Welcome 2010

2009 Saw the Group for Accountability and concerned community members achieve alot. The Group sent a letter to the editor of the Packet & Times which brought APTN to the community in June where they did a bit of an expose piece on the corruption of power and politics in the community. This momentum allowed us to put pressure on Chief and Council and an open community meeting was held in June. The turn out was good and members were given the opportunity to tell Chief and Council how they felt about the issues. Although there is much work to be done still we have created this blog, a facebook group and a twitter account to keep community members informed, both of what were doing and what Chief and Council is doing. We put pressure on the Chief and the Administration to get involved in the fight against the HST, something the other 133 First Nations were doing, but Rama was still waiting for their auditors to give them a "report". We kept the pressure on and Novembers Ojibway Times newsletter saw them printing the Band Council Resolution wherein they are stating their position against the HST. We advised Chief and Council that a unity rally against the HST was occuring at Queens Park and we 'advised' them that they should be sending a bus or a van to show their support. We attended that rally and showed our support in the fight against the HST.
In the mean time we, the Group for Accountability were studying the financial information for the band that we obtained through INAC after their MANY ATTEMPTS at stalling the process. INAC had to send us all of the audited financial statements that we requested (2002 to present) through an informal request for information. We attended every community meeting held in 2009 and began to host our own meetings out of the Church hall. We chose to discontinue those open Church hall meetings after it was discovered that someone was attending our meetings with the sole purpose of disclosing what was said to members of council (parking lot politics). We did not feel it was fair to the people who were showing up to share in confidence their experiences and frustrations, only to have them told to Chief and Council. So we discontinued that meeting format for the time being and have been continuing to meet in each others homes. Followers of this blog, community members; we want you to know that we have identified our priorities for 2010. We want you to know the fact that it is an election year is not lost on us. We want you to know that members of this group have an ACTUAL PLAN that would allow us to put an end to council being drunk on power and greed, administration that has no checks and balances in place or policies to govern them and an end to parking lot politics. Decisions affecting your life and the lives of our children SHOULD NOT BE MADE IN A PARKING LOT IN THE FRONT SEAT OF A PICKUP TRUCK. That is wrong on so many levels and we've seen it work for those that are affiliated but the exact opposite is true if you are not. We have a better way, a safer way and a fairer way for all band members. We expect 2010 to be a challenging year, an exciting year, but mostly a year meant for change.