Trust. Integrity. Reputation.
December - 2000 You can't have it both ways
November - 2000 Hard choices on election day
October - 2000 Nobody should die for patronage
September - 2000 Is real change coming?August - 2000 Real democracy achieved
July - 2000 Canada shifts to the rightJune - 2000 Welcome to Canada?
May - 2000 With just a bit of good faith . . .April - 2000 Mother Earth needs a helping hand
March - 2000 The bad guys - there's plenty!
February - 2000 Indian issues too complex?
January - 2000 Is it turf protection?
1999 Editorials 1998 Editorials
You can't have it both ways
The Canadian Alliance thinks it can ride ignorance, hate and resentment all the way to the top of the Canadian government structure.
We can't think of any other explanation for the positions the party takes on Aboriginal issues. They say they respect treaty and Aboriginal rights, then they say everybody's equal. Alberta Chief John Snow nailed it when he said that "equality" in this context means everybody should have treaty rights or nobody should have them.
We agree with Chief Snow and - surprise - we agree with the Alliance.
Yes, descendants of the European people who entered into these contracts (treaties are contracts between nations) should have the rights and responsibilities they gained in the treaties respected. As should the descendants of the Indigenous parties who signed the same contracts. That's equality.
The problem is that Native people have kept their part of the bargain while European Canadians, by and large, have not. Indigenous peoples shared their land with the newcomers and eventually it became more than sharing as the settlers colonized the continent and waged an undeclared war against Indigneous peoples.
Now, Stockwell Day and his party want to break those contracts. In fact, it appears to us they want to pretend the contracts never really existed. They want to keep everything they gained from the treaty relationship, plus keep everything they gave away.
There's no equality in that. There's no respect in that. There's no logic or honesty in that, and certainly no justice.
Decent, honorable people don't act like that.
Most racists scream blue murder when you confront them. Only hard-core haters consciously decide to be racist. The rest don't realize what they're doing until it's pointed out to them and even then they react with denial at first.
Well, it's time Alliance members who think they have the right to decide the way Indigenous people should fit into the Canadian mosaic to see the error of their ways. They have attempted to decide for Indigenous people, without the consent or consultation of Indigenous people. That's paternalism at best and racism at worst.
The Alliance isn't even making new mistakes. The false logic behind the White Paper was deflated in 1969. To return to it now is either aggressively stupid or worse.
This is written several days before the election, so it takes the form of a political prediction. The Alliance will never form a government - will never be fit to form a government - until it takes a hard look at where it's coming from on Native issues. The party's stance in this area is a dead give-away to enlightened voters that just about any party would do a better job.
We can only be grateful that Alliance doesn't understand human rights matters enough to disguise its true intentions. Watch out, though. After this failure at the polls, they probably won't make that mistake again.
November-2000Hard choices on election day
Many of you don't vote in Canadian elections because it would violate the ideas expressed in the Iroquoian Two Row Wampum - they stay in their boat and we'll stay in ours.
But many of you do vote, and we know the question of who forms the next government will matter a lot.
Considering the mess that would result from the election of a Canadian Alliance government, we wish we could be the second media outlet to declare the Liberals elected. CBC's This Hour has 22 Minutes beat us to the punch on that one a few days after the election was called.
Please understand we're not endorsing "the little guy from Shawinigan" and his gang. We just don't see the re-election of the Liberals as a sure thing. Remember Mulroney?
We think the current prime minister has surpassed the arrogance that led to the destruction of the Progressive Conservative party and we won't be overly shocked if the same fate befalls this government.
As much as the prime minister deserves this kind of ballot box justice, we don't even want to think about Prime Minister Stockwell Day.
Here are some of the things we despise about the Chrétien Liberals:
1) Their refusal to comply with the demands of the information commissioner.
2) That game they played to avoid facing the music from the auditor general over the HRDC fiasco and the message it sends about how much they really value accountability as a cornerstone of the Canadian system.
3) The HRDC fiasco itself, graphic proof that Liberal patronage is the only thing that matters in Ottawa these days.
4) The Prime Minister's violent, menacing treatment of reporters and/or demonstrators. Whether it's bullying reporters on the steps outside his office or pepper-spraying protesters in B.C. or man-handling another protester in Quebec, it's not the kind of thing a man of the people would do.
