All Things First Nations - CF help, protests, solutions, residential schools, etc. (merged)

[GAP]

Former AFN chief Mercredi on last-ditch effort to broaden First Nations meeting
By: Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press
Article Link

4:39 PM

OTTAWA - A serene hope enveloped Ovide Mercredi as he led two fellow aboriginal chiefs to the office of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's right-hand man on Wednesday night.

Less than 48 hours later, however, Mercredi would be filled with bitter disappointment at a government that he says was lacking the simple common sense to avoid embittering aboriginal people from coast to coast.

Mercredi, the former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Metis activist Perry Bellegarde and British Columbia Regional Chief Jody Wilson-Raybould met for more than an hour with Harper's chief of staff Nigel Wright in an effort to open the meeting up.

They were unsuccessful.

Mercredi offered details Friday of the behind-the-scenes wrangling that led to the meeting between Harper and a much smaller than envisioned group of native leaders, behind the closed doors of his Langevin Block office.

Mercredi said Friday's demonstrations and the outrage that underlies them all could have been avoided had Harper simply agreed to a modest proposal to open the meeting, and allow Gov.-Gen. David Johnston to attend at least part of it.

"If they cannot make a compromise on the logistics of a meeting, what faith do we have in them responding to the issues facing aboriginal people in Canada?" he told The Canadian Press.

"It's a reflection of what we can expect from this government."

Shortly after their arrival Monday in Ottawa, the three chiefs were tasked by AFN leadership with approaching the Prime Minister's Office and getting a workable agenda for the meeting.

They were mindful of the demands of Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence, but as Mercredi recalled it, the three chiefs were intent on finding common ground with Harper's PMO and arranging a meeting that their membership could live with.

"There was a lot of opposition to attending a meeting where not all the chiefs would be included, also where the agenda was predetermined," he said.

"So we had a big discussion about crafting our agenda, together with the government and getting a process that would be inclusive, but also the governor general would be present."

At 9 p.m. on Wednesday night, the three chiefs started their meeting in Wright's office with that hope still burning.

The government side did make some concessions, said Grand Chief Doug Kelly of the First Nations Summit in British Columbia. They agreed to open up the agenda beyond treaty negotiations and economic development, as originally proposed, and entertain discussion about housing, murdered and missing women and the impact on the environment of Harper's budget bills.

But the PMO wouldn't budge on the structure of the meeting — a crucial point for many of the bands from central Ontario and Manitoba whose treaties were signed by a representative of the Queen.

"We were trying to impress upon the government to include the Governor General in the meeting. And also to make it more open by having it televised. And but also we expressed for it to be inclusive," Mercredi recalled.

Wright listened attentively in what was a cordial, respectful discussion that wrapped at 10:15 p.m.

"We were told this would be taken to the prime minister and we would know the results the next day," Mercredi said.

But when Thursday came, the full contingent of AFN chiefs was stunned. A separate meeting with the Governor General — at his residence and in the evening after the meeting with Harper — was not what they had in mind.

"So, I was given a mandate to go back and try to secure a meeting with Nigel and a few other people."

At 2 p.m. Thursday, Mercredi picked up the phone.

"I placed a call to Nigel. He didn't take it. I left a message with his secretary to call me. He didn't call me back."

They waited two hours, and Mercredi called back.

This time, Wright came on the line.

"I had a discussion with him about how it is important for them to open up the meeting. And if they didn't, it would not be very positive. Likely many people wouldn't attend. It would create a real bad feeling across the country," said Mercredi.

"He said, 'No, the government has agreed to this and we're going to proceed as planned. We agreed to have the Governor General meet separately. And the other meeting will stay as it is.'"

A few hours later, early Thursday evening, Mercredi took the podium for 10 minutes at the AFN's hotel in downtown Ottawa. He broke the news to the chiefs behind closed doors.

The room erupted in outrage.

