The General Assembly of the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), has been atttented by leaders of the Native Canadian community for the first time. The rapprochement follows anti-Semitic rants by the former Assembly of First Nations chief David Ahenakew six years ago. Ahenakew had called Jews a "disease," blamed them for starting the Second World War, and said that Adolf Hitler was right when he "fried" six million Jews. Earlier this year, the new First Nations chief Phil Fontaine and a delegation visited Israel. During another official trip earlier this year, a delegation of First Nations women studied female empowerment and capacity building at the Golda Meir Mount Carmel International Training Centre in Haifa.
A group of Canadian Jewish leaders is to visit First Nation reserves in Canada's north later this year. Fontaine said the Jewish and First Nations people have discovered they have lots in common. "We have suffered from the same experiences in terms of discrimination and racism," he said. "It is in the best interests of both communities to work together."
Using the experience that led to the restoration of Hebrew from an ancient, obsolete language to the official language of Israel, the Jewish community is actively helping native communities restore their dying languages. Only three out of more than 50 native languages are now in common use. "We believe we can apply the same techniques here in Canada to retrieve indigenous languages," Fontaine said at the CJC gathering in the capital Ottawa. In the aftermath of the Ahenakew affair, the First Nations leaders had stood "shoulder to shoulder" in support of the Jewish community, said CJC chief executive Bernie Farber. "David Ahenakew was one person," he said, "but the significance was in the response by Chief Fontaine and other First Nations people. It was an issue that got resolved well because of our very strong relationship."
The Jewish community have an empathy for First Nations people over the residential schools issue, Farber added, saying: "We understand what it means to have our children taken away, and while the comparison is a little different between the Holocaust and residential schools, the pain is the same - the pain of losing family and the pain of an attempted loss of culture is something we intrinsically understand.".
