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Aboriginal Peoples Concerns About Racial Discrinination in Canada Balidated by UN Experts.

Sharon Menow (Cree, Norway House) is "gratified" by the response of the expert members of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to Aboriginal peoples' concerns and is confident that the Committee's final recommendations will send a strong message to Canada to clean up its act.

Canada's reports and update to the Committee that oversees compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), tabled August 5 and 6 in Geneva, painted a highly selective and rosy picture of the situation facing Aboriginal people in Canada. Individual program "successes" were used to obscure the continuing overall situation of over 600 First Nations and other indigenous peoples across Canada, namely that Aboriginal people in Canada experience discrimination in almost every aspect of their lives.

Committee members were not taken in, however. Dr. Kurt Herndl, Austrian expert on the Committee and Canadian Rapporteur, commented that "the report does not give a comprehensive picture of the measures adopted by Canada or in Canada to implement the Convention and does not really help to understand the interaction between the federal and provincial levels."

On hand to provide the experts with a more comprehensive picture were representatives of a number of Canadian non-governmental organizations, including (pictured left to right) Ms. Menow, Armand MacKenzie, representing the Innu Nation of Nitassin in Labrador, and Ravyn Godwin, representing the Skwelkwek'welt Protection Centre in British Columbia. This was the first time Canadian NGO's had attended a meeting of the ICERD Committee.

Ms. Menow and her colleagues presented Committee members with detailed briefs on racial discrimination against Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and had many opportunities to meet with Committee members to discuss their concerns. These concerns were reflected in the tough questions directed at Canada in the formal meetings, including queries about the lack of an inquiry into the shooting of Dudley George in 1995, the difficulties of First Nations in proving Aboriginal Title, and the high rate of incarceration of Aboriginal people.

The Committee's recommendations to Canada to improve its record on racial discrimination will be released on August 23rd. "In my discussions with various Committee members," says Ms. Menow, "they assured me that they were taking Aboriginal people's concerns very seriously and that they would be included in their recommendations to Canada."

"It is very fortunate that the U.N. provides a place to raise the longstanding concerns of First Nations," says well-known human rights lawyer, Dr. Mary Eberts, "because in Canada there is either no such forum, or justice is very long in coming... or both."

Press Conference at Queen's Park Media Studio, Toronto on Wednesday, August 14, 2002 at 10:30 a.m. Speakers; Sharon Menow, Coalition for a Public Inquiry into Ipperwash, and Dr. Mary Eberts, Human Rights Lawyer.