"Let's Settle This Once and For All"

If ever there was a statement of our problem with Treaty, this is it!

http://www.chroniclejournal.com//editorial/daily_editorial/2011-02-25/let’s-settle-once-and-all

The Editor of the Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal seems to think that our Treaties are some kind of deal founded on British contract law. "You get this, I get that. Sign here. There, we're done." But our Treaties are not like that. They are statements of complex relationships. They are like describing what it means to be a member of a family. They are our solemn, constitutionally-confirmed commitment to relationships among people who seek to achieve and maintain a peaceful and equitable sharing of land and resources for as long as the grass grows and the rivers run. But forever is a long, long time, so change has to be assumed. Once and for all, carved-in-stone decisions cannot possibly stand the test of this challenging time frame. Perpetuity -- the fundamental assumption on which our Treaties are founded, is the very antithesis of "once and for all," legal, contractual kind of thinking. ***

When we contemplate a relationship that is to last forever we are led into thinking about the sort of sharing that recognizes variable needs over time; one that maintains careful consideration for present and long-term sustainability within a landscape that is partly renewable, always changing and definitely finite. This perspective suggests that decision-making and the capacity for subtle adjustment would best be extremely well connected to the lands and waters that are to sustain us all. Decision-making needs to be sensitive and intimately knowledgeable if this sort of endless equitable sharing is to have any hope of success.

Our Treaties bind two peoples and the land together for a very, very long time. Neither nation gets to abandon the balance beam. The past century of failure, conflict and instability has occurred precisely because past decision-makers treated our Treaties like "once and for all" deals. But "consultation and accommodation", the phrase used by the Supreme Court to describe our Treaty dance, is not a one-shot arrangement.

If we hope to achieve and to maintain the harmonious alliances suggested by the Treaty negotiators, we are going to have to build workable, respectful, processes for shared desision-making -- ongoing processes that permit constant and effective accommodation of inevitable change. We need to have smooth systems for constantly communicating with each other and with the land because "forever" demands that we will be perpetually tweeking and re-balancing our considerations. When one considers the nature of this relationship it soon becomes evident that this sort of sophisticated, elegant balancing act cannot possibly be achieved by distant and disconnected bureaucrats and politicians whose interests are at odds with the sustainability of our Treaty regions and our Treaty people. Any serious attempt to make our Treaties work leads inevitably to the conclusion that there must be made-in-our-Treaty-areas decision-making …in other words, meaningful regional self-government.

If any once-and-for-all action is needed, it's a change to the power structure. We can't achieve the sustainability demanded by our Treaties if Queen's Park and Bay Street control the resources of our region. What's really needed is to move the centre of decision-making into our Treaty Regions ...once and for all. It is only here that the possibility for any kind of respectful, sensitive, sustainable, practical working relationship exists. As people whose lives depend upon these lands, we're capable of making up our own resource regulations …and then changing them as our sustainable Treaty relationship among the lands, waters and the people requires.

***Lawyers actually have a "Rule against perpetuities". You can look it up. The very existence of such a rule says a great deal about the true value of laws and lawyers when they prove incapable of pondering the infinite. On the other hand, Anishnaabe Elders and other deep thinkers think quite a lot about circles and endless cycles ...and they seem to suggest that it would be prudent for other beings who share this small planet to do likewise.

Yippee!

Supreme Court rulings recognizing Treaty and inherent rights mean that First Nations must be consulted and their interests accommodated.

(For the record, the generic picture of a marginalized human being used for this cartoon was taken in eastern Europe.)

Who are we? A Rights-Based Alliance or a Collective of Complainers?

Many distressed cities and towns in the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association are desperately trying to invent a new organization to better promote our region’s economic interests. The municipally biased designers are attempting to patch together a loose fitting body around an ill-connected framework vaguely tied to ‘the Northwest’. Dr. De Matteo, the intellectual guide for the group; a unanimous NOMA resolution, and plain old common sense all insist that First Nations' participation in the design and construction of any new vehicle is ‘crucial’.

The Steering Committee should therefore have been stopped in its tracks last week when the Grand Chiefs summarily rejected the ‘Alliance of the Willing’ approach that would form ‘Common Voice’. (A less generous observer might suggest that an ‘Alliance of the Whining’ might be a more appropriate description.)

What the undeterred promoters of the remaining 'half-assembly' seem to have overlooked is the fact that our region is already organized into large, coherent, legal alliances that are committed to mutual benefit. These existing, powerful partnerships are created by the spirit, intent and the letter of the Treaties that brought this land into the Canadian federation.

We are all, -aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike, beneficiaries of these treaties. Our benefits and our obligations come with being a citizen of this land. As People-Joined-By-Treaty, we share remarkable partnership agreements: -signed, perpetual contracts specifically intended to sustain all our families on this land forever. That’s a pretty powerful shared commitment; and one worth rallying around. As it happens, this existing economic alliance –jointly crafted with the full participation of First Nations, is endorsed by none other than Her Majesty the Queen, confirmed by the Canadian Constitution and it even comes with a built-in guarantee of consultation and accommodation. How’s that for a vehicle capable of promoting our shared interests!?

It seems the wise men and elders who guided us into confederation left us with a careful constitution for living well together on shared land. If we simply allow our treaties to frame our structures and processes, the way quickly becomes clear to create stable, cooperative and made-in-NWO resource planning and sharing mechanisms. Our treaty partnerships also provide us with real power to insist that local benefits be maximized and our economy and our land be sustained. That’s our Treaty promise to each other.

A new collective of complainers called “Common Voice” would be both ineffective and redundant. A formidable legal instrument for generating a harmonious voice for ourselves already exists. Our distinct voice is found in the bonds that draw us together under our treaties. The sound is the deep rich sound of who we truly are as a people: -Treaty People who share a wonderful land. The Grand Council in Treaty #3 and the City of Kenora are rightly insisting that it’s time we started practicing our true voice. It’s the only one that Queen’s Park is forced, by law to hear.

