Chiefs demand public inquiry and removal of MNR leadership
By Maya Ekman, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, NWOnewswatch.com THUNDER BAY – The chiefs of First Nations directly impacted by the wildfire situation are calling for a public inquiry and the “immediate removal” of the people leading the province’s response. After multiple First Nations self-evacuated, their chiefs say that they were repeatedly told by the Ministry of Natural Resources that they were not in any danger until the threat was imminent and had reached their community. They want Chris Cuthbertson, the MNR’s director for aviation, forest fire and emergency services, as well as the assistant deputy minister on that file removed from those roles. “We want to counter some of the narrative that Ontario is promoting out there, that they are in regular contact with our leadership. They are not,” said...
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Collins chief says they were told ‘not to worry’ about fire
By Maya Ekman, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, NWOnewswatch.com THUNDER BAY — “We do not understand how MNR failed to protect our community,” said Chief Helen Paavola of Namaygoosisagagun First Nation, also known as Collins. At a press conference held by Nishnawbe Aski Nation on Tuesday, Paavola shared that she was flown to her community the day before to see the damage done by the wildfire that reached her community last week. “I visited our homelands yesterday and during a community meeting this morning, I confirmed that there’s nothing left but just ashes,” she said. Minister of Natural Resources Mike Harris said at a press conference in Thunder Bay last week that the fire that destroyed the community had started that day. However, the fire was first reported on May 31....
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Brazil uses forensic science to trace gold’s origin and tackle illegal mining in the Amazon
By Gabriela Sá Pessoa BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Brazil is using forensic science to tackle illegal gold mining in the Amazon, a top threat to the rainforest, Indigenous groups and other communities there that has accelerated deforestation and driven mercury contamination to dangerous levels. The work takes place at the National Institute of Criminalistics in Brasilia, the country’s capital, where federal police have set up a “gold lab” that collects and analyses samples from across the country. The objective is to determine if a newly acquired sample — gold seized in a police raid, for example — comes from a protected area, meaning it has been illegally mined. It’s called “gold fingerprinting” — tracing the origin of gold samples with high precision. Tracing gold is like looking at a person’s...
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Ministry of Natural Resources: no new wildfires in Ontario in 24 hours
There are 177 active wildfires still burning in Ontario, but the Ministry of Natural Resources has reported no new blaze in the last 24 hours. Still, more than 1,800 people have been forced from their homes as the province grapples with what early estimates suggest is its most devastating wildfire season on record. Indigenous communities have borne the brunt of the fires, with First Nations making up 12 of the 13 evacuated communities. Hundreds of people fleeing the fires are staying in Thunder Bay, Ont., though others are taking refuge further south in Toronto and Niagara Falls. Indigenous leaders have called for a public inquiry into the Ontario government’s wildfire response, saying some communities were essentially left to fend for themselves, but Premier Doug Ford disagreed this week with the...
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Chiefs say government has had no communication with First Nations
By Maya Ekman, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, NWOnewswatch.com THUNDER BAY – First Nations leaders are calling for a public inquiry into the Ford government’s handling of the current wildfire situation in the Northwest. “I always say collaboration, cooperation and communication. We’re all working together,” Ford said in Thunder Bay Saturday but the leaders of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, Chiefs of Ontario and seven First Nations say they haven’t heard from any minister of his government. “What he is saying is not true. He’s creating a narrative so that he can basically lie to Canadians, and lie to the people of Ontario,” said Chief Wilfred King of Gull Bay First Nation at a press conference on Tuesday. King said that not one of the chiefs present had been contacted by either the...
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NDP leader Marit Stiles says Ontarians are being lied to
By Maya Ekman, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, NWOnewswatch.com THUNDER BAY – From funding to equipment to communication, Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles accuses Premier Doug Ford’s government of lying to Ontarians, calling their management of the wildfire crisis “outrageous and reprehensible.” Stiles and Thunder Bay—Superior North MPP Lise Vaugeois were the only representatives of any provincial party at the press conference held Tuesday by Nishnawbe Aski Nation, where they called for a public inquiry into the provincial government’s handling of this year’s fire season. Stiles and Vaugeois said that while wildfires are inevitable, there have been numerous suggestions from experts on how to better respond to emergencies that have gone ignored. Between 2019 and 2022, three different reports from wildland firefighters, the auditor general and NAN were given to the...
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Bodies of young brothers, 10 and 13, recovered from Manitoba lake
The body of a 13-year-old boy has been recovered from a Manitoba lake a day after his 10-year-old brother’s body was found near the shore. Aaron Au Ramirez and his younger brother Maximo Au Ramirez disappeared into Nutimik Lake in Whiteshell Provincial Park on Saturday. Maximo’s body was recovered Wednesday evening, after a boat on the water discovered him near Sturgeon Falls Trail. RCMP say Aaron’s body was found Thursday evening. Their parents said earlier in the day in a statement shared by RCMP that they were in “unimaginable pain.” Haidee Ramirez and Roger Au thanked the countless volunteers and search organizations that combed the water and shorelines or provided them with “hugs, prayers and hope.” “What we’ve gone through is not humanly possible to understand. We’re surviving only because...
