It was an Annual General Assembly to remember. Not only Crees were on hand but Luc Ferland, the PQ MNA for the Eeyou Istchee-Ungava riding, dropped in along with the Amos Mayor Ulrick Chérubin and the Amos Chamber of Commerce in the form of Martin Veau. They came to the inauguration of newly elected Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come.
Mistissini Chief John Longchap said it was a great event. He welcomed the “non-Native friends” and said, “It’s a sign they wish to work with us.” Longchap said he was glad to see so many people show up to “support your community, your new leaders and to participate in the AGA.”
Along with the taking of oaths of office by Coon Come and re-elected Deputy Grand Chief Ashley Iserhoff, the Crees would be honouring two important Crees.
Both Philip Awashish and Billy Diamond had been awarded honourary doctorates. Longchap said both Diamond and “Dr. Phil” have worked and still work for the betterment of all Crees. Longchap said it was a dream of his to work with Diamond and he was glad he had the opportunity to. Longchap said that Awashish help the Crees to speak with one voice. “He was the one to have the idea of an all chiefs meeting to work together as one Nation,” said Longchap.
Both Diamond and Awashish thanked the people for their support over the years. Diamond showed he still had the charisma to charm a crowd as the participants laughed and clapped throughout his speech. He talked of the early years and the work he and Awashish did.
Diamond showed he isn’t afraid to be confrontational when he slapped the Nation down saying, “The Nation was always hard on me,” and attributed being driven out of office by the Cree magazine.
Longchap congratulated both Coon Come and Iserhoff on winning their offices. He said Coon Come is recognized as defending Cree rights locally, nationally and internationally and “we need to give him our support.”
Longchap said Iserhoff’s strength was the support from the youth and the admiration of some of the greatest Cree Elders.
Coon Come took his oath of office at the Grand Council/Cree Regional Authority Annual General Assembly in Mistissini. He then delivered a State of the Nation Address to the Assembly. The Nation has the speech here where he calls on all Crees to work for a better future.
Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come in Mistissini, August 26, 2009
Wachiya!
It is an honour and a pleasure for me to be speaking to you here in Mistissini at this event today.
Today’s proceedings are significant for me in many ways.
First as you all know, this community is my family’s home, not far from my family’s trapline where I was born. For me, coming back to Mistissini is always particularly meaningful and emotional.
Of course, I feel the same way about all the Cree communities and all of Eeyou Istchee. This land is where we Crees belong. This land is where we have always been, and always will be. The lands, the waters, and the many, many resources it contains are the birthright of our people. Wherever I go in Iiyuuschii, whether it is on the coast or far inland, or in the north or in the south, I am at home. This land Iiyuuschii is our home, your home, my home, and future generations of Crees’ homes.
Second, this is the fifth time that I have the honour of being elected to the position of Grand Chief of the James Bay Cree Nation and the Chairperson of the Cree Regional Authority.
I was quite a bit younger – and much more naïve! – when I was elected to the position of Grand Chief for the first time in the 1980s. I am now a few years older, and perhaps even a bit wiser, than I was when I was entering my first term of office as Grand Chief. I am certainly much more aware of the many challenges and responsibilities that are entailed in being a Cree leader.
Third, as I said during the campaign, I believe that as a Nation and a People, we Crees are now “at a fork in the river” at this point in our history.
Let me explain what I mean for a few minutes. Because they were not personally there, the younger people among us today do not remember how things were for the Crees just a few years ago, even in the 1970s and 1980s. I wish to mention an important earlier turning point in James Bay Cree history.
You may think I’m going to mention the signing of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement in 1975. Yes, the signing of the JBNQA was a very important point in Cree history, one in which we Crees were the first Aboriginal People in Canadian history to enter into a modern treaty relationship with the federal and provincial governments.
Important as it was, the signing of the JBNQA is not the turning point I am thinking of. I am going to mention a year and an event that is one that we as a people must never forget. In 1980, a terrible gastrointestinal epidemic took place in Waskaganish. Dozens of our people became very sick, and eight of our young children died, and many others suffered permanent harm.
1980 was five years after the signing of the JBNQA. As a result of the Agreement, the governments of Canada and Quebec, and Hydro-Québec obtained a technical description and Cree assent to build one hydro-electric project. We did not negotiate the Agreement because it was our first choice. On the contrary, our leaders negotiated skillfully and fearlessly to make the best out of a bad situation in which strangers had come to Eeyou Istchee to take over our land and resources.
