Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
Apologizing for people versus the establishment that upheld not only the Indian Residential Schools system but protected – and continues to protect — the people who committed the crimes is horrifying.
Pope Francis came this week to Maskwasic in central Alberta — where many Indigenous people, (...)
Remarks in Alberta omitted Catholic Church’s complicity and cover-up of the sexual abuse of thousands of Indigenous children and its role in genocide.
The apology we heard from Pope Francis in Maskwacis this week was indeed historic, but predictably lacking in substance.
In what sounded (...)
It is now 40 years since the Trudeau Sr. government “patriated” Canada’s constitution, ending Britain’s vestigial control over changes in the country’s founding document, the British North America Act.
Much of the critical analysis at the time focused on how the 1982 Constitution Act (...)
Public opinion has been shaken by the ‘discovery’ of unmarked graves of children who died in residential schools. The word ‘discovery’ has to be placed in quotation marks because Indigenous communities have been saying for many years that terrible things had taken place on the grounds of (...)
An interview with Cree jurist and scholar Tamara Starblanket
Tamara Starblanket is a Nehiyaw Iskwew (Cree woman) from Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation in Treaty Six. She holds an LLM from the University of Saskatchewan, an LLB from the University of British Columbia. She is the Dean of Academics at (...)
Indigenous groups resisting a destructive gas pipeline have blockaded one of Canada’s busiest rail lines bringing business as usual to a grinding halt, reports John Clarke
In early February, the RCMP, Canada’s colonial police force, raided the land defender camps of the Wet’suwet’en people (...)
Government’s inquiry into disappeared women and girls to be published Monday.
Three decades of missing and murdered Indigenous women amounts to a “Canadian genocide”, a leaked landmark government report has concluded.
The document, titled Reclaiming Power and Place, was compiled over more (...)
New book explores the mass Indigenous movement that is in the vanguard of the fight for climate justice in Canada
This small book (123 pages) is an ambitious effort, with three objectives: “to outline the history of European colonization and the Canadian state… to outline the long and (...)
Nearly 50 years ago, a corporation poisoned First Nations people and land. They’re still fighting for justice
Seventy kilometers north of Kenora, in Ontario’s Lake of the Woods region, among a series of rolling, densely forested hills between two lakes, is the Ojibway community of Grassy (...)
It’s good news that in a number of cities people “are meeting together in growing numbers to explore what it means - and doesn’t mean - to stand in solidarity with Indigenous peoples within Canada,” as journalist Meg Mittelstedt wrote recently.
As Mittelstedt notes, this is happening (...)
By now, many of you have heard about the October 17 attack by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) on the Mi’kmaq Warrior encampment near Rexton, New Brunswick, Canada. About 200 Mounties descended on an anti-shale gas encampment with assault rifles and dogs to issue an injunction against (...)
This statement is published in the Spring 2013 issue of Union Farmer Quarterly, the official publication of Canada’s National Farmers Union.
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Omnibus Bills, Idle No More, and the NFU: OUR COMMON LAND, OUR COMMON GROUND
With a January 15 media release , we made (...)
Saskatoon: “The NFU is proud to declare its solidarity with Idle No More, which is bringing people together from across Canada to stop the Harper government from riding roughshod over our collective rights,” says Glenn Tait, NFU National Board member. “We want a better Canada.”
The NFU is (...)
The blossoming of the Idle No More movement signals the return of native resistance to the political and social landscape of Canada and Quebec.
With its origins in Saskatchewan in October 2012, this mass movement has taken on the federal government and more specifically the adoption of Bill (...)
What is Idle No More?
The Idle No More movement started in November 2012 in response to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s introduction of Omnibus Budget Bill C-45 (which, among other things, gutted the Navigable Waters Protection Act) as well as other legislation detrimental to First (...)
Flood evacuees feel lost in city’s ‘wicked world’
In two years since arriving in Winnipeg, 17 residents of Lake St. Martin reserve have taken their own lives
“The first casualty we had was my niece (Alexis). That was really hard. She told me once, ‘Uncle, I want to go home. I don’t want (...)
Please watch or listen to this 11-minute interview with Pamela Palmateer, Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University, member of Eel River Bar First Nation and spokeswoman for the “Idle No More” movement. Broadcast on Democracy Now, Dec. 26, 2012: (...)
One should not underestimate the political importance of the fasting of the aboriginal leader of Attawispiskat as an expression of the movement “Idle no more.” It does not attract the attention of major Anglo-Canadian media for nothing. An op-ed of the Toronto Star below explains its (...)
I woke up just past midnight with a bolt. My six-month-old son was crying. He has a cold – the second of his short life–and his blocked nose frightens him. I was about to get up when he started snoring again. I, on the other hand, was wide awake.
A single thought entered my head: Chief (...)
In a Dec. 16 editorial, the Star rightly called on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to meet with Chief Theresa Spence, now in her 10th day of a hunger strike. It rightly drew attention to the ongoing housing crisis at Attawapiskat First Nation. Yet, it missed the big picture.
Spence’s hunger (...)
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