Culture

Indigenous journalists do the job differently, and they always have. That's what Tristan Ahtone, Simon Moya-Smith, Angela Sterritt, Candis Callison and Julian Noisecat told National Observer's Emilee Gilpin when she asked about their experiences in the industry and their predictions for the future of a steadily shifting media landscape in North America. Here's what they had to say.

Indigenomics Institute founder Carol Anne Hilton released a plan Thursday at the Assembly of First Nations meetings in Ottawa for a new agenda for Indigenous economies, partnerships and investments in areas of business, industry and private sectors.

"I was so emotional. They were talking directly about proposed marine terminals and the increase in tanker traffic and how it would affect the west coast," she said. "They were asking, if there's a spill, who's going to be held accountable? Who's going to clean it up?"

As a moratorium on oil tankers off the north coast moves closer to becoming law, the Hereditary Chiefs and political leaders of First Nations along the North Pacific Coast pledge our full support for the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act and urge the Senate to pass Bill C-48.

In an extraordinary project, award-winning landscape photographer Edward Burtynsky and documentary filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier illustrate the severe impact human activity has had on the landscapes of 20 different countries. Human destruction of their environment has, perhaps, never before looked this beautiful. 

Recognizing that sex workers are capable of agency and independence in their actions is major... Their voices are often silenced, in favour of a condescending, disrespectful narrative that portrays them as either victims or criminals, writes Toula Drimonis

Tommy Orange, an Oakland-based author, was surprised his first novel 'There There' hit The New York Times best seller list, 11 weeks in a row. In an interview with National Observer, Orange told reporter Emilee Gilpin about rarely reading as a kid, the important role of fiction in society, and how the success of his first novel rode a strange parallel to Donald Trump's presidency.

Canada's data agency said Thursday it had compiled police data from 2016 and 2017 showing a 25 per cent increase in confirmed cases reported in the three months after #MeToo went viral.

During a special meeting, the Fédération des femmes du Québec took a controversial stance to support sex workers, officially declaring that women can make a free-will decision to enter the sex trade as a legitimate career choice. However, that reasoning of free will does not seem to extend to Quebec’s Muslim women who choose to wear religious head coverings, such as hijabs and niqabs.

The Tsilhqot'in people have gained a new story to pass down to generations to come, after members gathered as a mass force for Prime Minister Trudeau's visit to Tsilhqot'in title land, to engage in ceremony and apologize to the community "the Tsilhqot'in way" for the betrayal and killings of war chiefs in 1864.

It's an absurd notion that we are adding oil to the fire of populism, harming democracy, somehow capitulating to the “flaky, easily flustered” PC crowd, or turning off moderates who will inevitably jump into the arms of white supremacy if denied the right to listen to Steve Bannon’s hateful rhetoric, writes columnist Toula Drimonis.

Jatinder Singh never imagined that a street sign in Victoria's Cook Street village would take him on a journey that stretched back to 1864.

"The war in Yemen and in Syria, in which Saudi Arabia plays a role, has created a refugee crisis around the world that is having national repercussions here," says Marie Lamensch, project coordinator at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) at Concordia University.

Some Canadian authors believe students should be able to see their identities reflected in the stories they learn about in English class, and they applauded an Ontario school board for making that a priority.

Unbeknown to many Quebecers, the infamous Duplessis cross in the Blue Room isn’t even the original one. In 1984, during renovation and restoration work, the old crucifix was replaced. This so-called "historical artifact” is barely older than the furniture in my mom's house, writes columnist Toula Drimonis.