Commission Members Present

Jacques Johnson
Jennifer Klimek
Michael Asch
Sandy Day
Menno Wiebe
John MacMillan

Commission Members Absent

Regena Crowchild
Wilfred Barranoik
Theresa McBean
Don Aitken
Normand Boucher
Colleen McCrory

Lubicon Representatives Present

Chief Bernard Ominayak
Lubicon Community Members
Advisor Fred Lennarson

Others Present

John Goddard
John Krebes (P.M.)
Bruce Koliger (P.M.)
Bob Sachs (P.M.)

John Goddard: Thank you very much. I wanted to say first that when I heard about the formation of this Committee, I was very pleased. I know of the background of the panel members and the expertise that you bring to this panel. I want to say also that I feel very privileged to be invited here today.

I think to open what I'll do is -- I have written this book. I don't want to just cover what's in the book. What I thought I'd do to give you a little bit of an overview is just cover some of my own reactions as I went through the experience of meeting the Band first in 1984, the whole process of hearing their story, and trying to check it out, and then being witness to a lot of the events that have happened particularly since 1986, or '87 I guess, when I first decided to really take on the book in a serious way. I will also go into some detail about the formation of the Woodland Cree Band. I was really one of the only outside witnesses to that plebiscite vote. I thought that might be sort of a case history within a case history.

I first met Bernard Ominayak and came across the Lubicon Band in November of 1984, eight years ago, in a church basement in Edmonton. So this is kind of an anniversary for me. I had just become a free-lance writer and had spent a couple of years in the Northwest Territories, based in Yellowknife, travelling through the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, covering Native issues. When I went free-lance, I did not think I would carry on with those issues. I was looking to do something else. It was not really with much enthusiasm that I came to Alberta on my first free-lance magazine assignment. But I was here for Equinox. Almost right away I realized that this was something special. This small gathering in a church basement with quite serious-minded people. It was kind of a special atmosphere with that combination of Bernard Ominayak and Fred Lennarson. Bernard was very, very shy at that time, deferring to Fred Lennarson through most of the speaking. I was noticed that as a duo they were -- it was something that I'd never seen before. But what really impressed me was the factual presentation that they made; and I knew that as a reporter I had a real advantage, because a lot of these cases aren't very real documented in an orderly, systematic way. So that gave me a start. Since that time, I have to say that it has been an incredibly enriching experience for me to have been able to spend time in Little Buffalo, been taken around, spending time on the trapline, getting to know the people there. But of course it's also been a very painful experience as well, watching that community change under the really severe oppression that they've been subjected to since about 1982.

There are a couple of sort of main thrusts I just want to mention that I noticed through their history that I didn't point out specifically in the book. Maybe this shouldn't have surprised me so much, but one of the things I saw at every turn of events was the initiative and inventiveness and determination of this Band. I mean, going right back to the very beginning of the written history. You know they were overlooked by the Treaty Commission in 1899-1900. In the late 1920s people started to look to become part of the treaty, spending a week by wagon going out to places like Whitefish Lake and I guess Ft. Vermillion to get signed up. And then in 1933 a formal written petition to Ottawa to get their rights recognized. And then finally that led to the appearance of federal authorities in 1939 in Lubicon Lake and a recognition that they are a separate Band entitled to these rights to reserve.

You know, there's something that really struck me about that in 1984. This is documented in the letters to Ottawa from these federal people. And that is that it is very clear that the Lubicon people are only looking for fairness. They said, "Look, we're getting along well in here. There's lots to hunt and trap. But there are a few old people who could use this treaty annuity and we just want to be recognized to the fullness of our rights." That's how they put it. And at every turn when they were subjected to abuse by authorities or frustrated in their attempts to get those rights recognized. They would come back with these incredible initiatives -- like in 1942 when Malcolm McCrimmon showed up and struck half the Lubicon people off the Band lists. What did they do? Well, the Chief at the time, Joe Laboucan, created a de facto reserve on the land selected for the reserve in 1939 and moved his houses there and had everybody else move there. They built a mission school there. They found their own missionary and moved him there. In the early 1970s when oil development was going to go ahead and it was clear that northern Alberta had the largest oil supply on earth, Harold Cardinal, the leader of the Alberta Indian Association, called it "an obvious and exciting opportunity", and that was the attitude. I sometimes read in the newspapers that Indian people are trying to stall development or hang up these sort of things. But I found this is just not the case. And of course in the 1970s when Peter Lougheed brought his retroactive legislation in to crush that attempt to have aboriginal land rights recognized in northern Alberta before oil development went ahead, Bernard Ominayak took the initiative for the Lubicon Band to get organized internally and to look for outside help, leading to the present circumstances.

