Canada's colonial co-dependency with the Assembly of First Nations (ep 307)

MEDIA INDIGENA : Indigenous current affairs

This week: 'Nation to nation,' or funder to client? When it comes to describing the financial relationship between the Assembly of First Nations and the Canadian government which signs its cheques, critics are anything but kind. Through their jaded eyes, the department of Indian Affairs’ purse strings serve more like a leash on AFN, tightened whenever someone 'misbehaves.'

And if this Chiefs’ lobby group can’t much function without so-called Canadian taxpayers’ money—which, to be fair, is more like First Nations' resources effectively given back to them—is this oddball offshoot of perennial paternalism the best we can do in this era of Reconciliaction? A long-standing question recently renewed by just-unearthed documents appearing to show federal bureaucrats committed to keeping the Assembly from coloring outside the lines.

This week, Brett Forester, the CBC Indigenous reporter (and one-time host of Nation-to-Nation on APTN National News) who captured this story joins host/producer Rick Harp and roundtable regular Trina Roache, the Rogers Chair in Journalism at the University of King’s College to discuss the light these internal ISC memos may shed on the relationship between the two entities.

// CREDITS: 'The Thought Of You' by Squire Tuck (CC BY 4.0). Our theme is 'nesting' by birocratic.