The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers cancelled meetings with the Terrace City Council and the Terrace Chamber of Commerce, because the representatives the company had sent for the meetings wouldn’t be able to answer questions from people who had planned protests. “We have been focused most recently on LNG and the natural gas value chain. That’s what we were prepared to speak to today,” said Geoff Morrison, the BC Manager for CAPP.

RCMP Const. Andrew Curtis says an important historical mask was stolen from a shed in Alert Bay on Cormorant Island off the northern tip of Vancouver Island. The piece depicts the supernatural bird Huxhukw, and is one of three bird masks used by the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples during winter ceremonies. RCMP are concerned that the thief will attempt to sell the mask to a private collector or gallery and are urging anyone with information to contact them. It is a brightly painted piece with a beak five feet long.

Westbank First Nations will co-manage the new Black Mountain/Sntsk’il’ntYn Regional Park with the Regional District of Central Okanagan. The 1,260-acre park runs from Tower Ranch through to Highway 33. Sntsk’il’ntYn is a syilx/Okanagan word that means†“the place where arrowheads/flint rock is found”. The area was important to First Nations for gathering tools. It has four sensitive ecosystems, including species that are either endangered or threatened.

The Okanagan Nation Alliance and the Arrow Lakes Tribe of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville reservation in Washington took responsibility for the reburial of 10,000-year-old bones considered to be remains of an ancestor to the Sinixt people, considered extinct in Canada. First Nations gathered on the banks of the Kootenay River for the burial. The remains were found in February and sent by police to the coroner in Burnaby and then to the BC Archeological branch. The site of the reburial was blessed with sage and tobacco.

It was described as a historic meeting of First Nations leaders, the Premier of British Columbia, Christy Clark, and her Cabinet, who gathered Sept. 11 to “dialogue” on transforming the First Nations-Crown relationship.

The meeting was spurred on by the new legal landscape facing the province since the Supreme Court of Canada decision in the Tsilhqot’in case which recognized, for the first time in Canada, that Aboriginal Title exists beyond the reserve. It’s a game-changer, First Nations leaders believe, because much of British Columbia is unceded territory.

Sto:lo Community Futures (SCF), an Aboriginal non-profit organization in British Columbia, has set its sights on becoming the leading centre of Aboriginal business in British Columbia.

The organization has been around since the early 1990s, but this year launched a new five-year plan to a new board, said SCF spokesperson Francine Douglas, who is also the tourism co-ordinator for Sto:lo Tourism, one of the businesses in the territory.

David General is getting inducted into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

Again.

General, who lives in the Six Nations community of Ohsweken and has Oneida/Mohawk ancestry, was inducted into the hall via the team category back in 2008. He had served as a coach for the Six Nations Chiefs, who won three consecutive Mann Cup championships from 1994 to 1996. The Mann Cup is annually awarded to the Canadian senior men’s lacrosse champs.

Anybody that was a member of the Chiefs’ teams during any of those three years was inducted into the hall in 2008.

The Countess of Wessex, Sophie Rhys Jones, daughter-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II, has become a royal rock star in some First Nations communities across Canada. She charmed people in little remote communities on the West Coast of Canada and endeared herself completely to the people of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) in an isolated part of northern Ontario where she spent two days.

A First Nation has promised a court battle if B.C. approves plans to flood a swathe of its territories for the province’s long-sought-for 1,100-megawatt Site C hydroelectric dam.

West Moberly First Nation Chief Roland Willson announced the threat to apply for a judicial review in the province’s courts at a briefing on Sept. 9 in Vancouver, less than two months before a provincial decision is expected on granting a green-light to the project.