CEMA to continue operating September 25, 2015.

A recent comment from Conservative Party leader, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, about Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde’s supposed flip-flop over the First Nations Control of First Nations Education Act, highlights the need for a strong strategy, post-election, if the Conservatives do manage to retain power.

Over a year after Colton James Crowshoe’s body was found floating in the retention pond off Stoney Trail in Calgary, city police have yet to lay charges in the homicide. On Sept. 14, Calgary Police Service and the Calgary Fire Department aquatics team returned to the pond to search for additional evidence. Crowshoe, 18, was located in the pond on July 24, 2014, after a passerby called 911 reporting a body in the water. Crowshoe had been reported missing after being last seen by friends in the Abbeydale area of northeast Calgary, sometime between 2:30 a.m. and 4 a.m., on July 4, 2014.

A body of a woman found by a fisherman along the shore of the Oldman River Reservoir at the Windy Point campground on Sept. 13 has been identified as Victoria Joanne Crow Shoe, 43. Crow Shoe, a resident of Lethbridge, was reported missing to Lethbridge Regional Police Service on Sept.15. She was last seen by her family on Aug. 26. An autopsy confirmed her identity and her next-of-kin was notified by the RCMP. The RCMP is seeking help from the public in the investigation into her whereabouts from Aug. 26 to Sept. 13.

Six ridings will offer voters Indigenous candidates to choose from. The only riding with two Aboriginal candidates on the ballot is the northern riding of Lakeland where NDP candidate Duane Zaraska will face off against Liberal candidate Garry Parenteau. Both men are Métis and active in local Métis politics. Parenteau is the only Indigenous candidate the Liberals are running in Alberta.

In a live concert with film, Polaris prize-winning Tanya Tagaq fuses her voice with other musical talents to create a mesmerizing and original soundscape for the controversial 1922 silent film Nanook of the North in order to portray Inuit culture in a contemporary new light. Tagaq’s powerful throat singing combines with violinist Jesse Zubot, percussionist Jean Martin, and composer Derek Charke’s original score. The production takes place Oct. 9 and 10 at the Margaret Greenham Theatre at the Banff Centre. 

For the past six years, Chief Wilton Littlechild has crossed the country from coast-to-coast-to-coast listening to residential school survivors and their descendants. The result of those hearings, both private and public, was 94 calls to action released by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as its final act in early June.

Three months after the conclusion of the TRC, the words of survivors stay with Littlechild.

September 22, 2015.  Métis settlements, municipalities, municipal districts, counties, and registered non-profit societies in Alberta are eligible to apply for FireSmart grants to a maximum of $100,000 per community, according to Alberta Agriculture and Forestry. The funding can be used to support fire preparedness planning, public education, and on-the-ground fire mitigation projects, like creating buffers between buildings and forest vegetation. Over the past 10 years, the FireSmart Community Program has provided approximately $5.8 million to 129 different communities in Alberta.