Trust. Integrity. Reputation.
Trust. Integrity. Reputation.
February - 2000
A helping hand!
The Napi Powwow at Peigan First Nation in southern Alberta was held Jan. 21 to 23. See photos page 2.Photo Credit: Brad Crowfoot
Canadian cases affected
U.S. court rules trust funds mismanagedBlackfoot Confederacy declares independence
Hawaii trip no "junket" bands insist
Membership issues illustrate cultural differences
Racist letter sparks political debate
Two new plays make awesome theatre
Solving the Indian problem - Guest Column
Indian issues too complex? - Editorial
Buffalo Spirit is finally here. Join the Journey!
The above is only a partial list of all the stories featured in the February, 2000 issue of Windspeaker.
If you are not receiving your own copy of Windspeaker, then you have missed out on a great deal of news, information and humour.
U.S. court rules trust funds mismanaged
By Paul Barnsley
Windspeaker Staff Writer
WASHINGTON, D.C.Lawsuits seeking huge awards are front and centre in Indian Country these days. Those involved in the biggest cases say the government made huge mistakes in the name of assimilation or racism or politics.
The Samson Cree Nation will begin the trial phase of its civil action in Calgary this May, seeking more than a billion dollars in compensation for what it alleges was gross mismanagement of oil and gas monies held in trust by the federal government.
Six Nations of the Grand River is holding its action against the Crown - for an accounting of its lands and monies held in trust - in abeyance while Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault tries to mediate the dispute. Billions of dollars are involved in this civil claim as well.
And Native leaders on both sides of the Canada/United States border say a Dec. 21 U.S. Federal District Court decision is a sign that the fallout of hundreds of years of irresponsible, unlawful government action can no longer be ignored or covered up.
Trial Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled the U.S. government breached its fiduciary duty to more than 500.000 Native trust fund beneficiaries. The government has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for leave to appeal. A decision is expected in February or March. The only step remaining in the U.S. justice system after the Court of Appeals is the Supreme Court.
The class action lawsuit, Cobell v. Babbitt, was launched at the urging of Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet tribe of Montana, who was elected as treasurer of the tribe in the early 1980s and discovered problems with the trust accounts. Cobell persuaded the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) to file the lawsuit.
John Echohawk, executive director of NARF, said the decision ill force the government to explain its actions to the trust fund owners.
"We're don't think they're going to be able to do that because of the bad condition of the trust records, so we'll be able to present evidence ourselves, based on some forensic accounting by our expert witnesses - the Price, Waterhouse, Coopers firm - and we think they will be able to demonstrate that the account balances that the government's representing are way below what they should be and that our evidence of the accounting will be accepted and then the government will have to adjust the account balances to meet the accounting that we would present. So then there will be an increase in the total account balances," he said.
There are two types of trust funds in the United States. Cobell involves only trust funds owned by individuals. Estimates of the amount of money the federal government owes those owners are close to $10 billion. Tribal government trust fund owners are watching the case carefully and may be next to file suit.
As the case proceeded, it became apparent the government was trying to stonewall attempts to make it account for the money. Two of President Bill Clinton's cabinet members were held in contempt by Judge Lamberth for failing to produce documents.
"The contempt proceedings occurred in February of '99 when the court held that the secretary of the Interior [equivalent to Canada's minister of Indian Affairs] and the secretary of the Treasury, [Canada's cabinet equivalent would be the Finance minister] together with the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs, were in contempt of court for failure to produce documents related to the trust accounts of the five main plaintiffs that they'd been under court order to produce for some time.
They'd represented to the court that those documents would be forthcoming and they never were produced and the misrepresentations that they made to the court then became the subject of the contempt proceedings. (They were) made to pay the fees for the attorneys and the expert witnesses that we used to try and get those documents produced. A total amount of $600,000 was awarded," Echohawk explained.
It has taken a lot of work by a lot of people to fund, research and argue the case, but the effort was always seen to be worthwhile, he said.
"We've always felt the law required the government to perform these trust responsibilities," he said. "So we finally had to go to court and involve the judicial branch in enforcing these laws we know require the government to fulfill these trust responsibilities. We've felt like we've had a strong case all along and the courts are vindicating that view, so far, and we expect to prevail no matter how far up we have to go."
The Six Nations of the Grand River (Ontario) council is involved in a similar action against the Canadian government. Six Nations' Land Claim Research Director Phil Monture has overseen the court fight since1994. He toldWindspeaker his council recently struck a promising deal with Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault.
"On Jan. 13, Minister Nault was here. He's agreed that we'll investigate setting up an independent tribunal to negotiate resolutions to our claim. But we require it be cabinet approved, it can't be under the INAC mandate, and he agreed. It's got to have cabinet approval by June, by the summer break, or the court case will continue," he said.
The Haldimand Deed of 1784 set aside six miles on either side of the Grand River, from its mouth to its source, for the Six Nations as a reward for loyalty and assistance to the British Crown during the American Revolution. The deed covered close to one million acres; the current reserve is about 45,000 acres and Monture's staff has researched every plot of land in the Haldimand tract. Six Nations claims that most of the alienated land was never surrendered and most of the money from the Six Nations trust fund (where payment for any land that was legally surrendered should have been deposited) is missing. Like NARF with the Cobell case, Six Nations has sued for an accounting of its assets held in trust by the federal government. Estimates vary. Former Indian Affairs minister Ron Irwin said several years ago that the Six Nations claim could cost the government close to $30 billion if it's successful.
