Art Sterritt regrets that his desire to meet with former Assembly of First Nations national chiefs Shawn Atleo and Ovide Mercredi was made public before he had a chance to pick up the telephone, but he notes that Atleo and Mercredi, now advisors with Pacific Future Energy, could have got in contact with him.

Need to look up a word in the Plains Cree language? There’s an app for that.

Well, not quite, but there will be a software package available in the near future.

Indigenous rights activist fought colonialism

After signing up to work in Africa with CUSO right out of university, Marie Smallface-Marule was primed to defend Indigenous rights on a global scale.

Only 22, the first woman from the Kainai Nation in southern Alberta to earn a post-secondary education – with a degree in anthropology and sociology – stepped into the unknown by volunteering in Zambia.

But once there, she was assaulted by 1960s apartheid and quickly absorbed how damaging the effects of colonization were on the people she was trying to help.

Not even two weeks after Perry Bellegarde was elected national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Ottawa passed Bill C-428, the Indian Act Amendment and Replacement Act, legislation strongly opposed by First Nations.

“The federal government is unnecessarily adversarial,” said Bellegarde. “They’ve moved beyond free, prior and informed consent. They don’t respect the duty to consult and accommodate. They pass legislation that impacts on our rights and this is just another example.”

Yet another court ruling has come down telling Ottawa it needs to consult with First Nations, but there’s a difference with the decision rendered by Justice Roger Hughes on Dec. 19.

In the Mikisew Cree Nation’s challenge of the federal government’s decision to push through Omnibus bills C-38 and C-45 in 2012, the court tells Ottawa when that consultation needs to take place.

Two weeks after a ruling that the class action lawsuit known as the ‘Sixties Scoop’ was allowed to proceed, the federal government filed a notice of appeal.

On Dec. 2, 2014, the Ontario Superior Court dismissed an appeal by the federal government to halt the class action lawsuit. On Dec. 17, the appeal of that decision was in play.

“The federal Crown has sought leave to appeal the decision of the Ontario Superior Divisional Court to the Court of Appeal of Ontario,” reported Jeffery Wilson, lawyer for the Sixties Scoop survivors.

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke has added one more law that challenges federal authority in its community.

“It’s a jurisdictional dispute. We are the elected council in the community … we have operated outside the scope of Indian Act. We have taken mandates from the community and developed in their own jurisdiction and territory so we’ve been creating laws … for many years,” said Chief Lloyd Phillips.

The Urbane Indian

I am a playwright, amongst a few other related professions.  More specifically, a First Nation playwright, a contemporary storyteller, a teller of tales both dark and amusing.

I, like many of my fellow literary artists, spend my career writing about the issues and problems faced by our present day Native population. For many, it’s a way of dealing with the trauma caused by what I call P.C.S.D (Post Contact Stress Disorder).

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is promising a scathing – and sweeping - report on the federal government and Canadian society.

“Our work of truth telling and truth collecting was not easy. We had challenges throughout,” said TRC Chair Justice Murray Sinclair, at the Special Chiefs Assembly in December in Winnipeg. He said he expected this to be the last time he addressed the Assembly of First Nations since the TRC’s mandate ends July 1, 2015.

Isolation. Seg. The Hole. The Cooler. Special Handling Unit (pronounced “shoe”).

There are many terms for the segregation cells for prisoners banned from mingling with their peers behind bars. But a new lawsuit is seeking to curb the “over-reliance” on solitary confinement in Canada, particularly in cases when no offence was committed to warrant isolation.