Self-government does not have to work against the treaties

Page 4

Editorial

Self-government is a complicated issue. And the swirl of debate it has generated

in the current constitutional negotiations hasn't made it any easier to understand.

Part of the problem, perhaps, is that self-government is not one single thing. It doesn't come in a simple package that you can open and say "Look here, this is self-government.

Rather, the concept of self-government represents a myriad of big and small agreements, arrangements and programs that allow people to manage their own lives. Self-government is about consent; consent to how you will be governed, consent to how your health care and education will be managed, consent to what powers your government may exercise.

This may be why people are confused and concerned about the term self-government. They are expecting one big package instead of many smaller, simpler ones.

There are no strong reasons for their concerns. With self-government, the Native community is really only asking the country recognize rights that most Canadians already exercise in their daily lives in lots of small packages.

Treaty chiefs met in Edmonton recently at the first-ever national conference on treaty issues. Some chiefs expressed fears that entrenching self-government could lead to a violation of the treaties they uphold. They questioned whether Native people should be at the constitutional table at all and suggested a better route for meeting their needs and demands might be forcing Ottawa to live up to its original agreements.

The chiefs raised a good point. Some Native people already live under special--some will even say sacred--agreements. Any constitutional deal should not violate these agreements or create an opportunity to water down the rights they guarantee.

But there are many Native people living in Canada who don't enjoy the benefits of the treaties. They need protection too, like entrenching the inherent right to self-government in the constitution.

Does this mean that the treaty and non-treaty points of view must be at odds? Probably not. Remember, self-government is not one big package. It is a lot of packages.

And the treaties can become one of these packages if the final deal-making goes well. They can become the basis of self-government in the regions they affect, a vehicle to force Ottawa to live up to commitments it makes regionally as well as nationally.

There will be other packages for people who do not live under the treaties. The one big issue here--and this is for everybody--is to ensure that there is a fundamental legal basis for self-government that applies to all Native people.

Once that guarantee is enshrined, all the packages that make up self-government can be developed. The treaties should be one of these packages.