Little Keith Iron, the 10-year-old who was killed by dogs near his home last week on the Canoe Lake First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan, was buried yesterday.

People packed his funeral in the school gym, but among the mourners who will miss him most is his older brother, CBC reports here.

Sonny has difficulty communicated, says teacher Dorothy Laliberte, and Keith served as his caretaker.

“[Sonny] made sounds and [Keith] understood him, what he was saying,” she says.

“And if I couldn’t understand Sonny, Keith would get in and explain to me what was going on. It was like 100 per cent total care from a younger brother.”

Keith’s parents say their tragedy serves to underscore the need to deal with roaming dogs on reserves.

“Somebody needs to do something,” says his mother, Angie Checkosis. “And by that I mean the chief and council.”

Canoe Lake Chief Guy Lariviere has already said, here, that he and Canoe Lake leadership feel responsible.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Canoe Lake First Nation, Chief Guy Lariviere, First Nations, Keith Iron, Native American news, wild dogs

Every year since 1991, when a Native woman was murdered in Vancouver, people around Canada have marched on Valentine’s Day to commemorate the disproportionate numbers of First Nations women who are victimized by violent crime. (Watch a video of last year’s Vancouver march, above.)

There’s a Facebook page, 1st Annual Woman’s Memorial March for Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women – in French, the Première Marche Annuelle Commémorative en Mémoire des Femmes Autochtones Assassinées et Disparues.

The march also has its own Web site.

The cities where the march is being staged this year include, as always, Vancouver, despite the 2010 Winter Olympics, which start two days earlier.

“I think everybody realizes the important role of this march in this community,” organizer Angela Marie MacDougall tells The Tyee blog:

The Native Women’s Association of Canada has documented more than 500 cases of murdered or missing women over the past 30 years. In B.C., there has been increasing public pressure for a police inquiry into women who have met with violence on provincial highways.

It’s getting harder and harder to ignore these issues,” said MacDougall, who spoke at an art auction last night held to raise money for Vancouver’s Battered Women’s Support Services. Violence against aboriginal women, she said, is “the ultimate symptom of colonization.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: First Nations, Marche Annuelle Commémorative en Mémoire des Femmes Autochtones Assassinées et Disparues, Memorial March for Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, Native American news, Vancouver Olympics

First Peoples House, the new $7 million cultural center for indigenous students at the University of Victoria, officially opened this week – an acknowledgment of the school’s leap in First Nations enrollment.

The Victoria Times Colonist reports, here, that the nearly 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students represent a 700 percent increase in just a little over a decade.

“Although our indigenous students, staff and faculty are from different nations across the country, we all now have a sense of home, of place and of a stronger connection to the local communities,” she said.

The building’s Coast Salish style features a cedar-plank exterior and interior woven cedar walls, as well as a ceremonial hall has a gas “fire pit” with skylights representing the smoke holes. It’s expected to win LEED certification.

Anthropology student Mayana Ambers, of the Namgis First Nation in Alert Bay, said she feels comfortable in the centre.

“It’s really quiet and peaceful because campus can be hectic and busy and crazy,” says anthropology student Mayana Ambers, of the Namgis First Nation in Alert Bay. “It’s important, especially when you have people coming from more remote areas. I do feel a sense of pride in it.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Coast Salish, First Nations, First Peoples House, Namgis First Nation, Native American news, University of Victoria

The Four Host First Nations involved in next month’s 2010 Olympics tout the performers’ lineup as “explosive” – and it sounds as though they’ve got it just right.

The group today released the list of those who will perform at the 2010 Aboriginal Pavilion, or Chiefs’ House. (See the news release, with a schedule of the performances, here.)

The series kicks off with the legendary Buffy Sainte-Marie, just after the Feb. 12 opening ceremonies.

“The Four Host First Nations are proud to present the world’s premier Aboriginal performing artists,” says Tewanee Joseph, Chief Executive Officer of the Four Host First Nations. “We invite everyone to experience Aboriginal sounds of the 21st century – from traditional to contemporary, including jigs, throat singing, hip hop, rock and roll, folk and the blues.”

The 14-night program includes Team Rezofficial, Kinnie Starr, the Métis Fiddler Quartet, Murray Porter, Mad Eskimo and Joy Harjo, as well as traditional drummers and singers from the Four Host First Nations.

And, just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, all performances are free.