The Anishinaabeg as Stakeholder

In his Facilitator's report on the Northwestern Ontario economy, Dr. Rosehart chose to ignore the sad state of our Treaty relationships in his recommendations. It's our Treaties, you recall, that contain the moral, legal and economic principles on which Ontario and Canada are founded. It's our Treaties, even before our constitution, that shaped the all-important, conditional allocation of this land and its resources. As such, these solemn undertakings form the underlying building blocks of our economy.

But Dr. Rosehart is not the first white chap to treat this pesky legal detail with apparent disdain. As the Supreme Court has frequently pointed out in recent years, neither the Provincial nor the Federal Crown have been particularly attentive to their obligations under our Treaties either. But one would think that, in enlightened 2008 PC, the Queen's hired sage might have connected the dots between road blocks, court rulings, confusion and animosity and the Crown's historic neglect of our deal. You'd think that these various symptoms of protests in the streets, Aboriginal leaders in jail, mining companies hauling their dollars and drill rigs to more stable ground and that huge dark jurisdictional cloud casting a constant chill over the future of the forestry industry might actually have caught the attention of an astute Economic Facilitator.

http://www.chroniclejournal.com/top_story.php?id=100456
As reported in the Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal (link above,) a number of senior First Nation leaders were quick to point out that the good Doctor missed this most critical of the many maladies plaguing the Northwestern Ontario economy. In response, Dr. Rosehart dismissed their shared analysis as simply wrong. He helpfully eliminates any concerns these leaders might have by pronouncing his report fit as a fiddle. He does say, however, that the poor Indian's reading skills may be deficient.

Well, as the Anishinaabe leaders and their legal advisors have demonstrated to our highest courts, they can read very well indeed. But it doesn't take a post-graduate degree in English to discern the vestiges of an obsolete colonial attitude infusing the language of Rosehart's text and recommendations. Time after time, he refers to the Anishinaabeg as 'stakeholders', placing them on the same plane of consideration as municipalities, cottage owners' associations and tree-hugger collectives. It is revealing that, among all his footnotes, there does not appear to be one reference to the many Supreme Court decisions that have repeatedly confirmed that First Nations have interests, jurisdiction, rights and decision-making powers far beyond what has been historically acknowledged by the Provincial and Federal governments.

As in most parts of Canada, all families in our area enjoy the benefits of a Treaty. Both First Nation people and we, the more recent arrivals, are 'Treaty people'. We are all affected when our resource agreements are dysfunctional. (Sadly, the effects have been badly imbalanced.) While it should have been a matter of honour, it is now a matter of urgent economic necessity that our sworn intention to build a peaceful country based on equitable sharing needs to be translated into a system of effective and harmonious decision-making and benefit sharing. Considering the terrible legacy of poverty in First Nations and considering the latest economic depression in the whole region, we should be busy building our new, more respectful processes, as soon as possible! The neglect, greed and racism of the past have eroded and undermined the cornerstone agreements of our land-sharing deal. This critical foundation is now incapable of supporting a stable resource economy. It is therefore remarkable that Dr. Rosehart did not insist that mending and strengthening our basic working relationships be the governments' most urgent economic priority.

The process of 'consultation' will not get us there; as practiced by Ontario, getting 'consulted' means you are powerless. Stability can only be achieved if the fundamental Treaty principle of an alliance between friends is our starting point. So long as the representatives (and advisers) of the Crown persist in ignoring or diminishing the principle of true partnership contained in the words of our nation-to nation alliances, then the war in the woods and in the courts will not only continue, it will escalate. The only economic gain in that approach will be enjoyed by police officers, judges and lawyers.

While Dr. Rosehart observes in the text of his report that the principle of Treaty Rights was mentioned as being of "some concern" by a few of the Aboriginal leaders he spoke with, it is clear that he was not sufficiently persuaded of our Treaties' importance to the economy to warrant more than a few feeble references deep in the 74 page body of the report.

The Chiefs are right. This guy missed the most fundamental of our economic problems. Crown Ontario might have wanted an economic visionary -but what they appear to have got was someone who seems to be viewing our world from the perspective of the last century. In the last century a 'forward thinker' like Pierre Trudeau could get away with his opinion that there was no such thing as 'aboriginal rights.' In the pre-Delgamuk days of the last century it still seemed reasonable to flood wild rice fields, clear-cut forests, pollute watersheds and generally marginalize First Nations with virtual impunity; ...so long as it was in the name of the greater good of the (largely non-native) nation. The most any sensitive government or developer had to do was offer a few menial jobs and some other assimilative tokens to the impoverished folks who were being economically and environmentally displaced from their homeland. Thanks to the men and women who are the supreme keepers of our national mythology, those days are gone forever. For the honour of our Treaties and of our country, leading lights like Dr. Rosehart must acknowledge that First Nations cannot be treated as subservient "stakeholders". First Nations are among the founding and continuing governments of this country.

Ultimately, the oversight in the good Doctor's diagnosis and directions for economic recovery won't matter much; (...although his dismissal of the Chiefs' concerns does not do much to improve the atmosphere.) Whether Dr. Rosehart recommends it or not; whether he is capable of reading the signs or not, Treaty issues will command priority attention. Neither the law nor the First Nations will allow them to be ignored any longer. It is pretty safe to predict that the economy of Northwestern Ontario will not be going anywhere so long as our leaders fail to implement those mutually beneficial alliances that are the foundation of our country: that is, our Treaties.

The wheels have fallen off the car but Dr. Rosehart chose to focus his recommendations on mending the upholstery and improving gas consumption.