I’m posting this after a tumultuous day. Late last night Occupy Wall Street was violently raided by police, then this morning I woke up to news that Occupy Toronto was being served with eviction notices for 12:01AM (there’s now a temporary court injunction until at least Friday).
So when I say (Un)Occupy Canada, I’m not talking about ending the occupations. It’s about us recognizing that Canada is already “occupied” land and that indigenous sovereignty has to be a foundational component of our work.
Occupy sites can be an important, if challenging, place to have these discussions. I attended a great workshop on racism and colonialism at the camp and that’s where the inspiration for this design came from (also, see Two Row Wampum). Since this Saturday’s march was called in solidarity with indigenous peoples, it was a perfect occasion for our second sign-printing session (thanks Sheila, Jenny, and Ed!).
Unfortunately we got off to a late start due to some runny ink and unhelpful clamps, but we mixed up a way better purple by adding some white, decided to get rid of the clamps, and we were rolling from there…
If we can make it happen in time, we’ll make a batch of these for Indigenous Sovereignty Week.
Top two photos by Sheila Hewlett, bottom photo by ana_lee_smith on Flickr
6 thoughts on “(Un)Occupy Canada”
a great discussion and a great logo
i think to join this discussion would require one to properly ‘bring it’
thanks tony danza, constructive criticism and feedback is always appreciated. could you elaborate, i’m not sure if i fully understand what you mean.
oh no! i meant to say this blog is most high and amazing and that it presents an almost intimidating challenge for the anonymous internet proletariat’s pleasure-consumption/anti-production of media – there is visual literacy but also the pattern recognition and skills/aesthetic/creative/language necessary to communicate across barriers adding to the conversation of interconnected struggle, ok, respect internet anonymity, shit, why aren’t more people commenting?
sorry tony, i still don’t understand … could you clarify what you were referring to?
Hi there. I love this blog! My name is Melanie Cervantes and I am a co-founder of Dignidad Rebelde. One tid bit-you may or may not know-is that Juan Fuentes was Jesus Barraza’s mentor when they both worked at Mision Grafica at the Mission Cultural Center. Jesus started to mentor and collaborate with me in 2007 (or so). Hence the influence. 😉