The injustice meted out by our colonial forefathers, is not just an unfortunate 'legacy'. The destruction of land integral to native cultural is actively continuing today. Perhaps a shock for those who are feeling content in looking back reproachfully (I was until recently).

In addition to being morally just and in legally demanded, the protection of native land and culture benefits our entire society. Our capitalist, growth economy is swallowing up our life-support system and we have a huge task ahead of us to transform ourselves into a sustainable civilization. The aboriginal groups in Canada have felt the problems with our system more directly than most, but still retain some knowledge and values which can provide a deep resource for developing alternative economic and social structures. Practically they also have a unique legal framework with which they can protect our diminishing natural resources. It behoves all of us to directly support them.

One of the land destructions happening today - as you're reading this, bulldozer's may be felling trees - is occurring at Sun Peaks Resort near Kamloops. This weekend there is a peaceful convergence planned to demonstrate opposition to the massive expansion and show solidarity with the local groups whose land and culture is at stake. Don't let another sad chapter in a history textbook pass in front of you ...

******************* RESISTANCE WITHOUT RESERVATION! CONVERGENCE AGAINST SUN PEAKS RESORT SUNDAY AUG 29

Sun Peaks is built on Secwepemc land, which the Secwepemc refer to as Skwelkwek’welt, located in BC’s interior, 30 km NE of Kamloops. Secwepemc have never ceded, surrendered or released their land in any way. In 1997, the BC government approved a $70 million development plan, allowing Sun Peaks to continue expanding their resort from 5,000 to 25,000 beds and put ski runs on the previously undisturbed Mt. Morrisey. The Secwepemc attended stakeholder meetings and clearly said no to the development. Land and Water BC however, clearly disregarded their voices and granted new leases to Sun Peaks to facilitate their expansion, and in June 2001, Land and Water BC obtained a court injunction to forcibly remove Secwepemc from their lands. To date, 54 arrests with charges from criminal contempt and intimidation by blocking a road to resisting arrest have been made.

For those requiring transportation, buses will leave Vancouver at Broadway/ Commerical Skytrain Station (Safeway parking lot) on Saturday Aug 28, 2004 @ 10:30 AM sharp. Saturday evening there will be a salmon dinner by donation hosted by the Secwepemc community, followed by talks from elders.  Accommodation space for tents will be provided.  The demonstration will occur during the day on Sunday and busses will return by Sunday night.

Tickets for buses are 5-30$ (no one turned away). Organizations sending delegates are encouraged to keep in mind that the actual cost per person is 45$ per person. Tickets can be picked up at 1) Co-op Bookstore at 1391 Commercial Drive, Phone: 604-253-6442. Speak with Ray (available Tuesday-Saturday) 2) You can call 778-552-2099 or email

to arrange other pick-up.

Organized by Land,Freedom Decolonization Coalition in conjunction with NYM-Secwepemc Chapter and the Skwek'wekwelt Protection Center.

