Racist Quebec separatists making Natives scapegoats

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The path to independence is a bumpy one, as anyone knows who has tried to travel this road with a sullen adolescent or young adult. Along the way there are battles of wills, words, and scores of hurt feelings while the struggles inside display themselves to the outside world. The goal during this time is to reach the final destination with as little resentment as possible so that the mature relationships of adulthood can bring pleasure and comfort. This isn't always an easy thing to accomplish when the wounds collected on the trip are deep and allowed to fester. Many a family failed to recover because of the slings and arrows tossed during such a bout.

In Canada's Quebec there is a similar struggle playing out with not one but many adolescent children tearing at the fabric of what we wryly call unity. In order to seek their own special place and independent status, each lashes out with such venom as to poison and immobilize the other. Such tactics have been demonstrated most recently at the province's people's commission hearings when television captured separatists beating the sovereignty drum and causing Canada's First People as their own personal scapegoats.

The barbs sting. Not so much because they are based on much misinformation and a lack of understanding, but because there is no will on the part of the separatists to be informed or to understand. This is a very selfish and cruel time in Quebec's history. It will not be remembered as a time of triumph or glory.

While Natives of the province of Quebec are beginning to steel themselves against an onslaught of racist rhetoric, those Natives on the West Coast have been exonerated by a recent study. It states the 800,000 fish the federal government said should have returned to spawn but didn't died because of warm water and not Native poaching as was the accusation of the B.C. Fisheries Survival Coalition.

Not that the study will convince anyone who finds it easier to look to the Native fisher rather than in his own backyard to find fault with the way the Fraser river system in B.C. is managed, but at least the study is on the record. It also supports the need to cut back the commercial fishing industry in order to save the salmon for future generations. In a few decades we could be dipping our nets into a river devoid of that valuable resource. Let's hope we don't heed the warning nature has been sending too late or too little for the fish that has brought us so much wealth.

From coast to coast, Aboriginal communities have had to bear the brunt of non-Native society encroaching on their lands and their rights. Nowhere is this so apparent as it is in Labrador and Northern Quebec where the Innu have fought to ward off not one but many countries intent on abusing the hospitality of the people.

For the past nine years, they have protested the use of the area for military training of low-level flights and bombing practice. In response, the Canadian government, more specifically the Department of National Defence, has not decreased those flights but now intends to more than double them from 7,000 annually to 15,000. The environmental panel, which held hearings into the effects of low-level flying on the area, will release its recommendations sometime this month. Innu Nation spokesman Penote Michel said he will not be surprised if the recommendations rubber-stamp DND's plans. Expect to hear a lot more noise over Labrador coming this summer. It is suspected the more noise the roar of the engines make, the less the rest of Canada will hear the roar of the descent of the Innu.