Derek Neary
Northern News Services

Fort Simpson (Apr 30/04) - The roof on Elizabeth Hardisty's house is rotting and she wants the government to replace it.

Elizabeth Hardisty says the territorial government should replace the rotting roof on her house. She believes housing is a treaty right, but MLA Kevin Menicoche doesn't agree. - Derek Neary/NNSL photo

She's been requesting assistance through the Housing Corporation for five years, she said.

The problem came to a head in January when her husband, Percy, was up on the roof and his foot went through.

The Hardisty's home was constructed as part of a social housing project in the 1980s and it cost them nothing, she noted.

The Housing Corporation has offered her a new house, but she said she shouldn't have to take on a $140,000 mortgage.

She believes housing is a treaty right. Although there is nothing in Treaty 11 that guarantees housing, Hardisty said some elders who know the oral version of the treaty say the government promised to "pack the logs wherever you go."

"This treaty of 1921 is a big lie," she said. "How come the chiefs are leaving everything up to the people? They should help people."

Kevin Menicoche, MLA for Nahendeh and a member of the Liidlii Kue First Nation, said housing is not a treaty right. He said the government's old "colonial mentality" was to get people to move into communities by offering free housing, but it was never written into the treaty document.

"We've developed a culture that believes housing is free. People kind of expect that now... people have to change with the times," said Menicoche. "I believe people have more respect for themselves in that they do build their own homes and create self-reliant mentalities."

Herb Norwegian, grand chief of the Deh Cho First Nations, said there has been a general erosion of treaty rights as programs are off-loaded from the federal government to the territorial government. However, like Menicoche, he stressed the need for independence.

"The houses that we once had now have become disintegrated little tar paper shacks in some cases," Norwegian said. "A good part of that, too, is our responsibility, to make sure that it doesn't deteriorate. We have to try to meet government halfway on a lot of this stuff. If we're going to be self-governing, self-determining, that actually means you have to start paying your own way."