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Trust. Integrity. Reputation.
Top News - November - 2002
Evan Dreaver of the Muskoday First Nation in Saskatchewan stopped by the Windspeaker booth at the 2002 Saskatchewan First Nations Cultural Celebration and Powwow held in Saskatoon on Oct. 18 to 20.
Photo by: Bert CrowfootHate crime charges reduced
Chief, minister spar over throne speechOfficers charged
APTN news reorganizes with new executive producer
Equal under the law? Not even. - Editorial
Solidarity with Columbian sisters - Guest ColumnCheck out Ontario Birchbark
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Hate crime charges reduced
Paul Barnsley, Windspeaker Staff Writer, Stand Off AlbertaPage 1
Charges that three non-Native teenagers committed a hate crime when they allegedly opened fire on a school and six homes on the Blood reserve with paint-ball guns on Oct. 9 were reduced to 13 counts of vandalism by the Crown Attorney two weeks later.
The Blood Tribe chief and council are not happy with the decision.
"I still question why the charge was dropped. And a lot of council members are still of that opinion. We're trying to get our solicitors to look into it," said band councillor Jason Good Striker. "It seems to me that if any person, be they white, black, red or yellow, if anybody brings a toy gun onto a plane and raises hell, the new Canadian legislation towards terrorism is going to press regardless of race. This shouldn't be treated any different. It was an act of terrorism. They were going around our community with these weapons."
Good Striker couldn't verify if racial slurs were heard being uttered by the accused during the alleged incident, but he said name-calling and racist taunting is not unusual in southern Alberta.
At the time of the incident, Sgt. Brian Miller of the Blood Tribe Police Service told reporters that the crime the 17-year-old and two 16-year-olds were alleged to have committed fell under the definition of a hate crime because it was an act of hatred against an identifiable group.
Later, Blood Tribe Police Chief Alf Rudd explained that Sgt. Miller's interpretation of the Criminal Code of Canada was a bit off.
"On the merits of the case, the criteria for the charge isn't made out," he said.
The police chief said he had no problem with the decision to reduce the charges.
"We've got no problem. We've analyzed the thing and understand exactly what elements are required to make up that offense and that they weren't there in the initial instance and that, on reflection, conclusions were come to a little too hastily," he said. "The police here aren't disappointed. We're relieved we don't have that kind of thing going on."
Section 319 of the Criminal Code spells out what constitutes a hate crime. It states that "everyone who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, willfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group" is guilty of a hate crime. An "identifiable group" is defined in the Criminal Code to mean "any section of the public distinguished by color, race, religion or ethnic origin."
But the law also states that "no proceeding for an offence under this section shall be instituted without the consent of the attorney general."
Alf Rudd said his officers didn't get that consent.
"If you look at 319 subsection six, you have to have what's called a fiat from the attorney general of Alberta," the police chief said. "They found out about it on the news and were quite startled, knowing that proviso is there they thought, 'Why weren't we contacted?' When they got a look at the case, because the kid went to court, they said, 'Well it's not here anyway and when you make your application we're going to turn it down.'"
The Blood Police Chief sounded convinced the right decision had been made.
"First of all there's no statement communicated. That's the problem. There's not much communication in a paint splash is the point. There was no racial remarks, slurs, messages," he said.
He said his department's investigation, coupled with the RCMP investigation, had uncovered evidence that the accused may have been committing similar acts in various locales for several weeks.
"These three young fellows have been active for at least a month in the surrounding communities," he alleges. "They were doing the same thing. They had been carrying on in those communities," he said. "They're charged with 13 counts of vandalism that are still left on the information. And our ongoing investigation has identified a fourth suspect as well and we turned that information over to the RCMP."
The police chief sees the initial decision by his officers to be an error of enthusiasm.
"The guys misinterpreted it. And they know that now," he said.
The three young people, who cannot be named because of the provisions of the Young Offenders Act, appeared in court on Oct. 22 and heard formally that the hate crime charge had been dropped. They were remanded to Dec. 13.
The decision to drop the more serious charges was obviously not popular with some members of the Blood community. Outraged community members alerted this publication to this development, but none would speak on the record.
Principal Carolyn Weaselfat, whose Aahsaopi Elementary School was hit hardest in the attack, was in court. She confirmed that the charges had been dropped. The principal said she was "not authorized" to comment and suggested that Blood school superintendent Joyce Good Striker be contacted for comment. Good Striker was not available.
Chief, minister spar over throne speech
Paul Barnsley, Windspeaker Staff Writer, OttawaPage 3
As you could have predicted, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Matthew Coon Come and Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Robert Nault had widely varying views on the importance of the speech from the throne delivered by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson on Sept. 30.
Coon Come saw it as an unambitious re-hash of previous promises.
"We've all heard this before," he said. "On the one hand, we have a Prime Minister who was a minister of Indian Affairs. He's made statements recognizing the Third World conditions of our people. He is a parent and has adopted a First Nations person as a son. He has made statements several times in previous throne speeches about dealing with Aboriginal issues. At the same time, I think the bureaucrats got the upper hand on this one."
