PACIFIC CURLS

PACIFIC CURLS are fantastic! Wonderful musicians! They are Kim Halliday (Rotuman/NZ Scottish), Sarah Beattie (Scottish) and Ora Barlow (Te Whanau-a-Apanui/English). This trio has been together for 6 years, and play a seamless blend of Maori, Pasifik, Celtic music and instruments.

I saw/heard them in the summer and started a blog and then life ran away with me but here I am back in the blogosphere.

thumb piano

 So heres the thing, I grew up around pacific cultures and sounz, but have no claim to it culturally myself, am of Scottish ancestry, but was not raised in that culture, just in this bland english way.  Fiddle player Sarah hails from Aberdeenshire, as do some of my rellies, my great-grandma for instance.

This blend of music and cultures, YES! I never felt more complete, at home, so far from 'home'. Pacific beatz and harmonies with celtic fiddle. Who knew!?

Ora definitely leads, keeps it all together, the show moving along with her great song introductions, humour, audience participation, vocals, beat box and range of traditional instruments she plays from Nguru (nose flute) to the whirring spin of a Purerehua.

I loved all their songs, but can't get the final offering of their concert Kalimba Trance out of my head. Based around Kim Halliday's exquisite Kalimba (thumb piano) playing, which I heard like a ring of tiny bells being played in a mesmerizing circular rhythm (think didgeridoo circular breathing).  It made me want to get out my humble thumb piano (see photo) and play it after it sitting idle for years! Kim's exquisite thumb piano and ukele of a pink/blonde wood look like they may have been handcrafted just for her by the same detailed instrument maker. I once played mine for hours under a full moon on new years eve sitting at the top of a HUGE macrocarpa tree to an audience of equally large cockroaches. Yes I believe that is fizzy drink can decorations on my Trade Aid thumb piano, inventive use of recycling eh?

I was so enthused I ended up buying both their CD's, their 2008 Pacifi Celta, and their most recent Te Kore. 

You can hear some of their music online at their Pacific Curls sonicbids page where you can also keep a track of their touring dates. Go see them if they come to a place near you - you'll be glad you did!

Strong Medicine - West meets East meets North meets South

Medicine and spirit has been up a lot lately. I'm gonna go with that. During a film festival, I saw the films Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life, and The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island.

Buffy Sainte-Marie (1941- ) is an awe inspiring artist and activist who travels the world performing, and working on her Cradle Board Teaching Project which links indigenous teens across communities, provides School Curriculum on First Nations and much more. I really like her innovative  digital art work, 'painting with light'.  Her multiple streams of creativity, and standing up for what she believes in. Learning more about her long trail blazing career as a singer and songwriter since the 1960's was just wonderful. She has worked so hard for close to five decades, and endured her music being 'blacklisted' and suppressed due to her stand on First Nations rights and many other issues.

I was struck by many things in these two movies, but what stays with me is near the end Buffy Sainte-Marie says in the film something to the effect, 'if you carry the medicine, if you are a medicine carrier, but the illness is not epidemic yet, you have to carry the medicine for a really long time'. It made me reflect on the long history of many diverse communities for justice, healing, and wellness.

Buffy Sainte-Marie who was born in Saskatchewan, Canada of the Cree Nation, lives some of the year, when she is not traveling for work, in Hawaii. She talked about the need for a place of retreat, and quiet, in order to be able to do all she does as a performer and teacher. Similarly Hanne Sorensen (1960 - ) originally from Denmark who is one of 6 people featured in the film The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island, talks about needing to retreat after years working as a welder and technician aboard Greenpeace ships on environmental issues. The Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior - named after a Cree prophecy of the ecological disaster that would befall the human race if nature was not respected, was to lead a protest against underwater nuclear bomb tests at Mururoa, in 1985. For decades the peoples of the pacific have been made so sick by radiation poisoning, which still effects people today, including genetically. The Rainbow Warrior had just come from Rongelap, (Marshall Islands), where the indigenous people had asked for help to relocate to another island, their homeland had become so uninhabitable. The ship was bombed by members of the French military in a covert operation in Auckland harbour, it sank taking the life of Fernando Pereira. Many of the crew now live on nearby Waiheke Island. Aotearoa has been a nuclear-free zone by practice since 1984, and by law since 1987.

I understand that need to retreat, to reflect, to rejuvenate.  Both these places - Hawaii, and Waiheke Island, where these two women live, I have been to, and returned to for exactly these reasons - healing, review, renewal. Places which in and of themselves are healing, they have such powerful energy.

I watched a video of African-American writer Alice Walker (1944 - ) and Buddhist nun Pema Chodron (1936 - ) Pema Chodron and Alice Walker in Conversation (1999).

Alice Walker's third novel The Color Purple is one of my favourites. It talked about things I knew: violence; relationships with women; and things I had not been subjected to: racism. It meant so much to me, when the movie based on the book came out, a friend took the poster from the movie theatre and gave it to me, it hung on my wall for years. Alice Walker was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (the first African American woman writer to receive it) and the American Book Award for The Color Purple

Pema Chodron is a European-American Buddhist nun, director of Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, Canada.  Pema Chodron and Alice Walker  talked amongst other things about making toxic things in to medicine - more like emotional, or mental or spiritual suffering. Not to seek suffering, or be martyrish about it, but to accept that there will be good times, and there will be hard times. To use the hard times, to make use of them, to learn about ourselves, and others, a way to understand this as a social activist -  our shared experiences of sufffering. To make the hard, the toxic be a teacher to us.


Or as the Dalai Lama puts it:  'Acceptance of suffering does not mean we should not do everything in our power to solve a problem whenever it can be solved. However, acceptance of the suffering that we are already undergoing helps us not to make it worse with the additional burden of mental and emotional suffering. For example, there is not much we can do about old age. Far better to accept our condition than to fret about it.'

