#cultural sites in Canada

[travelernight]

Ultimate Canada Journey: 10 Stops You Need to Make

[battle-of-alberta]

Hey Cal! Question for you. What do you think about the Shaw family's recent donation to the Glenbow museum?

sometimes I try to answer current event asks in a timely manner and sometimes I wait 8-12 months because i got distracted I am Following the Story and Waiting for Developments cough cough cough

this announcement about the $35 mil donation was made in January 2022 and followed up in the spring with government funding committed for renovation. The Glenbow’s main building is in the process of transforming into the JR Centre for Arts and Culture.

I graduated a couple years ago from a museum studies program so I know a little bit about admission and funding models in Canada - they’re quite different from Europe and the US because about a third of the funding comes from government, which is usually much less than in Europe and much more than in the States. It is very typical to have free admission to major museums in NYC or in the UK, but basically unheard of in Canada until now. Of course, Calgary would be the city to do it due to having the most billionaires per capita in the country and a history of generous private arts funding.

(This also probably means that the Glenbow is actually being talked about in Museum Studies in a context other than the infamous Spirit Sings exhibition scandal in 1988, but I’m no longer a student nor am I currently working in museums so I don’t know exactly how that discussion is going)

[rabbitcruiser]

Canada’s National Indigenous Peoples Day

Learn about the various cultures and traditions of Canada’s Indigenous People, or join an event or ceremony to see how they have been preserved over time.

The culture, language and social systems of the original inhabitants of our world have had a significant impact on how we live our lives today. Canada’s National Indigenous Peoples Day is all about focusing on the contribution that these groups have made to our societies and helping people to learn about their heritage and culture. By celebrating this day, we can help keep Indigenous languages, traditions and culture alive for future generations.

Learn About Canada’s National Indigenous Peoples Day

The day officially first began in Canada in 1996, to celebrate the contributions and history of the Métis, Inuit and First Nation peoples. Since then, the day has been observed and celebrated internationally. Originally organized on the Summer Solstice (when the different peoples sometimes celebrate their heritage on the longest day of the year), the day’s events often include traditional feasts from each Indigenous People, festivals, dances, and the opportunity for people of all ages to learn about traditions, spiritual beliefs and culture. You might be lucky enough to see a sacred fire extinguishing ceremony or participate in a feast with a traditionally prepared meal.

It’s all about bringing people together from different walks of life to share in the contributions of Indigenous People to our society. You’ll find an eclectic mix of contemporary and traditional music while learning about how Indigenous Peoples helped to develop our agriculture, language and social customs. The day is also about how governments are creating crucial partnerships with Indigenous Peoples to protect their land, heritage and culture in modern times.

You can all get involved as the website has educational material for the whole family. There are also awareness events hosted in schools and local communities. If people want to get more involved they can even submit their ideas to get them registered as part of the event, so there are hundreds of opportunities to get involved. It also forms part of more extensive celebrations over an entire month that includes days like Multiculturalism Day and overall, aims to celebrate people from all walks of life and culture.

History of Canada’s National Indigenous Peoples Day

The day was officially recognized in Canada by the Governor-General of Canada Roméo LeBlanc in 1996. A year earlier in 1995, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples put forward the idea for the day to be created. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was a Commission put forward to reconcile the relationship between the Métis, Inuits and First Nation peoples and the Canadian Government. In 1996, Aboriginal Day was born, later changed to Canada’s National Indigenous Peoples Day in 2017.

In 1995, it wasn’t just the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples that suggested the day should be celebrated. A team of non-Indigenous and Indigenous peoples gathered and named themselves the Sacred Assembly. Chaired by Elijah Harper (Canadian Politician and Chief of the Red Sucker Lake First Nations) they called for a day for Indigenous Peoples to be celebrated and recognized for their contributions to our society. In 1982, what is now known as the Assembly of First Nations, set the path for the creation of this day, which led to Quebec recognizing the day as early as 1990.

However, there has been chatter about creating this day since 1945, when the day was first termed as ‘Indian Day’ by First Nation Chiefs, led by Jules Sioui. Jules Sioui was part of Huron Wendake First Nation and led two conventions during World War II which started to challenge the rights of Indigenous Peoples. The first meeting was chaired in 1943 in Ottawa and was attended by 53 people. The conference grew remarkably, and in 1944 was attended by four times as many people. Since then calls for a day of recognition have gained increasing traction and popularity.

Meanwhile, in late-1970s America, an International Conference began to suggest that America should host a celebration of its Indigenous peoples on Columbus Day. In 1989, it was first celebrated by South Dakota, and by 2019 was observed by multiple towns and states, including Louisiana, Dallas and Vermont. Brazil has also been celebrating since 1943, by decree of the then President, Getúlio Vargas. The UN also launched International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples in 1994, celebrating worldwide contributions from global Indigenous populations.

The United Nations had issued a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007, which aimed to create a global framework for the preservation, dignity and well-being of each Indigenous culture. This process started in 1982, when the UN created the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, to discuss the discrimination that Indigenous Peoples had faced worldwide.

How To Celebrate Canada’s National Indigenous Peoples Day

This is the perfect time to learn about different Indigenous Peoples and their cultures and traditions. For example, in Canada, this day celebrates the First Nations, Inuit and Métis cultures. Why not learn about the Michif language of the Métis, or find out more about the storytelling traditions of the Inuits? Learning about the separate cultures will help us to understand how each independent group contributed to many of the things in society we take for granted today.

Why not get involved in a local event and participate in a traditional feast or watch a sacred ceremony? Dive right in and download some of the online material – why have some fun with family and friends and learn about Indigenous Peoples in the process? If you don’t have an event near you, why not host your own and reach out to the local Indigenous community for some assistance.

Learning about the history of Indigenous Peoples is also part of understanding why a day of celebration is so vital for preserving cultures today. From land disputes to reconciling with Governments across the world, the story for all Indigenous People has not been an easy one.

