The Heiltsuk First Nation is demanding that the National Energy Board’s Northern Gateway pipeline joint review panel return to the coastal community and give them back the day-and-a-half lost in hearings last month.

Photo Caption: Cee Jai Julian (right), a former sex worker in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, addresses an April 10 press conference, with Battered Women’s Support Services worker Lisa Yellow-Quill.

A coalition of interested groups have rejected pleas to rejoin BC’s missing women inquiry, saying they will instead focus on a United Nations investigation and proposed royal commission into the circumstances surrounding Canada’s nearly 600 murdered or missing Aboriginal women.

The proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline’s environmental damage risks far outweigh the economic benefits for British Columbians.

Enbridge is an international company. It has offices in Canada, United States, Spain, Columbia, and Venezuela. In Canada, Enbridge is proposing to build a pipeline from the Alberta tar sands to the shipping port in Kitimaat, B.C.. This proposal has divided people in B.C.

The Urbane Indian

I look out my window and can’t help but notice that winter is beating a hasty retreat and spring is rapidly invading, spreading across the land like a canoe full of voyageurs and black robes.

The beginning of spring marks the start of some things and the end of others.  No more pushing cars or trucks stuck in snowdrifts – unfortunately the primary source of cardio in many First Nations communities.

 Maple sap is running already, meaning fresh maple syrup is already boiling in the pots.

The four-prong approach to fiscal management and economic development created in the First Nations Fiscal and Statistical Management Act of 2006 was reduced to three in the recent federal budget.

The 2012-2013 operating dollars for the First Nations Statistical Institute have been cut in half to $2.5 million. By April 1, 2013, there will be no funding available to the only First Nations-led and managed Crown corporation in Canada.

In the recently tabled federal budget, the government has committed to look more closely at private property ownership of reserve lands, claiming it is the only way First Nations can achieve their full economic development potential.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” said Robert Louie, chair of the First Nations Land Advisory Board and chief of Westbank First Nation.

“All of the work that we’re doing right now under First Nations Land Management accomplishes everything that needs to be accomplished, except we don’t transfer land to fee simple. We don’t want to and don’t have to.”

First Nations in Eastern Canada have won a court injunction against the federal government preventing a plan to impose on-reserve social assistance cuts.

Ottawa had planned to impose a welfare program that would harmonize First Nations social assistance with that of the rest of the eastern provinces beginning April 1.
But on March 30, Federal Court Judge Sandra Simpson issued an injunction, putting a temporary hold on planned cuts.

A major victory was won on April 18 when a federal court ruled that the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal failed to give a thorough airing to the issue of discrimination in federal funding to child welfare services on reserve. The court has ordered a new hearing on the issue. The tribunal had dismissed a case, filed by Cindy Blackstock of the First Nations and Family Caring Society and the Assembly of First Nations, on what many called a technicality.

The dunnvillechronicle.com reports that

The number of former residential school students claiming compensation through the Independent Assessment Process for physical, sexual and emotional abuse is forecast to be more than two times higher than originally predicted.

With an increase of applications expected from now until the deadline date of Sept. 19, it is believed that close to 30,000 former students will have submitted claims.
When the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) was signed in 2006, it was estimated that 12,500 students would be seeking compensation through the IAP.