A Two-Spirit friend who was participating as one of forty Aboriginal ceremonial spiritual elders and leaders in the third annual Downtown Eastside Smudge Ceremony invited me and a friend to come. Which was a humbling and amazing experience -  it is open to all, four hundred people came, many First Nations people traveling from near and far. It is held in a hard place, a dangerous place for women, especially Aboriginal women, where colonization meets the street. Where poverty, displacement, violence, addiction and prostitution live. A place where people live, and look out for one another. A place where Aboriginal villages once were. A place of hurt. The ceremony of healing from violence towards women,  was initiated by Darla Laughlin in 2007, after she had a vision in which she saw a huge abalone (paua) shell from which the smoke of sage was filling the street. Bringing together people of all races from the four sacred directions of the medicine wheel. Red races from the West, Black races from the South, Yellow races from the east, White races from the North. This year the smudge ceremony was on the 'Summer Solstice: Honouring Women as Sacred Life Giver. Prayers for Mother Earth and all Female Energy. Keeping our Seven Generations.'
 

Powerful medicine, after three hours one of the most painful places on earth felt as clear, neutral, energized, pure as a temple. I have recently been taught the Buddhist practice of Tonglen. Making your heart  a place of light, through which you breath in others suffering, breathing out joy, peace, happiness. I do not find it easy, I am still learning how not to take in, on that suffering, not to be overwhelmed by the suffering of all living beings.  Being a bit of an energy empath, I frequently shudder, on the bus, on the street, in traffic, when people and places of hurt, negative energy reaches and envelopes me as I pass by. I try to have compassion. To remember that sometimes, angry, aggressive, violent people, are just like barking dogs - scared. Yes I try to protect myself, with light. There are reasons I live in the mountains, and meditate on buses.  In the ceremonial space of so much concentrated energy, with so many people standing in spirit with their sacred medicine bundles, and constantly renewed by the smoke of the smudge, it was much more possible. The breathing in of suffering, transforming it, the breathing out of joy. It was a profound way to spend the summer solstice. 

After in the park, we ate wonderful vegetarian South-Asian Indian food. Amidst the First Nations drumming and dancing, I thought of friends in Aotearoa, in the winter, celebrating Matariki, the new year.


Later that week, an Aussie musician friend from down the line, I wished I could see more often, was in town and turned up unexpectedly next to me in my mediation class to surprise me! No not in a vision, like in reality! Let us sit together and envision a better world for all.

With gratitude Namaste.

killing us softly - something in the water?

The Tyee — Disabled again on BC Liberals' Hit List

"There are a number of initiatives that are undertaken in the budget to make sure that we continue to put low-income people on the top of the list." 

-- Premier Gordon Campbell, March 5 2010 (Yeah right Gordo!)


'The poor and the disabled are definitely at the top of the B.C. Liberal government's list -- the hit list for more suffering, that is. The poor and people with HIV and chronic illnesses whacked with more cuts to income and health support'. By Bill Tieleman, 9 Mar 2010, TheTyee.ca

Yes the 'Liberal' provincial government is at it again, announcing last month a further slate of cuts to products and services for people with disabilities, which include no longer funding products like orthotics, glucose monitors, bottled water. Changing eligibility to: dental and medical services; provision, replacement and repair of motorized scooters; nutritional supplements, etc. See more info here.

 The Liberal government seems to have a very short memory, they might have forgotten but we haven't, the 12 people who took their own lives; when their government decided to review everyone receiving disability benefits and make them 're-prove' their disability in 2002 by filling in a 23 page form in conjunction with a GP.  In a province where historically many thousands of people don't even have access to a GP.   Heroes exhibition artist Cleo Pawson hasn't forgotton either, she talks about it (at minute 7.40) along with her art in this interview on Redeye. The government spent millions on the review and saved practically nothing. The form was sent to 18, 750 people, only 47 people were found to not qualify anymore. Ironically it turned out Cleo was more disabled not less disabled,  and subsequently got more assistance that she needed. Photo of  a beaded work she started at the time, which took 6 years to complete. It is stunning, and so detailed.

BC Coalition of People with Disabilities will keep you up to date with BC governments shenanigans. The creepy part is the BC Government does remember. I heard on the grapevine recently, they gave some funding to a small disability arts festival a few years back, and the idea was the provgov would invite people on benefits to come. In the end the provgov decided not to, as they realized, people on disability benefits getting an unexpected envelope in the mail, would FREAK OUT, and think it was something bad again like the benefit review debacle.  

Neither have we forgotten about the 7 people who died, and the hundreds who were made sick, when ecoli contaminated the municipal water supply  in Walkerton Ontario in 2000. That's the reason why people who are immune compromised, don't drink tap water, if the water becomes contaminated, and it will from time to time, they will not just get sick, they are at a risk of dying. Now there were only 4, 800 people living in Walkerton at the time, so those 7 people who died represent more than 1 in 1000.  There are over 2 million people living in metro Vancouver - half of the province's population, which means if our water supply becomes contaminated as it did in 2006 and we are advised not to drink tap water, over 2000 people could die. Which is just over 2/3 of the number who died in the 911 attacks.  I hope when that happens, and it's not a matter of if, but when, that the their loved ones take a class action suit against the  provincial government .

For the record here is a quote from a current document from a Medical Office for a Metro Vancouver municipality: 

'Advisory Re: Drinking Water & Persons Who Are Immunocompromised. The Provincial Health Officer advises all British Columbians with compromised immune systems (such as HIV, organ or bone transplants, chemotherapy or medications that suppress the immune system) to avoid drinking water from any surface water source unless it has been boiled, filtered or distilled.  North Shore, Greater Vancouver and, in fact, nearly all British Columbia water sources are surface water sources (lakes, rivers, streams).' 

