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It has been a long time since resident, non-aboriginal hunters in Yellowknife had something to cheer about.

The Bathurst caribou herd was declared off-limits in 2010, and last year an anthrax outbreak wiped out half the Mackenzie bison herd. This led to the cancellation of the ballot draw hunt for the foreseeable future. But a recent proposal by the territorial government to re-open a limited bull-only hunt to resident hunters from three other caribou herds - the Bluenose-East, Ahiak and Beverly -- means caribou may be on the menu once again.

Of these three herds, the Bluenose-East is the most accessible to Yellowknife hunters, wintering near the winter roads linking Tlicho communities south of Great Bear Lake.

Last year, Weledeh MLA Bob Bromley accused Environment Minister Michael Miltenberger of "not sticking up" for resident hunters after a 2010 population estimate of the Bluenose-East herd put its number at 100,000 animals - up from 67,000 in 2006. It was unfathomable that more than two years would go by without any discussion on allowing non-aboriginal hunters to harvest the herd, said Bromley.

"Finally the minister is talking about it for the 2013-14 hunting season, which is four years after they recovered to above normal levels," he said. "Obviously, the resident hunter is being very mistreated here."

However, now that the government is pondering easing restrictions the Tlicho government and Wildlife Management Advisory Council of the NWT - and Inuvialuit-based organization - are expressing opposition to the proposal.

Tlicho Grand Chief Edward Erasmus argued in a letter to the Wek'eezhii Renewable Resources Board that opening the hunt to non-aboriginal hunters would be premature. He cited increased pressure on the Bluenose-East herd since the closure of the Bathurst hunt, and expressed fears that an influx of new hunters in the area would make future hunts unsafe. Aboriginal hunters, meanwhile, face no restrictions.

Surely all can agree that caribou numbers must be closely monitored, but there must also be some accommodation of non-aboriginal residents living in the Northwest Territories, many of whom no doubt work for the Tlicho government and aboriginal-owned companies. It doesn't make sense to allow aboriginal hunters to embark on a free-for-all, while leaving non-aboriginal hunters on the sidelines.

If the Tlicho government is so concerned about the caribou numbers and keeping hunters safe, perhaps it should be the one issuing the tags.

That way, it controls how the herd is being harvested, and how many tags are being given to their non-aboriginal neighbours. The Tlicho Government would then benefit from the additional income and goodwill.

The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup is a case in point. For a number of years, a handful of Fort Simpson residents have been participating in the cleanup, which is part of the larger nationwide initiative.

With their hands protected by rubber gloves, the volunteers scour the local beach and the riverbank beside the island for any garbage that has been left behind or washed up. There is often quite a haul.

The people who participate in the cleanup probably aren't the ones who created the litter in the first place. They certainly don't have to spend part of their weekend picking up other people's garbage and they aren't getting paid either. Yet, they still come.

Some of the volunteers might be motivated by the idea of being part of something larger than just Fort Simpson. Since the cleanup went nationwide in 2002, there have been cleanups in every province and territory every year. Last year, 315 people in the NWT alone participated.

Other volunteers may come out because they care about the land and water in the Deh Cho.

As Martina Norwegian, who has organized the recent cleanups in Fort Simpson asked, if the people here don't look after the

Mackenzie River, who else will?

The garbage on the river's shoreline near Fort Simpson didn't necessarily originate here, but efforts to keep the river clean have to start somewhere. By cleaning up along the section of the riverbank here, volunteers are not only making things better for Fort Simpson residents, but also for those people who live further along the Mackenzie River and even the Beaufort Sea, which the river empties into.

Volunteers may even come out because it is a good community event. For an afternoon, a variety of Fort Simpson residents mingle as they work toward a common goal.

In today's society, there is a lot of focus on getting ahead and doing things that benefit ourselves and not necessarily anyone else. That is why it is nice to see community support for initiatives such as the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup.

The cleanup is relevant to the Deh Cho, where water stewardship is important. It also gives residents an opportunity to help the wider world in a small way. Hopefully the 20th anniversary of the initiative will inspire even more people to get involved.

It's good to see some additional curriculum being added to regional schools. It's even better to see that new curriculum is something totally applicable to students living in the area.

