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Dear Editor:

I just had to write this short letter to let you know I was so happy to read your article in the Windspeaker paper. I'm one of the Bill C-31s. I'm so happy to see someone trying to do something about it. Us Native women lost so much when we married white men, and white women gained so much marrying Native men, which was so unfair from the beginning.

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When we think of traditional food, some folks get a vision of a big bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a family box of fries. However, we are going to go right back to square one, back to a time when we didn't have any teeth, or should I say babyhood. It was kind of hard to chew the old bird then, wasn't it?

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Dear Editor:

I am an Aboriginal nurse working with the Kwakiutl District Council Health Office. The cutbacks in health care across the country will definitely have an impact on Aboriginal people.

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Once again, I find myself in a position of having to move house and body, and like many people who occasionally find themselves nomadic, I look with foreboding at my shelves upon shelves upon shelves of books that line my walls. I have never actually counted them, but I'm sure they are high up into the high hundreds, maybe even the thousands. Eventually, they will all have to be boxed, carried, and unloaded somewhere in the city, most probably with several large groans and yet another impotent promise of "Nothing short of a nuclear war will ever make me move again."

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There's a story in this month's issue and we want to emphasize an important point that's made between the lines.

The story is about the process of adding regulations to legislation after the fact, a development that Canadian Alliance co-chair of the Joint Committee of Scrutiny of Regulations Gurmant Grewal has a big problem with.

He says the government is happy to keep as many of the really politically troubling aspects of new legislation as possible out of the bills that are debated in the House of Commons-read: where the public is watching.

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As the alternate member of Canada's Olympic men's curling team, Ken Tralnberg got his chance to throw a few rocks at the 2002 games in Salt Lake City. When he wasn't in the lineup, the Dene man originally from northern Saskatchewan was supposed to have the best seat in the house to watch his Kevin Martin rink take on the world and bring home the gold.

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Sources are saying the Indian Affairs minister has given the Joint Ministerial Advisory Committee (JMAC) an "absolute deadline" of March 8 to finalize its recommendations on what should be in the First Nations governance act.

After that the JMAC report will go to the Justice department for drafting and probably be introduced for first reading in the House of Commons in June.

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A women's drum group files a complaint of sexual discrimination

The Sweetgrass Road Drum Group raised money, hocked belongings, strapped the baby in the car and took an eight-hour drive from Winnipeg to St. Paul, Minnesota to sing at the 13th annual St. Thomas Powwow.

The result of that trip is a civil complaint against the university where the powwow was held, and a debate about whether women should be allowed to sing at the drum.

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Chief Dennis Pashe was arrested by Winnipeg City Police on Feb. 20 and charged in connection with a domestic dispute.

It's the latest development in a battle that has torn apart a small First Nation community located an hour's drive west of Winnipeg, as two factions battle over who should lead.

Pashe has ruled the Dakota Tipi First Nation for 23 years. There have been no elections during that time because Pashe claims he is a hereditary chief. But his family members dispute that claim.

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A federal committee that has the rare power to keep the government honest is embroiled in a dispute that involves the Aboriginal-only fisheries of the West Coast and could become crucial to the First Nations governance act reform process.

The government and the Opposition are at odds over how regulations should be developed. The regulations are constructed by bureaucrats to govern the way federal laws operate after they're passed by Parliament.