"Steadily emerging times"? What could this mean? I like this photo-essay, but I take exception as usual to Mr/Ms Coyote's ill-thought-out, correcter-than-thou, and abrasively-insulting post.// Look. I wish good fortune to aboriginals too, especially when they look to their (sub)cultural needs on their own time and their own dime, as seems to be the case with this cool canoe festival.// But in terms of "sharing," "conceding" and "concluding equitable agreements on" the wealth of Canada, let me share, concede and agree to this: aboriginals can participate in the economy like any other citizen. They can buy land, sell land, start businesses, work in mines and forests and factories, raise their families as they like, assemble freely, and worship whatever gods they please. That's the blessing and nature of this free Dominion; that's where a viable economy for Canadians of every colour begins.// And natives do jump in when they get the chance for such participation. And they do get healthier, wealthier and better able to practice whatever form of spirituality and tribal life they please. What's crushing the life out of aboriginal Canadians now, high birth rate or no, is massive corruption and thievery by race-mongering band councils who consider accountability "colonialist;" the vast potential wealth frozen in place by the res system; and the grotesque distortions of large-scale race/group based subsidies and entitlements. Aboriginal policy in Canada now isn't just unfair and immoral: it does not, in any sense, work. I might note that high birthrates aren't necessarily the sign of a healthy and happy group of people: consider the explosive reproductive pattern of such tormented nations as Bangladesh and Brazil.//And, Coyote? Aren't you the slightest bit uncomfortable with your implied suggestion that Euro-descended Canadians ought to just disappear? Doesn't your bright-eyed chatter about "Immigrant Society" being, essentially, bred out of existence remind you of anything unpleasant? Say, in a eugenical vein? You better look in your heart, friend. Might be a bit of a self-loathing issue there. // Couple more points. "Immigrant" Canadians are those born in another land, n-est-ce pas? The word "indigenous" means "from here," as we're all aware, right?// Finally (and speaking of colonialism), the borrowed American term "redneck" is a particularly ill-fitting and inappropriate one in this country. Coyote obviously means to describe (and demean) those working-class rural Canadians who are notorious for their stubborn commitment to democracy, hard work and good sense. I am proud to be among (well, descended from) their ranks. Point is, though, we haven't for centuries done much of the kind of agricultural work where you're in the fields all day, thus sunburning your nape. In fact we're more of a logging-fishing-mining sort of bunch, coast to coast. So the next time you want to slag off we sod-busting lumberjack types, with our irritating refusal to vanish from the earth, may I suggest you replace "redneck" with "bacon-munching frostback Northern scum"?

An interesting juxtaposition of opinions here!

In response to the Earnest comment about corruption: Undoubtedly there are some problems with aboriginal governance. However I think we should be careful about assigning that as a root problem. Doing so often implies a moral failure of the people in question, with a "they just aren't capable of managing themselves" attitude. This is an incredibly popular tactic that is used internationally with developing nations. Often to resist giving aid, or else to justify further intervention.

What is often missing in that corruption argument is the context. Most recipients of the "corruption" charge - often justified - are groups of people who have had their previous social and governance systems destroyed. Destroyed by colonizers who encourage the development of new organizations that allow exploitation. By nature these new systems are hierarchical and dictatorial (e.g. take your pick of world dictators) as they expressly allow corruption and the disregard of democratic will of the people.

My specific knowledge of aboriginal governance is not high, but I might agree with you Earnest that there are likely some systemic problems in the structures of the relationship between the aboriginal people and the Canadian government. In looking for solutions however I don't think focusing on "corruption" will be helpful. More helpful will be weaning ourselves of the need to exploit their resources, thus reducing the competitive relationship, and then working cooperatively towards fostering healthy communities and interdependant relationships.

(As an aside, the appearance of corruption depends on exactly what kind you are looking for. Corporate influence peddling in our own government, much of it even legal, can be viewed as a vast corruption of the mandate of the government to act in the public interest)

"Aren't you the slightest bit uncomfortable with your implied suggestion that Euro-descended Canadians ought to just disappear?" asks EC.

Actually, you are about as far off the mark as one could get, especially for one who actually claims to have read my post. So I will only answer that which flows from what I have actually said-, certainly from this mindless diatribe.

Such as your statement, "I might note that high birthrates aren't necessarily the sign of a healthy and happy group of people..."

When you have been decimated by small pox laden blankets, sent amongst you in an early example of biological warfare, and at the weakest point in your numbers and energy levels, had your children taken from you and separated from their culture and language, and abused sexually and otherwise in further demoralizing and degrading manner, and left to languish in the grinding poverty of a reservation "apatheid" system, separated from your own "economy" and rendered dependant upon "the conquerors charity"-, to have survived at all, and then to have come back from virtual extinction to a growing and increasingly vibrant population such as natives are beginning to experience, IS a sign of health, strength and recovery. That you cannot compliment them upon that and wish them well, and instead continue to insist on an old colonialists view more favouring, nay outright advocating their "absorption" into the Great Immigration Borg, to which White Capitalist Society has turned for survival in the period of its own birth rate and cultural/ economic decline, is most revealing of all your views here. No one is advocating anything here, anywhere near approaching the "disappearance" of Euro or any other hyphenated Canadians. It is merely HAPPENING of its own weight and history, and the contradictions inherent in its own socio-economic system. (Instead of socially facilitating the having of babies, we have put our resources into replacing ourselves via immigration instead. That was a social and economic policy choice of our capitalist system. It was clearly a choice, perceived to have a reduced cost element to the major "beneficiaries" of the system, ya think? Let others, like offshore "Baby Factories, have and raise the babies, then we will import them cheaper than we can produce them ourselves. More profit. Sounds like capitalism. :-) As much though, I think, it is a case of, what goes around comes around. And I am as proud of my Scottish immigrant heritage, in many regards, as any neocon apologist redneck, but not this particular thing which was done to natives. No morally perceptive person could or should be, IMHO.

