[IPSM] Land Claims and Treaties and Bands, Oh My!

[Macdonald Stainsby]

Land Claims and Treaties and Bands, Oh My!
First Ministers' Meeting coverage limited to official story

by Dru Oja Jay

When those with decision making power and access to the media come to a 
consensus, it is often easy to conclude that their account reflects 
reality--that, to the extent that one understands the official story, 
one understands the situation itself. While the usual suspects may not 
dispute such an account, dissent can nonetheless be found by those 
willing to look.

The First Minister's Meeting in November was, according to media 
coverage, a "historic summit" held in Kelowna, British Columbia where $5 
billion in spending was announced to "alleviate poverty" and "improve 
the quality of life" of Indigenous people in Canada. The plan, it was 
noted, focuses on housing, health care, education, economic development, 
and relations between natives and provincial and federal governments.

Reporting typically presented a positive outcome, despite difficulties 
in reaching agreement. A Globe and Mail report, for example, referred to 
a "feud" between the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and the Congress of 
Aboriginal Peoples (CAP) over whether wording would include natives 
without government-recognized status.

Criticism of the process was tempered by an overall impression that 
progress was being made. "The government is doing the honourable thing, 
but it does have the stink of desperation to it," NDP native affairs 
critic Pat Martin told the CBC, referring to the imminent fall of Paul 
Martin's Liberal government.

In a brief foray outside of this narrow range of views offered by the 
political establishment, the Globe and Mail made mention of some deeper 
criticisms of the process. The Globe's Bill Curry quoted Arthur Manuel 
of the Grassroots Peoples Coalition (GPC) as saying that "The minute you 
recognize our economic and treaty rights, our poverty would disappear 
immediately." The Globe report also noted that the deal signed in 
Kelowna made no mention of treaty rights.

While the media failed to provide the minimal context for Manuel's 
remarks--indeed, the CBC, the National Post, the Canadian Press and 
others ignored the grassroots perspective completely--the information is 
readily available for those who look.

"The federal government has co-opted the Assembly of First Nations... as 
Aboriginal and Treaty rights are traded off for the modern day 
equivalent of 'trinkets and beads'," Manuel wrote in a GPC communiqué.

In the analysis of Manuel and many others, the federal government and 
Canadian corporations have made hundreds of billions of dollars on 
resources and land that, by law, belongs to Indigenous peoples. By one 
estimate, the value of oil revenues from unceded land in Alberta totals 
over $70 billion for the last 12 years.

There was, in fact, considerable dissent about the meeting.

One has to search the website of CBC North, however, to learn that 
"about 200 bands from across Canada" boycotted the meeting. "It's as if 
the agreements were already prewritten with the AFN in Ottawa," Bill 
Namagoose of the Cree Grand Council was quoted as saying.

Another layer still obscures understanding of the situation: the band 
system itself. The band council system was imposed in 1884, with the 
Indian Advancement Act. Traditional systems of government were outlawed. 
Typically, traditional government held chiefs as spokespeople rather 
than decisionmakers, and decisionmaking power rested with the people of 
the nation. By imposing a system against the will of the affected 
communities, the federal government transfered control to the Ministry 
of Indian Affairs.

To this day, the Federal government controls band funding, and can 
withdraw it as it sees fit. A resident of Grassy Narrows, a reservation 
in Ontario, told independent journalist Macdonald Stainsby that "The 
council and the chief make a good living, and get a very good income. In 
this very poor community, that's why people join the council. They have 
no real power, but they are scared to risk their funding."

In a communiqué sent after the meeting, Manuel raises yet another major 
issue not mentioned in media reports. Since Lester Pearson, the federal 
government has insisted on calling its funding to band councils 
"humanitarian assistance", instead of its legal obligation under 
Canadian law. Manuel writes:

   We view programs and services as part payment from the Canadian and 
provincial governments using and benefiting from our lands. The AFN and 
[others] have let the Canadian and BC government off-the-hook by 
unlinking programs and services from Aboriginal and Treaty Rights.

Why aren't these challenges to the most basic assumptions upon which the 
plan to "lift natives out of poverty" is based reported in the media?

Is it because the claims are outlandish? Probably not. The 1996 Royal 
Commission report came to essentially the same conclusions outlined above.

According to the Commission,

   Aboriginal peoples' right of self-government within Canada is 
acknowledged and protected by the constitution. It recognizes that 
Aboriginal rights are older than Canada itself and that their continuity 
was part of the bargain between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people 
that made Canada possible.

The remaining explanation is that instead of understanding things as 
they are, journalists chose the shortcut of understanding things the way 
the political establishment presents them. Whether journalists were 
unable to look beyond the official line, were not allowed to, or didn't 
want to, is a analysis for another day--analysis that requires insider 
access. That Canada's journalists told a woefully incomplete story, 
however, is a matter of the public record.



-- 
Macdonald Stainsby
http://independentmedia.ca/survivingcanada
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope
    --Bertholt Brecht.