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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Dear Editor:
An elected Member of Parliament said "I don't think it's a secret to anyone that in Aboriginal societies and in Kanesatake society there is a level of violence that is not found elsewhere."
Quebec's Minister of Public Security Jacques Chagnon also told the newspaper that "when a crow flies by (in Kanesatake) and someone isn't happy, they pull out their…
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By the time you see this you'll know one very important thing that we, as our deadline for this month arrives, don't know: who won the federal election.
Aboriginal people played an unprecedented role in Campaign 2004. Prime Minister Paul Martin put out the call for Aboriginal candidates to run in this election and many answered. Elections Canada information revealed that…
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Inspired storyteller respected artist
Jackson Beardy's life began on July 24, 1944 on Garden Hill First Nation, an Oji-Cree community on the shores of Island Lake in northeastern Manitoba. Forty years later, on Dec. 7, 1984, it came to an end.
Almost 20 years have passed since Beardy's death, half a lifetime for the young artist who used his talents to reconnect to…
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Should there be a permanent Aboriginal presence on the highest court in the land? It's a debate that is just beginning in Ottawa.
Two spots will open up on the Supreme Court of Canada in June because justices Louise Arbour and Frank Iacobucci have resigned from the court. Iacobucci will retire. Arbour will leave to head up the United Nations Human Rights Commission.…
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A popular, comprehensive and rigorous field of study at Negahneewin College of Indigenous Studies in Thunder Bay is its Aboriginal Law and Advocacy program.
Graduates are finding the program prepares them not only to be court workers and legal advocates across the spectrum of social service-related jobs, but it gives them the solid grounding in Aboriginal history,…
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In faith, your God and my God are the same. There is no difference. No matter what race there is throughout the world, we all believe in the same God. There is just the names and the language that varies from one region to another.
Sometimes you are charged with responsibilities... I'm honored, as a warrior, as a powwow man, as a traditionalist, to travel, to be given…
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The heavy load of centuries worth of trauma is being carried on the shoulders of Aboriginal youth. Elders will meet at Hamilton and the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in the hopes of lightening that load.
They want to acknowledge and talk about the hardships their people have been dealt over the years since contact and deal with the effects that those hardships…
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Most people take the calendar for granted. They do not think much about the fact that Wednesday honors the Germanic deity Woden or that September, October, November and December still bear the Roman names for the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months of the year, respectively. (Later a Roman emperor inserted January and February in place of the former eleventh and twelfth…
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THE URBANE INDIAN
Just the other day I was sitting around musing about the concerns of being famous. If you've ever read the National Enquirer or People magazine, you know how rough and tragic it can be to be famous.
My heart goes out to the likes of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Really, it does. But try being semi-famous. That's my cross to bear.
People…
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NASIVVIK
At the recent Aboriginal summit with Prime Minister Paul Martin, one of the announcements was for that of the formation of an Inuit Secretariat within the Department of Indian Affairs. This development should have Inuit asking, "Has a profound historic threshold been crossed here? Will Inuit affairs in government now evolve to assume its own, unique identity?…
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PRO BONO
Dear Tuma:
My common law girlfriend and I split up about six months ago. Towards the end of our relationship, we had some fights and the police attended. At that point, my girlfriend was charged with assault. I did not want that to happen so I wrote a letter to the Crown counsel and asked that they do not pursue the charges if she agreed to a peace bond.…
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GUEST COLUMN
Prime Minister Paul Martin, in his opening statement to the Canada-Aboriginal Peoples Roundtable (April 19, 2004), is right when he says "We should not underestimate how much work we have to do, nor should we pretend that it will always be easy."
This statement contains an important key for failure or success. Notwithstanding Paul Martin's commitment…
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Recommends:
Indian Boyhood
by Charles A. Eastman Ohiyesa
Dover Publications-1902
This is a book of boyhood recollections and Dakota tribal lore of Ohiyesa, later known as Charles A. Eastman, who was born in Minnesota in 1860 of the Wahpeton band of the Santee Sioux (Dakota).
He writes about the time before his group was driven from their…
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Indigenous Women's Health Book, Within the Sacred Circle
Reproductive Rights, Environmental Health, Traditional Herbs and Remedies
Editors Charon Asetoyer, M.A., Katharine Cronk, Ph.D. and Samanthi Hewakapuge, M.A.
Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center-2004
322 pages (sc) $32.95 US
Among the many self-help, lay person's…
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Artist-Various
Album-Mitataht askiy: Sweet Grass Records
10 Years
Label-Sweet Grass Records
Producer-Ted Whitecalf
How do you celebrate a decade of bringing some of the best in traditional and contemporary Aboriginal music to audiences around the world? Well, if you're Ted Whitecalf of Sweet Grass Records, you mark the anniversary by releasing…