The Coastal First Nations unequivocally supports the
NDP’s plan in British Columbia to establish a “made in BC” Northern Gateway Project review process, said executive director Art Sterritt. “First Nations and all British Columbians have been waiting for the Liberal government to provide leadership on this issue and they have steadfastly failed at every turn,” he said.
   
NDP leader Adrian Dix promised that if he is elected premier next May, an NDP government would withdraw from the current environmental assessment of the project and set up an independent review.

Since the 1970's, pollution in Cowichan Bay on Vancouver
Island has caused a ban on the shellfish harvest. But with efforts from government agencies, forest companies, conservation groups and First Nations like the Cowichan Tribes, a shellfish harvest could be a reality by 2020. “Those clams are the canary in the coal mine,” said Chief Harvey Alphonse.

A Gitxsan land claims negotiator is in favour of the plan by media mogul David Black to build a refinery in Kitimat for the crude that Enbridge plans to pipe from the Alberta tar sands. This would mean that refined products like gas, diesel and kerosene would be exported on supertankers along BC’s coast, instead of the raw bitumen that is at the heart of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline proposal. Elmer Derrick believes the jobs that would come with the refinery, should it be built, would reduce significantly First Nations unemployment.
  

A legal showdown over open-net fish farming in B.C. is looming with Kwicksutaineuk/Ah-Kwa-Mish First Nation (KAFN) announcing it will fight for its right to launch a class action lawsuit at the Supreme Court of Canada.
After B.C.’s Court of Appeal ruled on May 3 that Indian Act Bands are forbidden from launching class-action proceedings on behalf of “Aboriginal collectives”– siding with the government – the case has major implications for Aboriginal people.

This October in Erfurt, Germany, judges from around the world will see what Aboriginal cuisine looks like. Four years from now, they will taste it.

The 2012 World Culinary Olympics is the second step in a three-step, 10-year plan formulated by Chef Ben Genaille to bring Aboriginal cuisine to the fore.

The journey began in 2007 when Genaille’s five-member Aboriginal culinary team began training with the Canadian National Team.

Joan Jack is confident that another class action launched in federal court will only strengthen the position of day scholars and day school students as they seek recognition and compensation for the abuse they suffered in federally-funded schools.

Jack’s law firm has been acting on behalf of day scholars and day school students since filing the McLean Day School Class Action in federal court in Winnipeg in 2009.

As far as Mary Spencer is concerned, time flies quickly, so the 27-year-old Ojibwe boxer who lives in Windsor, Ont. does not mind having to wait another four years for another shot at Olympic glory.

Spencer had originally hoped to be a retired boxer by now. But things didn’t go quite as planned for her at the recent London Olympics.

When the federal Police Officers Recruitment Fund concludes, that loss of funding will have an immediate and obvious impact on policing in Treaty 3.

“That’s 10 per cent of our (police) service basically,” said Treaty 3 Police Chief Conrad DeLaronde.

In 2008, the federal government allocated $400 million for a five-year period through the Police Officers Recruitment Fund. That money was transferred into trust funds for the provinces and territories to use.

Rank Comix

by Adam Martin

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The Montreal Gazette reports that the only time an Aboriginal issue was raised during the recent Quebec election, it infuriated the First Nation and Inuit communities in province. PQ leader Pauline Marois said her party would make it mandatory for political candidates to pass a French exam in order to run for public office, and that would include Aboriginals, because “the common language here is French.” Not so, said Ghislain Picard, grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador. “The language of Quebec isn’t just French.