Studio photographer Harry Pollard spent time documenting the beauty and resilience of members of several tribes.

His breathtaking collection included the Tsuu T’ina, Siksika, Kainai, and Piikani tribes, captured in traditional dress.

Interestingly, the historic images, which can be found on the Provincial Archives of Alberta, include the individuals' names and tell a story in themselves.

Many of the titles are themed around nature, like Lone Walking Buffalo and Running Antelope. Others focus on their status within the tribe, like an individual Pollard met called Spring Chief.

Pollard was born in Ontario, Canada in 1880 and specialised in photographing native people. As a young photographer, he arrived in Calgary in 1899 and opened a studio there.

He was later commission to produce promotional pictures of ocean cruises, which saw him travel around the world 14 times.

His breathtaking collection included the Tsuu T’ina tribe, whose population had fallen to just a few hundred members when the pictures were taken circa 1910. Thankfully, numbers have since risen to a couple of thousand individuals.

Wolfe Teeth of Nakoda Nation "Walking Buffalo of Nakoda Nation." "Herbert Lawrence of Siksika Nation." Martin Breaker, Nakoda Nation." A very respected elder, Betty Hunter from the Nakoda Nation Here a meeting of the Siksika Council is captured on camera Spring Chief of Tsuu T'ina Nation Big Belly, the Tsuu T'ina chief Hunting Eagle of Nakoda Nation Chief White Head, the Nakoda chief These elaborate teepees stood out against the rolling landscape in the Assiniboine camp, one of the many areas Pollard captured Lone Walking Buffalo, Nakoda Nation

Canada's Federal Court of Appeal has rejected Justin Trudeau govt's approval to build the Trans Mountain expansion project. This is an huge victory for Indigenous groups & people across Canada who have stood against this pipeline.

The Federal Court of Appeal’s decision to quash Ottawa’s approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is likely to delay the project for years, legal and political observers say.

The ruling means the National Energy Board must consider the impacts of increased tanker traffic on the marine environment and the federal government must consult more meaningfully with First Nations.

The energy board should first conduct its new review, which will involve receiving written submissions, consulting with Indigenous groups and holding hearings, said Chris Tollefson, a law professor at the University of Victoria.

The board’s first review took two years, and while the new assessment will be focused specifically on tanker traffic, Tollefson said the board must seriously consider the effects on endangered southern resident killer whales.

“The reality is that this proposal as currently planned would impact orcas unless it is changed,” said Tollefson, who represented BC Nature and Nature Canada during the first energy board review.


There are only 75 southern resident orcas left and few have reproductive potential. The project would have a serious impact unless design changes were made, such as altering shipping routes, reducing tanker speeds or the number of vessels, Tollefson said.

“In light of what the court had to say, I don’t think that should be hurried. I think it needs to be done right. It’s a central feature of this project.”


Once the board issues a new recommendation to cabinet, the federal government will have to redo its final phase of consultation with all the affected First Nations along the pipeline route.

Eugene Kung, a lawyer who has worked for project opponent the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, warned that if Ottawa tries to rush consultation, the project could just wind up back before the court.

“The federal government continues to take direction from the courts and interpret it through a lens of, ‘What is the least we can do?’ ... In the age of reconciliation, but also if the federal government is looking to avoid future appeals, they need to start aiming for something higher than the floor,” said Kung.


The court ruled that Canada must not only listen to First Nations during consultation, but also seriously consider their specific and real concerns and provide a response, including accommodations where necessary.

For example, the Coldwater Indian Band in British Columbia’s southern Interior raised concerns about the pipeline route passing through an aquifer that is the sole supply of drinking water for the First Nation’s main reserve, but the government did not reroute the pipeline or provide a new water source.


“They were undertaking the (final) consultations with First Nations in a rushed manner and not taking the time to listen, to try to accommodate and to have a genuinely two-way conversation, which takes longer than listening, taking notes and relaying them to decision-makers,” said Kathryn Harrison, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia.

It’s highly improbable Trudeau’s government will be able to get the board review and Indigenous consultations done before the next election in the fall of 2019, said Harrison, who added that it’s difficult to say how the ruling will affect the Liberal government’s chances.

