Maher Arar: JFK to Syria

I’ve heard recently the US refuses to take his name off of their terrorist list because if they admit they made a mistake it will set a precedent.

French and Saunders are Regressing

Healing

This healing process I’m in is going a lot more rapidly than I had expected. My bloggy nature sometimes makes me want to write about it here, but for various reasons I’ve decided not to, partly to do with personal safety issues and partly to do with thinking about some advanced concepts that I don’t think most people would understand even if I took days and days to tell it. So rather than try to distill some of these thoughts into the form of a blog post, I’m just working it through with select people.

I’ve also discovered that I’m forming closer friendships and relationships with people who have known me the longest, people who knew me before I was an adult and more adept at hiding myself. I have one best friend who’s known me since I was three, one best friend who knew me in high school and someone else who knew me then too, and I’m going for coffee with a woman I knew when I was thirteen who helped me figure some stuff out about myself during a VERY difficult lesson for at least three people. Also, of course, I’m spending time with my family again, which, although it has some rough and rocky patches, is actually turning out to be really good for me. Spending time with my sister again is probably one of the better reasons to live here, since she’s non-verbal and we can’t use the telephone together. She’s somewhat telepathic, but it’s subtle and easy to miss if I’m not around her on a regular basis.

The worker at her home once said “I don’t know why people think these people don’t talk, they’re talking all the time!” It’s true. I’m excited about her Snoezelen room, man, everyone should have a snoezelen room! I want one! Actually, I’m trying to figure out cheaper ways of having/making sensory objects and so on, because the official snoezelen stuff is ridiculously expensive. So if anyone has any tips on DIY Snoezelen feel free to leave a comment.

Mostly though, I think I’ve undone this gordian knot of being stuck in some shitty things that happened to me. I was really worried I would end up carrying it forever, but I’d rather send it back to where it came from. Bleh, who wants to feel psychic restraints for the rest of their life? Nobody.

I’m also looking at mandalas a lot. They’re very healing, I can’t articulate why, they just are. I’ve also realized all of my tattoos are mandalas!! I was shocked, hey!!! What the hell? When Carl Jung had his psychotic episode he had a particular mandala which formed the cornerstone of his life’s work. And I had one too when I went psychotic, but it’s pretty intense, I don’t feel like writing about it here. Maybe some other time. It’s actually from a photograph I had, but I don’t even know if I still have that photo. I still have a drawing of it though, one thing which escaped being burnt. I drew it over and over and over and it’s not until now that I figured out what it means. Unusual! I think I’m going to start drawing them for therapy reasons.

“… Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: ‘Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind’s eternal creation’ (Faust, II). And that is the self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious, but which cannot tolerate self-deceptions.” C. G. Jung

Mad Pride

I just got an invitation to submit something for Mad Pride Toronto. Yay!! I have to think about what I want to present, goodness!! Thank god for psychiatric survivors or I would still be on medication.

American Fascism

I read that Mayan priests are going to be cleansing a site that Bush is visiting, AFTER he leaves. They say not cleansing it of the evil spirits associated with Bush would be disrespectful to their ancestors. I’ve often wondered what spiritual people are doing about this issue.

And now the Iraq exit strategy is to invade Iran. Oh fucking hell. As if not enough trouble was caused. Karl Rove is now saying that Bush’s legacy is Preemptive warfare, and that he sees all future Presidents following this ideology. Help us now!

Yes, the world considers America to be the 4th Reich okay? Let’s just get that out of the way right now. It’s a fascist police state, and if you don’t believe me here’s a link to an AWESOME breakdown of Fascist governments and the corresponding news stories from the States. In fact, at one job I had David Suzuki came to speak and told us in 20 years Bush will be on trial for war crimes. It’s true it’s true. Why did it have to come to this? I don’t know. I saw this all coming way way back when the towers fell and I remembered the Reichstag. LOTS of people did, I wasn’t the only one, at all.

