By.PAUL OGRESKO
It was the year 2020 and the last Native
corporation in Canada was bought out by
Shell Canada. The buy-out coincided with the
selling off of the last reserve land of any value
10 a major logging company. The great
majority of the once more than 600 reserves in

the country were now merely ghost towns, the.

Indian people having moved to the cities in a
mass exodus that began in the 1980s.

In the inner cities of. Canada thousands of
Native people lived impoverished, sub-human
lives. Although comprising one in three of
those entering the labour force, people of
Native origin were largely relegated to the
lowest-paying, non-unionized jobs.

In various parts of the country Native
people protested for their rights, but it was too
little, too late. Aboriginal rights had long ago
been stricken from the Canadian Constitu-
tion. Land claims had been extinguished in
exchange for cash settlements that had been
Spent decades previous.

Virgin wilderness that had once been abo-
riginal land was now being mined for ura-
nium, the last forests were being logged and
the last rivers dammed so that the water could

_be sold to an increasingly parched United

States.

A few Native elders talked of things called
traditional values, living with the land, and
self-government but it was only amemory —
a thing of the past.

The leak of documents pertaining to a
Jan. 19 high-level meeting of Indian Affairs
officials has exposed the Mulroney govern-
ment’s plan to end federal responsibility for
aboriginal rights.

Included in the secret papers were plans
for a freeze on Native services, cutbacks and
transfers in funding, and the passing on of
federal responsibilities to the provinces.

Most important, the documents revealed
aboriginal rights are under an unprece-
dented attack from the Conservative
government, an attack that has been
underway since the Tory government
commissioned a secret task force under
then-deputy prime minister Erik Neilsen in

Letters

one, Fission seen a)

Tory plan would erode Native rights

tia no

o

HAID

Although the Mulroney government
vowed that it would never be implemented,
that report has laid the foundation for vir-
tually every move the Tories have made
since then.

Ina process which will gather steam if the
Meech Lake Accord is implemented, educa-
tion, job training, housing and health servi-
ces are being slashed. Responsibility for
these programs is being shifted to other
government agencies and the provinces,
and an increased load, under the heading of
“self-reliance,” is being placed on the Indian
bands themselves.

What the Conservatives are hoping to
create is a form of self-government where
federal responsibility for funding will be
eliminated and replaced, where necessary,
with provincial funding. The reserves will be

_ little more than municipalities —_ reliant

on outside funding and with no real com-
munity control.
It is a two-fold process: the ending of the

AS PROTEST LYELL ISLAND LOGGING, 1986 .

state’s necessity to negotiate real self-
government, and the gradual opening up of
aboriginal lands for resource exploitation

_by mining and logging corporations.

While the massive cutbacks are being
implemented, the Tories are developing
allies with. the numerically small, but
increasingly influential, business section of
the aboriginal community. Historically
there have always been chiefs who have
been totally reliant on federal patronage
and have been little more than yes-men for
the federal government. Today there is a
small sector of the aboriginal population
which is a capitalist class in ascendancy,
wishing to reap the rewards of exploiting
aboriginal land and the aboriginal labour
force.

The corporate model of Native self-
government has been tried and tested in
Alaska, where in exchange for selling off
their lands, the Alaskan Natives were given
money by the federal government to set up

U.S. veterans’ bill an intrusion

Bea Ferneyhough, Vancouver, writes (in a
letter to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney): I
wish to protest in the most vigorous fashion
any co-operation on the part of Canadian
medical, hospital, and any other authorities

concerned, in the implementing of the law
presently being promoted by U.S. President
Ronald Reagan to extend U.S. hospital
benefits to Canadians who went to Vietnam
as part of the military rape of that country.

Joan Jenkyn, Toronto, writes: Fred
Weir’s articles from Moscow are among
the most honest in any newspaper. The
reports from Afghanistan (April 25) and
Soviet Tajikistan (May 2) are very sensi-
tive to the interplay of Marxist-Leninist
ideology and Moslem culture.

Sometimes a correct statement can,
regretfully, generate emotionally-biased
prejudice. Our media is full of anti-Arab,
anti-Moslem bias — it goes back to the
Middle Ages.

