By Lloyd Dolha

An Ojibway First Nations woman from northern Manitoba who spent years fighting to protect the boreal forests of her traditional territory is this year’s North American recipient of the prestigious international Goldman Environmental Prize – the largest prize of its kind.

Sophia Rabliaukas, 47 yr.s, of the 12,00 member Poplar River First Nation, is the only aboriginal Canadian woman to receive the award in its 17 year history and one of the few Canadians to ever receive the award.

A leader of the Poplar River First Nation, Rabliauskas has worked for several years with her people to secure the interim protection of their two million acres of undisturbed forest land on the eastern side of Lake Winnipeg.

In 2004, she and several members of her community led Poplar River in the development of a comprehensive land protection and management plan for their traditional territory which forms a significant part of Canada’s boreal forest.

Led by Rabliauskas under the guidance of her elders, she and other community members developed a full-scale blueprint of how they intended to document, protect and sustainably manage the forests, wildlife and other natural resources in a precedent-setting accomplishment among the first Nations of the boreal region.

“In Sophia’s way of day-to-day living, she embodies the spirit of our culture,” said Vera Mitchell, director of education and former chief. “This includes a sense of rightful ownership of the land. She isn’t one to just talk about something – she goes out and gets it done.”

The land use plan outlines the following core components: respecting traditional knowledge; benefiting from environmental analysis; developing economic development activities, including the protection of traditional hunting, trapping and fishing activities; and creating sustainable tourism opportunities.
One year before the plan’s completion in 2004, Rabliauskas helped secure five more years of “interim protection status” for the Poplar River territory, which continues to prohibit any logging, hydro, gas or mining development within the two million acres.

Rabliauskas and Poplar River’s current efforts are focused on securing permanent protection of their traditional territories from the Manitoba government.

The Manitoba government has announced its intention to grant permanent protection to the Poplar River lands, though have not done so as of yet.

With that victory, the Poplar River First Nation and a half dozen other Ojibway First Nations from Manitoba and Ontario will develop a draft submission proposing the area to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Canada’s vast boreal forest, which includes the Poplar River lands, plays a vital role in mitigating the negative impacts of climate change. As its intact forests and wetlands store massive amounts of carbon.

Threats to the health of Canada’s boreal forest are numerous: less than ten percent of the boreal is strictly protected from development, and despite growing awareness of the area’s global importance, about one half of Canada’s annual wood harvest comes from the boreal.

Canada’s boreal forest comprises 25 percent of the world’s and more than 90 percent of the country’s remaining large intact forests. They cover nearly 1.4 billion acres – some 58 percent of Canada’s land mass – the boreal forms a massive green belt across the centre of the country, stretching from Newfoundland to the Yukon.

The area is also home to some of the world’s largest populations of woodland Cariboo, wolves and bears, and more than 75 percent of North America’s waterfowl.

Winners of the environmental prize are selected by an international jury from confidential nominations submitted by a worldwide network of environmental organizations and individuals.

Each year, six recipients are selected from the six inhabited continents of the world and receive $125,000 U.S. from the Goldman Foundation to continue their work.

Only three other Canadians have won the award, including former AFN national chief Matthew Coon Come, who led the Quebec Cree in their battle against hydro development in northern Quebec.

By Clint Buehler

EDMONTON – Wilton (Willie) Littlechild says the international community has a responsibility to protect indigenous rights.
He’s spent much of his career fighting to achieve that goal.
And that was the theme of his lecture at the ninth annual Visiting Lectureship in Human Rights at the University of Alberta, recognizing outstanding contributions to human rights, following such acknowledged human rights advocates as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former Canadian Forces General Romeo Dallaire.

Littlechild, a much achieving and honored Cree from Alberta’s Ermineskin First Nation, is a longtime delegate to the United Nation’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Littlechild told the supportive audience at the university’s Horowitz Theatre that much of the effort must go to improving the wellbeing of Aboriginal children because they are the most common victims of rights violations, with lower life expectancies, racial discrimination by police, unsanitary living conditions and denial of education as abuses that indigenous boys and girls suffer daily across the globe.

“Imagine a child being born and being expected to live 20 years less than others, experience Third World diseases, live in overcrowded houses, receive poor education, routinely be made to feel ashamed for who they are, and be harassed by police. This is an indigenous child.

“They live in both dev eloped and developing countries, but their plight is the same,” Littlechild said, calling on Canada to officially adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which he helped draft and negotiate.

He said he was frustrated at Canada’s, and Alberta’s, failure to take that important step—a step already taken by most other nations and political bodies including, as recently as last month, the State of Arizona.

“Canada was one of only two countries to vote against the Declaration,” Littlechild said. “We could look to our neighbours to the south for leadership.”

He said that be refusing to accept this Declaration, Canada has created two sets of laws, with indigenous peoples on the bottom end.

He emphasized that the road to justice was a long one, citing, for example, the first ever delegation by indigenous people to the League of Nations in 1926, when members of the Iroquois Six Nations went to the League’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland and, as with a Maori delegation from New Zealand, weren’t even received by the Assembly there.

By the 1950s and 1960s, Littlechild said, the international indigenous peoples’ movement had begun to gain momentum, as groups from across the planet joined forces with similar complaints ranging from the banning of indigenous culture and language to outright genocide.

It was no better in 1977, Littlechild said, when he headed an international indigenous delegation to the United Nations and they were not allowed in United Nations headquarters in New York City.

“In 1977, we couldn’t even get into the building,” Littlechild recalled. “With Elders with four pipes leading the way, we locked elbows, four-by-four, and marched.”

