Mailing address:
3536 - 106 Street
Edmonton, AB T6J 1A4
403-436-5652
FAX: 403-437-0719
December 2, 1991
Enclosed for your information is a copy of a newspaper article on the new
Lubicon book by John Goddard.
* * * * *
THE TORONTO GLOBE & MAIL, Thursday, November 28, 1991
CANADA LIED ABOUT LUBICON, NEW BOOK SAYS
By Rudy Platiel
Native Affairs Reporter
Canada rewrote history and "lied outright" to the United Nations about its
handling of the Lubicon Indian claim, a new book about the Alberta band's
50-year struggle for a reserve says.
John Goddard says in THE LAST STAND OF THE LUBICON CREE, which is to be
launched officially today, that canada's response in 1989 to a Lubicon
complaint to the UN is contradicted by a chronology he obtained from the
federal negotiators who prepared it.
Goddard, a writer who has followed the Lubicon case since 1984, says the UN
human-rights committee -- misled by Canada's submission -- tabled an
"ambiguous ruling" on the Lubicons' complaint about their treatment.
The UN committee said that "historical inequities" and more recent
developments "threaten the way of life and culture of the Lubicon and
constitute a violation of Article 27" of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights "so long as they continue."
But the committee also said that Canada was proposing to rectify the
situation with "a remedy the committee deems appropriate."
However, negotiations on the Lubicon claim fell apart when Ottawa presented
"a take-it-or-leave-it" offer around the end of 1988. The Indian Affairs
department subsequently created and formally recognized a new "Woodland
Cree" band composed of some dissident Lubicons and Indians from other areas
who had a claim to the territory.
Church groups condemned the creation of the new band as a tactic to
undermine the Lubicon leadership. But Ottawa negotiated a settlement with
the Woodland band.
The current government treatment of the Lubicon is "just history repeating
itself," Goddard said in an interview.
His book, which is published by Douglas & McIntyre, traces 50 years of
federal treatment of the Lubicon Indians from the 1940s when they were
promised reserve land because they had been missed in the settlement of an
1899 treaty.
However, Malcolm McCrimmon, a Indian Affairs department official,
arbitrarily struck hundreds of Lubicon Indians off the band list in an
apparent attempt to save the government money for the war effort.
Many who lost their status were forced to leave the Indian community where
they were born and raised. In some cases families were split between those
recognized as Indians and those not and orphans were "wrenched from their
adoptive families."
McCrimmon's actions provoked an outcry and two judicial inquiries in the
1940s, both of which condemned the cuts. But instead of being censured,
McCrimmon was put in charge of implementing the recommendations of the last
inquiry and he was eventually promoted.
The majority of those arbitrarily cut from the list never regained their
status and the promised reserve land was never provided, Goddard's book
says.
The Lubicon jumped to national prominence in 1988 with a campaign to
boycott the Calgary Olympics over the failure to provide them with reserve
land first promised in 1940.
They were all but ignored on their scrubby land until the discovery of oil
and the move to exploit it turned their claim for reserve land into a high-
stakes standoff.
Ottawa's response to the human-rights complaint made to the UN said that
federal negotiators became aware in December, 1988, of a group of 350
people within the Lubicon community who wanted to settle the land issue.
"To facilitate the taking of land collectively (or in common) for the
purpose of the reserve, the federal government agreed to the creation of
the Woodland Cree Band," the reply said.
But Goddard says in his book that, according to the federal chronology of
events he obtained, it wasn't until after negotiations between the Lubicon
leadership and Ottawa broke down in January, 1989, that federal officials
began returning phone calls to an individual who was seeking a separate
settlement.
Canada also told the UN that "further developments" included the provision
in an old treaty which offered individual Indians to take "severalty" -- or
land individually.
But Canada didn't tell the UN that its officials had emphatically ruled out
granting such a settlement.
In the end, Goddard said, the majority of the Woodland Cree were not those
who had been accepted members of the Lubicon group under Chief Bernard
Ominayak. The Woodland Cree Band was recognized within eight months, while
some other groups had been waiting decades for band recognition.
The new band subsequently accepted a negotiated settlement that had been
rejected by the Lubicon leadership. Each member who voted in the
ratification received $50 for expenses and $1,000 when the settlement was
accepted. But most ended up with nothing because the payments were
deducted from their welfare cheques.
Today, the majority of the original Lubicon group are without a settlement.
Among other points in the book:
*The Alberta government pursued "a master strategy" to drive hunters and
trappers off the oil-rich land, including a 1966 incident in which Indians
at Marten River were cajoled into moving to another community. When they
tried to return, the government burned and bulldozed their former
community.
*In 1975, when Alberta appeared about to lose a court case to the Indians
over a caveat they filed to the land, the government passed retroactive
legislation outlawing the caveats. Goddard said passing retroactive
legislation to win a court case "is virtually unheard of in a democracy"
but has drawn little news coverage.