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  • Different Worlds, Similar Problems

    DIFFERENT WORLDS, SIMILAR PROBLEMS
    Oakland Ross

    Toronto Star
    Feb 4 2008
    Canada

    Native women head to Israel to exchange ideas and improve a
    relationship that has been strained

    HAIFA, Israel-It lasted only a few moments, but those moments were
    magical.

    The place - a meeting room in the Golda Meir International Training
    Centre, high atop Mount Carmel, in Israel's third-largest city. The
    event - a farewell ceremony for 17 First Nations women from Canada
    who last week completed an 11-day study tour in the Jewish state.

    Wearing a red-and-black traditional robe and matching headband, Marilyn
    Jensen of the Tagish First Nation in Carcross, Yukon, beat a tom-tom
    and crooned an uptempo number called the "Raven People Clan Song,"
    rendered in the Inland Tlingit language.

    Before very long, people of diverse cultural backgrounds were climbing
    to their feet and dancing, a mixed crew of revellers that included
    Israelis, Canadians, Ugandans, Kenyans and Latin Americans - all
    waving their arms and moving their hips to the indigenous rhythms of
    the Canadian north.

    No one could have scripted a finer finale to a trip that might raise
    some eyebrows in Canada, but that most of its participants seemed
    to consider a rousing success, if not without a rough patch here and
    there - this being the Middle East and politics being what they are.

    "We live in a very political community," said Cora Voyageur, a tour
    participant who, in her regular life, is a sociology professor at
    the University of Calgary and a member of the Dene Nation.

    "If you want to stay out of politics in our community, you really
    have to work at it. In many ways, the political atmosphere here is
    very similar."

    In many ways, the political atmosphere here is downright suffocating.

    But the trip was not wholly consumed by politics in general or by the
    long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, a dispute
    that tends to affect almost everything that happens in this rancorous
    plot of terra firma.

    In fact, the tour was designed to introduce a group of Canadian
    native women to Israel, to exchange ideas about women's empowerment,
    the alleviation of poverty, microcredit, and other social issues,
    and to improve relations between two groups that haven't always got
    on especially well - Jews and Canadian natives.

    But politics are politics are politics, and this is the Middle East.

    A sponsored journey to Israel by a delegation of Canadian First Nations
    chiefs two years ago drew criticism from some groups at home, perhaps
    partly because that trip seemed eerily reminiscent of a propaganda
    campaign carried out two decades ago by Glenn Babb, formerly South
    Africa's ambassador in Ottawa.

    In 1987, Babb raised Canadian hackles by setting up an
    all-expenses-paid tour of his country for a group of First Nations
    leaders during the ebb years of apartheid, a ploy to highlight
    shortcomings in Canada's treatment of its indigenous people and make
    South Africa's racist policies seem less odious by comparison.

    Organized by the Canadian Jewish Congress and financed by Larry
    Tanenbaum, chair of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, this year's
    Israel trip by First Nations women seems to have had a more benign
    cast. But the project undoubtedly included a propaganda component of
    its own.

    For one thing, the Canadian women did not visit the Palestinian
    territories - an omission that some in Canada may find troubling.

    Bernie Farber, the CJC's chief executive officer, said the First
    Nations tour is part of a more general effort by Canadian Jews to
    build bridges to other groups in Canada that have suffered a history of
    discrimination and attempted genocide, a group that includes Armenian
    Canadians, as well as members of Canada's small communities of Roma
    people, Rwandan Tutsis, and Darfurians.

    Relations between Jews and native Canadians have not traditionally
    been close and have at times been downright acrimonious, as when
    former aboriginal leader David Ahenakew let loose a now infamous
    anti-Semitic outburst several years ago.

    Ahenakew's slurs were regarded as particularly shocking because he,
    like other First Nations people, must be keenly aware of the suffering
    caused by racial or ethnic prejudice - the common ground that Farber
    says Canadian Jews are hoping to build on now.

    "We have an understanding of the kind of discrimination the First
    Nations people have gone through," said Farber. "We have a lot in
    common, although we come from completely different worlds."

    The Canadian women on the Israel tour included lawyers, tribal chiefs
    and academics.

    Some members of the group were drawn to the trip largely out of concern
    for Canada's dying native languages. Israelis have reclaimed Hebrew,
    an ancient and practically moribund tongue that now serves as the
    country's national language. A lot of Canadian natives are keen to
    learn from that example.

    Others felt a special affinity for Israel's Arab minority, a
    disadvantaged group on the margins of political and economic life.

    "That was very obvious for us," said Kathleen McHugh, a Siksika
    woman from Alberta and chair of the Assembly of First Nations'
    women's council. "We recognized that."

    The Canadian women had sessions with three Israeli Arab communities
    during their trip, all arranged by the Golda Meir International
    Training Centre.

    Founded in 1961, the centre draws together women and men from all over
    the world for educational programs aimed at social and professional
    improvement, all offered under the auspices of Israel's international
    development agency.

    The Canadian women's trip coincided with a separate entrepreneurial
    training session that included participants from Latin America,
    Africa, and Asia.

    Farber says the CJC means to organize more Israel trips for First
    Nations people in the future. "One of the root causes of historical
    anti-Semitism is that people don't know Jews," he said. "... It's
    hard to hate someone you understand."

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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