A coastal First Nation’s Guardian team is gearing up to test the waters to try to limit the impacts of drought in their traditional territories on northeast Vancouver Island.

Indigenous communities are leading Canada's clean energy boom, "and doing that with a slanted table," says a First Nations business leader working to build a successful climate economy that incorporates Indigenous Peoples and their world views.

At the end of spring, Canada’s National Observer published a five-part series on the incredible odds stacked against First Nation students in northern Ontario who must travel hundreds of kilometres away from their families to get a high school education.

Sol Mamakwa, Ontario NDP MPP for Kiiwetinoong, an electoral district spanning the northwestern edge of the province, stands in front of a room full of teachers, parents and students who were probably expecting a speech. He delivers, instead, a speak-through-the-soul conversation that moves between storytelling and political demands.

Lawrence Wesley Education Centre in remote Cat Lake, a fly-in community 400 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, is a well-equipped school, with new Smart Boards, a new gym, a library and a computer room and a cafeteria large enough for all the students to eat together.

Jackson Wesley is passionate about basketball. He plays for his high school team in Sioux Lookout, 180 kilometres from home. But it’s March break, and he’s back in Cat Lake First Nation for the week. His mom, Sylvia Wesley, is a kindergarten teacher at Lawrence Wesley Education Centre, so Jackson has a pair of keys to the gym if he wants to steal some practice time.

Last fall, Greg Quachegan took 10 students hunting, an annual tradition at Dennis Franklin Cromarty (DFC) High School in Thunder Bay, Ont. They bagged a moose, and the vice-principal taught his students how to be on the land, hunt, fish and clean the animals.

You may have heard about the Fallen Feathers, seven students who left their First Nations in the North for high schools in Thunder Bay, Ont., and never returned home.