You never know.....

...who'll turn up on a service call.  My computer wouldn't synch, so I called 'Cochrane Computers' and a guy named Tony popped over.  

As I always do -- it's the old journalist in me -- I started interviewing him.  "I'm from the Tobacco Plains Nation," he told me, a reserve in the East Kootenay valley which abuts onto Montana.  Boy, did he sure know a lot about the Indigenous file -- including all the illegal (just my opinion) actions of chiefs across Canada.

We watched footage I had posted online about the Cowichan reserve, which showed a disgraceful dump with garbage strewn everywhere.  He knew all about it, but then he showed me footage of Tobacco Plains and that was a different story.  It was clean and beautiful.

We started talking money, my favourite subject on this file, and he knew a lot about that too -- including vast corruption, which he acknowledged exists everywhere.  I referenced the 1969 White Paper, written by Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien.  Remember that?  It recommended all Indigenous leave their ghettos (the paper used that word back then) and integrate into Canadian society.  

Well, at that all Hell broke loose!  The chiefs called it "racist" and a move that would make their people the lesser equals of every other Canadian.  The reality was that they refused to give up their perks.  Tony agreed and assured me it was still happening today.  He also said, however, that he is the only native he knows who will speak honestly about the corruption.  Our old friends Tanya Talaga and the always-hysterical Pam Palmeter, certainly aren't two of them.

This is why an angry Pierre Trudeau told the chiefs, “Okay, then stay in your ghetto”. He withdrew the paper and initiated the Indigenous Policy, basically unchanged for the last fifty-plus years, namely: Send money and don't touch the Indian Act.  As I have said, the chiefs claim they want to change the Act, but they don't.

The chiefs turned their backs on real reform.

Pierre Trudeau got one thing wrong when he angrily told the chiefs that they could stay in their ghettos.  The chiefs are not in ghettos at all.  They enjoy generous tax-free-salaries and expense accounts.  Life is good for them and for the many other people who feed off this system -- a system Indigenous leaders like William Wuttunee and Calvin Helin sardonically – but accurately – called “The Indian Industry”.

The question must still be asked: What if those chiefs in 1969 had at least agreed to consider Trudeau’s plan and work with him to address their legitimate concerns? Would we now live in a country where more indigenous people had integrated into the mainstream, while keeping those parts of their Indigenous identity that mattered most to them?

They didn't want any part of it, so we'll never know.  But as I always say, it's all about money.  So when Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak et al start raving about protecting pristine land, don't buy it.