“In the case of something like yoga, it is
not possible to return economic control and ownership to the originating
culture,” one professor says. Adrian Humphreys:
Pundits from around the globe weighed in on the death of a yoga class
for students at the University of Ottawa over questions of cultural
sensitivity, often awkwardly squeezing in “bending over backwards” or
“tying themselves in knots” puns in lampooning out-of-control political
correctness.
Student yoga joins a long list of art, fashion, music, sports and
activities chastised as insensitive or racist acts by a Western or white
majority cultural appropriation from minority communities.
Cultural appropriation, as a term, was once largely confined to
academic critiques of colonialism, but has become an increasingly
popular watchword in social media and among activists.
But is yoga one complaint too far?
It leaves campus administrators, public relations experts and,
perhaps, almost everyone else pondering when appreciation became
appropriation, mimicry exploitation and cultural interest insult...Continue reading, story in the comments...
US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro and the US State Department condemned the murder of 18-year-old American citizen Ezra Schwartz late Friday night, more than 24 hours after he was killed in a Palestinian terror attack in Gush Etzion.
"As Shabbat begins, we mourn with the family and friends of Ezra
Schwartz z"l, an American citizen murdered yesterday in a terrorist
attack," Shapiro posted, at 4:35 pm Friday local time. "Our thoughts and
prayers are with them, and with the families of the other victims of
yesterday's attacks. May God bring them comfort."...Continue reading...
Watch moment of silence: New England Patriots Stop to Honor Ezra Schwartz, Murdered in Israel for Being a Jew
Legendary singer-songwriter Ron Hynes, who documented hope and
heartbreak in his native Newfoundland for decades with songs like Sonny's Dream and Atlantic Blue, has died at the age of 64.
Close friends of the famous musician confirmed to CBC News that Hynes died Thursday and that family are flying home.
Hynes, who had been battling cancer, was rushed to hospital earlier this week.
Hynes, known for years as "the man of a thousand songs," was born in December 1950 in St. John's. He was raised in Ferryland.
Through a career that spanned more than three decades, Hynes
became known as one of Newfoundland and Labrador's greatest
singer-songwriters. His songs became commonplace in St. John's, around
the bay and indeed around the world.
His songs have been covered by more than 100 artists from all over the world.
Hynes released seven solo albums, starting with Discovery in 1972. The record holds the distinction of being the first made up of all original material from a Newfoundland artist...Continue reading...
by ahnationtalk: PENTICTON/OKANAGAN (SYLIX) TERRITORY, B.C. – The wave of economic
progress taking hold at the Penticton Indian Band has caught the
attention of national business leaders and other First Nations across
Canada.
The Band’s development corporation has been named Economic Developer
of the Year by the Council for the Advancement of Native Development
Officers (CANDO) at their 22nd Annual National Conference held recently
in Toronto.
“We’re very honoured to receive this award. It’s a huge boost of
confidence for our community and confirmation that we’re moving in the
right direction,” said Chief Kruger.
This is the second major national award this year for the Penticton
Indian Band Development Corporation, having won the 2015 Aboriginal
Economic Development Corporation Award from the Canadian Council for
Aboriginal Business.
“I am so proud of our community, giving us the mandate to move
forward with economic development projects that give people a chance for
a more prosperous future,” said Chief Kruger.
The Penticton Indian Band, with the largest reserve lands in British
Columbia, is moving forward on multiple fronts to strengthen the
community’s economy and culture. Within the past three years, the band
has opened a new $10-million community school, opened a state-of-the-art
community health centre powered by geothermal energy, and built the
Satikw Crossing bridge spanning the Okanagan River Channel. That $7.4
million project will open up 150 acres (60 hectares) of prime
development land along Highway 97 in the heart of Penticton...Continue reading...
These colorful homes are bulletproof,
fireproof, and can withstand earthquakes. They also maintain a
comfortable temperature, produce zero carbon emissions, and are powered
by solar and methane gas from recycled waste. Read here, photos.
