Wild ride at AFN AGM

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Assembly of First Nations Chief Matthew Coon Come and the Atlantic chiefs had been on the worst of terms since Coon Come publicly accused First Nations leaders of drinking and dancing too much. But that was only one point of contention that contributed to the feeling that Coon Come would spend the three days of the AFN's annual general meeting fighting for his political life.

The Halifax World Trade and Convention Centre was the site of the July 17 to 19 showdown. It was the first time the AFN hosted its AGM in Atlantic Canada.

Nova Scotia and Newfoundland Vice Chief Rick Simon reflected the mood of the room in the opening minutes of the first day by using that fact to take a gentle, but telling, shot.

"We had to host an AGM to get the national chief to come to Nova Scotia," the AFN executive member said as he welcomed the chiefs to his region.

Simon quickly added he was joking, but he knew that copies of a draft motion calling for a non-confidence vote in Coon Come were circulating and causing a sensation. Other chiefs from other regions had made it known they too would be bringing their gripes about his performance to the East Coast.

As soon as they arrived for the start of the meeting, chiefs, proxies, political operatives and reporters discovered the non-confidence motion was the hot topic of conversation. Garden River First Nation (Ontario) Chief Lyle Sayers was listed as the mover and Treaty 3 Council Grand Chief Leon Jourdaine as the seconder.

With this hanging over his head, Coon Come prepared to make his opening statement. Looking tired, maybe nervous, and certainly primed for battle, Coon Come made his opening remarks while his officials scrambled to deal with the architects of the non-confidence movement.

"I'm going to take a little more time than usual," said the chief.

His remarks would soon be front-page news, prompting indignation from the mainstream press and demands for an apology from the Ottawa Citizen.

Government officials, he said, tolerated unacceptable conditions in First Nation communities "because we are Indians."

"The fact is, the government of Canada has the resources, the know-how, and human and technical capacity to solve these issues," Coon Come said. "This is not rocket science. Roads need to be paved, infrastructure needs to be built, housing to be replaced and greatly expanded."

Knowing well the national press was listening closely to every word, Coon Come sent Canadians a harsh message.

These conditions have been tolerated because of racism, he said.

"Canadians and their governments are sometimes uncomfortable with this situation, but it is still being tolerated," he said. "Worse still, I have come to the conclusion that through recent decades, it has been federal policy to not provide for adequate sanitation, drinking water, housing, health care, infrastructure and services to our people. What is happening is the continuing implementation of policies of assimilation and extinguishment through infliction of conditions of social despair. These conditions are maintained, and one-by-one, our people will be forced to give up the struggle for our cultural survival. They are forced to drift away from our nations and societies and disappear into the Canadian mainstream."

The national chief then said the "external landscape" was the major cause of First Nations' problems but there was also an "internal landscape."

He urged unity and insisted on a strong resolve to protect Aboriginal rights at all costs.

"We know what the Canadian game plan is," he said. "It is to use our social and economic position against us, to bring us one-by-one as individual First Nations, and right-by-right, to surrender or give up our distinct status and rights. Short-term gains will be promised to us. However, it will be at great long-term cost. However, we all know that our fundamental rights do not belong only to us. They belong to future generations. We are the custodians of these rights, thetrustees of our peoples' future survival as Indigenous nations. This is truly a sacred trust."

Coon Come noted that the week before, Canadian politicians speaking in support of Toronto's 2008 Olympic bid, a competition that Beijing, China eventually won, tried to sway the Olympic committee by making China's human rights record a factor. He contrasted that approach with the message he is hearing from federal officials when he pursues a rights-based agenda for action in First Nation communities.

"In my meetings with federal cabinet ministers and officials over the last year, they have all informed me they do not have a 'taste for an Indian rights agenda.' They would prefer, they state, to stay away from rights issues, to simply work on First Nations' day-to-day community needs. This is a false approach. This is a dead end," he said.