“How does Justin Trudeau respond to (Alberta Premier) Rachel Notley’s directives to him and withdrawal from the climate plan?” she asked. “What steps can he take to reassure the oil industry that Canada knows what it’s doing in reviewing major projects?


“To what degree does the government convince Canadians that buying this pipeline and committing to build a new one was a good investment of taxpayers’ dollars?

“It really depends on what the Trudeau government does.”

Notley announced Thursday she was pulling Alberta out of the federal climate plan until Ottawa gets the pipeline expansion back on track. She demanded that Trudeau appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court and hold an emergency session of Parliament.

Trudeau said Friday he is committed to getting the project done “the right way.” He suggested he will follow the Appeal Court’s guidance on how to proceed.

“We are taking the time now to understand the court ruling, which addresses two things that are very important to this government — getting the science and the environmental protections right, and making sure we are walking forward in a true path of reconciliation and partnership with Indigenous Peoples,” Trudeau said after an event in Oshawa, Ont.

“We’re going to continue to move forward to get this pipeline built in the right way by acknowledging what the court has said.”

What a day! Our hearts are full of gratitude for the courageous Indigenous nations leading this legal battle, as well as our environmental allies + countless community members who have stood up to protect lands and waters from the #TransMountain pipeline + tanker project. #StopKM pic.twitter.com/79gW84TpkG

— West Coast Env. Law (@WCELaw) August 30, 2018

Even if the federal government did seek leave to appeal and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, that would take 18 months to two years, experts said.

The expansion project would triple the bitumen-carrying capacity of the Trans Mountain pipeline between near Edmonton and Metro Vancouver and increase tanker traffic in the Burrard Inlet sevenfold.

Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd. first announced the proposal in 2012 and shareholders voted Thursday to sell the pipeline to Canada for $4.5 billion.
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"We're winning. We're winning."

— Rueben George, Tsleil-Waututh First Nation representative, on #TransMountain Federal Court ruling.

Watch the news conference live: https://t.co/bu6IHV9MWK #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/Q9XAI8ZRHC

— CPAC (@CPAC_TV) August 30, 2018

A First Nations woman working to revive a threatened language in her traditional territory of northern British Columbia says she’s being forced to leave the country on Canada Day.

Mique’l Dangeli belongs to the Tsimshian First Nation, whose territory straddles the border between Alaska and British Columbia. She says Canada won’t recognize her right to live and work in B.C. because she was born on the American side on Annette Island Indian Reserve.

“For me, what I consider home is my home community and my people’s traditional territory, which is northern B.C.,” she said. “We’re not immigrants to our people’s traditional territory.”

Dangeli gave up a tenure-track position with the University of Alaska Southeast to teach 65 students how to speak Sm’algyax in the community of Kitsumkalum, just outside of Terrace, because there are so few fluent speakers remaining.

She says she hasn’t said goodbye to her students yet because it’s too difficult.

“I’ve shed a lot of tears with my elders and family but I don’t want to do that with my students. They’re so young and their love for the language is my inspiration and solace. I wouldn’t have the strength to fight this battle if I didn’t see where the hope truly lies, which is within my students,” she said.


After having two express entry applications for permanent residency fail, Dangeli has started a petition calling on the Canadian government to reciprocate the Jay Treaty, which was signed between the United States and Canada in 1794. The treaty allows status Indians born in Canada, who also have 50 per cent blood quantum, to live and work in the U.S.

Canada does not recognize the agreement as binding because it never codified it.

“The colonial border between the U.S. and Canada dissects Indigenous territories in ways that sever the lifelines between First Nation families, communities, languages and ceremonies,” Dangeli’s petition says.

Dangeli says she considered applying for Indian status in Canada, but learned the two-year process hinged on the baptismal record of her great-great-great grandmother in Prince Rupert, B.C., in the 1860s.


“So if she decided not to convert to Christianity I would not be considered an Indian under the Indian Act. The whole process is about one colonial institution affirming the power of another. It has nothing to do with our inherent Indigenous rights that predate colonial law,” Dangeli said.

