Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Thursday, January 17, 2013

AFN obstructionists will stop at nothing

Let’s say that somehow, the eruption we’ve all agreed to call Idle No More results in a historic breakthrough between Ottawa and Canada’s diverse and deeply troubled First Nations.

Let’s say the covenant recognizes and affirms aboriginal and treaty rights and contains a specific, collaborative action plan to deal with the urgent challenges of aboriginal childhood education, economic development, First Nations governance and accountability. Plus it comes with a startup $275 million just to be sure the rubber hits the road. And it’s announced at a historic gathering in Ottawa with the senior First Nations chiefs, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and even Governor-General David Johnston.

Now let’s say along comes an obstructionist “movement” that masquerades as militant but is really a minority faction of eccentric and reactionary Indian band chiefs who are hopelessly devoted to the status quo. They set out to methodically undermine the agreement. They hijack the work plan. Within a year they’ve pretty well sabotaged the whole thing.

You would not know it for all the pageantry and the rhetoric about genocide and treaties and insurrection, but that’s just one untold story of Idle No More so far. There was such an agreement. It was called the Joint Action Plan, dated June 9, 2011. It was systematically derailed, piece by piece, and its saboteurs are now among the loudest and most theatrical characters in the Idle No More drama.

It’s what British Columbia regional chief Jody Wilson-Raybould was talking about when she told the CBC last Sunday: “No one should use those movements as political opportunities to play power politics within the AFN.” But the opportunities have been taken, the power politics have been played, and for all the unhinged activist denunciations of the ruling Conservatives, it is the Assembly of First Nations that has been nearly riven asunder by all this.

It is not our sinister genius of a prime minister who’s in sick bay on doctor’s orders this week (pollster Ipsos-Reid reported Tuesday that the prime minister’s approval ratings are just fine). It’s Shawn Atleo, the visionary 46-year-old AFN national chief and co-author of the 2011 Joint Action Plan. Chief Atleo is expected to be off work pulling knives out of his back for perhaps two weeks.

This is not to traduce those four Saskatoon women whose earnest if unhelpfully paranoid reading of the 457-page parliamentary indignity packaged as Bill C-45 set off the Idle No More flash mobs in the first place. And great tribute is owed those thousands of aboriginal people who have marched in the snow, jingle danced at the mall and paraded down Main Street.

But to regard every harmless sidewalk gathering of drummers and singers as somehow ominously newsworthy is tolerable only until actual “news” occurs and it isn’t even noticed. Like last Sunday, when Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan unveiled a $330.8-million investment in water and sewer systems in First Nations communities across the country, along with a long-term strategy to fix the drinking-water mess that afflicts so many Indian reserves.

Maybe it wasn’t that big a deal, but perhaps if Duncan had dressed up like Sir Isaac Brock, shuttle-bused the Ottawa press gallery down to Queenston Heights and acted out the lines of the announcement in interpretive dance, you might have at least heard about it.

Not that “social media” have helped to clarify much.

Everyone from James Bay Cree Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come to New Democratic Party Leader Thomas Mulcair has expressed the wish that Attawapiskat Chief Theresa “willing to die for my people” Spence would just knock it off and go home. Even the Aboriginal People’s Television Network calls Chief Spence’s hunger strike at the Victoria Island aboriginal folk park merely a “liquids-only fast.”

But here’s what you get from the activist webzine The Canadian Progressive: “Hunger-striking Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Theresa Spence is the reincarnation of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. She is becoming the greatest moral and political leader of our time. In fact, Chief Theresa Spence’s courage and sacrifice already eclipses that of South Africa’s globally celebrated anti-apartheid icon, Nelson Mandela.”

It took only two months for an Internet meme to morph into a national news obsession. Now it’s the main alibi available to the bullying, anti-democratic minority that’s been paralyzing the AFN all along. Among the faction’s most prominent personalities are Manitoba Chief Derek Nepinak, Onion Lake Cree Chief Wally Fox and Serpent River Chief Isadore Day. These are the stout lads who came to Parliament Hill Dec. 4 intending to make a scene, purportedly about Bill C-45, and immediately resorted to roughhousing with House of Commons security guards for the television cameras.

Last February, only a month after the historic Crown-First Nations gathering in Ottawa, Chief Fox scored his first direct hit when he convinced the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations to reject the Crown-First Nations joint action plan in its entirety. The plan’s centrepiece was its far-reaching overhaul of and investment in aboriginal education.

The obstructionists boycotted the AFN’s own internal education task force and then had the gall to protest a lack of consultation when Atleo and Minister Duncan hammered out the beginning of a legislative strategy.

By last October, after a three-day session led mainly by Chief Nepinak, Atleo emerged to announce grimly that even his beloved education plan was history.

Then there’s Pam Palmater, the Rabble.ca columnist and Mi’kmaq academic whom Atleo thrashed in a 341-141 vote in last summer’s AFN elections. Palmater campaigned on the nasty claim that Atleo had “gone rogue” and was quietly collaborating with the incorrigibly right-wing Stephen Harper to transform the AFN into “the Assimilation of First Nations.” By late December, Palmater had emerged as the most prominent official spokesperson and organizer for Idle No More.

By last week, Nepinak, Fox and the rest were forming up in entourage behind Chief Spence in a grotesquely staged fiasco that was aimed solely at bullying the AFN executive to boycott the meeting Chief Atleo and Prime Minister Harper had managed to arrange in the Langevin Block. The obstructionists failed. But they haven’t stopped.

Last Sunday, Ernie Crey, the former United Native Nations vice-president who was the first aboriginal leader to openly question the motives of certain of Idle No More’s slickest champions, told me: Just watch, these demagogues have already insinuated themselves into Idle No More’s national spotlight and they’ll soon be busy “hounding the national chief from office.”

Two days later, APTN National News’s Jorge Barrera, on agreement that he wouldn’t name names, acquired a string of emails circulating in the obstructionist camp. One chief said Chief Atleo’s sudden medical leave had the “stench of seeking pity” about it. Another joked that Chief Atleo might prefer to take up some “less stressful position” in British Columbia. Another wrote that Chief Atleo should take “permanent leave.”

After losing to Atleo in last summer’s AFN elections, Pam Palmater declared: “We’re going to keep going. This is a movement that won’t stop now.” This isn’t the note one strikes in a graceful concession speech. Palmater wasn’t talking about Idle No More, either, when she said, “Our movement is strong.”

It certainly is. It’s just not quite the same “movement” we’ve all been hearing about.

Terry Glavin is an author and journalist whose most recent book is Come From the Shadows.

Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Terry Glavin

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