By Justin Podur, Z Net

ISLAMABAD – The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) is a women’s organization that runs underground schools and other projects, educates Afghan girls, runs a periodic journal, and agitates politically for women’s rights, human rights, secularism, and social justice in Afghanistan. From the 1979 Soviet invasion through to the 2006 closings of the camps, millions of Afghan refugees lived in Pakistan and many still do. While RAWA’s operations were always based primarily in Afghanistan, they have also had a strong presence in the Pakistan refugee community. I spoke to Mariam from RAWA in Islamabad when I was there in July 2008.

JUSTIN PODUR (JP): To begin, perhaps you could introduce readers to RAWA and its work in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

- No Olympics on stolen land!
- Disrupt and abolish the G8 and SPP
- Active support and solidarity for local struggles of self-determination,
justice and dignity*

[August 2008 - OTTAWA]

In the year 2010, three major international events will be taking place in
the Canadian state: the Winter Olympics in Vancouver/Whistler (between
February 12-28); the G8 Leader's Summit in Huntsville, Ontario (most likely
in June or July); and the meeting of the NAFTA leaders as part of the
so-called "Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)" (date and location not
yet known).

Already, groups and individuals on the West Coast have come together under
the banner of "No Olympics on stolen native land." They have been organizing
and raising awareness, from an anti-colonial and anti-capitalist
perspective, against the 2010 Olympics, for several years. [More info
available at www.no2010.com and http://harrietspirit.blogspot.com/]

Inspired by the mobilizing on the West Coast, organizers across "Canada"
have begun awareness-raising efforts. Building on the call from the West
Coast for anti-capitalist and anti-colonial resistance to the Olympics, some
organizers affiliated with the "People's Global Action" Bloc (PGA-Bloc) in
Ontario and Quebec have begun mobilizing around "Resistance2010", linking
anti-Olympics efforts to organizing against the G8 and SPP, and the

By Naomi Klein, Huffington Post, August 8, 2008

So far, the Olympics have been an open invitation to China-bash, a bottomless excuse for Western journalists to go after the Commies on everything from internet censorship to Darfur. Through all the nasty news stories, however, the Chinese government has seemed amazingly unperturbed. That's because it is betting on this: when the opening ceremonies begin friday, you will instantly forget all that unpleasantness as your brain is zapped by the cultural/athletic/political extravaganza that is the Beijing Olympics.

Like it or not, you are about to be awed by China's sheer awesomeness.

The games have been billed as China's "coming out party" to the world. They are far more significant than that. These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organizing society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism — central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance — harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism. Some call it "authoritarian capitalism," others "market Stalinism," personally I prefer "McCommunism."

There’s a new big story: climate change. Tadzio Müller suggests a way for anticapitalists to deal with the issue’s urgency without falling into catastrophism or quietism. Fromhttp://turbulence.org.uk/turbulence-4/the-movement-is-dead-long-live-the-movement/

R.I.P., or: the death of a movement
The movement’s dead! More precisely: the alterglobalisation movement as a common place for movements and ‘activists’ to meet and to become-other, together, linking their struggles under and against the common referent of neoliberal globalisation, is dead. Not that the particular struggles are dead. Nor have we seen the end of countersummit mobilisations: as I’m writing this, preparations for engaging the G8 in Japan are in full swing, and at every gathering of the radical and not-so-radical left, plans are busily being made to shut down one summit or another: the G8 in Italy in 2009; NATO’s 60-year birthday bash in France; and so on and so forth: countersummits-r-us?

Rita MacNeil, who went on to become a popular singer, was named in an RCMP document on a 1972 feminist gathering, Feminist singer of 'women's lib songs,' among dozens under scrutiny in early '70s

Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press, August 5, 2008

OTTAWA–RCMP spies infiltrated the women's movement in the early 1970s, monitoring marches and rallies to keep an eye on feminists including Rita MacNeil, who would become a much-admired Maritime songstress.

An undercover source reporting on a March 1972 gathering of women's liberation groups in Winnipeg compiled biographical sketches of several delegates, noting MacNeil was in attendance from the Toronto Women's Caucus.

"She's the one who composes and sings women's lib songs," says the RCMP memo, portions of which remain secret.

