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This year's Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards (CAMA) will be bigger than ever before. Organizers have announced they have added five new award categories-Best Fiddle Album, Best International Aboriginal/Indigenous Album, Best Inuit Traditional Album, Best Jazz Album and Best Aboriginal Music Radio Program.

At last year's CAMA, winners were honored in 17 categories.

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John Kim Bell, the founder of the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation, has taken yet another step away from the organization he has led for the past decade.

Former chairman of the board Bill Shead made the announcement in a letter to stakeholders on June 11. The letter states that effective May 31, Bell retired as president of the foundation.

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Lorne Cardinal is a happy man. The 40-year-old member of the Sucker Creek First Nation has a steady acting job in the most popular situation comedy in Canadian television history.

Cardinal plays Davis Quinton, the police chief of the fictional town of Dog River. It's the home community of Corner Gas, seen on CTV and The Comedy Network.

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THE URBANE INDIAN

For years, philosophers, Elders and people who work in the membership department at band offices across the country have been battling with the age-old question of what is Native and what is Caucasian. What separates the two and where does one belief system begin and the other stop? Truly complicated questions worthy of serious pondering. Well, I believe I may have the answer. And it's quite obvious. I expect no praise or rewards for my discovery, merely the credit and babes. And maybe some understanding.

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NASIVVIK

Now that another federal election is upon us, just how alive and excited are we about this great exercise of Canadian democracy called niruarniq in Inuktitut? What is there in a federal election that would cause an Inuk to pause and exclaim 'Oh, joy! Another federal election!' Searching the political landscape for something that Inuit can directly relate to in federal elections is like searching for a rare animal that is known to exist, but has never been seen. So how can we be as excited as other Canadians about all this?

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PRO BONO

Dear Tuma:

Last month my cousin died and left a will naming me as the executor. I do not have a clue as to what to do. I paid all the funeral expenses, but does Indian Affairs pay that? How can I be reimbursed for all the money I spent? Now his family tells me that what is in the will is not what he wanted and that they know what should go to whom. What should I do?

Under Pressure

Dear Under:

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A poll commissioned last summer by several federal government departments that asked grassroots on-reserve First Nation people what they thought about the First Nations governance act produced results that might surprise you.

The poll showed that more than half of the grassroots people wanted the legislation. Even more provocative, the poll showed that opposition to the act was high in higher income groups and low in low-income groups.

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Ron Ignace wants some answers. His son is dead and the three men who killed him were convicted on a lesser charge as a result of police mistakes during the investigation.

Ignace, the former chief of the Skeetchestn Indian Band, has had a very heavy heart since his 21-year-old son Gabriel Palmer, known to his friends and family as Skooks, was viciously killed Dec. 30, 2002.

Ignace called Windspeaker just an hour after sentence was pronounced to tell us of his call for an inquiry into the matter.

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Many Aboriginal organizations, including the Assembly of First Nations, are crying foul after former British Columbia Judge David Ramsay was sentenced to seven years in prison (a term they think is far too short) for what they say are race-based crimes.

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Aboriginal people living in British Columbia want more say in the operation of the world's first Aboriginal television network.

That was the general theme that emerged from a four-hour public consultation session at the Squamish Recreation Centre near North Vancouver on June 6.

All 20 current members of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network's (APTN) board of directors were on hand, as was Jean LaRose, the network's chief executive officer. The board currently has one vacancy.