At the beginning of the ceremony, a minute’s silence was observed to pay respect to the memory of all the martyrs of the Great War of Liberation and to express sincere condolences to the families and friends of the victims of the tragic terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow on March 22.

Twenty-six freedom fighters from different districts of Bangladesh were felicitated with commemorative gifts and certificates in the programme.

The freedom fighters expressed gratitude and thanks to the organizers for this honor.

In his welcome speech, the director of Russian House in Dhaka Pavel Dvoychenkov highlighted the historically friendly role of Russia in the great liberation war of Bangladesh and the overall development of post-war Bangladesh.

Land Minister Narayan Chandra Chand and the Director General of the Bangladesh National Museum Md. Kamruzzaman gratefully recalled the humanitarian and economic assistance in the reconstruction of war-torn Bangladesh, including the struggle for independence of Bangladesh.

They also said that the independence of Bangladesh would never have been possible without the cooperation of Russia.

Source: UNB

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The skies during Women’s History Month have witnessed a series of historic female flights. On March 16, Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri held the “first all-female two-ship T-38 flyover,” an aerial salute that soared above the KC Current stadium, the “first stadium to be built for women,” according to KSHB.

United Airlines also held a special flight on March 7 that epitomized elegance in aviation and inclusivity on the ground. Aboard Flight 1215, which traveled from Newark, NJ, to Sarasota, FL and back, was an all-women crew. At the helm was Captain Gabrielle Harding, a trailblazer recognized by PEOPLE as not only the second Black woman Line Check Pilot in United’s history, but also “the only Black woman captain working for a commercial airline who graduated from a historically Black college or university’s pilot program.”

Spotlighting trailblazers like Captain Harding is pivotal in paving the runway for future aviators, especially when we consider the gender disparities in the field. A 2022 study from the Women in Aviation Advisory Board reveals that women constitute a mere 4.6 percent of professional pilots. More starkly, Black women sit at a scant 0.5 percent.

In light of these underrepresentation statistics, the stories of women who bravely faced the challenges of their time in aviation become increasingly important for us to recognize and learn from.

While everyone knows the story of Amelia Earhart, from her historic flights to her mysterious disappearance, there’s another pioneering female pilot from the past who is finally getting her due. Just like Earhart, Bessie Coleman shattered equally big barriers—and the tragic circumstances surrounding her own untimely death have also sparked theories of wrongdoing, drawing renewed attention to her story.

Who Was Bessie Coleman?

Before the Wright Brothers’ historic ascent at Kitty Hawk captured the world’s imagination, the most legendary figures in aviation lore were a father and son: Daedalus and Icarus.

In the oft-referenced myth from Ancient Greece, Daedelus crafted wings for his son, Icarus. Basking in the thrill of flight and the warmth of the sun, Icarus soared higher and higher, ignoring his father’s warnings, until the sun’s rays melted his manmade wings, causing him to hurtle to his death.

Icarus has often served as a symbol of human hubris. As people throughout history dared to touch the skies—from Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent le Vieux d’Arlandes with their hot air balloons in France in 1783, to Alberto Santos-Dumont in Brazil, and the Wright Brothers in North Carolina—their lofty ambitions were met with skepticism from critics who recalled the boy who tumbled from the heavens for flying too close to the sun.

But for Bessie Coleman, a young girl of Black and Indigenous ancestry growing up in the poor town of Waxahachie, Texas, Icarus wasn’t the only fictional figure who kept her grounded. She also had to contend with Jim Crow, a crude minstrel character whose name was colloquially used to describe oppressive and racist laws in the American South.

Coleman didn’t always dream of being a pilot, but she knew she wanted more than the life offered by the small patch of land where she and her family picked cotton for minuscule wages.

At first, Coleman tried to pursue a college education. As Biography notes, “she embarked on a journey to Oklahoma to attend the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University (Langston University), where she completed only one term due to financial constraints.”

Money was a constant challenge for the Coleman family. After her father left to reside on a reservation in Oklahoma—an option Coleman’s mother reportedly declined—her mother became the main provider. Eventually, Bessie’s brothers also departed, seeking opportunities in Chicago with hopes of supporting the family back home. In 1915, with her educational ambitions paused, a 23-year-old Coleman followed suit and ventured to Chicago, eager to carve out her own path.

Coleman took a job in Chicago as a nail technician. In an early sign of her tenacity, she chose a prominent spot by the salon window to attract attention and built a reputation by attending to male customers, persuasively telling them that well-groomed nails would help them court women. What began as a means to make ends meet soon turned into a platform for recognition. In 1916, Coleman’s efforts and charm won her the title of “best manicurist in Black Chicago,” bringing her unexpected prominence in her community.

Coleman’s prowess secured her a place at the White Sox Barber Shop, owned by the trainer of the local baseball team for which it was named. Between the clients who sat in her chair and told stories of the brave aviators of World War I, and the cajoling of her combat-veteran brother, who according to Biography “…ribbed her about the superiority of French women who knew how to fly planes,” Coleman found her calling: to soar amidst the clouds.

How Did Bessie Coleman Learn to Fly?

For a Black American woman in 1921, obtaining a pilot’s license was virtually impossible. No one had done it before, and no flight school in the U.S. was willing to let Coleman be the first.

And so, recalling her brother’s comments about the women of France learning how to fly, Coleman chose to follow her dreams all the way to the Caudron Brothers’ School of Aviation in Le Crotoy. While Coleman taught herself French, she couldn’t always connect verbally with her French-speaking instructors. So she bridged the communication gap by “feeling the movements of steering system that connected the front and back cockpits,” according to Biography.

Through her diligence, on June 15, 1921, Coleman became the first Black woman in the world to earn a pilot’s license, which she received from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. But, as the podcast Invisible Eagles: Bessie Coleman points out, Coleman’s aeronautic achievement was overshadowed in her home country by a far more shocking story.

Only two weeks before Coleman received her pilot’s license, the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, sometimes referred to as “Black Wall Street,” suffered a devastating and deadly attack from a white mob, one that left between 100 and 300 people dead, and more than 10,000 homeless. And as HISTORY notes, airplanes—likely owned by the nearby Curtiss-Southwest Airplane Company—aided in the terror. So while Coleman flew high in France, back home, her beloved planes had become a tool of suppression.

