By DEB GUERETTE
RECORD-GAZETTE STAFF
Legal wording of Lubicon Cree band membership criteria has negotiating parties struggling as they enter the seventh month of talks.
Agreement in principle with the new federal negotiating team on how band membership would be determined was reached last fall, says Lubicon band advisor Fred Lennarson.
"It was the first item on the table at the first meeting in July. We've had an agreement in terms of Lubicon membership since September, (but the Lubicon have had a similar agreement) made on previous occasions and it has always fallen apart," Lennarson told the Record-Gazette.
Chief federal negotiator Brad Morse admits turning the agreement in principle into a legal document to be approved by cabinet is taking some time.
"We are sharing some drafts back and forth," Morse, an Ottawa University law professor, said, also commenting that, "I didn't think we'd spend as much time as we have on drafting membership (agreement) before we move on to other things. There have been some new approaches thrown on the table."
Band membership is a key point to the Lubicon, Lennarson says. "If membership cannot be agreed to, there cannot be a settlement," Lennarson said.
An essential element of Lubicon membership criteria is that all members have status under the Indian Act, he said. "We are talking about people's children with this. This has caused huge problems in other communities," he said.
The rest of the Lubicon membership proposal is not complicated either, Lennarson says, restating that band members are "Aboriginal people who are related to each other by blood and related to the territory by history."
While Morse declined to describe federal draft membership proposals saying, "ask the Lubicon," Lennarson says it is unacceptable. "They define family ties . . . as children and siblings and children of siblings. What about parents . . . and uncles and aunts," Lennarson questions.
Other federal criteria calls for band members to be "a group of people related to people who self-identified as Lubicon in 1899." "How are they supposed to do that? These are some elements they put in and it is not workable," Lennarson said.
The Lubicon want the membership question dealt with on the front end of this round of negotiations.
"What is the order in council (that goes before cabinet to create the band) going to say? They don't want to work on wording for that after (all the other settlement elements) and spend months and months talking about other things and the whole thing comes apart on this," Lennarson said.
The federal team is presently reviewing a Lubicon proposal that would see the order in council passed while the rest of the negotiations continue, but become effective at the conclusion of the settlement.
"We have some precedents for that. It is perfectly possible to pass that effective another date. At least it would be harder for (government) to say they don't remember making the agreement," Lennarson said, noting that agreement on Lubicon membership has been reached at earlier rounds of talks.
"I do know they are very serious about dealing with membership before proceeding on a whole lot of other things. If that can't be done, then I think the process is in question," Lennarson adds.
A negotiating session at Little Buffalo planned for this week was rescheduled.