first nations

• From the Slog: “Log Cabin Republican: Fuck Gays Who Live in Other States!” (That’s not the good kind of “fuck”, either.)
• From the Arizona Republic, via Feministing: Arizona’s “Squaw Peak” to be officially renamed “Piestewa Peak” after Lori Piestewa, a Hopi soldier who was killed in combat in Iraq in March 2003.
• From the BBC: A new American liberal pro-peace Jewish lobby called J Street, a sort of liberal counterweight to the conservative-dominated AIPAC. It’s been high time for something like this for years; I’m glad it’s got off the ground with as much fanfare as it’s been getting.
• From my good friend Friar Yid: “They All Look Alike”. This appears to be the opinion of some Haredi Jews regarding non-Orthodox or secular Jews. Ugly, ugly, ugly.

I have long thought that the Pacific Northwest (i.e. Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, and some of northern California) possesses the most ridiculous place names of anywhere in North America (and possibly the world). Much of this is a product of local Native languages, as it is all over North America, but some of it is just human silliness. Some of the pronunciations are reasonable (enough), but some are maddeningly unintuitive and therefore—rightly or wrongly—employed as shibboleths to identify ‘true’ PNWers from everybody else (mostly Californians, even those who moved to the area years ago and are now locals).

If I’ve left anything off this list that you feel merits inclusion in such a, uh, worthy list, please leave it in a comment.

Silly-sounding place names

• Agassiz, BC (pronounced ag-uh-SEE)
• Aloha, OR (pronounced uh-LO-uh)
• Boring, OR
• Champoeg, OR (pronounced sham-POO-ee)
• Chehalis, WA (pronounced sha-HEY-liss)
• Chilliwack, BC
• Cle Elum, WA
• Coos Bay, OR (pronounced so that coos rhymes with goose)
• Coquitlam (and Port Coquitlam), BC
• Ekalaka, MT (pronounced ee-kuh-LAH-kuh)
• Estacada, OR (pronounced es-tuh-KAY-duh, like the name Kay)
• Esquimalt, BC (pronounced ess-KWAI-malt)
• Issaquah, WA (pronounced IZZ-ah-kwah)
• Klickitat (and Klickitat County), WA
• La Center, WA
• Moscow, ID (pronounced MOSS-koo)
• Nisqually, WA (not to be confused with Old Nisqually, WA)
• Onalaska, WA
• Osoyoos, BC (pronounced oh-SOY-yooz)
• Owhyee, ID (pronounced oh-WHY-yee)
• Pe Ell, WA (pronounced like the letters P and L)
• Puyallup, WA (a true shibboleth: pronounced pyoo-AL-up)
• Sequim, WA (pronounced skwim)
• Skamokawa, WA (pronounced ska-MOCK-a-way)
• Snohomish and Snohomish County, WA (pronounced snow-HO-mish)
• Snoqualmie, WA (pronounced snow-KWAL-mee)
• Sprague, WA (pronounced spreyg, in one syllable)
• Steillacoom, WA (pronounced STILL-a-koom)
• Squamish, BC
• Wahkiakum County, WA
• Walla Walla, WA
• Whatcom County, WA
• Willamette and the Willamette River, OR (another classic shibboleth: pronounced to rhyme with dammit)
• Yreka, CA (pronounced why-REE-kuh)

However, the one Cree village in Québec definitely deserves to be on this list too: Whapmagoostui, PQ. Also, Woonsocket, Rhode Island, is pretty good.

On 13 February, Australia is going to issue its first formal apology to its aboriginal population, the AP is reporting. The newly elected Labor government is making this their first item of official business, according to Jenny Macklin, Minister of Indigenous Affairs. Furthermore, an anonymous citizen has providing funding for the writing of ‘Sorry’ in the sky above Sydney on Australia Day, which was over the weekend on 26 January.

I guess some sense of national, collective responsibility is one of the side effects of electing liberals to your government. Or at least it should be.

Reuters is reporting that David Ahenakew, the former chief of the Canadian Assembly of First Nations, will get a new trial for promoting hate speech. In 2002, Ahenakew compared Jews to a ‘disease’ which he blamed for starting the Second World War, and said that Hitler was justified when he ‘fried up six million of those guys’ because if he hadn’t, ‘Jews would have owned the goddamned world.’ Ahenakew was stripped of his Order of Canada and fined a thousand dollars. But today, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that Ahenakew’s trial did not concern itself with whether Ahenakew ‘intended to promote hatred’, which in this context means that Ahenakew could get away with it because the comments were uttered during a heated exchange with a newspaper reporter. I simply don’t see how that’s a defence for this sort of thing: not being able to control your outbursts does not excuse them when they are uttered.

In my last post I came down rather strongly on the side of free speech, and in this post I am endorsing the punishment of a hate speech targeted against ethnic groups. La kashya—there is no contradiction. The previous post is about protecting the essence of free speech exactly by holding people responsible for what they say, not by holding others responsible in their place. In this case, it would be as if the Saskatoon StarPhoenix were being sued for hate speech when they had merely printed what someone said to them in an interview. The point is that if democracy and free speech are concepts that are to have any meaning, people must be held responsible for their own speech, not others’.