MEDIA INDIGENA 308 (Patreon)

Weak Wexit Sauce? / MI 308

On this week’s Indigenous round table: Alberta sovereignty.

Sovereign over what and whom, you may ask? Great questions, ones that finally got an answer last week, when, on November 29, Premier Danielle Smith introduced her first bill, the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act. Or did they? Already it seems, Smith has done a western walk-back of some of the bill’s more controversial aspects—indeed, days after we recorded our discussion about it on December 2nd—making it a bit of a moving target. In any case, it never hurts to be Indigenously nervous when provincial premiers flirt with secession, especially when it could come at our expense. In a moment, we’ll walk through the Act (such as it was at the time), and what Indigenous peoples who never asked to be part of the province have to say about it.

Joining host/producer Rick Harp at the roundtable once again are Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies at York University Brock Pitawanakwat and assistant professor with the University of Alberta’s department of drama, Ken Williams.

LINKS DISCUSSED/CONSULTED THIS EPISODE:

Alberta Sovereignty Act would give cabinet unilateral powers to change laws CBC News 

B.C. treaty referendum CBC News 

First Nations leaders push back against ‘Saskatchewan First Act’ tabled by government APTN News 

Alberta chiefs call Sovereignty Act ‘self-centred and short-sighted’ APTN News 

Alberta Hansard: Thursday December 1, 2022 assembly.ab.ca 

Dancing Around the Table, Parts One & Two National Film Board

. . . . . . 

LISTEN NOW:

https://mediaindigena.libsyn.com/albertas-sovereignty-act-wexit-wake-up-call-or-western-woolliness-ep-308