Native cultures have nothing worth sharing, says PQ candidate

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A Parti Quebecois candidate believe Native cultures have nothing to teach modern society.

In a film documentary to be seen this fall, PQ hopeful Richard Le Hir, former president of the Quebec Manufacturers Association, said if it could be demonstrated to him Native culture is superior in any way, then there would be something to learn from Aboriginal society.

"I would have something to learn from them if it could be shown that their culture demonstrated its superiority in one form or another...when you look at what heritage has been left by Native civilizations - if you could call them civilizations - there is very little," he said in 1992 in an interview for the film Power of the North.

Le Hir said non-Native should take a hard line with Native opposition to northern Quebec energy development.

"We happen to need (the power) for our own development. Who is going to tell us that we can't do it," he said in the film.

Le Hir is one of the stars in the PQ line - up for the Sept. 12 election. It was believed the economic portfolio would be handed to him in the event of a PQ victory.

In an interview, with Canadian Press reporter, Daniel Sanger, Bill Namagoose of the Grand Council of Crees said he was not surprised by the man's comments.

"I remember him once trying to tell a room full of university educated people that the 10,000 caribou who drowned back in the 1980s had committed suicide. He said they were like lemmings from a Walt Disney movie."

Controversy is not new for Le Hir and he's getting used to making headlines for off-the-wall comments which cast a pall over the PQ party.