Kookum's House

11/14/2025

Dene Tha FN.
Always doing good things for the community 💖

11/14/2025

Something we haven't talked about is that we have been involved in a case with City of Edmonton for about three years now. Our lawyer has said we can finally talk about it.

It's a human rights case we filed because when we leased our space in Edmonton, the officer handling our file, we feel mishandled it due to our company being Native. We feel that way because of comments that were made in meetings, as well as finding this individuals social media accounts and seeing that they have very concerning racist posts that had gone unnoticed for about 11 years despite this person being a supervisor in the licensing office at COE. Their social media was public and horrific. They likely weren't just discriminating against us.

Notes were added to our licensing file, which we can trace to this person's intake that caused delay after delay with our business license (6 months of delays). Those notes stated we were building in our new space, which required several permits we didn't need, when we clearly documented time and time again that we were not building anything.

When we found out this person was affiliated with a hard right group that confronts Indigenous land back protesters, we became very concerned for our safety.

We knew we had an obligation to try to hold the City accountable. So we filed a Human Rights Complaint.

Sadly though, the Human Rights Commission is run by Danielle Smith's handpicked crony who dismissed our case just a couple of months ago after three years of fighting and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. We have appealed, but it isn't looking good.

Despite presenting significant evidence of this individuals comments, racist views and social media, the Human Rights Commission Director (who has been involved in multiple scandals for their own behaviour) dismissed our case without following several standard laws and procedures claiming we didn't have enough evidence. We submitted hundreds of Freedom of Information documents, meeting notes, social media screenshots, and more showing the problematic behaviour of this individual for years.

Even more reprehensible is that the City of Edmonton has allowed their lawyer to completely humiliate us and denigrate our values through this multi-year process. We weren't even suing for a monetary settlement, we were asking for changes in how the City of Edmonton handles Indigenous business intake. We know thousands of Indigenous Entrepreneurs and we've seen firsthand how COE's policies (or lack of) have harmed and created barriers for Indigenous businesses trying to get licensing in Edmonton. Unsurprisingly, we have had nothing but amazing help from the City of Calgary for our store and operations there. You'd think the City of Edmonton would be a different experience than it was, since Edmonton is seen as so progressive. However, in a very illegal move, the COE lawyer took the confidential settlement negotiations that are not supposed to be used against the victim in the case, and shared them in their filings, further humiliating us because we were trying to get them to make changes instead of seeking a monetary payout.

However, they've spent huge resources fighting us so they don't have to make any changes. So much for Truth and Reconciliation. We may need to do a fundraiser to continue the fight as we have appealed the director's decision. If we are successful, we are looking at huge costs to get to tribunal.

It has been a difficult 4 years with the City of Edmonton. We are saddened they have fought us so hard and even more saddened that our reasonable requests for structural change have been laughed at and disregarded.

If we need to do a fundraiser, we hope you'll be able to help us carry on the fight.

11/07/2025

11/04/2025

09/27/2025

Kookum’s House is at the Elks Indigenous Makers Market today until 6pm!!

Stop in and say hi if you’re going to the game today! 💚🧡