But especially disgusting is your characterization suggesting that corruption is again, something unique to native society, and from which we are somehow exempt. Obviously you haven't read about the RCMP raid on the BC legislature, or the drunken escapades of our Premier, by way of two smaller examples. And there are many, many others all around us, from crime families to drugs, prostitution and pornography ad infinitum, "suggesting" our own society's advanced state of corruption. But then, you are clearly someone with a blinkered intellectual view of the world, who sees only that which suits him, and says good things about him and what he perceives to be his.

More, at this juncture in our shared history, I see the correction and solution to this unfortunate and regrettable aspect of that history and continuing legacy, apologized for by such persons as yourself, not in some system of continued "economic forced" assimilation, but in a kind of equitable co-existance, cooperatively and mutually arrived at between them and us, and the sharing of what is, as opposed to insisting upon its monopoly to myself like some spoiled child.

And Chris, if you can give me direction to Sun Peaks, from Kamloops itself, I will be pleased to be there, on the morning of the Sunday. (I'll look it up on the internet.)

I found a map, from Kamloops, here:

http://www.ownerdirect.com/map/ca/bc/sunpeaks/local.htm

The average Indian band in Canada gets about $8,000 per capita from the federal government. If you divide the annual budget of Indian Affairs by the number of Indians, you get about $28,000. Where's the other $20,000? Give all that money to the Assembly of First Nations to administer and then we can start talking about equality.

Oh Lord, do I wanna get into this? Guess I do.// Chris and Sligo make interesting points, whereas Coyote's collection of rambling claptrap and belligerent platitudes -- well, I'm not gonna *deign*...// Sligo, obviously not all the programs, cash, subsidies and tax breaks provided to Canadian Indians go through the band councils -- and that's probably a good thing if you look at the heinous till-jacking that's happened at Hobbema and Stoney Creek (just for starters). Yeah, I don't doubt there's mismanagement and bureaucratic screwery at the Ministry itself -- it's a *vast* apparatus -- but for this reason alone the problem can't be quite as bad as your numbers suggest: the goodies come through a lot of different channels. Anyway, could a single AFN authority do better than 600 individual bands? Dunno. Maybe. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that this massive transfer of wealth be *completely* transparent -- that at every level of the system, people are checking each other to make sure there's no pilfering, and that the goodies get to the people they're meant to help. Such a system ain't hard to design: but as I'm sure you and Ron Nault know, there are political obstacles.// Such as, maybe, me. Because you can fiddle around with various aspects of aboriginal governance, friend, but it won't change the fact that the *principle* of the current system is wrong. And with all due respect, the time to start talking about equality is *before* you start throwing thousands of other peoples' hard-earned dollars at individuals because of their race. On the numbers we're looking at, Sligo, every Indian in Canada gets a premium of somewhere between $660 and $2300 just for being his own good self. Even if some of that is honourably-negotiated treaty money, even if some of it reflects the benefits all Canadians have fought for, it's still a premium, and that makes me queasy. I don't get a cheque just for being me, y'know: the idea makes me deeply uncomfortable. There has got to be a better way. Bill C-7 would just be a start.// Chris, good meta-point about the nature of corruption -- the rot just spreads, eh? My late stepmum was a small businesswoman, and she used to say that *any* employee will steal from you, if she thinks she can't be caught. The combination of big flows of money, and nobody looking, is just too much for we frail humans to resist. So, Mum said, you had to make graft impossible, by getting worker A to check B's numbers, with manager C watching them both, etc. I think this is evidently true on the macro level too. If we're going to assist 3rd World refugees or our aboriginal fellow-citizens, we need to make damned sure the money goes where it's needed. That may or may not be possible if we're sending bales of wheat to Darfur -- but it would be easy to do here at home. Except, as I've noted, Ovide Mercredi, and a lot of band chiefs with nice houses and big cars, consider "checks and balances" to be a bigoted "colonialist" notion.// Note: *some* chiefs pilfer and peddle influence. *Some* councils do. *Some* bureaucrats. Obviously most don't. (To the hysterical charge, from that one oversensitive fellow poster here, that I stated or implied native Canucks are more corrupt than others: you can read, can't you?) And I wouldn't even necessarily condemn everyone who's got their fingers in the DINA till; like I've said above, even the best of mankind is gonna be tempted by a large bundle of cash that no one's looking out for. Corrupt individuals are largely created by corrupt systems. But it's a damned shame we haven't been able to even put this bad idea, of aboriginal entitlement, into effective practice, such that modern natives can protect their cultural heritage while attaining a reasonable level of prosperity and health.// Which is just what we all want, innit? Is anyone on the left willing to admit there is a better way to get there? I'm an old NDPer, me, and I think the answer is obvious.

