Latest news with #Indigenous-focused
Cision Canada
04-07-2025
- Health
- Cision Canada
RNAO's BPSO Indigenous-focused Symposium brings together nurses and Indigenous leaders
THUNDER BAY, ON, July 4, 2025 /CNW/ - To continue improving health outcomes in Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in northern Ontario, the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario, health providers from Best Practice Spotlight Organizations ® (BPSO ®) and Indigenous leaders will gather in Thunder Bay for this year's BPSO Indigenous-focused Symposium. Developed by the symposium's BPSO planning committee, the event, happening between July 8-10, 2025, will celebrate the theme: Bridging Indigenous and Western Perspectives in Health Care. "This event is an opportunity to learn how Indigenous perspectives can be integrated into health-care systems in meaningful ways and listen to Indigenous voices and perspectives to improve health-care outcomes," says Maxine Lesage, a member of the symposium's BPSO planning committee and former member of RNAO's board of directors. "Attendees will also better understand how weaving together Indigenous and western perspectives through the Two-Eyed Seeing approach helps Indigenous-focused BPSOs use best practice guidelines to make a profound impact on quality outcomes for persons, providers, organizations, communities and health systems." Best practice guidelines (BPG) equip nurses and other health providers with up-to-date evidence-based recommendations to improve quality of health care. As part of the BPSO program, organizations work with RNAO to implement BPGs and measure their impact on outcomes. The three-day in-person event will include a panel on a day in the life of northern remote and urban Indigenous communities; traditional teachings on Indigenous cultures, grief and loss; and a panel on strength-based and cultural approaches to care. Health providers from different Indigenous-focused BPSOs will also share their stories on the impact the program has had and ways to evaluate outcomes from a Two-Eyed Seeing perspective. "The symposium comes during a challenging and uncertain time for Indigenous communities as they fight against the Red Lake 12 wildfire, Ontario's Bill 5 and federal Bill C-5, threatening the rights, lands and future generations of Indigenous Peoples," says RNAO CEO Dr. Doris Grinspun, founder of the BPG and BPSO programs. "We are committed to standing with Indigenous Peoples as their voices must be heard, ensuring mitigation measures to protect the environment and accommodation measures to respect their rights. At the event next week, I plan to once again recognize the incredible leadership, strength and resilience Indigenous Peoples have in the face of these Bills and emergencies such as the recent wildfires." For more information, please see our Action Alert to withdraw Bill 5 and our Indigenous Health and RNAO In Focus page. What: The Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario hosts the Best Practice Spotlight Organization (BPSO) Indigenous-focused Symposium in Thunder Bay. When: Tuesday, July 8 – Thursday, July 10, 2025 Who: Elder Theresa Redsky Fiddler Elder Margie Bannon, Fort William First Nation Elder Aaron Therriault, Traditional Drum Keeper and Knowledge Keeper Chief Michele Solomon, Fort William First Nation Melissa Deleary, program manager, Indigenous Engagement, Provincial and Regional, Indigenous Health Unit, Ontario Health Dr. Doris Grinspun, RNAO CEO and founder of the BPG and BPSO programs Maxine Lesage, representative of the symposium's BPSO planning committee Grace Suva, senior manager, Indigenous Health, RNAO's IABPG Centre Nurses and other staff from 20 BPSO teams representing several health sectors across Northern Ontario Where: Best Western Plus Nor' Wester Hotel & Conference Centre (2080 Highway #61, Thunder Bay, Ontario) RNAO's Best Practice Guidelines (BPG) Program is funded by Ontario's Ministry of Health. It was envisioned by CEO Dr. Doris Grinspun in 1998 and launched in 1999 to provide the best available evidence for patient care across all health sectors and settings, with more than 50 guidelines developed to date. The Best Practice Spotlight Organization® (BPSO®) program supports service and academic institutions that have formally agreed to implement multiple RNAO BPGs over a three-year period, and evaluate their impact on patients, organizations and health systems. Launched in 2003, the BPSO program now has more than 1,500 BPSOs in Ontario, Canada and internationally. The Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario (RNAO) is the professional association representing registered nurses, nurse practitioners and nursing students in Ontario. Since 1925, RNAO has advocated for healthy public policy, promoted excellence in nursing practice, increased nurses' contribution to shaping the health system, and influenced decisions that affect nurses and the public we serve. For more information about RNAO, visit or follow us on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Eater
