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National Indigenous News October 7 · National Indigenous Newscasts

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  SPEAKER_00: This is a look at your National Indigenous News.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm Daryl Stranger.
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  SPEAKER_00: Witnesses weighed in Monday in Ottawa on proposed changes to legislation that would officially recognize RCMP officers' duty to enforce First Nations laws and bylaws.
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  SPEAKER_00: Bill S223 seeks to amend sections of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act and is currently under consideration by the Senate Committee on National Security, Defense, and Veterans Affairs.
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  SPEAKER_00: Proponents of the bill say it will address uncertainty for RCMP around enforcing individual First Nations laws and bylaws across the country by clarifying its policing mandate to include them.
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  SPEAKER_00: Senator Mary Jane McCallum, who is Cree, put forward the bill in June 2025.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: First Nations laws and bylaws are defined in the bill as a bylaw made under the Indian Act, a law under the Framework Agreement on First Nation Land Management Act, or a law by a First Nation under a self-government agreement.
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  SPEAKER_00: RCMP Chief Superintendent Simon Pille, Director of National Criminal Operations, told the committee, while he agrees prior to 2014 there was more enforcement and more prosecution of offenses to First Nations laws and bylaws, there was no formal direction not to following that time.
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  SPEAKER_00: Robert Lewey, chief of West Bank First Nation in BC and chair of the First Nation Lands Advisory Board, said good governance dictates laws made by First Nations must be enforced.
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  SPEAKER_00: A new report from the Council of Canadian Academies called Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Food Sovereignty argues that indigenous knowledge systems and healthy food systems are so closely linked that one cannot be strengthened without the other.
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  SPEAKER_00: It also says that Canadian agriculture and food policy has a long way to go before it treats that knowledge as equal to Western science, rather than simply adding it to the pile.
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  SPEAKER_00: The report was commissioned by the federal government's Indigenous Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or I STEM cluster, and produced by an eight-member expert panel.
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  SPEAKER_00: The panel was asked a deliberately broad question: How can policy and governance support Indigenous science in a way that advances Indigenous priorities and achieves reciprocal benefits for Canada's social, environmental, and economic goals?
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  SPEAKER_00: Food turned out to be the right lens for that question.
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  SPEAKER_00: The panel's essential finding is blunt.
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  SPEAKER_00: Current federal mechanisms often treat Indigenous knowledge as information to be folded into existing Western decision-making processes rather than as an equal partner in setting policy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Recognition is an important first step, the report says, but it can remain extractive if it doesn't come with shared decision-making power or reciprocal benefit for the communities that hold the knowledge.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: The report lays out three phases for closing that gap in policy and governance, building a foundation of safety, security, and support, developing relationships over time, and building a bridge, a method co-developed and co-governed by both Indigenous and Western parties for solving a specific shared problem.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: In Ontario, staff, community members, and donors celebrated the grand opening of the Indigenous Healing Space at Hamilton Health Sciences St.
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  SPEAKER_00: Peter's Hospital.
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  SPEAKER_00: The space is grounded in connection, healing, respect, and culture.
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  SPEAKER_00: Located in central Hamilton, St.
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  SPEAKER_00: Peter's Hospital provides complex continuing care across four inpatient programs: palliative care, restorative slow stream rehabilitation, medically complex care, and behavioral health.
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  SPEAKER_00: The new space, located on the ground level of the hospital, was created in an open area previously used for a different purpose.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now it's a spacious private room and features art by a Mohawk mixed European artist.
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  SPEAKER_00: The room is equipped with ventilation that allows for indoor smudging, as well as a refrigerator, sink, and small cooktop for families to use while spending time at the hospital.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Hamilton Health Sciences is working to have a dedicated space at each of its hospital sites for Indigenous peoples to gather, take respite, and engage in traditional healing practices.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is the fourth Indigenous healing space at the Hamilton Health Sciences.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's a look at your national Indigenous news.