Robyn Heaslip, drama queen…
The more I dig into Professor Anthony James Hall’s fish story on Iranian PressTV, the more interesting and tangled the web becomes. Today we introduce a new character, Robyn Heaslip- someone who I learned today I have a relationship with (and I didn’t even know it until now!). This story also includes Joshua Blakeney of PressTV/Veterans Today, and Patricia Kelly of the Sto:lo nation.
Let me begin with some background to the story. I wrote a MediaWatch article a couple of weeks ago about a story on PressTV where Joshua Blakeney interviewed Professor Hall and Patricia Kelly about fishing rights on British Columbia’s Fraser river. In this story, Kelly got all super-dramatic about having received fines for illegal fishing- here’s a clip, as it is relevant to the rest of the story.
If one didn’t understand the background behind this story, they may not realize how over-dramatic Patricia Kelly’s performance is- that said, most people probably will. And, it becomes obvious she is overacting here when you understand what I learned last Thursday- all of this drama is over a $200 fine. And, Patricia Kelly herself admits that she’s not paying the fine on principle. As it seems with many stories on PressTV, this one is dripping with bovine excrement.
I did some more research on this story today and discovered more proof Blakeney’s piece is a fish story. It turns out that the conflict over fishing rights is not really between the government and the Stó:lo Nation- it’s actually between the Stó:lo and the Yale indigenous nations, and it is an age-old dispute between the two. Both nations claim fishing rights over the right to fish in the Fraser Canyon area for many years. So, basically, everything about Blakeney’s story is misstated.
So, let’s jump forward to a story Blakeney published yesterday in Veterans Today- where the plot thickens, and the bovine excrement meter goes off the charts. The story is titled The Brutalization Of An Aboriginal Woman And Her Teenage Son– that’s quite the title, sounds scary!
Last week, Patricia Kelly went to court to defend herself for not paying the $200 fine she was protesting. She walked into the courthouse with a friend who was literally beating a drum as they walked up the stairs. At the top of the second floor, the court’s Sheriff’s asked her friend to stop beating the drum- they explained how it was loud and disruptive to the other people in the courts.
At that moment, Kelly took the drum from her friend’s hands, and began to get belligerent with the Sheriffs- explaining to them how it was “an important part of her cultural protocol and preparations for the hearing.” Things got out of hand, and the Sheriffs threatened to arrest her- ultimately, they did. Kelly’s son then began screaming at the police, and he was also detained.
The story is told to us from the perspective of Robyn Heaslip, a PhD student at the University of Victoria who was with Kelly at the time- she describes herself as a ‘colleague’ of Kelly’s. Heaslip makes some pretty outrageous statements in the story- here’s an example:
“Patricia’s use of a drum in the courthouse, an important cultural protocol and practice, which is both an inherent indigenous right and protected under the Canadian Constitution”
Sorry Robyn, the constitution doesn’t say anything about indigenous people being allowed to interrupt other people’s court proceedings by walking through the courthouse banging a drum in a deliberate provocation- no dice. Ridiculous statements like this are in insult to all sensible indigenous people- and, it cheapens the meaning of indigenous rights. You should be ashamed of yourself for such shamelessness.
I had no idea who Robyn Heaslip was when I began writing this story, so I did a little research through Google. I was totally surprised to find-out there is a connection between us. Robyn, a person I had never met nor heard of before, is a signatory on the website that Harsha Walia’s associates setup slandering me after I tried to call her out on her promotion of Black Bloc violence during Occupy Vancouver!
I believe this tells us a bit about Robyn’s character- for someone to put their name to a slanderous attack of someone who they have never met or talked to before says a lot. It also exposes the connections I mentioned in my first article on this fish story between Rick Quipp and Harsha Walia’s No One Is Illegal. And, as is usual with Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside radicals, the whole story has been overblown and sensationalized.
