Attawapiskat election dogged by controversy
Off-reserve members are unable to cast ballots unless they make the long, expensive trip north
With band council elections for the Attawapiskat First Nation set for Tuesday, some off-reserve members are still hoping the chief and council will postpone the vote to deal with widespread concerns the band’s electoral process is unfair.
The current band council and Chief Theresa Spence, who gained national attention for fasting on Victoria Island during the height of the Idle No More protests, are requiring ballots to be cast in person on the reserve Tuesday, making it difficult for band members who live outside the remote northern Cree community to have a say in Attawapiskat’s leadership. Of the First Nation’s 3,351 members, just 1,862 live on the reserve, according to July 2013 numbers from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada.
“I can’t afford to go all the way there,” said Jocelyn Iahtail, who lives in Ottawa with her daughter. She left the reserve so her son could get the constant medical care he needs for a traumatic brain injury suffered during surgery. “They, of all people, should understand poverty and make it possible for offreserve members to have a voice.”
On Monday, a return flight from Timmins to Attawapiskat was selling for $1,200. A return from Ottawa was more than $2,000.
From Fort Albany Cree Nation, where Attawapiskat member Mike Koostachin lives, a return ticket costs $400. He can’t really afford to spend that money, but Koostachin said he’ll be making the trek to cast his ballot in person.
“Transparency in Attawapiskat is at zero per cent,” he said. “In my opinion, incompetent people are running our government system, and the same people are running for council again.”
Koostachin was on a special committee of Attawapiskat band members that drafted a new custom election code in early 2010 to bring the band in line with the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1999 Corbiere decision, which says all members of a First Nation over the age of 18 — whether they live on- or off-reserve — are entitled to participate in band elections.
Records of community meetings show people also wanted to prevent council members from holding other positions of influence at the same time. In response, the draft code included measures to prevent abuse of power: it put down in writing that councillors should not ap- point friends or family members to the band’s decisionmaking bodies, such as the education authority, health services, and Attawapiskat Resources Inc., which manages the money the band receives from nearby mining developments in the Ring of Fire. It also stipulated that councillors cannot have a criminal record, and could only miss three consecutive council meetings before being dismissed.
Community members voted to approve the new code in June 2010, but former chief Theresa Hall and the band council of the day decided not to ratify it since only 74 of a possible 2,166 eligible voters cast a ballot.
Instead, the former council conducted the August 2010 band elections using the old custom code, which has never been formally written down and which Iahtail and others say leads to confusion.
Koostachin wants the council to postpone the election, ratify the 2010 custom election code and start with a fresh nomination process so everyone who wants to can have their say.
Reached at his home in Attawapiskat Monday morning, acting chief Christopher Kataquapit said he couldn’t discuss details of Tuesday’s election and wasn’t available for an interview.
A representative at the Attawapiskat band office Monday said no one from council was available for an interview. There was no answer Monday at the home of Spence.
“We’re not denying any people from voting; they can come here to vote,” this year’s electoral officer, Louie Noah, said Monday. Noah expects about 400 of the Attiwapiskat First Nation’s more than 2,100 eligible voters to turn out Tuesday.
Noah says he took the job in mid-July because “nobody else wanted to do it.” By that time, he said it was too late to organize off-reserve polling stations and, anyway, it would have been too expensive.
“It would be nice to have that election code,” he said. “But it would cost a lot of money to get the mail-in ballots and send them out all over the country: it would be almost $10,000.”
While he admits the election process is divisive, he said he’s confident Tuesday’s election will go off without a hitch.
Charles Hookimaw, 31, moved to North Bay about five years ago to care for his mother, who needed to be closer to health services available in the city. He says he has been concerned about the election process since the last time members went to the polls in August 2010.
Hookimaw’s close friend Greg Shisheesh, who has since died, was a candidate for chief in that election and contested its outcome after a recount of the 345 ballots cast showed he was actually the winner. Electoral officer Rebecca Iahtail (a cousin to Jocelyn) had initially declared it a tie, with 171 votes each going to Spence and Shisheesh. According to band custom, Rebecca Iahtail, who is also an employee of the band council, broke the tie and made Spence chief. When the community demanded a recount, it showed 172 votes for Spence and 173 for Shisheesh, but Iahtail ruled the earlier count should stand and Spence was made chief.
Shisheesh appealed the outcome to Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC) through the official appeals process set up by the Indian Act. In a letter to the electoral officer and AANDC’s regional director and deputy minister, Shisheesh cited misrepresentation of votes, a poorly publicized election process, and what he suspects was pressure on the part of the band council to explain the problem.
Hookimaw said Shisheesh “never heard back” from AANDC about the appeals process and that nothing has changed.
“We have an over $10 million deficit and none of the candidates have addressed that and said how they’re going to proceed and what are the effective solutions.”
“There are plenty of educated people from Attawapiskat,” said Jocelyn Iahtail, who also takes issue with the low profile of the band council candidate nomination process. “We’ve got doctors and lawyers and accountants who are living off-reserve so they can get a job, go to school, or for health reasons. They need to be part of this process if anything is going to change.”
Iahtail said friends and family living in Attawapiskat who feel the same way are afraid to come forward because the chief and council control housing, health, education and finances for the band and they don’t want to be punished.
“There are a lot of functional and healthy bands. Ours is not,” she said.