"No doubt the fallout's big if we win so that's why [Nault's] agreed to sit down and we're going to know in the beginning of February how we'll start setting up this mediation process or tribunal," Monture said. "We're not withdrawing our claim. Remember that was the minister's big one: we won't talk to you unless you absolutely discontinue your litigation. We agreed that putting it in abeyance is OK for now."
Nault's gesture to set this process up as a way of solving the Six Nations lawsuit is a significant step forward. Monture believes it's a sign the federal government realizes they have to deal with these issues.
"I think Canada's coming to grips with the fact that these are liabilities. These are not moral liabilities, they're legal liabilities," he said. "No matter how you try to fluff it off, it's still a debt that Canada owes. So to say you've got a surplus this year, that's only a half-truth.
"It's just a matter of when it's going to happen. The best way to resolve these issues is a negotiated settlement because there's a lot of win/win scenarios if people will get the chip off their shoulders and sit down and try to resolve things as opposed to the adversarial approach that Canada and Indian Affairs has taken in the past where they said it's our money, it's our rules, you play our game or you go to hell," he said.
Montreal lawyer James O'Reilly is representing central Alberta's Samson Cree Nation in its $1.4 billion lawsuit against the federal government. O'Reilly said he's convinced that old, racist, paternalistic notions were mixed with backroom political dealing to cause the breaches of trust and fiduciary duty that his client alleges. He said the money earned by oil and gas resources on Samson Cree land were used by the government while it was being held in trust but the government did not exercise due care when it came to protecting the assets of the band. Money was poured into Indian Affairs' consolidated revenue fund and was used as a government asset rather than a Samson Cree asset, he alleges.
"The problem with the consolidated revenue fund is that there's a national debt that's close to $600 billion. That means that it's a deficit account. What this involves is essentially what can be described as a IOU or a simple credit to the band and then they make an accounting entry into what they call trust accounts. But there's no physical money that's credited to the trust accounts. It's a 'call' upon the so-called consolidated revenue fund, which means it's a call upon federal finances," he explained. "But then, instead of looking after it, they say the only thing you can do is pay interest. So the federal government says 'we will only pay interest and we will determine the rate of interest.' Then they do a sleight of hand. They say 'we will pay you interest based on long-term government of Canada bonds.' But the trick is: the rates are not the rates that you would get if you bought a long-term government of Canada bond at a particular time."
Native trust account holders were always paid interest at the lowest possible rate, O'Reilly said, allowing the government to benefit from the investment income generated by money which belonged to the band. The Samson statement of claim alleges the Samson trust funds could have been two-and-a-half to three times larger than they are if government officials had invested the money prudently.
"We have to show that they didn't treat these monies as the normal, prudent person would treat them. You've got to watch the shop. Our main beef is that they weren't watching the shop and intervening when something damaging was happening."
O'Reilly said the government should have known the trust fund owners would have objected to how their assets were managed.
"The Indian Act was never designed for large amounts of money," he said. "Never. It's not meant to be a system that can properly manage large sums of money because no one is assigned to do this type of thing."
Up until about 1969, the interest rate on Indian trust accounts was frozen, he said. Then as the Trudeau government prepared major changes to the Indian Act, the government changed the way the monies were managed.
"This was all at the time of the White Paper, the famous Indian Act consultations, and part of this was they said, well, this is going to get out of our hands. The Indian Act's going to be abolished and all the Indians are going to become white men. So, they didn't really look at it as anything long-term. So, they started with a system that made a bit of sense in the 1960s but made no sense starting in the 70s and the 80s in the years of high inflation and the world oil crisis when interest rates started to shoot way up," he said. "They had absolutely no system and they didn't consider it was necessary to have a system because, essentially, they said with Indian people . . . whatever we do with Indian people is a pure matter of our discretion. They should be thankful that we're helping them out."
O'Reilly believes he can convince a judge the department used money generated by band-owned assets to shrink the cost of its obligations to Native people.
"Personally, I think one of the great driving forces behind this was that the feds' ambition was to get Indian people to use their own monies, when they had monies even from resource development, and spend it on what would be normal program spending for the federal government. So, try to get the Indians to use their own money and save the feds from those expenditures and at the same time encourage a little bit of hostage mentality by saying we can make per capita distributions (PCDs) from resource development and the more we encourage that, the more we save money on programs and services and the more the people will become used to this," he said.
Monture, Echohawk and O'Reilly agree that the Crown's paternalistic, colonialistic attitudes towards Native people led to this situation, a situation that bureaucrats and politicians never thought they'd ever be called to account for.
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Blackfoot Confederacy declares independenceBy Paul Barnsley
Windspeaker Staff Writer
PEIGAN FIRST NATIONMembers of the traditional Blackfoot Confederacy have issued a declaration that says they are rejecting Canada's and the United States' jurisdiction over their traditional territory and reverting to the state of affairs that existed before European contact.
Acting on the advice of University of Illinois international law professor Francis Boyle, the Blackfoot Confederacy now calls itself the Blackfoot Nation. Boyle advised the confederacy members that a nation can be a confederacy but a confederacy is not necessarily a nation, and nationhood is what the declaration is all about.
