Ottawa Report

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I want to pay some well-deserved recognition this week to a few people in the world of Native affairs. Some of the recognition is a pat-on-the-back and some it's a kick-in-the-pants, metaphorically speaking, of course.

First, three cheers to Peter Desbarats, David Crombie and Bill McKnight. Desbarats is the Dean of the School of Journalism at the University of Western Ontario. The university is home to the Program in Journalism for Native People. The program was established seven years ago and its had serious money problems for just about as long. The program was about to go under this spring when Desbarats launched a huge letter-writing campaign. It paid off last month when David Crombie and Bill McKnight came up with $300,000 to dep the program operating for another three years.

These are tough days to squeeze money out of Ottawa, especially for programs that don't fit into one of the government's usual funding categories and the two ministers could have easily said no. After all, they've turned down more deserving requests in the past. But they didn't this time, so a little cheer goes out to David Crombie and Bill McKnight. But my biggest cheer goes to the man who actually led the fight to save the Program in Journalism for Native People ? hip-hip-hooray for Peter Desbarats.

The next one on my list is a newspaper, the Edmonton Journal. It gets a pat-on-the-back AND a kick-in-the-pants.

The paper deserves congratulations for a special award program the newspaper runs for Native students. It's open to Indian, Inuit and Metis high school students in Alberta, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and parts of British Columbia. Students are nominated by their teachers and the winners are selected for their academic achievement and community service. The Journal selects five winners and gives them a trip to Edmonton and $250 each. That's a lot of money for a high school student. But the Edmonton Journal is providing Native students with something much more valuable than money. It gives them recognition, incentive and hope.

The award program costs the Journal a few thousand dollars per year. That certainly isn't much money for a major daily newspaper but it is a good and all-too-rare example of a private business going out of its way to help Native people. Too many people think that helping Native people is the government's job and no one else's. Other newspapers would do well to copy the Journal's example. Or, for that matter, they could donate to the Program in Journalism for Native People at the University of Western Ontario. Anyway, a pat-on-the-back goes out to the Edmonton Journal.

Now for the kick-in-the-pants. The Journal has a reputation in the local Native media for its typically mainstream coverage of Native affairs. It does make an effort to cover the beat. But it covers the violence and the sensationalism and it often misses the good stuff.

One good example involves Windspeaker, the weekly Native newspaper based in Edmonton. The Journal carried a story recently on the controversy surrounding Windspeaker's dismissal of its white editor. The underlying message was that the dispute was racially based.

An example of a good news story involving Windspeaker that the Journal missed recently happened when Windspeaker cleaned up at the awards ceremony for the Native American Press Association. Windspeaker won two third prizes, four second prizes and eight ? count them ? eight first prizes, including the prize for best overall Native newspaper. There's nothing more to be said except boo to you Edmonton Journal.

The last person on this week's list gets an even louder boo. He's Thomas Flanagan, a professor at the University of Calgary.

His opinions on Native people were part of a lengthy article in a right-wing magazine called Western Report. The article was a thinly disguised attack on Native leaders in general and on Native self-government in particular. The magazine described Flanagan as an expert on Met history. But Metis leaders in Alberta complain that Flanagan has an anti-Metis bias that slants his view of history.

In the magazine article, Flanagan outlined his objections of Native self-government. He said Indian self-government would be a bureaucratic nightmare that would set a bad example for other ethnic groups in Canada.

But Flanagan did more than criticize Native leaders and their campaign for self-government. The entire Native political movement, he said, was a waste of time. "Politics is a curse," he said, "because it encourages the most talented Native people to spend their entire careers in an unproductive society." Flanagan went on to say that Native leaders would "be doing more for themselves in the long run if they were driving taxis because it would at least be a way of working their way up the ladder."

And to think that this man is a teacher in a Canadian university. In any even, Thomas Flanagan, I have a boo, a hiss and a jeer for you ? and some advice. If you happen to find yourself installed on your climb up the ladder of academic success ? just remember ? you can always drive a taxi.