“It is time we broke through the paralysis and endless broken promises and it is time to act,” National Chief Shawn Atleo told a news conference in Ottawa on Thursday that had been delayed by a day as the Assembly of First Nations continued discussing the demands they expected to put on the table.
Frustration over decades of disappointment was on display as chiefs warned Harper with an uncompromising tone to take this mission seriously or face the wrath of a young and energetic Idle No More protest movement prepared to disrupt the Canadian economy.
They also had a warning for Atleo, who late into the night Thursday was appealing to dissenting chiefs — including his main political rival — to focus on progress rather than logistics as they threatened to boycott the meeting unless it happened on their turf and their terms.
The Assembly of First Nations has come up with a list of short- and long-term demands that would lead to a restoration of the nation-to-nation relationship envisioned by treaties signed between indigenous peoples and the Crown in the 18th century and revamped for the modern day.
“The treaties were not meant to make us poor in our homelands, but that is what you see,” said Saskatchewan Regional Chief Perry Bellegarde, who appeared alongside Atleo and B.C. Regional Chief Jody Wilson-Raybould at the news conference.
The “high-level commitments” the chiefs are seeking from Harper include:
• a new institution through the PMO or the Privy Council Office to look at the implementation and enforcement of treaties;
• designating a minister, possibly Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, to bring together First Nations and provincial premiers to figure out how they can share revenues from resource development;
• a new “fiscal relationship” that would allow federal funding to increase with inflation and be based on total population living both on and off reserves;
• a public inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women;
• ensuring there is a school in every aboriginal community;
• reviewing the sections of recently passed omnibus budget implementation bills that have to do with environmental oversight to see if the Conservative government complied with its duty to consult First Nations.
Even as Atleo laid out his vision for a transformed relationship, he was coming under growing pressure from chiefs across Canada not to meet with Harper on Friday unless the prime minister comes to the downtown hotel where the Assembly of First Nations has been meeting this week and brings Gov. Gen. David Johnston with him.
Johnston has agreed to meet First Nations leaders, but at his Rideau Hall residence after the working meeting.
Pam Palmater, who placed second to Atleo in the Assembly of First Nations election last year, said Atleo has no authority to go to the meeting in the face of the chiefs’ opposition.
“If the AFN decided to go to that meeting against the will and decision of the chiefs, then the AFN would no longer be valid representative organization ... that’s as simple as it gets,” she told reporters.
Wallace Fox, chief of the Onion Lake Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, said First Nations leaders would have to control meeting’s agenda.
“No longer will the PM dictate to us. If we have to shut down this economy, then we will,” said Fox.
In own his remarks Thursday night, Atleo appealed for unity, saying that “difficult” work needs to be done.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Joanna Smith and Bruce Campion-Smith
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