Latest news with #truthtelling
CBC
09-07-2025
- General
- CBC
Day school survivors legacy fund now open for funding requests
A fund for projects for healing, language and cultural revitalization and commemoration for day school survivors and their families is now accepting applications. The McLean Legacy Fund is named after Garry McLean, a Manitoba-based advocate for Federal Indian Day School survivors, who was the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against the Government of Canada. McLean died from cancer in 2019 at the age of 67, just before a final settlement agreement was reached. Like residential schools, Federal Indian Day Schools were designed to assimilate Indigenous children while eradicating Indigenous languages and cultures. There were 699 Federal Indian Day Schools across Canada including one in Lake Manitoba First Nation, the Dog Creek Day School, which Garry McLean attended. About 200,000 Indigenous children attended day schools. The $1.47 billion settlement included a $200 million legacy fund. The McLean Day Schools Settlement Corporation says the legacy fund was created to support healing and wellness, language and culture preservation, commemoration and truth-telling for survivors and their families. "We know the journey began with tremendous pain and with that pain comes a powerful opportunity for healing, truth telling, revitalization of our languages, strengthening our cultures, and enhancing the pride of our identity," said Claudette Command, the settlement corporation's CEO, at a news conference in Ottawa Monday. Elder Gloria Wells, a board member with the legacy fund, said, "I strongly believe that ceremony and our language and our culture will be the ones to help us." The first call for submissions for funding opened Monday. There are two categories: survivor committee establishment that is one-time funding of up to $25,000, and money for community programs, up to $100,000 or $250,000 a year for four years, depending on the type of program. Southern Chiefs Organization Grand Chief Jerry Daniels, who was a friend of McLean, said he was "a powerful voice for justice and a relentless advocate for survivors of Indian Day Schools.... His efforts led to real change for thousands of our people." With the launch of the legacy fund, "his legacy will continue to uplift survivors and their families for generations to come," Daniels said.
Independent Singapore
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Independent Singapore
Shocking inquiry uncovers British role in genocide of indigenous Australians
A powerful 'accountability' movement is in progress in Australia. The Yoorrook Justice Commission, the country's first official 'truth-telling' review, released a trailblazing report disclosing that British settlers committed carnage against Aboriginal peoples in the state of Victoria. According to the latest BBC report, the final verdict was drawn from more than 1,300 submissions and two months of public hearings. The report touches on the distressing effects of colonisation, from mass assassinations and cultural obliteration to systemic xenophobia that continues today. With 100 endorsements for reparation, the report signifies a pivotal moment in Australia's journey towards fairness, truth, and resolution. A dark chapter revealed The Yoorrook Justice Commission's report leaves no uncertainty about what took place in Victoria after colonisation commenced in the 1830s. In just about twenty years, the Indigenous inhabitants decreased from approximately 60,000 to 15,000, a 75% reduction caused by what the commission directly labelled as genocide. Contributing factors included aggression, sickness, child eliminations, environmental squalor, and cultural expurgation. See also Man escapes 4th-floor hotel quarantine by tying bedsheets together 'These were not isolated incidents or accidents of history,' the report stated. 'This was genocide.' The conclusions draw an unswerving connection between British colonist practices and the 'near-complete physical destruction' of the state's Aboriginal population. Narratives collected during the investigation talked of ordeal and suffering in different generations, from sexual aggression and forced land acquisitions to compulsory integration and the loss of language and cultural individuality. A call for redress: Education, health, and recognition The commission dispensed 100 endorsements intended to repair the unfathomable wounds left by colonial violence. Among the most noteworthy suggestions are a total overhaul of the educational structure to reflect more Indigenous viewpoints and history, augmented investment in Aboriginal health amenities, and formal admissions of guilt for historical wrongs, including the barring of Aboriginal armed forces from post-war land endowments. The report also concluded that systemic bigotry remains widespread in Victoria's health structure, calling for additional Indigenous representation in the labour force and steadfast guidelines to expand healthcare. It also recommended that amends could be in the form of compensation, a theme that has been politically controversial but is now gaining traction. See also 65-year-old man dies from a blood clot after Moderna Covid-19 jab Jill Gallagher, head of Victoria's Aboriginal health peak body, said the genocide outcome is 'indisputable,' adding: 'We don't blame anyone alive today for these atrocities, but it is the responsibility of those of us alive today to accept that truth.' Australia at a crossroads: Truth-telling or turning away? The Yoorrook Commission's verdicts came at a decisive moment in Australia's broader national discourse about justice for First Nations individuals. Whereas some states, like Victoria, are proceeding with truth-telling initiatives, others have stopped advancements. For example, in Queensland, a truth review was negated following a change in political administration. Nationwide, work towards resolution underwent a major impediment when Australians voted against a 2023 plebiscite to create an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. Notwithstanding political struggle, the Yoorrook report stands as a substantial, yet painful, breakthrough. It challenges Australians to meet painful realities and to admit that resolution and compromise demand more than emblematic gesticulations. It calls for structural modification, acknowledgement, and the daring to face the country's history. As Premier Jacinta Allan said, the report 'shines a light on hard truths.' Whether those realities will lead to meaningful action remains the question confronting Australia today.
