Idle No More and the Audit of Chief Spence's Band

[ronthecivil]

Hate to mimic a Wetcoaster post (more in the context of an agreement rather than AA), but the US thinking is not honouring agreements with natives. In Canada we think of it a little differently. An agreement is an agreement. Don't make the ones you can't keep. OTOH, the gamemanship of this is getting out of hand.

[Wetcoaster]

Most of the agreements with regards to natives were made well before I was born and I had no part in making them.

Ergo I would have no problem whatsoever breaking them.

However I wouldn't just let natives starve to death I would work with them to allow them to participate in society while maintaining their culture, if that's what they wanted.

If not I would simply reduce funding to zero and if they sued me I would use the not withstanding clause to quash the court cases before they even began.

[ronthecivil]

Here is an article by journalist and author Terry Glavin who has written on aboriginal affairs and aboriginal history setting out the internal politics of the Idle No More movement in which he says a small group of activists who are politically opposed to the current AFN leadership have obstructed progress and continue to do so.

AFN obstructionists will stop at nothing

By Terry Glavin, Ottawa Citizen January 16, 2013

Let’s say that somehow, the eruption we’ve all agreed to call Idle No More results in a historic breakthrough between Ottawa and Canada’s diverse and deeply troubled First Nations.

Let’s say the covenant recognizes and affirms aboriginal and treaty rights and contains a specific, collaborative action plan to deal with the urgent challenges of aboriginal childhood education, economic development, First Nations governance and accountability. Plus it comes with a startup $275 million just to be sure the rubber hits the road. And it’s announced at a historic gathering in Ottawa with the senior First Nations chiefs, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and even Governor-General David Johnston.

Now let’s say along comes an obstructionist “movement” that masquerades as militant but is really a minority faction of eccentric and reactionary Indian band chiefs who are hopelessly devoted to the status quo. They set out to methodically undermine the agreement. They hijack the work plan. Within a year they’ve pretty well sabotaged the whole thing.

You would not know it for all the pageantry and the rhetoric about genocide and treaties and insurrection, but that’s just one untold story of Idle No More so far. There was such an agreement. It was called the Joint Action Plan, dated June 9, 2011. It was systematically derailed, piece by piece, and its saboteurs are now among the loudest and most theatrical characters in the Idle No More drama.

It’s what British Columbia regional chief Jody Wilson-Raybould was talking about when she told the CBC last Sunday: “No one should use those movements as political opportunities to play power politics within the AFN.” But the opportunities have been taken, the power politics have been played, and for all the unhinged activist denunciations of the ruling Conservatives, it is the Assembly of First Nations that has been nearly riven asunder by all this.

It is not our sinister genius of a prime minister who’s in sick bay on doctor’s orders this week (pollster Ipsos-Reid reported Tuesday that the prime minister’s approval ratings are just fine). It’s Shawn Atleo, the visionary 46-year-old AFN national chief and co-author of the 2011 Joint Action Plan. Chief Atleo is expected to be off work pulling knives out of his back for perhaps two weeks.

This is not to traduce those four Saskatoon women whose earnest if unhelpfully paranoid reading of the 457-page parliamentary indignity packaged as Bill C-45 set off the Idle No More flash mobs in the first place. And great tribute is owed those thousands of aboriginal people who have marched in the snow, jingle danced at the mall and paraded down Main Street.

But to regard every harmless sidewalk gathering of drummers and singers as somehow ominously newsworthy is tolerable only until actual “news” occurs and it isn’t even noticed. Like last Sunday, when Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan unveiled a $330.8-million investment in water and sewer systems in First Nations communities across the country, along with a long-term strategy to fix the drinking-water mess that afflicts so many Indian reserves.

Maybe it wasn’t that big a deal, but perhaps if Duncan had dressed up like Sir Isaac Brock, shuttle-bused the Ottawa press gallery down to Queenston Heights and acted out the lines of the announcement in interpretive dance, you might have at least heard about it.

Not that “social media” have helped to clarify much.

