Media.Knet.Ca

A Northern Ontario School of Medicine press release - for more information visit the NOSM web site at http://normed.ca

Another 56 Medical Students Join NOSM

Tuesday, September 5, 2006 -  The second intake of 56 students to Canada's newest medical school begin their first day of classes today, following a week of exposure to the diversity and vitality of Northern Ontario.

During their unique orientation week, the students travelled, participated in working sessions, met physicians and community leaders, and became acquainted with their new life as a medical student. Following introductory sessions at their home campuses at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and Laurentian University in Sudbury, the students gathered at Laurentian, where they embarked on a week-long bus excursion to Thunder Bay.

Stops along the way included Sault Ste. Marie, where the students participated in outdoor activities and experienced a warm welcome from physicians and dignitaries. In Marathon, they enjoyed beach sports and a hearty barbeque organized by Dr. Sarah Newbery and a group of community physicians. The final stop for the group was Thunder Bay, where they attended a dinner hosted by NOSM’s Founding Dean Dr. Roger Strasser and participated in a Hippocratic oath ceremony, before returning to their respective campuses.

NOSM continues to follow its mandate of social accountability in an endeavour to respond to the cultural diversity of Northern Ontario. Demographic profiles of the class of 2006 show that:

• 89% are from Northern Ontario
• 50% are from rural and remote backgrounds
• 5% are Aboriginal
• 21% are Francophone

More than 2,000 applications were received for the 2006-07 academic year, of which 391 were interviewed.  NOSM’s Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Admissions, Dr. Tom Szabo, noted that this was an exciting time for NOSM.  “Every member of the 2005 charter class moved forward into their second year, and NOSM has now officially welcomed its second group of students, which brings our student complement to 112 aspiring physicians."

Students will now get down to work and immerse themselves in all things NOSM -- state-of-the-art smart classrooms, a progressive distributed learning curriculum, and a community-based learning environment with placements across Northern Ontario.  Each of these elements helps to ensure that NOSM graduates physicians with an appreciation for the unique health-care needs of Northern Ontario, as well as the cultural diversity of the people who call it home.

The Northern Ontario School of Medicine is a pioneering faculty of medicine.  The School is a joint initiative of Lakehead and Laurentian Universities with main campuses in Thunder Bay and Sudbury, and multiple teaching and research sites across Northern Ontario.  By educating skilled physicians and undertaking health research suited to community needs, the School will become a cornerstone of community health care in Northern Ontario.  

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For more information, please contact:  Marlene Moore, Communications Officer (705) 662-7243 or Tracie Smith, Communications Officer (807) 766-7314

Nibinamik First Nation (Summer Beaver) presents ...

Men's Baseball Tournament
September 13 - 16 2006

Championship - $7.000.00
 Finalists - $4.000.00
Consolation - $2500.00
Runners up - $1500.00

Entry fee - $1000.00

Please check out Homepage at http://www.nibinamikrecreation.myknet.org/

Students in twelve First Nations are being offered a choice. Now students are able to stay at home with your family, attend high school, take accredited courses and learn new things online.

From KiHS web site at http://kihs.knet.ca

KiHS Gearing up for 2006/2007 School Year!

On September 5th KiHS will be starting its sixth year of operation. Many changes have occurred over the past 6 years to ensure that the program is meeting the needs of the students being served. This year, there are new courses being added to give students more options to complete their Ontario diploma requirement. KiHS wants to give every opportunity to students in the north to continue towards success in their educational experience.

Online secondary education is taking off all across North America and KiHS has been a leader in developing a model which is working for students in our First Nation communities. KiHS is an online program which allows students to earn valuable secondary credits while remaining in their home community. Many feel this is very important in that it allows for direct community, parental, and cultural involvement at a natural and needed level. Students are earning valuable skills and adding to the rich technical base in their communities and in doing so getting closer to a high school diploma.

KiHS is starting this year in the community of Saugeen First Nation. Students there will now have access to high school programing in their community. Congratulations Saugeen joining the KiHS program.

If you would like any additional information regarding KiHS, please contact me at the administration office in Balmertown (at 1-800-387-3740 ext 1302). KiHS may be just the place you need to help you find a way to complete your credits for your Ontario Secondary School Diploma.

Please continue to check out our website at http://kihs.knet.ca and option sheet for this school year and if there are courses which could work for you, make sure you call for more information.

