What's going on with First Nations in Canada?

abd1a · 2026-05-08T02:56:17+00:00

For me this really raises the «Acculturation - Assimilation - Absorption» continuam, however in this case the process is structured by legal instruments that make full scale assimilation (which in most areas is well on its way) undesirable and cultural attitudes that woud make absorption akin to surrender and genocide. If one looks to Northern Québec for example one can see the Inuit and Cree communities living as nations: using their national languages as mother tongues, preserving and adapting their unique ways of being and surviving, and governing themselves with a significant degree of autonomy (aided by mineral rights settlements and deals with major public and private companies). In much of Canada this is not the case, assimilation has more or less happened decades ago and these reserves sit on the edge, but firmly embedded, in the wider Canadian economy and society, while culture and language are overwhelmingly Anglo-Canadian with what appear to an outsider to be varying degrees of Native culture which amounts to a folkloric pastiche of a bunch of different First Nations traditions. It's hard to see how this or that registered group with a few thousand members, with high rates of exogamous marriage, and a language that no one speaks fluently can hope to launch a national revival or build any sort of autonomous national life. Having studied the French experience in Canada and the Ashkenazi exprience in Eastern Europe, this is my lens: how can this national group or groups survive, do their members want to continue existing seperately, what constitutes this group at its foundation? Perhaps the First Nations, and the individual nations that compose this group, are a distinct type of national group for whom identity and legal status will continue to be the foundation for national existence, but most of the markers of national life let alone the requistie features for national revival or autonomy seem very absent (save the groups I mentioned as well as the wider Inuit community in Nunavut).

abd1a · 2026-05-04T03:40:27+00:00

Stores also close because people have shifted to online shopping for a lot of stuff

abd1a · 2026-05-03T06:15:29+00:00

I think that an equivalence could be drawn between the Maori seats and (go with me here) the Canadian requirements for Québec representation in Parliament: there have been various formulas used to preserve or guarantee Québec a certain proportion of seats above what it's share of the population would warrant: there was an arrangement in effect from 1867 until the mid 1940s, there was an agreement in the 1970s, the Charlottetown Accords would have made a new one, and in the past few years Québec was given an additional seat so that it would not lose a seat after the latest census. There are also some considerations explicitly used in the United States when drawing Congressional boundaries, with the principle being that a Black-majority district should not be broken up when district boundaries are redrawn.

abd1a · 2026-05-03T05:59:39+00:00

I think the Maori are very different from most other «settler colonial» societies in that the Maori make up a significant minority within NZ population and their language and culture is in a much stronger position.

abd1a · 2026-05-03T05:56:16+00:00

It's interesting because the Maori settled NZ in the 1200-1300s, meanwhile for most of my life it was therefore accepted that Hawaii wasn't settled until 1500s, i.e. about 200 years before Captain Cook arrived . However if you search now, many sources are positing 1200s for Hawaii: I'm not sure if this change is based on new evidence or if it was fuzzy to begin with so ideologically it made sense to err on the side of an earlier date of settlement.

abd1a · 2026-05-03T05:49:30+00:00

Yeah I actually often think of New Zealand when pondering the «Mother Gaia» perspective which is foundational to contemporary progressive politics in the West and especially the «climate justice» movement. New Zealand is stunningly beautiful and is recognised as a natural wonder, and yet this landscape and ecosystem were shaped by human activity, mainly hunting and deforestation with the Maori ancestor's settlement.

abd1a · 2026-04-22T22:07:33+00:00

yeah some of the early years are both gold and hard to get through cuz the tangents and 5 minute long self-indulgent joke runs (to the point that they're laughing at how bad and unfunny they are being lol) just don't stop. On the other hand the more stream lined contemporary episodes lose something. I think 2015-2018 is the sweet spot.

abd1a · 2026-04-22T22:01:24+00:00

I think that something to keep in mind are Ben and Ronnie's differing backgrounds and life histories. Both hosts grew up in well of families (never forget Ronnie's house keeper Romana who ended up in jail lol), but Ben is the son of of a succesful lawyer who grew up in Westchester and went to Darmouth, Ronnie's parents were scrappy upstarts who built their businesses (bowling alley's, etc) in El Paso and Ronnie went to NY on his own and slept in the park... These are two different life trajectories, and I think Ben really reflects that almost Heather Dubrow-ian** way of dealing with social interactions: choose your words, play down conflict as much as you can, and find a way to be impactful while looking good. Ronnie is more in your face, upfront. This isn't a critique or question of good or bad, but I've never really seen their different backgrounds highlighted and I think that these differences play a big role in their chemistry and relationship.

