Every three years, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), Canada’s largest and most influential indigenous advocacy group, holds an election for the office of national chief..The last national chief’s time in office has been characterized by one “fine mess” after another..The AFN is 41 years old, evolving from an earlier male-dominated group called the National Indian Brotherhood, founded in 1967 to represent the collective and individual interests of Treaty Indians who had been divided into 619 bands, 634 “registry groups,” and 3,394 reserves..A registry group is an administrative term applied to a group of Indian Register individuals who have membership in a particular Indian band, or, are descendants from members of that band..A band usually relates to only one registry group except in three cases where bands have more than one such group..Some bands have one reserve; most bands are composed of several reserves; some reserves contain more than one band. .If there ever was the structural foundation for fine messes, this is it..The National Indian Brotherhood became the AFN in 1982 but continues to exclude Inuit and Métis peoples. This often puts them at loggerheads with various Métis associations over issues of land and resource rights..Each of the 634 registry groups is given a seat in the AFN, the positions filled by a Chief or representative. These people, mainly men, are the only ones eligible to vote for the national chief..The act that individual Treaty Indians don’t have a say in this decision is an ongoing bone of contention creating a potential for political fine messes with rank-and-file aboriginals..Small and large fine messes, perhaps destined to become a terminal fine mess, involve the election of the association’s first female national chief, RoseAnne Archibald, on July 8, 2021, after a fifth round of voting with only 50% of ballots cast..Some insiders felt the outcome was illegitimate because the AFN charter requires that a national chief be elected with 60% of the vote. AFN brass apparently ignored this constitutional irregularity, perhaps unwilling to see her term in office begin with a fine mess..Rumors of workplace disarray forming a real fine mess began to surface towards the end of 2021, eventually leading to bullying and harassment allegations against Archibald from four of her staff members, filed under the organization’s whistleblower and harassment policies..A fifth complaint by the AFN’s former CEO followed sometime later. .In a statement issued June 16, 2022, the AFN confirmed it received the complaints the month before against Archibald and determined the findings supported further inquiry by an independent external investigator..In her defence statement released the same day, Archibald claimed she welcomed the investigation but called for a forensic audit and independent inquiry into the last eight years of AFN operations..Her accusations of systemic corruption in the AFN, if accurate, surely deserve to be called a fine mess..The AFN executive committee together with its board of directors nevertheless voted to temporarily suspend her the very next day pending the outcome of the investigation by the external investigator. What a fine mess!.Archibald was reinstated on July 5, 2022 at an AFN General Assembly, when the Indian Chiefs-in-Assembly representing the 634 registry groups, the organization’s grassroots ruling body, roundly rejected a resolution calling for her suspension with only 44 voting in support, 252 voting against and 26 abstentions..In short, only 26% of eligible voters supported her ouster, a fine mess for sure. .This fine voting mess was soon followed by another one after the release of the investigator’s report on April 28, 2023 which found her guilty of breaching the AFN’s harassment and whistleblower policies, along with its code of conduct and ethics..The executive committee met on June 14 to set the agenda for a June 28 closed-door assembly concerning a probe into Archibald's conduct..It also voted 10-0 denouncing Archibald and recommending her removal, to which Archibald countered with a rebuttal, calling the investigation a distraction from her push to root out years of alleged AFN graft and corruption..Archibald also responded that “The AFN executive committee is out of line and their motion is completely unnecessary as 75% of the Chiefs-in-Assembly overwhelmingly [on July 5, 2022] endorsed my leadership and approach to create more transparency and accountability at the AFN.”.To her early charges against the AFN establishment, Archibald added the claim of misogyny — the hatred, distrust, marginalization, exploitation or discrimination of women — an accusation with surface credibility given its systemic occurrence among aboriginal peoples..With her political career hanging in the balance, Archibald gave an impassioned speech at the June 14 meeting, arguing the AFN would set a dangerous precedent by firing its first female national chief over what her lawyer called “minor breaches” of human resources policies..“Many women are watching,” she said. “What’s happening to me would never happen to a male chief. It would never happen to any of my predecessors.”.Indeed, removal never happened to any of her predecessors regardless of their behaviour in office..Then on June 28, 2023 chiefs-in-assembly once more addressed Archibald’s fate in what may have been a deliberately rushed one-day online Zoom gathering that had a far different outcome than the July 5, 2022 one: the non-confidence motion to oust needed 60% support from Band leaders in attendance to pass; it eventually secured 71%, or 163 of the 231 votes cast. .The 163 non-confidence ballots represented the decision of 26% of eligible voters..One of the 11 regional chiefs who make up the executive inside the AFN will become the interim leader of the national lobby group on July 9 as per the June 28 resolution..If ousting the first AFN National Chief in its history, and the first woman elected to this bastion of male privilege, by such an underwhelming majority, hasn’t created a fine mess, I don’t know what else to call it. .While Archibald has cleverly tried to conflate the issue of a hostile workplace with entrenched AFN rot and corruption, the two sets