Surveilling the artist

With the Arrest of the artist in The USA for the alleged involvement avec his wife's death, due to his creative work with bio-technical applications and processes is frightening for all of us as individuals in North American Society...Data...was quoted by me for a keynote event panel discussion at The Rim Shot Media Festival June 03 in Vancouver...when some audience and other keynote participants were devaluing the notion of fear around globalization and its affect on regional cultural practice. As an indigenous working artist who utilized various media form to complete the DVD edition of the feature film "7 Fires 4 U...Kitchi Manitou. I tie this latest news flash to my film parce que (because) the premise of this film deals with the dichotomy of surveillance and resistance between Native and Non-Native relations since the US Wounded Knee (1973) at Lakota Territory near the Black Hills (South Dakota), and the Canadian incident at Kanasatake Territory at Oka, Quebec, CDN, 1990. As indigenous people, we have been terrorized by State Apparatuses, while they used fear to create distrust between the "Indians" and the "Whites". RACE POLITCS MUST END, WE R ALL OF THE SAME COLOUR RED (INSIDE) The language of Blood may be used in avarice fornms today, but we can write with this language with grace , honesty, humility, and respect instead of the hate, anger, and disdain that hides in all of us. All ideas, which I presented yesterday to the four races of our times for the black, the white, and yellow races of the four directions....The keynote oral presentation pertaining around these following questions:

Are we moving towards a mono-cultural world?

Are the great Hollywood movie machine and the Internet (and urbanization, globalization, (etc) decimating regional cultural differences?

How do regional differences, idiosyncrasies, or specific cultural interests inform artistic practice?

Are globalization/urbanization and the mechanics of the Internet and the movie machine decimating regional cultural differences?

Do we accept the concept that globalization frees people from the tyranny of geography?

Is the unwarranted side effect of globalization monoculture?

Do we trust the thesis that the dual directions of the information highway (albeit that the rush hour is going from the centre out) improves the opportunity for distinctly regional cultural workers to communicate and broaden the scope of their audience?

Does the technological ability to choose our cultural experiences as an audience enrich our lives, or does it colonialize our cultural appetite?

Are distinct regionally informed artistic practices important? Dying?

What are the strategies that artists and cultural organizations can exploit to preserve and celebrate cultural autonomy?

END OF National Alliance for Media Artists,.

Donald Morin works as a filmmaker instructor, and regularly works throughout Vancouver with various contract work for the community. As a board member of The Longhouse Native Ministry, Donald helps with the Sunday service and meals offered to various folks of the community. He has performed for MAWO,http://www.mawovancouver.org/info.htm, and in defence of John Graham from AIMS history of the 70s. He continues to work for the Aboriginal community, and enjoys helping empower NAtive emerging artists. Previous years, Donald has performed at the Millenium 2000 Downtown EastSide Cross event @ Openheimer Park, and with The 1997 Aboriginal Cultural Festival. He has also performed for the United Native Nations;The Native Education Centre in Vancouver, The Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre, International Earth Day /Water 4 Life benefit for Sioux Spiritual Leader Arvin Looking Horse, Elder's Day, and at Kids Day at the Raycam Community Centre. Donald completed the entrepreneur program at The Management Training Institute (98) in New Westminster. Donald Morin’s theatre, television/filmmaking association began in 1980 with Barbizon Academy for ling and acting. In 1981, he studied film acting with the late Jim Scotland, and Theatre avec Alex Bruhanski. During that year, he did work for the films Zorro, The Blade, and Britt Eckland’s Columbia Connection 1982,he worked with Sylvester Stallone’s Film First Blood, did a light opera, and any performance work for experience. 1983, he was accepted into the film/and fines arts program at Simon Fraser University, whereupon he graduated with a bachelor degree avec Fine & Performing Arts Major, and a film concentration in 1989. A survivor of the sixties scoop, Donald has gone through 16 foster homes by the time he was four, endured physcial and sexual abuse, and is now seen as an example of overcomng adversity and strife to become a strong role model for Native youth. Miigweech, all my relations

Before the dawn of time, the Great Ice Ages, the coming of the skypeople, the supernatural, and everything this world contains or produced, there was the word. The spirit of the word through the four elements, the four directions, and the light and the dark, created our breath, our time and our being. Oka was beyond the times of Canadianization, Americanization, and Globalization. The Oka Crisis(90), which started my 14 year experience of the 7 Fires 4 U Kitchi Manitou Project, was the continuation of the awaking. The awaking of generations to what we are really here for.

Mother Earth opened up its body to connect her people to the Great Spirit. Regardless of our religions , there is only one Creator. Everything else is part of the servant or the master within this ongoing narrative of the cosmic universe. Out there, but nevertheless we must love our neighbour as much as we love ourselves. Forget the hate, the colour of skin, and the class.

Live life fullests, walk gentle on this earth. May The Great Spirit be with you

Residing about Indian Town.