Aboriginal and Inuit Non-Mining Issues – Page 15

Declaration lets Spence save face, end protest after failing to secure meeting with PM and Governor General – by Jesse Kline (National Post – January 24, 2013)

January 24, 2013

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Theresa Spence Wednesday night officially ended her six-week-old protest, which saw her subsisting on a liquid-only diet. It followed intense behind-the-scenes bargaining that allowed her to save face in the eyes of the government, her people and the general public.

Ms. Spence did a great job of publicizing her issue, but as a politician, she leaves much to be desired. With Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo also announcing Wednesday he will return to work Thursday after a medical leave, future negotiations will hopefully be a little less chaotic, and a little more productive.

From the beginning, it has been clear that Ms. Spence was in way over her head. When the Attawapiskat Chief first set up camp on an island in the Ottawa River on Dec. 11, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was faced with a serious dilemma: Meeting personally with Ms. Spence would have set a dangerous precedent, and could have led to every Canadian who has a grievance with the federal government (there are many) threatening to kill themselves, should they not get the ear of the prime minister. On the other hand, if he let her die, he would forever be known as the prime minister who was too stubborn to save a life.

Neither was a good option for Mr. Harper, who expertly organized a meeting that included representatives of the AFN and other aboriginal leaders.

NEWS RELEASE: RESPONSE FROM MISSANABIE CREE FIRST NATION CHIEF REGARDING NATIONAL POST COLUMN

January 22, 2013

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

GARDEN RIVER, ON — Regarding an article published in the National Post January 8, 2013 where Glenn Nolan, a former Chief of the Missanabie Cree First Nation made comments regarding key First Nations issues and resource revenue sharing, current Chief Kim Rainville issues the following statement:

Let it be known that the support from the Missanabie Cree First Nation council and community have been instrumental in Mr. Nolan achieving his professional goals. Being the president of the Prospector’s and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) as well as an executive of a junior mining company embroiled in the Ring of Fire development, it would make it very difficult for Mr. Nolan to express support for such a significant movement as “Idle No More”. Mr. Nolan’s opinions do not reflect the belief of the Missanabie Cree First Nation regarding the actions taken by Attawapiskat’s Chief Spence or support of the Idle No More movement.

“I believe the agenda of the government smearing a courageous leader such as Chief Spence is reprehensible,” said Chief Kim Rainville. “To have it seemingly come from a former Chief undermines the changes which are being called for by the “Idle No More” movement and a denial of the realities faced by many first Nations citizens.”

The list of issues is long; inadequate housing, health care, education economic opportunities, youth suicide, family violence, policing and the list goes on. These are immediate issues which need to be addressed. Recognition of First Nation autonomy, sovereignty, changes to the Indian Act driven by a First Nations process are paramount to achieving our rightful place in society, resource revenue sharing but a component of righting the many injustices.

‘You gotta know how to do things yourself up here’: For modern reserves, success is in balancing tradition and capitalism – by Jonathan Kay (National Post – January 19, 2013)

January 21, 2013

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

When I talk with Abraham Metatawabin about his life in the bush, there is a communication problem. I do not speak Cree, and the 92-year-old Fort Albany, Ont., elder does not speak English. But even with his son Chris acting as translator, there is another, more basic impediment: The hunting, trapping and fishing methods he learned as a young child in the sprawling riverlands west of James Bay are so basic to his way of thinking that he doesn’t even think of them as activities requiring explanation, and so I have to keep interrupting him for more detail.

Commanding a team of sled dogs, building a shelter out of wood and cured animal hide, catching a pike dinner with nothing but a baitless hook: You either knew how to do these things in the bush, or you became a frozen, emaciated corpse.

I came to talk with Abraham at his home on the Fort Albany reserve not just because he is a link to a bygone era, but also because the Metatawabin family as a whole — of whom I met four generations, in three different communities, during my travels to James Bay this past week — constitutes a sort of living roadmap to the wrenching transformations that First Nations have endured over the last half-century.

Like most members of the Fort Albany First Nation, Abraham was brought up as a Catholic. But he still has strong memories of his grandfather, a traditional 19th-century medicine man whom the RCMP hunted as an outlaw. Abraham’s father was recruited out of the bush into the Canadian army, and fought the Germans in the First World War.

Why proposed federal legislation concerns First Nations – (Wawatay News – January 16, 2013)

January 18, 2013

http://wawataynews.ca/

Prepared by Lorraine Land, Liora Zimmerman and Andrea Bradley Dec. 20, 2012 of Olthuis Kleer Townshend – LLP

Bill C-38 Budget Omnibus Bill #1

This 450-page bill changed more than 70 federal acts without proper Parliamentary debate. This bill dramatically changes Canada’s federal environmental legislation, removing many protections for water, fish, and the environment. The changes were made without consulting First Nations.

