This past month, I was happy to attend two Pow Wows I hadn't been to in years. I attended the Mattagami First Nation Pow Wow and the Matachewan First Nation...
I was happy to see my home community of Attawapiskat on the James Bay coast announce the opening of the new St Francis Xavier Parish Church on August 25....
Ernie Harper and his wife Deborah of Muskrat Dam were already going through a difficult time when a government policy suddenly piled on a whole lot more trouble.
Deborah had been in hospital for three months with a horrible infection in her foot, first in Sioux Lookout for a month and then another two months in Winnipeg.
Connie Walker, from the Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan, was in high school before she encountered Aboriginal people in her school’s history classes. Yet even then the image of First Nations being taught to her and her classmates was a static picture from the 17th and 18th centuries, of Plains Cree people hunting buffalo and living in teepees. She could not recognize herself, her family or her community in those lessons.
Citing a range of problems with the current First Nations education system, the Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) is calling on increased funding and decreased federal government control for education in Aboriginal communities.
Deputy Grand Chief Terry Waboose presented NAN’s report on the challenges and needs in education on Feb. 7, outlining a range of problems faced in communities of northwestern Ontario.
Health Canada will no longer pay for Oxycontin for patients under the Non-Insured Health Benefits Program (NIHB).
The federal government has removed all long-acting oxycodone drugs from the NIHBP effective February 15.
The move comes as communities across northern Ontario continue to be ravaged by epidemics of oxycodone addictions.
Health Canada spokesperson Stephane Shank said the government is acting on the recommendation of the NIHB drug use evaluation committee and NIHB pharmacy and therapeutics committee.
Health officials in Saskatchewan are cautioning their counterparts in northern Ontario that swift action is needed if the region hopes to avoid an HIV outbreak similar to the one the prairie province has been struggling with for years.
The warning comes as northern Ontario witnesses growing numbers of injection drug use, primarily associated with the prescription drug addiction epidemic in First Nations communities, and consequent increases in rates of Hepatitis C.
The phasing out of oxycontin has First Nations leaders and medical services providers on alert for a major health catastrophe in northern Ontario.
With estimates ranging up to 5,000 people addicted to opiods across the North, leaders are worried about the potential for severe public health and community safety risks as withdrawal symptoms hit large proportions of communities at the same time.
Representatives from the City of Thunder Bay and Fort William First Nation have joined together to call for government investment in infrastructure around the Ring of Fire.
The city and the First Nation say they are working towards making Thunder Bay and northwestern Ontario a mining hub, like the Sudbury region.
“There are enough riches in the Ring of Fire basin for everyone here, including First Nations,” said Thunder Bay mayor Keith Hobbs. “The riches in the Ring of Fire are enough to make Ontario a have-province.”
The federal Liberal critic for Aboriginal Affairs is cautioning that communities in northern Ontario could see environmental and health effects like those seen in Alberta’s oilsands region if regional planning and environmental assessments for the Ring of Fire are not done properly.
Dr. Carolyn Bennett was in Thunder Bay on Feb. 20 to meet with Matawa First Nations.
Following those meetings, Bennett said the current approach of doing individual environmental assessments for each Ring of Fire project is flawed.
Purchasing building supplies in bulk, setting up a central rent collection company for First Nations across the North and working on a pan-northern approach to heating homes on reserves are just a few of the ideas being considered to address the massive housing problem in Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) communities.
With over 5,000 new homes needed immediately across NAN communities, and the housing shortfall growing each year as populations in First Nations continue to rise, NAN’s deputy chief Les Loutit knows the status quo is nowhere near good enough.
The federal government should be providing Ontario with money to run First Nation schools in the province, say the authors of Ontario’s Drummond report.
Citing the high cost of poor education outcomes in First Nations communities in terms of social services and health care, the report calls for sweeping changes to on-reserve education in the province.
Paramount in the recommendations is a call to increase federal funding of First Nations education to the level of provincially-funded schools.
This past month, I was happy to attend two Pow Wows I hadn't been to in years. I attended the Mattagami First Nation Pow Wow and the Matachewan First Nation...
I was happy to see my home community of Attawapiskat on the James Bay coast announce the opening of the new St Francis Xavier Parish Church on August 25....