"They weren't mad at me. They tried to send me to get a better meeting. They were mad at the government (for) not listening," said Mercredi.

"That's the reason why people are out there protesting, because the government is not listening."
More on link

 

[Rifleman62]

Explaining the mess:  http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/2088643359001

Six minutes warning of the trouble ahead with the full support of the media party.

And a couple more from Ezra Levant:  http://jr2020.blogspot.com/search/label/Ezra%20Levant

Including some of the audit details.

 

[brihard]

Too many chiefs, not enough indians?

 

[The_Falcon]

Too many chiefs, not enough indians?

Well played, well played.

 

[GAP]

Too many chiefs, not enough indians?

I would think most indians on and off reserves just want to get on with their lives without being ripped by these so called "Leaders" either intellectually nor financially....

 

[Journeyman]

Well, now that Chief Spence has declared her intention to go on with her government-funded, hotel-living cleansing diet, I offer up a rounding cheer of  "who f*cking cares."

    :boring:

 

[Jarnhamar]

Does each reserve (say of 1000 +/- people) consider themselves a Nation? So in essence there are 600 or so separate nations in Canada and they each want to be treated separately?

 

[Old Sweat]

Does each reserve (say of 1000 +/- people) consider themselves a Nation? So in essence there are 600 or so separate nations in Canada and they each want to be treated separately?

From what I have read, a large number encouraged by some left wing academics and activitists certainly do. They don't let petty details like the constitution and reality get in the way. That that approach is certainly close to apartheid also really is just of no importance.

 

[Jarnhamar]

Explaining the mess:  http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/2088643359001

Six minutes warning of the trouble ahead with the full support of the media party.

And a couple more from Ezra Levant:  http://jr2020.blogspot.com/search/label/Ezra%20Levant

Including some of the audit details.

I just watched these and found them very interesting thanks for posting it.

I can't believe Derek Nepinak is talking about bloodshed like he is.

 

[Jed]

It appears that some battles seem to get fought over and over again. If these buttons keep getting pushed by FN Chiefs it will just take down the whole country.

I don't think it will end similar to the Oka crisis.

The issues are too wide spread and the focus is too misdirected to be met by anything but resistance by the average Canadian who is represented by the average politician.

 

[Jarnhamar]

I wonder how fast anyone else would get hammered by the authorities if they started claiming there's going to be bloodshed if something doesn't happen..

 

[Container]

I wonder how fast anyone else would get hammered by the authorities if they started claiming there's going to be bloodshed if something doesn't happen..

Yup. Its very tiring.

I used to police on a reserve that had a large "sovereign" Indian movement. Watching the wishy washy noncommital when coming to deal with them was amazing.

It actually, in my opinion, made things worse- when I finally stepped in on the routine things that we were being excused to avoid the hassle it became a significant series of struggles. Time and their believing their  own hype had made monsters. But hey- im no learned politician.

 

[Jed]

I have a minor revelation to make: I have some FN heritage in my background, I also some Quebecois in the mix too, but that is a different subject.

In my great grandparents' day it was not on to claim your native heritage: they became 'Apples' (Red on the outside and white on the inside) For successive generations the family clan embraced the WASP side of the family genealogy. Easy to do when you have blue eyes and relatively white skin.

Now we have this latest lawful ruling that Metis are considered FN. Can't you just predict the flood of folks such as myself taking out applications to put themselves on the latest  government gravy train to accept the government dole?


There is only one true solution to this issue and that is the integration of the FN communities into the larger Canadian community.  For true justice all Canadians must be treated with equality. Will it be painful and disruptive?  You bet.

 

[Rifleman62]

In light of the last few posts, you may be interested in Christie's take:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/11/christie-blatchford-government-has-allowed-police-to-operate-in-vacuum-of-accountability-with-aboriginals/

Christie Blatchford: Government has allowed police to operate in vacuum of accountability with aboriginal protesters

National Post - Jan 11, 2013

    “The lack of accountability for the overall policy of the OPP with respect to Caledonia is inexcusable in a country and province that is simultaneously committed both to enforcing the rule of law and to reaching just land settlements with Indigenous people.”
    — University of Western Ontario political science professor Andrew Sancton

In the news business, you often feel thick as a plank, or at least I do.

