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boots and hats special

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requested by @fishtank-thinktank

So the heatwave affecting India right now is insane. For my fellow fahrenheit folks out there, 60°C (the white areas) is 140°F.

Headline: Scar Tissue: The legacy of medical experimentation on Inuit in the Arctic

Publisher: APTN News

Date published: 29 June 2026

Selected text from article:

“I felt kind of ashamed of myself because those children that didn’t go to residential school knew a lot more about hunting, the land and it felt that we were kind of out of place because we didn’t know the way of traditional hunting practices,” says [Paul] Quassa.

In addition to the trauma of residential schools and forced relocations, Inuit were also victims of what’s known as the RCMP dog slaughter, where from the 1950s to 1970s the Mounties killed tens of thousands of sled dogs under the guise of public health concerns.

It decimated the Inuit way of life, leaving many proud hunters to feel aimless.

[...]

Funded by grants from the federal government, researchers from various universities conducted medical experiments, including grafting skin from one Inuk to another.

“David Howley, the late David Howely is on my skin, and Marie Ipkangnak, who’s still here, is the other skin,” explains 69-year-old Zacharias Kunuk, identifying the skin on each of his scars. “So my skin sister and my skin brother, that’s how I call them nowadays.” Kunuk is a renowned filmmaker who still lives in Igloolik, about 850 km west of Iqaluit in Nunavut.

[...]

“There was no other way of making money besides soap-stone carving, and they were offering money so I just joined the crowd,” Kunuk says “That was big back then. Five bucks could buy me biscuits, tea, sugar, back then, so I was just helping out in the family.”

Still, Kunuk says $5 or not, even if the procedure was properly explained to him beforehand, he would’ve likely agreed.

He was 18 years old, his grasp of English was not strong, and he thought everybody had to do it, like a mandatory vaccination.

“Because at that time, we listened to the white man, whether we like it or not,” explains Kunuk.

Quassa, Kunuk, and three other Inuit filed a civil lawsuit against the federal government in 2019 over the skin graft experiments.

[...]

The lawsuit Quassa and Kunuk are a part of is taking a while to work its way through the courts.

The delays stem from Canada bringing in the universities of Manitoba, Alberta, and Toronto as third party defendants as it was their employees who conducted the experiments with government funding.

American Indian Movement (AIM) members during a stand off with federal agents, Occupation of Wounded Knee, 1973.

Support Black Women!!! Support Black Womens Art!!! Support Dark Skinned Black Women!!! Support Dark Skinned Black Womens Art!!!

shortest possible story is that he he got arrested and hospitalized after walking around outside at night, MAYBE having 'an episode', MAYBE he was drunk, maybe he was high, maybe he was just being loud, who knows. Dude was outside at night in boxers and cowboy boots and that's all he did to "invite" police interaction.

But cops claimed he assaulted them so he gets arrested. Then goes to the hospital. Then goes back into custody.

And then he's not heard of for a while, then days later says he's out and okay. But facing FELONY charges!

Almost a year later, Lil Nas X is out of a mental health rehab program, looking good, saying he feels really good, and seems to be on the way up after all of this. I'm really happy for him. I hope he has good genuine support in his life through family, friends, and folks rooting on him that he can count on.

I am really disappointed but not surprised how quickly a lot of media support for him disappeared, especially queer papers. An interview from before the police incident really highlighted how many people wanted him to fail and wanted to see him fall, including certain pockets within communities that should have has his back.

More than 50% of Indigenous communities in reserve areas in Canada are at high risk of pipeline spills. When there is a spill, reserves are disproportionately impacted.

The National Energy Board and Supreme Court of Canada has a history of declaring the "public interest and economic interests outweigh Indigenous and treaty rights." Basically, Indigenous peoples don't count enough as "public" to matter.

Pipelines are built without proper consent from the Indigenous Nations they choose to occupy. Keep in mind I say choose, because this is the case even when alternative pipeline routes are suggested that could avoid reserve land. This is a direct, constant, and often violent threat to Indigenous sovereignty.

The MMIW crisis is funded by the oil industry through the creation of worker's "man camps" near reserve land. These "man camps" are nothing but pits of sexual violence and human trafficking of Indigenous women and girls. I am not exaggerating; this is well studied and well documented.

Resources & Sources:

To become an ‘energy superpower’, Canada wants to bulldoze Indigenous rights (START HERE!)

Indigenous Resistance to Alberta Oil and Gas Development Report

When the environment is destroyed, you're destroyed: Achieving Indigenous led pipeline justice

First Nations Consent Ignored as Canadians Asked to Subsidize LNG Expansion

Oil pipelines and food sovereignty: threat to health equity for Indigenous communities

Is Violence against Indigenous Women in “Canada’s interest”? Liquified Natural Gas in B.C., Sexual Violence & Narratives of Terra Nullius

The colonial playbook never ended, Canada’s pipeline deal proves it

A zine by me.

KN95 (or higher) rated, well-fitted respirator masks are revolutionary.

There are 760,000 Australians on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the system that - if they feel like it and your personalised plan says you get to have it - provides funding for everything from personal hygiene care to support workers to therapies to assistive technology. It's already very hard for disabled people to get on the NDIS, regardless of your disability. It's near impossible to access most support and equipment without being on the NDIS. And the government has announced that they want that number to drop to 600,000 in four years. 160,000 of us cut off the Scheme - and countless more denied access. This will cause deaths. People will die and people will suffer because there is no safety net. The NDIS is the only option for most of us. Even private health insurance doesn't cover most of these things. Nobody will swoop in to save us.

The bill wants to give the (non disabled!) NDIS minister basically unlimited power to cut our funding. They're already planning what they'd do with that power. What rights they'll strip from us. What dignity and freedom they'll remove to make their budget look better.

The bill wants to force people to try every treatment out there before they're allowed to be on the NDIS. Including if the treatment is literally impossible to access. There’s a lot of us living in regional areas or out bush who can't just pop to the capital cities for specialists. This will especially hurt disabled First Nations people in regional and remote communities, who already experience limited access to healthcare. Oh, and it includes chemical restraint, too. The government has directly refused to exclude chemical restraint from the required process, calling it "trialling medication".

If you're australian and worried, the ABC did a good breakdown of the proposed changes.

I know australia stuff doesn't really pop up on the radar on this site, but I want everyone to know what's going on. What we're fighting for here. Your australian disabled friends might be NDIS participants fearing for their life, rights, and freedom. They might not be a participant and afraid these changes mean they never will have access. We deserve better. The government built a system with no backup plan, and now they want hundreds of thousands of disabled people to pay the price for their bad planning.