MEDIA INDIGENA : Indigenous current affairs

This week: Standing up for the Standing Rock Sioux. For the US state of North Dakota, massive deposits of unconventional oil have brought much prosperity for some, great pain to others. In a bid to get even more of that oil to market, a new project is underway: the Dakota Access Pipeline. But the 1900 km, $3.8 billion project has long been opposed by local Indigenous people, the Standing Rock Siou...

According to preliminary new data released this week, Indigenous people in Canada are 10 times more likely to use an emergency shelter than their non-Indigenous counterparts. That's according to the National Shelter Study , a decade-long look at the use of emergency shelter beds across the country. And for the first time ever, the study has tracked stats according to Indigenous identity. Our guest...

If families form the bedrock of Indigenous peoples, it seems Canada has devoted decades to their fracture and fragmentation. And, as child advocate Cindy Blackstock notes, were we to label the forced institutionalization of children in faraway residential schools as 'phase one' of that fracturing, the subsequent removal of generations of kids into the homes of non-Aboriginal strangers in the 1960s...

Senseless, tragic and disturbing: words that rush to mind upon hearing the news of last week's killing of Colten Boushie. A 22-year-old resident of the Red Pheasant First Nation in western Canada, Boushie was shot to death after he and four other Indigenous young people drove onto the property of 54-year-old, non-Indigenous farmer Gerald Stanley in hopes of getting help with a flat tire. What happ...

Will it happen again? Will someone portrayed on-screen by Aboriginal actor Adam Beach be quickly dispensed with, leaving us next to no time to really know his character? According to our guest this week, it's been something of a pattern for Mr. Beach — indeed, it's a fate faced by all too many Indigenous actors in Hollywood, as they appear all too briefly in mainstream television and film producti...

When loved ones die, there's no question who suffers most—their families. And of those who pushed hardest for the newly-launched National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, none fought more fiercely than the relatives of these stolen sisters. Now some of those families have been left disappointed by the details of its terms of reference. Such concerns are echoed by group...

According to the WHO, food security is "when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life." In Canada's north, food access and affordability are critical issues —especially for many Indigenous communities — and government subsidies seem to only go so far. Madeleine Redfern, mayor of Iqaluit (Nunavut's capital city), discusses her...

This week on the program: Inaction on the Indian Act. Derided for decades, it's hung in there as one of Canada's oldest laws. Now there are hints from the federal Justice Minister that its days could be numbered... just not right away. Joining us with her thoughts on the delayed dismantling of the Act is Naomi Sayers, a law student active in legal reform and education who writes under the banner o...

An Indigenous broadcaster shares his personal and political perspective on police treatment of Aboriginal people, an issue he recently wrote about in his Huffington Post piece, "This Is Why People Of Colour Fear The Police." Jesse Wente is the d irector of Film Programmes at TIFF Bell Lightbox, and a long-time CBC Radio pop culture columnist. He joined us from Toronto. // Our theme is 'nesting' by...

Fresh off our week at the Podcast Movement conference in Chicago, the team behind MEDIA INDIGENA 'checks in' on our progress 18 weeks into the show. We share our experiences, lessons and successes—including our ultimate, larger vision for the show's future, both on and off the mic. Featuring Ian Milne , MI's Head of Audience & Partnership Development.  // Our theme is 'nesting' by Birocratic .

New research out of the University of Toronto into Indigenous child welfare has highlighted what some already suspected: that, when it comes to investigations of abuse or neglect, Indigenous families in Ontario are way more likely to be investigated than their white counterparts—130 per cent more, in fact. The disparity grows even greater for child removal , with young Aboriginal people 168 per ce...

This week: the fight for funding of Indigenous languages.  Despite the best efforts of the Canadian government to wipe out the roughly 60 Aboriginal languages in that part of the world (what some call deliberate linguicide) those ancestral tongues are not yet stilled. But this is no time for complacency, which is why people like Lorena Fontaine, an associate professor of Indigenous Governance at t...