Gwen Florio

Tags: 2010 Aboriginal Pavilion, 2010 Vancouver Olympics, buffalo post, Buffy Sainte-Marie, First Nations, Four Host First Nations, Joy Harjo, Kinnie Starr, Mad Eskimo, Métis Fiddler Quartet, Murray Porter, Native American news, Team Rezofficial

Saying a “seismic shift” is needed to save an entire generation of students, most of them aboriginal, the Alberta government has replaced all 23 members of a northern school board with a trustee who has a background in aboriginal education.

Such action is nearly unprecedented – but so are the dropout rates and poor test scores in the Northland School Division, the Winnipeg Free Press reports here.

The new trustee, Colin Kelly, has worked as director of education for Treaty 8 First Nations in Alberta and served as the superintendent of the problem-plagued Northland division between 1990 and 2002.

The school’s 2,800 students include those from several First Nations. A report last year found that few than 20 percent were completing high school within three years, and only 40 percent scored acceptably on tests – compared to a provincial average of 70 percent completion and 77 percent acceptable test levels.

But some found the move hypocritical.

Jeff Winsor of the Fort McKay First Nation tells the CBC, here, that the poor performance is due in part to a lack of government funding.

“We’re doing some innovative things here to try to mitigate the underfunding from the province and the school board,” he says, adding that attendance has increased 25 percent as a result.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, First Nations, Native American news, Northland School Division

The hockey group Right to Play is best known for its work in war zones, where it tries to help young people build self-esteem and leadership skills.

Now it’s headed to the Moose Cree First Nation on the James Bay coast in northern Ontario, where 13 teenagers hanged themselves last year and another 80 tried to kill themselves, the Toronto Star’s Tanya Talaga reports here.

Lest those statistics seem like just so many numbers, watch the video above, one of several YouTube memorials to one of the victims, Thomas Trapper, a young hockey player who killed himself a year ago this weekend.

(Read Talaga’s previous stories on the unfolding tragedy here and here.)

Right to Play operates in 23 countries, such as Lebanon and Burundi, but has never before come to Canada. The idea is that if the program takes hold at Moose Cree, it will spread to other reserves.

The idea to bring Right to Play to the reserve came from Brad Duguid, Ontario’s former aboriginal affairs minister, and recently named minister of infrastructure and energy. The Ontario government is partnering in the initiative.

“These young people deserve more than they are getting right now,” Duguid said at a news conference Thursday at the Hockey Hall of Fame. “This is the fastest-growing young population in our province and our country.”

Earlier this week, the govenment sent emergency funds and four suicide prevent workers to the community.

“What I see here today gives me great encouragement,” says Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Stan Beardy. The hockey plan, he says, “is something tangible, something my young people can relate to.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: Brad Duguid, buffalo post, First Nations, Moose Cree First Nation, Native American news, Nishnawbe Aski Nation, Right to Play, teen suicide, youth hockey

World champion Salish boxer brings event home to Flathead Indian Reservation
Former world champion boxer Marvin Camel comes home to the Flathead Indian Reservation Tuesday to talk about how boxing opened doors to him. He was a two-time world champion boxer who won the World Boxing Council and International Boxing Federation Cruiserweight Championships, the Char-Koosta News reports here. The newspaper writes that Camel is Montana’s only world championship boxer, and was named by Sports Illustrated as one of Montana’s top 50 athletes of the 20th century. Videos of his championship matches will be shown on the Flathead Reservation this week.

Report alleges mismanagement of tribal welfare funds
A investigative report by the Palm Springs (Calif.) Desert Sun alleges the 200 members of the Torres-Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians have seen millions of dollars disappear from a tribal welfare program meant to help them. More than $6 million disappeared in just two years, it says. Read it here.

Seneca Nation billboard calls for defeat of PACT act
The Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act would prohibit the U.S. Postal Service from delivering cigarettes and certain other tobacco products, effectively putting Indian-owned mail order tobacco businesses – an industry developed by the Seneca Nation over the past two decades – out of operation, writes Indian Country Today’s Gale Courey Toensing here. A Seneca Nation billboard on Interstate 190 urges people to vote against it.

Reinstated Navajo President Joe Shirley offers options for smaller council
Members of the Navajo Nation voted last month to decrease the size of their tribal council from 88 to 24. Now President Joe Shirley Jr., who recently returned after being placed on leave during a probe into the tribe’s business dealings, has offered 10 reapportionment plans for consideration. The Navajo Times has the story here.