How Did Bessie Coleman Become Famous?

When Coleman first returned home, she was greeted with praise from the Black newspapers of the time, but pointedly ignored by the white press. When she struggled to find jobs as a Black female pilot, she returned to Europe once more, this time to learn the art of aerial tricks and stunt piloting.

Coleman saw her performances as both a means to live and a beacon of inspiration, aiming to demonstrate to women and people of color that they, too, could aspire to and attain success in the field of aviation. Her grand aspiration was to establish a flight school that would empower African Americans to chase their own piloting dreams.

In September 1922, Coleman debuted her first aerial stunt show in Garden City, New York, during an era when “barnstorming” captivated the American public. These shows, aptly named for the rural practice where pilots utilized farms as impromptu airstrips, roamed from one locale to another, showcasing thrilling maneuvers like barrel rolls and loop-de-loops to awe-struck audiences across the country.

The shows were instrumental in the evolution of civil aviation, bringing the public into early contact with pilots outside the context of the battlefield. Coleman was acutely aware of the significance of her public persona within the barnstorming scene and crafted an image that exuded flair and respectability. As Biography notes, she was referred to as “Queen Bess” or “Brave Bess” by the media, presenting a striking image adorned in her long coat, leather boots, and Sam Browne officer’s belt. She was known to embellish her credentials in interviews, adding to the mystique of her character.

Coleman also recognized the powerful role that burgeoning cinema played in shaping public perception. She incorporated filmed footage of her flights in her traveling lectures, and even reached out to several studios specializing in “race films” (films produced by and for Black audiences in the early 20th century) to make a film about her life’s story. She first wrote to Norman Studios in Jacksonville, Florida, before she was contacted by the Seminole Film Producing Company.

Coleman accepted a role in Seminole’s upcoming feature film, Shadow and Sunshine, but was disappointed with the content of the script, which began with her character in tattered clothes and poverty. Coleman walked away from the project, in breach of her contract, “over her refusal to play to ‘Uncle Tom’ stereotypes,” according to Biography.

How Did Bessie Coleman Die?

Following a brief hiatus to recover from injuries sustained in a crash, Coleman returned to the skies in 1925. By then, she had included other Black female aviators in her shows, per Biography:

“That August, she was accompanied by the first known Black woman to make a parachute jump. After this same parachutist backed out of another gig, Coleman strapped on the jumper’s harness and did the deed herself.”

Ahead of a scheduled performance in Jacksonville, Coleman acquired an airplane, but it was delivered in a severe state of disrepair. The engine of the Jenny, in particular, was so “poorly maintained” that it elicited concern from other aviators who inspected it. On April 30, 1926, Coleman and her co-pilot William Wills went out for a test flight; Wills took control in the front cockpit while Coleman chose to sit without fastening her seatbelt in the back, intending to scout suitable locations for a parachute jump.

Tragically, during the flight, a mechanical failure resulted in catastrophe:

“According to witnesses, the plane suddenly accelerated and nose-dived, before flipping upside-down at about 500 feet. There was nothing to halt Coleman’s fall from the cockpit, and the 34-year-old trailblazer was instantly killed upon hitting the ground.

Wills also died in the subsequent crash, and investigators soon discovered the loose wrench that had jammed the gears and caused the plane’s uncontrollable behavior.”

“It was a tragic, but not uncommon accident in the heyday of barnstorming, at the time aircraft safety was being addressed by Congress with the Air Commerce Act of 1926 that mandated the regulation of pilots and aircraft,” the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) observes.

Despite the absence of concrete evidence to confirm foul play, the NASM acknowledges that “rumors of sabotage could not be stopped or corroborated.” Given the wrench that caused the fatal crash, some speculate whether its presence was an intentional act meant to thwart Coleman’s flight. Contextualizing these suspicions within the era’s racial and gender challenges, it’s understandable why questions linger about whether malicious intent played a role in the tragedy that ended Coleman’s life and career.

And the specter of sabotage in aviation, particularly targeting women, didn’t end with Coleman’s death.

Take the case of the Women’s Air Derby of 1929. As noted by the National Endowment for the Humanities, female pilots competing in the event were met with an alarming, anonymous warning before the race: “Beware of sabotage.” The race was marred by a series of mysterious mishaps ranging from contaminated fuel to structural failures and even life-threatening carbon monoxide leaks—all of which, prominent men in the press asserted, proved that “women can’t fly.”

Indeed, all the way through World War II, female pilots were subject to deadly acts of sabotage from men who didn’t feel they belonged in the skies. As TIME notes, “Some women reported finding grass in their tanks or acid in their parachutes, or that their tires had been slashed very slightly so that they’d blow out in the air.” In one instance, “Jacqueline Cochran personally discovered sugar in the gas tank of a plane that had crashed, killing her colleague Betty Davis, but feared she and her colleagues would lose their jobs if they reported it as such.”

The question of how that wrench came to be lodged in Bessie Coleman’s aircraft may forever be left unanswered. Aviation safety during the era was notoriously unreliable, but when coupled with the virulent racism and sexism of the time—exemplified by events such as the Ku Klux Klan’s 1926 march in Washington, D.C.—it presents a troubling backdrop against which Coleman’s death might be viewed.

How Do We Remember Bessie Coleman?

Coleman died in Jacksonville, Florida, a city that held another connection to her dreams beyond aviation. It was the home of Norman Studios, to whom she had written years earlier, expressing her desire to share her life’s story on the silver screen. While there is no evidence that a collaboration between Coleman and the studio ever materialized—nor is it certain if she and filmmaker Richard Norman ever personally crossed paths—Coleman’s spirit and achievements undoubtedly left an indelible mark on Norman.

Norman Studios never made The Bessie Coleman Story, per se, but Coleman provided the inspiration for the character of Ruth Sawtelle, the female lead of Norman’s 1926 film, The Flying Ace. Billed as “the greatest airplane thriller ever filmed,” The Flying Ace, which showcases an all-Black cast, features actress Kathryn Boyd’s Ruth in an outfit that strikingly mirrors the distinctive ensemble Coleman wore during her barnstorming days.

