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

Shared with the usual caveats: http://thechronicleherald.ca/canada/507481-spence-to-lay-out-conditions-to-end-hunger-strike

Spence to lay out conditions to end hunger strike

January 23, 2013 - 8:46am By The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence wants opposition parties and supporters to sign a 13-point declaration demanding immediate improvements to housing and schools on reserves.

A draft of the declaration has been obtained by The Canadian Press.

It lays out the conditions for resolving her liquids-only protest that has thrown the Ottawa-First Nations relationship into disarray for the last six weeks.

The draft declaration also says treaties should be fully implemented within five years and demands a thorough review of two Conservative government omnibus bills that dramatically changed environmental oversight.

Spence and her team are in the midst of delicate negotiations with chiefs and opposition parties on the final wording of the declaration and sources say agreement has not yet been reached.

::)
 
That article sums it up when it states that Spence's hunger strike has thrown the relations between Ottawa and FNs into disarray.

I can't even begin to figure out how disjointed this entire thing has become.

Idle No More had (and I say had because I think it has lost its legitimacy because of people like Spence, professional activists that hoped on the band wagon and other attention seeking chiefs) the oportunity to bring valid issues and concerns to the fore and raise awareness of FN concerns.

Unfortunately it has been drowned out for several reasons.  Spence's hunger strike, likely designed to distract, did quite the opposite.  It shined a light and a microscope on financial mismanagement on some reserves.  And I say some because some are quite successful.  But if you want to get Canadians' attention tell them how mispent their tax money is.  I will not go so far as saying that what was done was criminal but I am positive that gross incompetance played a part.

Add to the mix what seems to be political infighting and posturing from the AFN and things start to spin. 

To make matters worse, actvists are highjacking the whole thing.  Palestine?  jews?  Corporate greed?  Really?  Thanks for coming out.

When it comes to FNs, they are a proud people (or peoples is more appropriate).  But so are Canadians (I realise FN are Canadians but I use this here in the non-FN context for contrast, so please forgive the slight).  Making threats and ultimatums don't work.  You see, Canadians are mostly moderates.  Extreme actions and extreme language kind of turns them off.

The problem lies in the fact that we have a plethora of FN tribes, bands etc accross the country and defining each issue takes a different approach.  I very much believe that multi lateral approaches are needed.  I think at the federal level, the Government should set the tone.  Scrap the Indian Act and find something more suitable and with the times.  Maybe an Aboriginal Charter or whatever that clearly defines FNs place in Canada as a whole.  But, there should be more negociations at the provincial, territorial and quite possibly municipal level.  i would like to think that some, like the Cree in Quebec with the James Bay treaty or the Inuit in Nunavut are examples of where this can work.  What's good for the Cree may not be good for the Haida of BC etc etc.  by giving the provinces more power to negotiate and deal, I believe we'll see better and more creative solution.

But at the same time FNs have to be willing to do so. Tantrums, pouting and posturing isn't going to get them what they want or need.  There has to be some give and take from both sides to make this work.

And don't kid yourself.  FN communities, while having perhaps more connection to the land because of their heritage, are also out to profit.  like anyone else.  Historically FNs have been very adaptable to new technolgies and tactics to their benefit.  Trading with Europeans to gain advantage over rivals was quite common.  The same can be said today.  And in our type of society today there is nothing wrong with that.  Ultimately they (FNs) will need to integrate fully into the system.  this does not mean sacrificing values and culture.  I said this before.  It's about bringing what they have to benefit themselves and our country as whole.  And the rest of Canada should leverage that to its benefit as well.  FNs are the fastest growing demographic in Canada.  We need to harness that.  The alternative is a powder keg of dissallusioned people all in their prime with nothing to lose. 

The world changes and I think that both sides, all sides, should change their approaches with it.   

 
Good post Crantor. I for one have this same point of view. My  :2c:
 
The real problem is that folks like Pam Palmater and her ilk conflate integration with assimilation. I think that most people, indeed most FN, would welcome the former over the later, were the rhetoric dialed down.
 
