The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations got an endorsement for his re-election bid from a Canadian senator via social media on June 4, but it’s not the kind of endorsement that might be welcomed or appreciated.
That’s because it came via Twitter from Senator Patrick Brazeau, former president of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, who sits as a Conservative, and carries some heavy baggage from that previous time in his career. Some believe Brazeau got his seat as a quid pro quo for CAP’s endorsement of the Conservative Party Aboriginal agenda, and he has been much reviled in some circles since, accused of selling out his constituents for personal gain.
Pam Palmater, potential candidate for the position of national chief, said as much in a blog on her Indigenous Nationhood Web site in March, back before she declared her intention to run. She described Brazeau as “sucking up to the bully,” a strategy she said “may have won Brazeau a cushy Senate seat (an immediate, individual gain), but it left the grass-roots off-reserve people with nothing but an indebted organization with a horrific reputation as being the mouth piece of the Cons with an anti-First Nation political slant (long-term, community pain); and (2) the organization itself never gained anything in terms of major budget increases, political concessions from the Cons; nor did it advance the rights and interests of off-reserve Aboriginal peoples in any measurable way.”
That sparked a twitter retort from Brazeau who said from @TheBrazman that he would expose what he described as her ‘hypocrisy.’ “I’ll show your true colors,” Brazeau threatened, even daring her to sue him if she felt so inclined. Palmater is a law professor with Ryerson University.
During the back and forth over the course of hours, Brazeau told Palmater her blog was “insignificant except to those who don’t know any better.” Palmater invited Brazeau to visit with her to get things off his chest. It’s not clear if that meeting ever occurred.
In the blog, Palmater did attempt to paint National Chief Shawn Atleo with the same brush she used for Brazeau, saying Atleo “had done little but sing the praises of the Harper Conservatives.” So it was with some degree of glee, it seems, that Palmater supporters read her re-tweet about Brazeau’s endorsement of Atleo.
Brazeau had placed the endorsement on the national chief’s twitter page.
SenPatrickBrazeau @TheBrazman wrote to @shawatleo “good luck to you on your bid for re-election. FN people need you and your cooperative vision to move forward together.”
Palmater retweeted a link to a story about the endorsement and her followers piled on. Said Tweeting Ninja “Seriously, is there a worse endorsement than that?”
Instead of being put off, Brazeau has continued to tweet, not the praises of Atleo, however, but an assault on Palmater. He talks about, among other things, Palmater’s recent returned status under the McIvor legislation, claiming she identified until recently as Metis. Brazeau also seemed happy to be causing the stir, tweeting “It's a great pleasure to get ultra leftist Abo-peoples going,” and then went on to announce that “Regardless of who the AFN Chief is or the gvt, Treaties will never be respected. Old news, old argument. New solutions are needed.”
On June 8 Atleo released a statement distancing himself from the Brazeau/Palmater drama.
Atleo said he would not be “baited into confrontation or distracted from the work of achieving change and preventing government from running roughshod over our rights and title.”
As for Brazeau’s support, Atleo doesn’t consider a single tweet an endorsement.
“There is absolutely no connection to National Chief Atleo or his campaign,” the statement said.
“Senator Brazeau reveals a complete misinterpretation of ‘cooperation’. National Chief Atleo has unequivocally taken forward the rights and interests of First Nations in order to overcome the denial and extinguishment of First Nation Treaty and title rights.”
