Fight over attendance issue left hanging

Page 11

It was approaching 5 p.m. on Day 2 of the three-day confederacy scheduled by the Assembly of First Nations in Ottawa Dec. 9 to 11. The chiefs had begun plowing through a backlog of unfinished business, much of it put on the backburner for the last year or so to allow the organization to focus on the battle against the First Nations governance legislation.

Some chiefs were getting frustrated. They hadn't planned to attend Day 3 and wanted to deal with a resolution that would nail down an AFN strategy for dealing with the contentious health consent form issue. They wanted to deal with the resolution before the confederacy adjourned for the day.

Co-chair Luc Laine had a problem: the resolution on the health consent form hadn't been printed or translated into French. That would take a half-hour. Would the chiefs want to sit around for a half-hour before wrapping up for the day?

As Laine looked for a way out of this predicament, the chiefs took matters into their own hands.

Chief Patrick Madahbee of the Ojibways of Sucker Creek (Ontario) started things off.

"The dates for the assembly were made quite clear," he said. "You'd expect the chiefs would plan to be here for the duration to take care of important business."

Tall Cree First Nation (Alberta) Chief Bernie Meneen agreed.

"We came out here to do business," he said. "I think we all better hang in and let's get our work done."

Chief Harold Sault of Ontario's Red Rock First Nation was clearly frustrated with the chiefs who didn't make the commitment to stay the whole three days.

"If this meeting was scheduled for only two days, would everybody be leaving yesterday," he asked.

Only one resolution had been passed during the previous two AFN assemblies; there were not enough chiefs to raise a quorum on the last day in Edmonton in July or Squamish in B.C. in October. Sault suggested that the rules requiring a minimum number of chiefs to form that quorum should be dropped.

"We shouldn't stick to quorum," he said. "If half the chiefs leave, the other half should make the decisions. If you choose to leave and tomorrow you have no voice, it's your loss because you chose to leave."

Vice-chief Rick Simon suggested that the chair should simply read the resolution aloud instead of waiting for it to be printed. Nisga'a representative Herbert Norven suggested the two large screens in the corners of the hall, which were used only to project the AFN logo for most of the confederacy, could be used to project the resolutions so delegates could follow along from the floor without waiting for hard copy.

Many chiefs were eyeing the exits longingly. Others were fighting for a little extra time at the end of this day, so they could skip out the next. Still others were lining up at the microphones to get on the record as being in favor of working hard for their constituents.

With the distinct possibility that the rhetoric would begin flowing freely and thickly, Madahbee cut to the chase.

"How many are going to be here tomorrow," he asked.

About 80 per cent of the delegates raised their hands.

"I don't see what the problem is," Madahbee said. "Lots of people are going to be here tomorrow."

Madahbee emphasized that chiefs should have sent councillors to AFN meetings if they could not commit to spending the entire three days.

Herbert Norven shared the Nisga'a governance practices of dealing with lacklustre attendance.

"We have a code of conduct for our government members," he said, "so that we're always in attendance at all of the meetings we say we're going to go to. If we don't stay for the length of that meeting without proper reasons, we get docked half of whatever it is that we're going to get. And we have to pay for half of the travel and half of the expenses at the personal level because we didn't fulfill our commitment. These are the things we are starting to do at home."

Co-chair Ted Quewezance saw an unnecessary fight brewing that would make the organization look ad. "We will deal with this final resolution," he said, drawing the matter to a conclusion.