I was really into the book when I noticed some of these historic patterns and by 1984, I asked myself, if I were Indian Affairs Minister and coming into office like David Crombie and I had a chance to create the perfect situation, what would I want? What would I like that world to be? It just struck me that what I would really like to deal with was to be able to start from scratch, almost. You know, with a small community that was still culturally intact, still hunting and trapping, with good leadership -- say a younger person who knew some English and could deal with the outside world, but was also a respected trapper and hunter and respected by the Elders, and who would be able to consult with the Elders. And the Elders would be ideally men of initiative and standing and wisdom and still respected by the community. And that that would be the ideal situation from a Minister of Indian Affairs' point of view of going about your job. Well this is the Lubicon community of 1984, with that kind of panel of Elders still working the land, still leading their community in the traditional way. This young chief they had actually groomed to leadership -- Bernard Ominayak -- they encouraged him in school, warned him that one day it was going to fall in his responsibility to lead this community in a land rights struggle. And it was just so sad to see that this potential was lost, really the ideal situation. I can't imagine a more ideal situation than dealing with the Lubicon Band in 1984.

There is one other trend I just wanted to point out through this history. Maybe you've noticed it already in the reading of the documents, but there is this other phenomenon of investigators coming onto the scene, not knowing much, not really believing that the Indian complaint was -- I'll say it another way -- believing perhaps that the Indian plight was a bit trumped up. This was certainly the case with Napoleon L'Heureux in the 1930s. He made that reference that he knows those people in north central Alberta are just kind of a rag-tag bunch that used to belong to the Whitefish Lake Band. They are -- I forget exactly the phrase -- but, like drunkards and n'eer-do-wells who couldn't do well in Whitefish Lake. And then when he did actually go to Lubicon Lake for the first time in 1939, he discovered that in fact that was not the case at all, that people were doing well. There were great detailed reports about the fences and well-trained horses and the vegetable gardens and how well they were keeping their houses and how very different they were from Whitefish Lake. Those were the words. So when Napoleon L'Heureux and C.P. Schmidt went in 1939 there was a sort of evolution in their thinking.

And the same was true for Justice C.M. McKeen. He was a guy who in 1943 accompanied Malcolm McCrimmon around northern Alberta and he was kind of set up by McCrimmon. He was allowed to only ask two questions to determine whether or not these people really had legitimate claim to being on an Indian band list. He dug deeper and he read the laws and he looked into the original treaty commissioners' reports and he read the Indian Act and he realized he was being set up, he was being used. And he made a report that said that to the Minister. Then a couple of years later, Justice W.A. MacDonald of the Supreme Court of Alberta went through the same evolutionary process. We don't quite know as much about MacDonald and what he was thinking before or what kind of change in thinking he might have had. But certainly he came out and he looked into that case very closely and tried in his report to reverse Malcolm McCrimmon's decisions. And then of course we have E. Davie Fulton from yesterday. You are familiar with his report. He told me in an interview at the time I was working on the book that he too went through an evolutionary kind of process. I'm taking those words from him, in fact. How, when he first heard the story of the Lubicon case he thought the situation was exaggerated. He didn't say trumped-up, but he thought that the injustices that were described by the Band were exaggerated. And as he looked into it, he realized that this inquiry was going to take longer than he thought. He was going to have to delve deeper than he thought. And through that process he became really quite shocked by what he saw and you heard him speak yesterday about how this case can't be -- let's hope it's not a precedent. Let's hope this case is so unique and so awful that there can't be anything like this in the whole country.

I also went through a kind of evolutionary process as I looked into some of the facts of this case. I looked back on my whole self and think of how naive I must have been. One of my first experiences, just a couple of days after that first Edmonton meeting, I drove up to northern Alberta with Bernard to a meeting with David Crombie, who had just come into office after the first Mulroney election -- to meet David Crombie at a meeting of Treaty 8 Chiefs. Crombie had come prepared and briefed on Lubicon. He had prepared himself to meet privately with the Chief of the Lubicon Cree. He did so. Bernard presented him with 8 points of discussion, which were the basis for the Fulton inquiry. Crombie ended the meeting by saying "I think it's time to make a deal". He seemed very determined and very informed and it seemed like a great start. I remember I was reporting on that meeting for the Globe & Mail and I remember asking Bernard, "What is your response? What is your reaction to this event today?" And he was kind of very calm and low-key about it. He said, "Well, we'll see." I thought, "Gee, this guy's really ungrateful. Here this important man has come up from Ottawa to give him some time and he seems very ungrateful." I now understand a little better why he reacted that way.

