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Established in 1983 to serve the needs of northern Alberta, Windspeaker became a national newspaper on its 10th anniversary in 1993.
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A Yukon film-maker is the winner of a television production award. Arthur "Tookie" Mercredi will receive more than $10,000 to produce a half-hour educational documentary about a traditional Gwich'in family living in the Yukon. The documentary will be broadcast on Television Northern Canada. TVNC administers the application and selection of the annual NWTel Cable/ACL Aboriginal…
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The first annual entrepreneurial youth camp was organized by the Treaty Seven Economic Development office at Tsuu T'ina First Nation. The youth camp with a business angle was held on Feb. 21 to 27 at the Nakota Lodge near Morley, Alta. There are 30 young people taking part in seminars that will offer them a closer look at what it takes to start a business.
"They are…
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Robert Breaker, a former chief of the Siksika Nation and Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Leadership and Self-Government, part of the Banff Centre for for Management, spoke on Feb. 18 of the importance of singing a new song. First, however, he had his listeners do an exercise that showed how every-one has scotomas, or blind spots. He went on to explain how most people are…
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Eight hundred and thirteen kilometres north of Winnipeg at Norway House Cree Nation is a university program that claims to be the first of its kind in Canada.
There are a number of reasons the University of Manitoba's Bachelor of Nursing Degree Program at Norway House is considered unique. First of all, it focuses on Aboriginal issues in nursing and prepares its…
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Snookie Catholique and Donna Smith have a few things in common. Both received funding for training through a foundation that would like to see more women working in the technical side of television. Both women are now back in their communities and reaping the rewards of their education, knowledge and experience.
The Women's Television Network is a foundation that funds…
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When you live in an inner city neighborhood in a fractured family, where do you learn to build the healthy relationships necessary for the workforce?
The Teen Skill Acquisition Program can help. "Most of the students we target in Grades 7, 8 and 9 are street kids, mainly Aboriginals," said Terry Shalley, co-ordinator for the program through Catholic Family Services in…
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The Marae is the focal point of Maoirdom in any New Zealand community. It's a building or series of buildings in which Maori spiritual and moral values are celebrated and preserved. It is sacred to the living and a memorial to the dead. Typically, the marae consists of the whare kai (the dining hall) and the whare nul (the big house or the house of learning). Within the whare…
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For the Kitigan Zibi School located on the Algonquin First Nation of Maniwaki in Quebec, participation in the First Nations SchoolNet Project yielded immediate results as students used the initiative to chronicle and showcase information about their own heritage.
While the 200-student school already had a pretty active computer program, the new initiative created the…
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Computers - not since the advent of electricity has technological change had such an impact on the lives of people.
And the opportunities and challenges of the computer age have come home to First Nations as well - particularly the youth - with the First Nations SchoolNet project.
Created in 1996 by Industry Canada, and now jointly administered by the Assembly of…
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Fear's echoing voice sounded in my head with disgust.
"Be afraid, be very, very afraid. You don't deserve love and you don't need love. No one cares and no one is going save you. You're a nothing and you will always be a nothing! Run faster!"
Fear continued to scream at me.
"I'm going to catch you and when I do, I'll give you a real reason to cry! Run…
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When Sandra Shade first went to work for the Chinook Health Region's Diabetes and Lipids Education Centre, her job was to focus on the urban Aboriginal community. Within a short time, however, she was getting so many referrals from the nearby Blood and Peigan reserves that they were included in her Aboriginal diabetes prevention and maintenance program.
"Diabetes has…
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Laughing at pain, poverty and oppression won't make them go away, but it will make those problems seem smaller and easier to handle. That seems to be the message that Don Burnstick brings with him when he speaks to young people.
You can see it working. At the end of a two-day youth conference at the Saskatoon Inn on Feb. 3, the hotel lobby was jammed with teenagers…
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British Columbia's legislative attempt to protect Indigenous culture by limiting cross-cultural adoptions has hit a snag at the Supreme Court of Canada.
In a ruling that came just days after arguments were heard, the court awarded custody of a three-year-old boy of Aboriginal heritage to a non-Native couple in their 70s, ruling that the British Columbia Court of Appeals…
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Trapping has never been an easy life. But for an estimated 80,000 Canadians, half of them Native, trapping wild animals for fur is still a major source of income. That way of life is about to get a lot harder as the federal government forces trappers to switch to quick-kill traps to satisfy European animal-rights activists.
Canadian trade officials agreed to ban leghold…
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Although the Atlantic regional office of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development is not about to pull up the tent pegs and relocate overnight, it might happen in the not too distant future. At least that is what one chief of a New Brunswick First Nation hopes.
Fort Folly First Nation is a 20-minute drive from Amherst, N.S., where the regional office is…