Starting in March, the Cree people will be able to have their say on Cree rights, their future and political status in the event of Quebec separation.
Cree Chiefs meeting in Val d’Or in mid-February agreed to establish a commission to canvass public opinion in all nine communities on the future of the Cree Nation.
“We felt it is the Cree custom to involve all Iinuu people to express their views on the whole question,” said Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come.
“We feel this is a major threat and a change to our status and rights.”
Fifteen names were put forward as possible commissioners, among them prominent Elders, community leaders and youth.
I here is talk of dividing the commissioners into two groups, with one taking the coastal communities and the other working inland. The plan is to give the commissioners as much time as possible for everyone to express their views since so many of the people are on the land.
After its hearings, the commission will prepare a report which will be discussed at a special assembly of the Cree Nation in April. The assembly will probably take place in Chisasibi.
“We’re not doing this just as an exercise,” said the Grand Chief.
“We’re doing it because the government’s draft bill on sovereignty takes our historic relationship with Canada and our constitutional rights and unilaterally declares them subject to Quebec. Any change is subject to our consent,” he said.
“The part I don’t like is the double standard. We can but you Indians can’t We may be small in number but our rights are equal to those of any nation.”
Like virtually every First Nations government in Quebec, the Grand Council is boycotting the “people’s commissions” on sovereignty organized by the Parti Québécois government.
The commissions are made up mostly of avowed separatists. Some of them have embarassed the government by spending the hearings contradicting and even heckling anyone who raises a peep about sovereignty.
The Algonquin Nation surprised some by breaking the First Nations boycott of the commissions in mid-February. One Algonquin representative tried to make his presentation in his own language but was cut off.