Bill C-45 Budget Omnibus Bill #2

This second bill also exceeds 450 pages, and changed 44 federal laws, again without proper Parliamentary debate. This bill removes many fish habitat protections and fails to recognize Aboriginal commercial fisheries.

Changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act reduce the number of lakes and rivers where navigation and federal environmental assessment is required from 32,000 to just 97 lakes, and from 2.25 million to just 62 rivers. This means 99 per cent of Canada’s waterways lost their protection for navigation and federal enviro assessment purposes.

These changes were made without consulting First Nations.

Canada’s energy juggernaut hits a native roadblock – by Linada McQuaig (Toronto Star – January 15, 2013)

January 15, 2013

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Those who believe we can freely trash the environment in our quest to make ourselves richer suffer from a serious delusion — a delusion that doesn’t appear to afflict aboriginal people.

Aboriginals tend to live in harmony with Mother Earth. Their approach has long baffled and irritated Canada’s white establishment, which regards it as a needless impediment to unbridled economic growth.

Nowhere is this irritation more palpable than inside Stephen Harper’s government, with its fierce determination to turn Canada into an “energy superpower,” regardless of the environmental consequences. So it’s hardly surprising that the Harper government has ended up in a confrontation with Canada’s First Nations.

Certainly the prime minister has shown a ruthlessness in pursuing his goal of energy superpowerdom. He has gutted long-standing Canadian laws protecting the environment, ramming changes through Parliament last December as part of his controversial omnibus bill. He has thumbed his nose at global efforts to tackle climate change, revoking Canada’s commitment to Kyoto.

And he’s launched a series of witch-hunt audits of environmental groups that dared to challenge the rampant development of Alberta’s oilsands — one of the world’s biggest sources of climate-changing emissions — as well as plans for pipelines through environmentally sensitive areas.

First Nations leaders, Idle No More activists warn peaceful protests could turn into months-long blockades this spring – by Kathryn Blaze Carlson (National Post – January 15, 2013)

January 15, 2013

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

First Nations leaders and Idle No More activists have promised only peaceful protests on their national day of action Wednesday, but once the snow melts and warmer weather sets in, key highways — including the main road to Alberta’s Fort McMurray, a major oil production hub — could be blocked for days, weeks or even months, prompting what one chief called “chaos.”

These latest threats of economic upheaval come at a fragile moment in First Nations-Crown relations, especially now that National Chief Shawn Atleo announced on Monday that a regional chief will take over his duties while he takes a “brief” doctor-ordered stress leave.

Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam said that while there are no plans to shut down Highway 63, the only all-weather road to Fort McMurray, on Wednesday, the government should expect a months-long summer blockade if it does not repeal or amend its recently passed omnibus budget bill that made changes to the Indian Act and the Navigable Waterways Act.

“If we’re going to shut down that highway, we’re going to shut it down completely — and not just for one day,” he said, warning that “every major highway across the country” would fall to a similar fate. “It’s escalated to a point where people’s frustrations are beginning to run out, and when people’s frustrations run out, things happen.”

In Southern Ontario, Grand Chief Gordon Peters of the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians warned that Wednesday’s planned disruption along Highway 401 near Windsor is just a taste of what could come if the Harper government does not acquiesce.

Idle No More: A chance to repair a sad legacy – by Jim Coyle (Toronto Star – January 13, 2013)

January 14, 2013

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

The truth about stories, says the author and son of a Cherokee Thomas King, is “that that’s all we are.” It’s a notion at least as old as the Psalms. “We spend our years as a tale that is told.” And in our lifetimes, we’re shaped and guided by the stories we hear about who we are, where we come from, what we might be.

But stories can also be dangerous, King said in his Massey Lectures of 10 years ago. “So you have to be careful with the stories you tell. And you have to watch out for the stories you are told.”

As much as anything, Idle No More — born of a rally organized in Saskatoon in November by four aboriginal women — seems to be an attempt by Canada’s First Nations to insist that their story be reclaimed and heard, to galvanize their people and the wider public into addressing a long-standing national disgrace.

To get lost in the diet particulars of one hunger-striking chief in Ottawa, or the accounting idiosyncracies of one reserve’s band council, or a decision in Attawapiskat by a people grown wary of media to ban a TV crew, is to miss the larger and legitimate point of Idle No More and the opportunity it presents for essential change.

That drastic change is needed — at a time when the northwestern Ontario community of Pikangikum is called the suicide capital of Canada, and an inquest is soon to be held in Ontario into the deaths of seven native young people who died after leaving their remote home communities to pursue education in Thunder Bay — is beyond question.