According to its proponents, Indigenous public health goes beyond the original concept to encourage health practitioners to be more aware of the larger social, political and historical issues and dynamics that often drive Aboriginal health disparities. This week's episode comes to you from Toronto, host to "Public Health 2016," the annual conference of the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA)...

"Contaminated, hard to access or toxic." According to a new Human Rights Watch report, that's what all too many First Nations endure when it comes to safe, quality drinking water—in some cases, for decades.  Our guest this week is Amanda Klasing, a senior HRW researcher and the author of its report, "Make it Safe: Canada's Obligation to End the First Nations Water Crisis." // Our theme is 'nesting...

One of Canada's largest provinces now says it's sorry for its "silence in the face of abuses and deaths at residential schools... [and] for the continued harm that generations of abuse is causing to Indigenous communities, families and individuals." The formal apology by the Ontario government comes almost one year after Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued its final report. But wil...

This week, we get an update on the inquest into a series of young First Nation fatalities in northwestern Ontario, where seven Indigenous students have died over a 10 year period in the city of Thunder Bay. Our guest is Jody Porter, a local CBC journalist who's covered this story for years, including regular updates from the inquest. // Our theme is "nesting" by Birocratic .

This week we take a long look at a provocative poll recently published by the Washington Post about their home town pro football club, the "Redskins." The paper claims the results supposedly show "how few ordinary Indians have been persuaded by a national movement to change the football team's moniker." Not surprisingly, team owner Daniel Snyder immediately celebrated the findings, but critics cla...

Recently, Canadian energy giant Enbridge announced it was prepared to boost the Aboriginal stake in their Northern Gateway project up to 33 per cent.  Mired in controversy pretty much from the get-go, that includes how it seems to have seeded tension among Indigenous peoples, dividing them into pro- and anti-pipeline camps. But will  Enbridge's new offer be enough to win more Indigenous support? ...

This week on the program: the ever-growing economic footprint of Indigenous peoples. A recent report out of Atlantic Canada suggests Aboriginal spending benefits the region significantly, to the tune of $1.14 billion annually. But it's actually a trend across the country. Joining us with her insights into these numbers is Maureen Googoo, owner-editor of Kukukwes.com , a site dedicated to covering...

Adopted by most countries back in 2007, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) faced but a handful of holdouts: the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Flash forward to last week, when a senior Canadian politician said his government was developing a so-called "Canadian definition" of at least some portions of UNDRIP, including the bedrock notion of free, p...

This week on the program, making sense of Manitoba's Election. As a province with one of Canada's largest proportions of Aboriginal people, it's worth asking what the end of the NDP's 17-year run in favour of the Progressive Conservatives could mean to Indigenous interests going forward. Sharing his thoughts is long-time journalist Trevor Greyeyes , editor of the First Nations Voice newspaper. //...

The remote Ontario community of Attawapiskat is but one example of a First Nation caught in the grips of a devastating suicide epidemic. This week, professor of psychiatry Amy Bombay joins us to explore the bigger picture and difficult histories underlying these all-too-common issues facing reserves across Canada. // Our opening and closing theme is   'nesting' by Birocratic .

Just how much attention have Indigenous issues been getting from the front-runners in the US presidential primaries thus far? Simon Moya-Smith of Indian Country Today fills us in. Our opening and closing theme is   'nesting' by Birocratic .

"An ongoing medical crisis." According to doctors serving First Nations west of James Bay, that is the current state of Aboriginal health for the northern Ontario region. Dr. James Makokis is a Cree family doctor based in Alberta who also teaches at Yellowhead Tribal College and the Universities of Alberta and Toronto. He shares his perspective on the health care challenges and barriers facing Ind...

Some call it "historic." Its authors say it's "unprecedented." But what does Budget 2016 really offer Indigenous peoples in Canada? We asked Cindy Blackstock—executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada  and an associate professor at the University of Alberta—to help us break it down. // Our opening and closing theme is   'nesting' by Birocratic .