Prospective buyers for FNUC campus
Now that the Saskatoon campus of the First Nations University of Canada (FNUC) is up for sale – due to debt from withheld government funds – many buyers have their sights set on the property.
The City Park Community Association, which is overseen by residents of the neighborhood, wants the City of Saskatoon to provide them with $50,000 to pay for the green space portion, as it has done for other developments in the past. As well, the association wants to line up other financial backers and tenants for the purchase.

“I think what I said was ‘Jackpot!’” said John Janvier when he discovered a fragment of an arrow point at Berry Point, where he was excavating north of English Bay. “I dug these little squares and I found an arrow point. It was kind of broken. But a couple of days later another boy found a better one.”

The style of the arrow heads discovered in the English Bay mitigation stretch from 4,000 to 4,500 years ago.
“People were living on and off that same spot for a wide span of time. That’s kind of cool,” said archaeologist Gareth Spicer.

If you build it, they will come. If you move it, more will come. That’s the simple strategy of mobile education in providing more access to trades training in Alberta, an essential boon to remote Aboriginal communities seeking an entry point to working in the industrial sector.

Innovative Trailer Design Industries has created 53-foot trailers that can, in minutes, convert into portable shop classrooms to provide hands-on training in an atmosphere that’s remarkably similar to a machine shop or other industrial workplace.

Floyd Blackhorse is one of nine Aboriginal students who will get a taste of Hollywood without having to travel the distance.

The 25-year old Blackfoot man from Siksika First Nation, is participating in the NSI New Voices program in Winnipeg. Offered by the National Screen Institute, the program is designed for young Aboriginal adults who have a desire to work in the film and television industry.

New business courses have been added to Athabasca University’s Centre for World Indigenous Knowledge and Research programs which will further enable students to learn about Canada’s First Nations culture, history and management.

“The Centre was created to address the issues, needs and goals of Indigenous education at AU,” said Priscilla Campeau, chair of the CWIKR and program administrator of Indigenous Education.

The Indigenous education centre at Athabasca University was launched in the fall of 2001 and is staffed entirely with Indigenous people.

Sean Lessard’s official title is Aboriginal educational consultant with Edmonton Public Schools. And it is a job that he’s passionate about.

The 35-year-old former youth worker from Montreal Lake Cree Nation in Saskatchewan can barely sit still as he recounts all of the accomplishments of the Aboriginal students he mentors at Jasper Place High School in Edmonton.

By Brandon Kennedy
Sweetgrass Junior Reporter
LeGoff School,
Cold Lake Alberta

The large communal bison traps of the Blackfoot Plains Indians, developed nearly 6,000 years ago, are thought to be the single greatest food-gathering feats in human history.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre, located northwest of Fort McLeod in the rolling foothills, offers a vivid look at this hunting technique and history of the Plains Indians, including a well-preserved bone quarry.

Raising funds for Native programs continues to be a difficult task, but necessary to improve the lives of Alberta’s Aboriginal community, said Nelson Mayer, executive director of the Alberta Native Friendship Centres Association and vice president of the National Association of Friendship Centres.

To help raise funds for programming, the ANFCA marked its 40th anniversary with its first walkathon June 1, which included all 20 friendship centres in the province.

Visitors and patients to the newly-opened 128-bed Lois Hole Hospital for Women in Edmonton immediately notice the healing atmosphere created by soothing colours and peaceful art work hanging on the walls.

“I was hired to place artwork throughout the facility. It was not without its stress, but it was a great experience,” said Susan Pointe, an independent art consultant who assisted in the selection of the original works by Western Canadian artists. She had to keep in mind several potential categories of viewers, from patients, to staff, to visitors.