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Although the "Sharing Innovations That Work" conference, scheduled for June 29 to July 3 in Assumption, was cancelled at the last moment, it is planned to go ahead next year.

It was to have been the third community-based conference sponsored by the Four Worlds Development Project at the University of Lethbridge. The first two conferences were held in Alkali Lake, B.C., where alcoholism was once a major problem. Today, there is 90 per cent sobriety among the band members.

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The Metis community, friends and relatives across Alberta and British Columbia are mourning the death of leader and past president of the Metis Association of Alberta, Ambrose "Smokey" Laboucane, who passed away suddenly of a heart attack on June 27, at Kelowna, B.C.

Ambrose attended school at Fort McMurray until he was 14, when he decided to work on one of the many river boats that travelled the waterways from McMurray north. He worked as a deckhand, among other duties, on the Athabasca River, Lake Athabasca, the McKenzie River and as far north as the Arctic.

Windspeaker apologizes for any damage, harm or misleading impressions caused by an article entitled "Books don't balance at Buffalo Lake" which appeared in the May 8, 1987, Volume 5 Issue 9 of Windspeaker.

The article stated: "When the deficit was found, council members Ernest Howse Dr. and Mervin Desjarlais announced their resignations."

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EDITORIAL

"The well-known failure of our people in the system was directly affected by the traditional approach of trying to fit our culture into our education."

This was a statement made to over 2,000 indigenous people from around the world by an organizer of the World Conference of Indigenous Peoples' Education held last month. The speaker went on to say there's a dire need to start thinking about how education fits into our culture rather than the other way around.

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An Edmonton firearms dealer says he has a revolver that may have been used in the battle of Little Big Horn in 1876.

Bill Carlson, recently paid $700 for a single action revolver at an estate gun auction near Hobbema.

Carlson says records of army guns were kept by serial number in the 1800s and according to a letter by General George Custer which cited the serial numbers of three broken guns, Carlson's gun is in the middle. The numbers in the letter were 5743, 5773 and 6559 ? the Carlson gun's serial number is 5860.

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Catholics who attended an outdoor mass at the Enoch reserve have reported seeing a "miracle of the sun."

Over a hundred people who attended the mass, claim the sun was dancing, spinning or pulsating in the sky, sometimes changing color and size.

A university meteorologist says the phenomena has a natural explanation. He suggests the Enoch mass saw "sun dogs" resulting from refraction of the sun's light by atmospheric conditions.

A spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton agrees.

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Federal lawyer Ivan Whitehall says the Lubicon Indian Band is using the Alberta court as a political weapon to avoid a trail on a long-disputed land claim. This is his assessment of a copy of a written complaint the Lubicons have made to the United Nations.

The complaint mentions that several Alberta judges involved in the land claims have worked as oil company lawyers in the past.

Whitehall says the complaint offends the court's dignity.

Talk about luck!

Raymond Cross Child Jr., a Peigan band member, applied only once and yet was selected from 6,000 names to carry the Olympic 88 torch in Brocket next February.

The once-in-alife opportunity caught Cross Child by surprise when he was contacted about a month ago by OCO 88 in Calgary.

"A lot of my friends told me I was selected but I didn't believe them because I thought they were just joking around," said Cross Child in an interview.

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The controversy over a Calgary Herald cartoon published March 15 has erupted into a war of letters between the Herald and the Chairman of the Calgary Aboriginal Urban Affairs Committee.

In a letter to Herald Publisher, Patrick O'Callaghan, Andy Bear Robe accused Herald cartoonist Vance Rodewalt of "inciting violence" against Native people and that the Herald's treatment of Native people is "morally reprehensible, slanted and stereotypical."

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Both the Blood and Sarcee Nations in southern Alberta have received the required 50 plus one votes necessary to pass its proposed membership codes before the June 28 deadline required by Indian Affairs.

Kirby Many Fingers, constitution coordinator of the Blood tribe, says a final count was made on June 23 to determine that over 1,600 Bloods have signed a petition being circulated on the Blood reserve.