The Gov't of Canada and the people of Canada (including FN), are under no obligation whatsoever, to listen or give credence to Mayor Spence. She needs to be told that she doesn't speak for anyone but herself and has to go through the proper channels like any other plain Jane citizen.

Even with Bob Rae and Charlie Angus ready to tie up Parliament and the Legislature while professing her martyrdom and demanding her saintdom. She should realize they only want talking time, a chance to theatrically berate the PM and don't really give a fiddler's fart about her demands. Simple vote pandering and eye poking is what they are all about.

She can't play to the 'white man's guilt' anymore. It was gone a long time ago and no longer exists for intelligent and educated people. She's only making a mockery of other FN peoples.

BTW, who's mismanaging Attawapiskat while she's on holiday at her all inclusive resort on the Ottawa river?
 
:boring: Can't wait to see the spin and her lies.  :boring:
 
She would have gone longer, but her Kitchen Ninja dropped it's transmission trying to liquefy pizza and KFC big crunch combos.
 
Kat Stevens said:
She would have gone longer, but her Kitchen Ninja dropped it's transmission trying to liquefy pizza and KFC big crunch combos.

:rofl:
 
That man deserves milpoints.
 
Kat Stevens said:
She would have gone longer, but her Kitchen Ninja dropped it's transmission trying to liquefy pizza and KFC big crunch combos.

Best post of the day! Milpoints inbound!
 
2h4yee0.jpg
 
Well my predictions weren't too far off the mark.  She's in hospital and won't be at the press conference.

In an interesting twist.  Her own people (of Atawapiskat), were on their way to tell her to stop her hunger strike or quit as their chief. 

Link to article here from APTN news.  http://aptn.ca/pages/news/2013/01/23/spence-camp-waits-for-chiefs-opposition-leaders-to-sign-declaration-before-ending-fast/

So you have to wonder (abd not very hard I might add) how much of her ending her strike is attributable to her trying to save her job.  I guess her willing to die is limited by her risk of getting fired.  The irony of being given an ultimatum by her own people is not lost on me.
 
I like reading "A Bear's Rant". but then I agree with a lot of it.

http://abearsrant.com/2013/01/yesterday-was-a-busy-day-for-progressive-hypocrisy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ABearsRant+%28A+Bear%27s+Rant%29

Yesterday Was A Busy Day For Progressive Hypocrisy

Published January 24, 2013

Hypocrite: (1) A person who engages in the same behaviors he condemns others for. (2) A person who professes certain ideals, but fails to live up to them. (3) A person who holds other people to higher standards than he holds himself.

If you were ever looking for examples of hypocrisy and hypocrites hard at work, you wouldn’t have had to go much farther than the disgraceful display put on yesterday by Canada’s three opposition parties.

It started with Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae, aided by NDP MP Charlie Angus ‘negotiating’ an end to the hunger strike charade by Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence. It was further augmented by the whining of Green Party Leader Elizabeth May about the refusal of her fellow progressives in other parties joining forces with her to defeat the Harper Conservatives in the next election.

Let’s recap a bit so we’re all on the same page.

Theresa Spence first came to national prominence when she went before the media to highlight the appalling poverty on her reserve. It was, to hear her tell it, all the fault of the Government of Canada and the opposition, the media and progressives in general were very quick to get all over that wicked Stephen Harper and his heartless Conservative Government. The self-righteous and sanctimonious anger was so thick, we almost choked on it.

And then the truth started to leak out.

It started with a follow-up report last January by CBC’s Adrienne Arsenault who visited Attawapiskat where she discovered Theresa Spence living large and toodling about the reserve in her Cadillac Escalade. Then Sun Media published the band’s own audited financial statements and that wasn’t pretty either.