5) Chretien's continual and embarrassing episodes of foot in mouth disease, at home and abroad.
6) Chretien asking Brian Tobin to break a solemn promise to his supporters that he would finish his term as Premier of Newfoundland, for a rather flimsy reason involving internal Liberal party rivalries.
7) All of the breaches of Canada's fiduciary obligation to Indigenous peoples that we cover on a regular basis, especially the political manipulation we saw in Burnt Church in the last two Octobers.
We find each of these examples to be tragic and pathetic examples of just how out of touch Canada's elected leaders have become. As much as we had our differences with the late lamented Pierre Elliot Trudeau, we don't recall ever having had occasion to use the word "pathetic" in any description of his method of governing. That's how far the Liberals have fallen.
Now, here's the worst part. As far as all of the above may be from our ideal of how leaders should act in a liberal democracy, and as far as the Liberals' behavior may fall short of what we believe are the basic Canadian democratic values, this gang of ne'er do wells is still the best choice by far.
Isn't that a revoltin' development?
October-2000Nobody should die for patronage
While Waneek Horn-Miller, someone who has her own memories of the 1990 Oka confrontation, was fighting the Olympic battle in the pool in Sydney, armed forces were preparing for another Oka-style confrontation in the Burnt Church First Nation, N.B.
And here we are, all hoping against hope there won't be another Dudley George or Marcel Lemay.
We knew things didn't add up in the lobster wars. We said that last year when entire forests were sacrificed to produce enough newsprint to carry the endless, often hysterical, coverage of a dispute that boiled down to-for mainstream Canada-the slightly unpleasant fact that the British Crown had entered into, and benefited from, a treaty with the Mi'kmaq people that allowed the them to take a tiny, tiny share of a $500-million-a-year resource. Last October, we couldn't figure out why the Canadian political and business establishment was so outraged by the news they were going to have to honor their contract and share less than one per cent of the wealth with Native people. Don't they always say a deal's a deal? Isn't that a Canadian value?
This is the same Canadian political establishment that says it respects the inherent right of self government and the rule of law. Isn't the rule of law about following the rulings of the top court in the land? We haven't been able to figure out why Minister Dhaliwal keeps referring to the rule of law. It's a legal concept that many law professors will tell you has been ignored by legislators at the provincial and federal level because politicians know the voters don't care about its finer points. They only want to keep what they've got and try to get more.
Then, along comes an unlikely champion of the Native cause: Lawrence Solomon. This is a guy who's non-Native and not exactly obsessed with the struggle for Native rights. But he knows how the game of politics is played in this country and he solved the puzzle.
Stockwell Day has got the Liberals in a tizzy. They need Atlantic Canada to keep the Alliance at bay, they think.
Since Indians are in the minority and probably won't be able to make much of a difference in this fall's election, they don't matter. Even if they're right, they're wrong and no one's going to listen to them anyway. Last year's disgraceful performance by the mainstream press proved that.
What if somebody dies during this ridiculous charade that is being played out with real guns in New Brunswick? Who pays the price then?
Stop it now, Mr. Dhaliwal. Nobody should die in the name of Liberal patronage. Nobody should get hurt; nobody should even get wet.
September-2000Is real change coming?
As the first summer of the new millennium winds down, it's interesting to note that there is a new feeling in Indian Country. Different sounds are coming out of Ottawa where the highest profile Indigenous political organization in the country has recently seen a changing of the guard.
Since Matthew Coon Come is such a charismatic figure and since he has captured the attention of the mainstream press in a way that seems strange after the last three years, we tried to reach out to the other three southern national Indigenous political organizations this month. We have tried repeatedly in the past to contact the Inuit Tapirisat without success.
And of the Native Women's Association of Canada, the Métis National Council and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, only the latter responded to requests for interviews.
Because of the AFN's budget and because the mainstream press treats the AFN leader as sort of an Indian prime minister, we thought we should make an effort to reach out to the other organizations and see that their activities are reported as well and not overshadowed by the AFN.
CAP leader Dwight Dorey made time for our readers this month; the other leaders didn't. We hope that changes in the future.
