Katrina North

I just got back from being in southern Ontario for 8 or 9 days. While there, a friend I was out for a drink with, a Mohawk woman, observed with twinkly eyes that the Sudbury to which I would be returning is a better place than the one I left. She was, of course, referring to the arrival in Sudbury of the thousand Cree people evacuated from the Kashechewan Reserve near James Bay.

In a spirit of solidarity rather than just charity with those forced to abandon their homes in yet another twist of colonial circumstance, here is an article by Charles Demers of Seven Oaks. With reference to the outpouring of disdain among Canadians for the U.S. state's horrible and racist bungling of Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans, he says:

The fundamental question for us now is this: In the face of the equally foreseeable, calamitous and racialized circumstances that led to this week’s emergency evacuation of the Kashechewan Reserve in Ontario, will we carry over our indignation at the negligence with which African-Americans are treated by their government into a justified and constructive rage over the treatment of the Cree near James Bay?