by Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jan 09/98) - The federal government apologized for its mistreatment of Canada's first peoples Wednesday, but for some aboriginal leaders, it's a case of too little, too late.

The government's carefully worded statement of reconciliation was the centrepiece of its first official response to the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which was released more than a year ago.

Reading the statement at a press conference Wednesday, Minister of Indian Affairs Jane Stewart offered her government's apology several times.

"The government of Canada today formally expresses to all aboriginal people in Canada our profound regret for past actions of the federal government," said Stewart.

Of the abuse and forced cultural assimilation perpetrated at residential schools, Stewart said, "we are deeply sorry."

That was good enough for some, but not all aboriginal leaders, who wanted to hear the words from the Prime Minister Jean Chretien himself.

"An apology is more than an expression of regret," noted Marilyn Buffalo, president of the Native Womens Association of Canada.

"It should be the prime minister who makes the apology, as it was with Japanese Canadians, in the House of Commons," Buffalo said, echoing a parallel drawn by Harry Daniels, president of the Aboriginal Peoples' Congress.

But other leaders saw the reconciliation statement as an apology.

A Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. news release issued Wednesday said NTI president Jose Kusugak "was also grateful than an apology was made for the physical, sexual and other forms of abuse aboriginal people suffered in residential schools."

Phil Fontaine, grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said, "It is a great honor for me, on behalf of First Nations people in Canada, to accept the apology of the government of Canada."

The statement of reconciliation was presented as evidence of a new relationship the government is prepared to forge with aboriginal peoples.

A broad outline of that relationship was unveiled at the press conference.

The highlight of that announcement, entitled "Gathering Strength," was a $350-million commitment to healing the damage done at residential schools.

Several aboriginal leaders at the Ottawa press conference noted that's $150 million less than the Chretien government paid to cancel the EH-101 helicopter contract in 1993.