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.
Members of the Stoney Nakoda have been given lifetime access to Banff National Park. A ceremony was held at Banff Indian Grounds on Sept. 10 to launch an entry pass program. The program comes as a result of a partnership between the First Nation community and Parks Canada. “The launch of this entry pass to Banff National Park signals Parks Canada’s commitment to renewing and deepening its…
Hampton Affiliates and B.C. Jobs Minister Pat Bell say the Babine Forest Products mill in Burns Lake, B.C., will be rebuilt, if certain conditions are met. A fire destroyed the sawmill in January, and the lives of two employees were lost. Workers injured numbered 19 and 250 people were put out of work. The final decision on the rebuild will be made by year’s end. Conditions to be met include…
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
Federal Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Minister John Duncan makes no apologies for blindsiding Aboriginal leaders with funding cuts to Aboriginal representative organizations.
“We did not [let them know ahead of time]. That was not a requirement for us to make a major budgetary decision. We are the senior level of government. We have budgetary…
A pair of former Canadian university football players have launched a venture to give Aboriginal youth a glimpse of what football—and life—are all about.
Leroy Fontaine and Dathan Thomas are the co-founders of Tribal Dreams, which provides football camps for Aboriginal young people ranging in age from five to 18.
Besides teaching the youngsters about some football basics, there…
There is a new Aboriginal school for kindergarten to Grade 3 in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, and while people are calling it a mini-school it is a giant step to nurture Aboriginal youth by immersion in the teachings of a once-thriving culture on the West Coast.
Thirteen students enrolled at Macdonald Elementary School on East Hastings St. in September, and the new principal is…
Additional funding from the federal government will allow the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters to continue to help First Nations children who have witnessed violence.
Walking the Path, a program initiative of the ACWS, began as a pilot project in 2009. The program has been extended for an additional 21 months with the new funding.
Living with violence in the home can have a…
The sweatlodge is a refuge where the concerns of this world fall away and connection to the spirit world opens.
It was in this prayerful atmosphere that James Cecil Desjarlais, 67, of Manitoba’s Sandy Bay First Nation took a short walk into his next life this past spring.
“He couldn’t have gone in a better way,” said Anne Desjarlais, his wife of 37 years. “He went so peacefully,…
Rabbit in Norway
Wacey Rabbit once again finds himself playing professional hockey in Europe. Rabbit, a 25-year-old forward, is a member of the Lorenskog Ishockeyklubb, a squad that competes in Norway’s pro league.
Rabbit, a member of the Blackfoot Nation from the Blood reserve, had also played overseas during the 2010-11 season. He spent that year with a Croation-…
A touching intergenerational moment becomes bittersweet in Danis Goulet’s new film, Barefoot. Sixteen-year-old Alyssa’s kookum [grandmother] celebrates her granddaughter’s pregnancy, offering her a beaded baby carrier.
In La Ronge–the northern Saskatchewan reserve where the award-winning filmmaker and former ImagiNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival executive director grew up–so many young…
Artist — Priscilla's Revenge
Song — Ape Boy and the Velcro Girl
Album — Third Gear
Year — 2011
Blues had a baby and they called it rock and roll...or so Muddy Waters wrote. This is clearly something Priscilla’s Revenge has embraced on this blues based album with the electric guitars wailing away classic…
Windspeaker: What one quality do you most value in a friend?
Jace Martin: I truly look for loyalty; someone who has your back and is there for you in the good times and bad. Nothing like knowing in your heart that you can count on someone.
W: What is it that really makes you mad?
J.M.: I have found that unreliability has always irked me. When someone commits to something and…
WOLF SONGS & FIRE CHATS
I stand at the sink washing dishes. It’s one of the things that I do around our home that always feels like a ceremony. I can get meditative staring out the window at the lake and the mountain behind it and feeling the pull of the land all around me. It’s a centering thing really, and something that’s come to be important to me. Right after we eat I get to it…
The Urbane Indian
There was a fine mess cooking up in Toronto. It had to do with food. It also had to do with oddly titled food and some owners of a restaurant that seemed blissfully ignorant of certain elements of Canadian history and the racism that often tags along with it.
Still, they should have known, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. It was the issue de…
Michele Audette’s journey in the Indigenous women’s movement began right from her birth, she insists, when her mother married a non-Native man and immediately lost her status under now-repealed sections of Canada’s Indian Act.
“She was kicked out from her community,” Audette recalls. “So we had to live outside our community.”
One day, as a child, she went to request funding from…
As the flotilla of ocean-going Coast Salish canoes broached the rapids under Vancouver’s iconic Lion’s Gate Bridge Sept. 2, police boats followed with sirens flashing and officers keenly observing. To the north, hundreds of people gathered on a Tsleil-Waututh Nation beach to welcome the convoy.
But instead of heading straight to the waiting beach crowd, the armada of nine 20-person…