But I wrote an entire book about the breakdown of law-and-order in Caledonia, Ont., and yet, until Andrew Sancton’s note of this week, I’d managed to miss perhaps the most important lesson that Sidney Linden, the judge who headed the lengthy inquiry into the police-aboriginal standoff at Ipperwash in 1995, had to teach.

It appears my thickness is of particular density.

The quote above is from a piece Professor Sancton wrote and was published last year in the journal Canadian Public Administration.

The piece is called “Democratic policing”: Lessons from Ipperwash and Caledonia, and the quotes are around the first two words because it was Justice Linden who to virtually no public attention and sadly to little effect in government, recommended this model of policing.

Justice Linden, of course, was concerned with the events at Ipperwash Provincial Park in 1995, where a native protester named Dudley George was fatally shot when the Ontario Provincial Police moved in, and in general with issues of how police in Ontario handle aboriginal blockades.

A more intelligent and sympathetic view of aboriginal and Canadian history would be hard to find.

And the Linden report, and the hearings which led to it and which were still going on when protesters from Six Nations first moved onto a development site called Douglas Creek Estates in 2006, got scads of media attention.

But in the black-and-white way that comes naturally to the news business, the Ipperwash dispute was reduced to this: The Mike Harris Conservative government, impatient for action, had inappropriately influenced the OPP, with tragedy the result; Ontario must be vigilant to see that such a thing never happened again; thus police “independence” must be ferociously guarded.

Yet Justice Linden specifically found that though certainly mistakes had been made at Ipperwash, the Harris government had not unduly influenced the OPP, or, as Professor Sancton put it, “the government was perfectly entitled to do so as long as it followed procedures that were clear, transparent and respected established lines of authority.”

That’s because there’s a proper place for government to set policies for the police, just as it does in other spheres, and that includes decisions, as the professor wrote, on “how the police are to respond to specific challenges in the real world, such as protests and occupations.”

As Mr. Sancton pointed out, while Justice Linden agrees that in “the core area of law enforcement (who should be investigated, arrested and/or charged)” police need to be independent of government direction, that doesn’t mean the minister responsible for policing should adopt a “hands off” posture.

In fact, as Mr. Sancton noted – and he’s the first person I’ve read to say it – Justice Linden did not recommend the “police independence” model, but rather the “democratic policing” one. The judge’s analysis, Mr. Sancton said, “effectively repudiates the hands-off position taken by the [Dalton] McGuinty government concerning Caledonia.”

While most of the witnesses who either appeared before the judge or have spoken publicly — including the premier, various government ministers and senior OPP leaders — duly parroted “the nostrum that government ministers have no right to interfere in police ‘operational’ decisions,” Justice Linden didn’t accept this view of police independence.

The difficulty, Mr. Sancton concluded, is that this model doesn’t give sufficient authority to the responsible minister — or accountability.

That was Justice Linden’s end game — not that government policy shouldn’t inform the police, but rather that the government be transparent about the policy and answerable to Ontarians for it, and for any consequences.

As Mr. Sancton wrote, the judge’s real concern was not to insulate the police from government control but to protect them from “informal influence by an unspecified array of governmental operatives” ranging from the premier on down — the very thing that happened at Ipperwash.

What Justice Linden’s recommendations in this regard emphasize are focusing “responsibility for the OPP on a single minister,” making him or her answerable for policing policy, and seeing that the minister’s directives are fully public.

As Professor Sancton said, had the Linden scheme been in place when the Caledonia occupation began, “the minister responsible for the OPP would have had a decision to make: does he issue a policy directive to the OPP or not?” If the answer was yes, he would have had to make the directive public; if the answer was no, “the minister would have had to have been publicly responsible for not having issued a policy.”