EU Council President Van Rompuy announces the existence of the one-world government since 2009. Posted by Anders under Deutsch, Euromed:
I found that this is the Rockefeller/ Brzezinkski Trilateral Commission´s plan, the EU being the actual model for the elite´s one-world government, which is Agenda 21, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2013. Its terrible urbanization was praised by EU Council President, the Jesuit and Bilderberger Hermann van Rompuy. The EU project incl. the euro was launched and initially paid for by the Rothschild/Rockefeller Council on Foreign Relations in collaboration with Nazis, as a corporative EU Ltd. with theNazi- IG Farben as its model. For many years, the EU was financed with recovered Nazi money and was planned in 1944 by the Gestapo as the 4. Reich: A German financial superpower under supranational umbrella (The Trilateral Commission´s men from Rothschild´s Goldman Sachs) for Europe´s New Order.
The One-World-State is to be a merger of the North American Free Trade Association - the NAFTA (developing into the North American Union) , the EU and the ASEAN + 3
for a start. States which are opposed to this transglobal belt, i.e.
Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries, are being conquered
militarily for the NWO.
The Arabs never took an interest in the Euro-Mediterranean Process -
apart from taking the money that the EU so generously offers for
projects. This money is widely not implemented on the agreed projects -
it was invested by the European Investment Bank so that itlargely disappeared into tax havens and the pockets of “partner” dictator friends. Now the EU offers “partner countries” an “advanced status” - already bestowed upon Morocco, which is known for the genocide of Western Saharan Africans and terrible persecutions of Christians. This country and Tunisia (next “advanced partner”) are governed by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood has a detailed plan for the Islamization of Europe - apparently with the blessing of the EU. Also, Jordan has an “advanced status“. This means the four freedoms of the EU, including - in time - free immigration into the EU for such “partners”!..Continue reading...
For the past year, astronaut Scott Kelly has been tweeting breathtaking photos of Earth from the International Space Station.
On Sunday, he may have tweeted a photo of something far more astounding — a UFO.
That, at least, is what conspiracy theorists and alien obsessives would have you believe.
Their proof is “clearly” visible in a photo Kelly tweeted on Sunday from the ISS over India.
“In the upper right of the photo you can clearly see a large object with two lights on each end,” alien hunter Sonofmabarker wrote on YouTube (see video below). “It also appears to be very large and constructed.”...Continue reading... sonofmabarker
Creeden Martell, Saskatoon StarPhoenix: A man who survived a concentration camp during the Holocaust shared his experience with students in Warman.
Nate Leipciger, who has been speaking for 40 years, described the
atrocities of war committed by the Nazis against Jews, Italians,
political prisoners of war, homosexuals and his own family to a silent
gymnasium of staff and 750 students on Thursday.
“We were confined to the barracks (in Auschwitz II, Birkenau),”
Leipciger said of his most traumatic memory, which took place on Yom
Kippur in 1943. “The Nazis decided to play God. … I saw something I wish
I never saw. I saw naked women being transported to the gas chamber.
That was a very traumatic moment. Because years later, I found out that
among those women were my sister and my mother.”
Leipciger described the Nazis invading Poland and closing Jewish
schools when he was 11. He lived in a ghetto for four years. There,
ghetto prisoners would hide every time the Nazis came by to send people
to the camps.
Leipciger told the story of a woman and her child who were denied
entrance to a hiding place. He said the woman refused to leave and the
people inside let her and the child in with them. The Nazis
later declared the hiding spot clear, but when the woman emerged,
crying, her baby was dead. The infant had been suffocated.
“When you see people die, you don’t get used to it. Every human being
that dies is a new trauma. Every single human being is a life. It’s not
a number, like my number on my arm,” Leipciger said...Continue reading...
