NWAC blasts government

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When the Indian Affairs department marked the first anniversary of the launch of Gathering Strength on Jan. 7, the Liberal government issued a 12-page press release reporting "progress."

"Over the past year, our priority has been to build the foundation for lasting change," Indian Affairs Minister Jane Stewart said.

Aboriginal leaders, especially national leaders in Ottawa, are worried that some of this "lasting change" won't necessarily be for the better.

Marilyn Buffalo, president of the Native Women's Association of Canada, says a lot of the programs the government points to so proudly are mostly about fulfilling its own agenda.

"There's been an accord with the Metis National Council, with the Congress of Aboriginal People and the Assembly of First Nations," Buffalo said. "We have not received any new money. The Native Women's Association has not been acknowledged, nor are they recognized or given any funding. Is that punishment for refusing to accept the apology? I think so. I've made every effort over the last year-and-a-half to put proposals to Canada but they haven't been forthcoming."

NWAC refused to accept the government's apology for sexual and physical abuse at residential schools "on behalf of those who could not speak for themselves." Many former students have supported the stand the association took at that time and have been critical of AFN Grand Chief Phil Fontaine for accepting the apology on their behalf.

Not only is the government playing hardball with the national women's organization by not increasing funding or programming, Buffalo said, but Human Resource Development Canada has taken a "very significant" program away from the organization.

An employment and training program exclusively for off-reserve women was administered in all areas of the country and Buffalo says the women will soon have to look elsewhere for that help. Off-reserve groups in various parts of the country are struggling to get their share of employment and training funding. Groups in Manitoba and Ontario have taken the government to court during the last year to force changes in the way the programs are funded.

"They need to increase the funding, not take it away," she said. "It would be nice if our people could have access to resources that have been set aside for First Nations but, unfortunately, we have a population now that's 60 per cent off reserve and the funding doesn't reflect that. It's impossible for a person that's living away from the community to access this money and to top it all off, there's never enough for on-reserve people, anyways."

Observers say the federal government is happy to dodge its fiduciary duty to Aboriginal people by confining its services to reserves where there are no prospects of employment, knowing people will move off the reserve and become the responsibility of the provincial government. The government can claim that it has initiated a number of new programs, Buffalo said, but they haven't changed their attitude towards Aboriginal people.

"All they're doing is maintaining status quo to appease the minister of finance. There's no real spending increase here," she said. "It's just borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. While Canada is out bragging at the international level, the Aboriginal people who hold title to this territory, particularly Native women and children, are forced to line up at the food banks."

Buffalo slammed Ottawa's self government negotiation process.

"The federal government continues to apply its extinguishment policy and forcing First Nations to borrow money," she said. "They're in hock before they even settle their land claim and part of that is the extinguishment of tax immunity status. That's not acceptable. If you own title to territory why should you have to go in hock to the government before you even start negotiating?"

Women's associations in all regions of the country are furious with the government for failing to make changes to Bill C-49, The Land Managemen Act, which is due to become law early this year. Buffalo believes this bill is just another way the federal government is trying to limit its fiduciary obligation by off-loading that responsibly to First Nation governments. She points out that concerns voiced by women who see no provisions for the protection of women's matrimonial assets on a reserve in the event of a marriage breakdown, have not been addressed by law-makers as the bill goes through the House of Commons.

"The 14 First Nations that are involved in this process have to negotiate a land code with Indian Affairs. They have one year to do this. The problem I see is there's not going to be any uniformity. There's not going to be any national standards set," she said. "It's the same thing they did with Bill-31 where they gave the First Nations two years to come up with membership codes. They dumped the responsibility basically on the First Nations and there was no enforceability, no means to enforce the bill."

An invitation was extended to the AFN to comment on the anniversary of Gathering Strength but the AFN did not respond. The Inuit Tapirisat of Canada and the Congress of Aboriginal People also chose not to respond.

Metis National Council President Gerald Morin says the federal government might be on the right track but he's going to have to wait and see how far down the line the government is willing to go.

"I guess if there's any area of disappointment, it's taken a long time to get agreement with the feds on the Metis Nation Agenda and what concerns us a lot is, when you take a look at the RCAP report, one of the major themes throughout the report is that, essentially RCAP said the old colonial, paternalistic relationship which existed has led to misery and that kind of relationship doesn't work.

"So therefore the federal government has to put in place a new relationship with Aboriginal peoples based on a nation-to-nation and government-to-government relationship. That sometimes is lost when thefederal government is responding. Sometimes a lot of the initiatives are not premised on that kind of a relationship.

"We've seen that for example in many of these program initiatives in the federal departments where they deal with us, and they deal with the Assembly of First Nations, the Inuit leadership, but then they deal with all these Aboriginal interests groups at the table. The whole nation-to-nation thing is lost," Morin said.

On Jan. 22 of last year, a few weeks after the announcement of Minister Stewart's new action plan, federal Metis Interlocutor Ralph Goodale, in response to public complaints from the Metis organization that Gathering Strength was a deal between the Assembly of First Nations and the federal government, brought forth a Metis version called the Metis Nation Agenda.

"They've agreed to fund us, to undertake consultations with respect to a Metis Nation Agenda and we've at least got it that far," Morin said. "We're hopeful that through the negotiations we'll be able to make more progress."

Morin said his organization has, at this moment, only secured a deal to look at possible ways to secure a deal.

"They haven't agreed to the agenda. They've only agreed to give us money to consult our people on a Metis Nation Agenda. We've taken a step. We've just got to take some more steps, I guess."

Aboriginal leaders are suspicious of studies and other bureaucratic devices because Canadian governments have a long history of using such tactics to delay and deny real progress.

"I hope it's not a tactic on their part. I hope it's sincere. If it's a stalling tactic and it's just another way to keep us busy and throw some money at us without getting to the heart of the matter, then it's just a repeat of the past."

The national Metis leader said he believes the federal Cabinet member responsible for Metis issues appears to be honestly trying to help.

"To Ralph Goodale's credit, he's tried actually quite hard and he's sincere," Morin said. "He has more or les the same impediments that we have to put up with in the federal government, you know, and he's trying to move along our agenda. So he's trying pretty damn hard himself and we've established a good relationship with him so I'm hoping that through our ongoing negotiations that people like him and other supporters we have in the federal government can move this along."

While other leaders say they've heard a lot of talk that the federal cabinet will be shuffled in the near future, Morin said he hasn't heard much about that subject. But he felt that any progress his people might be poised to make could easily be derailed if Goodale moved on.

"He's a western-based senior minister from Saskatchewan. He basically comes from the heart of the Metis homeland. So for us, we certainly wouldn't want to see him shuffled out of there because if somebody else comes in there then we have to re-establish a new relationship, if we can, with the new person. I don't have a lot of faith in the bureaucrats going to a new person saying this is what we've done in good faith and we have to carry on. I pin more hope on the politicians through generating political will and saying this is something we have to do with the Metis," he said.