by former Western Arctic MP Dennis Bevington
Colonization is a bad word throughout Canada right now. Indigenous people have rightly identified its tentacles from the past 200 years as pervasive and underpinning to their lives today.
Only by throwing off the attitudes and control structures of the governments, churches and corporations, can progress be undertaken in the restoration of the people.
In the NWT, colonization has been challenged on many fronts by our First Nations, Inuvialuit and Metis people. Living in their strong communities, with a good sense of their regionality and their common struggle, progress has been made over the past half century.
The agreements that have been made over time have moved people to regional Indigenous governments, self-government for communities and a defined say and potential control over many of the aspects of their land, life and culture.
There is more to do to break the bonds and attitudes of the colonization process. And one thing that vigilance must be directed to is the back sliding nature of our existing authorities. As Member of Parliament during the Harper majority, I saw their hard line on taking the recommendations of the McCrank Report created by an Alberta Conservative. It led to the decision to strip the Tlicho, Gwich'in and Sahtu people of their Land and Water Boards, replacing them with a single super board. This would have undoubtedly moved decision input further away from the regions; we could call it re-colonization.
The Liberals, to their credit reversed the plan shortly after the election and we retained the boards. They have gone forward to have their own problems dealing with resource decisions and re-colonization.
Lately our own territorial Cabinet seems determined to follow in the same footsteps as the Harperites.
Not only did the cabinet ditch the regionally appointed NTPC Board, but now and much more seriously, they have moved to completely decimate the Aurora College Board. This board served regional interests of the NWT; with its large percentage of Indigenous students, the college needed the input that the communities had in the future of their young people's post secondary education. Cabinet has embraced a dubious report created by an Alberta accounting firm with no experience in adult education, let alone the socio-political directions of the NWT. The Minister of Education and the Premier are now looking for a single bureaucrat to direct the future of post secondary education, hired with no public input or even approbation from the Legislative Assembly.
Regardless of any desire for a destination university in the NWT, let us not throw out the baby with the bathwater. When our own government, built on the premise of consensus, consultation and unwritten understandings begins to act in this cavalier fashion, we need to take attention.
Re-colonization is a tool that many of our bureaucrats and politicians may see as the easiest path forward to a society that more resembles southern Canada.
Don't buy it! In the long run it won't work.