Darrin Potter
KiHS Principal

From http://www.tbsource.com/Localnews/index.asp?cid=86352

Long Lake settles with OPG - Tb News Source - 9/1/2006

A long-standing grievance between Long Lake No. 58 First Nation and Ontario Power Generation has been resolved.

The reported seven figure settlement now paves the way for a potential ongoing relationship between the two parties. A band spokesperson says they will be working with OPG to see a hydro generation plant built on the south end of Long Lake.

The dispute, partly over the loss of some traditional land, dates back to 1938 and the First Nation announced the signing of the monetary settlement Thursday. The amount of the settlement has not been disclosed.

Native leaders hope the agreement will signal to other industries that they would like to plan resource development projects with them.

From http://www.canada.com/cityguides/montreal/story.html?id=0a433a25-d6a6-4dd9-b4ef-3605ff97c658&k=11492&p=1

Politics closer to home -  BRENDAN KELLY, The Gazette - August 31, 2006

After her powerful Kanehsatake epic, Alanis Obomsawin takes on a more personal subject: the story of her own Abenaki people in Quebec    
 
The world premiere of Alanis Obomsawin's Waban-Aki: People From Where the Sun Rises takes place tonight at the Montreal film fest.

Thirty-six years after she first began toiling as a documentary filmmaker, Alanis Obomsawin finally decided to return home with a film crew.

Home in her case is Odanak, the Abenaki village near Sorel, just south of the St. Lawrence River, where Obomsawin spent most of the first nine years of her life.

The result is Waban-Aki: People From Where the Sun Rises, a fascinating look at the history of this small native community which was famous in the early 20th century for its exceptionally talented basket-makers. The National Film Board production has its world premiere today at the Montreal World Film Festival, with simultaneous screenings in English and French at the Quartier Latin cinema.

The Montreal filmmaker, who is a member of the Abenaki nation, has won awards and acclaim across the globe for often-activist films that have explored everything from a controversial police raid on a Quebec Mi'kmaq reserve (Incident at Restigouche, 1984) to the suicide of a teenager (Richard Cardinal: Cry from a Diary of a Metis Child, 1986).

She also made four powerful films about different aspects of the 1990 Oka Crisis, including the 1993 epic Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, which won the Citytv Award as best Canadian feature at the Toronto Film Festival that year.

Waban-Aki is one of Obomsawin's most personal films. It's also the first time she's devoted an entire movie to the Abenaki people.

"I always felt I had to do something for my own people," Obomsawin said in a recent interview on the terrace of the apartment where she's lived for the past 38 years, on a quiet street minutes from the heart of downtown.

"I've been wanting to do this for quite a few years."

Obomsawin was born in an Abenaki community in New Hampshire, but moved with her parents at the age of six months to Odanak on the banks of the St. Francis River, northeast of Montreal. She stayed there until the age of nine, when her father moved the family to Trois Rivieres because he had found work near there as a hunting and fishing guide.

"I have very good memories of my childhood (in Odanak)," said Obomsawin.

"We didn't have electricity or running water but I didn't know we were poor."

Waban-Aki features many older Odanak residents talking about the days when the village was a bustling centre for basket-making and it is partly a nostalgic portrait of a bygone era. But Obomsawin is never one to shy away from political arguments and, about midway through the documentary, it veers off into an account of the negative impact of the federal Indian Act on natives across the country.

Obomsawin said that more engage section came naturally because "making this film, I realized some horrifying things."

There are indeed poignant moments in which Abenaki women talk of losing their official native status because they married non-natives, and how the law continues to haunt the lives of their grandchildren.

From the very beginning of her career in the early '60s when she was a folksinger, Obomsawin has always believed in the political power of art, and she hasn't become any less idealistic over the years.

"It's the voice of the people being heard and it can make changes," she said.

When Obomsawin was first making native-themed documentaries at the NFB in the early '70s, there were fewer media outlets for explorations of Canada's native culture. But she's happy to note that things have gotten a lot better, thanks to the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) and the NFB's ongoing production of films about native issues.

Like so many of Obomsawin's films, Waban-Aki doesn't gloss over the sorry history of how natives have been treated by successive Canadian governments. Though there is still anger in her voice when she talks of how native culture has been (mis)treated, she refuses to even contemplate becoming bitter.

"Canadians are generous people," said Obomsawin.

