Assembly of First Nations 101: In the news for its dysfunction but it hasn’t always been

The Assembly of First Nations continues to make headlines after its national chief was ousted and then removed from its annual general assembly.

Former national chief RoseAnne Archibald alleged the organization is rife with corruption and entitlement leading to a coup against her. She said it’s “an affront to democracy” drawing a lot of attention to the AFN’s inner workings. The situation begs the questions: What is the AFN? What’s it supposed to do? And has it ever been functional?

The AFN is a self-described “advocacy organization” with roots in the National Indian Brotherhood which started as a reaction to the White Paper — a proposed dismantling of the Indian Act — in 1969.

The White Paper infuriated many Indigenous people across Canada because it did not recognize and honour First Nations’ rights, address grievances, or meaningfully include Indigenous people in policymaking.

Dan David, a Mohawk freelance journalist and consultant from Kanesatake, Que., said the Brotherhood was a force because it was the first time First Nations leaders from across the country organized and fought a single issue.

“The organization (went) from an organization of organizations, those provincial territorial organizations, into an organization of chiefs that can come together to debate these issues and come up with some kind of common platform,” David said.

The Brotherhood formed a single cohesive lobby group in 1970 and eventually morphed into the Assembly of First Nations or AFN in 1982 over a belief that chiefs’ strong national leadership was crucial.

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What was once a body to oppose the federal government, it is now the representative body of First Nations in dealing with Ottawa.

“Canada insists that the AFN not call itself a lobby group,” said Michael Hutchinson, a former journalist and former AFN press secretary, “(but rather ) an ‘advocacy organization,’ because Canadians do not have to lobby their governance system.”

Hutchinson said that despite this distinction, the AFN is forced to operate within the Indian Act system where there’s a lack of democracy and has no choice but to be a lobby group that works to put First Nations ideas and beliefs in front of the top levels of government.

“Canada really only supports democracy when it’s convenient for Canada,” he said.

The AFN represents over 600 First Nations communities across the country with regional chiefs from each province being that community’s direct link to the organization.

It fulfils its mandates through resolutions which, once passed, are often brought to the federal government in a push for them to become laws.

The AFN is an organization of chiefs — something grassroots First Nations have always been critical of, because elected band councils are a construct from the Indian Act system, not representative of traditional ways of governing.

0:48 National Indigenous Languages Day

“The communities tell the AFN what to do, so through those resolutions, AFN is given its lobby group marching orders,” Hutchinson said.

And there have been many “successful” lobbying actions, such as An act respecting Indigenous languages and An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families.

“The residential school apology and the payments had a lot to do with AFN lobbying under Phil Fontaine,” he said. “All these kinds of things are attempts of lobbying. Attempts are the first effort to make change.”

But the AFN never holds the pen.

“Canada always holds the pen because it’s Canadian law,” Hutchinson said. “That idea of holding the pen goes back to the fact that the AFN is a lobby group. It is not a government. It does not make law for First Nations. Canada does.“

“It’s not hard to convince Canadians that Indians are corrupt,” Hutchinson said. “It’s a stereotype that’s out there and so sometimes … this can be used to shore up political careers where you have First Nation politicians saying, ‘Well, I’m just trying to fight the corruption.'”

And that’s what Archibald campaigned on:  cleaning up the AFN, addressing a lack of transparency and calling for a forensic audit of the organization’s financials.

According to Hutchinson, the AFN has annual audits at Canada’s insistence by independent auditors. A forensic audit however would cover a range of investigative actions usually conducted to prosecute for fraud, embezzlement or other financial crimes.

“For a national chief to be corrupt, they would have to convince the lawyers and accountants in the secretariat to risk going to jail or risk ruining their reputation,” he said. “They would have to get the executive to go along with their corruption plans and not only go along with them in the moment, but keep quiet about them. … So there are checks and balances within the AFN.”

1:51 What does oversight look like at the Assembly of First Nations?

David disagrees. He said when the AFN was created, the intention was to appoint specific individuals to a “Confederacy of Nations” that would watch the organization and not the vested interests of their community or themselves.

According to the AFN’s charter, the Confederacy of Nations is meant to be an oversight body composed of First Nations representatives from each region of the country, with one member for every 10,000 First Nations citizens. But it isn’t active.

“There hasn’t been one from day one,” David said. “You allow the executive do whatever they damn well want, and that’s exactly what they did. They’re unaccountable except once a year at the annual general assembly, as opposed to every day of the year.”

Hutchinson, however, said there’s a reason for that. “If you create the Confederacy of Nations, what you are kind of doing is creating a Senate,” he said. “That ups the cost of the AFN because you have to have confederacy meetings, you have to hire them admins, pay for per diems.”

“If the AFN had a House of Commons ‘Chiefs in Assembly’ and Senate ‘Confederacy of Nations’ it’s almost guaranteed that Canada would start using the AFN as a First Nations federal government, which it kind of already tries to do now and (most) First Nations do not want the AFN to become a government.”

6:46 Archibald calls for forensic audit, urges AFN to move forward from her suspension

Oversight body or not, the AFN isn’t new to controversy and criticism.

When former national chief Shawn Atleo took a leave of absence after a meeting with the federal government that was boycotted by several chiefs, some called for a non-confidence vote. Atleo later resigned amid criticism from chiefs who accused him of selling out communities and siding with the government.

Former national chief Perry Bellegarde was criticized by other candidates who ran against him of being too close to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He was also criticized for being too quiet during the Wet’su’wet’en railroad protests.

And recently ousted national chief Archibald has two known active lawsuits against her. “I would like to see a list of lawsuits created under each national chief and I would suspect that RoseAnne created more lawsuits than anybody,” Hutchinson said.

There have been discussions about dismantling or decolonizing the AFN with several posts including the hashtag “Not My Chief,” and while the AFN will continue to run business as usual, there are questions about its future and what First Nations people want.