Welcome to my newsletter v2.1 !

This is the first edition.
I hope you'll appreciate the variety of topics and opportunities I provide here.

There are three main items in this first issue:

• Local Indigenous History: webinar, resource guide, Jane’s Walk weekend;

• Black Canadian Films archive and National Canadian Film Day;

• Palestine / Israel: Canadian legal context, DIY handouts, photo exhibit.

But, there are actually five items,

At the end, I’ve also included an explanation and intro to this newsletter,

And I’ve decided to start off each newsletter with a couple of photos to add the visual dimension.

So first, here are the photos:

The Identification of a Long-Ignored Indigenous Cultural Landscape in the National Capital Region

On April 17, Heritage Ottawa presents an evening webinar with archeologist Jean-Luc Pilon about how “the puzzle pieces of a significant cultural landscape, situated between the mouth of the Gatineau River and the Chaudière Falls emerged only recently and, to a significant degree, by happenstance.“

I think this will be a good learning opportunity. You can read the full description of the event, and register via Zoom, at the Heritage Ottawa web page.

I had featured Pilon’s work - linking to four pieces of his published research, as well as shorter accessible profiles of the work - in the “Sacred Waterfalls Site in Ottawa: Annotated Resource Guide” I created in 2019.

The guide covers the recent fight against the commercial/condo “Zibi” development there, as well as a larger context and background. It was something I put together after leading two guided walks at the site, as part of the “Jane’s Walks” weekend: the purpose was both to provide all the more detailed info and reference sources, as well as simply something comprehensive that is available to people outside of those weekend walks.

The 2024 edition of Jane’s Walk Ottawa is May 4-5. They’ve already started posting some of the walks that will be offered, and they are still accepting proposals from potential walk leaders (until April 12). See the website JanesWalkOttawa.ca.

Black Canadian Film: ICED IN BLACK digital archive

Almost exactly one year ago, on Canadian National Film Day, I ‘soft-launched’ the ICED IN BLACK: Canadian Black Experiences on Film festival archive.

The ICED… festival happened over 20 years ago and I was involved as a volunteer.

A few years ago I started thinking about doing something to honour what it was all about. My impetus was both the BlackLivesCDNSyllabus hashtag of 2016, as well as not being able to find anything online about the festival, and myself having written two articles about it at the time that I still had physical copies of.

So now this online digital archive exists and is available for people to peruse, including with links to many of the films available to watch online for free.

More recently I made quarter-page flyers, that anyone can print and use to let others know about this archive. Hopefully these flyers will be distributed at some of the National Canadian Film Day events, taking place on April 17.

*Note: There is likely an updated version of the flyer coming, and the link to print it will be added to the archive web page. The archive itself is still a work-in-progress.

The catastrophic Gaza situation: Israel/Palestine

As I’ve read and heard some Palestinians in Gaza say, there aren’t words that can express what is happening there,

Israel is committing mass horrors. It’s six months now of that.

For the past month I have been working on a piece about international law, specifically about how it applies in Canada when Israeli companies come here to sell Israeli real estate, including in the illegal settlements from which Palestinians have been displaced in an ongoing expansionary process since 1967.

Three of these events took place at the start of March, affording an opportunity to understand the dynamics and how international law can be applied by the Canadian government. I think this can be part of a solution to the blatant violations of humanity that Israel is committing.

The article isn’t yet complete, but yesterday I posted a draft preview of almost half of it - which is already 1850 words.

Read the preview at this link using the password: gazasolidarity

Also, I put together a couple of print-them-yourself Gaza Solidarity Flyers for anyone to raise awareness and connect people to a few links (Canada, USA, and international) that provide ways to take action.

The most updated versions are at linktr.ee/GazaSolidarityFlyer, along with links to collections of posters to print, compiled resource documents, and more.

And upcoming at the SAW Centre in Ottawa, is a photo exhibit from Gaza from before the current catastrophe began. There’s a vernissage the evening of April 18, and an artist talk on April 20, and the exhibit will be open for visits for a while.

This new Newsletter -
"News at the Moons" from EquitableEducation.ca

The basic purpose of this newsletter is to be able to connect in an ongoing way in an intentional manner. The newsletters I’m subscribed to, I appreciate knowing that I will get the important updates - I won’t miss them like I do on social media.

And while it is mainly a one-way communication, there’s always the availability to just hit reply if you’ve got something to say. I do that on occasion on ones I’m subscribed to; the people there will often reply back, even if I don’t know them.

I used to have a newsletter hosted on MailChimp, and most people subscribed one of two ways:

• at an event I facilitated or otherwise organized;

• from my website.

But after an extended period where I didn't send anything out - without realizing what would happen - the list was expired and everything, including my access to everyone’s email addresses, was erased with no possible recovery options.

This was a while ago, and the newsletters field has evolved since then,

I've chosen to go with Beehiiv as a host now (vs. Substack, Ghost, or MailChimp).

To describe the list, the three tags I chose - from the limited options - were:
Media, Equality, and Climate Change.
(Culture would've been the fourth, but they only allow three).

But an overall description of this list, simply relates to where I'm coming from, which is making independent (interdependent) media alongside organizing in grassroots activist contexts for 2+ decades.

The three pieces in today's newsletter, are a sample of the type of content I do.

The idea for how often I’ll be sending this newsletter is to be 'at the moons' - which is to say, a schedule roughly coinciding with each full and new moon... roughly bi-weekly but not on a particular day of the week.

"News at the Moons" reminded me of Toronto AM radio "Traffic on the nines" i.e. 7:09, 7:19, 7:29, etc. But the impetus for this ‘at the moons’ is both for it not to be too often, and also to remember to connect with the natural world more.

This edition is sent out around the eclipse/new moon, and end of Ramadan.
(Ramadan ends with the sighting of the first sliver of the moon re-appearing.)

The next edition, at the coming full moon, will be an Earthy Day edition.

Please feel free to send me any feedback or other thoughts or questions;
and also, to forward the newsletter on to any friends or anyone else you think would appreciate to see it and possibly subscribe themselves.

Newsletter ‘homepage’: equitableeducation.beehiiv.com 

Solidarity,
- greg