Luckily now we can preserve and enjoy all Indigenous cultures and appreciate the vast contribution that has been and is still being made today. So get stuck in, participate in a traditional event and learn all you can about different cultures. Help us send a big thank you to the original inhabitants of our planet for making it what it is today.

Source

[mostlysignssomeportents]

UK publishers suing Google for $17.4b over rigged ad markets

THIS WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Look, no one wants to kick Big Tech to the curb more than I do, but, also: it's good that Google indexes the news so people can find it, and it's good that Facebook provides forums where people can talk about the news.

It's not news if you can't find it. It's not news if you can't talk about it. We don't call information you can't find or discuss "news" – we call it "secrets."

And yet, the most popular – and widely deployed – anti-Big Tech tactic promulgated by the news industry and supported by many of my fellow trustbusters is premised on making Big Tech pay to index the news and/or provide a forum to discuss news articles. These "news bargaining codes" (or, less charitably, "link taxes") have been mooted or introduced in the EU, France, Spain, Australia, and Canada. There are proposals to introduce these in the US (through the JCPA) and in California (the CJPA).

These US bills are probably dead on arrival, for reasons that can be easily understood by the Canadian experience with them. After Canada introduced Bill C-18 – its own news bargaining code – Meta did exactly what it had done in many other places where this had been tried: blocked all news from Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and other Meta properties.

This has been a disaster for the news industry and a disaster for Canadians' ability to discuss the news. Oh, it makes Meta look like assholes, too, but Meta is the poster child for "too big to care" and is palpably indifferent to the PR costs of this boycott.

Frustrated lawmakers are now trying to figure out what to do next. The most common proposal is to order Meta to carry the news. Canadians should be worried about this, because the next government will almost certainly be helmed by the far-right conspiratorialist culture warrior Pierre Poilievre, who will doubtless use this power to order Facebook to platform "news sites" to give prominence to Canada's rotten bushel of crypto-fascist (and openly fascist) "news" sites.

Americans should worry about this too. A Donald Trump 2028 presidency combined with a must-carry rule for news would see Trump's cabinet appointees deciding what is (and is not) news, and ordering large social media platforms to cram the Daily Caller (or, you know, the Daily Stormer) into our eyeballs.

But there's another, more fundamental reason that must-carry is incompatible with the American system: the First Amendment. The government simply can't issue a blanket legal order to platforms requiring them to carry certain speech. They can strongly encourage it. A court can order limited compelled speech (say, a retraction following a finding of libel). Under emergency conditions, the government might be able to compel the transmission of urgent messages. But there's just no way the First Amendment can be squared with a blanket, ongoing order issued by the government to communications platforms requiring them to reproduce, and make available, everything published by some collection of their favorite news outlets.

This might also be illegal in Canada, but it's harder to be definitive. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enshrined in 1982, and Canada's Supreme Court is still figuring out what it means. Section Two of the Charter enshrines a free expression right, but it's worded in less absolute terms than the First Amendment, and that's deliberate. During the debate over the wording of the Charter, Canadian scholars and policymakers specifically invoked problems with First Amendment absolutism and tried to chart a middle course between strong protections for free expression and problems with the First Amendment's brook-no-exceptions language.

So maybe Canada's Supreme Court would find a must-carry order to Meta to be a violation of the Charter, but it's hard to say for sure. The Charter is both young and ambiguous, so it's harder to be definitive about what it would say about this hypothetical. But when it comes to the US and the First Amendment, that's categorically untrue. The US Constitution is centuries older than the Canadian Charter, and the First Amendment is extremely definitive, and there are reams of precedent interpreting it. The JPCA and CJPA are totally incompatible with the US Constitution. Passing them isn't as silly as passing a law declaring that Pi equals three or that water isn't wet, but it's in the neighborhood.

But all that isn't to say that the news industry shouldn't be attacking Big Tech. Far from it. Big Tech compulsively steals from the news!

But what Big Tech steals from the news isn't content.

It's money.

Big Tech steals money from the news. Take social media: when a news outlet invests in building a subscriber base on a social media platform, they're giving that platform a stick to beat them with. The more subscribers you have on social media, the more you'll be willing to pay to reach those subscribers, and the more incentive there is for the platform to suppress the reach of your articles unless you pay to "boost" your content.

This is plainly fraudulent. When I sign up to follow a news outlet on a social media site, I'm telling the platform to show me the things the news outlet publishes. When the platform uses that subscription as the basis for a blackmail plot, holding my desire to read the news to ransom, they are breaking their implied promise to me to show me the things I asked to see:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

This is stealing money from the news. It's the definition of an "unfair method of competition." Article 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act gives the FTC the power to step in and ban this practice, and they should:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

Big Tech also steals money from the news via the App Tax: the 30% rake that the mobile OS duopoly (Apple/Google) requires for every in-app purchase (Apple/Google also have policies that punish app vendors who take you to the web to make payments without paying the App Tax). 30% out of every subscriber dollar sent via an app is highway robbery! By contrast, the hyperconcentrated, price-gouging payment processing cartel charges 2-5% – about a tenth of the Big Tech tax. This is Big Tech stealing money from the news:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Finally, Big Tech steals money by monopolizing the ad market. The Google-Meta ad duopoly takes 51% out of every ad-dollar spent. The historic share going to advertising "intermediaries" is 10-15%. In other words, Google/Meta cornered the market on ads and then tripled the bite they were taking out of publishers' advertising revenue. They even have an illegal, collusive arrangement to rig this market, codenamed "Jedi Blue":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

There's two ways to unrig the ad market, and we should do both of them.

First, we should trustbust both Google and Meta and force them to sell off parts of their advertising businesses. Currently, both Google and Meta operate a "full stack" of ad services. They have an arm that represents advertisers buying space for ads. Another arm represents publishers selling space to advertisers. A third arm operates the marketplace where these sales take place. All three arms collect fees. On top of that: Google/Meta are both publishers and advertisers, competing with their own customers!