Lets not forget the provincial and federal government's failure to provide clean water to many First Nations reserves in Canada, you can keep up to date with progress on that front at Rez Water. Or that half the worlds population is made sick by diseases found in dirty water, that at least 5 million people worldwide die every year from lack of access to clean water.

So lets recap, the provincial government says if you are immune compromised DO NOT drink tap water. They used to pay for you to get purified water, but now they have decided, you can pay for it yourself, out of your insufficient funds, or die. 

For the environmental record, while we are all trying to stop drinking tiny bottles of bottled water which when discarded then pollute the environment. Everyone I know who gets bottled water for health reasons, has a couple 20 litre bottles which they get refilled  ( :

The really sad part is these recent cuts are on top of everything which has been cut by the Liberal provincial government of  B.C, in the past 8 years: Legal Aid, funding to Women's Centres, funding to Seniors Services in the community, daycare subsidies, the BC Human Rights Commission, 50% Arts funding, the list goes on. Stop Arts Cuts on Facebook. You can see just how badly BC is doing in securing the rights of First Nations/women.  So badly the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women wants Canada to report back on how it has improved the situation for women on welfare,  and First Nations women  facing violence in 1 year.

Here's a nice little ditty a timely reminder of the cost of the Olympics - like cutting the budget of the office which investigates the deaths of children. Yep just one of the many places that 8 billion dollars came from.  http://geoffberner.com/Olympicstheme/

Fortunately some people and organizations do give a damn, about making BC a better place to live, and will be demonstrating so on April 10th 2010.

Para Graphia Mark III

It’s all about context eh? It was only today seeing Para written in a sentence with other Maori words, I remembered Para is also a Maori word, or often prefix. I know that it’s not only about context, it’s also about who is writing, or seeing, or speaking, or understanding a word. That Para, separated from Graphia, as in Paragraphia, is a word not only in English/Latin, but also Maori, and possibly other languages such as Spanish. I set out to find what Para could mean. Relying on the always reliable, extensive Ngata Dictionary, Maori to English, and English to Maori. (http://www.learningmedia.co.nz/ngata/)

Which revealed 260 results for Para. So out of respect for the fact letters, sounds syllables live within many languages; in this space devoted to words, meanings and writers, included below are some of the beautiful possibilities in Maori. Which resonate with this writing, and whose trail led me back to another language I had been thinking about after returning to spend time at the Out from Under exhibition, Braille:

For those who may not know, Aotearoa is officially a trilingual country. The official languages, are indigenous Maori (since 1987 - of which in reality there are many distinct languages and dialects), NZ Sign Language (since 2006). English which is a de facto Official Language by use since colonization in 1800’s, but not actually by law.  Unfortunately the reality of access to, use, and teaching in all three languages is a whole other struggle. English being far more favoured by officialdom, and both Maori and NZ Sign Language having been repressed historically. That is, in practice, and legislated against, and people punished for using them. I believe the only other country in which Sign Language is an official language so far is Uganda.

Hori Mahue Ngata (1919 – 1989) eldest grandson of Sir Apirana Ngata MP (1874 –1950), was a kaumatua of Ngati Porou, with tribal connections to Ngai Tamanuhiri, Rongomaiwahine, and Te Aitanga a Mahaki. Interpreter, University lecturer, scholar, he, and his whanau (family), friends, and colleagues spent decades creating the dictionary of over 14,500 entries. From the 1960’s on, until it’s publication in 1993, four years after his sudden death in 1989. Leaving us all with a great taonga (treasure) of which I am in awe. (My apologies I can’t work out how to put the macrons over the long vowels on this computer – but I am on the trail of finding and configuring software which will correct this).

"kopara: female bellbird (listen to her sing http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/small-forest-birds/4/1).

haparangi: to bellow; taipara(tia): bombard; parapara: bent. He mahi parapara te korero purakau ki a Witi Ihimaera. Witi Ihimaera has a natural bent for story-telling. (this is even more apt considering he is gay writer = bent!). para: body. He nui nga para kai roto i te wai. There are foreign bodies in the water.

ukupara - smudge; pake parapara: black cape. Ko nga muka harakeke i totohua ki ro paru mo nga ra torutoru, i whatua mo te pake parapara. Flax fibres steeped in mud for several days were used to weave the black cape.

parapara: acumen, faculty, ingenuity, instinct/ive, resource, remains. paraketu(tia): probe

para kore: pure. tio para: mud oyster.

parari: gully; parara: roar. Te parara a te hau i roto i te koaka. The roar of the wind in the ravine. paparahi: trail; para: spirit."

H.M. Ngata Dictionary 1993

Which brought me back to Mae Brown, first Deaf-Blind person to receive a degree, at Toronto University in Canada in 1972. Working away on her Braille typewriter, with her lectures spelt into the palm of her hand, as part of her work she created a Braille encyclopedia. She is featured in the Out from Under exhibit under ‘Trailblazing’. The text of the online Plain Language Audio Tour of this section concludes:  http://www.ofu.ryerson.ca/exhibits/trailblazing.html

“Long before she earned her university degree she wrote an article comparing her life to a deep dark canyon. She imagined that her only way out of the canyon was by making a difficult climb. She wanted to leave way marks behind her so that other people could find the path she had taken”

when I lie down
tired worn out
others will stand
young, fresh
on the stairs
which I have built
they will climb
and on the work
which I have done
they will mount
at my clumsy work
they will laugh
and when the stones roll
they will curse me
but they will climb
and on my stairs
and they will mount
and on my work”

Mae Brown (1935 – 1973)

I like to think of Mae Brown working at her studies in the late 1960’s; whilst on the other side of the world H.M. Ngata is beginning his dictionary, starting with the legal terms used in his level III Maori Language Class at Auckland University. Trail blazing, doing something worth doing which no one has done before.

