Joni

Aden Bowman’s most famous Alumni.

Astumotah!

That’s probably a really bad spelling of a commonly used Cree word. It may surprise people, after watching most of this blog be in English, that in fact I do appreciate the multilingual quality of Canadian culture. And I did take French through school. I started out in French Immersion actually, the only reason I switched to Anglo schooling was because I moved to Montana for a year. Either way, when my brain is operating at full capacity I can pretty much decipher French. I mean, I do it literally so it sounds funny, but I have some fluent French speaking friends here in town who can correct the mistranslations. And mistranslations always occur. So if people did want to write here in French, and there are a lot of free thinking Quebeckers I know, then that is totally welcome. I am so not into having this blog stay a monoculture. That’s not the point.

The Cree language comes in 5 dialects and is the most widely spoken Aboriginal language in Canada, with 80 000 fluent speakers from Quebec to BC. Cree Speakers are well known for their diplomatic skills and ability to travel to various places while still retaining a sense of humour. The Cree language itself is a decolonized language which made concessions for change after the North West Rebellion, so that certain terms became contrary, including words for land and leader. Currently it is one of the most popular languages to be revived here in Canada, with both Native and Non Native speakers. Cree people were in charge of Canada’s fur trade and provided valuable assistance to otherwise clueless refugees. The Bible is the most recent translated addition to the current written language, the most recent translation was into the Y dialect, otherwise known as Plains Cree. Some new terms were created specifically to describe parts of the New and Old testament.

Lakota is one of the rarest languages in Canada with only 25 fluent speakers and most other Lakota/Dakota/Nakota speakers living in the United States of America. Sioux is considered a derogatory term for this tribe. Dene is a Canadian aboriginal language, and also ironically is the same language as the Navajo people of the South Western United States. Dene people in Canada still remember their migratory history. Saulteaux is another language spoken on the Plains, which has been revived and kept alive, there are some fluent Saulteaux speakers here and in Manitoba.

Cree is not the right name for my tribe, we are actually called Nehiyaw. Cree is a French term for Christians. I also don’t have my orthographics handy, so the accents are not in my Cree words right now, but there are long and short vowels all through Cree. Hopefully someone will point me in the right direction of using them online.

Awass Kisemohkoman!

Buddhist Primer

Buddhism was one of the core principles I worked with since I was nineteen or so. I was all independently doing it though, I didn’t really want to study with others because I was all, hmm, quiet. Anyway, the best author of Buddhist texts for a North American audience was Lama Surya Das. He was a Jewish boy who went to Kathmandu to find himself and ended up studying at the feet of the greats. Then he came back over here to try and apply it to contemporary life. The meditations he outlines are fairly simple but effective. I started out with Awakening the Buddha Within, which was a good beginning book and had some really enlightening meditations, like the candle meditation. Later on I read Awakening To The Sacred: Creating a Personal Spiritual Life. And now I’ve just finished Letting Go Of The Person You Used To Be: Lessons On Change, Loss, and Spiritual Transformation, which he wrote after Sept 11. I think anyone looking for their own spiritual path can find a lot of relevance in his books, even if you don’t become Buddhist or you want to apply it to other faiths.

Hope

You guys need some hope. Here is one of my favorite songs while I was in first year at Emily Carr. It’s Euphoria by Delerium.

Prevention

Damn! I thought I could take a break, but here’s some more info. I was talking to my friend Paul Lang who was literally an HIV poster boy. He’s been doing phenomenal work for years on HIV education and prevention. He recently teamed up with the folks who did the viral marketing for the wildly successful The Corporation. They have some websites for HIV education aimed at youth. He will be writing some stuff here and hopefully we’ll be linked up for that.

Hello Cool World
http://www.hellocoolworld.com

Condom Mania
http://www.condommania.com

Planet Ahead
http://www.planetahead.ca

I should also mention my lovely friend Robin Williamson, who has been working steadily with the bisexual community of Montreal to do HIV prevention work with Polyvalence. This is their site. Oh yes, and I should mention they don’t actually use the bisexual word, because some people who have sex with both genders don’t identify as such.

Polyvalence
http://polyvalence.ca/e/main.html

Wedding

Oh, fuck, that’s right. There is an open invitation to Cindy and Megan’s wedding here, you can find the details on the LadyLady website, but here’s the link to their wedding. It’s the first same sex wedding I have ever gone to, and it might take my mind off of Easter. Some amazing people are in town for it, including Cheli. I still don’t know what to wear, all I have is a top hat and no tux. But at least I am at a place now where I can go and not be really weird. It’s a circus theme, and I guess I am supposed to dress as a freak, but I am one anyway, so I shall probably go as myself. Although myself wears some goofy clothes usually. If you want you can get them some awesome presents.