Real World Update

My sister is more well off than me, temporarily anyway. She has $1000 to spend and we have to do it before social services decides that disabled people are living in the lap of luxury. So she’s taking me to Cirque De Soleil. Or rather, Cirque de Petit Soleil, since it’s an offshoot. I’m kidding, I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s the touring show from them. And we’re trying to help her get her group home’s Snoezelen room together. I keep telling her I’m going to drop E and spend all my time in her Snoezelen room. We were talking with her worker about siblings of the disabled eventually becoming the guardians when our parents die, and it was so funny, I said “I know, I might be her parent one day” and she just shot me this nasty look like “Oh, I don’t think so little sister, don’t insult me!” I had better find a better name for looking out for her AND being her little sister.

I’ve decided I don’t have enough money to go to Burning Man this year, sad!!! 🙁 Oh well. Next year maybe.

My iPod is being a jerk, I have to troubleshoot it because it’s not holding a charge properly. And I need my iPod!!!

I had a terrible dream the other night that the War started, I was walking in the street and suddenly a guy came running past saying The War is here! And we were all running and suddenly there were tanks everywhere and I had to keep hitting the ground to avoid being shot. And I remember so clearly waiting for bullets to rip through me, but none ever did. I ended up at my friend Preston’s, describing the war to him (he’s blind) while I looked out the windows. And then they attacked his fridge (??) and I said “Preston, they’re attacking your fridge” and he ran after them and was like “Stop attacking my fridge!”

Life’s okay. I’m doing well, my sleep has gone to a nice 6.5 hours a night, which is pretty good. I’m really giggly, but not crazy. Maybe I’m just supposed to be giggly. No, actually that’s not true, I’m only giggly around a certain person who makes me feel happy.

Invasion of the Penis Snatchers

I have a tendency to pick up whiffs of thought here and there and then eventually put it all together. A while ago I found out that the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) originated as a more obviously malicious book known as the Malleus Maleficarum, or Hammer of Witchcraft. This horrid piece of Inquisition literature was used principly to destroy european indigenous religions, Druids, Witches, etc, by describing what to look for in witch hunting. The Christian Church was using Jesus’ teachings to enact a deadly system of colonialist control over the population, and religions which didn’t depend on an intermediary between the divine and the practictioner were seen as dangerous to this need for total control. In fact one other reason was because pagan cultures practiced the democratic election of leaders rather than choosing leaders by birthright (ie The Monarchy). And you can’t exert total control by saying God told me to do this if your population has their own experience with communicating with divine forces and can tell you that’s bunk.

Incidentally the word “faggot” as a derogatory term for gay men comes from this era as well, because homosexuals were used to stoke the fires used to burn pagan practitioners.

Apparently the origins of the Inquisition were men becoming convinced that women were stealing their penises (women who were Witches of course). You can parallel this with Freud’s later development of Penis Envy, which probably comes from the same paranoia and thus perversion of female power.

Side Note: This is a Tibetan sand Mandala being made:

But we don’t have burnings at the stake anymore. Now we have four and five point restraints, and chemical lobotomies. MUCH cleaner and yet equally destructive.

I had been reminded of this when I was reading about Spiritual Emergencies and how they relate to psychiatric designations as Manic Psychosis and Schizophrenic breaks. I had read When The Dream Becomes Real a couple of years ago, but even though it’s a solid piece of scholarly writing, I still was too brainwashed to be able to accept or understand it. I’ve read it again and I have to say, it does a really good job of describing the rise of Pathology labels in terms of colonialist control.

In Celtic Ireland, there was no specific pathology for persons in schizophrenic states. A guardian would take responsibility for anything they did, but there weren’t derogatory labels for someone in a state of psychosis. They were touched by god, or taken by god. And in fact the Irish lived by the principle that “the rights of the insane take precedence over any other rights.” That is VERY different than today, where the rights of anyone else take precedence over the rights of the insane, even if someone else is asserting their right by destroying the brain tissue of the insane via meds, lobotomies, or ECT. Carl Jung in fact had a concept of schizophrenic breaks as a state of self healing, and Loren Mosher’s Soteria project bore this out, along with John Weir Perry’s Diabasis and R.D. Laing’s Kingsley Hall. However that idea has been generally disregarded in favour of capitalist pharmaceuticals originating from nazi experimentation, while another of Jung’s ideas were developed into the Myers Briggs Type Indicator which many people follow wholeheartedly. Kind of like Christians harping on the Ten Commandments and disregarding the fact that Jesus included two more commandments which are even more important than the originals.