This leads me to Heaslip’s next statement:
“Patricia has sustained numerous injuries as has her son Kwiis. Both Patricia and Kwiis were unnecessarily hurt, jailed, and subject to demeaning treatment when in custody. My own arm was sore from the rough treatment I received”
If you’ve been reading my stories on the Vancouver Casseroles, the pattern her will remind you of the incident where Lauren Gill was caught lying on CKNW about Sasha Wiley’s arm being broken by the police. This is all part of the pattern of these deliberate provocations- bait the police, get arrested, and cry-out “police brutality!”
So, there you have it, the background behind the latest Stó:lo fish story. I’m left with only one question really. Does PressTV know that Joshua Blakeney is pushing Professor Anthony James Hall’s and No One Is Illegal’s agenda, or are they being used unknowingly? Time will tell I guess, I’ll keep on-top of the story- and, of course, will keep you all updated as time progresses.
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I have to disagree—drumming is a practice in almost all natural cultures. Drumming tends to be outlawed when an opposing military conquers people and then only lets its drummers drum. I’m for freedom to drum, especially in Courthouses.
I understand fully that Quisling it up with the White Man is the only way for the indians to get ahead in reality, but I don’t think you can really blame the few who won’t trade their natural indigenous freedom for a few treaty beers.
I think you’re missing a point here… I could, technically, sing any random song at the top of my lungs or clap my hands as hard as I could in the courthouse BUT it would be highly distracting and also be considered very disrespectful to the people in the court rooms, hallways, etc… and that’s in the “white” culture, as you call it… so if it is considered disruptive and disrespectful for me to make alot of loud noise, then banging a drum (which is loud) would be reacted to in the same way! It had nothing to do with putting down your people because if I had done similar, I’d get arrested too for refusing to stop!! In fact anyone from any cultural background would have!!
By the way, the loud drumming would also have, because of it being distracting, made it hard for the people involved in any court case on that floor to concentrate because they are not used to hearing drumming or other sounds during the session. Perhaps you can convince the courts to eventually allow it, but please realize that people in general aren’t seeing it as “we gotta smack down the native people” they’re seeing it as I am explaining here… Originally, yes… our ancestors were a bunch of jerkwads who did put rules up to attack your culture but WE the descendants are simply used to courtrooms being run quietly (we don’t get any music either) so we don’t have any malice towards you guys. Unfortunately our ancestors traumatized you guys so much that some of you think everything is an attack… I am deeply, deeply ashamed and sorry for what they did to your people. Perhaps you could get them to allow the drumming, but if you do please keep in mind that if it is really loud it will be distracting, especially in the beginning because people aren’t used to it… over time, they would get used to it.
Whatever happens, that’s where I think the people in the courthouse were coming from… they didn’t have an agenda to put you down as native people at all! They would have done the same to any other person, including white people!!! So please stop assuming it’s a attack on native peoples specifically, it wasn’t meant that way at all!
And yes, I’m aware that our governments have been doing very bad things still… Again I am deeply ashamed… they don’t listen to us either. They don’t listen to anyone… it’s all a con game. Why do you think the number of voters has declined so much? People are starting, I think, to give up on the system. Those who do care enough in society, about anything good, are considered at best bleeding hearts, at worse kooks (or welfare/homeless bums. People just assume and yell “get a job” without knowing anything about the people they’re yelling at… Look at all the hate and ignorance the general public has towards protesters in general (they don’t seem to differentiate)… it’s very sad, very disheartening… Truthfully, even though it seems that non natives better off they’re getting shafted too… it’s just that most people don’t know it. When things get so bad they finally realize it, what’ll they do? Protest? Sigh, I’m rambling, sorry… Peace.
That is to say, if you are an unconquered indian, and you enter a building drumming, and some white man or some east indian in white man’s garb, whatever, tells you to stop drumming, that’s an act of war. If you don’t stop drumming, what will he do? He’ll assault you, capture you, take your drum.
