Chiefs from around the province are headed home after concluding this year’s FSIN Winter Assembly.
Today’s session opened with Chief Perry Bellegarde asking attendees to acknowledge the hundreds of Aboriginal women who have been murdered or gone missing.
Chief Lynn Acoose of the Sakimay First Nation thanked the grand chief for the gesture.
She said a mother of four recently went missing from her reserve for three months.
Acoose says trying to get the authorities to publicize the case was frustrating.
“I worked with the family to try to get answers on how the police were investigating her disappearance,” she says. “And we are always told, ‘She was seen here, she was seen there, her treaty card was used to purchase tobacco.’ So we couldn’t really get anywhere with pressuring the police in publicizing her disappearance.”
Meantime, Colin Starblanket of the Starblanket First Nation touched on the Idle No More movement.
Handpicked to deliver the message from youth, Starblanket says young people like himself are very passionate in their quest to protect treaty rights.
A number of items were also tabled this morning including the audit for the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies, which was unanimously passed by the chiefs.
A resolution was also tabled calling on the federation to lobby MP’s and MLA’s to oppose the First Nations Education Act.
Another resolution was also introduced that would seemingly separate Perry Bellegarde from his duties as an AFN vice-chief.
Up to now Bellegarde has taken care of the treaty portfolio for the AFN.
It was during this portion of the assembly that media were asked to leave the room.
The motion was later defeated.
During yesterday’s meetings, chiefs discussed gaming, resource revenue sharing and their frustration with the federal government’s First Nations Education Act.