ARTICLES BY
Will Nicholls
The Cree Trappers’ Association board of directors laid off the CTA’s president, vice-president and treasurer as of October 1 due to a lack of funds.
CTA president Edward Gilpin said it doesn’t look good for the executive and that the CTA has “exhausted our begging” for money.
He says the problem is ...
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Vermont residents probably aren’t too happy with buying Hydro-Quebec power these days. Central Vermont Public Service Corp. [Corp.] has asked state regulators to increase rates 6.6% in 1998. In the past summer and winter had different rates. “Incentives” were in place to encourage using less power in the winters.
Hydro-Quebec’s cost ...
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This year was the 16th annual Montreal Friendship center’s Pow Wow. “Is it possible to repossess land through celebration? We believe it is!” started off the Pow Wow program. This seemed to be the theme of the many people who came out to enjoy the festivities.
This year the location was ...
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The Pepeshquasati river, called the Papas by Cree residents, is a dream of a lifetime for most people into fishing.
The Papas flows into Lake Mistissini, where larger-than-life speckled trout never fail to awake anticipation in the most jaded of anyone who has ever fished.
It is a series of rapids not ...
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The Nation had a chance to talk to Clarence Tomatuk about the upcoming Cree Language and Culture Conference. The conference promises to be a milestone for the Crees. It is one of the few unbroken promises from the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement seeing implementation.
Tomatuk, the director of Education ...
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Ah, food, one of the basic necessities of life. It can be simple or complex in the making. One person’s delight leaves a bad taste in the mouth of another. It has been said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Something I’ve found to be ...
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This is a hard editorial for me to write as it concerns something private and personal. It concerns a decision that my girlfriend and myself made a while ago. We decided to enter into a serious monogamous relationship. One that involved a lot of trust on each others’ part.
Let’s face ...
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Quebec’s Environment and Wildlife Department announced that the Quebec is going to prohibit the possession and trade of bear gall bladders that are used in traditional Chinese medicine. This will start in 1998, according to Quebec’s Minister of Environment and Wildlife, David Cliche. Cliche also said there will also be ...
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Ye gods, the Parti Quebecois must be burning with jealousy!
Some Crees have done it once again with another high referendum result. In Whapmagoostui, 92 per cent of Cree voters said they oppose any development projects that would divert the Great Whale River. This referendum was in response to reports that ...
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The Cree School Board is working on a Cree
Education Act that would give local communities, Elders and the Cree Nation control over our schools.
The Cree Education Act will bring many changes to the communities. One of them is that local schools will be put under the authority of local communities. ...
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Robert Jimikin says he isn’t impressed with the new Minister of Indian Affairs, Jane Stewart. Mistissini’s director of public works says Indian Affairs is going backwards in dealing with Native housing issues. “There’s so much red tape required to release funding it’s a headache for us,” he says.
Jimikin was talking ...
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The mega-corp. Crees love to hate is back. Just when Crees and all their allies thought the Great Whale project was dead it showed up again in a new mutated, virulent form. The utility and Quebec government sang everyone a soft lullaby and hummed that James Bay Phase II is ...
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I first met Matthew Mukash during the Great Whale campaign in the U.S. He impressed me with the large amounts of facts and figures he had stored and ready for use in almost any situation. The other and most important thing this man impressed me with was his dedication and ...
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With all of the rumours flying around about Bourassa’s bulldozers coming out of retirement, The Nation thought it would be a good idea to visit the man at the top of the Cree totem pole and ask him to shed some light on the situation. Grand Chief Coon Come was ...
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Personally I’m not surprised that Hydro-Quebec has studied alternative ways of getting some power from the North. I think it’s they’re biggest source. I think we would have been a little naive not to think that while the Great Whale River project was being delayed—probably more for political reasons—that quietly ...
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What is your reaction as a youth on the Hydro-Quebec plans to divert the Great Whale and Rupert rivers into the existing La Grande Complex?
Bertie Wapachee: Over the years listening to the plans of Hydro-Quebec, one of them being the plan to make a big lake out of Iiyuuschii, in ...
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(Greenpeace is a member of a new coalition of groups protesting any new projects and the deregulation of Hydro-Quebec.)
The big picture is simple. We want a moratorium on all Hydro projects and to have public hearings on the state of the rivers and what they are intending to do and ...
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The four river diversions in the Innu homeland Nitassinan will primarily affect the community of Betsiamites. It is a community 300 kilometres to the west of ours. But the impact will touch everybody. To divert the four rivers will totally destroy the life of the wildlife in this area. The ...
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It was with shock, outrage and anger that I learnt of the latest chapter to the James Bay II saga. I, and the many others, who fought Great Whale (a.k.a. James Bay Phase II) felt the same. We awakened to yet another Friday the 13th part 8; movie where the ...
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It had been about fours years since I last hunted geese in the spring. It felt important to me as this was traditionally a time of celebration for the Crees. The harsh reality of the winter was over and the arrival of the geese was important to survival but also ...
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As Pow-Wows go, this one met all the expectations and then some. A Pow-Wow is a gathering of the people. A time to renew… old friendships, new beginnings. A time to trade, a time to dance and ultimately a time to rejoice. The winter is gone and summer, a time ...
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After 17 years of talking you’d expect somebody would get the message. After 17 years of talking you’d expect that somebody would understand the message. After 17 years of patience you’d expect more than a slap in the face.
That is in effect what the Liberal government did when they tossed ...
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Do you remember that old song by Willie Dunn? Went something like this: “Here come the anthro’s…” It is a song on how those people have left a bitterness with how they conducted themselves and what they did. Today, however, a different picture is seen by Indians across the landscape ...
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Hot dusty days and sweltering heat on gravel roads make any trip a mini-version of hell guaranteed to have sinners praying for something cool if you haven’t any air conditioning in your car. Up north it’s a must-have option but one that you have to take care of. It’s recommended ...
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Naomi Weistche is the youngest of seven children born to Andrew and Louisa Weistche. She is twelve years-old and is presently attending Wiinibekuu school in Waskaganish. As a Cree student in the school she faces a problem that not many other Crees have to face. She is deaf.
She wasn’t born ...
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With Cree traditional lifestyle constantly under threat, a new voice is looking to make hunters’ concerns about Canada geese, moose, caribou and black bears a top priority with the governments..
Violet Pachanos was recently chosen by the Grand Council to represent the Cree on the Hunting Fishing and Trapping Coordinating Committee, ...
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