HomeNon-participation is ‘better option’; Many aboriginals believe voting weakens native sovereignty claims
Gilles Paquin, a Montreal-based spokesperson for Elections Canada, said advertising material aimed at aboriginal voters, like the television, radio and print public service announcements, including ones on APTN, the aboriginal television network, is costing the federal elections overseer more than $350,000 in this campaihn.
But still, Quebec’s Mohawks maintain non-participation serves them better.
“In the end, voting would undermine us,” said Ellen Gabriel, a spokesperson for the Mohawk community of Kanesatake during the 1990 Oka Crisis. Gabriel is 52 and living back in Kanesatake after doing other things, including heading up the provincial organization Quebec Native Women.
Gabriel explained that Mohawks, unlike other aboriginals, don’t consider themselves to be Canadian citizens. If they were to participate in federal and provincial elections now, it would weaken their claim of being a separate nation and their demand to deal “nation to nation” with Canada.
“It’s not that Mohawks are uninterested in federal politics,” said Joe Delaronde, a spokesperson for the Kahnawake band council. “It’s not a rule written down somewhere. We’ve been courted before and we know we could sway the vote.”
But Delaronde said the Mohawk community takes its direction from the Two Row Wampum, a historic treaty that dictates one nation not interfere in another’s governance. “We’re in the same river, going in the same direction but in different canoes.”
Over the years, there have been times when the community has supported one of the national political parties from the sidelines - for example, the Liberals after they negotiated the Kelowna Accord, a landmark agreement between Canada and aboriginal peoples that was later struck down by the Conservative government.
“It’s better to have a one-on-one relationship with Canada,” said Kenneth Deer, a former publisher of the Eastern Door and now an international advocate for the rights of indigenous people.
A political junkie who has worked on several elections for the Kahnawake band council, Jacobs said she saw first-hand how few Mohawks vote when she volunteered as a clerk in the 2006 federal elections “out of curiosity” about the Canadian system.
At that time, she said, she counted about five or six people from Kahnawake at the polling station in Châteauguay. They included the Roman Catholic priest from Kahnawake and some non-native women married to Mohawks.
“There was not one native person,” she said.
This is very true…I do find it odd that a band council representative is discussing tradition though. Especially since most band council people are not traditional and don’t usually know much about our culture - I’m not sure how I feel when our band councillors act as though they know all about our culture, it kind of frustrates me but I guess that’s not important right now.
The article does really discuss how we feel about voting in elections - we just don’t do it and we ask all of our community members to also not participate in voting. I don’t vote and I never have - I also never plan to unless some huge issue occurs and I feel the need to vote. I bolded the parts which I believe are truly how many Mohawk people feel.
(Source: mirthalia, via custerdiedforyoursins)
