Decolonial Thanksgiving • Gaza • Turtles • DrawTheLine

Current events with new media, accompanied by connections to the past

Author

greg macdougall
October 15, 2025

Intro

Greetings - It’s been a while!

This marks the first newsletter I've sent out in quite a while.

It’s also the first one some of you will receive - that’s if you subscribed over the summer, for example at the east end (Shenkman) Zine Fair.

I plan to get these sendouts onto a more regular schedule.

One thing I've realized is my tendency to want to fit a lot of stuff in each. Streamlining it may be a worthwhile and positive shift, and what I’m sending today is a bit streamlined but still very long. What do you think?

Also to note…

I - similar to many others - have been going through things, as it's sometimes phrased. This current historical moment is quite a bit to deal with, and we all have our personal circumstances too.

Sometimes it all feels quite a bit much.
Hopefully we connect with the right pathfinders to help us through.

There are four main sections in this newsletter:

Reconciliation after September 30
(A few things)

New zine:
"Israel's Starvation of Gaza:
Some Canadian Connections"

DRAW THE LINE
- Mass Bike Ride report back

'Timeline cleanse': 
TURTLES and other wildlife.

Truth and Reconciliation, after Sept.30

It’s not meant to be limited to one day.

(This section could have been a full newsletter itself.)

Basics

If you are interested in some of what I’ve written (and multimedia) previously about Residential Schools, and/or Anishinabe Algonquin local context of colonialism, please visit EquitableEducation.ca 
and use the search function:
‘Residential Schools’ and/or ‘Algonquin "land claim"‘ respectively, are two search terms I tested that get the most important pieces but not too many other results.

I decided it was easier to let you search yourself than attempt to list a bunch of articles here. But…

Roland Chrisjohn

Regarding this whole topic of Truth and Reconciliation, I wanted to take the opportunity to point out the work of Roland Chrisjohn.

I learned belatedly about a year ago that he'd passed away in the prior year.

He and his work are probably not as well known as they rightfully should be, but that is how things go in a colonial country.

I'd interviewed him in 2018, along with the graduate student he'd worked with, about their book on Indigenous suicide. At the time he knew he didn't have a lot of time left in this world, and mentioned a few times about keeping in mind how it’d be Shaunessy McKay (the graduate student) who'd be carrying on the work in the longer term.

Shortly after I'd published the article, he gave a talk on "The Psychiatrization of Indigenous Peoples as a Continuiation of Genocide" - and the video is published on youtube.

One thing of note from the talk, is he tells the story of how he was assigned to write the chapter (or volume) on Residential Schools for the 1991-1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.. BUT after it was finished, it was rejected for being critical of the Catholic Church. He ended up publishing it as a stand-along book instead: The Circle Game.

There’s more to say, but not for me at this point. I did a search for an obituary but couldn’t find anything.

The article I wrote, the full PDF of the book on Indigenous suicide, an audio talk re: that book, and the above-mentioned video, are all in a single post on my site.

Roland Chrisjohn, 2018 talk

Oct 15 - Tewin revisited

There is a motion at Ottawa City Planning and Housing Committee, to revisit their 2021 decision in favour of the "Tewin" development:

I’ve registered to speak to the committee. My slides are here.

The meeting is livestreamed on youtube and also available after.

First of my five presentation slides

Decolonial Thanksgiving

Before there were any official commemorative type of September 30 activities, there was "Decolonial Thanksgiving."

In 2009, our group IPSMO put on such an event here in Ottawa.

We were inspired in part by the Anti-Colonial Thanksgiving annual event in Guelph - it started in 2005, and in 2019 prior to the pandemic, it had been going 15 years strong (link to article). Also, see their 2008 zine featuring transcripts of what the guest speakers had to say.

You can also see web evidence of the Anti-Colonial Dinners in Montreal via QPIRG from 2011-2019, at this link.

There's a bilingual Thanksgiving Prayer included - added on at the end, like a 'bonus track' on an album - in the Objibwe language book available on my site. This was from a special Hallowe’en evening session our community Ojibwe course in Kitchener attended with language keeper Violet Shawanda, at U.Waterloo.

Indigenous Sovereignty Week

In 2009 and 2010 we (IPSMO) were also part of a larger coalition that hosted series of "Indigenous Sovereignty Week" events. Ottawa did the two years, as did many communities across so-called Canada, and a few did 2011 too.

2010 ISW Ottawa poster

New zine on Gaza

Israel’s Starvation of Gaza:
Some Canadian Connections

This is short and concise - only one page double-sided - so you can print, fold, and pass it out.

It is a collection of a number of different discrete things, all relating to the starvation aspect of Israel's genocide of Gaza. They are each presented as stand-alone segments, but as a whole they work together in a way that can help people recognize both complicity and empathy. The last page features some of the initiatives that have been calling on Canada to do something.

I published the first version of this mid-September and was distributing it in print before I got it online. But with a bit of feedback (feedback can be very good!) I got inspired to do up a revised and improved version 2.0.

Here's the first panel, i.e. the cover page.

In case you missed it

DRAW THE LINE - Mass Bike Ride

Recently there was a big national (Sept 20) and global (Sept 19-21) mobilization under the banner of "Draw The Line."

It was built on the foundation of the annual marches for climate that got started in 2019 with the 'Climate Strike' led by students worldwide - but to bring together a wider convergence of people under a multi-issue politic, in line with the current situations we are collectively facing.

My involvement was to help get a mass bike ride going the previous evening, Friday Sept 19, in the style of a Critical Mass ride.

I got a bit of footage and did up a short video.

I also put together a playlist of musical suggestions for the Ottawa-Gatineau Draw The Line post-march gathering. There are 24 songs you can check out, themed around social justice and fighting back.

All 24 songs are in this Proton folder along with the file of the video.

*One of the songs is "Song For Assata" by Common, a tribute to Black liberation activist Assata Shakur - who recently passed away, on September 25, living in exile in Cuba. Learn more from the music.

I plan to write up a personal ‘critical debrief’ for Draw The Line, so look for that sometime soon. 'Critical' as in 'critical thinking', not 'critical' as in 'criticizing' - but emphasis on the importance of debrief and reflection.

‘Timeline cleanse’

TURTLES!

Special video including a frog attack on a hatchling.

This is our fourth year of organized helping with turtle nests, under the umbrella of the grassroots Turtles of Old Ottawa East and South group.

You can learn more specifically about our group, at linktr.ee/TurtlesOOES

The mother turtles generally lay the nests in June, and then it is September and into October when the babies hatch. We mainly help Snapping Turtles - who are more visible and have easier-to-find nests - as well as Painted Turtles, as those are the main species in the Rideau River in our area.

I have a few turtle videos from this season, as well as from previous years, in my 'Wildlife' playlist on Youtube. It has some other good wildlife too!

There's also a new document if you want to learn more about all the types of things related to what we do. It is from the “Turtle Nest Protection Symposium” this past spring that brought together people from many different such groups, combined with more formal experts and organizations. Read it here (17 pages).

Two Snapping Turtle babies getting used to their new habitat.

That’s it for this newsletter.

If things go as planned, I’ll have the next edition for ‘Media Democracy Day’ before the end of October.

Take good care / weweni*

(*: Ojibwe / Anishinaabemowin)