THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3 2016 VOL. 73, NO. 91
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TRIATHLON KID DOES IT AGAIN
A THOUSAND BEADS OF CREE HISTORY
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Mayor Dale Bumstead said staff shortages at the Dawson Creek hospital threatens cancer treatment in the entire Peace Region.
Creativity needed to save cancer services JONNY WAKEFIELD
For family of missing and murdered woman, violence has historical roots
JONNY WAKEFIELD reporter@dcdn.ca
After the Second World War, government officials in the Peace Region faced a challenge. Thousands of men were returning from the front, and government policy was to settle veterans on farms. But in the Peace, good farmland was in short supply. The solution? Move two Treaty 8 First Nations to new reserves. For Judy Maas, the decades-old decision to relocate what would become the Blueberry River First Nation is a link in the chain of events that led to her sister’s murder at the hands of serial killer Cody Legebokoff.
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Cynthia Maas, known by the nickname Cinderella to her family, became addicted to drugs following the Blueberry River First Nation’s historic court win over resource rights. The court found Canada had failed to uphold the nation’s interests when its members were moved off a reserve to make room for returning World War II veterans.Â
Cynthia Maas’s tragic story is included in a new
Amnesty International report on resource development and missing and murdered Indigenous women in Northeast B.C. The study, titled Out of Sight, Out of Mind, is the first time the human rights group’s missing and murdered women campaign has taken a close look at the Peace Region, and how its boom and bust economy impacts Indigenous women and girls. The study examines the ways in which oil and gas, forestry and other resource extraction intensifies dangerous socioeconomic conditions for First Nations people— in particular women. See MAAS on A3
Amnesty International forum here Friday April 2015 and October 2016, Amnesty International met with and interviewed more Amnesty International will than 100 Indigenous women hold a free public forum in Fort and men, First Nations leaders, St. John this Friday to present frontline social service proits long awaited report on on viders, resource workers, and the impacts of resource devel- other local and national offiopment on Indigenous women cials to investigate and address in Northeast B.C. the “unintended social imThe forum takes place Fri- pacts� and risks that resource day, Nov. 4, at the North Peace development imposes on IndiCultural Centre at 7 p.m. to genous women and girls. talk about its report titled Out “One of the things we of Sight, Out of Mind: Gender, learned in the course of our Indigenous Rights, and Energy research there has been three Development in Northeast B.C. decades of studies all pointing During several visits between to serious, unresolved social MATT PREPROST
editor@ahnfsj.ca
problems associated with the sheer scale of resource development in the northeast,� said Craig Benjamin, campaigner for the human rights of indigenous peoples for Amnesty International Canada. “We don’t want our report to be another report that sits on the shelves. We hope it will be an effective tool that will be used to prompt dialogue, encourage open discussion of issues that are too often and too easily ignored.�
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Chemotherapy patients forced to travel more than an hour for a single injection need local leaders to find creative solutions for restoring cancer care in Dawson Creek, Mayor Dale Bumstead says. Earlier this month, Northern Health announced it was suspending intravenous chemotherapy treatments at the Dawson Creek Hospital, citing a shortage of oncology nurses. The service was temporarily cut during the summer due to staffing shortages. Cancer patients must now travel an hour north to Fort St. John for injections and other treatments, some of which take just a few minutes. See CANCER on A3
Supreme Court rejects Site C permits challenge A B.C. Supreme Court judge has dismissed a legal challenge seeking to overturn provincial permits for construction of the Site C dam. On Monday, Justice Robert Sewell delivered his verdict in the case, in which the West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations argued they were inadequately consulted on permits that allowed early construction work for the dam, including logging and road building. It was the First Nations, not the provincial government, who “frustrated� the consultation process, Sewell determined. “I am satisfied that the process of consultation was frustrated by the positions taken by the petitioners and, in particular, by their refusal to engage in consultation within a reasonable timeframe,� Sewell wrote. See CHALLENGE on A15
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