PP. 4, sentence 4: between $660 and $2300 *monthly.*

More needs to be said concerning Earnest Canuck here, and some of his rambling ravings.

The only other occassions on which I have seen this person's moniker here, is around this same issue of native rights. It is obviously a "hot button" issue with this fellow. And his preoccupation with what is wrong with natives, native society and its corrupt leaders, and his refusal to deal with the issue of the corruption of his own "backyard", is what reveals what this fellow really is, more than any "old NDPer" label he may choose to throw out there.

More likely, if he ever was an NDPer, it was a long time ago. But then, there are NDPers and there are NDPers, just like with Greens-, or whatever. Lots of different folks hide in all kinds of closets. So labels don't "necessarily" tell one much.

His "hot button" issue though is race, like I say. It lights him up like a roman candle. And as for his views about that, judge for yourself. "Ovide Mercredi, and a lot of band chiefs with nice houses and big cars..." Which really pisses him off, even assuming its truth. They're ALL supposed to fit his stereotype of street drunks, living in shacks with no electricity or running water, and a heap of junk cars in the front yard. They don't, so they are obviously thieves, and corrupt.

Better you spend your time addressing the issue of corruption in your own society's backyard, Earnest. Ever seen the homes of the wealthy along Marine Drive in Vancouver, or the Uplands in Victoria, and compared that with how most ordinary "white" folks live, let alone their poor and those on skid row.

Even racists have to try and present themselves in some kind of rational light, as much for themselves as anyone else.

You are seriously messed in the head, Earnest. Though, if I read you right, you are probably too far gone and too old to do anything about it.

And there are rednecks and there are rednecks. You are one type, Earnest, and I quite another. And my neck is really red, being not "centuries" removed from long hours in the field, as it is. And I have great respect for "most" redneck loggers, among whom are members of my own family-, just not the neocon/Reform and race bigoted variant of popular infamy.

every Indian in Canada gets a premium of somewhere between $660 and $2300 just for being his own good self? A somewhat strange statment. Treaty Indians in Manitoba recieve 5 bucks a year.

I cannot believe we are having this debate in here. I ad to check to make sure I hadnt logged on to BC Report Magazine. Of course there is and can be corruption in native communities. The point being made earlier is that it is no more prevelant than in any other part of society. As well some of the leadership are often implanted by whichever Party in power at a given time. But most importantly most Aboriginal communities are forced to operate under an imposed governance model. On the west coast many Native Nations have a tradition of hereditary heads. These peoples families were often trained from birth to perform defined tasks in community structures. The Mowhawk peoples were ruled by Clan Mothers and the system of government flowed from this. The Iroquois conferacy governance model was used by the founding fathers of the US in building its own system of Government. My point is that even today Aboriginal people are forced into using imposed system with all the inferant faults that come with them. The question that should be asked in my opnion is when will the Great White father respect and allow Aboriginal people to define and choose the mechanisms they wish to govern themselves.

Ya all get an "F" for your ad hominen attacks; a "D" for your facts; but an "A" for your rhetorical flourishings. Now do your homework, class!

