With just a bit of good faith . . .

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A poignant moment at the Indigenous Bar Association's annual meeting in Edmonton on March 17:

Revered educator James sakej Henderson, the research director for the University of Saskatchewan's Native Law Centre - the beginning of the road for so many Aboriginal lawyers in this country - posed a question of University of Alberta law professor Dale Gibson.

'Would you say there's a conspiracy among legislators to deprive us of our Aboriginal rights?'

'I'm starting to think it's so obvious the courts could take judicial notice of it,' the respected non-Native academic said.

The room full of lawyers laughed uproariously at that witty response. To decode it into language the rest of us can understand, it's important to know that when courts take judicial notice of a fact, it means it goes without saying, that lawyers don't have to introduce evidence to prove it. A court would take judicial notice of something like, say . . . the sky is blue.

So Professor Gibson believes - and sakej Henderson certainly nodded his agreement at the time and none of the lawyers, including those who work for Alberta Justice or the federal government, rose to challenge him - that it's obvious that provincial and federal governments are conspiring to limit or ignore or eliminate Aboriginal rights.

That's news. These gentlemen cannot be dismissed as conspiracy theorist cranks.

Actually, it's not that hard to see if you shed the limiting blinders of what the IBA president, Dave Nahwegahbow, called the "oppressed person" syndrome.

For example: police have killed Native people in suspicious circumstances in every part of the country. J.J. Harper, Dudley George, Ty and Connie Jacobs and so many more. You would think, if there's a genuine desire in existence in any person in authority in this country, that someone - anyone - would have proposed a long time ago that a totally independent civilian agency should be created that would attack these cases with the investigative gusto of someone in search of way to get rich quick. No hold's barred, nothing to hide, no hidden agenda to preserve something or protect anyone. But it hasn't happened because the truth is ugly. There is racism in this country and a lot more than most Canadians would care to admit, and exposing it will embarrass people in high places and the voters who put them there.

Likewise, politicians don't want to tell the wealthy and powerful people in this country, people who help pay for election campaigns, that the courts say that a portion of the resources they've sewn up that bring them their great wealth, power and comfort, actually belong to Aboriginal people.

That's why the Cheam band is fighting with British Columbia, which has had more than two years to adapt to the Delgamuukw ruling.

The fact they haven't can only be attributed to a lack of good faith, referred to by laymen as a lack of honesty or fairness. We could all use a dose of good faith and, if we're true to the values we tell the world we believe in, we should all - Native and non-Native - raise the roof whenever we see there is no good faith.