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My Own Reasons for Opposing the Federally Dictated “First Nations Governance Act”(Bill C-61)

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My Own Reasons for Opposing the Federally Dictated “First Nations Governance Act”(Bill C-61) PERSPECTIVE Turtle Island Native Network www.turtleisland.org OPEN LETTER: FIRST NATIONS GOVERNANCE BILL, National Post June 19 editorial. For further comment on the First Nations Governance bill, Chief Stewart Phillip can be reached at (250) 490-5314. ========================= Re: Jonathan Kay’s June 19, 2002, Editorial “A better life for natives – a whiter one, too” Dear Editor: I am no longer shocked by the misleading and anti-Aboriginal racist drivel, which routinely passes for editorial comment on Aboriginal policy by the National Post, particularly by Jonathan Kay. After all, Mr. Kay has made his socially conservative views about assimilating First Nations known in previous articles written for this newspaper. Mr. Kay apparently reflects the views of owners of the Canwest Global chain of newspapers since similar anti-Aboriginal editorials have appeared across the country simultaneously this past week. However, as a Chief of my community and President of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, I must challenge Mr. Kay regarding his bigoted and erroneous interpretation of First Nations opposition to the federal government’s proposed “First Nations Governance Act” (Bill C-61). As your readers may recall earlier this week, Mr Kay made a number of odious assertions about why he believes that First Nations Chiefs oppose Bill C-61, some of Mr. Kay’s comments bear repeating here: · The legislation will force [Chiefs] to adopt state-of-the-art accounting and electoral practices that will limit their ability to dole out cash and favours to cronies. · [National Chief Matthew] Coon Come relies on the racism charge only because he can’t attack the merits of the legislation without seeming to be an apologist for the nepotism, hereditary chieftaincies and corruption the legislation is designed to phase out. · >From Red Deer to Ramallah, tribal societies are typically dominated by strongmen who dole out favours to kin and clan. · Canada’s natives, itinerant foragers and hunters two centuries ago, are now sedentary welfare collectors. Their relationship with the land has eroded greatly because they no longer depend on it for food. · Thanks to television, they are also abandoning native languages in favour of English and French, and have largely shed their animistic faiths. · Many chiefs are actually Christians. Mr. Coon Come himself belongs to an evangelical group and recently spent a year at a Florida Bible college. · In short, one of the only authentic elements of native culture that remains is the one Mr. Nault is targeting: the traditional patriarchal, kin-based system for distributing resources and choosing leaders. · By Euro-Canadian lights, “kin-based” is merely anthropological shorthand for “nepotistic”; “patriarchal” means sexist; and “traditional” means undemocratic. If going Euro is the price natives have to pay for reforming their political structures and cleaning up corruption on reserves, so be it. · The new legislation has been advanced under the false conceit that we can promote aboriginal economic well being and protect authentic native cultures simultaneously. · It is this conceit that prompts Ottawa to encourage Indians to remain on remote, economically desolate bantustans instead of migrating to city jobs. · While the First Nations Governance Act will help make some life more tolerable on those bantustans, it won’t solve the underlying problem. Most Indians will remain second-class citizens until Ottawa has the courage to use the A[ssimilation] word openly. I find it reprehensible that a national newspaper would allow Mr. Kay to express such patently racist opinions, which are not only grossly ill informed, but in my opinion, Mr. Kay’s views border on promoting hatred against First Nations. I want to attempt to correct the misconceptions caused by Mr. Kay’s diatribe and give my own reasons for opposing the federally dictated “First Nations Governance Act”(Bill C-61). To understand why most First Nations, and not just their leaders, oppose Bill 61, one must know something about the true history of Canada and how the Indian Act has impacted the Aboriginal and Treaty rights of Indigenous First Nations in what we now call Canada. So I must make some mention of it here. Only then can you understand how miraculous it is that any descendents of First Nations have survived to modern times. Then I will comment on our contemporary situation regarding Canada’s Bill C-61. The Indian Act: In Canada, first the French and then British could not exterminate the numerous and powerful First Nations. Instead the British Crown conducted a dishonest policy of on the one hand, establishing political and economic relations with First Nations through Treaties and Prerogative instruments, such as the Royal Proclamation of 1763, while on the other hand, planning for the colonization of North America through British occupation, settlement and possession. Through the Royal Proclamation of 1763 the Crown