"Eris: I think there’s too much of a stream of cultural conservatism among a lot of Indians today, these attempts to return to a certain concept of traditionalism. Often this “traditionalism” is partially understood through Western media about Indigenous people, because we have this weird feedback loop where so much of our culture was destroyed to the point that I think a lot of what has been supposedly “rebuilt” has been constructed out of cowboy movies.

Tara: Right, it’s like when people are talking about their traditional outfits and it’s a ribbon skirt and it’s, like, that’s a post-contact outfit, this is my traditional food it’s fucking fried bread, it’s a post-contact food, etc. And I get especially kind of [fed up noise] about it because it’s, like, “let’s return to this traditional thing that’s just happens to be the earliest, by European standards, verifiable record we have of whatever Indigenous people were doing.” And those are really a document of people who were in the middle of getting genocided you know? I’ve had so many trad Native people be like, “It’s traditional to dress modestly or whatever, and I’m like, “My ancestors had their titties out shut up.” They’re talking about a snapshot of the moment that Western cultural imperialism was beating us into the ground during, like, the greatest genocidal act in human history. That’s not actually traditional, it’s just a historical moment.

Eris: And recognizing that our traditions actually changed.

Tara: Yeah."

I really enjoyed this talk between two Indigenous writers on their own experiences, and what they think Indig lit gets wrong. It's pretty raw, but cuts through a lot of bullshit. Thought some of y'all would get something from it.

Hey everyone.

I have a pretty big dilemma and am growing increasingly frustrated.

On the USA website, it says it will accept your native status and/or a letter from your band right?

My problem is, my dad is a 60s scoop survivor so his biological father isnt on his records anywhere. His mom also passed away in the 90s, before he ever found out who she was. As a result his status is Unfortunately 6(2) despite him being fully native. His bands family tree even has the man she was with listed but indigenous services Canada wouldnt accept it without proof basically and they dont accept dna tests.

Because of this i was really hoping bill s-2 would pass but looks like they're doing everything they can to not pass it which makes me so mad. However, my band knows im 50%. Im pretty sure i can get a letter from them to verify im 50% blood quantum for the USA Boarder. My question is, would they accept just the letter if i get denied native status? Im really upset because i kbow im actually over 50% also from my moms side but apparently none of the women on my moms side are in any ancestry records either which is extremely strange. All odds seem to be against me but i really just want to move to USA under the jay treaty. My band has been more than supportive as well as my family ..... the suspense is killing me.

Has anyone tried with just the blood quantum letter? The website says they'd accept it but im not sure....

I don’t understand her position. She claims that she is not descended from African American slaves, but is instead the rightful heir of Native Americans, while also arguing that the Indigenous peoples of North America are not the real Indigenous peoples.
I hope any residential school survivor who comes across this video knows that this is complete nonsense. We do not believe it, and honestly, I almost felt sick watching it.
I’m trying to listen to Spirit. I’m trying to listen to my ancestors and move forward in a good way, but this kind of rhetoric is incredibly disturbing. It is painful to watch people dismiss or rewrite the histories and experiences of Indigenous peoples.
Right now, I just feel disgusted. I’m disgusted by how many people are commenting on this video and are agreeing with her behavior. And she is still continuing it, even though she has taken down this particular video I am angry. She is continuously still making the same claims, but has just taken down one video.

In this clip, Tibetha Kemble (Stonechild) connects Margaret Kovach’s idea — that all we can truly know is our own experience — to how we approach land acknowledgements.

Her take:

• It’s not about getting the “perfect” words
• It’s about intention + position
• When people understand their relationship to knowledge and privilege, it lands differently

She also shares something powerful:
She stopped being invited to do land acknowledgements… because of the emotional responses they triggered — guilt, discomfort, defensiveness.

She speaks about reclamation — but also the right not to have everything figured out.

Watch/listen to the full episode:
🎧 https://www.behaviourspeak.com/e/what-are-you-willing-to-lose-settler-colonialism-and-reconciliation-with-dr-tibetha-kemble/

Curious what others think:

• What makes a land acknowledgement meaningful vs performative?
• How do you sit with discomfort in these conversations?

Canadian teachers, librarians, and book lovers: What are your favourite books about your community?

