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Dear Editor:

I am writing this in response to the recent negative coverage of the Native Youth Movement in some local news reports. I feel it is time that the people of Penticton realize that wrong was done to the Native people 125 years ago and it still has a fierce effect on the Native people of today.

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Dear Editor:

Re: Lebret Junior Hockey, sports section, November 1999 issue.

I wish to offer a statement of correction in regards to the past history of the Saskatoon Rage as it relates to the Beardy's & Okemasis First Nation. In your story, you state that the Beardy's & Okemasis First Nation purchased the former Minot Top Guns in 1997. This is not the case. The franchise was purchased by a group of investors of which a few were members of the Beardy's & Okemasis First Nation.

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Dear Editor:

Re: Native Suicide

Recently, Canadian media widely reported the suicide death of a 15-year-old Inuit male. Media reported the desolate social conditions experienced by Inuit teenagers and of the psychologically-constrained environment the Inuit are forced to live within.

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I was watching one of our big chiefs on TV a few weeks ago face off against a young Native "radical." The chief was smugly dismissive in defending his own mature, patient and co-operative approach to resolving our problems. He was using words like "negotiation," "accommodation," "reconciliation" and "compromise." It saddened me that the chief has forgotten what we are fighting for. I offer this to all the Indian bureaucrats who are satisfied.

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So 1999 and the 20th century come to a close.

We could be negative and say, "Good riddance!" This century has been marked by some of the most horrific events in the history of mankind. A non-Native reader would think, upon reading those words, of the two World Wars, the Nazi holocaust and events of that type. Of course, the North American Indigenous holocaust was in previous centuries, although some would say it hasn't ended yet.

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On Nov. 7, the Coalition for a Public Inquiry into Ipperwash joined forces with representatives from First Nations and Canadian Human Rights organizations in Ontario, Manitoba, Quebec and the United States to honor those who have sacrificed their lives for Aboriginal people's land, treaty, economic, social and cultural rights.

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Justice Minister Anne McLellan released a report on Oct. 12 that concludes Canadian authorities followed proper procedure in the extradition of Leonard Peltier.

Peltier, an American Indian Movement member who was charged in the 1976 shooting of two FBI agents on the reservation at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, fled to Canada to escape prosecution. It has long been believed American authorities fabricated testimony to extradite Peltier to the U.S. He is currently fulfilling a life sentence for the crime.

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Finance Minister Paul Martin won't give his much-anticipated budget speech until February but the political maneuvering has already begun in every corner of Ottawa and around the country.

In the budget, Martin is expected to announce details of how the Liberal government plans to distribute a $100 billion fiscal surplus. Staff members in every ministry and every interest group in the nation's capital are scrambling to put their pet projects front and centre as the finance minister makes his final decisions.

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The victor will never be asked if he told the truth - Adolph Hitler.

Alarming examples of racial hatred are smoldering in various corners of the North American continent at this moment, ignited by fear, ignorance and more than a bit of resentment of gains being realized by Native people.

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While the British Columbia Liberal Party and the federal Reform Party rage impotently against the imminent ratification of the Nisga'a Final Agreement in the House of Commons, chiefs of a people directly affected by the terms of the agreement have abandoned the political process and are preparing for the worst.