Anishinawbe Blog

By Sarah Bissonette
Parry Sound North Star

PARRY SOUND – The federal government and Anishinabek First Nation moved a step closer to abolishing the Indian Act.
The Anishinabek First Nation, represented by Grand Council Chief John Beaucage, and the Government of Canada, represented by Minister of Indian Affairs Jim Prentice, agreed Friday afternoon to meet regularly and hammer out the community’s self-governance plan.
Both parties met at the Charles W. Stockey Centre for the Performing Arts Friday morning, where they signed an agreement to continue working towards a new plan.
The Anishinabek First Nation is comprised of 42 aboriginal communities, including Wasauksing, Moose Deer Point, and Henvey Inlet. In all, there are 633 First Nation communities governed under the Indian Act, Mr. Beaucage said. The Indian Act has governed First Nations people for more than 150 years.
“In terms of the Anishinabek First Nation, we have very strong leadership, we have strong chiefs, Chief Beaucage is a strong leader,” Mr. Prentice said. “And, in these communities, people are prepared to move ahead very rapidly in terms of leaving the Indian Act behind, assuming full responsibility for their rightful place as partners in this country of ours. The purpose of today was to talk about how we get there, how we achieve that kind of self-government.”
The agreement includes the blueprint is laid out for the Anishinabek to govern itself, including education, child welfare, economic development and social policy.
“These communities have taken it upon themselves to get out from under the security of the Indian Act. In order to do so, we need to form partnerships with the federal government in order to look at how we are going to do that,” said Mr. Beaucage. 

By Jonathon Wilson
Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal

A peaceful event aimed at teaching aboriginal healing was turned on its ear by violent winds blowing Sunday atop Mt. McKay.
About four dozen participants banded together to save a traditional longhouse built out of birch saplings. The structure, covered with a nylon tarp, nearly took to the air at about 2 p.m. when wind gusts reached nearly 80 km/h at the Mt. McKay lookout.
“That was very scary,” said Cindy Crowe, a Lake Helen First Nation member who helped organize the four-day event.
“We can‘t have the lodge falling on the sacred items in here, or the elders.”
Crowe said the five elders and the drummers were about to move into the sweat lodge when the winds picked up.
“I was asking if they were going to be doing a song or a prayer to ask for some assistance,” she said.
“The wind is definitely a challenge right now.”
A decision was made to remove the tarp and resurrect the lodge‘s birch frame. Crowe said the saplings will be returned to the forest when the event concludes.
The spiritual ceremony was organized by Blue Sky Teaching Lodge, with support from Fort William First Nation‘s Thunder Mountain cultural committee.
About 300 people have attended the gathering since the construction of the longhouse began last Monday.
Crowe said many participants are focusing their attention on personal healing.
“People will come with all kinds of things,” Crowe said. “It may be grief, it may be a medical condition.”
The event drew participants from Lake Helen, Gull Bay and Fort William First Nations. Crowe said many non-aboriginal participants, along with people from First Nations as far away as Kettle Point on Lake Huron, and Shoal Lake near Winnipeg, also showed up.
The event includes a daily feast, but some participants have chosen to fast for several days instead.
The fasters are tucked away in the nearby bush with no food or water. Crowe said it‘s an aboriginal custom meant to cleanse the soul.
“The fasting is sometimes done in the spring, as part of getting ready for the year,” she explained.
“They target to go for four full days and four full nights and they hope that they‘ll have a vision during that time.”
Crowe said there‘s a growing interest among aboriginal people to return to ancient traditions. The difficulty, she said, has been convincing people to open their minds to the ideas.
Some people, she said, might be embarrassed to admit that they don‘t know their culture or traditions.
“It‘s been a challenge for Anishnawbe people in the last 100 years, because their spirituality was basically underground,” Crowe said.
“We‘re very fortunate that we still have some elders with the original gifts, that are able to share it with us.”
The five elders attending are Albert Mandamin, Ronald Mandamin and Mary Rose Scott from Shoal Lake, Tommy White from Whitefish Bay, and Nancy Jones from Nicickousemenecaning First Nation.
The event concludes Tuesday afternoon. 

