Apr 26 2005 CBC News

REGINA – A Saskatchewan family wants the provincial government to change its laws concerning treatment for drug-addicted teenagers.

 Press Release from Native Women's Association of Canada and the Quebec Native Women.

It marks 20 years since amendments were made to the Indian Act, commonly known to First Nations as "Bill C-31". It was first introduced in Parliament on April 17, 1985 and it received Royal Assent on June 28, 1985. To mark the 20th anniversary of the continued discrimination of Bill C-31, the Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC) and the Quebec NativeWomen Inc. (QNW) are planning a protest on Parliament Hill on June 28, 2005. 

 It is well known that Bill C-31 did not alleviate the discriminationwithin the Indian Act. In fact, the situation has worsened. First Nations children are losing Indian status at an alarming rate because one of their parents is non-status. If something is not done then there will be no more status Indians in the foreseeable future. NWAC President, Beverley Jacobs, is very concerned over the effects of Bill C-31. "My office is receiving numerous calls related to Bill C-31. I am hearing about women being denied access to their communities as a result of who they married before 1985. I am also hearing about First Nations children being denied Indian status due to unstated paternity.

One (Especially) Sad Death in Iraq
by David Corn (From The Nation, posted on Common Dreams.org)

Marla Ruzicka deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Unlike Paul Wolfowitz or George Tenet, she shouldn't get it for botching the job in Iraq. No, she ought to receive it for trying damn hard to make America live up to its ideals in Iraq and elsewhere. But the medal would have to be awarded posthumously--because on Saturday, Marla, an irrepressible 28-year-old from California, was killed by a bomb when a suicide bomber, who was apparently trying to strike a US convoy on the highway to Baghdad International Airport, pulled up alongside her car pulled and detonated the explosives. Faiz Ali Salaam, her 43-year-old associate and the father of a two-month-old daughter, was also killed.

April 1, 2005 
Nunatsiaq News Editorial (http://nunatsiaq.com/)

The once-mighty animal rights movement is trying to bring back its glory days.

In an attempt to revive the influence it once wielded in the 1970s and 1980s, a coalition of animal rights extremists, led by the Humane Society of the U.S., launched a vitriolic campaign against the Newfoundland seal hunt last month with a series of demonstrations in cities around the world and a threatened boycott of Canadian fish products.

As always, they say they're not targeting the eastern Arctic seal hunt. But as the Inuit of the eastern Arctic know well, when Newfoundland seal hunters are attacked, Inuit seal hunters get hurt too.

 Apr 19 2005 CBC News

ST. JOHN'S, NFLD  —  A senior member of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society – which has spent the last month campaigning against the East Coast seal hunt – says violence is necessary to bring the seal industry to an end.

Apr 19 2005
CBC News

WINNIPEG – Some members of Tataskweyak Cree Nation say they've been kept in the dark about a recent trip by two band members and executives from Manitoba Hydro to the World Bank in March.

The delegation traveled to Washington, D.C. to make a 90-minute joint presentation at the World Bank about the proposed Keeyask dam on the Nelson River. The presentation was called "Benefit-sharing with Indigenous People on Hydro Dam Developments: the Case of Manitoba Hydro."

If the Tatskweyak band agrees to go ahead with the project, the 640-megawatt Keeyask dam would export power to the United States by 2012. The dam would cost $3.5 billion to build and would flood 46 square kilometres of land.