Province, treaty commission develop new Grade 12 course

Manitoba’s newest Grade 12 elective investigates the meaning of the phrase: “We Are All Treaty People.”

The education department teamed up with the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba to co-create a social studies curriculum.

Ahead of the winter term, the duo unveiled a new 40S credit: Land and Treaties: Relationships and Responsibilities.

“I don’t know anywhere else in Canada where this has happened,” said Connie Wyatt Anderson, treaty education lead for the commission.

Co-founder of Winnipeg's NIBI Enviro Tech says 'opportunities are endless' for recycling shipping containers into custom pods

When Robin Richards looks at a shipping container, he sees possibilities. It could be a freezer, backyard cabin or small storefront.

“The opportunities are endless,” Richards said.

The 40-year-old entrepreneur is the co-founder of NIBI Environmental Technologies Ltd., a Winnipeg business that recycles shipping containers and turns them into custom modular pods. The turnkey pods are designed to be mobile and durable.

Richards started the company in 2022 with business partner Kelsey Friesen. Last year, the company set up its headquarters in an industrial park in the Transcona neighbourhood of Winnipeg and began manufacturing pods.

Tired of waiting, First Nation buys $8M worth of generators

A northern First Nation that was evacuated almost all summer due to a wildfire and power outage has bought an $8-million emergency backup generator system, the chief announced Friday.

Mathias Colomb First Nation Chief Gordie Bear said he wants the federal and provincial governments to reimburse the community, which had asked the two governments to purchase and provide diesel-powered generators before power was restored in September.

“I don’t know why they didn’t come through with the request that we made when we were out in the boondocks,” Bear told the Free Press. “I just hope they all get together — have a tea party — and cost-share my investment.”

He accused the governments of ignoring the First Nation’s concerns. Bear said four generators were purchased using own-sourced revenue.

Bill aims to give MMF self-government treaty with Canada

The Manitoba Métis Federation is one step closer to having a self-government treaty with the federal government.

Federal Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty introduced Bill C-21 Thursday, the Red River Métis Self-Government Recognition and Implementation Treaty, which if passed would be the first self-government treaty with any Métis government in the country.

“This treaty has been 156 years in the making and represents the cherished vision of our ancestors and elders, who fought so hard to preserve our existence and keep the flame of our nationhood alive through the dark times,” MMF president David Chartrand said in a statement.

“This legislation realizes their vision and shows that the fighting spirit of the Red River Métis — Canada’s negotiation partner in Confederation and the founders of Manitoba — can never be dismissed when we stand for what we believe in.”

Arviat, Nunavut chosen as main campus location for Inuit Nunangat University

OTTAWA - The main campus of the new Inuit Nunangat University will be located in Arviat, Nunavut, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami president Natan Obed announced Wednesday.

The school also moved a step closer to being built with the announcement of a $50 million investment from Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., and another $85 million through the Nunavut Agreement Implementation Contract.

The Mastercard Foundation previously committed $50 million toward the development of the university.

The university, expected to open in 2030, will be the first based in the North and the first in Canada operated by and for Inuit. It will be tasked with promoting Inuit language retention and revitalization and supporting economic and cultural opportunities in the region.

Province’s Indigenous tourism industry growing

Melanie Gamache has been taking her beading and jigging sessions on the road lately.

Schools, immigrant services agencies and private companies had asked whether she would take Borealis Beading to them.

“With the exception of last year (with wildfires), there has been a growing demand,” Gamache said. “There’s just an increase in people wanting to know more — like people want to know the history.”

Gamache registered her company, Borealis Beading, in 2018 and started by hosting Métis beading workshops.

Exhibition digs into colonial ideas, societal pressures and resource use of lawns

Carrie Allison has thought a lot about lawns.

Specifically, the Halifax-based multidisciplinary artist thought about the time, money, resources and energy spent on the endless pursuit of the perfectly manicured, kelly-green squares in front of suburban houses; the colonial ideas about value, virtue, class and wealth lawns uphold; and the pressures exerted by societal expectations and full-on city bylaws to control what is a living thing.

It’s those ideas that inform we tend to care, a touring solo exhibition curated by Franchesca Hebert-Spence. The Winnipeg iteration of the show will be presented across two venues — Urban Shaman and within WAG-Qaumajuq’s permanent collection galleries — in collaboration with Marie-Anne Redhead, assistant curator of Indigenous and contemporary art at WAG-Qaumajuq.

“Lawns and grass are very much associated with that sort of, I would say, propaganda of what we value in society,” says Allison, 39, who is of nêhiýaw/Métis/mixed European descent. “They are used to tell people what they should value and how they should use their time.”

