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The following Toronto Star story is available online by clicking here ...

We move Kashechewan at its peril - Canada must listen to aboriginal people before making decisions on their behalf, says Marie Wadden - Dec. 13, 2006 - MARIE WADDEN

It's a shame Alan Pope, the former Ontario cabinet minister who has recommended the federal government move Kashechewan from James Bay to an area outside of Timmins, didn't speak to Jennifer Wynne when he was on the reserve.

She should have been his first stop.

Wynne is the community's NNADAP (National Native Alcohol and Drug Addiction Program) worker. That program is 25 years old this year and there's a drug addiction worker on most First Nations reserves who knows why their communities aren't working.

"He didn't come to my house, or my office either," Wynne says. "I wish he had."

Wynne would have been Anastasia Shkilnyk's first stop. Like Pope, Shkilnyk was sent by the federal government to a reserve devastated by water problems. It was 1976 and the community was Grassy Narrows near Kenora, where mercury from a pulp and paper mill had polluted the local river.

She found a community devastated as much by alcohol as by mercury. She documents the social chaos in her book, A Poison Stronger than Love.

She learned the downfall of these formerly self-sufficient Ojibway was caused by their forced resettlement from one reserve to another; from self-sufficiency to dependency. A delicate balance in their lives had been upset by policy-makers who went ahead with plans that ignored the wishes of the very people they were supposed to be "helping."

"People are very emotional in Kashechewan right now," Wynne says. "They don't know what to do. Whenever we talk about moving, people start to cry. They're depressed."

Wynne is describing a people who are at the very edge of their resiliency; their ability to cope with change and setbacks. Many on the reserve have dysfunctional ways of coping, mainly through alcohol and drugs.

Wynne estimates nine of every 10 adults in the community abuse alcohol, when they can get it. Like most aboriginal reserves, Kashechewan is supposed to be dry.

Wynne says bootleggers make $80 to $100 selling an average size bottle of vodka or rum on the reserve in the fall. The price drops in winter when the ice creates a road to the nearest liquor store, several hundred kilometres away. The price of bootlegged booze is usually a good indicator of a community's need to escape reality.

In the course of the Atkinson series, Tragedy or Triumph: Canadian Public Policy and Aboriginal Addictions, we've learned a lot about the high cost, financially and socially, of making and enacting policies for aboriginal people that does not engage them and that ignores their social fragility.

Two evaluations criticize the strategies Health Canada and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development have used to help relocate the Innu of Davis Inlet, Labrador, to a beautiful new place called Natuashish.

The evaluators say our failure to properly involve the Innu initially when their healing plan was created and to ignore their social healing needs, have set back the community's recovery. New housing and a better infrastructure have given the former residents more motivation to stop drinking, but the healing is still in its early stages.

Kashechewan needs healing, too, and it should start now, before any move takes place. It will take years to build new houses wherever the people decide to go and this time must be used wisely.

Wynne needs a lot more help. Funding for a vital Health Canada position — a "wellness worker" — ran out this summer. The wellness worker runs addiction prevention programs. Why is there no one in this job? If ever a place in Canada needed a wellness worker, it's Kashechewan.

Wynne would like more training, especially in counselling. She is concerned that talk of moving permanently will create divisions in the community and upset people already weakened by addiction and its partners — sexual abuse and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Kashechewan has only one mental health worker.

According to Health Canada's formula (one drug addiction worker for every 700 people) Wynne should have a partner. She'd like it to be a man because, she says, men in the community are not comfortable talking to her.

"I was sexually abused," she says openly, "and I know I couldn't talk about that with a male worker, I needed to speak to a woman. If we're going to help the men with their problems, they need men to talk to."

A team of mental health and wellness workers is needed in Kashechewan right now to help prepare the people for the big decisions ahead.

If we've learned anything from our short but disastrous history of interference in aboriginal lives, it's that they must be active participants in all decisions made.

We move Kashechewan at its peril. Kashechewan's troubles won't go away because the children have access to more arenas and public swimming pools, and their mothers can work behind the A&W counter or sling hamburgers at a McDonald's.

Ask the people who live on reserves that encircle Kenora, Thunder Bay, Sudbury, Goose Bay, or Williams Lake in B.C., if their lives are better than those of the people of Kashechewan. They'd say "no." You don't see many aboriginal people working in these towns, nor do their children feel welcome in many of the local public facilities.

