Questions of leadership

Page 5

Elsewhere in this month's issue of Windspeaker, you will see Kettle and Stony Point Chief Tom Bressette state a fundamental truth about the First Nations' leadership.

He said that First Nation chiefs or technicians who criticize people who accept a federal government paycheque are throwing rocks from the front porch of their glass houses. Elected chiefs can't hint that Bressette, and others like him who do work for federal boards, are any less committed to the Indigenous cause just because they take government money.

That allegation follows a false logic that eventually takes us all back to the proposition that all First Nation leaders are fundamentally corrupt. We don't believe that's the case. Some people will take that 'golden carrot.' Some never will. Some will dip their toe in that dangerous pool and then quickly pull it out again. Some will dive in and drink deeply.

But to say that all band council or tribal council leaders are sell-outs is going too far. Those who quietly raise that criticism are usually doing so for self-interested, political reasons and, as always, when each points a finger there are three others pointing back.

Yet, traditional leaders have been using the criticism about the Indian Act leaders for more than 100 years, haven't they?

They reason that you're either in one canoe or the other.

They say the world-view that is required to work in the federal bureaucracy is, by definition, non-Indigenous, even anti-Indigenous.

They could be right.

These traditional leaders aren't on the government payroll. They don't take federal paycheques for the political work that they do. In fact, they are ridiculed, dismissed and marginalized because they don't have budgets and desks and fax lines and email accounts as part of their infrastructure. They, the modern-day equivalent of the pre-contact Indigenous governments, are seen as less than legitimate because they don't look or act like government bureaucrats.

But is there a middle ground, a best of both worlds approach that could be considered?

We don't need to tell our readers that there is a distinct and unique Indigenous way of looking at the world and that that viewpoint is not exactly encouraged in the federal bureaucracy.

That may well be why we see, all too often, First Nation leaders acting more like managers than leaders. They're part of a system that manages information and authorities and mass populations of people. The system doesn't encourage leadership. In fact, it discourages leadership by making elected First Nation leaders spend so much time shuffling papers and signing forms that they don't have time to develop and work towards a legitimate vision of a better future.

Traditional leaders who have resisted the urge to make good money in the government system, who are often forced to live on welfare in order to stay in their home communities where there is no economy to speak of, have two things going for them. They are unquestionably not at risk of being co-opted and they have the time to think about the things that real leaders need to ponder.

We believe traditional governments need to play a bigger role for just those reasons.

While modern governance institutions are being developed by First Nation leaders who work in close proximity to the federal government and its bureaucratic culture, the traditional leaders could and should offer an important perspective.

Don't you think the fact that the federal government refuses to recognize and deal with these governments is a significant indicator that they have something to offer that will break the shackles of colonialism and pave the way for real self-government and a real nation-to-nation relationship?

We do. So how do we get from where we are to where we want to be?

-Windspeaker