Elder condemns using courts to solve band matters
Following a decision issued earlier this week, one of Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation’s Elders has come forward expressing his frustration with the sudden cancelation of a planned by-election and reinstatement of the Cree Nation’s urban councillor.
While he wasn’t surprised by the move, 72-year-old George Morin said he was disappointed by the election’s cancellation.
“When you lose control of your sovereignty, you don’t know what the outcome will be,” Morin said. “It should have stayed internal. When you let another foreign system say ‘this is what we use,’ you’ll never know what the outcome will be.”
Morin argued the use of the federal court system to interfere in a band matter is a forfeiture of the sovereignty of the Indigenous people within the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation. As a sovereign nation, he said the band created its own election code to dictate how elections should be carried out and those processes should be honoured.