In the beginning...

Page 6

Wilmer Nadjiwon, 81, was recently honored with a lifetime achievement award by the Union of Ontario Indians (UOI), an organization he helped found in 1969 and of which he was the first chief.

Remarkably vigorous for a man of his years, he operates a commercial wood-carving business and also runs a thriving Native-theme camp ground for tourists in Tobermorey, Ont. He was chief of the Cape Croker First Nation from 1964 to 1978.

Nadjiwon recently contacted Windspeaker to say that after years of voicing his disapproval of the First Nations leadership at the local level-he ran unsuccessfully for chief in the most recent band election at the age of 80-he had decided to speak out on the national stage. He was interviewed at his home on Dec. 13.

He first gained power by taking on the previously all-powerful Indian Agent in his community and proudly claims to have removed four Indian Agents.

"They just kept putting them in and I kept putting them out," he said. "They were waiting for me to lose the election."

He never earned more than a dollar a day during his 14 years as chief (annual salary $364), he said.

The beginning of the end of effective First Nation leadership, in his opinion, came when a government official first offered a fledgling First Nation political organization money to pay its operating costs.

"It was a Union of Ontario Indians meeting in 1970 or 1971. The Indian Affairs director came to our meeting. He said, 'I'm authorized up to a quarter of a million dollars to sign this cheque so that you the leaders of the Ontario people can have meals, travelling expenses, etc.' I told him to shove it high and get out, but the seeds had been sewn," he said. "After he left, there was a real tussle between the older people . . . they got up and said, 'We're doing something that has never been done before in the history of the Indian people.' In housing and welfare, a lot of things that I'd already accomplished. 'Why do you want to go after the chief for now?' They didn't get rid of me there. I had to fight them off for about eight or nine months."

Wilmer Nadjiwon claims he was eventually forced out by a false accusation that was fabricated because he refused to accept government money.

"They said I had received $10,000 from the government. It was just B.S. You know propaganda goes a long way and you can't do much to defend against it. You don't have to have the truth, you just have to say you have the truth," he said. "It was nothing, but what they were accusing me of . . . there was a possibility it would rub off on the Indian/Eskimo Association and I wanted them lily white because they were our power. All these board members were telling me I shouldn't be chief because I was refusing the money."

Eight months later, at a meeting in Winnipeg, he was informed by several UOI board members that he was no longer the chief.

The Indian/Eskimo Association was a group of non-Native people who took an interest in First Nation issues in the 1960s and 70s. It was established as a result of a bequest from an Alberta farmer, the former chief explained, who employed Native people as casual labor and felt bad because he could never afford to pay them much. When he died, he left $55,000 to anyone who would form an association to promote Native issues. Nadjiwon said it was absolutely crucial then, and remains so to this day, that Native people have the support of non-Native people.

Shortly after Nadjiwon was deposed, the new regime broke ties with the Indian/Eskimo Association and used the government money to establish an office in downtown Toronto.

"I never went. But somebody said to me, 'It's a great place. You don't know whether you're walking or flying because the carpet is so soft,'" he said.

The former chief described the importance of forming alliances with non-Native groups.

"If the public are behind you it forces the government to listen to you, but it also allows them to do it. It allows the government tht because, 'Yes, if all these people are for it then we can give it to them.' Makes them look good, too," he said.

When a Kettle Point man was charged with shooting a duck out of season, Nadjiwon used the support of non-Native people to get the minister of Indian Affairs to intervene and quash the charge.

He attended a meeting with Minister Arthur Laing, accompanied by a number of supporters, high-ranking church officials who did not wear their clerical garb.

"I asked the people there who support us to introduce themselves," he recalled. "And the bishops got up, one after the other, got up and said, 'Well, in our diocese, we've got 450,000 votes.' You know."

He said minister got the message very quickly.

"There is the power. The people power," he said. "If we don't have it you might as well go try to climb a stick. You have to have somebody out there on the [non-Native people's] side."

He believes the salaries that First Nation leaders are earning today and the amount of money that is spent on First Nations politics while grassroots people live in poverty has eroded public support for First Nation issues.

But Nadjiwon is most concerned about the passivity that being dependent on government money seems to encourage in many chiefs. He said a study showed that his community lost around $90 billion through wrongful land alienations.

"If I'd been at the table when that came out, I'd have said, 'Give us $5 billion and we'll forgive the rest. You couldn't spend $5 billion. It would replace itself faster than you could spend it," he said.

But no such proposal was forthcoming from his community's leadership, he added.

"It was never heard of again."

He's convinced a government tactic to use money to contain the growing political power of Native people as they began to organize in the late 1960s and early 1970s was employed successfully.

"It just sickens me. I think of all the effort. Just trying to advance our peoples' way of life. All that effort just sold down th drain. Sold!" he said.

The civil rights movement in the United States and the fight against apartheid in South Africa have many elements in common with the fight for Indigenous rights. But no leader of the calibre of a Martin Luther King or Nelson Mendela has come to the fore so far in the Indigenous rights battle. Nadjiwon has a theory about why that might be.

"You have to get somebody that's not out to make it a $50,000 a year job . . . well, I know it's more these days. But there's just nobody out there like that," he said. "I thought Coon Come could be it at one time. I'm sorry I could be so far wrong."

He admitted his opinion of the current national chief was soured when Coon Come wouldn't take the time to talk to him at the Aboriginal music awards in Toronto in November.

"I introduced myself to him as a veteran. He said he didn't have time to talk to me. He should have made time for a veteran and an Elder," he said.

Although he is critical of the leadership for absorbing so much of the scarce financial resources, that doesn't mean he believes First Nations people aren't entitled to a share of the wealth.

"Every damned cent that is coming to our people is deserved. But not in that form. That should be the price of our resources. Our resource money. That's what we're taking. We're not taking political buy-outs," he said.

The money owed to First Nations people for the loss of the land and resources should not be given to the leaders to control it as they see fit. That hasn't worked, he said.

"If they want to represent us, they should get their money from us," Nadjiwon said.

The minister is working on legislation that would create arm's length institutions that can't be treated as personal slush funds by First Nations leaders. But Nadjiwon, who sees the merits of such institutions, does not endorse the minister's approach.

"He's going to take advantage of the situation we've created for ourselves," he said. "I think Nault's latest initiative is to legtimize the theft of Canada from the Natives."

The dysfunctional governance processes of First Nations, shaped and guided by a government plan to subvert and control with federal money, has been unable to progress towards real self-determination, he said.

"No, we're not ready. Our leaders are ready to take the money, though. I can't see where we're heading," he added. "Look at the suicides, the health problems, the great momentous difficulties faced by Indian people all across this country in a time when we're spending more money than in all of history. There's just so much damned hopelessness."