Two Blood Tribe members and a member of the Montana Blackfoot community travelled to Peigan (about a 40-minute drive west of Lethbridge) for a Jan. 21 meeting at the home of Sikapii-Whitehorse who is also known as George Gallant. He and his wife, Elizabeth Crow Flag, who prefers to be called Yellow Dust Woman, are the keepers of the Beaver Bundle, one of the most sacred objects in Blackfoot tradition. George Gooddagger and Ken Scout, members of Alberta's Blood Tribe, and Long Standing Bear Chief of Browning, Montana attended a meeting that was heralded on various internet usenet groups (computer chat lines) as a momentous occasion in the history of the Blackfoot people.
These people, on behalf of the Blackfoot Confederacy, issued their three-page declaration on Nov. 29. They invited the governor general to attend the Jan. 21 meeting marking the declaration of independence. Governor General Adrienne Clarkson declined to attend because she had a previous engagement, but the letter sent to Sikapii-Whitehorse on her behalf congratulated the Blackfoot people and wished them well.
It's hard to imagine what Clarkson would have made of the conversation among the half-dozen Blackfoot people who sat around the dining room table in Sikapii-Whitehorse's home on the Peigan territory in southwestern Alberta on Jan. 21, but as the figurative head of state of Canada, she probably would not have been comfortable there.
Sikapii-Whitehorse interpreted the letter from Clarkson as an expression of support for the declaration from the governor general, but Rideau Hall press secretary Stewart Wheeler told Windspeaker that the governor general's staff receives hundreds of invitations each year and the standard procedure for dealing with each invitation is to first check to see if the governor general already has something scheduled on the date in question. If that's the case, as it was in the case of the invitation extended by the Blackfoot people, then a letter is sent expressing regrets that Clarkson has a previous engagement and cannot attend.
Only when there is nothing already scheduled and there's a chance the governor general may accept an invitation does the staff research the invitation to see if it would be appropriate for Clarkson or her husband, author John Raulston Saul, to attend. Wheeler said the invitation extended by the Blackfoot people never got to that stage.
"The letter certainly shouldn't be interpreted as an endorsement," he said.
Each of the people around the table at the Peigan meeting told a story of being marginalized by the Indian Act or federally recognized government on their home territory. Each also made it clear that they don't support the elected governments and don't get along too well with the elected leaders of their communities.
Traditional councils in all parts of North America have similar complaints. Most of these councils - the Iroquois Confederacy is a typical example - have no means of raising money and thus are powerless and reduced to a role of criticizing the Indian Act governments in Canada or the federally recognized tribal governments in the United States. But many Indigenous people have a deep-seated respect for the descendants of the traditional, pre-contact chiefs or faith-keepers. In some parts of the country, the traditional councils work together with the elected councils. Those arrangements usually see the traditional (or hereditary) chiefs performing the political role while the elected chiefs perform an administrative role, managing government programs and looking after the roads, sewage treatment and other similar functions of a local government.
Projects which threaten the environment or are clearly unpopular with the majority of the community have been known to allow the traditional chiefs to pull the people together to disrupt the control of the elected councils.
Sikapii-Whitehorse said the traditional Blackfoot lands are immensely resource-rich and yet the elected council, a group he accuses of being an arm of the federal government, allows the majority of its people to live in poverty.
"Ralph Klein brags that $12 to $15 billion a year in resources is taken off our land every year and yet we don't see a cent," he said. "Why are we beggars on our own land?"
He and Long Standing Bear Chief say they have uncovered a variety of illegal moves which invalidate the treaty covering their land (Treaty 7) and they say the elected councils are aware of these illegal actions but don't do anything about them because the elected officials are very well paid to look the other way.
"No man bites the hand that feeds him," said Long Standing Bear Chief. "Especially an ignorant man. But, since the government doesn't feed me, I'm not afraid to bite them."
All confederacy members said that the money extracted from their lands should be available to their people so they can use the funds to re-establish their traditional government and throw out what they see as the corrupt colonizers' system.
Sikapii-Whitehorse said the movement towards independence is in its infancy and will require a lot of organizing and political activism if the goal of being recognized around the world as a sovereign nation is to be achieved.
So far, both federal governments and the local mainstream press have chosen to ignore the declaration, an indication of just how far the former confederacy members have to go.
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Hawaii trip no "junket" bands insist
By Joan Black
Windspeaker Writer
KAMLOOPS, B.C.First Nations who attend conferences in holiday resort areas can expect to come under the gun for wasting taxpayers' money, recent stories in British Columbia newspapers show. Two January articles by Suzannne Fournier in Vancouver's the Province suggest bands used federal health care or education money to pay for fact-finding or research missions to Hawaii, which are portrayed as an unjustified and improper expense. Spokesmen for Health Canada, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and a provincial child and family agency director are quoted naysaying such trips, but no substantive evidence of misconduct seems to have prefaced an invitation to them to comment on Hawaiian trips by First Nations.
Fournier reported one trip in December included 13 B.C. and Alberta First Nations leaders, including "several Whispering Pines band members (Chief Richard LeBourdais, band manager Orla LeBourdais, community nurse Colleen LeBourdais and two councillors and their wives), Ahousaht band Chief Angus Campbell and councillor Louie Frank, and the Sto:lo Nation's Maureen Chapman, Debra Schneider and Patricia Charlie."
Medical Services Branch spokesman Yousuf Ali "admitted", according to Fournier, an audit of eight B.C. bands showed they had misspent health funds, but nothing in Fournier's article links those facts to the Hawaiian trips or the First Nations who went.
How much business versus how much pleasure is conducted out of the country is for the bands to know and is no one else's business, seems to be the attitude of the beleaguered First Nations. Most of the Native people quoted in Fournier's articles did not respond to Windspeaker's numerous requests to bring clarity to the issues raised. The ones who did talk to us said the Province and other newspapers selectively present information in a way that is calculated to discredit First Nations.
