As 2021 draws to a close, many are wondering: just what the hell happened? We received confirmation of what was already known: in the spring of this year, 215 bodies of Indigenous children were found in a clandestine cemetery at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C. That was just the beginning, and thousands have been discovered since across North America where genocidal policy found its most profound expression in “Indian residential schools.” On babble, academic discussion woven with the inter-generational pain felt by survivors’ families took hold in this thread.
2021 was also the year that saw our first anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, with multiple lockdowns and restrictions and the realization that with the development of variants, we will not soon be free of this deadly virus. Babblers, who’d been discussing COVID since early 2020 — just before the World Health Organization declared a pandemic — continued to express hope, fear and frustration with politicians and bureaucrats who failed to form a set of policies and procedures that would effectively limit the spread and devastation. In this thread, the topic is ongoing.
Remember the 2021 federal election? No? That’s probably because it was deemed by most to be an unnecessary and expensive power grab by the Liberal government that accomplished little, if anything. Unimpressed babblers talked about it here.
More recently in the year, the provincial government of British Columbia once again sent in heavily armed RCMP officers to invade sovereign Wet’suwet’en territory on behalf of Coastal Gas Link to violently arrest peaceful unarmed protesters, official observers and members of the media. The babble discussion that began early in 2020 was reignited with the brutal November 2021 police action on Wet’suwet’en territory.
All in all, there are many reasons for people to say good riddance to 2021, and we can’t blame them. The increasingly nihilistic zeitgeist has cast a pall over all world events and we prepare for more of the same for 2022. Yet there is cause for hope and a need to celebrate the small victories. As we wind down 2021, we can be thankful for having made it through another year, with another year of activism and politics, art and culture, and all good things to come.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
