THE RACIAL LENS
There is one other important, more profound way to see this situation. Look at our history. The structures within which Aboriginals must work have been artificially put in place by governments, largely by London and Ottawa, actively supported by provincial governments. British Columbia, with its determined blockage of treaty negotiations, deserves special mention. And what are these structures? Treaty versus non-Treaty Indians. Status versus non-Status Indians. Status or non-Status based on what are effectively complex calculations of blood.
Imagine! We have imposed on Aboriginal people a method of calculation that defines their rights and place in society. And that calculation is based on the worst form of European racism, which assumes there is virtue in the purity of blood lineage. This method was formalized in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the empires were busy justifying their growing power on the basis of Darwinian racial superiority. This required a measurement of race. Blood was a pseudo-scientific characteristic useful in the creation of a racial pecking order. And it could be applied to all peoples with the certainty that science – being European – would put the Europeans on top. What was absolutely clear in this Darwinesque theory was that interracial marriages produced a dilution of blood. A watering down of purity, and therefore of such things as nobility of character and intelligence. How fortunate that modern science could be invoked in support of the British, French, German, American and Italian empires. Better still, progress and a racial pecking order and blood purity could be linked. Imperial officials, succeeded by Canadian officials, could apply all this to the administration of Indian affairs. Science comforting power! A wonderful coincidence. No! No! There is no lucky accident here. It is destiny. Wonderful, disinterested, Darwinian destiny.
But it doesn’t stop there. This is grand theory. Global. All-inclusive. It encompasses the natural superiority of men over women. Long after 1982, when equal rights for women were given constitutional status in the Charter of Rights and specifically for Aboriginal women in the amended constitution itself, the patriarchal truth of the Indian Act is still being picked away at. The status of men versus the status of women is only one part of this. Rights on- versus off-reserve. Marrying non-Aboriginals and losing status because of watered-down blood. And on and on.
All of this was invented by imperial-minded officials who saw the world through a racial lens. They brought with them from Britain their racial views and legally enveloped the whole Aboriginal world within them. These views were taken up by the Department of Indian Affairs and those who worked in this domain. All of us were partly trapped by such delusional European beliefs in the centrality of race. Today it is fairly safe to say that most Canadians have escaped from it. But the assumptions of the late-nineteenth-century legal system leave Aboriginals largely trapped within its logic. And imperial systems are always designed to divide those who are to be dominated. It is easier to dominate people if you can divide them against each other. Race, religion, territory and the assignment of privileges are the traditional tools.
Again, these racial theories are not Aboriginal concepts. Again, this is a case where blame needs to be assigned. Again, this humiliating and divisive system was not of their doing.