The social problems on the reserves surrounding Canadian towns and cities are often so extreme that people are too insecure to leave the reserve.

Joe Linklater, the chief of Canada's most remote and socially healthy aboriginal community, Old Crow in the Yukon, told us you don't have to live near an urban centre to be a healthy aboriginal community. What is needed is a large land base to continue nurturing the aboriginal cultures' spiritual relationship with the natural world.

We have a lot to learn in Canada about making good policy for suffering aboriginal communities. We won't learn until we start to listen to the people who must always bear the brunt of our "good intentions."

One informed Kashechewan resident is telling us her people need to heal their hearts and minds before they can move anywhere and we should be listening.

From http://www.kenoradailyminerandnews.com/News/275148.html

Overcrowding growing concern at Whitedog school
By Mike Aiken - Miner and News - December 13, 2006

Barb Mach tries to keep focused on a tutoring session, but it’s hard to do.

Her lesson’s taking place in a converted staff room at Wabaseemoong School with 15 special ed students from a Grade 7/8 class.

“It’s exactly the environment they have trouble in,” she said.
Due to bureaucratic foot dragging, the building built for a capacity of 260 children from kindergarten to Grade 12 had 320 in September. The new construction promised for next fall 2007 might be ready for 2009.

“Students have been given hope so many times,” said Wabaseemoong (Whitedog) First Nation band councillor Waylon Scott on Tuesday. “It’ll get to a point where they’ll say ‘It’s not going to happen’.”

Since classes began, an estimated 50 have dropped off the rolls. With 70 per cent of enrolment in Grade 3 or younger, the band’s education authority is considering some drastic solutions.

One includes sending the high school students to Kenora, where they can get access to shops, optional courses and more extra-curricular activities.

While it may allow children access to classrooms, it may not solve related problems including the high drop-out rates among aboriginal students at local schools.

The vice-principal at Wabaseemoong First Nation School, Gaye McDonald, said the two-hour bus ride would make it very difficult for the senior students who have family responsibilities.
McDonald noted many of them are already parents, which would make the commute or a billeting situation very difficult for all involved.

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada spokesman Tony Prudori said Ottawa has approved design work on the new building, as well as the assignment of two portables to ease overcrowding.

Negotiations with the former Liberal government had included a personal pledge by Treasury Board President Reg Alcock to oversee the project. However, he and his government were defeated last January, causing further delay in the tendering process.

In recent years, renovations have helped with a sinking foundation, shifting walls, buckled floorboards, bent doorframes and an electrical panel that was separating from the wall.

A breakdown in the aging furnace last Christmas caused the plumbing to burst and flooding in the gym. The rebuilding of the 34-year-old school could cost an estimated $18 million.

The library and radio room have been converted for space, along with the front room in a teacher’s home, which has become a classroom for up to 20.

In the fall, National Chief Phil Fontaine paid a personal visit, along with MPP Howard Hampton. Both have applied pressure to federal government staff, leading to personal contact with senior staff at Indian Affairs and Treasury Board.

Regional Chief Angus Toulouse and Grand Chief Arnold Gardner were scheduled to visit the school Tuesday, but cancelled the night before. Band council received a note after 11 p.m. Monday saying the trip was off, Scott said, but he didn’t elaborate on the reason for the cancellation.

Fog grounded flights in and out of Kenora Tuesday morning, but it isn’t clear how this affected the regional chief since he was due to arrive in the city the day before. Calls to the Chiefs of Ontario and Treaty 3 offices weren’t returned Tuesday. The meeting was scheduled even though the two political bodies announced their split late last week.

The new school would have a capacity of between 400 and 450, which would solve many of the issues with crowding, said McDonald. It would also bring children in care home to the community, she added, noting the lack of classrooms is an obstacle.

The community has an on-reserve population of 876, but there are an estimated 200 children in care. Bringing these wards of the state back into the First Nation is an important issue for the band leadership.

In recent years, Whitedog has seen the creation of a new water treatment plant, water tower, children’s aid office and renovations at the youth resource centre. However, the completion of the Treaty 3 police substation continue to linger, as it also deals with a shifting foundation.

Much of Whitedog is located on clay or swamp, which makes it difficult for engineering.

