CTV News.ca Staff
Date: Wed. Jul. 13 2011 10:12 AM ET
The shooting death of a five-year-old boy on a violence-plagued Alberta reserve has underscored the need for Ottawa to rewrite its relationship with the First Nations according to national chief Shawn Atleo, and for all Canadians to work together to make reserve communities safe and livable.
"We're reaching out to all Canadian to join us, to make sure our children, our families, our women and communities are safe," Atleo told CTV's Canada AM on Wednesday, adding that Canada must return to the "original intent" of its treaties with aboriginals by, among other things, scrapping the Indian Act.
"We need to return to the original intent of the treaties -- mutual respect, mutual recognition and shared prosperity of the land," he said. "That has not been the reality nor the experience for First Nations."
Atleo has previously called on Ottawa to move away from the Indian Act and, in the long term, hopes to foster separate economies and systems of governance for the First Nations. He says the federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development should be replaced by two new entities: one to focus on the relationship between First Nations and the Crown, another to continue providing services to aboriginals.
Education funding to First Nations, he noted, has been frozen since 1996. He says outdated policies, including the Indian Act, hamper community leaders from establishing new and effective social and economic policies.
Atleo says improved schooling would do much to improve the standard of living in communities such as the violence-plagued Samson Cree First Nation where on Monday young Ethan Yellowbird, the grandson of the local chief, was shot while he slept.
The death has brought "focus" to the three-day Assembly of First Nations, said Atleo. Delegates on Tuesday tabled a discussion paper that set out plans on issues including the implementation of First Nations governments.
The boy was killed when he was struck by a bullet that was fired into his home on the reservation, which has been plagued by gang-related violence for years.
Samson Cree First Nation is about 100 kilometres south of Edmonton near the town of Hobbema. The shooting is the latest in a string of violent and deadly incidents on the reservation.
Police say they have completed their investigation of the scene, but continue to gather evidence and pursue leads.
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