Unpublished Newswire
In 1958, Eugene Arcand from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation was taken to St. Michael’s Indian Residential School. There, he was assigned a number—781—and he lived under the constant threat of abuse. Arcand began playing hockey after he noticed that the school athletes were the only ones who were fed properly. At hockey tournaments, he and the other children from St. Michael’s were made to wear their equipment at all times so they couldn’t run away. At the Final Report ceremony, Arcand unfolded a black-and-white photo showing a group of thirty-two little boys and girls laughing and...
September 29, 2025 - 06:29 | Michelle Cyca | Walrus
In 2024, the Haida Nation reached an agreement with the provincial government of British Columbia and the federal government to return the nation’s authority and jurisdiction over its ancestral archipelago, Haida Gwaii. This historic agreement was the first title case to be settled through negotiation with the federal government rather than through courts. According to the Canadian government, there are more than 170 such rights-based negotiations currently in process.
In the same year that the Haida title was achieved, Ottawa also transferred jurisdiction and authority over Crown lands...
September 29, 2025 - 06:29 | Riley Yesno | Walrus
Two things are true about Indigenous girls, women, and gender-diverse people in Canada.
First, as Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson notes, they “reproduce and amplify” Indigeneity, the definitive characteristics of Indigenous peoples and culture, diverse as they are. Second, she writes, it is this quality that has made them targets of
violence in a country that seeks to eradicate Indigeneity.
These truths have especially been on full display in Manitoba since 2022. Following the discovery of O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation member Rebecca Contois’s remains in a...
September 29, 2025 - 06:29 | Eva Jewell | Walrus
For six years, starting in 2007, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission travelled throughout the country, hearing testimonies from over 6,500 people who’d endured Canada’s residential school system. Six thousand and five hundred people, believing in the mandate of the commission, courageously testified, thinking that, finally, they would be heard and amends would be made. It’s difficult to imagine what that must have been like—reliving the abuses and indignities of what can only be described as internment facilities following a mandate of indoctrination set by the state and...
September 29, 2025 - 06:29 | Michelle Good | Walrus
Is it possible for Indigenous nations to define their own priorities within the very same economy built on their oppression and exclusion? In the decade since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its Calls to Action, the Canadian government has failed to shift the foundations of its economic system in a way that would truly make space for Indigenous self-determination. Instead, Indigenous people are told to be grateful that they have a seat at the table, with the menu already set.
The majority of the Calls to Action are not written for corporations. But call ninety-two...
September 29, 2025 - 06:29 | Janelle Lapointe | Walrus
More than 150,000 children taken. That’s really all you need to know about residential schools. In Canada, more than 150,000 Indigenous children attended these institutions between the 1870s and the late 1990s. There, they died, suffered, and ached—for their families, communities, languages, and ways of life.
Today, there are more Indigenous children in care than there were at the height of the residential school system. This is a momentous problem, especially in a time where so many in Canadian society seek to reconcile. Reconciliation simply cannot occur when our children and families...
September 29, 2025 - 06:29 | Anna Mary McKenzie | Walrus