First Nations eager to use new cross-border status cards
Some First Nations in the Yukon are ready to try secure new Indian status cards, but federal officials have chiefs to list concern before before a pilot program begins, the CBC reports here. The idea is that the card will make it easier for First Nations members to cross the Canada-U.S. border. The cards are to be tested in Yukon communities near Alaska.

Little Shell opposition plans election to replace tribal council
Leaders of an opposition faction within Montana’s Little Tribe of Chippewa Indians are planning an election to replace the existing Tribal Council, the Associated Press reports here. The tribe recently was denied federal recognition, but has long been recognized by the state of Montana.

Gwen Florio

Tags: First Nations, Flathead Indian Reservation, International Boxing Federation Cruiserweight Championship, Joe Shirley Jr., Little Shell Band of Chippewa, Marvin Camel, Navajo Nation, PACT Act, Seneca Nation, Torres-Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, U.S. Postal Service, World Boxing Council, Yukon

First Nations vow that pride will be their Olympics legacy
Although there has been a lot of controversy regarding First Nations and the Vancouver Oympics, Justin George, chief of the Tsleil-Waututh, says the ultimate legacy will be pride, Canadian Press reports here. “The level of participation hands down is going to be the legacy in that it’s given us the opportunity to educate the world (about) who we are,” says George. The Tsleil-Waututh are one of the four bands on whose original territories the games are being held.

Deadline for Cobell settlement resolution is pushed back
TGTBT, as the shorthand goes. Too good to be true. The deadline for the necessary congressional approval of the multi-billion-dollar settlement in the landmark Cobell case over mismanaged Indian trust money has been pushed back to Feb. 28, according to this Indian Country Today story. After decades of mismanagement and squandered funds, another few weeks probably doesn’t matter. But still.

Interior secretary calls summit with tribes over Cape Cod wind project
U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has scheduled a meeting for Wednesday in Washington with proponents of a wind power project off Cape Cod, the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette reports here. Opponents of the project also will be there, including members of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe. Last week, a ruling found that the project would interfere with the park’s traditional religious use of the site.

University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire to save Council Oaks Tree
The historic Council Oaks Tree at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire won’t have to be chopped down to make way for a new student union after all. The tree is on the school seal, and the original – the present one is a replacement – is believed to be the site of peace talks between the Dakota Sioux and Ojibwe tribes, the AP reports here.

A little haggis with your fry bread?
We can’t top this BBC lede, so we’ll just repeat it verbatim: An extraordinary link between Scotland and a Native American Indian tribe is set to take centre stage at an International Clan gathering. Get the story here.

Gwen Florio

Tags: 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Aquinnah Wampanoag, buffalo post, Cherokee, Cobell v. Salazar, Council Oaks Tree, Dakota Sioux, Elouise Cobell, First Nations, Native American news, Ojibwe, Tsleil-Waututh, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

How cool is this?

Steven Point, British Columbia’s first aboriginal lieutenant govdenror, is carving a piece of red cedar into an inland river canoe. He wants to launch it this month, and then donate it back to the people of the province as an example of a First Nations canoe, the Times Colonist of British Columbia reports here:

The launch ceremony will mark the culmination of hundreds of hours of work since Point, 58, found the old block of cedar while walking on Ross Bay beach last November.

The ends of the log had already been shaped into points and it looked like someone had tried to carve it, said Point. His brother, an experienced carver, pegged the wood at between 500 and 800 years old, meaning the work could have started before Christopher Columbus discovered the so-called New World.

He’s being mentored in his work by First Nations master carver Tony Hunt Sr., who carves both totem poles and seafaring canoes.

“What I believe is that you’re guided, and when things come in and out of your life you should pay attention, because something good could happen,” Point tells the paper’s Rob Shaw.

In addition to his provincial post, Point has been chief of the Skowkale First Nation and tribal chairman of the Sto:lo Nation.

He’s named the canoe Shxwtitöstel, which means a safe place to cross the river – a metaphor for between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people.

Gwen Florio

Tags: British Columbia, buffalo post, First Nations, Lt. Gov. Steven Point, Native American news, Native art, Skowkale First Nation, Sto:lo Nation, Tony Hunt