National Aboriginal Day Celebrations

National Aboriginal Day celebrations took place across the country Saturday, honouring the cultural contributions of First Nation, Inuit and Metis people.

First proclaimed 12 years ago by a Liberal government, National Aboriginal Day is held on June 21 because of the cultural significance of the first day of summer, the longest day of the year and the rebirth of Mother Earth. This excerpt I found at Canadian Press

There were celebrations going on in many different venues across our city today and continuing on into this evening. Although many of the celebrations were dampened (literally) by heavy downpours of belting rain! The Show Opener Dancers The Drumming Circle For The Dancers Rik Leaf is a folk-poet who has been a featured on six internationally released compilation CDs that combined have sold over 35,000 copies. His folk-rock latin-funk duo features Rik on acoustic-electric guitar, stomp box, ocarinas and vocals, and Marie-Josée Dandeneau, a female Métis multi instrumentalist on upright, cello, fretless bass and percussion. All information on Rik Leaf is an excerpt from Rik Leaf "Tribe of One" My Space site which has a lot of information, concert dates and some of his music. Marie-Josée Dandeneau, an acclaimed Metis multi-instrumentalist from St. Boniface, MB, who played standup and fretless bass, piano, acoustic guitar and djembe. Tribe of One shows add professional dancers and visual artists. This is one of the visual artists painting while Tribe of One was playing. They also had some aboriginal dancers on stage with them for several numbers.