APTN News InFocus

This April 1 episode of InFocus got appropriately foolish with some of the funniest Indigenous folks providing us with laughter.

Guests included Ryan McMahon as Clarence Two Toes, rez-humor goddess Sherry McKay, the all-female all-Indigenous comedy troupe Manifest Destiny's Child, and up and coming comics Chad Anderson and Dakota Herbert.

The laughs kept rolling with videos by viewers, made while everyone is isolating from COVID-19.

As the COVID-19 pandemic grips the world, what’s being done in our communities to help?

We speak to women making a difference and have plenty of advice on how you and your loved ones – and communities – can stay safe whether you’re in a remote community or an urban centre.

Imagine a perfect world where your medical care is equal parts cutting-edge modern medicine and traditional cultural care.

Well it's happening. And there’s a new report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal discussing how it works, what the benefits are, and how it needs to reach more care facilities, nursing stations, clinics and urban hospitals.

We've got a team that's doing this, joining us to chat about how it works and how it could be implemented where you live.

Ashleigh Cardinal is Cree from Goodfish Lake and has spent nine years working in the oil and gas industry.

Victoria Redsun is Dene-Cree from Barren Lands who has spent much of her life fighting the oil and gas industry.

Despite coming at it from different perspectives of the industry, both fear the effects that 14 work camps associated with the CGL pipeline will have on 20 Indigenous communities in northern B.C., particularly women and girls.

That and more on this episode of APTN InFocus.

APTN InFocus discussed the arrests, the media coverage, the racism, government reaction, and the broader issues in the Wet’suwet’en conflict.

We were joined by Molly Wickham, the spokesperson for Gidimt’en Access Point; Ellis Ross, the Liberal MLA for Skeena in B.C. and a former Chief Councillor of the Haisla Nation; Dan David, a Mohawk journalist who was the first news director of APTN News; Sharlene Gale, the Chief of Fort Nelson First Nation in British Columbia; and Brett Forester, a reporter for APTN News.

It’s a news story that’s fit for a Hollywood screenplay.

A local news reporter infiltrates a hate group, finds at least one of the recruiters is a military reservist and shortly after he blows the lid off the story. Then the reservist vanishes only to surface five months later south of the border, caught up in an FBI sting involving a terrorist cell that’s plotting a violent white revolution.

Ryan Thorpe is the Winnipeg Free Press reporter who broke the story Homegrown Hate back in June 2019.

The question of who is eligible to be registered in a band – and who makes that decision is the focus of a short APTN News Perspectives series.

Correspondent Tamara Pimentel spoke to families who have children that are not included on a band’s roll for one reason or another.

There are other families who are having trouble registering their child with their bands.

Tamara shares the stories of two same sex couples who cannot get their kids registered.

After more than a decade of waiting after the residential school survivors were compensated for being forced into compensation, many Indian day school survivors can now apply for compensation.

But Ottawa has deemed only half – about 700 schools – are eligible.

The other half – some 680 schools, sanatoriums and other facilities – they said, weren’t entirely run or funded by the Government of Canada and are excluded from the settlement.

APTN InFocus sorted through what this all means.

During the past month, there has been a volley of shots fired back and forth between the Metis National Council and the presidents of the Metis Nation of Ontario, Metis Nation of Alberta, and Metis Nation-Saskatchewan.

Also: The “historic new highs” of Indigenous people incarcerated in Canada’s prison system comes as no surprise to Indigenous people or those who have been paying attention to the issue.

It was a movement like no other.

Idle No More, it would be called, was a leaderless groundswell of opposition that some say had been simmering for a while when it finally came to a boil.

In a sweeping, two-part documentary, producers, directors Tim Fontaine and Rick Harp look back on the movement; what triggered it, how it grew through social media, how it galvanized unrest, what effect it had on non-Indigenous onlookers and mainstream media, and what its legacy will be.