Métis actor PJ Prudat delivers a brilliant performance in Café Daughter, a play by Cree playwright Kenneth T. Williams and directed by Yvette Nolan.

Café Daughter tells the story of Yvette Wong, a girl of mixed heritage growing up in Saskatchewan in the 1950s. Her father is Chinese and he runs a small town café. Her mother is Cree.
When Yvette is 10, her mother extracts a promise from her. She must never tell anyone she is Cree. Yvette holds this secret close to her heart along with a dream. She wants to be a doctor.

Aliya Howard was just six years old when she was first mesmerized by speed skating while watching the 2006 Winter Olympics on television.

At the time, her mother Melanie didn’t think too much of her daughter’s comments of how she’d like to take up the sport.
“Then, in the fall of that year when September came, we started looking for activities for her to do,” the elder Howard said of her daughter.

An advertisement in a Quebec-based newspaper that a speed skating club in Laval was seeking new participants caught her attention so she signed her daughter up.

A survey conducted of the Dene Nation in the Northwest Territories reveals that 90 per cent of respondents indicated that at some point they or their family have gone hungry. The survey was conducted from 2008 to 2010 and involved Aboriginal workers in 17 communities going door-to-door and speaking with people of all ages in their language.

Other highlights of the survey indicate that 60 per cent of Dene smoke; three quarters of the homes are smoke-free; alcohol and drug abuse top the list of concerns; and family values rate high.

Empathy, dignity, and respect: Creating cultural safety for Aboriginal people in urban health care, a report recently released by the Health Council of Canada, highlights some of the reasons many Aboriginal people do not seek care in mainstream health care settings and describes key practices that are working towards positive change. The report is based on a series of meetings held across Canada with health care providers, many of whom were First Nations, Inuit, or Métis.

An Aboriginal Patient Navigator and a Regional Aboriginal Cancer Lead offered by the Regional Cancer Care Northwest and Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre will help improve cancer care among First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities in Northwestern Ontario. The two services are identified in Cancer Care Ontario’s three-year Aboriginal Cancer Strategy II as vital components for helping Indigenous people access and make their way through the cancer system and to enhance their knowledge, awareness, and experience throughout their cancer journey.

The NunatuKavut Community Health Needs Assessment was recently unveiled by the NunatuKavut Community Council. The assessment provides a comprehensive and thorough review of the health of NunatuKavut residents on the south coast of Labrador. It identifies factors that influence health, determines gaps in health-related services and the appropriate ways to address them.

By Sam Laskaris

Boxer makes list
Ojibwe boxer Mary Spencer, who represented Canada at the 2012 London Olympics, has once again made a prestigious list.
Spencer was one of the 20 individuals or teams named to the Most Influential Women in Sport and Physical Activity List for 2012.

The list, which has been announced for the past 11 years, is annually published by the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity (CAAWS).

The need for a national Public Commission of Inquiry on Violence against Indigenous Women and Girls was one of eight issues raised with the Prime Minister when delegates from the Assembly of First Nations met with Stephen Harper on Jan. 11. In December, the AFN unanimously passed a resolution at the Special Chiefs Assembly calling for action if the government continues to refuse to move forward on the inquiry. The AFN is to coordinate political rallies on Parliament Hill and the offices of political representatives where First Nations leadership and families of victims would come together.

The future of Kapyong Barracks, a 160-acre property in Winnipeg that has sat empty since 2004, remains in limbo as the federal government takes steps to appeal a court ruling that ordered consultation with area First Nations over the development of the land. First Nations want to develop it for their own purposes, including the creation of an urban reserve with mixed housing and commercial space. The federal government has spent $15 million over the last eight years to maintain the 41 building on the site once home to the Princess Patricia Light Infantry Unit.

A small First Nation on  Vancouver Island has filed documents in federal court to stop the ratification of the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Act. Hupacasath band councillor Brenda Sayers said the federal government did not consult with First Nations despite the fact that Chinese investors would control resources and other assets on 232,000 hectares of unceded Aboriginal territory. Sayers said extraction of resources by foreign firms would strip negotiating powers for First Nations such as hers, which are involved in the treaty process.