Soon after that rejection, he said, things began to move rather quickly for the indigenous peoples’ movement, capped in 1993 by the United Nations declaration of “The Year of the Indigenous People,” and the establishment in 2002 of the UN’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, to which Littlechild was appointed North Americas representative.

He found that involvement ironic in that he only studied international law to fill his course schedule while studying for his law degree. “Why would someone like me study international law?” he recalled asking himself at the time. “I’m never going to use it.” In fact, his efforts on behalf of indigenous peoples has occupied a large part of his life.

Littlechild also cited the International Decades of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, the second of which began in 2005 with the theme of Partnership for Action and Dignity as another example of the successes that indigenous peoples have found in the international arena.

“Most indigenous peoples movements emerged in response to experiences of grave violations of their basic human rights and fundamental freedoms,” he said. “Their main demands are non-discrimination, equality and self-determination, and the right to subsistence. These are all the basic principles upon which international human rights law is based.”

The result has been that indigenous peoples’ involvement with the UN Commission on Human Rights “has immeasurably enriched the world’s discussions about human rights in general.
“The contributions of indigenous peoples in elaborating further discourse on self-determination, collective rights, rights to land, territories and resources, rights to culture, knowledge and identity cannot be underestimated,” he said.

Littlechild said he was particularly proud of how Aboriginal peoples have insisted on integrating the rights of women and children into all human rights discussions, cutting across previous divisions in law and diplomacy.

However, he ended his lecture on a positive note, saying that over the past 30 years, indigenous peoples world wide have achieved great successes in their efforts to achieve respect, recognition and justice.

His presentation was not without humor. Saying he owed much to the university, he told of the time he earned a zero on an English assignment.

“I went to the dean and told him I should get at least one mark for spelling my name right.”

The dean refused to change the mark, but told him to keep working.

“I have to thank him for not letting me take the easy way out.”
Following the lecture, Littlechild took questions from the audience, with several asking how the Alberta and Canadian governments could be persuaded to deal with Aboriginal treaties in the spirit of international law.

“The Maskwacis Cree wanted to, and continue to, promote partnerships among our peoples, using the international forum,” he responded. “As one stated, ‘It’s like the two wings of an eagle that it takes to fly. On one wing is treaty, and on the other wing is the UN Declaration [on the Rights of Aboriginal Peoples]. These are solutions, and they both go hand in hand to fight for the future.’”

A woman in the audience noted that, traditionally, Littlechild would have been given blankets and horses in recognition of his leadership whereupon, on behalf of the University of Alberta, Students Union President Samantha Power and Aboriginal Student Council President Derek Thunder presented him with a ceremonial blanket chosen by Elder and advisor Jerry Wood.
Littlechild said he had been in the audience for three of the previous human rights lectures, but had never anticipated that he would be chosen as a guest lecturer.

“Each of you out there also has a story,” he said. “Little did I think that some day I would be up here, so it has truly been an honour. Keep up the work that you do, and I look forward to the day when you get up here to tell your story.”

By Morgan O’Neal

Almost four months into the trial of Robert Willie’ Pickton for first degree murder, the focus of the sensational hearing in New Westminster has settled on the six women he is accused of killing after they disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. As coincidence would have it, the weekend of May 1 deposited me on those same Mean Streets when four packed cruise ships–the first of the year–docked in the Vancouver harbour below Hastings and Main. The number of tourists disembarking was beyond the capacity of private taxis; there were none available. Stranded visitors stood in line for up to two hours before venturing out on their own to get a look at the most beautiful city in Canada. But it is next to impossible to get from where those boats are docked to where beauty is hiding somewhere west of Granville, without wandering through or stumbling into the worst Skid Row in all of North America. I had a chance to observe some of these travellers as they were welcomed as guests to Vancouver by crack dealers leaning in the doorways of boarded up pawn shops and rooming houses.
This rotten core of the Downtown Eastside where once hard-working hard-drinking long-shoreman walked the streets north of Hastings is now a breeding ground for maggots fattening up on the dying meat; this is where the psychopaths come when they feel the urge to exploit human weakness. The life story of the population of this place is the dark legacy of colonialism, residential school abuse and foster home alienation: the deadly plunge into drug addiction and prostitution supported by the skewed legislation in the City of Vancouver that creates a last resort sex trade whose broken bodies are supplied by the impoverished community exploding in the downtown core. These meanest streets in North America serve as a backdrop for the lead story on the local evening television news when voyeuristic camera crews and reporters catch up with a few of the tourists who have at least made it into China town where they are absorbed safely into the smells and sounds of open air fresh produce and spice markets. Still trembling in their boots they are barely able to answer the reporters’ first question. “Will you be coming back to Vancouver again?”