Everyone from James Bay Cree Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come to New Democratic Party Leader Thomas Mulcair has expressed the wish that Attawapiskat Chief Theresa “willing to die for my people” Spence would just knock it off and go home. Even the Aboriginal People’s Television Network calls Chief Spence’s hunger strike at the Victoria Island aboriginal folk park merely a “liquids-only fast.”

But here’s what you get from the activist webzine The Canadian Progressive: “Hunger-striking Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Theresa Spence is the reincarnation of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. She is becoming the greatest moral and political leader of our time. In fact, Chief Theresa Spence’s courage and sacrifice already eclipses that of South Africa’s globally celebrated anti-apartheid icon, Nelson Mandela.”

It took only two months for an Internet meme to morph into a national news obsession. Now it’s the main alibi available to the bullying, anti-democratic minority that’s been paralyzing the AFN all along. Among the faction’s most prominent personalities are Manitoba Chief Derek Nepinak, Onion Lake Cree Chief Wally Fox and Serpent River Chief Isadore Day. These are the stout lads who came to Parliament Hill Dec. 4 intending to make a scene, purportedly about Bill C-45, and immediately resorted to roughhousing with House of Commons security guards for the television cameras.

Last February, only a month after the historic Crown-First Nations gathering in Ottawa, Chief Fox scored his first direct hit when he convinced the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations to reject the Crown-First Nations joint action plan in its entirety. The plan’s centrepiece was its far-reaching overhaul of and investment in aboriginal education.

The obstructionists boycotted the AFN’s own internal education task force and then had the gall to protest a lack of consultation when Atleo and Minister Duncan hammered out the beginning of a legislative strategy.

By last October, after a three-day session led mainly by Chief Nepinak, Atleo emerged to announce grimly that even his beloved education plan was history.

Then there’s Pam Palmater, the Rabble.ca columnist and Mi’kmaq academic whom Atleo thrashed in a 341-141 vote in last summer’s AFN elections. Palmater campaigned on the nasty claim that Atleo had “gone rogue” and was quietly collaborating with the incorrigibly right-wing Stephen Harper to transform the AFN into “the Assimilation of First Nations.” By late December, Palmater had emerged as the most prominent official spokesperson and organizer for Idle No More.

By last week, Nepinak, Fox and the rest were forming up in entourage behind Chief Spence in a grotesquely staged fiasco that was aimed solely at bullying the AFN executive to boycott the meeting Chief Atleo and Prime Minister Harper had managed to arrange in the Langevin Block. The obstructionists failed. But they haven’t stopped.

Last Sunday, Ernie Crey, the former United Native Nations vice-president who was the first aboriginal leader to openly question the motives of certain of Idle No More’s slickest champions, told me: Just watch, these demagogues have already insinuated themselves into Idle No More’s national spotlight and they’ll soon be busy “hounding the national chief from office.”

Two days later, APTN National News’s Jorge Barrera, on agreement that he wouldn’t name names, acquired a string of emails circulating in the obstructionist camp. One chief said Chief Atleo’s sudden medical leave had the “stench of seeking pity” about it. Another joked that Chief Atleo might prefer to take up some “less stressful position” in British Columbia. Another wrote that Chief Atleo should take “permanent leave.”

After losing to Atleo in last summer’s AFN elections, Pam Palmater declared: “We’re going to keep going. This is a movement that won’t stop now.” This isn’t the note one strikes in a graceful concession speech. Palmater wasn’t talking about Idle No More, either, when she said, “Our movement is strong.”

It certainly is. It’s just not quite the same “movement” we’ve all been hearing about.

Terry Glavin is an author and journalist whose most recent book is Come From the Shadows.

http://www.ottawacit...l#ixzz2IGD3wumP

[ronthecivil]

That is a bizarre take on what is a binding contract.

[ronthecivil]

Sorry... what is your objection to lawyers becoming very very rich???

[Wetcoaster]

I would say default is more likely than an agreement being made. Binding contracts are only binding so far as one as the ability to enforce it.

A negotiated settlement is just as much fantasy, especially with the vested interests that can derail a settlement even if one is made.

[ronthecivil]

???

You do realize these contracts (treaties and such other agreements) along with the Royal Proclamation of 1763 are entrenched in the Constitution and enforceable as such?

