'The rules are clear': Sask. First Nations leaders say Cameron not eligible to run for FSIN Chief

Delegates from 74 Saskatchewan First Nations are gathering in Saskatoon on Thursday to elect a new chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN).

Heading into the vote, some leaders are crying foul over incumbent Chief Bobby Cameron’s bid for re-election to a third term. They say his 1993 criminal record for break and enter and theft means he should never have been allowed to run, according to the FSIN’s own election bylaws.

Cameron’s criminal record came to light amid a contentious 2021 election that ended with the FSIN’s own electoral officer filing a lawsuit against the organization, claiming administrators actively worked to restrict her oversight role and to conceal irregularities.

An internal committee allowed Cameron to run anyway, despite a clause in the FSIN’s election act that bars someone from running if they have a past conviction for theft. Anyone who received a criminal conviction in the last five years is also ineligible under the bylaw.

Earlier this month, former Flying Dust Cree Nation Chief Robert Merasty issued a public letter to the chiefs of the FSIN’s 74 member nations calling for Cameron’s removal from the ballot.

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Allowing Cameron to run undermines the integrity of their election process, and the trust people have in their institutions, says Merasty, also a former FSIN vice-chief.

“Good governance is integral to any organization,” he told CTV News in a phone interview.

“If we don’t follow our own laws, in legislation we put in place to govern ourselves — we have governance issues. That’s not good for an organization.”

CTV News contacted Cameron Wednesday morning for comment on Merasty’s letter and has not yet received a response.

At the launch of his re-election campaign in September, Cameron denied he ever withheld details about his criminal record from FSIN election officials.

"I disclosed everything from; like I said, since 2011, when I first became vice-chief," he told CTV News in September.

Cameron said the conviction is over 30 years old and the rule only applies to criminal convictions in the last five years — although a separate clause of the act specifically barrs anyone with a prior conviction for theft or fraud, with no time limit specified.

Ultimately, Cameron said the members of the credentials committee determine who gets to run, and they gave him the green light.

For his part, Merasty questions why the credentials committee allows Cameron to proceed while others, including former Onion Lake Chief Wallace Fox, have been disqualified because of their criminal records.

“We have to be clear; be careful who we select to be our leaders. And we have to insist on due process,” he said.

“I'm just doing my part to say, ‘hey, wait a minute. Enough of this.’ It's time to follow the laws and legislation. You know, those principles that we stand for, to uphold those; to follow those.”

The questions around Cameron’s eligibility and his failure to disclose the criminal record until his fourth FSIN election campaign underscore what some have called a lack of transparency at the FSIN under his leadership.

Cameron has faced notable headwinds in recent years, including the allegations of election irregularities in 2021 and the launch of a forensic audit this spring by Indigenous Services Canada (ISC).

In March, ISC said it was auditing the expenditures tied to four separate federal funding agreements going back to 2019 after it received allegations of misspending.

Multiple attempts to contact the FSIN for comment about the audit in the ensuing months have been ignored, and the organization has been increasingly difficult to reach.

On Tuesday, Saskatoon Tribal Chief Mark Arcand held a press conference calling for governance reform and transparency at the FSIN.

Arcand sits on the FSIN’s treasury board and finance and audit committees, but he told reporters he was still forced to use access to information laws to obtain an internal audit report to get a closer look at the organization’s finances.

There were a number of concerning issues, Arcand said, including a significant debt load, funds intended for the benefit of member nations that weren’t being disbursed, and massive expenses on consultants’ fees, travel and per diem payments.

Outgoing FSIN vice-chief Aly Bear, who’s now running against Cameron for the role of chief, told CTV News on Wednesday that the lack of transparency at the top made her job difficult.

“There’s not enough transparency and accountability at the FSIN right now, and as the third vice-chief there was a lot of information that was being withheld,” she said.

“It deterred me from actually being able to do my job properly and being able to serve our nations the way we should.”

Like Merasty, Bear feels that Cameron should not be eligible to run based on his violation of the election bylaw.

“I think it’s very important that we continue to uphold our laws,” she said.

“At the end of the day, the rules are clear.”

The election could prove to be a pivotal one for the 78-year-old organization that was once a central figure in the movement towards First Nations’ self-governance.

Formed in a merger between two Indigenous organizations in 1946, the Union of Saskatchewan Indians initially found support from then-Saskatchewan Premier Tommy Douglas, according to Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan writer Yale Belanger.

The organization really picked up steam in the 1970s, when the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians spawned a host of educational institutions that still exist today, including what became the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies, the Saskatchewan Indigenous Cultural Centre and the First Nations University of Canada.

In the 80s and 90s, the FSIN was instrumental in creating the Office of the Treaty Commissioner, and creating a new gaming framework, establishing the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority and paving the way for Indigenous casinos in the province.