Amnesty International Book Club

It's baaaack! Reader's Choice 2021 is underway! Which book do you think we should read during November and December? Submit your pick using the link below. You can recommend any book by a Canadian author, fiction or nonfiction, that explores human rights issues. Be sure to enter your suggestion by Tuesday, October 19th. Your feedback will allow us to generate a list of the TOP 3 recommendations, which book club members can vote on starting next week. Let your voice be heard! https://docs.google.com//1FAIpQLSfdW3U6fZZ532B3Rk/viewform

On Truth and Reconciliation Day, September 30th, Amnesty International Canada presents Suffer the Little Children: Tamara Starblanket on genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State. Hosted by Ketty Nivyabandi, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada (English speaking Branch) and Octopus Books. It is vital for all of us to understand fully what has happened and is happening. Register now and submit your questions: https://us06web.zoom.us//register/WN_oSE3Bv7HSYyAZbCiCU4QPg

Download the discussion guide for Crow Winter by Karen McBride and ACT NOW to ensure justice for Indigenous Peoples in Canada. This action includes not only for the children who died at residential schools, but all First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Peoples. DG: http://www.amnestybookclub.ca//Crow-Winter-Discussion-Guid ACTION: https://takeaction.amnesty.ca/page/83894/-/1

Join us on September 30th, Truth and Reconciliation Day, for an event with legal scholar Tamara Starblanket on genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian state. LINK TO REGISTER: bit.ly/3kbGnnC Many settler Canadians have expressed shock at the findings of ground-penetrating radar at the sites of former residential schools across the country, which have revealed the remains of thousands of Indigenous children forcibly transferred by the colonial state from their homes ...and families and Nations. These horrifying ‘discoveries’ are already known to Indigenous Nations attempting for years to get justice. Justice, as defined by the international legal system, is far from adequate. Legal scholar Tamara Starblanket carefully prepared her master's thesis on this issue, which became the book Suffer the Little Children: Genocide, Indigenous Nations, and the Canadian State (Clarity Press, 2018). This powerful work turns the western legal system against itself despite the shortfalls of legal recourse that were founded in colonialism and imperialism. Yet, her work does demonstrate the Canadian state is culpable for genocide and violates international customary law. It explains in detail how the crime of genocide was conceptualized following World War 2 by the international community, how colonial countries, including Canada, sought to shield themselves against possible prosecution and sidestep the link between cultural genocide and colonialism. Tamara Starblanket is Spider Woman, a Nehiyaw iskwew (Cree woman) from Ahtahkakoop First Nation in Treaty Six. Tamara holds an LLM (master of laws) from the University of Saskatchewan, and an LLB from the University of British Columbia. She is the Dean of Academics at Native Education College on the unceded lands of the xmkym (Musqueam), Swxwú7mesh (Squamish), Slílwta/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations or what is commonly referred to as Vancouver, BC. Starblanket is the recipient of the 2020 Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy for her book Suffer the Little Children: Genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State.

AIBC will be reading Crow Winter by Algonquin Anishinaabe writer Karen McBride during September and October. The discussion guide will be available on our website in the coming weeks. Here's an introduction to this award winning piece of fiction: Nanabush. A name that has a certain weight on the tonguea taste. Like lit sage in a windowless room or aluminum foil on a metal filling. Trickster. Storyteller. Shape-shifter. An ancient troublemaker with the power to do great thing...s, only he doesn’t want to put in the work. Since coming home to Spirit Bear Point First Nation, Hazel Ellis has been dreaming of an old crow. He tells her he’s here to help her, save her. From what, exactly? Sure, her dad’s been dead for almost two years and she hasn’t quite reconciled that grief, but is that worth the time of an Algonquin demigod? Soon Hazel learns that there’s more at play than just her own sadness and doubt. The quarry that’s been lying unsullied for over a century on her father’s property is stirring the old magic that crosses the boundaries between this world and the next. With the aid of Nanabush, Hazel must unravel a web of deceit that, if left untouched, could destroy her family and her home on both sides of the Medicine Wheel.

https://www.amnesty.ca//afghanistan-international-communi/

TAKE ACTION! The corresponding human rights ACTION for this summer's book club selection, We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib, calls on the ICE San Diego Field Office Director to #FreeMaura immediately. https://www.amnesty.ca//us-free-maura-immigration-detentio

https://www.cbc.ca//we-have-always-been-here-by-samra-habi

Our book club selection for July and August asks us to examine this question: How do you find yourself when the world tells you that you don’t exist? We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib is a rallying cry for anyone who has ever felt out of place and a testament to the power of fearlessly inhabiting one’s truest self. http://www.amnestybookclub.ca/boo/we-have-always-been-here/

Today is National Indigenous Peoples Day in Canada. Take action to support #IndigenousRights by demanding the government take accountability in their policies and practices. Help ensure justice for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples. https://takeaction.amnesty.ca/page/83894/petition/1

Download the book club discussion guide for How To Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa on our webstie: http://www.amnestybookclub.ca//Amnesty-Discussion-Guide_Ma

We’re so excited to be reading the 2020 Giller Prize winning book HOW TO PRONOUNCE KNIFE by Souvankham Thammavongsa during May and June. Thammavongsa is the author of four acclaimed poetry books in addition to this debut collection of short stories. Her work has won an O. Henry Award and appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Granta, and NOON. Thammavongsa is a judge for the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize. She was born in the Lao refugee cam...p in Nong Khai, Thailand and was raised and educated in Toronto. A young man painting nails at the local salon. A woman plucking feathers at a chicken processing plant. A father who packs furniture to move into homes he'll never afford. A housewife learning English from daytime soap operas Souvankham Thammavongsa focuses on characters struggling to make a living, illuminating their hopes, disappointments, love affairs, acts of defiance, and above all their pursuit of a place to belong. In spare, intimate prose charged with emotional power and a sly wit, she paints an indelible portrait of watchful children, wounded men, and restless women caught between cultures, languages, and values. As one of Thammavongsa's characters says, "All we wanted was to live." And in these stories, they dobrightly, ferociously, unforgettably. http://www.amnestybookclub.ca/books/how-to-pronounce-knife/

Author Karen Grose writes about the pandemic's impact on gender equality, intimate partner violence, and job loss in the latest Amnesty International blog post. "As a global community, we must take action to protect the safety of women and girls, to improve their social and economic outcomes and to put in place interventions to address the broader societal aspects of gender inequality." https://amnesty.ca//amnesty-international-book-club-dime-b

As we near the end of Women's History Month, it's important to consider how we can continue to protect and defend women's rights around the world all year long. Download the free discussion guide for The Dime Box by Karen Grose for more book club questions: http://www.amnestybookclub.ca