CHOICE
Choice does exist. Somehow today we don’t believe this. It is a phenomenon throughout the West. But in this country such timidity, such fear of creative action, is particularly strange.
We have never been so rich, at least not our society as a whole. We have never been so educated. As individuals we have never done such a wide variety of things: from the old trapping, chopping and digging to technology in outer space and Nobel-worthy writing. And yet we have never been so afraid, as a society, to take broad, imaginative actions of the sort that got us this far.
It is precisely that sort of decisive action, call it societal engagement, that is now needed to embrace with the Aboriginal reality.
What stops us – what stops you – from voting people out of Parliament, out of office, because of their refusal to act on indigenous matters? What stops us – you – from voting people into Parliament, into office, because they have a fair and urgent commitment on indigenous questions at the top of their action plan?
I can think of three barriers.
First there is an international, or rather Western, problem. For forty years the standard public discourse shaping responsible leadership has been that choice is limited. Extremely limited. Why? Corporate taxes are bad. Debt is bad. Public initiatives are costly and fail. The market must be left to its own devices. Meanwhile, relax. Enrich yourself. Great economic forces will set the agenda. And if they fail, well, that is the fault of the public good. In any case, there is no other choice.
This has been the central narrative for several generations now. We have been free to manoeuvre carefully within these great truths. And so we work to reduce public debt. Or are made to feel guilty if we don’t. Or are punished for not doing so by the international bodies organized to defend the current ideology. Meanwhile our laws are increasingly designed to reward self-interest at the expense of the public good.
Of course it is not true that our choices are limited. There have never been so many possibilities. Think about it: we put public education in place and built our railways long ago, with scarcely any revenues or infrastructure. Why then do we believe today that our options are so limited? Because we have accepted an ideological argument. Some political parties actively advance this ideology. The other parties are too conformist, frightened or unimaginative to change the direction. So when they come to power they limit themselves to fiddling with details.
The core of this ideology is the marginalization of the public good in favour of Hobbesian self-interest: fear the other, look after yourself. More punishment, more prison, more individualism without rules to ensure fairness. Canadians have never really bought into this elite consensus. We have stubbornly held on to the main institutions of the public good, even as the elites chip away at them. They can only chip and try to bury time bombs in vast pieces of legislation, because they know we will vote against anything overt.
But our resistance has been just that: citizen resistance. This is careful citizen wisdom manoeuvring against the massive forces of ideological and administrative conformity. The outcome is obvious: gradually the people wear down. The structures of the public good become fragile, brittle. What else should we expect to happen in the absence of imaginative initiatives and creative reforms?
Instead, in the name of reform, we have had long-term, institutionalized austerity. A cut here. A removal of coverage there. A continual push to do less with less.
But our structures were invented with imagination and purpose. They can be strengthened only if they are reformed with a constant reimagining of the public good from an ethical point of view. Properly enriched, they can even do more with less. That is the creative circle.
Fear of our imagination and the replacement of social purpose with technical efficiency leads to aridity. In the process we become increasingly frightened. As if in a vicious circle, less investment leads to fewer services, leads to a sense that we can’t afford what we have, and so on.
As for the mainstream leadership, it has become increasingly confused by the failure of its truths to produce growth or broadly shared prosperity. Unable to admit failure, it has slipped into another kind of fear, one that paralyzes all powers of self-criticism and becomes ever more insistent on continuity. So hand in hand, we and they together grow ever more afraid.
Why is this a barrier to the Aboriginal comeback? Because this generalized sense of threat, this evaporation of the self-confidence necessary for choice and action, undermines our ability to embrace any strategic question and to see it as an opportunity for changing direction in a way that will alter society.
The second barrier?
Those institutions of failure that control Aboriginal affairs in Canada have deep roots, and those individuals who have the power to improve things – the ministers, civil servants, Justice Ministry lawyers, political parties, many academics, commentators – can’t see themselves as part of the problem.
Very few of them are re-examining the narrative. Their narrative. They are convinced that they are acting in the best interest of those who they believe cannot act for themselves. And, of course, of the taxpayer. But if they were indeed acting in our shared best interest – all of us, Aboriginal and not – how could half the water systems in indigenous communities be below Canadian standards, if not outright tainted? How could they remain that way?
This deformed idea of acting responsibly could almost be described as delusional. And yet these are good people. Or could be good people within a different narrative. Meanwhile their anxiety grows as they find themselves increasingly out of step with their “clients.” Perhaps that is why the lawyers from Justice are so aggressive.