The Flying Ace sidesteps the same racial stereotypes of its era that Coleman staunchly opposed in Seminole’s Shadow and Sunshine, opting instead for a respectful detective thriller. Starring J. Laurence Criner, a distinguished actor from the Harlem theatre scene, as the titular World War I pilot, The Flying Ace stands out as the only fully preserved film from Norman Studios. In 2021, the film was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, having been deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

While The Flying Ace might be the most enduring tribute to Coleman from her era, more recent efforts have been made to properly honor her legacy. In 1995, Coleman appeared on a U.S. postage stamp. In 2001, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and entered the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2006. And just last year, Coleman was commemorated on an American Women-series U.S. quarter and celebrated with her own Barbie doll in the Inspiring Women series.

Was Bessie Coleman an “American Icarus” who flew too close to the sun? Perhaps a better analogy lies in a different ancient story.

In the Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana, the story of two winged demigods, Sampati and Jatayu, unfolds. The two fly upward one day, toward the sun, in order to test their skills. But the younger brother, Jatayu, gets too close and his wings begin to scorch in the noon heat. Sampati, the older brother, flies ahead, spreading his wings wide to provide shade for his younger sibling and sacrificing his own wings in the process. Sampati crashes into the Vindhya mountains and dies, so that the younger Jatayu can continue to fly.

Bessie Coleman, more than anything, wanted to inspire other pilots from backgrounds traditionally excluded from the skies. Her narrative isn’t about succumbing to prideful excess, but rather, a deliberate act of selflessness for the sake of the future. She was scorched, both by the sun and the spotlight—not so that she could bask in the glow, but so that others might also one day soar.

Source: Popular Mechanics

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In May 2022, tens of ethnic Pamiri protesters were killed by security forces as demonstrations were violently suppressed and an “anti-terrorist operation” was launched in the east of the country. Activists, local leaders, journalists and bloggers were arrested and sentenced in unfair trials. Many reported being tortured. Access to information, including through the media and internet, remained heavily restricted. Domestic violence remained widespread with victims rarely securing justice or support. Afghan refugees continued to be detained and deported.

Tajikistan’s economic and political life continued to be tightly controlled by the president, in the 30th year of his rule, and his family. Over 100 people, including dozens of civilians, were killed and homes, schools and markets destroyed during cross border clashes between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in September. In May, following months of targeted repression by the central government, longstanding tensions in the eastern Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO) between these authorities and the Pamiris, a small, unrecognized ethnic minority belonging to the Shia Islam Ismaili community, flared into new protests. These were brutally suppressed by the authorities, who launched an “anti-terrorist operation” on 18 May during which tens of Pamiris were killed over several weeks. Over 200 people were arrested.

Pamiri protesters were killed by security forces in May and June 2022, as demonstrations were violently suppressed and an “anti-terrorist operation” was launched in the east of the country. Activists, local leaders, journalists and bloggers were arrested and sentenced in unfair trials. Many reported being tortured.

The official government figure in May for those killed in the “anti-terrorist operation” in the GBAO was originally 21, although unofficial sources reported more than double that number. The circumstances of many deaths, in the absence of independent reporting from Tajikistan, prompted allegations of extrajudicial executions. Prominent activists, informal local leaders, poets, religious leaders and journalists were arbitrarily targeted for arrest. Several prominent members of the Pamiri diaspora in Russia were abducted before resurfacing in custody in Tajikistan. By the end of the year, most of those arrested had been sentenced to long prison terms in unfair trials, typically for purported membership of a criminal organization and seeking to overthrow the constitutional order. The fate and whereabouts of some of those arrested remained unknown, prompting fears that they had been forcibly disappeared.

The crackdown on prominent Pamiri influencers, local leaders and activists was accompanied by a broader assault on the cultural heritage of Pamiris. Following the May-June unrest, the authorities shut down and confiscated the property of multiple local organizations linked to the Aga Khan Development Network working in the fields of education, economic development and religious instruction.

Freedom of expression remained severely curtailed. The few remaining independent media outlets, human rights defenders and bloggers were heavily targeted in the crackdown that followed the GBAO protests. On 17 May, Mullorajab Yusufi and Anushervon Aripov, journalists working for Radio Free Europe’s Tajik service and regional news outlet Current Time, were severely beaten by unknown assailants in the capital, Dushanbe, shortly after interviewing the well-known Pamiri journalist and human rights activist Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva about events in the GBAO. The next day Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva was herself arrested and accused of “publicly calling for the overthrow of the constitutional order”. In December, she was sentenced to 21 years’ imprisonment following a closed, unfair trial. Following her arrest, the authorities ordered Asia-Plus, the privately owned news agency for which she reported, to cease covering events in the GBAO. Other outlets reported similar coercion. On 19 May, Pamiri blogger and journalist Khushruz Jumayev (known online as Khush Gulyam) was arrested. He was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment in December on opaque charges relating to the May events in the GBAO. Other activists who faced unfair trials during the year included around a dozen members of Commission 44, an independent group of lawyers and human rights defenders established to investigate the November 2021 killing of an activist that sparked protests in the GBAO.

Shaftolu Bekdavlatov and Khujamri Pirmamadov were sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment each on charges of organizing a criminal group and receiving financial assistance from abroad. The head of the Pamiri Lawyers’ Association, Manuchehr Kholiknazarov, was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment on 9 December. Journalists and bloggers also faced prosecutions for critical reporting unrelated to the GBAO. On 15 June, two journalists and collaborators who reported widely on economic and social rights violations, Daler Imomali and Avazmad Gurbatov (also known as Abdullo Gurbati), were arrested shortly after reporting on the demolition of homes in Dushanbe. Avazmad Gurbatov was sentenced on 4 October to seven-and-a-half years’ imprisonment in a closed trial on trumped-up charges of assaulting a police officer and membership of the arbitrarily banned political organization Group 24. In a separate trial two weeks later, Daler Imomali was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, on equally far-fetched charges of tax evasion, disseminating false information and purported membership of Group 24. The internet was completely shut down for the first few months of the year in the GBAO and only intermittently and partially restored during the rest of the year. Tight restrictions remained in place throughout the country.