01-07-2025
- Eater
At Gatherings Café, a Chef Serves His Native Community With Nutritious, Affordable Meals
Walking into Gatherings Café, you immediately feel a sense of community. Newspapers in Ojibwe and Dakota are near the entrance, and a large gathering place reminiscent of traditional Ojibwe architecture welcomes you into the space, where you can eat, talk, and learn about Indigenous food and culture. Though Owamni and its parent organization's founder chef Sean Sherman frequently get the attention on a national stage for groundbreaking work in the Indigenous food movement, the Twin Cities are home to multiple Native-owned restaurants and cafes that contribute to the unique fabric of the city and help tell the story of decolonized foodways. Among them is Gatherings Café inside the Minneapolis American Indian Center. Run by executive chef Vernon DeFoe, a member of the Red Cliff Anishinaabe, the Gatherings Café mission is one of service, and DeFoe's culinary philosophy reflects the deep responsibility he feels to the Native community. Gatherings Café sticks with familiar presentations — sandwiches, tacos, salads, cakes, and muffins — all with Indigenous ingredients. The bison melt and bison tacos are the most popular items, but the cafe also serves fish melts and a 3 Sisters Salad with squash, hominy, beans, and a maple vinaigrette, along with pumpkin wild rice pancakes and veggie hashes for breakfast. DeFoe says the goal is to offer dishes that feel familiar to customers but also showcase Indigenous ingredients. 'Sometimes people have never had bison before and they don't really know what they're eating,' DeFoe says. The cafe's second goal is to ensure the restaurant is offering nourishing food that's also affordable. 'We're trying to keep that price point as low as we can,' he says. 'We're not trying to make money. It's for the community.' And even though DeFoe doesn't care as much about the frills, he would like to utilize the space to occasionally host tasting menus or more thematic pop–up dinners. 'It would be really cool, but it's not the priority. It's on the fancier side and I feel like most of the Indigenous restaurants, that's kind of what they're trying to go for. And I like to go out to eat at fancy restaurants.' Still, he remains cognizant of the people they serve and where they're located, saying, 'the whole point is to share the food with the community, and not everybody can afford a pop-up dinner, especially in the Native community.' Gathering's desserts are strong. A highlight is the wild rice cake with strawberry cream, made from wild rice flour they mill themselves. The cafe also sells pastries at the Indigenous-focused Four Sisters Farmers Market down the street. DeFoe notes they mill cornmeal and a wheat berry called moik pilkan — brought over by the Spanish back before the U.S. existed. 'It's colonial, but also Indigenous people used and thrived on it, since like the 1600s down in what's now called Arizona,' DeFoe says. DeFoe got his first restaurant job fresh out of high school, manning the grill and ice cream machine at a Dairy Queen. That was where he learned that he was good at cooking. He worked at various Minneapolis restaurants, including now closed Common Roots Cafe where DeFoe met Sherman, who was working as the head chef at the time. They'd talk often, DeFoe says, about the need for Indigenous food in Minneapolis. After Sherman quit Common Roots in 2013 to start the Sioux Chef, DeFoe eventually joined him, making connections and gaining deeper knowledge about precolonial foods, and also leading community outreach at North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS) Indigenous Food Lab. Then in 2023, the nonprofit Minneapolis American Indian Center hired him to run Gatherings Café as it renovated and expanded its mission. Beyond the restaurant, the center offers various resources to support the community, including Indigenous language learning opportunities, a culturally relevant Boys & Girls Club, various family services, workforce innovation, a Native Fitness and Nutrition program, and the Woodland Indian Crafts Gift Shop (owned by Charlie Stately, a Red Lake Ojibwe craftsman), and the Two Rivers Art Gallery. The Gatherings Café is also near the Native American Community