Aboriginal Rights, Canadian Rights, Human Rights- How to do it right?

[jennie]

You must have missed my post. I gave too examples of aboriginal rights that demonstrate why they are completely different from the normal right of inheritance.

http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums//index....st&p=248137

Can you give any example where someone other than an Aborignal inherits the right to ignore certain laws?

Can you give any example of 'collectives' other than aboriginals that inherit constitutionally protected rights to land?

You will have to run that by me again. Sorry ... "too examples" ... what? Where? not at that link ... sorry ... whose laws? whose constitution?

Oh ... "constitutionally protected rights to land" ... I hear ya there ... that is something Canadians do not have, it is absolutely true. That is something we should take up with our government if it bothers us.

Our lack of those constitutional property rights is a sore point ... but not a legal impediment to existing aboriginal rights.

We should make the government answer for that, though, yes!

I think the feds have pawned this 'property right' off on the provinces as their liability, though: Property deeds are 'guaranteed' by the province. Until I hear differently, I am assuming that is like insurance.

Collectives ... hmmm ... family corporations ... they don't need constitutional protection ... nor ours!

Whose laws?

Edited September 5, 2007 by jennie

[jennie]

A simple refusal is not necessary. The government can make a good faith attempt to negotiate a reasonable compromise.

If this compromise is refused the native groups can go to court which will take years. When the SCC looks at the case and if it agrees it has merit (natives could lose everything at this point) it will take into account the need to balance the rights of current tax payers and will likely side with the government if the government had made a good faith attempt at negotiation.

At this point in time the native groups would be forced to accept the government's offer and further violence and lawlessness would get them no where.

In fact all of the lawlessness today strengthens the government's hand when these cases go to court because the government will be the only party that demonstrated respect for the law.

Native's restort to violance and blockades because they hope to win by extortion what they could not win in court.

Well .. no ... not exactly ... not at all really ...

(There is no violence, so long as the police do not invade their territory.)

It really is about the uranium mine (Sharbot Lake blockade), the clearcutting (Grassy Narrows blockade) and the sprawl development on the greenfields (Six Nations land reclamations)

It's about land and life for all of us.

It is too late to be concerned solely about what the money settlements will be ... or too soon perhaps given the government's speed of negotiation.

It is now in a very immediate sense just about protecting their existing traditional and treaty land, some of which is settled by others who feel the same about protecting it, especially from uranium mining ... and dumping.

These are the immediate issues. Not the money. We can deal with the money. It is the land issues that cause confrontations that our governments do nothing to resolve ... like consult as they are legally required by law, but don't. :angry:

[jennie]

Such a poll is meaningless unless it makes it clear that settling treaties would cost money. How many people would want treaties honoured if it meant a 10% GST? I am guessing it would but much much less than 70%.

Well you suggest an interesting metric but NO ... ABSOLUTELY NOT passing it directly to the consumer/taxpayer in GST ... NO.

%GDPCanada

It's about the land ... and the billion$ in resource$ ... going $outh ... every day ...

And it'$ about Canada'$ 8 $traight budget $urplu$e$ ...

directly from the resource industries on traditional and treaty land of the Indigenous Peoples of Canada.

It is about desecration of the environment that sustains us all ... on LAND IN DISPUTE ... that is being plundered while it is being 'negotiated' ...

Hauled away ... sold ... south ... every day ... on trains running across traditional lands.

Clearcutting the Boreal ... paving Grand River country ... uranium in Algonquin cottage country (Ottawa headwaters) ...

These are the issues we need to be taking a stand on ... NOW.

Today ... well ... maybe tomorrow now ...

Oh ... the poll ... Land Claims, Treaties and Self-Government

" Canadians consider land claims to be the fourth most serious issue facing Aboriginal

Canadians, behind alcohol/drugs, discrimination and standard of living. Large

majorities in both the North and South consider the settlement of Aboriginal and

Inuit land claims to be an important issue.

