Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Out in the Cold Film Panel Steals Show

On Saturday October 25, I attended a screening of the film Out in the Cold at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum here in Regina. The movie was about 30 minutes long and it was about three Aboriginal men left on the outskirts of a city to freeze in winter by police. The film featured awesome actors Erroll Kinistino, Gordon Tootoosis and Regina's Mathew Strongeagle. Both Strongeagle and Kinistino made it out for the screening as well as the film's producer Sarah Abbott.


While the film itself was strong and entertaining, it was the discussion after the film that stole the show. Shauneen Pete, vice-president of student affairs at FNUniv, Nick Jones assistant professor in justice studies at the U of R and Regina police chief Troy Hagen gave their thoughts on the film, racism and policing and then fielded questions from the audience.


The first woman who approached the microphone identified herself as a Metis woman and actually started crying when she talked about the racism she felt from both the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities--the idea that she was "too brown" for the non-Aboriginal community and "not brown enough" for the Aboriginal community.


Although she seemed to forget what her actual question was in the end, the emotion she expressed was very touching and demonstrated just how deep the blade of racism cuts people on an individual level--no matter who it's coming from. She said the movie was "like a prayer" and that she found it "very inspiring."


I too found the whole event--both the panel discussion and the film--very inspiring. Everyone on the panel could agree that more events where we encourage real and meaningful dialogue about race relations in our community is a good idea.

Too often we get bogged down in being politically correct or worrying about whether or not we have a right to say something when what's really important is to just start talking about these issues. Period.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Aboriginal Student Centre Tipi Raising Competition

The U of R's ASC hosted the first annual Tipi Raising Compeition this past Friday, October 10th and about 20+ teams participated. It was a mix of students, community members and university staff and faculty.

There were three categories to compete in:
Student Category - team members must be university students only
General Category - team members can be anyone
Women's Category - team members must be women

The winners in each category were as follows:

Student Competition:
1. Metis Power
2. Maheganuk

Women's Competition:
1. Cowessess all girls
2. First Nation Sensations

General Competition:
1. Starblanket Sensations
2. Anybodies

Congratulations to everyone who participated and especially the winners!

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Aboriginal Youth Suicide in SK

Right now, I'm working on a story about Aboriginal youth suicide rates in the province. Did you know that suicide rates are five to seven times higher amongst First Nations youth than for non-Aboriginal youth according to the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch? I wasn't too surprised by that statistic.

I really wanted to do this story because of what's been happening in my community. This summer, my 19-year-old cousin threw himself out of a vehicle speeding down a gravel road attempting to kill himself. He survived but now has a brain injury. In Turnor Lake this past August, a 15-year-old girl committed suicide after allegedly suffering from sexual abuse. And in my community, Canoe Lake Cree Nation, two young people killed themselves last year. The young guy killed himself first and then during his wake, his girlfriend went home and committed suicide.

Stories like these are all too common and tragic.

I went into the Aboriginal Student Centre here on campus one day during lunch and just asked everyone there, "who here knows someone who has committed suicide?" Everyone in the centre except one person put their hand up. Some people had lost someone who was just an acquaintance while others had lost brothers, sisters and classmates. One of the people I'm interviewing, Pamela Sparvier (see left photo) lost both her brothers, a brother-in-law and almost lost her sister to suicide. Her sister attempted to shoot herself in the head and instead shot through her neck, severing her spinal cord and becoming paralyzed from the neck down.

I'm waiting for a call back from a researcher at the Indigenous Peoples Health Research Centre who I'm hoping will be able to provide me with some insight into why the suicide rates are so high, especially as you move north in province.

Check back for updates to this story and in the meantime, if you want more information, check out the following websites:

htttp://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fniah-spnia/promotion/suicide/index-eng.php

http://www.honouringlife.ca/


This story will be in the third edition of Ink. And keep checking our J-School website to see my complete story:

htttp://www.jschool.ca

Who will pay for the Aboriginal Student Centre?

I recently did a story about the U of R's Aboriginal Student Centre (ASC) and how its funding runs out in 2009. Currently, the ASC is funded only through donor funding from the Crown Investments Corporation (CIC) and that money is scheduled to run out next year.

As for what will happen after that, nothing is clear.

The good news? Well, I spoke to Judy Amundson, associate vice-president of student affairs, who actually admitted that she thinks the university needs to allocate some baseline funding dollars for the ASC in addition to donor funding so the centre isn't completely reliant on funding from outside sources. She also said she is going to present a budget to the university this year for the ASC asking for just that.

I hope to do an update on whether or not that actually happens after the new year.

My research for this story took me to the University of Manitoba and the University of Saskatchewan (via phone of course) to find out how those university's ASC's are funded. It's worth mentioning that I chose those universities to compare to because like the U of R, they have a significant Aboriginal student population. I didn't use the First Nations University of Canada because their student population also accesses U of R services (such as the ASC) and are considered to be U of R students registered through a federated college. As I suspected, those ASC's were funded by both core university funding and donor funding.

One of the questions I asked all three ASC managers, as well as Amundson, was "What message, if any, do you think it sends when an ASC isn't core funded?". All four interview subjects agreed, to varying degrees, that it sends the message a university isn't committed to Aboriginal services and education. It was refreshing (and quite surprising) to hear that even Amundson shared that sentiment.

Now for the bad news. Amundson wasn't willing to provide me with any clear numbers or plans for exactly what she will be doing to get more funding for the centre. In fact, she wouldn't even give me the current annual budget for the ASC so I've put in a formal request for that information through the U of R's Access to Information & Privacy Officer. I put in a similar request at the U of S, just for a comparison.

Like I said, I will be following this story closely to see what happens in the new year. Let's hope the university decides to adequately fund the ASC through BOTH core and donor funding. If it doesn't and the ASC goes bust, then it's the students who use the centre who really pay the price.

For more information on the ASC, check out its website:
http://www.uregina.ca/asc
If you'd like to read my complete story, check out the second edition of Ink or our website: