Canada has signed a multi-million dollar land claim settlement with Tsuu T’ina First Nation in Alberta. Tsuu T’ina Nation will receive $20.8 million that will resolve three specific claims which relate to three separate transactions involving the Glenmore Reservoir in the 1930s in which the nation did not receive adequate compensation.

On the 23rd anniversary of the Oka Crisis, people gathered at Oka Park, the traditional territory of the Kanehsatà:ke, to mark what organizers say is the start of a new battle against unauthorized development on Mohawk land. “We have neglected this part of our territory, thinking that what the white man calls a reservation is where we’re entitled to live,” said Ellen Gabriel, a member of the Kanien’kehà:ka nation and former leadership contender for the Assembly of First Nations.

Chief Marcia Brown-Martel of the Beaverhouse First Nation and Robert Commanda were back in court in July to push for a class action lawsuit that will examine the Sixties Scoop and the loss of cultural identity to Native children that were removed from their homes between 1965 and 1985. About 16,000 Aboriginal children in Ontario were apprehended and placed in non-Native care during this time, it is estimated.

The train accident in Lac-Mégantic, Que. is a wake-up call, said Chief Roy Michano. All Canadians need to ask what is being hauled through their communities, said the leader of the Ojibways of Pic River. “How many cities across the country could this happen to,” asked Michano, who said he tried to get information from Canadian Pacific Railway after a recent oil spill near White River, but the company was reluctant to provide the information. “Canadians, in general, [need to] get a clarification... as to what they’re bringing across the country.”

A plan to raise a memorial pole in Crab Park in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside will move ahead. The monument, first proposed in 1997, will honor the victims of serial killer Robert Pickton. The vote for the pole project was unanimous at a Park board meeting in June. The public consultation process began after the Klahoose First Nation applied to donate a red cedar, which will be harvested from their lands and carved over the coming year.

The Council of Yukon First Nations has declared their traditional territory to be ‘frack free,’ opposed to all hydraulic fracturing as a method in oil and gas exploration and extraction. The resolution was brought during the council’s annual meeting and passed unanimously. The group now calls for the Yukon government to oppose fracking. Environmental protection is a core value of the Yukon Nations, said Grand Chief Ruth Massie said. “I pledge to continue to protect our inherent rights, our land, our water, our environment as our ancestors would have wanted,” she said.

A former Conservative cabinet minister told delegates to the Assembly of First Nations assembly in Whitehorse that there are “incredible opportunities” in the energy and natural resource sectors and First Nations should negotiate to become a part of them before they get left behind. Jim Prentice, a former Aboriginal Affairs minister in the Stephen Harper government, told the gathering these are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, but they won’t be around forever.

National Chief Shawn A-In-Chut Atleo continues to face challengers and dissension in the ranks a full year after his election win in Toronto that gave him a second term as head of the Assembly of First Nations. The chiefs are meeting again this summer, this time in Whitehorse, Yukon, and it was there that Atleo delivered a message of unity on July 15. “Our goal, our strategy is to find the ways to empower and support one another as First Nations… We are often united in opposition—we reject top-down approaches and one-size-fits-all attitudes.

Rank Comix for August 2013

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By Adam Martin

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever written” said Ian Mosby, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at the University of Guelph, about his article “Administering Colonial Science”, published in May and revealed to the wider world in a recent Canadian Press report.