Torture and other ill-treatment remained widespread both as a means of intimidation and extracting confessions. Prisoners continued to report abuse and neglect, including beatings, lack of access to food and water and cold and wet conditions within the cells. While in pretrial detention following his arrest in July, Abdusattor Pirmuhammadzoda, a blogger who had been fired from a state radio broadcaster for criticizing the government in 2020, managed to smuggle out a letter in which he described being subjected to severe beatings, electric shocks and psychological torture, including threats against his family, in order to secure a confession. He was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment in November. In June, while trying to attend a concert in a public park in Dushanbe, Elobat Oghalykova was arrested for wearing a black dress in mourning for the death of one of her sons – a traditional practice that was banned in 2017. She was beaten at Spitamen District Police station and required hospitalization. When she filed a complaint, she was threatened with 15 days’ detention for disobeying a police officer.

According to multiple indicators published during the year, including the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, Tajikistan’s gender gap was the highest of all Central Asian countries and one of the highest globally. According to a survey published by the EU-UN Spotlight Initiative in June, 77.3% of respondents considered violence against women to be prevalent in Tajikistan and 34% of respondents (across both genders) believed it was justifiable to beat a partner who refused to obey. The accompanying report highlighted many longstanding problems: the weak legal framework; the limited range and inadequate funding of protection services; and stereotypical attitudes among public service providers, including law enforcement agencies. A draft criminal code criminalizing domestic violence, put before parliament in 2021, had not been passed by the end of the year.

In August, UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, raised grave concerns about the continued detention and deportation of Afghan refugees. The agency documented dozens of cases in August and September alone. Members of the nearly 14,000-strong Afghan refugee community reported that the forced expulsions were taking place without any procedure or obvious justification.

Source: Amnesty International

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Somewhere in the dense coastal forests surrounding Txaa K’alii Aksim Lisims (the Nass River) in what would become north-western British Columbia, Canada, master carver Oye’a’ of the Indigenous Nisg̱a’a people picked out a towering red cedar tree. After giving a blessing, he removed the bark around its base, girdling the tree. Over the next decade, the cedar dried from the inside out. By the 1850s, when it was felled for carving, it was light and strong enough survive for a century or two.

Commissioned to create a memorial pole by Joanna Moody, the matriarch of the House of Ni’isjoohl of G̱anada or Raven/Frog clan in Ank’idaa Village, an island in the middle of the Nass River, Oye’a’ stripped off the bark and brought the log to his workplace. Carving the story of Ts’wawit, a young warrior in line to be chief who was killed during a skirmish with Tsimshian warriors, and G̱anada’s traditional histories, Oye’a’ breathed life into the pts’aan (pole).

Even as the Ni’isjoohl memorial pts’aan was brought alive with the spirit of ravens, a white bullhead and the chief, life in the Nass Valley was changing. Captain George Vancouver was the first European to record encountering the Nisg̱a’a while charting the Pacific Coast from 1791-95. Then the fur trade got underway. In the 1830s, a Hudson Bay Company trading post was established in the heart of the territory, bringing smallpox, measles and other diseases, and destabilising the relationships between neighbouring Nations. Then, in 1860, gold was discovered. Worried about losing control over the region (and the gold), the British colonial office created the Colony of British Columbia, placing the entire Nass Valley within its domain.

From its headwaters in the glaciers of the Skeena Mountains, the Nass flows south-westerly for 380km before draining into Portland Inlet and the Pacific Ocean. Ringed by glacier-capped mountains; forests of hemlock, pine, balsam, aspen and alder flank the hillsides, gradually giving way to red cedar, spruce and hemlock as you near the coast. Meadows thick with soapberry, salmonberry and kinnikinnick plants entice deer, moose and porcupine. Eulachon and five species of salmon return to the Nass each year, attracting black bears, grizzly bears, wolves, ravens and bald eagles.

Life in Ank’idaa followed the seasons; people travelled for fishing, berry harvesting, hunting or trapping. Strict protocols and intricate social structure kept the community and ecosystems in balance. Around 1855, Oye’a’ would have delivered the Ts’wawit’s memorial pole from his home village of Gitwinksihlkw, 30km up the river from Ank’idaa. The House of Ni’isjoohl likely raised it with a feast and ceremony commonly known as a potlatch. Wealth was shared, traditional names were passed along and the pts’aan’s presence ensured the transmission of knowledge to the next generation.

Then, in 1884, the federal government of Canada enacted the Potlatch Ban, an amendment to the Indian Act of Canada, with a goal of crushing Indigenous culture. At the same time, disease kept coming. Missionaries pushed Indigenous people to assimilate into the growing settler population, warning them their “pagan” ways were to blame for their tragedies. By 1889, the Northwest Coast Indian Agency census counted 805 Nisga’a people; a population decline of 82-99%.

In Ank’idaa, the ancestors – as the Ni’isjoohl psts’aan and other poles are known to be – watched over their ravaged village. In 1920, it became mandatory for Indigenous children to attend residential school. Stolen away, many never returned home. In 1927, Marius Barbeau, anthropologist with the National Museum of Canada, first visited the Nass. In what he characterised as anthropological rescue, he voraciously scooped up the ceremonial and sacred belongings of what he called a “dying race”.

Coerced by missionaries and federal Indian agents, some Nisga’a parted with their possessions (others had their belongings destroyed). When Barbeau couldn’t get permission to take things, he took photos. An image of the Ni’isjoohl pts’aan caught someone’s eye at what’s now the National Museum of Scotland. After Barbeau negotiated a price between C$400 and C$600 (£240 and £360) to cover costs (no money was paid to the Nisga’a), he returned to the Nass in 1928. When Ank’idaa was empty during fishing or harvesting season, Barbeau and his team cut down most of the pts’aans in Ank’idaa, bundled them into a raft, and floated the ancestors down the Nass and onward to museums around the world.

By 1929, the stolen 36ft-tall Ni’isjoohl pts’aan was on display in Edinburgh.

