Issues Pages: Indigenous Rights

Columnists
Construction of the Keeyask dam. Image: Manitoba Hydro/Twitter
The silence of the dams: Manitoba Hydro's Keeyask dam
Matthew Behrens | Last summer, Manitoba Hydro began the flooding of 45 square kilometers of Cree lands at the massive Keeyask dam, which the energy utility solemnly acknowledges will result in ecological devastation.
News
Study time at a Roman Catholic Indian Residential School, Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories. Image: Library Archives Canada/Flickr
Whitewashed: Canada is shackled by its history of denial
Summer Mahmud, Rahul Varma | If schoolchildren were taught Canada's hidden history, they would have learned that the actions of the Canadian government constituted genocide.
News
Elder Bill Jones called a community meeting to address increasing violence at the Fairy Creek blockade. Image: Fairy Creek Blockade/Rainforest Flying Squad/Used with permission
Fairy Creek forest defenders protect the future we need
Rita Wong | The value in the forests does not lie only in how much profit the lumber itself turns, but primarily in the everlasting ecological value the old forests provide by nature.
Blog
Two people hold a sign that reads "treaty rights not tankers." Image: somecanuckchick/Flickr
Blueberry River First Nations court victory offers path to reconciliation
David Suzuki | The late-June B.C. Supreme Court ruling said the province failed to uphold its treaty promises and outlines a bold new framework for decision-making around resource extraction.
News
Christine Brouzes with a copy of Driven: The Secret Life of Taxi Drivers/Used with permission
The ride-share collective safely transporting Winnipeg's Indigenous women and girls
Marcello Di Cintio | Many of Winnipeg's Indigenous women have a story about harassment at the hands of drivers, most commonly about cabbies proposing "another way to pay." Ikwe set out to change that.
Columnists
A sixties scoop rally in 2011. Image: Crystal Luxmore/Flickr
In the child welfare system, the next iteration of residential schools
Maya Bhullar | Slow progress is being made through sustained activism to build better ways to protect First Nations children and put pressure on the federal government to actually fund and implement change.
Blog
A Cree person and dog sled team on the Severn River, with the Fort Severn Hudson's Bay Company post in the distance, c. 1953. Image: Archives of Ontario/Flickr.
Reparation, land and justice for Indigenous peoples is long overdue
David Suzuki | Canada was built on resource extraction and its foundations are shaky on many fronts, including dispossession of Indigenous peoples and wilful blindness to natural limits.
Blog
Ottawa Police Services filming a gathering of some 8,000 people mourning the loss of Indigenous children. Image: Brent Patterson/Used with permission
Ottawa police filming Every Child Matters walk echoes the Indian Act's pass system
Brent Patterson | The surveillance of racialized peoples has a long history and technology is now further enabling the erosion of the right to peaceful assembly.
Blog
Morinville's Roman Catholic Church burns Tuesday night (Photo: Twitter/Kim Smith, CTV).
While Jason Kenney promises the best summer ever, it's hard to shake the feeling of apocalyptic foreboding this Canada Day
David J. Climenhaga | If ever there was a moment in Canada's history for sober reflection, empathy and reconciliation, this Canada Day is it.
News
Image: Rachel Snow/Used with permission.
Canada's violence can no longer be masked by shallow national identity
Rachel Snow | Hasn’t the cancelling of First Nations gone on for long enough?
News
A sign that reads: "decolonize this place." Image: Billie Grace Ward/Flickr
Cancel Canada
Javney Mohr | An open letter to fellow non-Indigenous people: decolonization is not a metaphor.
News
Justin Trudeau and Carolyn Bennett. Image: Justin Trudeau/Flickr
Carolyn Bennett should quit because of government failures on Crown-Indigenous relations
Karl Nerenberg | When you are a minister and the people whom you are supposed to look out for utterly lose confidence in you, it is hard to see how you can carry on.
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