Nobody should die for patronage

Page 4

While Waneek Horn-Miller, someone who has her own memories of the 1990 Oka confrontation, was fighting the Olympic battle in the pool in Sydney, armed forces were preparing for another Oka-style confrontation in the Burnt Church First Nation, N.B.

And here we are, all hoping against hope there won't be another Dudley George or Marcel Lemay.

We knew things didn't add up in the lobster wars. We said that last year when entire forests were sacrificed to produce enough newsprint to carry the endless, often hysterical, coverage of a dispute that boiled down to-for mainstream Canada-the slightly unpleasant fact that the British Crown had entered into, and benefited from, a treaty with the Mi'kmaq people that allowed the them to take a tiny, tiny share of a $500-million-a-year resource. Last October, we couldn't figure out why the Canadian political and business establishment was so outraged by the news they were going to have to honor their contract and share less than one per cent of the wealth with Native people. Don't they always say a deal's a deal? Isn't that a Canadian value?

This is the same Canadian political establishment that says it respects the inherent right of self government and the rule of law. Isn't the rule of law about following the rulings of the top court in the land? We haven't been able to figure out why Minister Dhaliwal keeps referring to the rule of law. It's a legal concept that many law professors will tell you has been ignored by legislators at the provincial and federal level because politicians know the voters don't care about its finer points. They only want to keep what they've got and try to get more.

Then, along comes an unlikely champion of the Native cause: Lawrence Solomon. This is a guy who's non-Native and not exactly obsessed with the struggle for Native rights. But he knows how the game of politics is played in this country and he solved the puzzle.

Stockwell Day has got the Liberals in a tizzy. They need Atlantic Canada to keep the Alliance at bay, they think.

Since Indians are in the minority and probably won't be able to make much of a difference in this fall's election, they don't matter. Even if they're right, they're wrong and no one's going to listen to them anyway. Last year's disgraceful performance by the mainstream press proved that.

What if somebody dies during this ridiculous charade that is being played out with real guns in New Brunswick? Who pays the price then?

Stop it now, Mr. Dhaliwal. Nobody should die in the name of Liberal patronage. Nobody should get hurt; nobody should even get wet.