And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 14:35:29 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: New Brunswick AFN Hearings
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New Brunswick Telegraph Journal July 13, 1999
Native disputes province's right to impose boundaries
Indians should be able to hunt, fish and trap where they choose, task force
told
By ALAN WHITE - Telegraph Journal
FREDERICTON - The Assembly of First Nations' top official in New Brunswick
is issuing a call for Maliseets and Micmacs to ignore provincially imposed
boundaries for hunting, fishing and trapping. Len Tomah of Woodstock First
Nation told a national AFN task force visiting Fredericton yesterday that
it's time for natives in New Brunswick to exercise their rights to carry
out those traditional activities wherever they choose. "We have to start
exercising our rights rather than talking about them," said Mr. Tomah, who
is the Assembly's representative for New Brunswick and Prince Edward
Island. "I'm not saying let's go out and get radical, but exercise it." Mr.
Tomah is issuing the call in response to the province's decision in the
mid-1990s to designate certain portions of the province as Maliseet
territory for hunting, fishing and trapping, while other areas were deemed
to be the territory in which Micmacs can carry out those activities without
the need for a provincial licence. However, a Micmac found to be hunting in
Maliseet territory, or vice versa, can be charged with an unlawful act. The
decision to establish the distinct territories flowed from several cases
that made their way through the New Brunswick court system. The territories
were determined through historical information, but Mr. Tomah contends
those boundary lines mean nothing. "The provincial government has drawn a
line," he said. "Nobody draws a line for me when I hunt, fish, trap or
harvest. I draw the line.
"The bottom line is, they are drawing a line where my ancestors have
already gone." In an interview, Mr. Tomah said he "hopes" his call won't
result in a return to the summer of 1998, when natives and provincial
officials clashed over the right of natives to harvest wood from Crown land
in the province. "All it takes on the government's part is recognition that
they've made a mistake in terms of putting the imaginary line in place,"
said Mr. Tomah.
The former chief of the Woodstock First Nation is also waiting to hear
where the newly elected Progressive Conservative government stands on the
issue. "Whether that government respects or looks at the regulations that
the old government had put in place is entirely up to them," he said. "But
what they also have to respect is that aboriginal people here in the
province of New Brunswick have rights to hunt, have rights to fish, have
rights to trap and have rights to harvest." With the long-term logging
rights of natives still to be decided, Mr. Tomah's call to ignore
provincially imposed boundaries does not apply to logging rights at this
time. He notes that band councils are working "diligently" at arriving at a
second round of interim logging agreements with the province that give
their communities a per-capita share of timber the province has earmarked
for native harvest.
"I'm putting the logging issue aside and looking at the other aspects - the
right to trap, fish and hunt," said Mr. Tomah.
"Those three items right there are very, very big and very essential items
of native people in the way their lifestyle is. They rely [on them] not
only for food, but for clothing and medicinal purposes in some cases."
Few appear before native task force
Panel chairman says Assembly didn't want to delay probe into problems of
off-reserve natives for another year
By ALAN WHITE - Telegraph Journal
FREDERICTON - A native task force probing the problems faced by off-reserve
natives in New Brunswick heard more about representation and communication
yesterday than wider social issues.
The Assembly of First Nations task force attracted fewer than a dozen
off-reserve natives to its hearing in Fredericton, with participants only
briefly touching on social issues such as housing concerns and dropout
rates for aboriginal students.
Discussion was dominated by the issue of who represents off-reserve natives
if not the chief of their home community, and the need for the Assembly of
First Nations to improve its communications.
The short notice - five days - given for the Fredericton meeting had drawn
criticism in yesterday's Telegraph Journal from the president of the
council that represents New Brunswick's off-reserve natives and the task
force chairman admitted it has been a failing.
"I've heard that criticism everywhere that we've gone," said Peter
Manywounds, the chairman of the urban issues task force.
"We know that we didn't really have enough lead time to give as much notice
as we would have liked," he said. "But the decision that was made by the
executive in May is that rather than leave this issue for another year and
not address it now, we'd rather take this step now and recognize it wasn't
as comprehensive as we would have liked it to have been."
Fredericton was the 10th of 11 stops since June 16 for the task force, with
word of the visit not surfacing locally until last Wednesday. The task
force is to complete its hearings tomorrow in Halifax, then prepare 11
regional reports and a national report in time for a meeting of the
Assembly in Vancouver on July 22.
New Brunswick Aboriginal Peoples Council president Betty Ann LaVallee had
predicted there would be little participation in the meeting by those who
don't live in their home communities because of the lack of notice. Her
predictions proved true as the meeting's morning session attracted only a
handful of off-reserve natives who spoke briefly about social issues such
as whether native communities should provide housing for its members who
don't live on reserves.
"Unfortunately, it's not going to accomplish what the authors of this had
hoped to accomplish - they're not going to hear from the people," Ms.
LaVallee said yesterday.
Because the task force would only accept written submissions from organized
groups such as Ms. LaVallee's, she addressed the task force as "an
individual" with a focus being representation of those who don't live on
reserves.
"You can't deal with those [social] issues until you deal with the
representation and the government structure," she said in an interview.
"How can people get their point across unless they have a voice?
"We're falling through the cracks. You've got an individual [a chief] who
claims to represent me, although I can't vote for the man."
A recent Supreme Court of Canada decision found that band members who live
off reserves do have the right to vote in band elections. The Department of
Indian Affairs has been given an 18-month window in which they are to
establish a means for that to take place, but Ms. LaVallee said "they're
probably trying to find ways out of it - that's their [method of operation]."
Mr. Manywounds noted that two native communities in Saskatchewan with large
off-reserve memberships have established a system where a person who
doesn't live on the reserve is elected by those off-reserve members to sit
on the band council.
"Maybe it won't work for everybody, but at least they have taken that
step," he said.
Mr. Manywounds said the issue of representation will ultimately have to be
decided in New Brunswick by the native community in the province and that
the Assembly of First Nations can't impose a solution. "The bottom line is
what works somewhere else in the country may not necessarily work here," he
said in an interview. "It has to be tailored here by the people that are
here . . ."
"Let Us Consider The Human Brain As
A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
1957 G.H. Estabrooks
www.angelfire.com/mn/mcap/bc.html
FOR K A R E N #01182
who died fighting 4/23/99
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.aches-mc.org
807-622-5407
Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
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