For example, a Jan. 14 letter to the Province by trip organizer Dennis Josey takes issue with a picture of a beach that accompanied a Jan. 7 article by Fournier. The First Nations group for whom he arranged travel in December did not stay in a beachfront hotel, according to Josey. He also says the workshop fee for four days was $395 U.S., not $500 as Fournier's article states. In addition, he says he told her their delegation had a group hotel rate of $65 a night not $95 to $200.
Josey's response points out that "Canadian First Nations and Hawaiians are in the process of assuming responsibility for . . . health, education, housing, economic development, justice, child/family services, natural resources and employment." He says it is smart before doing this for First Nations here to consult with the Hawaiians, "who have succeeded in establishing and maintaining viable, cost-effective community programs."
A Jan. 7 press release issued by the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council states they have been studying and negotiating their takeover of health services from Health Canada and it defends their right to "compare how indigenous peoples from Hawaii are maintaining their language, culture and identity in the face of modern conditions."
Neskonlith Chief Arthur Manuel, chairman of the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council, said "We reject any suggestion that our staff or representatives went to Hawaii for a junket, or vacation. However, we cannot speak for any delegation other than our own."
Fournier admitted toWindspeaker she had learned the room cost of $95 to $200 a night quoted by a hotel desk clerk and mentioned in her story was not in line with the $65 group rate the bands paid, but otherwise she stands by what she wrote. She says all her information came from Native community members who are unhappy with what their leaders are doing. She provided one published letter, allegedly from a Sto:lo Nation member, supporting her claims. She says she has others.
Shuswap Nation Tribal Director Dave Monture counters that the Province doesn't print First Nations' letters giving the other side. He said the negative news stories have damaged his credibility and adversely affected his efforts to raise money for a local hospital.
He said he also met a wall of indifference when he talked to Fournier's editor. Both, Monture says, passed up his invitation to attend a press conference on Jan. 13, which was supposed to inform all media about the results of "a recent Hawaiian fact finding trip as reported to the chief's council on Jan. 12th, 2000." Windspeaker received notice of the B.C. press conference Jan. 12.
When Windspeaker reached Monture on Jan. 21, he provided extensive information about Hawaiian Native people and their social, political and economic situation as well as Hawaiian contacts. He indicated he could not speak about the December trip mentioned in Fournier's write-up, since he had only heard about it the day before the meeting with the chiefs Jan. 12.
Monture says he's frustrated that "nobody's interested" in substantive First Nations health issues.
He provided a breakdown of the cost for four Shuswap people to attend a Hawaiian conference Nov. 8 to 12. He said the November trip was the topic of the Jan. 13 press conference too.
Monture said he would ask Leigh Ann Edwards, a Neskonlith councillor who went to Hawaii in November, to provideWindspeaker with information about her trip. She did not return our telephone calls.
Whispering Pines band manager Orla LeBourdais responded to requests for information about the Hawaii trip she attended with "We've been instructed not to talk to the press." When pushed, she said we had the option of submitting questions for consideration by their council.
Then on Jan. 21 Whispering Pines Chief Richard LeBourdais called to provide details regarding his 100-member band. He said six people went to Hawaii in November for seven or eight days and he accompanied the health conference group on that trip. International trade between Indigenous nations and other forms of economic co-operation were prominent in his discussions with the Hawaiians. He did not explain his band's earlier reluctance to talk to Windspeaker.
Ahousaht First Nation Chief Angus Campbell and councillor Louie Frank did not return our telephone call. Band manager Joe Campbell said he knew nothing about the trip.
Although Fournier's articles make a big deal out of members of the Shuswap Nation and the Sto:lo Nation visiting Hawaii in December and November, they don't target the Alberta and Saskatchewan band members who also went, which caused one B.C. spokesman to ask whether putting B.C. bands in a bad light with the public was connected to the sensitive treaty negotiations underway there now.
On the other hand, a January press release provided by the Sto:lo Nation's Xyolhemeylh-National office (a child and family agency) on behalf of Maureen Chapman, chief of Skawahlook First Nation and the portfolio holder for Xyolhemeylh, responds to what Chapman describes as "inaccuracies" in the Jan. 7 article by Fournier with rhetoric about understanding poverty and working for the betterment of her Nation without refuting much of what Fournier said.
The release does say Chapman and Debra Schneider did not represent the Sto:lo Nation or Xyolhemeylh, but went to Hawaii as representatives of their Skawahlook First Nation. It also says Skawahlook does not receive federal or provincial funding of health or social services.
A woman in the Xyolhemeylh office said Chapman went "on her own band funds, okayed by her own members. And the one who went on our behalf, as our agency, was our cultural advisor, Pat Charlie, to do cultural exchange with the Hawaaian Aboriginals."
Chapman responded to Windspeaker's request for an interview by saying she wanted to talk about the trip and would call back. Several telephone calls to her made over subsequent days were not returned, however.
The Montana First Nation (Hobbema, Alta.) and the Ocean Man First Nation (Stoughton, Sask.) confirmed they also sent delegates, two and five respectively. These people could not be reached at press time. Diane Meguinis from Tsuu T'ina First Nation in Alberta said she paid her own way and her son's and took advantage of a seat sale to take 10 days' holiday. She said she did not visit Hawaii as a leader on behalf of her band.