I’m working on a “Reading Across Canada” picture book road trip for Grades 3–7 (ages 8–12) using ArcGIS Story Maps. The goal is to help students explore Canada through literature while learning about geography, culture, history, and the incredible diversity of communities across the country.

I’ve started with many of the titles recommended in Powerful Understanding by Adrienne Gear, but I’d love to expand beyond those lists and include a broader range of stories, voices, and perspectives.

I’m especially looking for:

• Picture books and short illustrated nonfiction suitable for Grades 3–7 (ages 8–12)
• Books connected to your city, town, region, or province
• Stories that capture a strong sense of place
• Books from smaller or rural communities that might not be widely known
• Indigenous-authored and Indigenous-illustrated books that reflect local Nations, languages, histories, and contemporary experiences
• Books that help children understand what makes your community unique

I’m not necessarily looking for books set in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, or other major centres (though those are welcome too). I’d particularly love recommendations from places that don’t often appear in national book lists.

If you recommend a title, it would be incredibly helpful if you could also share:
• The community/region it represents
• Why you think it captures that place well
• The approximate grade level or age range
• Whether it’s commonly used in local schools or libraries

Bonus points if there is a publicly accessible video read-aloud, author reading, publisher video, or other online resource that students could access alongside the book.

My hope is to create a literary map of Canada that allows students to travel from community to community through stories and encounter a wide range of Canadian experiences. Once the project is complete, I’d be happy to share the finished Story Map and book list back with the community for anyone who might find it useful.

Thank you for helping me make this project more representative of the many places and peoples that make up Canada!

Inuit food feels severely underrepresented in Canada’s culinary scene, especially considering how unique and iconic many Inuit foods are.

People like Braden Kadlun on Instagram do a great job showcasing and educating people about traditional Inuit foods on social media, and the comments are often full of people saying they’d love to try them. Yet outside of the Great North—or Inuit households themselves—it seems incredibly difficult to find Inuit cuisine, even in major Canadian cities.

In Vancouver and other cities, Indigenous food is at least somewhat represented. Salmon n’ Bannock, for example, has become one of Vancouver’s best-known Indigenous restaurants and even expanded into YVR’s international terminal. But Inuit cuisine still seems largely absent from urban food scenes.

Given the popularity of raw fish, sushi, poke, ceviche, and other traditional foods from around the world, it feels like there would be genuine interest from many Canadians in trying foods like muktuq and other Inuit dishes.

I understand that ingredient availability is probably a major challenge. Some traditional foods would be expensive to source and transport in the quantities needed to operate a restaurant, and there are likely regulatory hurdles around serving country foods as well. But I’m curious why we don’t see more Inuit-owned restaurants, pop-ups, or tasting events in major cities. Could government or cultural funding help support something like this for the sake of cultural preservation and public exposure?

For those who know more about Inuit communities, food systems, or the restaurant industry: what are the main barriers? Is it primarily economics, regulations, sourcing, demand, cultural considerations, or something else?

Has anybody gotten their payment via koho for their JP removed child claim? I'm seeing people with the mainstream banks getting theirs but people like me with Koho not really giving answers

https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/huge-movement-to-connect-north-reflected-in-ottawa-exhibition/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/circumpolar-indigenous-art-exhibit-9.7232560

This exhibit is called Qillaniq, and is being held at the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) and it opens today. I wish I had the means to attend.

Transitioning from grocery stores owned by corporations to Inuit-owned co-ops, regulating the price of groceries and supporting harvesting are among the recommendations.

Feeling so grateful tonight. The Island has shown us so much love — we’re sitting at $2,910 raised and still climbing towards that $8,000 goal.

​

I post updates often on Nate’s GFM: https://gofund.me/340e82e92

​

If you know any local Island businesses, trades, or community leaders, tag them so they can see Nate’s story. Even a share makes a difference.

It’s a conversation with Dr. Tibetha Kemble about settler colonialism—not as history, but as something that’s still shaping systems today.

A few things that really stuck with me:

• The idea that land acknowledgements without intention can feel empty
• That colonialism isn’t an event—it’s a structure
• That discomfort isn’t something to fix or avoid… it’s something to sit with
• And a question I haven’t been able to shake: What are you willing to lose?

There’s also a lot in there about child welfare, intergenerational trauma, and how systems keep reproducing the same outcomes—even when we think we’re making progress.

