Indigenous leaders in Manitoba are looking to have more say in fixing internal issues within the country’s national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
Leaders from regional groups are calling for a regional sub-commission involving the voices of families and survivors.
Officials within the inquiry are now saying the inquiry’s work is being smothered by government protocols that are tone-deaf to the experiences of those actually facing the crisis.
Indigenous leaders across the country are calling for the resignation of all commissioners and for the inquiry to have a hard reset.

Provincial police say a southwestern Ontario man is charged after allegedly assaulting an infant.
Investigators say the alleged incident occurred Wednesday at a Simcoe, Ont., home.
They allege a two-month-old child was assaulted.
Police did not release details or say how seriously the child was injured.
A 56-year-old Norfolk County man is charged with assault.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the UN General Assembly the experience of indigenous people in Canada has been a story of humiliation, neglect and abuse.
The PM said Canada is a work in progress when it comes to reconciling with indigenous people – confirming the colonial history is littered with a trail of forced migration, broken treaty promises and cultural genocide.
Trudeau said the Liberal government is committed to taking steps forward to heal Canada’s unjust acts towards indigenous communities by working to improve on reserve living conditions and eliminate long term drinking water advisories across the country.

Two indigenous nations in the US are compelling state leadership to clean up a closed nuclear plant that sits on their traditional territory.
Two Abenaki tribes in Vermont filed testimony with the Public Utilities Commission to provide experts to help the tribes determine the best course of action in the cleanup.
The Abenaki leadership say they want to see the land cleaned and allowed to rest and heal as much as possible before any further development happens to the territory.
The company that owns the former nuclear plant is seeking to sell the plant site to a demotion company that is promising to demolish the reactor and restore the site by 2030.
That demolition company has agreed to meet with the Abenaki and begin a dialogue about how to resolve the issues.

Hawaii’s land board is hearing arguments for and against building a giant telescope on a mountain some consider sacred.
Wednesday’s hearing in a Hilo hotel comes after the retired judge overseeing contested-case hearings for the Thirty Meter Telescope recommended granting the project a construction permit.
Telescope attorney Douglas Ing says there’s no rational reason why Native Hawaiian religious rights would be affected by developing the project.
Telescope opponent Kahookahi Kanuha says it’s up to Native Hawaiians to determine which places are sacred and how they should be protected.
It’s not clear when the board will make a decision.

A northern Manitoba Indigenous community that was forced to relocate 61 years ago will be getting some of its traditional land back.
The provincial government has signed an agreement to transfer 52 square kilometres of Crown land near Little Duck Lake to the federal government, so that it can be converted to a reserve for the Sayisi Dene First Nation.
The community’s 250 residents were forced to move to Churchill in 1956 after they were blamed for a steep decline in the caribou herd _ an idea later proven untrue.
In their new location on Hudson Bay, food was scarce, housing was inadequate and many residents died prematurely.
The Manitoba government apologized for its role in 2010 and, last year, the federal government apologized and offered $33.6 million in compensation.

A retired Mountie accused of smuggling narwhal tusks was sentenced Wednesday to five years and two months in a U.S. prison for related money-laundering counts.
Gregory Logan, 60, of Saint John, N.B., smuggled about 300 tusks valued at US$1.5 million to US$3 million into Maine in false compartments in his vehicle, U.S. prosecutors said. They were shipped from a post office box in Ellsworth, Maine, to buyers across the U.S.
Narwhals, protected in the United States and Canada, are known for their spiral tusks that can grow longer than eight feet and are valued for their use in carvings and jewelry-making.

Chicago’s Field Museum and the Nunatsiavut government in Labrador have been given the first Cultural Repatriation Award by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Canada’s national Inuit group.
The award recognizes the return of the bodies of 22 Inuit who were exhumed in 1927-1928 by William Strong, then an assistant curator at the museum.
The remains were kept in the museum’s collection until they were returned to Nunatsiavut in 2011 after three years of negotiations. They have since been reburied.

Liberal cabinet minister Carolyn Bennett is urging the leader of the official Opposition to kick Sen. Lynn Beyak out of the Conservative caucus.
Bennett, the minister for Crown- Indigenous relations, made the comments today during question period.
Beyak this week urging First Nations people to exchange their status cards “for a Canadian citizenship.”
Bennett describes Beyak’s latest comments as offensive, hurtful and ill-informed.
In a letter posted last week on her website, Beyak urged Indigenous Canadians to accept a one-time payment for outstanding treaty and land claims and end the guilt trip against their non-Indigenous counterparts.
Bennett is urging Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer to kick Beyak out of caucus, but Scheer has said while he disagrees with Beyak, she should leave on her own if she won’t embrace his positive message.
Beyak was removed from the Senate’s Aboriginal Peoples committee last spring after saying the good that came out of residential schools has been obscured by excessive focus on their legacy of abuse and cultural genocide.