MacNeil, who lent her musical talents to the feminist cause before turning to music full-time, was among dozens of women from across the country who came under Mountie scrutiny, new research reveals.

The entertainer was not immediately available for comment, nor was her manager.

Historians Steve Hewitt, a Canadian lecturer at the University of Birmingham in England, and Christabelle Sethna, of the University of Ottawa, sifted through hundreds of pages of declassified files detailing the RCMP Security Service's interest in women's groups that began flowering in the late 1960s.

What's Going on in Afghanistan: An Interview with Sonali Kolhatkar
By Mike Whitney, CounterPunch, July 31, 2008.

Sonali Kolhatkar is the co-author, with James Ingalls, of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (Seven Stories 2006). She is also the Co-Director of Afghan Women's Mission, a US-based non-profit organization that works in solidarity with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).

Mike Whitney: On a recent stopover in France, Barack Obama said, "We must win in Afghanistan. There is no other option." Recent polls, however, show that public support for the war in Afghanistan has fallen off sharply. In fact, many American's don't even know why we are still there. Is there a big difference between what "winning" means to the Bush administration and what it means to the people of Afghanistan? Also, have you seen any indication that the Bush administration intends to keep its promises and establish security, rebuild the country's infrastructure, spread democracy, remove the warlords, liberate women, and "modernize" Afghanistan or was that all just a public relations smokescreen to promote the invasion?

By Doug Ireland, Gay City News, July 28, 2008

Recovering our hidden gay history has been a critically important byproduct of the modern gay movement, and in its current Summer 2008 issue, the 46-year-old independent socialist review New Politics has published a significant discovery that restores to us a lost moment of our political history - specifically, of the history of gays and the left.

The discovery was made quite accidentally by the historian Christopher Phelps, a professor of history at Ohio State University at Mansfield whose books include the critically well-regarded biography "Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and Pragmatist." While Phelps was researching a forthcoming book on anti-Stalinist black radicals, he came across an article by one "H.L. Small" on homosexual emancipation entitled "Socialism and Sex," which appeared in 1952 in Young Socialist, the mimeographed bulletin of the youth section of the Socialist Party, then led by Norman Thomas.

And on further investigation, and after interviewing survivors of that period, Phelps unearthed the fact that there was an organized effort within the Socialist Party at that time to have it take a firm and bold position in favor of the decriminalization of homosexuality and the end of discrimination against gays and lesbians - an unheard of political initiative at the time for any political party.

Law Suit a Tar Sands Stopper?
by Tom Sandborn, The Tyee, July 28, 2008.

Jack Woodward and the Beaver Lake Cree aim to change Canadian law -- and their success likely would throw a huge wrench into Alberta's tar-sands oil production.

The suit pits the Beaver Lake Cree band against the governments of Canada and Alberta, asking the court to rule invalid the government authorization for thousands of petroleum projects on the band's core territory.

From Turbulence 4

With the explosions of 1968 still reverberating, John Holloway talks of our fast-moving, unstable and polyphonic revolt against abstract labour, the activity that weaves capitalist domination.

1968? Why talk about 1968? There are so many urgent things happening. Let’s talk of Oaxaca and Chiapas and the danger of civil war in Mexico. Let’s talk of the war in Iraq and the rapid destruction of the natural preconditions of human existence. Is this really a good moment for old men to sit back and reminisce?

But perhaps we need to talk of 1968 because, even in the face of all the real urgency, we are feeling lost and need some sense of direction: not to find the road (because the road does not exist) but to create many paths. Perhaps 1968 has something to do with our feeling lost, and perhaps it has something to do with making new paths. So let us talk of 1968.

1968 opened the door to a change in the world, a change in the rules of anti-capitalist conflict, a change in the meaning of anti-capitalist revolution, a change therefore in the meaning of hope. This is what we are still trying to understand. That is why I say that 1968 contributes to making us feel lost and is also a key to finding some orientation.

CONTENTS

1) TURBULENCE 04 OUT NOW!
2) HELP DISTRIBUTE TURBULENCE
3) TURBULENCE WEBSITE RELAUNCH
4) ‘MOVE INTO THE LIGHT? POSTSCRIPT TO A TURBULENT 2007’ REPUBLISHED BY PM
PRESS

1) TURBULENCE 04 OUT NOW!

