Blood: everything is about it.
In northern B.C. last month, a 22-year-old member of the Heiltsuk First Nation was denied entry to a First Nations basketball tournament: Although he was adopted as a baby, he didn't meet the league’s blood quantum requirements.
Recently, in downtown Toronto, a young man was kicked and beaten in front of his Yonge St. apartment, spilling blood on the ground, for “looking gay.”
And all over the country, newcomers from specific countries in Africa and men who have sex with men are still barred from donating blood to the Canadian Blood Services.
For this issue of the Ethnic Aisle we wanted to look at blood, in its entirety. It's a bodily fluid that some cook with and others organize their family traditions around. Blood is inheritance, science and violence.
What do you see in blood—and in the questions we’ve raised about it? As always, we’d like to hear from you: find us on Facebook, email us at ethnicaisle at gmail dot com or send us a tweet @ethnicaisle.
Canada remains the only country in the world to legislate Indigenous identity on the concept of blood quantum.
Among my cousins, to eat dinuguan— a blood stew we called "chocolate meat" — was to win a dare, not to savour a favourite dish.
Saying goodbye, in three languages.
Images from an archival project by Toronto-based photographer and collector Zun Lee.
Known as qurbani or aqiqa, taking the life of an animal is a gesture of thanks to a higher power for providing bounty in one’s life.
The billion dollar pharmaceutical industry requires the bodies of low-income wage earners, debt-ridden students, and immigrants.
It seems funny that, by virtue of sharing the same blood, my father's other child and I should have anything in common.
Laws against hate crimes are a deterrent, sure, but they also signal who Canada does—and doesn’t—consider worth protecting.
People from families created through adoption are living embodiments of the nature versus nurture debate.
White people were only going to eat humble pie and knuckle bone until their fortunes changed. As soon as they could afford it again, they wanted steak.
On a generations-long taboo of menstruation and food preparation.
An interview with professor OmiSoore Dryden.