Old Law Blocks Reform on Native Reserves

Vanessa Roulette ended her decade-long drug addiction ten months ago when prostitution became the last option to support her $400 a day habit.

In those dark ten years the 27-year-old Ojibway woman gave birth to three children, and lost custody of them all. One was born ill after being exposed to crack during pregnancy.

It's a familiar story in many Aboriginal communities. Now one of those communities is using a controversial by-law to fight back against drugs dealers but it could end up fighting the Canadian government instead.

Garry Sinclair is the drug prevention coordinator at Manitoba's Peguis First Nation, a community of 7,200 currently battling a drug epidemic.

"It's almost to a state of crisis," Sinclair said.

In efforts to stem the tide, Peguis has introduced a two-part bylaw. One part requires drug screening for all council employees. The other resurrects banishment as punishment for drug dealers.

It's working. Sinclair said drug dealers have stopped plying their wares boldly in the open as they once did and crack users no longer smoke where kids can easily see them. Break-ins are also down.

But those successes are immaterial to Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), which rejected the bylaw.

Unlike Canada's other municipalities, reserves are unable to pass bylaws without federal approval. While it is unlikely Peguis' bylaw would hold up if challenged in court, they would never get the chance to find out if they didn't defy INAC and enforce it anyway.

So out of desperation to address the severe drug problem in their community, defying INAC is exactly what Peguis is doing.

Hard drugs like crack, crystal meth and "oxycotton" (the street name for OxyContin, a prescription pain killer) have proliferated on the Peguis reserve.

Sinclair said that along with the drugs have come gangs, prostitution, guns and a rash of break-ins so frequent that some people are afraid to leave their homes.

He's also seen several addicted mothers give birth to what are commonly known as "crack babies" — children born ill who mature years behind other children.

"It's a very serious issue, not just here but in a lot of our First Nations," said Sinclair. "We're trying to do something about it and the government is not working with us."

Philippe Saethier, a bylaw manager at INAC said reserve by-laws can't contradict the criminal code, which Peguis' bylaw does. By stipulating punishments for criminal offenders outside the normal judicial process, the bylaw has become an outlaw.

INAC's bylaw process isn't the problem, said Saethier. "It's a matter of enforcement."

Saethier said Peguis should work with police to have existing criminal laws enforced. According to Sinclair, however, that just isn't going to work.

"Here in Peguis our local detachment is about 20 – 25 minutes away and they cover a large service area."

Police can take days to respond if overloaded with priority calls, Sinclair said. In the meantime, Peguis' drug problem keeps getting worse.

"It can't go on like this," said Sinclair. "We need leadership that can stand up and say 'were not going tolerate you drug dealers coming in and destroying our community.'"

Peguis has been trying send this message itself. Along the way, the town has highlighted the essential conflict between Canada's Aboriginal people and the government of Canada. It's a matter of authority — who has it, who needs it, and what it is used for.

Right now much of that is decided by one of Canada's most derided pieces of legislation — the Indian Act.

While the Act has been stripped of its most egregious provisions — like outlawing Aboriginal religious ceremonies or giving municipalities the power to relocate entire reserves if deemed "expedient" — it still severely restricts Aboriginal autonomy, say experts.

Whether for dog control or property zoning, all by-laws must be approved by INAC. Most bylaws go through smoothly, but some, like Walpole Island First Nation's animal control bylaw, which has been rejected twice, get caught up in the process.

More serious though is that local issues are decided by government officials sometimes thousands of kilometers away.

"It stands in the way of First Nations effectively managing the affairs of their communities," said Dan Wilson, a special adviser to the Assembly of First Nations. "We have the imposition of a federal body making decisions for people without ever having visited the reserve."

The irony is that INAC supports self-government agreements, which empower Aboriginal governments to pass laws related to their communities, land, and resources, without the confines of the Indian Act. INAC says greater autonomy is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty on reserves.

According to a Harvard research project, self-governed First Nations out-perform "external decision makers" on everything from governmental reform to social services and economic development.

And yet, the Act lingers on, essentially unchanged since 1985 when sexist sections that deprived Aboriginal women of specific rights and privileges were deleted.

But the limits imposed by the Act worry native leaders faced with the dire situations in many of Canada's native communities. Aboriginals are three times more likely to be victims of violent crime, seven times more likely to be victims of homicide, and eight to ten times more likely to be accused of homicide.

The government has tried to improve the Act several times, said Shin Imai one of Canada's foremost experts on Aboriginal law, but the intricacy of the Act means any change requires another change, setting off a domino effect that legislators have been reluctant to deal with.

First Nations groups have pushed the government to make radical revisions but that just caused the government to stop completely, he said.

While self-government agreements offer a way out, they take years to negotiate and there are hundreds of First Nations across Canada to negotiate agreements with.

But progress is being made despite the Act.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's historic June apology to the victims of the residential school program was followed with a spate of legislation covering everything from amending the Human Rights Act to include First Nations — previously seen as a glaring omission — to creating a tribunal to settle stalemated specific land claims.

The Kelowna Accord, a comprehensive $5 billion plan to address the social disparities between Aboriginal communities and the rest of Canada, will also be implemented.

Aboriginal communities are taking actions of their own as well, not all of which require renegade legislation.

Like Roulette, the reformed drug-addict. Now sober, she's a leader in her community and a role model for young Aboriginals facing drug addiction.

On Thursday she'll begin a 200 kilometre walk from Winnipeg and walk to Peguis, putting one foot in front of the other 16 or 17 hours a day until she gets there.

Roulette wants to raise money for a dry night club in Winnipeg and send a message to Aboriginal youth facing addiction, a message of hope that it is possible to quit.

"It is very hard, but you got to really really want to change your life."

"They don't have to be scared to ask for help," she said. "I did."