When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Canada the first post-national state, the implications went farther than divisive multiculturalism. Increasingly, those with the same characteristics as this country’s founders find their government, media, and academic...
John McLean was a Christian missionary who lived for nine years with the Blood (Kainai) Indians in present-day Southern Alberta, learning their language, customs and traditions. Based on this, in 1889, at the request of the Smithsonian Institution, he wrote The...
Written in 1889 by John McLean: Christian Missionary, Philologist and Ethnologist The antagonism existing between the customs, intellects, and lives of the two races, and the despondency consequent upon the changed life of the Indians are important factors in...
Indigenous politics in Canada involves a long drawn-out expensive processes designed not only to extract taxpayer dollars but also to block oversight and control narratives. Because of this, over the last several decades an expansion of a vast infrastructure of...
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy!
The war against the invisible enemy of COVID-19 has unfortunately made normal rights and freedoms invisible as well. Another example manifested on September 13 when Saskatchewan’s premier renewed emergency orders for his province. The list of powers he claimed were so...
When one thinks of Indigenous engagement in the natural resource economy, one usually thinks of opportunities in the oil and gas industry or in mining. However, increasingly, First Nations are getting involved in commercial forestry. Certain provinces – including...
Last January, a group of breakaway hereditary chiefs from Wet'suwet'en First Nation in the interior of British Columbia erected a blockade at a remote forestry road in protest of the proposed Coastal Gaslink pipeline to Kitimat, BC. Eventually, the issues were...
Statistics Canada’s report on suicide among First Nations people, Métis and Inuit (2011-2016) released June, 2019, found that Indigenous people in Canada die by suicide at a rate three times higher than that for non-Indigenous Canadians. The preamble starts by noting:...
Last week there was yet another “round dance” held at Portage and Main, this one was in support of the “hereditary chiefs” of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation blocking authorized construction of a natural gas pipeline in northern British Columbia. In spite of a court...
“Give me liberty or give me death” was a battle cry that many people will remember hearing, but few will recall the statesman who said it. Even fewer will know what it meant. These seven words concluded a speech given by Patrick Henry on March 23, 1775; a speech that...
Almost all aspects of the historical treaties signed between Indian bands and the Crown between 1850 and 1921 have been modernized over the past forty years. The notable exception is the treaty annuity, the single provision in the treaties specifically benefiting...
The saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” should not be applied to First Nations bands. Those that have maintained the same tired model that has failed for decades are still failing. Ones that have adopted property rights, economic...
Winnipeg’s Bear Clan has expelled its Thunder Bay sister group. While the mainly Indigenous volunteer group works closely with police, the collaborative relationship has broken down in Thunder Bay. The Thunder Bay chapter began in 2016 - inspired by the success of...
British Columbia has become the first province to adopt the United Nations Declaration on Aboriginal Peoples (UNDRIP). Except for the opposition of a determined group of Conservative senators, the federal government would have adopted UNDRIP as actionable law before...