First Nations leaders remain optimistic about next week's meeting with top government figures despite the absence of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and the limited availability of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Harper said Friday his role will be largely ceremonial at the First Nations summit, leaving the bulk of the work to the 10 ministers and 50 government staff who will be on hand.
Harper had earlier downplayed the summit's potential, stressing that the meeting will not be a "big bang" event with grand announcements and big funding boosts. The prime minister is said to favour an approach that starts with pilot projects and builds on small successes.
But Derek Nepinak, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, says First Nations leaders remain focused on the "optimism and opportunity the summit presents, however narrow the window (with the prime minister) might be."
"I think there's a lot of potential for pessimists that might look at the fact that the prime minister is only there for a short time as a negative. But we look at it as an opportunity," he said Friday on CTV's Power Play.
"There are 600 chiefs across Canada and 600 chiefs aren't able to address the prime minister in one day."
First Nations leaders will push for a first ministers meeting that will address native issues -- an "ambitious" goal he conceded, given Harper's limited contact with even provincial premiers.
"We live with tragedy in our communities every day," he added. "We have to be ambitious."
Amid the finger pointing over the crisis in Attawapiskat, forging a new fiscal relationship is central to the meeting, with both aboriginal leaders and the government recognizing a pressing need to discuss how money is best spent -- even though actual money won't come until the next federal budget at the earliest.
"It's about completely transforming the way we do our work. And it's about seeking commitments that the Crown will work with us to change the fiscal relationship, that we would move towards more stable, long-term fiscal relationships," said National Chief Shawn Atleo. "And that we would do that work together, and that we would move away from the unilateral nature of decision making."
Flaherty's sanction is not really necessary for those kinds of conversations. But for First Nations, changing the fiscal structure is only the first step.
Follow-up in the next budget is crucial, especially on education, if the federal government is going to live up to its commitments under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples signed recently by Canada, First Nations leaders say.
"I would certainly be looking to the upcoming budget," Atleo added.
With files from Canadian Press
