Getting to know the AFN candidates

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Chief Shawn (A-in-Chut) Atleo and Chief Perry (Okemow Peeasew Awasis) Bellegarde may be from different walks of life and represent different political ideals but what they do have in common is a desire to become National Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

In early May, the Nation (Vol 16, No. 13) published an interview with Chief John (Eyaabay) Beaucage of the Anishinabek Nation, who is also running in this AFN election. Unfortunately, the remaining two candidates – Chief Terrance Nelson (Mush-Ko-Dah-Be-Shik-Eese) of the Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation and Bill Wilson (Hemas Kla-Lee-Lee-Kla), a Kwawkgewth/Musgamagw from the Cape Mudge Indian Band – did not respond to interview requests from the Nation.

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Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo

Chief Atleo has spent the last 23 years as a First Nations leader, negotiator, facilitator and strategic planner. He is a hereditary chief of Ahousaht Nation in B.C., and has allowed his traditional teachings to guide him throughout his career.

Now serving his second consecutive term as the B.C. Regional Chief of the AFN, he has advocated and supported the 203 Nations in that province.

A family man, Atleo describes his life as revolving around his wife of 23 years and their two children.

The Nation: Tell us about your

campaign platform?

Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo: My platform is based on listening. It is not only listening most recently but from observations over the last five and a half years as Regional Chief.

There are so many issues that our people face every day, especially challenges that Chiefs have to face. I think it is important to have to organize our work. Reflecting back on my platform, there are four pillars that are mutually dependent on one another.

The first one is families and communities and the idea of rediscovering our balance as families overcoming the divisions that we did not create, like the on-and-off-reserve divide and the status and non-status. Those that were adopted out for example in the 1960s, they did not have the privilege like I did to grow up with grandparents to learn the language, the culture and to learn about the land. Those divisions were not created by us but we inherited them.

The Residential School system is the most significant legacy of division that we have inherited and that we have to work to overcome.

The gender imbalance is another issue. On the eve of Father’s Day I think about that as he grew up without a dad himself. My dad worked hard to overcome all of the trauma that he went through going to residential schools and so it is about taking it to the next level again.

It’s also about men accepting our responsibility to support women and to take up our roles to make sure that we are good dads. We have to be strong supporters of women because the women that I grew up with are the leaders in our family and our community. They are the ones that trained me for the role of hereditary Chief.

This pillar is also about supporting children and education. We have got a fundraiser to bring focus to discrimination and a human-rights commission case being launched by Cindy Blackstock on funding issues for child welfare.

These issues connect with the second pillar which is what people hold. People hold and are born with inherent rights, they are born into Nations who signed treaties in the past and they hold title and rights. With that comes responsibility which I was taught by my late grandfather and that is something we cannot let go of.

This ties into the third pillar which is a strong economy. Historic treaties were based on this notion of mutual recognition and respect and were built based on the idea of sharing the wealth and resources of the land and to do it with a notion of respecting our relationship of all living things in the environment. Of course, all things are living and must be respected. We have an environment that is in trouble, a planet in peril and an economy that is in trouble.

I think that Indigenous leadership is something that is desperately needed as we have much to bring to the table but of course we need to create economies in our communities, strong entrepreneurship both in the urban settings and at home in our villages and do all of this with an eye to taking leadership and bringing the environment into rebalance. And yet this means both utilizing our treaties to pursue economic development. It means making sure that families and communities are supported with entrepreneur training and have access to the structure to support economic development. It means making sure that those communities have the proper infrastructure which many don’t have.

Those first three pillars, in my listening to leaders and watching work happen to build strong First Nations governments and building of Nations and I think we need a strong First Nations public service to support First Nations government. We need a civil service, we need bureaucracies that are supported to be able to do their work in a non-political way to support the political leadership of Chiefs and Councils and pursue

economic development.

I know from having listened to young people that they are going to make sure that the leaders are pushed to support the rebuilding of our Nations, our ancestral ties to the land, to one another, to kinship ties through language. The idea that we are on the one hand 630+ bands and tribal councils and then 50+ languages and nations means that we have both realities right now. We have an Indian Act that we did not create but inherited and we have the issues of our people being status and non-status that we also did not create but inherited.

TN: What would you do for urban Aboriginals as AFN National Chief?

SA: This whole thing about status and non-status Aboriginals, there are huge divisions that it creates within families. When I walk through a village with a Chief and he points to different homes or Bill C-31 homes and we have people who are disconnected from family because of status/non-status. They to get homes in their villages but there are no homes. They want to stay at home but there is not the education or the economic development opportunities so they go to the cities. Once they are in the cities there is a lot of disconnect between people in the city environment and people back at home.

