| E. | The Funding to Implement the Recommendations |
The 1993 Report also recommended that the Government "provide the funding necessary to implement [the Report’s] recommendations." The funding to complete the relocation project has apparently been approved by Treasury Board and is now available. Once registration has been completed and reserves created, the Innu will be receiving funding from the Government equivalent to that of status Indians on reserve. However, the funding problems are threefold. First, the delays in obtaining funds have contributed to the delay in relocation and its cost. For the Innu, funding negotiations are interminable, complex and bureaucratic. On the government side, officials often see the Innu asking for funds without accountability and proceeding on the assumption that if they just got money their problems would be solved. In addition to the continuous contact across a range of issues, there are clear problems of communication between the Innu and the Government. The process has been complicated because the Government has placed the funding under third-party management. Concerned about overruns in band council spending and increasing deficits, the Government put the funds granted to the band councils of Davis Inlet and Sheshatshiu under the third-party management of the firm KPMG. Expenditures have to be approved against budgets by the third-party manager. In practice, this appears to have worked without significant friction, since most expenditures are routinely approved. What appears to be missing is training for band councils on financial management, to ensure that they can manage their funds in an accountable way after third-party management has come to an end. Federal officials have said that it is the responsibility of the third-party manager to do this. The Innu say that it has yet to be done. Nor is it clear that either the full implications of relocation or the funding consequences have been thought through. Whether the new community of Natuashish can function on the basis of the funding received by the Mushuau Innu Band Council is an open question. Back to top Second, from the Innu perspective, funding is not necessarily for the right thing. Funding for the outposts program has been a particular source of contention. To many Innu this program is essential for the preservation of their culture and for the education of their children in that culture. But it falls through the gaps and receives funding only on an ad hoc basis. It is fundamentally important that the particular cultural needs of the Innu receive full financial support through the operation of the outposts program as well as other traditional activities. Third, the Innu retain a long-standing grievance that they have never been properly compensated for the years since 1949 in which they were not acknowledged as Aboriginal people to whom the Government had any constitutional responsibility. In short, they have never received compensation for the breach by the Government of its fiduciary duty towards them. By contrast, there is a feeling among some officials, who focus on recent years and the money allocated for relocation, that the Innu have received far more funding than equivalent Aboriginal communities in Canada. | CONCLUSION 7 The Government has gone a significant way towards implementing the fifth recommendation in the 1993 Report that it provide the funding necessary to implement the Report’s recommendations. However, the issue will remain open until all of the recommendations have been fully implemented. |
Back to top II. | The Implications of the Recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples |
The Terms of Reference for the follow-up review require us to examine "the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, and the Government’s response to them (Gathering Strength — Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan) and the implementation thereof"and to consider them in relation to the recommendations of the 1993 Report. Many of the Royal Commission’s recommendations in Volume 3 of its report are relevant to the Innu as Aboriginal people, and many of the problems faced by the Innu are precisely those discussed in the Royal Commission’s report. In the present context, those recommendations relating to housing, education, cultural identity and language, health and self-government are relevant. In respect of housing, the Royal Commission recommended that the Government ensure adequate housing for Aboriginal people within 10 years. The new community being built for the Mushuau Innu clearly responds to that recommendation. The Royal Commission considered that housing "should be a key part of community healing and of cultural revival and self-definition among Aboriginal peoples." The report noted that "Aboriginal design and environmental technologies could reflect the rich history and the deep environmental sensitivity of communities and regions." It described the Cree community of Oujé-Bougoumou, Quebec, an Aboriginal community that had been moved seven times over five decades to make way for mining developments. By 1986 their living conditions had degenerated to a point described by the Grand Council of the Crees of Quebec as "the worst in the developed world." A new community constructed to house 525 community members was built, taking account of concerns about cultural renewal, economic development, environmental sustainability and social healing. Ultimately designated as a major success, the newly constructed village