The decades that followed were a dark time for Indigenous people in Canada. Physically, culturally and spiritually abused, they had few rights. But through the horror, the Nisga’a focused on the future.

On 11 May 2000, the Nisga’a and the governments of Canada and British Columbia signed the province’s first modern treaty, the Nisga’aa Final Agreement. In addition to codifying the Nisga’a’s right to self-governance, ownership of 2,020 sq km of hereditary land and access to traditional foods, the treaty paved the way for more than 300 stolen belongings to be returned to the Nisga’a from Canadian museums. But there was a stipulation; the returned belongings had to be conserved in a Class-A museum with humidity and temperature controls, a cost-prohibitive condition the Nation spent $17m to meet.

Designed after traditional longhouses, the glass-fronted Nisg̱a’a Museum opened in 2011 in Laxgalts’ap, a few miles downstream from Ank’idaa Village. According to Theresa Schober, the museum’s director and curator, the initial return of masks, bentwood boxes, regalia and other ceremonial items are just a portion of the Nisg̱a’a belongings scattered around the world, but their recovery is “reconnecting all Nisg̱a’a [houses and clans] to ancestral belongings as equally as possible.”

Now visitors can learn from the Nisg̱a’a on their own territory and on their own terms; a profound and healing experience, for everyone. “Young community members bring guests through the Ancestors’ Collection, sharing their own stories and oral histories,” said Schober. “It’s very different than seeing these belongings out of context, surrounded by unrelated objects.”

Sigidimnak’ Noxs Ts’aawit (Amy Parent) hadn’t expected to spend the past year thinking about the colonial-burdens of repatriation policy. As the Canada research chair in Indigenous education and governance at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Parent was meeting with Elders in Laxgalts’ap when Sim’oogit Ni’isjoohl (Chief Earl Stephens) asked her to look into the Ni’isjoohl memorial pole.

Ts’awit (Calvin McNeill) a master carver from the House of Ni’isjoohl, who lives in Laxgalts’ap and spent years studying his Nation’s belongings in museums had carved a replica from historical and contemporary photographs, but before the community could raise it, Parent said, “they needed more information about names connected to the original Ni’isjoohl pole”. Learning it was in Edinburgh, Parent reached out to National Museums Scotland (NMS). The details she found made her stomach lurch; her great-great-great-grandmother Joanna Moody had commissioned the pole, and both she and McNeill carried versions of the young warrior’s name.

What followed could have gone the way of other failed repatriation efforts. In August 2022, just before a seven-person Nisga’a delegation, including Parent, Stephens and Schober (as a non-Nisga’a witness), journeyed to Scotland to ask for the pole back, Schober estimated it could be a five- to seven-year process. Almost immediately, the Nisga’a delegation and NMS staff clashed. “First it was around our ceremonies to feed the pole [because] they had a ‘no-food-in-the-museum’ rule,” said Parent. (The two groups compromised by using vacuum-packed food.) “Then they told us to follow their very complicated, one-year-old repatriation policy.”

Instead, the Nisg̱a’a did what they do best: they invited NMS staff to learn who they are and why the pts’aan needed to go home. “We let the people of Scotland know that we wanted the spirit of the pole to be free… with our people,” said Parent, “where it can teach the next generation who we are.”

Describing the pts’aan’s return as “a rematriation”, reflecting the fact the Nisg̱a’a are matrilineal and the return would bring balance, Parent says the pts’aan must be powerful because the process began to move with unprecedented speed and ease. On 1 December 2022, NMS’ Board of Trustees agreed the Ni’isjoohl memorial pole could go home. Plans came together through the year and in August 2023 the delegation returned to Edinburgh for a private ceremony to prepare the pts’aan for the journey home – assuring it that it didn’t have to keep enduring the cacophony of strangers. Packed in a protective crate, swathed in cedar boughs, the pts’aan was lovingly moved by NMS staff through the dismantled gallery out into a closed street and to the airport where it was loaded into the belly of a Canadian Armed Forces aircraft for a journey to Terrace, BC.

On 29 September, just in time for Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a procession guided the Ni’isjoohl memorial pts’aan along the 150km drive on Nisg̱a’a Highway 113. Winding past lakes and streams, it travelled through a massive expanse of lichen-covered lava, a reminder of when the Tseax volcano erupted in 1700, spilling molten rock across the landscape, destroying at least two villages and killing an estimated 2,000 people.

Reaching the swift waters of the Nass, it passed Gitwinksihlkw, the place where it was carved. Then it plunged into the same misty forest where it once grew and that now hid signs of its ancient home village of Ank’idaa. Arriving in Laxgalts’ap, it was privately greeted by its family and unclad for the ceremony. Then the crowd began to grow. Dressed in red and black regalia, Nisg̱a’a dancers, drummers and singers filled the valley with song. As Elders spoke and prayed in Sim’algax, the mist burned off and, for the first time in 94 years, the pts’aan felt the sun.

Parent couldn’t help but note that everything had come full circle. “Through our songs, through our dances”, Parent says they were able to change hearts, minds and policy. The pts’aan was home.

Source : BBC

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A series of crackly pips and beeps broadcast to radios across Canada has outlasted two monarchs, 13 prime ministers, 27 sessions of parliament and various fractures to national unity. They have provided a quiet comfort to citizens abroad and inspired music and artworks.

But this week, after 84 years, Canada’s public broadcaster announced the termination of its official time signal, abruptly ending the longest running radio program in the country’s history. The news broke in a manner similar to the time signal: overlooked amid a frenzy of larger, more globally relevant stories.

“The way it disappeared so unceremoniously really took people by surprise,” said Craig Baird, host of the podcast Canadian History Ehx. “They missed the chance to say goodbye. It was like missing the series finale of a show that you’ve watched for years.”

Since November 5, 1939, CBC Radio One has broadcast the National Research Council time signal once a day, advising listeners “the beginning of the long dash” would mark the beginning the hour: one o’clock in Ontario, 10 in the morning in British Columbia.

Canadians set their watches and oven clocks to it. Trains were more punctual. Sailors could navigate more precisely. And as the time signal persisted over generations, it transformed into a cultural bedrock of the country.

