Here Comes the Judge......

You're either a muppet or a puppet. Go figure.

 

 

 

 Remember this: People, Governments and their policies make hunting complicated. Look to the problems of your abutting Country. Their problems can soon become your problems.

 

 

As always upon closer imspection of events and details I thought this was an interest course of events to explore and look back over. Lets take a closer look and see what there is to see.

I was reading this dated article, “Metis Victorious in Hunting Rights Case” written by Joan Taillon from 2001. Members of the Powley family went into an area and shot a moose without a government issued license, self-tagged it, and then took the moose home to process. Canada’s form of a game warden showed up, proclaimed the Powley’s had broken the law, seized their guns, and took off with the dead moose.

I looked for a court docket on these shenanigans. Fancy that…..found it.

The Court Docket:

http://www.ontariocourts.on.ca/decisions/2001/february/powley.htm

The argument:

The Powley’s shot a bull moose without a government issued licenses but contended it was their right to do so by the Constitution Act, 1982,s. 35 but were charged with hunting and possession of a moose without a license contrary to ss. 46 and 47 )1_)of the Game and Fish Act, R. S. O. 1992, c. G. 1. This was based around Metis status in the area.

The Ruling:

The Powley’s could hunt without a government issued license due to proving a genetic or identity link to Metis people and location where the moose was hunted.

The trial judge concluded that the respondents had established the necessary ingredients for an aboriginal right to hunt for food within the meaning of s. 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982 and that this right was infringed by sections 46 and 47(1) of the Game and Fish Act.

The Canadian Game Wardens had erroneously arrested the men and stole their moose aka harassment.

Issues that arise from the milieu:

The harassment of citizens by governmental agencies, who do not investigate but arrest then ask questions later (much to their embarrassment).

Loss of a food source that could have been used to stave off hunger or winter stock piling.

Expense of a second hunting trip to hunt another moose to replace the moose the Conservation officers took without a full investigation of the facts (much to their embarrassment).

Matter of Status Rights vs. Resource Conservation.

Harvesting a moose or wild game outside of conservation laws.

Conservation laws that conflict with current Sovereign Nations laws or rights.

More hunters than moose; given opportunity to hunt and protect the resource.

Government ignoring constitutional rights until the aboriginal party takes gov’t to court.

Consensual-based negotiations.

Regulatory regime reflecting priority of another group’s right to hunt outside of non-native peoples.

Distinction between one group or another; based on the quantum factor.

Burden of Proof; locations of previous archaic settlements of Metis people prior to European colonialism where animals are hunted.

Localized hunting rights versus national rights over provinces without prejudice.

Unlicensed and unmonitored hunters taking advantage of wild game resources without contributing to financial upkeep

Non-indigent organizations assuming unlicensed aboriginal hunters are not responsible or do not have their own distinct identity as to conservation practices within the community for continued supply and upkeep of wild game resources.

Unrestricted right to hunt and potential for overkill or population decimation without input of outside sources

Assumption by outside entities upon Aboriginal peoples that their acts are a careless assault on wild game and over indulgent to exclude non-native peoples in the taking of wild game.

Opening the floodgates to people (indigent or non-indigent) being able to hunt, trap, fish and extract resources from the land without limitation or concern for conservation.

Concern of being treated as a poacher versus a hunter and risk of legislative sanctions.

Hunters harvesting wild game on land not know for indigent occupation prior to European occupation but claiming it for the sake of getting away with unlawful hunting.

Side barreling this would be the eventuation of animal rights activists, who are opposed to killing animals as a form of murder or abuse, intruding on traditional hunting cultures of indigenous peoples.

Looming hunger, starvation, and death of people not able to feed themselves.

**Fast forward to 2014**

Then I found another dated article from Jan 23, 2014 entitled, “Alberta Metis Hunting Rights Appeal Won't Be Heard By Supreme Court” where Gary Hirsekorn was convicted in 2010 of hunting out of season after he shot a mule deer near the Cypress Hills in southeastern Alberta.

Hirsekorn’s lawyers wanted the court to expand Metis Rights on the Powley ruling benchmarking Metis rights which pinpointed Canadian landscapes where Metis settlements exist prior to European occupation. The problem with Hirsekorn’s case was the location where he hunted the mule deer. As far as history noted there was no Metis settlement there but that would mean the Powley ruling was solely based around the Powley’s hunting the moose on known Metis lands. Hirsekorn lost because his lawyers failed to prove the Metis had a historic presence in the area where Hirsekorn shot the deer.

