Negotiating Confrontations

"When it comes to negotiations, this is what is going on. You are being hunted with all the skills of the accomplished hunter, who has been at it for countless generations. The hunter knows his prey intimately. He has learned its habits and limitations and is an excellent tracker. With an incredible gift for observation, he knows the right and most efficient way to make the kill for his particular quarry ... telling a sad story to create sympathy is the bait or the decay ... or if that doesn't work, getting angry and threatening to scare your prey into the trap. Imitating the call or the habit of the quarry is replaced with imitating the language and practices of your adversary."
Chris Burke

Mr. Burke, who has lived around Hudson and James Bays for 45 years, married to a Cree woman - knows very well and intimately of what he speaks.  And on this occasion he speaks of what he knows very well; the propensity to manipulate the guilt of the "white man" to ensure that the cash cow that keeps getting milked to sustain an absurd dream of yesterday's heritage lifestyle laid over with today's appurtenances for modern living does not exhaust itself of its lifestyle-giving lucre. 




The First Nations demands expressed now in Idle No More, with Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence milking sympathy and steadfast support from the empathetic public a primary case in point, at the present time.  And, as far as Mr. Burke, the knowledgeable onlooker and keen interpretive observer is concerned, the greater the concessions granted to the imperiously infantilized demands of a woman whose utter failure as an administrator of her reserve has her posing as a Joan of Arc being sacrificed on the stake as her nation's courageous martyr, the more she will be encouraged to continue demanding greater concessions.

Sure enough, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has agreed to meet with National Chief Shawn Atleo and the other grand chiefs who make up the Assembly of First Nations, promising that there will be other meetings to follow, in an effort to reach an amicable, workable and useful agreement on the direction that Crown-AFN negotiations should follow.  Chief Spence, spiralling into 'near-starvation' conditions, eliciting unctuously admiring statements of support from various opposition politicians, members of the news media, academics and the public, insists she cannot now suspend her 'hunger strike' because of the offence given to First Nations on the Governor General feeling he need not attend that initial meeting.



She plans to continue her "sacred fast for change" and insists she willingly sacrifices herself for her people and will do so until such time as the government sees fit to repeal its budget implementation act, and commits to an equitable sharing of resource revenue sharing with First Nations.  Once the proud first inhabitants of the land we call Canada, although First Nations will not cede to the idea that anyone can own sacred land, it ill behooves the people of Canada to feel that the country's natural resources belongs equally to all, for this is a nation-to-nation situation.

And the First Nations are fed up with government assertions that many reserves are not lawfully and properly, let alone even adequately making use of the funds allocated them in perpetuity to be disbursed for the upkeep of all reserve members, and not to simply ensure that band councils gain fat bank accounts and personal residences that outclass those that are shuffled around to other band members. The sad thing is that what has happened in Attawapiskat with its miserable management and tawdry conditions is not reflected in all reserve management. Those who do ensure good administration have good reason to be put off by being painted with Attawapiskat's broad brush.

All of the most inconvenient revelations of mismanagement and disdain for record maintenance that would indicate just where and how funding has been so inadequate in Attawapiskat - $104-million over a five-year-period for two thousand inhabitants - that some residents have been living in squalor, so that an emergency had to be called, and emergency housing trucked in at great expense, was aired at this time simply to delegitimize Chief Spence's crusade for justice, according to her defenders. And the news media that were formerly so accommodating and welcomed at Victoria Island for their unquestioning support, are no longer permitted entry because their queries regarding the inconvenient audit are so inconvenient, so to speak, to the focus of Chief Spence's crusade.

Despite which, the Idle No More movement marches on, discommoding other Canadians through blockades on its way to "a revolution which honours and fulfills indigenous sovereignty", even while 'sovereignty' is not quite what First Nations want to achieve, if it means also they must become self-responsible and independent.  Insisting on nationhood and sovereign independence while holding out for a greater share of taxpayer-funded subsidies for a lifestyle without merit does not quite describe the achievable goal of autonomy.