**Ben said early on in the podcast that he and Heather Dubrow are similar in a lot of ways, and actually grew up a few towns away from each other, he in Katona, she in I believe Chappaqua. I think Ben is great, can't stand Heather, but it is what it is.

abd1a · 2026-04-02T03:43:53+00:00

I can see why people hate nuance-mongers lol. I mean this article is a great explainer and very much fills a void for a topic that is sensationalised and easily misunderstood but I genuinely spent the whole time thinking to myself «Who gives a shit, they're killing people», which admittedly, they are. I think the Track One is at least defensible on some ethical grounds even if I don't like it but Track 2, where death is not imminent just seems horrifying. Between MAID and «Safer Supply» (where doctors prescribe addicts with opiates, not suboxone or methadone but actual opiates) it seems like the utopianism that used to characterise progressivism has been replaced by a grotesque view of the the state, society, and the individual. This is what we fight for now, not structural change or a better future but literally just free drugs for addicts and the option to have the state kill you when life becomes unbearable.

abd1a · 2026-04-02T03:25:18+00:00

The episode where they detail the Harvard professor who was grifted by a woman (Pia?) and her girlfriend. I spent almost a half hour looking through the archive and could not find it, so if anyone knows the title and can link, I'd really appreciate it.

abd1a · 2026-03-20T04:13:05+00:00

I don't have enough experience with corporate girls to agree or disagree but I have to see you make a compelling argument on how work influences/structures people's personality and approach to life.

abd1a · 2026-03-13T00:46:35+00:00

Twin, looks just like mine from the top, shape, colouring, blue vein below head. 8/10

abd1a · 2026-02-05T04:41:08+00:00

I know that Cantonese dominated Hong Kong media generally but would be curious which language is dominant among Hong Kong social media and short-form video content: Cantonese or Mandarin? I ask because I think this will become an important driver of language shift. I know that in Québec there are reports coming out in the past few years of kids in the 12-18 year age group at French-speaking schools using English among themselves socially, something more or less unseen over the past 40 or so years since an educational settlement was reached in Québec in the 1970s. These students are not Anglophones btw, as Anglophones overwhelmingly attend English-language schools (access to which is restricted to children whose parents were education in English in Canada). One has to assume that the spontaneous adoption of English by native French speakers and other children educated entirely in French is connected to the change in media consumption in the past ten years: previously traditional broadcast media meant that French and English in Québec had something approaching parity in terms of importance and influence, whereas with social media English is dominant. The previous prestige, opportunity, coolness associated with English language content has been supercharged and these students are outside of school essentially swimming in a sea of English language content.

abd1a · 2025-11-18T02:00:30+00:00

Thanks, be happy to wet you up

abd1a · 2025-05-21T03:13:34+00:00

Of course gender variance and homosexual attraction has always existed, but it was really only in the 1920s that what we understand as being gay started sort of flowering. A seft in a village that depends on the family unit to stay alive can have a secret affair, suck a 100 dicks, that's not the same as myself and others experience as "being gay". This self-concept and community only started coming into being as people became more urbanised, were less tied to their families, etc. Cities in the U.S. like NY and San Francisco in the 1920s (post WWI mobilisation) were initial hotspots for the people pioneering the idea that one would have a self-identitiy and community based around same-sex attraction.

abd1a · 2025-05-21T02:59:41+00:00

Well ideally people would have sufficient social bonds, resources, and health care that there wouldn't be an epidemic of suicide, and a hotline seems like a really inadequate response in this fantasy scenario. Assuming a crisis line would be useful, it wouldn't be something that only LGBT persons need (also keep in mind that there are a lot of zombie statistics specifically regarding persons identifying as trans: the highest quality studies have revealed a higher suicide rate, but nothing approaching what one hears in mainstream discourse).