The following two news stories dealing with Indigenous rights show how the government is trying to "take care of" First Nations by doing what they think is best for the people and their communities without consulting with them. The first story from CBC deals with the recent announcement that the government is repealing section 67 of the Canada Human Rights Act. The second story addresses the issue of the government's efforts to block the United Nations Indigenous Rights Declaration from being passed.

From http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/12/13/prentice-bill.html

Native groups warn of 'disaster' over rights act changes - December 13, 2006 - CBC News

Native groups slammed the federal government on Wednesday for not consulting them on proposed changes to the Canadian Human Rights Act that would give aboriginal people the right to challenge federal legislation governing First Nations.

Aboriginal people in Canada currently cannot launch complaints about the Indian Act under the Canadian Human Rights Act, because of a specific section in the law that exempts the Indian Act.

At issue is Section 67, which says: "Nothing in this Act affects any provision of the Indian Act or any provision made under or pursuant to that Act."

Federal Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice, who introduced the changes Wednesday in Parliament, called the section "a block which prevents Canadian First Nations citizens from having the same rights and protections that you and I have."

Repealing the section "without engaging in meaningful consultations with Aboriginal Peoples could only lead to disaster," said Bev Jacobs, president of the Native Women's Association of Canada in a release Wednesday.

If passed, the change is expected to prompt hundreds of discrimination claims.

Transition period ignored, groups say

Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said human rights must be protected, but Prentice never responded to calls by aboriginal groups for a crucial transition period recommended by the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

"This is simply a recipe for ineffectiveness and will add new costs for First Nations governments already under-resourced," said Fontaine Wednesday in a release.

Prentice told reporters outside question period Wednesday that the government has held "extensive discussions about this for an extensive period and discussions will certainly carry on."

The groups said changing the act might seem like a good idea to non-natives, but they have traditional laws that work and they consider them important as well.

"Our people are fully capable of dealing with these matters themselves," said Katherine Whitecloud, a regional chief of Manitoba.

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The following CanWest news story is available online by clicking here

Fontaine joins global lobby on native rights treaty -Steven Edwards, CanWest News Service - Wednesday, December 13, 2006

UNITED NATIONS - Canada's First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine joined indigenous leaders from around the world Tuesday to launch an international campaign aimed at reigniting support for a treaty on native peoples' rights negotiated over 20 years.

He said the new push will focus first on trying to convince African nations to reverse their newly voiced opposition to the draft Canada and other European-colonized countries such as the United States and Australia have also rejected in its present form.

Indigenous groups hope that winning back African support will have a snowball effect that pressures the other countries into changing their positions.

The African caucus stunned the international indigenous community last month when they voted in a key General Assembly policy committee to postpone action on the draft treaty after approving it in the United Nations' Human Rights Council in June.

The document, which calls for international recognition of native peoples' right to self-determination and control over their traditional lands, needs General Assembly endorsement before it can be offered to states for signature and ratification.

"Over the next weeks and months we will be canvassing all member states, starting with the African coalition," said Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

"We were shocked and disappointed at the recent postponement, and we feel Canada's stance is a stain on its human rights (reputation) internationally."

Canada had been at the forefront of talks that began 20 years ago to create the first comprehensive treaty recognizing rights of native peoples, but withdrew support several months ago amid concern some of the finer print wasn't getting a full hearing.

In a position document, Canada said "parts of the text are vague and ambiguous," setting the stage for competing definitions that could, for example, enable native groups to reopen negotiations on already-settled land claims.

"I don't think anyone is acting in bad faith, rather it's just that countries feel there are some issues that need further discussion," said Fred Caron, assistant deputy minister in the Indian Affairs Department.

UN officials are working to get talks restarted for General Assembly action by next fall.

"It's not clear what can be achieved in nine months when this treaty has been so many years in the making," said Fontaine.

But Caron said much of the current draft had been written in the last year or two after years of deadlock.

"We're aiming for a declaration which advances indigenous rights in a fashion that leads to harmonious relations with the states in which they live," he said.

The document as it stands retains the support of Latin American countries, where indigenous peoples make up a large part of the electorate, and of Europe. But African countries _ which vaguely define their indigenous peoples as those who maintain traditional ways of life _ withdrew their support over the self-determination clauses.

While some African diplomats said their countries feared the provision could spark rebellions, a few indigenous activists charged developed countries such as the United States and Canada had pressured African nations into changing their votes.