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.
“There’s some wicked things that come out of the nuclear industry,” said Kirstin Scansen. She was speaking Dec. 12 at an event called Radioactive Colonialism: Uranium and the Dispossession of the Nehithaw Cree and Denesuline Peoples. The evening, attended by about 60 people, was organized by Idle No More Toronto.
Scansen is Cree from the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, a community located 420…
The First Nations Education Act proposed by the federal government has sparked angry protests across the country.
On Dec. 4, six horses decked out in beadwork and Pendleton blankets led a protest march up Yonge Street to the Aboriginal Affairs office at 25 St. Clair Avenue.
About 300 people marched behind, stopping for a round dance on Yonge Street. The marchers stopped again for…
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s special energy project envoy may have delivered some optimistic words for bringing together the Crown, First Nations and industry in B.C., but nonetheless the province’s Indigenous leaders declared that Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline remains dead in the water.
Lawyer Douglas Eyford issued his final report on Dec. 5, Forging Partnerships, Building…
Former street person, kind and generous to the end
Reporters descended upon Yellowknife last fall to meet an unlikely philanthropist.
Former street person Charles “Charlie” Delorme, a Tsastonotine Dene from near Fort Resolution, N.W.T, was giving away huge chunks of his $100,000 residential school settlement to charity.
The windfall afforded him the chance…
When anti-apartheid fighter Nelson Mandela was laid to rest on Dec. 15, South Africa’s revered first black president was accompanied by a symbol of leadership for many Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island: an eagle feather.
The feather journeyed from B.C. with Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo, who performed a Nuu-chah-nulth ceremony for Mandela in South…
Wolf Songs and Fire Chats
Every Christmas people everywhere go into a tizzy. They want to get the perfect gift. They want to spend their money on one that will be memorable, reflect all the emotion they hold for the person and be a keepsake that will endure for years. It causes a lot of panic. There are never a lot of calm faces as the big day nears. It’s more like the hordes of people…
The Urbane Indian
Every morning I wake up and, coming from my radio, I hear the latest update on the ongoing goings on in the Canadian Senate.
I am of two minds on the topic. First of all, as someone who’s spent about 25 years in Canadian theatre, it’s hard to argue with the theatrical appeal of what’s happening there. Not since Pierre Trudeau has Canadian politics actually become…
“All these bruises,” Amy Sock recalls her retired RCMP father lamenting, “and you can’t even walk.”
With those words, the Elsipogtog First Nation anti-fracking blockader said her dad wept as he vowed to burn his Red Serge uniform upon her release from police custody.
Sock’s arrest was part of the massive Oct. 17 standoff that saw hundreds of RCMP officers swarm the blockade camp…
MMF urges delay of Keeyask Project approval
The Manitoba Métis Federation is urging the Clean Environment Commission to delay approval of the Keeyask Project until a full assessment of its regional effects on the Manitoba Métis community has been carried out. Appropriate measures need to be designed to address the project’s environmental, socio-economic and cultural…
On Dec. 12, the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights
tabled a report entitled “Recognising Rights: Strengthening Off-Reserve First Nations Communities.” The report looks at the human rights of First Nations members who reside off-reserve, focusing on available federal programs, the source and nature of the rights of off-reserve First Nations people, off-reserve First Nations people’s…
Media has reported that BC’s Minister of Energy and Mines
Bill Bennett, will join Taseko Ltd in a joint lobbying effort to Ottawa to support and seek to sway federal decision-makers to permit the development of the twice rejected New Prosperity Mine in Tsilhqot’in Territory. “What a shamefully blatant act of political interference on the part of the province to deliberately disregard the…
Shawn Atleo, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations
has written to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty urging greater funding for First Nations education in the next federal budget. The chief said similar requests are made each year as the minister contemplates upcoming federal spending. “We’ve been under a two- per-cent cap since ’96. This is not the only policy area that we can point…
Neil Young will perform four benefit concerts in Canada
to raise funds for a legal defense fund supporting the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in “challenges against oil companies and government that are obstructing their traditional lands and rights,” reads a press release. The “Honor the Treaties” shows will be staged in January. Young will be joined by fellow Canadian artist Diana…
A Red Cross study of the evacuees from the Manitoba
flood of three years ago finds many are on an “emotional roller-coaster” and not adjusting well to life in Winnipeg. John Byrne, director general of disaster management, said the needs-assessment conducted by the organization found the lengthy evacuation taking its toll. About 2,000 First Nations people were displaced by the 2011 spring…
Members of the Treaty 8 First Nations held a rally outside of the Site C dam joint review panel hearing site Dec. 11.
Treaty 8 First Nations gathered in Fort St. John for a
peaceful demonstration opposing BC Hydro’s proposed Site C dam. The Joint Review Panel was hearing concerns about the project, which would create hydro-electric power for the province, but would also flood…