A new gene
that makes bacteria highly resistant to a last-resort class of
antibiotics has been found in people and pigs in China - including in
samples of bacteria with epidemic potential, researchers said on
Wednesday. The discovery was
described as "alarming" by scientists, who called for urgent
restrictions on the use of polymyxins - a class of antibiotics that
includes the drug colistin and is widely used in livestock farming.
"All
use of polymyxins must be minimized as soon as possible and all
unnecessary use stopped," said Laura Piddock, a professor of
microbiology at Britain's Birmingham University who was asked to comment
on the finding.
Researchers led by
Hua Liu from the South China Agricultural University who published
their work in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal found the gene,
called mcr-1, on plasmids - mobile DNA that can be easily copied and
transferred between different bacteria.
This suggests "an alarming potential" for it to spread and diversify between bacterial populations, they said.
The
team already has evidence of the gene being transferred between common
bacteria such as E.coli, which causes urinary tract and many other types
of infection, and Klesbsiella pneumoniae, which causes pneumonia and
other infections.
This suggests "the progression from extensive drug resistance to pandrug resistance is inevitable," they said.
"(And) although currently confined to China, mcr-1 is likely to emulate other resistance genes ... and spread worldwide."...Read more@http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/18/us-health-bacteria-gene-idUSKCN0T739620151118#XAWWuJou48fXWXWR.97
By
Tom Parfitt In September Moscow launched a
bombing campaign against the twisted State terror group, which controls
vast swathes of Syria and has forced thousands of people to flee the
country.
Many desperate asylum seekers have made their way to
Europe via boats to Greece, with David Cameron agreeing to let 20,000 in
Britain over the next five years.
But Russia's bid to wipe out
ISIS has been so successful that almost a million Syrians are elected to
return to their homeland, Russian politician Dmitry Sablin claimed. The senator, who recently visited
Syria, said: "[Syrian president Bashar al] Assad praised the actions of
the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria.
"He said thousands of terrorists are now fleeing Syria, and refugees are returning."...Continue reading...
Forget overpriced schools, long days in a crowded classroom, and pitifully poor results. These websites and
apps cover myriads of science, art, and technology topics. They will
teach you practically anything, from making hummus to building apps in
node.js, most of them for free. There is absolutely no excuse for you
not to master a new skill, expand your knowledge, or eventually boost
your career. You can learn interactively at your own pace and in the
comfort of your own home. It’s hard to imagine how much easier it can
possibly be. Honestly, what are you waiting for?The 37 Best Websites
One misconception that forever bothers me is the belief that blogging doesn’t work unless it’s meta.
People don’t believe blogs can be successful unless they are about blogging, marketing, or social media.
What they don’t understand is that it’s only the marketing blogs that publish things like “income reports” and the like.
Regular blogs in traditional topics don’t do this, yet they are still out there killing it.
Today I’m going to bring you 50 successful blogs, often built solely through publishing great content + guest blogging,
that span a huge variety of topics, to prove once and for all that
blogging can be used to build an audience in nearly every topic
imaginable...50 Successful Blogs
The New Zealand All Black
Jonah Lomu, with ball, holding off a Fiji defender during a Commonwealth
Games match in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1998. Standing 6-foot-5 and
weighing about 260 pounds, Lomu was tough to stop as a runner.Credit
Darren Mcnamara/European Pressphoto Agency
HONG
KONG — When Jonah Lomu had his international breakthrough as a
20-year-old at the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa, it soon became
evident that he would put an indelible stamp on the game.
At
the time Lomu was relatively unknown, having played only two
international test matches a year earlier. But by the end of the
tournament his name was everyone’s lips, as he scored seven tries in
five matches, nearly all of them brilliant displays of his combination
of speed and raw power.
Lomu died Wednesday in Auckland, New Zealand, at 40 of nephrotic syndrome, a rare kidney disease he had battled since he first turned pro.
Researchers found disulfiram - a drug used to treat alcoholism -
activated latent HIV in cells of patients receiving antiretroviral
therapy for the virus.
