Farewell, and Fare Well

"I have fought for this work and to achieve this mandate. This work is too important and I am not prepared to be an obstacle to it or a lightening rod distracting from the kids and their potential."
"I have carried out my actions based on principle and integrity. Personally, I believe this work must happen ... It must continue in every community and it must continue within Parliament."
Shawn Atleo, National Chief, Assembly of First Nations, resignation

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld    Shawn Atleo leaves a news conference after resigning as National Chief of the AFN Friday May 2, 2014 in Ottawa. Atleo made a brief statement before resigning as National Chief.

"National Chief Atleo was a conciliator and strengthened the relationship between First Nations and the Crown. We also shared a commitment to improving First Nation eduction and ensuring that students on reserve have the same eduction standards, supports and opportunities that most Canadians take for granted."
"Together we helped improve opportunities for greater participation by First Nations in the economy and standards of living and quality of life on reserve including through the Crown-First Nations Gathering in 2012."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Shawn Atleo was not the first grand chief of the AFN to be criticized by his provincial peers for being too accommodating to the attempts of the federal government and its agencies to reach a workable agreement on many issues that would benefit First Nations. His predecessor Phil Fontaine also caught his share of criticism for being too prepared to be reasonable in his demands. Still, it was Shawn Atleo whose reasonableness to creative solutions to long-time concerns that infuriated detractors to the point of fury.

And what has brought matters to a head between the corrosive denunciations from First Nations chiefs from the West appears to be Mr. Atleo's support of a federal bill overhauling education for First Nations' children. Bill C-33, the First Nation Education Act, underwent a number of substantial alterations at the insistence of Chief Atleo. His concern was to change the current situation where 60 percent of First Nations youths haven't completed high school in comparison to 10 percent of non-aboriginals.

The education reform bill was released in draft form last fall, leading Mr. Atleo to forcefully lobby government to amend what he saw as absolute shortcomings. And his recommendations were for the most part followed, including aboriginal communities retaining control of education; recognition of First Nations' culture and languages; shared oversight and continued engagement, and a promised $1.9-billion in additional funding. 

Chief Atleo's satisfaction with and promotion of the amended bill goaded his detractors on to furious denial of his suitability to act on their behalf. "Atleo's three-piece suits, photo ops, club speeches, international travel and fancy dinners with Harper and his ministers are an insult to the First Nations women who go murdered and missing, to our kids who die in foster care, to the children without hope who die of suicide and the many people who die premature deaths from purposeful, chronic federal underfunding", venomously wrote Pam Palmater, an aboriginal lawyer from New Brunswick.

The social-cultural, tribal failings inherent within isolated and dysfunctional First Nations communities will not see ownership of responsibility by those First Nations tribes themselves; their failures are the fault of an uncaring government, an uncompassionate Canadian population, and a chief who failed to live up to his responsibility to dedicate himself to rancour and rejection rather than accommodation and guidance to a government attempting to administer their file to the advantage both of Canada and its First Nations.