"In this place, with its overflowing garbage bins and ramshackle homes and as many people as rez dogs wandering the rutted roads and with approximately the same wary exhaustion, it is hard to argue with Shawn Atleo that Ottawa has been anything but disastrous for aboriginal Canadians.

From the Assembly of First Nations meeting in Moncton on the other side of the country, in the wake of the slaying of a dear little boy as he lay sleeping in his bed at the Samson Cree Nation here, the national AFN chief Tuesday called for the abolition of the old Indian Act and the vast Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANC) bureaucracy which, in its awful language, "supports" First Nations.

Atleo wasn't specific about what a new relationship between Ottawa and First Nations might look like, but what he was sure and blunt and correct about was that the current system is an unmitigated failure.

Such sweeping change, were it to be rooted in the killing of Ethan Yellowbird in the wee hours of Monday morning, would be the only legacy for a boy who died at the age of five.

Ethan was the grandchild of Samson Chief Marvin Yellowbird.

RCMP in Edmonton, where an autopsy was conducted Tuesday on the boy's body, said he died of a gunshot wound to the head."

Get the Story:
Christie Blatchford: Child's death a stain on system (The Calgary Herald 7/13)

Related Stories:
Five-year-old grandson of Samson Cree chief killed in drive by (7/12)