The roar of the wind in the ravine
roar
gully
trail
spirit

Te parara a te hau i roto i te koaka
parara
parari
paparahi
para

Or, it wasn’t until I stood alone in the dark canyon of the wings about to go on a stage, with the book my friend had given me, in which I had pasted my stories. I noticed for the first time, some months before she had written ‘Shine on you crazy diamond’. (Yes Ups to Pink Floyd!) She had put those words there, perhaps knowing, I would later need them. I took courage from those words. Blaze on my friends, blaze on.

WOMEN / MENTAL / HEALTH - Happy IWD, PWD's!

Photo Copyright FreeStockImages.org


HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY MARCH 8
- PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES!

MARCH 12
She Laughed, She Cried;
Fado with Sara Marreiros & Comedy with Jan Derbyshire
Friday, March 12, 2010. 8:00pm - 10:00pm
Location: Telus Studio Theatre - Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. UBC
Opening the performance stream of the Kickstart Festival 2010. Fado singer Sara Marreiros and her band bring music steeped in the passion of Portuguese saudade (yearning). Jan Derbyshire performs Funny in the Head, the rollicking story of a bipolar comedian’s fight to stay funny.
Tickets: $22 ($16 students, seniors & fixed income)
http://www.ticketmaster.ca/section 604.280.3311
Kickstart Festival 2010 presented in partnership with the Chan Centre
for the Performing Arts. http://www.kickstart-arts.ca/kickstartfestival.html

MARCH 13
Womyn and Mental Health. Saturday, March 13th 2010.
Facilitator: Erin Graham Location: Hastings Library
(2674 East Hastings Street). Time: 10 am – 2 pm.
This workshop will offer participants opportunities to talk about their understandings and experiences of psychiatry and mental health. We will discuss some of the ways in which women respond to the sexism and oppression we encounter, and examine how some of those responses are labeled "inappropriate" or as indicative of psychiatric illness. Participants can expect to have lots of time to engage with current ideas about women and mental health, and come away with some concrete strategies for how to get beside and assist women in distress, or who may be looking for resources about mental health. Come with questions, problems, ideas and an appetite for understanding.
Erin Graham is a long-time feminist activist, mental health Worker, storyteller and raconteur. She is presently in the process of getting a PhD from the department of Educational Studies at UBC.

MARCH 6
A Feminist Perspective of the Indian Act.
Saturday, March 6th 2010. Facilitator: Fay Blaney.
Location: Hastings Library (2674 East Hastings Street)
Time: 10Am – 2Pm
With International Women's Day fast approaching, this workshop will take a feminist exploration on the impact of the Indian Act on First Nations women. The feminist principle that “the personal is political” is an effective tool in bringing about greater understandings of gendered inequality. It underscores the relationship between the shaping of ideologies and beliefs through legal and institutional instruments, and its' impact on the lived experiences of First Nations women. The conviction that “Feminist until all women are free” must apply to this discussion!

Fay Blaney is a Xwemalhkwu woman of the Coast Salish First Nation. As a founding mother of the Aboriginal Women's Action Network, Fay lead two participatory action research projects on (i) Bill C-31 and (ii) violence against women as it pertains to alternative justice models. During her years as an instructor at Langara College and UBC, Fay taught Women's Studies, from an Aboriginal feminist perspective. She also played a significant role in the creation of the Aboriginal Studies Program at Langara College. Fay also taught a course on “Racism and Ethnic Relations in Canada”. In addition to several publications, Fay appears in the film, “Finding Dawn” and developed the Study Guide that accompanies this film.

Registration: Swathi Nirmal. Women's Centre Coordinator.
Vancouver Status of Women
Phone 604-255-6554 womencentre(at)vsw.ca. Bus tickets , Snacks and Childcare Provided. Please contact gorgeousmabel(at)hotmail.com in advance if you require childcare.

AVAILABLE NOW
Rain and Thunder Issue 45 (Winter 2009): Annual Activism Issue
Featured articles:
Activism as a Disabled Womon by Philippa Willitts
"Fierce Indigenous Love": Fighting for Her Sisters -- An Interview with Aboriginal Radical Feminist Laura Holland
Twin Oaks: Not the Revolution But You Can See it From Here by Valerie LivingWater
Lone Radical ...Feminist Actions by Diana Russell
Forty Years of Activism by Jean Taylor
The Other Side of Activism: Withdrawal as a Radical Act of Defiance by Kim Rivers

ART SUBMISSIONS APRIL
Words on the wall: Remembrance Of Patients Past
Psychiatric Survivors Archives of Toronto (PSAT) is giving out bricks for artists to create with, deadline for submission April 7th 2010. There will be a silent auction of bricks painted by local artists. Proceeds from the auction will be donated to the Psychiatric Survivors Archives of Toronto (PSAT) for the purpose of buying plaques to commemorate the labour of CAMH patients during the construction of a wall on the institution’s grounds.

Marc Glassman, Executive Director of This Is Not A Reading Series, will host the evening. Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, 1214 Queen St West Wednesday April 21: 7:30pm. To celebrate the re-issue of his groundbreaking study, Remembrance Of Patients Past (University of Toronto Press), scholar and activist Geoffrey Reaume will conduct a walking tour of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) grounds. Reaume will then guide the group to the Gladstone Hotel, where he will have an on-stage conversation Ruth Ruth of Friendly Spike Theatre Band. http://www.tinars.ca/content/remembrance-patients-past.
For bricks contact: 416 661 9975; http://www.psychiatricsurvivorarchives.com/index.html

FEBRUARY 14 2010 - 19th ANNUAL WOMEN'S MEMORIAL MARCH

FEBRUARY 14 2010 'Valentines Day' in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) Canada's 'poorest postal code.'