In any case, they are moving as if at war with this new and ever larger Aboriginal elite, with the indigenous court victories, with the sustained and broadening narrative coming from indigenous writers, public figures, movements and a growing number of non-Aboriginal supporters. As the cohesion and volume of this narrative grows, so will the incapacity of the official institutions to respond with openness and generosity of spirit only heighten the tension.
What makes this tension increasingly unbearable is that change is coming. They cannot stop it. The Canadian narrative will come to reflect the central indigenous role. The only question is in what conditions.
Third, and most important, I am not at all convinced that our society has changed what it believes about the Aboriginal place in Canada. We want to believe we have changed. But look in the mirror. Look at yourself. Ourselves. We have a fundamental and unacceptable situation. Unacceptable social conditions. The founding pillar of our civilization is alienated. Fundamental legal rights are not only denied but opposed by the state. And you and I, we allow all of this to drag on.
Has there been no fundamental change in attitudes? Are we incapacitated by a racism so deeply ingrained that we don’t recognize it in ourselves? Does the destructive influence of the extraction industries lie so deep within our governmental systems that we cannot even identify how it cripples our ability to set policies? Or is it an even more profound fear that if those in power were to embrace justice for indigenous peoples the whole narrative that allows them to get up in the morning and function would collapse? That the whole narrative of European civilization enlightening the northern half of the continent would evaporate? That the very explanations for each step taken would become confused? That the legitimacy of the land-holding system would evaporate?
This third barrier I am describing is about the roots of authority. It is about the fundamental mythologies that deliver legitimacy. Ah well, you think, if it is only a matter of mythology! But if it were only mythology why would power everywhere be so linked to myth? For that matter, why are writers the only social group still imprisoned and even killed by the hundreds each year around the world?
Because myth sets the form of power. It gives the force of legitimacy that allows a society to function. E. Richard Atleo (Umeek): “[M]yths are a reflection of, and a source of wisdom about, the nature of reality.”
Whether it is racism, deep-set corruption or dependency on a false myth, the problem remains the same. We have not made the fundamental decision to change what we believe about ourselves and our society. We need to take that step in order to put ourselves in sync with who we really are.
How do we take these barriers down?
We might begin by being consistent about the past. We have agreed that laws matter. Must be obeyed. That the constitutional division of powers matter. These hundred-and-fifty-year-old rules define how the federal and provincial governments function. Basic property laws are centuries old. We follow them. Our current court system was formalized by LaFontaine and Baldwin between 1848 and 1851. To the extent that laws are no longer perceived to serve justice, we reform them. But we respect continuity, the reality of the past.
The Supreme Court has made a series of rulings in the last thirty years confirming the Aboriginal position, rights and powers. Why do we allow our governments to ignore these rulings, even though they carry the answers to much of what doesn’t work for Aboriginals? Even though they confirm the reality of the indigenous position?
We cannot function as a society if we pick and choose which bits of justice to accept from our past. This is not justice. Nor does it reflect our reality. So we have an obligation – each of us – to make this clear. To ourselves. To those in power.
There is a basic principle in the relationship between indigenous peoples and newcomers going back to 1600. “[I]n the native political and legal system the concept and practice of reciprocity is of fundamental importance.” The whole practice, as the Western historian Jean Friesen puts it, of “exchange” had “magical, social, religious, political, individual and moral aspects.” “Mutual obligation.” “Balanced reciprocity.”
Balance and reciprocity. Much of what works in our society is based on balance and reciprocity. Transfer payments. Health care. The only group not to benefit is the group that actually installed this concept of governance. Again, for each of us as citizens it is a matter of being honest with ourselves. We must act to ensure that balance and reciprocity are applied in indigenous relations, as agreed to in the treaties.
This won’t happen as long as the Department of Indian Affairs exists, certainly in its current form. The department needs to be stripped of its “ward of the state” powers. As for the lawyers at the Department of Justice, the simple solution to removing the adversarial, verging on violent, atmosphere would be to transfer them elsewhere and bring in lawyers experienced in reconciliation and mediation. There is no lack of lawyers in Canada today who understand treaty questions, understand the need to settle fast, and are sympathetic to the ideas of restitution, reconciliation, balance and reciprocity.
To put this bluntly, the federal and provincial governments and their lawyers seem determined to pretend that repeated rulings of the Supreme Court have not happened. But lots of other lawyers respect the Court and understand these rulings.