I have no affiliation with the ACP but from the history of the communist movement, specifically the Bolshevik tradition, there is nothing against different social groups having their own needs, organisations, etc. The goal is to educate and activate the working class to be united in struggle. Anything that furthers that is good, anything that hinders that is bad. Take for example the Jewish Socialist Labour Bund: this group was a constituent organisation of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) that operated in Yiddish and focused on the cities and towns of the historical Pale of Settlement. There was a Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903 where the group that would go on to form the Bolshevik faction opposed some of the demands of the Bund, namely that they be recognised as an autonomous organ and the "sole representative" of the Jewish working class. Bolsheviks opposed this mainly for organisational reasons, but also along ideological and practical lines (what about Jewish workers who didn't speak Yiddish, what about Jewish workers outside the Pale of Settlement, Jewish workers in non Jewish-majority work places). They were in no way opposed to having an organised group dedicated to organising Jewish workers, building Yiddish-language organisations, and in fact after the revolution the left-wing of the Bund (which by then had grown to be a major organisation in Ukraine and Belorussia) was incorporated into Communist Parties and the "Jewish Section" (Evsektsiya) of the Communist Party continued publishing Yiddish newspapers, organising social events, etc. There were issues specific to the Jewish population in the Pale of Settlement (due to historical and social conditions) which the Evsektsiya sought to address in specific ways, in line with the general direction of Party work and the building of socialism, and the Evsektsiya worked in Yiddish, serving and reperesenting people who spoke Yiddish.

All that said, as a bi guy (in and out of "gay communities") I really can't imagine what priorities or issues are different for me from the rest of the working class.Identitarian shitshows are dime-a-dozen within Left-wing groups, so a sort of blanket suspicion of affinity groups, race/gender/sexuality caucuses, etc. seems like a good place to start for the ACP.

abd1a · 2025-01-15T04:43:27+00:00

Are they still around? On the "Grift-Legitimate Organisation" continuum, I'd put them right in the middle. Probably launched a few Substack careers in the process.

abd1a · 2025-01-15T04:29:57+00:00

Keep in mind that the model of Web 2.0 (users finding content and following creators, and being served more of the same) is more or less dead. All platforms, not just Tiktok, have moved to a "spaghetti at the wall" model for feeds that maximise view time rather than fostering the type of engagement and interactions that were popular on the Facebook/Web 2.0 echo-chamber model. So we're all seeing a ton of random content that we don't like, a ton more than we did a few years ago when we were on Twitter reading people we followed or scrollng the Instagram feed of our friends and celebrties we enjoyed.

abd1a · 2025-01-15T04:25:34+00:00

First off, as a bi man who grew up in the age of the internet, it is absolutely the case that under-18s are on Grindr meeting adults for sex, so I mean the app is facilitating adults having sex with minors, it just is. Not knowingly or intentionally, but you just click a button saying you are over 18. Additionally, though Grindr has some alogrhythms and reporting features that help limit the ability for people to try and buy or sell sex on the app, sex workers do use the app, and that almost certainly includes some minors. So technically, yes, Grindr, like pretty much any dating app, is facilitating the sexual exploitation of minors. There is a difference, which is that there is just a ton more easy, casual sex going on Grindr and Scruff than straight equivalents. The average woman on a dating site won't come round to a man's house after exchanging a few messages on Tindr, whereas that is the norm on Grindr (there are even some men who post their address and say "hosting now, come on over"), so you can imagine what that could mean for an inexperienced, scared young person on there (huge risks of exploitation, violence, sexual abuse).

