The trial of three members of an outspoken First Nations protest group is a case about “suppression of Indigenous voices” and “over-policing” of Canada’s First Nations people, a judge has been told.
Nicole Manuel, Chantel Manuel and Isha Jules, members of the Tiny House Warriors, are facing charges of mischief, causing a disturbance and assault stemming from an altercation with security and police outside a December 2018 meeting about the ongoing Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.
The proposed Bill C-15, which harmonizes the United Nations Declarations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into Canadian law, has been trumpeted by the Liberal government as a significant step forward on the path to reconciliation, one developed in consultation with First Nations, Inuit and Metis leaders.
McMaster and Brock U study shows online voting could boost democracy in some Indigenous communities.
Curve Lake First Nation, a forested community in southern Canada, is surrounded on three sides by fresh water.
But for decades, residents have been unable to safely make use of it. Wary of crumbling infrastructure and waterborne illness, the community instead relies on shipments of bottled water. The community’s newly elected chief, aged 34, has lived her whole life without the guarantee of clean water flowing from the tap.
“The emotional and spiritual damage of not having clean water, having to look at all of the water surrounding us on a daily basis and unable to use it, is almost unquantifiable,” said Chief Emily Whetung.
If the legislation passes, the Canadian government will be required to obtain “free, prior and informed consent” from First Nations groups before “the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources” in accordance with the UN directive.
OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada says an American Indigenous man has a constitutionally protected right to hunt in British Columbia given his people’s historic ties to the region.
The decision today comes in the case of Richard Lee Desautel, a U.S. citizen who was charged with hunting without a licence after shooting an elk near Castlegar, B.C.
Proposed legislation would ensure Indigenous rights are respected but concerns about consent clause remain.
Two chiefs of a First Nation in western Canada have told anti-old growth logging protesters camped out on their traditional lands to pack up and go home.
Operating under the banner of the Rainforest Flying Squad, a group of predominantly non-Indigenous activists have been blocking logging roads across a swath of southern Vancouver Island and calling for an immediate halt to old-growth logging since last August.
But in a letter released Monday, the Pacheedaht hereditary chief Frank Queesto Jones and chief councillor Jeff Jones say the nation has grown worried about the “increasing polarization” over forestry activities and the anti-old growth logging movement.
The designation – a first in Canada – aims to give the Indigenous community an added tool to defend the river, known as Muteshekau Shipu in the Innu language, from potential environmental harms.
Hundreds of Indigenous patients in B.C. have been using a new online tool to anonymously report the racism they’ve experienced within the health-care system. The initial demand for the tool has been so high that creators are aiming to expand the platform across the country next year.
Anne Kang, B.C.’s minister of advanced education and skills training, says the new bachelor’s degree of Nsyilxcn language fluency will boost the number of speakers at a time when Indigenous languages in B.C. are endangered.
She says the degree is the first of its kind in the province and will be offered by UBC Okanagan in partnership with the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology in Merritt and the En’owkin Centre in Penticton.
The policy debate surrounding Native people absolutely must be taken away from the victim industry and radically reformulated
Canada must cease to humble itself in sackcloth and ashes and confess to having spent its entire history trying to exterminate its Aboriginal peoples — culturally and intermittently physically, as well. This is essentially the chief and almost wholly false contention of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (TRC) 2015 report on the Indian residential schools (IRS) and related matters. One more time, I offer, like the late night television advertisement health warning that a powerful laxative may lead to suicidal thoughts or abrupt heart failure, my profound respect for Aboriginal people, my acknowledgement that they have many grievances, that Canadian government policy as it pertains to them has largely failed and my recognition that there is a great deal of interesting research contained within the TRC report.
Vancouver arts curator’s Indigenous ancestry claims panned as ‘pretendian’
Recent revelations that a Vancouver arts curator’s claims to Indigenous identity may be fraudulent adds to growing concerns about race-shifting in the arts and academic communities, where false claims of Indigenous identity can reap rewards and leave real Indigenous community members out in the cold.
Cheyanne Turions, a curator at SFU galleries, was outed as a “pretendian” last week after @nomoreredface published a Twitter thread that included screenshots of grants that Turions received from the Canada Council that were intended for Aboriginal curators, and worth $73,000, and another for $30,000 from the Ontario Arts Council.
This is the most pale-faced Indian ever. Her “apology” leaves me without pity
“I remain committed to pushing the work of dismantling supremacies within an ongoing settler colonial project further and making this work more precise. In part, this means figuring out how to work in a way that doesn’t detract from the urgent labour of Indigenous self-determination, and to figure out how I might use the privileges I am afforded in service of these decolonized futures.”
Why is it primarily Crazy Lefty white woman pulling this crap?
Check out the @nomoreredface twitter account.
It is shocking and dangerous that the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, published in 2015, has been so widely accepted as a full accounting of Native grievances and the basis for policy changes and reparations to accommodate those grievances. Almost the only serious critical analysis that has been given to this massive report is the excellent and very readable book, “From Truth Comes Reconciliation,” which was edited by Rodney Clifton and Mark Dewolf, and published by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Every Canadian concerned with Canada’s relationship with its Aboriginal peoples, which forms the basis for the rampant but fraudulent truism that this country is rotten with ”systemic racism,” should read this book. There is general agreement, as there should be, that Aboriginal people have legitimate grievances, that the country’s policy in regard to them has been unsuccessful and that this is a serious policy challenge where we simply have to do better. Justice Murray Sinclair, who chaired the commission, promised to “provide Canadians with a permanent record that weaves all experiences, all perspectives into the fabric of truth.” He and his fellow commissioners, Chief Wilton Littlechild and Marie Wilson, fell grievously short of delivering on that promise.
On February 19, Official Languages Minister Mélanie Joly presented her working paper on the modernization of the Official Languages Act (OLA). Breaking from Liberal tradition, which always placed French and English on a scrupulously equal footing, the document recognizes the vulnerability of the French language in Canada. It vows to implement “substantive equality” between the two official languages, while also calling for a further integration of protections for Indigenous languages.
