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Windspeaker Editorial Comments

A collection of Windspeaker's most recent editorial comments.

May 2013

Strategy comes not a moment too soon [editorial]

There once was a public service announcement that ran on CFWE, a radio network owned by the Aboriginal Multi-Media Society, publishers of Windspeaker, that was designed to raise awareness of youth suicide in northern Alberta communities. This was in the early 1990s and musical warrior Buffy Sainte-Marie lent her voice to it.

“We need all the Indians we can get,” was the message listeners were left with ringing in their ears. Such a good message, don’t you think?

The recently called state of emergency in the small northern Ontario community of Neskantaga First Nation brought that PSA back to mind this month. Suicide has visited this community over and over during the past year. So overwhelmed were the healthy adults in the community that they were beyond coping, so they sent up a cry for immediate help.

With only 400 community members, half of whom are suffering addictions and a full two-thirds of those young people, it’s no wonder Neskantaga had reached the breaking point. Exhausted by it all, frustrated and concerned about the future, leadership is asking why it had to come to this. Where is Health Canada? Where are the resources?

Ontario Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Zimmer said Ottawa isn’t doing enough about substance abuse and poverty on reserve.

“It should just be in our hearts and our souls to tackle this and we need the federal government to work with us,” Zimmer said as Ontario worked out its emergency response plan, even though First Nations are a federal responsibility.

Why does it always take a crisis for response from the federal government? Why does a community have to declare a state of emergency for any action? In Attawapiskat, a state of emergency had to be declared on their housing situation before Ottawa thought to respond. Is this indicative of how the federal Conservative government manages the affairs of Canada, or just the needs of First Nations? Stomp one fire out, then wait for another to break out. It’s an inconceivably bad approach if this is the case.

April 2013

Idle No More will never die [editorial]

There are some people who have been suckling at the teat of Corporate Canada for so long that they have forgotten who their real mother is; the milk so intoxicatingly potent that it blinds. We are seeing a lot of these Corporate guzzlers these days, so out of touch with Indigenous reality, so willing to dismiss the efforts and experience of their brothers and sisters for the taste of what their surrogates provide—money, prestige, the illusion of power, of belonging among Canada’s elite.

Perhaps a long walk—perhaps 1,600 or so kilometres of a long walk—might clear their heads. Trade out the Italian leather loafers for some good old rawhide snowshoes and perhaps they too will come home to their real families, touch back to them, feel their energy again, re-acquaint themselves with their relatives, their dreams and their desires. It’s there they will find their authentic selves, not swaddled in the arms of strangers.

It’s this estrangement, perhaps, that has skewed their perspective. They’ve forgotten that life has a rhythm, an ebb and a flow. It’s perhaps why the founder of the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation, John Kim Bell, was so quick to ring the death knell for the Idle No More movement.

Idle No More is dead, he told a crowd gathered for the I Do Business National Summit at the beginning of March. He said he had based this opinion on those highest of authorities on Indigenous peoples, Jeffrey Simpson and John Ibbitson, writers with the Globe and Mail. Polls, Bell asserted, have shown that Canadians have turned against the movement because it provided no real answers.

March 2013

When the police aren’t the good guys anymore [editorial]

It’s been a few years of increasingly disturbing news and, from all that we’ve learned during this time, we can safely conclude that many of the police services in this country have lost their moral bearings; they have lost their humanity; and lost perspective on what is right and good, which is, at its core, the most important thing of all.

When a mother calls the police station to report that her 18-year-old daughter has been battered, is the correct response from law enforcement to pick the wounded child up and throw her in cells? And when that girl reveals that she has been raped, is the response to keep her in cells for five days? That’s what happened in Edmonton in mid-February. The young woman was ‘bloodied and bruised’ and missing a front tooth when the Edmonton Police Service retrieved her from a downtown motel where ‘friends’ beat and sexually assaulted her.

- See more at: http://www.ammsa.com/publications/windspeaker/when-police-aren%E2%80%99t-good-guys-anymore-editorial#sthash.Bt7TM03v.dpuf

February 2013

A short window to make change [editorial]

We once had a columnist—a cranky old man, at times—who bristled when we talked about Canada’s need to learn about Aboriginal people. Someone would say something like ‘Canadians have no understanding of us or our issues’ and ‘we should be educating them.’ He would grumble and say he couldn’t care less about what Canadians understood about his people. He wrote, he said, so that his people could understand his people.

January 2013

Calling on some substance from the Prime Minister [editorial]

If you are in charge Prime Minister Stephen Harper, step up. You can no longer stand behind an ineffectual minister of Aboriginal Affairs while you, the great and powerful Oz, hide behind the curtain making all the slick decisions that have got us to this place. It’s time to look out and see what you have done.

December 2012

Legend an inspiration for the push back [editorial]

It’s an unusual thing to ask of readers, but we’re going to do it anyway. Turn to the final page of editorial in this paper—the footprints page—and read this article first. The story on this page every month deals with a person who has passed away who has created a path forward for us, or broke trail, or provided us an example. This month’s story is about militant activist Russell Means who passed away on Oct. 21.

