A Bit More Detail

• This MacLean's feature examines how, twenty years after the formation of Nunavut, some Inuit are considering new ways to make governance work in their interests.


• This National Observer article looks at how one Haisla band government sees hope in the construction of a pipeline, one that would provide the community with needed revenue.


• This Toronto Life feature by Michael Lista looks at the struggle by Six Nations-based businessman Ken Hill to avoid paying child support, using Indigenous sovereignty as a barrier.


• This National Observer article looks at the successful campaign, led by student Tomas Jirousek, to get McGill University to drop the name McGill Redmen for their sports team.


• CBC Montreal looks at the efforts to improve Indigenous representation on school curricula in the Gaspésie community of New Richmond.

• NOW Toronto reports on the potential of Indigenous films and television shows to gain international markets, so long as they get needed funding.


• Activists seeking to promote the Mohawk language and culture have received needed government funding, Global News reports.


• CBC Montreal notes the visit of a chef from the Six Nations of the Grand River to Montréal to share Iroquois cuisine there, and more.


• A Mi'kMaq community in Gaspésie does not want to preserve the Maison Busteed, a historic house belonging to an early settler who reportedly cheated them of their land, to the dismay of some local history activists. CBC reports.


• The remains of Nonosabasut and Demasduit, two of the last of the Beothuk of Newfoundland, are going to be transfer from Scotland to a new home in Canada, at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau. CBC reports.

• CBC Indigenous reports on how Kahnawake Mohawks celebrate Christmas with a Mohawk-language radio program.


• Craig Desson at CBC reports on how the Québec cheese-making Orthodox monastery, Virgin Mary the Consolatory, was preparing to meet Christmas.


• Jason Vermes at CBC's Cross-County Checkup has a report taking a look at the importance of chosen family for queer people at Christmas time, featuring the experiences of (among others) author Nathan Burgoine.


• Samantha Allan at The Daily Beast reports on how LGBT bars in the United States often remain open on Christmas, to provide community and family for queer people excluded from said.


• Carrie Jenkins, writing at Global News, notes how difficult it can be for people in polyamorous relationships to have both (or all) their partners recognized in holiday celebrations.


• Adam Wallis at Global News reports on some unexpected holiday albums, starting with the Star Wars Christmas album and going through drag and metal, for starters.


• Adam Gaffney at Jacobin Magazine makes the case for seeing Santa Claus as a hero of the left, doing his best to work wonders within a structurally unequal capitalism.


• Stephen Maher at MacLean's makes the case for "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues being the best Christmas song, ever.


• Noisey makes the case for the Darlene Love original of "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" being the best Christmas song.


• A Jamie Lauren Keiles interview at Vox with Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut explains how, exactly, American Jews came to make eating at Chinese restaurants a marker of their Christmas day events.

• A new neighbourhood in Markham is going to make use of geothermal energy to heat hundreds of homes. CBC reports.


• CityLab reports on how a census of the giant Pacific octopus in the waters of Seattle is going to be conducted.


• Some residents of Tijuana are protesting against the thousands of Central American refugees now sheltering in their city. Global News reports.


• A new exhibit at the 9/11 Museum in New York City tells of the contribution of Mohawk steelworkers to the construction of the megalopolis' skyline. CBC Indigenous reports.


• Officials in Hong Kong and Shenzhen are having problems drawing a boundary through a garden plot on their mutual border. The SCMP reports.

• The startling anti-native racism demonstrated in a series of tweets by retired Brock University professor Garth Stevenson may see him stripped of any continuing affiliation with that university. CBC reports.


• SBS notes how Canadians Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern, visiting Sydney, set to engaging in racist slander against Australian Aborigines.


• The Bank of Montreal has just replaced plaques, on its headquarters at the Place d'Armes, commemorating the death in battle there of an Iroquois chief. I actually saw these in place on my recent visit, just days before these went. CBC reports.


• New findings suggest that, if yarn technology did diffuse in the High Arctic in the Norse period, it came from the Inuit to the Norse and not the other way around. Global News has it.


• Ici Radio-Canada reports on a new dictionary of Abenaki that might yet help save that indigenous language.