Turbulence: Ideas for movement No. 4: ‘Who can save us from the future?’

Today, the very act of thinking about the future has become a problem. What
both capitalism and 'really existing socialism’ had in common was the belief
in a future where infinite happiness would spring from the infinite expansion
of production: sacrifices made in the present could always be justified in
terms of a brighter future. And now? The socialist future has been dead since
the fall of the Berlin wall. After that we seemed to live in a world where only
the capitalist future existed (even when it was under attack). But now this
future, too, is having its obituaries composed, and impending doom is the talk
of the town. The 'crisis of the future' – that is, of our capacity to think
about the future – is born out of these twin deaths: today it is easier to
imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

With this in mind we've assembled a collection of articles that, in different
ways, speak to us about futures. As much as we didn’t want people’s
ten-point programmes when, in June 2007 we asked ‘What would it mean to

The U.S. Treats Afghans Like Roaches
by Glenn Ford, Black Agenda Radio commentary, July 23, 2008.

To be occupied by foreign soldiers is always a degradation, but some countries are singularly unsuited to lord it over other nations. The United States seems incapable of conforming to the most elemental standards of civilized behavior when occupying Muslim lands. Americans routinely commit horrific atrocities against populations they are legally obligated to protect from harm. Since the beginning of the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, wedding parties have been especially attractive targets of U.S. airpower. "The crimes - mass murder from the air - point up the casually racist nature" of U.S. rule over non-European "others."

By Keith Jones, 18 July 2008.

Canada’s Border Services Agency turned Iraq war resister Robin Long over to US authorities Tuesday morning. Long, who fled the US Army in 2005 after learning he was to be deployed to Iraq, was immediately sent to a Bellingham, Washington county jail. He has since been transferred to the US Army base in Fort Carson, Colorado where he will be subject to military discipline for “desertion”—an offense for which US military personnel can be court-martialed, jailed and, in time of war, executed.

A US military spokesman told Canwest News Service that “the unit commander will look at the facts” and make a recommendation “about what disciplinary actions will ensue.”

The 25-year old Long had been in the custody of Canada’s border and immigration police, the CBSA, since last October. He had sought political refugee status in Canada, arguing that the 2003 US invasion of Iraq was illegal, that were he deployed to Iraq he would be complicit in war crimes, and that he would suffer irreparable harm if deported to the US.

11th Hour Decision: Court of Appeal Throws Out Publication Ban Again

(Friday, July 18th, 2008) After a decision by a Napanee judge, rendered at 10:30 am this morning, lifting a publication ban on Tyendinaga Mohawk Shawn Brant's preliminary hearing, Crown attorneys attempted to have the effect of the decision stayed, but failed.

At midday, only Crown prosecutors (no defence lawyers) appeared before a judge of the Court of Appeal, and convinced the judge to issue a stay. The media was ordered to "immediately cease reporting on evidence heard at the preliminary inquiry and remove all related reports from websites".

Then, at shortly after 5pm, lawyers for the CBC and Mr. Brant appeared before the same Appeals judge, along with Crown counsel. After substantial submissions, the judge lifted her earlier stay and dismissed the stay application altogether, ordering the publication ban lifted once more.

END THE WAR AGAINST THE ZAPATISTA COMMUNITIES

We, the organizations, collectives, movements, networks, communities, peoples, families and individuals who are adherents or sympathizers of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle, women, men, children and elders of the entire country declare:

1. For almost a year, the harrasment, provocations, repression, militarization and aggressions against the indigenous zapatista communities have been worsening. The military incursion of this past June 4th is only the most visible sign of a strategy that seeks to attack the social base of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the heart of indigenous autonomy: the land and territory. We condemn and reject these actions and demand that they stop immediately.

2. This new offensive is articulated once again by paramilitary groups and by the State Government of Chiapas, as well as by the Federal Government. It is a political-military strategy that seeks to back zapatismo into a corner. Complicit in this strategy is the silence of the mass media and everyone who remains silent before the repression through which our zapatista sisters and brothers are living. We will not be silent. We demand an immediate halt to this offensive against the zapatista project, which represents an alternative for the peoples of the world.

