The warning 43 years ago was about good talk without action.
It’s why Indigenous leaders approached prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s 1983 first ministers conference on constitutional rights with caution — concerned about holding negotiations to hold more negotiations, and about skeptical premiers primed to listen but not understand.
On Monday, First Nations leaders and Canada’s first ministers will meet again in Ottawa to discuss Indigenous rights, the first such meeting in two decades, with those same warnings looming over what the Assembly of First Nations is calling an “historic gathering.”
“First Nations and Canada and the provinces are at a crossroads,” Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) told CBC Indigenous. “Many chiefs have told us that they see this meeting as a chance to chart maybe a path forward, a new path forward.”
At an AFN-organized ceremony on Sunday few would speculate on what the meeting’s outcome will be, but for chiefs the mantra going in is “tangible results.” They stressed it can’t be a “one-and-done” event.
“We’re a minority in our own country,” said Kelsey Jacko, chief of Cold Lake First Nations in Alberta, “and everybody’s living off the milk and honey of our lands, but we’re being left out, so we need a seat at the table.”
Indigenous leaders meet to amend the Canadian Constitution in 1982
AFN, a national advocacy organization, has circulated several discussion papers suggesting it might seek commitments on building economic prosperity, policing, constitutional rights, health and education.
Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty on Sunday declined to speculate on potential outcomes, saying the federal government’s top priority is “to listen, to learn and to discuss how we can move forward.”
The AFN also circulated among First Nations a draft of a “Declaration of a Shared Path Forward” to be considered at the meeting that, if agreed to, would commit the parties to continue these meetings on an annual basis.
“If this goes well, then maybe that’s what’s in the future,” New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt told reporters walking into the ceremony on Sunday.
However Woodhouse Nepinak said Friday “you will not see a declaration” following the meeting because the AFN needs more time to consult its chiefs, with negotiations continuing on potential outcomes all weekend.
The last Indigenous-focused first ministers meeting was held in 2005 in Kelowna, B.C., seeking solutions to close the gap in living standards and yielding an agreement dubbed the Kelowna Accord.
To prepare for this meeting, Woodhouse Nepinak was thinking back to the 1983 Indigenous rights conference and its famous moments, beginning with Pierre Trudeau interrupting the chiefs’ ceremonial opening prayer then answering it with prayer of his own, which she called “hard to watch.”
Several premiers or their ministers attended the AFN’s day of ceremony on Sunday. Prime Minister Mark Carney didn’t attend but sent Alty in his place.
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew and Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak at the AFN’s Day of Ceremony on Sunday. (Brett Forester/CBC News)
The closed-door meeting comes as fundamental issues of Indigenous land title, self-determination and place in confederation remain fractious.
In Alberta last week, First Nations celebrated the decisive defeat of a separation referendum called by Premier Danielle Smith. Quebec just elected a new sovereigntist Parti Québécois government.
The B.C. Conservative Party, which campaigned on repealing the province’s legislation on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, won a majority government on Saturday.
Federally, Carney proposed the meeting while facing backlash for his hyperfocus on fast-tracking development of major infrastructure and energy projects, pipelines in particular.
“Of course they want major projects,” Woodhouse Nepinak reiterated,”but they’re not going to get there without First Nations.”
Speaking in French with Radio-Canada’s Espaces autochtones, AFN’s Quebec/Labrador Regional Chief Francis Verreault-Paul likened the situation facing First Nations to the one Canada faces, according to Carney, as a middle power on the world stage.
Verreault-Paul quoted Carney’s headline-grabbing speech earlier this year in Davos, where he said,”if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.”
“Right now, First Nations are not at the table for these major projects, ” Verreault-Paul said.
Does that mean they’re on the menu? Russ Diabo would probably say yes.
A member of the Mohawk Nation of Kahnawà:ke and a spokesperson for the Truth Before Reconciliation Network, Diabo helped organize a grassroots rally outside the meeting.
“We’re challenging their mandate,” he said, meaning AFN, “saying they don’t have one to represent rights-holders, the inherent and treaty-rights holders.”
AFN’s national chief position is elected by chiefs and not popular vote among First Nations people. It also has no Alberta regional chief and sometimes faces questions about its relevance.
“It’s a recipe for conflict, I think, because First Nations rights-holders weren’t involved in this. It was just with chiefs — and select chiefs,” Diabo said.
Three First Nations also raised those concerns in an open letter, warning about the meeting becoming “political cover” for the federal agenda. One signatory, Onion Lake Cree Nation on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, also sent AFN a formal cease-and-desist notice.
“I’ll be outside with the grassroots people,” Onion Lake Chief Darwin Peter Chief said in an interview. “We’re standing alongside First Nations in defence of our inherent treaty rights and independence and our right to determine our own future.”
His community has serious and long-standing concerns about representation, transparency, meaningful consultation and the protection of treaty rights, he said, and wrote. Woodhouse Nepinak said she welcomes the peaceful protest.