“Even if you weren’t a frequent listener to the CBC, most people have heard it at least once in their lifetimes,” said Baird. “And so while it persisted for so long, it’s not something people thought about much until it was gone.”

As Canadians make sense of the loss, a sense of grief and frustration has taken hold. Listeners to Baird’s show shared memories, including one woman who trained her dog to sit for a treat when the long dash was broadcast. An informal poll of his listeners and followers on social media found the vast majority wanted the time signal back – if only to say goodbye.

“You can’t say a noise is your friend,” said Sa Boothroyd, a British Columbia-based artist. “But it was a sound that resonated. And it touched many people at the same time. It brought us together like few things can.”

For Boothroyd, the time signal a piece of auditory “punctuation mark” that has remained a constant over the years. When she began selling a tea towel printed with the “long dash” they quickly became a bestseller.

“I had no idea it was going to catch on … But it means a lot to a lot of Canadians – even those outside the country. It’s something we can hang on to.”

But in 2019, as the public broadcaster celebrated the 80th anniversary of the time signal, journalist Lawrence Wall, announcer of time signal in Ottawa, told the CBC he didn’t envision the network changing the signal or “heaven forbid”, dropping it fully.

“People still like to listen to it, and I still run into people who say, ‘Aren’t you the guy who does the time signal?’ not ‘Aren’t you the guy who does the news in Ottawa?’” he said. “So it’s that time signal that really resonates with them still, and I think it always will.”

Another broadcaster, Stephen Rukavina, posted that when he was asked to record the preamble – the famous “long dash” line – “I really felt like I’d made it”.

It was the broadcaster’s gradual shift from over-the-air radio signals to satellite and internet-based transmissions that marked the end of the time signal.

“We share the nostalgia that many people have towards the daily time announcement but Canadians also depend on us for accurate information,” CBC spokesperson Emma Iannetta said in a statement. “With all of the different distribution methods we use today we can no longer ensure that the time announcement can be accurate.”

In one instance, the CBC had to drop the “10 seconds of silence” in the preamble to the time signal because silence confused modern systems.

The NRC said the installation of digital radio transmitters in 2018 led to a delay of up to 9 seconds. The NRC says cesium atomic clocks remain “the world’s best timekeepers”. A cesium fountain clock in the United States, NIST-F2, is accurate within 1 second over 300 million years.

Boothroyd says the decision by CBC is puzzling, especially because most Canadians no longer set their clocks by the signal. Instead, the pause was a moment of respite in a busy day.

“There’s a beautiful heaviness to the time signal. It makes us stop. We need to stop. And that’s a good thing,” Boothroyd. “We’re in a world that moves so fast. Technology is the reason we don’t have it anymore. But I wonder- what is technology offering us to replace what we’ve lost?”

Source : The Guardian

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Matthew Perry, best known for playing Chandler Bing in the hit TV sitcom Friends, has died at 54.

Perry died in an apparent drowning at his home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, sources including a representative for the actor and law enforcement told NBC News. An official cause of death has yet to be released.

Warner Bros Television Group, which produced all 10 seasons of Friends from 1994 until 2004, paid tribute to “our dear friend” and “an incredibly gifted actor”.

“The impact of his comedic genius was felt around the world, and his legacy will live on in the hearts of so many. This is a heartbreaking day, and we send our love to his family, his loved ones, and all of his devoted fans,” it wrote.

After small roles in Growing Pains, Beverly Hills 90210 and Dream On, Perry scored the role of sarcastic and neurotic Chandler Bing in Friends. The comedy, about six friends living in New York City, quickly became a phenomenon, winning multiple Emmys and scoring record ratings; the 2004 finale reached more than 52 million viewers in the US, making it the most watched TV episode of the 2000s.

“People come up to me every day and say, ‘Hey Chandler!’ I don’t respond to it,” he said in a 2014 interview. “If somebody says, ‘Hi Matthew, I love your work’, that’s one thing. But if somebody goes ‘Yo, Chandler’, I don’t like that. I’m tired of it. I’m not Chandler.”

Born in Massachusetts in 1969 to an American father and a Canadian mother, Perry grew up in Canada as his mother worked as a press aide to Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau. In his bestselling 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry recalled acting up after his father abandoned his family to chase his own dreams of becoming an actor – including bullying a young Justin Trudeau. “I decided to end my argument with him when he was put in charge of an entire army,” he wrote.

At 15, Perry moved to Hollywood, with the hope of reconnecting with his father. It was there he began to enjoy acting, and was eventually spotted at a diner, “charming a bunch of young women”, by director William Richert, who left a note asking him to be in his next movie, A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, alongside River Phoenix.

Perry was 24 when he started playing Chandler and was relatively unknown, like his co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer; Courteney Cox was known for her role in Family Ties. In a 2019 interview, Friends co-creator David Crane said Chandler was the most difficult character to cast, with actors Craig Bierko, Jon Cryer and Jon Favreau also considered for the role.

“Marta [Kauffman, co-creator] and I were thinking Chandler is just poorly written,” added Crane. “Then Matthew came in and you went, ‘Oh, well, there you go. Done. Done. That’s the guy.’”

Perry was nominated for an Emmy award five times, once for Friends and twice for his role as lawyer Joe Quincy on The West Wing.

During his tenure on Friends, Perry starred in films including Fools Rush In with Salma Hayek, Three to Tango with Neve Campbell and The Whole Nine Yards with Bruce Willis. He also played small roles in Ally McBeal and Scrubs.

In a 2002 interview with the New York Times, he confessed: “I wanted to be famous so badly. You want the attention, you want the bucks, and you want the best seat in the restaurant. I didn’t think what the repercussions would be.”

Perry’s personal life was blighted by addiction, starting in 1997 when he became addicted to pain medication after a jetski accident. He later claimed to not remember three years of his time on Friends and to spending over $9m on his fight to stay sober.

“I was taking 55 Vicodin a day, I weighed 128lbs, I was on Friends getting watched by 30 million people – and that’s why I can’t watch the show, because I was brutally thin,” he said. Perry later admitted he had suffered severe anxiety “every night” while filming the show and said he felt nothing when the show ended.