Conclusion

So I guess I can conclude this long dissertation, although I will always write here. By now you might have guessed that I really am the reincarnation of Sarain Stump. And Sarain Stump really was the reincarnation of Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl’s reign ended when the cult of Tezcatlipoca took over. A young man would be chosen for a year to live as Tezcatlipoca, and he had all kinds of girlfriends and was treated like a prince for a year. And at the end of the year, he would go up the pyramid and have his heart ripped out. And the next year it was the same, with a new boy. And Quetzalcoatl went into exile, and said he would be back. And he was trans. I think I have always wondered why Tezcatlipoca would be a more popular god. So I did spend many lifetimes following cults, trying to crack the code, trying to get people out. And I always died as a political prisoner. ALWAYS. Actually, that’s not true, the last time I needed to make amends to the Americas and clear my conscience and jump into a body that would be this age now, which is why I set my mom and dad up. I don’t think they need to be together, I think they just both have some awesome genetics. I’ve never gotten this far before, but then, this is the first time I have had the internet.

I’ve actually been working for six months on contract to my uncle, Doug Cuthand, who is a producer. He’s got some amazing scripts. I had to research HIV for him first, and then he sent me to the Merchant office to research residential schools. I couldn’t touch the files anymore. I know exactly what is in them, but I honestly don’t want those files near me again. Those are stories of some of the worst things that have happened to my people, those are stories of our Holocaust. And we are still in the Holocaust. I wanted to compare Nazi Germany, because that happened the same time the residential schools really got started. And our Holocaust was focused on our children, in the end. Uncle Doug has this amazing script he’s been working on based on the story we heard through Louise Mandell, about her grandfather, who was a Holocaust survivor. His camp was liberated by a regiment of Canadian aboriginal men. And they were amazing with the camp survivors. They held them and let them cry for the first time and gave them watery soup because they knew that they couldn’t have solid food yet. And that was when they felt free. And then some Americans came in for a photo op. He told her she should always work for Aboriginal people, and she has, she is one of the finest Native rights litigators in Canada, and it was lovely to apprentice in her office.

Anyway, I know he wants the research, and I know he’s kind of disappointed that I just took off and freaked out, but I was planning it. I didn’t expect to get so wrapped up in it, but I think I did crack the code and I think I did find a way for us to actually talk about it. I hope someone produces his script so that he does get something out of this, I didn’t mean to derail his project. But the research is all here, everything, everything I know.

Anyway, I have to go get tested for cervical cancer now. Because I contracted HPV and Indian Affairs wouldn’t pay for me to take Aldera. And Aldera is about six hundred bucks for a course of treatment, but they made me take some shoddy second rate one, and I don’t think it worked. No one was willing to pay for me to take care of an STD, because if I got an STD I probably deserved it. But I know who gave it to me and it was a girl. I have to put my time sheet in anyway, because I haven’t been paid for my last two weeks of work yet and I need to buy supplements for my brain and honestly, no one is lending me money anymore. And I have no job after this. So hopefully I can get paid and I can work this out with my uncle. He’s a legendary guy actually, he spent time in Haight Ashbury when it was all going on. There’s a rumour he helped draft dodgers. I’ve heard another story about him meeting the King of the Roma in a parking lot in Paris. He told me all about the sex workers using Smart Cars at Cannes. And he lost his son, my cousin Christopher, this year in an industrial accident. And we all miss Christopher so much. I didn’t want anyone to mess him over while he’s grieving. He’s had no clue what I’ve been doing, I think he’s kind of paranoid, poor guy. So I should go face up to that. Linda, who works in his office, was great fun to talk to. She’s worked in the Industry for ages and ages and she’s ridiculously good at what she does. And I hope he’s okay with the direction I took his research, because it really is all here. I just don’t think you need to hear about the shitty things they did to kids. That would be too hard on the remaining survivors. And other survivors, because it continued.

I dunno, I really hope I don’t have cervical cancer, but I’m honestly not sure. And some weird unknown liquids were injected to me in the ward, I have no idea what they were. They didn’t tell me. It was easy to believe I was a crazy person, because then somehow people feel safer. But I was never crazy. I was a political prisoner. And I doubt highly that I will get any recompense for it.

My whole file is in Montreal. I don’t want to look at it, but I’m aware it might come out after all of this, to prove I was fucked up. I think Mohammed is alive and well, by the way, because I see it in Maher Arar. I hope he can have a life again, he deserves to be able to relate to his family. He’s coming here this month, I was hoping to meet him. I dunno, I just want him to have some hope. Ten million dollars still won’t give you back your life, especially since he can’t even get on a plane anymore.

My last HIV, Hep, Syphillis, everything came out clear. I just have HPV. Which could still kill me unless I can get it out of my system and check my cervical cells on a routine basis. I guess it wasn’t important for Indian Affairs to actually provide proper treatment, but they sure did go balls out to pay for all kinds of psych meds, some of which are ridiculously expensive. If other people want to write on here they can send me an email, and I’ll add them, if they can tell me a good reason for them to add their voice to this Fit of Pique. And I’m out of pot, which I should get so I can keep healing, but again, people don’t want to give me money until I can prove I deserve it and that I’m a hard worker. I think they mean making shoes. Directing is not an option for me right now with the way government funding works. And I missed a bunch of deadlines, because I had to sort this out. I was writing about the psych ward, but it’s a long story that one.

