Canada’s top Mountie has told First Nations leaders in Alberta the RCMP will review the chiefs’ call for a criminal treason investigation into the province’s premier and governing party, a response that has some chiefs optimistic.
“It’s one step closer in regards to what we want to achieve in bringing this forward,” said Chief Desmond Bull of the Louis Bull Tribe in Maskwacis, who researched and formulated the case for the allegation.
Stop humouring these malcontents.
Veterans Affairs says Ottawa’s planned memorial to Canada’s Afghanistan mission will carry an Algonquin land acknowledgement as part of the federal government’s efforts to support indigenous reconciliation.
Blacklock’s Reporter says an internal May 25 memo said text at the National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan will appear in English, French and Algonquin.
NEW WESTMINSTER — When I signed up for the BC Teachers’ Federation’s self-paced online anti-racism course, I expected tools for dealing with racism in schools.
Instead, I got an indigenous creation story about a Skywoman falling through a black hole onto a turtle’s back, followed by a poem telling me I live on “stolen indigenous lands,” along with instructions that I obey and actively support DRIPA, UNDRIP, and land-back efforts.
The British Columbia government is set to give Hatley Castle, the home of former B.C. premier James Dunsmuir, to the Songhees First Nation as part of B.C.’s aggressive land-claims process.
Hatley Park is also the site of Royal Roads University, a public university that replaced the Royal Roads Military College, where generations of the naval officers were trained during the Cold War.
Because Hatley Park and the Castle are on federal land, Ottawa is involved in the transfer, too.
I will vote for anyone who ends the Indian act scam.
More than 135,000 hectares—1,350 square kilometres—of British Columbia Crown land has been identified or committed for transfer to First Nations through modern treaties and other agreements, according to provincial documents released this week. The area is roughly 12 times the size of Vancouver.
The province is also negotiating five modern treaties with the Te’mexw Treaty Association (TTA) that include approximately 1,565 hectares of Crown land in proposed treaty settlement areas.
In a July 29 briefing note disclosed by Blacklock’s Reporter, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty’s department claims it respects indigenous “rights and title” to Aboriginal ancestral lands.
This declaration has not prevented her department from continuing its court battle against an Indian tribe’s claim of ownership over Parliament Hill.
In British Columbia’s northwest, the constitutional trappings of Canadian governance are being replaced and the public is not having a say.
Across the province, more and more First Nations governments are making claims to vast swatches of land. Some of the most consequential claims are those of the Tahltan Nation, which has identified 95,933 square kilometres of land as its own territory. That’s about 11 per cent of the entire province. The consequences will be much greater than mere land transfers.
While only 1% of the Canadian population lives on Indian reserves, that tiny population is constantly in the news. From court cases that pit Aboriginal title against basic homeownership, to Indian chiefs threatening to block development — or even the upcoming Alberta independence referendum — their increasingly aggressive demands fill our courtrooms and newspapers.
(Incognito)
U.S. Federal prosecutors announced arrests Monday in a plot to smuggle methamphetamine from Canada into the United States in exchange for guns.
Three dual Canadian-American citizens from Akwesasne, the Mohawk territory that straddles the Canada-U.S. border between Ontario and Quebec and New York State, were arrested last Thursday, according to a press release from the United States Department of Justice.
The federal government says it is committed to respecting indigenous rights and title while continuing to fight a $5-billion court claim that seeks ownership and compensation for Parliament Hill and other federal landmarks in the National Capital Region.
A briefing note prepared for Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty reveals Ottawa remains in court opposing a title claim launched by the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, despite stating the government is committed to recognizing Aboriginal rights and title.
A little more than 50 years ago, members of B.C.’s NDP government gathered in the provincial capital to introduce the British Columbia Day Act, creating a statutory holiday to celebrate the province and its history. Now, B.C.’s current NDP government is negotiating a treaty that would give parts of that same capital away.
In a recent op-ed in the National Post, Josh Dehaas of the Canadian Constitution Foundation wrote: “Last September, many Canadians were shocked to learn through a Haida Nation news release that British Columbia and Canada had gone behind closed doors in judges’ chambers and signed an agreement that recognized Aboriginal title over all of Haida Gwaii. Without having to prove their title in court, the Haida gained constitutionally protected rights over the entire archipelago.”
In 2024, a mandatory course for B.C. lawyers referred to the “discovery of an unmarked burial site containing the bodies of 215 children on the former Kamloops Indian Residential School grounds” which “(confirmed) what survivors have been saying all along.” When one lawyer proposed a correction, as no graves were ever found, the B.C. Law Society publicly disparaged him. He sued for defamation — but now, the trial has been called off.
The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) recently met for their annual shindig in Ottawa, and the outcome was predictable. They offered nothing but anger, indignation, and demands. It’s an organization overrun with a sense of entitlement and suffers from a chronic oppositional disorder. It’s time that taxpayers stopped paying for it. Taxpayers funding a lobby group whose primary output is demands for more funding creates a self-reinforcing loop detached from broader Canadian fiscal reality or voter consent.
Survivor accounts of residential schools vary — sometimes from the very same person. Nunavut Senator Nancy Karetak-Lindell told Nunatsiaq News in 2001 that her time at Akaitcho Hall was “a home-away-from-home” and that “it’s not like what you’re hearing about all the residential school issues today.” In the same piece, she said, “At Akaitcho, we were in a structured environment compared to where we came from. That taught us perseverance and how to discipline ourselves.” “It taught us a lot about doing things in life that we didn’t always want to do, but those things had to be done … We had to learn how to live with people from different cultures who spoke different languages and came from different parts of the NWT,” she continued, adding that those friendships helped her political career.
