Welcome to AMMSA.COM, the news archive website for our family of Indigenous news publications.
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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While Waneek Horn-Miller, someone who has her own memories of the 1990 Oka confrontation, was fighting the Olympic battle in the pool in Sydney, armed forces were preparing for another Oka-style confrontation in the Burnt Church First Nation, N.B.
And here we are, all hoping against hope there won't be another Dudley George or Marcel Lemay.
We knew things didn't…
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His name is Chief Eagle Feather. It's also Spiritual Walker, but he's better known to the Windspeaker readership as the Minister of Indian Affairs, Robert Nault.
Nault attended the Frog Lake Cree Nation Gathering on Aug. 24 and was issued new status as an honorary Cree chief. The minister received a headdress and acquired his Cree name, Spiritual Walker, in a sacred naming…
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Twenty-nine years after the murder of high school student Helen Betty Osborne outside the town of The Pas, her family has received the Manitoba government's apology for bungling its investigation of the case. On July 14, Manitoba Justice Minister Gord Mackintosh admitted that his department's predecessors in the former Conservative government had mishandled the 1971 criminal…
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The Aboriginal People's Television Network (APTN) will apologize to billionaire and media mogul Ted Turner for a story that aired on its national current affairs program InVision.
Comments by Ted Turner used in the story were taken out of context, portraying him as racially insensitive.
Turner is the owner of CNN, a bison rancher, and was a guest speaker at the…
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There were whispers along the campaign trail about it, but debate started in earnest outside the Ottawa Civic Centre on July 12 when Treaty 3 Grand Chief Leon Jourdain, a Phil Fontaine supporter, slammed Matthew Coon Come for his Pentecostal Christian beliefs, and an alleged lack of respect for traditional spirituality.
#It was a last ditch effort to sway support to…
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Newly elected Assembly of First Nations Chief Matthew Coon Come made a strong statement of support for the community of Burnt Church, embroiled in a battle of wills with the Department of Firsheries and Oceans over fishing rights. Speaking to the community and the press on Aug. 17, the new national chief stated that he was there to show his unequivocal support.
"I am here…
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Amateur video showing a federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans boat ramming and sinking a much smaller boat carrying three Mi'kmaq fishermen on Aug. 29 leaves very little doubt that government employees are prepared to use violence to enforce federal fishing regulations.
Burnt Church First Nation spokesperson Karen Somerville said the chief and council are demanding…
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AFN chief Matthew Coon Come told the whole world on his first day in office that he is a Cree, not a Canadian citizen. This was no doubt meant to send a message to Canada. Just in case they didn't realize it yet, Coon Come made it clear that the Liberal Party/Indian Industry soft-ballers had left the building and had gone back to their government jobs; some new players had taken…
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As the first summer of the new millennium winds down, it's interesting to note that there is a new feeling in Indian Country. Different sounds are coming out of Ottawa where the highest profile Indigenous political organization in the country has recently seen a changing of the guard.
Since Matthew Coon Come is such a charismatic figure and since he has captured the…
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Last month I wrote how Canada is attempting to solve its 'Indian Problem' by forcing our communities to adopt policies which, in the long run, will lead to a meaningless notion of being 'Aboriginal' replacing all of our collective national and traditional identities. In the column, I pointed to what many of us see as an insidious tactic used by those who want to see our people…
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Just who are these government officials that the Grand Council of Crees is calling treaty busters, and who are the big business cohorts that will be slapping each other on the back when every last tree is cut down in Quebec?
They're educated, but not too smart. Maybe when they run out of secluded places to build their summer mansions and all their docks sit six feet above…
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Two new plays opened within two days of each other in Toronto this last January, and epitomized the healthy state of Native theatre in Canada.
The first play, The Trickster of Third Avenue East, is an auspicious debut for first-time playwright Darrell Dennis, while the musical Rose is the long-awaited third instalment to Tomson Highway's Wasaychigan Hill saga that started…
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After having many powerful politicians criticize his view on the development of Aboriginal people in the workforce, Reform MP Jim Pankiw (Saskatoon-Humbolt) is standing strong by comments he made in a Jan. 6 letter to both University of Saskatchewan President Peter MacKinnon and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Jack Hilson.
On December 22, 1999 the University of…
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A weary collection of Manitobans, and one Alberta chief, arrived in Vancouver in time to catch the last couple of days of the Assembly of First Nations annual meeting last July.
They walked almost 2,000 km from The Pas to Vancouver to raise awareness of the fight that many Indigenous people are waging to secure status and/or band membership in the curious, bureaucrat-…
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First Nations who attend conferences in holiday resort areas can expect to come under the gun for wasting taxpayers' money, recent stories in British Columbia newspapers show. Two January articles by Suzannne Fournier in Vancouver's the Province suggest bands used federal health care or education money to pay for fact-finding or research missions to Hawaii, which are portrayed as…