In search of promised lands

“Abel Bosum, Grand Chief of the Grand Council of the Crees, plants his dress shoes where his parents’ house once sat on a thin wooded spit that curls into Doré Lake like a dog’s tongue into a bowl of water. A late September breeze rushes through the birch trees. Bosum’s mind turns to the past. This was the site of the final village from which his people, the Oujé-Bougoumou Cree Nation, were uprooted by a mining company — this one a gold pit owned by a fellow named Campbell — in the unrelenting pursuit of monetizable minerals from the Canadian Shield.”

 

Julian Brave NoiseCat – Canadian Geographic – March 2020

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The changing face of Canada’s first suburbs

“As Tim VanDewark walks through his Edmonton suburb of Prince Charles one April evening, the “problem houses” keep appearing. Here is one post-war bungalow without curtains and a yard being reclaimed by nature. There is one with a deck that is leaning like it’s drunk. VanDewark stops walking at another, its windows covered in cobwebs. ‘There’s a lot that’s going to be happening in this neighbourhood,’ he says. ‘I would say there are at least 100 homes that haven’t really been well-maintained that will probably get demolished and redeveloped.'”

Tim Querengesser – Canadian Geographic – February 2020

The resurgence of the Nuxalk

“Tallio and others are working to bring Nuxalk rights back to this place and many more throughout Nuxalk territory. In the coming years, many places in the Nuxalk homeland, roughly from Dean Channel in the north to South Bentinck Arm in the south and King Island in the west to the Bella Coola Valley in the east, may come under Nuxalk jurisdiction for the first time in more than a century. ‘As a much older nation,’ Tallio tells me in his professorial tone, ‘we have to show Canada how to manage these resources.'”

 

Julian Brave NoiseCat – Canadian Geographic – October 2018

The Tribal Canoe Journey

“My alarm sounds at 3:45 a.m. — so early it might be considered night. There’s only one bed in my dad’s rental cottage in Shelton, Wash., so when I visit, we choose sides. I roll over, smacking him with my forearm, waking him, too. I have work to do. At 6 a.m., the Quinault Nation’s oceangoing canoe is setting out to sea on the Tribal Canoe Journey, an annual trans-national Indigenous voyage and gathering in the Pacific Northwest. Of 87 participating canoes, the Quinault were scheduled to voyage farthest, and I want to cover their departure.”

 

Julian Brave NoiseCat – Canadian Geographic – May 2018

Canada’s dirty secret

“For Derek Angove, the city’s amiable and devoted director of solid waste management, the problem was not so much the macabre presence of the body part (decidedly a matter for the police) but rather that for an indefinite period of time the plant would be out of commission, and there would be no place to unload or winnow the never-ending avalanche of recyclables that pours into the facility at a rate of about two tonnes a minute, aboard 18-wheelers that pick up the goods from any of seven municipal transfer stations across the city.”

Charles Wilkins – Canadian Geographic – November 2017