"There are all kinds of problems in our country, but I think people are tired of seeing injustice. There's been a lot of progress in the last 30 years in terms of the education system and in terms of realizing the value of the First Nations people. Thirty years ago, you were punished if you spoke your language at school. Now they're teaching (these languages) at university."

Waban-Aki: People From Where the Sun Rises screens today at 7:20 p.m. at Quartier Latin, with two screenings, one in English and the other in French.

bkelly@thegazette.canwest.com

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006

From First Perspective http://www.firstperspective.ca/fp_template.php?path=20060830teachers

Teaching the teachers about First Nations' culture -August 30, 2006 - by Holli Moncrieff

For years, The Manitoba Museum has been educating students about First Nations culture, so teaching the teachers was a natural progression.

In 2001, First Nations children accounted for one in four of all Manitoba children under 15-years-old. School divisions have been striving to incorporate more First Nations culture and heritage into their curriculum, which is where The Manitoba Museum comes in.

A few years ago, Winnipeg School Division #1 asked the Museum to develop Aboriginal Education Days. These Professional Development Days for teachers explain all the First Nations resources and school programs that the Museum has to offer.

Teachers are then taken on a tour of the archaeology and native ethnology labs, where they have the rare opportunity to view artifacts that aren't currently on public display.

"Our current goal is to raise awareness and respect for Aboriginal culture," explains Lila Knox, Manager of Educational and Interpretive Programs. "When the teachers meet someone like Katherine (Pettipas, Curator of the HBC Collection and Native Ethnology), who's dedicated her life to the preservation of these artifacts, they realize how important this history is."

During the lab tours, the teachers meet Pettipas, her assistant curator, Tanya Cochrane, and Curator of Archaeology Kevin Brownlee. Each curator delivers a short, animated presentation about their area of specialty.

"Several school divisions have made a commitment to Aboriginal education, but all teachers should be incorporating respect for all cultures into their curriculum," says Knox, herself a former teacher. "In order to respect a culture, you have to learn about it."

Brownlee, a Cree from Norway House, is committed to ending stereotypes that have been perpetuated against First Nations people in the educational system.

"I hate the term 'nomadic', because it implies that First Nations people were just moving around aimlessly, with no purpose, when they were actually tracking the migration patterns of the bison, fish, and caribou they relied on for food," he says. "It's the same with the word 'primitive'. Early native people were not primitive-they were highly sophisticated hunters, farmers, and miners, long before the point of European first contact."

During an Aboriginal Education Day held recently with teachers from Earl Grey School, Brownlee explained the high level of skill that went into making early First Nations cooking vessels, arrowheads, and the atlatl, a remarkable spear thrower than can reach distances of over 100 metres.

"If each teacher takes even a small bit back to classroom with them, it's well worth it," says Brownlee.

The visit to the Native Ethnology lab included a presentation by Jenny Meyer, an Ojibway and long-time volunteer of The Manitoba Museum, on the intricacy of First Nations beadwork.

"We're the right people to hold these training sessions," Knox says. "We have the expertise available, we have the collections, and we have a long history of presenting Aboriginal education to school groups. This way, teachers get the information from the best source."

The incorporation of First Nations culture into the school curriculum is important for all students, Knox adds.

"Non-Aboriginal students need to grow up sensitive of the people around them, respecting other cultures and honouring them," she says. "It's a teacher's job to prepare their students for the world, and it's only natural that they are trying to serve their students in the best possible way."

From The Toronto Star  http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1156974611781
 
Taming the unfrozen North
When global warming melts the Arctic ice, look to the Inuit to adapt and survive, just as their ancestors did
Aug. 31, 2006 - RACHEL A. QITSUALIK

In a much warmer 2020, the white bear's tracks no longer grace Arctic snows. The remnants of Inuit culture stand baffled as the last sea mammals perish, as creeping legions of grass and trees surround them, as southern industries pillage what many call the "New South." Ice is but a memory, while the Northwest Passage serves as the Arctic Panama Canal of this new boom era.

The histrionic paragraph above reflects an all too popular vision of the Arctic's future, one generally held by those who have never lived in it. I, however, grew up in this place: I've lived in igluvigait (igloos) as well as in southern houses, untangled dogsled races as readily as bought bus tickets. And my mind's eye renders me in the Arctic of 14 years hence as easily as five minutes from now.

Can you feel the warm August air? It's 2020, and:

In the hills, my husband and I chuckle at the staccato noise of a raven, shortly before bird and laughter are subsumed beneath the roar of vehicles. We turn to see a trio of military helicopters flying out over Frobisher Bay.

"Is it another CASP?" my husband asks. "Or a rescue?"

I shake my head, unsure, since these days there are as many rescue missions as Canadian Arctic Safety Patrols, or CASPs. The acronym replaced the SOVOP (Sovereignty Operation) around 2012, when the federal government decided it needed a friendlier term.

I can still remember the first one — Operation Narwhal in 2004, where vehicles were hobbled by unexpected frost and the military had to call on the Inuit Rangers for help afterlosing contact with two communications specialists in the hills. Those operations improved significantly by 2010, however, just in time to address our contemporary problem: foreign shipwrecks. It's embarrassing and alarming, the way wrecks are piling up in the so-called Northwest Passage, the Arctic waters where Inuit have hunted for ages.

They still hunt out there, of course. Inuit can hunt just as easily from boats as upon the once-common sea ice. It's tricky, navigating the sludge of icebergs in a small boat, but definitely worth it. Global warming, it seems, has caused planktonic populations to rise, increasing the numbers of fish and sea mammals with easier access to Arctic coasts. I can't recall a time when the hunting culture was this strong, although bears are no longer hunted.

Warmth has made the recently stabilized bear population more dangerous, since the animals are reverting to the coastal/island hunting style of their ancestors. But their numbers are nevertheless small. The end of the bear hunt is no loss, especially in comparison to the gift of food that comes with bountiful sea mammals.

Unfortunately, for many, another variety of prospective boom is starting to resemble bust.

It's amazing to think back on all the sabre-rattling between the United States, Denmark and Canada over rights to the Northwest Passage only to have so many ships ripped apart by unanticipated icebergs. In 2018, there was a much hoopla over Canada's new U.S. friendly licensing system for foreign usage of Canadian Arctic waters, even though America had already been using the waters since 2009. The issue only came to the forefront of public awareness in 2011, when an American oil tanker was split open 300 kilometres from Gjoa Haven, ruining local fish stocks and poisoning coastlines.

Inuit made little headway when they complained that the bacterial strain used to clean up the oil was giving their children skin ulcerations. But the Canadian public at least roused itself once they saw pictures of afflicted seal pups.

The result was the licensing system introduced two years ago, along with heavy costs in CASP operations to make sure no illegal dumping, immigration, speculation or fishing occurs. Add to that the cost of rescue efforts to foreign ships. .

The Land (as Inuit call the Arctic), you see, has always liked to play tricks. In this case, all the profiteers were so busy expecting Arctic waters to dutifully refrain from solidifying that they forgot one thing: The pole is still far from ice-free and global warming goes on.

As ice farther north warms and breaks off, the resultant "slush" — ice chunks from the size of a baseball to that of a high-rise — floats south. Instead of the expected ice-free Northwest Passage, the Danish tankers shipping fresh water from Greenland and the U.S. tankers shipping oil have, instead, found themselves negotiating a treacherous, boreal labyrinth.

So many lives have already been ruined as a result of greed and lack of foresight. But that, too, is an old story in the Arctic.

The illusion of boom, of less permafrost and more shipping, lured hordes of southerners North over a decade ago, believing that the Arctic was destined to become prime real estate amid rushes for gold, sapphires and diamonds.

They found, instead, an Arctic that was warmer but nevertheless treeless and incapable of becoming any nation's new breadbasket; in which shipping costs left a bitter taste in the mouths of the most rapacious companies. They built homes and complexes they were already fleeing by the time 2015 rolled around — homes now occupied mostly by Inuit families.

And as they retreated to the South again, pockets empty and with bittersweet memories of a beautiful but strangely unprofitable land, they were haunted by a single, frustrating mystery: the knowledge that they could never say exactly why the Arctic hadn't been what they'd expected.

But Inuit elders could have told them. If anyone had bothered to ask, Inuit might have explained the Land to them. And you can bet the word nalunaktuq would have been uttered. Come back to the present for a bit, even the past, and we'll talk.