Before the 1970s, before Hydro-Québec and the governments came to our land, we all know that our economy was based almost completely on hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering. This was the way we had always sustained ourselves, but already in the south of our territory, mining and forestry was shrinking the land and displacing our people. Overall, life was tough for our people and the high living standards that were taken for granted by non-Aboriginal Canadians were not reaching our communities, not even with regard to basic sanitation services.
In 1975, our leaders had negotiated that our communities would get adequate sanitation, clean drinking water, community centres, essential programs and services such areas as health, education and training, and employment in addition to support for traditional pursuits on the land.
Five years later in 1980, when the Waskaganish epidemic struck our people, and it became clear that even with the signing of the JBNQA, the promises that were made to our people were not going to be honoured without a fight.
The tragic Waskaganish epidemic in 1980 was a turning point for our people.
For the next quarter of a century, the Cree Nation fought an uninterrupted campaign in Canada and internationally. We insisted on respect for our treaty rights under the JBNQA. We insisted on respect for the Iiyuuschii environment. We insisted on respect for our rights to participate in the development of the territory. We insisted on respect for our right to meaningful economic and social development, so that our people can raise our children and feed our families in decent and safe communities.
The current meaningful improvement in the social and economic […] has only started becoming a reality for the Crees on the east side of James Bay in the late 1990s and 2000s. These improvements in employment, sanitation, community services, housing and other important aspects of Cree life did not happen because outside governments agreed with us that these improvements were essential.
One only has to travel to the communities on the west side of James Bay (such as Attawapiskat or Kashechewan to name just two) to see what government policies elsewhere in Canada with respect to sanitation, drinking water, housing, education, employment and resource benefits really are.
It is only as a result of the many fights we have fought, as a result of the many international campaigns we have waged, as a result of the many court cases we have brought, as a result of the many negotiations we have participated in, as a result of the vision and unity of our people and the strong mandates they have given us as leaders, the Cree social and economic conditions have improved greatly for our people over the last 30 years.
Fundamentally, the background to these social and economic improvements for our people is the fact that governments and corporations came to our territory to extract the hydro, mineral, animal and other resources it contains. The fights we have fought have ultimately been about whether the external governments and corporations would share some of the benefits of this resource extraction with our Nation in the forms of social and economic development and employment, or not.
The fights have also been about whether or not all of this industrial resource extraction going on in the Iiyuuschii environment will be undertaken sensibly and sustainably, so that the land can heal and the resources can sustain future generations to come.
The agreements we have entered into with Hydro-Québec, Quebec and Canada have all concerned these two issues, first the amount of benefits that will flow into our Nation and second, the level of social and environmental protection that the governments are willing to undertake. In both of these areas there are difficult choices that have had to be made, and there are Crees who agree and Crees who disagree with the paths that have been chosen and the outcomes that have taken place.
These agreements and disagreements are expressed continuously at our council tables, in our boardrooms, in the Cree media, over dinner at Cree family kitchen tables, in discussions on our community halls and on the street, and during our Cree elections. We are having to make difficult choices as a nation and as a people day after day, month after month, and year after year.
I have always stated my belief that only Indigenous peoples are asked to give something up – our legal rights, our rivers, our forests, our mineral resources – in order to get the roads, schools, housing, sanitation and social programs to everyone else in Canada can take for granted as a basic right. I still think that this is unjust.
But this is a fact of life, as the last 40 years or so of Cree history shows. We Crees were blessed to be located in a territory full of resources. For thousands of years those resources sustained us, mainly the animals, the plants and the water. Then the industrial resource extraction came into our territory, and along with it came governments, corporations, projects, mines, and tens of thousands of non-Crees, all wanting to greatly increase the extraction of resources from our territory.
There is a word that has been used recently by many Cree leaders: it is “encroachment”. This word is applicable: we are experiencing massive encroachment in our territory. But the governments and corporations responsible for this encroachment see it differently. They have defined the territory as their territory, and the seey our Cree territory as being limited to Category 1 lands and our communities.
The JBNQA and the Paix des Braves say otherwise. These treaties state that the Crees have a governance and benefits interest in the whole territory. But these relationships are never just what is written down. The people and corporations engaged in the encroachment and increased resource extraction will always be pushing for more, and more, and more.