That's why I applaud the introduction of the new Gwich'in study module to schools such as East Three Secondary School.

I'm a big fan of studying history, and more perspectives on history are better than standard mainstream fare – providing, of course, they don't descend to the level of propaganda.

This new curriculum is something, that given a chance, I'd dive right into if I was still a student.

Even better, the courses and study material are going to be available to all students in the system. That's a stroke of genius on the part of its developers. Now any student can learn something about their neighbours, as well as people of Gwich'in descent learning about their particular history.

Of course, you could argue the developers of the curriculum with the Gwich'in Tribal Council had no choice since there isn't a separate school system available to them.

That's true, and to my mind that's a good thing. I'm likely to champion inclusivity over insularity any time.

I grew up in an educational system that featured two public school alternatives, one secular and one Catholic, and a plethora of private ones. I've never been able to fathom how it can be logically explained that a religious-based system gets public funds, except that it's enshrined in Canada's constitution.

Moreover, I've always considered segregation in any form, much less officially-sanctioned forms, to be a philosophical mistake. If people are going to learn to get along, they'll do it by mingling with each other, opening themselves to new ideas and perspectives and hopefully learning a little tolerance along the way. That's far less likely to happen in systems where separation occurs.

Inuvik Chief Herbert Blake, though, is ambivalent about the idea. He likes the new curriculum, but says it doesn't go far enough. He has a vision of a time when Gwich'in people will have their own schools.

I respect Blake as a leader and as a politician. I also like him as a person. But I don't think a separate Gwich'in school system is a good idea, particularly for the Inuvik area.

As a designed or manufactured community, Inuvik was intended to be – and is – a multicultural town where Gwich'in, Inuvialuit, Metis and European-descended Canadians mingle freely. Today we can add a burgeoning Muslim population, and others, to that mix.

The great thing, though, is that there are no silos of separation in this town. Its polyglot nature is one of its attractive points.

Barbara Clement was flown more than 300 km to Yellowknife from Fort Simpson in mid-March to receive potentially life-saving treatment for her kidney disease. The three-times-weekly dialysis treatment leaves Clement feeling weak, she said.

And right now, she has to go through it alone.

Clement's common-law partner, Peter Hardisty, had to return home earlier this month as the benefits afforded to him as a non-medical escort ran out.

Now, Clement is left to find a place of her own so that she and her family can be reunited.

Until then, Clement is living at the Vital Abel Boarding Home in Ndilo. It is unlikely she will be leaving there any time soon because the waiting list for public housing can be anywhere from one to two years.

Clement won't be eligible to apply for public housing until the middle of next month because current regulations state residents have to be living in Yellowknife for six months.

Clement is also in financial straits as she had to leave her employment with the government in Fort Simpson to come to Yellowknife for treatment. Applications for financial assistance have been unsuccessful.

To compound the issue, if Hardisty and their three children want to come visit Clement, they're looking at a trip that will cost hundreds of dollars each way.

Under current regulations, the health authority allows stays of three weeks for non-medical escorts, after which re-approvals are needed.

The authority is a well-funded entity that needs to focus its measure of success on how well it helps patients, rather than how much money it has saved.

Forcing a solitary lifestyle upon someone who wants nothing more than to be with her family is unfair.

"I was in tears," Clement said. "I want someone to be here with me."

Anyone forced into such conditions could see their mental health affected from not being with the people they love during what very well may be the toughest challenge of their lives.

Specialty health services in the NWT are limited which means people have to travel long distances for treatment. Being away from family support can be as much a detriment to personal health as the condition being treated. This must be factored into health department policy so people don't suffer through stressful treatments alone and afraid.

The call for trained tradespeople is a familiar one in the North. More than a decade ago, when diamond mines Ekati and Diavik came on line, agreements were negotiated that included employment commitments to Northerners, and specifically aboriginal Northerners.

Leah Von Hagen, who was the manager of workforce development for Diavik in those early days, noted that there were difficulties with meeting these commitments.

"With a small population of about 43,000 people in the Northwest Territories, and other industry already in the area drawing on that small population for their workforce, our challenge has been finding people with the necessary skills to work for us."

