Time for Answers

EDITORIAL

Page 6

There is no need to comment further on recent remarks by Jim Horsman, Alberta minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, regarding Native self-government. that has been done quite well enough on the next page and elsewhere in this newspaper.

What should be noted is that this is only the latest in a series of change and incidents relating to the Getty (and Lougheed before that) government's relationship with Native people.

There is, of course, the obvious question: Why is Horsman still in the Cabinet? Is it because his racist and derogatory remarks echo the views of the other members of the Cabinet? Is it because Native people are such insignificant Albertans that it doesn't matter if a Cabinet minister insults them? Is it a tactic to put Native people off balance and reduce their effectiveness at the First Ministers' Conference later this month?

In the light of Horsman's remarks, it is almost impossible to resist the temptation to compile a list of other provincial governments actions and policies affecting Native people negatively:

1. The blockading of efforts by Metis settlements to obtain royalties for their mineral rights;

2. Failure to negotiate a fair and just land settlement with the Lubicon Lake Indian Band;

3. The active pursuit of arrests of Native people for hunting and fishing regulations violations;

4. Allowing resource development at the expense of Native trapping, hunting and fishing in isolated areas;

5. The downgrading of Native Affairs from a secretariat with its own minister to a small responsibility divided among three different ministers;

6. The introduction of legislation severely affecting the relationship between Native people and the land (wildlife, grazing lands, guiding and outfitting, game management.)

Are we to believe that all of this has taken place only in consideration of the best interests of all Albertans, and not as part of a deliberate hidden agenda aimed at eliminating all special status and rights for Native people, forcing their total assimilation. That is difficult to accept.

Continued evasiveness, deception and insulting rhetoric can only result in further damage, not only to Native people but to all of Albertans and Canadian society.