This is as if you were in court for a divorce and you discovered that the same lawyer representing your soon-to-be ex was also representing you…while serving as the judge…and trying to match with you both on Tinder. It shouldn't surprise you if at the end of that divorce, the court ruled that the family home should go to the lawyer.

So yeah, we should break up ad-tech:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Also: we should ban surveillance advertising. Surveillance advertising gives ad-tech companies a permanent advantage over publishers. Ad-tech will always know more about readers' behavior than publishers do, because Big Tech engages in continuous, highly invasive surveillance of every internet user in the world. Surveillance ads perform a little better than "content-based ads" (ads sold based on the content of a web-page, not the behavior of the person looking at the page), but publishers will always know more about their content than ad-tech does. That means that even if content-based ads command a slightly lower price than surveillance ads, a much larger share of that payment will go to publishers:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

Banning surveillance advertising isn't just good business, it's good politics. The potential coalition for banning surveillance ads is everyone who is harmed by commercial surveillance. That's a coalition that's orders of magnitude larger than the pool of people who merely care about fairness in the ad/news industries. It's everyone who's worried about their grandparents being brainwashed on Facebook, or their teens becoming anorexic because of Instagram. It includes people angry about deepfake porn, and people angry about Black Lives Matter protesters' identities being handed to the cops by Google (see also: Jan 6 insurrectionists).

It also includes everyone who discovers that they're paying higher prices because a vendor is using surveillance data to determine how much they'll pay – like when McDonald's raises the price of your "meal deal" on your payday, based on the assumption that you will spend more when your bank account is at its highest monthly level:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Attacking Big Tech for stealing money is much smarter than pretending that the problem is Big Tech stealing content. We want Big Tech to make the news easy to find and discuss. We just want them to stop pocketing 30 cents out of every subscriber dollar and 51 cents out of ever ad dollar, and ransoming subscribers' social media subscriptions to extort publishers.

And there's amazing news on this front: a consortium of UK web-publishers called Ad Tech Collective Action has just triumphed in a high-stakes proceeding, and can now go ahead with a suit against Google, seeking damages of GBP13.6b ($17.4b) for the rigged ad-tech market:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/17-bln-uk-adtech-lawsuit-against-google-can-go-ahead-tribunal-rules-2024-06-05/

The ruling, from the Competition Appeal Tribunal, paves the way for a frontal assault on the thing Big Tech actually steals from publishers: money, not content.

This is exactly what publishing should be doing. Targeting the method by which tech steals from the news is a benefit to all kinds of news organizations, including the independent, journalist-owned publishers that are doing the best news work today. These independents do not have the same interests as corporate news, which is dominated by hedge funds and private equity raiders, who have spent decades buying up and hollowing out news outlets, and blaming the resulting decline in readership and profits on Craiglist.

You can read more about Big Finance's raid on the news in Margot Susca's Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy:

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p087561

You can also watch/listen to Adam Conover's excellent interview with Susca:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21YfWy0-bA

Frankly, the looters and billionaires who bought and gutted our great papers are no more interested in the health of the news industry or democracy than Big Tech is. We should care about the news and the workers who produce the news, not the profits of the hedge-funds that own the news. An assault on Big Tech's monetary theft levels the playing field, making it easier for news workers and indies to compete directly with financialized news outlets and billionaire playthings, by letting indies keep more of every ad-dollar and more of every subscriber-dollar – and to reach their subscribers without paying ransom to social media.

Ending monetary theft – rather than licensing news search and discussion – is something that workers are far more interested in than their bosses. Any time you see workers and their bosses on the same side as a fight against Big Tech, you should look more closely. Bosses are not on their workers' side. If bosses get more money out of Big Tech, they will not share those gains with workers unless someone forces them to.

That's where antitrust comes in. Antitrust is designed to strike at power, and enforcers have broad authority to blunt the power of corporate juggernauts. Remember Article 5 of the FTC Act, the one that lets the FTC block "unfair methods of competition?" FTC Chair Lina Khan has proposed using it to regulate training AI, specifically to craft rules that address the labor and privacy issues with AI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mh8Z5pcJpg

This is an approach that can put creative workers where they belong, in a coalition with other workers, rather than with their bosses. The copyright approach to curbing AI training is beloved of the same media companies that are eagerly screwing their workers. If we manage to make copyright – a transferrable right that a worker can be forced to turn over their employer – into the system that regulates AI training, it won't stop training. It'll just trigger every entertainment company changing their boilerplate contract so that creative workers have to sign over their AI rights or be shown the door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

Then those same entertainment and news companies will train AI models and try to fire most of their workers and slash the pay of the remainder using those models' output. Using copyright to regulate AI training makes changes to who gets to benefit from workers' misery, shifting some of our stolen wages from AI companies to entertainment companies. But it won't stop them from ruining our lives.

By contrast, focusing on actual labor rights – say, through an FTCA 5 rulemaking – has the potential to protect those rights from all parties, and puts us on the same side as call-center workers, train drivers, radiologists and anyone else whose wages are being targeted by AI companies and their customers.

Policy fights are a recurring monkey's paw nightmare in which we try to do something to fight corruption and bullying, only to be outmaneuvered by corrupt bullies. Making good policy is no guarantee of a good outcome, but it sure helps – and good policy starts with targeting the thing you want to fix. If we're worried that news is being financially starved by Big Tech, then we should go after the money, not the links.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/06/stealing-money-not-content/#content-free

[godbirdart]

june 21 is national indigenous peoples day up here in canada; a day focused on celebrating the arts and cultures of our indigenous neighbours and communities.

if you’re looking for ways to support, or generally further your education on indigenous history, here are a bunch of links to help you get started! please go further and look up events hosted by your local community specifically, as some may not be listed on the sites below.

remember that if you cannot attend events or monetarily support businesses - you can always boost indigenous artists and voices online too.

