My Thank You Letter to Chief Spence

Dear Chief Spence

I was so happy to hear that you will be ending your long hunger strike.

Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence has decided to end her six-week-long hunger strike after members of the Assembly of First Nations and the Liberal and New Democrat caucuses agreed to back a list of commitments supporting aboriginal issues.

For you have endured enough, your people need you, and you don't need to die for your great struggle to go forward, stronger than ever.

Your enemies will say you failed because you didn't get a meeting with Stephen Harper and the Governor General. But Harper is a small man, the Governor General takes his orders from a foreign monarch. They are the ones who failed, they are the real losers. And you were bigger than both of them.

In your own humble way...

For I couldn't have imagined a more powerful symbol of the aboriginal demand for simple justice, than you with your feather, and your teepee, in the shadow of the Parliament buildings. 

Going to bed hungry like so many of your people. Forcing the politicians and the media to ignore you no longer.

You may be a simple, soft spoken person, from a remote and impoverished community. But you are a proud Chief, and a strong woman. Like the ones who birthed this great movement. Standing up to the bullies and the bigots.

And inspiring so many...

You can't do better than that. And I can't thank you enough for taking on the bully Harper, his foul Con regime, and their shameless stooges in the media.

And thank you too for opening my eyes to the large number of filthy racists who pollute this land. For even in my worst nightmares I never could have imagined there were so many.

And the way they smeared you and tried to humiliate you was so disgusting and so cowardly, it will only motivate me to fight them even harder than I ever have. And hopefully make me a better person and a better Canadian. 

As for those who would accuse you of helping to expose divisions in the aboriginal movement, to them I would just say this: what movement or what people are always united? And if you don't expose the differences, how can you reconcile them?

And build a movement as powerful as this one...

So when you leave your teepee for the last time later today, you can rightfully hold your head high. And know that thousands and thousands of people all over the country, will be watching and cheering you on. 

Or in my case, standing under the TV in the cafeteria at work, whooping it up, and causing a minor disturbance eh?

For this is just the BEGINNING. 

And as for the nasty bigots of Canada.

This one's for YOU...



So humble, so PROUD.

Thank you Chief Spence. The struggle continues.

Idle No More...

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