THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT is haunted by two issues affecting indigenous north of the 49th, and that just will not go into that good night: the Indian Residential School issue and that of missing Aboriginal women. It is the former that cuts across the political, social and economic spheres like a swathe, because it is based upon a vile trope, that it is necessary to “kill the Indian in the child,” implying that the existential and cultural essence of an aboriginal is something to be erased. It is a tragic issue, it resonates, but it is only one of a pleiade of indigenous tragedies around the world, each of which can be traced back to the Papal Bulls of Discovery. The UN estimates there are 370 million indigenous worldwide, representing over 5000 ethnic groups.
The goal of the Long March to Rome was both singleminded in its focus on the “blueprint for discovery” and broad in its implications, as the Papal Bulls were the enabling statute that legitimized the issuance of letters patent to the Cabots, who are credited with discovery of the Americas. To the extent possible, we also wanted to keep independent of politics or other considerations. It astounds me to this day that we didn’t, or rather I didn’t face up to the patent absurdity of considering that to be a reasonable expectation. It was exposing a flank without any hope of avoiding a debacle.
Canada also had its vulnerabilities, but they would only emerge in the 21st century as a result of processes that had begun in the 20th century and earlier. But there were unhealthy desires — the desire not to be good, but to be seen to be good. The desire not to be seen as American. The desire to deal with our past differently. But, because of our hubris, we failed to see some of the ironies staring us in the face. The first core reality of Canada is that it is a colony, but the fact that its faces were predominantly white until the 1990s cast a veil over the fact that we were no less a colony than African countries, particularly those who had been “decolonized” rather than opting for a revolution and a republic.
Somehow in the Canadian mind we still cultivate our complex that we are superior to the Americans — brave but without the racism. It is our greatest taboo, that we are instinctively not just good, but better than those south of the 49th. It is a taboo of recent vintage, our humble forefathers not having yet acquired the modern label of hubris. Yet, at the same time, we were burying the history of our soldiers, the very guarantors of our freedom. Something of our martial achievements, unrivalled in the world, was shunned by the ruling classes.
Other myths sprang up, that of a “natural governing party,” that of multiculturalism and diversity. Of a Scandinavian sense of social justice. Hubris was the prevailing theme and would be embedded in the form of the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms and section 35 that would grant supra-constitutional protection to aboriginal rights. That Pandora’s Box would eventually become untenable, and now, the country is in a legal and political shamble, but one that no-one dares acknowledge.
All of this was done of course without much mention of Canada’s historic role in dealing with its First Nations. It’s odd, because in the beginning, they truly were treated as autonomous nations. That changed during a successive entrenchment of policies that more closely mirrored the American approach of “civilizing” indigenous peoples, and drawing them away from their collective notions of society:
Thus, the old military partnership between British regular forces, Canadian militia, and Indian warriors was to be refashioned, and in its place, Imperial authorities, local officers of the British Indian department, and missionaries would work together to ensure the growth of Christian civilization among the “barbarous” and unsettled tribes of the Canadas1.
This policy — and that of refusing rights of ownership to Canada’s indigenous — was born directly of the Papal Bulls and the notion that non-Christians were barbarians. The Canadian government’s approach — a truth and reconciliation commission à la South Africa, was what it was. Canada is not that different from Africa — the overriding issue is getting resources to market without being caught in a squeeze by multinationals or China or the US or all of the above. Reconciliation was about getting resources to market, and if truth had to be compromised along the way, well so be it.
While in Quebec, although always careful to not join the sovereignist cause, living side-by-side with nationalists left an enduring impression upon me. They had assumed I was a federalist, just “pas comme les autres.” Although I refused to state it, the fact was that I was more than sympathetic to the idea of Quebec sovereignty, and today believe they’d be better off to dictate their own terms of independence. And, I had seen the clear evidence through my research into 19th century history in Quebec and at the Sorbonne of the role of the Catholic Church in keeping the Québécois from political and social emancipation. The other was the tactic of the federal government to constantly reach accommodations rather than discuss root causes of discontent.
In the end, the Vatican held a position not that far from their original one — that the doctrine characterizing the indigenous as barbarians was “ancient history” and the indigenous had to work with the bishops if they wanted to get anywhere. End of story.