indigenous tourism; lists businesses, events, and other indigenous-owned / led programs for the respective province or territory

indigenous tourism canada [generalized resources, event listings etc]

yukon

northwest territories

nunavut

british columbia

alberta

saskatchewan

manitoba

ontario

quebec

newfoundland and labrador

new brunswick

nova scotia

prince edward island

art

bill reid gallery of the northwest coast

lattimer art gallery

native northwest [while NNW itself is not indigenous-owned, it is a good way to discover artists and purchase their work. some artists sell on other sites too, so look around]

strong nations [sells books by indigenous authors]

education and resources

two-spirited people of manitoba

alberta indigenous history timeline [pdf]

alberta indigenous history resources

british columba history timeline

list of first nations peoples [wikipedia; could be incomplete / inaccurate]

cbc indigenous [indigenous-focused news]

missing and murdered indigenous women and girls

national centre for truth and reconciliation

native land interactive map

orange shirt day

qikiqtani truth commission

lil’ red dress project

whose land interactive map

charities / support / donations

clan mothers healing billage & knowledge centre

first nations health authority

indian residential schools survivor society

indigenous peoples resilience fund

qajuqturvik food bank

niqinik nuatsivik nunavut food bank

nunavut food security coalition

reconciliation canada

urban native youth association

additional links are always appreciated

[genericpuff]

completely off topic but regarding something that i saw pop up in my FB feed and i need to rant about

please do not fall for this shit

nintendo is NOT anti-AI.

it's really easy for them to say they're not going to use generative AI to create their games, because this statement has nothing to do with the very real issues with AI art such as the blatant theft of artists' work, environmental impact, replacement of humans in the industry, and just flat out unethical shit that AI has been designed around

it has EVERYTHING to do with their intellectual property rights, which Nintendo is NOTORIOUS for protecting with an iron fist even at their own expense. and i'm not talking the usual sensible argument shit like "ofc Nintendo wants to protect their IP's, they're a business!" i'm talking about the fact that this is the same company that just recently did a major takedown of the vast majority of Nintendo-licensed games on Vimm's Lair which aren't even being sold legitimately anywhere anymore-

i have so many fucking bones to pick with the flaccid bootlicking anti-piracy arguments out there but basically it comes down to this:

Nintendo is not a small indie company. They are literally one of the biggest, richest, most powerful gaming companies on the planet, rivalling Disney in just how many major franchises they own and profit off of. Many of their games are cultural classics, not just through the sentimentality and nostalgia of our childhoods, but also for all the innovations they made through games like Super Mario Bros, Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and many others that we, within the world of gaming, owe a lot to and should be able to access and play. It's not a matter of "wanting these games for free", it's a matter of wanting to be able to access these games, period, and Nintendo is deadset on making it as difficult as possible, even when it doesn't necessarily profit from them (need I remind you that many of the games that were taken down from Vimm's Lair are NOT available through their shitty, poorly-ported emulation subscription service - plus that subscription service can be altered and/or removed at any time, regardless of what you paid for, just like the Wii Virtual Console was, meaning you do not own any of the games you're paying to play on there.)

This isn't about being "cheap" or "not wanting to pay for games". This is about media preservation and the virtue of actually owning the things we pay for. If these games were resold at official outlets for reduced prices or made more accessible through e-shops that don't close down in between console generations or drip feed the odd legacy title every few months or release crappy ports on their outdated af tech for only a few months at a time for three times the price of their original value, people would gladly pay. It's the fact that people are having to put up with all of the hoops that Nintendo has put in place to prevent them from even handing them money to play their favorite titles that even drives them to piracy to begin with, and Nintendo will gladly shut those sites down to protect their IP even when it's an IP they're no longer profiting from and aren't making active efforts to sell.

Like, I would gladly hand over a reasonable amount of money (i.e. not the cost of a brand new triple A title in 2024 which is like $80-$100 here in Canada) for Diddy Kong Racing on the Switch, but ofc it's not on the fucking online play store and even if it was, I'd have to deal with paying an overpriced subscription fee for a port of the game that would undoubtedly run WORSE than it does on my PC, and that subscription service can be taken down at any time. But Nintendo wants me to not pirate the game that's not available on their shitty subscription service because... just don't do it, pretty please??

Nintendo is not anti-AI. They would gladly use AI in place of manual labor to scour the internet and dish out DMCA's to every emulation site, archived ROM hub, fan game, and artist alley creator if they could... oh wait, they already are.

Do not fall for the virtues of anti-AI when it comes to companies like Nintendo. They are not anti-AI. They're anti-ownership. They're anti-preservation.

[bignaz8]

CHIEF MOUNTAIN, also known as Nínaiistáko in Blackfoot or "Old Chief" in English, is a prominent peak located on the border of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana, United States, and Alberta, Canada. It is considered one of the most sacred sites for the Blackfeet Nation and holds significant cultural and spiritual importance.

The mountain and its surrounding area are part of the Glacier National Park and Waterton Lakes National Park, jointly designated as the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. This designation reflects the cross-border cooperation between the United States and Canada in preserving the natural and cultural heritage of the region, including the sacred significance of the peak to indigenous peoples..

[whencyclopedia]

