With the choice of a new National Chief this week, the Assembly of First Nations may appear to take a step toward rebuilding itself, but any success it has will collide with other forces of realignment in which the Supreme Court of Canada is playing a pivotal role.

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Both First Nations education and the Assembly of First Nations face uncertain futures after an extraordinary Chiefs' meeting and the predictable Conservative government reaction that followed.

Gathered in Ottawa on Tuesday for a special assembly, Chiefs and their proxies rejected the Conservatives' Bill C-33 but called for the government to start flowing the $1.9 billion in new education funding the Prime Minister had promised.

Give the win to Stephen Harper, with an assist to some of those who claim most loudly to oppose him. 

The Prime Minister is well known for being unsatisfied with merely besting opponents, seeking rather to break them. He has done so again and may well be on his way to larger goals.

Aided and abetted by many of those who swear their opposition to the Conservative government's unhidden agenda against First Nations rights and interests, the National Chief is gone and the Assembly of First Nations may be mortally wounded as an institution.

Politics is a messy business, so it is helpful to have clarity now and then. 

Certainly, partisan posturing often can muddy the issues and impede progress. On First Nations issues, entrenched positions and a high volume of uninformed rhetoric from both sides doesn’t help either. As a result, before the bill had been tabled many blindly rejected the new education legislation, while others absurdly insisted it should be adopted. 

Those early positions were both unfair, but this much is now perfectly clear: unless it is amended before passing, the Bill the government tabled in parliament yesterday is a failure. 

In the words of Justice Murray Sinclair, Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), "Reconciliation is about forging and maintaining respectful relationships."

But Canada has shown little respect for the Indigenous peoples of this land.

I’ll admit it.  I was wrong.  I thought the Conservative government would never make a real investment in First Nations education.

That is how to admit a mistake.  Like an apology, it must be clear and unequivocal. 

My mistake was in believing anything Stephen Harper said about First Nations.  I should have known better.

He reversed himself in 2010 on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.  His “no” vote at the UN in 2007 isolated Canada with three other countries against the rest of the world, but the PMO and its typists at all of Canada’s major newspapers insisted it was a principled stand, saving Canada from the evils of recognizing Indigenous rights. 

Last New Year’s eve, rabble published an op-ed I wrote about a relatively new phenomenon called Idle No More.  While hopeful about the attention being garnered by the rise in activism, I cautioned that whether “INM leads to increased awareness, a change in policy, or a change in government is an open question.”

A year later, that question can be answered only in part.

No doubt awareness of Indigenous issues has grown.  That is an accomplishment in which all those who have participated, through INM or otherwise, can take pride.

It may turn out that 2013 is the year Canada started taking Indigenous resource rights seriously.

Five centuries ago, when Europeans began trading with the Indigenous nations here for resources, the relationship rewarded Indigenous abilities to extract those resources and recognized Indigenous rights over them. 

But that didn’t last long.

According to the Fraser Institute, it is only First Nations’ stubborn insistence on non-existent rights and blindness to inevitable benefit that prevents them from being a willing partner to resource development.

Released yesterday, the report, Opportunities for First Nation prosperity through oil and gas development, successfully repeats some well-known facts:

-  First Nations are the youngest and fastest growing demographic in Canada;

-  The unemployment rate on reserve is 3 times the national average;

Sometimes it helps to put things in order, in precedence and priority, in order to see them clearly.  This is one of those times.

With today’s lifting of the injunction preventing anti-fracking protests in New Brunswick, the first question that comes to mind is why the RCMP felt it necessary to provoke the conflict that occurred last Thursday. 

Having waited two weeks, they could have waited another five days to see what the law would rule on the issue, but instead showed up at a previously peaceful protest with hundreds of officers, snipers, dogs, riot gear and tear gas.