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We’re an independent, online news magazine from B.C. founded in 2003. We’re devoted to fact-driven stories, reporting that informs and enlivens our democratic conversation. This feed features our stories, read by AI narration. Our reporting has changed laws, started movements and garnered numerous awards.

  1. 5 HRS AGO

    Brewster Kahle Is a Creative Force

    The wizard of the open internet has been working for decades to make knowledge more widely available. A Tyee interview. Brewster Kahle is a librarian — the internet's librarian, more specifically, a role he took on after helping to build the whole thing in the first place. The American-born tech whiz is one of the digital world's early architects. In the 1990s, Kahle worked to develop WAIS, the first client server text search system that enabled users to search databases on remote computers. It was a precursor to the World Wide Web. He co-founded Alexa Internet, an early web traffic analysis company later sold to Amazon for a cool $250 million. And in 2012, he became one of the first inductees to the Internet Hall of Fame, hailed as a global connector for founding the non-profit Internet Archive in 1996, as well its invaluable archiving tool, the Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine has been a free staple of the internet since well before most of us knew what a web crawler was. Last fall, the public service reached a major milestone, preserving its one trillionth website — a remarkable achievement, especially as the average life span of a web page is 100 days, according to Kahle. His Internet Archive, on the other hand, celebrates its 30th birthday on May 12. The internet has changed a great deal since Kahle's work began, and not always for the better. But his mission, Kahle insists, is still the same: universal access to all human knowledge, free of charge. There's still a ways to go, especially as media institutions and publishers consolidate power, enforce onerous copyright laws and tighten their grip over digital lending, limiting what libraries like Kahle's can even do. The culture deserves better, Kahle insists. "What you need to be able to do, to think critically, is compare and contrast," Kahle told The Tyee. "You need to be able to go and say, this is what this document, or this person, or this video, or whatever, said, and then try comparing it against something else. If you can't do that, if you can't rearrange things, then you're subject to whatever you were told, and it just washes over you." "It's very pervasive. If you take television or radio or podcasts, they all have this sort of characteristic. But now it's e-books, journal literature, magazines. They can change anything at any time. And they do! We know because we record these things." This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The Tyee: Before we get started, do you have any issues with Otter, the AI transcription software? I'm feeling self-conscious about it. Brewster Kahle: We're way into AI. But just not by the people you think. Looks like we've already started. Say more. So the Internet Archive Canada is a library, and we have enormous amounts of material from about 300 Canadian institutions. Digitizing books and pamphlets and newspapers, collecting web pages, Canadiana, going back and doing microfilm and microfiche. You're too young to — Hey now. I've heard of microfiche. You've done your time. Did you enjoy it? No! But digital, it's so good. So basically, we digitize a lot of this material and make it available through the Wayback Machine, and also on archive.org, where you can go and find all these materials and do a full text search. With AI technology, we can go and bring anything — river surveys, fish studies over decades — to life, and make them relevant to researchers, scholars and end users. What we want is a game with many winners. We want to make it so that lots of people can use these tools to go and bring these collections to life. So we're all for AI tools and technologies. It just has to be married with a set of policies, so you don't end up with just a few gigantic winners. Or actually, how it might work in Canada: no one doing anything, and then Canadians have to depend on American or Chinese megaliths to provide this, rather than 300 different organizations in Canada, all working together to [make] their collections dig...