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Thunder Bay 36 largest wildfire in Ontario history — by far
By Mike Stimpson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, SNnewswatch.com THUNDER BAY — There’s no end in sight to Whitesand First Nation’s evacuation, Chief Lawrence Wanakamik said Thursday. “But we’ll see next week,” Wanakamik told Newswatch as First Nation members continued to shelter in a south-side Thunder Bay hotel. The chief said he heard earlier this week from band members who are still on the reserve next to Armstrong, and they said all buildings there are still standing. Whitesand and Armstrong, about 220 kilometres north of the city, evacuated last week as a raging forest fire neared the communities. The blaze, which has merged with other wildfires and is now labelled Thunder Bay 36, remains out of control and spans nearly 320,000 hectares — making it not just the largest wildfire of...
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Parents in pain as Manitoba lake search continues for boy after brother’s body found
The parents of two boys swept into fast-moving rapids in a Manitoba lake say they’re in unimaginable pain as the search for one son enters its sixth day. Aaron Au Ramirez, 13, and his brother Maximo Au Ramirez, 10, disappeared into Nutimik Lake in Whiteshell Provincial Park on Saturday. Maximo’s body was recovered Wednesday evening after a boat on the water discovered it near Sturgeon Falls Trail. Haidee Ramirez and Roger Au thanked the countless volunteers and search organizations that have combed the water and shorelines or have provided the two with “hugs, prayers and hope.” “What we’ve gone through is not humanly possible to understand. We’re surviving only because of the help of those around us,” the parents said in a statement that was read to media on Thursday...
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OPP shuts down “Project Time” 63 people arrested in major Ontario Child Exploitation ring
By Alex Murray Writer A province-wide multi-agency probe into child exploitation in Ontario resulted in charges being laid against 63 people and the identification of 51 victims. The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) announced the charges on Wednesday (July 22). The joint initiative, called “Project Time,” includes 25 other police services and was executed through the Provincial Internet Child Exploitation Strategy (PICES). Project Time is a coordinated provincial effort to target individuals making, possessing, and distributing child sexual abuse material. OPP said identified victims were safeguarded and given the appropriate support. All told, Project Time resulted in 213 charges and the seizure of 814 electronic devices. 264 criminal investigations were conducted, with 154 still ongoing. The investigation found that two of the accused were people that were in a position of...
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Sussex well project part of $7.27M federal, N.B. infrastructure spend
By Andrew Bates, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Telegraph-Journal Drilling work has begun on a proposed new well for Ward 2 in Sussex as the provincial and federal governments announced they are contributing to the $1.68-million project. The new well is a replacement for two deteriorated wells in Ward 2, the former Village of Sussex Corner. On Wednesday, July 15, the province announced that four projects, including Sussex’s well proposal, were receiving a total of in $7.27 million in federal and provincial housing infrastructure cash. Sussex CAO Jason Thorne told Brunswick News the next day that the funding was confirmed in December for phases two and three of the project. It amounts to about $840,000 in federal funding through the Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund and about $559,000 in provincial funding through...
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Indigenous riders try out free transit, EV use in Vancouver project
By Sonal Gupta, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada’s National Observer Lana Putnam was already doing something that made her feel small: climbing onto a Vancouver bus without fare money and hoping to get where she was going before anyone noticed. Then she tripped. Putnam, a 70-year-old Cree Elder, was carrying her belongings when she fell in front of the other passengers. She wasn’t helped up; she was scolded. “Some of the people were saying, ‘Everybody pays,’” she said. “Instead of being worried about my fall.” Putnam’s experience is what a new clean-mobility pilot program in Vancouver is trying to address: how to make everyday travel more affordable and usable for lower-income urban Indigenous residents in one of Canada’s most expensive cities while also cutting transportation emissions. In Metro Vancouver, a...
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AFN rejects Newfoundland’s claims on Innu presence in Labrador
By Lucas-Matthew Marsh, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Iori:wase The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) has rejected the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador’s position on Innu history, standing in solidarity with the Innu Nation. Francis Verreault-Paul, AFN regional chief for Quebec and Labrador, stressed the personal impacts this resolution has on him in a press release. “As a proud Innu, I understood from the beginning that this fight was never about one Nation alone; it was about all First Nations,” Verreault-Paul said. “The powerful and inspiring words of Elder Elizabeth Penashue showed that our history belongs to us. The resolution, titled “Reject Efforts to Control First Nations Histories and Undermine Rights Recognition,” was unanimously passed during the AFN’s Annual General Assembly in Ottawa last week. The resolution was drafted in response...
