Native Women & Charlottetown Accord

In The Inconvenient Indian, the author discussed the Charlottetown Accord. I don't believe he mentioned the fact that the Native Women's Association was excluded from negotiations leading up to the Accord. Although other native and Metis organizations were given funding and invited to participate in the negotiations, native women were not represented. The NWA therefore went to court to seek the same financial support as the men's organizations. Here is a link to a summary of the Supreme Court of Canada decision.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Women's_Association_of_Canada_v._Canada

At Maureen's in September

Welcome back Saara! And many thanks to Maureen for hosting last night.  

We covered a lot of ground talking about the thorny issues raised in The Inconvenient Indian,  and several other tricky topics.  Some of the subjects that came up were Word on the Street, TIFF and the film Like Father Like Son, Ai Weiwei, the civil war in Syria and chemical weapons, the new Quebec law restricting religious symbols, etc. etc.  

We also made plans for meeting this fall.  

• On **Thursday October 17th** we'll gather at Susan's to talk about Sweet Jesus by Christine Pountney. 
• On Thursday November 7th we'll be at Lynda's and the book will be 419 by Will Ferguson.  
• On Thursday December 5th the book will be Big Breasts and Wide Hips by Mo Yan and we'll be at Wanda's.  

Other books that were mentioned:

• Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
• The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville
• The Emperor of Paris by CS Richardson
• The Orenda by Joseph Bowden
• The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer 
• Letters from Skye by Jessica Brockmole
• We Need New Names by Noviolet Bulawayo
• Fever by Mary Beth Keane
• Life by Keith Richards
• The Painted Girls by Kathy Marie Buchanan
• Everybody has Everything by Katrina Onstad
• Erasing Death by Sam Parnia
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
• My Antonia by Willa Cather
• Mount Pleasant by Don Gillmor

Sorry about the books I've missed here.  Some of my notes from last night that seemed OK at the time are just flat-out cryptic this morning.

In case you haven't seen it already here's Jian Ghomeshi's interview with Ai Weiwei.