The I Word.

Some people do not like the use of the term Indian to refer to the pre-colonial inhabitants of Canada and their modern descendants. An example of this got some press attention this week. Officials of a First Nations run theatre company were upset at the use of the term Indian in a Toronto Star review of one of their productions. Native Earth Performing Arts artistic director Yvonne Nolan stated the use of the term was an example of aboriginal Canadians lacking self-determination, since they can't name themselves. But I wonder if Nolan and other members of Native Earth have ever been to Saskatchewan. The term Indian continues in use in this province, specifically by Native organisations. The umbrella group representing 72 Saskatchewan First Nations continues to call itself the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations. Then there's SIGA, the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority. I haven't heard any widespread outrage at these organisations using the term Indian, and SIGA is a recent enough creation that the founders could have used some other term besides Indian.(Using aboriginal would have resulted in SAGA, which would have worked quite well.) Inaccurate as the term may be it seems unlikely it will stop being used here anytime soon.

Poor Jimmy.

I had assumed we'd heard the last of Jim Pankiw, former MP for my riding. Wrong! He had a letter in today's Saskatoon Star Phoenix. As per much of his political career it was about those horrible nasty Indians out to get everyone. Pankiw describes as "chilling" a statement by Doug Cuthand in his regular SP column that "All Saskatchewan politicians know that they can't ignore the First Nations vote and expect to get elected." Sounds like common sense to me. Would Pankiw find it "chilling" if Cuthand had said "the agricultural vote?" He's also upset that the current birthrate among Saskatchewan's Indians means we could eventually be "overrun" in the future by people with a "race based agenda." Paranoid much?

Pankiw was first a Reform Party MP, and then a Canadian Alliance MP. But its telling that while other members of the Democratic Representative Caucus, a short lived splinter movement from the CA of which he was a member, were eventually brought back into the party he wasn't. Nor was he accepted when the Alliance and Progressive Conservatives became the Conservative Party of Canada. And this is the party that accepted as members such perceived loose canons as MP Myron Thompson. Pankiw was obviously too much of a risk, and a letter like this is a good example why.