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/01/23/alberta-metis-hunting-rights-appeal_n_4653764.html

After reading this there were a range of problems but I did want to clarify a thing or two so I asked my friend Judy want did it mean to be “indian” and “metis” which there seemed to be some distinction there. Metis people are of mixed ethnicity Ojibwa and French. “Indian” is everyone else and such a crude word but there it is. She did tell me that the Metis would soon be slotted in the “indian” description and receive the same benefits of being an “indian”.  I was also reading the “indian” name tag gives a hunter the right to hunt out of season.

As I was researching this it becomes very clear that the Great Spirit has two hands; his left and his right. The right hand being indigent people or aboriginal if that is what you fancy. I prefer human beings but human beings have to label everything. The left hand is people who are not indigent or non-native. I find this hard to scatter my brain on because when you look at the world in this sense its kinda stupid. People are people right down to the marrow bone.

Earth is a round rock that spins in space. Everyone on it is native to Earth. There is no person on this rock that can’t be considered a native.  If you fell out of your mother’s uterus on this planet somewhere you are native. If you were born in a petri dish in a lab you are native. If a European points at an American and say, “You are not native.”  The statement is false because after some point if you are born anywhere on the Earth you are native. It’s a ridiculous concept born out of the need to assert ownership of some small patch of land or cast the shadow of exclusion.

As an Earthling the fact that you want to fight over a piece of dirt on Pangaea after it split which truly makes continents not lost but displaced and discovered by no one because a jack ass got on a boat and sail to another shore is short of dumb-fuckery. You cannot discover something that was not lost to start with because it wasn’t in your current reality. A good example of this is the moment some government wants to lay claim to Mars or Canada declaring their right to the Artic and North Pole to drill a hole in it and make it the Bog of Eternal Oil Slicks.

When the right and the left hand do not get along, they fight. This is the current state of affairs it would seem. There are two different entities living in one place and they don’t play well together.

I then thought of the problems that arise between loss of food and food security problem from the article, “Support hunters to fight hunger in Nunavut, says report”. Indigenous hunters have the problem of a lack of a hunter in the household or not having the financial resources to hunt at all.

Here you have the Powley’s who didn’t break any laws but lost their moose food source; sniffed of deprivation to me.

Clarity is a great thing when it is applied. One main problem here was the fact that governmental policy was not streamlined in the agencies where knowledge of indigenous legal guidelines were known alongside of non-indigenous. The Canadian Conservation Agents treated it as hunters under Canadian law bypassing indigenous privilege. When the judge ruled that there was to be a vast overhaul of the system to clarify the specifics I guess Canada said “Fuck that” and decided to label them all “indians”. The fat got chop on that issue. This is a statement to the unorganized structure of Canada’s government in treatment of native issues, policies, and approach.

I then thought of the issue of Status Right versus Resource Conservation.  No matter what you still have to have common sense approaches to daily living and your resources. Just because you can do an act doesn’t mean you do it without limits but then again outside entities shouldn't assume someone is reckless as well in dealing with natural resources. There again when you have groups of hunters going out at once or over a period of time harvesting wild game without a count to what is going on there might lay a problem of overhunting by proxy of not monitoring what is available and replenishing it. Also there is the problem of financially caring for wild game and landscapes through conservation and a gross imbalance of burden on one group while the other benefits without prejudice. This could cause a lot of strife. This too creates the problem of limiting a resource to keep it viable in the present of groups of people who are not limited based on ancestral rights, traditions, and culture.

The problem here is the responsibility of maintenance and upkeep to this group or that when it’s all the peoples no matter their distinction.

Even though my friend Judy told me the Metis would soon get “indian status” I thought of the blood quantum problem. This has been an annoying long term stain on human existence. Metis were not given the same rights over hunting as “indian status” because of their heritage. Being of mixed ancestry somehow it subjugates a person to a certain amount of prejudice or exclusion. The point I am getting at is if you are born from a French mother who is considered white and an Ojibwa man the world you live in will try and dictate to you, shame you, or threaten you into denying one part of your being. You may have to cast your white French self out to be accepted in an Ojibwa world or cast your Ojibwa self out to live in a white world. Either way you will disavow your mother’s or your father’s people through denial. The same goes for mixed raced children of African and Caucasian parents. Social groups compel them to choose which group they affiliate with instead of accepting both Caucasian and African descent. Such as President Obama and his wife having Caucasian heritage but they publically affiliate with non-Caucasian groups. We live in a world of mixed heritages and ancestry yet people are compelled to choose over one side or the other just like the Super Bowl. The only thing missing is half time and tail gating.

