In an attempt to discuss the impact of residential schools on the families of survivors and strategies for the future, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs is opening a national intergenerational conference next week in Winnipeg. It is the first intergenerational event on the issue that is First Nations-led.

A media release by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that revealed the salaries paid to some chiefs and councillors across Canada has tarred all First Nations leaders with the same brush.

I have to admit that when I first saw the information, I was both flabbergasted and outraged. "How can these guys do this to their people?" I thought.

However, a deeper look reveals the flaws in the CTF's analysis.

It appears that the salary grid in Saskatchewan is less onerous than it is in other provinces. According to a statement from the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, about one-third of the First Nations leaders here make less than $40,000 a year, and only a few exceed $100,000.

Forty-seven years ago, a great American civil rights leader took the stage at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in what has come to be remembered as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of the United States.

Citing the Emancipation Proclamation, a statement which served as a great beacon of hope for millions facing enslavement and flames of withering injustice, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. announced to 200,000 civil rights supporters, advocates, and allies sharing in the same strive for justice and purpose that although the United States had issued African-Americans a blank cheque of equality and freedom, the true spirit of the society was, in fact, not bankrupt of liberty and integrity, but instead stocked of opportunity.

A hundred years ago indigenous people traveled for many miles by any means possible to address the land question in British Columbia. On August 25, 1910, chiefs from Secwepemc, Okanagan and Nlaka'pamux met at Spences Bridge and wrote the "Memorial to Sir Wilfrid Laurier."

On June 11 this year, the leadership of those three nations met at Spences Bridge to reaffirm and rededicate that Memorial to a prime minister who read their grievance and promised to meet with them, but never did.

When Laurier received the document, written in English by James Teit, he was on the campaign trail for re-election. He made the promised but lost the election. Sir Robert Borden replaced him, and ignored the chiefs' demands for redress, for treaties and certainty.