Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (May 30/01) - The Dene Nation is questioning the government's right to tax First Nations in the territory and the national chief said he'd like to take action.
"We believe we have tax immunity," Bill Erasmus, national chief of the Dene Nation, said as he prepared for this week's leadership conference in Fort Providence.
Erasmus said the Dene Nation challenges everything from community residents paying municipal property taxes to federal income tax.
Erasmus said he's watching a taxation case now before the Federal Court in Edmonton.
It claims that Treaty 8 First Nations were promised that they would be tax-exempt regardless of where their citizens lived.
Treaty 8 includes bands in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Alberta and on the south shore of Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories.
James Posynick of the Indian Advisory Board -- a national organization that deals with First Nations taxation --will be giving a presentation.
Erasmus also said the Dene Nation is concerned about the federal government's transfer of powers to the government of the Northwest Territories.
"It affects us because it's dollars the territorial government gets and not First Nations," said Erasmus.
