"(Spence's) message is that the chiefs must and will redeem themselves despite an imperfect past; the time has come for the leaders of our nations to become one and the same as the people.
"The chiefs have made mistakes in the past, but don't shame them for these. They are, after all, our people. The chiefs are ready now to humble themselves for the people."
Angela Bercier, aide to Attiwapiskat Chief Theresa Spence

Theresa Spence is a minor chief of the Attiwapiskat reserve.  Her reserve territory happens to be sitting on some very lucrative mining geography.  DeBeers has invested $1-billion in the Victor mine close by Attiwapiskat.  An agreement was signed between the band council and the diamond mining corporation where the band receives roughly $30-million over a 12-year period representing the life span of the mine.

An additional $325-million has gone out representing contracts signed through companies owned by the band.  Those companies are to supply catering, helicopters, dynamite and other services to the mine through the period of its operation.  Out of that whopping $325-million the Attawapiskat Resources Inc. registers a profit of merely $100,000.  Something is amiss there.

Something comparable perhaps to the band's state of administrative affairs with inadequate housing, people living in cramped, squalid conditions despite receiving $90-million in federal support.  This is a reserve, like many others, where alcohol and drug abuse is rampant, child neglect and familial violence are commonplace, the entire social order completely dysfunctional.

Chief Spence has not given a financial accounting of the manner in which she and her band council dispersed funds.  She and the band council have failed spectacularly to adequately and responsibly administer the reserve.  But she is holding the federal government to account for her failures.  And using the fawning media and public sympathy at her self-imposed plight, posing as someone prepared to die for a cause.

It is a cause she has failed at.  A cause, in fact that the Assembly of First Nations itself has failed to come to grips with, while blaming the federal government for failing to address the misery of Canada's aboriginals.  Refusing to surrender an unrealistic and self-mutilating dream of heritage and life-on-the-land as sacred to the memory of the past and reflective of the needs of the present, First Nations have compromised the future of their children.

Education and security has failed reserve children, just as familial nurturing has failed them, in absence of quality and parental guidance.  Any recommendations that come out of the Aboriginal Affairs or the government itself in seeking to resolve these intractable issues of First Nations finding a place for themselves within Canadian society are picked apart and viewed as assaults on the sovereignty and the dignity of First Nations.

Yet solutions are elusive and no recommendations come from the Assembly of First Nations who blow hot and cold at the same time; decrying the Indian Act, yet loathe to see it change because it might result in a change in their own status.  The statement that the chiefs who have made past errors should not be blamed for them, is absurd; where is their responsibility?  That "they are, after all our own people", makes their lack of accountability all the more reprehensible.

They have failed in their responsibility to their people.  And Chief Spence's much celebrated suffering on behalf of her people represents a poorly staged Act one in a new Misery of Canadian Aboriginals play meant to radicalize aboriginal youth with ever greater stages of resentment calling for more civil disobedience and illegal acts of blockages and sabotage of the civil order.

First Nations claiming for themselves sovereign nation status is an absurd conceit which the federal and provincial governments have coddled for far too long.  Criminal activities over an aboriginal- unrecognized border between Canada and the U.S. where guns, drugs and alcohol and tobacco are smuggled represent an entitlement of First Nations. 

Much as holding a town to ransom because of unsettled land claims represents another entitlement where First Nations warriors brutalize and terrorize other Canadians to demonstrate just how serious they are about their rights.  Warnings by Chief Spence that she will starve to death if the Prime Minister doesn't bend to her will, sinister promises of escalating violence represent a manipulative tantrum.

The Minister of the Crown whom First Nations Chiefs should be meeting with and striving to work out an action plan to relieve the stresses and pave the way for a fair and just future for Canada's aboriginals is Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan.  And he has been and will "continue trying to engage the Chief and other First Nations leaders".

If Theresa Spence finds death by starvation preferable to returning to Attawapiskat to effect some remedial administrative chores representing proper management of her reserve, that is her choice.