So I too have a little different reaction to Ministerial promises and signs that maybe this thing is becoming unstuck, because there have been lots of opportunities where that could have become unstuck and then didn't.

I see I've noted here some of the other occasions with Crombie and of course with the Fulton inquiry which was brilliant and very well done and it was shelved. And then that real high point of the Lubicon struggle where they shut down the 4,000 sq. mile oil field and it led to a meeting with Premier Getty and Getty came out and supported virtually the entire Lubicon package, as far as provincial responsibility was concerned, and endorsed the size of the reserve and the membership question -- two of the key things hanging up negotiations at that time. Things seemed to become unstuck. The Ottawa negotiations where the federal people ratified the land and membership question. And that seemed to go somewhere. And then this whole roll-back which we've seen in the last couple of years. It really diminished some of that hope. I wouldn't say put an end. It's obviously not put an end to the hope or we wouldn't be here.

I want to speak specifically about what happened at the break-down of those Ottawa negotiations. I'm talking about the formation of the Woodland Cree. In the beginning those negotiations seemed to go well. Ivan Whitehall endorsed the Band's membership position. He said that the Lubicons could decide their own membership and accepted the Lubicon band list as valid. He ratified Premier Getty's proposal that it be a 95 sq. mile reserve. There was some progress made on some of the business that's before you now on just what the costs should be of the set-up of the community. Then things broke for Christmas. And after Christmas -- maybe I'm getting the sequence wrong -- but at some point Derek Burney came in and said, "Look, there will be no compensation in this offer, and as far as economic development, you're just going to have to be satisfied with a little fund that could help you lever regular programs."

Did you have a question about who Derek Burney is? Derek Burney was the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff who was overseeing negotiations in 1988- 89....(change tapes)...

...We heard yesterday that these negotiations ended in January of 1989 and it led to an offer than was put on the table by Brian Malone, the chief federal negotiator -- an offer that he said the Band could -- that this is a "final take-it-or-leave-it settlement offer" was the way he put it. The Lubicons turned it down. They didn't see that it could lead to any future.

But the federal people were under a lot of pressure at this point. They had to get a settlement. There was pressure from the United Nations. There was pressure from the World Council of Churches. There were international human rights groups getting interested in this case. They really wanted to lay it to rest.

Now I don't know who made the decision. There was a Cabinet committee by this time on Lubicon which consisted of Michael Wilson; Don Mazankowski; Bill McKnight, the Indian Affairs Minister; and Joe Clark. They were overseeing -- not overseeing exactly, Derek Burney was overseeing -- but they were kind of a reference committee. Anything that came up that had to be settled at the political level would go to this Cabinet committee, very highly placed people of course. We don't know who made the decision. But the mandate came down -- and we were getting this from Ken Colby, the chief spokesman for the federal side -- that if a settlement was not possible, that they should look for a mechanism -- I asked Ken Colby what he meant by "mechanism" and he said, "Find some way where even without a settlement, we can deliver programs to help the Lubicon community on the ground, social programs and economic programs." Another way of putting that, a harder way of putting that is that they had a mandate to impose a settlement even if the leadership of the Lubicon people did not endorse this "final take-it-or-leave-it settlement offer".

It sounds a little far-fetched, but we can trace the events. Two weeks after those negotiations ended, Brian Malone was in northern Alberta talking to a man named Henry Laboucan in a hotel in High Prairie. Malone was with a man named Fred Jobin, who was also a part of the federal negotiation team and now post-negotiation team. Now the question is what did Brian Malone have on his mind at that meeting? We know two things. We know that Henry Laboucan had applied some time earlier for something called land-in-severalty. This is a kind of obscure Treaty 8 clause that allows -- I think this was a rare thing in any treaty, Treaty 8 has it and Treaty 10, and I think it was because some of these Bands, some of the people were so spread out across the north that it allowed for a family group to have a small family reserve separate from the main reserve if they wanted to, if they elected to. It would be calculated at 160 acres per person. And the only case in which this had come into reality - - the only place I know of anyway -- was at Grouard which was where Henry Laboucan lived near Lesser Slave Lake. So Henry knew about this and he wanted land-in-severalty. He considered himself a Lubicon member but he didn't want to live in Lubicon territory. He wanted to stay in Grouard and have his own family reserve. So he had been petitioning Brian Malone about this during negotiations. And Brian Malone told him to get lost. He didn't tell him that, he just didn't return his phone calls. But in one of his other telephone messages, Henry Laboucan also said that "I know" -- I better get these words rights -- "I know of a majority of Native people who are not really excited about the Ominayak deal." Well, my guess is that this is what Brian Malone's interest really was -- "a majority of Native people who are not really excited about the Ominayak deal". And that this is what drew Brian Malone to northern Alberta, the possibility of starting talks with a majority of Lubicon members who were disenchanted with the Lubicon leadership and who might -- I don't know, maybe overthrow the Lubicon leadership. If there was a majority that would be pretty easy. Or anyway, a group of people certainly worth talking to in Brian Malone's mind.

