting the preservation of culture was also important. “I know there’s a lot of job creation and all that, but money doesn’t buy what the foundation is, which is our land, the basis of our culture and values,” Wabano told The Daily. “If there’s going to be a detrimental effect to our traditional cultures and values, then I will stand up to that and say no to development. You know, money is not everything when you have your identity as a person.”

“We’re not opposed to development, but we feel like we need to be fully involved,”
– Chief Gilbert Dominique of the Innu First Nation

Changes in social structure
Contrary to Dominique’s point, Wabano believed that instead of reducing social ills, large development projects serve to augment them even more. “There’s increases in negative behaviour as well, in regard to large-scale development like camps, prostitution, sexually-transmitted diseases, alcoholism, drug abuse, and violence – [these] are seen as the negative side of the development,” Wabano told The Daily. “These are impacts that are worrisome for women [who are] concerned about the safety of children and [younger] women. Also [there is the] fear [of] the breakdown of family values – so there are a lot of measures that need to be taken to avoid some of the conflicts.”

The project will have massive impacts on the surrounding communities, specifically with regard to social structures in the region. It is important to recognize that every movement seeking equity is the same at its core – we all are propelled by the same desire for equity, justice, and protection of all people in spite of our differences. This is where environmentalism and feminism converge in their efforts against a capitalist-driven project that, while it claims to create immense economic benefits for the province, will actually result not only in the destruction of the environment, but also in the disruption of the communities living in the affected areas.

Industrial projects have long been producing societal disruption, which often leads to the victimization of women. A student from Stanford University wrote an article in 2012 about her experience in the Peruvian Amazon, where illegal mining was rampant. She noted how casually the locals interacted with mercury, a poisonous metal that is produced in abundance as a result of gold mining, which can have disastrous impacts on those who come in contact with it. She also described how girls under the age of 18 were already part of brothels – many of them were forced into child prostitution between the ages of 12 and 17.

In a case hitting closer to home, Canadian mining company Hudbay was charged in 2013 with lawsuits from Guatemala, where the company had existing mining operations. The lawsuits included a case where 11 women were gang-raped. Yet another lawsuit against Hudbay charged the company with criminalizing Indigenous activists in Guatemala who protested against mining activities. The lack of respect for and the destruction of communities impacted by mining projects is apparent in these examples of what happens when mining companies with a strong financial backing intrude on the land of those who are already suffering financially and are unable to take the culpable companies to court. These cases are not exceptions, but rather a systemic problem produced by the Canadian mining industry abroad as well as at home. Oftentimes these fallacies are hidden by corporate social responsibility programs that encourage companies to engage in the buildup of infrastructure and community programs, such as roads and schools. They do so, however, to create an “ethical facade for unethical mining practices, as some have argued,” as Rex Brynen, a professor of political science at McGill, told The Daily in a previous article called “The problem with development organizations” (November 5, 2013, News, online) .

“If there’s going to be a detrimental effect to our traditional cultures and values, then I will stand up to that and say no to development. You know, money is not everything when you have your identity as a person.”
– president of the Cree Women Eeyou Istchee Association

Impact on women
With regards to Quebec specifically, Plan Nord has already started impacting the women in communities predicted to be affected by the project. A Huffington Post article focused on the region of North Shore specifically, explaining that after the first announcement of the plan by the Charest government, the promise of 20,000 jobs lured many investors and workers to communities there. When the PQ dismissed the plan, however, many found themselves out of work and having to cope with higher costs of living. For women, this often meant a step back to society’s traditional patriarchal roles, where men would work long hours while women took care of the household on what meagre income they received. In cases of divorce or separation, women were often left with nothing. These taxing living conditions often caused heightened stress between couples and lead to an increase inincidents of domestic abuse. Many cases were not officially reported, however, because women feared that going to women’s shelters or seeking help would result in their ostracization.

Wabano said that part of not speaking up could be attributed to the fact that many were never asked how they felt in the first place. “We know that women often feel left out of the consultation processes that are conducted in communities. These consultation processes are usually geared to reach leaders of the community, and there’s also some exclusion of some groups, such as women and youth. Even though the invitation [to speak] is there […] women [may still not attend] because there is no childcare provided, or maybe they’re afraid to speak up, to express their concerns in public,” Wabano told The Daily. “So maybe having a focus group for women only would be more convenient for them to discuss their thoughts on the impacts.” Work for women in the mining industry is limited and only a restricted number of women were able to find a job in the community. Unfortunately, they make up only 1.3 per cent on average of the construction workforce – not counting for jobs in cleaning or food services – resulting in unsafe spaces where they often faced racism and sexism from their male counterparts.

Wabano said that the way to combat these issues is to foster stronger communication between the government and the local communities impacted by mining. “It’s always essential to establish good relationships between governments and large-scale companies in the early stages of these development projects because [the local communities] need to be involved in the decision-making, ongoing community engagement, ongoing dialogue, and information-sharing throughout the whole process,” Wabano told The Daily. “In order to protect women, there’s always these measures that should be considered, and some of them could be hiring additional female security officers, or having cameras in sensitive areas within the camps, because we all know that there are challenges that women face, not only within mines but overall. It does not only happen to Aboriginal women, it happens to everyone, to every woman,” she continued. “It could be like [providing] training on human rights to police, or could be developing a conflict resolution or negotiating training program which includes everyone – leaders, women, everyone.”

Despite her request for increased information for the affected communities, Wabano does not think that Plan Nord should be carried through, seeing as it would result in disastrous environmental impacts. “Take uranium mining for example. There was a big stand against uranium mining in the Cree nation territory because of its detrimental environmental impact. So of course we are going to say no to that,” she said. “In order to say, ‘Okay, we’re coming into your community and we’re going to build a mine in your backyard’ – how are you going to protect us? How are you going to protect our community? How are you going to protect our land? For the present, and for future generations?”

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A history of racism in medical research

Medicine in the West has an extremely troubling history where people of colour (POC) are concerned. The past is riddled with medical malpractice on minority groups. Indeed, this was because society saw POC as less valuable than their white counterparts. POC have been subjugated to serving as test subjects in harmful experiments, which were justified by the fact that this would be beneficial to the majority, white, population at that time.

