John Gagnon

2020 and the Coronavirus: A date with a deadly virus

Create: 07/18/2020 - 01:29

Publisher’s Note

Excuse my absence for the past few months, between year-end duties, Coronavirus and working from home, it's been an unusual time to say the least. After four months on lockdown working daily to avoid a fear filled virus called the Coronavirus, cabin fever has set in. We are all missing family and friend’s intimate interactions and conversations. Basically, we are missing hugs and handshakes.

Divisions

Create: 03/03/2020 - 06:03

Divisions

Western thought calls the process of well-planned and implemented schemes of divisions in our society “social stratification.” Most of us know this as social classes. Our society has five social classes: upper, upper-middle, middle, working and lower. This is the division of the “haves and have-nots.” Money is therefore the great divider that pits people against people, family against family and community against community.

Dealing with Healing Part 2

Create: 03/03/2020 - 06:01

Dealing with Healing Part 2

A defect with the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement (IRRSA) was the colonial system that perpetrated the ill treatment at IRS, was the same system that controlled the judicial process of the agreement. The service providers for applying for a settlement ultimately became the system for dealing with the healing. This makes for a difficult and awkward journey for acknowledging and moving past the pain and learning to live in a healthy way.

Election Year and Its Thousand Promises

Create: 10/04/2019 - 03:38

It appears that citizens from our communities are participating more and more in Canada’s Federal election. Some believe that engaging in the process will help our communities ensure that we are receiving our fair funding from Canada. Some think that we should not be involved, and should be working on our own self-governance models. What makes us unique is we usually block vote for one specific political party, which bodes well for them but rarely for our communities.

The five year clean up

Create: 07/02/2019 - 07:55

Wawatay has always been a calling to me. The first time was in Autumn 2010, when I saw Wawatay in Timmins for the first time and I was compelled to walk in. That day changed my life forever. It was about a year I was with Wawatay, a short time, but integral as we managed to engage in a non-royalty contractual partnership with the NHL as well with an agreement with CBC Sports to use their video feed to broadcast an NHL game on WRN in Cree. We had a couple hitches but all in all it was fun to hear the excitement of the game manifest in the language.

Emancipation Via the Royal Proclamation

Create: 05/18/2019 - 01:21

Traditionally, I was told that life was without dysfunction and all peoples embraced their individual, family and community moments, with language and culture unmolested. No one was without their natural common knowledge and life was certainly great, naturally challenging but humanly honourable. The transition of becoming wards of the state began by limiting and overall eliminating decision making from the family and community levels.

Publisher’s Note: Sovereignty in Broadcasting

Create: 03/25/2019 - 23:11

Wawatay was recently awarded a grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Over the next couple months in the Publisher’s Note we will show the progress of gathering the research and producing the paper for submission. This first note will give you the thesis or the main argument we are proving. Our research paper is titled, Blending Tradition with Technology and its Sovereignty in Broadcasting.

Publisher's Note: The Disinformation of Ignorant Media

Create: 02/15/2019 - 03:26

The Oxford dictionary lists disinformation as “false information, which is intended to mislead, especially propaganda issued by a government organization to a rival power or the media.” And, disinformation is continually used in the five estates within our society: The First Estate is the Clergy; The Second Estate is the Monarchy; The Third Estate are the Bourgeoisie or Upper Class; the Fourth Estate are the Commoners and The Fifth Estate the Media. The responsibility of media and journalism is to keep citizens informed of local, regional, and national/international news.

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