By Special Correspondent Jessica Yee
It’s no secret that many Native American reservations and Aboriginal territories seem like far off, remote, out of reach places to the general population and society. I suppose that when the mainstream news media does report about our communities it often suggests that these are all immensely impoverished, violence infested, alcohol [...]

By Thea Lim
First the Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves refuse to move forward into ahem, postracial America and change their team names, and now The National Collector’s Mint is cheerfully moving backwards.

The National Collector’s Mint announces the private reproduction minting of the last $5 Indian Head Gold Piece ever minted by the U.S. [...]

by Special Correspondent Jessica Yee, originally published at Comment is Free

For Canada’s First Nations communities, being denied our basic and fundamental human rights is, sadly, not at all a surprise. So after last week’s report that the Canadian government had postponed the delivery of much-needed alcohol-based hand sanitisers to reserve communities with massive outbreaks of [...]

by Guest Contributor Gwen, originally published at Sociological Images
In the opening essay to the book Shared Visions: Native American Painters and Sculptors in the Twentieth Century, Rennard Strickland and Margaret Archuleta write,
J.J. Brody in his classic study, Indian Painters & White Patrons, identified the colonial nature of a patronage system that narrowly defined and dictated [...]

by Special Correspondent Jessica Yee, originally published at Rabble

Ed. Note: Jessica wrote this in response to Canadian border patrol agents being armed in Akwesasne. This article gives a summary of the situation:

A respected security and anti-terrorism expert says Canada’s federal government should stand by its guns and ignore threats from Mohawk militants in [...]

by Special Correspondent Jessica Yee, originally published in Ricepaper Magazine

Being mixed First Nations and being raised in the urban centre of Toronto, I’m often faced with the question of “Am I Indian enough?”:
Do I attend ceremony here?
Can I really understand what it’s like to be Native not living on the reservation now?
How am I going [...]

by Special Correspondent Jessica Yee
My inbox was abuzz yesterday with news of the Pope’s admission that he was “sorrowful” for what happened to residential school survivors; which came as a result of the much anticipated visit to the Vatican by a delegation from the Assembly of First Nations here in Canada.
Sorrowful. But not sorry. Is [...]

by Special Correspondent Jessica Yee
Savage. Squaw. Indian. Would we all agree that these are immensely derogatory names that should not be, in this day and age, still used to geographically locate places? Or even people, for that matter?
From the varying answers I’ve received when posing this question, it all really depends on who you ask [...]

By Special Correspondent Jessica Yee
Okay, so I’ll be honest, my night didn’t really start off too well. Waiting for the streetcar to come so I can go check out the much anticipated photo exhibit for “Prom Night in Mississippi” I see this gem of a display in a popular Queen West shoe store right [...]

by Special Correspondent Jessica Yee

Much of what people know about historic Native issues has to do with land on some level. Indeed, much of what we are about today has to do with our land also. Our Mother Earth is the ultimate living entity, something that sustains life and guides us as a people. They [...]

by Guest Contributor Lisa, originally published at Sociological Images
In many places in the midwest the American Indian is very present, but in other places in the U.S., like in California, Disney’s Pocahontas is as close as we get to “Indians.” The idea that American Indians are gone comes, in part, from the ubiquitous representation [...]

by Special Correspondent Jessica Yee
Like millions of people all over the world, I’m ecstatic, over-the-moon inspired by Obama’s win. If for no other reason (and all the others too in which we share the same opinion, like abortion for example) than his win is actually a good thing for the people in my community. Yes [...]

by Special Correspondent Jessica Yee
This past Friday, I received a few e-mails with this shocker:
“Today a shock jock named T-Man on 93.3 F.M. in Seattle made some very racist remarks stating “All native women are hoes because [we] have casinos & [we're] all drunk”.
Apparently it got even worse from there. Interestingly enough, on the 9am [...]

by Guest Contributor Jessica Yee, originally published at the Shameless Blog
Christopher Columbus is no hero.
Some say he is actually responsible for causing 95 million deaths of Indigenous peoples worldwide.
He was not a great discoverer either. He had no idea where he was going, and never even came to the land we know today as North [...]

by Guest Contributor Jessica Yee
Last year, a friend of mine told me that actress Juliette Lewis started up a band and that their sound was seriously a rockin’.
I was like “Really? Cool!” since I’d always appreciated the versatility Lewis demonstrated in her acting craft with movies like “The Other Sister,” “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” [...]