Okay. So on February 10th, 1989, when that meeting took place in High Prairie, Henry Laboucan showed up with 7 others. Brian Malone was there representing the federal side with Fred Jobin. Now of those 8 people, Henry Laboucan was the only person recognized as a Lubicon person at that time. Of the 506 Lubicon members that were accepted by Ottawa at those negotiations, only Henry Laboucan was on that list. Now there is a little different version by the federal people. They said on some previous lists there were 4 others - - 4 of the other members present were on previous Lubicon lists. I have never been able to verify that such a list existed. What I do know is that besides Henry there were only two others who were actually recognized by Ottawa as being Indians. We get a little further insight into what Brian Malone's plans were at that meeting by a memo he wrote to Ottawa. In it he wrote and talked about "coordinating dissenting interests" in the Lubicon Band.

Two weeks after that meeting a petition arrived in Ottawa addressed to the new Indian Affairs Minister Pierre Cadieux from two of those people who had been at that meeting with Brian Malone. It was written in the hand-writing of one of the members -- Melvin Laboucan -- and it was not just written in his hand, but all the signatures to it were also written in Melvin Laboucan's hand. Usually a petition is signed by all the individual members who endorse it -- in this case it was a list of names in Melvin Laboucan's hand-writing. The petition was kept secret and the fact that it was all in Melvin Laboucan's hand-writing was not made clear by the federal spokesman Ken Colby. He just said that these people had come forward, that they were a dissenting group at Lubicon Lake. He called them a "faction" within the Band that wanted Bernard Ominayak to accept the federal offer. This was how this was represented. Pierre Cadieux accepted this petition as legitimate, even though only one person has signed it. He offered right away to pay for a lawyer to help that group.

A couple of weeks later, April 17th, again in High Prairie, Henry Laboucan showed up to meet Brian Malone and Fred Jobin with 7 other people, not the same 7, not exactly the same 7, but still the same number of people. Henry Laboucan at that point was dumped. It was -- I'm kind of reading Brian Malone's mind here again -- he has never agreed to give me an interview. He's promised several times but has always cancelled at the last minute. He's been uncooperative with the whole process, something I know the panel is familiar with as well. Henry Laboucan was dumped. He was, I guess, considered of no more use to the federal people. In other words, it was not Henry Laboucan's interests that Brian Malone had in mind. It was the federal interests and Henry Laboucan no longer served them. Henry Laboucan still lived in Grouard and still wanted land-in-severalty.

I should mention also that this land-in-severalty business was suspicious right from the beginning because the federal Justice Department has been fighting land-in-severalty issues in northern Alberta. There are cases going on now where the federal Justice people are are fighting people who are applying for land-in-severalty. So there was just no degree of sincerity to begin with in trying to look after Henry Laboucan's interests that I can see.

Anyway, after this April 17th meeting two of the members from that group -- not Henry Laboucan obviously -- flew with Malone in a private plane to Edmonton where they met a lawyer from Calgary named Bob Young whose services were being paid for by the Indian Affairs Department. Bob Young agreed to represent this, what was being described as a dissident faction of the Lubicon Band.

Well, you can imagine that this was now in the press, with lots of stories about it and a lot of public discussion and certainly some pressure on Chief Ominayak to respond in some way. So he did. He called an election to see if there really was the majority of dissenting interests that the federal people were speaking about. In the election, which I attended, there was an overwhelming and unanimous vote to re-elect the Chief and the Council. So that put that issue partly to rest.

However, the federal effort continued. It continued by about 3-fold. There suddenly were people from the Indian Affairs Department from Ottawa in northern Alberta helping to recruit people, sign up people. The biggest part about this is that really in all these discussions -- the federal people, the provincial people have always been telling the Lubicons that "you are jacking up your numbers." That's what this whole membership question was about. "You are inflating your numbers, your membership figures. You don't deserve that much land because you are only half the number of people that you say you are." And then suddenly the federal people are saying, "Well, gee, we agreed to 506 in Ottawa but maybe there are more. To be fair to the Indian people, to be fair to all of the Lubicons, we should get out there and verify them and help them to gain Indian status."