A typical and sickening example of unethical research performed on POC was the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, conducted in 1932 on 600 Black men, 399 of whom had syphilis. The purpose of the experiment, which was to study the progression of untreated syphilis in Black males in order to identify the best treatment option, was never disclosed to the participants. In fact, the subjects were told that they were receiving treatment for their illness, though in reality they were receiving no treatment, and their blood was being taken purely for the purpose of performing tests. Even 13 years later, when penicillin was finally declared the treatment of choice for syphilis, the subjects were left untreated. The experiments continued for forty years, finally ending in 1972. Today, racism within the medical field is much more subtle due to stringent regulations in research methodology by independent review organizations.

Racism in scientific reasoning: nature versus nurture

There have also been claims in the past, such as in arguments related to eugenics, that certain groups are genetically superior to others, and that POC might be more susceptible to illnesses than their white counterparts. For example, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2009 reported that before the age of fifty, African Americans were twenty times more likely to have heart failure than their white counterparts. The study touches on an issue that has been studied throughout history: the question of whether or not a person’s race can play a significant role in their health.
This question is related to the concept of ‘nature versus nurture,’ the idea that certain traits are inherently coded into our genes – nature – while others are learned through experiments and adaptations to the environment – nurture. Recently, research has indicated that social conditions are a better indicator of predisposition to certain health conditions, as opposed to race.

Overall, the presumption that race has an effect on a person’s medical condition is a superficial, outdated analysis of a situation that is significantly more complex.

Even today, some researchers are still exploring the idea that people of different races are more prone to diseases, the claim that racial differences play an important role in determining one’s health, and whether any one group is more susceptible than another to certain illnesses.

Jay Kaufman, a professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McGill, believes that the environment plays a more central role when accounting for medical disparities across different social group than races. Kaufman suggests inequality in socioeconomic factors, such as access to healthcare, and healthy food, are the root cause of the higher instances of disease in certain populations as compared to others.

“I do think that most of the differences that we observe between social groups in our society in North America and Europe – and we see big disparities between groups, between, say, people of African origin and people of European origin – that it’s much more plausible that those arise from different social conditions than some kind of differing physiological or genetic difference,” Kaufman told The Daily.

“The biomedical presumption is to find some kind of physiological or genetic difference, and that too often excludes much more reasonable social phenomena, like social discrimination, like differences in socioeconomic status and education and living conditions, nutrition, things like that.”

Kaufman also referenced BiDil, a drug for treating congestive heart failure that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. in 2005 and was described as being solely for Black people. Further research concluded, however, that the drug worked for everyone regardless of their race, and that when the drug was tested, the test subjects consisted solely of self-identified African Americans.

“It was really […] an attempt to protect the patent of the drug by rebranding it as a drug for Black people,” Kaufman told The Daily. “So it’s a story of profits, it’s not really a story about any rational scientific evidence.” It’s also an example of the more subtle and modern form of racism present within medicine.

While he acknowledged that genetic differences could account for a small percentage of disparities, Kaufman believes that “by and large, the vast majority of differences we observe, I think, come from these different social environments, and not from any kinds of physiological process.”
Kaufman also spoke to addressing the underlying problem of racism in society in order to focus research efforts.

“We know that there are profound social differences. We can observe in the census, we can observe in the surveys, that there are big differences in education and nutrition and occupation and housing and all kinds of other life exposures, lifestyle, and social exposures,” Kaufman said. “I don’t think that the answer to that is to have different drugs for different groups, or different processes for different groups. I think that the real solution to that is to try to reduce the magnitude of the social disparities between racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups in the society.”

Overall, the presumption that race has an effect on a person’s medical condition is a superficial, outdated analysis of a situation that is significantly more complex. When discussing health discrepancies between races, factors of historical oppression and current socioeconomic barriers must be considered beyond a simple analysis of ‘x-race has this instance of disease’ and ‘y-race has a lower one.’ Recent research is beginning to dispel these racist perspectives on the situation, and may provide more information on what accommodations are necessary to combat the socioeconomic factors that lead to certain groups encountering more medical problems than others.

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The MHWG made its recommendations based on surveys given to focus groups of “stakeholders,” composed of staff members deemed to have constant interactions with students, as well as one graduate student. The stakeholders were surveyed to determine what they thought was lacking and what they thought had to change with regards to mental health services at McGill.

Marilyn Fitzpatrick, chair of the MHWG and an associate professor and program director of the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology at McGill, spoke to the lack of student representation in the stakeholders surveyed.

“[Executive Director of Student Services Jana Luker] wanted to take something that they could begin to take action on quickly and to do a survey of students would have taken much longer than we had,” said Fitzpatrick. “So we surveyed people [who] we thought were stakeholders from the perspective of stakeholders in delivering services.”

According to Luker, the MHWG was initiated due to concerns expressed over the years regarding increasing wait times and inadequate staff to counter that issue.

“We didn’t have the staff to get a response in a timely way, the wait time was increasing, [so] we wanted to look at the whole structure and make sure that we had an idea of access to care,” she told The Daily.

Luker said that the goal is to “continually and sustainably maintain a two-week waiting time,” and recognized the importance of creating more of a “culture of wellness across the whole university proactively, so people aren’t waiting and going into crisis.”

“The big picture is to create a more supportive and proactive culture of wellness,” Luker added.

A timeline of recommendations publicly available on the Mental Health Service’s website outlines next steps and includes status updates of the projects for the month of February, with another update to be provided in April.

There are 36 projects to be completed. According to the projected timeline of implementation, at least 15 of these are currently underway, eight have yet to be started, and two have already been completed.

Luker expressed concern about the recommendations that would require faculty who do not meet certain standards to undergo a faculty mental health training program, saying that suggestions could be made instead of making training mandatory.

“It is hard to tell [faculty that] they have mandatory training for all faculty,” Luker told The Daily. “I can’t say you have to do it, but I can recommend it.”

Arts and Science Senator Chloe Rourke agreed with Luker that the topic of mental health should be tackled not only by the administration, but by the student body as well. Rourke added that the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) was also aiming to address the issue with its own mental health policy plan.

“Ultimately, student mental health issues cannot be addressed by Student Services alone. It requires a commitment from all members of the McGill community, the faculties, and administration,” Rourke wrote in an email to The Daily.

