This Week on GR
October 28, 2021
Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded October 23rd, 2021
September 30th this year marked the first commemoration of National
Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada. The date coincides with Orange
Shirt Day, a popularly created remembrance of First Nations children
kidnapped by the state and brutalized in the Residential Schools system.
But the idea of Truth and Reconciliation is far broader than the
schools, or any single aspect of the country’s colonial past; because
whether you and your family arrived in Canada five, or five hundred and
five years ago, you’re a part now of the continuing occupation of
someone else’s home.
Denise Nadeau is an educator,
scholar, and activist working at the intersection of somatic therapy,
spiritual practice, decolonization, and racial justice. She is of mixed
European heritage from Quebec and the author of the new book Unsettling
Spirit: A Journey into Decolonization. She’s also an organizer with the
Calls to Action Scavenger Hunt: In Search of Truth and Reconciliation
event, to be held Saturday November 6th in James Bay.
Denise Nadeau in the first half.
And; Julian Assange is not the only prisoner of American
extraterritorial lawfare. Alex Saab is a Colombian businessman,
international “fixer”, and diplomat. A deal maker, Saab put his
considerable talents towards aiding besieged Venezuela evade the illegal
and deadly U.S. blockade to provide medicines and other much needed
goods to the country. Though you wouldn’t know any of that watching the
Western press who, as with WikiLeaks publisher Assange, has smeared him
with politically motivated lies.
John Philpot is a
Montreal-based defense attorney in International Criminal Law. Long
active in Palestinian and African support organizations, the peace
movement, and recent campaign to free political prisoner, Meng Wanzhou,
Philpot too was a member of the Free Alex Saab delegation presenting to
the annual African Bar Association meetings in Niger just days before
Saab was extradited from Cape Verde last week.
John Philpot and America courting war in the second half.
But first, Denise Nadeau on the hunt for truth and reconciliation in our home on native land.