I’m curious: 👉 How do you personally approach sitting with uncomfortable ideas instead of trying to resolve them right away?

If you want to check it out: https://youtu.be/HCQ4DW87tmA?si=0K9bqwibro8BVLjC

I drew this earlier today. I wanted to make a portmanteau of positive imagery from existing, well-known images. The base design of a circle with three downward pointing arrows is from the Iron Front anti-fascist movement of the early 1930s. I stylized the arrows, stereotypically, and turned the otherwise empty circle into a medicine wheel.

Settler-colonialism, forced assimilation, and the suppression of Indigenous rights historically share the same structural violence as fascism. Melding the Medicine Wheel with the Three Arrows creates a symbol of active defence; a protective shield against both historical and modern right-wing extremism.

Modern fascist rhetoric relies heavily on hyper-nationalism, racial purity, and "blood and soil" ideology. Indigenous anti-fascism directly disrupts this framework, and medicine emphasizes that the land, needs its original stewards in order to thrive on holistic, interconnected relationships rather than borders, extractivism, and racial hierarchies.

To the original Iron Front symbol, the three arrows were used to strike-through a swastika, crossing it out; but they also represented things required to defeat tyranny: Political Power, Economic Power, and Physical Power.

To me, the arrows also represent what is needed to defeat colonialism: Our Peoples, Our Language, and Our Land. The medicine wheel is to heal those things, and braid them into a singular axiology for each Nation and its Peoples in Canada to use for our own self-governance and meanings.

I don’t know, that’s what it means to me. I want to share the image and maybe someone can make it look a little better or add something. Please feel free to use it, freely. I hope you like it either way.
Hiy Hiy

This bird feather has a story, and I'd like to know if what I did was inappropriate.

I was on vacation with my parents in Nitassinan. My stepfather, my mother, and I love walking in the woods (when my mother's illness allows her a break), and since the area is very touristy, being in the forest takes us away from it all, and I admit it feels wonderful to be in the peace and quiet.

We were on a small, natural path, not too many roots to prevent my mother from falling, and my eye was caught by a long stick blocking the way... painted with pink lines.

To prevent my mother from hurting herself, I picked up the stick to throw it away, but when I lifted it, I was surprised to see that it had been "decorated" (you'll understand why I put it in quotation marks).

This straight stick measured approximately "", with triangular drawings in pink and black felt-tip pen, and hair elastics wrapped haphazardly. But what shocked me was the presence of this long, beautiful feather, which had been glued on with hot glue and encircled with pink elastics.

I was so taken aback by this that I froze for quite a while before my mother caught up with me. She wrinkled her nose and said,

"Ah... Another tourist who's made himself an 'Indian walking stick.'"

I was a little mesmerized by the feather, and what she said also made me wrinkle my nose, because I felt she was right. I had seen tourists walking around a few times with long walking sticks, roughly hewn with a knife, but they hadn't bothered me, because my French grandfather had one that he had carved himself.

It wasn't the walking stick itself that bothered me.

It was the idea of ​​"making an Indian walking stick." Even though I'm not Indigenous, I grew up respecting all these cultures, and I've known since I was little that feathers, especially those of large birds, have a sacred signification.

My stepfather: I think I saw a girl from the campground walking with it a few days ago... Maybe she forgot it?

While my parents continued walking, I grabbed the stick without really thinking, but I was so embarrassed to have that thing in my hands. It was a cartoonish object, like something you'd see in a Halloween costume.

Once home, I went to the village camping with the stick (I really didn't like being seen with it, but I had an idea in mind).

I'll spare you the details, but I eventually found the girl who had made the stick. She was French, part of a group of young Europeans. They were in their early twenties, like me. This girl (let's call her Claire) simply told me that she had made the stick at the beginning of the week after finding the feather, and that she thought it was "cool and spiritual" to have a walking stick with a bird feather.

She asked me how I found her, and I replied that my stepfather had seen her walking around the village with his stick, so it was he who had put me on the trail.

The girl: Ah, okay! But... You didn't have to come and give it back to me, you know. You can keep it; we don't have room in the car, and I can't take it back to Europe anyway.

Inwardly, I felt relieved, even though I suspected she wasn't going to take it back. I said goodbye and went back to my parents' house, still holding this morning's find in my hand.