The problem, Greg, is that your naive statism is nothing more than a thin layer of propaganda over what is fundamentally a military machine—it is one thing when you’re talking about the state machine enforcing moral law, but “quiet in the courthouse” is not a moral law—it is positive, designed to bias against a certain form of judicial proceeding: Judgment of God.
A white man would be responded to the same way.. they’d get arrested too.
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You know what? I’m guessing they would treat a Chinese person the same way too!
Yes they would, they would treat everyone that way.
So everyone is equally subject to positive law, which is a function of psychosis. Mentally healthy people only believe in natural law, not municipal/positive law. There was natural law for thousands of years before and municipal or judge-made law.
There was indeed established law in Paleolithic times. We are not Pre-Paleolithic people anymore. Who’s to say if Pre-Paleolithic civilization was mentally healthy? I am guessing natural law thousands of years ago might have been very primal, violent, brutal and rooted in survival of the fittest.
I think perhaps the point that was made in the above article is: that it is wrong no matter whatever culture or spirituality one identifies him/herself with, to interrupt other people’s court proceedings. It would be no less rude than if I were to bulldose over other people’s court proceedings with my own rituals merely because I happen to identify myself as a witch and believe there is no Judgement of God without the Wisdom of the Goddess.
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Yes, that’s exactly what I meant. The US Supreme Court put it best when they said that a person’s rights end at the point there they are infringing on the rights of others…
Unless “court proceedings” themselves are fundamentally psychotic and against what the Creator gave to us as our national endowment. Natural arms to defend ourselves, not politicians to defend ourselves.
Do you not see that the acceptance of “court proceedings” in and of itself means that one has been conquored and deprived of one’s natural endowment? Courts are the artifice of man, especially in a “multicultural democracy”, like modern Canada. Judge Begbie could have yelled from On High to the Indians that he was acting as the Vicegerent of God, so they had better cease their contemptuous drumming; what is it that a modern canadian judge who is nothing more than a political appointee says? “Sir, you are disrupting how we fleece the rubes, please stop.”?
Individuals always have a personal bias when it comes to his/her own version of what the Creator intends and we can’t seem to stop weaving these biases into our theories of justice and injustice. Anyone who strives to be on some form of moral path encounters this. Perhaps accepting court proceedings is no different than accepting the human made laws of traffic etiquette: in other words accepting the natural right to go at our own pace slow or fast, turn whenever or wherever we like, etc… isn’t necessarily the wisest of endowments, national or natural. Sometimes it sucks to have someone direct where we go and how we do it … Conquered and deprived you say? Well in response I would have to state a quote from my son who was five years old when he tried to put our human hypocrisy into perspective… “God steps on me and I step on God”. In other words, the endowment of natural law/creator’s law and outta the mouths of babes.
But getting back to the original point, and I could very well be wrong but am pretty sure that in Indigenous culture, drumming over another person whether it is in court or a sacred circle is not part of traditional ceremony. In my opinion a political appointee of a judge shouldn’t even have to get to that point where he would have to ask someone to stop drumming over another unless of course Patricia Kelly is more important than anyone else.. just saying
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Well put!
Courts and law have become twisted and corrupted but laws written to truly protect people’s rights and freedoms, not to simply control people and gain profit at others harmful expense, wouldn’t be an issue. Laws meant to protect people are being stripped away even now…. There was no harm meant (as my above post explains) in asking them to stop drumming…. When laws are meant to control people, they cause harm and we are having more and more laws written for control these days… As for us trying to remove laws and polices affecting native peoples in controlling wways as I wrote above, they aren’t gonna do it without a fight as they are creating policies and laws that will bind everyone.. why would they let go of control of the native peoples when they intend to control everyone in the Country (and by extension on the planet)? Heads up, we’re ALL in alot of trouble!!!
Drumming simply disrupts court proceedings. Imagine yourself sitting in court when all of a sudden you start hearing banging on a drum and singing. The judge has to stand down and the proceeding stops, this is disruptive.