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The National Day of Healing and Reconciliation (NDHR) was celebrated with events in Edmonton, as well as many other parts of the province on May 26.

NDHR is not recognized nationally officially, but organizers of the campaign at the Nechi Training, Research and Health Promotions Institute hope to collect signed petitions at each event to take to Ottawa in hopes it will be proclaimed a nationally celebrated day.

"Right now the government is not recognizing it as a national day yet. But it's going to happen," said Maggie Mercredi, one of the NDHR organizers.

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The light rain didn't dampen the spirits of organizers and more than 1,000 students from kindergarten to Grade 9 that participated in the fourth annual Alex Decoteau Run held at Rundle Park on May 14.

Students from Delton, Eastwood, McCauley, Norwood, Parkdale, John A. McDougall, Spruce Avenue and Crestwood schools all ran in honor of Alex Decoteau, a Cree athlete who became Canada's first Aboriginal police officer in 1909.

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Inspired storyteller respected artist

Jackson Beardy's life began on July 24, 1944 on Garden Hill First Nation, an Oji-Cree community on the shores of Island Lake in northeastern Manitoba. Forty years later, on Dec. 7, 1984, it came to an end.

Almost 20 years have passed since Beardy's death, half a lifetime for the young artist who used his talents to reconnect to his Native identity and later to inspire and encourage other young Native men and women to express themselves through art.

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Should there be a permanent Aboriginal presence on the highest court in the land? It's a debate that is just beginning in Ottawa.

Two spots will open up on the Supreme Court of Canada in June because justices Louise Arbour and Frank Iacobucci have resigned from the court. Iacobucci will retire. Arbour will leave to head up the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

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A popular, comprehensive and rigorous field of study at Negahneewin College of Indigenous Studies in Thunder Bay is its Aboriginal Law and Advocacy program.

Graduates are finding the program prepares them not only to be court workers and legal advocates across the spectrum of social service-related jobs, but it gives them the solid grounding in Aboriginal history, politics, and the land and self-government issues that community leaders and rights and treaty negotiators need today.

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In faith, your God and my God are the same. There is no difference. No matter what race there is throughout the world, we all believe in the same God. There is just the names and the language that varies from one region to another.

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The heavy load of centuries worth of trauma is being carried on the shoulders of Aboriginal youth. Elders will meet at Hamilton and the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in the hopes of lightening that load.

They want to acknowledge and talk about the hardships their people have been dealt over the years since contact and deal with the effects that those hardships have had on the generations.

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Most people take the calendar for granted. They do not think much about the fact that Wednesday honors the Germanic deity Woden or that September, October, November and December still bear the Roman names for the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months of the year, respectively. (Later a Roman emperor inserted January and February in place of the former eleventh and twelfth months and moved the New Year back to the end of December or the tenth month.)

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THE URBANE INDIAN

Just the other day I was sitting around musing about the concerns of being famous. If you've ever read the National Enquirer or People magazine, you know how rough and tragic it can be to be famous.

My heart goes out to the likes of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Really, it does. But try being semi-famous. That's my cross to bear.

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NASIVVIK

At the recent Aboriginal summit with Prime Minister Paul Martin, one of the announcements was for that of the formation of an Inuit Secretariat within the Department of Indian Affairs. This development should have Inuit asking, "Has a profound historic threshold been crossed here? Will Inuit affairs in government now evolve to assume its own, unique identity? Will this pave the way for an eventual federal Department of Inuit and Arctic Affairs?"