In 2011, the band had an operating budget of $34 million for a community of only 1500 people, hardly starvation wages. While many on the reserve were living in desperate circumstance, the band had more than $8 million in investments including investments in the oils sands and pipelines.

Despite the amount of money available, only $12 million of the annual budget went to programs for the welfare of the community while an almost equivalent amount went to Theresa Spence, her boyfriend and members of band council and the band office for salaries and other compensation. Fewer than 100 people were carving up over $11 million.

A subsequent independent audit revealed that Chief Spence and her band council could not account for 81% of the expenditure on her reserve. To put that into a clearer perspective, the expenditure of $27 million was not properly documented or accounted for.

Chief Spence was given the results of the audit in August and put on notice that it would be made public at some point after she and the Government had time to review it and the Minister had signed it off. Not long afterwards, she made the decision to come to Ottawa and began her hunger strike demanding a meeting with the Prime Minister.

Since starting her melodrama on Victoria Island, the audit has been made public as required by law and Chief Spence has changed her demands continuously as she dfragged her sorry hunger strike charade through six weeks.

While nobody in the aboriginal progressive communities will admit it publicly, she had become an embarrassment. She had also become a pawn to be used by cynical politicians both aboriginal and no-aboriginal alike.

The CBC referred to Bob Rae’s efforts to negotiate an end to Theresa Spence grandstanding as ‘statesman like’. Give it a rest. This was no nation to nation negotiation. First and foremost, Bob Rae does not speak for Canada; he speaks for a decimated Liberal Party and only for a couple of more months. Attawapiskat is not an independent nation. Its residents are Canadian citizens and the band is financed primarily by the Government of Canada. Let’s get back to some basic truths and take our heads out of asses folks. Evan Solomon of the CBC’s Power & Politics with Evan Solomon can dress it up any way he likes but a pig in a silk suit is still just a pig in a silk suit.

If the Conservative Government were to be unable to document properly or account for 81% of its annual budget, the Opposition Parties would be storming the barricades not negotiating an honourable resolution to something with Stephen Harper.

And that, my friends, is nothing less than hypocrisy hard at work.

People like Charlie Angus and Bob Rae are very selective in who and what they criticize. What they consider a sin for one is not necessarily a sin for another. That isn’t adherence to a set of principles, it is political expediency; nothing more than an opportunity to provide the illusion of caring while not really caring about or standing for anything much at all.

They certainly don’t seem to care very much about the Canadian taxpayer who has tossed almost $100 million into Attawapiskat over the past five years. They’d rather grandstand with the woman who has no record of what she did with the money we provided than protect our interest so that we don’t end up continuing to make the same wasteful mistakes.

It’s enough to make you shudder at the thought of any of them being part of a government with its hands on the public purse – but then we’ve already seen in Ontario what Bob Rae is capable of doing when he is in control of public money and that was just plain ugly. It made Chief Spence’s spending habits look positively responsible.

Perhaps the greatest hypocrisy of all was the fact that Chief Spence’s own band (Remember them? They’re the people everyone claims to be concerned about but never mention) had decided they had had enough. The acting chief and a member of the band council announced they would be arriving in Ottawa yesterday with an ultimatum to be delivered to Theresa Spence; end the hunger strike and return home to attend to her duties or she would be removed as band chief.

There would be no ceremony honouring her ‘brave’ stand, no statues built in her honour and no speeches given in praise of her sacrifice. Basically it was going to be, get your ass back home or get fired.

That is what gave the Rae negotiations a sense of urgency. If progressives were to maintain any illusion of dignity for having supported this woman in her self-serving charade, they needed to get her to end it quickly and with some kind of claim of victory.

Enter the Declaration of Commitment, a 13-point declaration of stated objectives that is as meaningless and pointless as this entire affair has been. None of it is binding on the Government and the provinces are already signaling they aren’t going to play either when it comes to increased resource sharing.

Well isn’t that just one major accomplishment for six weeks of fish broth and a whole of lot of hypocritical hyperbole from the progressive Opposition Parties?

