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But one week after his second annual meeting with First Ministers and indigenous leaders on clean growth and climate change, the two national aboriginal organizations have been disappointed again.

“I don’t think it’s a tough decision for the prime minister to have two more representatives sitting at the table,” NWAC president Francyne Joe told National Observer. “He states he’s a feminist, he states indigenous relations are high priorities for his government, and yet he’s specifically excluding a national indigenous group that has been recognized by the courts. Why?”

A pattern of exclusion

Both NWAC and CAP have been considered among the five major organizations representing aboriginal people in Canada since the days of the Kelowna Accord, along with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the Métis National Council (MNC), and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK).

Only the last three however, were granted an audience with Trudeau and the premiers during climate discussions in Vancouver in March, and again, in Ottawa last Friday. NWAC and CAP were also left out of a meeting on advancing reconciliation with the prime minister on Thursday that was attended by leaders of AFN, ITK, and a Métis representative from Manitoba………

According to a recent report by Health Canada, some Canadians are more exposed than others to the health risks associated with climate change, particularly northern residents, children and seniors, and those who are chronically ill, homeless, low income, or living off of the land.

ndigenous people, especially women and girls, fall into many of these categories, and some even fall into all of them. Roughly 17 per cent of aboriginal women live in poverty, face food insecurity, and struggle to access the public services that could help them, according to a 2012 report by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development,

“Indigenous women have been experiencing gender oppression within not just Canadian society, but within our own aboriginal societies,” said Joe of NWAC. “So sometimes I think our views are not going to be as well-represented by these male-dominated indigenous groups.

“If you have an aboriginal woman who has lost her right to status because of the Indian Act’s sex discrimination or her mother married off-reserve, never once did that aboriginal woman give up her indigenousness, interest or rights being represented by these groups, and yet these groups do not consult her on the issues that are going to affect her and her children.”………….. http://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/12/16/news/indigenous-leaders-shocked-again-repeated-exclusion-trudeaus-climate-talks