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Posted: Jul 13, 2021 6:22 PM PT | Last Updated: July 14
Jessica McCallum-Miller was elected to city council in Terrace, B.C., in 2018 at the age of 25. (Michelle Ghoussoub/CBC)
The first Indigenous person elected to city council in Terrace, B.C., says racist jokes and a complaint launched against her after she was interviewed about violence against women contributed to her decision to leave politics.
Jessica McCallum-Miller, 27, was elected to council in 2018, at the age of 25. She says her young age, along with her Gitxsan, Nisga a and Tsimshian heritage made her feel alone when tackling issues relating to women and Indigenous people in the community.
She expressed concern about how industrial growth in the region could negatively impact Indigenous women and was immediately attacked by others on council, she said.
“I felt like I really didn’t have allyship amongst the rest of council,” says McCallum-Miller, who is of Gitxsan, Wet’suwet’en and Nisga’a descent.
“I represented demographics on that council that have never been represented, ever. So, it was very hard for me to bring new initiatives when I’m part of a new generation, I’m Indigenous and I’m a young woman.”
Terrace, which has a population of about 15,000, sits 60 kilometres north of Kitimat, where LNG Canada’s liquefied natural gas terminal is under construction, and 150 kilometres east of Prince Rupert, which has seen rapid port expansion over the past decade. The industrial expansion, including the Coastal GasLink pipeline, has brought increased social pressures, rising housing costs and homelessness. But Terrace has not benefited from direct
CFNR Network
Jun 30, 2021 | 4:30 PM
Freda Diesing Northwest Coast Art School grad and Indigenous Advocate, Jessica McCallum-Miller joins us on this show to share a bit about herself, from her artwork to her activism.
She’s also going to tell us about an Anti-Colonial event along the millennium trail hosted by the Matriarchs in Training in Terrace tomorrow, July 1st, 2021.
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SHARES MP Wilson-Raybould, then a Liberal, in 2019. Today she says, ‘I am still proud to be a member of Parliament.’ But the racism that drove fellow MP Qaqqaq to quit, ‘that’s real. That exists,’ she says.
Photo by Justin Tang, the Canadian Press.
It was already going to be a difficult day. Jody Wilson-Raybould went to bed the night before knowing that, on Thursday, news would break that 751 unmarked graves had been discovered on Cowessess First Nation territory in Saskatchewan, sending a ripple of grief throughout Indigenous communities already mourning thousands of children who never returned from residential schools.