And so it will end today with a ceremony that will celebrate the accomplishment of absolutely nothing beyond a meaningless declaration. It will be just  more sanctimonious orgy of self-serving progressive hypocrisy.

The only good thing to be said is that after we suffer through the hypocrisy of today’s ceremony to honour this ridiculous woman, we won’t have to listen to daily reports about her any more.

And then there’s Green Party Leader Elizabeth May or the Queen of Green as some of us think her.

Ms May is greatly perturbed that her fellow progressives are not responding to her request to unite in a common, work-together strategy to defeat the Harper Conservatives in the next election. She accuses them of hyper-partisanship. Excuse me?

Ms May, who represents a party with one seat in Parliament, seems to feel that she’s a serious player in Canadian politics. She isn’t and the fact that those parties which are don’t see her as a player doesn’t make them hyper-partisan, just pragmatic. What advantage is there to them to get involved with a united strategy with her? She has nothing to bring to the table.

If anything, she would be the only one to possibly gain anything and only at the disadvantage of the other parties.

Her party represents less than 6% of the electorate and I would suggest the only reason it has even the one seat – hers – is because it threw all of its resources behind getting her elected in her own riding. So cynical is her hypocrisy that she moved from the east coast of Canada to the west coast in order to run in a riding that offered any real chance to win a seat. Her former supporters in the east were no longer relevant to her – she has new friends now.

What Elizabeth May fails to realize is that she is exactly what she condemns, a self-serving and hypocritical politician trying to feather her own nest. She is partisan, aligning herself only with those parties that come close to matching her own environmental fanaticism. She thought she was a leader and could unite the progressive left but she was wrong about that too. She mistook hubris for reality.

Her constant accusations of ideology against the current Prime Minister and her new accusation of partisanship against the opposition parties once again proves the old adage that the thing we fear in others is the thing we most fear in ourselves.

The Queen of Green is more like a yapping terrier than the queen of much of anything at all, especially principle.

All of this nonsense is wearying. It is gamesmanship rather than effective opposition with principled positions that benefit the country. It is hypocrisy where one group forgives their own sins and those whom they can use for their own purposes while condemning the same sins in someone else.

I have no issue with criticism of the government, in fact I encourage it. What I resent is the lack of principle behind what pretends to be informed government criticism these days. It is nothing less than hyper-partisan, petty politics. Issues are irrelevant, integrity is irrelevant; all that matters is scoring cheap political points at the expense of others. It is nothing but hypocrisy to condemn in others what you yourself do and quite frankly, nobody does that better than progressives these days.

I keep thinking that it would be nice to see politicians, especially progressive politicians who like to claim the moral high ground, return to simple concepts like consistently practicing the principle and morality they preach but it isn’t going to happen. It’s part of the DNA now and the only good thing coming out of it is that support for the Harper Government is increasing according to the latest polls.

You would have thought that might be a bit of a head-up for the left but apparently once hypocrisy gets into the political DNA – it’s not only a bugger to remove; it apparently is even more difficult to recognize.

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© 2012 Maggie’s Bear all rights reserved

The written content of this article is the sole property of Maggie’s Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Read more at http://abearsrant.com/2013/01/yesterday-was-a-busy-day-for-progressive-hypocrisy.html#XCtjjuiBE2bVEpAz.99
 
Thinking positively, something always comes out of no good:

In a move to end world hunger the UN has officially requested access to Chief Spence’s fish broth recipe.

Reasoning that if the Chief can survive for over 6 weeks on this soup without noticeably losing any of her considerable bulk, the World Health Organization has resolved to actually do something useful. In the future fish broth will replace food donations.

World harmony and health for all may be possible in our lifetime.
 
Rifleman62 said:
...... the UN has officially requested access to Chief Spence’s fish broth recipe.
Considering the amount of money pissed away on her Reserve to no effect, it seems like a typical UN move.
 
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