" Having said this, Canadians appear fatigued with the land claims issue. Only about

one in five Canadians agrees that land claim settlements lead to improved social and

economic conditions for Aboriginal people.

" With regard to treaties, 37% of Canadians believe that historical treaties are “sacred

promises that cannot be altered but can be interpreted in a modern context”. A larger

segment of the public (47%) believes that historical treaties are “agreements that

need to be updated from time to time”. Finally, 14% of the public believe that historical

treaties are “sacred promises that cannot be altered or reinterpreted in any way”.

Notice 47+37+14 =98% who want to honour or negotiate.

This is not the paper I was looking for, but it will do for now.

They were ...

Angus Reid 2002 - 68% of Canadians believe our governments should honour aboriginal and treaty rights.

Ipsos Reid May and July 2007 - 69% ... then over 70% after the National Day of Protest for Aboriginal Rights, similar question.

People just want to know the law is working.

" Canadians offer lukewarm support for Aboriginal self-government. Only one in five

citizens believes that Aboriginal people have a historic, existing right to self-government.

Not many Canadians are aware that Aboriginal self-government exists.

Still, a sizable percentage (47%) believes that self-government leads to an improvement

in the standard of living of Aboriginal people.

Edited September 5, 2007 by jennie

[Riverwind]

Well you suggest an interesting metric but NO ... ABSOLUTELY NOT passing it directly to the consumer/taxpayer in GST ... NO.

Sorry - you don't get to choose how the bill will be paid. More importantly it does not make a difference which taxes are raised because it is the it will ultimately be paid by the average taxpayer. As I said, your stats mean nothing unless the poll explains how settling these claims will affect there taxes. If people are given a true picture of the costs involved I am pretty sure support for 'honouring treaties' would drop to well below 50%. So don't bother wasting time posting results from biased/incomplete polls. Edited September 5, 2007 by Riverwind

[jennie]

Sorry - you don't get to choose how the bill will be paid.

And you do? How does one get to that exalted position?

But of course as I have mentioned repeatedly ... right now it is not the money that is the issue ... it is what is being done to the land while the government stalls the land claims.

[Posit]

Seems Six Nations Confederacy gets to choose how the bill is paid. That is why they call it "negotiation". They have already refused $125 million citing that they want the land back AND payment for loss of use. They''ll get it too IMO. They hold all the cards (and the historical records, illegal lands claims and a line of continuous grievances since the early 1800's complaining about the government's dirty dealings.

Oh wait, now I remember....

During the settlement of the Penn Tract at Tyendinaga, the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte received the village of Shannonville in whole after the government evicted the residents. Seems our glorious government admitted that no one ever bought those lands and in the end had no choice but to hand them back. Hmmmm.....that was a negotiated settlement too......

[guyser]

But of course as I have mentioned repeatedly ... right now it is not the money that is the issue ... it is what is being done to the land while the government stalls the land claims.

It is always about the money with these land claims. They always settle when the money flows.

You make it sound as if the aboriginals are altruistic. Laughable really, but hey, whatever floats ones boat.

If perhaps the aboriginals came to the rescue when the northern villages suffer from lack of water, or lack of food or lack of programmes to keep the youth out of trouble would you have a point. But nope, cry that the Govt needs to assist, needs to fly them out of there , needs to build this and that...... all the while Aboribinals are cashing the bingo and casino checks.

Yup altruism is alive and well.

Edited September 6, 2007 by guyser

[jennie]

It is always about the money with these land claims. They always settle when the money flows.

Lake Sharbot blockade - Uranium drilling

Six Nations land reclamations - greenfield sprawl

Grassy Narrows blockade - clear-cutting the Boreal forest

Tyendinaga - quarry used as toxic highway dump

That's just Ontario.

It's about the land.

[Visionseeker]

A simple refusal is not necessary. The government can make a good faith attempt to negotiate a reasonable compromise. If this compromise is refused the native groups can go to court which will take years. When the SCC looks at the case and if it agrees it has merit (natives could lose everything at this point) it will take into account the need to balance the rights of current tax payers and will likely side with the government if the government had made a good faith attempt at negotiation.

