Charles Meechance, the former chief of Saskatchewan's Red Pheasant First Nation, made his first appearance in court on June 18, charged with seven counts of attempting to buy votes in an election. The case was adjourned until July to allow Meechance time to hire a lawyer.
Also charged is fellow band member Burt Benson, who faces two counts of attempted vote-buying.

Charles Meechance, the former chief of Saskatchewan's Red Pheasant First Nation, made his first appearance in court on June 18, charged with seven counts of attempting to buy votes in an election. The case was adjourned until July to allow Meechance time to hire a lawyer.
Also charged is fellow band member Burt Benson, who faces two counts of attempted vote-buying.

A small band near Chard in northern Alberta is joining other bands like Chief Bernard Ominayak's Lubicon Lake Band in suing the Alberta government for failing to ensure its treaty rights.
Nearby industrial sites near Chipewyan Prairie Dene First Nation is making it impossible for them to hunt and fish to support themselves.
Chief Vern Janvier explained in a press conference "our primary concern is to keep our way of life alive." Since half of his people are uneducated and have no inclination to become engineers, they have no stake in expanding oilsands development.

A lapsed bill that would give Canadian human rights protection to First Nations people on reserves is finally being revived after 30 years.
MPs approved the Conservative bill on May 28 and now it heads to the Senate for consideration.
The legislation calls for First Nation members to be allowed to make formal human rights complaints against band councils or Ottawa, something they were barred from doing under the Canadian Human Rights Act.

A drunk driver who killed a mother and her three daughters on a northern Alberta highway in 2006 may someday get behind the wheel again.
Though Raymond Charles Yellowknee, now 35, has had repeated impulses to get behind the wheel after drinking hard, seeming not "to show regard for endangering other people's lives and obviously does not fear harming himself,"according to one correctional officer, he cannot be jailed indefinitely.

Band members of the Kelly Lake Cree Nation, 540 km northwest of Edmonton, are concerned about the damage being done to their traditional lands from oil and gas exploration and hope to bring attention to their health and safety concerns by holding a blockade from June 20 to 23.

One day before the June 11 apology by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, residential school survivor, Phil Morin, predicted the words would only be a small step to help Aboriginal people recover from the residential school system. He knew it would need to be followed with major action to be sincere ­ a view that seemed to be held by the majority of Aboriginal people across the country.

Dear Prime Minister Harper:

Mr. Speaker, I stand before you today to offer an apology to former students of Indian residential schools. The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history.
In the 1870's, the federal government, partly in order to meet its obligation to educate Aboriginal children, began to play a role in the development and administration of these schools.

No doubt you recognize the face of Chief Dan George and remember his acting coupe de grace as 'Old Lodge Skins' in one of the most entertaining and provocative movies of the 1970's 'Little Big Man'.
In it, he plays the wise adoptive grandfather of Dustin Hoffman, a whiteman who switches legions between the European and Cheyenne cultures for survival. Hoffman narrates the memoire as the last living survivor of Custer's Last Stand at the famed Battle of the Little Big Horn, a 122-year-old man named Jack Crabb.