4 — Sunday, September 20, 1992 - North Shore News

Natives knock deal made by ‘Indians in suits’

iT SHOULD have come as
no surprise, but during my
brief sojourn over the
Labour Day weekend at a -
meeting of natives and en-
vironmentalists in the foot-
hills of the Rockies some
three hours west of Edmon-
ton, I made the beiated
discovery that the constitu-
tional deal is not loved by

_ all Indians.

Bob
Hunter

STRICTLY PERSONAL

In fact, at least so far as the
ones I talked to were concerned, it
was a total crock, the final nail in
the coffin built for native cultures
by neo-coionialism.

That it was negotiated by “In- :
dians in suits’? made it, if any-
thing, less digestible to the people
Iwesamong. —

This was rather embarrassing _
for me.

Less than a week before, | had
rather presumptuously written a ”
column arguing that the only good

_ season for voting in favor of the
new constitutional deal was the
section granting natives the right
to self-government, with a five-
year phase-in period in which to
define what self-government
means. - .

There was little else I could see

in the deal that serves the pur-
poses of British Columbians or
Albertans; unless you accept the
argument that a united Canada is
worth almost any internal political
pricetag.
.. If this seems extreme, to fancy
that the aboriginal self-govern-
ment clause outweighs the long-
term unfairness of the entrenched

"Quebec guarantee of seats (plus

continued senate patronage anda .

hammerlock on the prime
ministership) “for eternity,”* 1” It
admit it's a bloody odd position
relative to any mainstream Cana-
dian mindset.

But I’m stuck, for whatever
reasons, with the notion that
Canada’s foundations must be
rebuilt from the ground upward,
since the nation was originally a
prize of war: an ugly century-long
war involving genocide and crimes
against humanity, as we would.
currently judge such 2 conquest.

To correct such a wrong by the
return of something which was
never knowingly surrendered —
namely self-government — is a
tiny price to pay for being abie to
say that you are the loyal citizen
of a truly just and honorable and
legitimate nation-state. .

Canada doesn’t deserve to be |
viewed in such a light yet. And
never will until the ‘‘Indian issue’’
is resolved.

The issue involves the very soul
of the country, if such a term isn’t
pure fancy.

Certainly, i in legal terms,
Canada is in deep do-do interna-
tionally when it comes to the great
question of the ownership of what
we like to call British Columbia,
where, except for a handful of
minuscule exceptions, mainly on
Vancouver Island, no treaties were
signed.

Ergo, the very terms under
which B.C. entered Confederation

are fraudulent.

The relative handful of whites
who voted to join Canada did not
so much as consult the native ma-
jority of the population of the
day, let alone allow them to vote.

At the time, under the terms of
the British North America Act, it
was considered “‘treason’’ against
the King if anyone seized Indian
lands ‘‘beyond the Treaty fron-
tier.””

Almost every acre of present-
day B.C. was beyond the Treaty
frontier, which mostly ended in
the Alberta foothills.

This is the dark secret lurking at

the heart of the country construed

. atthe moment as ‘‘Canada.”’

“A big hunk of it —~ B.C. —
isn’t really, under British faws of
precedent, a legal part of anything
except itself. In the end, nearly
any non-Canadian court is bound
to agree.

This isn’t a big secret. I believe

most lawyers understand this
perfectly, regardiess.of what a
string of white judges may have
had to say to justify continued
white occupation over “the years.

OK, given the legal snafu of
B.C. having legitimately entered
Confederation, what else is there
to consider?

: Well, you ask, what good does
native self-government do any-
body besides natives?

The answer is that it could end
the uncertainty that right now is
tying up development in any
number of sectors. A wobbly table
is a poor setting for any economic
games.

The forestry and mining sectors,
for instance, would welcome some
kind of stability.

What does big industry care,
really, with whom it deals? It’s
like the Hollywood producer who
phones and has only one question:
““wWho owns the property?”

At the other end of political re-
ality, I have listened to Ovide
Mercredi tell a huge group of
white businessmen and bankers,
quite bluntly: ‘‘As soon as our
land claims are settled, you will
have to do business with us. So
get used to it.’’

Businessmen and bankers are
pragmatic types. They just want
to know what the rules are.
They’ ll hire lawyers to try to get
around them, but they have to
have something to work with.

It was an interesting contrast to
go from listening to a speech by
Mercredi (a couple of months ago)
in one of the glittering ballrooms
of the Royal York Hotel in
Toronto, to an encampment of .
native elders, activists, healers,
drummers, pipe-carriers and war-
tiors in the snow-whipped foot-
hills of the Rockies.

So far as these natives were
concerned, Ovide Mercredi, Grand

Chiet of the Assembly of First
Nations, is at best, an “Uncle
Tom,” and at worst, a Judas.

The same applied, they were
convinced, to Ron George, presi-
dent of the Native Council of
Canada.

I found this attitude toward

_both men hard to take, since f
knaw Ron George personally, and
have been impressed by what I
heard from Ovide Mercredi, al-
though in both cases, I noticed,
like all leaders, they have egos. So
what else is new?

Yet who am I to deny the evi-
dence that native communities —
probably all 600-and-something
of them — are bitterly divided on
constitutional reform?

The media, following govern-
ment’s lead, may have décided
that a few native men in suits
speak for all Indians, but it just
ain’ttrue. —

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