The Native Peoples of North America (also known as American Indians, Native Americans, Indigenous Americans, and First Americans) are the original inhabitants of North America believed to have migrated into the region between 40,000-14,000 years ago, developing into separate nations with distinct and sophisticated cultures. These autonomous nations spread from Alaska, through Canada, and the lower United States. The earliest periods of migration, settlement, and development are defined by archaeological evidence (spearheads, tools, monumental structures) from sites throughout North America and are most often referred to by the following terms: Paleoindian-Clovis Culture – c. 40,000 to c. 14,000 BCE Dalton-Folsom Culture – c. 8500-7900 BCE Archaic Period – c. 8000-1000 BCE Woodland Period – c. 500 BCE to c. 1100 CE Mississippian Culture – c. 1100-1540 CE During the Archaic Period, some Native populations moved from a hunter-gatherer paradigm to a more sedentary social model as evidenced by sites such as Watson Brake (c. 3500 BCE), Poverty Point (c. 1700-1100 BCE), and others of varying size, developed throughout the region during the Woodland and Mississippian Culture eras. The cultures that developed in and around these sites were distinct from one another but shared a worldview that included belief in a higher power and disembodied spirits, the value of community over individual needs, reciprocity in interaction with the environment and each other, the importance of ritual and tradition, the practice of warfare and slavery, and conservation of resources. Women were highly respected in the communities and frequently served as leaders or advisers in government. These separate communities developed into what are sometimes called 'tribes' (but more often referred to now as 'nations') at some point prior to c. 980 to c. 1030 CE when the first European settlement was established in North America by Leif Erikson at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. By the time of the beginning of European colonization of the Americas in the 15th century CE, they were highly developed political and social entities associated with a specific region and a certain territory within that region. Although European expansion across Canada and the United States eventually deprived the indigenous peoples of their ancient lands, the nations still exist today and the image of the 'vanished Indian' is as much of a myth as the 'noble savage' or similar tropes developed by European and American scholars during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

[beautiful-basque-country]

Kaixo~

Hate to be a bother, but I’m always curious and trying to study different cultures and history and I recalled seeing you talk about the Basque finding the americas before Columbus, but it seems I can’t find any information on that, could you please talk about this part of history and share a few links?

Kaixo anon!

Thanks for your question. Let's see.

Jacques Cartier, discoverer of Newfoundland, found tens of Basque fishing ships; carbon dating suggests Basque presence since the 14th century.

A Basque axe was found in the archeological discovery of Mantle, the largest Huron First Nations village discovered to date. The site, located in present-day Stouffville, near Toronto, had thousands of Native artifacts on it. However, amid all of these artifacts there was a part of a European axe buried 100 years before Europeans were believed to have set foot in that part of the continent. “For me, sitting in my office in Toronto and digging a site just North of Toronto and finding a Basque artifact from 1500 or 1520 was absolutely mind blowing,” lead archeologist on the dig, Dr. Ron Williamson, said. While Colombus had already reached America 8 years before, Spanish expeditions went south, so certainly Basques were the first documented Europeans in what we know as Canada today.

In 2017, historical novel writer Gonzalo Giner, while researching for his latest work, stumbled upon the theory and stated: The Basques take it for granted that they reached America before Columbus. Obviously, this is not proven and no evidence of this has yet been found, but it is very reasonable to think that they reached Newfoundland. It is worth considering whether it was a little before or a little after Columbus reached the continent. There are are documents from 1501 though that show specific contracts to "Tierras Nuevas", that is, to Newfoundland, where it was known that there were some formidable fishing grounds. This is reasonable because the Basque fleet expanded its area of ​​action as the whale population in the Atlantic became scarce and they ended up reaching Greenland. From there there's a sea current that could have taken them to Newfoundland without difficulty, although they may not have known where they were or if it was an island or something else. Not in vain, if they found such a spectacular cauldron of whales and codfish, it is very likely that they kept it a secret. It is a plausible story. Again, Canada, Newfoundland, Greenland: North America.

In 2023, a book published in 1647 was found where French scholar Étienne Cleirac states Basque sailors arrived in America 100 years before Columbus. And from intuition we went to some proof at last.

[skippyv20]

Your site has indeed become racist; much more so than when I first became aware of it. You should not be posting pictures of that little girl with cheap shot comments aimed at her resemblance and Meghan’s or comparing Meghan’s appearance against that of the Nigerian girls she posed with. That is playing skin tone politics which is a no-no amongst Blacks because its a wedge that Whites have historically used to divide us and cause conflict. Nor should any of you be remarking about her makeup. Meghan is mixed; we follow different rules and yes most black people use grease or some sort of moisturizer in our hair because of its coarseness. Many of you are very ignorant. about African American and African culture. Any African American who has taken a dna test will tell you most of us are about 20-30% Nigerian if the dna tests are to believed and many are about 25% Caucasian.  We are not racist, I am not racist.  If you choose to believe all the crap she has out there, fine.  If we say anything we are racist!  What little girl of any race would want to be compared to her???? Mixed?  Yes, Maltese, Nigerian, Caucasian….who spent all her life before marrying into royal family as a Caucasian…only associating and marrying Caucasian men!  Most Canadians born in Canada have some indigenous in their ancestry…when a person plasters themselves with spray tan…that’s a little too much! Meghan herself said…“I see myself in you” when she looks at these young girls….please….how insulting to those precious girls!  It’s not acceptable to do “blackface”….but she does it…and when we call her out…we are labeled racists…..it has never been about her race….its always been about her actions…she spray tans herself….that is the action!  

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada is expressing support for a proposed Inuit women’s shelter in Ottawa that is facing resistance from residents.

In a statement Wednesday, the national Inuit women’s organization said that “in response to recent reporting about the proposed women’s shelter in Ottawa’s south end,” it supports the Ottawa Aboriginal Coalition’s efforts to build the facility.

Ottawa’s Gloucester-Southgate Coun. Jessica Bradley held an information session for residents Tuesday over a proposed transfer of a vacant city-owned lot in the Hunt Club neighbourhood to the coalition.

The lot would then become the site of a new shelter dedicated for Inuit women and children fleeing violence.

“This sanctuary will provide Inuit women and their children with a safe, healthy, and culturally appropriate place to live and heal in a welcoming family-oriented neighbourhood with great access to schools, parks, and greenspace,” Bradley said in a news update posted to her website. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland, @vague-humanoid

[scotianostra]

On 15th September 1773 the emigrant ship “Hector” arrives in Pictou Harbour on Nova Scotia carrying 189 Highlanders, most loaded two months earlier in Ullapool.

Although they were not the first Scots to arrive in North America they were the vanguard of a massive wave of Scottish immigrants to arrive in what is now Canada. In the century following the landing of the Hector more than 120 ships brought nearly 20 000 people from Scotland to the port of Pictou. By 1879 more than ninety-three percent of the region’s rural property owners had Scottish names.