(I emphasize here that none of us — the judge, the professor or me the plank — is talking about the government telling the police whom to arrest.)

In the end, nothing has changed, despite the Linden report. Mr. Sancton said that undoubtedly, such a vacuum of accountability suits some. They might prefer the OPP commissioners be left to do whatever they wish, as indeed has happened, with OPP boss Chris Lewis recently deciding that during an Idle No More rail blockade last weekend, his officers would not assist the local sheriff in enforcing a court injunction, and being unrepentant when criticized by the judge for the force’s “passivity.”

At the very minimum, Mr. Sancton said, commissioners should be “required to defend their own policy decisions publicly.”

Finally, the professor concluded in his article, “Commanders in the Canadian Armed Forces are given considerable leeway by their political masters in determining how personnel are trained and deployed, especially when they are actually in a field of conflict.

”But no one suggests that they should be given a general mandate to ‘keep Canada secure’ and then be left alone to decide what to do.”

That’s precisely the situation in Ontario – where native chiefs are threatening more rail and road blockades next week – right now: The government mantra is hands off the police, the police are accountable to no one, including the courts, and no one is answerable to the people.

National Post
[email protected]

 

[Brad Sallows]

>So in essence there are 600 or so separate nations in Canada and they each want to be treated separately?

There are 600 or so separate communities (some are really districts of communities, but nevertheless not heavily populated) who want to be exempt from the jurisdiction of provinces and other districts/municipalities, and much of federal jurisdiction.  In exchange for allowing the government of Canada to grant them these extraordinary freedoms and to be the scapegoat whenever the exercise of freedom results in suboptimal outcomes, they are willing to accept financial tribute and cultural boot-licking (eg. "First Nations").

 

[Old Sweat]

This article in the National Post which is reproduced under the Fair Dealings provision of the Copyright Act discusses the indigenism theory, which in my opinion is based on wishful thinking and activism.

Separate and equal nations: The academic theory behind Idle No More

Joseph Brean | Jan 12, 2013 12:18 PM ET | Last Updated: Jan 12, 2013 12:58 PM ET


For all the noise about hunger strikes, boycott threats, railway disruptions and an audit leak, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s historic meeting with Indian chiefs was nearly derailed by a quirk of constitutional theory — the notion that Canada and its aboriginal groups are separate and equal nations.

Controversial but commonly held, this idea seemed to require the presence of the Queen, Canada’s head of state, or at least her representative Governor-General David Johnston, who refused because it was a working policy summit.

A dinner with Mr. Johnston at Rideau Hall made for a compromise, but the knife-edged climax to Idle No More — at which Mr. Harper agreed to the need for greater oversight and to future high-level meetings, but which was still boycotted by several chiefs who threatened economic disruption until Ottawa agreed to meet on their terms, nation to nation — revealed the prominence of a theory known as indigenism, according to which the land of Canada was stolen from self-governing peoples first by France, then by England, and lastly by the millions of immigrant “settlers” who have arrived since.

Though sparked by the housing crisis in Attawapiskat, Ont., and some controversial legislation, the Idle No More movement has drawn upon the rich vein of this theory that runs through academia in Canada, from social theorists to geographers.

It is a realm in which it is uncontroversial to call Canada an illegitimate, racist, colonial power, or to claim its government is now engaged in the genocide of its native peoples, or that non-native Canadians, especially those of European descent, are “colonizers,” at best blind to their own bigotry and privilege.

In describing goals of Idle No More, Assembly of First Nations Chief Shawn Atleo vowed to “drive the final stake in the heart of colonialism,” and Manitoba Chief Derek Nepinak denounced “140 years of colonial rule in our territory.” Likewise, on Friday in Kingston, Ont., a statue of its most famous son and Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald was defaced with red paint and graffiti reading “colonizer,” “murderer,” and “this is stolen land.”

