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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.
The Royal Bank of Canada has made some changes to its corporate social/environmental policy. Perhaps the most impressive change includes the free, prior and informed consultation (FPIC) clause to ensure that big business clients in the mining and energy sectors are socially responsible by meaningfully consulting and accommodating Indigenous communities affected by their operations.
The…
Artist—Kristi Lane Sinclair
Song—Chinese Radio
Album—I Love You
Label—Independent
Kristi Lane Sinclair starts her début CD release I Love You with the ‘Last Song’, which one might have thought by the title, should have been at the end of this song set. But Kristi Lane proves to be somewhat unpredictable. Kristi’s guitar playing is crisp, with clean acoustic picking and…
FIRST NATIONS POSE THE
biggest hurdle to the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline, says Enbridge president and CEO Pat Daniel. He made the comment at an investor conference in Whistler Jan. 20. He said First Nations may lack the numbers, but their opposition to the twin pipeline is vocal and influential. “As we all know in Canada, First Nations have got a lot of power and…
Windspeaker: What one quality do you value in a friend?
Clarence Two Toes: It's that they have their own wheels to go to the powwow or round dance with. Sometimes my war pony breaks down and I need a lift; it’s not cool that my friend Bob has to borrow his ex-girlfriend’s car to get to the powwow.
W: What is it that really makes you mad?
C.T.T.: I get really mad when my cat…
Statistics Canada is readying the new 2011 Census which will be distributed to all communities across the country to collect information about the people who live in Canada.
The federal organization has sent out information to Aboriginal communities to promote full participation and increase accuracy in data collected in the Census short-form questionnaire this May.
“Accurate…
After some doubt, there will be a National Aboriginal Hockey Championship (NAHC) this year after all, but the tournament will not be as big as in previous years.
For a while it appeared there would be no national championship in 2011. That’s because no suitable group had offered to host the tournament, which traditionally attracts about 10 female and 10 male squads from across the…
It’s official. We got rights. That’s good to know, considering for three years Canada and a number of rather significant other countries thought Indigenous people didn’t deserve them (of course I’m paraphrasing). But on Dec. 16, 2010, President Obama announced that the United States will sign the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It was one of the last countries…
Reconciliation is a major concern for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, according to chair Murray Sinclair.
“So long as this settlement agreement is being implemented in the way that it’s being implemented, reconciliation is going to be very difficult for us,” Sinclair told a group of chiefs, day scholars and residential school survivors on Dec. 13, 2010.
Focus, he said,…
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has taken critical steps to ensure that northern survivors of Indian residential schools are given every chance to tell their stories in a setting that is comfortable for them.
Not only is the next national event planned for Inuvik, but the TRC will be visiting 19 northern communities prior to the event, which will be held June 28 to July 1.…
The Cree Nation now has its own embassy in the heart of historic Québec City.
“We are working with the government of Quebec on various projects and we felt it was necessary that we establish an office here,” said Matthew Coon Come of Mistissini, Grand Chief of the Grand Council of Crees (Eeyou Istchee) since 2009.
Coon Come is now in his fifth mandate as leader of the Grand…
An unexpected category of abusers is resulting in the continued re-victimization of former residential school students.
“The issue of student-on-student abuse was one, I’m fairly certain with discussion with the parties to the settlement agreement, that was not on the minds of the negotiators of the settlement when the agreement was reached,” said Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the…
Money available for residential school commemoration projects cannot be used to replace lost funding from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation,” said Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
While there may have been some similar commemorative events that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation funded as part of what they were doing, Sinclair said commemoration…
THE CANADIAN FORCES WILL
offer an official apology for listing the Mohawk Warrior Society as a potentially violent insurgent group in a draft manual in 2006. The listing angered many who claimed Mohawks were being compared to such terror groups as Hezbollah and the Taliban. The draft document singled out the Aboriginal traditional group as an example of “radical Native…
THE LAKE OF THE WOODS ENTERPRISE
reports that a residential school exhibit at the Lake of the Woods Museum has been nominated for three Ontario Historical Society Awards. The “Bakaan nake’ii ngii-izhi-gakinoo’amaagoomin (We Were Taught Differently): The Indian residential school experience” exhibit ran at the museum between Sept. 1 and Nov. 29, 2008. It then traveled to…
If readers haven’t yet viewed the video of carver John T. Williams’ shooting death at the hands of a Seattle police officer, be forewarned, it’s jaw-dropping in the most profound way. Not in the graphic nature of a Tarantino movie, because there is no blood. We don’t even see Officer Ian Birk unholster his gun, nor do we see him fire five rounds from his police revolver into Williams’ small…