Manitoba has a chance to prove it’s not the weakest link in an agreement struck between it and the other Prairie provinces to explore the possibility of building a deep-water harbour at Port Nelson on the Hudson Bay. Manitoba must do its part to not mess this...
An early 20th century photo of the cemetery associated with the St. Mary’s IRS, Kenora, Ontario, showing wooden grave markers of students that were allowed to disintegrate over time, proving that students were given a proper Christian (Catholic) burial. "We...
Big Ideas & Big Topics
Canada needs to end colonialism and grant the country’s 630 First Nations title to their reserve lands fully and unconditionally. Doing so should no longer be controversial and should transcend partisanship. But once that’s done individual First Nations have to...
In this essay, I explain that young people should come to university to be educated, and not to become credentialed; the public should support universities because universities educate young people, not because they produce credentialled workers. Why should a...
During the whole of recorded history, the empire has been the most constant and common form of political organization. A basic, self-evident feature of all empire-building has been the successful occupation of the lands of the local, Indigenous inhabitants by outside...
Derek Chauvin is the Minneapolis police officer who achieved international notoriety for his role in the death of George Floyd. A video showing Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes, as Floyd pleaded that he couldn’t breathe, was viewed millions of times...
There is little doubt that the condition of Indigenous people is desperate in Canada, especially for those living in the 600 or so small isolated First Nations communities. Most Canadians know some facts about the quality of lives of the people in these communities,...
“Pretendians” are what Indigenous people call non-Indigenous people who claim that they are Indigenous. Government financial incentives reserved exclusively for Indigenous people—supposedly, to achieve “equity”—have created “Pretendians” who are increasingly being...
Richard Gwyn, author of Nation Maker—Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times, a biography of Canada’s first prime minister, reported that in the 1950s—the decade I grew up in—was a time “…when Canadians came to realize and believe that a ‘new nationality’ could be...
Indigenous housing—especially in remote and northern locations—represents one of the intractable problems facing First Nation communities. The high cost of housing in these locations and the never-ending cycle of backlogs plague reserve communities across Canada....
“Great leaders have great fellowship. Big Bear had, at some point, some three thousand followers on the books and four hundred ... Eventually, because he took a hard line position, and he understood the long-term ramifications of the policies of the government in...
“Indian society was essentially democratic in that people that were governed were led with their consent. The method by which this was exercised was different than in the, in the general society today in that rather than having elections for leaders, leaders were...
In this age of Indigenous reconciliation, it is important to remember the Indigenous movers and shakers who have gone before and cleared the path for others. James Gladstone (1887-1971) was such an Indigenous person. In the Blackfoot language, he was known as...
“You see, you hear proposals these days; let them be like everybody else or turn all the funding of Indian Affairs over to the individual. That kind of total change would bring chaos and would eventually strengthen the hands of the system as it exists today, because...