Chiefs gather to elect a new leader
Meeting in Winnipeg will decide how Canada’s indigenous peoples will further their agenda
OTTAWA — Canada’s First Nations chiefs gather in Winnipeg for three days this week for a momentous meeting that could set the tone for how indigenous leaders assert their demands to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in coming months.
Several hundred chiefs from the country’s largest aboriginal group — the Assembly of First Nations ( AFN) — will elect a new national chief.
Will that chief be a hardedged rebel who adopts angry, perhaps even threatening, rhetoric to get the attention of Harper and the rest of the country?
Or will he appeal to the better nature of Canadians, and try to use logic to persuade Harper to accept aboriginal demands on issues such as First Nations education funding and control of schools, treaty rights, missing and murdered indigenous women and shared natural resource development?
There’s a lot on the line — for the unity, peace and self- image of Canada, for the many thousands of aboriginals living in poverty and for the future of the AFN, which has been accused of becoming irrelevant to the First Nations’ “grassroots.”
“Our young people are getting frustrated,” Saskatchewan Chief Perry Bellegarde, one of three leadership contenders, told Postmedia News.
“They are tired of the poverty and the overcrowded housing and the systemic racism. They are tired of being held back.”
“The relationship in Canada between indigenous peoples and governments has got to change.” Here’s what to watch for as the AFN meeting begins Tuesday:
The election
The AFN was rocked by infighting this year, prompting national chief Shawn Atleo to resign in May because some chiefs didn’t like how he had worked with the federal government on a federal bill to reform the First Nations education system.
With Atleo’s three- year term cut short, the AFN was left scrambling and it was frozen out by the Conservative government.
More than 630 chiefs are eligible to vote in Wednesday’s election. The winner must get 60 per cent on the final ballot.
Bellegarde, chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations ( FSIN) is seen as the front- runner. He ran second to Atleo in the 2009 election.
The other major candidate is Ghislain Picard, regional AFN chief of Quebec and Labrador. He was appointed interim national chief by the AFN executive after Shawn Atleo’s resignation.
The long- shot contender is Leon Jourdain, former Grand Chief of Treaty 3, which constitutes northwest Ontario and eastern Manitoba.
Missing and murdered aboriginal women
The chiefs are gathering near the fork of two rivers — the Red River, where the body of 15- year- old Tina Fontaine was discovered last summer, and the Assiniboine, where 16- yearold Rinelle Harper was left for dead in November by two men who allegedly attacked her.
Both incidents have shocked Canadians and angered aboriginals.
And yet, Harper’s government continues to reject widespread calls from aboriginals, premiers and federal opposition parties for a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women.
Earlier this year, an RCMP report showed there had been 1,181 cases of murdered or missing aboriginal women in Canada since 1980.
In August, Harper was accused of being “heartless” and “callous” for saying Fontaine’s death should be viewed not as a “sociological phenomenon,” but as a crime.
The AFN isn’t giving up.
First Nations education
The AFN and the prime minister are at loggerheads. In April, the government introduced Bill C- 33, to hand control of on- reserve education to First Nations, while also setting standards. The government promised $ 1.9 billion in new funds.
But Atleo faced a revolt from some chiefs who complained they were kept in the dark on his work with the government.
The chiefs say the bill fell short of providing sufficient funds for schools on reserves, did little to protect indigenous culture and languages, and actually gave the federal government control of the system.
Without the AFN’s support, the government put the bill on ice and ignored pleas from the AFN’s interim chief, Picard, to ditch the bill and renew talks.
There is a crying need for reform — the system is underfunded and 60 per cent of First Nations youths in their early 20s do not have a high school diploma, compared with 10 per cent of non- aboriginals.
Residential schools
In 2008, Harper apologized for the residential school system. Over many decades, 150,000 aboriginal children were sent by the federal government to church- run schools, where many faced physical and sexual abuse.
A Truth and Reconciliation Commission ( TRC) was established to hear testimonials and collect documentary evidence. Its report will be released next June and is expected to contain critical findings.
First Nations chiefs, whose communities are still filled with people scarred by the residential school system, don’t want governments to ignore the TRC’s recommendations.
Resource development
In June, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a ruling that recognized a First Nation’s title to a specific tract of land in British Columbia — a landmark decision with implications for energy projects such as the Northern Gateway pipeline and other proposals.
In future, economic development on land on which title is established will require First Nations consent. If that’s not given, governments will have to go to great lengths to justify development on aboriginal land. Indigenous leaders say they will use this new legal power.