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While many federal departments face significant cuts after Finance Minister Paul Martin's budget, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development will see marginal funding increase over the next three years.

Ron Irwin, the minister responsible for DIAND, announced increases of six per cent for fiscal year 1995-96 and three per cent increases for each of the next two years. The total gain for the department will be about 12 per cent from a starting point of more than $5 billion in 1994-95.

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Native Friendship Centre staff are reeling from news of a whopping 20-per cent cutback in federal funds over three years announced in the Liberal budget.

"For me, it's frustrating beyond belief. People are burnt out. We're stretched to the limits," said Marc Maracle, executive director of the 111-member National Association of Friendship Centres, based in Ottawa.

"We're handcuffed, we're down on our knees, we're being kicked and we've still got a smile on our face."

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What makes up for 10 years of corrosion? Representatives of Cold Lake First Nations need that answer before sitting down with Ottawa to finally hammer out a resolutions to grievances stemming from the formation of the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range in 1952.

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It's a blistering attack on B.C.'s salmon fishery, a federal review board cast a wide net of blame over the industry for almost gutting West Coast salmon stocks last summer.

Native fishermen, as well as non-Natives, the federal fisheries department and enforcement officials, were lambasted by the report. The report, released by the Fraser River Sockeye Public Review Board this month in Vancouver, examined the disappearance of more than a million sockeye that failed to return to spawn in B.C.'s largest river system.

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At the Alberta Chief's Summit on March 16, Indian Affairs and Northern Development Minister Ron Irwin announced that his department would be cutting some passages of the Indian Act altogether. He said that parts of the Act, enacted and largely unchanged since the late 19th century, are outdated.

"The act is an impediment to change," he said. "I am personally offended by provisions that require me and my cabinet colleagues to become involved in activities and decisions that should be the business of First Nations."

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During a recent visit with one of my brothers who is incarcerated in a federal penitentiary, we talked about so-called rehabilitation programs. He told about a speaker from the University of Saskatchewan who spoke to the Native Brotherhood. And then, totally taking me by surprise, he said, "I was going to ask her is she knew you (since you teach there, too) but I thought you probably didn't want anyone to know that you have a relative in prison."

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The current level of militarization in the Canadian North, and in particular the Innu's traditional hunting, trapping and fishing lands in the Labrador-Quebec peninsula, should not be continued without a complete and impartial review of the environmental impact of the practice of low level flying on the inhabitants of these lands.

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There is only so much boloney a people can be expected to swallow, and Metis Nation of Saskatchewan president Gerald Morin's insistence his organization is woefully under-funded is just one thin slice too much.

During the course of the Deloitte and Touche, audit, which uncovered a sickening degree of financial mismanagement at the Metis Nation, Morin moaned that funding cuts and lack of resources are the reason his organization is in the financial mess it's in. He said government funding just didn't keep up with the growth of MNS.

Hog wash!

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Kahnawake councillor Billy Two Rivers is still waiting for a response from the CRTC regarding his complaint that two Quebec radio stations were in contravention of radio regulations when they broadcast racist and disparaging remarks about Indians over the airwaves.

The CRTC is investigating numerous complaints about program content from Chicoutimi radio station CJMT and CKRS of Jonquiere. The offending broadcasts were made as long ago as March 1993 and as recently as November that same year.

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Innu Nation president Peter Penashue said he is disappointed the mandate of an environmental review of low-level flying in Labrador and Quebec did not include halting the program altogether.

He said the consultant concerned himself only with finding alternative ways to keep the military program active rather than finding evidence for having the practice stopped.

Penashue said this is the second environmental review of its kind in the past eight years. The first was disregarded for having too many deficiencies in the statement.