Change
The showdowns attracted much media attention and after Oka the government funded a $60 million exhaustive Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples , which was finally published six years later in November 1996 and called for fundamental change and self-government for aboriginals. The document presented a devastating account of the everyday struggle facing Canada's aboriginal peoples, including a catalogue of deprivation, mistreatment and official neglect suffered by native children in the residential schools. The report went on to recommend the creation of an aboriginal parliament to decide on land claims, establish a native university and steer an ambitious twenty-year multimillion dollar programme of economic aid to counter native unemployment and poor housing and health conditions. The majority of the recommendations seem to have been totally ignored by the present Liberal government - they've made it clear that broad structural change, particularly anything connected with the Constitution, is simply not on its agenda. In 1998, the government did, however, formally apologise to the aboriginal peoples for the way they had been mistreated and offered compensation to those abused in the school system. On April 1, 1999, after decades of negotiations and planning, the creation of a new province, Nunavut , redrew Canada's borders and gave one-fifth of its landmass to Canada's smallest native population, the Inuit. Known as "our land" in Inuktitut, the two million square kilometres of Nunavut is home to a self-governed population of 27,000, 85 percent of which is Inuit. More recently, in July 2000, the Supreme Court of British Columbia upheld the Nisga'a land treaty as constitutionally valid. This came after Liberals in British Columbia tried to quash the $487 million deal, which gives 2000 square kilometres of land, $170 million fishing and logging rights and a significant degree of self-government to the Nisga'a. For their part the formerly fractured Assembly of First Nations , which represents "status Indians", enjoyed three years of relative calm under its national chief, Phil Fontaine, who lifted the AFN out of its debt, inherited from his predecessor, Ovide Mercredi, who had taken a much more hardline approach to aboriginal sovereignty. Fontaine also signed a co-operation agreement, in July 1999, with the Washington-based National Congress of American Indians, America's largest Indian organization, to expand trade and cultural exchanges. For all his achievements, Fontaine was seen as being too cosy with the government in Ottawa and in September 2000, Mathew Coon Come, a tough-talking Cree leader from northern Quebec, was elected the new national chief, perhaps signalling a return to more confrontational politics between Canada's natives and the federal government
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