assumed trust and fiduciary responsibilities to First Nations, to protect their rights and interests from frauds and abuses. However, by 1812, the Imperial government could not afford to maintain its empire and began to off-load fiscal responsibilities to the colonial governments in exchange for a devolution of powers. Throughout the 19th century the protective aspects of the First Nations-Crown relationship were eroded and replaced with the Canadian government policy objectives of assimilation and civilization. In 1857 "An Act for the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes of the Canadas" was passed. The purpose of this act was the "gradual removal of all legal distinctions" between Indians and settlers. Moreover, it provided criteria for enfranchisement. In 1876, the Government of Canada under the authority granted to them by the British Parliament in 1867, consolidated all pre-confederation legislation regarding First Nations into the infamous Indian Act. This piece of legislation was designed to systematically undermine the sovereignty of First Nations and restrict them to small tracts of land called "reserves". The Crown then illegally and immorally gave the rest of the lands and resources to provinces, territorial governments and third party interests. From 1876 until now, First Nations have resisted the application of the Indian Act and our collective efforts were engaged in a long legal and political struggle for the recognition and accommodation of our Aboriginal and Treaty rights by the Canadian Confederation. Section 35 Constitutional Protection: It has been 33 years since the Chiefs from across British Columbia created our organization, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, to fight the federal government’s 1969 White Paper Policy to terminate our special historic, legal and political status as Indian Nations with land rights. From British Columbia we joined Treaty First Nations at various times to stop the federal government from terminating our inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty rights and Aboriginal title. It was 21 years ago, in 1980, when the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs assisted in organizing a train to Ottawa, which we called the “Constitution Express”. We helped our leaders and grassroots people get to Ottawa, to ensure that our title, rights and interests were included in Canada’s new constitution, which was under negotiation at that time. From Ottawa a group of our leaders and people continued on to lobby in Europe. We also joined with Treaty First Nations in a British Lobby effort, and with Treaty First Nations we jointly launched a court action in England to try and stop the Constitutional Patriation process, and although we didn’t succeed in stopping the process we did achieve judicial support in England for the notion that no Parliament should lessen the guarantees the Imperial Crown made to our Indian Nations in Canada. All of these political and legal actions helped to pressure the federal and provincial governments to agree to have section 35 placed in Canada’s Constitution, and together these political and legal actions set the stage for First Nations involvement in Canadian constitutional reform throughout the 1980’s into the early 1990’s, when Canada’s constitutional talks ended. The position our national organization, the Assembly of First Nations took throughout these constitutional talks is that section 35 is a “full box”, which means that all of our inherent, aboriginal and treaty rights are already constitutionally protected by section 35, including our inherent right to self-government. This is the First Nations definition of section 35. Since the time of first contact with Europeans our ancestors have insisted on a nation- to-nation relationship. All of the earliest treaties and agreements recognized Indian Nations. Nationhood means sovereignty. We may have to share it with the Canadian State, but we have never surrendered our sovereignty! When representatives from Indian Nations began traveling to England and the League of Nations in the early 1900’s to press our case for recognition of our Nationhood, the Canadian Parliament responded with an amendment to their colonial Indian Act in 1928. This dramatically affected our grandparents’ generation. The Indian Act amendment prohibited our grandparents from conducting ceremonies, it prohibited them from hiring lawyers to protect our rights, and it even prohibited our grandparents’ generation from having gatherings unless an Indian agent allowed it. This section of the Indian Act was in place until the 1951 Indian Act amendments. For over 23 years a generation of our people grew up having their parents take the ceremonies underground, and to hold their community meetings in secret from the Indian Agent and the RCMP! For many First Nations peoples alive today, we are talking about our grandparents’ and parents’ generations that this happened to. So in a very real sense section 35 does represent the culmination of a long, terribly difficult political and legal struggle for the constitutional protection of our aboriginal and treaty rights! First Nations will never forget this.
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