When I was brought to Vancouver by my dad, who was pursuing his various degrees, I felt that disconnect deeply.

What I would want to do is to work on the reconnecting and that is by working with organizations that are doing good work. I think of the Friendship Centres, for example. If the Friendship Centre wasn’t there in Vancouver when I was a teenager then I don’t know what would have happened. In the 1980s it kept me busy and out of trouble by doing something positive and there is a sense of belonging there. I think that there is some opportunity to create stronger linkages between nations and the urban service delivery organizations so that we make sure that we are working on the reconnecting part.

TN: As Friendship Centres are very strapped for cash, would you seek to increase their funding?

SA: Of course we would want to do that, the challenge here is that we end up either knowingly or unknowingly being pitted against one another through funding that is not sustainable both in the community for Chiefs and Council or in cities. Then the policy-makers in the provincial legislatures or federal government are forced politically to look at things like statistics and say that small far northern community doesn’t really need the support because they don’t have the numbers. These funds should go somewhere else and then we see what happens in northern Manitoba when the H1N1 starts to hit and the health support is not there.

In the city we run into the same sorts of challenges where the Friendship Centres are not supported the kind of frontline services that are so desperately needed that caused people like me in my early 20s to try and fill the void by creating a program response of some kind. I did that in the area of life skills and free employment training when I used to run my own private post-secondary training institute in Vancouver.

Unless the leaders throughout the urban service delivery organization movement and the First Nations regional, local Chief and council, tribal council leadership and the National AFN have a well-coordinated effort, we are going to constantly run into unsustainable funding. This is where we are sending in separate proposals that are trying to build a case which results in somebody losing as opposed to bringing attention to the fact that these are all of our people, these are our relatives, and this is family.

TN: What are you going to do to address Canada’s 520 missing/murdered Aboriginal women?

SA: I think about the effort the Walk for Justice women made to bring attention to the murdered and missing women, one of which is a relative of mine that is still on that missing list. This is personal for me and thinking back to the various cases, I know that Sharon MacIvor is back in court and just linking it to this issue of citizenship and identity and belonging and the fight that women are leading and I think about what was said in the Corbiere decision about women being doubly discriminated against.

I want to first bring attention to our internal First Nations relationship and the kind of challenges that we have within our own families and our own families. Yes, the root causes have to do with issues that others need to work with as well whether it’s poverty or homelessness so we have some strong women’s organizations like the Native Women’s Association, I think there is a need to work really closely together. We have an AFN women’s council, I actually chaired the inaugural meeting of the National Assembly’s First Nations Women’s council. It was intimidating being the only man in the room but it was powerful to see that kind of thing get started.

There is currently very strong leadership in women’s councils for the AFN to work directly with and support those initiatives that are ongoing right now.

This is also about men taking up responsibility to accept the challenges that we are facing in our communities, particularly around violence and to support women leadership and to move toward rediscovering our balances.
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Chief Perry Bellegarde

Chief Bellegarde hails from the Little Black Bear First Nation in Saskatchewan. A business administration graduate from the University of Regina, Bellegarde was first elected into power by as a representative of the Touchwood-File Hills-Qu’Appelle Tribal Council.

Having also been elected as Grand Chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) and the Regional Vice Chief for the Assembly of First Nations in 1998, Bellegarde has spent most of his adult life in politics.

A man of traditional values who has been honoured by various different Nations, Bellegarde credits a great deal of his success in life to his connections to his Elders and their teachings.

The Nation: Tell us about the basic points of your platform?

Chief Perry Bellegarde: It’s definitely a First Nations rights agenda and an inherent rights treaty agenda, which is the foundation. Then we build upon that and we start talking about a new fiscal relationship with the crown based on removing the 2% cap that we have lived with for 14 years, based on total population funding on and off reserves, based on consumer price indexing and as well, based on sharing in the revenues and royalties generated from the riches of this country. So it’s also about resource revenue sharing, that is a key point and that is for all 633 First Nations across Canada.

That is there and then I go to what I call the four Es, education and training and that means schools on reserves such as Attawapiskat that has been crying out for a school for nine years. I could meet that opportunity to get that school. I would get rid of the cap on post-secondary funding. I have always said that education is our Buffalo in the year 2009 and beyond because that is how we are going to survive. This will also lead to employment for our people and economic development and of course, respect for the environment as well. Sustainable economic development strategies that have respect as well for Mother Earth so that she is not abused. As Indigenous people we say that we are stewards of the land, territorial stewardship is key for us and we must be aware of that at all times.

