Self-government takes back burner

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Self-government was not first on the agenda at last week's annual meetings of the chiefs of the Assembly of First Nations.

Poverty, health care and education superseded Native political sovereignty as important issues, said Tsuu Tina Chief Roy Whitney.

"People want to make sure they have bread and butter on the table, they have a job, their children have clothing," he said. "To me, those are more pressing issues. Self-government is meaningless unless the rest of it is able to take place."

The 633 national chiefs met on the Tsuu Tina Reserve southwest of Calgary June 24-30 to discuss plans for combating government funding cutbacks at a time when many Natives across Canada are still living in Third World conditions, Whitney said.

But securing federal aid could prove difficult because Ottawa is using last year's defeat of the Charlottetown Accord as an excuse to avoid dealing with issues like Native self-government, said assembly Grand Chief Ovide Mercredi.

"There's no doubt in my mind that Kim Campbell's government will be tougher on Indian people than Brian Mulroney's," he said. "We have a tough place in this country, a place we don't want to be."

Mercredi also chided newly appointed Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern development Pauline Browes for not attending the conference.

"The absence of the Minister of Indian Affairs from this assembly is inexcusable. This is not the politics of inclusion."

An official for Indian Affairs said he was unable to track down the minister's whereabouts during the conference.

The Tsuu Tina gathering marks the second AFN chiefs' policy conference this year. The assembly met earlier in Halifax to try and outline a new mandate for the organization but delayed forming any new policy.

Meanwhile, 17 bands from Alberta are holding their own conference in Morley, just west of Calgary. The bands, which make up the Treaty 6 Confederacy, are dissatisfied with the assembly because of Mercredi's approach to treaty issues, said Sunchild Band Chief Harry Goodrunning.

Treaty chiefs are the minority in the assembly, representing only 37 per cent of the total membership. Over 70 representatives from treaty bands met on the Tsuu Tina Reserve last April to discuss the creation of a United Treaty First Nations council, a new national political organization aimed at enforcing treaties with the Crown.