I'll just sum up what happened in the next few months. This recruitment drive went on in earnest. There were meetings, after meeting, after meeting. There is a sort of sub-department of the Indian Affairs office in Ottawa that looks after membership, the Registrar's Office. And it's main job in the last few years has been trying to deal with the people, deal with women and descendants who have been cut out of Indian status because of that -- you know, if they married a white person -- anyway, they had a right to join back -- so the whole membership section has had a huge backlog of cases. They dropped those cases. Put all their attention -- we know this from internal comments from that department -- dropped all those cases to give priority to those becoming Woodland Cree band members. In other words, they weren't recruiting these people any more to try to challenge Lubicon leadership. What was happening, what was evolving was the intent to create a second Band to lay claim to Lubicon territory and then negotiate with the federal government to get a settlement, which turned out to be quite similar in terms to the "take-it-or- leave-it" offer.

I've just got some notes here -- in record time, numbers kept a secret, membership kept secret. Anyway what we saw of the negotiations was Brian Malone sitting opposite Bob Young, and some Woodlanders selected to accompany Bob Young to these negotiations.

If that were not outrageous enough there was then this whole cooked-up plebiscite, a vote held of all the Woodland members to try and give legitimacy to the creation of the Woodland Cree Band which by now every Native organization in the country was denouncing. I followed this plebiscite business very closely. I was in Cadotte Lake during the vote itself. I was the only reporter actually on the ground during that process. Others were covering it by phone. There are certain regulations in the Indian Act to cover the conduction of this sort of plebiscite. The voting list has to be posted publicly, and it was. I didn't get a copy when I asked at the Indian Affairs Department, but I was able to go out to public places and verify that there was a legal list of 268 people. I should say also that the logistics challenge for this plebescite vote was enormous for the Indian Affairs people, a real headache. It was being conducted by Indian Affairs directly, handled out of the Edmonton office, overseen by Garry Wouters ostensibly as the local person and his official subordinate in this case was Sheila Carr-Stewart. There's some evidence that Fred Jobin was also directly involved although he denies this -- Fred Jobin being one of the negotiators in Ottawa and since reassigned to an education portfolio.

Well by now, the federal people had recruited people from all over northern Alberta. As you know, there are really 7 isolated communities in northern Alberta -- there's Lubicon Lake, there's Cadotte Lake, there's Trout Lake, there's Peerless Lake, there's Loon Lake, Sandy Lake, there's a couple of other lakes, Chipewyan Lake -- with unsettled land rights. And a lot of these people have moved around and found their land rights never addressed. They found themselves in other parts of northern Alberta. So it was some of these people that the feds had picked off and signed up to the Woodlanders. I have a lot of sympathy for these people even though they were really screwing up the Lubicon case. They had legitimate land rights that had not been settled and should have been. And here were some people finally paying attention to them, signing them up, getting them treaty status, Indian status, that they had never had recognized. So of course the federal people were able to draw a lot of members into this. The problem now for the federal people was that they were dispersed all over northern Alberta. So they set up 4 polling stations -- one in Edmonton at Canada Place, one in Slave Lake, one in Peace River -- all these outside of Lubicon territory -- and one in Cadotte Lake, which is the neighboring community to Little Buffalo. I was at the Cadotte Lake polling station in the Band office, which was a trailer provided by the Indian Affairs Department. What I found that day was people coming in one end of the trailer, in the door, walking along the trailer corridor past me. There was a table set up like the federal people usually set up tables with scrutineers. Roger Cardinal, again an employee from the Indian Affairs Department in Edmonton, sitting there officiating on behalf of the federal government and people of Canada. One of those aluminum ballot boxes on the table in front of him. Another Indian Affairs employee sitting beside him to help out. And then the person was given a ballot. There was one of those little cardboard screens where people marked their secret ballot, and then they would come around again to put the ballot in the box. They were then given a coupon -- this from a Woodland Band member -- a coupon that they took across to the opposite wall and a check was made out for each voter for $50.00. Everybody who voted got $50.00. Another part of this deal was -- I should mention that this was justified as travel expenses. But I said, "Gee, here's John Halcrow paid $50 for travel expenses and he lives just down the road. He walked over here. What kind of expenses did he have?" "Well, you know, if you give travel expenses to some people, well we have to be fair to everybody so we don't get in trouble." Well, I was just talking to a guy who was coordinating the rides to the polling booth. He said he had 100 drivers in all sections of northern Alberta to drive these people to the polls at the expense not of the voter. Remember, these kinds of incentives had to be quite extraordinary to get a population of disparate people who have no previous affiliation to this creation of the Woodland Cree and who were really not in the habit of voting in any sort of election, let alone a plebiscite that they might not understand. This deal was not explained during the referendum. There was no legal text. There was no text at all available to these people. So this was "travel expenses" -- $50 to everybody who voted.