I had a lousy cucumber sandwich one time with Mr. Levy, a former NDP minister in Dave Barret's government who was responsible for aboriginal affairs. He laughed at how naive he was when he first took the post since he was allowing RCMP informants (ie, band council spies) to come into his office at the legislature to deliver their reports. Earnest Canuck is in very deep denial if he thinks that the Dept of Indian Affairs does not deliberately, in some way, try to undermine band councils. This is at the heart of depair and destruction of many communities. But it is not self-destruction, it is a government policy of deliberate destruction.

We have digressed some, my skookum friends, and I don't want to fight anymore. I appreciate my multi-coloured fellow citizens who added some rational debate on practical matters to this thread; I appreciate somewhat less my honourable friends who engaged in skeevy ad hominem attacks and pointless gaseous things-that-are-said abstraction here. Well. This ought to have been Elaine Briere's space. She did, remember, shoot a beautiful essay documenting the honoured past and hopeful future of some of my aboriginal fellow citizens. Plus some of their Yankee relatives, eh? Right, I'm done -- except to nominate Don Sandberg for Parliament in any capacity whatsoever. http://www.fcpp.org/pdf/042%20Don%20Sandberg%0ConversationsfromFronti erformatted.pdf

Oh for christ's sake. If the above link doesn't work, as seems apparent, just go to www.fcpp.org and search for Sandberg. Then argue with *him* for a while... maybe he doesn't need to sleep or work.

Earnest Canuck, you're not the only one who's noticed and been repelled by Coyote's unjustifiable thinly-veiled racism. Good posts, EC.

The problem I have this morning, reading these contributions, is I can agree with virtually all of them. Yes, there are deep-rooted and very entrenched problems with "native governance". Nobody can deny the evidence of favouritism, nepotism, and downright mis-management. And who TAUGHT my grand-children's relatives this self-defeating system? Department of Indian Affairs. It is no accident that so many bands are repeatedly unable to make anything work. Should the bands suddenly become self sustaining, self governing and absolute models of governmental wonderfullness all those over-paid nabobs in the DIA bureaucracy would be in line with the rest of us, looking for jobs. The generational agony of all manner of dysfunction continues to scar the young people, substance abuse is a real threat, suicide and AIDS take lives daily... there are some very grim and heartbreaking statistics but two weeks ago I gave a lift to three young men going to Campbell River. We drove past evidence of absolutely mindless logging destruction and, frustrated, I asked them what it was like for them to see such a stinking, inexcusable mess in what was their traditional homeland. One young man told me, very gently, that when he was "a kid" it made him so angry and so radical he was ready to do almost anything as "payback". Then his elders took him camping and told him the names of people who had died trying to change things with violence. And, he said, all this stuff is wrong, Auntie. It is just wrong. Everyone in this car knows it is wrong. And more and more people in town know it is wrong. When enough people know it is wrong, we'll stop them. And the trees will grow again, the fish will come back, and maybe next time we'll all be just a bit smarter. I am not a first nations person, but we are all of us native to this earth. What the arstles are doing is being done everywhere. No one group or culture has "the" answer, there is no single answer, but I think we all of us know what we all need to do. We might squabble a bit about the details but it isn't true God is in the details. All of us need to "smarten up". And exchanges like the ones above help us do that. Some of my grandchildren, three of them at least, are not "native" kids. Others are "status" natives. The challenges faced by those grand kids living on reserve are huge. Their education facilities and options are not as good as that available to the ones living in Maple Ridge. Their perceived choices are very limited. It is so easy to say "they" can do this or that or work at this job or that job or.. but almost invariably that choice means being isolated from the extended family and those of us who have never really had such a thing can't understand why even the hint of the threat of losing it is paralyzing. I don't live on reserve, I live "in town", in Tahsis, a village of maybe three hundred fifty people. Some of my grandchildren come to stay with me at least a couple of days a week, from the small reserve where they live. They think Tahsis is wonderful!! We have a bakery where a grandma can get huge peanut butter cookies for little girls. We have a post office where grandma can open a box and get letters! We can go to a store and choose videos for girls to watch in the evening with a big bowl of popcorn. To them this little village is a place of adventure and unlimited choice and fun. We are learning non-native nursery rhymes, we are also learning the songs of Willy Nelson. Their extended native family teaches them other stories in another language. but I have no illusions about their futures. They are moving into Tahsis for the coming school year so their older brother and sister can have better educational opportunities. Tahsis might have 60 kids from kindergarten to grade twelve this year. With all the best will in the world a school that small cannot possibly provide what those kids will need to venture further into the mainstream. Their chances would be much greater if DIA was shut down tomorrow. The challenges for all of us are huge and wallowing in any extreme, whether the romantic glories of a nearly vanished past (which never really existed) or drowning in grief because of old wrongs won't help anyone. But we can help ourselves. Support land claims. Don't let the few with money and political power continue to steal and wreck what is left. And to anyone who sneers that we can't give the country back to the Indians because they'll wreck it I can only ask "we haven't?" and say I know in my heart they would never treat us as shabbily and cruelly as we have treated them. I don't think inherent racism is at work here, I think we have been very carefully taught and conditioned to tunnel vision. But as NAFTA and WTO and all the other initials continue to line up and the great amerikkkan eagle continues to buy up the province we will all very soon find out what it has been like for our cousins. If we don't wake up we're next!! We'll all be "status", with numbers, as if the Canadian Kennel Club was in charge, and we'll be crammed onto some kind of reserves watching the last logs exported, the last drops of clean water taken from us. I've had one helluva rough two years of it in some ways. It's hard for someone like me to keep my mouth shut and not say "what you ought to do is.......". But I think we might all have to learn to do that and let our cousins find their own way through the morass caused by deliberate governmental policy and DIA idiocy. Good question, where DOES that extra two thousand per person go? pouilly foussee, anyone?

