Time to open the circle in Vancouver, not shut down conversation

The meeting between the federal cabinet and (some) Indigenous leaders today in Vancouver has turned toxic even before the call to order.

First, the feds opted to bar two of the five national Aboriginal organizations – the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples and the Native Women’s Association of Canada. CAP (whose members are mostly off-reserve and non-status) and NWAC don’t represent “nations”, the federal reasoning goes, and this is a “nation-to-nation” meeting on climate change before the feds meet the premiers later in the week.

But what was billed as a historic meeting between Canada and Indigenous peoples (the Assembly of First Nations, the Metis National Council and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami are on the attendee list) will be all of two hours.

The invitation list for a photo op is hardly worth the bad feelings, as one premier and the federal NDP leader have noted.

The political clumsiness regarding today’s meeting reflects a troubling pattern in federal-Aboriginal relations.

The AFN has the inside track in the early days of what many hope will be a new era in Crown-Indigenous relations. That is understandable, considering it is the representative of the more than 600 First Nations in Canada. National Chief Perry Bellegarde has done much to unify an often fractious outfit. Canada wants a cohesive and effective AFN as much as Bellegarde does because, otherwise, there will be no way to implement the federal government Indigenous agenda.

But what is that agenda?

Perhaps more importantly, what is the agenda of the AFN?

Less than a month ago, the AFN was running its own event in Vancouver, “the First Nations Forum on Energy,” seen by many as an effort to pave the way for megaprojects such as the Energy East pipeline, pushed aggressively by a desperate oil industry but bitterly opposed by many of the Indigenous peoples over whose lands it will pass.

But not all. Some of our people see this and other natural resource projects as the route out of centuries of Indigenous poverty and marginalization.

This is the profound issue facing Indigenous peoples right here, right now.

It’s a time when we need to hear all our many voices, to confront the conflicting points of view among us.

Excluding CAP and NWAC does not help us to begin that dialogue.

While CAP is in a weakened state after the reign of former National Chief Patrick Brazeau and a successor forced to exit early, it could if it took on the challenge provide a voice for First Nations people who live off-reserve, as more than half of us do.

Including NWAC is entirely in keeping with the central role of women in Indigenous societies and counters the marginalization that came with colonization.

Let’s open the circle, not close it before the conversation has even begun.