    19 min

  2. 5 HRS AGO

    The Birds Who Call Us Home

    We're in the full flush of spring. Here on the east coast of Vancouver Island, signs of renewal abound, including winged arrivals from Espírito Santo, Brazil — the ravenous and ravishing purple martins. I, too, am feeling revived. This year, in addition to the usual milestone — a birthday, my 59th — spring brings something new: the first anniversary of having survived a major health crisis that nearly cost me my life. Short of a swift helping hand, I wouldn't be here today. I think the new me has become better at finding joy in and connection to the burgeoning life around me: the unfurling leaves, the riot of blooms, the return of migratory birds — especially the purple martins. While the females of this species are mostly shades of gray, the males are a resplendent, iridescent purple-black. North America's largest swallows, their acrobatic aerial feats as they pursue insects, and each other, command attention. Their complex vocalizations — urgent proclamations of metallic clicks and chirps reminiscent of R2-D2 — delight me every time. Clearly, I'm not alone in my appreciation. Six new nest boxes, funded in part by the city, have gone up at the end of the pier overlooking our small town's marina. Checking on them has become a highlight of my family's evening strolls, which can include sightings of river otters, seals and bald eagles vying for castoffs from fishers cleaning their catches. Over the years, I've noticed these shoebox-sized homes in several locations here on the island and wondered about the people who built them and the birds who use them. This year, the year of no more excuses, I decided it was time to follow my interest. I soon discovered that purple martins inspire deep and lasting devotion, and that this connection is older and more widespread than I could have imagined. Across North America, wherever purple martins are found, people are moved to care for them. But there are many species of birds, and other wild creatures, that could use a helping hand. What is it about these birds? For many purple martin people, the answer lies in an intimate, vital and ongoing relationship with something wild willing to meet us across the interspecies divide. Like all purple martins, the western subspecies (Progne subis arboricola) that nests in my neighborhood depends on a wide variety of flying insects to sustain itself and its chicks, including wasps and winged ants, bees, flies, beetles, moths, butterflies and dragonflies. Vancouver Island sits at the northern extent of their breeding range, which reaches all the way down to Southern California. They arrive here after a nearly 13,000-kilometre round trip to their wintering grounds along the southeast coast of Brazil, a feat that scientists only learned about in 2023. When it comes to choosing a home, western purple martins, like their cousins in the central and eastern part of the continent, prefer a turnkey residence. Their natural nesting sites — abandoned woodpecker cavities, snags in mature trees — have dwindled as development and logging have claimed more and more habitat. But thanks to the efforts of local individuals and organizations, nest boxes like the ones on our pier helped save this species from vanishing here in British Columbia back in the 1980s, when only five known nesting pairs remained. Today, there are an estimated 1,200 in the province, and as many as 247,800 individual western purple martins throughout their range, though the population is decreasing. Another subspecies, the desert purple martin, still nests in cavities bored by other birds in the saguaro and cardon cacti of Arizona and northern Mexico. Relatively little is known about this subspecies, although their numbers — perhaps 6,000 — are also thought to be falling. Still, taken together, the western and desert subspecies make up only 2.9 per cent of the overall purple martin population. The far more numerous and widespread eastern subspecies is found across most of the eastern half of th...