Clinic and the Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center, which provides support to Indigenous women experiencing domestic abuse, as well as other Indian Health Board buildings. Crucially, it's also near Little Earth, a 9.4-acre, 212-unit Housing and Urban Development (HUD) subsidized housing complex. Founded in 1973, it's the only Indigenous preference project-based Section 8 rental assistance community in the United States. Gatherings Café works with the Little Earth Urban Farm, which, in partnership with the University of Minnesota, is starting an aquaponics lab to both increase access to Indigenous nutritional foods and contribute to the maintenance of ecosystems by harvesting walleye and perch after their complete lifecycle and using the project to benefit agricultural projects. 'It feels awesome because essentially we're all there to work for the community and we're all doing it in different ways,' says DeFoe. Even with the center's presence in the Cities, coupled with other Indigenous-owned businesses, like coffee shop Pow Wow Grounds just a block away, DeFoe says Indigenous-owned businesses still find it challenging to get off the ground. 'It's hard to get people to invest capital in Indigenous restaurants.' Marketing isn't one of DeFoe's strengths, but he acknowledges it's something he needs to work on. Soon, Gatherings Café wants to start doing external catering — right now it's only able to cater events that take place at the Minneapolis American Indian Center. 'It also serves breakfast from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. Monday through Friday, but DeFoe wants to start brunch service on the weekends. 'Right now, a lot of people can't make it in, because we're only open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays.' Despite the lack of focus on flair — or perhaps partly because of it — Gatherings Café has become a central part of the Indigenous community in Minneapolis. I visited the cafe earlier this year on Valentine's Day, February 14. It's also known as a day of Action and Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women across Indigenous communities within U.S. borders and in Canada. It's a day that the American Indian Movement pushed for to get recognition and justice. So every year, communities, including those here in Minneapolis, commemorate the day with marches and protests. In Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people are significantly more likely to be sexually assaulted, kidnapped, sold into human trafficking, and murdered. DeFoe, who is from Duluth, says he grew up near a massive shipping port and would hear stories about the workers there who kidnapped and murdered Native women. Stories like these — stories of injustice, of inequity — drive DeFoe. At his core, DeFoe feels that food is the vehicle he uses to connect with and serve his community. As community members marched in the falling snow, they shared stories about the loved ones that had brought them out. Casey Anderson, who is Ojibwe, said that she was marching to get the community to recognize the Indigenous women who have been murdered or kidnapped and to take action. Her sister, Rebecca Anderson, was brutally beaten and potentially sexually assaulted on Lake Street on September 3, 2015. Anderson, a mother of five children, died of her injuries nearly three months later, on November 26 — Thanksgiving Day, which many Indigenous people advocate to changing to a National Day of Mourning to acknowledge the genocide of Indigenous people that Thanksgiving represents. Casey Anderson says the response from the police at the time was 'nothing,' and her sister's homicide has continued to go unsolved. Another marcher, Lillian Whipple, who is Standing Rock Dakota, said that her cousin, Mato Dow, has been missing since October 13, 2017. He went missing on the Lower Sioux Indian Reservation, in Redwood County, Minnesota. 'They still haven't found him and there's no leads. My cousin and his mom had to fight to even get him on the news,' Whipple said. When asked Whipple what justice would look like for her, she said, 'There's never no justice. Because everybody's still going missing. There's never no justice for anybody.' The day of the march, Gatherings Café lived up to its name. It was a meeting point, a place for people to gather and grab food and drink, chat, meet new friends, reconnect with their community, and mourn those they'd lost. 'I'm pretty sure that was the most packed I've ever seen the building,' DeFoe says, adding that he spent the day running around passing out chili to keep folks warm. The Indigenous community's creativity, pride, and connectedness is what drives DeFoe, but it is also stories like these — stories of injustice, of inequity. DeFoe feels that food is the vehicle he uses to connect with and serve his community. 'It's nice that I work at a nonprofit and got paid to feed everybody at the march,' he says. 'That's way more fulfilling to me.' See More: Dining Out in the Twin Cities
