Lubicon Lake Indian Nation
Little Buffalo Lake, AB
403-629-3945
FAX: 403-629-3939
Mailing address:
3536 - 106 Street
Edmonton, AB T6J 1A4
403-436-5652
FAX: 403-437-0719
December 18, 1991
Enclosed for your information is a copy of a letter which Lubicon Chief
Bernard Ominayak recently sent to the U.N. Human Rights Committee. The
Chief's letter up-dates the Committee on the Lubicon situation and advises
the Committee how the Canadian Government is using the Committee's U.N.
decision as a key element in its current anti-Lubicon propaganda campaign.
* * * * *
December 18, 1991, letter from Chief Bernard Ominayak to the United Nations
Human Rights Committee
Mr. Jakob Th. Moller
Chief Communications Unit
Centre for Human Rights
United Nations Office
CH-1211 Geneve 10
SWITZERLAND
RE: Communication No. 167/1984
Dear Sir:
The Lubicon people wish to apprize the Committee of developments respecting
the Committee's March 26, 1990, decision on violation of Lubicon rights
under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. We also
wish to inquire about promised Committee follow-up on that decision.
NO NEGOTIATIONS
There have been no negotiations between the Lubicon people and the
Government of Canada since January 24, 1989, when Canadian Government
representatives deliberately broke down negotiations with a surprise "take-
it-or-leave-it" settlement offer known in advance to be untenable because
it provided the Lubicon people with absolutely no hope of ever again
becoming socially, politically or economically self-sufficient. Since that
time Canadian Government representatives have reiterated repeatedly that
their clearly unacceptable so-called "take-it-or-leave-it" offer will not
be changed.
In essence the Canadian Government has offered to build houses for the
Lubicon people and to support us forever on welfare -- like animals in the
zoo who are cared for and fed at an appointed time -- in exchange for our
acquiescence to the deliberate destruction of our self-sufficient way of
life and the pillage of our resource-rich 10,000 square kilometre
traditional territory. The genocidal consequences for aboriginal people of
such an arrangement are well known and are a national disgrace in Canada
with aboriginal people suffering 90% plus unemployment rates, overcrowded
and inadequate housing, high disease and alcoholism rates, high illiteracy
rates, infant mortality rates nearly twice the national average, average
life expectancy 10 years shorter than the national average, violent deaths
three times more common than among non-aboriginal people, death by
poisoning or injury four times more common, an overall death rate four
times higher than other people in the country and the highest suicide rate
of any racial or ethnic group in the world.
CONTINUING SUBVERSION OF LUBICON RIGHTS AND SOCIETY
As predicted Canada has proceeded apace with efforts to subvert rights
which the Lubicon people supposedly enjoy under Canadian law and to tear
Lubicon society asunder, creating a whole new aboriginal society with
supposedly equal rights to our unceded traditional territory out of
disparate individuals technically belonging to a half-a-dozen different
aboriginal societies from the surrounding area, selecting and paying a
lawyer to "negotiate" a settlement of aboriginal land rights over our
unceded traditional territory supposedly on behalf of this new Government-
created aboriginal society, promising to pay the members of this new
Government-created aboriginal society $1,000 each (which they learned later
would be deducted from their normal welfare payments) if they accepted this
Government contrived settlement agreement, and then publicly claiming that
the Lubicon people no longer hold unextinguished aboriginal land rights to
our traditional territory, because, supposedly, "other natives, who shared
those traditional lands with the Lubicons either signed or adhered to
Treaty No. 8".
The very wording of the Canadian "Indian Act" legislation under which this
new "Band" was created illustrates the nature of the problem faced not only
by the Lubicon people but also by all of the aboriginal people in Canada.
Certainly such provisions directed at any other distinct people or
political jurisdiction in the country is both unimaginable and would be
rightly condemned as an unacceptable violation of civil and political
rights. The operative section of that 1985 Canadian "Indian Act"
legislation reads, in part:
"17.(1) The Minister may, whenever he considers it
desirable...constitute new Bands and establish Band lists with
respect thereto from existing Band lists, or from the (Government-
created) Indian Register, if requested to do so by (an unspecified
number of) persons proposing to form the new Band. (In this case
the Government of Canada actually sent agents into the area
surrounding the traditional Lubicon territory to solicit and
organize such a request.)