The national chief then urged the chiefs to take the perceived high moral ground away from the minister by actively dealing with corruption.

"Let us also ensure that we take care of our internal business so that there is simply no excuse for others to intervene. Where there are a few among us who abuse their power or tolerate conflicts of interest or mistreat their people or act in self-interest, let us bring those practices to an early end," he said. "Not because we need to keep the minister and the Reform Party at bay, but because it is the right thing to do."

It was barely two hours after the official beginning of the first day when Jourdaine and Sayers appeared before the convention to disavow any connection with the non-confidence motion. Many observers didn't believe it, suspecting deals and promises had been made by the national chief's political staff to defuse the potential crisis.

The afternoon of the first day saw a preliminary discussion of the AFN's response to the First Nations Governance Act. As reported in Windspeaker, the executive was hoping to re-open the issue, despite the previous resolution from the chiefs to bycott the consultation process.

"It is a reversal to some degree of the position we took in Vancouver," senior AFN political advisor Clive Linklater acknowledged.

The next morning saw a change in agenda. Instead of the continuation of the governance debate, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation's Georges Erasmus was called on to begin the day with his organization's annual report to the chiefs. Erasmus himself said he was being asked to make his report hours earlier than he had expected.

Subsequent investigations by Windspeaker explained this change in plans. While Erasmus allowed the main meeting to continue by making his presentation, closed-door meetings were in progress. Well-placed sources say one meeting involved the Atlantic chiefs and the national chief. Other sessions, involving the regional groups adamantly opposed to any change in the AFN's governance stance, were also in progress throughout the morning.

The afternoon session revealed the substance of the closed-door negotiations over governance. When Chief Stewart Phillip, the most vocal critic of the executive-led initiative to revisit the AFN boycott of the consultations, put his name on the top of the new governance motion, it was a sign that a complex deal had been worked out behind closed doors. Musqueam Chief Ernie Campbell verified that fact the next day.

"I commend everyone responsible for (the resolution)," he said. "There was a lot of work behind the scenes that led to it."

The motion, the only survivor of three regarding governance that had been in place prior to the lunch break, resolved to re-enforce the May Confederacy's boycott resolution while at the same time opening the door to AFN participation in governance consultations. The chiefs resolved to call on Canada to work with the AFN to create a different consultation process. The proposed joint process would recognize First Nations' right to self-determination and begin progress towards "a true nation-to-nation relationship."

The moion also called for a 30-day time limit to be imposed on the minister for a response. Should Minister Robert Nault not respond within 30 days, the resolution called for First Nations to "engage in an aggressive strategic plan of action at the local, national and international levels."

The most remarkable thing about it, however, was the unprecedented unanimity the resolution produced. All regions, Coon Come supporters, Coon Come opponents, conservative chiefs, radical chiefs, the Native Women's Association of Canada and even a member of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples- United Native Nations-British Columbia president Scott Clark who was carrying the voting proxy for the Yale First Nation- spoke enthusiastically in favor of the compromise resolution. It carried unanimously.

The love-in was capped off by a speech by the national chief. As he basked in the glow of a room full of chiefs who were radiating with the energy of a renewed sense of purpose, Coon Come shocked observers by apologizing for anything he had done that had alienated him from the chiefs.

"As national chief, over one year of my term, it has been a learning curve. I've had many scrums. We all have differences of opinions, diverse objectives. But we are united in one issue that brings us together. With many scrums, I may have stated certain things that hurt people's feelings. And if I did that, if I have offended any of our chiefs or any of our members of our First Nations, then I apologize," he said.

The apology sparked a standing ovation.

The chair promptly recognized Atlantic Policy Congress co-chair, Chief Lawrence Paul.

"It takes a person of extraordinary good character and strong character to be able to admit that 'I'm not perfect and sometimes I make mistakes.' It takes a person of very good character to admit that," he said. "The credibility of the national chief, in my estimation, went up 100 per cent today -110 per cent."

But informed sources said the national chief had little choice