The chiefs of the Confederacy of Treaty 6 First Nations emerged from their first meeting with Danielle Smith yesterday clearly unimpressed with the Alberta premier’s glib patter about the significance to their people of the so-called Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act.
In a terse 150-word media release, the Treaty 6 chiefs stated: “It was clear from our discussions that Premier Smith does not understand our Treaty or our inherent rights nor does she respect them.”
The chiefs of the Alberta First Nations of the Treaty 6 Confederacy are deeply concerned by the implications of United Conservative Party’s sovereignty agenda and have urged the Smith Government “to withdraw and reconsider any legislation that pretends jurisdiction over Treaty Lands and Peoples,” as does the Sovereignty Act.
“Nor do we agree that an invitation on the day of the Throne Speech is an inclusive approach to hearing Albertans and Indigenous voices in a meaningful way for such a dangerous piece of legislation,” the blunt communique continued.
“The Premier will not dictate how we will be consulted – we point her once again to the duty to consult to learn more about how to engage and work with us appropriately,” it said.
Indeed, the statement clarified that despite the meeting, “this does not, in any way or sense, constitute her duty to consult with regard to matters of mutual concern” – a reference to rulings of the Supreme Court of Canada that Canadian governments must engage in good faith consultations with First Nations on land and resource decisions that impact Indigenous interests.
The chiefs’ statement was surprising only in its bluntness. It should be clear to all from the actions of the UCP Government that Premier Smith either does not understand the historical and contemporary meaning of the treaties between First Nations and the Crown, or chooses not to understand.
Among the fundamental principles of Treaty 6, which extends from Alberta into Saskatchewan and Manitoba, is that “at no time did Treaty First Nations relinquish their right to nationhood, their Inherent Right to determine their own destinies, nor did they allow any foreign government to govern them,” the Confederacy’s website states.
“Our Treaty relationship is with the Crown, currently represented by King Charles III, while the federal government serves as a conduit,” the chiefs explained in a news release on Nov. 23.
All of Alberta occupies the territory of Treaty 6 (negotiated between 1876 and 1878), Treaty 7 (signed in 1877), Treaty 8 (signed in 1899), and a corner of Treaty 10 (last signed in 1907) that extends into eastern Alberta. So in a very real way, all of us who live in this place are treaty people, obligated to honour and respect the treaty rights of First Nations people.
The Confederacy of Treaty 6 First Nations, founded in 1993, says its purpose is “to serve as the united political voice for those First Nations of Treaty Six who were involved, because they believe that there is a need for fundamental treaty and human rights of First Nations people to be protected.”
There is every reason to suspect, even before yesterday’s statement by the chiefs, that the Smith Government’s commitment to consulting First Nations leaders about its sovereignist agenda amounts only to lip service, at best.
The racist conduct of several individuals who have played important roles with Alberta Conservative parties revealed in a series of news stories this fall indicate deeply troubling attitudes about the province’s relationship with First Nations people are entrenched in the governing party’s base and tolerated by some leaders.
Indigenous Relations Minister Rick Wilson admitted in the Legislature on Dec. 7 that “there was not enough consultation, and that is regrettable.”
Global News quoted Mr. Wilson saying, “We really have to listen to the chiefs. They do have Treaty rights and we have to respect that. And that’s why we put the clauses in there that we will respect their Treaty rights.”
Obviously, the Treaty 6 chiefs concluded those promises cannot be taken at face value.
Meanwhile, Premier Smith yesterday was widely reported to have apologized for her controversial comparison the day before of Alberta’s relationship with Ottawa to that of First Nations people under the Indian Act.
But it was a typical Danielle Smith apology.
“That was certainly not the intention of my comment. If it was taken that way, I absolutely apologize for that,” she said in response to a question by NDP Opposition Indigenous Relations Critic Richard Feehan. “As I said, if my comments were misconstrued, I absolutely apologize for it,” she responded to his follow-up question.
