Selling higher education to those who aren’t buying it

Posted on November 4, 2011 by admin

Selling higher education to those who aren’t buying it

By Matthew Pearson, The Ottawa Citizen November 4, 2011

Geraldine King is a first-generation university student at Carleton University.

The odds were stacked high against Geraldine King.

She was born on the Gull Bay First Nation, a small Ojibway community a couple hours drive north of Thunder Bay.

She became a mother not long after her 20th birthday, supporting herself and her son by working for national aboriginal groups in Ottawa after she moved here about two decades ago.

She liked the work but soon realized she couldn’t continue to climb the career ladder without going back to school. She had hit a dead end, and to change direction, she’d need a degree.

via Selling higher education to those who aren’t buying it.

Posted in Aboriginal, education, First Nations | Leave a comment

B.C. Premier seeks non-treaty deals with natives – The Globe and Mail

Posted on November 4, 2011 by admin

 

 

B.C. Premier seeks non-treaty deals with natives

justine hunter

VICTORIA— From Friday’s Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Nov. 04, 2011 4:00AM EDT

Last updated Friday, Nov. 04, 2011 5:20AM EDT

British Columbia Premier Christy Clark is breaking with a decades-long pursuit of treaties with first nations, saying that process has failed to deliver either economic growth for aboriginal communities or security for business investors.

The Premier is directing her government to focus instead on striking economic development deals with native leaders who are willing to do business. Those agreements may include land transfers or revenue-sharing on resources, and in other cases the province will broker deals between private investors and first nations on a project-by-project basis.

More related to this story

Natives renew their fight as Ottawa weighs revised plan for B.C. gold mine

B.C.’s Kitimat LNG terminal wins export licence

B.C. first nations to set own health policy

Such deals have emerged on a piecemeal basis in recent years but Ms. Clark has formally adopted the strategy – effectively repudiating the approach of her predecessor, Gordon Campbell, who saw treaty settlements as the means to permanently remove uncertainty over land and resources from B.C.’s business climate.

via B.C. Premier seeks non-treaty deals with natives – The Globe and Mail.

Posted in Aboriginal, British Columbia, Environment, First Nations, Little Fish Lake, mining, resources, Treaty Rights | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

White bear cubs risk being shot in B.C. town – British Columbia – CBC News

Posted on November 2, 2011 by admin

 

The unusual white bears could meet the same fate as dozens of others that have to be shot in B.C. each year. The unusual white bears could meet the same fate as dozens of others that have to be shot in B.C. each year. (Kristy Aronson/Sonora Resort/hancockwildlife.org)

White bear cubs risk being shot in B.C. town

CBC News

Posted: Nov 2, 2011 6:22 AM PT

Last Updated: Nov 2, 2011 6:16 AM PT

A pair of rare white bear cubs and a young black bear sibling have become a nuisance in a small town in eastern B.C., and local residents are being urged to help the animals avoid being shot by conservation officers.

The three cubs, from two different mothers, have been gorging on garbage and the last of the season’s fallen fruit around the community of Elkford, just inside the B.C. border, about 130 kilometres southwest of Calgary.

via White bear cubs risk being shot in B.C. town – British Columbia – CBC News.

Posted in Endangered species | Leave a comment

Penticton Indian Band School Design National and International Recognition – MarketWatch

Posted on November 2, 2011 by admin

Penticton Indian Band School Design National and International Recognition

Penticton Indian Band Finds Right Equation to Bring the Students Back

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, Nov 02, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Despite the recent reports of higher than ever absenteeism among First Nation students, the new Outma Sqilx’w Cultural School has calculated the right algorithm for student engagement. The new school opened just in time for the 2011/2012 school year and is already reporting record attendance.

The School is the result of intensive collaboration between the Band’s project team, the Federal and Provincial Governments. Chief Jonathan Kruger acknowledges the strong team effort that took place in order to bring the school project to reality. “We are very appreciative and impressed by the efforts of the Federal and Provincial Governments and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. All levels of Government were committed to bringing this vision to reality and we believe the project has delivered a landmark building that everyone can be proud of.”

via Penticton Indian Band School Design National and International Recognition – MarketWatch.