I am curious about the ships here. I don’t know, maybe they can help me. Maybe I can’t get help on this planet the way it is. Maybe you do prefer Tezcatlipoca. I don’t want to commit suicide, and I won’t, so if you do find me dead I didn’t do it. I know we have to disarm all nukes in order to get out of quarantine, but I’m not sure that people are ready to let go of the ballistic missiles they’ve been cuddling while falling asleep.

And really, truly, I mostly just want to be a director again. And I want to live forever. Somehow I do believe that forever is possible.

So I’ll end my formal presentation with one of my favorite songs in high school by The Cranberries, Salvation. And they come from another one of my homelands that knows colonialism inside and out. I’ll still talk on here, but I do hope that the floor opens up now, because I know they are waiting in the wings. And I hope it makes sense now. Have a good Easter, and I will write again after the holidays are over. But feel free to write during that time. I have friends here who are checking up on me and they are really good. And now I should go fill in my time sheet.

The Unknown Country

I’ve been checking my site meter and notice that The Unknown Country keeps popping up. At first I thought it was government, but they are all Mac users. I think I know where the Unknown Country is.

Pandemic

I keep hearing people say “Next there will be a pandemic.” It’s here, in case you haven’t noticed.

It’s not really a coincidence that AIDS emerged just after the Queer movement really started. Excuse me, Gay liberation, because that’s what they called it. The two epicentres of the pandemic were San Francisco and New York. There were also two experimental vaccines being given to gay men in both of those cities. For the old school boys, they still remember getting those vaccines and it still freaks them out. Obviously not every vaccine had HIV, because that would be too obvious. But I think whatever the concept was, they didn’t realize that pansexual identity was alive and well, and that it was never going to stay in that one community. Currently 70% of seroconversions world wide are through heterosexual intercourse. In Mumbai almost 600 people contract HIV every night.

You might be surprised to know that the best HIV prevention education I got was from sex workers, gay men, and recovering junkies. They were amazing to talk to! I remember dating a sex worker once and I started asking her how she stayed safe, I mean, because it is a risky job, clearly, and for all kinds of reasons. She told me some neat things. She talked about being careful with lipstick, because sometimes it eats away latex. She talked about how you never put your seatbelt on and if it gets dodgy you open the door while they are driving, because no matter what they were going to do to you, they don’t want to fuck up their car. She was intense! I don’t think she knew why I was asking, I wasn’t going to be a sex worker unless I had to do survival sex, but I always knew that it was possible I would need to do survival sex work because of my identity. But mostly I just wanted to know that she was as safe as she could be, because I loved her and we really didn’t know how to be ourselves in this kind of a world. We broke up over triggers, I was still pretty clueless about them.

And then some of the most politically aware people I met were recovering junkies. My friend Brent used to talk to me about his life in the downtown eastside and all these socialist things he used to do in his life. He was an amazing political activist for a really long time, and he’s an older guy, he must be fifty now. Anyway, I remember one day he said “They’re sharing HIV positive needles on purpose now. It’s the only way they can get on disability, and disability pays more than regular welfare.” It was sad. I mean, we both knew the kinds of people who walked through that neighborhood, and most of them had hard luck lives. ANYONE can end up in the downtown eastside. And once you’re there, holy fuck, it is hard as hell to escape. I gave him an Erika Lopez book to entertain himself with, I think he liked it.

I was talking to a friend once and was shocked to find out that she was as old as me and had only ever used condoms once. I think people have romanticized unsafe sex. I mean, you can do risky stuff but you have to be really really fucking careful and really clear about boundaries and wow, it’s intense. And not many people can do monogamy. Some can, but relatively few. And sometimes I wonder if that’s just because they’re looking for better sex, more than that they are not in love. It’s funny though, that in a time when we HAVE to really take this pandemic fucking seriously, so many of the most well trained HIV educators have been silenced because of their identities. And instead we have fucking True Love Waits campaigns, and girls are doing anal because they think it’s safer than possible baby making sex. It’s insanity! Most youth are total sodomites now, and they don’t see it as sex, it’s foreplay. I don’t know how that happened. I mean, sodomy is ridiculously fun, and if boys don’t know how vaginas work, and most don’t, then maybe they should stick to that! But really, you need to think about safer sex for all kinds of things, not just penis in vagina sex. And it’s true that condoms break, but fuck, that is better than none at all isn’t it? I don’t know, homophobia and transphobia really is going to kill the planet. And we’ve been distracted with some fucked up campaign against a country not many Americans really care about except they’ve been told to hate it.

Mikiki

I think Mikiki is going to start writing here, I hope so, because hir work is amazingly fun. Ze does an activity called the Drag Race, which has been in Saskatoon too. And ze has a makeup library. Here’s Mikiki’s drag race documentation.