Gauntlet thrown, Indian Affairs

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We got some help this month when some hard, verifiable financial information about the AFN was 'slipped under the door in a plain brown envelope.' Such leaks are the essence of journalism, because people in positions of power and influence will lie to us if they think they can get away with it. We've seen that. And without the kind of assistance we receive, there's no way we can ever know if we're getting the straight goods and all of those goods.

That said-and we're going to shock you-we feel the need to commend the AFN for their quick and forthright response to our inquiries. While we're not sure they would have answered the questions if we hadn't convinced them we had the information, the organization was quick to respond. Vice-chief Ken Young and CEO Dan Brant, especially, responded with integrity when we asked the tough questions.

Young put a very legitimate challenge to this paper: Go and do the same job on the government.

"If there's going to be transparency and accountability, fine. But let's have it both ways," he said.

The timing wasn't right for us to take that challenge up this month. That was our fault. We couldn't get the inquiries to the government in time to fairly expect them to respond. But, because we take a break for the holidays, too, INAC now has more than a month to prepare.

We will be asking who their consultants are, how much they make, what they do, and a lot of other questions that deal with the government's spending on the politics of Indian Act reform.

We hope you'll be ready, INAC, to answer our call. You can't say we haven't warned you.

On another front, we feel Professor Elizabeth Furniss has written a very important book. We believe she has put her finger on an aspect of Canadian culture that is all-too-rarely dealt with in any forum in this country. An editorial decision was made to join what would have been a simple review of the professor's book with a news story that swept through Indian Country in December-the Jonathan Kay piece in the National Post, "A case for assimilation."

Furniss argues (and we think proves, but buy the book and decide for yourself) that Canadians have deluded themselves into thinking they're benevolent and devoid of racism against Native people. She calls it an unexamined racism that is absorbed through the pores of all Canadians in very subtle, almost undetectable ways. After reading the book and Kay's article in the same week, we thought the latter helped dramatically prove the former's thesis.

We made another editorial decision not to contact Kay for the article for a couple of reasons: 1) he had his say in a gigantic piece (by newspaper standards) in his own publication, 2) Professor Furniss believes that confrontation will never bring Canadians to realize what they're doing. She preaches patient, gentle education. We figured arguing with Mr. Kay would mean we were ignoring that very good advice.

We saw Mr. Kay on APTN's Contact and saw that he was respectful and thoughtful, if a little too convinced of his complete understanding of a complex beat that's he's spent a mere eight months studying. We aren't calling him a raving, hate-mongering racist, although some will. He probably meant well but some of the material in his article makes us believe he's suffering from a uniquely Canadian malady. But we do invite him to look at the professor's ideas and see if he can come to grips with them-and then write another long, long piece for the Post.