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Membership issues illustrate cultural differencesBy Paul Barnsley
Windspeaker Staff Writer
VANCOUVERA weary collection of Manitobans, and one Alberta chief, arrived in Vancouver in time to catch the last couple of days of the Assembly of First Nations annual meeting last July.
They walked almost 2,000 km from The Pas to Vancouver to raise awareness of the fight that many Indigenous people are waging to secure status and/or band membership in the curious, bureaucrat-created, post-Bill C-31 world.
Bill C-31, as most Native people know, was the 1985 amendment to the Indian Act that the Government of Canada, under then-prime minister Brian Mulroney, enacted in the face of several Supreme Court of Canada decisions and international pressure to remove discrimination against Native women from the Indian Act. Before the law was changed, a Native woman who married a non-Native man lost her status but a Native man who married a non-Native woman did not. In fact, the non-Native wife of a Native man actually gained status under Canadian law. There are still many women who acquired status solely by marriage before 1985 who remain status Indians.
That bothers some Native people, especially those who have significant Native bloodlines but still can't secure status for themselves or their children. Native leaders say the bureaucracy has turned the whole process of deciding who is an Indian and who isn't into an exercise that has no foundation in common sense.
Nathan MacGillvary organized the walk from The Pas to Vancouver. He's desperate for help in a Federal Court of Canada case that could decide the heritage of his granddaughter, Dakota. Dakota's mom, MacGillvary's daughter, was an unwed mother who chose not to disclose the name of the father to the federal government. Non-Native women in that predicament aren't even asked the question. But Native women who are asked the question - and refuse to answer - find that the government workers assume that the father is non-Aboriginal (whether that's the case or not). That arbitrary policy decision affects the status of the children and their children, increasing the chance that future generations will lose their status.
MacGillvary believes the regulations the Department of Indian Affairs has created to deal with deciding who is an Indian and who isn't are designed to eliminate Native people and the cost that Native entitlements impose on the federal treasury. He gives it about 50 years if something isn't done soon.
"A lot of people think they have a treaty number and they're safe. But that treaty number isn't good enough," he said. "All these regulations are designed to eliminate First Nations and treaties and within 50 or 60 years, that's what they'll do if we don't wake up."
Chief Richard Davis of the northern Alberta Swan River First Nation joined MacGillvary's long march because he feels his community's membership is threatened by the department of Indian Affairs' membership regulations.
"My grandchildren could be affected," he said. "Bill C-31 is the most aggressively genocidal assimilation project the government has ever introduced. We've never been consulted about any of these government regulations and that's wrong. Our legacy is ours to determine. You can't determine culture through legislation and you can't extinguish culture through legislation but that's what's going on."
Another Alberta band located not too far from Swan River was in the national spotlight a few years ago when it tried to fight for the right to decide who belongs on the membership roll and who doesn't. The Sawridge band was widely portrayed as an oil-rich band whose small number of members wanted to make it impossible for others to join the band because they didn't want to share the wealth. Lawyer Catherine Twinn, a Sawridge member, went on the attack telling reporters that the real issue, the more important issue, is who decides membership. She argued that the band should have the right to decide who is a member of its community, not the federal government. The case is scheduled to return to court in the near future; examinations are scheduled for next month. But Chief Davis said it doesn't matter whether you think the Sawridge members are being greedy and exclusionary or not because they're right about the importance of controlling their own membership list.
"They knew C-31 was about extinguishment long before anybody else," he said of his neighboring band.
Viola Thomas, the president of the United Native Nations in British Columbia, represents the interests of the off-reserve residents in that province. Since First Nation leaders believe that government funding has not kept up with the jump in membership that C-31 caused when it restored status to women and their children who had lost their status when they married non-Natives, the band council leadership has not been in a position to actively provide services to their off-reserve members. In many cases, reserve residents resent the newcomers who add more strain to already limited budgets. Thomas said that's one aspect of the issue that the women who fought for the Indian Act change didn't anticipate.
"Sandra Lovelace and the Native Women's Association of Canada never anticipated that the change in the discriminatory provision would create a bigger headache than the provision itself," she said. "They never, ever anticipated that when Bill C-31 kicked in, it would have these 27 legal categories. That's what has to be challenged - the right to self identify. I always use the analogy of immigrants who come to Canada. They agree to learn English and give up their identity, their right to self define. But for Aboriginal people that was imposed. The definition that eroded our right to self define was imposed. That process also destroys our matrilineal forms of identities. Historically, culturally, all first peoples were always recognized through their ancestors. With the erosion of that evolved a patrilineal definition that totally destroyed those rights to self definition. I think it's part of the White Paper policy. They still want to assimilate and disband their fiduciary obligation for Aboriginal people."
A recent decision in a British Columbia court case has Thomas excited. She called the Wilson decision a "fabulous decision" saying the court recognized that the Indian registrar's insistence on documented proof of Native heritage was an unfair burden on many Aboriginal people.
"That was a very, very interesting case because it really affects a lot of our people, particularly Aboriginal people who, at the time the Indian Act kicked in and the registrar came on stream, were excluded from the list because of their traditional activities like trapping or being a veteran. What that decision basically reaffirms was that, for those individuals who don't have the adequate paper documentation for application for membership, the registrar now has to factor the oral history. It's a very interesting case because quite often the paper stuff is used against our people who are wanting to register," she said.