Even such major cities as Toronto and Vancouver are said to have been wrongly imposed on unceded land, just as European colonizers imposed themselves on “Turtle Island,” or North America.


A key voice in this academic field is Pamela Palmater, an Idle No More spokeswoman and chair of the centre for indigenous governance at Ryerson University in Toronto. As a Mi’kmaq from New Brunswick who was once denied Indian status based on the impurity of her bloodline, Prof. Palmater compares herself to a survivor of residential schools, and claims Indians are in a race against “legislative extinction” imposed by the majority of Canadians.

“If we do not act now, there will be no status Indians left to maintain our communities and culture into the future,” writes Prof. Palmater in Beyond Blood, her PhD thesis that is now used in university aboriginal studies courses.

“It’s supposed to be nation to nation,” she told reporters in advance of the meeting, saying Canada no longer gets to dictate the terms of its relationship with its indigenous people. “What we’re going to do is show you how to be a respectful partner… If they refuse, that’s their choice, but there will be consequences.”

“The word ‘nation’ gets played with in the same way the word ‘genocide’ does,” said John Borrows, chair of law, public policy and society at the University of Minnesota and an expert on Canadian indigenous governance.

Taiaiake Alfred, a professor of indigenous governance at the University of Victoria, said the word genocide is a “powerful emotional trigger,” but that it nevertheless applies to Canadian Indians, now and in the past. He cited United Nations criteria for the crime, which include committing any of the following with intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part: killing their members, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction, imposing measures intended to prevent births, or forcibly transferring children to another group.”

“Our genocide, even if we accept that it’s historical and ended technically with the residential schools, there’s been no adequate reparations. There’s been no reparations at all, really. The individuals themselves have been compensated to some degree, but when it comes down to it, the collectivities, the communities that were affected in terms of their ability to sustain themselves into the future, are not being provided with any kind of adequate redress,” Prof. Taiaiake said.

‘What we’re going to do is show you how to be a respectful partner… If they refuse, that’s their choice, but there will be consequences’
Among activists, such as the Occupy protesters, this theory of indigenism has also provided a basis for alliances between indigenous groups and anarchist or environmental groups, all of which tend to view the Canadian government as malicious and illegitimate. At the extremes, it has even seen First Nations chiefs welcomed by Iran’s dictatorship as representative victims of Canadian genocide.

Tom Flanagan, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary and former advisor to Mr. Harper, said the theory that Canada was stolen from pre-existing nations is “standard fare among the academic left.” He has seen it bubble up from law schools, where professors like Prof. Palmater have constructed elaborate arguments to validate the view that Indians were never conquered, and “paid in advance” by agreeing to share the land.

“The ideas are influential,” he said, even though some of it might be “trash talk for the cameras.”

“That’s what’s driving Idle No More. It’s not new. This whole vision was widely articulated during the hearings on the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples,” Mr. Flanagan said.


If First Nations were truly nations, he said, then Mr. Harper’s behaviour would be fairly called heavy-handed, for example making changes to the Indian Act without their consent. But on this analysis, the same would be true of amending the criminal code, which also applies to Indians, or any other similar legislation.

“Personally, I think this is utterly impossible to implement. There wouldn’t be any resource revenues if you implemented this political vision because nothing would ever get done. How would stuff get approved? How would pipelines get approved? How would railways function, crossing all these sovereign territories, having to get approval from 600 sovereign nations?”

Just as exposing white privilege is a key strategy of anti-racist campaigners, so is exposing settler guilt a key strategy of decolonization theory.

But whereas “white guilt” leads to moral paralysis, and is no help to anyone, Prof. Alfred said the concept of “settler guilt” contains an implicit recognition of inherited privilege, which implies a responsibility to address it and make amends.

“It’s the opposite of guilt, which paralyzes. This is the creation of a sense of responsibility for action,” he said.