A compromise, according to Myriam Webster on-line, is a "mutual promise to abide by an arbiter's decision". It is an agreement attained through mutual concessions; not a take it or leave it offer as you imply when contemplating the supposed compromise's refusal.

As for the government exhibiting "good faith" attempts at negotiation, that ship just won't sail. For it is well understood by all serious observers that the strategy of the Department of Justice has been to obfuscate, stall and otherwise imperil any flow to negotiations. The most obvious demonstration of the technique can be found in the constant shuffling of the Minister of Indian Affairs and all its administrative implications. In short, it is the government that is systematically avoiding the attainment of compromise in many negotiations because they fear that the price of agreement would be politically damaging.

Tax payer rights fit nowhere in the equation, however tax payer ire most certainly does.

Now as for the courts, they likely wouldn't care a whiff about tax payer ire or other political fall-out when considering questions of law (hence the principle of judicial separation). While they would hardly side 100% with each native claim, I dare say they are likely to come much closer to the native position than that of the government. Why? Because the natives tend to have pretty compelling cases.

At this point in time the native groups would be forced to accept the government's offer and further violence and lawlessness would get them no where.

I see, the government's solution to resolve grievance and growing unrest born from its maltreatment of natives will be to force them to take their medicine and to make them like it too. [sarcasm]Why it's just so crazy it just might work![/sarcasm]

In fact all of the lawlessness today strengthens the government's hand when these cases go to court because the government will be the only party that demonstrated respect for the law.

No, it doesn't. The court concerns itself with the facts that surround the dispute. The extra political actions of some natives will in no way influence how the court deliberates. Your assertion would have us believe that judges would ignore their duty to interpret the law to perform a coercive function; to punish many natives because some are getting restless. Not only would this be unjust, it would be racist.

Native's resort to violance and blockades because they hope to win by extortion what they could not win in court.

Violence? Seems to me that the violence that has occurred stems from police storming lines of non-violent aboriginal blockades (see Oka and Ipperwash).

Extortion? Would it be extortion to block your neighbour’s car in his driveway until he returns your lawnmower, chain saw and other tools that he borrowed long ago but refuses to return?

Natives resort to civil disobedience because they recognize that government inaction is born from a fear of political fall-out if they were to seriously work to resolve these disputes. To counter-balance this, some natives seek to create political fall-out as a cost of government inaction. I predict that the longer the government remains inactive, more and more natives will begin to look at ratcheting up that cost.

[Posit]

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." ~Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Why We Can't Wait, 1963

Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

Edited September 6, 2007 by Posit

[Visionseeker]

By electing parties unwilling to deal with those that constantly try to blackmail and pressure us into settling claims that should not be settled.

Why should these claims not be settled? Are natives not entitled to full protection of the law? Asserting one's legal claim is a fundamental right in Canada, not blackmail.

Since when can Indians at large just bring the law into their own hands? The police could easily arrest them all and have them charged for any such acts.

Civil disobedience is an admirable (and quite often effective) response to repeated injustice. Arresting large groups engaged in civil disobedience often reflects badly on the force conducting the arrests and erodes both the morale and sense of professionalism within the force's ranks. Why should they after all have to clean-up the mess created by gutless politicians?

They don't own the land, they have no title that says anything of such. This is a civilized country. We don't play games based on spiritual traditional land and such crap. It's tresspassing if you can prove legal ownership. Which you can't. The buck stops with the Crown, and with a Constitutional admendment, it would.

Uh, they do own land and, in the case of the bulk of treaties I am familiar with, the title is often clear. As for a Constitutional amendment, be careful what you wish for. For such protection would afford some aboriginal communities full power to evict all the residents of a number of small to large cities in this country. That is assuming that your desired amendment doesn't explicitly exclude aboriginals from such protection.

