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“It would be nice to have that election code,” he said. “But it would cost a lot of money to get the mail-in ballots and send them out all over the country: it would be almost $10,000.”

While he admits the election process is divisive, he said he’s confident Tuesday’s election will go off without a hitch. “There’s going to be complaints as usual, but it will die down.”

Jocelyn Iahtail has also written about her concerns to every authority figure she can think of: the Ontario Provincial Police, AANDC, the RCMP, members of Parliament, the Mushkegowuk Tribal Council (which includes Attawapiskat), and the Assembly of First Nations.

“They all know about the problems but, for us, there’s no recourse,” she said. “There’s no protection. Where do we go for help? We’ve gone everywhere that you can think of and we’re told the very same thing that everyone else is told: consult with your chief and council. But, if our chief and council are not willing to even respond or speak about it, where do we go?”

This current structure is not working and we’re repeating it again and again and again

“We have an over $10-million deficit and none of the candidates have addressed that and said how they’re going to proceed and what are the effective solutions.”

“There are plenty of educated people from Attawapiskat,” said Jocelyn Iahtail, who also takes issue with the low profile of the band council candidate nomination process. “We’ve got doctors and lawyers and accountants who are living off-reserve so they can get a job, go to school, or for health reasons. They need to be part of this process if anything is going to change.”

Iahtail said friends and family living in Attawapiskat who feel the same way are afraid to come forward because the chief and council control housing, health, education and finances for the band and they don’t want to be punished.

“This current structure is not working and we’re repeating it again and again and again,” she said, noting that other First Nations have benefited from updating their election codes. “There are a lot of functional and healthy bands. Ours is not.”