Adam Hanieh, The Bullet, Socialist Project

Neoliberalism, the 'New Middle East' and Palestine
In the late 1960s, with the definitive collapse of British and French colonialism in the Middle East, the US rose to become the dominant imperial power within the region. Because of the presence of oil, the Middle East became critically important to the overall construction of US hegemony in the global order. Control of the region's resources functioned simultaneously to secure a vital commodity, provide a source of profits, and as a cudgel with which to influence rival powers within the global marketplace. In the last 30 years, the region – particularly the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – has taken on an increasingly important role as a source of flows of surplus capital – and hence overall power – within the global financial order.

ILLEGAL DEVELOPMENT OF “KINGSPAN" ON HAUDENOSAUNEE TERRITORY

MNN. July 14, 2008. 10:40 a.m. This morning the Brantford City police arrested a Six Nations Indigenous person at the construction site at Fenn Ridge in Brantford. At the same time Ontario Provincial Police are gathering on Highway 403, making way for cement trucks to enter the illegal construction site. More cruisers are arriving on the scene. They have laid spike belts on the road to keep Indigenous people on the outside. Ambulances and paddy wagons are arriving. There are men, women and children inside the site gates. All the workers have left.

This land is part of the Haudenosaunee Territory which was never surrendered by the Indigenous owners. This Indigenous land is being illegally used as collateral to raise money from the public on the Irish and other stock exchanges and constitutes fraud.

Kingspan manufactures insulation and is building a $4 billion plant on Haudenosaunee territory without consultation with or permission from the land owners.

Gene Murtagh, CEO, Kingspan Group
PLC, Dublin Road, Kingscourt Co.,
Cavan, Ireland; +353 (0) 42 969 8000;
admn@kingspan.ie

The Six Nations people had agreed to let the company remove all their equipment on this day. Instead the

By Macdonald Stainsby, July 14, 2008

For much of the last year, many of the anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian forces across Canada have started to work towards converging many of the bigger issues to take place in 2010 into a larger whole.

Some of the issues included are: The 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, the next round of Security and Prosperity Partnership [SPP] negotiations to be held within Canada-- and the G8 Summit to be held in Ontario all during that same year. On many different levels these issues interlink and have an inherent connection with one another. Some of them, more than others. Here I wish to make the case that what belongs as a major thread through all of these discussions is often absent among those of us trying to make these larger connections coherent in our organizing.

Here I will specifically focus on making a connection for the 2010 Games resistance, the SPP and the Albertan Tar Sands as another central organizing point.

Part 1, Adam Hanieh, the Bullet, Socialist Project.

Over the last six months, the Palestinian economy has been radically transformed under a new plan drawn up by the Palestinian Authority (PA) called the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan (PRDP). Developed in close collaboration with institutions such as the World Bank and the British Department for International Development (DFID), the PRDP is currently being implemented in the West Bank where the Abu Mazen-led PA has effective control. It embraces the fundamental precepts of neoliberalism: a private sector-driven economic strategy in which the aim is to attract foreign investment and reduce public spending to a minimum.

Workers at 3 hotels could strike: Unions negotiating wages, conditions as contracts expire in peak tourist season
by Lesley Ciarula Taylor, Toronto Star, July 12, 2008.

At the height of Toronto's summer tourist season, unions at three hotels, including the Fairmont Royal York, have moved into strike positions.

Eighty-one per cent of the 850 workers at the Royal York voted to strike as early as July 16, the date their contract expires, if negotiations fail.

Contracts for 134 workers at the Holiday Inn and Radisson hotels on Dixon Rd., near the airport, expired yesterday, putting them in a position to strike at any time.

Abdul Husseini came off shift as a waiter at the Holiday Inn's restaurant yesterday and went right into a meeting of Local 75 of Unite Here, the union organizing employees at hotels across North America.

"The important issue is standards," Husseini said. "Our first cook gets $14.76 an hour. At the Hilton down the road, the first cook gets $18.86 an hour and Westmont (Hospitality Group) owns them both. At least they could fill the gap.