A new Canada is at hand [Aboriginal issues] – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial (January 10, 2013)

January 12, 2013

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

WITH so much riding on Friday’s meeting between the leaders of two of Canada’s “nations,” there is a danger that the drama of Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence could detract from it. Spence is so the wrong person to be seen to be speaking for First Nations in general and the Idle No More movement in particular. Her hunger strike in a teepee — interspersed with a visit to a nearby hotel and some slumber time in a car — has been marked by shifting demands and her disingenuous response to the leaked audit of her impoverished band’s finances.

A chief who drives an Escalade while most about her scramble for basic shelter; who calls the absence of basic accounting for $100 million in public funds, largely intended for housing, a ruse to discredit her; and who questions the skills of a major financial institution for revealing the breathtaking irregularities of her own band management, does not deserve to be given credence at this crucial juncture in the life of Canada.

Who, then, does speak for First Nations in Friday’s meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and several of his ministers? Some First Nations leaders say that Shawn Atleo’s Assembly of First Nations, which convened this important meeting, does not speak for them. There are 617 First Nations in Canada, most of which are part of regional organizations like Nishnawbe Aski Nation here in the Northwest. First Nations and their umbrella groups all have chiefs. Hopefully, the select few chiefs present Friday are representative of most if not all of the more than 700,000 First Nations people.

The real story behind Attawapiskat’s problems – by Thomas Walkom (Toronto Star – January 9, 2013)

November 4, 2015January 9, 2013

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Making sense of Attawapiskat is not easy. The James Bay native community is synonymous with poverty. But it sits next to a diamond mine. Its chief, Theresa Spence, has become famous across Canada because of the hunger strike she is waging on an island in the Ottawa River.

She insists she’ll only consume liquids until Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets with her (which he has agreed to do). But what does Spence want from that meeting? This is less clear. She talks vaguely of a new relationship between aboriginal first nations and the federal government.

We now know, thanks to a detailed audit of Attawapiskat’s finances commissioned by Ottawa, that the first nation’s bookkeeping leaves much to be desired.

Auditors from Deloitte and Touche concluded that roughly 80 per cent of the detailed spending transactions they investigated came with little or no paperwork, making it unclear how the monies were spent.

Yet oddly enough, another auditing firm — this one based in Timmins — has regularly been okaying the band’s annual financial statements, all of which are available on the Attawapiskat website.

Six lessons from a brilliant, scathing year-old CBC report on Attawapiskat’s mismanagement – by Jonathan Kay (National Post – January 8, 2013)

January 8, 2013

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

CBC News made headlines on Monday by publicizing a scathing audit report on Attawapiskat, the impoverished northern Ontario Cree community led by hunger-striking chief Theresa Spence.

Yet you’ll find an even more searing indictment of Attawapiskat’s leadership in a televised report from the CBC’s Adrienne Arsenault. That segment is a year old, but it’s getting a new life on the internet thanks to a Twitter-based resurrection campaign led by blogger Richard Klagsbrun.

Watch the video: It’s shocking how many important lessons from Attawapiskat Ms. Arsenault manages to pack into just eight minutes.

1. The idea that the destitution of far-flung First Nations such as Attawapiskat is a result of Ottawa’s neglect is wrong. Ms. Arsenault’s quick tour of Attawapiskat — a place that then was supposed to have been in a housing crisis — shows a half-dozen well-constructed houses with no one living in them. When questioned about this total waste of resources, Chief Theresa Spence has no real answer.

2. In fact, Ms. Arsenault’s reporting suggests that the real problem in Attawapiskat is Ms. Spence’s own incompetent leadership — in which capacity she is aided by her live-in boyfriend Clayton Kennedy, who serves as the community’s manager. Neither apparently can be bothered to fill out the paperwork required to get needed resources from Ottawa, or even supply basic accounting information.

Audit nightmare: The RCMP, not Harper, should be meeting with Chief Spence – by Ezra Levant (Toronto Sun – January 8, 2013)

January 8, 2013

http://www.torontosun.com/home

A new audit of the Attawapiskat Indian reserve was released Monday. It was shocking. The accounting firm of Deloitte randomly chose 505 financial transactions, between April 1, 2005 and Nov. 30, 2011, to review. They found “81% of files did not have adequate supporting documents and over 60% had no documentation of the reason for payment.”

A lot of that money was supposed to go to housing. Attawapiskat is the reserve where some houses have leaky roofs, poor insulation, broken plumbing and are generally unfit for habitation. But Deloitte wrote, “There is no evidence of due diligence in the use of public funds, including the use of funds for housing.”

Deloitte can’t find where the money went. But maybe the long list of people on the band’s rich payroll might know, starting with Theresa Spence, the chief, or her boyfriend, Clayton Kennedy, who just happens to be the town’s financial manager. He bills the band $850 a day to manage their finances.

In fact, there are 21 politicians on the band payroll. Plus plenty of full-time staff. But Deloitte didn’t find that reassuring: “Attawapiskat First Nation did not provide us with any job descriptions for individuals who are involved in the financial management of funding agreements.”