One thing you forget to consider, there is alot more 'Canadian's' than 'Indians'.

You're kidding, right? Because I seem to recall that the population of Canada sat at about 33,000,000 while the population of India (where Indians live) was 1,100,000,000 or so. But then perhaps I've misunderstood your use of the word and you are simply deploying the archaic and less respectful moniker that once stood as the common label for non-Inuit aborigines in North America. This interpretation is strengthened by the dichotomous positioning you employ for "Canadian" and "Indian", as if these are to be mutually exclusive. Assuming they are dichotomous, does it not then follow that they should have their own territory and laws for which to govern it? Or is it your expectation that the dichotomy be "resolved" through other means. But alas, I digress.

You are correct in your assessment that aboriginals represent a minority in the larger Canadian community. But what you fail to note is that they represent the youngest and fastest growing population of ethnically identifiable groups in Canada. Furthermore, their proportion of the population in SK and MB is approaching a critical political (read electoral) mass and their ability to shape the public policies of those provinces is soon to become quite entrenched. Lastly, your "Canadians" to "Indians" dichotomy presumes that all "Canadians" stand (or would stand) in opposition to aboriginal reclamation efforts. Not only is this false, but as other posters have shown in this thread, ignores the fact that an overwhelming majority of Canadians are sympathetic to the aboriginal entreprise.

How long of a blockade do you think people would tolerate before they just dealt with the matter straight up? There is a reason why Alberta Indians don't try stunts like they do in Ontario... it wouldn't last all of an hour. Ontarians would eventually reach that point as well.

I see, "we's in Alberta knows how ta handle our injuns, dem folks in Ontario could learn a thing or two from us." What a wonderfully tribal sentiment.

I know! The outrage! All those free things and the highest rate of individual and collective transfers of Federal dollars certainly seems like brutal oppression!

If we cut off all privledge tomorrow and made all Indians equal to the rest of Canadians, then there isn't much left for them to do, now is there?

Making people equal!? If you cannot see the absurdity, I certainly can't help you. As for your spending claims, back'em up. I am more than willing to do the group the service of showing just how misplaced your appreciation of fiscal transfers are.

[guyser]

Extortion? Would it be extortion to block your neighbour’s car in his driveway until he returns your lawnmower, chain saw and other tools that he borrowed long ago but refuses to return?

Try it. You would be arrested the moment the cops show up. Same should happen the moment a blockade goes up. Enough is enough.

[guyser]

Lake Sharbot blockade - Uranium drilling

Six Nations land reclamations - greenfield sprawl

Grassy Narrows blockade - clear-cutting the Boreal forest

Tyendinaga - quarry used as toxic highway dump

That's just Ontario.

It's about the land.

Thanks....they want the money for the land or the landuse money that flows. You really dont think this through do you?

But then again, you dodge the other part of my post tha deals with the lack of response from FN's when the going gets tough for their brothers.

So in your own words, thanks for proving my point.

There is no altruism , just greedy bastards like the rest. Thanks , I thought so.

[jennie]

Thanks....they want the money for the land or the landuse money that flows. You really dont think this through do you?

But then again, you dodge the other part of my post tha deals with the lack of response from FN's when the going gets tough for their brothers.

So in your own words, thanks for proving my point.

There is no altruism , just greedy bastards like the rest. Thanks , I thought so.

They are certainly entitled to compensation and a share of resources. However, the blockades are about the governments' USES of the land.

If resource and development money from their land has been fuelling our economy, bringing us 8 straight budget surpluses. JUST WHO ARE THE GREEDY BASTARDS HERE?

Indigenous Nations want what is theirs ... what is necessary to their survival as peoples ... the land.

Canada wants to keep what was taken, was never and is not ours.

JUST WHO ARE THE SELFISH GREEDY LAWLESS BASTARDS HERE?

In my opinion it is the governments of Canada ... all of them ... past and present ... federal, provincial and municipal.

