Backtracking apologies fail to impress [editorial]

“Shame, shame on you” seems to be the theme this month with a number of not-so-enlightened comments about Aboriginal people and lawlessness coming from non-Aboriginal “observers.”

When Air Canada announced it would no longer put up flight crews in a Winnipeg downtown hotel because of an increase in crime in the area, it blamed the safety situation on the influx of “1,000 displaced people from rural Manitoba.”

It didn’t take much to read between the lines to figure out that those displaced people were Aboriginals who were forced to flee their homes because of flooding. Yes, there was an “apology,” though anyone with a lick of sense isn’t buying what Air Canada is selling with it.
“It appears that certain inferences are being drawn from the contents of a recent internal bulletin relating to accommodation for flight crews on overnight layover in Winnipeg,” said the airline’s spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick. “Air Canada wishes to state categorically it had no intent to cause offence to any individual or group and apologizes if it inadvertently did so.”

Nope. No matter how many times we read that, it still smells like manure.

And then there’s the Saskatchewan Party’s Yorkton candidate Greg Ottenbreit, who, after talking to “many” First Nations people, has decided that the “free and easy” money—handouts, he’s calling it—that would come from resource revenue sharing would most assuredly be used to purchase drugs and alcohol and contribute to the social decay of the province. He made the comment at an all-candidates forum in October.

Shame. And really? Are we back to that old song and dance? Papa wants to save us from ourselves, and that’s why he won’t share the wealth. We just wouldn’t know what to do with that kind of money, except shoot it into our veins, or pour it down our throats. We couldn’t possibly be responsible with it. He’s protecting us from ourselves. Isn’t that nice?

Oh, yes, he’s apologized for his public paternalistic musings, if not the greed and grasping that he attempted to disguise as concern for First Nations people, but the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations is calling upon Ottenbreit to step down, or for party leader and Premier Brad Wall to release him. Wall has refused, saying Ottenbreit is a good man “and he immediately understood this was the wrong thing to say and apologized.”

Wall insists his party does oppose “a special” revenue-sharing deal for First Nations “or any group,” because the resource revenue of the province belongs to “everybody equally.”

“That’s it. It’s the only reasoning behind our position,” he said. Seems that Ottenbreit, an incumbent looking for re-election, just went off-script. Hey, it happens when ignorance, engrained racist attitudes and misconceptions bubble to the surface in the heat of a debate.

Interesting that Wall lumped First Nations in with “any group”, which tells us that he’d prefer not to acknowledge the legal and constitutional uniqueness of the First Peoples in what is now known as Canada.

The spin Wall is trying to put on this is that this is about the subject of revenue sharing, and not about the ignorance and intolerance that exists in his party. So, that’s why we’ve come out swinging. It’s because First Nations people have to do a better job of pushing back.
“Comments such as these cause the public to form opinion and reinforce negative images of First Nation people,” FSIN Vice-Chief Morley Watson said in response to the Ottenbreit comment. Um, that’s true, but we don’t think Watson has much credibility when it comes to condemning those who would reinforce the public’s negative images of First Nations people.

If there was an organization that has, over many years now, worked to “cause the public to form opinion” of a negative kind about First Nations, it’s the FSIN. If you’re looking for the moral high ground, it’s back there where you left it when you dropped the ball on First Nations University, Saskatchewan Indian Gaming, parts 1 and 2, featuring Dutch Lerat, and the sad debacle around the ouster of reformers SIGA Board Chair Kirk Goodtrack and former Grand Chief Guy Lonechild. So shame on you FSIN for being the pot that calls the kettle black.
Windspeaker