Luker noted that the issue of mental health is serious and relevant to the whole university. “Student Services of course is one of the primary drivers of this because this is our mandate, because that’s what we do, we support students in mental health – it’s a huge component in what we do. The feeling is really that everyone has a responsibility around this, and that’s what we are trying to do.”

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We live on a continent where a vibrant Indigenous culture was attacked by colonization a few hundred years ago, when Europeans began to explore the globe and claim what lands they stumbled upon as their own. Throughout the Americas, Europeans asserted their ownership of Indigenous lands in different ways, whether through physical aggression or emotional manipulation, and forced the displaced natives onto increasingly smaller strips of land. During this period, vast numbers of Indigenous peoples were decimated, both through genocide and the introduction of European diseases, facilitating the successful establishment of European colonies. Many Indigenous people were enslaved or coerced into intermarriages where they were forced to adopt European culture. These occurrences, combined with the arrival of missionaries who preached European culture and values, served to nearly extinguish the rich Indigenous cultures of the Americas.

We live on a continent where a vibrant Indigenous culture was attacked by colonization a few hundred years ago, when Europeans began to explore the globe and claim what lands they stumbled upon as their own.

The residential school system in Canada was the physical embodiment of cultural genocide, whereby European colonizers forcefully imposed their culture upon Indigenous children. Indigenous people were forced to attend these schools, which sought to completely erase their culture through physical and emotional abuse – speaking in their native tongue or even acknowledging their Indigenous heritage warranted severe punishment. There were also many reported cases of sexual abuse at these schools, the psychological impacts of these abuses have spanned generations. With the last residential school only closing in 1996, and an estimated 80,000 people alive today who attended residential schools, the ruinous effects of the colonizers’ crimes are clearly not a thing of the past.

In order to compensate for the brutal actions of those who created the society in which we live today, we have to mitigate the lasting damage caused by colonization. Being an ally asks that we, as people with privilege, recognize that privilege and listen to the needs of those who are marginalized by the same system from which we benefit. The process of being an ally involves building long-term relationships with marginalized groups, and working together toward goals that confront and mitigate ongoing oppression. With regards to decolonization specifically, we as settlers can start as allies by being aware of the history of the land on which we stand and acknowledging that history publicly.

What is not widely known […] is that McGill was built on traditional Kanien’kehá:ka land.

It is common knowledge that McGill is one of many educational institutions formed by beneficiaries of British colonialism. Even the name of the university is indicative of its colonial nature – James McGill was a wealthy British colonizer who donated the funds that allowed McGill to flourish all those years ago. What is not widely known, however, is that McGill was built on traditional Kanien’kehá:ka land. The lack of public awareness and effort by our university to own up to its past serves to create an oppressive environment for Indigenous students, whereby the atrocities committed against their ancestors are simply swept under the rug. In conversations with The Daily last October, Kakwiranó:ron Cook, the Aboriginal Outreach Administrator at McGill, recalled when his sister was a student at McGill. Despite having historical ties to the land, his sister felt lonely, both due to a lack of diversity in the student body and the absence of acknowledgement of the Indigenous land.

The issue of territorial acknowledgement was one of three proposals put to the McGill administration, which aimed at creating a more welcoming environment for Indigenous students. The proposal called for McGill to publicly acknowledge on its website and in email signatures that McGill is built on traditionally Kanien’kehá:ka land. The second proposal called for a relocation of the Hochelaga Rock, which commemorates the Indigenous history of the land. It can currently be found shoved in a corner near Roddick Gates, but the proposal called for it to be moved to a more prominent area on campus, such as in front of the James McGill statue. Finally, the third proposal asked that the Hiawatha belt flag, which symbolizes the unity of the five original nations in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, be raised over the Arts building on National Aboriginal Day and during the annual Indigenous Awareness Week held at McGill in September.

The lack of public awareness and effort by our university to own up to its past serves to create an oppressive environment for Indigenous students, whereby the atrocities committed against their ancestors are simply swept under the rug.

All three proposals, although initially well-received, have faced opposition from members of the administration and are now unlikely to be implemented. The first proposal was said to potentially expose McGill to land claims, which, considering its colonial history, is a little ironic. The second proposal, according to the administration, was too costly to implement – however, SSMU VP University Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan told The Daily she heard how some in the administration thought the rock’s relocation in front of the James McGill statue would be “too prominent.” Finally, according to Dean of Students André Costopoulos, the third proposal could not be accepted as written, as he personally believed it would not serve the purposes of increasing visibility of Indigenous culture. The Dean cited weather as the culprit, saying that, “If it’s a rainy and dull day with no wind, nobody’s going to see [the flag].”

McGill, for its part, has allowed strides toward acknowledging the Indigenous history of its land with its annual Indigenous Awareness Week, a week where Indigenous culture is celebrated and shared with the Montreal community. The Indigenous Studies minor, a program discussed as early as the 1980s and finally implemented in Winter 2015 due to mounting student pressure, also takes McGill a step in the right direction. These actions, however, pale in comparison to what should be done based on the violent history upon which McGill owes its success.

We, as students of a colonial institution, should work toward acknowledging our university’s colonial history and help it progress further toward decolonization order to make this institution a welcoming environment for all.

Jasreet Kaur is a U2 Accounting student. To contact her, please email jasreet.kaur@mail.mcgill.ca.

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On February 18, the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) Legislative Council met to discuss and vote on budget allocation, support for various campus organizations, and fee increases.

AUS Space Project

President Ava Liu reported to Council on developments in the AUS Space Project, a joint initiative with the McGill Spaces Project, Campus Space & Planning, and the Faculty of Arts that aims to redesign underutilized spaces in and around the Leacock building.

The AUS Space Project has been discussed as a way to make use of funds that the AUS currently has in Guaranteed Investment Certificates (GIC), of which roughly $180,000 will be available by 2017, according to Liu.

Some were skeptical of the idea, including Arts Senator Jacob Greenspon.

“This is such a huge sum of money that I think we should have a larger discussion before spending it on a couple of space projects,” Greenspon said. “A lot of the money can be put toward student services.”

