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.
Jubilant supporters of National Chief Phil Fontaine are claiming that history was made at Vancouver's Canada Place on July 12. It was a short workday for the delegates on day two of the 27th Assembly of First Nations (AFN) annual general assembly as the incumbent made short work of his lone challenger, Chief Bill Wilson. At shortly after 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time, the results of the first ballot…
As resource companies line up to pay multi-million dollar royalty fees to the provincial government for the right to harvest the vast untapped resource wealth of northern Ontario, First Nations have served notice that their interests can no longer be ignored.
Two remote Ontario First Nations find themselves at ground zero in the battle to bring a halt to the jurisdictional ping pong…
After more than a decade of international intrigue, the United Nations draft declaration on Indigenous rights will finally go before the UN general assembly for ratification later this year, despite the efforts of Canadian government representatives.
The June 29 vote of the new 47-member United Nations Human Rights Council, which replaces the much criticized UN Human Rights Commission,…
An open letter to Vice-Chief Morley Watson:
My grandfather, John R. McLeod, and my late my grandmother, Ida McLeod, helped to build the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural College and also the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College. This, in turn, became the First Nations University of Canada. I have worked for the university for the last 10 years. I have many shortcomings, but I have given my…
The Free Trade Agreement and fantastic globalized trade improvements have given Canada greater prosperity. So say our Canadian corporate heads and our government leaders of the last 20 years. And that is true for about the 20 per cent upper-income part of our population.
Not so for the rest of us, and certainly not for the 20 per cent at the lowest income level and the poor. Wage levels…
Hi. I am an inmate doing time in the Northern Treatment Centre in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. I am writing to you to voice my opinion and let others know of how our ceremonies are being dishonored. Is it not bad enough that when doing the sweat we have to heat our grandfathers with propane on a barbecue-like surface with no sacred fire, but then also to dishonor the ceremony by not smoking the pipe…
Dear Editor:
I'm a Migmaw from Nova Scotia. We had National Aboriginal Day in Nova Scotia, and I know everybody did across the country, but a lot of the people I talked to said there was only one thing missing. We don't have a national flag across the country. The Canadians have a national flag, the American's have a flag and the Acadians have their national flag and Nova Scotia has the…
We read with dismay the letter Prime Minister Stephen Harper wrote to the editor of the Calgary Herald in mid-July announcing that he would initiate a judicial inquiry into the decline of the Fraser River salmon fishery.
The decline of any irreplaceable natural resource should be the subject of a far-reaching and non-political inquiry. There should be no sacred cows, no no-go zones. No…
Walter Perry Deiter was born May 31, 1916 on the Peepeekisis reserve in southeastern Saskatchewan. Although both his parents could speak their traditional languages-his father Cree and his mother Saulteaux-they did not encourage their children to do the same. But what his parents did encourage in Deiter and his siblings was a belief in their abilities, and the abilities of all Aboriginal…
First Nation high school students in British Columbia learned the art of entrepreneurship this spring with the guidance of volunteer college students and a program called Opening Doors.
Mount Currie high school students managed businesses that included Lil'wat Cinema, a T-shirt company called MC Wear and a drop-in soccer night. Students at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (…
Five luminaries of the Indigenous film and communication arts community were celebrated at the 11th annual Dreamspeakers Film Festival in Edmonton on June 10.
Their hands and signatures were cast in cement as the second set of inductees into the Dreamspeakers organization's Walk of Honour.
Producer/director Alanis Obomsawin smiled broadly as she planted her hands in the wet…
A world champion dragon boat racer and a member of the Canadian men's volleyball team have been selected as the national winners of the 2005 Tom Longboat Award.
Toronto's Marisha Roman, who helped Canada win five medals (three gold, two silver) at last year's world dragon boat championships in Germany, was chosen as the national female recipient. Dallas Soonias, who hails from Red Deer…
Hamish Tatty was four years old when his father Peter and aunt Angelina Mercer started M & T Enterprises. He joined the company in 1992 and now the 30-year-old is managing the family business.
When M & T first got started in 1979, the company off-loaded aircraft and made local deliveries, Tatty said. Over the years, the list of services M & T provides has grown to include…
ndian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice's remarks regarding a United Nations committee's judgment of Canada's performance under the covenant on economic, civil and political rights have caused a stir.
The remarks were made after the release of a UN report related to Canada's treatment of the Lubicon Cree people of Northern Alberta. The United Nations human rights committee has twice before…
It'll be Phil versus Bill when the election for national chief is held on July 12, the middle day of the three-day Assembly of First Nations' (AFN) 27th annual general assembly.
National Chief Phil Fontaine, a Seaulteux (Ojibway) from the Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba, will be seeking his third term as leader of the AFN.
Fontaine will be opposed by only one other candidate,…