"In a historic “first-of-its-kind” agreement the government of British Colombia has acknowledged the aboriginal ownership of 200 islands off the west coast of Canada.

The owners are the Haida nation, and rather than the Canadian government giving something to a First Nation, the agreement admits that the “Xhaaidlagha Gwaayaai” or the “islands at the end of world,” always belonged to them, a subtle yet powerful difference in the wording of First Nations negotiating.

BC Premier David Eby called the treaty “long overdue” and once signed, will clear the way for half a million hectares (1.3 million acres) of land to be managed by the Haida.

Postal service, shipping lanes, school and community services, private property rights, and local government jurisdiction, will all be unaffected by the agreement, which will essentially outline that the Haida decide what to do with the 200 or so islands and islets.

“We could be facing each other in a courtroom, we could have been fighting each other for years and years, but we chose a different path,” said Minister of Indigenous Relations of BC, Murray Rankin at the signing ceremony, who added that it took creativity and courage to “create a better world for our children.”

Indeed, making the agreement outside the courts of the formal treaty process reflects a vastly different way of negotiating than has been the norm for Canada.

“This agreement won’t only raise all boats here on Haida Gwaii – increase opportunity and prosperity for the Haida people and for the whole community and for the whole province – but it will also be an example and another way for nations – not just in British Columbia, but right across Canada – to have their title recognized,” said Eby.

In other words, by deciding this outside court, Eby and the province of BC hope to set a new standard for how such land title agreements are struck."

-via Good News Network, April 18, 2024

if you want to actually start to end homelessness, you need to give homeless people unconditional homes, including when we use them to do drugs or sit around drinking. either housing is unconditional or it isn’t

someone sitting at home alone, an active alcoholic, squandering your charity, drinking all day is better situation than a street homeless alcoholic. someone using drugs in your charity house is better than them doing the same w no shelter

most of you would not like most street homeless people, I definitely don’t and didn’t when I was street homeless. for every one person who uses unconditional shelter to turn themselves around, someone else will do jack shit and very slowly, if ever, work through the issues that made them homeless, will maybe never be able to live independently. still better than street homelessness, still worth doing. ultimately either you believe that shelter should be universal or you don’t

homeless people actually can’t be rehabilitated if you want to end homelessness. we either affirm the right to shelter for the worst drunken, lying, filthy, cheating, self destructive homeless people that exist, genuinely irredeemable wankers, or we concede that shelter is not a right

@landcrowe yep, it is!

But the history of this word is vert interesting in fact.

Gabacho/a comes from Occitan - of pre-Roman origin - gavach, which means "a person that suffers from goiter" or, more extensively, "a person that speaks wrong". But if we look at how the word is used in different languages we'll notice that it's also used to speak pejoratively of the people that live north from you. But why?

Because in the 16th century the area known as Granda Gavacheria - that included Bordeaux and Les Landes -:

was so decimated and impoverished after the plague that its lords relied on foreign handwork to work in the abandoned fields. These settlers came indeed from the north, and spoke French and not Occitan, so they spoke wrong. And locals started calling them gavaches. In fact, this area welcomed so many foreigners that it became an island of langue d'oïl in a sea of langue d'oc.

Some examples so we see gabacho actually means "someone from the north that speaks other language":

The Catalans from Pyrénees-Orientales to their Occitan-speaking neighbors from Òpol e Perilhons.

In Spain, it's used to call any French person.

Also in Mexico is used for the gringos, the neighbors from the north!

Another examples of gabachos would be the Swiss for the Italians, or the Romanians to the Bulgarians, or the Guianans to the Brazilians.

Use the word wisely!

Why does basil smell so fucking amazing

me upon receiving an email

“i can’t do this anymore” says a girl who is not only going to do it but do it well

went on a trip to study bats over the weekend :)

I'm so here for the the "actually feminism doesn't benefit men" conversation.

To anyone who believes fairy tale romances never happen in real life, may I remind you that JRR and Edith Tolkien met and experienced a forbidden love in their youth, and then were separated for five whole years because of his guardian’s rules that he could not date till he was 21, and she got engaged to someone else only because she assumed he’d forgotten her and lost hope that she could ever be with him, but then on his 21st birthday, he wrote her a letter saying he still loved her and wanted to marry her, she responded basically saying ‘if I’d known you hadn’t left me on the shelf, I would never have said yes to anyone else,’ then a week later she greeted him at the train station and then immediately dumped her fiancé, and they got married and she converted to his religion and danced for him in a flowering field far away from the trenches into which he was drafted, which left such an impression that he crafted an entire story about the most beautiful maiden in the world who danced in the woods and made enormous sacrifices to be with the man she loved, and they had four kids and remained faithful to each other and blissfully grew old together and their gravestones are now marked with the names of that same fictional couple that he created, who broke every rule and overcame every possible obstacle to be together and get a happy ending, who only did all that because he based it all on their own real love story.

Recomano moltíssim llegir aquest article de l'historiador David Garrido sobre la Segona República espanyola i la seva catalanofòbia i projecte supremacista espanyol.

probably i just said it but i want to say it again:

- don’t apologise if you don’t know english.

- yes, english is the most common language on the internet but you are not forced to know it perfectly.

- your own language is beautiful.

- non-english people make a huge effort to write in English everyday on this website.

- support non-english people and don’t make them feel bad if they do not know English. 

- actually support all the languages.

- spread more language diversity on Tumblr.

thank you. 

A sweet theme for April!

Ummmm sometimes you dread the weight of your life and other times it is an early morning in april and there are 5 species of birds singing and also the sun is shining through the baby leaves. Btw

Hey btw, here's a piece of life advice:

If you know what you'd have to do to solve a problem, but you just don't want to do it, your main problem isn't the problem itself. Your problem is figuring out how to get yourself to do the solution.

If your problem is not eating enough vegetables, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make vegetables stop being yucky". If your problem is not getting enough exercise, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make exercise stop sucking ass". You're not supposed to just be doing things that are awful and suck all the time forever, you're supposed to figure out how to make it stop being so awful all the time.

I used to hate wearing sunscreen because it's sticky and slimy and disgusting and it feels bad and it smells bad, so I neglected to wear it even if I needed to. Then I found one that isn't like that, and doesn't smell and feel gross. Problem solved.

There is no correct way to live that's just supposed to suck and feel bad all the time. You're allowed to figure out how to make it not suck so bad.

Sonya Sklaroff (American,b.1970)

I Spent Time in a Magical Butterfly Garden, 2021

Oil on canvas