About
The Project • Short Term Goals • Long Term Aspirations / Ideas • Basis of Unity • ContactUs
The Project
Did you learn about the state’s sterilization of women for not passing an IQ test in your high school Canadian history classes?
Have you ever read about the pride with which some French Canadian men dodged military service by running off into the woods.?
No ? very likely not. These are not the kinds of moments that the state includes in its selection of facts when they produce Canadian History. But, as I’m sure many of you recognize, this territory has many other moments to be remembered, recounted and represented.
There is a community of people in Ottawa that is working to raise awareness and get people asking questions about Canada’s history. We are aiming to make a space for stories to be remembered, recounted and represented. Particularly stories dealing with the tradition of oppression and the dissent.
Inspired to work for positive social change within our community and globally we believe that knowing where we come from, is necessary in moving forward. The inequality in Canada is deeply rooted in the history we don’t hear about.
When a country, a government, a system of law and order, a physical environment, and social interaction is built within a context of racism, sexism, and classism and left unchallenged these isms become integrated into the structure and become reproduced patterns. Canada amongst many other countries has a rich history of resistance and of oppression, a history that is not often recounted in high school history classes. A history that people deny, that people see as insignificant, a history that we are told is in the past and that we need to get over. Acknowledging that this history exists, and that these patterns continue to be reproduced is the first step in learning from these mistakes and doing it differently.
Short Term Goals
Short Zine
We are looking to publish a second edition of the Alternative Heritage Moments Zine. A small magazine containing short essays of approximately 500 words providing windows into some of the other areas of Canada’s lesser known history.
Radio Minutes
Do you remember those television shorts and one minute radio blurbs talking about moments in Canadian history. “Dr. Pentfield I smell burnt toast”, or Marshal McLuhan “the medium is the message”, or Jennie Trout ripping the leaf of the naked picture of a man in medical school. Some of these have been burned into our memory as children, and are used as teaching tools in history classes. We are hoping to use this format to produce radio and video moments to distribute on local radio stations and the internet.
Collaborative Website
We are developing collaboratively built and edited webspace to act as a contact point and a studio where research can be posted, topics can be discussed. The space will act as an online community gathering point and a place were we can reference the work we have done and where we encourage people to be skeptical.
Long Term Aspirations / Ideas
Developing history presentations, going into schools, university classrooms, community centers, churches, and parks doing presentations on the material we have collected, and the stories that have been written.
Develop a National Network of radical storytellers who work on remembering, recounting and representing lost history of the past and documenting the history of today. Perhaps linked from a common webspace.
Basis of Unity
“We define our goals by the way we chose our means of struggle.” Las Zapatistas
We believe that the process in which we organize is just as the important as the end product we produce. We use non-hierarchical consensus based decision making, we reject racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ablism and all other forms and systems of domination and discrimination.
We also realize that in this regard, failure will most likely occur daily and we need to work intentionally to keep each other accountable to these goals and open to constructive criticism.
The purpose of our organization is to aid in the creation of a free society organized along the following principles:
• Democracy: A free society depends on a free media and organizes civic, social, and economic life using the principles of participatory democracy arising from direct action and public accountability. Those affected by a decision have an opportunity to participate in that decision.
• Equality: All people are welcomed as part of a free society. All people are equal and all labour is valued equally.
• Diversity: All people in a free society are different, and space for their difference is paramount to their equality.
• Security: Every human in a free society has secure access to meet their basic needs of food, shelter, health care, information, education, and transportation.
• Creativity: A free society values culture, art, and leisure as fundamental needs. Every person has the right to their own culture and to practice creative expression.
• Self-Determination: A free society is decentralized and all localities are autonomous and self-determined so long as they do not infringe upon the other basic principles of a free society.
• Interdependence: Communities in a free society are dependent on one another through mutual aid and exchange. Only through community will we see change.
• Justice: All people have the right to be free from coercion, threat, and violence. A justice system should reside in the community it affects, seek resolution rather than revenge, and should work towards the abolition of authoritarian prisons and jails.
• Peace: A free society uses conflict as an opportunity to learn from divergent views, opinions and experiences, with the goal of crafting agreements and taking actions that affirm the humanity and basic rights of all parties.
• Ecology: Humans live in balance with, and are part of, the natural world. A free society recognizes the right to clean water, clean air and food free of industrial toxins and genetic engineering.
• Economy: In a free society the means of production should be placed in the hands of the people, empowering communities to organize meaningful employment, and provide a responsible and sustainable standard of living which tries to meet the needs of all people
This Basis of Unity document is based on the Resist! Collective's Basis of Unity. It has also been adopted by the Red Cursor Collective (riseup.net) and is based on several documents including their basis of unity, the Black Panther Party's 10 Point Program and the TAO/OAT basis of unity.