FSIN taking the high moral ground, or are they? [editorial]

Can a person come back from a bad choice, like the lack of judgment Chief Guy Lonechild demonstrated when he chose to drive while under the influence in 2009, before he was elected to lead the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations? Well, some have, but will he?

Efforts are underway to remove Lonechild from the power he holds at the FSIN on the basis of his legal issues, but the push to remove him just doesn’t have that righteous smell to it. It should be about having no tolerance for drinking and driving, but it’s starting to look like the campaign to remove Lonechild has more to do with the number of chiefs that have no tolerance for the reforms Lonechild has made in the organization.

“The principle of the whole thing is not impaired driving; it’s payback,” Ralph Paul, chief of the English River First Nation, is reported to have said. Lonechild was a key player in pulling First Nations University back from the brink of collapse when he was first elected. Paul says the most vocal proponents of removing Lonechild from his post are former university board members. And, if readers remember, there were a lot of them, mostly FSIN chiefs, who had the chance to reform the university structure themselves, but chose not to. Instead they waited for governments to pull funding and endanger the reputation of the school and the education of the students enrolled there before allowing Lonechild to take critical action.

It’s hard not to make enemies when you’re trying to make change. The old guard doesn’t like their comfortable place to get mussed up. And a drunk driving charge is just the ammunition they would need to head up to the moral high-ground to shout from the rooftops that ‘he must pay for his mistake.’

And really, who is going to argue the point? In this day and age leaders must be more than merely elected, they must be role models too. It is possible that Lonechild will hang on to his seat at the head of the table. Look at outgoing British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell who, in 2003 during a vacation in Hawaii, was charged with driving drunk. Campbell said it was his darkest moment. “I think I let everybody down. I feel awful about it.” He did let people down, and yes, he should feel awful about, yet he survived the political storm that brewed for a long time after the charges were put to rest. He went on, in fact, to lead his BC Liberal Party to two more terms in power.

Maybe instead of changing the FSIN’s executive act to make it easier to hold a non-confidence vote, as the chiefs did at the last assembly they convened, they should consider changing their election rules to include a morals clause. If you’ve ever been convicted of a crime, then you can’t be a chief at the FSIN table. If you are facing any charges at the time of the election, then you must wait until you are cleared of those charges before being allowed to run. Then the rules would be the same for all, and the integrity of this process would not look so skewed. Now, it’s just a convenient tool to remove the thorn in the side that Lonechild seems to have become to some FSIN chiefs.
Windspeaker