Prairie

• Glen Ellyn, Illinois--(Newsfile Corp. - July 31, 2023) - Janice Kaushal brings with her a wealth of knowledge and more than 30 years of experience in higher education to her new role as the Dean of Business and Applied Technology at College of DuPage.
• "I have a history in higher education of working with multiple programs, including trade, business and IT," she said.
• College of DuPage President Dr. Brian Caputo was impressed with Kaushal's extensive educational background that includes positions at two-year and four-year institutions.
• Serving more than 22,000 students each term, College of DuPage is the largest public community college in the state of Illinois.

• Established in 1913, Andrew Agencies is one of the largest and most respected full-service insurance and financial services firms in the Prairies.
• Andrew Agencies is well-known for its breadth of innovative insurance solutions and professionalized service across agriculture / farm, small to medium-sized commercial, homeowners, and auto business.
• “We’re thrilled to welcome Andrew Agencies Ltd. to Westland,” says Jamie Lyons, Westland’s President & CEO.
• They also have solid insurance industry family roots – just like the Andrew family,” says Scott Andrew, President and CEO of Andrew Agencies Ltd. “Andrew Agencies has served a growing client base since 1913 and we’re optimistic for the opportunities this acquisition presents to our clients, including expanded products and services, and the opportunities it brings for our employees.

• Researchers often overlook the similarities between street gang involvement and its connection to marginalisation and colonisation in South Africa and Canada.
• Our findings are represented through the accounts of two former gang members, Gavin and Roddy, in South Africa and Canada.
• Whether in South Africa, Canada, or elsewhere, gangs are an embedded, systemic feature of unequal and exclusionary urban landscapes.

Gavin and Roddy

• Gavin, a long-time member of the Mongrels gang, grew up with an abusive father in an impoverished informal settlement on the outskirts of Cape Town.
• Says Gavin:
  The reason (gangsters) shoot constantly – that they do it every day – is they want to … make a statement and become famous – put their name out.
• Roddy also spoke about the same challenges Gavin faced, and how being in a gang provided a solution:
  No water, no money, no brotherhood … the identity of something (the gang) made you feel important … I felt so awesome when I joined the gang, I felt like: wow your problems are over.
• Although Gavin and Roddy grew up on different sides of the world, each saw gangs and street culture as a way to gain access to the basic amenities of life where legitimate opportunities were not afforded.

Mapping marginality

• In Winnipeg and other Prairie cities, gang membership is dominated by Indigenous youth living in marginalised neighbourhoods that are seen as gang controlled.
• It later also happened through child welfare policies which scooped children away from their families and placed them in non-Indigenous homes.
• Settler colonial policies such as these have created the social conditions and inequities that enable Indigenous street gangs to emerge and expand.

What this means

• But consistently acting “crazy” and seeking violent confrontation expands a gang member’s social and personal esteem by conforming to gang ideals of toughness and fearlessness.
• Gang membership was a calculated move that provided Gavin, Roddy, and others in our study with what they believed to be their best chance to survive.
• Denied access to legal sources of income and other forms of human capital, marginal populations turn to the streets and to violence.

• We humans rely on the soil to provide us with a stable supply of food, clean water and clean air.
• Yet despite our reliance on soil, humans entrenched in colonial mindset and systems have been poor soil stewards and generally ignorant to the destructive and extractive practices we inflict on soil.
• If we do not listen to the stories of the soil, we as humans might destroy the soil which supports countless lives.

Impacts of human activity

• The region has traditionally been stewarded by the Niitsitapi, Îethka Nakoda and Tsuut’ina Nations, and more recently Métis Nation Region 3.
• We try to imagine, from the soil’s point of view, how detrimental the impacts of human activity have been.
• In this single event, human activity undid the thousands of years it took for the soil to be a space where life could thrive in harmony with the local climate.

Repairing our relationship with the soil

• Ironically, plants such as dandelions and thistles that were carried here alongside European colonization also thrive on the soil impacted by colonial legacy.
• Over time the compacted soil will recover, but it will never be the same.
• We run the Soil Camp, an educational project that explores what more soil-centric relationships could look like in action.
• Asking these questions can help us take action to be a better partner to the soil beneath our feet.