OTTAWA (CP) – The House of Commons stood as one to collectively apologize for the sad legacy of native residential schools, but don’t expect to hear the prime minister say he’s sorry.
That’s because a Liberal motion that passed 257-0 on Tuesday is largely symbolic.
Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice says a formal apology from the Conservative government is likely years away – if it comes at all.
He made a clear distinction between what happens in the Commons and the obligations of the “executive branch” of cabinet ministers.
Prentice says his main obligation now is to implement a compensation deal worth well over $2 billion. The offer to about 80,000 former residential school students is expected to be finalized by September, settling one of the largest and most complex lawsuits in Canadian history.
It does not include an apology, although one was promised by the former Liberal government that initially crafted the deal.
“We’re in the midst of the implementation of (the agreement),” Prentice said Tuesday outside the Commons. “I think that’s an important consideration that someone in my position as minister needs to be cognizant of.”
Prentice says that doesn’t mean an apology from the prime minister is being stalled to avoid legal snags. Rather, it’s important that Canadians hear the full story about residential schools first.
Ottawa is planning a $60-million, five-year truth and reconciliation commission that will travel Canada hearing stories about the echoing impact of the now-defunct institutions.
Prentice cited a similar process to deal with South Africa’s painful era of apartheid. At the end of it, an apology from the head of state was recommended, he said.
Many surviving students say an apology from the prime minister is more important than receiving a cheque.
Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, was one of the first public figures to openly talk about his own damaging experience.
“Those of us who were personally abused, as well as those who suffered intergenerational effects of abuse, deserve the fullest, most sincere, and complete apology from the representatives of the Canadian people.
“We expect that the prime minister of Canada will apologize in a timely fashion and in an appropriate public ceremony so that this matter can finally be put behind us.”
Liberal MP Gary Merasty says survivors shouldn’t have to wait.
Widespread abuse, cultural loss and even death in the church-run schools has been well documented, he said in an interview.
Any more delay is “very irresponsible.” Several elderly and sick former students die each month.
Merasty, who put forward the motion calling on the Commons to apologize, is a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation in Northern Saskatchewan. His grandfather tried to hide Merasty’s mother from federal authorities who eventually forced her to attend a residential school for three years.
Merasty has lambasted Prentice for recently saying residential schools were primarily meant “to educate” native children. In fact, they were an acknowledged tool of assimilation to “Christianize” aboriginal people, Merasty says.
“You don’t need the truth and reconciliation commission to finish in order to consider giving an apology.”
In fact, there’s a risk the process “will be consumed with anger at the government for the denial and the attempt to reshape historical memory to diminish and demean what actually happened.”
The former Liberal government acknowledged in 1998 that physical and sexual abuse in the schools was rampant for much of the last century.
Many native languages have never recovered from school policies that harshly punished children for speaking them. Continuing struggles with alcohol and drug addiction, sexual dysfunction and domestic violence are blamed in part on the social havoc wreaked by residential schools.
The former Liberal government stopped short of apologizing, but offered a statement of reconciliation that opened a floodgate of lawsuits.
About 150,000 students suffered widespread abuse, cultural losses and even death at the church-run institutions. Archival records also show that students died of tuberculosis at an alarming rate after the schools opened in the late 1800s.
“There’s absolutely enough information in place now that warrants an apology,” says Darcy Merkur of the Toronto law firm Thomson Rogers. Its coalition of lawyers from across Canada spearheaded the class-action lawsuit that spurred the federal compensation deal.
“It would be welcome to have an apology immediately following the implementation of the settlement.”
That said, testimony collected by the truth and reconciliation commission may well merit “an expansion of that apology.” 

www.baytoday.ca 

A delegation of concerned citizens appeared in front of council Monday following two incidents where disparaging racial remarks were made at the West Ferris Arena during minor hockey games.
Director of Communications for the Anishinabek Nation and Union of Ontario Indians Maurice Switzer explained the delegation to council consisted of three presenters. The first presenter was the parent of one of hockey players who was targeted with the racist insult. She spoke of the personal hurt the comments had caused and is now looking for solutions that would discourage any similar occurrences in future. She feels cross-cultural training should be offered to hockey officials.
Also in attendance was a Nipissing First Nation council member who supported the parents from their community, and said their First Nation is willing to work with North Bay to make things better.
Switzer also spoke to council on behalf of the Union of Ontario Indians (UOI) asking council to publicly denounce the actions as unacceptable behaviour.
He specifically asked North Bay City Council to: issue a public statement endorsing the concept of community diversity and to develop a municipal diversity plan/strategy that would include cross-cultural training for staff. He also requested that North Bay be added to the list of signatories that have joined a Canadian coalition of municipalities against racism.
Switzer says the UOI is more than willing to work with the council on all of the initiatives outlined.
Mayor Vic Fedeli said he personally investigated the issue immediately following the incident with Chief Marianna Couchie, the coach of the hockey team and with Switzer. Fedeli says the boy publicly admitted making the offensive remark and extended his hand to the other boy and apologised. At that point, Fedeli says everyone involved generally felt the admission of guilt and the apology was sufficient.
Fedeli appreciates the requests made by Switzer and says that City Hall is already doing a significant amount of work around such issues, including the recent adoption of a Discrimination and Harassment policy as well as a Corporate hiring policy. Adding that the new hiring policy allows the city to hire the best person for the job versus targeting certain demographics.
The city also introduced the new ‘Fair Play’ policy, which has a code of conduct and Fedeli says a policy that everyone is required to adhere to when using any of the city’s facilities.