In other words: Sorry/Not Sorry.
Its not easy these days being a pretendian or Danielle Smith. Sometimes it is hard to tell which she is, but either way she seems to cause a lot of offense.
You would think by now she would have figured out what not to say, or at least get better at apologizing. Slow or very reluctant learner, I guess.
Comparing the Alberta government with its billions in wealth and all its powers to the situation of First Nations people is a poor choice and somewhat insulting to everyone, especially First Nations peoples. Her half hearted apology is even worse. Perhaps she will come up with a better one in a few days, but in any event, I believe we already have a good idea how she really feels on this matter.
She was doing so well for a little while. It must have been a week or two since she said something really dumb. Maybe opening your mouth to fill dead air quickly without much thought is an asset for a radio talk show host, but alienating a lot of people with poorly chosen words is not a good idea for those that want to lead us and bring us together as a province.
So once again the UCP will have to try do a hasty clean up on aisle Smith. Some, even in the UCP, tried to warn the party about this. I suspect it will continue to be a bumpy ride with the leader they narrowly and not so enthusiatically chose.
As expected, Danielle Smith has once again stuck her appendage in her mouth. And so it continues. In fact, it will keep on continuing until Danielle Smith’s political term is cut short, and she’ll take the UCP down with her. Her mouth is clearly working separately from her brain, and this does her a disservice. Danielle Smith and the UCP certainly aren’t doing Alberta any favours, with their very costly, failed policies either. She’s a pretend Native person, with no Cherokee lineage, and a pretend conservative and Reformer, who doesn’t represent, or stand up for actual Native people, or represent true conservatives, which we saw under premier Peter Lougheed, who actually did have Native ancestry.
Anonymous At least with my Cherokee ancestry I can prove it with my DNA and pictures of my great grandmother and great, great grandmother. My grandfather , on dad’s side, was half Cherokee and as my retired RCMP and doctor friends have pointed out over the years, he would have been 50% American Indian, your dad would be 25% and you will be around 12% . In 2015 I had my DNA tested and it came back 10% American Indian . My friends were right.
Alan K. Spiller: The unfortunate thing is that Danielle Smith is fooling people, and whatever she says, they believe it to be true. These pretend conservatives and Reformers are never able to do anything that makes sense, and we end up paying dearly for it.
More looting of the public trust from the UCP/Cons. Ms. Smith’s apology is worse than “sorry, not sorry.” The subtext is “I’m sorry you are so stupid that you misunderstood my perfectly simple statement.” As is the case with so much Con arrogance, Monty Python characterized it best:
https://youtu.be/pXw7LYWNi5E?t=23
Yes, I do agree with you. Do recollect that skit.
Smith just doesn’t care about anything or anyone who isn’t her. She will throw anyone under the bus and she’ll do what ever she wants, while she can.
Definitely not sorry. Sorry does not involve “if”. The fault lies with all the people who constantly misunderstand her on a daily basis. She is the most misunderstood person in my lifetime. Of course she is not actually sorry for what she did and said, as usual. She’s just sorry that so many people are so incredibly mean, and frankly stupid, toward the greatest victim of all time, one Danielle Smith.
Typical Smith apology. Let me paraphrase – I’m sorry that you idiots are too dense and stupid to understand my brilliant utterances.
Danielle Smith says some pretty amazing things. Lately, she’s declared that Alberta has been treated as badly as First Nations people by Ottawa. I suspect at some point she will declare that public education is no different than residential schools and that Albertans are being forced into their own culture genocide because of LGBT2Q legislation. Yes, this is the world Alberta has voted for and may do so again.
Smith and her followers happily live in a bubble, where their world view is only one that matters, and any effort to refute it is communism, feminism, and cultural genocide. Jordan Peterson would be so proud.
Must to Smith’s surprise the world is not her podcast, but she will try to make it that way. Sorry and not sorry will be heard a lot from now on.