19th ANNUAL WOMEN'S MEMORIAL MARCH, REMEMBERING WOMEN 14 FEBRUARY 2010

Women who are missing, were murdered, died from drugs or poverty, the majority First Nations = died from the violence, and effects of colonialism, cultural genocide and racism. The Womens' Memorial March takes place every February 14, stopping at places where women died, or were last seen. The DTES is a couple blocks from several Winter Olympic 2010 Venues, VANOC tried to have the 19th Annual Womens' Memorial March canceled; delayed until after the Olympics; rerouted. They were unsuccessful.

December 2008. Aboriginal Women's Action Network
'The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has called on Canada to set up an inquiry into the reasons for the failure of law enforcement agencies to investigate promptly the cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal women. Carrie Humchitt, President of the Aboriginal Women’s Action Network, said “The CEDAW Committee has clearly recognized the urgency and gravity of the documented disappearances and murders of over 511 Aboriginal women and girls from communities in Canada. It is important to everyone to examine why Canadian officials failed to protect these women, or investigate promptly. This is a human rights issue of central importance in Canada,” said Humchitt, “and one that needs the immediate attention on the facts and solutions that the UN Committee is calling for.”

In British Columbia over the last twenty years, dozens of Aboriginal women and girls have gone missing from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, and along the Highway of Tears which runs between Prince George and Prince Rupert. Many of these missing women and girls have been found murdered. “Aboriginal women and girls have been treated by violent men, and by authorities, as though their safety and their lives do not matter. Bringing the facts into the light is essential if Canada is to fulfill its commitment to treating Aboriginal women and girls as human beings of equal dignity and worth,” said Jackie Lynne, a Board member of AWAN.'

Amnesty International completed a report on the situation in 2004 Stolen Sisters: A Human Rights Response to discrimination and violence against Indigenous Women in Canada (October, 2004)

Audio and Video from the 2010 MARCH, with family members, Shawn A-in-chut Atleo National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Mayor Gregor Robertson, and Federal MP Libby Davies, echoing the calls of many groups for a provincial and/or federal inquiry. Something groups like AWAN and Native Women's Association of Canada have been calling for, for years.

In related news a Tent City was set up February 15 2010 to draw attention to homelessness at 58 East Hastings St, a site of previous housing, torn down, slated for redevelopment, which later stalled, and the site is currently parking for VANOC. 'No more empty talk, no more empty lots'. Check out a Cath Turner report on Al Jazeera with Stella August and Joan Morelli of Power of Women at the Downtown Eastside Women Centre

Xtrawest reports 'City Councilor Ellen Woodsworth began a seven-day hunger strike this week in support of housing the city's homeless. She is one of many local volunteers who have held the iconic wooden spoon in the 2010 Hunger Strike Relay। The relay began in December 2008 and will continue until June, when supporters from across the country will call on the federal government to reestablish a National Housing Program in Canada. Despite her hunger strike, Woodsworth is spending time this week at various city intersections handing out Valentine's Day cards that people can sign and send to their MP or to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in support of the bill.'

women do not die
peacefully
when murdered
deprived of life
livelihood
they do not lie
with vacant eyes
and angel expressions
like you see
on the tv shows
women fight
are beaten down
women yell
are silenced
women scream
are suffocated
women do not die
calmly
but in pain
in fear
and in anger
WOMEN
FIGHT
TO
LIVE

(2003)


TO WOMEN'S MEMORIES: PEACE. KIA PAI MARIE. NAMASTE.

k.d. lang eh

Yes I watched the opening of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games on TV. For the record I wish governments would spend as much money and energy on addressing First Nations sovereignty; homelessness, poverty, services to women, children, elders, disabled, refugees; the arts etc as they do on sports events like this.....k.d. lang singing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah near the end kinda got to me. Wow, such power in her voice, she put her heart and soul in to that! (Even tho up until that moment I wasn't really a fan of this song, I mean the dude can write, but his songs can tend towards dirges and sometimes 1970's style misogyny). Okay I cried during the First Nations part, with so many dancers from so many nations gathered together in one place. Bagpipes make me cry sometimes too, and I tried not to cry, during a fantastic performance by Turanga Ararau and local First Nations last week, I went to on the eve of Waitangi Day, as I hummed quietly the familiar tunes. It's part spirit, part collective memory, part some grief of energy around previously oppressed cultures, part some personal history of my own. Like when people play 10 guitars. Theme song of 1970's parties, rural and urban.....I actually thought this was a local song up until quite recently, there were so many localized versions sung; me being oblivious to Engelbert Humperdink.

It made me think about the power of k.d. lang standing there in her white suit butchness for all the parts of the world which could watch knowing some part of who and what she is. This Metis, lesbian, butch woman, singing a song to another woman. It inspired me to carry on with my own tiny spoken word performance when the opportunity arises. There is a power in your own truth which others not only appreciate, but need.



Like a disabled artist I met out at a Uni talk about Cancer and being Queer. I was chatting with after, asked me 'was that you I went to see perform at such and such a venue'? Yep it probably was. We have no idea sometimes the positive effect of what we do has on others. We often don't find out until years later, if even at all. Being a big boned gal from southern alberta, apparently k.d. lang performed Turn me round at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics too. I did love that song, big boned gal from southern alberta that year, it made me feel like I fit in my body as I danced around the kitchen.

I did really love her Constant Craving song from her Ingenue album, and could play it over, and over and over again in the early 1990's! Although I always thought of it as being about chocolate! I'm joking! And I thought the line 'Maybe a great magnet/pulls all souls towards truth' was 'Maybe a great Minatour' huh? I always imagined some big Taniwha.



