Ontario Birchbark

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Award-winning author and illustrator Leo Yerxa has just received another honor, being named this year's recipient of the Governor General's Literary Award in the Children's Literature-Illustration category.

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Alberta's own Shane Yellowbird blasted onto the country music scene earlier this year with his debut CD, Life is calling my name, revealing his effortless singing abilities to the world and earning him three Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Awards during the Manito Ahbee festival held in Winnipeg from Nov. 2 to 5. Yellowbird was named Best New Artist at the award show, while the song Beautiful Concept garnered him the Single of the Year Award and the accompanying video was named Best Music Video.

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Ann Arbor is as lovely little town about an hour west of Detroit. It's a university town and logically enough, it's full of students. While I am here not as a student, I am however here in an academic capacity. Playwright-in-Residence for Residential College is my official title, and I'm here to write a play for the theatre department, and offer up my experiences as a fairly successful playwright to the silly students who have opted to explore the world of theatre.

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Canada's largest and most respected publisher of Aboriginal news and information is heading in a new editorial direction. After 13 years, Debora Steel is stepping down at the Edmonton-based Aboriginal Multi-Media Society (AMMSA).

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Headlines Theatre in Vancouver has just launched its latest project, an interactive theatre piece that involves the audience in an examination of methamphetamine addition.

"This interactive forum is about the root causes of addiction," said Jen Cressy, publicist for the theatre company. "So, basically we're using meth addictions as a starting point and a lens, if you will, through which to look at addiction in general."

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The federal government is doing its share to ensure the 2008 North American Indigenous Games are a success.

Canada's Minister for Sport Michael Chong announced on Nov. 3 the government is pledging $3.5 million to the event.

This support represents slightly more than one-third of the anticipated $10 million that will be required to run the games that will be held in British Columbia's Cowichan Valley.

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Delegates from as far away as New Zealand, Africa and Latin America met in Hobbema, Alta. Nov. 14 to 17 to discuss processes for making treaties with Indigenous peoples. It was the first United Nations seminar of its kind held outside of a UN venue and the first on treaty land.

The UN Expert Seminar on Treaties, Agreements and Other Constructive Arrangements between States and Indigenous Peoples, held at Samson Cree Nation, was the second in a series of three such meetings arranged by the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights.

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Michael Todd Seeley was only 27-years-old when his life came to an end on foreign soil, some 5,000 miles from his home in Fredericton.

Seeley was serving with the United States Army in Iraq when he was killed on Oct. 30 by a n explosive device that detonated near his vehicle. At the time of the incident, Seeley, a member of Bravo Company of the 28th Infantry Unit based in Fort Hood, Texas, was showing replacement troops which roads to patrol. He was originally scheduled to be back in Texas on Oct. 28, but his stay in Iraq was extended until Nov. 5.

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The leader of one of the five federally-recognized national Aboriginal organizations has launched a campaign to scrap the Indian Act and get rid of some 500 chiefs.

Patrick Brazeau, leader of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP), made national headlines in November when he told the Globe and Mail there are "too many chiefs."

He followed that up with an appearance on the popular CBC Radio One public affairs show The Current, but there was no chief on the panel to debate Brazeau.

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When former Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault decided to change the Indian Act in 2002, the launch of the First Nations governance act (FNGA) in a school auditorium on the Siksika First Nation territory in southern Alberta was a nationally-televised event.

"I am the most important person in your life," Nault told the audience of First Nation students and teachers that day.