It won't? How come?

Coy or obtuse... which is it, BF?

Last time it was coy, so lets say this time its obtuse. Why wont FN unity help a common FN cause?

Because it is quite likely that the moderates will have to bend to the extremists and the messages will start to sound like the idiots out of Manitoba saying they'll bring the Canadian economy to its knees.

Yeah, that'll go a oong way towards garnering publiuc support for the cause.

Fair enough but where does it say they're showing unity with the extremists? Spence's hunger strike tactic and demands to meet with the GG may be ham-handed and ill-advised, but I haven't seen where she's signed on to any extremist position on FN issues.

Kahnawake keeps tight rein on finances

CHRISTOPHER CURTIS, THE GAZETTE
JANUARY 8, 2013

MONTREAL — When it comes to numbers, Ryan Rice is what you might call a stickler.

Rice and his team of administrators triple check the thousands of invoices, purchase orders and receipts that pour into the Kahnawake Mohawk Council every year. It can be an exhaustive, mind-blistering process, but when it’s all said and done, every penny of the band council’s $40-million budget is accounted for.

“It feels like overkill sometimes, like we’re really too meticulous,” Rice told The Gazette. “But I’m proud of the work we do.”

Things aren’t quite so smooth in the nearby Mohawk settlement of Kanesatake. When Grand Chief Serge Simon took office in 2011, his band council was $3.2 million in debt and struggling to fend off third-party management. The reserve has managed to maintain control over its funding under Simon’s stewardship, but every day is a struggle.

The management of aboriginal finances across Canada came under scrutiny Monday when an audit was released detailing questionable bookkeeping practices on the Attawapiskat band council in Northern Ontario.

Attawapiskat chief Theresa Spence was roundly criticized for the millions in funds that went unaccounted for during her time as grand chief and deputy chief of the Cree territory. For nearly a month, Spence has staged a hunger strike that has placed her at the centre of a nation-wide aboriginal protest movement, making her a lightning rod for controversy.

Aboriginal leaders in Quebec say they were upset with the audit’s findings, which have caused many to unfairly paint all First Nations with the same brush.

“When something like this happens, it kind of rubs off on all of us,” said Rice, a Concordia University business and commerce graduate. “But the truth is, we never run a deficit and our books are always balanced.”

Along with five other employees, Rice oversees a budget that finances just about every aspect of daily life on the South Shore reserve. Like any other municipality, local government funds weekly garbage pickups, it’s what pays for potholes to be patched and drinking water to be filtered. But council also funds education and health care and hands out loans for small businesses and the construction of new homes.

“We still have people who come to council and pay their mortgage in cash, if you can imagine that in this day and age,” Rice said. “And when we’re not tracking all of these transactions, we’re stretching every nickel as far as it can be stretched.”

Each July, after turning its books over to the federal government, the band also publishes them on the Mohawk Council’s wesbite and in the locally-run Eastern Door newspaper. Incredibly, Rice’s duties also include overseeing human resources, economic development and IT security at a band council that employs more than 300 people in the town of about 7,500.

For his part, Chief Simon says he was disappointed to see the scathing audit of Attawapiskat’s finances.

“I admire what Spence is doing, but it’s tough to defend those numbers,” he said.

Simon was elected on a promise to reform local governance and eliminate patronage on council. During his first year in office, the grand chief put his money where his mouth was, refusing to take a salary in order to help pay down the reserve’s massive debt.

But the chief says he ran into problems early on, when internal strife would get in the way of reform.

“The problem we’re seeing here is that a lot of people don’t want to separate politics from the day-to-day running of the territory,” he said. “People want to oversee every aspect of their individual portfolios, but they aren’t always qualified to. On smaller reserves, chiefs — and I include myself in that category — have a scary amount of power. Not everyone has a university degree or management experience, and it’s a dangerous mix. But when you look at it carefully, I think it has more to do with the sad state and underfunding of aboriginal education in this country than anything else.”

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The extremists are already the ones that are driving the AFN agenda as well as the Idle No More strategy. Moderates like Atleo, whom I genuinely feel bad for, are already ramping up the rhetoric in order not to be left behind. Surely you will admit that the Atelo of Thursday/Friday sounds far more extreme than the Atleo of the AFN elections.

The man has no choice - bend to the extremists or risk being left behind.

How Shawn Atleo and Idle No More will benefit from divisions among the chiefs

I wonder if some national Canadian journalists have ever given a thought to how social movements operate.

Over the past 24 hours, we've been treated to a steady stream of negative commentary about how the First Nations community is "divided" over its dealings with the federal government.

Some have speculated that the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Shawn Atleo, could be facing a mutiny because some chiefs refused to attend yesterday's meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The doom-and-gloom tone hints that this Idle No More movement might be on the rocks.

The reality is that when people work together to advance change, they will disagree over tactics and strategies.

And this can enhance the likelihood of success. That's because governments are often eager to negotiate with "more reasonable" people over the hotheads.

Smart leaders in social movements—and I include Atleo in this camp—will take advantage of this to gain concessions.

Mohandas Gandhi wouldn't have been as successful in the Quit India movement had it not been for violent freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh and Subhjas Chandra Bose.

The British knew that followers of Singh and Bose were willing to engage in armed struggle, so it was easier to deal with Gandhi and the Congress Party.

Similarly during the U.S. civil-rights movement, the existence of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers made the demands of Martin Luther King Jr. look reasonable in comparison. That enhanced King's standing in the eyes of the public and the mainstream politicians.

If there are divisions within the First Nations community, this could prove very useful to Atleo.

It's already gotten him and other chiefs a long meeting with the prime minister. And it's put aboriginal issues at the top of the national political and media agenda for the first time since the Oka crisis.

Social movements—and I include the more recent struggle for LGBT rights in this—are multsegmented entities swimming in a similar direction. They are often characterized by differences within.

These divisions can be beneficial if channelled properly. It's time that the national media recognized that there is enormous strength in diversity.

Atleo's position has been enhanced by the fact that some chiefs wouldn't meet with Harper.

He's going to be seen by the media, the public, and the government as the "good chief", just as Gandhi was the "reasonable" Indian leader and King was the "reasonable" African American leader.

Harper is smart enough to know that if he doesn't deal with Atleo, he'll likely face much bigger challenges from the Idle No More movement.

First Nations are making progress. It's going to be a bumpy ride, but that's always the case when people are bringing about major changes in any society.