1980s…

1. 1980s… Aboriginal Self Government and the Treaty Process

2. Generate a list of all the things that governments provide for citizens. Indicate which level of government should be responsible for these things. • Consider the following: • Are there groups of people in Canada that should have their own governments? If so, which groups and why is this deserved/acceptable/desired? • What is the impact on Canada if certain groups govern themselves? • What is the impact on those groups if they govern themselves?

3. Lafontaine Baldwin Lecture

4. George Erasmus: Public discourse and relations with Aborignal people have been overcome with inertia in recent years…. These issues are not going to disappear on their own. Rilke: For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence.

5. Group Tasks… Group 1: Declaration of the First Nations Group 2: 1969 White Paper on Aboriginals in Canada Group 3: 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples Group 4: Case Study Nunavut Group 5: Case Study (Dene or Metis) Group 6: International Comparisons Complete instructions as distributed and post to your appropriate wikispace page.

6. To what end? • “Relationships between aboriginal peoples around the world and the governments that administer their affairs are often characterized as "internal colonial" and highly problematic. Some co-incident central elements of these difficult relationships are: • One ethnic group or coalition rules the affairs of others living within the state, • Territorial separation of the subordinate ethnic groups in 'homelands', 'native reserves', and the like, • Land tenure rights different from those of members of the dominant group, • An internal government within a government especially created to rule the subject groups, • Unique legal status in which the subject group and its members are considered to have a corporate status that takes precedence over their individual status. Members of the ruling ethnic groups are considered individuals in the eyes of the state, • "Relations of economic inequality in which subject peoples are relegated to positions of dependency and inferiority in the division of labour and the relations of production." • The question then is this: Has the treaty between the federal government of Canada and the Inuit substantially altered their historical association?” Denis Wall, Ph.D. Source: http://www.ualberta.ca/~walld/NUNSEPT2.html

7. To what end? • What is the goal of self-government? Is it to address present problems, or address historical wrongs? • What are the costs? Of dong something? Of doing nothing?

8. Response… The government of Canada should make as its priority the implementation of self-government for all Aboriginal nations and communities in an effort to address historical wrongs and present challenges of these nations/communities.

9. Sources http://archives.cbc.ca/for_teachers/430/ http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/rights_freedoms/clips/2444/ http://archives.cbc.ca/for_teachers/432/ http://www2.pch.gc.ca/special/gouv-gov/108-eng.cfm