    13 min

  3. 5 HRS AGO

    Musician, Photographer, Environmentalist. This Is Ora Cogan

    The acclaimed Nanaimo artist is embarking on an international tour. Her work grapples with ecology, politics and what it means to be human. Ora Cogan's gothic country chords hit with a dread that goes straight to the pit of your stomach. Her voice soars above, letting the feeling loose to spiral up like smoke. At least, it usually does. The Nanaimo-based musician lost her voice the week before the release show for her new album, Hard-Hearted Woman, at the Pearl in Vancouver in mid-March. Cogan turned her guitar towards her bandmates and joined them in the fray of sound. She sounded real, raw and a little weary. It was a good introduction to an album concerned with choosing feeling over dissociation in the numbing cruelty of the 2026 news cycle. "Imagine I've been singing to you in a bar for two days," she told us from the stage. "I should have cancelled this show tonight, but I'm here because I love you." Cogan has lost and found her voice many times along a non-linear path that took her from playing noise shows in Victoria to documenting the frontlines of land defence in B.C.'s old growth forests. While music and environmental photojournalism have occupied distinct chapters in Cogan's life, she came to both with a similar impulse: to face hard things head on. Her art grapples with ecological grief, everyday cruelty, and "whatever is going on in my small town," she said. Cogan was born in the Gulf Islands to an artist mother and a photojournalist father. She was raised on folk music from across the map, from the klezmer and Ladino music of her Jewish heritage to Irish fiddle tunes. At age 16, she left home to train as a silversmith on Gabriola Island. Now, she calls Nanaimo home. She sings like a lonesome cowboy, but she swaps the open space of the plains for the ancient forests and secluded beaches of Vancouver Island. She does a lot of her writing outdoors, in "strange little bizarre worlds" of estuaries, rivers and abandoned mining equipment. The Gulf Islands have breathtaking natural beauty supporting some of the most abundant ecosystems on earth. They also bear the marks of resource industries' booms, busts and afterlives. So do Cogan's lyrics. There are hints of natural disaster imagery in the album — on "River Rise" she sings, "How can you see the stars through all the smoke?" While her lyrics come from a nebulous place that she hesitates to define, they also come from the place where she's from. "The external landscape mirrors the internal landscape," she said. Art helps the impossible make sense Cogan had been involved in environmental justice movements for a decade as a grassroots organizer, including working in media and communications. She worked with Sacred Earth Solar, an Indigenous women-led coalition promoting renewable energy transitions, and directed a documentary in 2012 interviewing Heiltsuk women about the risks of an oil spill along the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline. Cogan never thought she'd follow in her father's photojournalist footsteps. But, when land defenders blockaded logging roads to protect the last old growth forests on Vancouver Island in 2021, she picked up her camera and went to document what has been called the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. For six months, Cogan embedded herself in the camps at Fairy Creek on Ditidaht and Pacheedaht territory. She worked with reporters to document road blockades, tree-sits and police response for Teen Vogue, Vice, Ricochet and the Narwhal. "We all deserve clean water and fresh air, which have a very intrinsic relationship with the forest," she said. Her portraits capture the resilience and vulnerability of land defenders, some as young as 13, defying a court injunction. Her photos also capture the RCMP violence and repression that protesters — and press — faced in the injunction zone. Cogan witnessed land defenders thrown to the ground, insulted and arrested in the thousands by RCMP officers. When she documented an August 20...

    8 min

  4. 6 HRS AGO

    Ryan Gosling Will Save Us All

    This week while enduring the most recent stomach-churning arc in American politics, I was reminded of a famous quote from the late American biologist and naturalist E.O. Wilson. "The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and godlike technology." Preach, brother! Here on Earth, the looming spectre of a mushroom cloud hangs over our collective heads. And out there in outer space, a team of astronauts are providing a real-time example of what people are capable of when they work together. The Artemis II mission this month has reminded folks that space travel is extraordinary, especially when it is undertaken by genuine astronauts, not billionaires and celebrity space tourists. The week has been tinged with the sense that we're standing on the brink of something transformative, for good or bad. Or both. In these moments, I turn to culture to not only navigate current events, but to provide greater context to the turbulence and upheaval. Two new movies — one a blockbuster smash and the other a powerful Canadian documentary — helped me make sense of the moment. Maybe they can help you too. In 'Project Hail Mary,' a reminder of smart possibility Project Hail Mary, an unlikely science fiction hit featuring the almighty Ryan Gosling and an animated rock alien, has the good fortune of being the right film at the right time. The story, in short, follows a high school physics teacher named Ryland Grace (Gosling), a disgraced scientist who is whiling away his time explaining the principles of science to spotty teenagers. Then the government comes a' calling. Seems the world is ending, yet again, this time because of some pesky little sprites. Infectious micro-organisms called "astrophage" are proliferating on the sun's surface. Thanks to their voracious appetites, the sun's light is dimming, threatening the future of life on Earth. After getting drummed out of the higher echelons of molecular biology due to authoring a paper that went against the current school of scientific thought, Grace is hiding out, teaching high school and nursing his ego. Even when given the opportunity to save the world and prove his thesis correct, Grace almost doesn't take the golden ticket on offer. Insecurity, awkwardness and generally just being a big chicken stands in the way of greatness. Adapted from Andy Weir's 2021 novel, the film stays true to the major plot points of Weir's work, with the bonus addition of Gosling's incontrovertible charm to add to the action. Grace isn't exactly a hero for the ages. A screaming coward and a man for whom relationships with other humans are something of a challenge, he has no family, no partner and doesn't even own a dog, as Eva Stratt, the head of the project states in her character's clinical cadence. She's not wrong. Stratt (played with deadpan authority by Sandra Hüller) should know. She, too, is obviously a person for whom ordinary human interactions are not easy. But Grace does have one quality: the ability to think outside the box, in all senses of the phrase. He is the first scientist to figure out the nature of astrophage, including the fact they're horny little devils who traipse across space for an all-out orgy on the planet Venus. While you're pondering this particular curiosity, the film is rocketing ahead, placing audiences in the heat of the action when Grace wakes up aboard a spacecraft, light years from earth. The rest of the three-person crew has perished, and he is alone and suffering from retrograde amnesia. The rest of the narrative takes shape as he figures out why he's there, what the stakes are, and how to address the problem, all with the help of an alien rock creature dubbed Rocky, naturally. The more interesting part of the film's success is the reaction of audiences. That people are compelled by the idea that co-operation, courage and selflessness are not only important but critical to humanity's survival shouldn't come as a surprise...

