Windspeaker should send reporters to witness CAP voting

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Dear Editor:

The Assembly of First Nations is always under intense scrutiny for its national leadership convention where the national chief is elected. It's transparent for all to see.

How about giving equal treatment to some of the other so-called Aboriginal political organizations by covering their electoral conventions to see if they're above board? Congress of Aboriginal Peoples keeps saying that they have a national electoral process to vote for its national chief. Next time they vote for their national chief, send a reporter to cover it. Report on who are the voting delegates from coast to coast.

The most galling part of their mantra is they keep saying that they represent the treaty status Indians living off reserve in Canada. If so, when was the national convention by treaty/status living off reserve to give their legal/political rights to the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples? Who are all the treaty status Indians and how many in Halifax, Moncton, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, Prince George, Vancouver, Victoria and Prince Rupert that convened in each of these cities and gave their approval to send voting delegates to participate?

Congress of Aboriginal People should and must have a public accounting of the following: membership; voters' registry; and an audited expense spread sheet of its national voting convention.

The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples has no business hi-jacking the legal/political rights of treaty status Indians living in the cities of this country. The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples is a Metis organization.

-F. One Moon