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Aboriginal and Inuit Non-Mining Issues

NAN committed to Ring of Fire, says Grand Chief Yesno – by Carl Clutchey (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – June 19, 2015)

Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

That was then, this is now. Officials with Nishnawbe Ask Nation says mining and other developments in the Ontario’s far North won’t take place unless First Nations are the decision-makers at the forefront of that development.

“The days are long gone when industry or government can exploit our land and the resources it contains,” NAN Grand Chief Harvey Yesno declared in an address to the Ontario Mining Forum held in Thunder Bay on Wednesday.

As proof that NAN is determined to lead in the Ring of Fire development in the lower James Bay area, Yesno said the identification of key transportation corridors will be based on First Nation knowledge of local topography, sacred sites, cultural heritage and environment and resource development activities.

“This new approach will provide certainty for First Nations and the business community,” said Yesno. The lone main mining player in the Ring of Fire is Toronto-based Noront Resources. Noront is calling for an east-west transportation corridor that would link Pickle Lake to the main mining site, which is about 550 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay.

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Ring of Fire development takes time, says Wynne – by Brent Linton (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – June 16, 2015)

Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

It was clear that Ontario’s premier had on her mind the slow-moving development of the Ring of Fire and the contentious sale of Hydro One during her visit to Thunder Bay on Monday.

Kathleen Wynne brought up the ownership of the massive electrical utility during a speech she gave in the city. “By broadening the ownership of Hydro One, we are able to make the infrastructure investments that communities across the North need to thrive,” she said.

“We are ensuring that the regulation that is in place now remains in place in terms of the setting of rates, in terms of the building of transmission, in terms of services across the province. That was very much a critical part of that decision to broaden the ownership of Hydro One.

“In terms of these investments in infrastructure there are consultations that are going to happen across the provinces. I believe there is one in July happening in Thunder Bay . . . because the decisions have not all been made how those investments are going to be made.”

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Mirage no more: Inuit university in Nunavut takes shape – by Jim Bell (Nunatsiaq News – June 9, 2015)

http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/

How about Inuit Nunanganni University Kanatami? That’s “INUK” for short. It’s still a dream — but now an Arctic-based, Inuit-focused university no longer shimmers like a mirage on the edge of an unreachable horizon.

That’s because the powers-that-be now believe the dream could one day be made real.

This past June 2, through acting commissioner Nellie Kusugak’s throne speech, the Government of Nunavut announced the territorial government will start a feasibility study for a university to be located in Nunavut.

It’s too early to tell if the GN is serious or if the study will become a delaying tactic aimed at kicking the can further down the road.

But it’s a sign that GN officials have started listening to those who have pushed the idea for years, such as the members of Nunavut’s Ilitturvik University Society.

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Canada’s treatment of aboriginals was shameful, but it was not genocide – by Conrad Black (National Post – June 6, 2015)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

I yield to no one in my fervour to make amends to the native people for violations of treaty rights and other mistreatment, but the phrase “cultural genocide,” as I wrote here last week in reference to the Chief Justice of Canada’s use of it in a speech given in honour of the Aga Khan, is deliberately provocative and sensational.

We might as well accuse Canada and the United States and all countries built on immigration (ultimately almost all countries) of cultural genocide, of the natives or the arrivals, though of course immigration is voluntary. All words bearing the suffix “cide” refer to physical extermination: suicide, homicide, genocide, regicide, etc.

The native people, or First Nations, were here first, but there were not more than a few hundred thousand of them in what is now Canada in the 17th century. They had a Stone Age culture that had not invented the wheel, and which graduated, however brusquely, to more sophisticated levels of civilization, but the culture was not exterminated.

Apart from a few mid-western farming tribes and Pacific and Great Lakes inhabitants of log dwellings, the First Nations did not have permanent buildings or agriculture, metal tools, or knitted fabrics.

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Residential schools, reserves and Canada’s crime against humanity – by Doug Saunders (Globe and Mail – June 6, 2015)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

The first thing worth knowing, in understanding the specific nature of the crime Canada stands accused of, is how recent it all really was.

Keep in mind that, until 1960, no First Nations were permitted to vote in a Canadian election. In other words, they had a legal status not of citizens but much more like that of wildlife. They could not, for much of the 20th century, leave the confines of a reserve without permission from a government agent. Indigenous Canadians often could not run businesses, borrow money, own property, or, in the case of Inuit from the 1940s to the 1970s, even have a name.

And at the centre of all this, the practice of seizing aboriginal children permanently and usually unwillingly from their parents, placing them in state custody, and subjecting them to the forced labour and isolation of residential “schools” – the subject of this week’s monumental Truth and Reconciliation Commission report – reached its peak at the very end of the 1950s and continued in significant numbers through the 1970s (the last residential school didn’t close until 1996).

Almost a third of aboriginal Canadians – 150,000 people – were raised, without access to their families, in these institutions (which were by any normal definition not educational but penal).