News that about half of Canada’s Aboriginal population now lives in cities and towns would not surprise anyone familiar with the derelict streets of the poorest postal code in Canada. Canada’s fastest growing Aboriginal communities are in the urban centers of Vancouver, Prince George, Edmonton, Calgary, Lethbridge, Regina, Saskatoon, Prince Albert, Winnipeg, Thompson, Thunder Bay and Toronto. In Edmonton, for example, family and friends of missing women recently held a rally to raise awareness in relation to unsolved disappearances there. Organizers of the Stolen Sisters Awareness March staged the event to remind people of the grim realities far too many aboriginal women face, in particular those who live on the streets, are addicted to drugs or work in the sex trade. Like Pickton’s victims these women have disappeared without their families knowing what happened to them. April Eve Wiberg, one of the organizers of the march, said that over the last 20 years, more than 500 aboriginal women in Canada have been murdered or they’ve just disappeared. “I’m hoping to raise awareness,” she said. “I’m hoping by everyone coming out and supporting us that the authorities will take these cases more seriously and treat them equally. “And as an aboriginal community, I don’t think that our ancestors would have put up with this and remained silent, so why should we?”
In Edmonton Connie Benwell hopes that breaking the silence about the root causes of this shameful epidemic will help her find her daughter, 27-year-old Leanne Benwell, who has been missing since March 12. She had been living on the streets for the last five years. “It’s terrifying,” Benwell said. “I have no clue where she is. My worst fear is that she’ll show up dead.” And there is a clear justification for such fear. The Vancouver Province newspaper reported only last month the death by overdose of a young native woman who was instrumental in bringing down David Ramsay, infamous BC provincial court judge from Prince George who pleaded guilty in 2004 and was sentenced to seven years in federal prison for sexual exploitation, violence against underage prostitutes, mostly aboriginal girls, and breach of trust. The young woman was a teenager in the sex trade at the time and cannot be named. She was 22 years old when she died of a drug overdose on April 1, only a few weeks after completing a drug rehabilitation program. Statistical evidence long ago verified the high percentage of aboriginal women haunting the streets and alleys of the Downtown Eastside. A decade ago, Drum writer Sean Devlin began reporting on the missing and murdered women now thought to be among the many victims of the Coquitlam pig farmer Robert ‘Willie’ Picton. At the time it was no secret that seventy percent of the women in the Downtown Eastside were native. Professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University, John Lowman, perhaps Canada’s leading expert on prostitution had already shown that women involved in the sex trade would be 60 to 120 times more likely to be murdered than other Canadian women. Lowman went so far as to accuse the Vancouver police and city politicians of complicity through inaction in the murders and disappearances of these women, describing the situation in the following way: “The police and the politicians actively created the problem they are now trying to fix. The rhetoric of the 80’s and 90’s was: ‘We’ll get rid of the prostitutes. The idea of eliminating prostitution in Vancouver has translated tragically into Really getting rid of prostitutes. We chase them from one area to another. They find themselves in dark streets in defenseless situations. They get into strangers’ cars. There are no eyes there. But there Are men who get off on violence. They see the women’s vulnerability.’”

These women are chased in fact from poverty ridden rural reserves to drug infested inner city dead zones like the Downtown Eastside where psychopaths are waiting to pounce. Lowman suspected a serial killer long before law enforcement made that leap of logic. A 1997 Drum article told the tragic story of Lisa Marie Graveline, whose family had come to Vancouver from a Manitoba reserve and whose mother and father and brother all died from addiction related problems. Entire native families are stuck in this addictive cycle. Lisa Marie’s body was found stuffed into a duffel bag in a Downtown Eastside dumpster. She was known by frontline workers to have used the services of WISH (Women’s Information and Safe House) where 60 % of participants are Native. Program Director in the late 90’s Karen Duddy told the Drum at the time that the overwhelming atmosphere was one of menace. “Our women are very worried about their missing sisters. There is a great sense of fear out there.” That fear has only increased in recent years as in the case of Pilasi Kingfisher who upon arriving at the Bus station on Main and Terminal in Vancouver went missing for two weeks. Who could blame family and friends and indeed the public at large for just assuming that she would never be seen again; that she had become just one more victim of the horror story of life on or adjacent to the Downtown Eastside Thankfully this young native woman finally contacted her family from Saskatchewan where she was reported to have been living for two weeks by her own choice.

Chief Phil Fontaine of The Assembly of First Nations is forced by this scourge to file a human-rights complaint against the federal government in order to begin to put an end to the “systemic discrimination” resulting from the perpetual under-funding of aboriginal child-welfare services. “Our children need action now, so I am announcing today that we are putting governments on notice that a lack of action should be viewed as putting children at risk,” Fontaine said to the International Congress on Ethics in Gatineau, Quebec. The stark truth is that one in 10 aboriginal children in Canada is in foster care, as opposed to one in 200 non-aboriginal children. Child-welfare agencies for First Nations get 22 per cent less money than those that deal with non-aboriginal children. The logic is clear, according to Fontaine. Because child-services agencies lack adequate financing, these agencies are forced to spend what money they do have on taking children away from their parents. The reason 27,000 aboriginal children are in foster homes is the lack of funding and support at every level. “Such systemic discrimination must end,” Fontaine said. Meanwhile, in her first official meeting with British Columbia’s aboriginal leaders, the province’s new representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, pledged to dismantle or at least substantially alter a decrepit piece of federal legislation that is clearly responsible for the staggeringly high number of native children at present in government care. Because it is under federal jurisdiction her statements have relevance for Native communities across the country. But Turpel-Lafond’s criticism of the law may in fact be the first time a provincial official has been so blatant in blaming the bureaucracy for what is indeed a national disgrace. She went so far as to explicitly describe the guilty federal Directive 20.1 as “perverse.” The directive in question stipulates that federal government money will be made available to look after troubled aboriginal kids “only if they are taken away from their families and placed in government care.” This is the language of kidnap and ransom.