A drug used to treat alcoholism - called disulfiram - could bring us
closer to a cure for HIV, according to the results of a new study led by
researchers from the University of Melbourne in Australia.
Study leader Prof. Sharon Lewin, of The Peter Doherty Institute for
Infection and Immunity at Melbourne, and colleagues publish their
findings in The Lancet HIV.
Disulfiram (brand name Antabuse) is a drug given to individuals with an
alcohol use disorder to discourage them from drinking. It works by
blocking an enzyme called dehydrogenase, which plays a role in
metabolizing alcohol intake.
Inhibiting dehydrogenase causes acute sensitivity to alcohol; if
patients consume alcohol while taking disulfiram, they will experience a
number of unpleasant side effects, including headache, nausea, chest pain, vomiting, weakness, blurred vision, sweating and mental confusion.
But as well as helping to treat alcoholism, Prof. Lewin and colleagues found the drug could lead to a cure for one of the world's most serious and challenging diseases: HIV...Continue reading...
Related: One wonders why these Muslim countries are not accepting refugees. Are they really refugees, or is it the Trojan Horse. "...And I’m certain that they would be more than welcome
into the holy cities of Mecca and Medina where they already have houses
of worship that can accommodate millions of pilgrims - so the House of
Saud will no longer have to bribe pay other countries to build mosques in exchange for accepting the undesirable unfortunate refugees. I’m quite certain that they wouldn’t mind taking in a few million thugsjihadis refugees from war torn lands in the region; after all theirs is the religion of peace, tranquility and tolerance.
And think how joyous the refugees will be, celebrating their numerous
most holy holidays with their fellow worshipers rather than heathens in
the West..." Location, Location, Location!
By Tyler MacDonald
Denmark-based think tank The Happiness Research Institute recently released the results of a study that examined the effects of Facebook use on happiness, according to Digital Trends.
The study found that participants who quit Facebook for one week were
happier, less worried and less lonely than a group of participants that
continued to use Facebook.
"After one week without Facebook, the treatment group reported a
significantly higher level of life satisfaction," the researchers wrote.
"People on Facebook are 39 percent more likely to feel less happy than
their friends,"
In addition to increased levels of happiness, participants who
stopped using Facebook also experienced increased levels of
concentration and higher levels of feeling productive.
One of the possible reasons for the decreased levels of happiness
experienced by those that use Facebook is the increased levels of envy
that come with the use of the website, according to ITWeb.
"Five out of 10 people envy the amazing experiences of others who
post on Facebook, while one out of three envy how happy other people
seem on Facebook, and four out of 10 envy the apparent success of others
on Facebook," the researchers wrote. "Instead of focusing on what we
actually need, we have an unfortunate tendency to focus on what other
people have,"...Continue reading...
Related: Twitter users more likely to share happiness than sadness
By
Stuart Winter Like his lovable literary counterpart, the powerful black bear got
himself into a tight jam after going on the prowl for an easy meal.
While Winnie was left clambering about with his head stuck in a jar
marked "hunny" in the AA Milne story where Piglet meets the Heffalump,
the wild 200lb bear was left in a tight spot after trying to drink milk
from a metal churn....Read more...
byThomas D. Williams, Ph.D.: Two days after the horrendous jihadist attacks in Paris,
Pope Francis preached about the “end times,” encouraging his hearers to
be vigilant and ready at any moment to meet God face to face.
In his Angelus message
Sunday, the Pope invited the ten thousand pilgrims gathered in Saint
Peter’s Square to think about their death, the day they will meet God
and give an accounting for their life.
The Pope also explicitly addressed the Paris carnage, expressing his
“deep sorrow for the terrorist attacks that bloodied France late on
Friday, causing many casualties.” Along with offering his condolences to
the victims and their families, Francis condemned the massacre as an
“unspeakable affront to human dignity.”
“Such barbarity leaves us shocked and we wonder how the human heart
can conceive and carry out such horrible events, which have shaken not
only France but the whole world,” he said.
