Takuginai is here – and today, by here, we mean right here on your computer. Takuginai, the popular Nunavut children’s show that runs in both Inuktitut and English, now has its own Web site.

Much like Sesame Street, Takuginai – which has been on the air for 25 years – uses a mix of puppets, people, and graphics to teach kids how to read and count.

Takuginai’s puppets include Johnny the Lemming, Granny and Grandpa, Pukki and Meesee, the Nunatsiaq News reports here.

Innuinaqtun and French versions of the Web site are also planned. The show is produced by the Inuit Broadcasting Corp.

Watch part of a Takuginai episode on smoking below. And, enjoy!

Gwen Florio

Rescuers save many stranded by early thaw in Manitoba’s First Nations
Spring might be good news elsewhere in North America, but not when it comes early in Manitoba as it did this past week, turning hard-frozen roads to muck and trapping travelers trying to get to remote First Nations communities. Some people were stuck in their vehicles for as long as five days, emergency workers tell the Montreal Gazette. Helicopters and truck convoys were used to rescue them.

Project WIN – With Indian Nations – finds Indian teachers for Indian schools
“All Navajo children leave the reservation, but they always come back,” Shannon Begaye tells the Arizona Republic. “This is home.” The thing that enabled Begaye, who originally planned on being a lawyer, to come home was a project that helps Native people become teachers in schools on their own reservations, something that benefits both teacher and student.

Apache tribe fights copper mine, even as it moves toward approval
A bill now in the Senate would give around 2,400 acres of public land in southeastern Arizona for copper mining to Resolution Copper Co. – a subsidary of the giant Rio Tinto mining company – in exchange for around 5,000 acres around the state. But the mine would go on land sacred to the San Carolos Apache tribe. The Sierra Club and others have joined the tribe in fighting the move. Indian Country Today has the story and a slideshow, here.

Native identity? Or fraud? Penning Tennessee recognition stirs debate
The state of Tennessee is looking at recognizing six tribes, a move the members of those groups say is long overdue. But some long-recognized tribes object. “The idea of state-level recognition for what are essentially social clubs — people who may have Indian ancestry but are not Indians — is offensive to me,” Melba Checote Eads, a citizen of the Oklahoma-based Muscogee Creek Nation, tells the Tennesseean.

School dedicates hoops championship to girls killed by drunk driver
Deshauna and Del Lynn Peshlakai were killed earlier this month by a drunken driver in Santa Fe – just as the Lady Braves of the Santa Fe Indian School were going into the state basketball tournament. The Lady Braves quickly designed T-shirts – Athletes Against Drunk Driving – and went on to win the school’s the school’s first Class 3A state championship. Head coach Cindy Roybal tells the Navajo Times it helped her team focus on their Peshalkais family’s grief, rather than their own concerns

Gwen Florio

Quilting project honors Native children who died in boarding schools
Jamestown, N.D., resident Ellen Pfeiffer first learned about Indian boarding schools from her former husband, a member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe whose grandmother was taken from her family and sent to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. She found the story heartbreaking, and began to study the era. Barbara Landis, Carlisle Indian School biographer, reports that nearly 10,000 Indian children went to Carlisle in its 40-year-history. Of those, nearly 200 children died, most of them of respiratory diseases such as pneumonia and tuberculosis.

Pfeiffer believes the schools, whose purpose was to assimilate Indian children, did a disservice to Native Americans. Now she’s making quilts to honor the children who died so far from their families. The project involves 186 quilts, according to this Jamestown Sun story distributed by the Associated Press.

Connecticut tribes blast state’s plan to add keno games
Connecticut is looking at adding keno games to help close a $1.3 billion budget shortfall. But tribal casinos – which already offer it – are crying foul, saying it could cut into their profits, Indian Country Today’s Gale Courey Toensing writes here. Jackson King, general counsel for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, says that if the state launches keno, the tribes could stop making payments to the state based on their own earnings, because of a violation of the compact.

Navajo Nation plans five casinos within two years
Despite a drop in gaming revenues around the country, the Navajo Nation Gaming Enterprise says it has secured the funding for five news casinos, and plans to build them within the next two years, according to the Navajo Times. Investment Committee members say gaming looks like more secure route than the stock market these days.

Seneca Nation stops effort to ban mail-order smokes in New York
The New York Times has this story on how the Seneca Nation turned around a bill designed to halt the shipment of mail-order cigarettes. The bill was approved by the New York House of Representatives and a Senate committee, before the Seneca Nation, which sees more than $1 billion annually in gambling and cigarette revenues, launched a full-scale lobbying effort to stop it.

Nunavut to substantially cut polar bear harvest quota; hunters object
Over the next four years, the annual hunting quota for Baffin Bay polar bears will gradually be reduced from 105 to 65, according to the Nunatsiaq News. Biologists are worried the bears are being overhunted, and Greenland has already reduced its quotas. But some hunters are demanding compensation for their communities.

