After calling First Nations people “freeloading Indians”...

After calling First Nations people “freeloading Indians”, the president of the youth wing of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party has resigned. The comment occurred on Brayden Mazurkiewich’s facebook profile Dec. 14 when he was discussing a federal court ruling that said First Nations needed to be consulted before Kapyong Barracks, a former Canadian Forces base, can be sold.† “If they build a reserve inside this city I think that will be the last straw and I will finally leave what is becoming the laughing stock,” Mazurkiewich wrote. “That was built for hardworking men and women of the military, not freeloading Indians,” he later wrote. PC party president Ryan Matthews requested Mazurkiewich’s resignation after the comments became public. He said Mazurkiewich’s comments were “detrimental to our party.” Mazurkiewich became the youth president last February. The Kapyong ruling upholds the Crown’s legal duty to consult First Nations with outstanding land entitlements about the disposal and use of Crown lands. In January 2008, First Nations of Treaty One (Brokenhead, Peguis, Roseau River, Sagkeeng, Long Plain, Sandy Bay and Swan Lake) filed to have a court review Ottawa’s 2005 decision to transfer the vacant Kapyong Barracks land to the Canada Lands Company. Treaty One of 1871 promised the communities more land than the federal government delivered and the government acknowledges its debt. But the feds told the Treaty One communities Kapyong isn’t available to them. The federal court ruled in the First Nations’ favor in 2009, but the federal government appealed the decision.