“They made us many promises. But they kept but one…They promised to take our land…and they took it.”
Chief Red Cloud–Sioux
It is pretty ironic that someone who rose to power with the promise to defend Alberta’s constitutional rights does not respect other people’s constitutional rights.
I’d suspect Smith doesn’t see the Indigenous people as people but rather obstacles to her quest for their land and removal of all rights they have under the treaties.
Her statement was not an apology. A real apology does not blame the other party for misinterpreting what she said. A real apology takes responsibility for being wrong.
So, how many Indigenous people will come out en masse to vote against Smith, and the UCP in the next provincial election?
This important demographic could be a significant factor in ridding us of these fascists.
A portion of North East Alberta also includes Treaty 10 lands.
Ah. Ms Smith is sorry we didn’t understand. How comforting.
Yes, of course, the problem isn’t DS’s but others who misconstrued her comments. A typical shift of responsibility from the offender to the offended. Oh, and, if you take my comments here in the wrong way, I apologize that you are offended.
Hate Farming 101
Vaccine haters ………………check
NDP haters ……………………check
Trudeau haters……………….check
monarch haters ……………..check
transfer payment haters…..check
gun restriction haters………check
treaty rights haters………….check
the myriad of haters that
can smell hate and like it …..check
Q-Queen Cherokee Dani is starting to feel pretty confident about that spring coronation… erm… election. Sorry/Not Sorry. A vote is a vote. Fun Times.
Every time you turn around these phoney conservatives are making enemies with some other group of people. It’s all they know. While Smith continues to whine about it all being Trudeau’s fault she offers no explanation for why she feels that way. Does she really think we are that stupid ? Why would we be dumb enough to bash him when he is our hero, providing Albertans with an extra $30 billion and saving our oil industry in the process. Her reform party pal Poilievre is no different. He whines about everything but offers no solution to fix the problems. These reformers aren’t smart enough to figure out that they might be the problem. Add to the situation with stupid seniors hurling sarcastic comments at mayors and councillors for their high increase in taxes but too dumb to realize that it’s these reformers who are the problem. Where else would the people be dumb enough to let their provincial government cut corporate taxes by $9.4 billion , to benefit the rich, making it impossible for them to provide proper funding to the municipalities then blame the councillors for the huge shortage in funding the municipalities are receiving creating the high property taxes. It wasn’t happening under Lougheed and Getty and it shouldn’t be happening here now. Not only do Alaskans not pay any state taxes their property taxes are next to nothing thanks to proper management of their oil wealth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjLaq717C0M
The channeler [Danielle Smith as ‘medium’.] of all things Margaret Thatcher [“The lady is not for turning.”] is apparently an enthusiastic devotee of all things Ralph Klein as well, i.e., “She listens. She cares.” It seems that the [apparent] multiple personality disordered clown that is Danielle Smith has finally found a three ring circus worthy of her ‘ability’ and ‘merit’. And the Alberta ‘proletariat’ has finally found the Government that they truly deserve.
In any case, does anyone still remember the myth of “meritocracy”?
That is, “government or the holding of power by people selected on the basis of their ability.”
Even though, “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this.” And, “It is impossible for someone to lie unless (s)he thinks (s)he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.”
http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_bullshit.pdf
Now, Danielle Smith could be a liar [someone who doesn’t tell the truth], or perhaps Danielle Smith is a simple bullshitter, or perhaps she is a construct of multiple permutations and combinations of the above observations.
Noting carefully that . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “There was an eruption of laughter amongst First Nations people Friday at an Edmonton hotel when a panel of Chiefs was asked about Alberta’s premier claiming to have Indigenous heritage. Danielle Smith has spoken publicly about her Cherokee roots as far back as 2012, and in September she wrote in a tweet that she is “someone with indigenous (sic) ancestry.”
https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/smith-fails-to-back-up-indigenous-heritage-claims-after-report-finds-no-proof-1.6159765
Where is the apology?
