
Canada's foremost ethnic author/filmmaker
returns to bookstores across the country as award-winning publisher
Key Porter Books re-prints Archie Belaney's 1936 "Tales
From An Empty Cabin" classic, inspired in part by a
'Grey Owl Birthday Recognition' campaign launched last year
by Hip-Hop Activist Raoul S. Juneja (a.k.a. Deejay Ra) as
a response to the CBC's exclusion of Belaney from their "Greatest
Canadian" 2004 national voting census promotional materials
and digital archive.
"By proving (in death) his non-native ancestry in
no way affected the sincere conservation messages behind
his writing and films, Grey Owl defined the global vision
of multiculturalism which we're still only beginning to
fully understand," Juneja wrote in a May 10, 2004
letter to numerous officials in the CBC administration,
inquiring why the founder of the environmentalist movement
didn't make a "Greatest Canadian" online suggestions
page cut that made space for profiles of Celine Dion and
Dan Aykroyd.
Yet the rap radio host of Indian heritage remained adamant
young Canadian students would be eager to learn more about
the Ojibway-Englishman responsible for Canada's name receiving
daily international headlines alongside Mahatma Gandhi's
India and Joe Louis' America, incorporating Grey Owl titles
into his 'Hip-Hop Literacy' project and campaigning on
Canadian community TV for September 18th birthday recognition
on the country's calendars for the first author to teach
Native rights at Harvard University.
"Like I mentioned in the CBC letter our
multicultural kids deserve to see an Ojibway author's birthday
on Canadian calendars, and now that even one of his classics
has been re-printed I don't plan on ending my Grey Owl
birthday recognition campaign until they do," explains Juneja.
Attached support photography courtesy of Yousuf Karsh.