Equity Commissioner Vareesha Khan agreed with Greenspon, and said that a survey should be conducted among constituents so that they have a say in where AUS’s money is being spent.

“There’s concern if what we’re doing is relevant to the students. There’s concern from constituents that we don’t represent people enough,” Khan said.

Liu later clarified to The Daily that the GIC funds are one of three potential sources of funding for the project, including the AUS Info-Tech Fund, valued at roughly $160,000, and the Arts Undergraduate Improvement Fund. According to Liu, the project would likely be funded by a combination of these sources.

Liu also said that students will be consulted about the project once more specific project proposals have been established.

AUS supports QPIRG McGill referendum, ECOLE project

Council passed a motion supporting the Educational Community Living Environment (ECOLE) project in its efforts to promote sustainable lifestyles for students on campus. In the motion, Council agreed to publicize ECOLE among Arts students, mandating that “the AUS grant ECOLE booking privileges under the External portfolio.”

Council also passed a motion to endorse Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) McGill’s upcoming referendum, including a fee increase from $3.75 to $5.00.QPIRG McGill is seeking a fee increase to compensate for inflation, as its last fee increase took place in 2009.

Field studies fees

Timothy Johns, the academic director for the Canadian Field Studies in Africa (CFSIA) program, addressed Council regarding the program’s financial sustainability. The CFSIA course brings interested students to places in East Africa to study sustainable development.

Johns attributed the financial instability to depreciation in the Canadian dollar by almost 10 per cent since the program’s budget was last approved in November 2014, and said that although the program had excess funds in the previous years to offset the fluctuations, the funds were wiped out in the current year. To ensure the continuity of the program, according to Johns, it is essential that the fees for the program be increased.

“In order for it to be self-funding, we need a fee increase of $3,004, which raises the fees [to $15,430],” Johns said. “We’re obviously in a risky situation and we realize it’s a huge increase, but if the program’s not self-funded, it won’t run.”

A motion to increase the fee passed.

Council also passed a motion for the Northern Field Studies Program to increase its fee from $5,000 to $12,000 for interested students due to change in location from Schefferville, Quebec to Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut.

Other motions

Council also passed a motion to fix a redundancy in its electoral bylaws with regard to holding subsequent referenda on fees instituted by referendum.

Other motions passed included one in support of AUS departments working with the Ethical Business Practices Committee to ensure that employees are treated fairly, and another in support of the Active Bystander project, through which sexual awareness workshops will be held in order to create a safe space for students.

A previous version of this article stated that the redesign of spaces in Leacock and the Ferrier courtyard would cost $180,000 over three years. In fact, a specific redesign project has not yet been chosen, and the $180,000 is one of three funding sources potentially available to AUS. The Daily regrets the error.

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The study, conducted by J. Harvey & Associates Consulting and ÉCOgestion Solutions, analyzed the environmental assessment administered by TransCanada that was submitted to the National Energy Board. According to the authors of the study, these assessments are often incomplete and present generalized and overly optimistic perspectives on the impacts of the pipeline.

“The study conducted by our consultants indicates that the risks of leakage are more important than what TransCanada claims,” Bruno Tremblay, Deputy Director General of Planning and Inspection at MRC de D’Autray, told The Daily in French.

Tremblay continued, “On one note, it seems that a 1.5 per cent of leakage from the pipeline is not detectable by the control center in Calgary. A 1.5 per cent flow from 1.1 million barrels per day represents a large quantity of oil that could spread in the environment for many days without anyone the wiser. We are not convinced that the implementation of the pipeline is without consequence to the integrity of Lanoraie’s [a town in D’Autray] peatlands.”

“Quebec cannot purport to be a leader in climate like they do if they go on to approve this.”

The assessment by TransCanada discussed its risk mitigation techniques, which, according to Tim Duboyce, a spokesperson for the company, included, “regular aerial surveillance and frequent inspections from our field teams who physically walk along the pipeline route.” This point was criticized by the authors of the independent study, who said that the time lapse between inspections is what would allow minor oil leaks to flow freely for days without detection, causing severe harm to the sensitive bogs in D’Autray.

“We did this study because there is no information. […] If the Quebec government had conducted an independent study, or other people, perhaps we wouldn’t have done this […] to have an independent study to evaluate the impact of this project on our land,” Tremblay said. “There are elements in the report that hadn’t been raised by TransCanada.”

Divest McGill also criticized the lack of adequate disclosures, especially with regards to the environmental impacts of the product being transported through the pipeline. “[TransCanada does’t] include an evaluation of climate impacts of the oil that is being transported, which are equivalent to 40 per cent of Quebec total annual emissions – a mind-boggling figure,” Divest McGill member Bronwen Tucker told The Daily.

“Quebec cannot purport to be a leader in climate like they do if they go on to approve this.”

The pipeline project has also encountered opposition from various environmental and wildlife protection groups in Quebec. In a recent controversy regarding an oil port to be opened in Cacouna, a municipality in the south of Quebec, it was found that the port might have disastrous effects on the Beluga whale population in the Saint Lawrence River, a species that was recently reclassified as endangered.

Tremblay hopes that the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) – Quebec’s office of public hearings on the environment – takes an active role in properly portraying the impacts of the pipeline project to the Energy Board and to the public in general.

“The MRC will make the study available to all Quebec municipalities so they can have this information. Moreover, the MRC will appear before the National Energy Board to assert its opposition to the project,” Tremblay said. “We hope that the BAPE is conducting a study on this pipeline project.”

Tucker also advocated for the report to be considered in decision-making. “I think BAPE should take this report seriously and recommend against the proposal – it shows not all of the conditions the provincial government set for the pipeline would be met, which is scary considering these conditions were fairly lenient in the first place.”

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The march started at 3 p.m. in front of Square Cabot near Atwater Metro and continued peacefully eastward along Ste. Catherine. Those present held signs and chanted slogans, such as, “Bring our sisters home! Bring our daughters home! Bring our mothers home!”

The first memorial march took place in Vancouver in 1991, organized by a group of Indigenous women and frontline workers. It initially started as a response to the failure of police to investigate the murder of a Coast Salish woman. Since 1991, the march has continued as a means of addressing the systematic violence against Indigenous women, pervasive across society and throughout the media landscape.

