When taxpayers are forced to fund self-vilification

Michelle Stirling, a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists, wrote the following piece on the other side of the paywall. She is a prolific and gifted writer who has researched, written, and co-produced historical shows about Southern Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Hugh Dempsey, then curator of the Glenbow Museum.

Her opinion piece here, re-posted with the consent of the Western Standard, skillfully dissects an essay written by Michelle Cyca, an indigenous freelance journalist and editor from Vancouver, British Columbia.

Cyca’s bio says “I’m a member of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in Treaty 6, and I live and work on the ancestral, unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ peoples,” a clue to her radical activism since there’s no “ancestral, unceded territories” anywhere in Canada because any so-called unceded land is legally Crown land.

For a related take to Stirling’s on Cyca’s farfetched assertions, you can also link to a Western Standard piece I co-authored with Brian Giesbrecht found here or by pasting the following link into your web browser: https://www.westernstandard.news/news/giesbrecht-rubenstein-there-was-nothing-sinister-about-indian-residential-school-deaths-and-burials/article_f5d3301a-f011-11ed-9aad-0f49e8fc3153.html.