Indigenous history

Close up to a pipeline protest and recalling a notorious bit of Italian history

It's our responsibility to make sure teachers are equipped to teach the truth and acknowledge the important role schools play in reconciliation, write Linda Isaac and John Estabillo.

Historical monuments serve to valorize the past, not preserve it, and so it hardly counts as historical revisionism to wish to change the name of a school, writes Andrew Kemle, a master's student in political science at the University of Calgary.

Canadians may think that reconciliation was born of altruism. That the government gifted reconciliation to survivors in an act of contrition. But that’s not true, writes columnist Karyn Pugliese, a.k.a. Pabàmàdiz.

The Lower Kootenay Band in British Columbia's southern Interior says a search using ground-penetrating radar has found the remains of 182 people in unmarked graves at a site close to a former residential school.

For those willing to accept the truth about residential schools, Canada is not the country they thought they knew. But there is an opportunity to change it, writes columnist Karyn Pugliese, a.k.a. Pabàmàdiz.

First Nations leaders and Quebec history teachers say the timing is right to reset the way Indigenous history is taught in primary and secondary schools across the province.

The statue of Egerton Ryerson that stood outside the Toronto university bearing his name was pulled down and its head discarded in Lake Ontario on the weekend. A university task force says it still won’t rush a review of his legacy.

The first story I heard about “the missing” was from a Dene elder, Catherine, just over 10 years ago. She was speaking about the impact of tuberculosis on her family at a health conference. The topic triggered her memories of residential school, and of a younger sister who never returned.

If the network thinks Rick Santorum’s views are worth elevating, then it’s long past time for it to have at least one Native person regularly on air, writes columnist Julian Brave NoiseCat.

In a video posted to the Ryerson Conservatives Facebook group last month, the Conservative leader said residential schools aimed initially to educate Indigenous children but later devolved into harmful practices.

Some leaders and health professionals say they are facing a challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic of persuading Indigenous people to trust a health system that has a history of experimenting on them.

Archeologist Christine Roberts, a member of the Wei Wai Kum First Nation on Vancouver Island, says her work gives her a profound sense of belonging and a tie to the land she works on.

Also another humanistic film from Iran, and genre fun from Vancouver.

Kanesatake's grand chief said on Monday, July 29, 2019, that his people are not heading towards a second Oka crisis, despite tensions over a land dispute and a highly publicized war of words with the mayor of the nearby Quebec town.