Canada's Aboriginal peoples have long been known to be the watchdogs of Canada's environment and its inhabitants. To assist the Aboriginal peoples to do just that, one program is putting out a call for proposals.
With the New Year looming ever closer, so too are the deadlines for Aboriginal Funds For Species At Risk (AFSAR), a program designed to help preserve Canada's endangered species.

In the ongoing efforts to strengthen Canadian Aboriginal people's education, the Canadian Education Association (CEA) has associated with Dr. Shauneen Pete, the vice-president of First Nations University of Canada.
The CEA was founded in 1891 and its mandate is to put forth optimal education practices through a process of research and dialogue with many levels of knowledgeable intellectuals.

As the coordinator for the Brighter Futures Program, Bob Vibert would like to see change in Liidliil Kue First Nation, but said that he needs input from the community.
"I wanted to help the community. I'd like to see more healing taking place, more gatherings, that sort of thing with people wanting to come together. I would like to generate a lot of healing initiatives," said Vibert. "But I would like more input from the community about what they want to see."

After years of complaints and pleas to correct the inequities in the child welfare system, the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) will be reviewing the situation. Perhaps more important, the CHRC may impose corrections that the government failed to see through.

New plaques commemorating a 600 year-old Aboriginal village site were recently unveiled before a group of eager Ontario secondary school students.
Students packed into the library where a special ceremony was held at Scarborough's Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School on Nov. 14 to recognize an ancestral Huron-Wendat village that was unearthed during a 2001 archeological dig. The school is adjacent to the site of the former community. This is the first time in the Greater Toronto Area that one of these villages has been commemorated in this fashion with Huron-Wendat participation.

A wink and a wave from Pope Benedict XVI was all that members of Indian Brook First Nation (Nova Scotia) needed to make their trip to Rome in October worthwhile.
Forty-eight people made the 10-day trip. The group included 14 survivors from Shubenacadie Indian Residential School and half a dozen day school survivors.
There were also elders, family members of school survivors, and first generation descendants of school survivors (ranging in age from 15 to 50 years old), support staff and two priests.

Canada's Native population lives in lucky times. Today's film and television glows with fairly accurate Aboriginal representation. Some days it's like you can't turn on the television without seeing Gordon Tootoosis, Adam Beach, Tantoo Cardinal, Graham Greene or Gary Farmer staring back at you.
Not that many decades ago, almost all the Indian faces on screen were not in fact Indigenous people... at least not to this country. They were... colour-enhanced.

The United States made history on Nov. 4 when its citizens elected Barack Obama, an African-American, as their president.
He did it for his Democratic Party in convincing fashion as well, winning the popular vote handily, and the Electoral with more than 360 votes compared to Republican John McCain's 170-plus.

On Nov. 13, the Premier of British Columbia danced with the children of Tla-o-qui-aht in celebration of a new kind of treaty agreement their leadership had negotiated with the province.
Gordon Campbell was wrapped in a black shawl bordered with the small, painted hand-prints of the young people before he signed what is being hailed as the first-ever incremental treaty (ITA).

In 1929, with a decision in the landmark "Persons Case," women became legally recognized as "persons" under Canadian law.
Nearly 80 years later, Beverley Jacobs is still fighting to ensure that Aboriginal women receive that same level of respect.
On Nov. 7, Jacobs, president of the Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC), received one of the country's highest honours, the Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case. The award is presented annually to five people who have made a significant contribution to the advancement of Canadian women.