Coon Come, for his part, has - in his first month on the job - already surpassed the three year totals of his predecessor in the amount of access and openness provided to this paper by the national chief. His political staff has promised that inquiries made by us on behalf of our readers will continue to be welcome.
That's a huge (and we think, of course, a positive) step forward in the realm of openness and accountability for First Nations governments.
Even though we're paid to be cynical and to look for hidden agendas and such, we feel the stirrings of a faint hope.
Coon Come's political staff say they're going to do what it takes to get the job done. They say the "big band office" mentality is under seige; the Indian industry is under attack, bureaucratic slowness and inflexibility is out of fashion and productivity is now the main concern. If you're not putting in a full day's work in service of the people then get out. No more soaking up the people's money without results. No more cushy, bureaucratic jobs that create nothing but debit lines on the annual audit.
We'll see.
But we strongly believe that if they accomplish that goal, one of the biggest problems in Indian Country will be gone and the other problems won't seem nearly as insurmountable.
August - 2000Real democracy achieved
Preston Manning talked the talk and then walked the walk in Calgary in late June and it cost him. Believe it or not - we commend him for taking a rare risk.
To prove he sincerely believes government in this country should be (to borrow an American axiom) of the people, for the people and by the people, Manning introduced direct democracy - a very unusual concept in Canadian politics - to the Canadian Alliance Party leadership process by allowing grassroots participation. By surrendering his control, by not ensuring that the hands on the levers of power belonged only to a few select insiders, he risked losing his power and position as leader of the Official Opposition.
Of course, that's what happened. The people have spoken and, for better or for worse, Stockwell Day will lead Manning's party for the foreseeable future. But if Manning had continued the colonial-style, indirect application of democracy that has long been practiced by the Canadian establishment, he would never have considered taking the chance in the first place.
The two Indigenous peoples, the ancient Greeks and the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy), that get the credit for creating the concept we now call democracy, dealt with small, manageable populations and could easily employ direct participatory democracy.
In the more recent past, vast distances and large population numbers have taken direct democracy away from grassroots people. A pure form of democracy - where all the members of the community gather to debate and decide all the issues of the day - is hard to work in a large community. But today's technology makes it workable. Despite the glitches, the Alliance proved that with their call-in vote, people from the far reaches of Canada could contribute.
Elders and traditional people tell us that the band council system parallels the Canadian system where patronage and secret back room deals grease the machinery of government. They say elected chiefs act just like their non-Native counterparts and that's the root cause of a lot of the unrest in First Nations. Fully accountable governments will stem a lot of that unrest and it seems to us that complete accountability can best be accomplished by complete participation.
That means - if they want to live up to the spirit of their words regarding accountability - the chiefs can no longer keep the national chief selection process as their personal plaything.
We say there's definitely no excuse for excluding the grassroots people at the band level. Most First Nations are small enough to include all the people all the time. And now that the Alliance has proven it can work at the national level, there's no excuse for the AFN to continue to exclude the grassroots. This should be the last election where only chiefs select the national chief.
July - 2000
Canada shifts to the rightWhen a Liberal like Brian Tobin feels it's OK to tell the National Post about his professed worries about the mental health of Native leaders and feel he's doing the right thing by tarring Native leaders as dysfunctional drunks, we know it's time to update all the labels that identify political parties.
We used to think that left meant tolerant as well as liberal and right meant intolerant as well as conservative, that arch-conservatives would, typically, engage in social Darwinism and conclude that they must be superior because the cream always rises to the top and, since they're at the top, they must be the cream. You know, "The poor are that way because they're inferior."
We didn't get a chance to discuss the matter with Premier Tobin (through no fault of ours), but we smell paternalism and social Darwinism emanating from his comments.
So what's happened to liberalism in this country? Has Preston Manning's party (whatever it's called this week) really shifted the political spectrum that much?
Commentators in Ottawa have accused the deficit-cutting Liberals of acting more like Tories than Tories, but we thought that was just a blip caused by successful lobbying by the wealthy who don't want to pay for the social safety net for others when they can afford to look after themselves quite nicely and probably will never need that net.
