Assembly of first nations.

• Author: Fenwick, Fred R.
• Position: Aboriginal law

As this is written in late July, the Assembly of First Nations has just elected Mr. Phil Fontaine as its Grand Chief. Mr. Fontaine had been the Grand Chief of the AFN from 1997 to 2000 but had been defeated by Matthew Coon Come for the 2000-2003 term. The election seemed to center around the negotiating stance that the candidates would be prepared to take with the federal government, Mr. Coon Come evidently favoring a more aggressive position to Mr. Fontaine's willingness to negotiate on certain issues. All of the candidates were unanimous in their opposition to the proposed First Nations Governance legislation.

But what is the AFN, and what mandate does it have to speak for First Nations?

First, just a little bit of history and then some nitpicking about names.

The Assembly of First Nations used to be called the National Indian Brotherhood and consists of an Assembly of individual chiefs of about 630 First Nations, guided by a Secretariat or executive council consisting of the National Chief and regional chiefs elected from each of the provinces and territories. The National Chief just elected is only one of 15 votes on this executive council. Importantly, the AFN is not an assembly of elected representatives, but an assembly of heads of local Indian governments.

So, down to the nitpicking about names. Now, in western democratic tradition, we have a representative democracy. We don't all get to vote on everything. We have this odd tradition to pick someone because we like his speeches or she belongs to the correct political party and then send them to city hall or the provincial or federal legislature to make decisions on all sorts of things that maybe were, and most often were not debated in the election. But we at least know that this is what the representative is sent for. And when one branch of government (or a business or an individual) gets into negotiation with another branch of government, they know that the city or province has the authority to cut a deal.

Now the members of the AFN are locally elected chiefs who most probably get elected based on local issues, not necessarily on the sorts of national issues that are going to concern the AFN and the federal government. Do the individual chiefs have the delegated authority to represent their members on national issues? Undoubtedly sometimes they do, but the conduct of local business is often going to be in dispute with national business. How often are the provincial premiers in...