Absolutely outstanding piece, Anne. Moving.

And it is absolutely true, especially for all those of my fellow White folks who think WE have the answer, "What the arstles are doing is being done everywhere. No one group or culture has "the" answer, there is no single answer, but I think we all of us know what we all need to do."

Especially, for starters, we need to have some understanding of this particular history and present of our native neighbours, no more, nor less flawed than we-, and to, for starters, stop being so damned vindictive and hurtful towards them. We have it all, afterall, save for the remnant patches we left them as "Reservations", to confine them on, and the paltry sums that dribble down through our own bueaucratic systems, to merely allow them to exist.

It is an arrangement, and a deliberate system, which cannot, will not be allowed to go on much longer. It will change one way, or it will change another.

"If we don't wake up we're next!! We'll all be "status", with numbers, as if the Canadian Kennel Club was in charge, and we'll be crammed onto some kind of reserves watching the last logs exported, the last drops of clean water taken from us." Amen to that. A truer characterization of the "rapidly emerging future" was never written.

In some ways, I see our native communities as Canada's last best hope for the future. All we have to do is shaddup and listen. And we're going to have to, as a great burgeoning population of young educated native peoples take their place at our country's "table". If people were shocked and appalled by Mathew Coon Come, get ready for the next wave.

Im many ways, Canada as a nation has yet to deal with the shameful and destructive path it took when the first settlers arrived and began to marginalize those living here at least 10,000 years prior. We have all feasted at the table of riches and have benefited by the billions of dollars taken in resources each year since before Confederation. There is an unpaid bill at the table now and nobody is making a move to pay it. I think that Canada's indigenous population has been incredibly patient with the "visitors who never left". This cannot remain this way as the youth see how hopeless their futures will be unless groundbreaking changes in our relationship occur soon. I think even Earnest Canuk can admit the corruption in native governance is miniscule compared to our own "superior" system of governance where new scandal are announced daily and fewer than 60% of registered voters believed in the system enough to vote. Other contributors of poverty would be legislated racism ( Indian Act) and the creation of reserves, an unfair treaty system, residential schools and all the fall-out, all of which was created by colonialism, not FN's. The past ( and current) govenments ( Fed and provincial...remember Campbell's incredibly stupid referendum?) have been masters of creating an unrealistic high bar for FN's to aspire to and then when success is at hand, they arbitrarily raise the bar again...look at the real and non-sugar coated version of Canadian history and then we can begin to look for forgiveness and move on to a real relationship based on equity and equality. The land we all reside on and make a living off was taken under less than honourable ways and we all need to pressure the governments to do the right thing. The canoe journeys must be seen as a wonderful way to feel your native pride! More power to you all.