We Crees will always have to push back against encroachment. We must push back not because we want to be obstructive. We must push back because if we don’t keep pushing back, we will soon wake up and find out that the lines we have drawn in the sand back in 1975, and in 2001, and in 2007 regarding the extent of our benefit, and the extent of our influence and control over our territory and its resources, and the extent of social and environmental protection, will all have moved, and we won’t like the result.
I will take this one step further. Externally speaking, we Crees must implement a strategic vision in which we take a leaf out of the book of the Government of Quebec as to how it relates to the rest of Canada. While the percentage of the population of Quebec is shrinking as a part of Canada, it continues to push hard on every front for an increased share of the benefits and political influence. We must do the same. We must maintain a strategic stance of demands for a greater share of the geographic, political, economic, social and cultural space of Iiyuuschii.
Thankfully, we Crees are now hopefully beyond the era of community gastrointestinal epidemics. We must not take this for granted however, as shown by the recent gastrointestinal epidemic in Walkerton, a non-Aboriginal community in Ontario, and as the current H1N1 crisis shows.
However, in our communities, we certainly have other kinds of social challenges, all of which were raised during the last election campaign by many Cree voters. In a number of Cree communities there have not been any high-school graduates for a number of years. Existing and new social and economic challenges persist. There is an increasing gap between Cree “haves” and Cree “have-nots”. There are some serious health issues, social difficulties and infrastructural challenges that are looming.
Fundamentally, there are fewer than 20,000 of us in the world. Many of the corporations and governments seeking to extract the resources in Eeyou Istchee have more employees than the population of our whole Nation. If we are going to play a meaningful role in the future of our territory, if we are going to be players, or possibly even dominant players in Eeyou Istchee, we are going to have to “punch above our weight” to use a phrase from the sport of boxing.
Let’s face it, in all numerical respects the Cree Nation is a “featherweight”: our population is small, our economy is small, and our geographic position is isolated from the external centres of power. In coming years and decades, in order for us to continue to maintain and strengthen our Cree status and Cree rights, and to continue to benefit meaningfully from the wealth of the land, and to effectively resist and perhaps even turn back the tide of encroachment in Eeyou Istchee from such forces as MBJ and the non-Cree towns and councils, we Crees as a Nation are going to have to exert much more influence and pressure than any small Indigenous Nation like ours can normally exert. We are going to have to maintain a “heavyweight” presence in the outside world.
We Crees have “punched above our weight” before starting with Grand Chief Billy Diamond’s courageous response to the Waskaganish epidemic, and continuing through the campaign against Great Whale and the Cree assertion of our right to self-determination in the context of Quebec secession. We can continue to do so again.
In the past, we have been heavyweight players in the legislative, judicial, constitutional, administrative, political and other arenas in Canada and internationally.
In recent years our external influence has diminished, and it will take effort and determination on our part to build it up again. If we neglect these things, we will before long find that the important doors are closed to us in the corridors of power in Quebec, Ottawa, New York and Geneva. And then we will find that when the tables are set to discuss MBJ or the renewals of our agreements, that we do not like the positions of the people who have been sent to talk to us, and that we do not like the results.
There is however also some very good news in addition to these challenging truths. I stated during the election and I will say it again here: there is also enormous opportunity for our people. The increase in resource extraction, which is not always at the level of sustainability we would prefer, does bring job opportunities that must be seized.
The Agreements we have entered into have made stable funding available on a multi-year basis for Cree government and entities to carry out the responsibilities we have in a manner and at a level that other Aboriginal peoples in Canada are not yet able to dream of. We now have the adequate financial resources required. The responsibility to carry out these tasks for the benefit of our people is now mostly ours as Crees, and in most areas there will now be no one else to blame if these things are not adequately or properly done.
For all these reasons, my friends, education and training are of critical importance for our Nation. These critically important socio-economic development and administration tasks must be carried out in coming years, to the greatest extent possible, by Cree administrators, Cree social and health care workers, Cree technicians, Cree contractors and Cree workers. We cannot afford to miss the boat of ensuring that at the very least there are skilled, competitive and effective Cree workers and Cree entrepreneurs for every position and every contract in our government and entities and society.
Any Cree leader who states that he or she alone has the right answer and knows the clear direction to be taken is mistaken. Overall, there is no black-and-white truth, no clear answer to every question we face as a Nation and a people.
People, there is no correct answer to the challenges that we face. There are mostly only trade-offs between one less acceptable option and another more acceptable course of action. Every decision we make, every program we put in place, every agreement we sign, will have its upsides and downsides, its benefits and its costs.