We now realize the shift to the right is firmly entrenched.
Chief Stewart Phillip sees it. He reminded us that former Tory Prime Minister Brian Mulroney gauged the public mood in the aftermath of Oka and, in his famous four pillar speech, promised a very sympathetic Canadian public that Native issues would be addressed. Mulroney even promised all land claims would be settled by the year 2000. But Phillip also said that the British Columbia treaty process, which was initiated to help Mulroney keep that promise, was a stall. Phillip believes the bureaucrats advised that the public is fickle. Yes, Canadians were enamored with the romantic warrior figures staring down the army, but the bureaucrats said, "Give them time. That will pass."And oh boy has it.
The mood in this land now is more about resentment than sympathy and politicians don't feel any pressure to come up with real solutions to Native issues.
If Premier Tobin had spent a little time talking to any one of the dozens of specialists who attended the Indigenous mental health conference in Montreal, he would have been advised to keep his mouth shut.
Tobin is a representative of the system that caused the problems and now he is "bravely" drawing attention to it, "for their own good."
A provincial premier has ready access to any number of learned advisors. Why didn't he use them for this issue? Perhaps he did - scarier still.
June-2000Welcome to Canada?
As the dignitaries gathered to mark the beginning of the Nisga'a adventure in self governance on May 11, the federal Indian Affairs minister "welcomed" the Nisga'a people "to the Canadian family."
Politics, of course, kept him from saying, "Welcome to the family of self governing nations," even though that was the goal the Nisga'a people set out to achieve more than a century ago.
The Indian Act was imposed on the Nisga'a people 113 long years ago and, you could say, it took them this long to finally wriggle out from underneath. If you look at the history, you wouldn't be out of line to say the Nisga'a should have been killed off.
That's not to say that the framers of the Act and their successors (Canada and British Columbia) didn't do their best to make sure they did kill off the Nisga'a people, and it's no thanks to them that they didn't.
All the time, effort, blood, sweat and tears of the Nisga'a people has, for the last 113 years, been dedicated to gaining their liberation from, as British Columbia Premier Ujjal Dosanjh so accurately described it, "the shackles of the Indian Act."
It's thanks to the astonishingly deep and powerful will to survive that lies within the hearts of all colonized Indigenous peoples, qualities that are clearly present in generous quantities in the Nisga'a people, that the Nisga'a have steered their canoe home through dangerous and mysterious waters - led by the likes of Dr. Frank Calder, James Gosnell, Alvin McKay and Dr. Joe Gosnell. Their journey will now be filled with a new set of unknown perils and adventures, but it will be their own and there's more than a bit of dignity in that.
That pale and bloodless comment by the Indian Affairs minister could have been - and should have been, we feel - a direct apology for more than 11 decades of torture and torment at the hands of the minister's various predecessors.
Two questions, Mr. Minister and Mr. Premier: If it was such a wonderful moment and such a triumph for justice, why was it so hard? And why did it take so long?
We pass along our congratulations and best wishes to the Nisga'a, secure in our belief that they will treat their Gitanyow neighbors much better than the Nisga'a have been treated by the Crown during the last century. We believe you'll work hard to find a good faith solution to the overlap question. We're sure you know far too much about oppression to want to be on the other side of it.
May - 2000
With just a bit of good faith . . .A poignant moment at the Indigenous Bar Association's annual meeting in Edmonton on March 17:
Revered educator James sákèj Henderson, the research director for the University of Saskatchewan's Native Law Centre - the beginning of the road for so many Aboriginal lawyers in this country - posed a question of University of Alberta law professor Dale Gibson.
'Would you say there's a conspiracy among legislators to deprive us of our Aboriginal rights?'
'I'm starting to think it's so obvious the courts could take judicial notice of it,' the respected non-Native academic said.
The room full of lawyers laughed uproariously at that witty response. To decode it into language the rest of us can understand, it's important to know that when courts take judicial notice of a fact, it means it goes without saying, that lawyers don't have to introduce evidence to prove it. A court would take judicial notice of something like, say . . . the sky is blue.
