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Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde, elected on Wednesday, has made his priority clear: “To the people across the great land, I say to you, that the values of fairness and tolerance which Canada exports to the world, is a lie when it comes to our people.” The national chief then declared that First Nations expected a far greater share of the country’s prosperity: “To Canada, we say, for far too long we have been dispossessed of our homelands and the wealth of our rightful inheritance.”
To most Canadians, Chief Bellegarde’s statement seems provocative, if not radical. Conditioned to believing that First Nations simply stand before the government of Canada, cap in hand, demanding additional funding, the general public likely looks on the latest call to action as yet another money grab. It is nothing of the sort.
The national chief, in calling for aboriginal people to receive a “rightful” share of the country’s prosperity, is asserting the First Nations’ expectation that resource-revenue sharing will become the norm across Canada. Only a few decades ago, such an argument would have been rejected out of hand.
Governments provided a variety of social welfare, housing and other payments, a process that cost the Department of Indian Affairs a great deal of money but did little to address the underlying socio-economic needs of aboriginal communities.
First Nations wanted something different. They believed, as Bellegarde himself has said many times, that the historical treaties only transferred land “to the depth of the plough,” leaving the question of control of the wealth below the surface unresolved. In non-treaty areas, where First Nations’ claims to the land and resources remained unresolved, it seemed obvious to aboriginal people that they deserved a share in the natural bounty of their territories.
In recent years, federal, provincial and territorial governments reconsidered their earlier stance and instituted several forms of resource-revenue sharing. The concept is simple: Governments receive financial benefits, in the forms of royalties, from companies developing natural resources.
For the rest of this column, click here: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/12/12/ken-coates-a-fair-deal-for-natives/