Where has AFN’S Bellegarde been on Wet’suwet’en?
National group often seen as too close to government
The protests over the Coastal Gaslink pipeline through Wet’suwet’en lands in British Columbia have brought greater attention, prominence and pressure to nearly everyone involved.
Previously little known Indigenous leaders have suddenly become major players in national politics, not least the hereditary chiefs who met this week with federal and provincial ministers.
An obvious crisis for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the affair has also sparked the strange resurgence of lame duck Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, who has postured against Trudeau from between his two main aspiring successors, Peter Mackay and Erin O’toole.
All this has pushed diverse grassroots activists onto Canada’s news pages, from urban environmentalists to Mohawk Warriors.
One notably quiet voice, however, has been Perry Bellegarde and the Assembly of First Nations of which he is national chief.
This is not entirely of his own making. Partly it is because people are not paying attention to his calls for peace and quiet. As the leader of the alliance of more than 600 First Nations, he has spoken up in defence of self-determination and Indigenous law, while also urging peace.
“People should never be criminalized for standing up for their lands,” Bellegarde said on Feb. 10, adding he was in touch with the AFN’S B.C. regional Chief Terry Teegee and the commissioner of the RCMP, Brenda Lucki. “The AFN supports the governance and decision-making process of the Wet’suwet’en people. Canada and B.C. must do the same,” he said at the time.
In the rush to cover hyper-local Indigenous politics, however, there has been a blind spot for the national picture that AFN represents. This conflict is, after all, an issue of international law, “nation-to-nation,” in the prime minister’s own words.
The conflict is similar to another major Aboriginal land rights dispute the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on last week. In a tightly split decision, a five-judge majority decided that Quebec courts can hear an Innu challenge for land that straddles the border into Newfoundland and Labrador, set for a mining megaproject. The majority found Aboriginal rights are not like property rights, or personal rights, which are constrained by provincial borders, but a special sort of right that predates Canada and applies evenly across it. The minority would have restricted the Quebec-based dispute to only Quebec land, because Aboriginal rights “exist within the limits of Canada’s legal system.”
Bringing this sort of ruling to fruition in the real world of politics is exactly the sort of thing the AFN was designed to broker. Wet’suwet’en should have been an opportunity for political leadership. But the events of the last few weeks have shown the Wet’suwet’en conflict is also a reminder of the AFN’S main vulnerabilities as a modern construct that historically has been uncomfortably close to the federal government.
The AFN was formed in the 1980s, modelled on the United Nations, at a time when Canada was preparing to patriate its Constitution, and thereby take over responsibility for the treaty and Aboriginal rights guaranteed by the Crown. It proved its relevance in the 1990s in an era of possible Quebec separation and uncertainty over Indigenous rights in a new international context.
But the elected leadership of the AFN has often stood in contrast to more grassroots representation. The Wet’suwet’en conflict adds the further wrinkle of hereditary chiefs, whose positions are contested, and whose views on the pipeline differ greatly from their elected counterparts.
There have also been deeper worries about the AFN’S fundamental legitimacy, in the same way as band councils and the Indian Act are often seen not as examples of Indigenous self-determination, but as artifacts of a colonial relationship that are themselves obstacles to reconciliation.
During the Idle No More protests of 2012, for example, thenafn national chief Shawn Atleo resigned, mainly because he was seen as too close to then-prime minister Stephen Harper.
Those protests were as much about forcing First Nations leadership to answer to their people as they were about goading the federal government into action. They had been born partly of frustration with the AFN’S conciliatory style, which today remains on display.
Atleo had followed Phil Fontaine, whose co-operative approach with Canada and focus on economic development goals led to hopeful strategies like the Kelowna Accord and the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. But they also brought him into conflict with more oppositional figures like Matthew Coon Come, national chief between Fontaine’s terms in the early 2000s, whose political name had been made earlier in successful protest against a hydroelectric megaproject in James Bay.
An image of AFN’S coziness with federal authorities was solidified in 2013, when it was revealed that Fontaine, as national chief, had co-ordinated with RCMP in advance of protests on a National Aboriginal Day of Action.
Little change has come despite frequent calls to revamp the AFN, to perhaps allow individual votes as opposed to just chiefs, or to reject federal funding out of concern for the pressure that comes with it.
When Bellegarde was re-elected to a second term in 2018, on a platform of cooperation and reconciliation aimed at boosting Indigenous economies, he pointed to Trudeau’s record as the first sitting prime minister ever to attend an AFN chiefs’ assembly.
Concerns that he was too close to the governing Liberal Party did not seem to hinder him, even though the Liberals’ image as reconciliation-seekers has taken a beating in Trudeau’s second term. As the Liberal government faces its first major episode of Indigenous protest, Wet’suwet’en is proving to be a challenge for the AFN also.
THE AFN SUPPORTS THE GOVERNANCE AND DECISION-MAKING PROCESS OF THE WET’SUWET’EN PEOPLE. CANADA AND B.C. MUST DO THE SAME. — PERRY BELLEGARDE RECENT EVENTS HAVE SHOWN THE WET’SUWET’EN CONFLICT IS ALSO A REMINDER OF THE AFN’S MAIN VULNERABILITIES.