In a speech to aboriginal leaders, chiefs, councilors and child-welfare advocates at a recent First Nations Summit in North Vancouver, Turpel-Lafond stated clearly that there were few more wrong-headed pieces of bureaucratic bungling in the history of relations between the government and First Nations. “Very clearly federal funding for child welfare is based on a perverse performance measure, which is that funds are based on taking kids into (government) care, which only encourages them to take more kids into care.” Again, in any other language these stipulations would be denounced as bounty hunting, a price on the head of every native kid. Needless to say, the new B.C. Rep. for Children and Youth was applauded for her frankness and received in general a very warm reception from the Native leaders in attendance. In offering an alternative to the perversity of the present situation, Turpel-Lafond emphasized that native kids and their communities would obviously be better served “by strengthening their family and cultural ties” in order to help families deal with such issues as addiction and domestic violence and all the other negative effects that characterize the national scourge of the “residential school syndrome.”

There are at present approximately 9,500 children in the care of the B.C. government, and more than half of these are of aboriginal ancestry. Compare this number to the fact that First Nations people make up less than four percent of the provincial population. And just to make certain you get the picture, check out the disproportionate number of aboriginal adults who are incarcerated in the penal institutions of the province. The path trodden by native prison inmates doubtless begins in the horrid childhoods spent in residential schools sanctioned by malevolent government policy. The provincial government, for its part, has recently agreed with First Nations to begin a gradual transfer of the care of native children to aboriginal agencies and authorities. These changes are necessary and welcome, but children no matter where they come from will never be truly safe and secure without the wholesale admission of guilt by the colonial institutions that started the problems in the first place. The cultural genocide that was historically perpetrated against the First Nations of this continent continues to this day in myriad more subtle forms to thwart the efforts of Aboriginal communities to rebuild their dignity. There is one simple phrase that must remain in the language of the struggle for First Nations self-determination. Systemic racism is at the bottom of each and every obstacle facing native communities

The life stories of the women missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in the days, weeks and months leading up to their disappearances are carbon copies of those going missing now in Winnipeg and Edmonton. The six women Robert Pickton is accused of murdering had already dropped out of sight some time before Picton came along. They disappeared because of a lack of services designed to address the problems caused by chronic poverty and dysfunction, and in the case of Native women esepcially, vicious cycles of addiction stemming from displacement and emotional breakdown. In the days before their files were closed, the last people to have contact with these women were usually doctors, pharmacists, police officers and community support workers. That is to say the files on these women were shut down some time before they died because there was no money available to keep them alive. Sereena Abotsway, Marnie Frey, Andrea Joesbury, Georgina Papin, Mona Wilson and Brenda Wolfe are all tragic examples of a system proven miserably inadequate to the task of rescuing members of a community at risk. These women were homeless and hungry and some were trying to protect children of their own. They were all known to the police and in many cases had recently reported having been assaulted both sexually and physically by predatory men in the Downtown East-side. In all six cases Medical Services Plan and Pharmanet records indicate that they were entirely dependent upon prescription drugs to function at the most miserable level of existence. The system had a responsibility to get them off the street and into treatment of some kind, before Robert Pickton crawled out from under his rock and butchered them.

By Morgan O’Neal

At the Red Earth First Nation about 300 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon the Carrot River as well as rivers originating in the Pasquia Hills peaked on Sunday, water levels dropping more than five centimetres, but with almost 700 Red Earth residents in Saskatoon or Prince Albert, the streets of the First Nation were deserted Monday afternoon. While river water did not reach homes or any other building on Red Earth, some were still at risk. Water saturated the muskeg and could still seep into basements from underground, says Dearld Whitecap, a co-ordinator for emergency operations.

Red Earth vice-chief Elton Head had been cautious about deciding when to return, but said it could be as early as Wednesday, and as it turned out everything is in place for the nearly 700 residents of the Red Earth First Nation displaced by flood waters to return home this morning, Wednesday, April 25. “They will be heading home (today) barring any unforeseen circumstances,” said Richard Kent, spokesperson for the Prince Albert Grand Council. The decision to go back was made by Red Earth First Nation Chief Miller Nawayakas, and was based on recommendations from a number of groups, including the Saskatchewan Watershed Authority.

Although water levels are dropping at Red Earth, Kent said some dikes are beginning to thaw, allowing water to spurt through. He said 21 homes took on water during the flood, and residents at the First Nation continue to pump water and sandbag affected areas.Last year during a flood, evacuees from the reserve were away from home for 12 days. A return today would mark six days away this time.

Meanwhile, the Yellow Quill First Nation is cleaning up debris after flood waters caused some problems in the community. But the damage this year is nothing compared to last year, says Hector Whitehead, housing and public works director for the First Nation, located about 250 kilometres east of Saskatoon. “There were 34 units that were affected last spring,” said Whitehead. Snow in the bush was removed this winter so when it melted, it wouldn’t affect the community as severely, he said.
Whitehead said was told by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada officials that the flood at Yellow Quill last year was worse than the one at Red Earth. The First Nation didn’t publicize it, though, he said. “We just kind of did what we thought should be taking place to try to resolve the problem without any outside help,” he said. Whitehead said only three or four houses were affected in this year’s runoff.

This week, an assessment is expected to be released from the Environment and Agriculture departments on soil quality in the areas of Waldsea Lake, Deadmoose Lake and Hougton Lake Area farmers are concerned the water spilling from these three alkaline lakes will contaminate agricultural land.

Waters in the Rosthern area are under control, although the RM of Rosthern declared a state of emergency Monday. “Quite honestly it has dropped off our radar,” Johnson said. The same is true for Beardy’s Okemasis First Nation. Jackfish Lake, north of North Battleford, is expected to rise another 30 centimetres but will not reach its record high despite earlier flood advisories indicating it may do so. “We will have to check the safety of the situation before we can confirm this,” he said.

