In these and many other ways, the federal government has blocked progress
at the negotiating table, and in a bullying and defiant way has challenged
First Nations to go to court if we do not like what we are offered, even
though they know that aboriginal people do not have the resources to fight
long legal battles. The Gitskan Wet'suwet'en court case ... illustrates
the difficulties of this route. Two other examples are pertinent: after
the Teme-Augama Anishnabai managed, in 1973, to impose a land caution over
110 townships in Northern Ontario, asserting aboriginal ownership, the
Ontario government changed the legislation to preclude other First Nations
from using the same tactic. Ten years later, when the Lubicon went to
court to try for the same thing, the Alberta government retroactively
changed the legislation to insure that the band's action would fail. (These
same tactics have been used by the South African apartheid government to
deny the rights of Africans.)
Similarly, in 1985, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed the right of
Mi'kmaq Indians to hunt under a treaty of 1752, which the court declared
to be in effect. Yet, in 1988, in defiance of that ruling, provincial
game officers arrested and charged thriteen Mi'kmaq who were hunting
outside the provincial hunting season, and have vowed to continue to
prosecute Mi'kmaq citizens who exercise their rights.
In our view the Mi'maq case should have provided an opportunity for the
federal government to begin bilateral negotiations with our people to
redefine the terms of many of the old treaties. Instead, the government
has chosen to ignore it. Even more absurdly, the minister has acted as if
the treaty was with J.M. Simon (the Mi'kmaq who won the case) and not
with all Mi'kmaqs. According to this reasoning, every Mi'kmaq would have
to go to court to prove that he is descended from those who signed the
1752 treaty. This is the attitude of a federal government that is
supposed to be there to protect the rights of aboriginal people.
These are only a few of the anomalies that have made the claims process
unworkable."
Georges Erasmus, National Chief, Assembly of First Nations, as quoted
in "DRUMBEAT: Anger And Renewal In Indian Country" (ISBN 0-9299091-03-5)
(Reprinted without permission)