Salish Kootenai College honors lifelong Salish language teacher Sophie Mays
Last month, family and friends on the Flathead Indian Reservation gathered at Salish Kootenai College to dedicate Sophie’s Room. It honors Sophie “Supi” Quequesah Mays died last year at the age of 56, the Char-Koosta News reports. Mays, who grew up with parents who spoke only Salish, dedicated her life to preserving the Salish language. She was the first Salish teacher when the college was founded.

Gwen Florio

The promo for tonight’s performance at the First Nation’s Pavilion describes it this way: An explosive evening of DJs, rappers and hip-hop royalty. Don’t miss as artists such as Feenix, Team Rez Official, Ostwelve, Kaiva and Def 3 rip it up on stage.

We say, we defy anyone to to listen to this and not dance.

Watch Feenix on the video above.

And, you can watch a video of Team Rez Official below (warning: not safe for work!).

Nunavut’s Kaiva, led by Li’l Bear, brought break dancing to the youth of Nunavummiut. Find out more, here.

Vancouver’s Ostwelve, aka Ron Dean Harris, was born into Coast Salish and Sto:Lo territoritory, according to his MySpace page, which has all sorts of other interesting information about him.

And here’s the MySpace page for Def3, who’s based in Regina, Saskatchewan.

For a complete schedule of events at the First Nations Pavilion, click here.

Gwen Florio

Here’s a fun report on the G-7 conference going on in Iqaluit, capital of the Inuit territory of Nunavut, Canada’s northernmost territory. Jane Wardell of the Associated Press covered it, and thank heavens she wrote about more than the official discussions. Here’s her report:

IQALUIT, Nunavut (AP) — Finance officials are taking a break in talks about the world’s economic woes to listen to a different tune.

But Inuit folk singer Lucie Idlout’s music comes with a serious message — and a challenge. Her song, “Lovely Irene,” inspired Iqaluit Mayor Elisapee Sheutiapik to launch a campaign to stamp out domestic violence in Nunavut, Canada’s most northern territory.

Iqaluit, Nunavut’s capital with just 7,000 people, has the highest rate of domestic violence per capita for any city in Canada — a fact that Sheutiapik is determined to change. She has renamed a street in the town that houses the only women’s shelter in the territory “Angel Street” and is now taking her campaign global.

She’s challenging finance ministers from the Group of Seven to create an “Angel Street” of their own in their countries in solidarity with her cause.

Sheutiapik argues that tackling an issue that was taboo in her childhood — “I used to see women with black eyes and I wasn’t supposed to talk about it” — is just as vital to economic development in Nunavut and the world as addressing big bank failures.

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Sheutiapik also has another message for potentially squeamish G-7 ministers — “You won’t know if you like it unless you try it.”

The promotion of seal meat products on the sidelines of the meeting here is sending a message to the world after the European Union banned the import of seal products on humane grounds.

Canada argues that seal-hunting is humane and provides income for isolated communities like Iqaluit. Sheutiapik points out that seal meat is still a staple for many families in this isolated outpost.

“If there was no seal, I wouldn’t be standing here,” she said. “That’s what my grandfather survived on. There was no beef here.”

Canada’s governor general Michaelle Jean caused an international stir last year by gutting a seal and swallowing a raw slice of the mammal’s heart.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and British Treasury chief Alistair Darling are among the officials sidestepping any potential controversy by skipping an Inuit “community feast,” which will feature seal meat, planned for after the close of talks on Saturday night.

“That’s unfortunate,” said Sheutiapik, who doesn’t buy the excuse that they are busy men who must return to world affairs: “They have to eat.”

This particular story is near and dear to our hearts at Buffalo Post because we’ve traveled twice to Canada’s northernmost territory, Nunavut – once before it became an Inuit territory, and once afterward, once in summer and once in winter, each time featuring its own particular beauty. This story from the Associated Press about the pending G-7 meeting in the high Arctic only makes us want to go back yet again.

As Rob Gillies of the Associated Press writes, Nunavut’s capital of Iqaluit, on Baffin Island will be quite a change for the leaders of the world’s most powerful economies. The town of 7,000 people still has no stoplights, and winter will still be in full force when the G-7 leaders arrive Friday and Saturday.

However, Canada’s choice of Iqaluit as the meeting place makes two important points.

The first has to do with the sovereignty; the second with the already-apparent affects in the Arctic of climate change:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press that apart from wanting to showcase the charms of Nunavut (Inuit for “Our Land”), Canada is sending a diplomatic message about a territory that may contain one-fifth of the world’s petroleum reserves.