Side note: This is an animation of a Mandala:

Colonialism in the guise of Christianity did some hideous things to the European pagan traditions, like turning the Horned God of fertility into Lucifer, who was originally just a knock a bout fallen angel in the Bible. It was also a lazy way of explaining evil in the world. The major Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter, correspond to previous pagan holidays based on lunar cycles. It was the saddest case of appropriation ever. And yet strangely, in it’s own way, still adheres to the original Pagan religious structure. Christianity all over the world is adapted by and for different cultures actually, which is why in central America the Virgin Mary is the big religious figure and why the Sacred Heart of Jesus is everywhere. Also Latin American Christianity has some of the most awe inspiring churches and cathedrals because the people who lived there responded to sensual opulance more than in other places. The African religion of Voodoo survived by substituting saints in the place of other spirits.

Sometimes I look at the world and just shake my head. I don’t know why religions have to fight each other all the time, especially since I enjoy aspects of nearly every religion. Mostly though I think it’s ridiculous for everyone to fight over religion since at it’s most basic essence it’s using the same types of universal energies for the same communal spirit. Mantras, prayers, magic, medicine, it’s really all the same thing. BUT I don’t think we should all have to practice spiritual beliefs in the same way, because that would be boring and people would feel like they didn’t fit in, imagine a Voodoo priestess trying to sit through an Anglican sermon, or a Catholic trying to deal with being in a hot dark sweatlodge. Not that interfaith occurances don’t happen, but MAKING someone worship in a certain way, aaahh! Nooo, don’t do it. That’s how we get places like Residential Schools and pedophile nuns, ugh.

And yet psychiatry is still the number 1 place people turn to when someone starts talking about God more than they did before or acting otherwise peculiar. Logically one would turn to a religious or spiritual figure in the community, but no. Instead we go directly to the transubstantiated Inquisitors who are only too willing to “help” someone become part of the colonized body politic again.

This is an animation following the rules of Chaos Mathematics.

The irony, of course, is that now more than any other time people need to watch the Self and Ego breakdown, and this means record numbers of people are having psychotic/schizophrenic states. But I don’t feel like being ashamed of mine anymore. I sorted some awesome stuff out for myself in it, and I think I’m a stronger person now (especially now that I’m off the drugs). I don’t think I’ll ever have to go back to that state, because I think I managed to absorb the important bits before I got Blanche Dubois’d.

Graduate student in clinical psychology:

– Overheard at a talk given by R.D.Laing in New York (When the Dream Becomes Real)

This is a video of quark and subatomic particles moving according to Chaos theory. By the way, Mandalas figure prominently in psychotic episodes.

Names

I was talking with my mom last night about finally deciding to get a Name. I forget why, but she basically asked why I even wanted one and I got all frustrated and said “Everyone else has a Name!!!” I mean an Indian Name. My late cousin Christopher’s name was Snowdrift. Laurel told me that a long time ago you could go to any medicine person and they would all give you the same name. Now you can get different names from different people, and none of them will match. Kind of like Ab Fab, Patsy Stone’s full name is really Eurydice Colette Clytemnestra Dido Bathsheba Rabelais Patricia Cocteau Stone. So many names!!!

I currently have three, the usual number, first middle and last. Thirza is from Thirza Jones, who is a filmmaker incidentally and one of my mom’s friends. Jean is from Jean Goodwill, an Aunt of my mom’s who was one of the first Indian women to get a university education and went into nursing. And Cuthand is from my Grampa. But I did have a boys name, which was never used. If I’d been born male I would have been called Sarain.

Sarain, for those who don’t know, was an influential Aboriginal artist who also played matchmaker with my mum and dad. His father was stationed in Italy during the war, and met his mom over there. Then Sarain moved to Canada to learn more about his roots. He set up my mom and dad and then when he was in Mexico died tragically in an undertow in the Gulf. Just after he died, my mom got a letter from him where he mentioned going to see a fortune teller who had a little monkey who pulled out cards, and the card it pulled out was Death. Oh man! Mum’s friend had to call Sarain’s mom in Italy and tell her her son had died, not being able to speak any Italian either! Anyway, I think he suppressed the story of his Venetian past to avoid being called a pretend Indian or something like Grey Owl, which he wasn’t, he just had an Italian background as well. No, Pierce Brosnan will not be playing Sarain. My dad once showed me some of his drawings which clearly depict the back of the boats used in the canals of Venice. In fact, I just found a rather cute article with my dad in his youth and Sarain.

