On Friday, after four years of servility and weak leadership in the face of a Harper government bent on an aggressive agenda of assimilation and termination of First Nations, National Chief Shawn Atleo was forced by popular pressure and a brewing chiefs' revolt to resign, the first time a national chief has resigned since the creation of the institution.
Throughout his term, Atleo has been more concerned with keeping Ottawa happy than with representing the aspirations of First Nations people. When people rose up during Idle No More, he undermined the movement by legitimizing the government's empty posturing by attending a controversial meeting with the Prime Ministers' Office on January 11, 2013 without the mandate of the Chiefs in Assembly.
Most recently, he has served as the fig leaf for the government's Orwellian First Nations Education Act, which aims to finish the job of "killing the Indian in the child" that residential schools began by placing First Nations education under the control of governments and central authorities remote from the realities of First Nations -- all while disingenuously claiming to place education under First Nations control. This was too much for First Nations peoples, and many chiefs, to bear.
http://rabble.ca/news/2014/05/idle-no-more-responds-to-shawn-atleos-resignation
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