An award-winning radio show, Healing Perspectives, spearheaded by a group of Indigenous Studies students at Victoria’s Camosun College, is diversifying the talk show genre by mirroring a traditional healing circle on air.
The groundbreaking weekly one hour spot currently airing on Camosun’s radio station, CKMO, won the Outstanding Achievement Award in the Aboriginal Affairs and Cultural programming category from the National Campus and Community Radio Association (NCRA). The award was announced on June 11.

Games in Milwaukee cancelled
The 2011 North American Indigenous Games (NAIG) will not be held in Milwaukee. And there’s a possibility the games will not be held at all next year. The games were scheduled to be staged in the Wisconsin city from July 10 to 17, 2011. But on June 29, just over a year before the games were set to open, the NAIG Council announced it was cancelling the games as the host society, NAIG USA Inc., revealed it was withdrawing from hosting the event.

To lose someone close to your heart is the most agonizing and devastating thing that anyone has to go through.  Yet every minute of every day someone is hurting because of the loss of a loved one.  I never fully understood why people go through depression or sadness differently, until I experienced it myself.  And for those of you that have climbed that big mountain of hurt and sadness and came out stronger, full of faith and hope, I salute you.  

Windspeaker: What one quality do you most value in a friend?
Howie Miller: Height. Someone with good height can reach things I cannot. They tend to be able to see further. Their shoes are really big so if I wanted to do a clown show, I’d have that option.

W: What is it that really makes you mad?
H.M.: When the TV listings are wrong. I make popcorn, get some sodas, clean the couch, call my friends, and then the show that I want to watch isn’t on. It’s usually my show “Caution May Contain Nuts” on APTN. What channel is that again?

Shannen Koostachin threw a small pebble in a big pond that caused ripples to reverberate across the country.
But the stone had barely left her hand when, shockingly, she was killed in a motor vehicle accident on an Ontario highway.

MIKE METATAWABIN OF THE

THE SASKATCHEWAN INDIAN GAMING ASSOCIATION (SIGA)

Ninoon Dawah handed out turkey, ham and cheese sandwiches on June 16, the first day of the inaugural event hosted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Winnipeg.

The young man from Sandy Bay First Nation in Manitoba said in a soft voice that his grandmother and mother had both attended residential schools.

“It was so hard for them,” said Dawah. “My grandmother got hit when she tried to speak her language. My mother got hit as well for speaking her language.”

Perhaps that was what drove Dawah’s mother to teach him to speak Ojibway.

The federal government will be repealing sections of the Indian Act that allow Indian residential schools to operate.

The announcement was made by Indian and Northern Affairs minister Chuck Strahl to applause and cheers at the first national event for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, held mid-June in Winnipeg.

A box crafted with the pain that one grandmother suffered while attending residential school sat in the centre of the first sharing circle hosted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the TRC’s inaugural national event in Winnipeg June 16 to 19.