Reserve squalor isn’t about funding, but where the money goes – by Lorne Gunter (Toronto Sun – January 6, 2013)

January 8, 2013

http://www.torontosun.com/home

Cash not the answer

Back in the fall of 2011 when Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence was first in the news, Mark Milke of the Fraser Institute produced a fascinating comparison of her reserve’s budget versus budgets for similar-sized non-aboriginal communities across the country.

Milke pointed out that Attawapiskat, a settlement with fewer than 1,600 residents, had an annual operating budget of nearly $32 million. Meanwhile, Atikokan, Ont., near Thunder Bay had almost 3,300 inhabitants — more than double that of Attawapiskat — and yet spent just $8.4 million providing municipal services. That’s one-quarter the budget for a town with twice the population, or $20,140 per capita in Attawapiskat versus $2,550 in Atikokan.

Spence’s complaint back then was that her reserve had too few houses for residents because Ottawa was giving it too little money. Milke’s point was that there was no shortage of funds, so the cause of Attawapiskat’s problems must lie elsewhere.

There are legitimate reasons why a reserve such as Spence’s might have to spend significantly greater amounts providing services.

For instance, while Atikokan is hardly central, Attawapiskat is truly far away from industrial civilization. What’s more, in Attawapiskat much of the employment is based on jobs created by the band government, whereas in Atikokan the private sector is the big employer. Plus the band is nearly the sole source of housing and health care.

A map of the future [Northwestern Ontario/Ring of Fire] – economically speaking – by David Robinson (Northern Ontario Business – January 2013)

January 7, 2013

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North. Dr. David Robinson is an economist at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada. drobinson@laurentian.ca

As minister of northern development and mines, Rick Bartolucci has published the most important development map of Northern Ontario. It isn’t a map of what he is doing, or even what he plans to do-this map shows what others have stopped doing. But with a bit of imagination the map also shows Northern Ontario’s future.

Strange to say, the map didn’t get into the Northern Growth Plan. Maybe the team that wrote the plan didn’t realize what they had. After all, why do we care where all the abandoned mines in Northern Ontario happen to be? It’s just one of the many neat maps available on the Ministry Northern Development and of Mines website.

It is the unsurprising information in this map that matters. The map shows that there are a lot of abandoned mines. We all knew that, although we probably didn’t know just how many. The map shows that mines tend to be found close to railroad lines and major highways. That isn’t very surprising either. The third, not very surprising but important fact, is there are only four abandoned mines in the northwest quarter of the province.

Female Newsmaker of the year [Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence] – by Lenny Carpenter (Wawatay News – January 3, 2014)

January 4, 2013

Northern Ontario’s First Nations Voice: http://wawataynews.ca/

Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence’s national spotlight for her fight to remove the third party manager assigned to her First Nation and her decision to go on a hunger strike last month makes her Wawatay’s female newsmaker of the year.

Following the housing crisis in her community at the end of last year, Spence continued to oppose the third party manager imposed upon the community by the federal government.

In January, after Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development of Canada (AANDC) Minister John Duncan accused Spence and the leadership of Attawapiskat of withholding information so that the third party manager could release funds for essential services, Spence issued a reply indicating that the manager’s fees were billed to the First Nation at a rate of $20,000 a month.

“Why should my First Nation be paying $1,300 a day for some firm to issue payroll cheques for my First Nation with our already limited Band Support Funding?” Spence asked in her letter to Duncan. “We do not need a high priced manager to issue cheques, because we are capable of issuing cheques and managing our business affairs.”

After a federal court declined to remove the third party manager on a temporary basis in February, Spence said the decision did not affect the First Nation’s overall legal challenge. She had filed a court injunction against AANDC in December.

When aboriginal conflicts aren’t stranger than fiction – by Christie Blatchford (National Post – January 4, 2013)

January 4, 2013

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

I started to read Doug Bland’s novel Uprising in 2009, shortly after it was first published.

I didn’t finish only because I was then embroiled in my own non-fiction account of the native occupation in Caledonia, Ont., three years earlier. As always for me, this is a time of great writerly insecurity, and I was afraid both of distraction and of being intimidated unto paralysis by the excellence of someone else’s book.

I still haven’t quite made my way through Uprising’s almost 500 pages, despite an all-day effort, but reading it now is considerably creepy-crawlier than it was before, amid the widespread protests, hunger strikes, flash mobs and assorted other actions of the aboriginal Idle No More movement.

Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Bland, until 2011 the Chair of Defence Management Studies at Queen’s in Kingston, was already a respected author when Uprising was released, but not of fiction.

In fact, he says, he wrote the first draft “as a typical academic book,” realized afterwards that the only people who would read it were other academics, and did it again as fiction.