Assembly of First Nations B.C. Regional Chief Shane Gottfriedson suggests it’s time for parties to step back and take a deep breath. He was speaking about a lawsuit that has been filed in the BC Supreme Court.

“It’s really being blown out of proportion,” he said.

The lawsuit raises the issue of how schools should be allowed to teach and promote Indigenous culture in the classroom.

Arthur Bear Chief said his is a story that needs to be told. Not only for himself, but for the other children who were abused at Old Sun residential school and can no longer speak out.

“It’s important for me to make public what I personally went through and also to speak for people that are gone that went to residential school with me and that went through probably the same thing that I did. There’s no voices for these people. I wanted the public to know,” said Bear Chief.

My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell will be published in December.

November 10, 2016.

Independent Indigenous input will help inform the University of Calgary’s institutional-wide Indigenous strategy, but there is no plan to solicit that same kind of input of the larger Indigenous community when the strategy is in draft format.

That doesn’t mean Indigenous people won’t have hands-on involvement after the consultation process is concluded. It means that input will be limited to Indigenous personnel with ties to the university.

An anonymous donation to the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) will be housed in a new Gallery of Northwest Coast Masterworks.

Construction of the new gallery begins this month and is expected to be completed in time to open to the public by National Aboriginal Day, June 21, 2017.

The 200 pieces of Indigenous art, worth $7 million, make up the largest collection of Northwest Coast First Nations art to return to B.C. in recent decades.

The Heiltsuk Nation is disappointed to learn that the federal government is withholding analytical data arising from early environmental sampling after a tug and barge ran aground Heiltsuk territorial waters.

These samples, collected by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and handed over to the Department of Environment and Climate Change, may contain information critical to Heiltsuk decision-making around human and environmental health, reads a statement from the nation dated Nov. 10.

Bradley Dobson is making quite a name for himself, albeit far from his original home.

Dobson, a member of the Moose Cree First Nation, was born in the remote northern Ontario community of Moose Factory.

The 17-year-old is now starring in his first season of Junior A hockey with the Smiths Falls Bears. The Bears compete in the 12-team Central Canada Hockey League, comprised of teams in and near Ottawa and surrounding areas in eastern Ontario.

Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler announced Oct. 28 that the Thunder Bay training centre has been renamed for Chanie (Charlie) Wenjack, a First Nations boy who died while running away from residential school 50 years ago on Oct. 22, 1966.

The Oshki-Pimache-O-Win Education and Training Institute will be renamed as a “fitting and lasting tribute to the memory of Chanie Wenjack and all of our youth who were lost during the Indian residential school era,” said Fiddler.

MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette says now that he has “put it down on paper what it should look like” he is hopeful that a member of the Trudeau Cabinet – either Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett or Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly – will take his private members bill forward as a piece of legislation, setting June 2 as Indian residential school reconciliation and memorial day.

If the passage of the bill has to depend on him, Ouellette says residential school survivors and their descendants will be waiting at least three years for the first hour of debate on the bill.

Indigenous activist and world-renowned architect Douglas Cardinal lost his bid in Ontario Superior Court to stop the Cleveland Indians baseball team from using its “racist name” and Chief Wahoo mascot logo during the American League Championship Series games played in Toronto against the Blue Jays.

The application also named Rogers Communications Inc., which broadcast the games.

November 1, 2016.

The frustration bleeds through when Child and Youth Advocate Del Graff talks about recommendations that have been repeatedly ignored by provincial governments.

“Since my office has been responsible for investigative reviews, we’ve made 34 recommendations to address suicide for young people. Of 34 of those recommendations, only eight have been met. That’s less than a quarter of them,” said Graff