” If it was taken that way I absolutely apologize for that”. and “…if my comments were misconstrued, I absolutely apologize for it.” could be meaningless gobbledygook or perhaps off the cuff comments from a narcissist feeling both incapable of doing wrong and too proud to be able to offer a sincere apology. Apologies for “that’ and “it” have no relationships to her comments. Maybe she feels victimized and entitled to receive an apology from those who would misconstrue her.
“If there are two ways to take what I said, and one of those ways is bad, I meant the other one.”
While Premier Smith’s escapades are in keeping with her character, does no one find the Minister for Indigenous relations comment that he did not hear her comment troubling? Thankfully he is not an operating nurse, “Sorry Doctor what?”.
We have a Premier and a Government that repeatedly displays in incredible lack of depth on so many issues.
Either the Premier is getting incredibly bad political advice or she is not heeding it.
They are a bunch of rank amateurs. And it shows.
Unfortunately Albertans will have to pay the price.
‘We doan nee no steenking apology redux!’
That’s right! Why polish old boners when a new one presents for insincere apology, anew, every sitting day of the Alberta Legislative Assembly?
Although the UCP laager was circled after only half a year in power, its new Wagon Mistress has finally fulfilled its purpose by inviting a galloping encirclement that surely has the ghost of Thathanka Iyotake (who once spent a family vacation in the Territory) dancing to the irregular beat of this modern-day general Georgette Custard’s scatter-shot. “We swirled like water around a stone,” reminisces the Great Plains warrior and martyr, paying tribute to her stubborn resolve (although that level of classy probably needs a little bit bigger horn to register with Danielle, or, using her lesser-known “Indian” name, “Heels-Dug-Into-Her-Ears,” which suffers a bit of abbreviated loss in translation, namely: “-Deeply-,” or, “-Very-Deeply-“).
Despite the superb grandeur of Smith’s deluded constitutionality, the mere mention of “King Charles III” and “Federal Government” affects a pique in her febrile mind as might an invocation of magic words. She’ll doubtlessly refer these to Barry Cooper whose barrel-full of fruitcake constitutional notions will doubtlessly advise. But, already invoked at a time of Treaty Nº 6 First Nations choosing, she’s susceptible to “Invidia” (get Barry to look it up for you, Danielle), variously translated, again with some loss of sense, as ‘covetousness,’ ‘envy,’ or ‘jealousy.’
(Then, of course, there’s “Luxuria,” or ‘lust,’ of which “Confederacy”—the preferred organization of Treaty Nº 6 First Nations—will probably fire premier Smith’s loins, again a susceptibility which she, if not her caucus, doesn’t appear to much realize. It’s the confederacy that she longs for, even if not knowing exactly how to get one, never mind probably not knowing exactly what one is. Another one for the fruitcake barrel.)
Yet Smith is undeniably the premier (a part of the Constitution she’d like to retain while hacking off some of its other vital organs), so paranoia is inevitable in a way that’s more enchanting than stock, “everybody’s-out-to-get-me” rhetoric that Alberta (and its unacknowledged Quebec twin) has issued many times, rote, for years. Thus, the odds being fairly good that one of Smith’s UCP hacks will be tasked with reading criticisms from “the enemy” which the War Room obsessively seeks to know closely, perhaps even on well-read, reasonable and respected sites like this one, a review of basics Danielle should—but doesn’t appear to—know seems in order.
I sincerely hope it helps.