So Professor Gibson believes - and sákèj Henderson certainly nodded his agreement at the time and none of the lawyers, including those who work for Alberta Justice or the federal government, rose to challenge him - that it's obvious that provincial and federal governments are conspiring to limit or ignore or eliminate Aboriginal rights.
That's news. These gentlemen cannot be dismissed as conspiracy theorist cranks.
Actually, it's not that hard to see if you shed the limiting blinders of what the IBA president, Dave Nahwegahbow, called the "oppressed person" syndrome.
For example: police have killed Native people in suspicious circumstances in every part of the country. J.J. Harper, Dudley George, Ty and Connie Jacobs and so many more. You would think, if there's a genuine desire in existence in any person in authority in this country, that someone - anyone - would have proposed a long time ago that a totally independent civilian agency should be created that would attack these cases with the investigative gusto of someone in search of way to get rich quick. No hold's barred, nothing to hide, no hidden agenda to preserve something or protect anyone. But it hasn't happened because the truth is ugly. There is racism in this country and a lot more than most Canadians would care to admit, and exposing it will embarrass people in high places and the voters who put them there.
Likewise, politicians don't want to tell the wealthy and powerful people in this country, people who help pay for election campaigns, that the courts say that a portion of the resources they've sewn up that bring them their great wealth, power and comfort, actually belong to Aboriginal people.
That's why the Cheam band is fighting with British Columbia, which has had more than two years to adapt to the Delgamuukw ruling.
The fact they haven't can only be attributed to a lack of good faith, referred to by laymen as a lack of honesty or fairness. We could all use a dose of good faith and, if we're true to the values we tell the world we believe in, we should all - Native and non-Native - raise the roof whenever we see there is no good faith.
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April - 2000
Mother Earth needs a helping handThe National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, set up by the federal government to research sustainable development of non-renewable resources, is swamped by the number of grass-roots issues brought before it. Everything from disappearing trees and fish to the cost of doing business and trying to prosper in a fiscal climate that at times is as cold as the Mackenzie Valley in January. Their task force of northern stakeholders running the Aboriginal Communities and Non-renewable Resource Development Program was supposed to find ways Aboriginal people, industry, government and environmentalists can make sure resource development over the next decade or so supports economic development in Aboriginal communities without wrecking the environment or dumping on Native culture more than it already has. Resource development meaning activities such as diamond mining and oil and gas exploration.
The big picture is that these issues affect all of humanity, ultimately, regardless of where we live, and the problems affect us equally too. And because they do, we'd better not rely on a handful of appointees to conduct another study and table a few reports and hope everything will be hunky-dory. For one thing, NRTEE has already found it has bitten off more than its 24 members can chew.
With Native people across the country increasingly frightened and angry at the legacy of environmental devastation they already bear - everything from persistant organic pollutants (POPs) entering the food chain and wreaking genetic havoc, to destruction of forests sanctioned by provincial and federal governments and even the courts - NRTEE's task force found the complaints too many and the job too big. It had to narrow its focus only to the Aboriginal communities of the Western Arctic.
Co-chairs Cindy Kenny-Gilday and Joseph O'Neill have undertaken a formidable job in ensuring more than 150 interest groups (so far) aim for consensus, as they balance the needs of hunter-gatherers and fragile ecosystems against the needs of the unemployed and profit-driven developers. Our hat is off to everyone at the table trying to resolve huge eco-problems and create opportunities for all.
Trouble is, while well-intentioned groups are trying to decide truck-before-caribou or caribou-before-truck, the environmental clock is ticking. That means instead of waiting until the forests are finished and the last trap is found in a museum, some people are implementing their own solutions.
It shouldn't have to be. A government that purports to lead should not be spending millions to prop up its ecologically correct stance at the same time as it is allowing provinces to do an end run around treaties and regulations that have environentally protective measures built in. Neither should it still be bungling Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal relations over a few lobster traps at home, while spending our money to posture abroad.
For example, Canada has demonstrated a less than mediocre level of achievement in meeting its environmental targets since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. And it has consistently foot-dragged when it comes to standing up to the U.S. and other environmental Neanderthals. So even though the first week of spring finds Canada taking a stand on banning POPs at the 120-nation Bonn convention and putting up $20 million of our money overseas to make it so, remember this is a drop in the bucket. And although a few Inuit who are already gravely affected by toxic chemicals in the food they have no choice but to eat will attend the conference, we need to remember they don't drive foreign policy. By the time you read this, you will know who does.
