Vancouver, Musqueam
The Feeding Habits of Roses
I suggest to you, dear reader, that roses have agency. They select us, seduce us ...
... with colour and scent and even the sound of their leaves rustling; with the exciting danger of the thorn. They appeal to our sympathy, vanity, longing, doubt. We give blood.
I suggest that we use roses to represent Love because they do what Love does. Love and roses have complicated feeding habits. They feed on us.
Love selects its own animals at auction, and you are one of them. You hope! You can expect to be rubbed with salt, soaked underwater, dressed in seasoning, seared. Parts of you will seem to be ruined, burnt, wasted, or chopped off. Why would you resist?
ISBN 978-9959354-3-3
Softcover, 274 pages
Front cover image, "The Feeding Habits of Roses" by Kerry Coast.
the picture of intent
C$ 20.00
(C$ 4.50 shipping)
"the picture of intent
- canadian attempts to destroy indigenous peoples"
By Kerry Coast
The selected articles report on Canada’s modern pursuit of the destruction of Indigenous Peoples. The “picture of intent” brings a multitude of incidents into a composite view. These articles describe the impossible, everyday situations of Indigenous Peoples - which they continue to defy at great pain and cost.
The impossible situations are not naturally occurring. They are thoughtfully designed and manufactured by agents of Canada, hand in hand with an ongoing counter-narrative of denial and dismissal in Canadian culture. Such jargon as “reconciliation” and “new relationships” and “modern day treaties” are the velvet glove which conceals an iron fist. The situations stay the same while the settler story keeps being rewritten for posterity. The popular narrative and the actual situations should be considered together.
This book is a collection of articles originally published in The BC Treaty Negotiating Times, The St’át’imc Runner newspaper, and the Vancouver Media Co-op.
See "events" to watch and listen to the book launch broadcast
2022
188 pp softcover
5”x8”
ISBN 9780995935495
Speeches from the crowd
C$ 20.00
This collection of essays is a set of challenges for those of us who are living on the shifting edge of an unsustainable world: an urban "First World" that is completely subsidized by forces, people, and places largely unknown to us, and often elsewhere.
This read poses essential questions on food security, big media, poverty, social fabrics we could quilt with... and tools to replace the "keep calm and go shopping" Modus Operandi.
Contents:
Speeches: Poverty Fatigue ~ History's End (no date) ~ Women's Day ~ The Power Has Too Much Media ~ Colonial Futures: The Devil You Do ~ A $20 Blueberry
Just among the crowd: Letter to Auntie Jean ~ The Crutches ~ Social Needia ~ The Autonomous Nervous System
2018
Softcover 182 pages
5.25"x8"
ISBN - 978-1985301849
Other Books by Kerry Coast
The Colonial Present
The ongoing colonization of British Columbia relies on settler indifference to the indigenous. The Colonial Present documents the colonizer's manufacture of a new mythology to dehumanize the original peoples and strip them of their rightful places in the world.
This book is an exploration of how such a stunning string of events continues unchecked, and British Columbians' continuing attempts to rationalize them.
" This is history as it should be done."
WARD CHURCHILL
"This fascinating study provides a template not only for understanding but transforming colonial realities throughout North America."
- Natsu Taylor Saito, Professor of
International Law, Georgia State
University
Home to an Empty House
Short Stories
There is a deep churning within identity,
where the devices of history, of humanity,
are polished. One of the grindstones is the place we live and call home.
There is a growing commonality around the world, among individuals' sense of displacement. The search for belonging ensues. It is often negotiated through that tempest of dust kicked up along others' paths, as their identities suck and whirl and
even offer shelter.
Some of these stories go to the impact of European imperialism on Indigenous peoples here in the west. Some turn back onto upheavals among Europeans which cracked ancient human codes, and forged nation states. The road home comes up against borders real and imagined; physical and spiritual. Very often, after all we have been through to finally return, the old place just isn't the same. And neither are we.
The BC Treaty Process ~ dealing in duress
The BC Treaty Process ~ dealing in duress
Every Final Agreement produced in the BC Treaty Commission's "modern day treaty" process has been the subject of court action and human rights complaints, and has caused searing divisions within the Indigenous community engaged in it.
Why are Agreements which are criticized in UN human rights committees still being sought by Indigenous communities? Because the present day alternative - abject poverty or open confrontations with the police and government - is forcing them to take the only means available to keep their people in houses, to start businesses, to access a small part of the wealth of their own lands.
With excerpts from open letters, UN Human Rights Council committees, and press statements.
Kerry Coast
About the Author
Kerry Coast was educated at the university of the kitchen table. Self-directed studies began in the mid-1990s after leaving a BC university and a college that were not teaching what she wanted to know: why was the BC treaty process so punitive and controversial?
In the community meetings, reoccupations and courts of 1994--97, in Secwepemc, Nuxalk and St’át’imc, there was a vivid introduction and steep learning curve for a white girl raised by immigrant parents on the ranch in non-treaty Secwepemc territory.
Born beyond the treaty frontier on the west coast of what is today called “Canada,” Kerry has always lived in unceded, unsurrendered Indigenous lands, but it was not until she was twenty years old that she found that out. Meeting and spending time with people of the land answered a lot of basic human questions for a gal whose Scottish family had been dispersed all over the world by the British Empire.
Since then, research, more kitchen table classes, and joining in community campaigns have never stopped.
Kerry worked for the Lillooet Tribal Council as the founding editor of The St'át'imc Runner newspaper. With new mentors, including Arthur Manuel, she went on to co-found The BC Treaty Negotiating Times newspaper. She contributes to the Vancouver Media Co-op.
Kerry has consulted with the International Human Rights Association of American Minorities on the unprecedented Edmonds v. Canada, IACHR case #12-929, since 2010. The Inter-American Court admitted the case on the basis that no domestic remedy is available to the jurisdictional dispute between Líl'wat and Canada.
In 2017, Kerry launched an independent book label, Electromagnetic Print, to get some important voices in print. She transcribed, developed and did supporting research for memoirs by Bill Lightbown, Kutenia, Beatrice Silver, Sto:lo, and Ron George, Wet’suwet’en. Works by Canadian constitutional lawyer Bruce Clark; Japanese Canadian human rights advocate and community leader Tatsuo Kage; Dutch researcher Marjo Van derVeen and her father Peter, in their testamentary memoir of their family’s linguistic work in Indonesia – before and during the Second World War; and more have followed.
Today she is building an archive of the documentary record of Indigenous roadblocks against British Columbia – the last resort of people whose legal issues have led to armed standoffs and individual persecution. The west wasn’t won Archive Project honours the indomitable spirit of Indigenous Peoples, and has an online base at www.thewestwasntwon.com. Archive Quarterly is the current journal of that project.
