Cheers and waving flags filled a crowded Parliament Hill late last month when the 270 Nishiyuu Walkers reached their destination.
The Nishiyuu Walkers were a group of seven young Cree men named David Kawapit, 18, Geordie Rupert, 21, Raymond Kawapit, 20, Stanley George Jr., 17, Travis George, 17, Jordon Masty, 19, and Johnny Abraham, 19.
They started the 1,600-kilometre, 68-day march from Whapmagoostui, Que., a small village on the shores of the Hudson Bay, on Jan. 16 to back the Idle No More movement. Over the course of their walk, other First Nations communities joined in support.
One aim of the movement is to persuade the federal government to collaborate more with First Nations leaders on issues such as enivronment protection, selling of aboriginals land and self-governance on reserves.
But earning the prime minister’s attention is proving difficult for the long-travelled group.
Though NDP leader Tom Mulcair and Green Party head Elizabeth May greeted and congratulated the walkers in Ottawa, Stephen Harper skipped town.
The glamour of a photo opportunity proved too tempting for Harper, who greeted fresh-off-the-plane Chinese pandas in Toronto. Apparently, the bears urgently needed to meet the nation’s leader before they started a five-year stint at the Toronto Zoo.
The prime minister’s snub of the walkers was made something painfully clear: the federal government doesn’t intend to mend a broken relationship with the country’s First Nations communities.
“It continues to speak to the fact that the government has no interest in resetting the relationship,” says Jean Crowder, NDP aboriginal affairs critic and MP for the Nanaimo-Cowichan riding in B.C., which boasts a large aboriginal population.
“The government has to come at it with good faith. It has to change its mindset and be willing to sit down as equal partners at the table to talk about solutions.”
But ignoring the Nishiyuu Walkers’ arrival in Ottawa delays finding solutions to problems the trek addressed, such as poverty and insufficient space on reserves.
In fact, many Inuit and Algonquin people, for example, joined the march to Ottawa from areas without access to roads.
How do their efforts and determination not earn Harper’s support? Even a mere handshake would be a sign of good faith and possibly open the door to future collaboration.
In addition, only a week after the walk, Crowder says MPs in the House of Commons discussed the contentious Bill S2, which tackles questions of property ownership after aboriginal couples divorce, for the first time in two years.
Many First Nations regard the bill as an infringement of their sovereignty.
And it is.
Because provincial divorce laws don’t hold power on reserves, the federal government sees a need to further challenge aboriginal self-governance by implementing its own legislation.
Undoubtedly, these laws would challenge aboriginal traditions.
The Harper government’s discussion of Bill S2 mere days after the walkers arrived at Parliament Hill does only one thing: widen the ideological gap between Ottawa and First Nations communities.
But at this rate, without so much as a handshake for the Nishiyuu Walkers, relations with aboriginal communities will remain fractured as long as the Conservative party are in power.