Dene MP a powerful mix of Native, European values

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The house is white, clean, somewhat dilapidated, but the interior is comfortable. Book racks are filled with classics such as J.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, bound in a beautifully aged cover. It is a book Ethel Blondin-Andrew used to read to her three kids. She still has the last page marked where she read to her children. The youngest in now 19. They have left the nest, working or attending university.

It is a European image.

Two caribou legs, cut at the knee joints, sit on the counter top.

It is a Dene image.

Blondin-Andrew, Liberal Western Arctic member of Parliament, aboriginal affairs critic, co-chair of last year's Liberal leadership convention and Mountain Dene, is going to learn how to make a sheath from the thin, tough skin on the legs.

Photos are pinned up on message boards in the kitchen, showing Dene elders from the Sahtu region in the Northwest Territories, happy relatives, and a picture of Ethel and her husband Leon Andrew.

After the interview she will visit him at the Yellowknife Correctional Centre, where he is serving time for slapping and choking Blondin-Andrew in January. He assaulted her similarly in December, just before Christmas, which wasn't reported.

Blondin-Andrew loves him.

And love conquers all.

Blondin-Andrew grew up loved, one of seven kids. Part of the year they lived in Fort Norman, a Dene community with roots as a Hudson's Bay trading post on the MacKenzie River. She spent spring on muskrat and beaver hunts and trapping seasons at Sucker Creek on the MacKenzie River, at the foot of the MacKenzie mountain range.

She went to school at a residential school run by nuns in her birthplace of Fort Norman, a residential school in Inuvik in the MacKenzie Delta, and at the Catholic residential school Grandin College, in Fort Smith on the border near Fort Chipewyan.

She graduated from the University of Alberta as a teacher. During and after, she had three kids, a husband, a divorce and then a single working mother's life.

Now she is a Liberal powerhouse, wielding so much influence that deputy house leader Sheila Copps came north early this month for Blondin-Andrew's nomination to run in the Western Arctic riding again.

Eastern Arctic Liberal MP Jack Anawak says Blondin-Andrew is a strong political force. She bolstered pro-Native views in the Liberal party, getting pro-trapping and anti-extinguishment as part of the Liberal party platform. She also pushed for aboriginal rights, supporting the failed Charlottetown Accord.

"I think she is very able and has served her constituency well in fighting for the interests of the north," says Anawak, who sits five seats away from her in Parliament.

"We often have to support each other. As people we're close because we're the only two aboriginal members in the Liberal caucus," Anawak explains.

She is articulate and demands attention. In Parliament for the past four-and-a-half years, she asked 99 questions, made 31 speeches, sent out 176 press releases and took 221 trips on issues such as the Charlottetown Accord and fur lobbying in Europe.

"She's always been very outspoken and very honest. I think that's how she comes across in her dedication," says Willard Hagen, president of the Inuvik-based Gwich in Tribal Council, which is implementing its $75 million land claim over 15 years. Blondin-Andrew played a part in its passage, getting the Liberals to support the claim legislation in Parliament. Hagen thanks her for that, but he suggests she turn to "bread and butter" issues now.

"It would be nice in these times to have a member of Parliament who speaks a lot to the economic problems in the North.

"There's no jobs, no development happening," Hagen says. Blondin-Andrew is "very weak" when it comes to economic development, he explains.

Close friend Melody McLeod, a single Metis working mother in Yellowknife, was a fellow Grandin student. Their friendship survives despite gaps of years and months between seeing each other.

McLeod is woried about the hectic pace Blondin-Andrew follows, spending only weekends at home; even then, the MP's phone is ringing constantly. McLeod has the unique position of conducting "reality checks" for Blondin-Andrew. "It's a very special friendship that I have with her. I don't have that with a lot of people," says McLeod.

When the MP feels overworked or mentally tired, she often calls McLeod to escape.

"Our best times are when we get together. She comes over to my place. We

open a can of Klik, (canned meat), pull out the pilot biscuits and have a can of fruit and have a good, old fashioned meal and share all our happenings," McLeod said.

The typical bush snack harkens back to Blondin-Andrew's childhood, when she used to live on the land with her aunt and uncle and seven siblings. That life, based on subsistence harvesting, and the Catholic schools she attended, imbued her with the principles of hard work and rigid discipline that she employs in her job.

It all culminated recently in a private member's bill she introduced to Parliament.

It is a proposed environmental charter of rights, complete with auditor general, ombudsman and laws that give people the right to take federal government to court.

"That's empowerment of the people. I believe the relationship is not between the government and the land and then the people. I think the relationship is between the people and the land. The accountability is with the government," Blondin-Andrew says.

For Blondin-Andrew, a mother's love and care is what holds families together; they are the ties that bind, the foundation for a strong people.

The Dene language and teaching Dene traditions to children are also keystones to her people's strength. For this she wants to establish a cultural survival school, much like the Ben Calf Robe school in Edmonton, where contemporary education mixes with Cree spirituality and Elders' spoken wisdom.

The school would be only one cornerstone in rebuilding the strength of Native peopl in the rugged, vast MacKenzie Valley. The Dene have been struck with alcohol, drugs and accelerated modernization. In Blondin-Andrew's mind, television is an insidious influence, corrupting the minds of her people.

"I just think there's a pervasive influence from television. I'm so annoyed and worried that people don't understand that there are switches and plugs on those things," she says gravely.

She would like to see the return of extended families to the communities; the return of love. Parents providing children with a sense of security and self-esteem. Grandparents becoming the fountains of knowledge, and the keepers and teachers of the Slavey language.

In the meantime, she will "barrel ahead," as McLeod puts it, and work for the betterment of her people, combing Native values with an academic background, putting the strengths of two peoples to work for her.