St’at’imc threaten action over infrastructure trespasses in southern ‘BC’

By Keven Drews, Canadian Press/Vancouver Sun, May 10, 2013

VANCOUVER – Southwestern British Columbia’s St’at’imc Chiefs Council is threatening to block a highway and rail line and “embarrass” private companies and the next provincial government over trespasses on its traditional territory.

Grim report warns Canada vulnerable to an aboriginal insurrection

John Ivison, National Post, May 1, 2013

Masked warrior on guard at burning car barricade, Burnt Church, New Brunswick.

Mankind is at a crossroads, Woody Allen once quipped: “One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness.  The other to total extinction.  Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

Canada’s relations with its aboriginal people are also at a crossroads but, fortunately, one of the potential paths forward promises a more auspicious outcome than Mr. Allen’s doomsday scenario.

Innu protesters barricade windows of Sheshatshiu office

CBC News, Apr 25, 2013

Dozens of Innu protesters have blockaded the Newfoundland and Labrador Child, Youth and Family Services offices in Sheshatshiu.

The protesters have boarded up the windows of the building with wooden signs bearing slogans such as “bring our children back” and “baby snatchers.”

Ktunaxa treaty including Wensley Bench land contentious for some

By Claire Paradis, Arrow Lakes News, April 23, 2013

Across Highway 6 from Box Lake there is a stretch of forest familiar with mountain bikers and hikers who walk the old railway bed. A 242-hectare section twice as long as Box Lake running parallel to the highway is now Ktunaxa land, as of March 27, when the area was signed over to the First Nation by the provincial and federal governments.

Not everyone is pleased with the deal. Marilyn James, representative from the Sinixt Nation, who said the Sinixt have had a land claim filed since 2008.

First Nations leader sent Idle No More plans to government: emails

By Laura Stone, Global News, April 18, 2013

Terrance Nelson during his speech seeking election as national chief of AFN, June 2012.

The federal government didn’t have to go far to find out what First Nations leaders were planning during last winter’s Idle No More movement.

The plans were sent directly to the government inbox.

Sinixt Nation Press Release and Statement

Date: April 12, 2013

Sinixt Nation has worked diligently over the past three decades to correct the 1956 Canadian government’s extinction status of Sinixt people. The Crown has recognized Sinixt people as indigenous peoples of Canada (as a tribal group) but not as the Indian Act’s defined term of “Aboriginal peoples of Canada” as presented in a document dated August 9th, 1995 and signed by then Indian Affairs Minister Ron Irwin which stated: “The Arrow Lakes Band ceased to exist as a band for the purpose of the Indian Act when-its last [registered] member died on October 1, 1953. … It does not, of course, mean that the Sinixt people ceased to exist as a tribal group.”

Inuit in Labrador arrested protesting hydro project

David P. Ball, Indian Country Today, April 11, 2013

Inuit Elder James Learning is dragged by Royal Canadian Mounted Police to one of their vehicles upon his arrest on April 5, 2013, for refusing to stop participating in a blockade to protest the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project on the Lower Churchill River in Labrador, Canada.

A 74-year old Inuit elder has ended a hunger strike and been released from jail after being arrested along with seven others protesting the controversial Muskrat Falls hydroelectric dam on the Churchill River in Labrador.