of issues need to be separated, even though it may be credible to opine that the harassment charges were made because Archibald was determined to root out several possibly intertwined AFN problems..Those problems include incompetent administration, worker apathy and poor job performance, inflated salaries, wasteful spending, political patronage, exorbitant payout demands, unaccountability and a lack of transparency, untendered contracts, and related issues. .Taken together, it is hard to call these charges anything other than chronic corruption. In Archibald’s defence, she has made seemingly credible allegations of AFN corruption in the past..Indigenous Services Canada also secretly intensified its monitoring of cash flow at the Assembly of First Nations shortly after RoseAnne Archibald, who had called for a review of the lobby group's books, was elected national chief, unclassified internal memos show..But even before that, departmental officials had "long raised concerns" about the AFN re-allocating program money to make up for deficits in operational funding, which the department's deals with the AFN wouldn't allow — and which the AFN denies has ever happened — according to a memo dated Nov. 5, 2020..But this is not the end of the story because, if nothing else, Archibald is a tenacious political warrior, a prerequisite for a woman born in the tiny Taykwa Tagamou Indian Reserve in northwestern Ontario today containing only 123 members..In 1990, aged 23, she was the first woman and youngest chief ever elected by her band in. She was the first woman and youngest Nishnawbe Aski Nation Deputy Grand Chief in 1991, and the first woman and youngest Grand Chief of the Mushkegowuk Council in 1994. And she became the first woman elected as Ontario Regional Chief in 2018..In the fractious world of indigenous politics, Archibald has proven to be a survivor. So, it should come as no surprise that since her current ouster, she has launched a frantic campaign to regain AFN leadership..In a short video on July 3, Archibald appealed to her supporters to contact their respective chiefs and councils to demand her reinstatement as national chief and to advocate for a forensic audit of AFN finances under her predecessors, something she called for on several previous occasions.. “I don’t want to be reinstated because of my ego. I want to be reinstated because I have a sacred responsibility that I have to fulfil,” Archibald said in the video, also claiming that AFN chiefs carried out “one of the most violent acts against an indigenous, First Nation women leader ever.” .Archibald’s claims of “sacred responsibility” and “violent acts” are somewhat hard to take seriously given the profane way, at least from an ancient indigenous inter-group conflict resolution perspective, that many indigenous activists regularly still give lip, ceremonial, or true service to..She has attacked her ideological and political foes in such a public and vitriolic way, surely adding to the series of fine messes in the process..Her latest charge in a second video is the need for an independent investigation into potential government interference in AFN affairs, an organization federal officials have always claimed is independent of any government interference..The AFN has become a tool for the government,” Archibald said during a Facebook Live video on the evening of July 6. .She alluded to interference in the video, including allegations that there were connections between assembly staff, chiefs, former national chiefs and the federal Liberal government..Hundreds of chiefs and leaders will be gathering in Halifax, July 11-13, for this year’s annual general assembly..The issue, even legitimacy, of ratifying the selection of an interim national chief from the 11 regional chiefs is bound to come up as will Archibald’s reinstatement..Some indigenous leaders say the future of the organization is in jeopardy, heading into the Halifax meeting..Cara Currie Hall, chief of staff for former National Chief Matthew Coon Come, argued that:.“The entire validity of the organization is in question now by way of the actions of the regional chiefs,” she told APTN News: “Does it serve its purpose, what was it created to do?"."And the office of the national chief and the sanctity of the national chief is now in question, it’s been tarnished and diminished by regional chiefs and the political agenda.”.Thaioronióhte Dan David, an award-winning journalist and former news director at APTN says what’s happened to Archibald “is a coup.”.David who also questions the number of chiefs and proxies who took part in the June 28 meeting and why it happened just weeks ahead of the Annual General Assembly. .AFN Regional Chief Paul Prosper told APTN that the executive hasn’t found the money to conduct the forensic audit that chiefs in assembly voted for in 2022, a difficult assertion to accept given that the bloated AFN received $39.2 million in federal cash in 2021-22..According to long-time critic and former candidate for AFN national chief, Pam Palmater, if there was some workplace policy that was violated, as the independent investigation determined, that could have been dealt with through progressive discipline rather than outright dismissal..Palmater says the removal of Archibald is about something much deeper..“To allow staff and the executive and some regional chiefs to use this as ‘ok this is going to be our strategy to get rid of this national chief,’ who is strong willed and assertive and wants to do things her way, based on what the chiefs told her to do, questioning everything, questioning the status quo, the old boys club, wanting an audit, wanting to know what past national chiefs were doing, she’s bringing forward all of the questions and concerns that we as grassroots people have been saying for decades,” Palmater told APTN..Palmater says she will be looking for chiefs to take their power back from the executive and regional chiefs in Halifax, otherwise, “this is the death knell where they don’t represent anyone, anymore and its really embarrassing.” .Stayed tuned. This fine mess still have lots of legs. .Hymie Rubenstein is editor of The REAL Indigenous Issues Newsletter and a retired professor of anthropology, University of Manitoba.
