Artist—Ali Fontaine
Song—He's Bout To Lose
Album—Diamond in the Rough
Year—2012

Windspeaker: What one quality do you most value in a friend?
Kevin Eshkawkogan: Truthfulness. If someone really cares about you, they’ll tell you the truth about a situation; sometimes even if you didn’t ask for it.

Patrick Madahbee wants to make it clear to the United Nations Special Rapporteur that what the Canadian government is saying abroad is not what Indigenous people are living at home.

After about a dozen years of jumping through bureaucratic red tape, it has finally arrived: Concordia University in Montreal is now offering Quebec’s first-time ever First Peoples Studies Program.

The program is a 42-credit major under the Faculty of Arts and Science within the School of Community and Public Affairs. The program focuses on the three prominent First Peoples in Canada, and specifically the Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk).

Short-listed this year for one of the most esteemed awards of music in Canada, the $30,000 Polaris Prize, A Tribe Called Red is now embarking on an ambitious collaboration with other Indigenous artists across the continent.

As the Idle No More movement organizes nation-wide rallies to mark the 250th anniversary of the British Royal Proclamation as a “racist historical framework,” the Land Claims Agreement Coalition will host a symposium looking at that same document as “a very useful starting point for all of our negotiations.”

Edward Dennis vividly remembers the northern winter day that four of his fellow students attempted to escape the abuse and starvation of Lejac Indian Residential School in Fraser Lake, B.C. Only one of his classmates survived.

“They were running away from Lejac,” he said. “One of them turned around at Piper’s Glen. He could hear (the other) three fall through the ice.”

Standing on the shore of Vancouver’s False Creek on Sept. 17, Dennis watched quietly as dozens of ocean-going Salish canoes assembled in the waters, greeted by traditional songs and drumming.

Two agreements negotiated over a 20-year period have moved the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation into a position of self-governance. The First Nation is the first on the prairies to achieve this status.

“To me, it’s obviously about getting out from the Indian Act. It allows us now… to focus on the priorities set by the community,” said Chief Vincent Tacan.

Other First Nations have opted out of portions of the Indian Act, but into other federal legislation. These agreements allow Sioux Valley Dakota Nation, a non-treaty First Nation, to establish its own laws.

WOLF SONGS & FIRE CHATS

I’ve spent the bulk of my lifetime engaged in the process of learning. When life circumstances forced me to leave school at 16, I became very serious about remaining open to new discoveries.

For the longest time, books were my university. I’ve also benefited immensely from the presence of amazing and powerful teachers who gave me spiritual, cultural and philosophical knowledge.

THE URBANE INDIAN

Let me share with you several tales of trans-cultural gifts.
In my journeys to far off lands, I have given and received many gifts. Sometimes I have proudly given one or two of my books as gifts. Occasionally it would be a unique Native themed t-shirt somebody took a fancy to, or something as unique as wild rice I had specifically brought for just such a situation.