    9 min

  5. 22 HRS AGO

    J.B. MacKinnon's Vancouver Tree Tour

    Help us build a citizens' map of great trees. Do you have a favourite to tell us about? … Article written by J.B. MacKinnon. Big, old and much-loved trees are vanishing in Vancouver. The city is still home to many, many wonderful trees, though, and celebrating them is their best defence. After I wrote "They Cut Down 'Grandpapa'" — published yesterday in these pages — The Tyee team asked what trees in the city stood out to me as I talked to urban foresters and searched for special examples. I came up with a dozen — a list you can tick, or tour in a day. These are trees with some combination of history, character, old age or sweeping size, and they're all on public land. Most have been recognized by urban forest fans for decades. This list, with illustrations of the actual trees by Nora Kelly, is meant to be only a beginning. The greatest threat to Vancouver's trees is that we don't know which ones are treasured, who treasures them and why. This is where you come in. Do you have a favourite city tree, tree-lined street or grove? Let us know (1) about the tree, (2) where it is and (3) why the tree matters — to you, your people, your neighbourhood or even to urban wildlife. Photos welcome! Or maybe a beloved tree has recently been cut down in your neighbourhood? Tell us at editor[at]thetyee.ca and put the words "favourite tree" in the subject line. In the meantime, here's my list including co-ordinates — and a map with precisely set pins — to make it easy to find all 12 sites. 1. 'Somei-yoshino' cherries (illustrated at the top of this story): These four grizzled survivors are among the very few remaining specimens from a 1935 donation of 1,000 saplings by the Uyeda family, who were forcibly removed from Vancouver during the Second World War Japanese Canadian internment. The trees' blossoms are now scanty, but long marked spring's arrival for North Shore commuters. They stand near the Georgia Street entrance to Stanley Park just to the west of Stanley Park Drive and south of the roundabout connecting Stanley Park Drive to Pipeline Road. 2. Caucasian wingnut, Comox Street at Chilco Street: Some would call it undercounting, but Vancouver Park Board data shows just eight such wingnuts in the city. This is the greatest among them, with long, pendulous flowers in spring. 3. Red oak, Alexandra Park: Vancouver's stoutest, most Lord of the Rings oak was likely planted in the first decade of the 1900s, making it well over a century old. 4. Dutch elms: Celebrated turn-of-the-20th-century lifeguard Serafim "Joe" Fortes knew this grove; he lived in a cottage here. A plaque honours George Wainborn, Vancouver's longest-serving park commissioner. The copse, which has been lit up at Christmas since the '90s, overlooks the Inukshuk monument at English Bay and waves across Beach Avenue at the red oak of Alexandra Park. 5. Douglas fir, Laurel Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues: My favourite tree in the city stands in the middle of an alley — a supersized version of a flower coming up through a crack in the concrete. What is its story? If anyone knows, I'm all ears. 6. 'Ojochin' cherry at the Japanese Canadian War Memorial, Stanley Park: Donated by visiting Japanese mayors, this white-blossomed tree has kept watch over the monument since 1925. The trunk is now held together by an industrial-size screw. 7. Giant sequoia, loop road, Queen Elizabeth Park: Landmark sequoias dot the city, most notably on the nearby Cambie Heritage Boulevard, but a friend correctly assured me there's something special about this hidden one, still young at 70-something years old. 8. Pyramidal European hornbeams, Dumfries Street from 47th to 49th Avenue: Another friend recommended this cathedral-like street of inverted-triangle trees. Sharp-shinned hawks were nesting here when I visited. 9. Tree of heaven, McAuley Park, Fraser Street at Kingsway: A balm to weary Kingsway commuters, this tree pretty much is McAuley Park, which is also home to a monument to the 50,00...