• Croatian-Canadian fans in Mississauga were definitely organized and ready to celebrate the Croatian team playing in the World Cup finals. Global News reports.


• People in Kahnawake are looking forward to an upcoming powwow, as a celebration of indigenous culture and a vehicle for reconciliation. Global News reports.


• CityLab notes the progress that environmental initiatives in Madrid have had in bringing wildlife back to the Spanish capital.


• Politico Europe reports on the mood in Helsinki on the eve of the Trump-Putin summit there. Avoiding a repetition of Munich was prominent in locals' minds.


• Namrata Kolachalam at Roads and Kingdoms reports from Mumbai on the negative environmental impact of a controversial statue of Marathi conqueror Shivaji on local fishing communities.

• TVO notes that slow Internet speeds cause real problems for people in rural Ontario, focusing here on the southwest.


• Kelly Boutsalis at NOW Toronto reports on new efforts to revive the Mohawk language.


• At Open Democracy, Bulat Mukhamedzhanov describes how a centralization in power in Russia away from Tatarstan threatens the future of the Tatar language in education.


• Ainslie Cruickshank reports on what seems to me to be an ill-judged controversy in a Toronto school over a folksong by Iroquois poet E. Pauline Johnson, "Land of the Silver Birch," calling it racist, over in the Toronto Star.


• This politico.eu article examining the polarized media landscape in Catalonia, and wider Spain, is disturbing. Is everyone really talking past each other?

• Building two thousand affordable housing units in Toronto is a nice step forward. Will there be more steps? The Toronto Star reports.


• This charming bit of improvised art down at Humber Bay Park reminds me that I really need to head down there. From the Toronto Star.


• Montréal has stopped representing genocidal General Amherst on its flag, replacing it with a native pine tree. The National Post reports.


• Emily Macrae at Torontoist suggests co-housing, drawn from a Québec model, is something Toronto might want to look into.


• Richard Longley at NOW Toronto explores the Toronto Islands. Do they have a future? What will they need?

Among the Babel of global dialects exploding across Canada, one old home-grown language is in a race against extinction.

The language of the Cayuga people — one of the Six Nations of the Grand River, just west of the GTA — is fighting to survive while the last 49 native speakers are still alive to pass the torch. In a bid to breathe new life into the vanishing language, the community has been running preschool programs, elementary Cayuga immersion and post-secondary diplomas in the language.

But now Cayuga — and Mohawk, its more widely used cousin in the Iroquois language family — are getting a boost in recognition. The languages will be the subject of a new three-year Bachelor of Arts degree offered by Six Nations Polytechnic.

It’s the first time Queen’s Park has permitted a First Nations-run post-secondary institute to offer a degree of its own, and the Six Nations community sees the program in Ogwehoweh, which refers to both languages, as an academic lifeline to the heart of their cultures.

“Cayuga is close to extinction; it’s in a very fragile state but we need it for our traditional cultural activities and institutions,” said Rebecca Jamieson, president of Six Nations Polytechnic, who has studied Cayuga but not yet mastered speaking it.

"Are you nervous perhaps? Do you think? Are you nervous? You should be."

The words are uttered sotto voce. They crawl across the skin, like menacing earwigs, issued threats of bullet hitting bone.

The face of the Ojibwa warrior moves in close — sunglasses, bandana, anonymity. The youthful private — field helmet, bare face — shifts. Looks over the shoulder of the warrior, to the left, to the right. Then locks: nose to nose; toe to toe. A straight-ahead, dead-eye stare.

The shutter clicks. An inextinguishable instant.

Twenty-five years ago Shaney Komulainen was working freelance for The Canadian Press, covering the Oka Crisis. Young, eager, a little bit goofy, the 27-year-old photojournalist can be seen fleetingly in video clips as the army advanced on the Kanesatake barricades toward the ancestral Mohawk lands targeted for golf course expansion.

On Sept. 1, 1990, Komulainen wasn’t supposed to be in the area known as the Pines. She had been assigned to the South Shore where the Mohawks had blockaded access to the Mercier Bridge. It was day 52 of a long, hot summer siege when she heard the news on the radio that the army was on the move and her first thought was “Oh, s---. Here I am (away from the action), and something’s finally happening at Oka.”