And while Harry Daniels, president of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, the national organization that lobbies on behalf of off-reserve residents, angrily points out that there's no way to challenge a decision of the Indian registrar in court, Thomas warns that at least there's an internal appeal process within the Department of Indian Affairs.
"If you don't apply to the department for your application and you only apply direct to the band, you have no recourse for appeal if you appeal to the band unless the band has an appeal component within their band membership code and many of them don't," she said. "We always tell people, 'Don't go to your band, go through the registrar, because then at least you have that recourse for appeal.'"
Thomas sees all the problems caused by Bill C-31 to be the result of the government not keeping its promises to not impose greater hardships on First Nations by enacting the bill.
"The other thing that's got to be exposed is the broken promise from the Red Book that promised to enhance resources to deal with the needs of persons becoming reinstated. There's no doubt that part of the systemic attitudes that's been inherited by the some of the bands is that it's Bill C-31 or the urban Indians that's causing all the problems with our budgets, when in essence the problem rests with the federal government itself in underestimating the projections on reinstatement and secondly, capping resources to First Nations.
"By doing that, what you're effectively doing is cultivating a polarization amongst the Aboriginal community where you then get Indians blaming Indians when it isn't Indians that are the enemy here. It's how the federal government has chosen to prioritize their budget allocations."
Gerald Taiaiake Alfred, a Mohawk academic who teaches Indigenous governance at the University of Victoria, said there are a lot of very difficult issues involved in the question of who decides who is an Indian. He worked on the controversial membership code of his home community of Kahnawake and he believes tough measures are required to take back control of who decides status and membership. The new membership code in Kahnawake states that at least half of your family has to come from the community if you are to be welcomed as a member.
"It's easy to talk about things in the theoretical sense but when you are last representatives of your nation on earth and you are last of your blood line and you are last people holding onto last little bit of land you have, I don't think it's out of all reason to get a little defensive," he said. "If people want us to be entirely welcoming and entirely inclusive, it would need to be a welcoming and inclusive world where we would be allowed to live without persecution and we would have a land base where we could be who we truly are. We're like a trapped animal."
He points out that the first Indian Act, enacted in 1851, contained no discrimination against women marrying outside the community.
"The Indians complained," he said. "They didn't want white men coming into the community because the women have more of a responsibility within the culture regarding the land, there's more of a responsibility to keep within the culture. So it's a weird mixture of what today seems like bias, sexual discrimination. It looks like men discriminating against women but at the same time it's putting more of a real traditional emphasis on the roles of the women, saying in essence the women are more important in the culture and there's a higher responsibility on them."
The fact that non-Native government employees make the membership rules has caused great cultural upheaval in Kahnawake and most other Indigenous communities, he said.
"They're unbending. They have absolutely no comprehension of the social and political reality in the community."
Alfred agrees with Thomas and Davis when they say that every new policy seems aimed a making sure that there are fewer Indians.
"In the long term, yes, that's what they're doing. But the irony or the paradox is that in the short term, they're adding people to our list against our will. It's kind of paradoxical because they don't want us to have control over our own identity which means they don't want us to survive as a people. They accomplish that by forcing this broad, meaningless definition of what it means to be an Indian upon us. So in the end, the idea of being a Mohawk will mean nothing because all it will mean is being descended from people who used to be Mohawks. Whereas we're looking to perpetuate this living cultural definition of what being a Mohawk is on our own decision according to our own criteria."
The uncomfortable question of distinction by race is always a part of the arguments over this issue. Alfred suggested that the Indian Act introduced racial issues into the question and Indigenous peoples would be foolish not to deal with them.
"The government has a criteria for membership which is devoid of any cultural meaning and is, strictly speaking, a racialist criteria. We have a criteria which is racialist in the sense that it's based on blood, but it's also cultural according to what our community determines is a Mohawk today," he said. "They're trying to impose this strict racialist criteria on us and we're trying to fight that and in the meantime what it means is that they want to add numbers of people to us who have no culture in the hopes that in the end our nation will be defined strictly by criteria that comes from the outside."
Alfred said the Mohawks have decided they don't want members added to their community who aren't in touch with Mohawk traditions, which are more important than blood quantums or other criteria for determining membership. He provided the example of a person with 100 per cent Mohawk blood who was adopted as an infant by a non-Native family and has no connection with the fabric of Mohawk life and culture.
"He's a candidate. He has the right, but he doesn't have the status yet. He hasn't done what needs to be done. In all of these traditions there's a great deal of responsibility. People think of it as an entitlement, now," he explained. "Even people who are born on the reserve, raised there and everything. They think of it as something that's owed to them. They forget that there's a lot you have to do, to sacrifice, in order to be a member of that community. You have to do certain things. You can't go around claiming to be a Mohawk if you're going against the traditions and the teaching of what it takes to be one. If you want to be really traditional about it. If you want to put real stake in the teachings, in the lessons of our culture, that's the conclusion you would draw. The problem is it's too harsh for a lot of people."
If a person never does the work of learning the culture so he can take his place in the Mohawk community or is judged to have too small a connection to the community, then he will probably not be accepted as a member, Alfred said. But that doesn't mean that person is not an Aboriginal as described by Canadian law.
"If someone is excluded based on our criteria, it's not like they go into this black hole of nothingness. They still have the identity that they can claim as an Iroquois in the cultural sense if they want and they still have their status as an Aboriginal person in Canada," Alfred said. "I'm perfectly comfortable with that because it has nothing to do with the Mohawk nation. It doesn't impinge on our rights to do whatever we want. It doesn't place an additional burden on us if that person doesn't meet our criteria. But at he same time, as an individual in the principle of justice, it allows that person to still access the rights that that person has because of that one drop of blood. That is the Aboriginal within Canada and everything that flows from that obligation on the part of the Canadian government. So I'm not for the Canadian government giving that up. They've created this situation and they have an obligation to the people.