The root word of nalunaktuq is nalu, or "not knowing." In Inuktitut (the Inuit language), nalunaktuq loosely means "difficult to comprehend" or "unpredictable." But why should the Inuit perspective on such a thing matter? Well, besides the fact that their ever-burgeoning population makes up 86 per cent of Nunavut, Inuit have learned the harshest lessons from the Land. The best such lesson has been that of nalunaktuq, the fact that general trends serve as poor indicators of what the Arctic will actually do.

Many people believe Inuit survivability and Land-knowledge are one, but few suspect that both hinge upon an acceptance of the Land's protean nature.

Much of the popular shock over signs of warming in the Arctic stems from the assumption that, of all environments, the Arctic is traditionally the least inclined to change. This variety of pop sophism, however, is easily unmasked through even cursory examination of that era that birthed Inuit culture itself. For the truth is that Inuit are a young people, and they were shaped by previous global warming.

The planet Earth, between 800 A.D. and 1200 A.D., was a hot place. There are tales of rich apple orchards in England, and sunburns being common.

As occurs at any time, in any place, when things begin to heat up, people move around. History shows this to be one of the greatest eras of tribal migration and rise of empire.

Inuit first emerged out of Alaska, around the time of the warm period's onset. The warmth had given sea mammals ready access to Canada's Arctic Archipelago, and Inuit culture had adapted to specialize in hunting — basically eating their way eastward via innovations such as improved boats.

They did so well that, by 1,000 A.D. (the time of Leif Ericsson's discovery of "Vinland"), they were across Canada. By 1200 A.D., they were settled into Greenland, just in time for the planet to fall into its chilly phase once again.

Nevertheless, folklore — that subconscious history of a culture — never forgets. To this day, Inuit ajaraaq (string games) retain the string figure called Kigiaq. This is "The Beaver," an animal that once ranged as far as the Arctic, during the Earth's last warming period.

As heretical as it sounds within the context of pop dogma, the last time the planet grew hotter, it was actually good for Inuit. This is because Inuit are the embodiment of adaptability itself, and other peoples who direct eyes toward the Arctic would do well to emulate such elasticity.

Lately, we've become inundated with sweeping, nigh-hysterical publications along the lines of "Global warming will render 95 per cent of Arctic species extinct within 10 years," or "Climate change will destroy Inuit culture within a decade." We humans instinctively love a crusade; but a crusade is past-oriented, while adaptation is future-oriented.

We cannot trust crisis, since someone always profits from fear. Nor can we trust prediction, until the day science can provide us with an accurate five-day forecast. But we can trust in our heritage as an ancient species, and an adaptive one. We can trust in our own ability to change, if the Land will not.

The truth is that the Arctic is warming — but I fear more for how the South will react to it than I do for Inuit.

The common southern perception seems to be that global warming will reshape the North into the South, as though the Arctic were defined, up to this point, by cold alone. Many businesses view the Arctic as a new fruit ripe for the picking, counting on global warming as the friend who will give them a boost in reaching out for it.

But ask anyone who has lived in the Arctic for a time and they will tell you that its islands and shores are strewn with the bleached remnants of such ambition: shipping costs that mounted beyond control, inconstant yield, disastrous turns of weather. Who can count the number of disappointed ventures?

Inevitably, the next couple of decades promise the illusion of boom for the Arctic, perhaps, in some greed-maddened brains, the mistaken belief that a warmer North is about to sprout trees and spawn its own little Toronto. It simply won't happen, because even with the eventual melting of permafrost, the Arctic is poor in topsoil and gravel, twin requirements for the agriculture and construction necessary to sustain large populations.

Some might resort to the argument that population is a non-factor, and that fleets of international ships will directly connect North to South. But the attempt to do this very thing is what, I believe, will lay the groundwork for tragedy. My greatest fear is that shipping interests, driven by blind speculation, will brave the stew of icebergs resulting from inconstant freezing only to spill their ice-gutted bellies into Arctic waters as they fail.

How long, I wonder, will Arctic communities have to suffer such disasters before those companies finally pull out?

Inuit, until that day, will have to be patient and adapt. Inevitably, they'll watch it all, endure it as usual and feed the latest sea mammals, which will also use the Northwest Passage, to their children. Just like their ancestors did the last time the planet warmed.

And they will adapt, even as they whisper a prayer over the skeletons of those who refused to do the same. For Inuit have never owned the Land, having learned of old that it is no man's resource.

