The Alberta government has chosen not to renew a regulation banning the practice of “carding” by police officers, but the province says the practice is still prohibited under other laws. The provincial regulation enforcing the ban was due for renewal this past summer, but a government letter to the Alberta Association of Police Governance and […]

ATIKOKAN — After months of controversy and investigation, the Atikokan Native Friendship Centre (ANFC) has fired its executive director. The centre’s personnel committee posted a brief statement on the ANFC’s Facebook page this week confirming Sarah Laurich’s dismissal. “On review of the report on the investigation into the allegations made against our executive director, we […]

Despite a series of weather-related delays, Phase Siksika Nation High School students have completed the first CompTIA Tech, IT foundations training program to be offered at a First Nations high school in Canada.  The inaugural cohort saw 13 of the 15 students who had started the program seeing it through to completion. “It is so […]

Several of Canada’s federal departments didn’t meet the mandated target for Indigenous procurement in 2023-2024, according to government documents obtained by Canada’s National Observer through an Access to Information request. The policy, introduced in 2021, requires that at least five per cent of all federal spending must go to Indigenous businesses to address economic gaps […]

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Indigenous leaders from the Peruvian Amazon who are calling for the government to stop oil and gas projects in their territory took their case to an international human rights body on Tuesday. The leaders presented evidence of the impact of oil and gas exploration at a hearing before the Inter-American Commission […]

Nunavut is taking another small step in addressing the housing crisis.  Land for Homes (L4H) brought together representatives from several  groups including Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI), Nunavut Housing  Corporation (NHC), Nunavut Association of Municipalities (NAM), regional  Inuit associations, development corporations, and all levels of  government to talk about challenges and collaborations to remove  barriers to […]

Living in an isolated Northern community does not offer a child protection from online predators waiting to lure and abuse innocent children, according to a Statistics Canada report on online child sexual exploitation.  With the world at one’s fingertips, the Internet has become a nefarious playground for those wanting to manipulate and harm a child […]

To get to the post office in North West River, for years Joanna Michel would pass the residential school where she spent eight years in  the 1970s. “It’s a bad reminder of what happened, what took place there,” she  says, sitting in an empty conference room at the Innu Round Table  Secretariat office in Sheshatshiu. […]

People in Nunavut and northern Labrador have been writing to Canadian government officials this year to say grocers were charging exorbitant prices despite receiving a federal subsidy. The emails about the Nutrition North subsidy program ranged from desperate pleas to do something to lower food costs, to angry demands that retailers receiving subsidies be investigated. […]

After demands for a meeting with government officials went unheeded, a group of Oka residents pledging solidarity with Kanesatake whistleblowers are taking a step closer to enacting checkpoints to stop dump trucks carrying potentially contaminated soil from entering the territory. Other types of traffic would be allowed to pass, the group has said. “I think […]

The president of the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada (ITAC) says his organization is facing major cuts that risk setting the industry back a decade. This week, at the peak of tourism season, Keith Henry informed staff at ITAC that around half the organization’s staff will be laid off in November. He also said smaller […]

In 2018, Joe Bailey was running a successful tourism business showing guests the colourful Aurora Borealis. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic locked down the Northwest Territories. The territory was shut off from the rest of the world for two years, which meant no revenue for Bailey’s business, NorthStar Adventures, except government funding. His business received some […]