“If you’re silent, then nothing changes, so I think that the march is to remind the people that it’s not over […]”

Saturday’s demonstration began with performances of various groups as well as chants. Among the performances was a healing song performed by a group of women drummers called Odaya.

Monica Van Schaik, an organizer from Missing Justice, told The Daily that this year’s march was the largest so far. She added that while she believed the march was a good way to show support, it was not enough.

“I think I will only be able to say that enough awareness is being given to the phenomenon of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada when they stop going missing,” Van Schaik said.

The march also aims to highlight the lack of government initiative to investigate these crimes, a criticism that many Indigenous-rights activist groups have been voicing for years.

“As we see, the Harper government ignored this issue and refused to have a public inquiry, refused to put more funding into Indigenous-run and -led organizations [who were trying to raise awareness of the issue] and that makes this march and us being here today so much more important,” Van Schaik said.

“Bring our sisters home! Bring our daughters home! Bring our mothers home!”

One unidentified speaker at the march made references to the Chapel Hill shooting that occurred in North Carolina on February 10, noting that this march was also for other victims of racist violence.

Another unidentified speaker noted the significance of uniting the huge variety of backgrounds and perspectives of those attending the march.

“I don’t know if there is anything that is essentially common to our experiences, to what we mean by violence, to what we mean by women, or to what we mean by memorial,” she said.

She continued, “So my hope is that […] we can walk together today and that we can support one another in a unity that’s composed of unique and complicated realities.”

John Cree, an Kahnawake elder who does presentations at universities on Indigenous awareness, was a speaker at the event, and spoke to The Daily about the importance of the march in cultivating change.

“If you’re silent, then nothing changes, so I think that the march is to remind the people that it’s not over, it’s not a demonstration for one day, it’s a demonstration. […] We’re going to do until change is made.”

Van Schaik spoke to the significance of the event falling on Valentine’s Day, a day catered specifically to cherishing loved ones.

“I think it’s very important and very specific that it’s happening on Valentine’s Day, because on Valentine’s Day, we often show affection and show that women are important within our society and we’re here on the streets to show the same, and to also highlight that women are being devalued within our society,” Van Schaik said.

“They’re going missing, they’re being murdered. Violence is happening toward the women here in Canada and we’re here to say that that needs to stop.”

[flickr id=”72157650756016086″]

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Last November, Head & Hands hired a second employee for its Street Work program, restoring the program to the capacity it had before budget cuts forced its discontinuation in 2011. The program was partially reinstated in 2013 with the hiring of a single street worker after substantial fundraising.

Head & Hands is an organization that caters to the needs of youth between the ages of 12 to 25 in Montreal who may not have access to certain resources, ranging from counselling to legal services to free condoms to clean needles.

Street Work is the group’s outreach program, whereby street workers move around the Notre- Dame-de-Grâce (NDG) neighbourhood to meet clients and provide services, such as active listening and on-the-spot counselling, while also conducting harm reduction and drug awareness workshops at schools, community centres, and group homes.

“[The program] focuses on supporting marginalized youth using an educational approach that’s rooted in risk reduction,” said Victoria Pilger, Funding and Partnerships Coordinator at Head & Hands.

“We have a team of two street workers and […] they reach youth on their own turf – in bars, parks, metros, group homes, shooting galleries, basically anywhere where youth can be reached.”

Donald*, a past client of Head & Hands, attributed many of his successes to the Street Work program in a video testimonial.

“Without it, people like me would continue to be on the streets. I wouldn’t be where I am today, I wouldn’t have an apartment, I wouldn’t be able to look for work, I wouldn’t be stable, I wouldn’t have my beautiful dog, I wouldn’t have my beautiful wife. You know, it helped me,” Donald said in the testimonial. “The Street Work program got me off the street.”

In 2011, the Street Work program was suspended after budget cuts forced the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) Montreal to cease funding for the program. According to Pilger, PHAC faced a near 30 per cent reduction in its budget.

“We’re seeing that government funding for all social programs [is] shrinking, especially for programs that are using a non-judgmental and harm-reduction approach,” said Pilger.

The program was partially reinstated in 2013 after Head & Hands began fundraising in the local community.

“We launched a two-year campaign and we turned to our community for support. Over those two years, we were able to partially re-launch the program in the fall of 2013 – we raised the funds to bring back one street worker full-time,” said Pilger. This fundraising continued until another street worker was hired in the fall of 2014.

“The Street Work program got me off the street.”

Since the program’s initial reinstatement in 2013, street worker Sara* has managed to reach almost 500 youth around the city. According to Sara, the addition of an extra street worker comes as a significant achievement for the program, and will allow Head & Hands to expand its focus while continuing to provide resources for those who currently require them.

“I go into schools, community centres, and group homes for the most part,” said Sara. “There’s always so much to do, and there [are] so many dreams I have for the program, [such as] having a little bit more time to vamp up the drug workshops and spend time [on it]. Thankfully, we got a new street worker, and we sort of shift our schedules so that we’re able to meet with more people.”

“[I also get to] develop deeper relationships with clients because I’m able to spend more time with them, because I know there’s another street worker who can take certain calls or go to certain areas that I haven’t been to in a while,” Sara continued.

“Having our Street Work program back means that now we’re able to listen and hear what’s going in our neighborhood from really important voices – from youth who see NDG from the perspective of homelessness, poverty, social exclusion, from within the youth protection system, and other experiences of marginalization,” said Pilger.

“Our street workers are able to be our eyes and ears on the ground […] and hear the voices of youth that we might not have been able to hear without the program.”

A previous version of this article stated that PHAC faced a near 13 per cent cut to its budget. In fact, it was a near 30 per cent cut. The Daily regrets the error.

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On November 13, the Concordia Sikh Students Association held an event to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the 1984 Sikh genocide, during which thousands of Sikhs in India were killed and displaced from their homes. Around twenty people, most of whom were Sikh, attended the event, which featured screenings of short films followed by a discussion.

Two of the videos shown described the events of 1984, when, in June, the Indian government enacted Operation Blue Star, a military operation intended to “break the backbone” of Sikh ‘separatists.’ It ordered the bombing of a prominent gurdwara (a Sikh place of worship) and the massacre of the people inside, under the guise of combating a separatist, terrorist movement in the Sikh-dominated state of Punjab.