Red Earth’s second evacuation in as many years should be seen as a “wake-up call” for the government to seriously look at the living conditions of First Nations people in Canada, says Head. “As a community leader, I am frustrated with the land that was given to us. It’s not suitable for development, it’s not good for hunting,” he said. “The federal government has been sending us memos that they will be there for us, but we are more or less still waiting.”

In December, Red Earth residents told community leaders to talk to the government about acquiring better quality land. Another assembly will likely be called once everyone returns, according to Head. And he’s hoping his people won’t be forced to evacuate for the third year in a row. If lack of money is the excuse then some suggest that the federal Conservative government’s fixation on Quebec is keeping it from living up to its campaign promise on equalization, provincial Finance Minister Andrew Thomson said Monday. The fiscal imbalance between provincial and federal governments tops the agenda at a two-day meeting between provincial finance ministers and their federal counterpart, Jim Flaherty, which began Monday in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.

Saskatchewan’s NDP government wants the Tory government to keep its campaign promise to exclude nonrenewable resource revenues from the equalization formula, which would mean around $900 million in extra federal cash for the province annually. While Flaherty at one point gave assurances that exclusion would happen, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has several times said it was simply a “preference” of the government and no decision had been made.

Thomson chalks up the change to concern in Quebec about how the promise on non-renewable resources would impact that province’s share of the equalization pot. “The problem we have is that the Conservatives are still in campaign mode. They believe they own the West and they’re trying to court Quebec and that is what’s complicating this,” he said in a telephone interview from Ontario. Flaherty said over the weekend there would be no significant increase in federal money going to the provinces to deal with the fiscal imbalance, pointing out that eight of the 10 provinces are running surpluses.

While Thomson said it won’t take great deal more money to fix the fiscal imbalance, he didn’t like the suggestion that provinces have more leeway because of the GST cut. “The last time we heard anything as ridiculous as that was from the Trudeau government in the ‘70s where they transferred so-called tax points. If Stephen Harper actually believes that’s what should happen, that we should go around and increase provincial sales taxes, I would encourage him to come to any community in Saskatchewan and say it,” he said.

Meanwhile, late Tuesday afternoon, Sask Power cut the umbilical cord to several customers in the flood-ravaged region. Dozens of cabin owners have been sandbagging feverishly to hold back water from Fishing Lake, but the loss of electricity is likely to force many people to higher ground. “We can no longer be selective and take metres out (at individual cabins),” said Sask Power spokesperson Larry Christie. Although Christie could not estimate how many people would be affected, he said Tuesday’s action involved a significant portion of line. Access roads to many areas of Fishing Lake are impassable, which helped force SaskPower’s hand.

“We can’t get into those places because the roads are so bad, so we’re cutting the line,” said Christie. At Ottmann Beach, ducks and even a muskrat swam over what used to be an access road. Murray Beach, just up the road, is also swamped. If power poles start falling, a live line would cause serious problems, said Christie. Cabin owners at Waldsea Lake, north of Humboldt, have also lost electrical service. Some customers outside of the flooded areas will likewise be affected because they are served by the same line.

Prior to Tuesday, SaskPower officials had been making daily inspections of properties. Any cabins surrounded by water had their electricity cut. “Even if a guy’s got a pump going or meat in the deep freeze, it didn’t matter. You were shut off,” said Harold Sandberg, mayor of Chorney Beach on the south end of the lake. While some cabin owners imported diesel sump pumps, Sandberg estimated Tuesday afternoon that about 20 pumps on Chorney Beach were still using electricity.

The local golf course now has more water hazards than fairways. The adjacent road also sits under water, further isolating the hardest-hit cabins on Chorney Beach. Even areas that seem high and dry aren’t safe, cautioned Sandberg. “A week ago, we knew we had to sand bag. But didn’t hink would be pouring over the banks.” Th Saskatchewan Watershed Authority reported a three-centimetre rise on Fishing Lake, Tuesday. However, rising water isn’t the only concern. Thick layers of ice continue to blanket the lake.

“With all of this work that we’re doing,” said Sandberg, “if we get one chunk of ice through a dike, that’ll be it for everybody because it’ll come through here whoosh!”A little farther east at Leslie Beach, cabin owner Edward Chasky expressed similar concerns about the ice. When the lake flooded several years ago, he watched a piece of ice that “went up the main beach at walking speed and pushed a cabin off its foundation.”

Street signs at Leslie Beach now mark a canal system. Chasky ploughed into the water on his all-terrain vehicle with a trailer in tow. He salvaged a small load — including a fridge and two mattresses — from his cabin. The71 year-old been coming to Fishing Lake since he was eight years old, but he doesn’t expect to be back any time soon. I’d be surprised if we’re back within two years.”

By Rick Littlechild

Based on a true story, Luna an Orca whale arrived in the Nootka Sound area in 2001 after being separated from his pod in the Juan de Fuca Straight. The Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation who live near Gold River adopted the whale believing that the spirit of their former chief who had prophesized before his death that he would return as a kakawin (orca whale). Luna appeared a few days after the chief’s death fulfilling the prophesy and the traditional belief that the ancestors could join with animals.
The drama that unfold within the Native community when the chief’s son Mike Maquinna returns home to attend his father’s funeral and Luna arrives in the village harbour is the main premise of the movie. Mike’s separation from his band and their traditions has made him question the validity of their beliefs. He is a hereditary chief and must take on the mantle of leadership now that his father is dead. Mike feels he is ill suited for the position since his spiritual base seems at odds with the traditions of his own people.

