The Assembly of First Nations is outlining its election priorities for Canada’s First Nations as the federal campaign is set to begin.
AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde released the 16-page document which lists short- and long-term goals to improve the lives of Indigenous Peoples in Canada.
AFN has prioritized issues of climate change, calling for more economic-development opportunities for First Nations, better access to safe drinking water, greater investments in housing, health care and education and new restorative-justice system.

A Friday ruling by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal about Canada’s treatment of Indigenous children ruled the federal government had been “wilful and reckless” in discriminating against First Nations children living on reserves by chronically and knowingly underfunding child-welfare services.
It ordered the federal government to pay $40,000 for every First Nations child who was inappropriately taken away from his or her parents after 2006. The same amount is to be paid to each of their parents. Children who were abused in foster care and those who had basic services, like medical care, denied to them are also each entitled to $40,000. That’s the maximum the tribunal can award.
The Assembly of First Nations estimates about 54,000 children and their parents could be eligible for the money, meaning the total bill will likely exceed $2 billion.
The tribunal has given the AFN, the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society and the federal government until December to come up with a plan for determining who is eligible for the compensation and how it will be paid.

A First Nation on the Manitoba-Ontario boundary is closer to getting safe drinking water.
Government officials are at Shoal Lake 40 to celebrate the start of construction on a new water treatment system.
The community of 300 residents has been under boil-water advisories since 1997.
The new plant is to be completed by December 2020.
Indigenous Services Canada is contributing up to $33 million for the project.

Human bones excavated from a 4,000-year-old burial site in western Wyoming will be returned to a Native American tribe to be determined.
The National Park Service this week said the fragmentary human remains of an 8- to 9-year-old child and an adult will be returned to a tribe in Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana or Idaho following consultations.
The bones were removed from a site near the U.S. Forest Service’s Dead Indian Campground in the Shoshone National Forest in 1969 during an archaeological excavation.
They’re now being returned to a tribe under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
The National Park Service says the bones have been identified as Native American but cannot be reasonably traced to any present-day tribe.
The agency says the burial site is the aboriginal land of the Crow Tribe of Montana.