Leader promotes non-violence

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Ovide Mercredi, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, addressed the students at Red River College in Winnipeg on Feb. 22. His message was a somber one.

Mercredi spoke of the growing sense of uncertainty in the Canadian population. Uncertainty over jobs, uncertainty about the country, especially since the Quebec referendum, and uncertainty about the future is what drives Canadians today.

"The young people of our community have no future. Young people in urban centres have no future. That is why you have, in the city of Winnipeg, Indian gangs being established. Because young people have given up on the system."

To turn around that anger and mistrust, Aboriginal people must become self-reliant through knowledge, skills and resources. He said part of acquiring those traits is getting an education and having a national plan for all Aboriginal people.

Mercredi said the events at Gustafsen Lake, B.C. last summer were an example of people who had no options, opportunities and nothing to lose. He said the tactic of armed stand-off is not the way to address Aboriginal land rights.

"In Gustafsen Lake last year, no university students were there, no college students, no leaders. There was no one there who had a job or a future. Gustafsen was Native people who had given up on the system or had seen the system give up on them. They were a group of people frustrated to the point where they had no loyalties to anyone, no loyalties even to their own people."

Violence, self-destruction and anger, are touching Aboriginal people's lives every day. Mercredi said violence will not achieve anything. It will just perpetuate more of the same. To begin a process of change, Aboriginal people have to volunteer more to help each other.

"Volunteerism means sacrifice. Our people are sick and angry. Much of that is internalized anger which buries us. We can become well, but we'll still be poor. There has to be an economic plan as well."

Mercredi plans to organize a national conference for the fall of 1996 with the chiefs and the young people from across Canada.