Francis unequivocally recognized the Islamist ideology behind the
attacks, denouncing the use of God’s name to justify the brutal attacks
as “blasphemy"...Continue reading...
The tiger who came to tea: enjoying life in a Canadian nature reserve
Aged 64, Roger Hooper is still braving the Antarctic and plunging into
the Amazon rainforests in search of that perfect photograph. Based in
London when he’s not traversing the globe, he regularly exhibits work,
has produced three books, and contributes images to the WWF’s
publications – his way of encouraging others to take an interest in and
protect our natural world...Continue reading, photos...
Dennis Money / The Associated Press file photo.
A white deer leaps at the former Seneca Army Depot in central New York. There are about 200 white deer, a natural variant of the brown white-tailed deer, on the decommissioned site that will soon be put up for bid.
By:Mary EschThe Associated Press
ROMULUS, N.Y.—Hundreds of ghostly white deer
roaming among overgrown munitions bunkers at a sprawling former Army
weapons depot face an uncertain future after living and breeding largely
undisturbed since the middle of last century.
The white deer — a genetic quirk that
developed naturally on the 7,000-acre (2,800-hectare), fenced-in expanse
— have thrived, even as the depot itself has transitioned from one of
the most important Cold War storehouses of bombs and ammunition to a
decommissioned relic.
Now, as local officials seek to put the old
Seneca Army Depot up for bids next month, there is concern that the sale
could also mean the end of the line for the unusual white deer. A group
of residents dedicated to saving the animals has proposed turning the
old depot into a world-class tourist attraction to show off both its
rich military history and its unusual wildlife. The Nature Conservancy
also is looking at options for preserving the largely undeveloped
landscape.
“When we ran bus tours on a limited basis
between 2006 and 2012, we had people come from all over the United
States to see the deer,” said Dennis Money of Seneca White Deer Inc.
“People are enchanted by them.”
The white deer owe their continued existence
to 39 kilometres of rusting chain-link perimeter fencing that went up
when the depot was built in 1941, capturing several dozen wild
white-tailed deer in the area’s extensive woodlands. The white deer are
natural genetic variants of the normal brown ones. They’re not albinos,
which lack all pigment, but are leucistic, lacking pigment only in their
fur...Continue reading...
Robert Lachman / Los Angeles Times/TNS.
Jack Yufe, left, and his twin brother, Oskar Stohr, in 1979. They were raised apart and in later years developed a "love-hate relationship," according to Yufe's wife. Stohr died in 1997; Yufe died this week, age 82.
Jack Yufe grew up missing his other half, an identical twin brother from whom he had been separated at 6 months.
For years, they exchanged letters and
photographs. Then, at age 21, they met at a German train station. The
encounter was detailed in psychologist Nancy Segal’s book Indivisible by Two: Lives of Extraordinary Twins.
Yufe and his brother, Oskar Stohr, examined
one another as if they were looking at alien specimens, though no
likeness could have been more familiar to either of them. Their cultural
differences were as immediately apparent as their physical
similarities. Casting a wary eye at Yufe’s Israeli luggage tags, Stohr
removed them and told his long-lost brother to tell others he was coming
from America.
From this first uneasy exchange in 1954 grew a
complex but enduring bond that would bring Yufe and Stohr to the centre
of discussions about nature and nurture. After all, the differences
between the brothers’ upbringings were more extreme than those
experienced by most twins separated by circumstance.
Yufe grew up Jewish in Trinidad and became an
officer in the Israeli navy. Stohr grew up Catholic in Nazi Germany and
became an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth.
Yufe died on Monday of cancer in a San Diego hospital, The Associated Press reports. He was 82.
Mulder
How bad is this?
Well let’s do the math. By comparison, the worst oil spill in history
was during the Gulf War in Kuwait and it was 240 to 336 MILLION
Gallons. At 3.78 Liters per Gallon the worst case scenario for the oil
spill was just shy of 1.3 BILLION Litres.