"This is the most active agenda of the Department of Indian Affairs and a government in a very long time," Nault said.
The minister and the national chief each scheduled a question and answer session with the Aboriginal press immediately after the speech. Nault spent about 20 minutes on the line on Oct. 1; Coon Come, in his first such press conference in almost two years, talked to reporters for almost an hour the next day.
Coon Come was critical of the central themes of the speech, the approach fundamentally flawed.
"He had an opportunity to be a visionary and I think he missed the boat. He's talking about closing the gap, but not really dealing with the cost of the gap-nothing innovative," Coon Come said.
"Dealing with the cost of the gap, I thought would have [meant] referring to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. The $55 million of taxpayers money that was spent and the five years of research, 400 recommendations, and there's not one reference to a recommendation in the throne speech."
The Governor General repeatedly used the phrase "closing the gap in life" when referring to the government's Aboriginal agenda, which was a major part of the throne speech. Coon Come countered by saying, "the initiatives of the government will fail if they are seen as done for us. The initiatives of the government will succeed if they are creative and are done with us. Throughout this speech you hear 'work with' about 21 times. But they're always talking about 'with their own institutions.'"
Windspeaker asked the minister whether "closing the gap" meant that the government would move toward First Nations positions or that First Nations were expected to move closer to the government's position?
Rather than deal with that question, he criticized Coon Come for not endorsing the government's plan.
"The national chief is not being very consistent because, if you recall in a number of speeches in the last few years, the biggest criticism of the government is that we weren't moving on what Mr. Coon Come portrayed as the bread and butter issues," the minister said.
"Now that we have moved on them and are moving towards improving the delivery of programs and services in order to improve the quality of life for First Nations people-whether it's economic development, social, infrastructure, improving education or the tools of modern governance that everyone takes for granted in other governments-all I can say is I'm shocked and surprised that people's memories are so short because that's what was requested of us. I'm of the view that we're delivering on the agenda, in some areas of course, that were put to us by First Nations citizens and First Nations leaders over the last number of years."
Coon Come repeated his belief that the gap can only be closed by redistributing lands and resources and allowing Indigenous peoples a share of the wealth harvested from their traditional territories. He said the greatest root problem facing First Nations was the lack of control they have of their own destinies.
"The government is still trying to tell us what is good for us. They had an opportunity to think outside of the box. There exists in our communities urgent needs that require a comprehensive strategy with three elements: long-term investment, partnerships and First Nations control of our own lives. All the social programs, although we welcome them, if they are done without First Nations control they will not solve the suicides," he said.
The minister made no secret of the fact that he believes the government of Canada has the ultimate authority, that First Nations do not have equal, government-to-government, standing with Canada. He dismissed the AFN, not for the first time, as a mere lobby group.
"I am very committed to moving forward differently than other ministers in the past simply because I will not be stopped by certain groups of individuals who do not want to move away from the status quo. The status quo has not served First Nations very well. And at the rate we're going we will have serious issues in this country if we don't start to make progressive change," he said. "I think what the leadership-Matthew Coon Come-is telling you is that the government should not be allowed to move unless he gives us his permission. Well, I can assure you that won't happen because the government of Canada has a moral and legal obligation to deliver programs and services and improve the quality of life for First Nation people.
"If I can put it to you another way, First Nations people and First Nations leaders are driving this agenda. We have been in contact and are working with them right across the country. We just don't think a lobby group like the AFN should be the leader in developing policy and programs. That should be done by the communities themselves," he said.
Coon Come said the minister was in error in not recognizing the AFN as a collection of duly-represented leaders with legitimate political authority.
"This is again part of the [public relations] by Minister Nault to try to label our national organization as a lobby group when in fact we are part of the institutions of Canada," he said. "The fact that we are mentioned as Aboriginal peoples in the Constitution gives us a special place, which the government of Canada and especially this minister does not recognize. I don't care what he says. In this country, Aboriginal peoples are not just another interest group."
Nault said he had identified how much money will be required to fulfill the commitments of the throne speech, but he wouldn't disclose that information.
"I can't tell you what the numbers are today because that's what budgets are for. But I can assure you that it's our intention to meet our commitments," he said.Officers charged
Paul Barnsley, Windspeaker Staff Writer, TorontoPage 10
Only days after Windspeaker reported that a police cover-up was being alleged in the very public beating of a Native man in Toronto, two city police officers were arrested.
After a four-month investigation by members of Internal Affairs, the officers were charged on Sept. 26 with assaulting Ramsey Whitefish on June 2 in the Bloor Street West and Borden Street area of the city.
Roger Obonsawin, a member of the Aboriginal Peoples Council of Toronto, a group that complained about the slow pace of the investigation, said he was told that the decision to arrest and charge the officers was based on DNA evidence allegedly found on the officers' boots. Witnesses allege that Whitefish was kicked, stomped and punched by two police officers.
Charged with one count of assault each are police constables James Rowe and Dion Monahar, both of 14 Division. Rowe has been a member of the service for two years and Monahar for three. They were released from custody with conditions and will appear in court on Nov. 7.
