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 […]
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 […]
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” […]
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, […]
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. […]
