4 - Wednesday, Nov. 4, 1992 - North Shore News

Aboriginal self-gov’t train cat be derailed

Bob
Hunter

STRICTLY PERSONAL

FOR THE record, I believe
I was the first columnist in
any of the dailies or
weeklies in Canada to ques-
tion the assumption that
native people were over-
whelmingly in favor of the
constitutional deal.

On Sept. 20, 1 noted that In-
dian leaders like Ovide Mercredi
and Ron George, dedicated and
well-intentioned as they were, did
not speak for ail Indians.

First of all, they could not
speak for all Indians any more
than Brian Mulroney or Audrey
McLaughlin could speak for all
non-native Canadians.

Probably, Ron George more
closely represented his constitue-
ncy — the off-reservye, non-status
and mixed-blood members of the
Native Council of Canada ~-
because he doesn't have to con-
tend with an army of other chiefs.

The problem faced by Mercredi,
trying to represent the reserves,
was that most, if not all, reserves
are permanently divided among
themselves.

That was presumably one of the
goals of the architects of the orig-
inal Indian Act: structural
divisiveness.

Obviously, the system is still ef-
fective. One endangered entity
that survived the referendum nice-
ly was the Department of Indian
Affairs, where 6,000 almost en-
urely white Durcaucrats must have
been popping the bubbly when the
No vote came in.

If the referendum had passed,
they faced the ultimate prospect
of having to hand their jobs over
to Indians, and having to go look
for other work.

Traditionalists on the reserves, |
reported, could be counted on to
oppose the deal on the grounds

that the Charlottetown Accord
would have entrenched the band
council system once and for all by
putting control of funding into the
hands of the elected leaders and
the council's administrative
hierarchy.

Well, presumably putting fund-
ing into their hands. The whole
delicate issue of funding had been
left up in the air, hadn't it?

So, at best, all that could be
hoped for on the reserves would
be a two-thirds majority.

Amazing how quickly another
third of the vote can dissalve,
which is indeed what happened.
And in good measure precisely
because funding guarantees
weren’t spelled out.

The initial split on reserve after
reserve is between the elected
chiefs and their councillors on the
one hand and the medicine pceo-
ple, the hereditary chieftains’ fam-
ilies, and the warriors on the
other.

Sometimes there is overlap, as
when a hereditary chief wins the
elected chieftainship or one of his
family becomes a councillor.

But they can always be thrown
out, which of course can’t happen
in a hereditary system. (Witness
the British Royal Family and their
clan.)

Reserves are therefore hotbeds
of political infighting.

The seriousness with which local
politics is taken is magnified
enormously on reserves with high
unemployment levels, where posi-
tions on the band council are
among the few relatively lucrative
jobs available within hundreds of
miles.

There was no way of breaking it
down statistically for sure, but
based on conversations | had with
a group of Indians from across
the country in the foothills of
Alberta back in carly September,
my guess was that somewhere be-
tween 15% and 35% of the
reserves’ populations, the tradi-
tionalist clement, would definitely
vote No.

Back then, when this seemed
like a large number compared to
the popular impression that the
natives must be unanimously
behind the deal, since they were
being promised self-government, |
figured, even though there would
be a battle, the traditionalists
alonc wouldn't be **enough to
derail the constitution Iron
Horse."’

Obviously, they weren't alone,
The Iron Horse is stopped in its
tracks,

Be that as it may, my prediction
now is that the drive for self-

Man charged with theft

A 29-YEAR-OLD man_ faces
charges following a foiled theft.

According to a West Vancouver
Police spokesman, a police officer
was injured while investigating the
incident.

A police dog and its handler
were called to a British Properties
home in the 1300-block of
Camridge Road at 9:47 p.m. on
Oct. 30. The dog team tracked to
a nearby home where the police
investigator observed two males
running from a garage carrying a
box containing approximately 150
CDs.

The police officer ordered the
Pair to stop. The suspects dropped

the box and continued = their
escape.

The police dog apprehended one
of the suspects. The other suspect
escaped in a car.

The police officer was injured
when his arm was trapped in the
steering wheel of the vehicle. He
was dragged by the car for ap-
proximately 30 feet.

Alexander Gerard Blaauw. of
no fixed address, now faces
charges of break, enter and theft,
and possession of stolen property.
The second suspect escaped in the
car,

The police recovered property
stolen from two homes.

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government itself has gained toc
much momentum to be stopped.

Like it or not, we are in a new
era of relations with the 600-odd
stubborn little nations in our
midst, each of them a challenge to
our accepted modern ideas of
sovereignty and statehood.

More than a few national
observers have glumly reached the
conclusion that Quebec is on its
way out. Face it, the reserves are
basically on their way out too. Al-
though I don’t see any need to
feel glum about that.

Where they're going is an open
question, but | am curtain of a
few ‘‘givens’’ in all this.

First, Canadians do not have

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the will to keep native people
locked up in the bondage of the
Indian Act, now that they have
demonstrated so clearly how much
they want out — albeit on their
own terms,

They themselves have become
far too sophisticated to be
suckered in ever again.

They are not going to be forced
into any kind of ‘buffalo jump,”
as one native leader put it to me,
meaning they can’t be stampeded.

Secondly, the level of confron-
tation between natives and the
police (representing the rest of us)
is going to escalate unless Ottawa
and the provinces can find some
effective ways to release the

energy of all these built-up expec-
tations, especially on ‘front-line’?
reserves in the path of logging,
dams and development.

Out there in the bush, a state of
barely apprehended insurrection
has existed for a long, long time.
Barricades, blockades, demands,
drums, direct action. Expect more
of it, not less.

And thirdly, I suspect the
bloom of the relationship between
environmentalists and aboriginal
leaders is going to fade as some
reserves begin to assert themselves
economically to catch up with the
political transformation that has
taken place.

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