Day by day it is feeling as though the emergence of Perry Bellegarde, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, could not happen at a better time for our aspirations as a country.
Firm, focused yet flexible leadership on behalf of our Indigenous people, in the context of a national government that properly professes commitment to the principles of partnership, makes the affable and media-wise chief a major asset at this critical juncture.
Like it or not, we are as a country trying in short order to educate ourselves on colonialism and abandon mistreatment to seek a reconciliation that includes an economic framework of mutual respect.
It is uncertain if Canadians apprehend what’s required, but with Bellegarde we are provided a grounded and less strident option to take us there with Justin Trudeau – and certainly the wider, somewhat under-informed country.
Bellegarde has staked his contribution on a positive outcome, and in person he exudes an encyclopaedic handle on the file and a personable persuasiveness that works in every encounter to transcend our divide as we approach this new pact.
Bellegarde is not sugar-coating what is to come. True partnership is neither for the parsimonious nor for the power-obsessed.
He preaches more than anything the necessity in business as a first principle the respect for Indigenous participation and collaboration. If there is any worry that First Nations will use their judicial heft to seek a veto on business development in this country, he says, the best dodge is to pre-emptively earn and foster respect.
It’s a tidy, common-sense message, just direct enough to alert attention but not threatening in this climate of potential conflict over precarious projects. On resource development, for instance, he is advocating early engagement to ensure there is buy-in. He rightfully notes the development of human capital is good for everyone – by which he means education in the long term, jobs in the short term, to achieve these better outcomes.
These are very reasonable attributes of a very reasonable leader who has found himself in the Trudeau government in greater authority than he might have expected when he assumed the role under – and by no means beside – Stephen Harper.
The federal government has brought him into NAFTA advice, even put forward at his behest an Indigenous chapter of the accord for which it will seemingly fight. No question, that element caught Americans off guard, and there is yet to be a public response, but Bellegarde has shrewdly earned endorsement from American tribal leaders meantime.
He decries the plodding bureaucracy of the country, as have Indigenous leaders and advocates for about four generations now, as hindrances on a rising national will to get through the reconciliation process in a sliver of the time it took us to need it.
But Bellegarde’s most provocative idea is bound to be uncomfortable for the comforted: he wants provinces to adopt Indigenous employment and industrial standards that would be the litmus test by which they would conduct business. He admits it’s a big step, but it’s also clear that he now swings a hammer if he wishes.
With a smile on his face, he asks: wouldn’t it be better to just get on with it?
Bellegarde himself is coming upon re-election next year.
While there are quiet criticisms that his office is more about inking pacts than advocating proposals, and while there is disquiet about a national government that has done the easier talk rather than the more difficult walk on Indigenous economic emancipation, he seems correctly typecast as the leader with whom Trudeau can break bread. He might find himself as the man of history. Certainly by the next election Trudeau has to effect an advanced nation-to-nation covenant to bridge the enervating and embarrassing gap between our Indigenous and non-Indigenous standards of living.
Our prime minister has taken the initiative, but in setting the bar high on this matter, he has no political option but to – well, to be a prime minister for all of our people. I sense Bellegarde will hold him to that.
Kirk LaPointe is editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver Media Group and vice-president of Glacier Media.