Ironically, very few of the Hector people stayed on the Pictou Plantation. They had been cruelly deceived by the shipping company that brought them out to Nova Scotia. The land was not ready for settlement as promised and supplies for the coming winter were meagre. Most of them moved on to settled parts of the province leaving an intrepid handful of their countrymen to fend for themselves in an uncultivated wilderness.

The Hector was owned by two men, Pagan and Witherspoon, who bought three shares of land in Pictou, and they engaged a Mr John Ross as their agent, to accompany the vessel to Scotland, to bring out as many colonists as they could induce, by misrepresentation and falsehoods, to leave their homes.

As they were leaving, a piper came on board who had not paid his passage; the captain ordered him ashore, but the strains of the national instrument affected those on board so much that they pleaded to have him allowed to accompany them, and offered to share their own rations with him in exchange for his music during the passage. Their request was granted, scrolling through various passenger lists I have found out the Piper was more than likely a man called William McKay.

All those travelling that were aged over 8 were required to pay full fare for the passage, those between 2 and 8 were charged half fare under 2’s were free. It was bad enough that they were conned with the promise of land in Canada but conditions on board the Hector were said to be horrendous, the ship was barely sea worthy and has been described as a crumbling wreck. I can’t find any mention of how may survived the 11 week journey or how the passengers were related to one another it was a nine week journey over the Atlantic, Smallpox and dysentery took their toll on the infants and children on board. In all, eighteen died at sea, I think by that they mean 18 children, poor things. By the time the rotting hulk landed, people were picking at the planks to find worms to eat.

On arrival about all that they seen was the dense forest grew down to the water’s edge as far as the eye could see.

The unfamiliar customs and appearance of the natives inhabiting the area so terrified the settlers that they remained on board for two days despite their desire to walk again on dry land. Finally, on September 17, 1773, dressed in full Scottish regalia, with all pageantry of their kilts and the pipes, they went ashore

The “Hector” pioneers faced extreme difficulties during their first year in the New World, but with the development of a lively timber trade with Scotland and the finalising of land grants, conditions improved and the development of what is now Pictou County was under way. The land was rich, the rivers and oceans plentifully stocked with fish, and the timber of high quality.

Pics are of a stamp issued in 1973 to mark 200 years since the crossing and the Hector replica at Pictou. The Hector Heritage Quay is one of Nova Scotia's major cultural tourist attractions. The Hector is a full-sized replica of the original ship. A Highland Homecoming, a celebration of the strong Scottish spirit, takes place on-site every September. and kicking off today.

You can find all the details on their FB page here https://www.facebook.com/shiphector/

[mancalledhoss]

CHIEF MOUNTAIN: also known as Nínaiistáko in Blackfoot or "Old Chief" in English, is a prominent peak located on the border of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana, United States, and Alberta, Canada. It is considered one of the most sacred sites for the Blackfeet Nation and holds significant cultural and spiritual importance.

[dizzymoods]

Lots of VC questions recently. Someone emailed about what they should be engaging with to develop their artistic voice. Here's my answer:

In terms of guidance, Werner Herzog, who is admittedly a weirdo, said that the best thing a film student can do is go backpacking cross country, which I would never do. But the point he was ultimately making is that life experience is more important than anything a film school can teach you. Your artistic voice develops more sharply the more intune you are with the world; all the film stuff is superfluous really. So that would be my major advice. Live life! Be open to all sorts of experiences.

Outside of that I would say to read and watch anything and everything you can get your hands on. Especially stuff that has nothing to do with film. Be curious, which is to say non-judgemental. Sitting through stuff that you have no interest in or actively hate is good! It develops your taste in ways that seeking out only what you like can never do. It also expands your horizons and teaches you how much you actually don't know about anything. Keeps you humble. You'll be surprised 5 years on how something that you had no interest in is super relevant to what you're trying to do.

I'll drop some recommendations later but something you are going to run into is paywalls and exorbitant costs. Scihub, Libgen, and PaywallReader can be your friends in this regard. The more niche something is, the less mirrors there are. Investing in an internet audio/video ripper is essential. Rip often and indiscriminately. Nothing is safe unless you triplicate it. And if you can't afford hard drives, dummy alphabet accounts are the next best thing. Also, footnotes and reference lists are treasure troves of breadcrumbs.

The standard VC reading list includes: Reel to Real, The Devil Finds Work, Playing in the Dark, Young British & Black, Ways of Seeing (also a documentary), Orientalism, Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Culture, Questions of Third Cinema, Hollywood & Counter Cinema, Figures Traced in Light, Parallel Tracks, and Basho: The Complete Haiku

Hundreds of films can be found on Solidarity Cinema. Cinema of the World has a deep archive but you need to have space and a nitrofile account to download most films, but you can snipe a few films here and there (or look for them elsewhere). Rarefilmm updates semi-regularly and you can stream the films; they are now more active on twitter and are even taking requests. Some state-sponsored film industries have robust presences on youtube with english subs: Russia's Mosfilm/FUSE Mosfilm, Canada's NFB, the Korean Film Archive, Native People's Media. There's UbuWeb for all your avant-garde needs. There's FIlmmaker's Co-Op (pay-per-view), Paper Tiger Television, and Deep Dish Television for NYC indie stuff. AfroMarxist has a fair amount of political documentaries. NMAHC has an archive that houses the work of Chamba Productions and some of Pearl Bowser's stuff. And of course there's the legendary MikeD of ReelBlack. It's a crap shoot but some filmmakers and/or their estates make work available free online (Leo Hurwitz and Julie Dash come to mind). I'd recommend a Kweli TV subscription for black film, and never be surprised by what you can find on youtube or tubi!

