In which we dispel the notion that Land Claims represent a net loss to Canada. In fact, in many cases, Canada gets quite a bit more out its Land Claims Agreements than it puts in.

The Nunavut Land Claims Agreement provides a good example of a modern-day treaty, and illustrates both the lofty principles that underlie the notion of a nation-to-nation treaty between Canada and its first peoples, and the disappointing aftermath. It’s also instructive because many insist that claims and treaties are “old obligations”, historical relics. Not so. The largest land claim in Canadian history was signed (by a Conservative Prime Minister) just fifteen years ago.

As we approach the National Day of Action, we can expect that the usual ignorance and racism will once again begin to boil in the moronosphere. As a countermeasure, we thought this year we’d shed a bit of light on the background on some of the issues likely to come up on blogs over the next few weeks.

Not only is there little to no information in the mainstream media regarding the announcement of residential school mass graves, but what little there was is now disappearing.

Friends & Relatives of the Disappeared-Toronto revealed the locations of mass graves of First Nations children at Canadian residential schools. In front of Indian & Northern Affairs Canada offices, Toronto, April 10, 2008.

Squamish Nation Territory (”Vancouver, Canada”) - At a public ceremony and press conference held today outside the colonial “Indian Affairs” building in downtown Vancouver, the Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared (FRD) released a list of twenty eight mass graves across Canada holding the remains of untold numbers of aboriginal children who died in Indian Residential Schools.

The list was distributed today to the world media and to United Nations agencies, as the first act of the newly-formed International Human Rights Tribunal into Genocide in Canada (IHRTGC), a non-governmental body established by indigenous elders.

The Mohawk protester who helped shut down a stretch of Ontario’s busiest highway last June says Canadians can expect more disruption on May 29.

Subtitled: Feds try for divide and conquer, fail miserably, and have to answer for their own failures

In December of 2006 Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. sued the Federal Government for $1 billion for breach of contract in its’ failure to live up to it’s legal and contractual obligations under the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. The Feds, in a blatant ‘lets get them fighting with each other‘ move, attempted to have the Government of Nunavut joined in the suit, and today we are happy to report that they failed in that attempt.

— that it almost always sees the light of day. Sometimes it takes a while, but you can usually depend on it happening regardless of how hard, or how often, it gets lied about.

Yesterday the Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared - a Vancouver-based aboriginal group examining residential school issues - released a list of 28 mass graves across Canada, four of which are located in Alberta.

Further to an earlier post regarding current Conservative Party of Canada hypocrisy we now find that Harper is not going to discipline MP Tom Lukiwski for his bigoted comments…..

UPDATE: Email has been sent to the Liberal Party of Canada

The Conserv-o-sphere is full of those calling for folks to make an end of the whole Lekiwiski thing. He said stupid and bigoted things and got caught they say, he apologized they say, let it die they say — and their party followed suit… at least where one of their own is involved, for others it’s a different story.

That’s the story at Jacks News Watch.

Is there a link between this and David Ahenakew’s reinstatement?

Updates as I find them

Update (Canwest News): Federal funding to FSIN jeopardized by Ahenakew

Subtitled: Are they really clueless, or do they just not care?

New rules that require voters to have photo identification and a street address need to be reconsidered because they hurt northern voters, Western Arctic MP Dennis Bevington says.

The Harper Government’s legislation to protect the property rights of Aboriginal women is a Trojan Horse - an assault on First Nations collective rights, Aboriginal title and Treaty rights, piously disguised as a defense of women’s rights by a government of hypocrites that’s done as much as it can to dismantle women’s rights in every other quarter.

Gee, imagine that…. Conservative senators are boycotting a trip to communities in the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut to study rural poverty in the north because they think it will cost too much. I’m going to put forward the idea that weather, party platform, and simple lack of interest are the actual reasons.

We’ll know for sure when/if I get a reply to my email to an MP in the House asking if any Conservative senators attended the Committee on Aboriginal Peoples trip to a casino in New Mexico.