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Provincial

Aspiring entrepreneurs no longer need an exceptional sense for success or enormous capital assets to make it in today's competitive market place. All they need is an idea, self-confidence and support, says Gord Cunningham, spokesman for Calmeadow Charitable Foundation in Toronto.

Community-based business groups are the wave of the future and the new concept is ready to pour into Alberta's Native communities, he says.

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Tansi, ahnee and hello. Morning and the sweetgrass smolders. I enter the place where there are no questions.

All around me the soft fingers of the smudge reaching up through and around my world and into the realm of the invisible. All around m the connection.

News Briefs Page 3

News Briefs

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Since the breakdown of negotiations between the federal government officials and Lubicon Lake representatives mid-January over the Natives' land claim, the Lubicons have been cleaning house and working on technical agreements with the province of Alberta.

Lubicon negotiator Fred Lennarson said, "What we are doing is that we are getting the people who are concerned about this (situation) the information they need s they can actively support us.

News Briefs

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An Alberta Energy Company pulp mill planned for the town of Slave Lake doesn't properly address Native concerns in its proposal, says a member of Friends of Athabasca, an environmental group located in Athabasca.

Mike Gismondi said, "There is a problem and they (the company) have to go an extra mile to meet the Native concerns. The broader scope of this thing is that sustainable development in northern Alberta cannot ignore the Native people - 65 per cent of all Native live in Northern Alberta in this province.

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Native parents and student protesters from Northern Alberta garnered the support they were looking for at Wednesday's rally in Edmonton.

Their struggle to halt the government's new E-12 policy has taken a giant leap forward, according to Indian Association of Alberta president Roy Louis.

He said Edmonton's contribution to a nationwide protest should help make the government of Canada sit up and take notice of Indian rights.

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The Meech Lake accord threatens Native people's control over their children's future, charges National Indian leader George Erasmus.

"Meech Lake will severely limit our abilities to control child care services. Under its current provisions, provinces can opt out of federal programs and take that money for their own provincial programs," said Erasmus, national chief of the 700,000-member Assembly of First Nations.

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Native Canadians are prisoners in their own land, similar to the blacks in South Africa, said a Louis Bull band member during an elders meeting in Goodfish Lake last week.

Former Saskatchewan penitentiary inmate Alex Twinn told a visiting RCMP constable Indians in Alberta are suffering under the same apartheid rule that has oppressed the black-majority population in South Africa.

"Some issues here are minor compared to South Africa. But it all comes down to the same thing - the rich white man is bringing us down."

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Provincial

Native voters in northern Alberta riding flexed their newly-found political muscle as two Native candidates won seats in the legislature in a surprising election which also saw Premier Don Getty defeated in his own riding.

Progressive Conservative candidate Pearl Calahasen and Mike Cardinal both won convincing victories in ridings north of Edmonton to lead the five Native candidates who ran in the provincial election.

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The decision to cut funding from Alberta's top Native political organization has been dropped, according to the Indian and Northern Affairs regional office.

Consultation and policy development funds will be allocated directly to the Indian Association of Alberta (IAA) instead of being given to bands who, in turn, would have handed it over to the IAA. Provincial Native leaders have reflected the plan to divide funding among Indian bands.