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March-2000The bad guys - there's plenty
Just who are these government officials that the Grand Council of Crees is calling treaty busters, and who are the big business cohorts that will be slapping each other on the back when every last tree is cut down in Quebec?
They're educated, but not too smart. Maybe when they run out of secluded places to build their summer mansions and all their docks sit six feet above the water line they'll see the light. When there's no more river to float their bateaux! Lawyers and forest products companies. And two levels of government as enablers.
Do you suppose these people studied biology? They didn't major in ecology, you can bet a plate of poutine on that! Well, what about history and treaty rights then?
You need to know who they are. There's plenty! (Beaucoup!) Most of the time, only one or two names show up in the news. But these are the bad guys and just wait till you find out the lengths they'll go to subvert their own laws to get around the Canadian Constitution, no less.
Let's see now, there's the provincial administrator under Section 22 of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and the federal administrator - same section, same agreement. Then there's the Hon. Paul Bégin, Quebec Minister of the Environment. Also the Hon. Christine Stewart, Minister of the Environment of Canada - not to be confused with the still Hon. Jane Stewart, who was in her capacity as the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development when the saplings hit the fan, so to speak. The Hon. Guy Chevrette (now the Hon. Jacques Brassard), Minister of Natural Resources. And plenty of companies: Domtar Inc.; Produits Forestiers Donohue Inc. (including the company formerly known as Produits Forestiers Saucier Inc.); Barrette-Chapais Ltée; Tembec Inc.; Les Chantiers de Chibougamau Ltée; Les Industries Norbord Inc; Abitibi-Consolidated Inc. (used to be Stone-Consolidated Corporation, also formerly Abitibi-Price and Consolidated Bathurst); Matériaux Blanchet Inc.; Scierie Amos Inc.; Scierie Gallichan Inc.; IPB International Inc.; Scierie Landrienne Inc.; Bois KMS (GMI) Ltée; Fournitures Minières Simard Inc.; Produits Forestiers Alliance Inc.; Panneaux Chambord Inc. and Kruger Inc. We've also got the attorneys general of Quebec and Canada, the Hon. John Manley, Quebec's Minister for the Federal Office of Regional Development; the Hon. David M. Collenette, Minister of Transport, La Sociéte de Dévelopment de la Baie James; Rexfor, Normick-Perron Inc., Filifor Inc.; Scierie Senco Ltée; Optibois Inc. (formerly 2541-3998 Québec Inc. (Précibois)); Le Groupe Forex Inc.; Forex Inc.; Bisson et Bisson Inc.; Howard-Bienvenue Inc.; and Compagnie Internationale de Papier du Canada.
Can you believe it! The Crees have five lawyers; the guys supporting clear-cutting Cree territory have 27 at least. Twenty-seven law firms, not lawyers. Vingt-sept! No wonder they have to cut so many trees to prepare all those legal briefs. In both "official" languages. We were told by a spokesman for one offending company the English is for the Crees.
But even with all these lawyers, Justice Croteau of the Quebec Superior Court saw through their schemes. In December he ruled the forestry companies and his own government had violated the constitutional rights of the Cree people, abused and circumvented the spirit and substance of the quarter-century-old James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. He said they had to smarten up and he gave them till high cottage season to do it.
As a result, big business is sparing no effort to get Justice Croteau removed from hearing the case. And not just this judge. The rest of the judges too who might recognize a fair deal for the Indians when they see it. These companies want 37 of them stopped from hearing the case of the Crees versus them. They have given the court 37 (trente-sept!) judges' names they don't want. Almost half the judges in Montreal. They've taken more turns through the judicial system than a split-rail fence. But maybe pretty soon they'll run out of wood even for that.
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February -2000Indian issues too complex?