As an extra incentive, the understanding was made clear to everybody that if the vote was "yes" -- it was a private secret vote, we know that -- but if the vote was 50% or more yes, everybody in the Band would get $1,000. So if you were a man and a woman with 7 kids, you would get $9,000 for a yes vote. So there was the incentive to go to the ballot box in the first place and an incentive to vote yes.

The vote went 98.5% in favor...(change tapes)...maybe I should speed this up a little bit. I'm taking a long time with it. I just really wanted you people to be aware of the details of this thing and about how this thing was rigged. $50 and $1,000. Did I mentioned the voters' list has 268 names on it? It turned out there were 268 people who voted. I said, "Gee, that's 100% voting turnout." They said, "No, actually it wasn't 100% voter turnout. There are now 309 voters." I asked, "How did you get that?" Another guy standing near me said, "Yeah, how'd you get that? Last night I had the list and there were only 295?" This list was growing during the plebiscite itself.

And the real sad part of this story is that a few days later people found out that this $50 and $1,000 per member would be counted as income to anybody receiving welfare, which is about 90% of these people. And that their welfare payments would be cut off until that sum, that lump sum they were paid for this vote, was paid back. So that what happened was the original money -- let me just go back to a detail in the federal offer that's really significant. They ended up with about 700 members. But they said only 300 and some would be counted for land purposes. So they got a square acreage for half the people. The other people weren't entitled to land. They were certainly entitled to be part of this Woodland deal but they weren't entitled to land so the reserve would only be so much. And then for economic development money, the federal government would pay for a certain amount of land at $50 an acre which created a fund -- the exact figures are in the book, I can't recall them now -- this created a fund of something like several hundred thousand dollars. Of course it reduces the size of the reserve, but it created a fund and it was from that fund that these people were paid for voting and voting yes, and then that money was then taken away out of their welfare payments. So the federal government was actually buying their vote with economic development money. And then you had this just awful situation where after the celebration of this deal going through -- there was a big party, you can imagine, these people did consider that their aboriginal birth right had been settled, and there was something to celebrate here after 50 years of waiting. After the party, they realized that they had spent their grocery money for the next 2 months and they showed up at the Band Office at Little Buffalo asking if the Lubicon people could help them out.

I phoned up Garry Wouters after this and said, "Garry, you're in charge. Do you think that this really is the way that things should be done here?" He said he had no complaints from anybody and if I had some complaints why didn't we have breakfast together. I said, "Mr. Wouters, I'm not a citizen coming to complain. I'm a reporter asking you for some sort of reaction here." He never did seem to get that. He just said that we could be friends and talk about this and if I had some substantial matters to discuss he would consider them.

I mentioned that I was reporting some of these details for the Globe and Mail.

The first story about the vote and the $50 and $1,000 I filed with the Globe and Mail the next day. It made page 1. When I found out about the welfare money being put off, I filed a second story and it was given prominent display above the fold on page 4 during the week. Not a single leader in Canada that I know of -- besides Ross Harvey from Edmonton here who I contacted for comment during the writing of these articles -- had any reaction. Nobody stood up and said this is unacceptable. There just wasn't one single person who was ready to stand up and say there was something wrong here. And of course this Woodland Cree business went through.

We're at 11:00 here and I know it's time for a break. It's when we broke yesterday. Let me make just some short comments here.

I had a personal experience with Garry Wouters last year when my book had just come out and I was doing a tour. He posted a memo -- and maybe I'll save this until after the break, but I just want to mention it -- he posted a memo saying that nobody was to speak to John Goddard any more. I was kind of black-listed. I can discuss that later.

One other general thing that I might just mention and if there's any questions about this I can answer them. My latest work has been in Southeast Asia. I spent about a month 2 1/2 years ago in Sarawak, in a special part of Sarawak called Penan Territory. This is one of the last nomadic jungle peoples on earth. There is now technology to log deep into their territory. It's quite hilly and steep in places, but they now have the technology to really get at that primary rain forest that is their territorial homeland. I went in there, up river in small canoes, and saw these people being pushed out of their territory, relocated in areas that are already cut, secondary forests, in longhouses which they are not accustomed to -- longhouses are a traditional type of house for other tribes in Borneo -- built by the government at government expense, put in these longhouses to live on welfare. And I thought, "Wow, where have I seen this before -- native people being pushed off the land into government built settlements to live on welfare. This really reminds me of something."

