[This may have been slightly garbled in conversion to 80-character
lines.--mkk]
* Original Area: NA-CHAT * Original From: Teionnion'kwata:se
(1:128/112) * Original To : All (90:80/3)
BY RUDY PLATIEL
Native Affairs Reporter Canada's land claim settlement with
the Inuit was denounced at a hearing in Manitoba yesterday
as "a theft of Dene land" that compounds the injustice
against a people who were almost destroyed by a 1956
relocation. Ila Bussidor, a former chief of the Sayisi Dene
in Northern Manitoba, told the Royal Commission on Aboriginal
Peoples in Thompson that the recently'signed Nunavut agreement
gives the Inuit control ofland that for thousands ot' years was
the traditional territory of the Dene before they were moved
from the bush to Churchill, "We protest the outright theft of over
50,000 square miles [129,500 square kilometres] of
traditional Dene territory, a theft orchestrated by the federal
government. We have been denied title to our share of the land, "
Mrs. Bussidor said. In a passionate and bitter denunciation of the
relocation, which was followed by social disintegration and
deaths, Mrs. Bussidor said the Inuit deal is a final injustice to
be inflicted on the Dene, who ore now struggling to restore their
pride and independence. "We were dropped off on a rocky
peninsula on the outskirts of Churchill with no means of building
shelters for our families, " Mrs. Bussidor" said.
"The dog teams starved first. The people spent the hrst Churchill
winter in their tents. They survived by scrounging from the
dump. There were no jobs for a people that spoke no English and
were unfamiliar with routine. " A cyde of community
self-destruction followed, Mrs. Bussidor said, in which adults
turned to alcohol, welfare, abuse and garbage scavenging. "There
were many children like me, who were starving, afraid of
violent,'drunken parents and ended up running for their lives, "
she said. While some turned to crime and ended up in reform
schools and prisons, she said, "a handful of us used education as
an avenue of escape. "
In 1966 the Sayisi Dene (Dene from the East) were moved to
another site 5.6 kilometres outside Churchill, but drunken
adults often froze to death on the road or died in house fire's,
as her parents did, Mrs. Bussidor said. In the 1970s, she said,
her people began to come to terms with what had happened to them
and moved back to their traditional territory to establish new
communities. But the process of restoring a shattered culture is
hard, she said. "The generation of people we relied on to teach
us the Dene way are all dead. Our living parents are now old and
feeble, and they never fully recovered from the perils of the
ordeal, " she said. The royal commissioners, Paul Chartrand
and Bertha Wilson, promised to consider the Dene's request for
an investigation and a second hearing into the relocation.
The Dene also want compensation and a new land settlement. They
say a 1910 treaty their leaders signed, believing it was " a
friendship treaty," has left them with nothing.
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