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and we think Reform MP Jim Pankiw proved it this month. The 33-year-old chiropractor and acupuncturist who grew up on the family farm in Unity, Sask. was quick to jump in with his views on affirmative action when the University of Saskatchewan decided to try and make its workforce begin to reflect the population of its community. Pankiw's is a point of view that's been out there for awhile. There's no original thinking behind his declaration that affirmative action sometimes cheapens the accomplishments of minority people. There's some truth to what he says, although saying that reaching out to a much-discriminated against minority is even remotely similar to the hate-filled intolerance of the KKK is just plain blankety-blank stupid.
We even agree that there have been some spectacular failures created by the so-called Native access programs. There's no short-cut to a law degree or a social work certificate or even a degree in journalism. You've got to do the work.
But in a province that actually elected a Klu Klux Klan provincial government in this century, (it's true, you can look it up), where community leaders like Mr. Pankiw have allowed a group that makes up 13 per cent of the population to fill only one per cent of the workforce, something's got to be done.
Pankiw said he's looking out for Native people, that regular folks in Saskatchewan will resent Native people who get jobs because of their race and it will foster racism.
Hey, Mr. Pankiw. Instead of writing moronic, half-baked letters that argue that things should stay the way they are (a strange thing for a "reformer" to do, in any event), why not get to work on the real problem. Those regular folks you're so worried will react in a racist manner could use a little educating. This hiring policy will be a good stop-gap measure to stem the suicide epidemic among young Native people. Right now they see no hope for the future until those prone-to-racism yahoos whose reactions you're so worried about are shown that it's OK to hire someone who looks or talks or dresses or acts a little differently from the boys at the lodge.
After all, you should know something about the troubles minority members have in getting and keeping a job. Wasn't it former Reform Party whip Bob Ringma who insisted he had the right to keep his visible minority employees in the back of the shop, away from his intolerant customers? Didn't Mr. Ringma end up on the political scrap heap because he felt blacks and gays and, probably, Indians should have been kept out of sight of the regular folks who were his customers?
January -2000
Is it turf protection?
One very interesting and, at times, very troubling theme kept coming up this month as we went about the business of trying to keep up with the hectic pace of life in Indian Country.
Whether it was a question of who will coach the national Junior Indigenous hockey team or who speaks for Indigenous nations at the United Nations, the people who work in a number of fields are starting to feel threatened by a growing and more aggressive Assembly of First Nations.
In a speech in Vancouver in July, National Chief Phil Fontaine boasted that his organization is growing in terms of budget, number of employees and effectiveness. And it's true that there doesn't seem to be any area where there's activity that fails to quickly attract the AFN's attention. That could just mean they're doing a darn fine job. We had hoped to speak to the national chief about this issue. He even called and left a message on Dec. 22, we called back and waited, but we didn't quite connect.
Now here's the problem. When the AFN established a women's secretariat, the Native Women's Association of Canada cried foul, claiming that Fontaine was attempting to scoop them on their funding. Ditto with off-reserve organizations when the AFN finally got around to dealing with off-reserve issues. And now WIN Sports is incensed that the AFN dared to announce that Ted Nolan would be coaching their hockey team without working something out with them beforehand. They hope that it was just a misunderstanding.
And in Regina in mid-December, the many people who have made careers out of representing their communities at the United Nations declared they are more than a little antsy about the AFN's sudden interest in the international arena, as well. They suspect it's all about that 10 per cent administration fee the funded body gets to keep out of program dollars.
We feel that if the only motivation for this AFN growth spurt is to get their hands on more cash, then it's a pretty cynical and suspect exercise. Likewise, if the AFN critics are only barking to protect their own turf, then we have to question their dedication to putting the public interest ahead of their own interests.
During the 1997 campaign for the national chief's job, unsuccessful candidate Larry Sault, now the grand chief of the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians in Ontario, said the national chief must always remember that he is elected to speak for the chiefs but the chiefs are the bosses.
If Phil Fontaine subscibes to that approach, then the individual nations will know who the boss really is. And they'll know that the AFN is acting in their interest at all times.
But if they worry that the national chief is building the profile of the national organization in order to pad his own pre-election resumé, that would seem to be a legitimate concern. After all, the national press treats the national chief like he's the equivalent of the prime minister in Indian Country. It's a bully pulpit that any savvy politician would be foolish not to exploit for political purposes.
But should politics come before the public interest?
We don't think so.