November 2012

First Nations standing firm on Enbridge [editorial]

The citizens of British Columbia aren’t just going to roll over for the Enbridge pipeline proposal. That’s obvious after the massive Oct. 22 rally on the steps of tThe citizens of British Columbia aren’t just going to roll over for the Enbridge pipeline proposal. That’s obvious after the massive Oct. 22 rally on the steps of the BC legislature with more than 4,000 people in attendance with banners and placards denouncing the project.

October 2012

Are you ready for a fight? [editorial]

Aboriginal people are under siege, and don’t know what is about to hit them. We at Windspeaker want Aboriginal people to be well warned before it’s too late to do anything about it, so let’s lay it out here. The Harper Conservatives are on the attack to take Aboriginal interests out at the knees and it begins with government’s intention to slash funding to tribal councils and other organizations that work on the behalf of grassroots people.

September 2012

Take that first step towards a changed world [editorial]

If readers have been spending the last short days of summer down at the local river or lake (and who could blame them) they may have missed the dust-up over the name of an Ottawa minor league football club called the Nepean Redskins.

A man named Ian Campeau, a card-carrying Nippissing Ojibwe, also known as Dee Jay NDN from the band A Tribe Called Red, has been campaigning to convince the team to change its name to something… well… something that isn’t a derogatory description of the Indigenous people of North America.

August 2012

The chiefs have spoken [editorial]

The result of the Assembly of First Nations election for national chief July 17 did not come as much of a surprise. Despite the manufactured drama whipped up by the media (at the urging of one particular candidate) about the deficiencies of Shawn Atleo, he received his second mandate to serve after three voting rounds.

Though some very talented people threw their hats into the ring, it was clear from the first ballot that there really was no significant divide at the chiefs’ organization. While some saw the differences in approach to the position of national chief as an irreparable fracture, there was, in reality, no greater fissure than one might expect to occur naturally, considering the great geographical span the organization serves.

July 2012

AFN Chief will have to 'get ugly' with feds [editorial]

The Stephen Harper Conservative majority government has picked up a head of steam with the passage of its omnibus budget bill C-38, and the question now is: How do you stop a train?

That will be the big overarching question in the minds of voters when they mark their ballots at this month’s Assembly of First Nations election for national chief. It has to be, because the Harper government is content to run over Canadians’ best interests, so we have to know the interests of First Nations from coast to coast won’t carry much sway unless the chiefs choose wisely.

June 2012

Who will pay for Harper’s cuts? [editorial]

It was in May of 2000 when the people of Walkerton, Ont. began to present with symptoms of E. coli contamination from the small town’s water supply. Seven people were to die from drinking the water, and about 2,500 people became ill.

Though two men were jailed for their part in the tragedy, admitting to falsifying reports and concealing laboratory tests that had found evidence of the contamination, well before the public was warned, it was the Walkerton Commission of Inquiry, led by Justice Dennis O’Connor, that eventually placed some of the blame for the tragedy at the foot of the Conservative provincial government for cuts made to regulating water quality and enforcement of the environmental guidelines that had been in place.

May 2012

A do-nothing approach requires nothing at all [editorial]

It seems to us that the Aboriginal Affairs ship being captained currently by MP John Duncan has been set adrift by its political master, Prime Minister Stephen Harper. It’s not only just off course; there seems to be no course charted at all, and that’s a disgrace after all this time. Aboriginal Affairs is just a cork bobbing in high seas, aimless, directionless, hopeless, hapless and of no good use to anyone at the moment.

April 2012

Government needs to get up-front and personal with residential school survivors [editorial]

It’s more than a little bit disturbing that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is complaining about the lack of federal involvement in their statement gathering hearings. Does Prime Minister Stephen Harper believe that the 2008 apology for the residential school system is enough to absolve Canada’s Government of its responsibility on this issue? It’s not.

March 2012

A kettle and pot case all around [editorial]

Oh no, the Prime Minister of Canada is again being distracted by party politics. You know what that means for the Aboriginal agenda? It’s backburner time.

The debate in the House of Commons at the end of February was dominated by scandal. The thrust and parry of federal politics has reached an all-time new low with dirty tricks surrounding voter suppression being the main, but not the only, accusation being hurled.

February 2012

First step or not, our situation remains unacceptable [editorial]

We’d like to take some time here to acknowledge some terrible losses our communities have suffered since the last time we published, including, and perhaps most notably, the community of Burns Lake where fire destroyed a sawmill, killing two men and leaving many in this village injured and out of work indefinitely. The pain of that situation will be acutely felt as people mourn both the personal and professional devastation of the fire. Our thoughts and prayers are with these families. Once the grieving is put aside there will come a time when finding other employment will be necessary, and in this region that will be difficult; perhaps even impossible. We wonder where hope and help for these people will come from.

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Windspeaker Editorial Comments

A collection of Windspeaker's most recent editorial comments.

May 2013

Strategy comes not a moment too soon [editorial]

April 2013

Idle No More will never die [editorial]

March 2013

When the police aren’t the good guys anymore [editorial]

February 2013

A short window to make change [editorial]

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