was chosen by the United Nations as one of 50 exemplary communities around the world, and a vivid example of how traditional values and culture could be combined with modern design and technology.43 Back to top The Oujé-Bougoumou example shows what is possible in the regeneration of Aboriginal communities. The architectural design of the new Oujé-Bougoumou Cree village reflected traditional teepee shapes and Cree settlement patterns, with a longhouse-style meeting place, and a school that functioned as a place for learning and recreation, and a centre of village life. The new Mushuau Innu community of Natuashish reflects to some extent Innu cultural and traditional concerns. There has, however, been considerable tension between the desire of the Government to build in accordance with standard specifications and the desire of the Innu to have the community built in a way that would respond to their particular needs. This played itself out in a debate over the design of the school, which ultimately was resolved by compromise. The challenge for the Mushuau Innu is to adapt their new community to their particular needs, a problem that is made much more complicated by the problems of health and social dysfunction that will be referred to later. In respect of education, the Royal Commission noted that control over education delivered to Aboriginal people remained primarily in the hands of provincial or territorial governments, with few mechanisms for effective accountability to Aboriginal parents and students. There was insufficient opportunity for Aboriginal people to transmit their linguistic and cultural heritage to the next generation. The report recommended that Aboriginally controlled educational systems be developed and that Aboriginal language be assigned priority in Aboriginal educational systems. The area of education is one that has become critical in respect of the Innu, and there is little evidence of any progress towards giving effect to either the letter or the substance of the Royal Commission’s recommendations. In respect of the preservation of Aboriginal arts and heritage, the Royal Commission recognized the importance of conserving and revitalizing Aboriginal languages. Innu-aimun continues to function as the language in daily use among the families and households in Sheshatshiu and Davis Inlet. Given the potential extinction of so many other Aboriginal languages, the vibrancy of the Innu-aimun language in Labrador is cause for pride. Yet the language of instruction in the schools is essentially English. Equally, the dominance of television in the communities creates serious concerns about the future of the language. Even more critically, the Innu note that if their community is not able to maintain its traditional connections with life in the country, through programs such as the outposts program, the richness of the language will dissipate. The future of Innu-aimun is at a critical stage. Now is the time to take active steps to ensure that it retain its richness and strength. For a country such as Canada, where the interconnections between language, culture and national identity are central, this ought to rank as a concern of the highest order. Back to top The Royal Commission focused as well on issues relating to family, health and healing. The concerns raised in the report — regarding the elimination of violence against women, children, elders and persons with disabilities; the need to involve women, youth, elders and persons with disabilities in governing councils and decision-making bodies; the need to transform current programs into more holistic delivery systems in culturally appropriate forms; the importance of the provision of clean water, basic sanitation facilities and safe housing; and the need for the development of Aboriginal healing lodges, controlled by the communities themselves, and reflective of traditional and spiritual values underlying Aboriginal culture — all resonate with the problems faced by the communities of Sheshatshiu and Davis Inlet. Finally, at the most fundamental level, the Royal Commission saw a key role for Aboriginal self-government as providing "the affirmation and conservation of Aboriginal cultures and identities as fundamental characteristics for Canadian society."44 The vision of self-government set out by the Royal Commission was not, however, the municipal council model that the Innu fear the Government wishes to impose on them. Rather: It should be understood that self-government does not mean bringing Aboriginal nations into line with predetermined Canadian norms of how people should govern themselves. It is the reinstatement of a nation-to-nation relationship. It is the entrenchment of the Aboriginal right of doing things differently, within the boundaries of a flexible Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international human rights standards.45
The issue of self-government remains one of the key outstanding issues to be resolved in the new relationship that is evolving between the Government and the Innu. | CONCLUSION 8 Although the actions of the Government in respect of the Innu conform to some of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, such as the building of the community at Natuashish and in some respects health reform, in many critical areas such as education and self-government there is little evidence that the recommendations of the Royal Commission have been implemented at all in respect of the Innu. |
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