Xavier Kataquapit

‘Let’s try to live a simple and meaningful life in 2011’
This year just before Christmas, while I was travelling in some bigger city centres in southern Ontario, I noticed just how crazy this holiday season has become.
There were long streams of traffic going from mall to mall and every store I visited had lineups of people at the cash. A normal part of this shopping frenzy seemed to be made up of screaming moms and dads and crying kids.

I recently came back from a vacation to Cuba. In the three weeks that I was gone, I managed to lose about five pounds. It was relatively easy to lose that weight.
Not only is food scarce in Cuba, it is also expensive and tourists usually have to eat in restaurants and resorts. I was not staying in the country on a resort package so I had to find restaurants that served good food at a fair price. Merely looking around the city of Havana for places to eat made for plenty of opportunity to walk.

Recently, I have heard news that greatly affects the First Nations of Nishnawbe Aski Nation territory in northern Ontario. This news involves the discovery of a 100 plus year old diary by Daniel MacMartin, a treaty commissioner who represented the government of Ontario.
His diary provides a new perspective on the signing of Treaty 9.

My Kookum or Grandmother, Louise Paulmartin, often told me when I was young that “the world was getting crazy.”
She reserved the comment for when she heard news from the southern non-Native world about a calamity or crisis like a war, a terrible flood or if she might have viewed some violent or horrible news on the television. Of course, as a youngster, I never realized what she meant. When I became a teenager I merely attributed that comment of hers as a result of old age and being out of touch with the modern world.

Babies are a big responsibility. They need to be helped with everything and fussed over 24 hours a day in the beginning. Children are very important in First Nations and often, in remote Native communities, many members of the town will assist in raising them.
We Cree welcome newborns no matter how, when or why they have come into this world. A newborn is often cared for by the parents, grand parents, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends. Everyone pitches in to help out.