The federal government has been working to resolve border issues for First Nations but has not reached a solution. In December 2016, it appointed Fred Caron to examine the issue as a special representative of the minister of Crown-Indigenous relations and northern affairs.

Caron met with representatives from more than 100 First Nations between January and August 2017, submitting a report to a committee of senior federal officials that is charged with developing a plan for addressing the border-crossing issues.

“Among the issues highlighted in Mr. Caron’s report, and that are being examined by the committee of senior officials, are questions relating to the important cultural and family connections between First Nations in Canada and native American communities in the United States,” Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada said in a statement.


The government will discuss next steps on the file with First Nations in the coming months, after the committee submits its recommendations, it said.

“The government is committed to working in partnership with First Nations to address their Canada-United States border crossing concerns,” the department said.

Although the Jay Treaty is historic, Canadian institutions are increasingly choosing to honour it, said Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a law professor with the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia and inaugural director of the school’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre.

She gave the example of Vancouver Island University, which offers domestic tuition for American Indigenous students who would fall under the treaty.

Border issues have most commonly arisen in Eastern Canada, she said, where communities like the Akwesasne First Nation cross three borders between Ontario, Quebec and New York.


Some are looking for solutions, like Mohawk leaders who called for a special identification card that would ease the border crossing, which hasn’t been granted, she said.

“Indigneous people have been coming forward and saying let’s work this out in a practical way,” she said.

“It’s a case where Canada is actually behind.”

Toronto lawyer Sara Mainville says border issues have been common in Eastern Canada and some First Nations leaders have taken it upon themselves to set up meetings with customs and immigration officials so their community members don’t run into any problems, since Canada isn’t honouring the Jay Treaty.

In 2006, her own community of the Couchiching First Nation sanctioned the adoption of the husband of one of its members who was born on the American side of the Anishnaabe territory, because he needed medical care and Canada wouldn’t recognize his rights to the territory.

Mainville pointed to Canada’s commitment to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as something that gives Dangeli’s argument more weight, because it specifically says Indigenous Peoples divided by international borders have a right to maintain contact with their own members.

For Dangeli’s part, she says she hopes her situation is resolved as soon as possible, especially given the critical state of the language.

“This is my heart and soul and the work is very much needed within our nation.”
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“I felt something at the back of my head and when I turned around, he ran away,” Vadnais said on Wednesday. “I saw my hair and the elastic on the ground.

A Calgary family is hoping to inspire cultural awareness after a troubling incident involving their 11-year-old son.

Rafe Vadnais is a Grade 6 student at a Calgary middle school. The Indigenous boy said part of his braid was cut off by another student after the dismissal bell rang on Monday afternoon.

It was the very first day Vadnais felt confident enough to go to class wearing the braid.

“I was worried about my braid, that someone wasn’t going to like it, but I went to school anyway,” Vadnais said. “My braid, I have a feeling it’s giving me strength, and I feel good about it.”

Vadnais’ mother, Shantel Tallow, said she and her son bonded over the braiding experience and felt this was a symbol of her son’s culture, reflecting wisdom and his identity.


Tallow said she was enraged when she discovered someone had cut off a part of his braid.

“For someone to do that, they must have had their eye on him,” Tallow added. “I thought about hunting the child down and scolding him and getting his parents involved, but what am I going to do with just one family?”

She doesn’t want to blame the school or the student, but said she would rather engage in a wider conversation about acceptance and celebration of diversity.


“We shouldn’t have to explain our culture, we all have culture. We’re not just skin tones. We are someone with a heart and a mind,” Tallow said.

A spokesperson with the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) said the school in question is aware of the incident and is responding appropriately.


“We are unable to offer comment on incidents involving specific students, however, the CBE believes in creating inclusive learning environments where all students feel included, safe, valued and supported in their learning,” reads a statement sent to Global News by CBE spokesperson Megan Geyer. “Honouring the diversity of students and communities is very important to us, and so we are disappointed when a situation occurs that results in a student feeling unsafe or unvalued.


“Every situation is different and requires an appropriate response. Schools work to support the students impacted, educate the school community and ensure that those responsible are held to account.”