    5 min

  6. 22 HRS AGO

    Eight New Canadian Poetry Collections to Celebrate National Poetry Month

    New and seasoned poets explore identity, memory, disability and more. … Article written by Literary Press Group of Canada. April is National Poetry Month, and there's no better way to celebrate than with an exciting new (or new-to-you) collection of poetry from a Canadian independent publisher. These eight collections from debut and veteran writers tackle themes as wide-ranging as grief, disability, war, colonialism, labour and motherhood. Discover or rediscover poetry this April, and happy National Poetry Month! A powerful, elegiac new collection by an acclaimed poet and disability activist The Way Disabled People Love Each Other By Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (Arsenal Pulp Press) This is the latest poetry book by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, the disability activist and author of such seminal disability studies books as Care Work and The Future Is Disabled. The Way Disabled People Love Each Other honours the crip community by articulating its complexities, ambitions and utter humanity. It's a road map for survivors looking for something that's neither a happy Hollywood ending nor a transformative justice fairy tale — not the healing we wished for, but the healing we find anyway. Brimming with odes, elegies and mourning songs, these poems sparkle like switchblades and offer new possibilities for love, grief and memory. A major achievement rich with searing wisdom, complicated grace and magisterial craft Cannibal Rats By Richard Greene (Véhicule Press) Reporting from locales as disparate as the Civil War battlefields of America and the storm-worn shores of Newfoundland, "where, as almost nowhere else, you can hold / in hand the inner substance of the world," Governor General's Award winner Richard Greene bears witness to historical injustices, meditates on how "art and memory unravel" under the auspices of mortality, and wrestles with the loss of a beloved mother. "There's a limit to what the heart can learn / without pause and repair," he writes in the stunning travelogue that ends the book, "but I should return / to this place of bayonets and canon, / small gesture of one still living to what is gone." Cannibal Rats is a major achievement from one of Canada's most accomplished poets. A lyric meditation on the migrations of the Lenape people in the US Midwest and southern Canada Commonwealth By D.A. Lockhart (Kegedonce Press) In Commonwealth, D.A. Lockhart tackles the multiple meanings of home for the Lenape in the wake of the colonial enterprise: home as a people, home as an idea, home as an ideal and, ultimately, home as a place just over the horizon that seems to retreat the closer you get. Lockhart tackles these various meanings unflinchingly and honestly, yet with exquisite tenderness and a lyric sensibility that contrasts with the Rust Belt grit of contemporary Lenape territory. He never lets you forget that the industrial heartland of latter-day North America is one of the most traumatized parts of Turtle Island, yet there is so much opportunity for joy and celebration, for its trees will always stand, its birds sing and its spirits inhabit every cubic inch of space. A Canadian literary icon sharply observes humanity, nature and aging First Light, Last Light By Glen Sorestad (Shadowpaw Press) Glen Sorestad became the country's first provincial poet laureate in 2000, and since then he has continued crafting poems full of warmth and humanity. In First Light, Last Light, his 17th collection and his first in six years, he writes sensitively about the present and the past, friends and family, and the power of nature. Loss and grief are balanced with wonder and joy. These are poems that range widely in time and space but are always grounded in the details of daily life: a fox in the backyard, a snowy owl that causes a traffic jam in an urban mall's entrance, a visit to a familiar place turned unfamiliar by time, even the dreaded annual medical examination. Once again, Glen Sorestad has penned poems that will deli...