This is probably super overwhelming but the joy of being an autodidact is the thrill of discovery so peruse at your leisurely interest. The internet is your oyster if you know how to use it! Back in my day hardly any of these sites existed and the ones that did weren't as robust as they are now. I've had to frankenstein whole movies from various clips posted in 144p on youtube 😩

I used to do a couple of themed months a year where I'd read and watch as much as possible about a filmmaker, genre, or movement that interested me. I'd spin a globe to learn a little about a random country's cinema. Best of lists/canons don't really mean much but they are good sources of stuff to at least be aware of.

[kygerbearr]

can i get some information?

in hokkaido japan there's these rockets that hang from poles to show you where the road is when it snows over (due to the high elevation there)

also in arizona its illegal for a business to deny any person water because of how hot it is there. they also opted out of daylight savings time and all of america could also do that if they wanted, its just that every other state votes to keep it for some reason.

canada having bagged milk is actually only for the eastern side of canada. the western side of it not as much. also the backs of signs in british columbia are painted green

on google maps coverage of curacao, if you look down at the car there's a sticker on some of the roof rack on the car. this is consistent across curacao's google map coverage

buzz lightyear and woody are actually in the files in the original ps2 version of kingdom hearts 2 and a model for the world on the gummi ship menu is in some screenshots of early kh1 gameplay suggesting they intended on including toy story as a playable world from the very start i stole this image from reddit

polar bears are to my knowledge the only ursidae that actively hunt humans and are also the only carnivorous bears. at least i think. dont fact check it just trust me on this one

in gex 3 deep cover gecko for ps1 and n64, in the 3rd level Tut TV there's a sign on the wall that says "ankh if you're corny" but there's also an unused texture that says horny instead of corny this is the only image i have of it sorry that its small

thomas edison in fate grand order is a furry lion man who is every single president of the united states of america (past, present and future) built into one person. also his super move is proving God doesn't exist and he looks like this

this photo of the sun photoshopped into the background of a place is in the philippines and you can tell because of the color of the sattellite dish as well as the ads for cigarettes

thyis is a grizzly bear you can tell because hes brown. also they only really exist in alaska/canada/montana/wyoming-ish

oh yeah also tsela and yiska from the smoke room vn are names that are words in navajo. not exactly directly translateable as Diné Bizaad, the language of the navajo, essentially operates in "pictures". describing things and such. tsela can be translated to the best of my ability as "like stone"

while yiska essentially carries the message of "the night has passed" (used in both the word for Tomorrow and Saturday)

cynthia's last name, tsosie, essentially means "slender". I cannot provide an excerpt from my navajo-english dictionary since it's not in there, but it's also from 1958 and so its probably a little bit incomplete. the fact that she uses the name cynthia, a non-navajo name, reflects her decision to leave the reservation.

the name Begay is also a real life navajo surname that is an anglicization of biye', which means his/her son. i wish i could speak more on the accuracies within TSR's clifford route regarding navajo culture and history but that would be spoilers. all i will say is that the soap thing was a very real thing that was commonplace

speaking of clifford, his last name Tibbits could be a reference to Howard Clinton Tibbitts, a photographer who was well known for his photographs along the sites of the southern pacific railway which encompassed Arizona and into Apache and Puebloan territories. and yes, even Utah. rather telling

anyways that is an amount of information

[everlastiingiimmortals]

Notes on Dr. Ratio: Design, Philosophy, and Culture

That's right, I'm back with another big thinkpiece! This time, I'll be doing a very long overdue analysis on Ratio and drawing notes to the real-life inspirations behind his character. I'll be having quite a bit of overlap with existing headcanon posts I've made, so if there's anything I repeat I apologize. I'll do my best to link the major posts I've written before as they come up!

I'll be splitting this piece into three different sections: design, kit and naming conventions, and miscellaneous (that gorgeous E6, his personality and backstory, statues, etc). So, without further ado, let's begin! This will be lengthy, just as a general note, and has a lot to point to, so the notes will be bulleted.

Design:

To start, Ratio has an overall blue and white theme. This immediately struck me as very Greek, especially since the colors in his chiton are of a similar shade to the national flag of Greece.

He has a modernized and modified version of the chiton and himation or chlamys, all of which are traditional articles of clothing in Ancient Greece. The chiton is the blue half with the sleeve, and and the himation is the white cloth. Both are tucked under a zone (the girdle), with it only partially hidden on one side. Usually the whole belt would be hidden under the folds of a chiton, but HYV likes their belts. An interesting note regarding the himation is that it's fastened on his left shoulder, rather than the right as it would traditionally be done.

The button fastening Ratio's himation in place is actually a Roman button! An example of one can be seen here, in the Met.

The sandals he wears are more of Greek origin than Roman, I think. It was hard to find the exact type or name, but this site points to several examples.

Naturally, the owl pauldron is a reference to Athena (Minerva in Roman mythology), the Greek goddess of wisdom and strategy. This is a motif that also shows up on Ratio's codex.

His hairpiece is a representation of a laurel wreath, which were awarded to skilled, accomplished people as a symbol of triumph -- though usually intended for victors of athletic or musical and poetic competitions (and for the Romans, martial victory), they have also come to represent academic success and achievement.

The column he summons in his Ultimate is a composite column, noted by the large volutes (reminiscent of an ionic order) as well as the acanthus leaf motifs similar to a corinthian column.

Similarly, acanthus leaves -- a popular design in Ancient Greece and Rome -- make repeated appearances on Ratio's outfit. We can see some sort of acanthus leaf with volutes on his belt buckle, acanthus leaves on his bracers, and also on the hem of his pants.

Throughout his clothing (particularly the flowy bits) we see endless vitruvian scrolls (also called wave scrolls) on his cape wings and the hem of his chiton. Though I didn't see anything suggesting symbolism, it was a very popular design in Ancient Greece all the same, and was thought to represent the Meander, a winding river in Turkey.

His alabaster headpiece looks nothing like him, but I wonder if it could possibly be modeled after Athena instead? The hair is long enough to be braided and curled into a bun, and it does look vaguely similar to some statues and depictions of Athena. It's hard to say.