So I have thought seriously about taking on this boy name which would have been mine as well as my usual name. I have no idea what that would look like, besides having a longer name. I don’t know if sometimes I would go by Sarain or not.

And I still want my Cree name, because I would ordinarily have gotten a new name after reaching some level of adulthood. But it’ll probably be a name only a few people know, generally we don’t run around calling ourselves by our Cree names, it’s kind of special, although some do. Maybe we’ve just been colonized into humility and shame! Oh no!! Really though, a lot of stuff about my culture I simply don’t tell people as kind of a protection mechanism.

Ugh, my last job I worked with some white guy who thought Indian names were stupid, I nearly choked him. And the boss wouldn’t tell him to knock of the racist shit. No wonder I was so miserable.

Ancestors

It’s nice to be living near my family and have people to talk to about spiritual concerns. I know I don’t chase people down to smudge them or anything, but I was raised primarily with Cree spiritual traditions, some of which seem very unbelievable. I used to get so frustrated and indignant with white people when I tried to talk about spiritual events I’d just naturally seen during my life. Or heard about. But I don’t think I will talk about my personal experiences. Instead I will talk about my Great Great Grandfather Mistatimwas.

His story is the one I remember the most, we were all told it over and over so that we would remember where we came from before the first Cuthand had a last name. Mistatimwas was a war chief, horse thief, and medicine man. His name means Flying Horse, because that’s what he looked like when he was stealing a horse. he was apparently an excellent horse thief. You have to remember this was a long time ago, when things were still very different. He was the war chief for the infamous Battle of Cutknife Hill, during the Northwest Rebellion, and we used to get long drawn out explanations of his battle plan which actually worked, using the nature of the geography and basically surrounding the Red Coats led by Colonel Otter.

Mistatimwas doesn’t get any credit for leading this battle actually, Poundmaker does. But in fact Poundmaker was the Peace Chief and did the diplomatic work before and afterwards, and for some reason the europeans decided he was the one who lead the war. Nope. He did lead the people, but the battle plans and war charge were lead by Mistatimwas. I hear there are historical documents of Mistatimwas saying “I was the one who did that!” And Poundmaker saying “Yes, it’s true, he did it, not me!” But Poundmaker is the one who got into shit over it, and he’s the one who’s remembered.

Mistatimwas was also seriously injured during the battle of Cutknife Hill. Here’s the story (the spelling is different between what I was taught and what’s written, I don’t know which one is correct, I’ll have to ask Grampa. This is from “Old Ways of the People of the Cree Tribe” by Fine Day).

“Misatimwas was dying – wounded in the belly. His guts were coming out. He told them to cut it off, but no one had the courage to do it, so he did it himself. The Bear hide was hanging in the tipi where he lay. Misatimwas drank a lot of water all the time. His father took down the Bear hide near morning, when Misatimwas was just about dead. The old man started to speak to the hide and covered his son with it – head to head – and sat behind the heads. He took a rattle and started to sing a Bear song. The fire went out – it was pretty dark. Before long we saw the Bear hide moving, and we heard a Bear squealing. The old man kept on singing. We could hear the Bear all the time, coming down. I don’t know if the sound came from the hide or the man’s body.

“Misatimwas was so low that he didn’t want anymore water. When the fire blazed up I went close and Misatimwas motioned me to come closer. “If I see the Sun coming up I’ll live.” I could hardly hear him. His father asked what he had said and I told him. Misatimwas sank lower. It seemed as though the Sun wouldn’t come up soon enough. I listened to his breath and the others were watching for the Sun. They finally saw it, but I thought that Misatimwas had fooled himself – that he was going to die anyway. But when the Sun was quite high he drew a deep breath. Not long after he breathed good – called for water and was well. I saw this with my own eyes. He was Jose Cuthand’s father.”