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MCK looking for decision-maker for Administrative Tribunal
By Lucas-Matthew Marsh, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Iori:wase The Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) Justice Services Division has opened a call for applications for a new decision-maker to join its Administrative Tribunal. According to MCK’s Justice Commissioner Kevin Fleischer, this recruitment is part of a new initiative to review government decisions more effectively. “Our administrative tribunal, I believe, is the first comprehensive administrative tribunal in a First Nations community in the country,” Fleischer said. The decision-maker will oversee the regulation and application of Kahnawake’s laws, policies and procedures. “The administrative tribunal could best be thought of as an administrative court… what sets an administrative tribunal aside is that it’s meant to be more efficient, more economical and more user friendly,” Fleischer said. The Administrative Tribunal began operating last spring following...
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Connecting to Indigenous roots takes more than just showing up with a status card and DNA, author says
By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Windspeaker.com Jenn Ashton is clear: Growing My Way Home: Stories of Resilience and Care may be classified as an autobiographical fiction, but it is her true story. The abuse, the time as a runaway and in juvie, the broken marriages, the miscarriages, the drugs and alcohol abuse are all what she lived. The fiction part comes in how she connects the pieces of her life. “There’s a lot of people out there who don’t like the term autofiction because it seems like a lie and they don’t know which parts are real and which parts aren’t. So, I always want to start off by saying the book is real,” said Ashton, who is a “status Indian” with Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) Nation in British Columbia....
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FGCA fills in the gap training seed collectors
By Meg Deak, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Woolwich Observer Do you know where the trees growing at greenhouses come from? The obvious answer is seeds; the less obvious part is where those seeds are sourced. “People just think of seeds as magic that shows up. You can go to the nursery and buy an ornamental tree and put it in your lawn, but they have no idea where that tree came from,” said Darren Derbowka, coordinator at the National Tree Seed Centre. The backbone of the tree seed industry has always been seed collectors, who search an area to track, identify, and harvest seed. In Ontario, reforestation projects and greenhouses depend on seed collectors; however, according to the Forest Gene Conservation Association (FGCA), there is currently a shortage of these...
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First Nations chief leading charge to reverse Etsy ban
By Sam Laskaris, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Windspeaker.com Chief Jenny Brake of Qalipu First Nation in Newfoundland and Labrador is hoping there is still time for the globally popular marketplace Etsy to reverse an upcoming ban. Brake is spearheading a call for the suspension of an Etsy decision that would ban the sale of natural fur products from its site effective Aug. 11. Brake was hoping to introduce a resolution at the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) Annual General Assembly to advocate for the reversal or suspension of the ban. But the resolution, among others, did not make it to the floor due to time constraints at the three-day assembly, which concluded July 16 in Ottawa. Brake is now hoping the AFN passes the resolution at an upcoming meeting of...
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Canada’s aerial firefighting system is too slow, and front-line communities are paying the cost
By John Gradek Recently, as hundreds of fires burned across Northern Ontario and smoke pushed Toronto’s air quality to among the worst on the planet, Canada’s minister of emergency management defended Ottawa’s response and said, in effect, that nothing went wrong. In the same news cycle, Ontario’s minister of emergency preparedness sent a letter asking the federal government to guarantee that aircraft and crews could be deployed on less than 24 hours’ notice. However, a request for pre-agreed 24-hour readiness is, by definition, evidence that such readiness does not currently exist. You don’t ask for something you already have. In early June, I wrote in The Conversation Canada that Canada’s decision to lease a fleet of 10 firefighting aircraft for the 2026 wildfire season was a useful beginning but not...
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Indigenous veterans fought for country, but were mistreated after service new book recounts
By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter Lynn Gehl was in her thirties when she finally started to learn the story of her great-grandfather Joseph Gagnon from Golden Lake Reserve (now known as Pikwakanagan First Nation) in Ontario. In Joseph Gagnon: An Algonquin World War 1 Veteran, Gehl outlines the way her great-grandfather suffered from discrimination when it came to Canada’s implementation of policies for Indigenous veterans. “I reconnected with my grandmother and her brother Gordon, and they told me where (Joseph) was buried and they told me that he didn’t have a gravestone,” said Gehl. In accordance with the Last Post Fund, which has been in place since 1909, no veteran is to be denied a “dignified funeral and burial, as well as a military gravestone, due to insufficient...
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Aerial photos show devastation of Ontario First Nation as wildfires burn across north
By Kathryn Mannie Aerial photographs taken above Namaygoosisagagun First Nation show the devastation wrought by a fast-moving wildfire that forced residents to flee last week as flames closed in on their northern Ontario community. The photos show scorched earth and debris where buildings once stood, and the charred remnants of trees. Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Linda Debassige said last week that more than 30 homes, a school and community centres were reduced to ashes as Namaygoosisagagun, also known as Collins First Nation, was swallowed by fire. The residents fled without help from the province. Dramatic photos and videos of their evacuation showed people escaping on boats as a huge wall of smoke and flames rose behind them. “My members barely escaped with the clothes on their backs. My community...
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