Vadnais said he will continue to grow out his hair and continue wearing his braid.
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Aboriginal people in Ontario are prepared to lay down their lives to protect their traditional lands from any unwanted development, a group of First Nations chiefs said Tuesday.

Aboriginal communities have seen what Canadian and Ontario laws have done to their land over the last 147 years, Beardy said.

"The land has become sick," he said. "We become sick. We become poor, desperate and dying."

The people of Grassy Narrows First Nation are still suffering from mercury poisoning decades after the Wabigoon river around their land was contaminated by a local paper mill, Beardy added.

Grand Chief of Treaty 3, Warren White, argued that Prime Minister Stephen Harper recognizes the state of Israel, but not the lands of Canada's aboriginal peoples.

"He needs to have the same principles that he's saying about Israeli lands to Treaty 3 territory and native lands in Canada," White said.


"Clean up your own backyard before you go and spill a lot of money into disasters in other countries."

Grand Chief Harvey Yesno of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation added that the province's aboriginal people will draw a line in the sand, put a stake in the ground and tie themselves to it if that's what it takes to protect their land from unwanted resource development.

"We're no longer just going to be civilly disobedient. We're going to defend our lands, and there's a big difference there," he said.

"Our young people are dying, our people are dying. So let's die at least defending our land."

Aboriginal communities don't want to harm others, said Beardy. But they'll do what they must to stop an incursion on their lands, such as forming human blockades to stop the clearcutting of trees, he said.

"Anything that happens on our aboriginal homeland now, they must consult with us," said Roger Fobister Sr., chief of Grassy Narrows First Nation. "Even if they're going to cut down one tree, they better ask us."
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As the Pope faces criticism for declining a formal apology for residential school abuses, a Catholic bishop in B.C. is on a local mission of reconciliation.

Bishop Gary Gordon of the Diocese of Victoria piloted his small boat to the remote community of Kyuquot.on Vancouver Island's west coast for the Easter weekend, to finalize the return of a small island to the Ka:'yu:'k'h'/Che:k'tles7et'h' First Nation.

"It's kind of Independence Day for the people here," Gordon told On the Island host Gregor Craigie, referring to the anniversary of the Maa-Nulth treaty. "I thought it would be a good opportunity."

The bishop discovered the church's ownership of 11.2-hectare Mission Island about four months ago while looking through old correspondence. He immediately contacted their solicitors to begin the ownership transfer.

"It's all signed and done," he said.

The diocese's reparations come the same week the president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said Pope Francis can't personally apologize for residential schools. A papal apology was one of the 94 recommendations made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and it was personally requested by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a visit to the Vatican last year.


In Victoria, Kwagiulth artist Carey Newman, who created the Witness Blanket monument to residential school victims, said he was concerned about the wording around the statement that the Pope would not "personally" apologize.

"We're asking for an official response from the Catholic Church as a whole and the one human who can give us those words is the Pope," Newman said.

Bishop Gordon said the Pope has discussed the TRC and residential school issues with senior clergy over the past two years.


"He wants his local bishops, myself included, to do the real legwork in terms of the reconciliation process," he said.

Gordon said he has been doing that since 1977, in the Fraser Valley and Yukon before his transfer to Vancouver Island.

"I just continue to do my little piece of working toward this path of restorative justice," he said.

He added the structure of the church is more local than people realize.

"There have been a number of apologies, myself included at the TRC in Inuvik, and also the TRC in Vancouver and Victoria," he said.

"My predecessor [in the Diocese of Victoria] has issued an apology. I issued one in Yukon."
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Wiikwemkoong water advocate Autumn Peltier has been selected as a 2017 Ontario Junior Citizen award recipient from the Ontario Community Newspaper Association (OCNA).

 “The 2017 Ontario Junior Citizen Finalists have been selected and will be recognized by OCNA member newspapers for their outstanding achievements,” states a press release from the OCNA. “The 12 individuals are future leaders making conscious efforts to see change in society and are working hard to make a difference both locally and globally. Although very different and unique, they all share one aspect in common—they are all truly inspiring, and their stories illustrate creativity, determination and generosity.”