Life sometimes motivates the right decision in crucial situations. When the Government announces its plans to return Luna to his Pod, Mike who is slowly convinced by his mother that Luna truly embodies his father’s spirit and was sent to be his son’s spiritual guide, decides to take up the fight against the government to keep the whale in Nootka Sound. His decision not only renews his faith in his own traditions but spurs a spiritual revival that gives him the strength to unite his community in a David and Goliath battle against government bureaucracy.

Adam Beach plays the troubled Mike Maquinna was touched by the story, ‘’I heard of the whale out on the West Coast, but that was it, then I signed on and I learned a lot more about the whale and the people he affected. It really woke up the younger generation there and got them to look at their traditions, because of Luna they are learning and reconnecting with traditions, grassroots stuff. It was awesome to see; I saw it every day we were there.’’

The movie has a stellar cast, Graham Greene gives a wizened performance as Bill Louis the elder who is more deserving of the chief’s role than the young Maquinna. The mother of the young chief played by Tantoo Cardinal is nothing less than spellbinding. Jason Priestly in an uncharacteristic bad guy role as Ted Jefferies the self righteous government official, portrays with great accuracy the petty autocratic attitude many government administrators still have towards Native people. There is no shortage of talent in LUNA: SPIRIT OF THE WHALE and Adam Beach demonstrates again why his star keeps rising in the uncertain world of cinema.

The pride of the Dog Creek band situated just north of Winnipeg, Adam went back to his reserve last year to run for chief, he failed to get elected but he promised he would try again. A surprising move considering how is career has flourished in the last five years, how he would fit in the time to be chief when he is the hardest working native actor alive.
Adam appeared in North of 60 early in his career and became more familiar with TV audiences as a regular in The Rez. His film credits include Dance Me Outside and the acclaimed Smoke Signals but his breakthrough performance came in

WINDTALKERS with Nicolas Cage in 2002. Adam has caught the attention of Hollywood directors including Clint Eastwood who cast him as Ira Hayes in Flags Of Our Fathers. ‘’ You only get one take with Clint, so it’s got to be a good one.’’

By CLINT BUEHLER

EDMONTON – The Royal Alberta Museum’s (RAM)has finally given the public access the bulk of a collection of rare First Nations and Metis artifacts gathered by an eccentric Scottish earl, the 9th Earl of Southesk.
An exhibition of the artifacts was opened to the public earlier this month.

The RAM’s curatorial staff’s successfully rescued the collection last year with the solid support and fast action of Aboriginal leaders, other Canadian museums and federal and provincial funding agencies.

Rather than going to private collectors where it was feared they would be scattered to different destinations and inaccessible, most of those artifacts will now b e available for viewing and research at the museum.

Metis and First Nations leaders and Canadian museums staff were aghast at the potential loss of access to the rare collection if it went to private collectors.

The RAM first became aware that Sotheby’s was selling the collection about two weeks prior to the auction, says RAM Curator Susan Berry. RAM staff immediately sprang into action.
They contacted other museums to ensure they wouldn’t compete in the bidding, and for letters of support to funders. They contacted Aboriginal leaders for letters of support. They contacted funding agencies to secure funding in time for the auction. All responded immediately and positively.
At stake was a distinctive collection of rare artifacts from the mid-19th century, an era which was not represented in the RAM collection. Sotheby’s, which conducted the May 8 sale in New York, called the collection “the most historically significant group of American Indian artifacts ever to be offered at auction.”
The artifacts had been gathered by James Carnegie, the 9th Earl of Southesk on a tour of western Canada, beginning in 1859. The journey is chronicled in his book, “Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains.”

Only 32 when he made the journey, and in ill heath from mourning the loss of his young wife, he made the trip, as he wrote later, to “travel in some part of the world where good sport could be met with among the larger animals and where, at the same time, I might recruit my health by an active open-air life in a healthy climate.”

His choice was what was the Rupert’s Land and traveled through southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan, spent a week at Fort Edmonton, then headed up the Athabasca River and down to the Kootney Plains and the Bow River near what is now Calgary and Banff.

Dubbed by some as the “first tourist” to visit Western Canada, not being an explorer, trader or surveyor like those who had come before him.

He didn’t exactly rough it. Although he dressed like a frontiersman in buckskin, his entourage included a gamekeeper from his Scottish estate and an Iroquois cook, as well as guides and porters. He even traveled with a rubber bathtub.
The earl didn’t always see the Indians in so positive a light, dismissing some as “bloated, disgusting savages” while praising the Metis as “tall, straight and well proportioned.”

The earl, like other tourists, gathered souvenirs as he travelled, purchasing or commissioning dozens of pieces from Metis, Cree, Nakoda. Blood and Blackfoot artists and craftspeople, including shirta, dresses, moccasin, mittes, purses, pipes, knives, sheaths, and saddle pads. In some instances he had items such as slippers made specifically for his four young children at home.

The collection had been languishing in the ancestral castle in Scotland for the past 150 years, many in pristine condition, with intricate beadwork fully intact, porcupine quill work that has retained its brilliant colours and silk ribbons that remain unfrayed.

The collection was not unknown here, according to Berry.
Dr. Sherry Farrell Racette of the University of Saskatchewan had seen and studied the collection in Scotland, as has Dr. Pat McCormack of the University of Alberta’s School of Native Studies and researchers from the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Now, says Berry, some of the pieces in the collection will be available because the RAM successfully bid for them against other bidders in the United States and elsewhere, possibly making them unavailable for viewing and research in Alberta, and maybe anywhere else.

