Cree chief slams Gathering Strength

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The one thing Canada needs to do to remedy the problems that plague First Nations communities is the only thing Canada is unwilling to do.

That's the short version of a speech delivered by Matthew Coon Come, the grand chief of the Grand Council of the Crees, during the first Assembly of First Nations-sponsored media conference on Aboriginal issues, hosted at Ottawa's Carleton University on Dec. 10.

Coon Come was invited by the AFN to tell a room full of reporters, government officials and communications staff about the problems faced by his people as the threat of Quebec separation hangs over them. He used the occasion to express his views about the nature of the relationship that all First Nations have with federal and provincial governments. A good part of the half-hour-long speech was inspired by the report of the United Nations Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, which was released in Geneva, Switzerland the week before.

"For one thing, the UN committee took note of the extremely limited land and resource bases of Aboriginal peoples in this country as a result of our ongoing dispossession. My own people, the James Bay Crees, were dispossessed in the early 1970s by flooding for a mega-project," he said.

"Then, under duress, the brutal federal policy of extinguishment of Aboriginal land rights and title was applied to us, upon the insistence of the Quebec government. The UN committee called for the restoration to Aboriginal peoples of lands and resources that are adequate to ensure sustainable economies and societies. It also called for an end to the unjustifiable federal policy of extinguishment of Aboriginal title."

Any steps by any government that are not in the direction of recognizing true self government and self-determination in the international sense for Indigenous peoples are false steps which move away from compliance with commonly accepted international standards, Coon Come said.

He then suggested that just about every action taken by the Department of Indian Affairs in recent years could be described as such a false step.

"We don't wish to go on being a burden in any way," he said. "But without adequate access to lands, resources, and without the jurisdictions required to benefit meaningfully and sustainably from them, we are being given no choice. No number of apologies, policies, token programs or symbolic healing funds are going to remedy this fundamental socio-economic fact."

That last statement was a complete dismissal of the current federal government's action plan for dealing with Aboriginal issues, Gathering Strength.

Asked by Windspeaker if he felt the federal government's actions represented a deliberate strategy to exclude Indigenous peoples, as opposed to a well-intentioned but flawed approach to dealing with a difficult situation, Coon Come chose not to answer "yes" or "no." But his answer revealed that Ottawa's idea of self government isn't anywhere close to acceptable as long as there is no real Indigenous control of land and resources.

"I challenge any First Nation that says it has self government," he said. "If you're administering a federal program, you're just an extension of the federal government - you're administering your own poverty. The government must act on the RCAP recommendations on the redistribution of natural resources. We need real partnerships, real joint ventures. I don't see a signal that there is any change in the treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada. I see the status quo and our communities are social time bombs."

Because the national chief has worked so closely with the federal government on Gathering Strength and the Agenda for Action with First Nations, Coon Come's remarks could also have been seen as an attack on AFN Grand Chief Phil Fontaine. In a phone interview two weeks after the speech, the AFN's communications director, Maurice Switzer, said the two leaders aren't really that far apart. He said the national chief made a ccious effort to work alongside the federal government during the first year of his term, but the honeymoon is over.

"Any elected person spends the first year building his own team, gauging the landscape," he said. "The national chief decided early on to be more conciliatory than . . . well, than before, in order to prove he was open to good, honest dialogue. But recently, the national chief has let his constituents know that he is prepared to do what it takes. We know we can't let the gap widen any further."

Switzer said the AFN sees Gathering Strength as a "good first step" but the chiefs will be watching for evidence of real progress over the next few months. During the three-day Confederacy of Nations chiefs gathering in Ottawa, which wrapped up the day Coon Come made his remarks, the chiefs resolved to insist that by April 1 Minister Stewart take the joint federal-AFN plan for the establishment of an independent specific claims commission and tribunal to Cabinet as it is written. Stewart had asked the chiefs to back off on some of the demands because the Cabinet was worried about the potential cost.

The battle during the next few months, it appears, will be between chiefs who have lost patience with the federal government's approach to self government and those who still feel they can work out an acceptable deal with Ottawa.

Coon Come believes Native leaders have to be tough in their negotiations with Ottawa. He believes the failure of the federal government to actively work towards real self-determination for Indigenous peoples is a sign that old paternalistic, even racist, attitudes still exist in the minds of Canada's decision-makers.

"From our perspective as Aboriginal peoples, there is a common theme that unavoidably surfaces in all of these issues - the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada on Quebec secession; the federal-provincial social union talks; the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples; the latest report of the UN Coitee on Social Economic and Cultural Rights; and the tragically poor conditions faced almost universally in hundreds of Aboriginal communities across this country. The common theme is dispossession, exclusion, marginalization and discrimination," he said. "The acute situation in Canada has now been authoritatively characterized in a meaningful and accurate way: there is, to quote the UN committee, a 'gross disparity between Aboriginal people and the majority of Canadians with respect to enjoyment of covenant rights.' Aboriginal people did not need a UN committee of judges and experts to know that our human rights were being violated. But we did need such a committee to point this out to federal and provincial governments in Canada."