Why the Act is still around, and what needs to change
Evelyn Ullyott Hayes
Murray Sinclair during the opening keynote of the Shingwauk 2015 Gathering. (Archkris via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) Governing everything from band leadership to land management, the Indian Act continues to shape daily life for many Indigenous people 150 years after it was enacted. For many Indigenous leaders and scholars, its enduring framework remains a […] More »
Documentary follows First Nations’ 70-year fight to restore water to the Nechako River
Hayley Munro
Image courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada, Lantern Films, and Experimental Forest Films. For the First Nations communities who coexist with the Nechako River, there’s a deep understanding that they will persist. Nechako: It Will Be a Big River Again, a documentary directed by Lyana Patrick and co-produced by the National Film Board […] More »
“You have to stay here with me ’cause I don’t want you to be responsible for me,” insists a visitor to Percy Sacobie’s cabin in the woods behind his mother’s house. “You’re responsible for what you do to yourself,” Sacobie replies. He stops by the cabin every morning and every evening, but beyond that, its […] More »
This year, Canada celebrates its 150th birthday. Ours is a country of rich history—but not all Canadian stories are told equally. In this special report, This tackles 13 issues—one per province and territory—that have yet to be addressed and resolved by our country in a century and a half In 2015, the auditor general of […] More »
The Two Sisters Written by E. Pauline Johnson, illustrated by Sandra Butt Waterlea Books, $19.95 Poet and performer E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) died more than a century ago. But B.C.-based illustrator Sandra Butt revived one of Johnson’s iconic poems—“The Two Sisters”—in her picture book of the same name. This retelling of a First Nations’ legend […] More »
Alexandra Shimo, left, and Lia Grimanis. Photo courtesy of Lia Grimanis Uncommon rain and no wind in April 2014 in the mountains of Pokhara, Nepal, nearly halted Lia Grimanis’ elaborate wedding proposal to award-winning author, Alexandra Shimo. After planning the para-hawking proposal (a combination of paragliding and falconry) for three-and-a-half years, Grimanis couldn’t back out […] More »
On a cold December day nine years ago, a group of young people from the Grassy Narrows First Nation lay down in front of a line of logging trucks on a snow-covered road. Chrissy Swain, now 32, recalls that day at Slant Lake, about an hour north of Kenora, Ontario, which set off what has […] More »
The residents of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, live downstream from the most destructive industrial project on earth. A portrait of a community in peril Canada’s oil sands are the largest and most environmentally destructive industrial project in the world. So far, oil sands development has eliminated 602 square kilometers of Boreal forest and emits 29.5 million […] More »
The path forward, if the futures of First Nations and the rest of Canada are to reconcile, begins with two steps. Repeal the Indian Act, and abolish the department that delivers it. Bluntly put, the legislation that governs how status Indians are treated—and defines who holds that status—was racist and wrong in its conception 135 […] More »
Back in the 1960s, a group of high-minded northern and southern Canadians had a collective revelation: if the North ever wanted to succeed, it desperately needed a university. Toronto-based lawyer and retired Air Force general Richard Rohmer spearheaded the idea, first lobbying locals and politicians, and later penning a draft for a bricks-and-mortar institution. While […] More »
Over the last 40 years, 90 countries have amended their constitutions to include the right to a healthy environment. Portugal was the first in 1976, and since then scores have followed, from Argentina to Zambia. But not Canada. What we have is the 1999 Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Under that law, polluters found in violation […] More »