Native people caught in a bind

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Grand Chief Mike Mitchell's recent victory in Federal Court asserted his Aboriginal right to bring goods for personal and community use acroos the Canadian border with the United States. The ruling raises an important question: why do Aboriginal people need to go to court to have their rights protected when they are already protected in Canada's Constitution?

Section 35 of the Constitution states that existing Aboriginal and treaty rights are affirmed. If this is truly the case, then why is Canada constantly contesting the rights of Aboriginal people when those rights are exercised?

Paul Williams, one of several lawyers who represented Mitchell in this case, summed up the question quite succinctly.

"It stunned me that well over a million dollars was spent on both sides during this case," he said. "People of good will could easily have sat down and negotiated an agreement in two days."

Williams said that a senior Indian Affairs official refused to negotiate before the trial, telling Mitchell's legal representatives that if they believe he had that right they'd have to prove it in court.

Mitchell's rights, and the rights of all the Mohawks of Akwesasne, were affirmed by the Federal Court. Affirmed means these rights existed before the judge said they existed. Does this mean that Canada Customs was contravening the Constitution, the supreme law of Canada, when it charged Mohawks of Akwesasne duty for goods they brought in from the United States before this judgement?

Maybe the Mohawks of Akwesasne are owed money plus interest for all of the duty previously charged to them by Canada Customs.

Canada's Aboriginal people are caught in a bind. By law, their rights exist because of the Constitution, but they can't safely exercise these rights until they're able to assemble a crack legal team and fight it out with Canada in the courts.

It is especially troubling that Canada's lawyers would try, as they did in this case, to declare that Mohawk people are not Indigenous to an area, such as the banks of the St. Lawrence River.

In an earlier case before the Supreme Court, Canada tried this tactic before and that evidence was discredited. The fact that they'd try it again is ludicrous and insidious. Canada is trying to prove that its own First Nations people are not Aboriginal as a tactic to erase their rights!

Canada prides itself on being a law-abiding nation, and yet it continually breaks its own supreme law whenever it denies Aboriginal people their rights.