The RAM’s success in acquiring the items has a double benefit, says Berry, rescuing First Nations and Metis artifacts of great cultural and historical significance, and a big step for the RAM to become one of Canada’s great museums.

“If people are coming to the Royal Alberta Museum from around the world,” says RAM director Bruce McGillivray, “this is the kind of collection they expect to see.”

The RAM was unable to bid successfully for every item in the collection, but did acquire 29 of the 39 pieces being offered for a little less than $1.1 million Canadian, thanks to a cultural properties grant from the Canadian Heritage Emergency Program, and grants from the Alberta Heritage Research Foundation and Alberta Aboriginal Affairs.

Unfortunately, Berry says, Sotheby’s would not reveal the identity of the private collectors who purchased the other 10 items, including the item that went for the highest price. That was an elaborately beaded Blackfoot man’s shirt that sold to a private collector for $800,000 U.S.

The RAM scored its own coup, however, successfully bidding $497,600 U.S. for a Kainai (Blood) dress which the earl described in his journal as “a beautiful specimen of a Blood Indian women’s dress, made from prepared skins of the mountain sheep and richly embroidered with blue and white beads. Such dresses are now seldom to be seen.”

Before this purchase the RAM had no artifacts from the 1850s in its collection, with most remaining in European collections.
Berry says the time from when the availability of the collection was discovered until the auction was over was extremely stressful for everyone involved.

By B.H. Bates

There’s an old Native legend that goes something like this: Many, many, many moons ago, when animals could talk, a frog was hopping toward the water – when out of the sky came a mighty Eagle and gobbled down the poor frog. But the frog was smart and he held his breath. He slowly made his way to the back of the Eagle. He popped his head out of the Eagle, and looked way, way down at the ground below. He turned to the Eagle, and said: “How high are we?” The Eagle looked back at the frog hanging out of his ass, and replied: “About a mile!” The frog said, “Wow! Really? You wouldn’t shit a guy, would ya?”
The reason I’m writing about humour and the Native, is because I’ve noticed a lot of people walking around with their brows furrowed and a frown stretched across their mugs … “What’s wrong?”

I’ve often bragged to non-natives that we non-whites love a good laugh. If, for instance, we were to see Chief Sitting Bull, slip in some buffalo shit – the whole tribe wouldn’t stop laughing until the snows came again. Have Natives lost their legendary: Ha, Ha, He, He, Ho, Ho?

Let’s start in the beginning: when our four fathers and one mother first arrived in North America. Natives had very little to survive on; primitive weapons, large packs of hungry animals and if that wasn’t bad enough – toilet paper hadn’t been invented yet! Could you survive under those conditions? What would you do? What could you do? Have you ever heard of the old saying: “Just laugh it off”?

When things are out of your control, and you couldn’t do anything about it, even if you wanted to, it’s like seeing Chief Sitting Bull, laying on the ground, moaning and groaning – all you can do is laugh at him every time he wipes more buffalo pie off of his butt. Well, my Bros and Sis’ – that laugh, it’s a coping mechanism. Laughing relieves stress and allows the mind (if only for a short period of time) to accept the moment and to move on.

If we go back even further in time … when the first Native monkeys climbed out of the trees. There was a great deal of stress involved in leafing the safety of the branches. Can you imagine having all the ‘wood’ you wanted, and then nothing at all? Wouldn’t you, too, be stressed? If you couldn’t laugh at it, all that’s left … is to beat yourself!

Be truthful, have you ever beat yourself up over something … or someone? Be truthful, did you get the joke in the last paragraph? The innuendo? The suggestion of a sexual nature? The references to; wood, you, beat, yourself?

Now! After reading that last sentence – If it didn’t even invoke, at the very least, a ‘Mini Haha,’ you’re not only a sad Indian, you’re a dead Indian! Humour, is one of humanities greatest attributes: appropriately positioned right between her two brothers, love and hate! I love to laugh, and I hate to think of humour’s enemy: Mr. Sad. Which brings us right back to all those unhappy faces I’ve been seeing. What’s wrong? Do you feel; different, separated, unwanted and unappreciated? What are ya goin’ to do about it; Beat yourself up over it? Laugh it off? Or are you just going to be, like, Sad?

I once heard a Native comedian making fun of Natives – it was so funny it would’ve made you pee in your pants. And I’ve also been deeply touched by Natives who made jokes about where they’d get their next meal. I know as Natives, we have some unique problems – but everyone has problems, no matter what colour your skin may be.
I’ve bragged to people: “Natives have a great sense of humour!” I want you to prove me right. I want you to create a punch line to this joke: A Native and his friend Chang, walk into a bar and setting at the bar is a hot blonde being served by a black bartender … etc, etc! Come on, my Brothers and sisters, get your wits together and email me your twisted Native thoughts. Come on … give me your best ‘punch!’
Whatever we do, we shouldn’t let the ‘politically correct’ half-wits stifle our ability to laugh at ourselves; it’s either that or people will be laughing at us and not with us! There are many things in life that we must take seriously, but to let them encroach into the rest of our lives is not funny: at all!

HE, HE, HA, HA, HO, HO!

THE END

Dear reader: Please feel free to contact, B. H. Bates at: beeinthebonnet@shaw.ca

By Danny Beaton

Ultimately we want to leave a legacy for our future generations by thinking ahead. Its all about our future generations, the unborn, our family, showing them that we made a commitment to the environment, to the land. We fought for it. That’s how we got here in the first place. That’s why we’ve been here- camped along the Grand River for the last 200 years. This has affected every human being on the planet. If we don’t harmonize ourselves, living in peace, all the principals that the Iroquois Confederacy stand for, all the laws we stand for is about keeping the great peace.

