The Star obtained documents through Access to Information legislation that show a handful of residents was angry enough about the way Chief Theresa Spence was managing the housing shortage that they filed complaints with Aboriginal Affairs.
The Cree community of 2,000 declared a state of emergency at the end of October last year as winter approached with some families living in makeshift housing, sometimes without plumbing or insulation.
The Conservative government responded by appointing a third-party manager tasked with taking control of band council spending and ordering an independent audit of its books. The government later bought 22 modular homes and renovated three existing houses.
The community kicked the third-party manager out of Attawapiskat and then fought his appointment all the way to federal court before losing the case. The third-party manager left Thursday.
It was the decision to oppose the third-party manager that had one unidentified resident writing an email to the Assessment and Investigation Services Branch at Aboriginal Affairs, which handles allegations and complaints about the conduct of First Nation, Métis and Inuit government bodies.
“The community have some concerns about the ‘elected leaders’ for failing to meet with the membership prior to calling on the emergency response. Furthermore, the community are not in agreement that the band council and the chief booted out the 3rd party manager,” the complainant wrote on Dec. 7.
“They are questioning their campaign introduced by MP Charlie Angus,” the email continued, referring to the NDP MP for Timmins-James Bay who brought international attention to the situation in Attawapiskat. “We are tired of him using our community for his political scores.”
The documents show that the same person had contacted the government earlier regarding “unspecified allegations of misuse of public funds” in Attawapiskat.
Spence did not respond to multiple requests by telephone and email for an interview this week, but Angus chalked the complaints up to ordinary “infighting” common to First Nations communities.
“You have people who are basically coming from the same families and they’re living on top of each other, so whenever a decision is made in any community I have been in, there is a lot of talking back about it,” Angus said Friday. “I don’t think this is indicative of anything in Attawapiskat that I haven’t seen in other communities, where people are pretty desperate and pretty poor and have very few options.”
Another resident wrote to the investigations branch on Oct. 13 — before the community declared its state of emergency — to complain about the way the band council spends money.
“We have so much power and control issues within our own governance and our programs dollars are not being used where it is suppose to utilized . . . Our concerns have been mounting since we asked direct questions to our past and present leaders in the community in regards to our housing, water quality, employment and social impacts since the (De Beers diamond) mine opened but no avail,” the complainant wrote.
The government censored names of complainants and details of specific allegations before releasing the documents to the Star.
Another resident caught the attention of the investigations branch after sending an email to a department official on Dec. 5 detailing what Chris Pierre, manager of investigations, called “serious issues” and “misuse of Aboriginal Affairs funds” in follow-up emails.
Aboriginal Affairs spokeswoman Geneviève Guibert wrote in an email Friday that the government could not comment on any of the complaints because “this issue remains in litigation.”
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Joanna Smith
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