Last summer I went to a territory called variously West Papua or Western New Guinea or Irian Jaya -- it's a province of Indonesia on the west side of the Island of New Guinea. There this process is taking place too. The Indonesian government has a law -- I mean, not a law but a stated policy, a development policy -- of getting tribal people off the land into government settlements to live. While they don't exactly say it, to live on welfare. That seems to be the deal. So you can see these patterns all over the world and they're very similar. And when human rights groups go to these places, international rights groups make presentations to the United Nations, it is always called crimes against humanity. What is happening in the Penan Territory are crimes against humanity. And what is happening at Lubicon Lake are crimes against humanity. I know Mr. Fulton said yesterday we must be moderate in our language, but we must understand that these are crimes. These are crimes being committed by Garry Wouters who broke the law in this referendum. They are crimes against humanity being committed by Brian Malone and Bob Coulter at Indian Affairs in Ottawa and Fred Jobin here. I'm not saying that our efforts should be on locking these people up or that the focus should be on bringing them to justice. But certainly some kind of process has to be found where these people are out of the way.

I saw this -- I'll be brief here -- I saw this new federal offer, so-called new federal offer. The first thing I noticed is that it was an "improved" offer -- $73 million now up from something else. One of the big items there was $10.5 million for the value of the reserve land. You know, we heard Mr. Fulton saying that was preposterous. The reserve land is a legal right of these people. How can a price be put on it and -- I knew instantly this was a trumped-up offer. That this offer was not part of a sincere effort to reverse some of these trends that I'm watching over the last 8 years, but it was part of the problem, part of the same process, part of the same criminal process to do these people damage.

You talked about the precedent yesterday. You know, that being fair to the Lubicon people would set a precedent. Or giving in to the demands of the Lubicon people would set a precedent. And I thought, what is the precedent. Well, yeah, the Indians of Canada have been fucked for 200 years and being fair to them might set a precedent. And so that's the precedent we're talking about. The precedent would be fairness.

I just note here that Mr. Fulton said yesterday we should deal with this case on its merits and not think in terms of trying to solve all of the world's problems but look at this case on its merits and try to decide what was fair. So I'll just leave it rest there and let people take a break.

Jennifer Klimek: Thank you John. We'll take about a five minute break and then come back and address some questions to you.

Jennifer Klimek: (inaudible -- What were some of the sources in your research?)

John Goddard: Yes, there is a reference to that in the book acknowledging some sources. One of the reasons that I decided to go ahead with the book was that there was just so much documentation. Where the documentation started in terms of the Band's history was through the Indian Association of Alberta. In the 1970s they had a unit called the Treaty and Aboriginal Rights Research unit. This group was looking not only at the Lubicon claim but some of the other isolated communities in north central Alberta and I suppose research in other areas as well. I see Michael Asch and he probably knows a lot more about it than I do. But that created a library of documentation -- missionary records to some extent -- although I know that Fred Lennarson did a lot of archival research on the missionaries himself through the Archbishop's residence library in McLennan. But really the core material was from the TARR research and that was organized for the Band by Fred Lennarson and Terri Kelly, and to which I was given full access. It was a real gift. You can imagine just being given access to this stuff. It was wonderful. Instead of having to go through the archives myself -- which would have been impossible anyway, because the Indian Affairs Department by the time I came along had cut off access to the public to those papers. The same with Rene Fumaleau as a matter of fact. He now says that those documents, the days when he did his research for -- Michael, what was the title of Fumaleau's book?

?: "As Long as This Land Shall Last."

John Goddard: "As Long as This Land Shall Last", thank you very much. He now says that he was allowed to look through cardboard boxes full of stuff. And now all of that material -- I suppose not all but I think he said a large amount of that material is now inaccessible to the public.

So there was the TARR materials. There was the McLennan archives. A lot of this stuff I witnessed myself. That's why I chose the Lubicon Cree story and the Woodland Cree story. I witnessed a lot of these events.