"There are 18 people working in the kitchen, we're open 24 hours a day, most of them are recent immigrants from India and Sri Lanka and they really work hard."

Canada Throws Ecuador into Reverse
When a little nation reined in big miners, our ambassador got very political.
http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/07/11/CanMining/.
By Jennifer Moore
Published: July 11, 2008
Canada is "re-engaging with the Americas." That's what Minister of
International Trade David Emerson told the Canada Council for the
Americas in Vancouver this past February, elaborating that Canada
wants to play "a positive role" to "help citizens throughout the
region thrive in the world."

"You can count on Canada and Canadians," Emerson assured.

But in Ecuador, a small Andean nation a quarter the size of British
Columbia, Canada's government has aligned itself with powerful
Canadian mining interests to undo a recently passed decree crafted to
strengthen protection for human rights and the environment.

The government decree, hailed as a momentous victory by a grassroots
movement fighting big mining projects in Ecuador, would halt what
critics call a pell-mell method of granting mining concessions
heedless of communities' wishes or damage to nature.

Canada is a top investor in Ecuador and Canada's ambassador to Ecuador
is Christian Lapointe. Lately, he has been very busy helping to put
Canadian mining companies in good stead with the Ecuadorian
government. Two companies have projects suspended and have been

This article was originally in published in Spanish - La Jornada 30th June 2008 by the well-respected Oaxacan activist and founder of the University of the Earth, Gustavo Esteva; he was one of the EZLN's advisors in their negotiations with the Mexican government.

We need to recognise and acknowledge the grave seriousness of the current situation, which cannot be overstated. Neither should we hide the fact that evil triumphs when people shrug their shoulders at it and return quietly to their daily activities. Now is the time to act. Only with concerted and effective mobilisation can we prevent the disaster that now threatens us.

In November 2007, 'Peace with Democracy', a group of independent thinkers who cannot be accused of partisan or dogmatic exaggeration, and who stand out for the calmness and solidity of their judgements, stated "Mexico is in a state of emergency". They presented many facts and reasons to substantiate their warning.

An interview with South Korean activist Dopehead Zo, by Sarah Lazare, Marina Sitrin, David Solnit and Asha Colazione.

The anti-G8 mobilizations have been bringing together inspiring organizers and activists from all over the world. Japanese precarious temp workers, calling themselves “Freeters”, South Korean anti-military base organizers, Spanish media activists, Farm workers from Via Campesina, Australian human rights activists, German direct action organizers, and many others from North America, Asia, and Europe, have all come together to share stories, struggles, ideas, and to network and plan actions. At The Counter G8 International Forum in Tokyo, we met one organizer whose story is so compelling we needed to share it as soon as possible. The following is a selected transcription of our conversation.

July, 07 2008, By No! G8 Legal Team -- NG8LT

* Arrestees are still in jail and face years in prison
* Local organizers may face arrests
* Arrestees and organizers friends and families are facing harassment and possible house raids by police

Activists and organizers are asking local groups and individuals to call, e-mail, visit and protest at Japanese embassies over the unjust arrests, detentions, deportations, and repression occurring around counter-G8 mobilization in Japan.

Japanese police continue to escalate repression against protesters of the Group of 8 Summit. This is part of a growing trend of the suppression of human rights in Japan. Yesterday's demonstration of approximately five thousand was lined with, and sometimes boxed in by, several thousand police in full riot gear. At least four people - including a Reuters reporter - were arrested. In one arrest, the police shattered the window of a sound truck and dragged out the driver. Hours after the demonstration ended the legal team had already received numerous reports of police misconduct.

Afghanistan under the knife and hammer
by Richard Seymour, from Lenin's Tomb, July 3, 2008.

The procedure is quite simple. Choose a country in the world that seems to be suffering, in some way dysfunctional, ripe for 'intervention'. Perform some 'surgical' air strikes and, after a quick and painless stitch-up, auction it off to the highest bidders. Having done that, so the theory goes, you can return home and contemplate your good deeds. But, sticking with the medical metaphor for a second, you are not a doctor and you wouldn't know the hippocratic oath if it was printed in reverse lettering on your forehead. Whatever 'illness' you were supposedly dealing with has metastasized while the body is resisting your implants. In fact, the 'patient' keeps trying to kick your ass every time you come near him. Time to give up? Hell no. While Bush sends more troops to Afghanistan, Gordon Brown has insisted that there will be no 'artificial timetable' for British troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Okay, but how about a real timetable?

