Tuesday, January 24, 2012

It's all sweet grass and feathers at Chief Harper's invitation-only Loya Jurga

Big Chief Harper summoned the lesser chiefs to a pow-wow today. They came in their hundreds. Grand Chiefs, Regional Chiefs, hereditary Chiefs, Band Chiefs, you name it.

Most of the morning was taken up with prayers and tributes to the sleeping Gods that haven't done their First Nations supplicants much good the last five hundred years or so. Why not take a page out of whitey's book and try for a bit of separation between church and state, native brothers? The white folks are just patronizing you when they indulge this stuff. Let sleeping Gods lie already!

In the afternoon Big Chief Harper had to duck out early to meet up with some serious folks in Davos, but not before delivering one of the most hackneyed speeches of his career.

Referring to the Indian Act, the 1876 legislation that codified native apartheid in Canada, Harper said "that tree has deep roots. Blowing up the stump would just leave a big hole."

And with that Harper was off to Switzerland, and the Chiefs were off to their impoverished communities, no more empowered and no wiser than they were before.

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