Editorial - First Nations experience undeniably distinct

We have to take issue with a column published by The StarPheonix on Nov. 7 written by Doug Cuthand, who, in his backhanded way, was attempting to congratulate President-elect Barack Obama on his historic win on Nov. 4 in the United States.
The column begins "It is said that when something is useless and worn out, it's given to the coloured folks."
Cuthand writes that George Bush has left the United States in such a mess that no white man would want to be president. The columnist concludes that now that the U.S. is involved in two wars, is mired in debt, has a crippled economy and a tattered reputation, the reins of power are now merely being handed over to this "minority" because they are no longer of any value.
In his attempt to be provocative, Cuthand dismisses the monumental effort of Obama, his supporters and the American public, to wrestle the White House out of the icy grip of the Republican Party and to break the hold of the special interest groups that sought to use that highest office to further their own particular agendas.
Cuthand also diminishes the exhaustive struggle of Obama to win the nod to lead the Democratic Party into the presidential race; a win that came at the expense of Hilary Clinton, who had that top post all but sewn up heading into the primaries. She held on until the bitter end in an attempt to scratch out a win, but the aggressive juggernaut that supported her bid to take the White House was no match for the legions of Americans who had had enough of the business as usual approach to U.S. politics. Their decision was to vote for a man of change, not just a man of color. The color of his skin was not what America voted to support. It was Obama's promise of change that was central to his appeal.
Cuthand reduces the extraordinary Obama to the ordinary; just another black man fighting over scraps left behind by the whites. On the contrary, Obama wasn't only a black man running for president. He is first and foremost a man with a vision for a new future, a man with a philosophy, a man who could cut through the racial divisions in the United States and make people truly believe. Such a man is more than black or white or Asian or Christian or Muslim. Such a man transcends those things.
Cuthand goes on in his column to say that Native people in Canada have also been receiving the white man's castoffs and "surplus junk" for years, including programs that Indian Affairs wears out and unloads on Native governments across the country. And again, we have to jump in here and say that Cuthand diminishes the concerted effort and personal sacrifice of many individual Native people who worked very hard to pry control of these very programs away from Indian Affairs and the federal government.
Think of the sit-ins of the 1970s at Blue Quills school as Elders insisted that they could do a better job of educating Indian children in Indian schools. Think of the protests and marches, the lobbying of governments, the handstands and back-flips done in an effort to wrest control of social welfare programs on reserves, of mental health programs, of some authority over lands and resources. Think of the struggles in the courts that continue to this day that are grounded in the dream of self-determination.
It is this dream of self-determination that is fundamental to the experience of First Nations peoples, and makes the struggles of Native nations distinct from the collective experience of the African American.
Cuthand writes "Aboriginal people in Canada are the equivalent of the blacks in the U.S.," and this is categorically untrue. Yes, there has been oppression of these two groups. Yes, there has been, continues to be, similar racism against us, but our histories are rooted in very different places, and these roots have informed the development of our peoples over the generations in very different ways.
The African American was stolen away from his homeland and has had his ties to that territory severed forcibly. That group's effort has been to carve out a place in this new home among the mainstream. First People remain separate and apart from the mainstream, despite great effort and many government initiatives to absorb us.
We were not removed from our territories for the most part, but relegated to small parcels of it. We continue to have a physical and legal attachment to the land, still work to protect it and have some say over its development. We watch as the territory is logged off, or fished out, or explored for minerals without our consent or consideration. We fight to regain it, fight for a share of the benefits that accrue from it. The stories of the African American and the First Nation person are different, and to ignore this is to do us both a disservice.
Since the election of Obama, there have been many in Canada musing about whether this country could ever elect an Aboriginal person as prime minister, as if this would be the equivalent of the United States overcoming its troubled racial past to elect a black man to its highest office.
Noah Richler for the National Post writes "If Canada is to experience its own extraordinary, galvanizing political progression, it will not be because it has elected a black to high office. That would be pleasing enough. But no, our own Obama moment will occur when Canada upholds a candidate from the First Nations as prime minister. Then we shall have confronted our own national shame. Then we shall have surmounted our own historical disgrace."
This arrogantly assumes that the ultimate prize to be obtained by First Nations is Canada's highest office.
In fact, this is not the ultimate prize. What would prove an equivalent measure of maturity in Canada is a return of the autonomy that Native nations once enjoyed over their societies, their economies, their territories, and their future.