MMIWG Inquiry loses another high profile staffer & Stingray Music partners with APTN

MMIWG Inquiry loses another major player

Yet another high-profile Indigenous figure has stepped down from Canada’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. This time the team lost Waneek Horn-Miller, its director of community engagement, who said she is leaving to focus on her family.

Horn-Miller is a Mohawk, a former Olympian and a survivor of the Oka Crisis in 1990 where she was stabbed by a bayonet during an altercation with a Canadian soldier. She is leaving a key role at the Inquiry, as a number of family members of victims, activists and academics have criticized its lack of outreach and transparency. Several signed an open letter to Prime Minister Trudeau demanding a hard reset to the “deeply misguided” inquiry.

“They have continually dismissed our concerns, refused to take steps to rebuild trust, and have maintained a deeply misguided approach that imposes a harmful, colonial process on us,” says the letter. “This has and continues to create trauma as well as insecurity and a lack of safety for our families, communities, and loved ones.”

Aside from Horn-Miller, the inquiry has lost director of communications Sue Montgomery, manager of community relations Tanya Kappo (a founding member of Idle No More), original commissioner Marilyn Poitras and executive director Michele Moreau.

 

Stingray Music partners with APTN

Stingray Music has announced a partnership with Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), Native Communications Inc. (NCI-FM Manitoba) and First Peoples Radio (FPR) in Ottawa and Toronto to bring the music of artists from Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities to a worldwide audience via two television streaming channels.

As of a July 26 press conference in Montreal, users of the Stingray Music mobile app can now listen to channels such as “Aboriginal Music from Canada – Contemporary” and “Aboriginal Music from Canada – Retro”. Both promote Native musicians and stream their songs to listeners across the globe.

Stingray celebrated the new partnership as a way to “maintain and strengthen its position as the only streaming service dedicated to promoting Canadian music from Coast to Coast to Coast, at home and abroad.”

“We could not claim to be a truly Canadian music service without promoting the talent of our country’s First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities,” said Mathieu Péloquin, Senior Vice-President, Marketing and Communications of Stingray. “We are truly honoured that APTN, NCI-FM Manitoba, and FPR choose Stingray as a partner to share the vitality of their music with the world.”