Fundamentally, I believe that we Crees will have to work together in unity – as individuals, families, communities, councils and a nation – to maintain and strengthen our nation internally and externally. I am dedicating myself to working with everyone to achieve these goals. I believe that our Cree Nation is too small for us to be able to afford full-scale oppositional politics inside our camp. Of course, we can and must have ongoing and vigorous discussion and debate in the Cree camp about the best ways to proceed on various issues and questions. This is Cree democracy at work. But when push comes to shove it is only Cree unity that will carry us forward, and it is only Cree rights that basically matter.
I am therefore calling on all sectors of Cree society, whether they supported me or another candidate for Grand Chief, to now join me and Deputy Grand Chief Iserhoff and everyone else elected or appointed to office in rolling up our sleeves and tackling the challenges ahead of us and working together to benefit from the many blessings and opportunities that we currently have.
Yes, technically in the end I got the most votes, as did Deputy Grand Chief Iserhoff. But this does not mean that those who ran against us were less worthy of the support they got. The abilities and vision and perspectives of all of the candidates who ran for Cree public office will be needed in the coming years to carry out the huge range of initiatives that must be carried out for successful Cree Nation-building. The education, energies and efforts of all of these talented people are needed, both to maintain our current positions and to strengthen our prospects for the future.
I will never take for granted that I know better how to do this job of Grand Chief. There will always be new tasks that must be undertaken, new challenges to be overcome, new opportunities that must be made the most of, and new ways of doing things better for the benefit of our people that must be found and tried out. However there is also past experience that must be brought into the present, emulated and re-used because it contains the wisdom of previous generations, and allows us to move ahead with the benefit of knowing what works and what does not.
Thank you for this wonderful gathering today. As I said at the beginning, it is an honour and a pleasure to be speaking with you today, and to have been elected to work with you all to serve our people once again. I promise to do so collaboratively, energetically, inclusively, dynamically, and as effectively as I possibly can. Together we can achieve great things!
Miigwetch!
•••
Keynote speaker Osoyoos Chief Clarence Louie from British Columbia wowed the Cree crowd with his inspiring talk about changes that would have to be made if the Crees wanted to create a real economic future.
Louie felt he was honoured to be talking to the Cree as his first paper on land claims was about the James Bay Cree. He complimented the AGA because this was only the second place where almost everything was done in Cree. Louie said, “It is impressive that you have kept your language so strong.”
But Louie was not there just to hand out compliments to the Crees he was there to talk business. “I don’t believe in Indian time. You can’t run a business that way,” said Louie. He said the local individual and band businesses were important. “Youth should be able to stay in their communities and have jobs that don’t involve working for the government,” said Louie. “Federal spending doesn’t address economic challenges. Only two per cent of the $8 billion spent on First Nations is spent on economic development.”
Louie said the old Indian Affairs model hasn’t worked for the past 200 years.
“Every federal minister (Indian Affairs) says he wants to tackle Aboriginal poverty but it will never happen under the old model,” said Louie.
He said to look at the communities and you’ll see youth moving to the cities. Louie sees it as losing resources for the community.
His desire for jobs comes from his own community’s experiences. The community was one of the poorest First Nations reserve in Canada. They are now one of the richest. Louie attributes this to doing business and ensuring everyone is employed.
Louie said he toured prisons from Manitoba on westward. He said 70% of the prison population was Aboriginal. He found that the majority of the inmates didn’t have a job before doing something that landed them in jail. The lesson is there said Louie, “provide jobs or face disruption.”
Louie took a tough stance on welfare recipients. “Only a single mother or a handicapped person should be on welfare. Able-bodied people should be working. I can tell you too that most single mothers I know can outwork single guys.”
Louie said it was time to upset the status quo. “There’s nothing wrong with our people putting on a suit and going head-to-head with an outside business to create an Aboriginal business,” said Louie adding economic development is the new battleground First Nations need to get into. “No economic base means no control of our future.”
Louie reminded people that Ovide Mercredi said, “It’s the economic horse that pulls the social cart.” The problem, according to Louie, is we have been and are putting the cart before the horse.
Louie believes every student should be able to get a summer job and we have to have guidance counsellors to help youth find a career. “I also believe in youth entrepreneurship. Youth have to learn to create business plans and the other activities necessary for them to create new business in their own communities.”
Louie ended with, “Everyone needs the dignity of a job and not just a band council job.”
Next issue: Annual reports, financial reports and other Cree issues at the AGA
