Articles

AFN Chief Phil Fontaine made the call for immediate action to address the situation of Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

The call was answered in over 100 locations across Canada, where people stopped traffic, trains, and TV news on June 29, 2007.

      At the end of the first National Day of Action, June 29, the AFN press release explained:

“The national chief called on the federal government to honour its promises to First Nations; to implement the plan agreed to at the first ministers meeting on aboriginal issues in Kelowna, BC; to apologize to survivors of residential schools; and to work with First Nations to give life to their rights as recognized in Canada’s constitution.”

In 2008, the Prime Minister made an apology in June, and in 2009, Canada took over the date for the National Day of Action - and called it Canada's Aboriginal Day.

  On September 29, 1974, the Native Peoples Caravan arrived in Ottawa. From uprisings that summer at the Two Springs occupation in Secwepemc and the reoccupation of Anishinaabe Park by the Ojibway Warriors Society, the Caravan was joined by people from coast to coast.

That night they caucused at a secret location, and on the morning of September 30, they made their way to Parliament Hill.

“The RCMP had the guns, the bayonets and the tear gas; we had a drum and a sheet of paper with our demands.” – Louis Cameron, Ojibway Warriors Society.

 With the recent Haida agreement, “Rising Tides,” where British Columbia recognizes Haida title to its lands and waters as “Aboriginal title,” we are forced to wonder: is this the same “Title” that Indigenous Peoples west of the Rocky Mountains have been roadblocking, litigating, and petitioning international courts for?

No doubt the Haida have little intention of relinquishing their inherent ancestral titles and rights, their internationally recognized Peoples’ rights to self-determination and control of their own natural wealth. But reading the Agreement reveals there is no doubt the province intends to minimize its recognition of what that entails.

  We definitely don’t know what “reconciliation” is. 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Canada, did not offer a definition and did not have one written into its mandate. In fact, the TRC’s Call to Action #65 recommends the government work with policy and educational institutes to define “reconciliation.”

We do know a lot about what Canadian reconciliation isn’t. It’s not a legally defined process. It’s not binding. It has not been, and will not be, overseen by an independent, impartial, third party. It clearly does not mean that the RCMP will stop terrorizing and arresting land defenders when “negotiations” reach an impasse and courts won’t stop finding them guilty and jailing them.

We know how the police and RCMP think about reconciliation. The cops sent to stand off against the Gidimt’en roadblock were heavily armed, and they arrested people with guns drawn. They referred to their guns as “reconciliation sticks.” 

A five-part series.

  Reflecting on two centuries since Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. McIntosh, 1823

When Europeans found out about North America, they fought each other – and made treaties with each other – for the right to exclusive trading and treaty making there.

    But in 1823, the exact meaning of French, Spanish, and British dealings on the Atlantic coast of this continent were the subject of an elaborate judicial review by US Chief Justice John Marshall. The case at trial was a question of whether inheritors and tenants of land bought from the Illinois and Piankeshaw could keep their arrangement after the nations’ leadership made a treaty with the USA.

 WARNING – this article refers to abuse of children.

Two Indigenous people, a married couple, were sentenced on Friday June 23, the foster parents of young Indigenous siblings. They were charged with assault and manslaughter and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Our deepest condolences go to the children’s family, the perpetrators’ families, and the Sto:lo people in whose community these events – which are not unique – have unfolded.

That Sto:lo community is not alone, not in any part of this tragedy. The incomprehensible hurt and loss of innocent Indigenous children is part of a much larger, much older, ongoing and world-famous Canadian assault on Indigenous Peoples.

Back to its grass roots: can new AFN leadership make change?

“Truth before reconciliation.” 

This summer the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) has been refreshed by a certain candidate running for National Chief, whose participation lends the organization rare credibility.

Russell Diabo knows he has quite a mountain to climb in order to win. But he is already achieving one objective: to use the candidacy as a platform to alert the Chiefs and the people to a dramatic and impending crisis in Canadian legislation affecting the Indigenous.