    9 min

  7. 22 HRS AGO

    Why a BC MLA Charged with Assault Is Still On the Job

    Despite calls for Hon Chan's resignation, he can't be forced out. … Article written by Andrew MacLeod. Even when a British Columbia MLA is facing serious criminal charges, as Richmond Centre representative Hon Chan is, there are few means to fire them. Chan has sat as an Independent since late March when the Conservative Party of BC booted him from its caucus after learning that he has been charged with assault, assault by choking and uttering threats for offences alleged to have occurred against an intimate partner on Jan. 12, 2024, in Richmond. Colleagues in the legislature can call for his resignation, as BC NDP and BC Green MLAs have. Victoria-Beacon Hill NDP MLA Grace Lore said it's inappropriate for Chan to continue serving as an MLA. "His constituents, survivors of intimate partner violence, and all British Columbians deserve better than that," Lore said in a March 26 statement. "Intimate partner violence occurs in every corner of this province, in every kind of community, at every level of income and status. It is a public safety issue." And West Vancouver-Sea to Sky BC Green MLA Jeremy Valeriote said: "It's incumbent on Members of the Legislative Assembly to uphold the highest standards — and to face accountability if they do not." But it is not up to them whether or not Chan loses his seat, and so far he has declined to resign, saying in a post on X that he "disagrees with the allegation and looks forward to defending himself through the legal process." Instead, whether he can continue as an MLA is governed by the Constitution Act until voters get their say in the next election, scheduled for 2028. It says a person ceases to be an MLA and their seat becomes vacant if "the member is convicted of an indictable offence that may only be prosecuted by way of indictment." In Canadian law, indictable offences are serious crimes like murder and robbery. It's not known if the Crown will proceed by way of indictment against Chan or file summary charges, which carry lesser penalties. And like anyone charged with a crime, he is innocent until proven guilty. With a first appearance scheduled for April 22, it will be some time before a court hears his case and decides whether or not to convict him. The charges come as intimate partner violence rates continue to rise in Canada. Between 2018 and 2023 the police-reported offence rate increased 13.8 per cent across the country, according to Statistics Canada. In B.C., the rate increased 6.6 per cent. Advocates note a large number of cases are not reported to police. The province's constitution also allows for a seat to become vacant after an MLA dies, becomes a member of the federal House of Commons, fails to attend the legislative assembly during a whole session without the assembly's permission, becomes a subject or citizen of a foreign state or power or "makes a declaration or acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence" to a foreign state or power. Dual citizens can serve as MLAs if they are dual citizens prior to their election but may forfeit their seat if they become a citizen of another country after they are elected. The other way to fire an MLA is through the Recall and Initiative Act, a process that involves collecting signatures from at least 40 per cent of people who were registered voters in the district on election day and who remain registered voters in the province. "I'll tell you one thing, it's rigged to not work," said Salvatore Vetro, the proponent on a failed 2023 effort to recall Premier David Eby in Vancouver-Point Grey. Canvassers submitted 2,737 signatures to Elections BC, far short of the 16,449 required. The signature requirement is high considering how few people vote, and 60 days is a short time to collect them, Vetro said. "It's so bloody hard," he said. "It's rigged against you. They never meant recall to work." Since 1995, Elections BC's website says, the chief electoral officer has approved 30 recall petitions. None has succeeded. The clo...