When there is something outside of your psyche that is telling you to rendering some part of your being as a whole to fractions and repressing it away from yourself and the world to assimilate is terribly wrong. The only reason we have check boxes for ethnic groups is for statistician to do their mathematical magic for surveys, focus groups, presidential elections, monitoring trends and targeting audiences.

We as a world have not done away with the labeling of our human brethren and sisters to just one box on the application. Are you Hispanic, African, Caucasian, Native American, or Oriental? Or are you born of the interlacing of centuries of people from different ports of the world? I would tell you to look toward the Genographic Project for some answers.

On the other hand you have people that love this state of being because it fuels their need for separation and validation for excluding a group they perceive as an enemy or beneath them.

In regards to First Nations not being responsible enough to manage wild game is short of poppy cock. On the individual level there might be some question to each person’s individual attitude but overall when you have a group of people that wonder why they have to fight their government over clean water, migratory fish, natural landscape, and intrusion from third party entities to access areas for mining or not considering the pollution the company may cause to the threat of life and limb of inhabitants is like a slur to their person. This type treatment only re-enforces the idea the finger pointer is probably polluted and trying to defame the image of the activist. It’s a spectacle. There is documentation from Europeans journaling the way in which native inhabitants performed land management. Give us a break on that one, please.

I then considered the burden of proof in regards to previous archaic Metis settlements and hunting wild game solely on this outlined property without a governmentally issued license. This is complete bullshit. Before Europeans set foot here there were roads everywhere as documented by settlers in South Carolina in the 1700s.  The King’s Road was a traveled Native American road until it was renamed. Reminds me of someone tossing a body in a house foundation, backing a cement truck up and dumping cement in the hole, and covering it up. Then the owner walks all over it without a clue. This is history. In school you are taught bullet points and not details because that is where the devil lays.

On reflection when you consider all the issues that can arise from someone shooting a moose you have to step back and take a personal moment. The moment that moose dropped it began to tell us a great many disturbing things. How the problems between the Canadian government and the First Nations people that inhabit the same spaces are causing a lot of emotional, cultural, and spiritual damage in brief. Separation can be amicable or down right aggressive but somewhere in the middle of compromise and a well-structured government where all parts are in harmony through communication could bring about change that benefits both sides.

There are so many issues here to consider. It’s a lot to think about.

Written by: W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

 

 

 

 

The Blurry Face of Hunting

Remember this: There are now a lot of hunters roaming the countryside blurry and out of focus where before it was crystal clear.

I was doing the rounds looking for something interesting to read. I will say now that I am not anyone's social police. I just read things and write for my enjoyment. You can read or pass, rich or poor, nutty bird or sane-whatever. I can show  you some love as long as you don't overstep my boundaries. Boundaries are important. I had to get some.

I found a post on the Outdoor Life blog. Just as soon as I saw it I put my head down and shook it in consternation. It was one of those "I knew this was going to eventually happen" moments but hard headed people who think they are invincible just don't see the hatchet fall for looking at the basket. If one went back and read parts of my blog its like a prophecy almost.

Rewind to 2010. The posting of trophy animal photography was in full swing.

There were several male hunters, female hunters, and people pretending to be the opposite sex to lure people in for blackmail purposes to squash competition, be creepy, or any other unknown nefarious reason. I told these nameless people it wasn't prudent to interact with violent strangers on the internet or even suspiciouos people. Turn them into the FBI I said. I was ignored because an hour later these same individuals were seeking an aggressive audience with mutually aggressive strangers. Just watching the comments made me think, "God what a waste of energy."
I remarked it was not a good idea to leave family pictures on display publically after the hunter intentionally visited sites and antagonized anti-hunting people and vice versa. This was a mutual two way street of battling absolutely nothing tangible with no productive outcome.

I even noticed that a lot of the faceless attackers were rip offs of convict names from public law enforcement sites. How easy to make an online page of a convict then blame your shenanigans on them. Think about it. You're in jail for murder or car-jacking but Betty Sue is using your info to harass Alejandro online for posting a trophy photo. Not saying this is the case all the time but it could happen.

