All this time, and this is the answer?

Page 4

Will somebody please explain to us what the fuss is all about? Why call a special chiefs' assembly in November in order to pass a resolution that basically says First Nations want the right to have the financial institutions legislation apply only to the First Nations who want it?

The draft legislation was already optional. Isn't that what optional means?

All the political scheming and plotting of the last 18 months gets us here?

This November special assembly ended almost exactly three weeks before the regularly scheduled annual December Confederacy of the Assembly of First Nations is set to begin. It couldn't wait three weeks?

Yes, the legislation was due to be introduced in the House of Commons for first reading the following week. It still will be. The resolution didn't change a thing in that regard.

We understand the AFN wisely decided it would not pay the travel costs of the delegates. That means it spent approximately $10,000 for the best rental hall in Canada for two days. Ten grand ain't much compared to the $500,000 it could have cost, but 10 grand is still 10 grand.

The Indian Affairs department is having a field day with this one. Already the not-so-subtle sub-text of every comment gleefully delivered by every official in the department is that the AFN is irrelevant. Less than one-sixth of the chiefs in the country cared enough to go to Ottawa for this one, they say, sniggering delightedly behind their hands.

The mainstream press stayed away in record numbers this time. Reporters we talked to say editors are tired of all the noise accompanied by very little news.

One legitimate bit of actual news emerged from the gathering. Matthew Coon Come will run for a second term. If the AFN doesn't get its act together there may not be an organization to lead in the next three years. We can't help but wonder what all the time and energy and money is being expended for.

We've said this before but it looks like it needs repeating: Remember the people!

You know, the ones who would get the benefit of all the money if it wasn't being spent on expensive consultants and first class plane fares and five star hotels and hefty per diems.

The resolution accommodated the "diversity" of viewpoints within the AFN, inside sources say earnestly. Diversity is a nice word for division and yes, factions of chiefs are divided over the financial institutions. So, in the end after all this jockeying and flying to Vancouver for this meeting and Saskatoon for that meeting and Ottawa for yet another meeting, they decide that the answer is that everybody gets exactly what they wanted from Day 1.

That's leadership? Is that decisiveness? Is that working together and bashing out the issue and deciding the best course for the future of First Nation people?

One more question. Why couldn't this compromise have been decided on 18 months ago when all the rhetoric starting flying? You know, a million or so dollars ago.

We're all for working out win/win solutions, but this one was lying there staring at the chiefs every step of the way. Why did it take so long?

We can't help but wonder if some leaders haven't used this issue to raise their political profiles. This decision makes the whole issue look like a straw man raised up for the personal benefit of a few chiefs who want to make a power grab within the organization.

If it's not that then, as we said before, we just don't get it.