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Canada’s residential schools cultural genocide, Truth and Reconciliation commission says – by Joanna Smith (Toronto Star – June 3, 2015)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

A damning report culminates a six-year examination of Canada’s residential schools that oversaw the ill-treatment of aboriginal children for more than a century.

OTTAWA—The Truth and Reconciliation Commission urges all Canadians to rise to the enormous challenge of righting the wrongs committed by residential schools, even if it takes generations to reverse the ongoing effects of cultural genocide.

“We have described for you a mountain. We have shown you a path to the top. We call upon you to do the climbing,” Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, told a packed ballroom in a downtown Ottawa hotel Tuesday.

The exhortation came on an emotionally charged day that saw the commission release a heart-wrenching and damning 381-page summary of its final report detailing the history and legacy of residential schools — largely operated by churches and funded by the Canadian government — that saw 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children come through their doors for more than a century.

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[Canada Aboriginal Issues] McLachlin said what many have long known – by Ken Coates (Globe and Mail – June 1, 2015)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Ken S. Coates is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Regional Innovation at the University of Saskatchewan and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s senior policy fellow for aboriginal and northern Canadian issues.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin changed the national vocabulary on Thursday. Her simple comment that Canada had attempted “cultural genocide” on indigenous peoples, an explanation central to aboriginal understanding of Canadian history and well-known to students of Canada’s past, is a demonstration of this country’s slow-changing political maturity on the indigenous file.

In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stood, with indigenous leaders joining him on the floor of the House of Commons, and uttered a similarly meaningful statement about residential schools. He said, on behalf of all Canadians, that he was “sorry.” Why it took so long is a mystery known only to the legal advisers who guided the government’s hand, for aboriginal people and historians long knew of the perhaps unintended but nonetheless destructive impact of residential schools. But it was a start.

It was a simple and honest word, with substantial political implications.

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[Canada Aboriginal Issues] Truth and reconciliation: This is just the beginning – by Perry Bellegarde (Globe and Mail – June 1, 2015)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Perry Bellegarde is National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

The closing events of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are under way this week in Ottawa. The Commission has played an important role in shining a light on the Indian residential schools, the darkest chapter in our shared history. The issue facing all of us now is our shared future. What is required for real reconciliation between First Nations and Canada?

I believe reconciliation is about closing the gap – the gap in understanding between First Nations and Canadians and the gap in the quality of life between us. Closing the gap in understanding starts with confronting the purpose of the residential schools, which was nothing less than the eradication of First Nations identity from Canada. The intent was to kill our cultures and our languages. Once you lose those, you lose everything – your pride, self-image and self-worth.

First Nations identities are central to Canada’s identity. We must support and promote indigenous languages and cultures in the school system and in Canadian society as a proud part of our heritage.

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Feds spent $1M on bottled water in First Nation with broken water plant, chief says – by Jody Porter (CBC News Thunder Bay – May 29, 2015)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay

Frustration mounts as Neskantaga First Nation goes more than 20 years without safe drinking water

The chief of Neskantaga First Nation in northwestern Ontario says, after 20 years under a boil water advisory, he can’t understand why his community has slipped down the federal government’s priority list for safe drinking water.

Chief Wayne Moonias met with officials from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada in Thunder Bay on Thursday.

He said department officials told him that Neskantaga is number 19 on the government’s priority list for spending on water plants. Previously, Moonias said the community was told it was fourth on that list.

“We’re over 20 years already where our people haven’t been able to get the water they need to drink from their taps or to bathe themselves without getting any rashes,” Moonias said.

The boil water advisory was issued for Neskantaga in 1995 because the water from the community’s then two-year-old water plant often tested positive for high levels of chlorine and harmful disinfectant products.

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Close the gap between Canada and its aboriginal people: AFN chief – by Kim MacKrael (Globe and Mail – May 14, 2015)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

OTTAWA — The leader of the country’s largest aboriginal group is calling on Ottawa to close the gap between Canada and its aboriginal people as the UN prepares to adopt a new set of sustainable development goals.

Perry Bellegarde said in an interview Wednesday that the federal government should invest more in education, training and housing to bring conditions for aboriginal Canadians in line with the rest of the country. The National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations said he plans to bring that message Thursday to a gathering of international development experts and non-governmental organizations in Gatineau, Que.

Mr. Bellegarde’s comments come as the United Nations prepares to adopt a new set of global targets to replace eight millennium development goals when they expire at the end of this year. The new objectives will cover 17 target areas, ranging from ending poverty to combatting climate change and reducing inequality. Unlike the previous goals, the new targets have been explicitly developed to be universally applicable, which means wealthy countries like Canada will be expected to work toward achieving them alongside lower-income countries.

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NEWS RELEASE: NAN CHALLENGES FEDERAL COMMITMENT TO MEETING INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDS OF FIRST NATIONS

http://www.nan.on.ca/

(May 6, 2015) – THUNDER BAY: Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Grand Chief Harvey Yesno is challenging the Government of Canada’s commitment to meeting the infrastructure needs of First Nations despite claims made by Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt in the House of Commons yesterday.

