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For three days in January, people from across Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) territory gathered in Thunder Bay to learn about Treaty 9 and to share their ideas about how to realize the rights guaranteed by the treaty document.

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Marilyn Van Bibber is a Northern Tutchone from the Selkirk First Nation near Pelly Crossing, Yukon who has had an important impact on the lives of many Aboriginal people.

Van Bibber, armed with a diploma in nursing and a certificate in midwifery, has served northern Native communities for some 25 odd years, and with a number of university courses in political science and sociology under her belt, she has also helped out in the land claim arena.

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"Tenacity, dedication and pure stubbornness" kept a unique First Nations library open through hard times, according to Gene Joseph, founding librarian of the Xwi7xwa Library at the University of British Columbia's First Nations House of Learning.

And the library's new status as a full branch of the UBC library system puts it in a position to extend collections, services and outreach programs to Aboriginal communities.

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The prevention of deadly infections is as simple as washing your hands, and in learning the differences between viruses and bacteria to know when and how to use antibiotics.

The lessons are part of a province-wide program called, Do Bugs Need Drugs?, aimed at children, families, and health care professionals to address antibiotic resistance. In 1998, the program was developed in Alberta by Dr. Edith Blondel-Hill and has since been adopted by communities in Northern Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and now by British Columbia.

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The students at Haa-huu-payuk elementary school were treated to a special workshop Jan. 11 and 12 that got them talking about science.

It was just the kind of activity the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council's fisheries program-called Uu-a-thluk- was hoping the school would engage in to help ensure the future of resource management.

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It was truly a wet and wild year for Jeremy Brown in 2005, who spent five months of it travelling the waterways of Canada, the United States and Mexico.

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As the Aboriginal tourism sector continues to grow, so does the need for Aboriginal interpreters. These positions would be filled by people of Aboriginal decent who have the desire to tell the Aboriginal story and can do so in two new heritage sites, including Metis Crossing in northeastern Alberta and Blackfoot Crossing in the south.

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PRO BONO

Dear Readers: I must say sorry for not having any recent columns available. I will do my best not to have this situation happen again. My sincere apologies and here is this month's column.

Dear Tuma:

I'm looking for a lawyer and was told to talk to you. A family member is in jail and the Legal Aid lawyer is not working to get him out. Can you help out? How much does a lawyer costs?

Legal Aid Is Not Enough

Dear Legal Aid:

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NASIVVIK

Open the pages of any Arctic book or journal and the tortured spellings of Inuit names leap out like bad captions in a foreign language movie. To an Inuk reader, coming across such names in print is like having to negotiate, with great care and caution, through patches of brittle, treacherous, unavoidable rough ice.