Alberta Green Party and First Nations’ Issues

Alberta Green Party and First Nations’ Issues

When we work on the policies for the Alberta Green Party related to First Nation’s issues, we must be aware of what is provincial in the way responsibility and what is federal. The fact of the matter is the Federal government has jurisdiction of First Nation’s issues as far as education, health, treaties, and land claims. This includes natives on and off reservations.

My favoured way of helping the Alberta Green Party to best address Alberta’s First Nation’s issues and policies would be to go to them, instead of having one person from one First Nation come to us.

If we have the money I think it makes more sense for the Alberta Green Party to develop a group of people from around the province to attend that various meetings and conferences involving their local First Nations.

By sending people out to the various First Nations’ groups we can accumulate discussion, impressions, and issues that directly relate to local or region members of First Nations. Of course there are going to be trends or similar issues and concerns province wide, from which we can find big picture policy ideas, and then from that will flow policies that better reflect region issues and differences.

The other benefit from working out a plan like the above, is that the Alberta Green Party will be going to the communities of the First Nations, and actually talk to them and listen. It will build a longterm relationship that we can build on, not only for policy development but maybe even memberships and candidates.

The issues are very different for natives that live on the reserve or in the large urban centres, plus the smaller centres in between.

The issues involved with the reserves in the southern part of Alberta, vary quite a bit from those in northern remote areas of Alberta, from even those around Fort McMurray.

In the north the natives are wanting to be part of the oil and gas boom, not only from a point of money, but water and meaningful employment and business development for long term benefits.

You have the issues involved with the Metis, Cree, Dene, Blackfoot, and female natives are all different, with some of the issues being common.

There are First Nation’s communities that farm and ranch along side of other non-native Albertans, with the same issues but do not necessarily have the same access to the various funding or agricultural agencies. Federal or provincial.

The First Nations people want their traditional hunting and fishing rights enforced, but this may come in conflict with the environmental protection regulations designed to help refurbish certain species that are in danger of disappearing or being over harvested. This can also be in conflict with what the Alberta Green Party has stated in previous policy statements already endorsed at Policy conventions and those to come.

A prime example of this is the recent change to the hunting and fishing regulations passed by the current Minister of Community Development in the Klein government. The regulations were made in such a way that the natives were given full hunting and fishing privaleges through out the province, in and out of season, with no restrictions. It was not what the natives wanted, it was in conflict with the rules and regulations that non-natives had to follow, and the regulations did not go through the regular channels for public consultation, nor even cabinet approval.

For instance, the Bioregional Management Boards. How do the First Nation’s communities fit in with the boards, as they are governed by federal law, treaties, and what has afforded to them through common law or the courts.

I think we need to set up the committee of AGP members to organize a fan out to do local or regional research into the issues involved in their area with regards to the First Nation’s communities.

This would, as I suggested up above, involve sending them to the various communities themselves, or conferences, or meetings. We would need to make sure there are notes taken and inputed to the policy development process. We also have to make sure, as George mentioned at our last policy meeting, make this an ongoing process and I would think also interactive from both sides of the issue.

Here is a selection of some of the most recent issues being talked about in Canada. Yes, they are from other parts of Canada, but if they move ahead they will have an affect on First Nation’s people in other areas of Canada.

In the Ottawa Citizen, on July 14, 2006 editorial the day after the re- election of Mr. Fontaine as the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations says, “that Canada's First Nations don't need a kinder, gentler paternalism.” In fact they put the position forward that the First Nations people, and “all Canadians, need leaders who will ask tough questions: Will continued segregation help aboriginal people thrive? How can remote communities prosper? They need leaders who will look at old problems with fresh eyes.”

As a Provincial party it may be a policy position that we agree with the Kelowna Accord, the $5-billion agreement the Liberal government signed last year with premiers before it was voted out of office. It was meant to fight poverty, improve living conditions and increase education and health standards for First Nations.

The final sentence in the Citizen editorial states, “The old ideas have not served the young people growing up on reserves now, and they owe those ideas no loyalty.”

As was reported in the Toronto Star on the matter of Fontaine’s re-election, “support in Toronto for the head of the Assembly of First Nations is wavering following his re-election to a third term. "The AFN has been almost irrelevant in terms of urban aboriginal issues," said Joe Hester, who runs Anishnawbe Health Toronto, a local drop-in clinic.

In Toronto’s case 26 per cent of the homeless people are aboriginal with less than 1 per cent of people in Toronto being native.

As Michael Cheena, Executive Director of the Urban Aboriginal Alliance of Toronto, "We're not at the table," and added that "the federal government only deals with the AFN and the First Nations chiefs, and the urban aboriginals get left out." Cheena said he didn't know if that would have changed if Bill Wilson had been elected instead.

So we see that there is even dissention amongst the groups that work with and for the First Nation’s people.

As a provincial party it might be a policy idea to, advocate the province of Alberta join the
native leaders of Alberta, in the fight to convince the Canadian government to agree on the United Nations Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or maybe the province should adopt the declaration as a policy and put it into law.

As an example of one issue that is of interest to the northern native communities in Alberta that might not be an issue to natives in southeast Alberta, are "livelihood rights," a doctrine developed to give practical modern meaning to century-old Indian treaties.

The Edmonton Journal writes about a very real example of this by referring to the Resistance by the Dene Tha' in the High Level region against the Alberta leg in the $7.5-billion Mackenzie gas project is only the first attempt at using the new approach to try changing a development, said Jim Webb, a policy adviser to northern native communities. Livelihood rights are cornerstones of 1980s and '90s aboriginal treaties in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Arctic "comprehensive land claims settlements" are built on native resource ownership, development partnerships, endowment funds or revenue shares for acquiring businesses assets and roles in supervising resource projects through regional regulatory agencies.

This is real issue that also extends to other First Nations groups with regards to the oil and gas industry through out Alberta, but most recently in the north.

The national agencies have so far refused to pick a fight with Alberta by intervening. The decision on the Arctic pipeline's Alberta leg is being left up to the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board. A Dene Tha' lawsuit is still only in early stages in the federal court.

Provincial authorities know all about the attempt to import the northern version of aboriginal rights. The Alberta government has observer status in three-year-old negotiations between the federal government and the province's native communities on translating old Indian treaties into modern agreements akin to the Arctic claims settlements.

This is an example of where jurisidictions overlap with no one prepared to stand up for the people of the First Nations.

Webb points out that a provincial policy describes processes for adapting the northern approach to Alberta conditions, including integrated land use plans and "regional management forums" of government, industry and aboriginal representatives.

But the apparatus only exists on paper, Webb said. An early attempt to put the theory into practice in the Fort McMurray region ended when the province withdrew from the exercise rather than let it develop a controlling role in oilsands development, he said.

The status quo, however, is spawning increasingly acrimonious regulatory and legal duels over modern meanings to be read into the old Indian treaties.
The original pacts did not spell out the livelihood rights idea, which is that Canada owes its original inhabitants the means to make new livings in exchange for taking away all their territories except for small reservations.

Maybe a policy area for the Alberta Green Party to look at is in fact developing a process for the Provincial government to participate in making sure that the people of the First Nations are equal participants in the industrial development of the province in the same way that counties, cities, and municipal governments are, while trying to look at the old agreements with our modern eyes.