A dearth of trained tradespeople is not unique to the North. It's a world-wide problem, hence the focus of governments on programs to help develop a skilled workforce. Targeting youth, for example, is one way via Skills Canada.

The Mine Training Society, which turned 10 years old in August, is another way to ensure the right training takes place. And it is taking the right approach - partnership.

Around the time of the society's inception, Education Culture and Employment was operating in a vacuum, with mines having to train workers themselves, with their own programs.

With the partnership approach - which involves industry, the GNWT, and aboriginal governments - industry can identify needs and the right training can take place.

This will prove valuable in the long run, by helping meet the challenge of a predicted increase of need for a skilled workforce by 2017, but also by providing skills to Northerners that they can carry with them.

As Skills Canada notes, people who are employed in the skilled trades and technologies are virtually guaranteed long, productive, and stable careers.

While Aug. 23 is a day that hardly yields a blip on the radar of most Canadians, it should be recognized, without fail, across this great nation of ours.

Black Ribbon Day is a national day of remembrance for the suffering put upon millions of people by the aggressive and superior military powers of a Communist and a totalitarian regime.

It traces all the way back to Aug. 23, 1939, when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed their infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, containing secret protocols to define the territorial spheres of influence Germany and the Soviets would have after a successful invasion of Poland.

For its architects, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, the treaty of non-aggression hid their desire to divide the continent between them on the eve of the Second World War.

The pact survived until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

The deal struck between Hitler and Stalin and forged by its namesakes, foreign ministers Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop, led to the people of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and Romania's Bessarabia region (Moldova) suffering brutal occupations at the hands of the Nazi and Soviet soldiers.

Finland actually turned away its Soviet would-be conquerors, but did lose the Karelia region to the Soviets. During the occupations, hundreds of thousands of people were taken to Siberian labour camps.

The number of generations the pact affected was put on display for the world during the marking of the 50th anniversary of its signing on Aug. 23, 1989.

About two million people joined hands to form a human chain stretching more than 650 km to link the states of Tallin, Riga and Vilnius.

The demonstration became known as the Baltic Way (the Chain of Freedom) and literally forced Mikhail Gorbachev to acknowledge the pact in public for the first time.

Today, with Russia seemingly looking to assert its authority once again, it could be argued the importance of observing Black Ribbon Day has never been higher.

Too often, as the years pass after a major conflict, people start to forget the price paid by so many in the name of freedom.

They also tend to forget, or simply deny, how quickly freedom can be snatched away when the circumstances are right for an aggressive power.

The groundwork of atrocities being committed was well underway when the war finally spilled outside the boundaries of Europe.

Every Nov. 11, we honour the memory of our own brave men and women who gave their lives for freedom, as well as our allies in the States, Britain and France.

We live in an age when numerous countries have nuclear capability and other strive to obtain it.

We hear of the use of chemical weapons in other parts of the world, shudder when told of terrorist attacks, and give thanks for living in a country as safe as ours.

Others believed their freedom was safe, too, until it was taken away and the world as they knew it ceased to exist.

Now, more than ever, it's important to remember the suffering of these victims. While a black ribbon may be symbolic, it speaks volumes to remind the world we remember!

When funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was cut by the federal government in 2010, there was outrage in Northern communities and the government was lobbied by aboriginal groups to rethink its decision.

People knew even then the detrimental effects the funding cuts would have on the 100 community-based healing programs across the country that were funded by this organization.

Over the past three years, these grassroots programs that offered support to residential school survivors have been disintegrating around us. Earlier this month, one more program bit the dust.

The Embracing our Human-Nest program, hosted by the Healing Drum Society based out of Yellowknife, offered group counselling sessions throughout the territory. Its demise means the loss of six jobs and the loss of a program that was offered to nearly 1,000 clients since its inception in 2002. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation, meanwhile, is set to close its doors next year.

These program cancellations do not come as a surprise. The foundation has been stretching its one-time funding of $350 million from 1998 until the very end, but endings are never as clean cut as we are initially led to believe.

The federal government set up its residential school clean-up job to be as smooth as possible. It ensured it filled in the blanks in its accounting books, offering settlement payments - Common Experience Payment - to residential school survivors to avoid legal backlash for decades on end. It checked off financial compensation and checked off healing programs through the foundation and then, in 2010, through Health Canada.

