A conversation with Jim Antoine
By Bruce Mason, Gabriola Sounder
Monday, July 9 2007
Across Canada on Friday, June 29th, 2007, First Nations were engaged in demonstrations, during what they called National Action Day as I sat down with Jim Antoine, formerly chief of the Fort Simpson Dene Band and premier of the Northwest Territories.
Nothing seemed out of place as we chatted while his fellow students - including his 23 year-old son Timbah - had a final beer with James Mitchell, ISBA founder, owner and instructor and Chris Bell, instructor of the just completed course, “Introduction to Stonework.”
“Education is the key to everything,” said Antoine, “to the lives of individuals, communities, including Aboriginal communities and certainly in the North.”
He has studied at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Lethbridge, among other places, including three courses at ISBA; he was exempted from the log building course, having studied that subject with Mitchell almost 30 years ago.
“It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do and I’ve learned a lot since arriving here on Gabriola in March,” he continued. “I had to clear a path for the snowmobile, walking in waist deep snow before we left Fort Simpson. We managed to cut four cords of wood. On the day we arrived on the island it seemed like summer.
“We have a lot of white spruce back home, some of it fairly large, and one sawmill in the region,” he continued. “Timbah has completed his electrical and welding pre-apprenticeships and learned how to fight fires. I hope he can find work with the skills that he has developed here, that it is do-able.”
Antoine, represented the Nahendeh constituency, elected to the legislature assembly in 1991 and 1995 and was elected premier by secret ballot, on December 10th, 1998, after Premier Don Morin resigned due to conflict of interest allegations.
“Interesting times,” he recalled, of the period during his tenure in the top job, when Nunavut was created out of the NWT and Canada’s map changed forever for the first time since Newfoundland joined confederation in 1949, the year Jim Antoine was born.
The area is 1,140,835 square kilometres (440,479 square miles) with a population of 41,464 in the 2006 census, an increase of 11 per cent from 2001 and includes geographical features, including the vast Great Bear and Great Slave Lakes, the Mackenzie River and the canyons of the Nahanni River, a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site, territorial islands in the Arctic and archipelagos, with enormous geological resources including gold, natural gas and diamonds, touted as an ethical alternative to blood diamonds.
“Things seemed to have hardened up somewhat, since the Conservatives took power away from the Liberals,” he observed, “We are still much like a colony of the federal government with aspirations to becoming a province, which may happen long after my time.”
He once owned a service station in his home town of Fort Simpson. “That’s the kind of thing where you work for the bank,” he said, and assisted in the development of the Deh Cho First Nation, serving as executive director for both the regional and tribal councils, was president of Nogha Enterprises, owned by the Fort Simspson Dene Band Development Corporation, and in 1987 he co-ordinated the Papal visit.
Most recently he was Pan-Northern ambassador for the Canada Winter Games held in Whitehorse earlier this year.
After three decades of combined service as an elected official, including cabinet portfolio positions such as public works and services, transportation and aboriginal affairs and economic development - he was chief of the Liidlii Kue First Nation for several terms prior to becoming MLA - he said he’s happy to have moved on with his life, after retiring from politics in 2003, partially filling his days as a private consultant, doing some work for the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, which will own one-third of a proposed Mackenzie Valley project.
“I have always been up front and honest,” he recalled, “always been my own man and I’ve always done the things I thought were right and it has worked for me.
“We were on the land long before the Europeans arrived but the reality is that we have to live together,” Antoine continued. “Aboriginal people must have more influence in decision making during the devolution of power in the North.
“Our natural resources are controlled by Ottawa and we depend on the federal government for financial handouts to run the Northwest Territories. The ultimate goal is to not only control our own natural resources, but also benefit from them.
“First Nations must become equal partners and major economic players,” Antoine continued. ‘A pipe line deal, for example, would be the first time in Canada that we have played a major role in the development of a large natural project.”
The media may play up the most sensational aspects of the renewed determination of the country’s aboriginal people to reclaim their land and destiny, he said, but in the end it is all about awareness.
“That’s what National Action Day is about, awareness. I’ve worked with many good, well-intentioned people, but there is a need to be more informed about the issues,” said Jim Antoine. “What I would tell Sounder readers is to ask politicians and officials how much they know about aboriginal issues.
“Education is the key to everything,” he stressed once again, in the shadow of the fireplace he and his son helped build on Gabriola.
In next weeks Sounder see story on Stone class at ISBA.
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