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We acknowledge through the use of tobacco, incense-cedar, sage-many of these things we use to appease the spirits. It isn't the object itself. It's what they bring.

Spirits are very much attracted to smell, very much attracted to smell. Each has a different form of spirit ... We use, especially when we talk about our warriors, we use tobacco. That's the most sacred of all our herbs and medicines. We use it to appease the spirits and, in all ceremonies when we talk about the spirit world, we'll always foremost use tobacco in our strong way.

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Dear Buffalo Spirit:

I have heard that there are buffalo farms. The buffalo are getting sick and dying. This is happening to them, I am told, because it is not in the spirit of the buffalo to be domesticated like the white man's cattle and locked up in a pen, herded up to be slaughtered and then butchered and sent to market where the only difference between it and a plastic wrapped cut of slave-steak is the label on its package.

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Artist - Kinnie Starr

Album - Sun Again

Song - Discovered

Label - Violet Inch Records

Producer - Kinnie Starr and John Raham

Thoroughly enjoyable, start to surprise finish

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Yvette Nolan

-Artistic Director, Native Earth Performing Arts

Recommends:

The Last Crossing

By Guy Vanderhaeghe

McClelland & Stewart-2003

Full of cowboys and the occasional Indian, Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Last Crossing is part historical novel, part mystery. The Last Crossing chronicles the journey of Charles and

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Louis Riel

-A Comic-Strip Biography

By Chester Brown

Drawn and Quarterly Publications

272 pages (hc)

$34.95

Louis Riel-A Comic-Strip Biography is an interesting experiment, taking a unique approach to the telling of the story of Louis Riel and his struggle to have the rights of the Metis people in Western Canada recognized by the federal government. The story is told entirely within comic-strip panels, six to a page, drawn in black and white.

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MUSIC BIZ 101

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THE URBANE INDIAN

The wagons are circled and the Natives are restless for sure. E-mails and condemnations are flying across North America quicker than broken treaty promises. For the second time in as many months, a major American television musical spectacle, this time the Grammys instead of the Super Bowl halftime show, has provoked an outcry. Only this time, Janet Jackson's breast was nowhere in sight. Instead, it is a performance by rap artists OutKast that has the Native community on the war path.

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NASIVVIK

Nowadays, even small villages in the Arctic are connected to the endless cyber-destinations of the Information Superhighway. Previously unthinkable, this provides reliable communications by Internet and e-mail to every corner of the world. Unfortunately, these conveniences also provide opportunities for fraud artists to ply their trade, and Arctic isolation no longer provides immunity.

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PRO BONO

Dear Tuma:

I heard that the Supreme Court of Canada said that it is OK to spank kids. Is this true? My kid told me that I couldn't hit him and that if I did, he would call the Children's Aid. How hard can I spank my child? What about the neighborhood kids? They're the ones who are the worst and need a good old-fashioned spanking to teach them a thing or two. Can I use the "Slipper" or better, the traditional "switch?"

He's going to get it now

Dear He's going to get it now:

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MEDIUM RARE

Despite hours of coverage by major news networks and thousands of words in newspapers and magazines, chances are you're confused by that conflict at Kanehsatake Mohawk Territory near Montreal in January.

It began as a story about a crime-fighting chief. It evolved into a tale about mob rule. And it wound up as an account of a government taking the bull by the horns.

By that time, the media should have known better, but they'd moved on leaving us wondering just what is happening in this community.