"(2) Where pursuant to subsection (1) a new Band has been
established from an existing Band OR ANY PART THEREOF
(capitalization added), such portion of the reserve lands and
funds of the existing Band as the Minister (in his sole
discretion) determines shall be held for the use and benefit of
the new Band. (This clause literally gives the Minister the legal
power to take apart any aboriginal society in the country and to
distribute the lands and resources rightfully belonging to that
aboriginal society as he sees fit.)
"(3) No protest may be made...in respect of the deletion from or
the addition to a Band List consequent on the exercise by the
Minister of any of his powers under subsection (1)."
COMMITTEE MEMBERS NOW IMPLICATED IN THE GENOCIDE OF THE LUBICON PEOPLE
Most recently, and in response to Lubicon efforts to block clear-cutting of
trees in our unceded traditional territory by a Japanese forestry company
to whom the Alberta Provincial Government has sold the timber rights to a
huge 41,000 square kilometre area which completely blankets our 10,000
square kilometre traditional territory -- something which would almost
certainly complete the genocidal process being deliberately and
systematically directed against the Lubicon people by the Canadian and
Alberta Governments -- the Canadian Government initiated a major new anti-
Lubicon propaganda campaign claiming, among other things, that "the Human
Rights Committee found the (take-it-or-leave-it) offer which Canada made to
the (Lubicon people) is fair and reasonable and would meet any obligation
Canada has under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights".
Thus has the Government of Canada now used the imprecise wording of the
Committee's Lubicon decision to implicate the members of the Human Rights
Committee in the genocide of the Lubicon people -- much in the same way
that the Nazis implicated the international community in the Holocaust by
citing refusals of other countries to accept German Jews.
PROMISED FOLLOW-UP
Lastly we would like to know what if anything has happened with promised
Committee follow-up on the decision. We were advised by Committee staff at
the time of the decision that a Special Rapporteur would be appointed to
follow-up on the Committee's decision and that Canada would be reported
annually to the General Assembly so long as the violation of our rights
continued -- along with other violators of the International Covenant such
as South Africa. The violation of our rights clearly continues. We've
heard nothing from or about any "Special Rapporteur". And we're distressed
to note that Canada is not even being reported to the General Assembly as
being in continuing violation of our rights under the Covenant.
As a people whose society is being systematically destroyed and whose
members have literally been dying while the Committee spent years
contemplating our increasingly desperate plight, it seems to us that the
Committee could at least now keep its promise to annually report the
results of its tragically ineffectual decision on continuing violation of
our civil and political rights to the General Assembly.
Sincerely,
Bernard Ominayak, Chief
Lubicon Lake Indian Nation
cc: Mr. Antonio Gonzalez, Director
International Indian Treaty Council
Messrs. Erasmus and Dussault, Co-Chairpersons,
Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples
Grand Chief Ovide Mercredi
Assembly of First Nations
Grand Chief Matthew Cooncome
Grand Council of the Crees
U.N. Human Rights Committee Members --
Mr. Andreas Mavrommatis
Nicosia, Cyprus
Mr. Nisuke Ando
Japan
Mlle. Christine Chanet
France
Mr. Vojin Dimitrijevic
Yugoslavia
Mr. Rein A. Myullerson
Moscow, Russia
M. Birame Ndiaye
Senegal
M. Fausto Pocar
Italy
Mr. Omran El Shafei
Egypt
Mrs. Rosalyn Higgins
United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland
Sr. Julio Prado Vallejo
Ecuador
Sr. A. Serrano Caldera
Nicaragua
Mr. S. Amos Wako
Kenya
Mr. Bertil Wennergren
Sweden
Mr. Rajsoomer Lallah
Mauritius
Mr. Francisco Jose Aguilar Urbina
Costa Rica
Mr. Janos Fodor
Hungary
Mr. Kurt Herndl
Austria
Mr. Walsed Sadi
Jordan