But that's not to say that simply by being Aboriginal that the person has a right to be a member of full standing of every nation. So I make a distinction between the two."
The intermingling of the races and the destruction of Indigenous culture - some of it intentional and some accidental - have created the situation where people of Indigenous ancestry have no connection to any one Indigenous community and Alfred argues that traditional cultures are based on a complex series of relationships that can't easily be entered into from outside. Tribal customs made a place for every member of the unit and every member of the unit knew and fulfilled his or her role. It is unfair and unnatural for the federal government to force new threads into this fabric without the consent of those people who already form the community, he said. The fact of European colonization means that there will be people of Indigenous ancestry who, for one reason or another, don't fit into any Indigenous community. Alfred believes they should still be accommodated as Indigenous people by Canadian authorities.
"There's going to be thousands of people who the Canadian government considers to be Mohawk but who are not accepted by the Mohawks. If I was working for the government, I'd put some thought into how to resolve that because it's the government's problem. Eventually the Mohawks are going to reassert themselves and say we don't want you calling them Mohawks. Call them whatever you want to call them but they're not Mohawks," he said.Racist letter sparks political debate
By Chris Tyrone Ross
Windspeaker Contributor
SASKATOON, Sask.After having many powerful politicians criticize his view on the development of Aboriginal people in the workforce, Reform MP Jim Pankiw (Saskatoon-Humbolt) is standing strong by comments he made in a Jan. 6 letter to both University of Saskatchewan President Peter MacKinnon and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Jack Hilson.
On December 22, 1999 the University of Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan's NDP government signed a partnership agreement to increase the percentage of Aboriginal people employed at the university. This fueled Pankiw to write the controversial letter that compared the partnership agreement to "modern day Klansmen," saying that it is a "racist hiring initiative" and hiring should be "based on merit and qualification, as opposed to race." He also wrote "the hiring policy being proposed and the inevitable consequences bear a resemblance to the former segregationist policies of the southern Unites States."
After the letter leaked into the mainstream press and into the hands of many politicians, such as Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations Chief Perry Bellegarde and Jack Hilson, Pankiw found himself under a lot of pressure to explain himself to the Aboriginal community.
In a recent interview with Windspeaker, Pankiw talked about the letter and why he made the comments. "I don't think we should make race-based enquiries," said Pankiw. "When this program goes into effect they (U of S) will pre-screen applicants to discriminate against non-Natives; it's like them saying to Native employees . . . 'Since you can't do it on your own, we will give you special treatment.'
"This is going to harm the Native community and promote racism. Natives in the workforce will be looked at in resentment. Non-Natives will say, 'he got the job because he's Native;' that's how people will perceive Native people in the workforce" stated Pankiw. "If, in the future, the employment rate of Aboriginal people remains at one per cent, so be it; we can't justify the potential of Native people in the workforce based on racist hiring initiatives." When asked about the future potential of today's Native youth as opposed to non-Native youth, he stated, "This initiative harms their future; if it was the opposite, then everyone would be equal and have a fair chance. Native youth will find themselves struggling in the future because they may not be educated or experienced enough-I mean we need to promote harmony, we all want a society where we're all equal, right?"
Hilson's response was more public than MacKinnon's. Hilson went on television to send a clear message to Pankiw:
"I would like to meet with Mr. Pankiw and his people and challenge him to a debate and explain to him how wrong he is on this issue, and tell him that the partnership agreement between my party and the U of S is a positive move for the Province of Saskatchewan.
"The employment rate for First Nations people is only one per cent, and they take up only 13 per cent of the Saskatchewan's population. If that percentage remains the same, then the future of Saskatchewan is going to look very bleak," said Hilson. He added, "I think that his comparison to the Ku Klux Klan is silly, foolish, and childish. What baffles me the most is that I thought he was into helping people; obviously that is not what's happening here."
Just recently the two finally met on CBC News Hour in a conference call debate, Pankiw was in Saskatoon, and Hilson was in Regina. The two debated endlessly over the partnership agreement and Pankiw's negative views. Hilson's main argument was the fact that Pankiw had no problem at all if the Aboriginal employment rate remained at one percent. Pankiw continued to state his argument of the "racist-hiring initiative" being undertaken with the partnership agreement. Pankiw says he will not apologize to anyone, and will stand by his comments.
There were others who had a strong opinion as well, like F.S.I.N. Chief Perry Bellegarde. He went on APTN's Indigenous Circle to criticize Pankiw for his comments. "It's obvious that he doesn't do his own letters; he probably just signs them. This kind of stuff is breaking that bridge to the future for First Nations people." explained Bellegarde. "What we're (F.S.I.N.) trying to do is educate the non-Native people about treaties and the relationship we created years ago to co-exist with each other, and I guess we have to do a better job, because it looks like some people just don't understand, like Mr. Pankiw." Bellegarde also said, "I think that he needs to learn more about our people before he criticizes our people. We're always working with the non-Native community, to build better relationships and better partnerships so we can all have a brighter future. Stuff like this really breaks that ongoing relationship, and it upsets me."
Many youth were interviewed as well, regarding the "K.K.K. Letter" as Jack Hilson would put it.
