Maachestan, the Cree word for the annual spring river ice breakup, is happening all along the James Bay coast. This is a very important time of year for...
I was proud to see First Nation youth representing our northern homelands on the international stage this past month at the United Nations. Jeronimo...
This September 30 marks the second annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a nationally recognized federal holiday in Canada commemorating the memory of the residential school era that affected thousands of Indigenous children and their families across the country.
What is it with all of the hate circulating these days? If anyone knows anything about being oppressed or hated it has to be Indigenous people like me. I grew up feeling discriminated against and I had to push myself to leave my remote First Nation and venture out into the greater world for school at first and then later to work at writing. My father Marius Kataquapit left the north when he was a teenager in the 1950s in search of work in the south but he realized he couldn’t survive in the outside world on his own at the time.
COVID19 is still a very prominent part of our lives. As much as we would like to think that this pandemic is coming to an end, it is still a very dangerous period for many people.
This past month, I lost my uncle Elder Alex Kataquapit through complications from the COVID19 virus. At 89 years of age, he was doing well for his age until he contracted the virus which completely weakened him and sent him to hospital. Older people and those with compromised health issues are most at risk with COVID19 but many younger people are also having problems and what is known as long COVID.
How important is it to have a healthy diet? Well, most recent research tells us that if we have a healthy diet then we have a better chance of living a long life with fewer health problems. However, what does it mean to have a healthy diet.
My people have a long history of dealing with new dangerous and deadly diseases that we had no protection against. During the First World War I lost my great-grandfather to the 1918 influenza pandemic when he left his homeland on James Bay to volunteer for the war overseas. He never returned and he now lies in a burial plot just outside the city of London. In the decades that followed, wave after wave of influenza, small pox, measles, polio and most commonly tuberculosis claimed many people on the James Bay coast because there was little to no immunity to these new diseases.
After dealing with the Covid19 pandemic for a few years now, the worry of world war on my mind and obvious dangers now threatening due to climate change, I still have hope that things will work out in the long run. I am feeling like that this week because I had the privilege to connect with a group of happy, curious and wonderful young people during the Wabun Youth Gathering in Mattagami First Nation.
The 15th Annual Wabun Youth Gathering was held in Mattagami First Nation in a week long outdoor event from July 11 to 15 for over 70 Indigenous youth on the shores of Lake Mattagami. The event was organized by the Wabun Tribal Council Health Department with the support of the tribal council’s First Nations.
National Indigenous Peoples Day which takes place on June 21 and the wider National Indigenous History Month in June is a significant time for Indigenous people in Canada.
This special day was established in 1996 by the Canadian government as a symbolic national holiday to recognize and celebrate the unique heritage, cultures and contributions of First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples. In 2009, the House of Commons also passed a motion to designate June as National Indigenous History Month to honour the history, heritage and diversity of Indigenous peoples in Canada.
Summer has finally arrived and the warm weather has us all excited and out and about. We have all endured a difficult winter and in fact a challenging past three years of the Covid19 pandemic. We deserve to have a great summer.
Beaverhouse First Nation made history on Saturday May 21 when leadership announced to their community citizens that the First Nation had achieved formal recognition as a First Nation from the government of Canada. The historic announcement was sent by the government on April 19, 2022 as an official letter from the Honourable Marc Miller, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations (ISC), stating that ‘Beaverhouse First Nation has demonstrated it is a section 35 rights-bearing First Nation collectivity’.
Maachestan, the Cree word for the annual spring river ice breakup, is happening all along the James Bay coast. This is a very important time of year for...
I was proud to see First Nation youth representing our northern homelands on the international stage this past month at the United Nations. Jeronimo...