Posted in Aboriginal, British Columbia, education, First Nations | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Cop ‘indifferent’ to disappearance

Posted on November 2, 2011 by admin

Cop ‘indifferent’ to disappearance

RCMP officer ignored ‘missing’ report on Tiffany Drew, social worker alleges

By Suzanne Fournier, The Province November 2, 2011 3:07 AM

Women were disappearing from the Downtown Eastside in the 1990s as if snatched up by a “dark force,” the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry heard Tuesday.

“It’s like there was a monster out there, an evil force sweeping up women, but we don’t know what it was,” said Elaine Allan, who was the co-ordinator of WISH, a women-only drop-in where sex workers could get dinner by six, have a shower or watch TV, but had to leave by 10 p.m.

Allan said that as regular clients like Georgina Papin, Dawn Crey, Tiffany Drew and Jennifer Furminger disappeared, anxiety mounted in the community.

Allan testified that in 1999 a young woman named Ashwan became “just hysterical” at WISH, saying her best friend Tiffany Drew had gone missing. As weeks went by, Ashwan’s anguish grew and Allan said she finally paged Vancouver police Const. David Dickson, then the DTES liaison.

Dickson was “indifferent,” said Allan, but weeks later “took me aside and told me Tiffany was in recovery [from drug addiction] and didn’t want contact from me or Ashwan.”

via Cop ‘indifferent’ to disappearance.

Posted in Missing and Murdered Women | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Culture treasure from Canada’s dawn to see publication

Posted on November 1, 2011 by admin

Culture treasure from Canada’s dawn to see publication

By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News November 1, 2011 8:03 PM

One of Canada’s “fundamental documents” — a 335-year-old, lavishly illustrated manuscript describing the First Nations, wildlife and geography of the country at the dawn of European settlement — will finally be published in book form this month, giving unprecedented exposure to a historic Canadian treasure that, surprisingly, has been held since 1949 by a museum in Oklahoma.

The Codex Canadensis was created around 1675 by an observant, artistic and sometimes fantastically imaginative Jesuit priest named Louis Nicolas, whose pioneering achievement was lost to Canadian history for more than two centuries.

It’s being published for the first time by McGill-Queen’s University Press in a hefty, 550-page, bilingual volume, along with Nicolas’s collected writings about Canada in the age of New France, The Natural History of the New World.

via Culture treasure from Canada’s dawn to see publication.

Posted in First Nations | Leave a comment

Posted on November 1, 2011 by admin
Posted in FNMI Reports | Leave a comment

Arrival of Mohawks takes Occupy up a notch | Columnists | Opinion | Calgary Sun

Posted on November 1, 2011 by admin

Arrival of Mohawks takes Occupy up a notch

By Ezra Levant ,QMI Agency

First posted: Monday, October 31, 2011 06:00 PM MDT

The Occupy Toronto protest has been pretty empty these past weeks — there are a lot of tents up, but they’re empty. They’re like flamingo lawn ornaments, or political lawn signs. They’re for show.

Even two weeks ago, it was clear that most of the protesters there went home at night, when the media wasn’t there to notice, because they wanted to sleep in comfortable beds and to have hot showers. Other than union organizers, only a few genuinely homeless people stayed there full time — people who were on the streets long before Canada’s labour unions decided to copycat the U.S. Occupy Wall Street protests.

The whole thing was rather pitiful: Effete, elitist, rich, spoiled, entitled white kids pretending to find common cause with homeless and disturbed people.

Canada’s protests have been embarrassingly lame — even if they have cost police millions of dollars in overtime.

So what’s next? In the United States, Occupy protests have decided to stay relevant by turning violent. Oakland, Calif., saw outright riots. It’s not accidental: This is the next stage of the protests, to spark a violent encounter with police in the hopes that the police response will gain them public sympathy and give them the political credibility that their whiny incoherence hasn’t provided so far.

via Arrival of Mohawks takes Occupy up a notch | Columnists | Opinion | Calgary Sun.

Posted in Aboriginal, First Nations, Human Rights, Human Rights, Indigenous, Indigenous Rights, Ontario, Treaty Rights | Leave a comment