Reality jostles with hope in advance of natives’ meeting with Harper – by Bruce Campion-Smith (Toronto Star – January 02, 2012)

The Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

OTTAWA—A northern Ontario aboriginal community in crisis, a high-level summit to tackle chronic problems facing Canada’s First Nations people — and hopes that those problems may finally be solved.

That could be the storyline going into the Jan. 24 meeting between the federal government and Canada’s First Nations leaders.

But that was the backdrop in late 2005, when then-prime minister Paul Martin, premiers and the leaders of five native groups huddled to hammer out the Kelowna Accord, an agreement to invest $5 billion in priorities facing aboriginal communities.

Within a year, that deal was dead, killed by the newly elected Conservative government.

Shawn Atleo can rhyme off many of the royal commissions, studies and other well-intentioned moves over the years that have highlighted the struggles facing Canada’s natives but had less success in achieving lasting solutions.

Now, as the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations prepares for the upcoming “Crown-First Nations Gathering,” he’s confident the stark problems of Attawapiskat in northern Ontario will provide impetus to not just talk about solutions but find the willpower to make them a reality.

And he’s hoping Canadians — who help build homes in Haiti, provide clean drinking water in Africa and build schools in South America — are now pushing for similar action in their own backyard.

“Attawapiskat is the first time we’ve had YouTube bring the kind of stark images that you would expect somewhere else in the world,” Atleo said in an interview.

“Those are images that cut through really a lot of the conversation. It really touches people’s hearts. And then the questions start to emerge.

“It’s really encouraging that so many Canadians are saying, ‘We need to seize this moment.’

“It feels like there is a raising of consciousness and I’m hopeful that maybe this is the tipping point that pushes us over the edge towards real change.”

There were similar grand hopes coming out of Kelowna in 2005, that investments in education, clean drinking water, economic opportunities, housing and health care would have a lasting impact on aboriginal communities.

At the time, tales of bad water and the emergency evacuation of residents of the Kashechewan reserve in northern Ontario were in the news.

With the deal in hand, leaders boldly proclaimed that aboriginal poverty had “turned the corner.” Phil Fontaine, Atleo’s predecessor at the Assembly of First Nations, said the 10-year strategy would turn “poverty into prosperity.”

But mere days later, Martin’s minority Liberal government was defeated, setting in motion an election that the Conservatives won.

Liberal interim leader Bob Rae calls the Tories’ cancellation of Kelowna “disgraceful” and says it’s time for a dramatic overhaul in relations with Canada’s First Nations’ people.

“I think it’s a time for a truly transformative period. I think the objective has to be to get rid of the Indian Act. I think the objective has to be to have a dramatically sped-up process for settling treaties and land claims,” Rae told the Star’s Susan Delacourt.

“We need to have a program for a sharing of resources with respect to people on reserve and in remote communities that will give them the means to actually run their communities.

“You can’t solve the problems without self-government, without a much greater focus on education, and without figuring out how we’re actually going to give resources to communities that simply don’t have the resources to do what they have to do.”

For the rest of this article, please go to the Toronto Star website: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1109348–reality-jostles-with-hope-in-advance-of-natives-meeting-with-harper