It's been quite the journey these past four years -- learning about my treaty heritage and the responsiblities associated with it. As part of this, I worked with some Nishnaabe members of the Stoney Point Reserve as they told their story of reclaiming their ancestral...
I want to share what I learned as I prepared a keynote speech to a United Church regional council AGM, and also share a link to it so you can see the images. I became even more convinced that the trauma of displacement and dispossession that my forebears experienced...
The how of seeing reality fundamentally conditions the reality we work with. So to me, seeing nature solely through the lens of Western science is part of the problem. This book, reviewed here, reminds environmentalists (and others) of another, more deeply historical...
Writing this review of Michelle Porter's poetic memoir, Approaching Fire, taught me a lot about the distorting power of official public memory. The review was published in the Literary Review of Canada (reviewcanada.ca), March, 2021. Three underlying facts propel this...
Renewing a lived relationship with the earth is essential to renewing our responsibility to sustain it as a habitat hospitable to human habitation. This is the implicit message of a book by Jerry Fontaine I just reviewed for the environmental magazine, Watershed...
I want to amplify the voice of this clear-thinking and generous-hearted Anishinaabe-kwe linguist and lawyer by sharing a review I did of her book about Indigenous langugage and law revitalization, published in the Literary Review of Canada, June, 2019. When I headed...
Here's us line-dancing women on Gabriola, B.C. We're taking up the Jerusalema Dance Challenge that's been going around the world to raise joy during the Covid pandemic. The song was composed by South African musician Master KG, and performed by Nomcebo. I’m glad I...
'Today I Stand Upon the Shore' original music written and performed by Pat Mayberry 2014 Video by Heather Menzies Blog Series: A journey of reckoning and reconnection I went looking for my ancestors after writing No Time: Stress & the Crisis of Modern Life, which...
Two books – Is Racism an Environmental Threat by Ghassan Hage and As We Have Always Done by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson – explore the personal in the political.
Based on Heather Menzies' presentation at Camp Gabriola on August 26, 2016. Part 1 of 2 A politics of hope can prevail over a politics of despair if it’s guided by a vision that itself is grounded in what has worked in the past... when the so-called unseen hand of...