The Tahltan Central Council is celebrating Fortune Minerals’ decision to halt mineral exploration activities in the Klappan. Fortune made the announcement Sept 23 that it will halt drilling and has suspended all activity at its Arctos Anthracite coal project. Tahltan Elders, leaders and community members have focused their efforts in recent weeks to persuade Fortune to leave the area. “Today we are celebrating the strength and unity of our people,” said Tahltan Central Council President Annita McPhee.

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The map of Canadian First Nations pre-European contact has only been hanging on Allan Yerxa’s office wall for a few days, but already the response has been “wow.”

Willy made him famous, but Lear made him proud

Mohawk actor August Schellenberg stole the scene in big screen productions like Black Robe and The New World with his powerful presence. Yet he insisted that everyone call him “Augie.”

“Even when I was directing him, it took a lot of self-control not to call him “Mr. Schellenberg,” said Mark Leiren-Young, who almost cut the part he’d written for Schellenberg in his environmental drama The Green Chain when he dropped out during shooting.

Art historian, scholar, writer and curator Steve Loft doesn’t mince words when he talks about the need for an art exhibition like Ghost Dance.

Ghost Dance: Activism. Resistance. Art. is currently on show at Toronto’s Ryerson University Image Centre.

“This is a colonial institution,” he said of Ryerson in his introduction to Ghost Dance, “…and one that kept Indigenous people out for a long time. It was a process of elimination, of erasure of Aboriginal people. We have to remember that history. We have to acknowledge that history. And we have to fight that history.”

FNHA takes over delivery of health services in BC

Conference to focus on physical activity

Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. will be the site of the second annual National Aboriginal Physical Activity Conference this winter. The event, which will run from Feb. 19 to Feb. 22, is staged to promote physical activity in Aboriginal communities across the countries.

Cody Jamieson has won yet another prestigious lacrosse championship.

The 26-year-old Mohawk was one of the main reasons Ontario’s Six Nations Chiefs captured the Mann Cup, the Canadian senior lacrosse championship.

The Chiefs defeated the host Victoria Shamrocks 4-2 in the best-of-seven national championship series.

Six Nations capped off the series with an 8-5 victory in Game 6, held on Sept. 13.

All of the matches in the national final were staged in Victoria as the event rotates each year between Ontario and British Columbia.

Adrian Sutherland is doing his best to create a positive news story for his northern Ontario community.

Sutherland, a 36-year-old Cree musician, is from Attawapiskat, a First Nation that has made its share of headlines for its housing, infrastructure and water problems. Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence also had a well-publicized hunger strike, which fuelled the Idle No More movement last winter.

For King and Kanata:
Canadian Indians and the First World War
By Timothy C. Winegard
Published By University of Manitoba Press
Pages: 224
Reviewed by Christine Smith

In “King and Kanata: Canadian Indians and the First World War” author Timothy C. Winegard takes a comprehensive look at the history of First Nations people and their experience on the battlefield and home front during this time of war.

World-renowned Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin has done it again. Hi-Ho Mistahey! is the forty-second documentary she’s made and the film premiered at the 38th annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

Obomsawin has been with the National Film Board for 45 years and has made 42 films, almost one film a year. Obomsawin, a very young looking 81-year-old with the vibrant energy of someone half her age, the filmmaker shows no sign of slowing down and, in fact, has four projects in the works. Added to this is a book she’s planning about her life and her work.