Up In The Clouds

"I, like all the other people who are protesting am opposed to poverty, but I see these recent changes as a practical approach to making it easier for First Nations to develop an economy.  What (the government) is trying to do is legislate us back into the economy."
Manny Jules, former First Nations band councillor and chief

The current, deservedly maligned Indian Act governing land leasing has provisions that add huge bureaucratic delays to the process of land leasing.  It needed to be changed to allow reserves to advance their interests in leasing out their land to prospective lessees with a business plan that would ultimately provide employment to band members in a best-case scenario, and allow reserves as well to make a profit in the development and extraction of natural resources on their land.

Complaints came from the bands themselves that the current Act, which required that a full majority of band members agree to a prospective leasing deal was too cumbersome, too time-consuming, too inadequate to the purpose of advancing band interests.  And it was in response to these complaints that Prime Minister Harper and Aboriginal and Northern Affairs sought to amend the act to ensure that a simple majority of a band membership could make the decision.

Similarly, the decision to make band councils and their chiefs responsible for producing an audit of the federal funds spent and the manner in which those funds were spent, along with disclosing salaries came first as a request from many band members who felt it was their right to know these details for full transparency and accountability.  Now, the Idle No More movement and Chief Theresa Spence declare these moves to be intrusive and unwarranted.

Prime Minister Harper is intent on producing incremental changes that will have a cumulative effect in furthering the interests of First Nations communities, from enhanced leasing to improved educational opportunities for First Nations children.  And while many within the aboriginal community support these moves, many more are uncertain or simply resistant to change, unwilling to substantially alter the status quo.

Chief Theresa Spence, whose own Attawapiskat northern Ontario fly-in reserve has been the subject of emergency attention by the federal government - caused in no small part by hers and her council's inept administration where a population of 2000 souls have somehow not benefited from $90- million in federal funds over five years that have been squandered in some unknown manner, even while income of an additional $60-million from DeBeers, along with band service contracts valued at over $300-million - presents as a mystery of mismanagement.

She didn't care for the accusations of mismanagement, and countered with an attack of her own latterly, accusing the federal government of its own mismanagement of the First Nations file.  And while there is truth to both criticisms, the affective, self-sacrificing grandstanding of Chief Spence that has garnered her the kind of sympathetic attention that most egotists thrive on, and her intimidating demands have created a spectacle of misinformation.

The threat of suicide-through-starvation as a protest against the generalized indifference to the plight of First Nations peoples purported to be the reality which leaves them living in squalid conditions, is not the least bit likely to create a martyr-close-to-death as so many of her fawning supporters claim.  She imbibes lemon juice, a pharmacopoeia of vitamins and fish broth which is quite sustaining for a well-padded woman.

Criticizing Prime Minister Stephen Harper as a heartless governor of the affairs and well-being of Canada's aboriginals is an abysmally incorrect reading of reality.  Grand Chief Shawn Atleo has indicated more than frequently his trust in the intentions of this prime minister.  Who has proven himself in a myriad of ways to be involved and caring of the rights of First Nations.

The first Prime Minister to stand in the House of Commons to apologize for the travesty that the experience of Residential Schools represented to many, albeit not all, who went through the paces of an education in that program; the first to endorse the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; first to extend the Canadian Human Rights Act to aboriginals living on reserves; first to appoint an Innu to the Cabinet; first to appoint two aboriginal Cabinet ministers simultaneously.

JEFF MCINTOSH/THE CANADIAN PRESS Prime Minister Stephen Harper wears a headdress after being made an honourary chief of the Blood tribe during a ceremony in Stand Off, Alta., Monday. 

 

"I believe Harper, in his heart of hearts, believes that First Nations have to be part of the federation and part of the economy" emphasized Mr. Jules.  While Ernie Crey, a First Nations leader once employed on aboriginal programming for the federal government had his own take on the matter: "I don't take issue with people going to malls and drumming, singing or having round dances in an attempt to draw attention to problems in the aboriginal community. But what they're after is so vague -- so up in the clouds -- that nobody knows what they want."

That may be because they do not, in fact, quite know what they want.  "Having known [Mr. Harper] and spoken with him on this over the years, I know the Prime Minister cares deeply about aboriginal issues", noted Senator Patrick Brazeau, another aboriginal leader.  "He would love for the chiefs to meet and come up with real solutions. But until they do that, it's hard for the Prime Minister to have a discussion on what needs to be done. It has to come from the leaders."