Siddon suggests Native parliament

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A Native Parliament may be the next step in securing self-government for Canada's First Nations, the Minister of Indian Affairs said.

Although the political body would not be a Parliament in the constitutional sense, it would consist of Native officials administering programs for Native people, said Tom Siddon.

"If a representative structure in the form of a political body were to be created and were to come forward and ask for a certain level of responsibility, I think there is a way to accommodate that," he said.

There would have to be a way to form a representative democracy where Natives at the community level would decide who would be representing them, Siddon said.

"You know, the unique feature from my perspective would be that the politics of deciding of priorities are no longer dumped at the feet of non-Native Ministers in Ottawa. Those then become the essence of debate among First Nations communities across Canada."

The ultimate goal of such a system would be to dissolve the Department of Indian Affairs and hand national Native government back to the First Nations, Siddon said. The only major obstacle to such a plan is the often tense relationships that exist between the individual First Nations and their desire to have a national political body.

"The thing will only work if there's a will to make it work and not allow it to divide on regional lines," he said.

Creating a workable funding formula for Native communities would help eliminate squabbling between bands over funding levels and eventually make the Minister of Indian Affairs obsolete, Siddon said. The only other problem would be to legitimize the new system to the Canadian taxpayers who would have to initially fund it.

Reaction from the First Nations to the idea of a Native Parliament has been slow, however, as many Native leaders have yet to hear about it.

"Once again, Tom is coming out with something that affects Native people without talking to Native people about it first," said Native Council of Canada president Ron George.

"It's news to me," said Assembly of First Nations Ontario vice-Chief Gordon Peters. "But there's always this on-going process where they seem to have this idea that is what the people want."

The only national Native body that the Assembly of First Nations believes is in the assembly itself, Peters said.

"It goes back to the process undertaken by Senator Marchand and Ethel Blondin," she said. "They went around the country and tried to change the boundaries for elections of Native people that would go to the House of Commons. Our chiefs in Ontario said 'no way'."

"I'm not saying that that is the right model for Aboriginal people," Siddon said. "But think of Parliament. In some ways it is the embodiment of the ancient Iroquois Confederacy. The whole business of consensus government...is not unfamiliar to Aboriginal culture."

Peters, however, was not as enthusiastic.

"The question we have to ask ourselves in terms of a national political body is what do we want for our future?" he said. "Do we want integration? Because that's what's being advocated."