But more is needed than that. In a report issued by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, it states that "as payments flow to survivors, they should be received in the context of a healing environment. Community support networks should be established and maintained to maximize the potential benefits of the Common Experience Payment while minimizing its potential negative effects."

While money from Health Canada is still filtering to organizations such as the Healing Drum Society, the Gwich'in Tribal Council and the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation to provide counselling services and community-based support workers, the consistency of continuing programs is critical to healing.

This time, with the termination of Embracing our Human-Nest, it's group counselling, which was a popular means of healing. There were nearly 200 people on the waiting list for the program when it dissolved on Aug. 16. For many who used the program, it was the group dynamic that most helped, sharing stories with others who continue to suffer years after residential schools in this country ceased to exist.

There is no substitute to the grassroots healing programs offered within communities, such as those offered by the Healing Drum Society. The front line workers such as Joe Pintarics, executive director of the society, see the need for these programs and know which ones are working. The disruption of these programs adds to the confusion that survivors feel and shakes the foundation they have so bravely created brick by brick.

Pintarics shakes his head when he recalls Prime Minister Stephen Harper's apology to aboriginal people for the Indian Residential School system in 2008. It calls the more than 100 years of horrific abuse to some students a "sad chapter in our history."

The chapter isn't over. Every page that turns adds more suicide, more lack of parenting, poverty and substance abuse.

The more we learn from these healing programs, the more help can be given to people who need it. Cutting off the support these programs offer is destructive and is a detrimental step backward into the past, erasing any progress made.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper got his pants dirty with the Canadian Rangers in Gjoa Haven last week, lying prone in the dirt with a Korean War-era Lee Enfield rifle for some target practice.

He participated in an Arctic sovereignty patrol with the Rangers as part of Operation Nanook, the annual military exercise involving hundreds of Canadian Armed Forces personnel. Harper shook hands with elders dressed in traditional caribou and seal skin clothing and posed for photographs on the barren landscape.

Earlier last week, in Hay River, he announced $5.8 million in funding for the NWT and Nunavut Mine Training Society's Mining the Future project, which aims to prepare Inuit and aboriginal people for jobs in the mines.

Generally speaking, Harper's Conservative government has been good to the North. A permanent military facility just opened at Resolute, which will support the many Inuit who work with the Canadian Rangers. Ottawa boosted its funding for the Rangers program so another 1,000 Rangers could be hired. There are now more than 5,000 Rangers in 178 patrols, an increase of 25 per cent since 2007.

However, we can't help but wonder if Harper, during his annual tour of the North, has looked at the daily living conditions of the average Nunavummiut. Social indicators in many communities are dismal.

Food security is a dream for many people. The latest food basket comparison from the Nunavut Bureau of Statistics shows the price of a two-litre carton of milk is $7.35 in Gjoa Haven and a one-kg package of pork chops is $15.44. In many communities, paying for the high price of food has a negative ripple effect, resulting in no resources for clothing, shelter and cleaning supplies.

Israel Mablick Sr. of Iqaluit told Nunavut News/North on Aug. 15 that he shares a two-bedroom unit with his wife, his mother, his sister, his nephew and his five children. Many Nunavummiut live in similar deplorable conditions.

Should Canada's stewardship of the North be measured by how many diamonds and minerals can be hauled out of the ground? Or by the strength of its military presence?

At the end of the day, it should be measured by the state of its housing and the physical and mental health of its people.

And that is where the Conservative government is falling short. It is outrageous that the government is spending $620,000 on testing a stealth snowmobile when an 11-year-old boy takes his own life in Repulse Bay, just the latest suicide of several recent tragic events in remote communities. The suicide rate in Nunavut in 2009 was 65 people for every 100,000 residents, startlingly high compared to the national rate of 11.5 suicides for every 100,000 residents. Still, there is little help for those contemplating suicide or the families left behind.

Harper has done well on issues related to a military presence in the Arctic, expanding the Rangers program and creating support for employment and resource development.

Now, it would be nice if he could focus some attention on the basic needs of the average Nunavummiut.

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