“I was really excited to hear that I will be receiving this award,” Autumn told The Expositor, an OCNA member newspaper. “I feel really proud that the government and other organizations are acknowledging the work I have been doing.”

“At just 13-years-old, Autumn is a role model and veteran activist,” notes the OCNA press release. “She is proud to be Indigenous and feels very passionate about preserving the environment and creating awareness for the importance of clean drinking water. She was one of two youth advocates chosen to represent Canada during the 2015 Children’s Climate Conference in Sweden, and during the 2016 Winter Meeting of Canada’s Premiers in Vancouver, she addressed her concerns directly to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Autumn recognizes that water is the lifeblood of Mother Earth and it needs to be protected. Through traditional water ceremonies and speeches across the country, Autumn is helping to make the world a better place for kids that come after her.”

“Autumn is a phenomenal girl,” said Grand Council Chief of the Anishinabek Nation Patrick Madahbee. “She is very aware of the importance of water and the environment. We are all very proud of her and her many accomplishments.”

Last Friday, Autumn was awarded the Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers by Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. Autumn was joined by fellow Islanders Josephine Mandamin, Dawn ‘Meemee’ Harvard, Allen Corbiere and Neil Debassige, who were also presented with medals.


In February, Autumn will speak at the Assembly of First Nations in Vancouver at a water symposium and the Indigenous Women’s Forum in Ottawa.

Autumn will also speak at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly at World Water Day on March 22 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

The Ontario Junior Citizen Awards are promoted through the 280 member newspapers of the Ontario Community Newspapers Association.


Nominations of eligible youth aged six to 17 are received through member newspapers committed to recognizing the outstanding leaders who are making a difference in their communities. Nominees may be involved in community service, are young people who are contributing to their community while living with a physical or psychological limitation, or individuals who have performed acts of heroism or bravery. Candidates are also recognized for being ‘good kids’ who show a commitment to making life better for others. A panel of judges unanimously agreed on the final award recipients.

The final recipients and their families will be invited to a special ceremony in Toronto to receive their award in March of this year.
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Conservative Sen. Lynn Beyak has been removed from all Senate committees, a week after a series of controversial remarks about First Nations people came to light.

 “Do not back down, the Indians, First Nations or whatever they want to be called have milked this issue to their decided advantage,” reads one letter dated Mar. 30, 2017.

“The handouts have taken their people nowhere, and their constant backward-looking mentality serves no useful purpose,” states another, dated Mar. 10, 2017. “Aboriginals seem to be well schooled in getting media pity and they have become very good at getting media coverage.”

“I’m no anthropologist but it seems every opportunistic culture, subsistence hunter/gatherers seeks to get what they can for no effort. There is always a clash between industrial/organized farming culture that values effort as opposed to a culture that will sit and wait until the government gives them stuff.”

Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer said he demanded that Beyak remove the content from her website, but she refused. Scheer’s statement continued, “To suggest that indigenous Canadians are lazy compared to other Canadians is simply racist.”

“As a result of her actions, the Conservative Senate Leader Larry Smith and I have removed Senator Lynn Beyak from the Conservative National Caucus,” Scheer said. “Racism will not be tolerated in the Conservative Caucus or Conservative Party of Canada.”


Sen. Smith added in a separate statement that the matter was now considered closed, and that he would not be making further comment.

"No amount of money can compare to the richness of the river and what it gives us.” said First Nation

Canada’s Lax Kw’alaams show us how we can be saved: by loving the natural world and local living economies more than mere money and profit

Everything has a price. Everyone can be bought. We assume this principle is endemic to modern life — and that accepting it is most obvious to the impoverished. Except all over the world, people are defying it for a greater cause. That courage may be even more contagious.

It has been in full supply in north-west Canada, where an oil giant is aiming to construct one of the country’s biggest fossil fuel developments: a pipeline to ship liquified natural gas (LNG) out of British Colombia. To export it overseas via tankers, Malaysian-owned Petronas must first win approval for a multi-billion dollar terminal on the coast.