Beloved drop-in centre remains a haven for youth after 50 years

Some children are never given the foundational tools at home to ease their way into this world. For a long list of complex reasons, home is not always a haven. And it’s not assured to be a safe place for kids.

But there is a building at the corner of Ross and Sherbrook that serves as both a home and a refuge, where young people find safety, acceptance and love, 365 days a year, anytime, all the time.

“I wouldn’t be alive today if it hadn’t been for Rossbrook House,” is an often-repeated phrase.

In 1976, Sister Geraldine MacNamara (Sister of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary), with the help of other sisters and a group of young men from Winnipeg’s Centennial neighbourhood, founded Rossbrook House as an alternative to the streets.

Trump continues to target Indigenous peoples

The Assembly of First Nations recently issued an official travel advisory to all its members considering travel to the United States.

Métis-Canadian soprano exploring portrayals of Indigenous women in opera stresses need for joy, humour

While historically opera has been divided into comedies and tragedies, buffa and seria, Camryn Dewar believes Canada’s recent operas have tended to be overly solemn when tackling certain difficult subjects.

The Métis-Canadian soprano is thinking, in particular, about the representation of Indigenous issues — a lightning rod for both government funding and critical scrutiny in Canadian culture.

“Lots of (operas) tackle the struggle and the loss, but not many of them feature Indigenous joy and humour,” she says. “And that’s something that’s really necessary because it helps with normalization, showing us as normal people.”

Dewar, a Fulbright Scholar with a newly minted master of music in vocal performance from Montclair State University, is on a Canadian tour showcasing Indigenous Female Representation in Opera, 1879–Present. Part lecture, part singing performance, the presentation had its first Winnipeg stop last week at the University of Manitoba and returns to the Canadian Mennonite University at 11:30 a.m., March 12, in the Laudamus Auditorium.

‘He took us to the mountaintop’: 30th Sacred Assembly celebrates Elijah Harper’s legacy

Several hundred people from across Canada, including church and Indigenous leaders, gathered in Winnipeg on the weekend to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the 1995 Sacred Assembly, and to discuss ways to keep its vision alive.

Cold ice, warm hearts at WASAC youth camp

Even the frigid weather couldn’t chill the warm smiles on Saturday morning, as Indigenous youth from across Manitoba got to take a spin over the ice with some former NHL stars.

That was just one of the weekend highlights at the Winnipeg Aboriginal Sport Achievement Centre’s (WASAC) camp, which brought dozens of First Nations and Metis youth from Duck Bay, Pauingassi, Lac Brochet, Shamattawa, Bunibonibee Cree Nation and Pine Creek to Camp Manitou for a day of fun and education around sport and healthy living.

The eighth-annual camp kicked off Friday night, when campers attended the Murray Sinclair Memorial Round Dance at the convention centre.

Saturday’s busy activity slate included yoga classes, a cooking workshop with chefs from Indigenous-owned local restaurant Feast, and a casual skate with local Jets alumni and friends, including Winkler’s Ray Neufeld, Winnipeg’s Derek Meech, and longtime NHL goalie Trevor Kidd.

First Nation says Hydro misuse of river diversion destroying sturgeon population

A northern First Nation is calling on Manitoba Hydro to alter its use of the Churchill River diversion to protect a lake sturgeon population allegedly decimated by hydroelectric operations.

Tataskweyak Cree Nation Chief Doreen Spence said the culturally significant species is facing extinction on the river system without immediate intervention, 50 years after Manitoba built the diversion to send water to large power generating stations.

“The diversion has artificially altered the flow of the water… so much that the river is barely able to sustain life as it once did,” Spence told reporters in Winnipeg Thursday.

“Manitoba Hydro must operate the diversion in sync with the natural flow regime of the river for the sturgeon to survive.”

Pimicikamak’s $20-M in unpaid Hydro bills pales in comparison to what Hydro owes First Nation, chief says

To underline its anger over unresolved compensation from the 1977 Northern Flood Agreement, the Pimicikamak (Cross Lake) Cree Nation stopped paying its electricity bills from Manitoba Hydro about 10 years ago. Now, the remote First Nation owes more than $20 million in arrears on its residential accounts.

Dan David, Mohawk journalist and Indigenous news trailblazer, dies at 73

Dan David, a renowned Mohawk journalist who helped establish the news department of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, has died.

His sister Marie David said he died Jan. 12 after a long struggle with cancer.

He was 73.

Karyn Pugliese, an APTN host and producer and David's friend and colleague, said his death is a huge loss for the dozens of Indigenous journalists he mentored and whose careers he helped launch.

Vancouver conference aims to unite Indigenous tech community

VANCOUVER - For Shauna McAllister, working at Canadian technology companies as a Cree and Métis woman meant she was often the only Indigenous person in the room. 

