Penticton Indian Band recognized by CCAB

“I will be crazy excited and terrified to see my head on screen,” said Jessie Short, who was selected for this year’s Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers/imagineNATIVE mentorship program.  The annual mentorship enables an Indigenous artist living in Alberta to expand his practice into film and video and screen his work at the imagineNATIVE film festival in Toronto in October.

The Catholic priest who has been an integral part of the Edmonton inner city for the past 20 years will be staying.

Rev. Jim Holland, of the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples, was defended passionately by his parishioners, says Cree Elder Gilman Cardinal, who was among those to speak to representatives of the Oblates. He told them the church would suffer if the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate went through with its plan to transfer Holland.

Neither the parishioners nor Holland were consulted before the Oblates made its decision.

Aboriginal artists connected to funders

Students in Gibbons and members of the Immanuel Anglican Church in Wetaskiwin are among the many in Canada honouring the 150,000 Aboriginal children who lost their childhood and their culture to the residential school system through heart gardens. Over 250 were planted across the province and thousands nationwide.

Communities have painted murals, decorated paper hearts, sewn quilts and planted heart-shaped flowerbeds. The intent of the gardens is to get people talking about the reality and painful legacy of residential schools.

The third of three investigations of RCMP-involved shootings of Indigenous men in August 2013 has concluded in the same manner as the first two: no wrong-doing on the part of the RCMP.

The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team has determined that the RCMP officer, who shot and killed Daniel Charland, 52, in a residence on the Cold Lake First Nation, had used force “reasonable in the circumstances.” The incident occurred Aug. 15, 2013.

ASIRT executive director Susan Hughson released the findings on May 22 in Cold Lake.

After 52 hours of worrying that their homes may be consumed by a man-initiated wildfire, the majority of residents of Bigstone Cree Nation and the hamlet of Wabasca, in the Municipal District of Opportunity, were given the all clear to return on the evening of May 26.

Health Canada Minister Rona Ambrose recently met with First Nations representatives, provincial officials, doctors, pharmacists, law enforcement and addictions specialists in Edmonton to discuss prescription drug abuse. The symposium was the second of its kind in as many years, with a specific focus on the increasing incidents of overdose and abuse of prescription drugs reported in First Nations communities across the province in recent months.

Richard Van Camp, of the Dogrib (Tlicho) Nation from Fort Smith, NWT, is the winner of the R. Ross Annett Award for Children’s Literature. Van Camp’s book Little You was nominated along with You’re Just Right, by Victor Lethbridge, a member of Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation. Also nominated in that category of the 2015 Alberta Literary Awards was Leanne Shirtliffe, of Calgary, for The Change Your Name Store. The awards were presented at a gala on May 23 in Edmonton.