“It’s one of our government’s priorities, the assertion of our sovereignty in the Arctic,” Flaherty said….

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, the first Inuit to sit in a Canadian federal cabinet, also has her eye on geography. “With the interest from my prime minister to develop the north and the interest around sovereignty, it’s an ideal location to have a G-7, to show the international community that Canada’s Arctic is a part of Canada,” Aglukkaq told the AP.

Meanwhile, the average February temperature in Iqaluit is 25-below. As Gillies writes: “That should make for quite a photo op.”

We’ll be updating on the meeting itself.

Gwen Florio

Beyond powwow songs: “Earthsongs” radio host focuses on modern Native music
Shyanne Beatty hosts “Earthsongs,” a national radio program of modern music for Native America. Beatty, who is Han Gwich’in Athabascan from Eagle, Alaska, tells station KTUU‘s Eric Sowl that “a lot of people think that Native American or indigenous music is powwow music. It’s not that any more. It’s rock, it’s reggae, it’s world music.” Native American broadcasters represent less than 1 percent of the nation’s on-air media talent.

San Miguel Band of Mission Indians donates $1.7 million in Haiti relief
The San Manuel Band of Mission Indians is helping earthquake relief efforts in Haiti by donating $1.7 million to the American Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders. According to Indian Country Today, it’s the most recent such effort by the tribe, which donated $700,000 after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita; $1 million for wildfire recovery in Southern California, and $1 million to relief groups in Sudan’s Darfur region.

Senators-Canadiens hockey game was NHL’s first broadcast in Inuktitut
Hockey history was made yesterday with the first-ever broadcast in Inukitut of an NHL game. CBC broadcasters Charlie Panigoniak and Annie Ford called the Ottawa Senators-Montreal Canadiens game in Inuktitut, according to the Nunatsiaq News. The game was broadcast around Nunavut and CBC also streamed it online. The Senators won, 3-2, in OT.

Natives may be added to Alaska’s state song
There’s an effort – again – in Alaska to add references to indigenous people in the state’s song, according to The Tundra Drums. A similar effort failed in 2002, but Sen. Albert Kookesh, who Tlingit and leader in the Alaska Federation of Natives, says times have changed. The bill would add a second verse that references Benny Benson, the Native boy who in 1927 designed the territorial flag that eventually became the state flag. The version begins: A Native lad chose the Dipper’s stars, For Alaska’s flag that there be no bars, Among our cultures.

Pascua Yaqui Tribe announces new casino hotel
Despite an economy that has wreaked havoc on profits from tribal and non-tribal casinos alike, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, owner of two Tucson-area casinos, says it will break ground next month on a casino and hotel expected to create up to 200 jobs. The Sol Casinos Hotel and Convention Center will be an expansion of Casino Del Sol, the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson reports. It’s scheduled to open next year.

Gwen Florio

In just a few weeks, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species – CITES – will decide whether to go along with a U.S. proposal to grant endangered species status to polar bears.

That’s a move opposed by Inuit hunters, and now they’re getting some support from the World Wildlife Fund and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Under the auspices of TRAFFIC, an umbrella conservation group, the two will formally oppose the U.S. move, according to the Nunatsiaq news, here.

“The threat to polar bears is not from trade. It is not really a concern at this time,” says Andrew Derocher, a member of the IUCN’s Polar Bear Specialist Group.

“We are looking to the future, 40 years, for polar bears to be in trouble due to habitat loss and the effect of climate change.”

A report by TRAFFIC shows that only 2 percent of polar bears have been killed by hunting since the 1990s. But the U.S. proposal would effectively make it illegal to hunt polar bears.

Craig Stewart, the director of WWF-Canada’s Arctic program, says the U.S. proposal won’t address the greenhouse gas emissions that are the bear’s true threat.

Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. vice-president Raymond Ningeocheak echoed that observation, and added that the proposed U.S. ban ” will, however, adversely affect Inuit culturally and economically.”

“Inuit need to be more involved in information gathering and making decisions about wildlife in Nunavut,” he says. “When scientists listen to us and understand what is actually happening here, there will be less confusion and misunderstanding about the current status of polar bears.”

Gwen Florio

Dennis Patterson, newly appointed as senator from the Canadian territory of Nunavut, says his first speech before Parliament will counter news reports portraying the decade-old territory that set aside traditional aboriginal lands as a failure, according to the Nunatsiaq News, here.

(See this Toronto Globe & Mail story headlined, “Ten Years In, Nunavut Gets Failing Grade)

“There is no reason to be hopeless. We have to be positive,” Patterson tells the Qikiqtani Inuit Association.

But he says the Ottawa’s perception of the problems in Nunavut – it means “our land” in Inuktitut – is likely making the federal government reluctant about moving forward on the devolution of responsibility for public lands and resources.

Gwen Florio