Category Archives: First Nations

Art for Christmas!

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Copper Painting by artist Marilyn McKee

Copper Painting by artist Marilyn McKee

How’d you like to get a $1,200 work of art for ten measly bucks? You would, wouldn’t you (you cheap-ass art-lover, you!)? Well here’s your chance to really stun someone on Christmas morning with an extravagant present that says more and better things about you than, say, an Ed Hardy nightie and a bottle of Malibu.

Haida artist Marilyn McKee, the same woman featured in this article I wrote for the Daily Dot last year, has turned to Facebook once again, raffling off this impressive copper painting. A jeweler by trade, McKee is branching out and doing more painting this year. This is the largest, most complex piece she has done yet.

Tickets are $10 and you haven’t much time. The draw is in 11 hours, 9am Friday morning. To purchase tickets by electronic transfer, message the artist on Facebook directly or email or phone. Here is what she posted on Facebook a few days ago, and there are still tickets left (two fewer if I can get the transfer done in time!):

The piece is signed by Haida artist Marilyn McKee.
The piece comes with authenticity
and has been painted on a metal canvas 2 feet across.
EMT will be accepted and cost of shipping will be incurred by myself.
Again only 94 tickets are left @10 each. so if only 50 sell your odds increase.
Draw will be Friday morning, Dec 20th @9 am or sooner if sold out.
Thank you
marilynmckee at hotmail.com
778-709-7461

Support a local artist and get yourself some swank wall swag at the same time! By tomorrow lunchtime it will be too late!

#OpFrackOff takes on racist cop, #OpSWN takes on energy conglomerate

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Mikmaq stop sign

Frack off First Nations land!

When the RCMP confronted the First Nations fracking protesters at Elsipogtog late last week and things turned violent, Anonymous got involved almost immediately, announcing #OpFrackOff. Now they’ve gone farther, a lot farther.

When an unidentified RCMP officer shouted, “crown land belongs to the government not to fucking natives,” he probably didn’t expect Anonymous to issue a call to action inviting the public to help ID him. He probably should have.

In a pair of documents released on Pastebin today and a video, Anonymous and their allies have announced they intend to carry their investigation much further. In the newly-announced #OpSWN they intend nothing less than laying out all the corporate, political, and social connections for SWN (Southwestern Energy), the American gas company at the heart of the conflict.

“Why is Canada attacking it’s First Nations population with a self-described paramilitary force? To protect the right of a Texas oil company’s fracking ambitions?  And what do Wendy’s french fries have to do with fracking? “

They then answered that question at length and in detail, using the online mapping tool Pearltrees to lay out the links between Cavendish Farms, Wendy’s, and SWN. And the New Brunswick political establishment. And the Irving family, a local corporate and media power clan whose influence extends internationally. And then called on Anonymous and supporters to fill in missing connections as well.

The point of all of this, according to one of the investigators we spoke with via Twitter, is to enable people to protest the RCMP response at Elsipogtog by demonstrating at their local Wendy’s, instead of trucking all the way to the Texas headquarters of SWN. The goal is to show that the events taking place on unceded Mi’kmaq territory are connected in a very real dollars and cents way to consumer choices that everyone makes in their day to day lives, and to show that other choices are possible.

Since SWN and the RCMP are hitting the Mi’kmaq where they live, Anonymous has decided to hit them where they live: right in the bank account.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons