Lost Face wins Alberta Spirit at CIFF
September 27, 2016. Lost Face, starring Alberta actors Gerald Auger, Michelle Thrush, Morris Birdyellowhead and Montreal’s Martin Dubreuil, took first prize at the Calgary International Film Festival’s Alberta Spirit gala on Sunday evening. The 14-minute short, shot west of Calgary by Australian native Sean Meehan, is based on the title story of Jack London’s 1910 collection about a power struggle between a European fur thief and his Native captors. Meehan said he came to Alberta to shoot because he needed snow and a large Indigenous cast. He teamed up with Joe Media’s Matt Gillespie, who was associate producer of Lost Face. There were about 150 submissions to this year’s Alberta Spirit.
Iveson suggests former RAM become Indigenous museum
September 27, 2016. Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson is suggesting turning the building that formally housed the Royal Alberta Museum into a national centre to celebrate Indigenous heritage. “We are a capital city in this country and yet we do not have a national institution which many of the other capital cities do,” said Mayor Don Iveson at the Canadian Urban Planning Summit on Saturday, the Edmonton Journal reported. One of the buildings on the former RAM’s grounds is Government House, where treaties between the Crown and Alberta's First Nations people were once signed. The province is looking for suggestions as to what to do with the now-vacant building.
Alberta hosts NWT, Nunavut education ministers
September 27, 2016. Alberta Education Minister David Eggen is meeting with education ministers from the Northwest Territories and Nunavut to discuss curriculum plans, including Indigenous reconciliation. The two territories are interested in using Alberta’s curriculum in their own classrooms. Eggen says he looks forward to learning from the ministers as Alberta works to develop new content across six subjects. The province says Alberta has invited experts from the Northwest Territories and Nunavut to participate on curriculum working groups in the coming years. It says their work will ensure all Alberta students learn about residential schools, treaties and First Nations, Metis and Inuit history, as well Indigenous perspectives and contributions. The two-day meeting of the three education ministers concludes today.
UNESCO monitoring mission underway at Wood Buffalo National Park
September 27, 2016. A United Nations monitoring mission is now reviewing Wood Buffalo National Park at the request of the Mikisew Cree Nation. MCN petitioned the UN in 2014 to list the park as being under threat from various developments. The park, a UNESCO world heritage site since 1983, is at the convergence of the Peace and Athabasca rivers and is considered the largest freshwater boreal delta on the planet. The World Heritage Centre concluded in 2015 that a review of cumulative effects on the national park was warranted and asked that Canada not make any other development decisions that "would be difficult to reverse." However, this July the federal government issued fisheries permits to allow construction of Site C dam, which will dam an 83-kilometre long reservoir on the Peace River. The UNESCO park review opens a new front in the battle over Site C, which is already being challenged in Federal Court by two B.C. First Nations. The 10-day monitoring mission, which began Sunday, could only go ahead with an invitation from the federal government. The World Heritage Committee's decision to review noted "with concern the lack of engagement with Indigenous communities in monitoring activities, as well as insufficient consideration of traditional ecological knowledge." The UNESCO mission will present a report with recommendations to be considered by the World Heritage Committee at its July 2017 session in Krakow, Poland.
Water the focus of Calgary conference
September 27, 2016. The right to clean water in First Nations will be one of the discussions held at the four-day Under Western Skies 2016: Water–Events, Trends, Analysis conference. Minister of Indigenous Relations Richard Feehan opens the conference, held at Mount Royal University in Calgary, this morning. Also on the agenda is “How to build an Indigenous university,” “Climate change and water,” and “Industry and water.” The Under Western Skies conference series on the environment takes place every two years at Mount Royal University. The innovative, award-winning conference series was inaugurated in 2010, paying homage in its name to Donald Worster, the environmental historian whose book by the same title is a landmark in ecocritical studies.