One native university student said, "Jim Pankiw does not realize the huge potential that Native students have; we are almost up there with everyone else. I mean the more we go to school, like University, and get a career, the more powerful we are as Native people; we have more university educated chiefs and lawyers these days. Finally here is a chance for Native youth to prove that we can succeed like everyone else. I'm proud to see this partnership agreement in stone, we can now make our people proud."
That is exactly what the partnership agreement is about, "making people proud, and making a difference in the community," says Jack Hilson, "I hope that in the future we can sign more agreements, and more relationships for a brighter future for Saskatchewan, involving Native people and non-Native people."
Two new plays make awesome theatre
By Kenneth Williams
Windspeaker Contributor
TORONTO, Ont.Two new plays opened within two days of each other in Toronto this last January, and epitomized the healthy state of Native theatre in Canada.
The first play, The Trickster of Third Avenue East, is an auspicious debut for first-time playwright Darrell Dennis, while the musical Rose is the long-awaited third instalment to Tomson Highway's Wasaychigan Hill saga that started with Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move To Kapuskasing.
The Trickster of Third Avenue East is the debut play from Shushwap actor Darrell Dennis. If you want to put a face to the name, he played Frank Fencepost on the TV series The Rez and was the dancing Native guy in the Out of the Blue ad that parodied the Village People's "YMCA."
Like I said, this is his first play, and it's an awesome one.
Trickster is a tight, fast moving, three-hander that revolves around Roger, a chronically unemployed, alcoholic writer; Mary, his waitress/actress girlfriend; and the Trickster, who strolls into their lives and proceeds to screw around with them. The play is funny, tragic and, when the Trickster really wants to show his stuff, surreal.
Ryan Black as Roger and Michelle St. John as Mary are gripping as a young couple clinging desperately to a failing relationship. Things are really tough for these two. Roger can't even get a job interview any more, his writing isn't selling, he's drinking too much and he's hawking anything that isn't bolted down just to put food on the table. Mary's acting career is over before it gets started, and, to top it all off, she's pregnant. But wait, it gets more interesting when Billy Merasty, as the Trickster, strolls into their lives.
The Trickster is full of promises, both real and fantastic, and the resulting chaos forces Roger and Mary to confront the ghosts of their pasts.
Dennis, however, doesn't go for the easy ending. Roger and Mary will not live happily ever after just because they've had cathartic moments, but you do know that their lives are now their own and they realize they can survive.
This is a very, very strong debut for Dennis and we can look forward to more good material from him in the future. It is fitting that we see the work of an emerging Native playwright just as a pioneer in contemporary Native theatre, Tomson Highway, is premiering his new play.
Even though he may disagree with this statement, contemporary Native theatre in Canada wouldn't be as strong as it is without Highway. He founded Native Earth Performing Arts, and then wrote two hugely influential plays, Rez Sisters and Dry Lips, which made all of Canada take notice of Native theatre. Highway dreamed of a cycle of seven plays on and about the people of the fictional reserve of Wasaychigan Hill. It was a grand dream, but few people doubted him after the success of the first two plays left everyone impatiently waiting for the third.
They waited and waited. Highway had a new play, Rose, completed, but no one wanted to produce it, which was more because of the sad financial nature of Canadian theatre than because of problems with the play. Early readings proved that the play and the music were both very good. But it had 19 characters!
Most Canadian playwrights rarely write any script that needs more than four actors if they want to get produced in this country, and here Highway had written a grand opus that would test the financial courage of any Canadian theatre.
It would take the University College Drama Program of the University of Toronto to take Rose off the page and put it on the stage ten years after the premiere of Dry Lips. It was a long wait, but worth it. In this third instalment of the Wasaychigan Hill saga, Highway seamlessly blends satirical comedy with low-down brutal tragedy, and blends bopping, energetic songs with intense satire in an emotionally satisfying roller coaster. It is theatrical magic from beginning to end. The emotions swing from the extreme: an unborn baby screaming to be born while her mother is stomped repeatedly on the stomach, to the surreal: dancing avocados and male swimsuit models waving huge phalluses. All of this, believe it or not, works so wonderfully that you don't realize the play has a running time of more than three-and-a-half hours.
Rose centres around two struggles: Emily Dictionary's struggle to lay the ghosts of her lesbian lover and her unborn daughter to rest; and a battle between the men and the women of Wasaychigan Hill over building a casino in the community hall. Some characters from the previous two plays are back: Big Joey, Zachary Jeremiah Keechigeesik, Pierre St. Pierre, Gazelle Nataways, Creature Nataways, Hera Keechigeesik, Philomena Moosetail, Annie Cook, Emily Dictionary, and Veronique St. Pierre.
The young cast, all but one non-Native, rise to the challenges of this script. Thirteen-year-old Alana Brascoupe, who plays the ghost of Rosetta Dictionary, Emily's unborn daughter, is the only Native cast member. Highway anticipates that this might be an issue, and is quoted in the program as saying "When I look at people, I see either kind people or unkind people. The color of their skin doesn't matter."
Normally I would agree, but not this time. Ironically, the fact that a mostly white cast is portraying Native people so well and so honestly intensifies the power of this play. It goes against my belief in casting according to race: that is, Native characters should be played by Native actors, but I can't deny what I experienced.
The Trickster of Third Avenue East runs from Jan. 19 to Feb. 12 at the Poor Alex Theatre, and Rose runs from Jan. 21 to Feb. 5 at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse.
