"PM's Record Offers Little for Natives to Celebrate"

KETTLE POINT, Ont. - As the Mulroney era comes to a close, natives, like others, are taking stock of the retiring prime minister's record and his influence on their lives.

Some observers give the prime minister credit for making tough choices that weren't popular while others revile him for making poor choices based on a limited vision of Canada.

He'll be remembered as the prime minister who brought natives into constitutional negotiations but his reign was also married by a 78-day armed stand-off between natives and soldiers in Quebec.

Was he a hero or a villain on aboriginal issues?

Brian Mulroney made his mark on the history of relations between whites and natives in Canada as the first prime minister to concede that aboriginal people have an inherent right to govern themselves.

But beyond that his record offers precious little for natives to celebrate.

During his first term, Mulroney picked up the ball that many natives believe was fumbled by former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, when he held several first minister's conferences on aboriginal issues.

Trudeau's federalist vision had left little room for the idea of native self-government or sovereignty and many aboriginal leaders welcomed the change signalled by Mulroney's leadership.

But early hopes for a breakthrough in relations were dashed with the failure of the conferences. Within months of the collapse of the final conference, Mulroney crafted the Meech Lake constitutional accord, a deal that essentially ignored aboriginal people.

It was a slap in the face and one one that many native people are not likely to forget. The death of the Meech Lake accord at the hands of Manitoba MLA Elijah Harper was seen by aboriginal people as vindication for their marginalization. But its death also called upon Mulroney to perfect his performance as a spin doctor. It was quite a sight.

Mulroney went to great lengths to pin the blame on someone other than the quiet Indian with an eagle feather in his hand.

And more than anything else, I believe this was the definitive movement of the prime minister's career. It was as if he couldn't admit he was beaten by an Indian. Politically, it gave him nothing in Quebec as Harper's reason for saying "No" had nothing to do with Quebec and everything to do with aboriginal people.

It stands as a testament to Mulroney's ability to weave alternate universes that many people still blame Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells for the death of the Meech Lake accord. I marvel at how few journalists give Elijah Harper full credit for killing the accord.

Although native journalists did not have that problem, they had trouble to contend with closer to home. In the spring of 1990, Mulroney's government gutted funding to aboriginal newspapers and radio stations, many of them offering services in native languages. Although the publication I edit was not affected by the cuts, I believe the attack on native languages will be judged by history as an act of cultural genocide.

Mulroney wore another hat that year - the cowboy hat of an Indian fighter - when he spewed rhetorically on the sanctity of one law for all during the 1990 Oka Crisis. It was quite a performance for the leader of a country upholding the Indian Act; the clearest set of separate laws for a race of people this side of apartheid.

Mulroney eventually found time in the twilight of his reign for the Charlottetown accord and the opportunity to present himself as a defender of Indian People.

His defence of natives during the debate over constitutional renewal was actually on behalf of the accord and he merely used those sections that applied to natives as proof of his great heart. It's always difficult to figure how history will judge that kind of gall; but that's only because native people don't get to write history.

Miles Morrisseau is editor of Nativebeat, a publication specializing in native issues. Last year, the Native American Journalists Association voted Nativebeat best monthly aboriginal newspaper in North America.