When Friends ended in 2004, Perry’s next small-screen lead was in Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which was cancelled after one season. In 2009 he starred in hit comedy 17 Again alongside Zac Efron, and later guest-starred on both The Good Wife and The Good Fight.

Perry also led one-season sitcom Go On and a remake of The Odd Couple, which lasted for three seasons. In 2016 he wrote and starred in play The End of Longing, which opened in the West End and later transferred to Broadway.

In 2019, he was put in a two-week coma when his colon exploded due to opiate abuse; he underwent 14 surgeries to repair the damage. “At this point in my life, the words of gratitude pour out of me because I should be dead, and yet somehow I am not,” he wrote in Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.

The memoir was a hit with readers and critics, with the Observer’s Barbara Ellen calling it “harrowing and revealing about the juncture where extreme compound addiction collides with mega-celebrity”.

“You have to get famous to know that it’s not the answer. And nobody who is not famous will ever truly believe that,” Perry wrote.

Source: The Guardian

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Connor Bedard’s Chicago Blackhawks family tree in Montreal branches 72 years and almost one mile.

It extends from the legendary Forum, where his great-great uncle Jim Bedard played one game on defense for Chicago in 1951, stretching about a dozen city blocks southeast to Bell Centre, where the 18-year-old phenom from North Vancouver will play for the first time on NHL ice in Canada on Saturday against the Canadiens (7 p.m. ET, TVAS, CITY, SNE, NBCSCH, NHLN).

Bedard will hope for a better fate in Montreal than that of his late distant relative, whose Black Hawks (then two words) were clobbered 10-2 on March 10, 1951, on the strength of hat tricks by Maurice “Rocket” Richard and Bert Olmstead.

“I’m sure it will be awesome,” Bedard said on Friday after an afternoon practice at the Canadiens’ suburban training facility. “Everybody says it’s a great place to play. The rink’s pretty electric, obviously really passionate fans. …

“You grow up watching ‘Hockey Night in Canada.’ As a kid I remember always getting really excited for Saturday, me and my dad. We’d always tune in. It’s kind of like a tradition in Canada. Every Saturday you’ve got that. It’s really exciting to be in a Canadian city for (the Canadiens’) home opener. It’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re all really looking forward to that.”

As are Montreal hockey fans. Not since future Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Sidney Crosby played his first game in Montreal on Jan. 3, 2006, has there been this kind of eager anticipation for a visiting player.

“After two games, Connor is doing very well, there’s a lot of pressure on him,” said 10-time Canadiens Stanley Cup champion Yvan Cournoyer, captain of the team’s run of four straight from 1976-79. “He could be one of the NHL’s best players. When he’s on the ice, I can see his talent and his potential. You can see that he makes a difference. It’s a good start.”

Cournoyer will get his first in-person look on Saturday, sitting among the crowd at Bell Centre.

In 2006, Crosby arrived in Montreal with blaring fanfare and enormous expectations, amplified in the city by his having worshipped the Canadiens in his youth and two seasons played with Rimouski in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.

In his 18 NHL seasons, the native of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia has lived up to his billing and more, becoming one of the finest players in the history of the game.

Crosby’s first game in Montreal was fun before it ever began, the city abuzz for the most heralded Penguins player since native son Mario Lemieux. 

Crosby’s 39th NHL game was only his second in his native country, having picked up an assist the night before in Toronto against the Maple Leafs to give him a team-leading 43 points (19 goals, 24 assists).

Referee Don Koharski, a native of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, held up the opening face-off in Montreal, directing Crosby’s eyes to the open penalty-box door where Canadiens photographer Bob Fisher was standing, his lens aimed at center ice.

“See that photographer over there?” Koharski said to Crosby. “He wants a photo of the two legends from Nova Scotia.”

With Canadiens captain Saku Koivu, forward Alex Kovalev and Penguins forward Ziggy Palffy idling in wait, Crosby grinned and said to Koharski, “Yeah? Well, where’s the other one?”

The Penguins’ young star scored twice that night, 4:33 into the game, then the eventual game-winner 1:58 into the third period, selected first star.

The third period just underway, Canadiens legend Jean Beliveau was being interviewed by Penguins television, speaking from his aisle seat three rows behind Montreal’s bench.

“Usually a youngster, if they’re 18 or 19 years old, it takes a year or two before you get adjusted to the speed of the game,” Beliveau said as the Penguins began a rush up the ice. “But Sidney, he has everything. Natural talent, great ability, he looks physically strong” — Crosby scored in Beliveau’s mid-sentence — “and I’m always happy when there’s a youngster coming up like that. It’s good for the game.”

On Saturday, 18 years after Crosby’s first game in Montreal, Bedard will for the first and only time this season step onto the ice of the NHL’s oldest and most storied franchise. Eager to see him will be Elise Beliveau, who will be sitting two seats from where she and her late husband were first dazzled by Crosby.

Beliveau was playing senior hockey with the Quebec Aces when Jim Bedard played his one game in Montreal, a very tiny piece of Blackhawks history as one of 1,015 men to have skated or played goal for the team.

A native of Admiral, Saskatchewan, Bedard worked his way up from junior in Moose Jaw in the province and the minor pros in Kansas City to play his 22 NHL games, all for Chicago, five in the autumn of 1949, then 17 more in 1950-51. 

His great-great nephew will reach 22 games, good health permitting, against the Jets in Winnipeg on Dec. 2. In his two NHL games to date, Connor Bedard has matched his relative’s career offensive output with two points (one goal, one assist).

The sad-sack 1950-51 Black Hawks would finish the season last in the six-team NHL, their record of 13-47-10 leaving them 26 points out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs; they scored the League’s fewest goals (171) while allowing the most (280), surrendering 10, 11 and 12 goals in three of their losses.

The 10-2 Forum drubbing wasn’t pretty.

“It was a rough night for Harry Lumley in the Chicago citadel,” a Montreal newspaper report read. “The Habitants fired so much rubber at the big goaler that he looked dazed, even groggy. … Under the circumstances, he probably felt he was lucky to escape with his life.”

