A Voice from the Eastern Door
A Voice from the Eastern Door
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The largest dam removal project ever undertaken in the United States is now complete, following the demolition of the last of four dams on the Klamath River. This milestone represents a significant victory for tribal nations along the Oregon-California border, who have fought for decades to restore the river to its natural state. The removal of the Iron Gate Dam, Copco Dams 1 and 2, and JC Boyle Dam will enable the region’s renowned salmon population to navigate freely through the Klamath River and its tributaries for the first time in over a...
JUNEAU, AK – The Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission (SEITC), consisting of Alaska Tribes rooted along Canada’s transboundary rivers, today requested that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights order a temporary pause on reckless mining activity that is violating the Tribes’ human rights. As dozens of mining companies seek permission from the government of British Columbia (BC) to develop some of the world’s largest gold mines in the headwaters of Southeast Alaska’s transboundary rivers, the Canadian governmen...
STAR BLANKET CREE NATION, SK – A new state-of-the-art water treatment plant is providing clean drinking water to all homes and supporting Star Blanket Cree Nation in living without a drinking water advisory for the first time in over 17 years. The community's dedication and commitment to providing clean, safe drinking water has helped them to lift the boil water advisory that had been in effect since 2007 for the 300 residents living on reserve. Star Blanket Cree Nation is home to approximately 300 residents and is located nearly 90 km n...
OTTAWA – President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Natan Obed, and the Minister of Indigenous Services, Patty Hajdu, issued the following statement today: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and Indigenous Services Canada Working to Eliminate Tuberculosis in Inuit Nunangat by 2030 (Inuktitut Syllabics) (CNW Group/Indigenous Services Canada) “Tuberculosis (TB) can be eliminated with joint efforts and partnerships between Inuit leaders, Inuit communities, and federal, provincial, and territorial governments. Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), the national rep...
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2023–2024 funding cycle of its Listen, Hear Our Voices initiative. In total, 25 First Nations, Inuit and Métis Nation organizations will share $1.5 million to support their efforts to digitize and preserve language and culture materials and build digitization and preservation capacity to do so. The recipients were selected based on the recommendations of an Indigenous review committee, external to LAC and consisting of First Nations, Inuit and Métis individuals fro...
MILLBROOK FIRST NATION – The Government of Canada recognizes Indigenous Peoples’ inherent right to self-determination and supports the right of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis to independently deliver services that meet the unique needs of their communities. Angeline Gillis, Executive Director of The CMM (Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq) and the Honourable Patty Hajdu, Minister of Indigenous Services, announced the signing of a historic, co-developed Framework Agreement to work together on the transfer of control, delivery and manage...
STANDING ROCK – Three years after a federal court mandated the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) “to conduct a full environmental impact review” of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the preliminary Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was unveiled on September 8, 2023. This very pipeline triggered the notable resistance at Standing Rock spanning from April 2016 to March 2017. During this period, a multitude of tribal members from various parts of Indian Country, along with environmental advocates, rallied in protest. The pipeline’s path is sign...
TORONTO – August marks Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month, and as good vision is significantly important for a child’s growth and well-being, the Canadian Ophthalmological Society (COS) wants to raise awareness about the importance of eye exams and highlight the work that’s being done by the Indigenous Children Eye Examination (ICEE) project. To date, ICEE has helped provide eye care to over 6,000 Indigenous children in the towns of Moosonee, Moose Cree First Nation, Attawapiskat First Nation, Fort Albany First Nation, Kashechewan First N...
By Colin Durrant, Perry Wheeler, Sean Mahoney at Earthjustice. Two Tribes in Maine today joined forces with leading environmental groups and a national public interest environmental law organization to oppose a proposed mine that would be located in the shadow of Baxter State Park and the Katahdin Woods & Waters National Monument. The proposed zinc mine at Pickett Mountain is being pursued by a virtually unknown Canadian company, Wolfden Resources, that has never operated a mine before. A previous version of Wolfden’s request was widely o...
JOUSSARD, AB – Sucker Creek First Nation Chief Roderick Willier and Driftpile Cree Nation Chief Dwayne Laboucan welcomed over 400 registered Survivors, Descendants, and Community Members – from across Treaty 8 – to the St. Bruno’s Indian Residential School Gathering. This Gathering was rescheduled to June 23rd through June 25th due to the recent wildfire state of emergency across Alberta. The University of Alberta’s Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology was engaged by the Lesser Slave Lake Indian Regional Council (LSLIRC), Sucker Cr...
KITIGAN ZIBI – In an application addressed to the Canadian Energy Regulator, three Anishinabeg Algonquin First Nations are requesting that the Regulator intervene with the Government of Quebec in the matter of the export of electricity to New York City. The First Nations of Abitibiwinni, Kitigan Zibi and Lac Simon state in their request that Quebec is deliberately interfering with their constitutional rights guaranteed by section 35 of the Canadian Constitution. In their brief to the regulator, the Anishinabeg believe that Quebec’s Min...
TḰEMLÚPS TE SECWÉPEMC – TRADITIONAL TERRITORY OF THE SECWÉPEMC – On March 23, 2023, Kúkpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir of the Tḱemlúps te Secwépemc, the Honorable Patty Hajdu, Minister of Indigenous Services, and Colleen Erickson, Board Chair of the First Nations Health Authority (FNHA), are pleased to jointly announce $12.5 million in federal funding towards the construction of a new healing center at Tḱemlúps te Secwépemc. This funding follows a commitment made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau affirming the Government of Canada’s support...