That’s why when we talk about the environment we are talking about everybody’s rights. The vast majority of people, including non-native people support what we are doing, they understand the struggle has always been going since day one. The media are selling newspapers because of the violence, the confrontation. I think people aren’t stupid because they realize how important it is to protect the environment, our Sacred Mother Earth. Its not just the Grand River, its everywhere, there’s a problem of land theft all over the world.

That roadblock in Caledonia represents justice for the whole world. We are saying no more development, we are saying no more polluting our rivers, we are saying no more giving us poison. Enough is enough, that was enough. Its been a topic of conversation around our dinner table since I was a little kid Danny. We are living our prophecies now really, because all of this was prophecised by the elders ages ago. That this world would come to this and how things would come to be. We are living the future of our elders. The writing was always on the wall, everybody knew it was always there.

The newspapers are anti-supportive, its anti- natives, it’s a group of protestors, its all one sided, it’s a group of aboriginals, finally after one year they are calling us Six Nations. Saying we are a small group of protesters. Its probably what the OPP thought when they came April 20, 2006 for the raid, they thought we were a handful of protester but they didn’t realize the Six Nations were backing us. The people who were arrested at the beginning were Palestinians, Cree, Mohawk, and non-native supporters. The answer for this problem is by the government to honour our treaties, honour our commitment to the environment, honour our elders, honour our Chiefs, and most of all honour our Clan Mothers.

We have a government, we have treaties in place for Douglas Creek. The government hasn’t honoured any of those treaties. We are the Iroquois Confederacy government, we have treaties with Canada’s government. We have all our Wampums where our treaties are written, that’s where they are remembered. We have showed the government our Wampums and explained our Wampums, how our government works. And explained how our true government of democracy works with consensus. Where everyone has their say. Its not a popularity contest, like the democratic system they have now in Ottawa. The government can’t resolve it because it would cost them too much. You are looking at millions of dollars a year in revenue alone in taxes along the Haldimond Track. What we are talking about is the Haldimond Track. The Iroquois have agreements that predate the Haldimond Track. What I am saying if they honour the Haldimond Track Treaty it’s going to cause a domino effect. This would involve all the cities and towns along the Grand River including the whole city of Caledonia, the whole town of Brantford, Kitchener it goes along the whole river, its quite big area. Its massive, its huge and that’s what the Haldimond Deed covers. Like I said we have agreements that pre-date the Haldimond Deed. The 1701 agreement, that’s all of Ontario plus New York State and parts of Pennsylvania as well Danny, I don’t think the government is going to honour that. If it was anything west of Ottawa that’s what the 1701 agreement covered. All we are trying to do is make politicians come clean now. This is our responsibility, to look after the land. This is Mother Earth, this is where we all come from, this is our culture, guardians of the land. Honouring Mother Earth, honouring the Native People and honouring Native struggles, our commitment to Mother Earth.

They can’t break that bond that we have, its something that we’re tied to. There’s nothing they can force upon us. The Canadian government can’t impose laws and regulations and impose violence on us. They beat us up and it didn’t change things. We’re still here and we are more determined to protect our children’s future. We’re still fighting, we’re not done and we might never be done as long as there is Mother Earth. My dream is world peace, people living in harmony with natural justice. People doing what’s right, living by what’s right. People living with the truth. There’s justice and karma out there that’s natural, that snap back and bite you in the butt.

That’s what’s happening now, Mother Earth is wounded, she can’t do what she used to. All we have to do is watch the weather, the universe is speaking on behalf of Indigenous Peoples. If we don’t change our ways and stop polluting the planet, its going to destroy Mother Earth, Mother Earth is suffering, there’s too many people taking from her. We can only take so much before nature suffers. Millions of people are immigrating out this way, immigrating to the green lands, we’re losing the agricultural base here. New subdivisions are piling up, people are piling up, on top of each other, beside each other isn’t a harmonious way to live in the country. Its adding to the pollution of the air, everything is getting polluted by overpopulation. Over population is polluting Mother Earth. To us the fight isn’t with ourselves, it’s the powers to be to understand that you can’t eat money, money isn’t everything, you have to look at our lifestyle. You have to look at the way of life for all humans, in Canada the people can be the catalyst for the environment, but its not happening. Because they are not listening to the Aboriginal People here, the Native people here. We are the heart beat of the environment.

My family have been here in Six Nations, seven generations along this Grand River. Everybody has seen the development, we’ve been pushed and pushed and pushed. Now we’re on a little patch of territory. We’ve been pushed back to a tiny patch. We can no longer hunt and do what we need to along this river which was our sustenance. The river is heavily polluted, with all the cities dumping their sewage into the river, tire plants, all the development is dumping raw sewage into the river. You can’t eat any of the fish anymore.

After all the years of pollution along the Grand the fish are heavily contaminated. It all goes back to the Great Lakes, the contamination is basically affecting everyone, not just Native people. Everyone should be speaking out. What happens to Six Nations People happens to everyone.

One day there will be no land here, there will be no water, only sand, it will be made into a desert, barren, no trees, no nothing. We have been ignored, our pleas have been ignored, we have been asking the government to be accountable to the people and to the environment, to Mother Earth. But we’ve been ignored. That’s why there is an explosion of all these forces, its died down this winter but spring is back and were organizing. We want to be heard, we have been sleeping outside on the roadblock for 1 year. Real issues are affecting all of our children’s future, hopefully more people will understand our plight and be enlightened.

Thank you for listening