So as per Dame Edna's dubious advice below, I am embracing my inner Canadian, no not the Olympic pride kind. The be true to yourself, k.d. lang kind. I do love when she sings how she commits, to the song, to the note, to whatever she's wearing. That's it, just commit.





I saw the delightful k.d. lang in concert in Aotearoa a few years back for my birthday, fantastic! With a couple of my dear, apparently straight grrl workmates who were swooning in the aisles! There was leaning over the balcony, taking breathtaking photos, and breathless whispering! But y'know k.d. is awesome it's hard not to swoon! Ah good times good times ( : I often seem to see people perform outa their country, whichever one I'm not in. Like I saw The Topp Twins live in Canada in 1998, and Alix Dobkin, and Joan Baez in Aotearoa around 2000. Stumbled upon my all time favs Aussie grrl band FRUIT in Canada around 2006.



At the Turanga Ararau performance at We Yah Hani Nah Coastal First Nations Dance Festival we got seated near the front, on the side with the bear totem, which made me happy, the side, the place for twins. ( : Reminded me how ten days before I met Miss A, I dressed up in a bear costume I made out of my grandma's black coat and tried to win a free trip to visit Canada. The energy of that, of committing to that. Once when I was first in Canada, things were going real badly housing and relationships wise for a bit, and I knew no one, and I was staying in this place with no phone and no internet. I felt so lonesome, just before I fell asleep, I thought of a black bear, I'd met two by then already. I fell asleep with it's warm pungent fur and breath on my neck. The next day, a bear walked up the stairs past my door. It truly did, I called, and bear came and gave me strength to go on. I been wondering if twins will come to the next generation, and then a relative did talk to me about that this week, the possible genetic inheritance of that happening.

Hey and synchronistic I was walking through a mall thursday and I heard playing 'How Bizzare' Sistah Seena says 'funky'!!

Okay enough with the youtube mix tape session, I need to get Mixpod like the stylee Miss Brian। Nice music e hoa! Still craving some k.d? Miss Brian rightly points out in her comment below k.d. lang does indeed have a new compilation just out Recollection.

FEELING NOSTALGIC

Brian's an unusual name for a girl, doesn't like the weather lately, which as it pounds on the roof made me think of the late poet Hone Tuwhare and Rain.

Reading the NZ Herald online, R.I.P. Pacific Island music pioneer Pauly Fuemana, innovator behind that classic debut single How Bizarre. Which lead me to think of the late Maori/Jewish/Celtic music pioneer, and later Like Minds Like Mine mental health educator; Mahinaarangi Tocker, whose music formed the soundtrack of the 1980's for me. Which lead me to this soulful version of Po Karekare Ana by Deborah Wai Kapohe who I just discovered right now. She seems to be furthering the honourable tradition of wonderful women musicians who also happen to be lawyers, along with Moana Maniapoto Jackson, Judy Small, and Anne Feeney.

Like I said, feeling all nostalgic for them Black Sand Shores.......

RENEE – you can’t really explain humour

You can't really explain humour. It is different in different locations, even if you are all (allegedly) speaking the same language. I have just finished re-reading Renee's (1929- ) book of comic writing Yin and Tonic (1998). Makes me laugh so hard! She has urban and small town NZ down to a T. Whether it be her frustration and successes in having some female garden gnomes made because previously all garden gnomes were male which she found ridiculous! Her priceless satirical gardening, cooking, ironing or pet care tips; taking the piss out of the media, dealing to heterosexism, ageism and sexism; or reminiscing about the good old days of political protest, womens groups, and writers parties. She has it going on!

I think my favourite story is: New Zealand's greatest pastime

'No it's not rugby, racing or beer. It's not sex, going out to restaurants, or reading books. It's not going to the theatre, opera, or ballet, It's not even bowls.
This pastime is indulged in by people of either sex, with people of their own or the other sex,and takes place both in the privacy of their own home and/or on the streets. It is enjoyed by people of any age. It is not a special feature of any culture, a plank of any political party or religious group. It is not confined to a certain class or income bracket, or whether you have or have not had children, a mammogram or cervical smear, or been tested for AIDS.It doesn't matter if you do it in the latest Porsche or in a rusty old Ford Falcon stationwagon. Policemen do it, drug dealers do it. Politicians do it, so do poets. Women do it, men do it, kids do it. Even animals have been known to do it. Hands up anyone who has moved house in the last five years.'

I believe I worked out once I have moved 60 times in my 4 decades and then some!

Or maybe it's her hilarious take on the invisibility of women over sixty in: To tell or not to tell, that is the answer

'You are party, from the next booth, to the discussion between two cheerful-looking men. One of them becomes aware that you would possibly overhear. You smile as though you have recently been discharged in to the community.'The old girl okay' the friend asks? 'Can you count to 100 backwards?' asks the first one. You nod and let a dribble of flat white run down your chin. They shrug and go back to discussing whether it should be a car accident or a drive by. You wait until they've gone, and then you attempt to solve the moral dilemma: should you tell someone? And if so what will you say?'

But then again theres What to do when I tell you I have breast cancer...

'Do not tell me about your auntie who died recently of breast cancer. Or I might tell of the sudden death by strangulation of someone who told someone who had a breast cancer that their auntie had recently died of a breast cancer.
Remember a lump is a lump is a lump, so do not ask me how big the lump is.'

