William Wuttunee, visionary

 



"He was a visionary and a true leader.  He pushed for natives  to become wholly independent of the reserve system and the treaty system," said Nola Wuttunee, daughter of Cree elder and internationally-recognized lawyer William Wuttunee who died recently at 87. 

Now, this is a guy to whom I can relate.  Long before I learned my birth great-grandmother had been a Mohawk from the Tyendenaga Reserve in Napanee, I wondered why natives lived on isolated reserves, not integrating into Canada.  So did Wuttunee and he was right.  I thank God my ancestor married off-reserve, thus giving her descendants the gift of being "Canadian".  Said his daughter, "My father saw the reserve as a very limited environment.  He saw no future there."

He was right, of course, and to this day native reserves remain poor, deprived and degenerate places, regardless of the $8.5 billion handed them by the Federal Government.  In fact, although I don't know many, every successful native I do lives and works off-reserve.  But here's the rub:  getting off the reserve, dumping the treaties and becoming "Canadian" means the money stops flowing via The Indian Act.  That's why Wuttunee was a pariah among his own people.  In fact, many tribal chiefs would not even permit him to come onto their reserves, so worried were they about losing the money funnelled them from the federal government via the Act. 

Wuttunee won a scholarship to McGill and became the first native lawyer to practise in Western Canada at the age of 26.  Successful , he was appointed to a cross-section of boards and commissions by both provincial and federal governments because of his unique perspective about life both on and off-reserve.  He chose off-reserve because, as he said, he knew firsthand the hardships and limitations of life on a reserve.  Sent to a residential school, he suffered abuse but chose to move past it.  "He wanted to move on and leave that psychological burden in the past," said his daughter.  He also would not teach his children Cree until they had first mastered English.  "No, you need to learn English to succeed in this world," he admonished.  What a brilliant guy.   

The "National Indian Brotherhood", which he founded, later became the "Assembly of First Nations" but unlike its leaders of today, Wuttunee remained a fierce advocate of integration.  Ironically, under Justin Trudeau's father Pierre, a white paper was published that proposed an end to "Indian status" and the dissolution of the federal Department of Indian Affairs.  Native matters would be transferred to provincial hands.  This is ironic because Trudeau-the-younger is gung ho to cater to the native leadership in whatever way he has to and however they want him to.  Trudeau mistakenly believes this will ensure they cooperate, but nothing is further from the truth.  Our new PM needs to channel his father and Wuttunee.   

When the white paper was published it was universally panned by native leaders.  No kidding!  But Wuttunee supported it because it promoted integration.  "He believed a better life was to be had for natives in cities, working and living alongside white people," said Doug  Cuthand, Saskatchewan native activist. 

How can anyone argue that?