Global News
20-06-2025
- General
- Global News
Guelph recognizes National Indigenous Peoples Day
Guelph is among the communities across Canada acknowledging National Indigenous Peoples Day. To celebrate the day on June 21, an event is taking place at Riverside Park on June 20, featuring music, dancing and drumming and a performance by Oneida Wolf Clan, Six Nations singer/songwriter Lacey Hill. National Indigenous Peoples Day corresponds with the summer solstice and has been celebrated since 1996. Amina Yousaf, associate head of Early Childhood Studies at the University of Guelph-Humber, said more attention is being paid to Indigenous history inside the classrooms. 'It's not just about the history, but it's also about how we're learning to relate to each other today,' Yousaf said. 'And that's why it's more widespread and being embedded within the educational system within different areas.' Get daily National news Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day. Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy Yousaf said that Indigenous studies is gaining more attention because people are starting to understand the importance of Indigenous history in Canadian history. Story continues below advertisement When Yousaf was younger, she said she didn't have the chance to learn more about Indigenous history and culture because it was often omitted. She said we all play a role to play in reconciliation and stresses the importance of teaching Indigenous history in elementary and secondary schools, not just in university. Since 2021, the Ontario government has been actively integrating Indigenous studies and making revisions to the school curriculum to incorporate Indigenous-focused content into subjects such as social studies and history. Yousaf said there are more educational resources available for students to learn about Indigenous history. Although the variety of accessible resources is helpful, she said more can be done. 'Make more space for Indigenous-led programs, for more research. And also, more leadership and bringing in more Indigenous voices and centring it within that knowledge. Just ensure that it is authentic,' she said. Yousaf said the history and culture of Indigenous Peoples Day should be acknowledged every day, not only on June 21. She also notes that students should educate themselves outside of the classroom, too.
CTV News
03-05-2025
- CTV News
Thunder Bay police officer charged following collision last year
A Thunder Bay Police Service (TBPS) officer has been charged with dangerous operation of a motor vehicle in connection with a 2024 collision that followed a police pursuit. The Ontario Provincial Police announced the charge against a 37-year-old constable in a news release this week. The incident occurred on Feb. 29, 2024, when a TBPS vehicle and a civilian car collided at the southern end of Neebing Avenue. Police watchdog investigation closed, outside of mandate According to a previous news release from the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), the officer had been pursuing the 31-year-old male driver for roughly four-and-a-half minutes over seven kilometres before the crash. The man was subsequently arrested and taken to hospital. The SIU, Ontario's civilian police oversight agency, initially investigated but discontinued its probe in June 2024 after reviewing medical records. Director Joseph Martino stated no fractures or serious injuries were confirmed, meaning the incident fell outside the SIU's mandate. The OPP took over the case at TBPS's request in July 2024. The officer is scheduled to appear in court on May 28 to answer the dangerous operation charge. CTV News contacted TBPS about the officer's employment status but has not received a response. Previous disciplinary issues The constable involved has previously faced disciplinary action. In 2023, they pleaded guilty at a Police Services Act hearing to three counts of misconduct – discreditable conduct, insubordination, and unlawful exercise of authority – stemming from a January 2022 encounter with an Indigenous man. Body-worn camera footage showed the officer using profanity, grabbing the man's arm, and pushing him against a bus shelter. As a result, the officer was temporarily demoted and ordered to complete Indigenous-focused training.