    5 min

  8. 23 HRS AGO

    RCMP Seeks to Quash Discrimination Ruling by Human Rights Tribunal

    The force is arguing the tribunal shouldn't provide police oversight. But an expert says the appeal reflects resistance to reform. … Article written by Amanda Follett Hosgood. The RCMP is asking the Federal Court to overturn a finding that its officers discriminated against Indigenous people when they investigated historical abuse allegations at two northern B.C. schools. The force says the decision infringes on police independence — and that police investigations are not a "service" under Canadian human rights law. Last month, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled that race and ethnic origin were likely factors "in some of the adverse differential treatment or denial of service" experienced by First Nations former students who shared accounts of physical, sexual and emotional abuse with police during an investigation more than a decade ago. On April 1, the RCMP filed an application for judicial review of the decision. In the appeal, a federal Department of Justice lawyer wrote that the tribunal strayed beyond its jurisdiction in determining that RCMP criminal investigations constitute a "service... customarily available to the public" under the Canadian Human Rights Act. The force is arguing that investigations are a public good, not an individual service, and is asking for the court to quash the entire ruling. "Core law enforcement functions such as decisions made by police in the course of a criminal investigation are not a 'benefit' extended to any individual member of the public but rather are in the general public interest," Department of Justice lawyer Whitney Dunn wrote in the application. Dunn also represented the RCMP at the inquiry, which held hearings from May 2023 until February 2024. Dunn said complaints against the RCMP should be handled and adjudicated by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission and the courts, rather than the tribunal. One legal expert told The Tyee she has heard that argument before. Jessica Buffalo, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia's Peter A. Allard School of Law, said the RCMP's appeal fits a pattern of resistance within the force to changes in policing. Buffalo is not involved in the tribunal case, but she said it's similar to others she's worked on, including in her role as academic director at the Indigenous Community Legal Clinic, which pairs UBC law students with Indigenous people seeking free legal advice in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The clinic is currently handling a case against the RCMP that's before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, and Buffalo said the tribunal's ruling will be helpful. "We get that with other files that we have, too — that 'No, this is not a human rights issue,' so I really appreciated the tribunal's take on that," said Buffalo, who holds the traditional name Bear Woman and is from Samson Cree Nation. "This is something that is happening over and over again," said Buffalo, who disagrees with the argument that police aren't serving individuals in the course of investigations. "You are providing a service that requires people to come and talk to you, to trust you and be very vulnerable with you." She said practices that are discriminatory and make victims feel disbelieved erode trust between Indigenous communities and police. The complaint that led to the recent tribunal decision was first brought to the Canadian Human Rights Commission by six members of the Lake Babine Nation in 2017. The commission investigated and referred it for inquiry in 2020. In a statement of particulars filed with the tribunal in June 2020, the complainants wrote that RCMP investigators held "stereotypes and biased attitudes" against Indigenous people that, when coupled with favouritism toward "a powerful non-Indigenous individual," resulted in a flawed and incomplete investigation, contrary to the Canadian Human Rights Act. The man at the centre of the allegations was a former gym teacher who taught at Immaculata school in Burns Lake in the l...

    9 min
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Ratings & Reviews

4.2
out of 5
13 Ratings

About

We’re an independent, online news magazine from B.C. founded in 2003. We’re devoted to fact-driven stories, reporting that informs and enlivens our democratic conversation. This feed features our stories, read by AI narration. Our reporting has changed laws, started movements and garnered numerous awards.

Information

  • Creator
    The Tyee
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    47
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025
  • Show Website
    The Tyee: Audio Edition

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