News last week that three Manitoba native bands made significant political donations to the federal Liberal party between 2000 and 2002 has angered many ordinary Canadians, and with good reason.
The fact that the donations were diverted from band funds earmarked to deliver vitally important community services such as education, health care, housing and social assistance -- programs routinely painted by their leaders as woefully underfunded by the government in the first place -- is alarming. Like the overwhelming majority of Canada's 600-plus registered Indian bands, the three Manitoba communities -- the Peguis First Nation, the Berens River First Nation and the Norway House Cree Nation -- suffer from crushing levels of unemployment and a host of other social ills. If it had been spent on services rather than partisan politics, this money could have made a world of difference to at least a few struggling residents.
Equally disturbing is that these scant, taxpayer-funded resources were funneled by the three bands back to the governing party at a time when they, like most First Nations, were roundly condemning the Liberals for their plans to impose greater accountability through the now-defunct First Nations Governance Act.
When Liberal leaser Paul Martin withdrew the legislation shortly after becoming Prime Minister, he cited the lack of consultation with First Nations when the legislation was introduced by the Chrétien government. But it's doubtful that any of the three Manitoba reserves bothered to consult with their own people about tapping into band funds to make political donations. They undoubtedly knew that, if they did so, the outrage would have been immediate.
Such apparent contempt by these leaders for their constituents' urgent needs flies in the face of the reputations they have attempted to cultivate. Both the Peguis First Nation and the Norway House Cree Nation, each with populations exceeding 5,000, are among the country's largest reserves and are led by chiefs who regularly extol their virtues as progressive and accountable leaders. But beyond even the campaign donations controversy, other recent events have put the lie to such claims.
In the case of Norway House, where Chief Ron Evans is presently running for the federal Liberals in the sprawling Churchill riding, basic democratic rights taken for granted by most Canadians are routinely denied to band members.
For nearly two years, Evans and five other members of his seven-person council have tried to stifle the attempts of one councillor to demand greater financial accountability and political transparency. Since he began fighting for access to the band's financial records and an accounting of its liabilities, Marcel Balfour has been stripped of his political portfolio, ejected from council meetings, and deprived of his salary. In defending these draconian measures, Evans' excuse has been the young councillor's "disruptive" influence and "lack of communications skills."
Later, when nearly 1,000 members of the reserve petitioned Ottawa for a new band election, Evans tried to derail the attempt by circulating a document that supposedly denied the community's right to call an election and was purportedly signed by Indian Affairs Minister Andy Mitchell -- a claim the minister's office has categorically denied.
Evans' contribution of band funds to the Liberal party under council seal between 2000 and 2002 has therefore come as little surprise. In a community where dissent has often been crushed, either through band citizenship revocations, home evictions or the prohibition of community meetings not sanctioned by the council, it's pretty well par for the course.
Unfortunately, the sad state of democracy in Norway House is not an isolated one.
On the Peguis First Nation, the lack of accountability and transparency at the band government level is equally entrenched with its chief and council. Attempts by members of the community over the years to ask legitimate questions of their leaders regarding land claims negotiations, the band's finances and their own band membership status have met a similar fate as in Norway House.
When Peguis members tried to go higher with their concerns, access to information requests were then either stymied or subverted. In one case, a band member has complained that he was tricked by a councillor into signing a document that withdrew his request for information.
Such contempt for democracy is not limited to band leadership in Manitoba. On the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ont., for instance, Chief Roberta Jamieson -- a nearly successful candidate for National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations last year -- routinely refuses to respond to questions from the media regarding her leadership. A former ombudsman for the province of Ontario, Jamieson told me in an interview during her AFN campaign that "the people's expectation of participatory democracy is naive and unworkable."
Across the country, chiefs and councils wield enormous power over their citizens through the Indian Act. For all their perceived hatred of the legislation, First Nations leaders continue to use it as both a needle and a cloak, pricking the conscience of a Canadian public immobilized by its vague collective guilt while simultaneously obscuring their own work in denying fundamental democractic and human rights to their own people.
As the political donations by Evans and others made clear, far too many First Nations leaders allow the interpretation of democracy to be guided by the lure of political influence and power. Meanwhile, the far more urgent and difficult imperatives of political obligation and responsibility fall by the wayside.