He wears a signet ring! While the use of signet rings in academics is largely a tradition within the US and Canada from my research, they date back to the Bronze Age of Ancient Greece and were popular in Ancient Rome as symbols of status. Interestingly, Ratio wears his on his left middle finger, rather than his right (which would traditionally symbolize power and strength).

Ratio has a few gems on his person: an amethyst on his gold neckpiece (??? what is that thing, I still have no idea), and a sapphire or lapis lazuli on each bracer and sandal. Amethysts traditionally represent clarity of mind, while both sapphire and lapis lazuli can symbolize wisdom. Interestingly, all three stones have names of Greek or Latin origin.

Seriously, what is that neckpiece? It has wings that sit below the amethyst, and it occurred to me that it looks vaguely similar to a caduceus, with the chain being reminiscent of the intertwined snakes. It should be noted that the caduceus is not a medical symbol, as is commonly misunderstood here in the US, but rather a symbol of Hermes. It has associations with wisdom, eloquence, deception, and trade, which obviously don't all apply to Ratio as a character, but given his alignment with the Intelligentsia Guild/IPC and his role in the Penacony arc, it's interesting to note all the same.

His codex! This is actually a silly marble (??) version of a wax tablet, popularly used in Ancient Greece. Here is an example of a foldable wax tablet from Byzantine Egypt, but the general idea is the same. They were in Greece, too.

Kit and Naming Conventions:

First off, the man himself: Veritas Ratio. I've talked about this at length, so I'll link the most recent post on his etymology here.

His banner title, Panta Rhei. This is Greek for "all things are in flux," and attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. He was insistent on change and the idea of the world being in constant motion; that is to say, all things being in the process of becoming, but never realizing that final limit. This idea of people constantly changing and growing is something reflected in Ratio's philosophy as well.

Ratio's Lightcone is named "Baptism of Pure Thought," which is particularly interesting to his character. Baptism -- notably the act of immersing one in water -- is largely known as a Christian practice (which did originate in the Roman Empire!). While Ratio himself has never struck me as religious, it's obvious that his baths are an incredibly spiritual and sacred habit for this reason. It's cute lol

His Talent, Cogito Ergo Sum. This is Latin, and translates to "I think, therefore I am." This was most famously used in Descartes' philosophy. Descartes was a French philosopher around the tail end of the Renaissance, and is commonly associated with the rise of modern rationalism and epistemology -- both of these are central to Ratio's character.

Ratio's fifth Eidolon, Sic Itur Ad Astra. This phrase translates to "thus one journeys to the stars," and has its origins in Latin literature. Two noteworthy origins are Virgil, a Roman poet, and Seneca the Younger, a Roman philosopher and playwright. Given how he used to wish to reach for the stars (the Genius Society) and also quite literally travels among the stars, this is a fitting, if a little sad, name.

Ratio's (beloved) sixth Eidolon, Vincit Omnia Veritas. There's no literary or philosophical origin for this from what I saw. It simply means "truth conquers all," a nice, final declaration of Ratio's philosophy.

Miscellaneous:

Ratio's statues from his Technique have three famous real life references. I was unable to find the reference for the one where he's holding his book and lifting his hand up like he's giving a speech, but I saw some speculation that it was in reference to a pope statue. Nothing to really speculate on since I can't find a definitive reference. The flexing statue seems to be in reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger's famous flexing pose, which is certainly A Choice, but it does make sense given Ancient Greek celebration of physical fitness and athleticism. Ratio himself is also fairly muscular and fit, and in his backstory he was noted to exercise frequently on top of his studies, so depictions of said fitness is not surprising. The most important reference, however, is to the Discolobus, an Ancient Greek statue, which also ties back to the idea of athleticism and fitness.

That beautiful, beautiful E6. It's a direct reference to Michelangelo's David. Interestingly, Ratio seems to have quite a number of nods to Michelangelo. Beyond the amazingly lifelike statues -- which Michelangelo is famous for -- he was also known to be generally unpleasant and reclusive, which does fit with Ratio's personality.

The strongest and most important influence, however, comes down to Leonardo da Vinci, and doesn't have any direct references like the others. Rather, the ties to da Vinci come in Ratio's accomplishments, philosophy, and appearance. The both of them are incredibly skilled geniuses technologically and artistically, and have made countless inventions. Like da Vinci, Ratio is a polymath -- that is, a person whose knowledge spans many fields and subjects. This was a fundamental aspect of Renaissance humanism, which posited that humans are limitless in their potential and knowledge and that all should seek to better themself through education and personal cultivation. Through the idea of the individual pursuing their own development, humanists advocated for the autonomy, progress, and equal dignity of all people. da Vinci was one such humanist of the Renaissance; this is something I've said before, but it is absolutely fundamental to Ratio's philosophy and motivations. He is a humanist just the same as da Vinci. Given that Renaissance humanism was a philosophy revolving around the revival of Greco-Roman culture, it is no wonder that Ratio ties back to those influences so strongly as well. (As a side note, like Ratio, da Vinci was supposedly a very beautiful and graceful man, who had a particular fondness for animals.)

Overall, it's really interesting to see how each section can more or less divide his inspirations: his design being Greek, his naming conventions being Roman, and his personality and philosophy being the Renaissance, with only a little overlap. I've mentioned this in passing I believe (I can't find where I initially put it), but Latin overlapping with the Renaissance is actually a very fundamental aspect of education, given that Greco-Roman culture was seen as the pinnacle of philosophy and knowledge during that time in Europe, and knowing Latin was considered proof of a good education and social standing. All this is the reason why I argue for Ratio being a representation of the Italian Renaissance, rather than Ancient Greek and Rome on their own.

Honorable Mentions (not tied to the themes of his origins! Just fun things deserving of recognition):

Isaac Newton's apple in his idle!

Heart statue :)

Jojo pose statue

Jojo pose in his trailer thumbnail

I'll also plug my piece on his parents here, not because they don't tie to his origins but because they're not relevant to the analysis itself.