I like oil. Oil brings me things. Things like home heating, air conditioning, electricity. It means people aren’t burning trees so I can hike through forests. It means people aren’t burning coal so I can breathe without blackening my lungs. It means communities don’t have to be flooded so someone can jam up a river to [...] . . . → Read More: Oil’s Slippery Slope
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Since the ’30s, the days of the family farm have been numbered. The dustbowl sucked young farmers off the land faster than you can say “plague of grasshoppers.” But there were always dirt die-hards who hung on — even flourished — once the rain fell again and the insecticide giants and genetically modified crop scientists bent [...] . . . → Read More: One little planet. One BIG farm. Just an amazing, all-around awesome story out of the Muskoday First Nation in Saskatchewan, courtesy of The Star-Phoenix. The article details efforts by the community, in partnership with Heifer International Canada, to pursue “Indigenous organic gardening, agroecology and organic food entrepreneurship” via the Muskoday Organic Growers Co-op. According to the Star-Phoenix, the Co-op’s roots (no pun [...] . . . → Read More: Saskatchewan First Nation’s novel solution to welfare: organic veggies Funny how being on the receiving end of a massive land grab can alter one’s perspective on what rules should apply to outsiders scooping up your territory and/or the resources beneath it. Recent months have seen much discussion in favour of ‘privatizing’ First Nations lands. Communal or collective ownership, we are told, has been a lazy, [...] . . . → Read More: If privatizing Indigenous lands is such a great idea, why the uproar over privatized PotashCorp? Report filed by Samantha Butler (TORONTO) — At 8 p.m., Wed. Oct. 20, a Maori boy set off with one thousand Torontonians on a guided tour of his life. Known simply as ‘Boy,’ the 11-year-old shows off a rickety farm house in rural New Zealand, where he lives with his Gran, younger brother, and five baby cousins. [...] . . . → Read More: How the show goes on: imagineNATIVE festival realizes international return on investment A recent Globe and Mail editorial approves of a “special” Indian and Northern Affairs Canada project looking at “why some [65 First Nations] reserves are doing well economically.” The study’s aim: to “pinpoint the causes of their success.” The Globe then goes on to argue that a likely “common factor in these cases of prosperity” [...] . . . → Read More: Is the ‘secret’ of some First Nations’ economic success all that secret? Awesome story in The Ecologist of how the tradition of Amazonian rubber-tapping has been successfully revived among Indigenous people in Brazil thanks in part to the critical assistance of local NGO Poloprobio. By “joining scientific research with the rubber-tappers’ empirical knowledge,” the partnership innovated a better processing method that doesn’t rely on electricity or machinery, thereby [...] . . . → Read More: Rubber revival delivers cultural, economic bounce for Indigenous Amazonians The 500 or so people living on the Mosquito (Grizzly Bear’s Head) reserve in central Saskatchewan are undergoing some introspective times. This past spring, the chief and a councillor from the band office were charged with fraud and breach of trust as part of a 5-year investigation into the (mis)management of their people’s Treaty Land Entitlement (TLE) money. [...] . . . → Read More: Snatching the People’s Purse Here’s a debate that opens all sorts of canned worms about what might be rightly considered the sovereign territory of Indigenous peoples. As we see in this report from TVNZ’s Te Karere, some Maori have put forth arguments claiming Indigenous title to the so-called 4G (fourth generation) wireless broadband spectrum in New Zealand. So far, these applications [...] . . . → Read More: Spectrum Sovereignty? Maori Treaty Rights to 4G Debated in New Zealand I sent away for my “treaty money” the other day. Apparently, you can do that now. Growing up in Manitoba, treaty money was usually collected in person at “Treaty Days,” which commemorated the occasion of your First Nation signing its bilateral treaty with the Crown. Many treaty communities still host their own Days. It was at these [...] . . . → Read More: Some Inflated Thoughts About Treaty Payments Elouise Cobell, Blackfeet warrior’s battle with the US government’s mismanagement of Indian money comes down to the wire. . . . → Read More: War & Trust & the Waiting Game The Miami Herald has published a comprehensive look by reporter Joseph Goodman at how the ever-flowing BP oil spill threatens to impact the region’s Indigenous peoples, namely, the Chitimacha and the Houma. As far back as May 6, 2010, the chief of Pointe-au-Chien shared his concern with mediaINDIGENA about the spill, given “almost 80% of his [...] . . . → Read More: BP Spill and Louisiana Tribes: “This oil is just going to finish us.” I remember my very first political protest. The premier of Québec said he was prepared to bulldoze the Cree into the modern age over some massive hydro-electric project that would divert entire rivers and flood areas of land bigger than some American states. The prime minister of Canada said Indians had no special rights and [...] . . . → Read More: Every Now and Then Yesterday around 3:30 am, an Ottawa branch of the Royal Bank of Canada was torched in the name of “aboriginal peoples, workers and the poor” of British Columbia. It then appears the people responsible posted a video of the fire-bombing. The brief video of the actual incident is followed by a message (full text [...] . . . → Read More: Activists Fire-Bomb Ottawa Bank in Name of Indigenous Rights: What Do You Think? POLL The always interesting Blue Corn Comics by Rob Schmidt has recently come across a TV ad for Koff “Indian” Beer (a Carlsberg product) that Schmidt believes “emphasizes the uncomfortable connection between Indians and alcohol.” See for yourself: Huh. You don’t see that very often: teepee-as-nightclub. Here’s another spot in the series, which I believe came out in [...] . . . → Read More: Controversy Brews Anew Over Koff “Indian” Beer Ads During our recent sit-down with outgoing Chief Marcel Balfour, it wasn’t long before the discussion turned to Canada’s infamous ’2% funding cap.’ That’s the cap Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) places on annual increases to First Nations’ budgets. According to a report hosted on the department’s own website, this “2 per cent funding cap was [...] . . . → Read More: First Nations Funding: A System Built to Fail? A press release issued today from the Ontario government states that the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Minister of Revenue have entered into a Memorandum of Agreement with the Chiefs of Ontario (COO) committing both parties to work together to realize the continuation of the First Nation point of sale tax exemption within the framework [...] . . . → Read More: First Nations, Ontario Agree to Fight for Continued Tax Exemption from Impending HST The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) just released its latest paper, The Income Gap Between Aboriginal Peoples and the Rest of Canada. Authored by Daniel Wilson and David Macdonald, the study looks at data collected in the 1996, 2001 and 2006 Canadian Censuses, to identify trends and raise questions about the persistent income gaps between [...] . . . → Read More: Aboriginal, Non-Aboriginal Wage Parity in Canada Will Take 63 Years: Study A few days ago, the federal Conservatives proposed their new budget, totaling out at roughly $280 billion in expenditures (versus apx. $231 billion in revenues). And as we saw in Tim Fontaine’s overview, the 2010 federal budget included a few multi-million dollar programs and services aimed at Aboriginal people. Millions and billions: these are impressive, even incomprehensible [...] . . . → Read More: Calculating the Bottom Line for First Nations Well, it wasn’t what most people wanted to hear, but it sure was what many expected. The 2010 Federal Budget was released to much fanfare in Ottawa today, and by the looks of things, it’s time to lace up those moccasins reeeeeal tight (or belt, it’s your fancy). Here’s a quick breakdown of how some federal programs fared (those [...] . . . → Read More: Budget Day! Budget Day! How some Aboriginal-related programs fared |
     
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