Yellowknives Dene First Nation

Let's dive into the best of our election night coverage.

Coming up, Melissa Sire on becoming the new mayor, how Garrett Cochran conceded, and Cody Drygeese wins a ton of votes as he becomes what we believe is the first Yellowknives Dene member of city council.

Former Mayor Mark Heyck and outgoing Mayor Ben Hendriksen will give us their analysis too, and we'll hear from a few others who made it onto council for the next four years.

First, let's do a quick rundown, shall we? So we are all on the same page.

I stand here with no regrets, only immense gratitude and deep pride in our work together over the past few weeks.

Cody Drygeese picked up far more votes than any other candidate for city council last night.

That's an important moment for relations between the city and the Yellowknives Dene First Nation.

We'll get into that in more detail in a moment.

It's how we, we make leaders, and, um, that work and framing that work in a way that's meaningful to the community, I think, is a really important part of it.

I always tell a story about one of our elders that we work with from YK, from the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, Charlie, and we were on an island in, uh, Tinde, which is a big lake in the north.

Some people were living in cabins.

Some people were living in canvas tents.

My married English name is Michelle Robinson and I use they/them pronouns.

My Dene lineage roots me in the land of the Great Bear Lake Tribe in Treaty 11 in Delany.

I'm a native to Turtle Island and my Dene nation is uninvited to this area of Klincho Tené Indahe in Saa’tu Dené meaning many big dog town, named after the Calgary Stampede.

I was born in Calgary or in Blackfoot Mohkinstsis as Michelle Elliott, an English name that has afforded me privilege in an English colonial world.

Acknowledging proximity to whiteness is important because the darker the skin, the more racism a person experiences in colonial spaces.

My late great-grandfather is Milo Bewill from Delany.

His daughter Alice is my now late granny.

My mother and I are Northern Slavey Dene or Saa’tu, but my Indian Act and Post Status Card by the Canadian government says Yellowknives Dene.

We can also search through the infrastructure bank.

Actually, something to consider as well is getting into a relationship and signing with the MOU with the YKDFN, seeing if we can actually access some funds from the Indigenous Infrastructure Bank.

There's an incredible opportunity with working within collaboration to address this, as this water line provides half the drinking water for half the population of the NWT.

Now, when it comes down to straight up capital, I've never been a huge fan of capital legacy projects.

Thank you so much, Ali.

This is an incredibly important question.

We are actually in the midst of negotiation of the MOU, the memorandum of understanding between us and the YKDFN.

I think there's a lot of important aspects within that document that need to be addressed, not only for shared

His daughter, Alice, is my now late granny.

My mother and I are Northern Slavey Dene or Saa’tuú Dene, but my Indian Act imposed status card by the Canadian government says Yellowknives Dene First Nation.

Through my father, I am a daughter of the Mayflower and a daughter of the American Revolution.

Having a Canadian Indian Act imposed status card is a colonial construct by Canadian policies meant to divide indigenous people's inherent rights.

[upbeat music] Welcome to the Family Medicine Matters podcast, Real Stories, Real Solutions.

I'm Sarah Cook, a family doctor living in Yellowknives Dene territory in the Northwest Territories, originally from Mi'kmaqi, Nova Scotia, and president of the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

Family medicine in Canada is under serious strain.

Right now, millions of people in Canada don't have a family doctor.

We're excited to be here.

We're gonna be, uh, joined as well by the host of the Native Calgarian podcast, uh, Michelle Robinson, SaaToh Dene, a, a member of Yellowknives Dene First Nation, ah, and the host of the Native Calgarian podcast.

They are a Queen's Platinum Jubilee medal recipient, a, a former political candidate, a, a public speaker, the founder of an Indigenous book club, the co-founder of the Reconciliation Action Group, and a mom.

Michelle's grandmother attended the Catholic Sacred Heart Indian Residential School in Fort Providence, and her aunt and uncle attended in Yellowknife at the Anglican Bon Pas Hall.

I, I didn't understand what a status native was.

And, uh, all, all I knew was that my dad, who was white, had custody of me, so I didn't understand.

Um, it, it's taken a long time for me to get here and even identify proudly as SaaToh Dene and as a member of Yellowknives Dene First Nation because of the...

You know, we weren't taught to be proud of who we were when we were growing up.