My second thought was if they are hunters why aren't they hunting instead of playing tag-you-are-it on social media. For me it made me not want to hunt because it disgusted me. I stopped looking at such things. My life returned to a normal happy place.

There was one site that all this negative corruption made birth on social media. I told my brother and  he was extremely irate. I eventually cut ties from that controversy because it was not worth being dragged into someone else's self created mess only to be pulled down by it. I also had a moment where as an indivdual I said, "This is not me. I am not a follower of bullshit and melodrama. I am a hunter". I sat back and watched these hunters and huntresses get sucked down into a problem they helped create. Now they are crying about it. The Blame Game phantasm begins where anti-hunting spooks haunt them but no one is really there.

At one point it really got rich.

Someone started blaming me for all their problems. I wasn't the one at the computer tapping away at the keyboard. No sir.  There is always people who do wrong then try to put the blame on another person so they don't have to face the consequences of their actions. To me this is what it looked like. The person walked into the woods, started a fight with a bear then really thought he or she would walk out without that bear ripping his or her head clean off. When they took this little trip into the mouth of Bear Hell they didn't even go prepared or even think out what would happen next; left all their hunting skills at the edge of the forest and forged ahead into the stupid bliss of controversy and murder threats.

Somewhere in me I feel somewhat sorry for these hunter people. Somewhere......

Then there were the now sensitive huntresses and hunters who saw a anti-hunter hiding in the dark shadows, under rocks, and peeping out from their keyboard.  After that came the direct attacks from hunters onto other hunters who had a differing opinion because they were now "secret anti-hunters", "tree hugger", or whatever nice label could be applied. I observed this was also a form of black balling, character attacking, low common dirty pool on the part of hunting competitiors. It always seemed to me the loser was the winner and the followers of the hunter who used character attacks was the losers. At least that hunter or huntress that stood their ground, didn't play dirty pool, and stood for something was the real deal. That's the one that can look themselves in the face in a pool of water and know who they are.

It was kind of comical because you can still see it on feeding streams. The post will go like this:

Poster points virtual finger and declares, "This looks like anti-hunting sentiment". If you say anything to the contrary the virtual finger points right back at you, "You're an anti-hunter" whether it is true or not. They tell all their friends  in private messages then you are the black sheep of the family or the hunting world. Baaa. Unfortunately no one asks you if this is true for not wanting to get pulled into the vortex of drama. Better to go with the devil you know.

I had hunters lurking around my private page, passive-aggressively posting things to engage me in battle as another hunter-huntress or pretender. At least if they can get you to argue with them its negative press but press all the same. I was scratching my head, said fuck it, I don't need this; goodbye.

One bad experience I had was friending a 'huntress' but she allowed other male hunters to attack a female hunter on her page then didn't say anything. She advertises she promotes females hunting and encourages it but allows male hunters to beat up on females as long as she's immune. This is how you question a motive by people's true behavior. Instead of breeding friendship or making a new colleague it was better to kick dirt in someone's face along with the men. Every now and again when her pages are not active she throws in the old anti-hunter ploy. Now she dreams of being the Queen of the Hunting Heap. Good luck to you; its lonely at the top because someone is always trying to push you off. As for me, I am riding the dirt roads on my white trash golf cart, carefree as a wild bandicoot.

I have also had this happen to me as well. When you have more than two men jump on one woman in one conversation that is suppose to be taking part in the same sport that female must either be a major threat or one awesome woman.

Yes these are bad experiences but when you know who you are it doesn't matter. All these bad behaviors and mistreatments are not doing anything for interpersonal relationships between hunters or huntresses. It just makes people look mean and self-centered on me, me, me; (all the way home).

I know I am not the only person this has happened to? I have spent the last four years looking for a female hunter to friend but there is none to be had.
Nowhere.......

Now going back to the previous mention of blurry faces. I looked at the image. Outdoor Life blurred out the face as requested. This being a type of defacing of the self by one's own hand no matter the reason. Self-effacing is defined as making your acts inconspicuous. A little late for that.  Now you have pressure on hunters to 'remove their face' from trophy photos. The groups against hunting now can pressure the hunters into marring their faces robbing them of media accolades over trophy photos and do it by the hunter's own hand and decision. This would be the first step in wiping it off of social media. The face today, the body, then the whole picture. Gone.

Yet there is still some things Angelia has yet to tell you............


Written by: W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~