/topic/337885-idle-no-more-and-the-audit-of-chief-spences-band/page__st__30#entry11052134">http://forum.canucks...0#entry11052134

In any event contracts as a general rule are enforceable against successor parties unless the contract happens have a specific term.

[Wetcoaster]

But how would they enforce it?

Setting the INAC budget to zero is obviously extreme but moving forward the amount of taxpayers is going to go down significantly while the number of people that have status is going to go up (it's the only real segment of society with a high birth rate).

What happens if we get into a situation where we can't pay it anymore?

[ronthecivil]

As Wewaykum suggests, general principles set out in these and other decisions do not finally determine the precise scope of fiduciary obligations that may be owed by the Crown to a given Aboriginal group in a given set of circumstances. Cases in which these matters are pivotal to Aboriginal claims will continue to come before Canadian courts with regularity, where they are to be decided on a case-specific basis within the general guidelines articulated by the Court

[Wetcoaster]

Well, set budget to zero, and make them hire lawyers to fight the country in court. Do this over and over again. Appeal every decision. Be at obstructionist as the small group that fights against any sort of deal to end this broken system.

Make it clear that every penny will have to be fought for and every delay will be made.

Fight the system as hard as the groups behind Idle no more are fighting to preserve it.

In a future where every sort of potential spending measure will already be cut, where few if anyone will be willing or able to lend money, and where resource revenues could be miniscule don't be shocked if taxpayers revolt and refuse to honor their fiduciary duty even if it's legislated on them.

[ronthecivil]

That is a bizarre strategy and one that the courts would likely penalize with punitive and/or exemplary damages for breaching the owed fiduciary duty acting in bad faith.

[Wetcoaster]

So we have a system of escalating costs that we have no control over, no hope of changing, destined to balloon indefinitely with zero control over how the money in this system is allocated or the ability to measure it's effectiveness.

Great system we've been saddled with.

I would have no problem with the government using the non-withstanding clause as many times as needed to destroy it.

Though if some native leaders have their way the economy will be destroyed and it won't matter since when the economy goes to tatters it tends to bring a lot of things with it.

[ronthecivil]

You might not have a problem with the notwithstanding clause but the government would - both morally and legally.

The notwithstanding clause does not apply to the sections entrenching Aboriginal rights.

[Wetcoaster]

Well, much like any other problem in society, we can keep kicking the can down the road. But the longer we take to fix things the more costly and more traumatic the change will be, regardless of the reasons we have had to put it off.

Many countries (in fact some some even recently) have completely switched over their constitution in whole because of how previous ones have separated people into different classes.

Will our country have to undergo a revolution to resolve this mess? I sure hope not, but if it is not solved one day it will.

You can put your eggs in the negotiated change basket but while some people have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are (the various oligarchs of the little kingdoms around the country) and have the ability to derail any sort of change even if in the minority as we are seeing right now then unfortunately there is little that can be done.

Either the oligarchs that stand in the way of change have to go or our paternalistic system has to go. History shows that such systems are unsustainable. Particularity as the majority of people paying the bills and an ever increasing number of those that are in the system tire of it's excess and waste at the expense of the countries worst off.

[Wetcoaster]

Buckingham Palace has responded to Chief Spence's request for the Queen to intervene directly submitted by a third party.

The answer is NO -

In a letter dated Jan. 7, obtained by The Canadian Press, Buckingham Palace tells a supporter of Spence that the chief should deal instead with the federal cabinet.

"This is not a matter in which The Queen would intervene," says the letter.

"As a constitutional Sovereign, Her Majesty acts through her personal representative, the Governor General, on the advice of her Canadian Ministers and, therefore, it is to them that your appeal should be directed."

http://www.cbc.ca/ne...nce-appeal.html

[sixwings]

Spence should continue her "hunger strike" until she meets the Queen now.

[Common sense]

"Hunger" strike? I can't believe even this fooled Buckingham Palace....

[Wetcoaster]

Reports are the Queen was not amused.

[Common sense]

Reports are the Queen was not amused.

[YaK]

Buckingham Palace has responded to Chief Spence's request for the Queen to intervene directly submitted by a third party.

The answer is NO -