Mailing address:
3536 - 106 Street
Edmonton, AB T6J 1A4
403-436-5652
FAX: 403-437-0719
January 18, 1992
Enclosed for your information is another review of John Goddard's book on
the Lubicons.
* * * * *
WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, Saturday, December 28, 1991
LOOKING AT NATIVE RIGHTS
By Ralph Kuropatwa
Special to the Free Press
LAST STAND OF THE LUBICON CREE: by John Goddard, 282 pp., Vancouver,
Douglas & McIntyre
John Goddard's LAST STAND OF THE LUBICON CREE is a distressing tale of
promises broken and justice denied. You may remember the Lubicon hitting
the front pages in 1988. Television news coverage was incomplete without
the young Chief Ominayak and his trademark baseball cap. The story was not
a very complicated one. In their out-of-the-way tuck in Alberta's Lesser
Slave interior, between the Peace River to the north and the Athabasca to
the south, the Lubicon were missed by every treaty-making Canadian sweep of
Indian communities. Occasional visits by federal agents and accountants
kept depleting the number of residents that were recognized as being "real"
Indians, and therefore eligible for the grants and services of Indian
Affairs. By 1950, the exploration companies had hit oil. John Goddard's
book is a painfully detailed account of how the lust for oil further
corrupted relations between politicians and aboriginals.
It is an important book, and it tells an important story.
In its briefest outline, it reminds us that Ottawa and Edmonton could not
move quickly enough in the service of oil, and could not be imagined moving
slower to settle a fundamental dispute with a small aboriginal community
over land settlement, band membership, wildlife management, and a claim for
cash compensation. The Lubicon went up the ladder of bureaucratic
requirements, rung by rung. Then they lost patience with the game in which
the rules applied only to them, and seemed to change whenever they
threatened to work in favor of the Lubicon.
So they called for a boycott of the Winter Olympic Games at Calgary. They
appealed to the organized international community regarding Canada's
violations of human rights. And they blockaded their land, which shut down
oil operations for about a week.
For a while, they were media darlings. Alberta Premier Don Getty declared
himself a friend of the Lubicon, prompting the predictable comment about
how, with friends like that, the Lubicon didn't need any enemies. Brian
Mulroney gave them sympathy and re-assurances of goodwill in the middle of
the election campaign. Then the election was over. The media went on to
fresher stories, and the solution to the troublesome Lubicon was put into
place by the representatives of Canada. Essentially, they defined the
Lubicon out of existence.
One more failure to communicate, or more sleaze in government-aboriginal
relations.