Article Origin
Volume
Issue
Year
Page 27
A discussion about Louis Riel and his rightful place in Canadian history was one of the highlights of a three-day conference in Saskatoon in June.
The Indigenous Bar Association of Canada and the University of Saskatchewan's Indigenous Peoples' Justice Initiative jointly sponsored "The Metis People in the 21st Century" conference from June 18 to 20.
Former Congress of Aboriginal Peoples president Harry Daniels moderated the panel discussion about "Riel as hero and symbol in Canada in the 21st century" on the evening of the conference's first day. The panellists were Jean Teillet, Riel's great-grandniece, Metis author and educator Paul Chartrand, Metis Nation of Ontario President Tony Belcourt, University of Toronto criminologist and historian Carolyn Strange and Dominion Institute executive director Rudyard Griffith.
Griffith was on the hot seat because his organization helped produce the dramatized retrial of Riel that aired on CBC television last year, despite the protests of Metis leaders. Griffith defended the concept of dramatizing the events that led to the execution of the Metis leader as a novel way of proving that Canadian history doesn't have to be dull. But several panellists told him that Riel and his fate are still very much a part of everyday life for Metis people.
"We didn't believe that playing Russian Roulette by trying to hang Riel and Metis people again was appropriate," said Belcourt.
He said Metis people are still stigmatized by the execution of their leader as a traitor after the 1885 battle at Batoche. He said the English protestants that executed Riel still dominate the Ontario establishment and there is tension in the province even today. Belcourt's organization supports the Powley case, a Metis hunting rights case in the Sault Ste. Marie area. A much-anticipated decision on that case is expected from the Supreme Court of Canada in the fall.
"The Ontario position [on Powley] is that Metis communities never existed in Ontario and don't exist today," he explained. "The Metis people feel that prejudice in Ontario, the bigotry, the snide remarks. You cannot raise Louis Riel's name in our province without a profound ripple."
There has been a move by some members of the federal government to pardon Louis Riel and rehabilitate his historical legacy from that of executed traitor to mistreated father of confederation. But some think the government has got it backwards.
"The only lasting effect from this would be that the government would appear to have pardoned itself. We should be seriously considering pardoning the government," said Teillet.
Chartrand said the government bills are empty symbols.
"To go simpering to Ottawa to ask the descendants of the politicians who dealt unjustly with Riel, it's just not important to me," he said. "If you look at these bills, it's very simple. Not one of them wants to do a damn thing about the cause of the Metis."
Later in the conference, the discussion would turn to how Canada is dealing with the concept of Metis rights. The Metis were recognized as an Aboriginal people in the Canadian constitution in 1982, but there has been resistance to the idea of actively embracing Metis rights.
Teillet said a lot of injustices have been heaped on her people by successive Canadian governments and a reckoning is required before the parties can move forward.
Pardoning Riel would only be a small part of that reckoning, she said.
"I can agree with exoneration, but only if it is part of a meaningful package that comes with it," she said.
She recommended an approach used to deal with institutional injustices in South Africa after the end of apartheid.
"In South Africa there was tremendous anger. So they created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was necessary for people to say their stories," the lawyer said.
The commission was granted amnesty powers and people were pardoned in return for telling the truth about what happened during apartheid. But finncial reparation was also required in some cases.
She compared the government's idea of pardoning Riel to the former U.S. President Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon after Nixon was driven from office for illegal acts committed in the Watergate scandal.
"When Ford pardoned Nixon, did it change how you felt about Nixon?" she asked.
Moderator Harry Daniels, the man many of the delegates at the conference credit with getting the Metis people recognized as an Aboriginal people in Canada's Constitution, took that analogy one step further.
"The pardoning of Nixon didn't change my idea of Nixon, but it sure changed my idea of Ford," he said.
The two principal lawyers for the two biggest Metis rights cases currently before the courts briefed the delegates at the conference.
Jean Teillet said many people think the Powley case will define who qualifies as a Metis under Canadian law when the Supreme Court of Canada hands down its decision. But the case is not about that, she said.
"Powley is not about who is a Metis and who isn't. It is a test of harvesting rights," she said. "It is absolutely not the job of the Supreme Court of Canada to define who the Metis people are."
Her clients shot a moose on land that she believes she has proven to the court is a traditional Metis hunting area. The case hinges, she said, on convincing the court the area was an historical Metis community that has survived to the present day.
Jean Teillet said she expects to win the case. She said all sides in the case agreed that there was a Metis settlement in Sault Ste. Marie prior to 1850, when the Robinson Huron Treaty was signed. After that the community "changed but survived," she said.
Lionel Chartrand is a Metis lawyer who works out of the Aboriginal Law Office of Manitoba Legal Aid in Winnipeg. He is lead counsel in the Blais case.
Ernie Blais was the president of the Manitoba Metis Federation in 1994 when a couple of members of his organization were charged with illegal huntingon vacant Crown land. Chartrand said he argued that yes, the Natural Resources Transfer Act was passed in 1930 and control of natural resources in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba was granted to the provincial governments. But the provinces had to promise the federal government that "Indian" people would be allowed to hunt for food on vacant Crown land.
"We tried to prove in the courts that the Metis are 'constitutional Indians' and should have the right to the benefits of the NRTA," he said. "Metis shouldn't be second-class citizens."
He is hopeful the courts will see things that way because, he said, the word "Indian" was never defined when Section 91 (24) of the British North America Act gave the federal government-not the provinces-responsibility for Native people.
A panel featuring several high-level provincial and federal government officials was an especially interesting part of the conference's last day.
Fred Caron, an assistant deputy minister with the Privy Council Office, admitted that government has had a hard time coming to grips with Metis rights issues. But there has been progress, he said.
"If you had called this meeting 25 years ago, nobody would have showed up," he said.
Belcourt said he was tired of hearing from officials that "this is the way things are."
He stressed that Metis rights is an issue that isn't going away.
"What we really want is to implement our inherent right of self-government," he said. "We're doing nothing more right now than delivering federal programs. We're not at the table when allocations are made."
Caron admitted the issue of Metis rights equalling First Nation rights was a scary concept for senior decision-makers in government. Other deputy minister-level speakers from provincial governments said that provincial agreements with Metis people may be the way to go, but there is that fear of dramatically increased costs.
Brent Cotter, a deputy minister from Saskatchewan, quoted Harry Daniels in assessing the attitde of governments that try to claim that Metis issues are the responsibility of another level of government.
"As Harry said, it's sort of a reverse custody battle-nobody wants us," he said.
- 5771 views