Friends and enemies

Page 4

Ever since the white man darkened the shores of North America, Native people have been caught between a rock and a hard place.

In 1990 that rock and that hard place, more often than not, is the provincial government and the federal government respectively.

Native people are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Take the Lubicon Lake Indian band for instance.

The federal government has little interest in settling the band's 50-year-old land-claim dispute.

And the provincial government, which benefits from the resource development carried out on land claimed by the band - logging, oil and gas development - tells the band to respect the law.

"We've given it our best shot in helping the band reach an agreement with Otttawa," says Native Affairs Minister Ken Rostad. "Your fight isn't with us or the developers."

Meanwhile, the developers and the province are laughing all the way to the bank.

What are the band members to do? Sit and twiddle their thumbs until the trees are all cut and the oil is all gone?

Yes, if Rostad's line of reasoning is to be accepted.

Meanwhile, where is Indian affairs, which is supposed to protect the interest of Canada's treaty Indians?

Rather than standing in the corner of the Lubicons as the band's trustee, the department chooses to abandon that rile, content instead to carry the government's football.

The continual conflict of interest the department finds itself in is the most compelling argument for banishing it to the ash heap.

The Supreme Court, in the Sparrow Case earlier this year, noted "the honor of the Crown is at stake in dealing with aboriginal peoples."

Well, the federal government isn't too much concerned about its honor when it comes to the treatment of Native people.

Nor is the Indian affairs department. Its concern is the honor of the government of the day.

And where is Indian affairs in the fight of the Peigan Indians and the Lonefighters Society against the destructive Oldman dam?

Nowhere to be found.

Where were department officials when scores of RCMP officers and government workers invaded the Peigan reserve recently to repair the Lonefighters' attempt to divert the Oldman River?

In hiding.

What are the Peigans to do?

Sit back while the province destroys their reserve and their sacred land?

What law is protecting their interests?

But Native people aren't without friends in high places.

Max Yalden, chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, frequently picks up the balls fumbled by Indian affairs only to have his wrists slapped by the department for refusing to mind his own business.

Case in point was his recent nine-page scathing, but reasonable critique of federal aboriginal policy.

Thin-skinned Indian Affairs Minister Tom Siddon, who obviously hadn't read the report, quickly condemned it as "very unprofessional" and "irresponsible."

If he had read it, he would have to agree with many of the conclusions:

an independent land-claims commission should be established to put an end to the conflict of interest position in which Indian affairs is often found;

that the "outdated and paternalistic Indian Act" be replaced. "The Indian Act is fundamentally and irreparably flawed. No amount of tinkering can alter that.";

and the government should seriously consider replacing Indian affairs, which is "a relic of a past that must be put behind us."

At the same time Yalden was delivering his report, Prime Minister Mulroney was in Rome having to defend the government's treatment of Canada's Native peoples.

In the absence of laws to protect their interests, Natives are getting help from the Pope, the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Supreme Court.

With friends like that, it is the provincial and federal governments, which will more often find themselves between a rock and a hard place.

More's the pleasure.