Tag: idlenomore

Attendance list for Prime Minister- First Nations meeting

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A group of Manitoba chiefs outside the front door of Langevin Block, the site of today’s Crown-FN working meeting demand Harper come outside and meet with them. (David Akin)

So who’s at this meeting that many of those outside Langevin Block today (above) did not want to take place? Continue reading Attendance list for Prime Minister- First Nations meeting

Palmater: If GG and PM do not come to chiefs' hotel, there will be consequences

As I blog this at 11 a.m. Eastern, we are two hours away from a scheduled meeting between Prime Minister Stephen Harper, some of his cabinet ministers and officials and some First Nations leaders. We believe Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo will be one of those leaders along with AFN B.C. regional chief Jody Wilson-Raybould.  But we’re still not quite sure if that meeting will occur and,if it does, if it will be with those FN leaders. Continue reading Palmater: If GG and PM do not come to chiefs' hotel, there will be consequences

Is Chief Spence setting a good example for aboriginal girls by threatening suicide?

Terry Glavin makes a not insignificant point about the potential harm Chief Spence’s hunger strike might have on First Nations communities:

Aboriginal teenagers in Canada are perhaps six times more likely to kill themselves than non-aboriginal youth. Among the Inuit, youth suicide is 11 times the national average. Between 2005 and 2010, Health Canada spent $65 million on a National Aboriginal Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy. The kids kept on killing themselves, and in 2011 the Ontario Chief Coroner’s Office released a 215-page report on aboriginal suicides in Northern Ontario. One of the report’s key recommendations: the creation of a national suicide prevention strategy.

Then along comes Theresa Spence, the elected chief of the forlorn and remote Northern Ontario community of Attawapiskat. Since Dec. 11, Spence has been camped in a teepee on an island in the Ottawa River, threatening to starve herself to death — to kill herself — unless the prime minister and the Governor General accede to her variously contradictory and ambiguous demands ..

Read the rest: Idle No More? Let’s get serious.