ABC News
17-06-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Thousands join Walk for Truth as Yoorrook Justice Commission truth-telling inquiry concludes
More than three thousand people are expected to join the final day of a 500-kilometre walk to mark the closure of Australia's first formal truth-telling process, the Yoorrook Justice Commission. The four-year Aboriginal-led inquiry will become Victoria's longest-ever state-run royal commission when it formally concludes on June 30. Since 2021, the inquiry has been tasked with establishing an official record of the history of colonisation of Victoria and its ongoing impacts on First Peoples. In the inquiry's final weeks, Yoorrook Commissioner Travis Lovett has walked across half of the state in an attempt to raise awareness of the commission's historic work. The Kerrupmara Gunditjmara traditional owner has already been joined by thousands of supporters on his 25-day Walk For Truth. The walk began on Commissioner Lovett's traditional country near Portland, the earliest site of permanent European settlement in Victoria. "It's about walking side by side, listening deeply with respect and taking steps toward a fairer Victoria for everyone." Today the walk led by Commissioner Lovett is scheduled to arrive at Melbourne's Parliament house. Yoorrook's final report is expected to be delivered to government in coming days and then made public sometime next month. Over the last four years, Yoorrook has collected evidence from thousands of people as part of its comprehensive investigation into the past and ongoing impacts of colonisation in Victoria. Designed and led by Victorian First Peoples, its mandate has been unprecedented in Australia. It has heard from Stolen Generations survivors, elders, historians, experts and non-Indigenous advocates about the true impacts of colonisation and ways the state can improve outcomes for future generations. In interim findings, Yoorrook, which means 'truth' in the Wamba Wamba language, uncovered evidence of grave and ongoing human rights abuses against First Peoples. In September 2023, it called for sweeping reforms to Victoria's criminal justice and child protection systems. Those proposals received a lukewarm reception from government, which now fully supports just six of the inquiry's 46 interim recommendations. It is understood Yoorrook's final report will include more than 100 recommendations including changes to the way Victoria's history is taught in schools. While this truth-telling process ends, it's expected a call for further and ongoing- truth-telling opportunities will be pushed for as part of state-wide Treaty negotiations. Australia's first formal Treaty negotiations are now underway in Victoria, though Victoria's Liberal opposition no longer support a treaty between the state and First Peoples. While Victoria has participated in joint state-Commonwealth royal commissions which have run for more than four years, upon its conclusion Yoorrook will become the longest ever state-run royal commission in Victoria.
New York Times
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Virtues of Ideological Art
What is successful right-wing art? I posed that question to Jonathan Keeperman, who runs the far-right publisher Passage Press, on my podcast a couple of weeks ago, and you can tell that it's a tricky question because he took two separate bites at answering it, offering one response in our conversation and a revised one in a subsequent post on his Substack. In the first answer he suggested that we should understand 'right-wing art' as any art that tells the whole truth about the world, free from the ideological strictures and sensitivity reads imposed by contemporary progressivism. To me that seemed conveniently circular — reality has a well-known conservative bias, therefore any truthtelling art is inherently right-wing — and he tacitly acknowledged as much in his follow-up; there he suggested that the very concept of 'right-wing art' might be a category error, since art can't be circumscribed by politics and the artist's job is to be a truthteller and let the political implications take care of themselves. The second answer is the more attractive one for creators and critics, but I don't find it quite satisfying either. Certainly it doesn't resolve the tension inherent in Keeperman's own publishing project, which is trying to break away from the agitprop that often defines right-wing culture in modern America (think Dinesh D'Souza documentaries and Christian message movies), while also trading on the idea that there is special aesthetic value in the forbidden territory of far-right prose, among writers (from H.P. Lovecraft down to Curtis Yarvin) deemed dangerous because of their racism or sexism or authoritarianism. The same tension shows up in more mainstream quests to fix conservatism's broken relationship to the higher forms of culture. In his new book, '13 Novels Conservatives Will Love (but Probably Haven't Read),' Christopher Scalia is self-consciously trying to educate conservative readers into a deeper appreciation of literary culture — to add more literary fiction to the works of political theory and history that many right-wing readers favor, and to expand the familiar list of novelists beloved by conservatives beyond 'Lord of the Rings,' 'Atlas Shrugged' and maybe 'Brideshead Revisited.' In doing this he's aware of the risk of instrumentalizing the works he's celebrating, and so he cautions that 'any artist who elevates his political point above the techniques and elements of his craft is creating propaganda, not art.' But he's still urging people to read Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walter Scott and P.D. James because they illuminate a particular philosophical or ideological perspective on the world, not for the sake of their artfulness alone. Which leaves open the question of whether conscious philosophical or ideological motivations can themselves create particular artistic value, rather than yielding inevitably to propaganda. I think the answer has to be yes — that the concepts of 'successful right-wing art' and 'successful left-wing art' are both meaningful descriptions, not just category errors or excuses for agitprop, insofar as both 'right' and 'left' perspectives on the world capture aspects of reality that can be non-propagandistically portrayed. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
