Re: They’re Stealing our children

After two years of hard work, 11 students have graduated from the Old Sun Community College in the school’s first ever Aboriginal Practical Nurse Diploma Program. The training was offered on the Siksika First Nation campus in partnership with Bow Valley College.
“Instructors from Bow Valley came and showed us how to utilize everything in there, to teach us better. From what we learned in there, once we were put in the hospital environment (for our practicums), we were very well prepared,” said graduate Valene Bearchief.

A new program that will build the artistic integrity and leadership skills of Aboriginal youth in Edmonton has been announced.

The OtiNikan Aboriginal Leadership Academy, to be operated by the Centre for Race and Culture, will put highly performing youth into  arts-oriented activities.
Christine Sokaymoh Frederick, a prominent Métis artist, is program coordinator for OtiNikan, which means “our future” in Cree.

They were nowhere near as big as organizers had hoped for.

Yet Allan Ross, the executive director of the Alberta Indigenous Games, said the plan is still to stage the multi-sports competition again next year and on an ongoing basis.

The inaugural AIG was held July 17-21, with venues in Edmonton, Leduc and the Enoch Cree Nation.

The games attracted about 400 athletes, a far cry from the 2,000 organizers had at one point anticipated.
Five sports were contested: golf, track and field, ball hockey, basketball and canoeing.

Following a marathon day of fastball action an Alberta-based team came up just a run shy of defending its national title.

The Red Nation Jets, however, did win some hardware, settling for second place in the women’s division at this year’s Canadian Native Fastball Championships.

The Jets, based out of the Alexis Nakota Sioux First Nation, were edged 5-4 by the Regina-club AMI Pride in the championship final.

Quinn Crawler has deep roots in the Stoney community and can speak of a time when there was unity on the nation. In the 1970s, tribal leadership was under Chief Sitting Winds, Frank Kaquitts, the first and only chief of all three Stoney bands and his 12 councillors. No distinction was made between the Bearspaw, Chiniki and Wesley bands that make up the Stoney Nakoda Nation.
 “You said you were Stoney,” said Crawler, a member of the newly formed Nakoda Wahtijabi (Youth) Advisory Council. The youth council also makes no distinction between the Bearspaw, Chiniki and Wesley bands.

A federal court judge’s decision to overrule David Bearspaw’s extension as chief is clear indication that Stoney tribal custom was not recognized, said Elder Bill McLean, 90, former Chief and the oldest man on the Stoney reserve.

McLean visited his grandson Bearspaw the morning after he was first elected and told him, “I know and have experience of how hard it is to become a leader. You need advisors to help.”

A committee of Elders was formed to advise the newly elected chief.

The Stardale Women’s Group Charity has resurrected an ancient art form of the West Coast Salish women giving it contemporary significance as a learning tool for young Aboriginal women.

A “tar sands group” has come forward with the money needed to pay court fees after the provincial and federal governments “added insult to injury,” said Ron Lameman, advisor for the Beaver Lake Cree Nation, and insisted that the First Nation ante up $5,000 to pay for a failed attempt to be represented in court in October by a law firm from the United Kingdom.

The return to power of Darcy Dixon to chief of the Bearspaw First Nation is one more change in a long line of controversy surrounding the Stoney Nakoda Nation.
In an election forced by a federal court judge, Dixon defeated incumbent David Bearspaw by a vote of 327 to 222 in an 80 per cent voters’ turnout at the polls Aug. 9. All four sitting councillors also lost.