The following November, India’s prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. In response to the assassination, anti-Sikh mobs engaged in a genocide of approximately 30,000 Sikhs.

Participant experiences and collective knowledge

Many attendees had relatives in India at the time, and some described how their families had been directly affected by the events of 1984.

One participant said that her family lived in South Delhi at the time, and, for three weeks, did not leave their house, during and after the period of genocide. When they did go outside they saw that the gutters were filled with bodies.

“[The bodies] were dismembered, but the only thing you could tell was you could see kara [a metal bracelet Sikhs wear] and you could see the person had long hair.” She said they were left for around two or three months.

“My family had Hindu neighbours and tenants, so when the mob did come, when they were passing the street, these guys stood in front of the gate and warded [the mob] off,” said one participant.

Some of the videos played reflected participants’ experiences, as they depicted refugee camps filled with Sikhs displaced by the genocide, many covered in burns where mobs had poured kerosene on them and tried to light them on fire. Another video showed the aftermath of the genocide twenty years later, speaking to women in the “Widow Colony,” in Western New Delhi, where impoverished women whose husbands and children were killed in the genocide still live today.

All of the videos shown said that, in addition to the systematic killing of Sikh men, women, and children, Sikh women and girls were also targeted with sexual violence – many of the women who survived the genocide were raped while their husbands and children were killed.

An elder Sikh man present at the discussion, whom everyone at the discussion referred to as “uncle,” explained that the tensions between Sikhs and Hindus dated back to the independence of India from British colonial rule. He said that, when India received its independence from Britain, the Hindus asked the Sikhs to remain a part of India instead of splitting into their own country.

Sikh leaders sat down with prominent Hindu figures, including Mahatma Gandhi, and were promised that the Punjab would be an independent state. However, many at the discussion said that the Sikhs suffered great oppression as a minority: they were paid very little for their agricultural products, they had limited access to clean water, they were not allowed to list Punjabi as their first language, and they were forced to adopt Hindu customs.

According to one participant, the Indian government unofficially facilitated the genocide, sending buses full of jailed criminals, who were promised shorter sentences in exchange for their participation, to villages for the purpose of killing the Sikhs.

The prisoners were provided with addresses, voting lists, and other government information, and were authorized to stop trains to look for, and murder, Sikh passengers. Civilians were also encouraged to kill the Sikhs, storming their houses as police turned a blind eye.

Legacy of the 1984 genocide

Speaking to the legacy of the genocide, many agreed that it is important to raise awareness of it, and spoke against “forgiving and forgetting” the past. One participant noted that the Indian government actively tries to hide the truth from the general public.

“One thing I find that’s very shocking is, when you go to India and you look at their history textbooks in high school, even at the university level, there’s no mention of it at all, like absolutely none,” she said.

The uncle brought up the point that, while the Indian government may not want the world to know about what happened, the presence of the Widow Colony serves as a constant reminder for Sikhs about the injustice they still face, and may be intended to prevent further Sikh mobilization and activism.

Some mentioned the immense danger of speaking about the oppression of Sikhs in India. The uncle told the story of Jaswant Singh Khalra, a human rights activist who was extremely vocal about the Sikh children who went missing in the years following the genocide.

Khalra discovered the cremation of around 25,000 unidentified Sikh bodies by the Indian government, and presented his findings to the Indian high court. In 1995, Khalra left India and traveled around Canada to present his findings. According to the uncle, Khalra returned to India knowing it would be a threat to his life, and within 15 days of his arrival, he was abducted by the police and killed.

Some said they had not known much about the genocide prior to attending to the discussion, or knew other Sikhs who knew nothing or were misinformed of the events. The information on the genocide has been coming out recently, and much is still not known, as the Indian government continues to cover up its actions.

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Seeds of Hope was filmed and made by award-winning Al Jazeera documentary filmmaker Fiona Lloyd-Davies, who joined Myriam Denov, a McGill professor of international social work, and Mélanie Coutu, the program director of the McGill Humanitarian Studies Initiative, at a panel discussion held after the screening.

The film follows Masika Katsuva, a rape survivor who started up a centre within her home to provide physical and emotional support for other rape survivors and their children. When the survivors felt strong enough, Katsuva found them homes and jobs within the local community. Katsuva rented a field nearby where she and the other survivors could plant crops in order to sustain the centre.

Katsuva and her two daughters, who are also rape survivors, provide care to over 18 children as well, who were either orphaned during the conflict or abandoned by their mothers due to being “products of rape.”

The documentary follows the community for a two-year stretch over which the centre saw growth and success, until it was overtaken by a retreating Congolese army that happened to pass through the community. The soldiers raped many women, killing some at the same time.

“You have an army made up of militia groups, who have child soldiers who have no formal training, very little education and understanding of what a soldier should be doing, how they should be behaving, what their responsibilities are,” Katsuva said in the film.

“I found it very emotionally and intellectually challenging. It’s hard to cope with the knowledge that such horrendous acts are still committed today on a daily basis, and that little is being done by the international community,” U3 Arts student Franseza Pardoe, who attended the event, told The Daily.

“I had read widely on the conflict prior [to] going [to this event] but being exposed to the women’s personal testimonies was new and extremely moving,” Pardoe continued.

The documentary also showed the soldiers’ disturbing perspectives, who admitted to enjoying their actions, and justified themselves by claiming they had merely followed their commandant’s orders.

The panel discussion after the screening explored topics such as the re-victimization of rape survivors and the failure to include them in relevant policy-making decisions. Denov spoke about how the perpetrators of sexual violence are usually not punished for their crimes due to inadmissible evidence provided in international courts.

“What you have in many situations are victims who are forced to then see their perpetrators on a regular basis in the community, so there’s a process of re-victimization that often occurs,” Denov said.

“In terms of peace-keeping, the problem currently is that the peace negotiation process is very militarized – there are the head of states, there are the military men [who make the decisions],” Coutu said.

Some international initiatives have already begun to attempt to hold perpetrators accountable for sexual violence. This June, the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict was held in London. The summit was meant to address multiple issues relating to sexual violence in conflict, including coming up with a protocol as to how evidence should be collected when rape survivors wish to bring their perpetrators to court.