When Weir refers to the first wave of
the socialist revolution in Tajikistan, he
writes of women liberated “from the
direct tyranny of Islamic rule.” It is too

Avoid anti-Moslem bias

easy for us to respond with a false sense
of superiority.

Canada is a predominantly Christian
culture. Progressives are painfully aware
of both the negative thinking of the
Roman Catholic pontiff on women’s
rights, and the denial of our free will by
Protestant fundamentalists. Yet we are
proud of the Christian movement's posi-
tions on disarmament, against free trade
and for a new world economic order.

We need even more sensitivity and
awareness in our paper. We need facts on
the current historical equivalent in the
Islamic world of all that we point to as
progressive in the predominantly Chris-
tian movement.

Hypocrisy, impudence and downright
intrusion into a foreign country — Canada
— marks this new Reagan legislation.
Hypocrisy, because the U.S. is notorious for
its inadequate public medical service and to
bring in special legislation for citizens of
another country is simply outrageous to
both U.S. and Canadian citizens.

Impudent, because the law honours par-
ticipants in the most murderous and
unprincipled military undertaking in either
ancient or modern history. It was illegal and
ultimately repudiated by the mothers of
many of the veterans themselves, and
resulted in the most humiliating and dis-
graceful rout for the invaders.

‘Intrusive, because its obvious intention is
to establish a precedent of Canadian recog-
nition of the Vietnam War as a military
venture in which Canada is implicated as an
ally.

On the contrary, Canadians on a mass
scale repudiated that dirty war, gave haven
to draft dodgers and deserters, and at no
time regarded themselves as participants in
the unholy undertaking.

Leave Canada clean and clear of any part
in the Vietnam War.

.. Tories’ plan seeks to divide Canada’s Native people.

Bi:

Native corporations. Today those Native
corporations are in bankruptcy or have
been bought out by the large monopolies.
The last resource of the Alaskan Native —
the land — is being sold off as collateral.
Potentially a similar fate awaits many of
Canada’s first nations.

The aboriginal population is young and
increasing. Fifty-two per cent of Native
people are under the age of 20. According to
Dept. of Indian Affairs statistics, by 1991
one in four entering the labour force in
Canada will be of aboriginal descent; in
Manitoba and Saskatchewan the ratio will
be nearly one in two. The Native birth rate

" remains twice the Canada average.

Federal cutbacks are coming at a time
when the need for education and social ser-
vices on reserves has never been higher. Yet
the feds are currently dismantling Native
social programs.

The Neilsen report stated that the “fed-
eral government, having divested itself of
any responsibility for (Native) community
support, should then move (Native) eco-
nomic development support to the Depart-
ment of Regional Industrial Expansion
(now the Department of Western Diversifi-
cation) where it can combine all contribu-
tions to viable business development.”

This is now being implemented. Funding
previously slated for Native programs is
being channelled to the Western Diversifi-
cation program with no guarantee any of it
will reach Native communities. In August

TRIBUNE PHOTO — DAN KEETON

1987, Indian Affairs Minister William ,

McKnight was given the additional portfo-
lio of minister for western diversification.

The Assembly of First Nations (AFN),
representing 400,000 status Indians, remains
at the centre of the aboriginal movement for
self-government. The overwhelming major-
ity of its leaders see self-government as
being in line with traditional Native values
of respecting the land and of putting the
communal good before individual interests.
The AFN has been the most resistant to the
Tory efforts to co-opt or buy out aboriginal
rights. ~

However, the politics within the non-
status, Metis and Inuit communities remain
more tenuous. A serious split has recently
taken place in Saskatchewan between the
Metis and non-status Indians, and while
those who would collaborate with the feds
remain on the periphery.of the AFN, the
Tories are trying to get around this by deal-
ing with each of Canada’s 600 first nations
on a one-to-one basis. By embarking on
separate deals the Tories hope to minimize
the effectiveness of united aboriginal organ-
izations.

It remains to be seen whether the Tory
agenda will succeed.

Pacific Tribune, May 25, 1988 « 5