Indigenous Peoples play a key role in having a vision for the economic paradigm of the future that will allow us, as human beings, to understand our role in the sacred circle of life.

116 First Nations across Canada – almost one in five – have running water that is not drinkable because of contamination. It’s a horrendous situation putting residents at increased risk for a host of health problems usually associated with the world’s poorest countries.

The explosion of oil production in the Alberta tar sands has created a new push to build pipelines throughout North America. In northern British Columbia, most of which is unceded indigenous land, there are overlapping proposals for new ports and pipelines to transport tar sands oil.

Years ago Mohawk woman Kahentinetha Horn was to be a secondary speaker to a keynote named AngryArab. Little did organizers know that Horn does not believe in being second to anyone, she stole the show.

In the summer of 2009, at a funeral in Winnipeg’s North End following a gang-related drive-by shooting, two of us were approached by members of a street gang. They wanted to talk. Too often the voices of the people who have intimate knowledge of, and are integral to, the problems in Winnipeg’s inner city are not heard. Our report endeavours to give a voice to these six Aboriginal men.

Since the mainstream Indigenous political organizations have to varying degrees been institutionalized and have a muted role in the actual struggles taking place, it’s thought that a different kind of organization is needed, one that comes from the dissident communities, the communities engaged in direct, non-violent opposition to the state.

In western Canadian cities like Winnipeg, a new and particularly destructive form of poverty has emerged over the past thirty years. It is inextricably linked with racism, is disproportionately concentrated in the inner city and has especially damaging effects on Aboriginal people. At the same time, it is Aboriginal people and especially Aboriginal women who are in the lead in developing effective, close-to-the-ground strategies to combat this new poverty.

My mother’s name is Gail Catherine Thomas and my late father’s name was Peter Sinclair Sr., both from the community of Pukatawagan Cree Nation located in northern Manitoba. Like many Native peoples at that time, my mother was raised in the bush.

Indigenous lifestyles are traditionally more linked to land and water than those of the Canadian population at large. Rural communities, especially in the north and west, still depend on country (wild) foods and forestry for livelihood and medicine. Many depend on the land for spirituality and for socio-cultural reasons. From this perspective, industrial pollution has a larger impact on Aboriginal communities.

Despite their release, the problem for KI and other Aboriginal communities in Ontario remains essentially the same. There is a fundamental conflict between provincial law, which grants unfettered access to land in Ontario for mining development, and the government’s obligations under treaty to honour First Nations’ relationships to their traditional lands.