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Aboriginal financial leaders are hoping that an agreement signed on July 20 will lead to an increase in the amount of money available for Aboriginal business loans.

The signing ceremony was held in a meeting room at the Charlottetown Civic Centre while the Assembly of First Nations' annual general meeting was in progress in the main hall.

Dan Brant is now the chief executive officer of the National Aboriginal Capital Corporation Association (NACCA), an association of the 57 Aboriginal financial institutions (AFIs) that exist in Canada.

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Not much has changed in Kelly Lake since the CBC did a 1993 documentary exposing hard living conditions in their community and the lack of essential services, says Lyle Letendre, president of the Kelly Lake Metis Settlement Society. Except more Elders have passed and the people who remain are more disheartened.

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The Cowichan Tribes on Central Vancouver Island have something to teach the world. On Aug. 31 they hosted Indigenous representatives from Taiwan, Bolivia and El Salvador in a day of information exchange on the successes and challenges they face in natural resource management.

Delegates toured the Cowichan Valley and Mount Prevost in the morning and participated in information and cultural exchanges after lunch.

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A coalition of organizations with a stake in mental health service provision is hosting a conference for mental health professionals, para-professionals and interested community members in Sudbury next month. In a field that often seems dominated by female health care providers, one thing that makes this conference stand out is a workshop to address specifically men's issues.

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Today, opportunities exist as never before for young people to get a good education. Sometimes it is a lot harder to spot the educational opportunities for adults who may have missed some schooling the first time around.

At Brock University in St. Catharines, however, a very flexible program is underway for Aboriginal adults who want to obtain credentials that will enable them to teach other Aboriginal adults. Options exist to complete either a bachelor of education degree in Aboriginal adult education or an Aboriginal education certificate program.

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It is quieter now on Webequie First Nation than in mid-July when a rash of suicides brought a flurry of outside visitors to the beleaguered reserve 480 km northwest of Thunder Bay.

First Nations and First Nation organizations stepped in to do what they could.

But calls for substantive government action to solve the problems blamed for creating the suicide epidemic have not changed much in the community, although at the provincial level at least, some are listening and offering support.

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The work of seven First Nations artists-Bob Boyer, Dana Claxton, Ruth Cuthand, Faye HeavyShield, Robert Houle, Ron Noganosh, and Edward Poitras-was featured in the exhibition A History Lesson, which ran from Aug. 7 to Sept. 5 at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) in Toronto as part of the Planet IndigenUs festival. All the works are part of the permanent collection of the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina.

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The Planet IndigenUs festival, which took place at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre from Aug. 13 to 22, featured plenty of visual arts programming from artists based right across Canada.

Haisla photographer Arthur Renwick's exhibition of black-and-white photo diptychs, Totem Hysteria, paired totem poles from the Northwest Coast with various commercial representations of totems (primarily signs and sandwich boards advertising businesses such as Totem Audio Video, Totem Auto Body, and Totem Super Star Gold Bingo).

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Planet IndigenUs, a 10-day-long, multi-disciplinary festival celebrating Indigenous artistic expression, took over Toronto's Harbourfront Centre from Aug. 13 to 22. The festival, co-sponsored by Harbourfront and the Brantford-based Woodland Cultural Centre, featured more than 300 artists from every continent.

"This is a ground-breaking event," Harbourfront CEO William Boyle said. "This is going to bust the cliches people have about Indigenous peoples."

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A two-year study has revealed high levels of contaminants in the wild meat and fish consumed by Grassy Narrows and Wabauskang First Nations.

One hundred and eighty samples of animals that include otter, beaver, muskrat, moose, rabbit, deer, marten, jackfish and pickerel were collected. Lab results for 93 per cent of the samples collected show high levels of mercury, arsenic, cadmium, lead, tin or other heavy metals.