Kwanlin Dun First Nation councillor Sean Smith led Elijah Smith Elementary School students in drumming and singing the Fire Song Tuesday afternoon — a fitting send-off for two Yukon First Nations Wildfire firefighters heading across the world to help those in need.  Chad Thomas and Jordan Profeit head to Australia Wednesday to help fight the bush…

The Quebec government department responsible for authorizing place names, the Commission de toponymie du Québec, has launched a new online audio guide to help people correctly pronounce Inuktitut place names. Visitors to the commission’s website can now hear audio recordings of the the correct Inuktitut pronunciation of 125 names of communities, rivers, lakes, mountains and other geographical…

The RCMP have blocked access to a First Nation’s territory in northern B.C., heightening tensions as government officials and hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en continue to clash over the Coastal GasLink pipeline.  The Mounties have increased their presence in the area, setting up a checkpoint and restricting access along a service road that leads to three sites…

Tensions are simmering amid uncertainty over what happens next in a clash of legal systems in the traditional territory of the Wet’suwet’en nation in Northern B.C. over a natural gas pipeline.  RCMP have increased their presence in the area, setting up a checkpoint and restricting access along the Morice Forest Service Road that leads to…

The federal government has consented to the certification of a proposed $1.1 billion class action lawsuit filed over Indian hospitals — federally run medical facilities that saw the abuse and mistreatment of Indigenous patients over several decades.  The Federal Court is scheduled to hold a certification hearing on the proposed class action lawsuit on Jan. 22, according to court files.…

Days before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the initial approval for the Trans Mountain pipeline, the RCMP reactivated a seemingly dormant list of Indigenous rights activists deemed potential “criminal threats,” internal RCMP emails and documents show.  An RCMP intelligence initiative called Project Sitka, which concluded in March 2015, identified 89 individuals — Indigenous and non-Indigenous —…