Vancouver Sun

Aboriginal leaders chart a course for the future

- FRANK PEEBLES

PRINCE GEORGE — Today’s aboriginal elders fought back against colonial oppression so effectivel­y that tomorrow’s aboriginal children are poised to see the historic record set straight.

According to Tl’azt’en Nation grand chief Ed John, one of Canada’s leading aboriginal leadership figures, the elders at the 37th B. C. Elders Gathering in Prince George this week were responsibl­e for a centuries- old message finally being heard: mainstream Canadian government­s “can’t simply do whatever you want in our lands anymore.”

He challenged aboriginal Canadians to keep the momentum going.

“Let them know we own all this land, not just little parts of it ( reserves). We are willing to share it, but what happened was, the people we shared it with took over and seemed to think it was theirs,” he said. “Now we have to fight to turn around that thinking, to straighten out the record.”

Union of B. C. Indian Chiefs president Stewart Phillip said Canada was guilty of “ugly experiment­s to obliterate indigenous languages and cultures” but now, due to the perseveran­ce of the elders, they are culturally healing from the atrocities of residentia­l schools and helping mainstream Canada recognize its own mistakes.

New mistakes are still being made, however, through what he called the “industrial agenda” that must be opposed “if it is at the expense of indigenous rights, at the expense of the democratic process for all Canadians, and at the expense of our grandchild­ren’s birthright.”

Assembly of First Nations regional representa­tive Jody Wilson- Raybould pointed out how far First Nations have come and how fast.

“It was not long ago it would have been illegal to gather like this, and impossible to become a lawyer as I have without disenfranc­hisement.” But, she added, “of course we aspire to more than just survival.”

Foremost among the problems, all the main speakers agreed, is the Indian Act, the federal legislatio­n that Wilson- Raybould urged everyone — aboriginal and non- aboriginal alike — to lobby for its removal.

“Get rid of the colonizer,” she said about the federal law. “We are inherently political people and we live in a political world. No other Canadian is a ward of the state, so we are forced to be political.”

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