Xavier Kataquapit

What is it with all of the hate circulating these days? If anyone knows anything about being oppressed or hated it has to be Indigenous people like me. I grew up feeling discriminated against and I had to push myself to leave my remote First Nation and venture out into the greater world for school at first and then later to work at writing. My father Marius Kataquapit left the north when he was a teenager in the 1950s in search of work in the south but he realized he couldn’t survive in the outside world on his own at the time.

How important is it to have a healthy diet? Well, most recent research tells us that if we have a healthy diet then we have a better chance of living a long life with fewer health problems. However, what does it mean to have a healthy diet.

After dealing with the Covid19 pandemic for a few years now, the worry of world war on my mind and obvious dangers now threatening due to climate change, I still have hope that things will work out in the long run. I am feeling like that this week because I had the privilege to connect with a group of happy, curious and wonderful young people during the Wabun Youth Gathering in Mattagami First Nation.

National Indigenous Peoples Day which takes place on June 21 and the wider National Indigenous History Month in June is a significant time for Indigenous people in Canada.

This special day was established in 1996 by the Canadian government as a symbolic national holiday to recognize and celebrate the unique heritage, cultures and contributions of First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples. In 2009, the House of Commons also passed a motion to designate June as National Indigenous History Month to honour the history, heritage and diversity of Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Beaverhouse First Nation made history on Saturday May 21 when leadership announced to their community citizens that the First Nation had achieved formal recognition as a First Nation from the government of Canada. The historic announcement was sent by the government on April 19, 2022 as an official letter from the Honourable Marc Miller, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations (ISC), stating that ‘Beaverhouse First Nation has demonstrated it is a section 35 rights-bearing First Nation collectivity’.