I also talk about the importance of our languages, I speak Cree and they are only one of 58 different languages in Canada. I say that the apology was fine for the residential schools but those were just words so let’s see some action here. When I say action, it would be easy for the government of Canada to adopt the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, announce a First Nations language institute to promote, protect and preserve First Nations languages.

I would also start making strategic investments to lower the socio-economic gap between First Nations people and non-First Nations people in Canada.

In a nutshell that is my party platform but it is basically about self-determination. It is for the recognition of inherent rights of self-determination of Indigenous peoples.

TN: From the sounds of it, it seems as though you would want to make some changes in terms of Indian and Northern Affairs?

PB: There have to be changes in the system and I say it’s more strategic investments because we have a Nation to Nation relationship with the crown. We have lived under the Indian Act since 1876, our rights are protected in section 35 of the constitution but is a full box or empty box of rights? What process do we utilize to fill up section 35, we should be looking at a treaty implementation act, not an Indian Act.

We should be looking at a treaty commissioner appointed by parliament and not by cabinet just like Sheila Fraser who is the auditor general and has some independence and some authority and power to review government operations. We need a structure and mechanisms in place to really implement treaties and inherent rights.

TN: Would you change voting legislation within the AFN so that all First Nations peoples in Canada could vote for National Grand Chief?

PB: There has to be changes no question to make the AFN more relevant, more responsive and more respectful of the diversity across Canada. If you are talking about one Indian one vote, I say the first order of government is at the Chief and Council levels. Because of the Corbiere decisions, every First Nations person across Canada has that fundamental right to vote for their Chief and Council. I encourage all First Nations people to exercise that right and get involved in that First Nations government. That office of Chief is very high and that has to be respected. This is the approach that I take, there has to be other mechanisms, ways and means to include all of our people both on reserve and off reserve because we say we are treaty Indian people not only when you live on the reserve but off reserve as well. Your rights are portable, that is what we believe.

Restructuring the AFN along certain lines but to have respect for that first order of government at a community level, that is the priority. First Nations people across Canada have to get involved and make that connection back to their first order of government because that is the one that signed the treaty, nation to nation.

I have said before that the AFN is not a government, not until the Chiefs and the people make it an issue that they want to see the AFN as their government then you can move forward to an Indian-run vote. Right now it is a lobby/advocacy based organization.

TN: What specifically would you do for urban Aboriginals?

PB: The First thing is total funding out to the Chiefs and councils, right now they are only funded on reserve population right? That is not acceptable because every First Nations person has the right to vote for their Chief and council so there is a reasonable expectation now to expect services and programs. If the Chiefs and council do not have the financial resources, they are not going to be able to meet the needs of their people. This must be addressed.

A new fiscal relationship, that is step one. At the same time there has got to be enough flexibility in the system so that whatever works in each territory, whatever systems there are for off reserve First Nations people that are there should be supported. In Toronto there is a vibrant Friendship Centre that is practically supported. In Saskatchewan you’ve got Tribal councils that perform services and programs, in B.C. you’ve got Friendship Centres and Tribal councils. You have to have enough flexibility in the system to make sure that whatever works to make sure that First Nations people are given that opportunity for good housing, education and training and employment opportunities in all of the major centres.

TN: Would you lobby for more funding for Friendship Centres?

PB: Yeah, they are a key piece and they are frontline. The people that utilize the Friendship Centres, they don’t care if it’s First Nations or Métis or Inuit, they need services and programs. If it is effective and meeting the needs then yes.

There is no education on the reserves, there is no education or training and often there are no employment opportunities so it’s almost like our people are pushed off the reserves and into the cities. There are some reserves that are even starting to set up urban First Nations reserve offices to support their members. This is the case in Winnipeg and there is one in Regina. This is why I bring up flexibility because on size might not fit all.

Whatever the approach is in each region and each territory that works and meets the needs, that is what you go with.

TN: Is there anything specifically in your campaign for women?

PB: Women’s issues are something I have always talked about in the assembly to make sure that the youth’s, women’s and Elders voices are heard, that they have those commissions in place. We have to make sure that they are still reflexive and responsive and that everybody feels part of it, that they are doing what they are supposed to do.

We created the Saskatchewan First Nations Women’s commission to make sure that women’s voices are heard within the structures of decision-making.

One of the big things that we talk about is violence against Aboriginal women, there are over 500 missing Aboriginal women. Who is addressing that? How are those needs being addressed? This is a human rights travesty. Again this has to be a reasonable national and international focus to raise it up and even amongst our men themselves.

It’s not just our First Nations men but also non-First Nations men. This issue has to be elevated higher because it is a huge issue.

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