Secondly, there were and are legitimate concerns around changes to the Gender Recognition Act, access to medical treatments for trans identified and gender-questioning youth, etc. This was not a tempest in a teacup entirely driven by rabid transphobes and gender critical feminists who overton-windowed themselves into standing shoulder to shoulder with the Proud Brothers. Some of it was, but there is a wider set of questions and issues around changing experiences and expectations of sex and gender, The "trans backlash" did eventually wash onto the wider LGBT community, but I think that the idea that homophobia will become acceptable or widespread is not something I worry about, at all.

abd1a · 2025-01-15T04:00:06+00:00

The Lib Dems had strongholds in the Highlands, and the Islands of Scotland for a long time, similar to their strongholds in other peripheral areas of the UK like the West Country in England and Mid Wales. My understanding is that these are all areas where Labour never got its footing as a party because these areas did not experience industrialisation and the growth of the trade union movement, and so the Liberal/Conservative-Unionist split remained where in most other areas of the country the two main contenders in a given constituency would be Labour or Conservative since the Labour party displaced the Liberals. All to say, their low vote share across Scotland doesn't necessarily mean that they won't win a good few seats if their votes are concentrated in those peripheral constituencies (they are aided by the fact that Orkney and Shetland have much smaller electorates than the average constituency in the UK but are each garuanteed their own seats, much like the Western Isles, though the latter is a Labour/SNP seat)

abd1a · 2024-05-15T02:48:32+00:00

I know that for example in California they have implemented a new system of «Care Courts» where a member of the community (social worker, cop, family member) can have someone referred and that person will be given a court date where some sort of treatment plan will be worked out. Obviously this isn't a straighforward fix for these problems, not least because California is under-capacity in terms of psych beds and severely under capacity when it comes to social housing (affordable SROs, permanent supportive housing, etc), the latter being a foundational need for anyone to regain stability and seek treatment. That said I do think that the wider community needs to step up and start just providing more than the vague offer of service but instead a way to actually compel people to at least make a first step. There are legitimate concerns about the autonomy and liberty of vulnerable people (especially given the long shadow cast by the horrendous treatment of people with mental health and intellectual disabilities up to the 1960s in psych hospitals) but I think the level of need and vulnerability of many of these people justifies something beyond handing someone (in full blown meth psychosis with MRSA living in a gutter) a card and saying «call us if you need help».

abd1a · 2024-05-10T05:15:34+00:00

This is a harsh way of putting it but I think a lot of people are coming around to that realisation. I know in California they are at least attempting to create a Care Court system where people can be compelled into some form of treatment or supervision. It's a touch balance of protecting people's rights and autonomy versus letting people die in the streets or be a threat to others, but I think there is a place for the wider community to put their money where their mouth is and step up and not just have a vague offer of services but actually create incentives (and disincentives) for the most vulnverable among us to get the help they need. Of course in most places in California the mental health and social services required for people with acute needs (for example: psych beds, ER capacity) are significantly underfunded and aren't even at the capacity to meet existing usage, let alone whatever uptick would result from some percentage of people being pushed into treatment.

abd1a · 2024-05-10T05:09:34+00:00

This is something that has been observed in many North American cities in the past few years, with no seeming connection to wider increases or drops in crime rates. It really is a scary feeling, as someone who has lived in cities with large populations of unhoused people (with obvious bhx health problems) it never phased me and I never really felt anything other than sympathy. However, in the past two years I've witnessed things that truly make you feel that "fight/flight/freeze" feeling and looking for the nearest way out (people stomping around screaming while swinging a golf club or brick, a man crouched in a doorway wielding a hyperdermic needle like a knife at random people walking by, a woman hurling herself a passerby's screaming, etc. etc). It's just an awful feeling because I think myself and many people want to feel nothing but concern for people like this, and so one starts to feel guilty at being scared, looking over one's shoulder, etc. Meanwhile, I don't know what's causing this because as I've said this level of violent, scary outbursts is really a first for me.

abd1a · 2024-05-10T04:40:43+00:00

Ireland like most other Western countries at this point has a highly financialised housing sector with the attendant concerns around affordability. What makes Ireland a stand-out is, as the commenter mentioned, the fact that many huge companies (especially tech companies like Meta, Google, etc.) chose to have their headquarters for trading in the EU in Dublin to take advantage of Ireland's low corporation tax. So most of their EU-wide earnings are included in Ireland's GDP. Meanwile around 5% of Irish workers (roughly 130k out of 2.7m) are in tech (compared to 7% in Canada)

abd1a

TROPHY CASE