Four Manitoba native leaders are defending their expensive trip to an exclusive cocktail party at the Prime Minister's home last week.

The chiefs used more than $15,000 of band funds to pay for a charter flight to Ottawa to attend a function for big donors to the Liberal Party.

Critics have questioned whether that cash would have been better spent improving living conditions on reserves, rather than flying to the two-hour party last Wednesday.

But Chris Henderson, grand chief of the Southern Chiefs Organization, says the money was an investment, and that donating to the Liberals is the best way to get access to Ottawa's political elite to lobby for change on reserves.

"I've got no regrets in making that trip," says Henderson. "If I had to do it again, I would do it again. By no means was that trip luxurious in any way."

Also attending the party at 24 Sussex Drive was Ron Evans, chief of the Norway House Cree Nation, Arnold Ouskan, grand chief of the Keewatin Tribal Council, and Sidney Garrioch, grand chief of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak.

Winnipeg Centre MP Pat Martin finds the whole thing appalling. "The idea that chiefs, aboriginal leaders, feel that they have to buy access to the power structure in Ottawa, that they have to shell out of their pockets to touch the hem of the garment of the Prime Minister  where's the dignity?"

The chiefs say the flights were so expensive because they didn't decide to attend until Tuesday morning, the day before the reception. By that time, says Garrioch, no commercial airlines had cheaper flights available that would get them back to Manitoba in time for an Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs conference in Norway House.

The chiefs say there were some tangible results from the trip: they learned the federal Indian Affairs minister will be in Manitoba in a few weeks, and they say they have secured a meeting with him.