By Fabiola Cineas. TARANAKI, New Zealand — About 500 people sat gathered under a large white tent in late October, partly to shield themselves from intermittent rainfall, but mostly to focus their attention on the man speaking at the lectern amid the downpour. The crowd, mainly made up of members of Ngāti Maru - one of the nearly 150 Māori iwi (Indigenous tribes) that have lived across New Zealand for centuries — hung on the speaker’s every word, their eyes fixed on the stage. It was a message they had been waiting to receive for generat...
FORT McMURRAY, AB – “Since May 2022, Imperial Oil and the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) have covered up unprecedented failures of tailings dams and toxic tailings leaks and spill at the Kearl mine,” said Chief Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. “They’ve been keeping this information from the public, instead of protecting the environment and the downstream Indigenous communities. “ It took nearly a year before Imperial informed downstream Indigenous communities of the unprecedented failures of four separate tailings ponds at th...
Smoky Lake, Alberta – Over the past two weekends, the Métis Nation of Alberta's (MNA) Children and Family Services Department hosted 30 families at Métis for the annual Connecting Through Culture Retreat, with this year's focus being on connecting to the outdoors and becoming a Métis winterer/hivernant. Activities included hide tanning, dog sledding, and traditional skills workshops. Families also familiarized themselves with wildlife at the Visons, Hopes, and Dreams Métis Crossing Wildl...
By Nick Martin. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for Haaland v. Brackeen, a case in which the justices will decide the future of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Passed by Congress in 1978, the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, was a legislative solution to a problem that has existed since the colonization of the Americas began: the theft of Indigenous children. The subsequent system the law put into place allowed tribal nations to intervene in foster and adoptive cases involving their citizens in the name of providing...
Blackfeet Nation Challenges Ban on Montana Vaccine Mandates By Katheryn Houghton. Kaiser Health News. Law professors and attorneys say the challenge appears to be the first time that pandemic-related laws have been challenged in court over an alleged infringement on tribal sovereignty J.R. Myers’ frustration grew as he read the email: To attend a local economic development council meeting in Browning – the largest community on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana – he had to bring proof he was vaccinated against covid...
UNCEDED TRADITIONAL MI’KMAQ TERRITORY – It’s now official after an agreement was formally signed in Halifax on November 7: the Atlantic First Nations Water Authority (AFNWA) becomes the first Indigenous Water Utility in the country. This is a significant milestone as it puts control of water and wastewater management firmly in the hands of First Nations. The transfer agreement was signed Monday by Potlotek First Nation Chief Wilbert Marshall of the Atlantic First Nations Water Authority, Carl Yates, CEO of AFNWA, and Patty Hajdu, the feder...
POPLAR RIVER FIRST NATION – A new Kindergarten to Grade 12 school at Poplar River First Nation means that some high school students will no longer have to travel outside the community to pursue their education. Poplar River First Nation celebrated the grand opening of a new K-12 school that will allow students to stay closer to home while completing their high school education. The new $36.5 million facility features a traditional teaching room and shared cultural spaces, and includes classrooms, a science lab, multi-purpose room, computer r...
THE RED RIVER MÉTIS, MANITOBA MÉTIS FEDERATION – Locating unmarked burials at former residential school sites across Canada is a tragic reminder of the abuse that many Indigenous children suffered in these institutions. The Government of Canada is working with Survivors, Indigenous leaders and affected families and communities to address historical wrongs and the lasting physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual harms related to the legacy of residential schools. Part of this work includes efforts being made to locate and commemorate mis...
SIPEKNE’KATIK, FN – The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has issued a letter to the Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations Office in Geneva. The letter comes after CERD met in its 107th Session in Geneva to consider complaints under its Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedure (‘EWUAP”), which included further consideration of the complaint filed by Mi’kmaq lawyers with respect to the violence against Mi’kmaq Treaty fishers in the fall of 2020. The letter to Canada draws heavily from the finding...
PRESCOTT, Wash. – On Tuesday, Aug. 9, tribal leaders from around the Pacific Northwest gathered at Fishhook Park to advocate for working together to restore Columbia Basin salmon populations. The event highlighted the power of partnerships in finding comprehensive solutions to salmon recovery. Leaders from Yakama Nation and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) celebrated the role of salmon in Northwest Native cultures and recommended taking immediate action to ensure endangered salmon do not go extinct. The t...
The release of the recent Peace on the Water Senate report gives our community hope that there may be a pathway forward for the recognition and implementation of our Indigenous rights. We are encouraged that the Senate has ben able to recognize and articulate the various the barriers that the Mi’kmaq have faced in the exercise of our rights – barriers that have been created through the administration of rights under DFO. While we are encouraged with the findings it must also be said that we raised these issues two years ago, and had Canada lis...
YAKAMA RESERVATION – The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation (“Yakama Nation”) recognize Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Governor Jay Inslee (D-WA) for their release of a draft report today regarding the critical condition of salmon in the Pacific Northwest and the feasibility of removing the lower Snake River dams to improve salmon survival. “Salmon in the Snake River and Columbia River Basin are at a crisis point,” said Yakama Tribal Council Chairman, Delano Saluskin. “Our people are salmon people. When the salmon thrive, we...
Epidemiological summary of COVID-19 cases in First Nations communities as reported to FNIHB on November 17, 2020 at 2:55 p.m. ET for the week of November 15 to November 21, 2020. 10 Quebec Cases 1 Ontario Cases 33 Manitoba Cases 70 Saskatchewan Cases 41 Alberta Cases 28 British Columbia Cases Canada Wide The latest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Canada as of 19:00 EDT on November 23, 2020: Canada: 337,555 confirmed cases in Canada, 56,835 active cases. Quebec: 133,206 total cases, 10,997 active cases (including 6,842 deaths, 115,367...