From CBC online at http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2006/08/31/suicide-study.html

Aboriginal study to examine youth suicide on reserves
August 31, 2006

The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs launched a new study this week aimed at solving one of the biggest crises in the province's First Nations, youth suicide.

The assembly is working with the University of Manitoba's Centre for Aboriginal Health Research on the three-year project. It has also secured the expertise of Chris Lalonde, a psychology professor and a top international expert on aboriginal youth suicide from the University of Victoria.

Organizers announced details of the study on Tuesday at the Traditional Youth Gathering, the AMC's annual youth conference, near the Peguis First Nation on Fisher Bay.

Amanda Meawasige, the AMC's youth suicide prevention co-ordinator, said the study will be unique in that aboriginal people will be talking to aboriginal people.

"Suicide is such a very taboo issue, it's something we didn't want to be phoning around about," Meawasige said.

"We wanted to go in person, offer tobacco, do ceremonies if it's necessary, to actually begin asking these questions. We wanted to take a … culturally rooted attempt at it."

According to the AMC, young people on reserves kill themselves at rates five to seven times higher than other young people, but not all reserves suffer from high suicide rates, Meawasige said.

So the study will find out what those places are doing right.

"We can respond to our own crisis situation in ways that we know have worked for us," she said.

Meawasige said cultural activities, such as drumming and traditional craftwork, have also been known to help address youth suicide.

But Tanita Spence, 16, from Sandy Bay, said parents must set a good example for their children.

"The alcohol and drugs with their parents, and they're the ones [who] say, 'Oh, you guys are the future,' " she said. "And they don't even take care of us."

Tanita first tried to hang herself from a tree when she was 12 years old. "I just felt so empty, I guess. I felt unloved," she said.

AFN Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement Conference for Frontline Workers

REGISTRATION REQUESTED BY SEPTEMBER 6!

WHEN: Sept. 11-13, 2006

WHERE: Sheraton Wall Centre, 1088 Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC

Click on the links below for more information.

• Poster/General Information
• Registration Form
• Draft Agenda 

Message from the AFN Residential School program coordinator:

The Assembly of First Nations – Indian Residential Schools Unit is requesting the assistance of your Tribal Council to distribute the enclosed information to your respective contacts. We also request confirmation of those community representatives in your area who will attend and participate in this conference.

We realize this is short notice and want to insure that your tribal area has the opportunity to participate. Please ensure participants who plan to attend are registered as soon as possible. Thanking you in advance for your assistance.

Charlene Belleau
Manager, AFN - Indian Residential Schools Unit

For more information, please visit our website at: www.afn.ca/residentialschools

The Treaty #3 education team is hosting a letter writing campaign to voice concerns about INAC cuts to Special Education funding for students attending provincial schools.

Go to their web site at http://www.treaty3.ca/education-crisis/ to sign the postcard that will be sent online to Roger Valley's office.

From the web site ...

ISSUE

INAC has made severe cuts to the moderate to high cost special education funding for students attending provincial schools in order to cover a $3.2 million deficit in their budget. These cuts are effective immediately and will impact students in the 2006-07 school year.

First Nations submitted applications to INAC in June for the profound and moderate special needs students. These applications were reviewed by INAC in a process which did not involve the First Nations.

IMPACT

Most First Nations have suffered 30-75% cuts. In the Treaty #3 territory, these cuts amount to $1.3 million dollars. This results in the loss of support services for many students attending provincial schools. First Nations have not received enough funding to provide the one-on-one support to students which INAC has determined do not meet the criteria for high cost support, even though these students do meet the criteria of the Ministry of Education.

INAC will not disclose which students are to receive support and which are not. First Nations were simply given an allocation and told to work with it.

Students with moderate to severe issues will be impacted the most. This means that there will be a higher ratio of students to Education Assistants, no Education Assistants for students who are not considered a priority, and possibly no Education Assistants for students who may pose a threat to themselves or others.

If these supports are not in place for students who may pose a threat, the principals of the schools can prevent those students from entering the school, based on the Ontario Safe Schools Act.

What you can do ...

Voice your concern for our children by emailing the postcard to Roger Valley by filling out the form on the Treaty #3 web site, or click the postcard graphic (on the web site) to download a printable version you can sign and mail or fax.

If you choose to download the postcard, Roger Valley's Mailing address and fax number is listed below.

Roger Valley, MP
101 Duke Street
Dryden, Ontario P8N1G4
Fax: 1-807-223-8655