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Ahneen, howdy and ho, ho, ho. This is the time of year when somebody with blue Paul Newman eyes, a red, beard face like Burl Ives and a body like Refrigerator Perry goes sneaking around unsupervised in our places. That mostly invisible entity leaves toys for the kids and the bills for you know who.

To tell you the truth, that's how my version of the Christmas spirit left me feeling until very late this year. Almost exactly like a bag of week-old laundry.

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Windspeaker cartoonist Kim McLain has finally done it!

No, he hasn't slipped over the edge while sketching a cartoon of Sam Sinclair still holding onto the steering wheel after all those years while the rest of the MAA car was falling apart, and he hasn't applied electric wires to his head (yet) while drawing a cartoon of the little ole lady from Lubicon screaming "Where's the beef?"

Instead, he has gone beyond all of that and put together 64 pages of "The Best of Kim McLain."

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Muriel Stanley Venne is still an active member of the National Economic Development Program (NEDP) Advisory Board, and that fact was "officially announced at Federation of Metis Settlements All Council meeting October 27 in Edmonton.

This announcement comes after Venne was asked to consider resigning her position on the board in March of this year, because of her involvement in the provincial election. Venne made her election bid as a candidate for the New Democratic Party in the Meadowlark riding in the May 8 provincial elections.

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Back in their hey-days of the late 1950s and early 1960 when the first batch of Native friendship centres came into existence, a variety of programs, services and organizations took root. The centres, became, if you will, the catalyst for such movements and in 1987, the Canadian Native Friendship Centre (CNFC) in Edmonton celebrates its silver (25th) anniversary.

A planning committee has been struck with John Fletcher as the chairman and former Edmonton Eskimo kicker, Dave Cutler, along with Willie Littlechild, filling the roles of honorary co-chairman.

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Dear Santa:

How are you? I hope you're able to bring everything on my Christmas list because I have been a good little boy. I mean, golly, I haven't criticized politicians all year - except when they deserved it. Anyway, Santa, here's my list:

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A panel of Native service leaders were united in the feeling that the major source in Native mental health problems is the intrusive "non-Native system."

Speaking to an audience of health professionals, the panel addressed a symposium on Community Participation in Mental Health on Thursday, December 4, at the University of Alberta.

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How can you tell where Ontario secondary road 525 ends? Right where the rough, never-sanded-in-the winter part begins. This so-called road that snakes into my home reserve.

Back in the early fifties, the government asked whether we would give up land so they could put in a road. This was to get to a hydro dam site further north. Because they thought provincial game laws would then be enforced along that surrendered land, the chief and council at the time said "nah."

EDITORIAL

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If it too often seems that Christmas and the Holiday Season are about the things we have to do and the things we have to buy, and not enough about the reason we are doing and buying them, and who we are doing and buying them for, then maybe it's time to rethink the whole idea completely.

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In November, the Provincial Museum in Edmonton unveiled a new display relating to trapping in the north. The exhibit, entitled "Trapping in Transition"," was co-ordinated by curator Dr. Pat McCormack and will be up at least until the spring or early summer of 1987.

An estimated 150 people, including some real live trappers, attended the opening which offered traditional snacks of tea, bannock, moosemeat and whitefish. How about that! One didn't even have to go to a northern busy community to partake of the same food that hunters and trappers enjoy.

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CALGARY - Because of the lack of positive role models, Indian people are allowing the government to destroy their way of life through alcohol abuse, drug dependency and high suicide rates, said the executive director of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, (AISES).