Milke: Aboriginals are individuals, not all the same – Calgary Herald

July 20, 2015

One curious side-effect of modern identity politics — the regressive notion your skin colour, ethnicity or gender determines your priorities, privileges and politics — is how it leads leaders to assumptions they “own” others — or at least can speak for them based on some shared but irrelevant characteristic.

Enter Perry Bellegarde, grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations, the taxpayer-funded federal lobby group that represents many reserve chiefs. With an eye on the upcoming federal election and the possible effect of native votes on it, Bellegarde recently observed that “Fifty-one ridings can make a difference between a majority and a minority government.”

Ghislain Picard, a regional AFN chief, was more explicit about whom senior AFN leaders would like to see elected: “I don’t see how we can go another four years with this government.”

 The AFN antipathy to the Harper Tories originates in the reflexive belief that what some aboriginal politicians demand — more taxpayer cash, unthinking agreement with the AFN’s take on everything, and any other whim or wish — must be unquestionably accepted and certainly never opposed.

Read more: http://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/milke-aboriginals-are-individuals-not-a-monolith

MS4