"When it comes to being an individual who is proud of their identity and wants to incorporate that into their work, that can be very lonely," McAllister, a sales lead for Indigenous majority-owned company R8dius told The Canadian Press. 

But she and others are hoping to change that by participating in an inaugural conference bringing together hundreds of Indigenous technology professionals in Vancouver in the coming week.

The Indigenous Tech Conference, organized by the Indigenous Tech Circle, is set to take place on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Noem burns bridges with tribes as governor, uses ICE to fan flames for Trump

During most of her time as the Republican governor of South Dakota from 2019 to 2025, Kristi Noem was officially banned by nine Indigenous tribes, prohibiting her from travelling to nearly 12 per cent of the state’s territory.

In particular, Noem drew the ire of the government of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who banned her permanently from visiting their home on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The governor, Oglala Sioux leaders alleged, supported anti-protest legislation targeting Native Americans, set up illegal security checkpoints to stop Indigenous peoples from leaving their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic and claimed — with no evidence to back it up — that Mexican drug cartels were joining with a Native American gang called “Ghost Dancers” to commit murders on the reservation.

At the time, Oglala Sioux Tribal president Frank Star Comes Out accused the future secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security of spreading falsehoods and stereotypes about his people while facilitating violence against them in order to gain favour with then-U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump (and, perhaps, her selection as his vice-presidential running mate).

First Nation’s power-outage misery ‘frozen like a rock’

An army of plumbers, engineers and members of the Canadian Armed Forces are continuing to assess damages after a lengthy power outage at Pimicikamak Cree Nation froze water and sewage pipes.

Chief David Monias said it is going to take months to repair damage to homes and years to install new water and sewage treatment plants and systems.

“They have frozen pipes — the sewage plant is completely frozen,” Monias said Wednesday. “The raw sewage has frozen like rock, it is as hard as rock. There is enough (methane) gas in there that we can’t even enter the building. So they are trying to figure out a way how to air out that building so that they can assess the sewage problem.”

Monias said the experts are going to try to get the water and sewage systems up and running while the community works with government on a longer term solution. He said the plants will eventually need to be decommissioned.

Ribbon Skirt Day leader reflects on changes since her cultural attire was shamed

In Isabella Kulak's home is a box of about a few hundred letters, notes and hand-drawn pictures of ribbon skirts sent to her from across Canada and beyond — fan mail from those who consider her story and the origins of "Ribbon Skirt Day" as inspirational.

"I have like a whole notebook of letters, a whole stack of drawings from all these schools and it makes me feel so happy and it warms my heart," said Isabella, a shy 15-year-old, on a phone call from her home in Kamsack, Sask., located about 270 kilometres east of Regina.

"I do want to eventually write back to them, but I am really busy with school."

After all, the Anishinaabe girl is still a teenager. This past week, she had a volleyball tournament. These next few months, she will be completing Grade 10 and the next big step is on the path to medical school, she said.

Damage estimates spiral as Pimicikamak tries to recover from power outage, deep freeze

The power is back on, but the damage has been done. Water leaks. Burst pipes. Burned houses. And still, more than 4,000 residents of Pimicikamak Cree Nation are forced out of their homes, with no clear timeline of when they’ll be able to return.

On Saturday, six days after a downed power line left the remote Northern First Nation without electricity for over four days, Pimicikamak Chief David Monias spoke to reporters by Zoom to give an update on the crisis — and emphasize the expertise and supports the community still needs to recover.

Although power has been restored to the community, which is located roughly 100 km south of Thompson, over four days without electricity caused major damage, Monias said. The water treatment plant is “pretty much ready to explode” due to leaks and is unable to draw water into its reservoir, leaving the community without potable water.

Houses too suffered in the deep freeze, including damage to pipes and cracked floors. So far, of the 1,335 houses on the community, which is also known as Cross Lake, at least 200 are severely compromised and not yet safe for residents to return. That number may grow as officials continue their inspections.

Alberta group gets green light to collect signatures for separation referendum

EDMONTON - Alberta's election agency has fired the starter's pistol on the race to collect enough names for a referendum on the province quitting Canada.

Elections Alberta announced Friday that Mitch Sylvestre and the Alberta Prosperity Project have from Saturday until May 2 to collect just under 178,000 signatures to qualify.

"Citizen initiative petition signature sheets have been issued," Elections Alberta said in a statement Friday.

"The proponent may now proceed with collecting signatures."

Animal Nation includes rural and Indigenous people in its portraits of Prairie and northern animals

At first glance, Winnipeg-born producer Jesse Bochner’s seven-part series Animal Nation brings to mind docu-series such as Wild America, Planet Earth and Nature.