News & Events
Double standard over Ahenakew
September 22, 2008
On the one hand you have David Ahenakew, the 74-year-old Cree who has been dragged through hell for comments he made in 2002 about the historic situation surrounding Jewish people in Nazi Germany.
On the other hand there is the quick forgiveness extended to prominent non-Aboriginal Canadians who have made statements that are similarly repulsive.
The media's soothing treatment for Minnedosa MLA Leanne Rowat fits the pattern of quick forgiveness extended to non-Aboriginals. Or maybe being a Tory is the distinguishing factor. Who knows?
In late April in the Manitoba, when discussing Native fishing and Lake Dauphin, the government cabinet minister said the word "sustenance" and Rowat blurted out "wine and beer."
Our office was called about the matter the following week and after examining a recording of the incident on YouTube, we were convinced that Rowat's heckling was intolerable, especially given her position as the PC's Aboriginal Affairs critic. Many of the Indian people I talked to were appalled. Our people have been targets snide remarks too often in the past and I wasn't going to let this slide.
In the days that followed the media stumbled over itself to exonerate Rowat, with columnists and editorial writers insisting that Rowat didn't do anything wrong that was of any significance.
Not only did they accept at face value Rowat's explanation that she was referring to the province's Spirited Energy campaign, but several writers went on to repeat Tory Leader Hugh McFayden's line that Rowat's comments were lifted from their context. For instance the Brandon Sun's James O'Connor (May 2) said her comments "completely" out of context.
But there was only one context. She was sitting in the Legislature and Native Fishing was being discussed. If Rowatt's heckling related to anything other than the issue being discussed, then it was her mind out of sync with the what was going on in the Legislature. The issue being discussed related directly to her responsibilities as Aboriginal Affairs critic and if her brain was in some other orbit, then she was guilty of a significant lapse.
There are some parallels between the quick forgiveness of Rowat and the acceptance of apologies and explanations given in March by Brad Wall and Tom Lukiwski.
This spring the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians announced Ahenakew was being re-instated as a senator with FSIN, a position that he had been stripped of five years earlier. Immediately Wall, who is now premier of Saskatchewan, said his government would re-evaluate its relationship with FSIN. Both Wall and Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl said they definitely wouldn't deal with FSIN if Ahenakew was in the room.
Within a few days Wall's lily-pure positioning looked comical - or at least it should have appeared comical to any fair-minded person with a sense of irony - when a 1991 video tape surfaced showing Wall mocking the Ukrainian heritage of Roy Romanow. Even more startling though was the part of the video showing Lukiwski , who is now a Saskatchewan MP, making crude, hateful, anti-gay remarks.
Now, let's compare the response of Indian organizations to Ahenakew's 2002 to those of the Saskatchewan and Canadian governments in 2008.
Wall and Lukiwski both said they were sorry and that was enough for the governments.. Lukiwski, a cabinet secretary in Stephen Harper's government, wasn't reprimanded in any manner. In 2002 Indian leaders including Assembly of First Nations National Chief Matthew Coon Come criticized Ahenakew in strong terms and he was stripped of his position as an FSIN senator.
Ahenakew apologized emphatically at a tearful news conference. Later the government stripped him of his Order of Canada and the Saskatchewan Justice Department charged him with a hate crime. Initially he was convicted and fined $1,000 but the conviction was overturned on appeal. Now Saskatchewan is having Ahenakew tried for a second time over the 2002 comments.
Conviction is unlikely because Canada's hate laws are designed to counter campaigns, so the accused person must have had the goal of spreading hatred in an organized way. This means there must be repeated efforts - or at least the intention to make repeated efforts - to spread a hate message. The decision to retry Ahenakew has more to do with politics than enforcing the law.
Some Indian people - myself included - felt betrayed by the law, the media, the public and Canada's politicians. The zero-tolerance standard applied to Ahenakew becomes complete tolerance when the offenders come from the centres of power and respectability.
When Lukiwski apologized and said that that his ugly comments didn't reflect his personal feelings, many, many people took him at his word. There wasn't any investigation or exploration of Lukiwski's character. He said he wasn't homophobic, so it was accepted as true. Harper called the 1991 comments "unacceptable," but found no fault with the man possessing the mouth that uttered those remarks.
Meanwhile hosts and callers on talk radio in Winnipeg were angry; not at Lukiwski or Wall or Harper, but at the NDP for making public the tape, which the Saskatchewan Party had left laying in the offices they vacated last year when they went from opposition to government. There were also remarks that Lukiwski shouldn't have to face up to comments from 17 years ago (back when he was a kid of 40). The radio host kept barking that we are all very different from back then and that attitudes in Canada have changed. A number of other media people, from editorial writers to news columnists, have done backflips to rationalize or justify Lukiwski's actions.
I didn't write this letter to defend Mr. Ahenakew, although anyone who uses the internet to dig up a transcript of his 2002 interview with the Saskatoon Star Phoenix will see that his crude, mangled misinterpretation of German history is comparable in offensiveness to Lukiwski's comments about homosexuals "with dirt under their fingernails who transmit diseases."
The imbalance in public and political reaction to these events is powerful evidence of hypocrisy. The Canadian system has been quick, persistent and severe in punishing Ahenakew, but with their own guys it was: "Oh well, boys will be boys." Even if one of the boys was 40 at the time he spoke on camera for a video tape.
Grand Chief Morris J. Swan Shannacappo