TRC

Canada has been so slow to carry out recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that an Indigenous-led think tank says it has decided to stop publishing an annual report tracking its progress.

Indigenous leaders say they are hopeful that new Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree will take inspiration from his predecessor's approach with organizations, community members and leadership.

What began as a Dene honour song in a public school has transformed into a national-looking organization doing the hard work of reconciliation.

Progressive senators tried to pass an amendment to Bill C-5 that would have given judges the ability to pass conditional sentences for all offences, under exceptional circumstances. Without it, advocates worry the bill won't ease Canada's mass incarceration crisis.

All eyes turn to Parliament with the courts upholding the constitutionality on limits to conditional sentencing. Now it's a question if Bill C-5, which will remove some mandatory sentencing, will pass. But will the bill go far enough?

The top-down approach was inspired by grassroots local affiliates that were already working together, like in Saskatoon, Sask.

Reconciliation is as much a personal journey as it is a collective one, said Taylor Behn-Tsakoza, co-chair of the Assembly of First Nations Youth Council.

Murray Sinclair, like so many other Indigenous leaders, says the discovery by First Nations of hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential school sites has led to more people learning, and accepting, what survivors of these institutions experienced.

Canada’s National Observer spoke with Lorelei Williams, an advocate for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) and their families, ahead of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

As a family, we have been at the receiving end of almost everything Canada did to First Nations people, and my mother saw it all, writes Robert Jago.

In contrast to the 2015 campaign, when Idle No More was still flourishing and anti-Harper sentiment drove record-high Indigenous turnout, this election sees Indigenous issues on the sidelines, and neither hate nor hope is motivating Native voters.

Twenty minutes of the Oct. 7 debate were allocated for a discussion about Indigenous issues among all six Canadian federal leaders. But as quickly as this segment began, it derailed into a haphazard conversation about pipelines, Quebec and climate change.

Cree Elder Patrick Etherington went to see the bishop in 1986 at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Moosonee, Ont. As a 30-year-old man, now a father, he walked straight into the local headquarters of the organization that had stolen him from his own parents.

The federally funded commission — plagued by many staffing changes throughout its tenure — says Debbie Reid has left the commission as executive director but it will not comment further, calling it a personnel matter.

A year after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he would set up an interim board of directors to establish a National Council for Reconciliation, his government picked Grand Chief Wilton Littlechild to chair that board.