Indigenous Australian leaders have formally called on their government to have a voice in parliament and say they are inspired by New Zealand’s inclusion of Maori in politics. Can it inspire the Aboriginals of Canada or Quebec? The specialists contacted were skeptical for a variety of reasons, but nevertheless pointed out that more and more indigenous political bodies are taking their political future into their own hands.
In Australia, five years after the Uluru meeting, which notably gave birth to the idea of getting a voice in Parliament for Australian Aboriginals (Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders), representatives of the organization Voice of Parliament is now proposing to hold a national referendum on May 27, 2023 or January 27, 2024. With Australia’s federal election just a month away, they want to make it an election issue.
What about us? In the Canadian Parliament, Aboriginal MPs lack representation (11 MPs out of 338 currently) and they rarely reach ministerial positions. In Quebec, only two Aboriginal deputies sat in the National Assembly and one of them (Ludger Bastien in 1924) had to give up his Indian status in order to sit.
So when will there be a federal or provincial aboriginal party to better reflect aboriginal interests?
” It is important for First Countries to have forums or consultation models where they listen and listen. “
The former Abenaki MP stressed with the same breath that the experiments tested over the past forty years have yielded mixed results.
Regional consultation tables yield few results. We see this especially in Atikamekw in the case of logginglaunched in an interview with Espaces autochtones the one who is now a lawyer at the firm Neashish & Champoux, in Wendake.
Create the Council of Regions and Countries
If he points out that the model of governance between Cree and non-Aboriginal in Jamésie (Nord-du-Québec) is interestinghe mentioned, however, the importance of not not only managed the files gradually to reach the heart of the problem, which is the existence of territory and the autonomy.
He proposes the creation, in the National Assembly of Quebec, of a permanent parliamentary committee devoted to Aboriginal issues. In the second step, a second parliamentary chamber can also be established: the Council of Regions and Nations (such as the German Federal Council which represents federal state in Germany).
Investing in areas of power to advance Indigenous claims can be a productive strategydeclared in 2020 Alexis Wawanoloath in a multiple work entitled Indigenous peoples and politics in Quebec and Canada. He also believes in that Indigenous voices will be heard more and moreespecially in educational institutions, and it will lead people who want to invest in a real reconciliation that will not only benefit the colonized state and its society.
Overcome inertia
As a professor in the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Quebec at Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Sébastien Brodeur-Girard has taught law and governance each year since 2019 to Indigenous people from across the province. He had no appetite for creating an indigenous political party like the Maori Party in New Zealand.
In Canada, Aboriginals did not gain the right to vote until 1960 (1969 in Quebec), so there is no good tradition of electoral participation among them.said the professor.
” Also, some communities like the Crees or Mohawks considered themselves independent of a colonial system and decided to create their own political institutions (health, police, justice, youth protection) to govern and defend their interests. according to their own agenda. and in their methods. “
In addition, due to their spread across the country, the chances of a potential Aboriginal party having elected MPs are generally low, according to him. With the exception of some northern riding, such as Manitoba, also at the municipal level, where the demographic weight of Aboriginal people is beginning to be felt in some political decisions, particularly in Winnipeg, Val-d’Or or La Tuque.
What seems certain is that many Aboriginal leaders are starting to lose patience. Thursday, in the face of what they thought was a reluctance and listening governments, the Leaders of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador (AFNQL) announced the creation of an Office of Self-Determination and Self-Management.
” I want to remind François Legault and his government that we are alive and well, the First Nations are alive and committed to their future […] We are unique human beings with inherent rights, including the right to self -determination and self -government. “
This is also the observation made by some Aboriginal leaders in northern Quebec, where three Nations (Cree, Inuit and Naskapi) last week announced their desire to build a common front. The forum to be established will meet quarterly to discuss common issues such as economic development or caribou management.
At a press conference, alliance representatives also indicated that they wanted to assert their own jurisdiction.
Today, when there is an election, non-natives in our south, say in the Val-d’Or region, are more numerous and vote for someone they think is the right person for them- bothsaid Pita Aatami, president of Makivik Corporation which represents Inuit.
Can we also automatically reserve certain elected seats (in Parliament or National Assembly) for Aboriginal people?
I don’t believe there will be any legal or constitutional barriers, but whether there is any interest there and whether those positions will have some power or none remains to be seen.launched the professor ofUQAT. He pointed out that, even in New Zealand, the system put in place does not provide as much power as expected to Maori Aboriginals.
The example of New Zealand
Of the Commonwealth countries, New Zealand is the furthest in terms of Indigenous representation in Parliament. It must be said that the country has more than 16% of Maori (compared to 4.9% of Aboriginal people in Canada and 2.3% in Quebec).
At since 1867, unlike Aboriginals in Quebec and Canada, Maori have had seats reserved for them in Parliamentanthropologist Natacha Gagné said in an article published in June 2021 (New window) in the review Native American research in Quebec.
Another important difference, he says, is that in 1996 New Zealand adopted a compensatory mixed-member proportional system, allowing small parties to get parliamentary seats once they get more than 5% of the vote. .
So in 2004, the Maori Party was formed after a conflict with the government over exclusive ownership of the seabed, it quickly won four seats in 2005, then five in 2008, when it joined the conservative coalition in power.
With the consent of the government, the Maori Party acquired a national program of health services adapted to the Maori reality and exclusive institutions were created specifically on language or media matters. But the party has had less success in the fight against poverty, at work or in education, and even split in two in creating a left wing, say researchers from Laval University.
Today, the political party is not part of the ruling coalition, but the current Labor government still has 18 elected Maori out of 75, and five of them hold Cabinet positions.
How to explain this growth? In 1975 in a conciliation effort, New Zealand established the Waitangi Tribunal (named after the original treaty in 1840 which was ignored by the British). Since 1989, its recommendations have resulted in approximately fifty reparations and compensation agreements that have enabled Maori to make substantial investments, in addition to encouraging Aboriginal entrepreneurship.
” This allowed the tribes to gradually establish themselves as major players on the economic scene, which significantly contributed to changing New Zealand’s political dynamics by making them important players. “
In 2018, according to a study, the Maori economy will be worth NZ $ 68.7 billion (about C $ 56.5 billion), or one-third of the New Zealand economy. It also grew 60% between 2013 and 2018, although socio-economic gaps remain.
Researcher’s conclusion: The rise of the Maori Party marked the beginning of a movement that from now on Maori will trust the powers of Parliament instead of turning to the courts when they want constitutional changes.
All these positive changes about the situation of Maori in New Zealand are, in part, the direct or indirect result of the reform of the electoral system., he added. He also thinks Quebec or Canada would do well to follow suit.
” Voting system reform is for me one of the promising ways to allow Aboriginals to participate in parliamentary debates and therefore in social debates and to influence developments affecting Aboriginals and, more broadly, the Quebecers and Canadians. “
In New Zealand, increased Maori participation in democratic bodies has certainly contributed to providing greater visibility into Maori issues and perspectives, he confessed to Indigenous Spaces, regretting the passage of the federal Liberal commitment. this election and a few CAQ to reform the voting system was not held.
Source: Radio-Canada