Or the classic Touring:

'Then they turn to you and say, 'How would you like to be introduced?'
As the ghost of Marilyn Monroe, Queen Salote. Winner of Dominatrix of the Year Award. How about something about the books and plays I've written? Ugh, Ugh.
For some reason they expect you to be a good sport. Haven't they heard, that writers are never good sports? If they were good sports they wouldn't be writers, they'd be flight attendants.
And you'll eat all the asparagus rolls, won't you, because asparagus rolls give the writer indigestion.
Book signings. If you're very lucky one person might turn up for the book signing, and if you talk in a lively animated fashion they might stay round for two hours so it doesn't look as if no one loves you. Or maybe they'll just think you've gone off your medication, and run like hell.'

Part of her bio from the NZ Book Council/Te Kaunihera Pukapuka o Aotearoa reads: 'Renée, feminist dramatist and fiction writer, was born in Napier, of Ngati Kahungunu and Irish-English-Scots ancestry.She left school and started work at the age of 12; has worked in woollen mills, a printing factory, a grocery-dairy, and as a feature writer and reviewer; and completed a BA at the University of Auckland in 1979.

Renée has described herself as a ‘lesbian feminist with socialist working-class ideals’ and most of her writing is a direct expression of that conviction. She has been involved with community theatre, the Broadsheet Collective, PEN, radio shows, programme organisation for the Globe Theatre in Dunedin, and with script writing for TV. She started writing for the stage at the age of 50.'

See it's never too late to write! Renee has written 14 plays, 8 novels, short stories and poetry; a textbook Lets Write Plays (1998) and taught creative writing. For sure I saw her drama performed at the Dunedin Women's Festival (1989?) at Otago University. I think probably it was Born to Clean, and also maybe Secrets, and/or Setting the table. It was unforgettable, I can still picture the character in her floral pinny franticly cleaning, setting the table, and washing her hands over and over again. It was about sexual abuse, real, and unnerving, I felt quite sick after, yep it was that good! I am pretty sure I saw her perform with the legendary Hens Teeth womens theatre/comedy troupe in Wellington in the 1980's sometime, and man were they funny! Mostly I have been aware of her wry and status quo busting novels like Willy Nilly (1990), Daisy and Lilly (1993), and Does This Make Sense to You? (1995). Her work was some of the first local writing published by a lesbian with lesbian characters, along with Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Tahuri : Short Stories. (1989)

JANET FRAME - crazy? autistic? brilliant!

I have started keeping a dream journal. In the middle of an intriguing dream I was having about experimenting with making small sculpted letters of the alphabet out of leaves, plants, paint, yellow, red, green etc. Which spelled LGBTQI, and were to be held up by people scattered throughout the seats of an outdoor stadium. My mate from Brians an unusual name for a girl blog appears in my dream rather randomly and says "Don't you think if there is a Janet Frame award it should go to a crazy person".

What!? Which has got me thinking about the wonderful Janet Frame (28 August 1924 - 29 January 2004). One of Aotearoa/New Zealand's most famous authors. In her lifetime she published a book of poetry, a children's book, eleven novels, four short story collections, and three volumes of autobiography, which have been translated into many languages. Since her death, a novel, a book of poetry, and a collection of short stories have been published.

Janet Frame, as a child suffered the loss of two of her sisters by drowning ten years apart, grew up in poverty, infused in storytelling, spent 12 years in and out of psychiatric hospitals, narrowly avoided a frontal lobotomy in 1951, when the doctor had a change of mind after her first book of short stories, The lagoon and other stories won a literary award.

I think to myself well there probably is a Janet Frame Award, Google will provide the answer! Yep, since 2005 The Janet Frame Literary Trust Award, has been granted to 4 authors to write fiction or poetry, and to 2 Authors Advocacy Organizations. The 2008 recipient, poet Rhian Gallagher (1961- ) who moved to London in 1987, returned to Aotearoa in 2003, and as it turns out happens to be a lesbian.

After completing her first novel in 1956, Owls do cry, Janet Frame moved to London, not returning to Aotearoa for 7 years. When she was in the looney bin in Aotearoa in the 1940's her writing plans and aspirations were noted as symptoms of her mental illness, perhaps 'delusions of grandeur'. In her novel Towards another summer, written in 1963 and published posthumously in 2007, the main character Grace Cleave, expatriate novelist living in London, is holidaying in the north of England. Her host asks why she has abandoned her homeland: 'Don't you ever want to go back?''I was a certified lunatic in New Zealand. Go back? I was advised to sell hats for my salvation.'

Two previously unpublished stories she wrote were published in the New Yorker in 2008. Janet Frame did submit them for publication in 1954 to Charles Brasch of Landfall magazine, but he returned them to her with a note saying the stories were 'too painful to publish', which begs the question, too painful for who? A night at the Opera, portrays the screening of a movie in the looney bin and 'Gorse is not people reflects Frame’s determination to view reality from alternative perspectives, in this case that of a dwarf celebrating her 21st birthday. The story also makes disturbing use of Frame’s still fresh memories of life as a resident at Seacliff mental hospital.' (The Arts Fuse 2008)

Janet Frame published 3 volumes of autobiography, To The Is-Land (1982) about her childhood, An Angel at My Table (1984) about her years as a student and in a psychiatric hospital, The Envoy from Mirror City (1985)about her travels and life as a writer. All three came out as a collected Autobiography in 1989, and were made in to a dramatic film An Angel at My Table in 1990 by Jane Campion.

Like many people I read her autobiographical books in 1985. They were gripping, written in a way like no other, and to me chilling. Her writing was so important to so many of us, including close friends who had been incarcerated in psychiatric institutions, often as a result of being lesbian, or the effects of family abuse. Through her writing we knew you could survive: grinding poverty, unbearable loss and grief, torturous mistreatment, soul destroying ignorance, and misunderstanding. That somehow the will, the creative impulse does prevail. That not compromising your own creative vision was possible. That making your own way, on your own terms, was a viable option. Her books left a lasting impression on me, of what my country did to those considered a little different, it's writers and artists. For many years I kept my writing to myself, difference is defined by others and so that I could not keep to myself. I followed the example of those who had gone before me in finding an antidote to the strictures of the society they find themselves in, and left the country (some 15 years later). Like painters Margaret Stoddart, Frances Hodgkins, writers Katherine Mansfield, Witi Ihimaera, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, musicians Kiri Te Kanawa, Gareth Farr. Some for a few years, some for good, to survive, to follow creative, employment or academic opportunities.

