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Showing posts from July, 2017

No More Seats at the Table: Canada's Premiers and National Aboriginal Organizations

This post has been revised and published by the Institute of Public Policy Research: http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/august-2017/national-indigenous-groups-and-the-premiers Three of Canada's five major National Aboriginal Organizations (NAOs) opted to skip this month's annual meeting with the premiers in Edmonton.  The move prompted several media outlets to run lead stories featuring leaders of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), Metis National Council (MNC) and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) condemning the premiers for failing to invite them to the "main table" of the Council of the Federation (CoF) -- a body exclusively reserved for the thirteen provincial and territorial premiers.  They accused premiers of "segregating" Indigenous leaders from high-level discussions, relegating them to a pre-event conversation. For their part, premiers were reserved in their response, extending an open invitation to all NAO leaders to meet with them again next