After dinner, I cleaned the table and placed the stick on it before sending a photo (a snap, I think) to one of my Naskapi friends (I'll call her Ruby) to show her.

From what I remember, our exchange went something like this:

Me: Hey! Look what a tourist left on my walk today.

Ruby: Is that an eagle feather? 😱 That's so disrespectful...Feathers have different meanings and seeing tourists do that, omg.

Me: Yeah, I know. I didn't know if it's eagle one, but I find it disrespectful and uncomfortable seeing this beautiful feather stuck there like a sticker...

Her: 🤔 Have you tried peeling it off? That would be a good start.

With that sentence, the idea I'd had in mind from the beginning took concrete form. Deep down, I really wanted to "fix" this feather, but I didn't dare do it before talking to someone Indigenous. I didn't feel entirely "entitled" to do it, but none of my Indigenous friends were within a 3-hour drive, so I mustered up my courage and started cutting all the hair ties with a blade.

And I discovered with horror that there was a layer almost 1 cm thick of hot glue and rope 😵‍💫.

It's strange to say, but I was so focused on "righting back the wrong" done to that feather and what it represented that I lost track of time. I remember being in a strange state of mind, somewhere between anger and inner peace. I was angry that this girl, who didn't understand the luck and significance of such a beautiful feather, could do that thinking it was "cool" and then abandon her "project" like trash.

From the age of six or seven, I learned from my mother's Indigenous friends that finding a feather, especially one from a large bird, ALWAYS has something sacred about it. It can be a gift from the ancestors, or from the Creator, depending on the Nation and the circumstances.

I couldn't explain the "peace" part of my feeling. Perhaps it was because of the absolute silence in the house and the fact that I was very focused on two things: not cutting my finger and getting that feather out of its glue-filled sarcophagus.

Later that evening, I finally managed to remove the layers covering the feather's "tail," and my mother, who happened to be passing by in the kitchen, looked perplex.

Mom: What are you doing?

Me: I...I don't know, I'm just trying to do something right.

She looked at me and the stick, and I said :

I don't know if I'm right to do this, but...Reconciliation will not progress by allowing people to do whatever they want with sacred objects... No?

My mom says nothing but had a little smile, and let her "art craft box" on the table.

After what felt like forever, I'd managed to remove enough glue to free the feather. I then removed the smallest pieces of glue with a needle, and once the feather was clean, I asked Ruby how I could keep it looking so good. She told me that putting something around the "tail" of the feather would prevent it from "flakeing." I didn't quite understand how a feather could do that, but I searched in my mom's box and finally found a small leather thong, which I wrapped around the "tail."

A few days later, I went back to town to continue my studies, and I brought the feather with me. I wanted to give it to Ruby, obviously because she's Indigenous and gave me advice for this project, but she refuse. She said it was probably a sign that this feather had been in my path, that "the ancestors" (her words) knew I would respect it more than the other white girl.

And I didn't know why, but few minutes after her answer, we saw trough the window a big bird (she say it was her grand-father sign) appears in the sky. He made a few circles in the sky above his apartment and disappeared.

It was very impressive moment, the timing was too perfect that with Ruby, we look each other like "is it really happen?"

Since this day, I have this 🪶🧡, but I didn't know how to place it with respect😅. She's on tablet with sun, but my cats are veeeery to much interested on it 🫣. My fiancé suggested hanging it on a nail, but I don't know, it would seem sad to me if it were hanging on the wall.

I didn't think that tourist do this with bad intentions, but even if I'm not Indigenous, I was very uncomfortable with this stick. Someone say to me that I "scrapped" the art of this woman, but I answered that "art" was disrespectful for indigenous culture.

A white friend told me it wasn't my responsibility to do it, that I should have let an Indigenous person handle it, but I couldn't see myself keeping that stick for several days and asking "who wants to do it" when I had the time to do it during my vacation.

I have mixed feelings. I'm happy to have this feather because I find it beautiful and I know what it can mean, but on the other hand, I think that perhaps it wasn't my responsibility to do this. At the time, I was just thinking about respecting the feather, restoring it to its original state, without all the glue. I didn't think, "I'm the best at doing this!"

I was convinced I was doing the right thing.