''Look at the real and non-sugar coated version of Canadian history and then we can begin to look for forgiveness and move on to a real relationship based on equity and equality,'' offered PRW. The sad thing is, as witnessed by Campbell's referendum, this history continues to be marked by conflict, but you certainly state a truth that, in itself, says a whole lot about current relationships between native and non-native communities.

Beautifull tapestry of thinking ! In my region , a micro version of the " invisible people " of Canada is very much in evidence * An experience I had , two decades or so ago involved myself in a role as an interested "historian " to encourage the local First Nations to come to a Public Meeting and speak of their existence* I do not use the word EXISTENCE * lightly , there was , for the most part on the evening of their announced participation an interesting consequence. THERE WAS A NO SHOW FROM THE LOCAL FIRST NATION* and my History Society asked me for an explanation - since I'd arranged for that event to happen . I advised them that I felt that something had happened and that I would look into it * The next day , I called the phone number that I'd dialed before only to be told by the telephone company that it was no longer in service * Dutifully , for the next 2 weeks or so.. I called every day.. , until finally a voice answered , and asking him if he was still chief , and getting an affirmative , we arranged to have him attend the following Public Meeting *.. And let me tell you , it was a very moving experience for all who attended this meeting.. , for when it came time for this individual to give his presentation he shocked everyone ... by describing the fact that he could tell us very little about their origins or tribe.. since the DIA was refusing to release documents that were kept in their files.. , Thus revealing a very powerfull factor , which contributed to what was a no show , the first time around.. You see.., the First Nation Council in my region were living a " power struggle ".. , and this could be attributed in large part to , a Governance Structure ( DIA ) , Who were clearly rife with a political and power subservient mission *.. INTENTION* Anyway , the upshot of this Public Meeting was that a member of the audience , who was a retired DIA worker , was so upset by what she heard that eventually all , who attended this meeting came away wanting to clarify.. what was clearly an OBSTRUCTION of information , The happy results to this story is that eventually - with the help of many - this First Nation was able to find a sense of direction , identity and MEMORY* A fascinating .. , RED FISH UP THE RIVER * .. recent release , does indeed begin to tell a very powerfull story.. , The river in question is the COQUITLAM RIVER * Within this story and within this region can be experienced in a micro macro fashion the whole experience of FIRST NATIONS ... , within the land we call ours .

Jan 11 2004 To Whom It Might Concern.

I am S'amuna', Hul'qumi'num Coast Salish. I belong to an "Indian Band" that the White Government calls "Cowichan Tribes. My grandfather and his brothers once raced the fastest canoe team in the region. Her name was Mt.Prevost. If you will kindly note - The canoe tradition amongst Coast Salish people was primarily about trade. Coast Salish people were fabulously wealthy and had a vibrant and complex economy. This has been completely stultified and arrested by Canadian Government intervention. Now - instead of vibrant trade and growing wealth - Aboriginal Peoples have been subjected to kleptocracies created by the Federal Government in the form of "Indian Band Governments". The suggestion I have been making for years in our region is for Aboriginal Lands to be essentially free-trade zones where all people, native and not could enjoy the same tax-breaks that Aboriginal people currently enjoy. These free-trade zones would be magnets for foreign investment and would add to property values of ceded non-native land close to reserves. Furthermore, Aboriginal People who own the lands of such free-trade, tax-free zones could become some of the wealthiest citizens of the world instead of being forced into generatinal dependency, squalor and poverty. Unfortunatley, biggoted right-wingers don't want to see Aboriginal people do well - and the Kleptocrats in Band Governments and the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs have a vested interest in keeping Aboriginals under their "Wardship" poor, disenfranchised and un-empowered. I am pleased however that some Aboriginal Peoples across Canada are seeing the benefits for such a plan. Such bands are looking at creating tax-havens in Quebec, And private MRI clinics and hospitals in Saskatchewan. If this trend continues I think it won't be long before Aboriginal Peoples in Canada realize that they have far more to gain by forgoing dependency upon the Federal Government and seeking outside-the-box solutions towards economic development.

it is pretty cool!