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Nine Metis youth from across Ontario shared an amazing experience in August, spending two weeks doing volunteer community work in Ecuador.

Through a partnership with the Metis Nation of Ontario Training Initiatives and Canada World Youth's Global Learner Program, the participants, ranging in age from 18 to 30, embarked on their 14-day adventure on Aug. 10 and returned home on Aug. 24.

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Residents of nine northern First Nations are back home after being evacuated to escape smoke billowing from forest fires raging near their communities.

Those residents most at risk of suffering adverse affects from the smoke, including the elderly, the young and those with respiratory problems, were temporarily relocated from their communities in early September. The First Nations involved in the evacuation included Keewaywin, Aroland, North Spirit Lake, Sandy Lake, Deer Lake, Ginoogaming, Gull Bay, Long Lake and Pays Plat.

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Capilano College has announced the launch of the Aboriginal

Tourism Operations Certificate, a one year, full-time program, offered at the Squamish campus. The college is now accepting applicants for the January 2007 intake.

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The seventh annual National Aboriginal Women in Leadership Training Conference, to be held Oct. 26 to 28 at Vancouver's Empire Landmark hotel, will feature singer/songwriter/educator Buffy Sainte-Marie as one of the keynote speakers on opening day

Sainte-Marie performed at the first National Aboriginal Women in Leadership Conference in 2000 and she returns to help the host organization,

First Nations Training & Consulting Services, mark the seventh anniversary of the conference, the theme of which is "Honoring Our Women and Seven Generations."

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Calvin Helin still plans to operate his free karate club, primarily for Aboriginal children, in British Columbia, but after digging into his own pocket to cover club expenses the last few years, Helin, is now seeking some financial sponsors.

"It's growing so big I can't carry it anymore," Helin said of the Shudokan Aboriginal Karate Club he founded in 2002 in East Vancouver.

Helin said he doesn't have an exact figure, but estimates he has spent thousands of dollars the last few years to run the club.

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The grieving parents of a 19-year-old have become resigned to the fact that their son's final resting place is at the bottom of the Bulkley River, but they are deeply upset that search equipment that might have located his body was unavailable for more than two months.

Ernie John was last seen in the early morning on June 25 in his truck plunging into the river in the Morricetown Canyon. Immediate and ensuing efforts to locate him were fruitless, mostly because the community doesn't have access to the high-tech equipment needed to find him.

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Tsimshian and Museum of Northern British Columbia officials are in a race against time as they work towards obtaining the world's most coveted private collection of Canadian Aboriginal artifacts, which is set to go to auction at Sotheby's in New York on Oct. 5.

The famed Dundas collection contains a number of treasured, sacred objects that originate from the Tsimshian village of Metlakatla near Prince Rupert. The objects were obtained in the mid-1800s by Anglican missionary William Duncan from Chief Paul Legaic as part of the chief's conversion to Christianity.

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Roy Leonard Mussell was serving his fourth term as chief of the Skwah First Nation when he died of cancer on March 5 at the age of 57, but the impact of his life's work went well beyond the boundaries of the small community he'd led for close to a decade.

In addition to his role as Skwah chief, Mussell was involved with a number of other organizations-some regional, some provincial and some national in their scope.

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At a powwow recently, I saw a Native person walking the grounds wearing one of those "I AM CANADIAN" T-shirts that are so popular these days, several years after the similarly popular television commercial of the same topic. On the shirt were a series of pithy and semi-humorous observations about the Canadian lifestyle, as opposed to the American way of life.

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Ryan Constant is fairly confident he'll be playing professional hockey somewhere this season, but as of late September, the 21-year-old defenceman just wasn't sure in which league he'd begin his pro career.

Constant originally thought he'd be playing at Boston's Northeastern University this season after accepting an athletic scholarship offer from the American school. Due to some botched up paperwork, however, Constant was told he wouldn't be allowed to start at the school until the following semester in January.