When Janet Frame died in 2004 I happened to be in Aotearoa on Waiheke Island. I bought the Listener with the 4 page tribute by C. K Stead. Janet Frame wrote in a truly unique way, eschewing literary conventions to be true to her own inner monologue, and that of her characters. Said to possess a 'dangerous intelligence', her books won many literary awards, making her the subject of some professional jealousy. Despite her at time autobiographical writing, she guarded her privacy, wanting to lead an already life, far more interested in writing than succumbing to the cult of personality which surrounded her. I also bought at this time the more conventional weighty tome (nearly 600 pages) of a biography she had collaborated on with Michael King, Wrestling with the angel, (2000) with it's photos and dates and letters and references. We mourned the passing of a great soul. I returned home to my small collection of her books, the only collection I have of anyones work. I was fond of picking up old hardback copies of her work I came across in secondhand bookstores. Scented gardens for the blind, Faces in the water, The Edge of the alphabet....

Perhaps my friend appearing in my dream was to tell me, Janet's contemporary, close friend, and fellow poet, J.C. Sturm had just died (1927 - 2009). Jacquie Sturm whose poetry I also have thanks to my friend N (she of the write a poem a day discipline), who often sent me a book by a NZ woman poet for my birthday these past years in exile. J.C. Sturm was the wife of 'preeminent NZ poet' James K. Baxter, who I am not much of a fan of. This opinion did not improve when I discovered although she submitted poetry to a literary magazine he edited for several years he never published a single one! He went off to 'find himself' leaving her a solo parent. Had her collection of short stories The House of the Talking Cat : Stories been published when they were ready in 1966, instead of in 1983, they would have been the first collection by a Maori person, man or woman, instead this honor went to Witi Ihimaera with his novel Whanau in 1977. She was one of the first Maori women to get a university degree, in 1949.

Through the reach of the web I stumbled upon a debate raging since 2007 about whether Janet Frame was autistic. New Zealand doctor and rehabilitation researcher working in Australia, Sarah Abrahamson proposed that Janet Frame had high-functioning autism (HFA), in an article in the NZ Medical Journal October 12 2007. She based this on her reading of Janet Frame's writing, particularly the posthumously published novel, Towards another summer. Which portrays a weekend in which Grace Cleave, stays with a family she does not know well, and the painfulness of this and other social interactions for her, the divide between her inner life and outer world. There is the point of view that her artistic gift does not need to be pathologized with a diagnosis, or alternately that she can posthumously act as a positive role model for autism.

It has been suggested that her biographer Michael King and she herself did not find the autism label such a foreign idea. But as someone who fought for years to escape the the label of crazy and schizophrenia - she was later determined by doctors to not have schizophrenia, to have never had schizophrenia, but she was likely affected by post traumatic stress; she may have been reluctant to take on any label. She was leery of the 'mad-genius' mythology which surrounded her and her work. If the label of autism would have fit with her during her lifetime; or now that she has passed, we will never know.

David Cohen, journalist, father of an autistic son and author of a book about autism, A Perfect World, in an article in the NZ Listener, Autistic Licence seemed to be hedging his bets. Yet on his website about autism, humans.org.nz in a a discussion from 2007 he seems pretty convinced she was.

Pamela Gordon, niece of Janet Frame, appointed by Janet as her Literary Executor, and representative of The Trustees of the Janet Frame Literary Trust; and who has a daughter who is autistic, is adamant that Janet Frame was not autistic. This has resulted in much debate, some of it ill-willed, as evident by a January 5 2010 entry on Pamela's blog about Janet's work entitled Janet on the planet: Poison Pen letters. The entry has since been removed from the blog, but the title is visible if you Google search it.

What I was able to glean by a quick scan of the entry before it was removed, was that there are those affected by autism who are angry at the denial of Janet's possible autism. But also that Literary Executor, Pamela Gordon receives an inordinate amount of correspondence on this and other matters, personally attacking her for how she deals with her aunt's legacy. This is both to be expected given the attachment of so many to the mythology surrounding Janet Frame; as well as being completely unreasonable.

It reminds me that art historians and the media have brought us such startling revelations (not) in the past few years just by looking at the painting of Mona Lisa, that she is a) pregnant b)flushed from recent sexual activity, and most recently c) her lips reveal she was suffering from high cholesterol. A then partner of mine, upon viewing the painting of the Mona Lisa in person excitedly informed me some years ago, that I have the exact same hands as Mona Lisa. So I do know, what we see, can be, in the mind or eye of the beholder

Towards another summer, Janet Frame's novel published in 2007, based on a weekend spent with a journalist in England, and his wife, a fellow New Zealander. Widely considered to be about homesickness, Grace Cleave becomes a migratory bird. It is, but for a romanticized version of the country of origin she had left behind, as she left it and remembered it. She knew this, it is there in the damp woolly portrayal of her compatriots relative's room.

In 2008 I read from cover to cover her book of poetry published posthumously. The Goose Bath also titled Storms Will Tell: Selected Poems (2006) and then passed it on to my art collaborator of 20 years T, at a bus station, as is our wont.

Towards another summer rests on my bookshelf along with her other novels. For now Janet's biography Wrestling with the angel sleeps peacefully under my pillow.