Statistics Canada is readying the new 2011 Census which will be distributed to all communities across the country to collect information about the people who live in Canada.

The federal organization has sent out information to Aboriginal communities to promote full participation and increase accuracy in data collected in the Census short-form questionnaire this May.

After some doubt, there will be a National Aboriginal Hockey Championship (NAHC) this year after all, but the tournament will not be as big as in previous years.
For a while it appeared there would be no national championship in 2011. That’s because no suitable group had offered to host the tournament, which traditionally attracts about 10 female and 10 male squads from across the country.

Since no group had submitted a bid to host the 2011 tourney, the Aboriginal Sports Circle (ASC) extended the bid deadline in December. But even that did not bring any hosting offers.

It’s official. We got rights. That’s good to know, considering for three years Canada and a number of rather significant other countries thought Indigenous people didn’t deserve them (of course I’m paraphrasing). But on Dec. 16, 2010, President Obama announced that the United States will sign the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It was one of the last countries to do so.

Reconciliation is a major concern for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, according to chair Murray Sinclair.

“So long as this settlement agreement is being implemented in the way that it’s being implemented, reconciliation is going to be very difficult for us,” Sinclair told a group of chiefs, day scholars and residential school survivors on Dec. 13, 2010.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has taken critical steps to ensure that northern survivors of Indian residential schools are given every chance to tell their stories in a setting that is comfortable for them.
Not only is the next national event planned for Inuvik, but the TRC will be visiting 19 northern communities prior to the event, which will be held June 28 to July 1.
The announcement was made on Jan. 12, the same day the TRC’s Yellowknife office was officially opened.

The Cree Nation now has its own embassy in the heart of historic Québec City.

“We are working with the government of Quebec on various projects and we felt it was necessary that we establish an office here,” said Matthew Coon Come of Mistissini, Grand Chief of the Grand Council of Crees (Eeyou Istchee) since 2009.

Coon Come is now in his fifth mandate as leader of the Grand Council, and is a former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

An unexpected category of abusers is resulting in the continued re-victimization of former residential school students.

“The issue of student-on-student abuse was one, I’m fairly certain with discussion with the parties to the settlement agreement, that was not on the minds of the negotiators of the settlement when the agreement was reached,” said Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Money available for residential school commemoration projects cannot be used to replace lost funding from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation,” said Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
While there may have been some similar commemorative events that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation funded as part of what they were doing, Sinclair said commemoration money is “not intended to be a source of core funding for organizations. It’s intended to be a way in which survivor communities can put together a commemoration project.”

THE CANADIAN FORCES WILL

THE LAKE OF THE WOODS ENTERPRISE