“Some of the problems in the past with international criminal trials have been that the evidence from women has not been admissible in court […] so they wanted to create a protocol that can be accepted,” Lloyd-Davies told The Daily.

According to Lloyd-Davies, there is still progress to be made. “I think we need to keep reminding them, keep pressuring them to ensure [that these human rights workers] who are already [helping survivors] do it in [such] a way that it can be used as evidence, and to try to end this perception of impunity that enables men to continue to rape.”

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The Subcommittee has begun work on a third initiative, which calls on McGill to publicly acknowledge that the university is built on Indigenous land. “The way we see it now is pulling our resources together to have a sound package to present to Senate, probably in the late spring, of the traditional territorial acknowledgement,” said Kakwiranó:ron Cook, the chair of the Subcommittee and McGill’s Aboriginal Outreach Administrator, in an interview with The Daily.

“It would be great to see it acknowledged on our website. Other universities embrace their host Indigenous communities. Here, we’re not there yet. It’s proving to be a longer process than any of us expected,” Cook said.

Cook told The Daily that he wrote to the Secretariat in February asking that the Hiawatha Belt Flag be raised on National Aboriginal Day in June and on the day of the annual Pow-Wow in August, but his request was unsuccessful. The Hiawatha Belt, Cook explained, is “a symbol of unification and peace.”

André Costopoulos, the Dean of Students and the chair of the Aboriginal Affairs Working Group, explained that, given that flying the flag is a “bureaucratic process,” other avenues might be preferable.

“I think there are equivalent symbolic gestures that we can make that would be more visible and that would be more meaningful,” said Costopoulos. “For example, we could put a banner on the front of the Arts building, and that would be much more visible. We could have an exhibit in the Arts building lobby or the library. […] So we’re exploring more alternatives right now.”

Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP University Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan also noted that there are legal complications with raising the flag.

“Most institutions in Quebec are only allowed to fly the Quebec and Canadian flag. However, McGill has been flying their flag for so long that they have an acquired right to fly that additional flag,” Stewart-Kanigan told The Daily. “[McGill is] concerned that, if they fly the Hiawatha Belt Flag, they will lose their acquired right to fly the McGill flag.”

Hochelaga Rock

The relocation of the Hochelaga Rock to a more prominent location was also proposed by the two groups. The rock, which is currently situated on Lower Field, commemorates the Haudenosaunee village of Hochelaga that once stood at McGill’s current location.

According to Cook, the proposal was presented to the Senate Committee on Physical Development in 2012, but there was no funding available to go through with the project.

“One of the biggest problems at McGill right now is the challenge of resources,” Allan Vicaire, Indigenous Education Advisor at the Social Equity and Diversity Education office (SEDE), told The Daily. “[McGill] is faced with a lot of cuts, so all of those projects we’d like to see come to fruition, they don’t happen because of the [lack of] financial resources.”

Legal issues surrounding the ownership of the rock further slowed progress on its relocation. Costopoulos said that the rock does not technically belong to McGill, but instead to Parks Canada, and so moving it would involve a lengthy process of navigating through different levels of bureaucracy.

“From my understanding, it’s been communicated by […] Campus and Space Planning [that] the rock will never move,” said Stewart-Kanigan. “Back in 2012, they drew a sketch of where the rock could potentially go, right in front of the James McGill statue by the Y-intersection. […] More recently, it’s come down that a location in front of [the] James McGill [statue] would be too prominent.”

While the actual status of the Hochelaga Rock’s relocation remains undetermined, minor changes have been made to improve the situation, such as redoing the rock’s plaque, cleaning the area, and planned additions of benches and some traditional Haudenosaunee plants around the rock.

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The institute will gather information on these areas in conjunction with the controversial Plan Nord, a proposed project to extract resources from the lands of First Nations and the Inuit, such as the Kuujjuaq Inuit land. The lands contain many natural resources, including gold, iron ore, rare earth metals, and diamonds.

The provincial government of Quebec will provide the project with $3 million from the Fonds du Plan Nord, or the Northern Plan Fund, for the creation of the institute, which will not have a central location between the three universities involved.

Research for development and resource extraction in Northern Quebec

“The plan is for INQ to become a hub for research, innovation, and community development related to the North across disciplines, including in areas like the responsible use of natural resources, nutrition and health of Indigenous people, civic security in the Arctic, access to education, and renewable energy,” McGill’s Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations) Rose Goldstein told The Daily in an email.

The areas of Northern Quebec being targeted by this research are sparsely inhabited, and little research is currently available on the area.

Therefore, according to INRS Vice-President of Research and Academic Affairs Yves Bégin, current research methods will have to be revised and replaced with other methods that can more accurately represent the current situation of the areas to be studied.

“The key point is to see the north from the north. Anyone who has experience will say that the north is so particular that everything has to be reinvented,” Bégin told The Daily in an email, though he did not go into specifics of the research methods that will be used.

He said their research will cover a variety of topics, including, “biodiversity, population health, economy, mining, [and] permafrost.”
“This initiative is aligned with the Quebec government’s focus. […] INQ is not, however, part of the Plan Nord,” said Goldstein.

Both Bégin and Goldstein claimed that the research aspect of the INQ would attempt to incorporate the perspectives and insights of Indigenous people already living in those regions. “Consultations with internal and external communities will certainly be part of our work as we create a world-class research program to take place at this future institute,” said Goldstein.

Speaking about the INQ project specifically, Bégin mentioned that one of the goals of the INQ is to include Indigenous perspectives in the research conducted, and that, in his experience, the Northern communities have been involved since the inception of the program.

With regard to McGill’s efforts to include Indigenous peoples, Goldstein stated, “We will collaborate with the partner institutions to develop a governance plan, extend the partnership to encompass Northern communities, establish a budget, and initiate program development.”

Lack of inclusion of Indigenous peoples in Plan Nord

Tunu Napartuk, the mayor of the village of Kuujjuaq in Northern Quebec, told The Daily that the consultation process for Plan Nord has been extremely limited, and that no one in the Kuujjuaq community was told specific details of the plan.

“When it first came out a number of years ago, we were informed at the same time as the general public. […] Afterward, we were taken by surprise and we’re now trying to adjust and see how the plan now is going to work for the north,” said Napartuk.