All blockades in Ontario are issues of mistreatment of the land, destruction and pollution threatening large areas of Canada.

They are protecting their own survival, and ours too in the process, against ongoing Canadian government greed, immorality and lawlessness.

Edited September 6, 2007 by jennie

[guyser]

They are entitled to that.

If resource and development money from their land has been fuelling our economy, bringing us 8 straight budget surpluses. JUST WHO ARE THE GREEDY BASTARDS HERE?

JUST WHO ARE THE SELFISH GREEDY LAWLESS BASTARDS HERE?

.

Call me when your basket is full of tomatoes.

[jennie]

Call me when your basket is full of tomatoes.

I don't know what that means.

So you concede?

[M.Dancer]

I don't know what that means.

So you concede?

[guyser]

I don't know what that means.

So you concede?

What he ^ said....

[jennie]

What he ^ said....

What I see is that neither of you can answer my question without revealing the truth: Canada is the greedy lawless bastard and you know it.

Having said that, where were we ... ah yes ... the thread topic ... HOW CAN WE DO THIS RIGHT?

Well first of all ... what does "right" mean?

That would mean ... according to the laws of Canada ... right?

Can we agree on that? I am sure that is what the majority of Canadians would agree with.

If so, how can we convince our politicians that Canadians want them to resolve issues with Indigenous Nations according to our laws?

[Posit]

Having been here for a while jenny, that is typcial of the guys who have lost the argument. They try to take us into a new distraction away from the truth because they are afraid their myths will be revealed. Sadly they are so wrapped tight up in their head that they don't realize we know their myths and delusions have no basis in reality.

[jennie]

Having been here for a while jenny, that is typcial of the guys who have lost the argument. They try to take us into a new distraction away from the truth because they are afraid their myths will be revealed. Sadly they are so wrapped tight up in their head that they don't realize we know their myths and delusions have no basis in reality.

So ... we continue to tell the truth ... myths continue to be exposed ... like this one:

oh I see, now I just don't know what I'm talking about.

People are people. Equal rights for all. I believe that. You don't.

No, I absolutely agree: Equal rights for all.

Equal right to inherit property rights, for example.

There are no 'special rights'. That's just propaganda fed to confuse the issues.

The rights afforded by the Constitution of Canada are the rights we all have.

The reason they are stated more explicitly for aboriginal people is because traditionally, their rights have not been respected in Canada (or elsewhere).

The historical infringements on their rights are due to greed for the resources from their land ... the money that fuels our economy (and others).

The new declaration from the UN makes this perfectly clear: It is simply a restatement of 'human rights' from other UN covenants, as a reminder that all of these rights also apply to Indigenous Nations within other countries.

[White Doors]

Now you are just spamming... again.

Charles - can you merge these threads please?

Please tell me how I can reimburse the thousands I spent on my university education please.

thanks!

[jennie]

Now you are just spamming... again.

Charles - can you merge these threads please?

Please tell me how I can reimburse the thousands I spent on my university education please.

thanks!

??

Sorry if I offended you by quoting you. Seemed appropriate to the issue, though they are different threads.

I don't understand your reference to your wasted university education, but if you say so.

Edited September 6, 2007 by jennie

[White Doors]

??

that's what I thought.

thanks.

[jennie]

What I see is that neither of you can answer my question without revealing the truth: Canada is the greedy lawless bastard and we all know it.

Having said that, where were we ... ah yes ... the thread topic ... HOW CAN WE DO THIS RIGHT?

Well first of all ... what does "right" mean?

That would mean ... according to the laws of Canada ... right?

Can we agree on that? I am sure that is what the majority of Canadians would agree with.

If so, how can we convince our politicians that Canadians want them to resolve issues with Indigenous Nations according to our laws?

So now perhaps we can get back to the thread topic ... Aboriginal Rights, Canadian Rights, Human Rights HOW TO DO IT RIGHT? ... Any thoughts?

Can we agree on being guided by the laws of Canada at least?