Fight or Submit by Grand Chief Ronald M. Derrickson

Author:Grand Chief Ronald M. Derrickson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2020-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

A Royal Commission on Me

The final front that made up the perfect storm of forces heading my way was the local one. As the orchestrated campaign by local white businessmen and their Progressive Conservative mouthpieces was taking shape before my eyes in the spring of 1986, I decided that I could no longer stand for chief. If I were elected, I would be helpless with all my energy taken up defending myself and offering a standing target for my enemies. So I announced I would stand aside in the August 26 election. My decision was the only one I could take in the best interest of the band, but it allowed my opponents to slip into office. And it was at that point I became truly fearful. I knew that I had done nothing wrong, but with my opponents now making up the new chief and council, I was suddenly vulnerable to being set up by phoney evidence coming out — not only from the local Progressive Conservatives and their murderous white business clientele but also from a band council office that had, in important ways, already joined forces with them and, who I was suing for defamatory statements about me.

This included the new chief, Robert Louie, who had been one of Kayban’s followers. In the future, Robert Louie would play an important role in Westbank politics, and given the role he played in Kayban’s crazy Westbank Indian Action and Advisory Council, I was obviously not going to be a fan of his. But in office, Louie also turned out to be a classic establishment Indian, someone who was very adept at feeding off the public trough, accepting watered-down versions of our rights from the government and then being rewarded with high-paying posts on government advisory boards and committees, which added exponentially to what became a substantial chief’s salary.

The way it worked was that in one year, Louie would pay himself $150,389 as Westbank chief, but he was also paid an $800-a-day per diem and a salary of $122,800 as the government-paid Land Advisory Board chair, with $35,456 in travel funding. This was in addition to the $25,599 in travel expenses he charged the band. I can only imagine what these payments amounted to when you took all of his boards and committees together, which included the National Aboriginal Economic Development Board, First Nations Finance Authority Inc., All Nations Trust Company, Kelowna Chamber of Commerce, United Native Friendship Society, the Premier’s Advisory Council of Aboriginal Affairs, the First Nations Lands Advisory Board and Peace Hills Trust (Financial Institution).

With this new, politically pliable chief as one of my attackers, I was afraid I was not going to be the subject of an inquiry but of a set-up arranged between the band office and the Progressive Conservative Indian Affairs department.

But when I finally looked at the actual mandate of the committee, I was reminded that my accusers had to not only frame me but also the Indian Affairs department that I had worked in coordination with.

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