But Jim Bedard did have one good memory against the Canadiens. A couple of weeks earlier, on Feb. 22, the injury-riddled Black Hawks had defeated Montreal 3-2 at Chicago Stadium for just their second win in 31 games (2-26-5), an upset witnessed by only 4,912 fans.

There will be more than four times that on Saturday, Bell Centre to be jammed for the Canadiens’ home opener, Bedard the hottest ticket in town. The rookie will be 18 years, 89 days old when the puck drops, 60 days younger than Crosby when the latter made his Montreal debut.

Any curtain-raiser is an electric event in this hockey-mad market. But as a midseason game was crackling for Crosby in 2006, so too will the voltage be high for Bedard, this game wired with another generational talent.

Source : NHL.com

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That was the first time I covered what was then known as the Nestle Invitational. I was researching A Good Walk Spoiled, and when I drove onto the property at Bay Hill and parked my car – about a mile from the media centre; thanks very much IMG – the first thing I did was go in search of Doc Giffin.

At that point, Doc had only been Arnold Palmer’s right-hand man for 28 years. He would remain by his side for another 28 – until Palmer died in September 2016. My question to Doc when I found him was direct: “Is there any way I can get some time with Arnold this week?” Doc said he would get back to me.

The week was going to be a hectic one: the second thing I did on that Tuesday afternoon was go find Greg Norman. The late Bev Norwood, a rare good guy in the agent business, had told me he had cleared the way and Norman was open to talking to me for the book. I was also supposed to drive to St Petersburg on Friday and Sunday to cover first and second-round NCAA Tournament games for the Washington Post. The trip was just under 100 miles – not counting the walk to my car.

Palmer, though, was my primary target. In those days, even though neither played very much anymore, you couldn’t write a book about life on the PGA Tour without talking to Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.

Norman wasn’t an easy out. After he had finished his pro-am round (Bay Hill’s pro-am was on Tuesday) I introduced myself. Norman’s first question was the same one 99 percent of athletes ask upon first meeting a reporter: “How much time do you need?”

I gave him my stock answer, “About an hour.”

Norman, as Nicklaus would do later in the year, looked at me as if he’d seen a ghost. “I don’t have that much time,” he said.

“OK,” I said. “Thanks.” And, as I would do with Nicklaus, I started to walk away.

“Hang on,” Norman said. “Why don’t you come by my house Friday afternoon. We can talk then.”

Great. One important interview set up, one to go.

Sure enough, Thursday afternoon, after I had walked the golf course (and loved it) for the first time, Doc Giffin found me and said, “Can you go to Arnold’s on Sunday morning for bagels and coffee? He can give you plenty of time then.”

Seriously Doc? Can I go to Arnold’s house for bagels and coffee? If IMG moved my parking spot five miles away, I’d get there.

The only hitch was that I’d asked Mike Krzyzewski if I could meet him at Duke’s hotel Sunday morning to talk to him before his team played Michigan State that evening. Talking to Krzyzewski early would make it easy for me to write late if his team won.

I called Krzyzewski and told him I had to cancel our meeting. Trust me when I tell you he wasn’t broken-hearted. “Everything OK?” he asked.

“Yeah, fine, but Arnold Palmer’s willing to talk to me Sunday morning and I have to do that.”

“So, you’d rather talk to a golfer than to me.”

I was tempted to explain the importance of the interview to him. I settled for, “Yes.”

And so, at 9 o’clock Sunday morning, Doc and I were ushered into Palmer’s house. Introductions were made and Doc said, “Arnold, you should know, John cancelled a meeting with Mike Krzyzewski to be here this morning.”

Palmer looked at me quizzically. “Mike Kachoosko?” he said.

“Jejefski,” I said. “He’s the Duke basketball coach.”

Palmer grinned. “Oh yeah, Duke. That’s the team whose butt we’ve been kicking the last couple years.”

He was right, Wake Forest was in the midst of a nine-game winning streak against Duke.

Gotcha – for the first, but certainly not the last time.

We then sat and talked for two hours. Actually three, because Arnold invited me down to his workshop while he worked on some golf clubs for an hour.

I was late getting started for St Petersburg and missed the start of the first game. I didn’t care even a little.

Source: australiangolfdigest

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Erdogan’s furious comments further distanced the prospects of Sweden and Finland joining the Western defense alliance before Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary polls in May.

Turkey and Hungary are the only NATO members not to have ratified the Nordic neighbors’ historic decision to break their tradition of military non-alignment in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has promised that his parliament would approve the two bids next month.

But Erdogan has dug in his heels heading into a close election in which he is trying to energize his nationalist electoral base.

“Sweden should not expect support from us for NATO,” Erdogan said in his first official response to the act by an anti-Islam politician during a protest on Saturday that was approved by the Swedish police despite Turkey’s objections.

“It is clear that those who caused such a disgrace in front of our country’s embassy can no longer expect any benevolence from us regarding their application for NATO membership,” Erdogan said.

Swedish leaders roundly condemned far-right politician Rasmus Paludan’s actions but defended their country’s broad definition of free speech.

Erdogan has already set out a series of tough conditions that include a demand for Sweden to extradite dozens of mostly Kurdish suspects that Ankara either accuses of “terrorism” or of involvement in a failed 2016 coup.

Sweden’s courtship of Turkey appeared to be making headway with a flurry of visits by top ministers to Ankara.

Stockholm has also enacted a constitutional amendment that will make it possible to pass tougher anti-terror laws demanded by Ankara.

But things turned sour when a small Kurdish group hung an effigy of Erdogan outside Stockholm’s city hall earlier this month..

Turkey summoned the Swedish ambassador and revoked an invitation for its parliament speaker to visit Ankara.

The Swedish police decision to approve Paludan’s protests drew a similar response.

Turkey summoned Stockholm’s ambassador for another dressing down and canceled a planned visit by Sweden’s defense minister.

Erdogan said the burning of the Muslim holy book was a hate crime that could not be defended by free speech.

“No one has the right to humiliate the saints,” he said in nationally televised remarks.

source: timesofisrael

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