Welcome to AMMSA.COM, the news archive website for our family of Indigenous news publications.

Hard choices on election day

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Many of you don't vote in Canadian elections because it would violate the ideas expressed in the Iroquoian Two Row Wampum - they stay in their boat and we'll stay in ours.

But many of you do vote, and we know the question of who forms the next government will matter a lot.

Considering the mess that would result from the election of a Canadian Alliance government, we wish we could be the second media outlet to declare the Liberals elected. CBC's This Hour has 22 Minutes beat us to the punch on that one a few days after the election was called.

Olympics showcase Aborigine gripes

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In a country governed by a party that actually tabled a law empowering authorities to shoot protesters who might mar the Sydney Olympics, Australia's Aborigine leaders are hoping to make the world take a close look at the tragic history of Australia and the suffering experienced by Indigenous people in the time since the colonizers arrived.

At the same time, the country's approximately 400,000 Aborigine people don't want to put too much of a damper on "Cathy's games."

Canadian media hits snooze

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Human rights activists are saying that, once again, the national press missed an opportunity to take a close look at a problem that is national in scope and of fundamental importance to the way Canadians see themselves.

Rick Dedam handed it to the CBC on a silver platter and the CBC dropped it. Nobody else picked it up.

First Nations can't meet Corbiere decision deadline

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The Assembly of First Nations is saying its members can't meet the Supreme Court of Canada's Nov. 20 deadline to accommodate off-reserve residents in band elections.

Canada's court of last resort struck down a section of the Indian Act in the Corbiere case last year. The court delayed the date when the decision would take effect for 18 months in order to give the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs and First Nations' councils time to come up with a non-discriminatory means of including off-reserve members in band politics.

Anger mounts

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Mi'kmaq lobster fishers are finding themselves in hot water for doing the same thing that the Supreme Court of Canada acquitted Donald Marshall, Jr. of doing a year ago.

From sea to shining sea

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It was high noon on a busy Friday when a couple of hundred Aboriginal people took to the streets and marched from the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre to Harbour Centre, the building where the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has their Pacific regional headquarters. The march was to show support of the Mi'kmaq Indians at Burnt Church, N.B. for exercising their treaty right to a commercial fishery, under seige by the DFO and the Canadian government.

Nobody should die for patronage

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While Waneek Horn-Miller, someone who has her own memories of the 1990 Oka confrontation, was fighting the Olympic battle in the pool in Sydney, armed forces were preparing for another Oka-style confrontation in the Burnt Church First Nation, N.B.

And here we are, all hoping against hope there won't be another Dudley George or Marcel Lemay.