So Oil Spill of 1.3Billion Liters is bad. But Raw Sewage spill of 8 Billion Litres is ok.
Well done Minister for the Environment, Catherine McKenna. Your
first week on the job and you are already making a massive impact on the
environment. Too bad it’s in the wrong direction.
Talk about being OfficiallyScrewed!!! officiallyscrewed.com/
Daniel Martins Digital Reporter Wednesday, November 11, 2015, 11:30 AM -
The City of Montreal's controversial sewage dump project started just
after midnight and will continue for the next seven days, despite a
protest by about 40 people.
Montreal first proposed the raw sewage dump earlier this year,
before Environment Canada ordered a halt to the plan, pending a review
by an independent panel. Now, newly appointed Environment Minister
Catherine McKenna has said Montreal can make the dump, provided it meets
several conditions.
"The risks associated with an unplanned
discharge are significant," McKenna told CTV. "Really, it’s balancing
risk. It’s less than ideal. I’m not thrilled to be in this situation."
McKenna
said a controlled dump was better than an accidental one, which could
be possible given the advanced age of the city's sewage system...Read more>>http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/montreal-gets-ok-to-dump-8-billion-litres-of-raw-sewage/59599/
Related: WATCH: Sewage dump protest blocked access to Mercier Bridge by
Kelly Lapare
Forty years ago today, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank during a fierce storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 men aboard.
That same night, on Nov. 10, 1975, Canadian folk icon Gordon Lightfoot
was working a new album while squatting in an abandoned home in Toronto.
In an interview with CTV Barrie, Lightfoot recalls that it was a "cold
and windy" evening in the city and the windows of the home were shaking.
Lightfoot said he went downstairs for a coffee and flipped on the TV to
see a news report about the American freighter sinking three hours
earlier.
It was a moment that left a last impression on him and eventually
inspired him to write "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which became
a Number 1 hit in Canada and peaked at Number 2 on the Billboard Hot
100 chart...Continue reading...
By Nick Waddell: Scientists are looking to create bees that are selectively bred to
survive cold Canadian winters in hopes that the number of bees we import
from the U.S. can be reduced.
Two answers to questions you may have right now. No, this is not a
joke; we have actually been importing bees from the states for years.
And no, they didn’t first consider millions of tiny Canada Goose parkas.
A pair of educators from opposite ends of the country, Professor Amro
Zayed from York University’s Faculty of Science, and Professor Leonard
Foster from the University of British Columbia, were recently awarded
$7.3 million in joint industry-government funding to try and solve
Canada’s bee problem.
“It is very clear that we have to develop innovative solutions for
bee health because bee declines will have serious consequences for
Canada’s economy and food security,” says Zayed. The professor says
genetic data can predict the behavior of colonies and beekeepers could
use genomic and proteomic markers to selectively breed colonies that
can better survive our cold winters...Continue reading...
Early on the morning of May 3, 1915, John McCrae sat wearily near his
field dressing station, a crude bunker cut into the slopes of a bank
near the Ypres-Yser Canal in Belgium.
A Canadian military surgeon, he had been at the French line for 12 days
under incessant German bombardment, and the toll of dead and wounded
had been appalling.
From his position on the road along the canal running into Ypres,
McCrae wrote: “I saw all the tragedies of war enacted. A wagon, or a
bunch of horses or a stray man, would get there just in time for a
shell. One could see the absolute knockout; or worse yet, at night one
could hear the tragedy, a horse’s scream or the man’s moan.”
The previous night he had buried a good friend, Lt. Alexis Helmer of
Ottawa, blown to pieces by a direct hit from a German shell. Now, as he
sat in the early morning sunshine, he could hear the larks singing
between the crash of the guns. He could see the rows of crosses in a
nearby cemetery.
The field where the cemetery lay was thick with scarlet poppies,
their dormant seeds churned up by the guns, blooming despite—or because
of—the carnage. McCrae took in the scene and quickly wrote a 15-line
poem. Speaking as from the dead to the living, “In Flanders Fields” was
to become the most famous poem of the Great War—perhaps of any war...Continue reading...