That happens to be at the mouth of Canada’s second-largest salmon river, on the traditional territory of the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation. One of the world’s longest un-dammed rivers, the Skeena abounds in the fish relied on by surrounding wildlife — and by First Nations and an entire regional economy.

Last year, following our modern principle, Petronas offered the First Nation an offer they imagined couldn’t be refused: in exchange for their support, a whopping $1.15 billion in cash. But put to a vote, the Lax Kw’alaams resoundingly said “no” — every single community member.


When Petronas made the offer, Lax Kw’alaams hereditary chief Yahaan says he believed the community — poor and with few employment prospects — might vote yes.

“Opportunities like that don’t come to your door every day,” he says. “But I give my people credit for taking that bold step. They showed their love and their passion for the land and water. No amount of money can compare to the richness of the river and what it gives us.”

They knew something even a billion dollars couldn’t persuade them to ignore: that you couldn’t pick a worse place to transform into an industrial landscape. The proposed site for the LNG plant is smack in the middle of a unique estuary, a coastal Mecca for fish: where every year hundreds of millions of young salmon, having travelled down the river after birth, feed and nurture as part of their journey to adulthood.

The RCMP has officially introduced eagle feathers into the Nova Scotia justice system.

On Monday the force announced the feather is being added alongside affirmations and the Bible as an object to swear upon while giving a testimony under oath.

“To wear or to hold an eagle feather causes our creator to take immediate notice,” explained Donald Julien, a member of the Mi’kmaq community and former veteran for the Canadian Armed Forces and United Nations. He emphasised the important symbolism of the eagle feather to First Nations people. “[This is a] wonderful show of understanding and the acknowledgement of our traditional ways of expressing our prayer,” he said.

Nova Scotia’s aboriginal policing analyst, RCMP Cpl. De-Anne Sack, was responsible for the idea and helped process the official introduction into the justice system.

“To many First Nations people, when you give them a Bible, it doesn’t mean anything”, Sack said via in an RCMP statement. “But if you give them an eagle feather, it carries more significance, power and clout.”

The feather can also be used for all citizens, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, for comfort as well.


“It has an energy of it’s own,” said Clifford Paul while explaining the symbolism and significance of the eagle feather. “The eagle is the messenger [to the Creator] in our world…It’s always an honour when an eagle shows itself...If you were to receive an eagle feather, it is a higher honour than receiving the Noble Peace Prize or a gold medal at the Olympics.”

Each of the feathers is cleansed -or ‘smudged’-by smoke from one of the four-main natural medicines used by First Nations communities before it is given to law enforcement. Feathers are individually placed in a red case, along with an official letter and standard judicial procedures. They will be smudged once a year.


Jane Abram from the Millbrook First Nation smudged the first of 13 feathers that will be given to provincial courts in communities around Nova Scotia. The RCMP said the remainder will be introduced in early 2018.


“I think it’s a ground-breaking moment, really. I’m so happy and pleased and honoured because it says so much especially to First Nations people and to me personally,” Abram said.


She also hopes Nova Scotia will serve as an example to other provinces to introduce the feather into their justice system. She stressed it is an important step towards reconciliation.

“I feel that it’s going to take hold and hopefully other [provinces] will do the same,” she said. “I hope that we can continue to work towards truth and reconciliation for both parties, for the non-Indigenous as well as the Indigenous people. To work together and have a stronger relationship in doing so.”

The RCMP said this initiative is a first in Canada for the force. .
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“Our people do not believe in killing an animal unless it is taken for food,” says MaryAnn Enevoldsen, elected chief of the Homalco Nation

An indigenous community reconnects with its heritage by working to end hunting and promote bear-watching in British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest.

There are stories about the white bears that hide in the deep forest of British Columbia’s coast. Old stories, handed down from one generation to the next for thousands of years, since the last Ice Age gripped the world, and glaciers licked the edge of the rain forest.

One tale, told by the Kitasoo/Xai’Xais Nation, says that as the sheets of ice began to retreat, Raven—the creator of all things—made the animal known as the spirit bear to remind him of the ice and snow. It’s a story that speaks not only to First Nations’ connection with wildlife but also to their deep roots in the Great Bear Rainforest, an area the size of Switzerland that’s home to some 20,000 First Nations people.