When pressured by the Opposition over his government’s failure to assist with the a state of emergency in Shoal Lake No. 40 First Nation, which is cut off from the mainland without ferry service and has spent the last 17 years on a boil water advisory, the Minister made vague references to Canada-wide funding commitments his government has repeated for years instead of making a firm commitment to fixing the water and infrastructure needs of Shoal Lake and many First Nations.

“The dire situation in Shoal Lake is very much like that across much of NAN territory, where many First Nations have been on drinking water advisories for more than 10 years and nearly all communities are in need of new or upgraded water and wastewater systems and other critical infrastructure like housing, police, firefighting, health care and education facilities,” said Grand Chief Harvey Yesno. “It is shameful that the Minister is touting nearly decade-old funding commitments instead of making the necessary investments to improve the quality of life in our impoverished communities. If the Minister was truly committed to the health and safety of First Nations we would see more action from this government.”

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Who will tackle First Nations waterworks? (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – April 27, 2015)

Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

Trust Ontario’s Liberals to take a swipe at the feds in a provincial budget, but we got the point.

Last week’s big document by Finance Minister Charles Sousa notes that 30 Ontario First Nations remain under boil-water advisories, something that is primarily a federal responsibility.

In most communities in the province, clean drinking water is a given and a basic right, but at too many First Nations — both remote and road-accessible — it remains elusive.

In Sousa’s budget, the province acknowledges a long-term plan is needed to rectify this deplorable situation, but is light on details.

Every so often, First Nations will try to highlight faulty drinking water plants, or the fact that hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent each year on endless bottled-water relief programs.

Then, as part of an enervating back-and-forth routine, the federal government will say that money is indeed allocated every year for infrastructure, including waterworks.

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First Nations need real reform – by Lorne Gunter (Ottawa Sun – April 14, 2015)

http://www.ottawasun.com/

We are killing our First Nations with kindness – and political correctness.

What most First Nations need is fewer tax dollars, better educational options for their young people and more individual liberty. Instead, Canada’s courts and politicians think more collectivism and more cash are the solutions to Third World conditions on many reserves.

Both the Chretien and Harper governments have attempted to break the cycle of bad governance that is behind much of the dysfunction on half or more of Canada’s just over 630 reserves.

The Liberals attempted to pass a First Nations Governance Act (FNGA) in 2002. It was an effort to make band councils more democratic and more accountable to their members and to Ottawa.

Chretien’s FNGA would have replaced the race-based Indian Act and introduced new rules to ensure free and fair elections on reserves, applied financial management standards comparable to those used by municipal and provincial governments, and sought to make on-reserve administration more professional.

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Ottawa sends $2M in bottled water to First Nation – by Joanna Smith (Toronto Star – February 15, 2015)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Marten Falls First Nation, a remote reserve that’s been under a boil-water advisory since 2005, relies on water bottles flown in by the government.

OTTAWA—The Conservative government has spent at least $2 million flying bottled water to a small aboriginal community in northern Ontario that has been without its own source of drinkable water for a decade.

“All of our landfill is filled with plastic bottles,” Linda Moonias, the band manager of Marten Falls First Nation, a fly-in reserve about 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, Ont., said in a telephone interview Friday.

“It’s totally ludicrous,” said Bruce Achneepineskum, the interim chief of the reserve near the proposed Ring of Fire mining development.

Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada has been reimbursing Marten Falls for the cost of sending bottled water from Thunder Bay by airplane since Health Canada issued a boil-water advisory for the remote community of about 335 people on July 18, 2005.

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Welcome to Winnipeg: Where Canada’s racism problem is at its worst – by Nancy Macdonald (MACLEAN’S Magazine – January 22, 2015)

http://www.macleans.ca/

How the death of Tina Fontaine has finally forced it to face its festering race problem.

“Oh Goddd how long are aboriginal people going to use what happened as a crutch to suck more money out of Canadians?” Winnipeg teacher Brad Badiuk wrote on Facebook last month. “They have contributed NOTHING to the development of Canada. Just standing with their hand out. Get to work, tear the treaties and shut the FK up already. Why am I on the hook for their cultural support?”

Another day in Winnipeg, another hateful screed against the city’s growing indigenous population. This one from a teacher (now on unpaid leave) at Kelvin High School, long considered among the city’s progressive schools—alma mater to just about every Winipegger of note, from Marshall McLuhan to Izzy Asper, Fred Penner and Neil Young.

Badiuk’s comments came to light the day Rinelle Harper—the shy 16-year-old indigenous girl left for dead in the city’s Assiniboine River after a brutal sexual assault—spoke publicly for the first time after her recovery. She called for an inquiry to help explain why so many indigenous girls and women are being murdered in Winnipeg, and elsewhere in Canada.

Badiuk’s comments came while the city was still reeling from the murder of Tina Fontaine, a 15-year-old child from the Sagkeeng First Nation who was wrapped in plastic and tossed into the Red River after being sexually exploited in the city’s core.

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