By Gary Kinsman

AN INSPIRING AND broad-ranging queer historian, Allan Bérubé died at the age of 61 on December 11, 2007. He left us with major contributions of exciting historical work, but also important unfinished work that needs to be continued.

Bérubé’s allegiance was not to the academy but to the movement and community. Bérubé’s histories, as he put it, were about the lives of ordinary lesbians and gay men. He was not formally trained as a historian. Instead his remarkable skills grew out of his decade long involvement in the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project and the broader grassroots queer history movement based on developing ways to return our history to our communities.

Some of his earliest work with the History Project was on women who cross-dressed and passed as men. Bérubé’s historical work, while centering on gay and queer experiences, always examined the ways in which sexuality, class, race and gender relations are made in and through each other. Sexuality, for him, was thought and practiced in relation to class, race and gender.

Marching To A Different Drummer

Harper's Free Trade Mantra: Hush, Rush, and Sign
Written by Dawn Paley
Tuesday, 01 July 2008
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1356/1/
This January, after little more than 6 months of negotiations, the
Canadian Government announced the completion of negotiations of the
Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement at the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland.

Six months later, on June 7, 2008, Canada announced that negotiations
for a controversial Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia were
finalized.

The negotiations with Colombia were controversial from the get go: the
country has the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, and the
government of Alvaro Uribe is riddled by ongoing scandals that have
revealed proven links between Uribe's allies in Congress and
paramilitary death squads.

In a corruption scandal that would most certainly bring down a
Canadian Prime Minister, Uribe himself is the subject of a recent
Sentence by the Colombian Supreme Court. The justices condemned him
for buying the key vote of Congresswoman Yidis Medina in exchange for
political favours, a crime necessary for the constitutional changes
that opened the door to Uribe's re-election in 2006.

On June 26th, Medina was sentenced to 3 ½ years of house arrest for
accepting bribes from the president. The president promptly responded

Introductory remarks for Indigenous Struggles Solidarity Day, June 28 in Sudbury

By Clarissa Lassaline

Good morning. Bonjour. Anni. Welcome everyone.

Today’s activities have been initiated by a local group called Sudbury Against War and Occupation (SAWO). We are a mixed group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous folks concerned with all forms and consequences of war and occupation. While this includes working against Canadian involvement in war and occupation all over the world, SAWO sees it as central to recognize that Canada itself exists as an occupation of First Nations’ territory and that struggles of Indigenous Peoples against that occupation must be supported. There is an urgent need to support communities standing up for their lands and for their sovereignity and understand how non-indigenous people are a part of and contribute to the continuing violations of that soveriegnity. Mohawk activist of Tyendinaga, Shawn Brant, called for a different way of doing things on National Aboriginal Day last year when he cried out: “We bury our children in this country every day. We have to force them to drink polluted water. We’re sick and tired of it. It’s going to end-June 29 is going to mark the time when First Nations people are going to be in a different relationship with the rest of the country.”

By Angela Scappatura, The Sudbury Star

Indigenous and non-indigenous people gathered at Victory Park to assert their support for the struggles of aboriginals in Canada on Saturday.

Heavy rain did not prevent more than a dozen people from attending the day-long event, which included a drumming workshop, personal stories and musical performances.

The event was organized by Sudbury Against War and Occupation and was designed to raise awareness of aboriginal issues.

Gary Kinsman is a member of Sudbury Against War and Occupation and said the inaugural event displays solidarity between both indigenous and non-indigenous people.

"I think it's important because what we're showing is that the government's apology around residential schools was not enough," he said while standing beneath a tarp protecting a barbeque and food from the rain.

"The government policies around indigenous people are, in general, pretty bad."

Many of the day's events highlighted the group's concern surrounding First Nations land claims. Kinsman, who is not an aboriginal, said there needs to be justice for the community.