He said many Indians identify as Canadians, though not to the degree that American Indians identify as Americans, which he sees as a regrettable, cautionary tale. He said that whether an Indian identifies as Canadian is largely determined by whether his nation is satisfied with its treaty, and that the idea of Canada as a “colonial” power stems from a recognition that the historical autonomy of Indians has been undervalued.

“From that perspective, you have an injustice that occurs when our existence as autonomous people … is disrespected,” Prof. Alfred said. “That’s where the colonialism comes in, when our resources are used against our ownership, when our rights are ignored, when our ability to make laws and to run our affairs in the way that we always have been running them, on our own authority, when that’s all disrespected in favour of an idea that we are under the authority of a people who came here after us, to which we never agreed.”

Prof. Borrows compared the rancorous situation in Canada to the U.S. debate between constitutional originalism, which seeks answers only in the foundational documents, and so-called living constitutionalism, which takes into account the subsequent amendments, history and current context.

“We have two guilty parties on that [originalism] front in Canada,” he said. “We have the Supreme Court of Canada, which says that aboriginal rights are only those things which were integral to the distinctive culture of aboriginal peoples prior to the arrival of Europeans… And then we also have some indigenous people who will make a similar kind of originalist claim, that we were here before others came, we had this governance and resources, and we have to return to that moment.”

“Politics is never final,” he added.

 

[Container]

Generally speaking- OPP officers, that I speak to, will always bring up the fact that when they did use force and it escalated to gun fire- during the resulting fight Sgt. Ken 'Tex' Deane was "hung out to dry" for an operational mistake during a tense and active fight where he mistook a dark stick as a firearm.

The courts called him a liar and sentenced him for criminal neg causing death. Because the courts say one thing, like they have again, and then condemn the police actions it is not in their interest to be another political scapegoat.

I would suggest that where there is an injunction and the judge has ordered it dismantled it isnt really discretionary. The method might be but the rule of law needs to be followed- especially by the police

 

[Kat Stevens]

The whole "stolen land" thing has had me thinking, and I really hate doing that,  so I'm a little cranky.  Are we to believe that before the white devils arrived, all indigenous persons in North America lived in peace and harmony with each other?  There were no tribal migrations and conquests?  There was no tribal genocide in a very real sense, not just a melodramatic headline grabbing way?  Nobody took his neighbours lands and took them into very real slavery?  Every culture has stolen land from, or lost land to, it's neighbours.  It sucks to be the losing party in those exchanges, of that there is no doubt, and mistakes have been made in dealing with aboriginal issues, but to accuse Canada of genocide is way offside, at least in my limited understanding of the word.

 

[Infanteer]

From what I understand, archeological evidence suggests three waves of migration across the Bearing Straight, and each successive wave brought societies into contact with each other.  Some cultures were wiped right off the map.  The history of the Americas prior to the arrival of the Europeans was no different than any other area of the globe - people traded, moved, fought and displaced eachother.  To suggest that we could somehow put the genie of 1492 back into bottle is pure silliness.

 

[armyvern]

...
Now we have this latest lawful ruling that Metis are considered FN. Can't you just predict the flood of folks such as myself taking out applications to put themselves on the latest  government gravy train to accept the government dole?
...

When on my Christmas block leave, I went home and was buying some new jeans for my 9er Domestic (old man / fiance / whatever is the term du jour these days), who is Metis, and had to upsize on the waist-size by an inch from his normal size.  I advised him when he opened them Christmas morning that he too had to become "idle no more."  He called me a bitch.

Last night when he arrived at my apartment for the weekend, his first words upon entering through the door were, "now that the court ruling is out, do not expect me to be accompanying you while shopping so that I can toss any tax-exempt status onto the register for you and essentially upsize your shopping budget."

What an asshole. 

I'd like to think that this is the common attitude amongst all Canadians.  I really am hopeful that most Canadians, including all of our aboriginal peoples, want only to have dignity, respect and contribute to an equal and just society for us all.