Shawn Bell - Wawatay News

With nice weather and only a few rapids-induced mishaps, the first half of the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) canoe trip to Fort Severn has been a pleasure for participants.
Richard Anderson, KI’s watershed community worker, is one of 14 band members travelling in seven canoes on the traditional transportation route to Hudson Bay.
In an interview from a riverbank as the group set up camp, Anderson said it was great just to be out on the river.
“It’s really nice and quiet up here,” he said. “The water’s looking nice, we’re drinking right from the river.”

It has been 10 months since Matawa First Nations filed a judicial review of the Ring of Fire Environmental Assessment process, but the review continues to be delayed by legal procedures.
Judith Rae, Matawa’s legal representative on the case, told Wawatay News that recent legal motions by both Cliffs Resources and the government of Canada have delayed the pre-hearing process in the case.
The latest delays come after Canada took longer than usual to provide information at the beginning of the legal action, said the lawyer with Olthius Kleer Townshed law firm.

Less than one year from opening Canada’s newest law school, Lakehead Law’s founding dean is adamant that the school will bring more Aboriginal people of northern Ontario into the legal profession.
The new school will also graduate lawyers with a solid understanding of Aboriginal culture and the importance of Aboriginal law in the Canadian legal context, according to Lee Stuesser, the founding dean who sat down with Wawatay one week after settling into his office in Thunder Bay.

With the Ontario government now acknowledging that the north-south access road into the Ring of Fire is solely going to be for industrial users – “for developers to go in and get ore and minerals back out”, as a government spokesperson said – it is time to look at whether a road is actually in the best interests of the north.

A corridor between the Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win health centre and the Jeremiah McKay Kabayshewekamik hostel has been named after Sam and Madeline Crane.
In a ceremony on Sept. 5, Sioux Lookout First Nation Health Authority board of directors chair John Cutfeet explained that Same and Madeline Crane devoted many hours of their lives providing health services in the Sioux Lookout area.
The following excerpt is from the speech given by Cutfeet at the ceremony.