Yet in the 1980s when Doug Neasloss, the elected chief of the Kitasoo/Xai’Xais, was growing up, he never heard the origin story of the spirit bear. In fact he never heard of spirit bears at all because for decades the stories about these white-coated relatives of black bears were kept secret. Elders feared that if word of their existence spread, spirit bears—like black and grizzly bears—would be pursued and killed by fur trappers or trophy hunters.

So in the late 1990s when Neasloss was starting to work as a wildlife guide and his boss told him to go out and look for a white bear, he was skeptical. You guys are out to lunch, he remembers thinking—there’s no such thing as a white bear.


But Neasloss dutifully ventured into the bush. He was just unzipping his trousers to relieve himself when a ghostly bear padded into the forest and lay down on a bed of moss 30 feet in front of him. The bear began gnawing on a salmon it had caught in a nearby stream, unconcerned by Neasloss’s presence. A ray of sun momentarily broke through the clouds. “It was magical,” he says.

Spirit bears, also known as Kermode bears, are among the world’s rarest ursines, found only in the remote archipelago of British Columbia’s central coast. They’re a subspecies of the black bear, born white when two dark-furred parents carry an obscure genetic mutation. The British Columbian government estimates there are 400 spirit bears in the province, and hunting them is illegal.


“Our people do not believe in killing an animal unless it is taken for food,” says MaryAnn Enevoldsen, elected chief of the Homalco Nation, which runs a grizzly-viewing area about 200 miles south of Klemtu. “We can show thousands of people the bears in their natural habitat without harming or stressing them out. On the other hand, the ‘pleasure' of killing a bear only happens once and gratifies a few individuals.”

Today, First Nations up and down the coast are reclaiming their culture, and bear-based ecotourism is a part of that. Many tribes are rebuilding the “big houses” where potlatches and other ceremonies are held, sometimes with money earned from tourist operations.


Coastal Guardian Watchmen are reconnecting with their traditional lands as they patrol for illegal hunting. And elders no longer fearful of poaching are starting to share the sacred stories about bears they’d kept silent for so long.

Just down a gravel road from the Spirit Bear Lodge is Klemtu’s big house, a massive cedar building constructed in 2001. It’s perched at the edge of the sea, surrounded by mist-shrouded cedars and spruce trees, with an opening in the roof to let out wood smoke. Inside, 24-year-old Barry Edgar is giving a tour. He talks about a new online database that’s preserving digital recordings of traditional stories and about the new generation of children who will grow up hearing ancient tales about Kitasoo/Xai’Xais’ unique relationship with bears, told beneath the carved totem poles of the big house.

“Culture is like a flower," Edgar explains as visitors snapped photos of the intricate carvings. “It needs to be in the sun to thrive. Tourism helped us survive because it forced us to remember things.”
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An Ontario woman wants to return her land to the Alderville First Nation as an act of reconciliation.

Janice Keil, a secondary school teacher from Peterborough, Ontario, owns 100 acres of land in Northumberland County, in the territory of the Mississauga.

Keil wants to restore the land to tallgrass prairie and then she wants to repatriate some of it to nearby Alderville First Nation.

"I realized that at the heart of this path of reconciliation is the land, that we as white settlers stole, including my ancestors."

She said listening to interviews on Unreserved, especially about Canada's 150th anniversary, got her thinking about the role of settlers in the country and what she can do to foster reconciliation.

"Something shifted inside and as a proud Canadian it made me feel really ashamed to celebrate Canada Day 2017."


Keil said the process to repatriate the land could take between 10 and 20 years because there aren't many examples to follow. Despite the lenghty timeline, she feels repatriating the land is an important step on the path to reconciliation.

"I knew without any doubt that it was a lie that the land belongs to me and even though I have this piece of paper called a deed, the land needs to be returned to the Indigenous peoples."

She said though it often suprises people, she feels compelled to see this repatriation through.

"For me the question isn't why, the question is how can I not do this? How can you not do everything in your power to bring about reconciliation in the best way that you can in your tiny corner of Turtle Island?"
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