First Nations leaders could be meeting with federal ministers this winter.

“The meeting that we have been pursuing is a First Nations-Crown gathering whereby the First Nations, and particularly Cabinet, would sit and have a meeting with First Nations leaders from across the country,” said Assembly of First Nations Chief Shawn Atleo. “(The Prime Minister) has by letter expressed an openness to that and we’ve had further developments.” The meeting has been talked about for almost a year.

Indigenous people in North America are standing together in Ottawa and Washington to deliver the same message: Unchecked oil development is destroying Mother Earth.

“(The solidarity) just shows the cause for concern, the severity of these projects and how widespread these issues are. The implications for these types of projects are dire and they need to actually be addressed,” said Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Greenpeace spokesperson and member of the Lubicon Cree First Nation.

Aboriginal leaders in British Columbia are calling on the federal government to reform policies that allow the RCMP to investigate itself when allegations of misconduct against its members have been levelled.

The request comes amid a landslide of incidences that have shined a spotlight on strained relations between First Nations and the RCMP in Canada.

Tensions in B.C. are rising over the number of violent incidences between Aboriginal people and the RCMP. Aboriginal leaders are demanding reform.

“Shame, shame on you” seems to be the theme this month with a number of not-so-enlightened comments about Aboriginal people and lawlessness coming from non-Aboriginal “observers.”

When Air Canada announced it would no longer put up flight crews in a Winnipeg downtown hotel because of an increase in crime in the area, it blamed the safety situation on the influx of “1,000 displaced people from rural Manitoba.”

Aurel Dubé showed up for his interview with Windspeaker sporting a chest full of medals.
The veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces was born on the Kitigan Zibi First Nation reserve near Maniwaki, Que., but because his mother was an alcoholic, he and his brothers were put in foster homes when he was five.

He thinks that her drinking had something to do with her experiences in a residential school, though she only stayed less than a year when her father took her out.
“The priest used to beat her when she spoke Algonquin,” so Dubénever learned the language.

Erin Joseph Bear Robe has raised the bar on time-honoured First Nations cooking in his recently opened restaurant Keriwa Café located at 1690 Queen Street West in Toronto. And it has been a straight path of hard work from his Siksika reserve to becoming a high-end chef.

It was a part-time job in the River Café, an upscale Calgary restaurant, during his time at university that he discovered cooking as a future career. So it was back to school, this time at the Institute of Technology, where he enrolled in the school’s culinary program.

Bellstar and the Osoyoos Indian Band launched the third phase of the South Okanagan’s top rated destination resort—Spirit Ridge Vineyard Resort & Spa located in Osoyoos, BC—with $5 million in sales in the first weekend. The residences at Spirit Ridge is the first development at the resort designed specifically for year-round residential living. Construction is scheduled to start in early 2012 with initial possessions taking place in the late summer to early fall of 2012.

Simon Fraser University professor Rick Routledge and biologist Alexander Morton have reported that sockeye smolts from Rivers Inlet have tested positive for the European strain of Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA ) as identified by Dr. Fred Kibenge of the ISA reference laboratory at the Atlantic Veterinary College in P.E.I. Fish farm protesters said it’s time for the federal department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to take action.

The Tsilhqot’in Nation has called on the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and the federal government to reject the re-bid Prosperity mine project. “The company is on record admitting this new option is worse than the one that was rejected last year, and a ... review panel has already agreed with that assessment,” said Chief Joe Alphonse, chair of the Tsilhqot’in National Government, which represents six First Nations.

The Okanagan Nation is proceeding to court on this question: How did the province get the title and authority it claims to the forested land in the province in the absence of treaty? The answer to this question is urgently needed throughout the province, a press release from the nation states.