Heady and romantic stuff for a young native bolshi activist. Woo! Anyway, yes, Poundmaker got the credit for the battle of Cutknife Hill. I actually went to day care and school with a descendant of his, Tara Worme. I locked her in a sandbox and went off for snack time with Laurel and left her there when we were three. I think my first television appearance was me chasing her around a jungle gym with a little halloween witch on CBC. She and I also did a 24 hour hunger strike in solidarity with the other hunger strikers when a cap was put on Native education funding back in the 80’s. I wrote a really mean letter to Mulroney. We weren’t allowed to publicise it though because people thought some would assume we were being pressured to do it, when it was our idea in the first place. Sadness, a political act without an audience, like one brown hand clapping.

While Mistatimwas was being doctored his son, my great grandfather, Jose, fled Saskatchewan and went down to Montana to tour with a Wild West show. I’ve heard it was because he thought his father was dead for sure. So he went down to the states and played Indian for a while, then he came back up here. Mistatimwas is buried on the reserve in an unmarked grave, because he was buried with a medicine bundle and the family didn’t want grave robbers to get it. As you may surmise, some pretty intense medicine has been handed down through the generations. I’ve known a couple people to tell me about the process when it shows up, it involves a specific triad of female spirits. But that’s getting personal. I can say that the Bear spirit stays with our family, it’s a really funny character, but also fierce. There’s something about dreaming about being eaten by a bear that starts the process of becoming a healer, but it’s pretty scary for me anyway. I keep running away. Nooo! Don’t eat me!

Generally the Bear spirit in our family is terribly witty though. I’ve heard other tribes get suspicious of Bear spirits, but I think there are various types.

I saw a Huron medicine bundle at the Smithsonian once and my mom and I were really disturbed by it, the fact that it was being displayed, for one, and that you could tell it was getting angry. It was a really unhappy bundle. I’ve heard that museums with remains and artifacts get VERY haunted. In fact, I recently heard that a museum in the States with the remains of an Inuit shaman had been having some problems because he would get out in the middle of the night, leave his case, and start walking around the museum, TERRIFYING the security guards.

I’ve also found out that a lot of old artifacts which are being repatriated, like bundles, have been turned into toxic waste, LITERALLY. To preserve leather and feathers they’ve been liberally sprayed with DDT. If people want to repatriate them to bury them in the land, they can’t, because it’s legally toxic waste material. They can’t even touch it. Now that is a crime. I know to some people aboriginal spiritual objects seem like just a bunch of things, but there’s some really intense power in them, and to turn them into toxic waste material is just beyond revolting.

No one’s taken me to the location of Mistatimwas’ grave, but I’m hoping this year someone will show me. I’m also hoping to get a grant to do my huge history documentary. I’m hoping to trace my Cree and Scots ancestors and figure out where I come from in both the European and the Aboriginal lines. I’m hoping to find out which tribe in Mongolia or Sibera has the same haplotype as me and go visit them. And at the end I’m going to get my lip chin tattoo, and hopefully be able to speak Cree.

I hate telling my interesting stories to people who just go “Nah, that never happened, it isn’t possible or logical.” Boring. There are many things in the world we can never begin to comprehend, especially not with that DDT attitude.

Here’s my Grampa’s version of the story, and to remind you, Poundmaker was the Peace Chief so he did all the diplomatic work.
Poundmaker’s Surrender by Stan Cuthand, Saskatchewan Indian 1988
Ahaw is a Cree utterance of agreement, Tapwe means truth, or more specifically true speech. We were also neither a patriarchal nor matriarchal society, we were egalitarians, so there’s a lovely detail about Poundmaker’s wife trying to speak to the white soldiers and them being totally disinterested. In fact, women were the ones in charge of trade, which made the Fur Trade history complicated. Women would tell the men what to say because those were the only people the white traders listened to, and often in order to be a successful trader white men took on native wives (with the charming name Country Wives) because otherwise they couldn’t access trade as easily.

Anglican 404

A work related moment of humour: This is the quote which comes up on a 404 page not found page on the Anglican Church of Canada website.

“And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.”
— Amos 8:12 (KJV)

Lord, why doth thou 404 me?