The Spirit of All Nations.
The City of Brantford is sniffing around the Glebe Farm lands again for the completion of the decades old Brantford Southern Access Route (BSAR), which Six Nations protesters and local citizens jointly succeeded in stopping in the 1990’s.
OHSWEKEN – Spectators were in for a surprise at the opening of a Committee of the Whole meeting at Elected Council last week when three small children with the help of their teacher, read parts of the Thanksgiving Address to Chief and Council. Typically, local Christian Pastors are brought in to pray which opens up the general meeting.
After years of community members pressuring its leaders to build a youth centre, that dream is one step closer to becoming reality. Representatives from K.L. Martin & Associates, a technical consulting firm on Six Nations met with Elected Council last week to present their design of a new Elder & Youth Centre. The new centre, if built, will go directly in between the arena and community hall and will connect the two buildings so that people can access any of the buildings without having to go outside.
Six Nations Elected Chief Ava Hill, along with band council representatives from Kahnawake and Tyendinaga met with NDP leader Thomas Mulcair at Parliament Hill last Thursday to talk about Bill C-10 and its ramifications to First Nations communities if the bill gets legislated.
The missing and murdered Indigenous people movement in Canada has been gaining increasing awareness in the past few months. More and more groups are lobbying the federal government to call a national inquiry into the disappearances and murders of thousands of First Nations men and women.
On April 1, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources’ (MNR) 10 year Forestry Management Plan (FMP) for the Whiskey Jack Forest comes into effect, with over 50 000 hectares – that’s more than 500 square kilometers of forest scheduled for clearcutting.
The Harper Government – as our Prime Minister modestly likes it to be called – has been showing its teeth during the past several years.
The latest version of the First Nations Education Act which is now entitled the “First Nations Control of First Nations Education Act,” was introduced in Parliament last week. Six Nations Elected Chief Ava Hill was already in Ottawa that same day meeting with politicians to discuss Bill C-10.
Last week a group of concerned community members brought their concerns to the Six Nations Landfill Site, which is where the Kearns disintegrator is located. Still in its trial run and operated by the Kearns Waste Sciences Group from Nova Scotia, some of those living near the landfill site are complaining of black smoke and the smell of burned garbage. The group asked operator John Kearns to shut down his disintegrator but he declined to do so, and they left peacefully.
A representative from the Woodland Cultural Center, a few residential school survivors and their supporters went before Elected Council last week to ask them to designate the old Mush Hole a Six Nations historic site, something that has never been done before. Elected Council has already promised to provide $220,000 to the restoration of the roof but the total cost is closer to one million. Fundraising is currently in the works to come up with the rest of the money.
SIX NATIONS – A group of Six Nations residents are pursuing community and financial support to get the Dolly Parton Imagination Library started for all of…
Every year, on the first nice day after the snow is gone, Jamie Kunkel, a Mohawk Bear, gets ready for spear fishing. Self-taught Jamie has been spear fishing for most of his life. Aboriginal fishing begins weeks before the regular open fishing season.
TORONTO – April 20, will mark the 8th anniversary of the pre-dawn OPP raid on Kanonhstaton, formerly known as the Douglas Creek Estates, which failed to remove Six Nations protesters, or land protectors as they prefer to be called.
Trial has finally wrapped up for accused killer Roseanne Whalen who, for the past three weeks, stood trial for the murder of her 2-year-old daughter Marissa whose remains were found in a shallow grave in a secluded area near Ohsweken, Six Nations in October 2011. Jurors are expected to begin deliberations this week in a Hamilton courthouse.
EDMONTON – The Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s seventh and final National Event took place in Edmonton, on March 27-30. As the committee noted, “There were more Indian Residential Schools in Alberta than in any other province. For 116 years, thousands of Aboriginal children in Alberta were sent to Indian Residential Schools funded by the federal government and run by the churches. They were taken from their families and communities in order to be stripped of language, cultural identity and traditions. Canada’s attempt to wipe out Aboriginal cultures failed. But it left an urgent need for reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples.”
