Stephanie Wesley

Do you ever have one of those infuriating moments where you’re so angry and upset and you just want to kick something but you can’t because the stuff that you’re so angry and upset about has to do with people’s ignorant comments over the Internet?
I do, occasionally, but to be honest not as much as I used to.
The other day I noticed a trend on my social-media feed wherein my friends were sharing photographs depicting non-Aboriginal models in headdresses. The photos stemmed from a photographer’s business page.

Glen Wabasse and Amy Manning were two of many Aboriginal graduates who received their high school diploma on Thursday, June 13 at the Embassy Ballroom at the Victoria Inn in Thunder Bay.
Wabasse and Manning were students at the Lakehead Adult Education Centre. Other graduates included 16 Sandy Lake First Nation members who were attending the distance education program that the centre offers.
Wabasse, who is from Webequie First Nation, moved to Thunder Bay in 2012 when he decided to go back to school to earn his high school diploma.

“This is a great town. I love it, National Aboriginal Day,” comedian Patrick Cheechoo said.
Cheechoo was in town performing at the Aboriginal Day Gala that took place on June 22 at the Airlane Hotel and Conference Centre in Thunder Bay. Over 170 tickets to the gala were sold.
“I get to go to a gathering like this every day,” Cheechoo said as he looked around the audience. “I go there in the evening - you see friends and you catch up. It’s called shopping at Wal-Mart,” he joked.

I took my son out to his first ever powwow the other weekend. He was a little nervous at the start, as he always is in situations that are new to him. His curiosity eventually overpowered his nerves, and he sat still on a rock to watch the dancers on Mount McKay where the powwow was being held.

I went to another event involving missing and murdered Aboriginal women. A group of ten people are currently walking across Canada in hopes to bring awareness and justice to the missing and murdered women and children in this nation, and I went to listen to their stories. It’s been my third time as a reporter attending an event in relation to the treatment of Aboriginal women in this country.
Prior to last summer, I had not attended anything like a memory walk for murdered and missing Aboriginal women in Canada; I hadn’t been to any discussions or listened to any stories.