I did that magazine article in 1984-85. And then I started on the mailing list so I was still following it. And then in February of 1986 there was a hearing of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Issues on Lubicon. James O'Reilly was there. Fred Lennarson was there. Bernard Ominayak was there. Edward Laboucan, who I believe you heard from, was also there. And E. Davie Fulton. It was quite an extraordinary evening one week night in Ottawa. And the place was just packed. Every Department in the government seemed to have a representative there. It was just an electric atmosphere. People standing all along the walls. All the chairs filled. And Fulton, I remember at that time, his report had been shelved by then and Roger Tass‚ had been named the new federal negotiator and had rolled back some of the progress that Fulton had made. And Fulton said "I think these people should be invited back to the negotiation table and not the ultimatum table." So very strong statements from Fulton at that time. And I thought, well, there's a book possibility here. I didn't have any money at first, but Fred Lennarson and Bernard Ominayak were going to Europe and I said, "Gee, you think if I get some money together that I could follow you along on this trip?" And they agreed that would be all right. I'm just mentioning this because it was the eyewitness part. I wanted to get a sense of just how significant this case was. And I went to Europe. There was this conference in Vienna with scholars from all over Europe and academics who were very well informed -- not just about the Lubicon case but some of the big cases in the United States. Also, by that time the Olympic boycott had started, which I was very skeptical about in the beginning. But I saw that there was momentum here. That this was a movement that was being formed. And that this was a very significant event in the history of the country. And that I was kind of given this opportunity to witness the process of an aboriginal society negotiating with a modern western democracy their aboriginal rights. And I thought I wanted to get in on that process.

I don't think I'm answering this question very well...I should say something about the federal side too, because I tried -- David Crombie I felt would be open to seeing me. He wasn't. I wrote him -- I made a couple of phone calls and then I ended up writing him a letter. I originally went to Bruce Rawson, the Deputy Minister. He referred me to Crombie. Crombie referred me back to Bruce Rawson. Bruce Rawson referred me to Bob Coulter. And I have managed some conversations with Bob Coulter over the years. The latest was about this Woodland Cree plebiscite. He said everything looked on the up and up to him. And there was some -- I guess for a year and a half or something, I was in regular contact with Ken Colby, the federal spokesman. But even at one time with him, he tried to cut me off. He was starting to spread rumors -- I got this from a newspaper reporter in Alberta who I won't identify because it's not necessary -- that I had misquoted Ken Colby in the Globe and Mail, that he had said the opposite. Ken Colby seemed to be smearing my name around in Alberta in this way. So I protested that and came up with transcripts of some of these interviews from which the quote originated and sent them to Brian Malone, who I guess referred them to the Minister's office. They came back with the fact that it was not proper that I was cut off in this way. So in trying to deal with the federal people -- the condition was mostly if you wanted to have a cosy breakfast to discuss your complaints, then we'll talk, but otherwise you can forget about getting much information out of the federal government.

I think I also itemized in the acknowledgements and sources section that Brian Malone set up several interviews with me -- one I can remember in particular set up months in advance. It was to be -- I forget the exact circumstances, but it was after some event that was going on. It would be in this month generally, and we'll nail down the date a little later. And I said fine. And then he said it would have to be in Edmonton and I said, "Gee, you're in Ottawa an awful lot. I'm in Montreal. Why can't we do it in Ottawa?" No, it would have to be in Edmonton. And he named four people that he wanted present. This had to do with the Woodland Cree. He wanted Woodland members there. He wanted Fred Jobin there. He wanted a lot of people there. So it would have to be in Edmonton. I said fine to all these conditions. And then a couple of weeks before when I was trying to nail down the exact hour to book a flight, he cancelled. And that was not just a single incident. He was doing it all the time. And then he finally agreed to have some written correspondence with me if I would write him and he would reply like three months later. But I did get some valuable material that way. He didn't know that I had so many pieces and so some of the pieces he supplied were pretty useless on their own, but they fitted very nicely with some of the other material.

Jennifer Klimek: Thank you. I'd like to open it up to the other Commissioners.

Menno Wiebe: Since your fact gathering, particularly on eligibility for membership, having documented the up and down moves by various federal authorities on recognizing and then cancelling eligibility -- since the documentation in your book, "Last Stand of the Lubicon Cree", do you have any further information about moves for discrediting or awarding or recognizing the membership of the Lubicon people?

John Goddard: You know, one of the first things I noticed in this new federal offer that you're considering is that the membership question has been rolled back. In other words, at Grimshaw in October '88 Premier Getty in a very carefully worded way that didn't directly contradict the Lougheed policy on Lubicon membership, he indirectly recognized a membership of about 500 Lubicon people -- just if you work out the square acreage of the reserve he was prepared to accept. And that translated during the Ottawa negotiations of December '88, January '89 into a ratification by the federal people of a membership of 506. I see in the latest offer that all that progress has been rolled back. They are going back to a position...