4 — Wednesday, September 23, 1992 - North Shore News Indian leaders do not speak for all indians 1 SPENT three days in the feothilis of the Rockies over the Labour Day weekend, sitting in on long meetings with ' natives and white environmentalists. . Sometimes we sat around a, fireplace in the warmth of a large log house, sometimes in a barn, sometimes around open-pit fires in teepees, and once I went riding ~ with a group along the Athabasca | River. : A blizzard greeted me when I arrived on the Friday night. Snow fell all through Saturday. In fact, that night, the Sacred Fire at the centre of the encampment with its 20-foot-high teepees almost went cut. Sunday dawned white-shrouded and glistening. But by afternoon, the skies had cleared, like a hood being thrown back, revealing the ‘silver necklaces of the mountains. And on the last day, we - gathered in a circle in brilliant September Alberta sunlight around the Sacred Fire. Yours truly had learned much. - Some of it wasn’t “‘new’’ in the sense of being a new piece of his- tory. But i¢ was new in the sense of there being a iiving human per- sonality in front of me, making the abstract real. _ knew from my readings that many native people, whose race is described ir white history books as having been exterminated, nevertheless continue to exist. Still, it was something else to talk to a Saulteaux who cannot get a visa because the bureaucrats in the Indian Affairs Department insist his bloodline ran out a long time ago. It docsn’t matter what his grandmother says, apparently. Or his mother and father. And certainly none of them have any rights to anything ever guaranteed in any treaties signed . by their ancestors, since they have _ conveniently become ‘‘extinct.”’ The '‘‘cracks”’ of history run deep. Canadian history is no ex- ception. There is a lot that never quite gets incorporated into the main body of national mythology. Certainly, when the history of Canada's renewed constitution is written, we are not likely to find much about the Indians who did not agree with the deal. Just-like my Saulteaux friend’s trital identity, it will have vanish- éd ‘from the official record. - Since Day Cne of the occupa- . tion of Casada by Europeans, the ” » technique has betn to divide and . conquer. -. Most of.us, I dare say, think the “dividing” bit applied to the divisions between tribes and native nations ‘that were so slyly ex- ploited by the likes of Champlain and Cartier. *- In fact, thé most successful bit . + of dividing was the work done on ". the reserves after treaties were signed. Or; in:the case of B.C., :.. ‘after'the Indian Act was pro- claimed and natives given a : Straightforward take-it-or-leave-it ‘proposition, basically at gunpoint. Under the Indian Act, elected ': band councils were ordered into “ existence. . ~ This had the wonderful appear- “+ ance of being highly democratic, whereas its main function was to . Greate a new alien orders of guv- - €mmment much more responsive to CGttawa than the indigenous lead- ‘ership could be expected to be. . To this day, every reserve in Canada has a basic split between the hereditary chiefs and the elected chiefs, between the tradi- ‘. tionalists and the band council. Sometimes this is overcome by a - hereditary chief running for Bob Hunter STRICTLY PERSONAL elected office and winning. But nine times out of 10, the heredi- tary bloodline families exist as a kind of government-in-exile, with the power-making decisions all being in the hands of the elected band chief and council. Republicans and Jiberals alike may applaud this. Essentially, we are talking about deposed monar- Chies. But the obvious truth is that since the band councils are largely dependent on Ottawa for their funding 2s well as their iegitimacy, they tend not to rock the boat as much as traditionalists adhering to the ‘old ways’’ might. The highest-paid job is that of chief. It’s a government job, of course. Council members aiso get che- ques from Ottawa. Everyone learns how to play games with the Indian Affairs bureaucracy. The winners get to fly around a fair amount, attending con- ferences. They get to hire lawyers and consultants. Some of them move to Ottawa and become ‘‘Gucci Indians,"’ feeding off the native affairs gov- 2rament-industry complex. The despair of traditionalists, meaning the medicine men, healers, pipe-carriers, hereditary clan chiefs, Longhouse People, whatever they're called, is that all self-government will do is en- trench the current white man’s way of running things. In this view, when Indians put on suits, they become ‘‘suits,”” and that’s all there is to it. They are co-opted, and the ‘“‘native way”’ slips ever further into the background. The natives J talked with over the Labour Day weekend were firmly of a mind that the most to be expected from the constitutional deal was some mil- quetoast form of municipal gov- ernance. “Sovereignty’’ is what they believe they always had. And that’s what they want again.. There was no ‘‘grand chief” in the old days. How could he speak for all the native nations when it would be impossible even to know all their languages, let alone their dreams and wants? What percentage of native peo- ple the traditionalists represent is a good question. The best guess ! could get from anyone was that it might range from 15 to 30%. Not enough to derail the constitution Iron Horse. But a factor to bé kept in mind, especially by those, like me, who presume to think that Indian leaders speak for all Indians. 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