Native rights ignored - Cree leader

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Native rights in Canada are not being recognized or constitutionally protected the United Nations' Working Group on Indigenous Peoples was told last month.

The "No" vote in last year's national referendum resulted in the abandonment of Native rights as a constitutional issue in Canada, said Ted Moses, head of the Grand Council of the Crees of Quebec.

"The failure of the constitutional agreement, known as the Charlottetown Accord, has placed the advancement of our rights in Canada in serious in serious question," he said.

"There have been absolutely no developments with regards to the recognition of our rights since the failure of this initiate."

Moses was in Geneva last month for the UN's International Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples Conference, which ran July 19-30.

"Our self-determination continues to be effective denied while the (federal) government continues its all-or-nothing approach to constitutional agreement," he told the working group's sub-committee on the prevention of discrimination and the protection of minorities.

In his review of human rights protection in Canada Moses also highlighted the threat that Quebec separatism represents to Natives in that province.

Quebec's separation from Canada would affect Natives rights to remain within Canada if they wished, would abrogate their treaties and undermine their treaty and Aboriginal rights, said Moses.

"(It) would unilaterally remove us from the present system of law in a federal state without our consent...create new international borders between Indigenous peoples living in Quebec and the rest of Canada, separate us from our families, and remove us from the community of Indigenous nations."

Several bands in Quebec have voiced their concern over the province's unwillingness to recognize Native sovereignty. At the Assembly of First Nations annual meeting near Calgary last month, Quebec Native bands banded together to mount their own sovereignty movement.

Natives in Quebec won't allow the province to separate, said Chief Joe Norton of the Kahnawake Nation. Separation is not an option, he added, because the First Nations still own the land.

"There is no such thing as separation," he said. "They do not own the land. They do not have that right. If anybody has that right, then it is the First Nations in the region that is currently called Quebec."

But Parti Quebecois leader Jacques Parizeau questioned Native territorial rights, under the 1975 James Bay Treaty, Parizeau added.

Natives such as the Crees also lost their territorial rights under the 1975 James Bay Treaty, Parizeau added.

But treaties signed in the 17th century the Micmac, Mohawk and Algonquin did not cede Aboriginal territorial rights, Norton said.

Natives will fight Quebec's claim first applying political pressure in Ottawa, said Grand Chief of the Akwesasne Mohawk Council Mike Mitchell. But he did not rule out the use of physical confrontations similar to that during the Oka crisis in 1990 if Natives are cornered into defending their rights.