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Remember that March 1 deadline for signing a government consent form or doing without non-insured health care?

Forget about it. The deadline is history. The government has changed its mind.

The government has scrapped the universal, national consent form after facing an aggressive lobby against it by First Nations and Inuit leaders and much suspicion from people that the data collected with the form would be used to undermine health care entitlements.

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Two American academics have provided information in support of compensation for language and culture loss in a residential school court case in Canada.

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A court ruling that might have sped up settlement of residential school compensation claims has instead been appealed to the highest court in the land.

Justice Minister Irwin Cotler and Denis Coderre, the minister responsible for the Office of Indian Residential School Resolution Canada (IRSRC), made the call on Feb. 9-the federal Crown will appeal the Blackwater case to the Supreme Court of Canada.

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Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief Phil Fontaine did not act like a man on the run from the press.

Windspeaker met up with him at a ceremony Feb. 6 celebrating the relocation of the Alberta AFN office to Tsuu T'ina First Nation territory.

Just two days before, there had been allegations made in a national newspaper that the Liberal government had aided his election victory last July over Chief Roberta Jamieson and incumbent national chief Matthew Coon Come.

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It was originally supposed to last four days. Then it was down to two. Then James O'Reilly, lawyer for the Samson Cree Nation, found a way to get it all done in one day.

And now former prime minister Jean Chretien is on the record in Victor Buffalo versus the Crown.

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Chief Irvin McIvor said goodbye to his third-party manager on Feb. 1. The rookie Sandy Bay First Nation chief was elected in September after leading a fight to depose the previous council. He inherited a $9 million debt, but came into office with a plan to wrestle that debt to the ground.

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INAC accountability called into question

The first couple of chapters of the recently released auditor general's report got most of the attention after it was tabled in the House of Commons on Feb. 10, but the last three chapters were equally damning of the Liberal government and its management of taxpayer money.

The $100 million sponsorship scandal dominated question period, and media interest, after Sheila Fraser reported that the Liberal government had funneled millions of dollars to political friends in Quebec for little or no work done for that money.

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Editor's note: Last month Windspeaker wrote in this space about racism and cops. We listed a number of people, who, through some action by or dealing with the police, had come to some harm or whose cases were mishandled. In among that long list were the names Lucy Pedoniquott, Shelley Napope, Eva Taysup and Calinda Waterhen. Because of a missed semi-colon, the editorial read as though these women were among the women murdered or missing in the Vancouver area, some of whose bodies have been located at the Pickton pig farm just outside the city. This is not the case.

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Dear Editor:

When is the government of Canada going to understand that Attawapiskat First Nation (Ontario) of 1,700 citizens is indisputably in desperate need of an elementary school?

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Dear Editor:

What gives you people the right to block highways and deprive anyone of the necessities of life? It's time you Aboriginals start living by the same laws as the rest of the country. '

By the way, I am part Native and I do not agree with any of the antics you people carry out.

Get it through your heads that you are no better than anyone else. You do not own the entire country. Abide by your own treaties.

-Lynn