At the time of their arrest the officers were suspended from duty with pay in accordance with the province's Police Services Act.
Obonsawin said members of his council believe the arrests should have been made long ago.
"The whole thing hinged on the DNA evidence. We were pushing that they didn't need to wait for that evidence because they had 13 eyewitnesses," he said.
Native people in the city have also questioned the charges, saying assault causing bodily harm, a more serious charge, would have been more appropriate.APTN news reorganizes with new executive producer
Paul Barnsley, Windspeaker Staff Writer, WinnipegPage 18
As of Oct. 28, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network news team is on the air every day. The half-hour news show will air Monday to Friday at 6:30 p.m. Central Time (7:30 in Toronto, 4:30 in Vancouver). On Friday, Contact, the call-in show starring Rick Harp, will follow.
There will be a couple of changes viewers will notice: the show is now called APTN National News. Contact's formal name is APTN National News: Contact. Harp will join Nola Wuttunee as the news co-anchor. Wuttunee took over the anchor job last year after Carol Adams (now Carol Morin) left for CBC North.
Sources report that a major announcement regarding an appointment to the vacant Chief Operating Officer position, filled by APTN board chairman Clayton Gordon since the board elected not to renew its contract with former COO Ron Nadeau, was scheduled for just after Windspeaker's production deadline. It was expected that Jean Larose, the director of communications for the Assembly of First Nations for the last nine years, would be named to the COO position. Reliable sources confirmed that Larose made a presentation to the hiring committee and was informed by the board that he had emerged as the top choice. Negotiations about details of his contract were being finalized as we went to press.
The change that will have the most direct effect on news is the hiring of 14-year Vision-TV veteran Rita Deverell as executive producer of news and current affairs. She joined APTN in August. The two-time Gemini Award winner was a founding member of Vision-TV and was the network anchor, vice-president and senior producer.
Deverell spoke to this publication on Oct. 22, the day after she was inducted into the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame during a ceremony in Vancouver. She entered the hall with Pamela Wallin and eight other people who have "made a major contribution to Canadian broadcasting."
Moving from Toronto to Winnipeg, where APTN headquarters is located, was not a problem for the veteran journalist.
"In the original, original sense, I guess I'm from the Prairies in that I was born in Houston (Texas). So after I became a Canadian and ended up in Regina, I thought: 'Oh, I've come home,' " she said.
She worked in the Saskatchewan capital 25 years ago.
"It was in Regina that I first began to do journalistic work on Aboriginal stories," she said.
Now in her late 50s, Deverell had not expected her career to take such a dramatically different turn when she left Vision-TV.
"I wasn't planning on putting up my feet and swinging in the sun, but I was not planning on coming to Winnipeg. I was not planning on launching a daily show in APTN and I wasn't actually planning on staying in the really, really fast paced news and current affairs game. I made the decision to retire from Vision-TV which was a hard decision," she said. "And then after I did that, and I was planning on going in a number of directions, none of which was head of news and current affairs at APTN, then APTN came along. So my retirement didn't last very long."
But she's excited about the opportunity.
"I have been interested in, concerned about Aboriginal issues for 25 years," she said.
When she started working for the CBC in Regina she noticed that Aboriginal people made up 30 per cent of the population but they certainly weren't the subject of 30 per cent of the stories in news and current affairs programming.
"I said to the news director that I would like to do something to change that. He said, 'Good luck to you.' With that modest amount of encouragement, I did do a couple of seasons of feature stories about Aboriginal issues and people," she said. "My sensitivity to these issues, which is not more sensitive than anyone in the world, is that I grew up in the southern United States and I'm black. Two things were very noticeable to me when I first came to Regina. One was that Native people were kind of on the margins of society the way that black people were when I was growing up. The second thing was that everyone would immediately tell me, because I was black, that they weren't racist. They would say that they weren't like those awful people in the United States. But they didn't notice that the same kind of racism was directed at Aboriginal people. It was such a given that they didn't even know it was happening."
She doesn't claim to be an expert on Aboriginal issues. She said she'll rely on her "terrifically talented" editorial staff to help with the fine points in that regard.
"But I do think there was an almost visceral understanding of what was going on. It took a while to get from the pit of my stomach to the top of my head," she said.
She said the news department isn't getting a major bump in its budget to help smooth the way to going on the air every day, but she doesn't see it as a problem.
"We are doing news and current affairs. We are not doing a straight news show. We will do news, what's happening today. But we don't intend to try to outrun CNN. For a couple of reasons. One: we don't stand a chance of doing that. You can't just double our budget to do that. Second: that wouldn't be making much of a contribution if we tried to do that. CNN is already very good at being CNN. The purpose of APTN National News is to deal with events of the day, the week, the month, from Aboriginal perspectives. I think we need to be more expert on why rather than when," she said. "We'll spend that money as smart as we can."
She hopes to increase the amount of international Indigenous news stories.
"We really have to give people information that they can't get anyplace else," she said.