Napartuk explained why the proposed projects are worrying and that he wished that he and his community had been consulted more.
“We live off the land. […] Inuit groups on the land learned how to work with the land and survive off it for many centuries, so the land and the environment are extremely important to us,” he explained.

“So when there’s another group of people that show interest in our land – we call it our land because we’ve been on this land for many thousands of years – when there’s other groups of people who show interest in our land, we’re always concerned, and we always want to take part in the process, to be informed, to have the right to ask questions on what the plans are,” he added.

Napartuk explained that regional leaders, elected from within the people in Kuujjuaq, are the ones who voice their concerns about projects happening within their territory to the government.

“We do have leaders, regional leaders, elected leaders, that we elect within our people, and they’re the ones who have been spending a lot of energy, and pass on their concerns about any projects that may happen within our territory.”

“[Regional leaders] regularly meet and inform the provincial leaders, and the [provincial] government – I hope by this time – clearly understands what our concerns are,” said Napartuk.

Napartuk said that although the government listens to the concerns voiced by regional leaders, they are not necessarily prioritized over the general goals of the province.

“In the north, especially North[ern] Quebec, we have the tendency of finding out things after projects or programs have started, and the whole process of consultation has always been challenged. So, to be consulted, and to be made aware of how things are going to work, especially if the projects are very important, that needs to happen here,” explained Napartuk.

Revival of Plan Nord

The Plan Nord project was first proposed in 2011 by the Liberal party, but was put on hold for 19 months after the Parti Québécois came into power in 2012. After the Liberals won the elections in April under Philippe Couillard, the project was revived with a few changes.

Major changes from the 2011 version include a new revenue-sharing scheme between regions, whereby tax revenue used to fund the project will be used for both extracting natural resources and youth development programs. Additionally, a stronger focus will be placed on the development of the mining industry with a $1 billion investment by the Quebec government in Quebec contractors building mining equipment.

Plan Nord’s overall focus on the exploitation of the natural resources on lands belonging to Indigenous peoples has already earned criticism from many environmental and social justice groups, including Divest McGill. When the plan was first introduced in 2011, Divest McGill issued a statement saying, “Quebec’s Plan Nord involves some of the largest, dirtiest companies on the planet and provides for extraordinary environmental destruction across huge swaths of Northern Quebec. Much of this will occur on Native land, as the voices of Indigenous peoples fall on the deaf ears of politicians.” Activists have also demonstrated against the project for similar reasons.

Both the original and current plan involve heavy investments in research on the resource-rich lands of Northern Quebec and infrastructure development, the latter of which aims to increase the accessibility of natural resources in Northern Quebec.

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Braving the rain, over 1,000 people came to the ninth annual March and Vigil for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women – organized by Missing Justice, Quebec Native Women, and the Centre for Gender Advocacy (CGA) – to demand justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and call on the Canadian government to investigate the violence against them. The march was one of around 100 Sisters in Spirit events held across Canada on Saturday to protest these issues.

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie, Publicity and Promotions Coordinator at the CGA, spoke to The Daily about the march’s significance. “This march was founded nine years ago by Bridget Tolley, an Algonquin woman, on the anniversary of her mother’s death. One of the main purposes of the march is to pay respects to and honour the many, many lives of missing and murdered Native women and girls across Canada,” Rolbin-Ghanie told The Daily.

Tolley initiated the march in honour of her mother, Gladys Tolley, who died in 2001 after being hit by a Sûreté du Québec (SQ) police cruiser. No inquiry was made into the case, and no officers were charged in her death.

The event on Saturday evening started off at Place Émilie-Gamelin with an opening performance by the Buffalo Hat Singers and with speakers from various groups discussing the government’s lack of action to end the violence against missing and murdered Indigenous women.

This was followed by an hour-long march, mostly on St. Laurent, during which protesters chanted slogans such as “Solidarité avec les femmes autochtones!” (Solidarity with Indigenous women) and “Bring our daughters home, bring our sisters home!” The march ended with a candlelight vigil and musical performances by members of the Indigenous community, some of whom were personally affected by the systemic violence against Indigenous women.

Podcast: An Interview with Monica van Schaik from the Missing Justice collective

Many at the march expressed their displeasure with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s lack of action toward preventing violence against Indigenous women. Alison Hackney, a protester at Saturday’s march spoke to this frustration, telling The Daily she hoped that the march “[would] help bring better change in government, and I hope this government, or a future government, will initiate a national inquiry and seriously address the issue.”

McGill’s chapter of Amnesty International numbered among the many human rights groups that marched on Saturday. D’Arcy White, a U3 Political Science and Economics student and VP External for Amnesty International at McGill, told The Daily that he sought to raise awareness of the problem both at McGill and in surrounding communities.

“Our group came out to the march to express our concern over the disproportionate amount of Aboriginal women who have fallen victim to violent crime in the past two decades,” said White.

“In Canada, Aboriginal women are four times more likely than non-Aboriginal women to be murdered,” White continued. “Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, it’s clear that the institutions meant to protect human rights in this country are failing Aboriginal women disproportionately. It shouldn’t take more murdered and missing Indigenous women for greater initiative to fix the problem.”

Some activists also addressed the impact of the disappearances and deaths of Indigenous women on their families and communities. Saimata Manning, an employment counselor for Inuit people in Montreal, has met many such families, and believes that while a national inquiry is important, providing support for the families of victims is crucial as well. “Some families have been hurt so much that they turn to drugs and alcohol, family violence,” said Manning. “I think [the government] should implement something that gives back to the community, to [Indigenous people or others], to have programs, maybe open up things that people can go to.”

“There’s always the aspect of the march that aims to take up public space and to draw attention to the issue, and, we hope, to the deeply systemic nature of the issue, so that people aren’t just saying ‘Oh, poor Native women are going missing and being murdered’ without understanding the deeper root causes behind it,” Rolbin-Ghanie told The Daily. “The system is failing native women and children in their communities.”

At the end of the vigil, an Indigenous speaker led the closing prayer, who said, “Let’s bring our minds together, let’s bring our collective efforts together, let’s, in unity, do something for our collective good – not just the good of my community, not just the good of your community […] but the collective, human good.”

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