Volume 6, Issue 10

Aaaaaa. Shpring.

Aaaaaa. Shpring. The time when a young Cree’s fancy turns south to the approaching flock. Hopefully, flocks. There have always been stories, since most people still living now can remember, of the continually dwindling waves of birds come spring. My parents, and probably yours too, remember a time when birds, geese, ... read more ››

Canada faces sanctions

Ecologists are trying to get the U.S. government to invoke trade sanctions against Canada over Ottawa’s s failure to pass a law to protect endangered species. After 25 years of having an endangered-species law south of the border, a U.S. wildlife coalition ran out of patience waiting for Canada to follow ... read more ››

Crees See the Pope

The last time the Crees went to see the Pope it was back in 1983 and then Grand Chief Billy Diamond caused quite a stir. Canadian diplomats were running around trying to stop the visit because the Pope of the Catholic Church only met with heads of state and this implied ... read more ››

Donations pour in

A journey through the heart of Eeyou Istchee has achieved its goals and the walk isn’t even over yet. Generous Crees and entities have contributed $237,201.90 as of March 23 towards purchasing a hemo-dialysis machine. The hemo-dialysis machine would be used to help residents in the North to clean their blood. ... read more ››

Four in five Vancouver Native kids live in poverty

A staggering 79 per cent of Vancouver’s Native children grow up in families with incomes below the poverty line, according to a British Columbia coalition of community groups. B.C. Campaign 2000 said in a report that 1,830 Native children, from infancy to age 14, struggle every day in the city for ... read more ››

How Crees helped Quebec pay off its deficit

Got a great idea. Let’s all just stop whining about Quebec’s desire or apparent inability to live up to its obligations and duties under the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. Instead of taking them to court to get them to live up to those obligations, as for example outlined under ... read more ››

Lac Rocher Find a Dud?

Hopes were dashed for mining companies and shareholders when a massive nickel deposit at Lac Rocher north of Waswanipi turned out possibly to be a dud. Share prices crashed 24 per cent for Nuinsco Resorces Ltd., the Toronto mining outfit that was conducting the exporation. Months of hype about the discovery had ... read more ››

Like Animals in a Zoo

Matteo Pablo is a Guatemalan of Mayan ancestry, of the Chuj ethnic group. He left his country in 1982 after a massacre by the Guatemalan army in his village, Petanac. He lived in a refugee camp in Mexico for 14 years, before coming to Canada. He was interviewed for the ... read more ››

Nurses Consider Last-Minute Offer

Almost all the nurses in the nine Cree communities were on the verge of quitting their jobs because they say the Quebec government has ignored their poor work conditions for years. Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come asked the federal government to step in with military medical units if nurses carried out ... read more ››

RCMP says Natives armed to the teeth

RCMP says Natives armed to the teeth So what are you hunting with this year? According to an internal RCMP document Southam News obtained under the Access to Information Act, Native “militants” may be using more than the usual hunting rifles. A brief put out by the RCMP’s Criminal Intelligence Directorate warns ... read more ››

RCMP sorry it shot dogs

The Mounties are talking about apologizing to the Inuit for shooting their sled dogs in the 1950s and 1960s. “They just went up to them and it was ‘bang, bang.’ They didn’t explain anything,” said Lucassie Nutaraluk of Iqaluit in a newspaper report. The RCMP is hoping to mend bridges with the ... read more ››

The Excluded

Marcelino Diaz de Jesus is a Nahua from the southern province of Guerrero in Mexico. He is one of the eight or nine million Aboriginal people who represent 9 per cent of the Mexican population: 59 ethnic groups who speak 92 languages. Diaz’s life has been tightly linked to the Native-rights ... read more ››

U.S. BACKED Guatemalan Genocide

America’s CIA helped the Guatemalan army create a blood-thirsty killing machine that destroyed entire Mayan villages in the 1980s, according to declassified reports cited by The New York Times. About 200,000 people were killed in the U.S.-supported genocide against the Mayan people, said the Times article. Mayans constitute the majority of ... read more ››

Voices of the Elders: Story of Children Starving to Death

As told by David Cheezo I’ll tell a story from here in Eastmain when the people were inland. The people left Eastmain in their canoes to go live inland and stayed in the bush all winter long. That man’s father was there too. They lived inland. That man didn’t want to ... read more ››