Like-minded PEOPLE, usually of the electorate but acting on behalf of fellow citizens who are not, join a PARTY to put forward ideas which, after debate and compromise among themselves, and vetting for legality, are presentable as POLICY proposals in a popularly-elected PARLIAMENT. The party bankrolls a selected member’s candidacy, one for each riding in the jurisdiction, who, if elected to sit in parliament, submits these proposals for PUBLIC debate, possible amendment and, finally, a vote by all elected members present in the assembly where, if the proposal passes by a majority, it becomes law. POLITICS is how all of these steps get done within rules proscribing how people are eligible to vote in elections, how parties are formed and administered, how elections are conducted, how parliaments proceed, how its laws are enforced, and how disputes are adjudicated—all of which is usually proscribed in a document called a CONSTITUTION (some jurisdictions like the unitary UK rather use judicial precedent instead, but in federated nations like Canada, a written constitution setting out rules applying equally to each of the sovereign federates is essential in order to preclude incessant jurisdictional disputes between them that would interfere with ordinary and/or extraordinary matters of security and justice).
Most people— unfortunately, not as many as there should be—already know this stuff (I recall it being taught in my rural, two-room, eight-grade public school in early-1960s Upper Canada). However, given the peculiar evolution of the UCP, culminating by extraordinary twists and turns in the leadership of Danielle Smith, it’s fair to ask how she’s doing.
Constitutionally, as the Treaty Nº 6 Confederacy and many others correctly point out, Smith presents as totally bereft—almost as if she’s congenitally unable to hold the blinding, first-run methyl-hooch Cooper’s been feeding her (which could be likened to child abuse if she wasn’t an adult).
It’s hardly her fault that the UCP is not a party of like-minded people, but knowing each of its two, mutually suspicious factions as well as she does (having been the instrument of each one’s destruction as separate, mutually opposed parties), she certainly is guilty of weaselling into its leadership crisis and festering schism as a supposedly “united” party. Such opportunism abuses what should be a source of cogent policy within the Constitution to which her province is subscribed. There is of course a mechanism to secede—which her Gordian hot-mess seems to peripherally suggest—but her omission or dismissal of it here is as disingenuous as her party leadership—never mind her responsibility as premier.
Smith’s miscomprehension of, and perhaps conflation of parties and constitutions (the existence of each is understood but not articulated in either of the other) is amply shown in everything she does. In fact, it is legend and consistently characteristic of her. Her cultivated amalgam of objectionism, aloofness, and petulance single-handedly—and unapologetically— folded a school board; then won her leadership of a radically splintered opposition partly; then won her a seat in the Assembly while losing an election the party was predicted to win after the first of her now-infamous series of insincere apologies was subsumed in a lake of political fire. Her 2014 floor-crossing which ultimately destroyed pitcher and catcher is but a mere interceding chapter to her latest showcase of political ineptitude.
Smith either cannot or will not apologize for serial political gaffs. That’s right: gaffs—the things real politicians assiduously try to avoid.
But, boiled down to the most basic metric, the PEOPLE, we see no psephological or democratic chops in this unfortunate premier. Her party is really a barrel of gas-lighted antifreeze named Barry Cooper. Even though the wing nut faction made her party leader, and no matter how educated or ignorant of politics any of its members might be, surely some of them expected Smith to get its dubious policies done—note the past tense: I reckon even the die-hards are beginning to wonder if she can (although I admit that some probably would go directly to armed insurrection).
But it’s the citizens of Alberta its premier is supposed —nay, required—to be concerned with. The vanishingly small set of approvals, party and riding, she has so far achieved in her current romp through the halls of power disrespects about 99% of Albertans in purely democratic sense, of course including First Nations which have special treaty rights under our Constitution and laws. They simply can’t assume any blame for “misconstruing” her words: they are impossible to construe in any case!
Given that this is not a politician by definitions—note the plural—Albertans cannot expect better of Danielle Smith, only better of the future without her. Lest we forget, indigenous nations have been around for a long, long time, and Alberta will be around for a long, long time. Alls we can say right now is that, once in a while, fate deals a shitty hand and, if the rule of law has anything to do with it—which it does—it won’t last very long at all.
Hang tough, my Alberta friends: we’re all rooting for you! Keep in mind, always: strong winds can’t last all day.