Page 17

URBANE INDIAN

The gods of Air Canada had deemed it necessary to place me in the most uncomfortable seat possible; the one in the middle row of four. There I sat, all six feet, 196 lbs. of me for 16 hours, including the two hours we spent on the runway waiting to take off. Maybe the crowded airplane seats would serve to acclimatize the passengers to a country with a population of about 1 billion.

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All the Indians are dead in America. They killed them all. There's no more.

"The guy who said that to me didn't understand what Native people were," said Alexander Binette, the 25-year-old Kanesatake Mohawk member of a band called Peaches 'n' Cream currently touring Asia.

Page 12

Sheila Fraser and her staff released a report card on Indian education and have given the department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) a failing grade.

The auditor general said INAC does not know whether funding to First Nations is sufficient to meet the education standards it has set or whether the results achieved are in line with the resources provided. The budget for this program is over $1 billion annually.

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Two decisions handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada on Nov. 18 were cheered by First Nation leaders across Canada.

In Haida Nation v. British Columbia and Taku River Tlingit First Nation v. British Columbia, Canada's court of last resort was unanimous in firming up gray areas in Aboriginal law.

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Saskatoon Police Chief Russell Sabo fired Constables Larry Hartwig and Bradley Senger on Nov. 12. The officers had been suspended with pay since just after Stonechild Inquiry Chief Commissioner Justice David Wright concluded that Neil Stonechild had been in their custody shortly before his frozen body was found in an industrial area on the outskirts of the city.

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The seven chiefs of the Okanagan Nation are not willing to watch more of their young citizens die tragically.

A week after three young men were killed and three others injured on the Penticton Indian Band's reserve in a dispute over drugs, the chiefs of the seven southern British Columbia Interior communities met in Kelowna to discuss the tragedy.

On Nov. 10, they issued a public statement titled, "Confronting the problems of drug use and trafficking in our communities."

Page 9

A review of the 2004 election of the Metis Nation-Saskatchewan (MNS) found that activities at some polling stations were so questionable that the people of the province could not trust the election results.

The Saskatchewan government decided therefore to continue to withhold funding to the MNS and refuse to recognize the MNS provincial council that was sworn into office on Oct. 7 with Dwayne Roth as president.

The review was conducted by former Saskatchewan chief electoral officer Keith Lampard.

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At the very least, Dwayne Roth will be in shape for the promised upcoming battles.

At the end of a 250-kilometre march from Saskatoon to Regina to challenge the provincial government's refusal to recognize the results of a controversial election that made Roth president of the Metis Nation-Saskatchewan (MNS), he declared the coming of a second Saskatchewan Metis rebellion.

Planned protests, he said, include occuption of lands Metis claim as their own, and disruption of official ceremonies planned for Saskatchewan's centennial celebrations.

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There are two categories of harm in the federal government's residential school alternative dispute resolution (ADR) process: Category A and Category B.

The first category is for survivors claiming physical abuse with injuries that lasted more than six weeks or that required hospitalization. It also includes sexual abuse.

Category B involves claims for less serious injuries and for wrongful confinement. Category B claims are capped by the government at $1,500 unless there are aggravating factors. In that case the cap is set at $3,500.

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The Assembly of First Nations' report on Canada's dispute resolution plan to compensate for abuses in Indian residential schools was released on Nov. 17 and presented a scathing indictment of the federal government's alternative dispute resolution (DR or ADR) process.

The report was commissioned and released by the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), but more than half of the members of the expert panel that prepared it are non-Native people who hold law degrees. Many are eminent law professors and two are judges.