Reconciliation with the First and Foremost

Well, that United Nations envoy certainly put us in our place, didn't he?

So...

Is everyone clear now on how the Rest of Us should go about negotiating with Canada's First and Foremost Nations?

One of us will propose something -- a mine, perhaps, or a forestry project that would bring much-needed revenue to our cash-strapped government for little things like, uh, health care, education, welfare or new homes in one of Canada's needy FFN communities.

Or maybe it's just a testy comeback to a bit of political grandstanding.

The FFNs, assisted by their social justice friends, will respond to this insult by running off to the mainstream media to reveal the shocking truth about the evil, colonial, rapacious and uncaring government. We will get an earful about treaties, George III, residential schools, assimilation, greedy corporations, malnourished children, inadequate funding, destitute reserves, small pox and the duplicity of settlers.

If this fails to produce immediate capitulation, the FFNs will call on their team of non-Aboriginal lawyers to ask the courts to block whatever it is that the government might ponder doing or saying or permitting to happen. They will cite a Constitution that, apparently, applies only to them.

The courts will deliberate for about ten minutes, then issue a decision that favours the FFNs, humiliates the governement, ignores the Rest of Us and sets a precedent that further entrenches the right of FFNs to most of Canada's land mass.

As these "negotiations" are happening, the FFNs will ice the cake by racing off to New York to play their newly acquired "rights of indigenous people" card. The United Nations will oblige with a scathing attack on all things Canadian. The world will tut-tut about Canada's evil, colonial, rapacious and uncaring people.

Properly chastised by our betters, the Rest of Us will give the FFNs whatever they want.

Life will go on until the next set of "negotiations."

That, folks, is the meaning of reconciliation.









 




 

Attawapiskat debate has positive impacts

We owe a big thanks to Attawapiskat First Nation and MP Charlie Angus for thrusting the little community’s housing problems into the spotlight.

In setting off a firestorm, they have sparked a much-needed discussion about remote communities and their place in the larger nation. The debate has elicited nastiness and name-calling, of course, but it has also done several valuable and positive things.

First, it has prompted average Canadians to think about their relationship with First Nations and the more distant reaches of this country.

One impression emerges. The principal players in this drama – INAC and the native leadership – are locked in a dysfunctional dance that smells of another era. For too many years, this show has been run as a two-step on a ghost ship, with the Aboriginal industry providing accompaniment. There’s a wind-up gramophone on the bar, but it’s stuck in a groove of “Do as we say / Send us more money.”

Now that we’ve had a chance to peek through the porthole, we may want to shove the door open, stop the music and drag the dancers out into the light of the currrent century. It’s time for new steps to a new tune played by a better band on a different dance floor.

Second, the debate has stimulated creative suggestions, even bold actions, from outside groups.

For instance, Indian Country Today reports that Habitat for Humanity Canada is partnering with the Assembly of First Nations to help alleviate a crisis that afflicts a hundred or more reserves. Habitat has worked on Aboriginal housing for a while, but it promises to make it a priority for the next five years.

Meanwhile, homebuilder Mike Holmes, host of HGTV’s Holmes on Homes, has stepped forward to offer advice and assistance, also under AFN’s aegis


In a CBC interview, he proffered a simple solution to the housing situation – just “stop building crap” with inappropriate materials that are subject to rot, fire and mould. He suggests cinder block and drywall. And make sure you transfer the skills to build and maintain those sustainable homes to the First Nations. It will make a world of difference.

Thirdly, the crisis has exposed major weaknesses in our economic infrastructure.

For a country that prides itself on its transportation network, it is unconscionable that 15 modular homes cannot be delivered to Attawapiskat until the ice roads are ready in January or February.


Granted, this part of Ontario is vast and harsh, but we’ve been tooling around in it since the late 1600s. Yes, the muskeg is difficult. But back in the 1930s, Ontario managed to build a railway to Moosonee through very difficult terrain. And if we look across the bay, over toward the Quebec side, we might notice there are roads that link the Cree communities almost to Hudson Bay.


There is no real excuse, either, for our inability to design and build safe, sustainable communities in a northern environment.


Just 90 kilometres inland from Attawapiskat, De Beers Canada has built a safe, warm, comfortable community for its 500 employees. How could this be? How is it that one company, headquartered in distant South Africa, can conjure up a working town from the cold northern air, while we muddle along with under-serviced shacks and a string of excuses?

We will have to do a lot better -- in planning, designing, engineering and delivering -- if we wish to be known as a northern people, and if we have any aspiration of benefiting from our rich northern lands.

Chiefs jump aboard the bash-Canada wagon

Canada’s Indian chiefs have escalated the dispute over Attawapiskat’s housing crisis by seeking to shame Canada in front of the nations of the world.

On Tuesday, the Assembly of First Nations passed a unanimous resolution to make Canada an object of international derision by asking the United Nations to monitor the federal government's response to a housing emergency on the Northern Ontario reserve


Chiefs asked the UN to appoint a "special rapporteur" to examine whether the Harper government is dealing with the crisis in a way that meets its obligations under Canadian and international treaties concerning First Nations people

Their declaration also calls on the federal and provincial governments to respond to communities in dire need.

The next step, presumably, is for the UN to raise its hands in horror and deem Canada an “apartheid” regime. It could impose sanctions on dirty tar sands, tainted seal meat, blood diamonds and clear-cut lumber. Perhaps a UN protectorate could also be established to control Canada’s renegade mining companies and address Canada’s disappointing performance on climate change.

Other people may have a different view, but I am thoroughly fed up with this never-ending bash Canada routine from First Nations and their friends in the social justice brigade.

In the past few years, First Nations groups have worn a path to New York, taking grievance upon grievance to the international body. They should stop doing it. It is bad citizenship that borders on treason. It damages all Canadians by painting the country as a thuggish colonial throwback.

Further, these overwrought pleas for the world’s pity are bad business. In its effort to put the squeeze on the federal government, Attawapiskat has made itself look pitiful and incompetent. That may be great for fundraising, but it's hardly a selling point for a company in need of a keen workforce. The community compounded the damage by launching an over-the-top attack on the De Beers diamond mine near the reserve, raising even more questions about the wisdom of investing large sums of money in this part of the world.   

Then there's the democracy thing. 

Canadian citizens do not deserve to be denigrated as irrelevant squatters, who have no right to their own lands, who should sit silently by, like good children, while First Nation governments conduct their “nation to nation” negotiations with the monarch’s representatives.

We are not in the 1700s, when Rupert’s Land was run by British fur traders and King George III could spout proclamations that would bind a people forever. Today's Canadians are not "settlers." They have a right to make decisions about their country, its lands and its resources, no matter what the UN -- or some dead English monarch -- thinks about it.

The approach chosen by First Nation chiefs is deeply insulting to Canadians. It’s part of a stale, old mindset that hobbles Canada and restrains its people from moving forward as an independent and prosperous nation.

Bad politics; bad business; bad choice.