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13
The picture of 'Robert Christopher (Horse) McCoy' was scanned from the Saskatoon Star Pheonix in September, 2005.
SASKATOON -- A former Regina resident was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq this week, becoming Saskatchewan's first military casualty of the conflict.
Robert Christopher (Horse) McCoy, a member of the Thunderchild First Nation, who has dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship, was on his third military assignment in Iraq when he died in the bombing early Wednesday morning.
"This time he won't be coming back," said Thunderchild councillor Ira Horse.
"It's pretty traumatic. Everybody here is feeling for his family."
Horse, a distant relative of McCoy's, said people are in shock at Thunderchild, located 250 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.
"He risked his life and died standing up for something he believed in," said Horse.
She said McCoy comes from a lineage linked to the Cree Nation Warrior Society. It was their job to protect their people and lands, she said.
McCoy was apparently working as a private security agent for U.S. State Department officials.
He and three other agents were driving by car in Basra, Iraq's second largest city.
A roadside bomb went off, killing all of them. It was one of two bombings Wednesday in Basra. The other left 15 dead and 21 injured when a car bomb went off near a restaurant, officials said in reports.
McCoy's father is from Thunderchild, while his mother is from Texas. He's lived in Regina, North Battleford, and Texas. Saskatchewan family members were en route to Texas Thursday for the funeral there. A date for the burial has not been set.
"We are extremely proud of our young people and the commitment they make. There's no requirement for First Nations people to sign up (for military duty), but they do," said Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations vice-chief Lawrence Joseph.
"He does all First Nations people a great honour."
Last summer, McCoy was given a hero's welcome when he returned to Thunderchild for a visit. He and his great-grandfather George Horse, an 86-year-old veteran of the Second World War and the Korean War were honoured at a ceremony.
He had recently returned from a tour as member of the U.S. Marines. He said at the time he'd like to return this year on a private security contract.
McCoy said it could pay in the range of $175,000 US a year. That would allow him to buy a house in Calgary and start a family.
He also defended the highly controversial, American-led war, which Canada declined to participate in.
"I've never seen photographs like the photographs I've taken over there of the kids, the children, the families that were happy to have us over there," he said, adding those who opposed the U.S. presence were in the vast minority.
McCoy joined the Canadian army in 1998 but left a year later to join the U.S. Marine Corps.
In 2001, he got into the amphibious reconnaissance unit, the marine corps' elite equivalent to the Navy Seals.
"If you want more of a challenge than what you're already doing, amphibious reconnaissance is what you want," he said at the time.
After two years spent learning high-tech surveillance techniques and how to speak Arabic, McCoy was shipped to Kuwait. He remembers the "shock and awe" Patriot missiles soaring over his head on March 19, 2003, as he stood on the Iraq border waiting to enter.
In Iraq, McCoy travelled with a team of six special operations soldiers responsible for locating weapons caches and anti-aircraft guns.
During the day, the team interviewed children to find out where weapons were, and at night, they would get as close as they could to the fortifications. Using a laptop computer and a mini satellite dish, they would relay digital photos and grid co-ordinates back to headquarters.
McCoy said his team went undetected by Iraqi soldiers, which was fortunate because they were lightly armed and unlikely to hold off an entire unit on their own.
According to the Associated Press, the bombings that killed McCoy and others are fuelling fears the insurgency was taking deeper root outside Sunni-dominated territory. Attacks against Americans in Basra are rare. The U.S. has only a minimal presence in the area.
Also, Shiites, who are the dominant population in the south, have found themselves the political winners as new government structures take shape after the U.S.-led invasion.
McCoy will be honoured in late December when Thunderchild hosts an event for all First Nations veterans. There may also be something done in his honour at a powwow in North Battleford next weekend, Joseph said.
Adrian Humphreys: 
