Is real change coming?

Page 4

As the first summer of the new millennium winds down, it's interesting to note that there is a new feeling in Indian Country. Different sounds are coming out of Ottawa where the highest profile Indigenous political organization in the country has recently seen a changing of the guard.

Since Matthew Coon Come is such a charismatic figure and since he has captured the attention of the mainstream press in a way that seems strange after the last three years, we tried to reach out to the other three southern national Indigenous political organizations this month. We have tried repeatedly in the past to contact the Inuit Tapirisat without success.

And of the Native Women's Association of Canada, the Metis National Council and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, only the latter responded to requests for interviews.

Because of the AFN's budget and because the mainstream press treats the AFN leader as sort of an Indian prime minister, we thought we should make an effort to reach out to the other organizations and see that their activities are reported as well and not overshadowed by the AFN.

CAP leader Dwight Dorey made time for our readers this month; the other leaders didn't. We hope that changes in the future.

Coon Come, for his part, has - in his first month on the job - already surpassed the three year totals of his predecessor in the amount of access and openness provided to this paper by the national chief. His political staff has promised that inquiries made by us on behalf of our readers will continue to be welcome.

That's a huge (and we think, of course, a positive) step forward in the realm of openness and accountability for First Nations governments.

Even though we're paid to be cynical and to look for hidden agendas and such, we feel the stirrings of a faint hope.

Coon Come's political staff say they're going to do what it takes to get the job done. They say the "big band office" mentality is under seige; the Indian industry is under attack, bureaucratic slowness and inflexibility is out of fashion and productivity is now the main concern. If you're not putting in a full day's work in service of the people then get out. No more soaking up the people's money without results. No more cushy, bureaucratic jobs that create nothing but debit lines on the annual audit.

We'll see.

But we strongly believe that if they accomplish that goal, one of the biggest problems in Indian Country will be gone and the other problems won't seem nearly as insurmountable.