Remember the people

Page 4

This last month has seen an incredible amount of time, energy and money expended by the government of Canada and the Assembly of First Nations to spin the story regarding the governance process to reflect their differing individual points of view.

Each side has sacrificed all that time, energy and money (and, on occasion, the truth) to protect their own interests. What we've noticed most of all is that the people-who both sides say they're striving to serve-have either been left out of the equation or used in ways that tend to show that they aren't appreciated or respected as much as the politicians like to claim.

It started on the last day of April on the Siksika First Nation territory, 100 kilometres or so east of Calgary along the Trans-Canada Highway in southern Alberta. High school students were let out of class to sit in the school auditorium while Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault staged his media event to announce the consultations leading to the First Nations governance act would soon begin.

In the days leading up to that morning, the Department of Indian Affairs' communications machine was in high-gear, with staff making extravagant promises to the media that it would be "worth their while" to be there for this "major announcement."

All the national TV networks and representatives of most of the major national print organizations made the trip to Siksika. CBC's Newsworld covered it live. After the minister made his announcement, Newsworld abandoned ship, skipping the First Nations response to the Indian Affairs minister. A short and token press conference was then held for those reporters who still remained interested while the plethora of INAC suits fidgeted nervously and scowled. Mere minutes after it began, the press conference was over and the minister was spirited out of the building. The students, perfect fodder for the cameras and now no longer needed, shuffled back to class, probably wondering why they had been invited in the first place.

It was all too slick.

Flash forward to May 8 on the Squamish First Nation, an urban rez surrounded by the municipalities of North and West Vancouver, located almost directly beneath the northern extremity of the Lion's Gate Bridge connecting those cities with downtown Vancouver. An unusually high number of chiefs made the trip to the left coast for this Confederacy of Nations. They arrived ready to rally their fellow chiefs to take on the minister over the governance act. Strangely enough, the minister didn't make the trip west. AFN staff say he was invited but he told them he couldn't come to British Columbia because the provincial election campaign was in its final week and it wouldn't be seemly for a federal cabinet minister to be in the region. Clearly the chiefs didn't believe that one. One AFN wag asked, with his tongue in his cheek, what happens when there is an election in Ontario? Would the entire federal government move to Manitoba?

But, despite the lack of that invited guest and the money to pay for the chiefs' meeting, the Confederacy carried on. AFN sources say the organization hasn't received a penny from the federal government since April and money's getting tight. It costs about $500,000 to stage one of these gatherings, so the AFN is hoping the funding starts flowing again real soon.

On the first day, the chiefs knocked the governance act around a bit.

Chief Sophie Pierre of British Columbia's St. Mary's First Nation reflected the initial thinking of the chiefs. She said a blanket rejection of the Nault initiative would be a bad move. Several other chiefs agreed. It was on the second day that the move to reject the legislation and boycott the consultation process started to gain momentum.

Chief Pierre, by the way, said something that got us thinking:

"The government is using our own people against us . . . (er) each other," she said.

And there it was. It seemed she corrected herself when it appeared her words could be interpreted as te government using the people against the chiefs. That would be an admission that the people and the chiefs are two separate stakeholders in this struggle and that wouldn't have well served the AFN's "spin."

Throughout the three-day gathering, the chiefs showed they're not above using the same kind of PR tactics the government employed in Alberta.

In a glaring example, former chief Manny Jules said, with a straight face, that no criminal investigation involving a First Nation politician had ever led to a conviction. It could be that he hadn't heard of the Darlene Yellow Old Woman case where the former chief and health director of the Siksika Nation was found guilty, just a few weeks before the Confederacy, of two counts of breaching trust and accepting $323,333 in secret commissions or kickbacks.

Jules' point was, however, that the mainstream press displays a bias towards First Nations leaders, that 97 per cent of First Nations and First Nations organization pass stringent audits with flying colors, year after year. He's right. We know because he was quoting federal government statistics and we've seen that report. It's available, but it wasn't reported in the mainstream press.

There is a stereotype out there that First Nations chiefs are crooks and have carte blanche to pillage the public treasury. Nault is using that- consciously or not, to give him the benefit of the doubt-to drive his fight for the governance act. We say, and we dare anyone to prove otherwise, that First Nations leaders are no better or worse than other politicians in Canada. They're part of the Canadian system and they learned from the masters. For every story about a crooked chief, there's another about a senator or a premier or an MP or MLA or small-town council member (or a prime minister) to balance it out. But there's no doubt the press is rougher on the chiefs.

But so far, in the midst of this high-power, high-level, political struggle, we get the impression the chiefs' pronouncemens on the governance act are mainly in support of keeping their own power, influence and prestige, while the government's agenda appears to be to keep the upper hand and control.

The people, meanwhile, want better living conditions, respect for their culture and their history, clean water, good education, health care and a chance to work and earn a good living and raise healthy, happy families. As far as we're concerned, those are the only things that really matter.

It's not our place to say whether the governance act initiative is good or bad, but we can insist that everyone with the power to do so put the people's interests first.

And we'll be watching so we can raise the alarm when that doesn't happen.