Just when it seems that things are going better between Indigenous Peoples and the government, news arrives showing that it isn’t so. Yes, there have been some funding increases, but not nearly enough to address acute inequalities, especially for housing. The Liberals have budgeted $2.7 billion for on-reserve housing, but that’s far short of the $40-60 billion that is necessary, according to the Assembly of First Nations.
I received my copy of No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy in the Defense of the Sacred by Klee Benally around the same time as the Oppenheimer-dominated Oscars ceremony. I learned about Benally a while ago through his activism against radioactive waste from nuclear bomb testing in Diné (Navajo) territory that still poisons his people and his land to this day.
The flock of geese, majestic and noisy, flew over the southern farms and started heading north. Then suddenly, they headed back south before flying north again. What is going on?
Extreme cold weather is part of life every winter on the James Bay coast. The cold was normal for my parents who were both born during a time when people didn’t have very much. My late father Marius Kataquapit was a trapper and hunter who learned to live and thrive on the land from the time he was a child.
For several months, my overworked dryer was cranking out a sloppy thumping sound. I wondered if I should get a new one or fix it myself. I decided to try repairing it, so I went on YouTube to find help. Sure enough, within minutes of browsing I came across a Canadian site that seemed to be trustworthy. It was quite informative, and I was able to deduce my needs by the thumping sounds alone and quickly ordered a repair kit. As its delivery by post took several weeks, I did some online studying.
Leonard Peltier is the longest imprisoned Indigenous person in the United States. Even after almost 47 years behind bars he is considered a political prisoner by Amnesty International, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Congress of American Indians, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Rev. Jesse Jackson, among many others who believe he should be immediately released.
We celebrate Valentine’s Day with wishes for those we are romantically interested in or in general for good greetings to family and friends. However, the history of this day that is celebrated on February 14 is very different.
Now that the world’s attention seems to be more focussed on global warming, let’s see how that theory works in the North. Here warmth is something that happens once or twice during the summer and not in the middle of winter like this year.
The expression, “when Hell freezes over,” means something will never happen. While this doesn’t apply to a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision, Hell must have gotten a little chilly.
It was good to see recent developments by northern Indigenous political leadership to deal with the epidemic of drug and alcohol abuse and the dire situation of suicide primarily by young Native people in northern Ontario. I know we are all fed up with watching so many of our family members and friends becoming helpless with addictions and the resulting violence in our Northern First Nations. We are also feeling helpless with so many of our people dealing with mental health issues.