Stripping the department of its power and changing the legal outline of government is merely a first step. It makes action possible. That action requires massive and urgent consultation – the kind of consultation that does not begin from some corporate decision to dig a hole or build a pipeline.
Yet the government itself admits that it has no “consistent consultation protocol or policy to provide guidance to provinces and companies concerning the level of consultation and forms of accommodation required by the constitutional duty to consult.” Why? Because the federal government does not itself have a proper protocol or policy. James Anaya, reporting on the indigenous situation in Canada for the UN Human Rights Council in 2014, pointed out, “[T]he Government appears to view the overall interests of Canadians as adverse to aboriginal interests, rather than encompassing them.”
Yet the urgency of the situation calls for an all-encompassing approach. Think of how we turned the situation of francophones and the French language around in the 1960s and 1970s with multiple strategies – financial transfers, francophone minority school boards, French immersion, bilingual government services, public policies on hiring and language skills. We took risks. We invented brand-new approaches. We invested a lot of money. The result has been a remarkable success. Think of how we energized and balanced our immigration/citizenship policies with the point system, myriad support programs, language courses, partnership programs. Again: risk taking, inventions, investment. The result is a cutting-edge approach to citizenship.
In these two areas we understood that we were faced with choosing to act or suffering some very real consequences. So we took action. The effect has been remarkable.
The Aboriginal situation is both more fundamental to the country and reflects a more basic social crisis. In 1988 in Edmonton, Georges Erasmus was elected to a second term as national chief. In his acceptance speech he warned: “Canada, if you do not deal with this generation of leaders and seek peaceful solutions, then we cannot promise that you are going to like the kind of violent political action that we can just about guarantee the next generation is going to bring to you.” This was not long before Oka.
Asked by a CBC journalist what he meant, Erasmus replied, “We come from a tradition of people where we warn our enemies. Normally we give three warnings. The First Nations have given Canada the first warning.” Erasmus wasn’t calling for violence any more than Taiaiake Alfred is today. And we are now well past the third warning. His point was simple: “The Canadian government is not taking our issues seriously.” There will be consequences. They still aren’t, even though the direction of events is clear. And the consequences are becoming ever more obvious.
Private Patrick Cloutier, the 22e Régiment, and Brad Larocque, Mohawk Warrior and University of Saskatchewan economics student, during the Oka crisis, September 1, 1990. © Shaney Komulainen/The Canadian Press.
If you focus on our governments you may become depressed about what is happening. I prefer to focus on the growing power of the indigenous peoples and the existing power that all of us have as citizens.
“Canada is a test case for a grand notion – the notion that dissimilar peoples can share land, resources, power and dreams while respecting and sustaining their differences.” So began the commissioners’ introduction to the four-thousand-page report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, co-chaired by Georges Erasmus and René Dussault. There it is. There is the narrative that reflects us. “The story of Canada is the story of many such peoples, trying and failing and trying again to live together in peace and harmony.”
“But there can be no peace or harmony unless there is justice.”
You see here the clarity of an argument that makes sense in the Canadian context. Ovide Mercredi, another remarkable former national chief: “These two goals of remaining distinct peoples and belonging as equals to a larger national community, such as a country, are not inconceivable dreams.” Or E. Richard Atleo (Umeek), who writes about how to promote “balance and harmony between beings” using “the laws of the positive side of polarity.”
Those among us who are addicted to the Euro-U.S. model of the nation state are confused by such words. They always have been. This is not the logic of the monolithic state with its assertion of a dominant culture and a centralized mythology. In their terms this cannot be a real state. Here lies the core of all negative tensions in Canada. Many of our leaders are themselves addicted to the Euro-U.S. Westphalian model. They desperately attempt to fabricate simplistic myths – peopled by royal families, military triumphs, heroes, Canadian values or Quebec values – that turn out to be lifted directly from Britain or France or the United States. You might say these are simple, old-fashioned concepts of patriotism. But in this case old-fashioned refers to a model that has never worked here, a model that leads to the kind of patriotic misery experienced in Europe and the United States when races are ranked, languages forbidden, cultures excluded, one religion set in place as the official faith, or all religions marginalized so that the state’s monolithic mythology can become the state religion. This is disingenuously called a secular state. And all of this is done in the name of a safe, aggressively simplified and centralized mythology.
But if that is so, you ask, what is it that holds us together in our non-monolithic model? Go back to the ideas I have been relaying – peace and harmony, balance and harmony, balance and reciprocity. Listen to the elegance of the word notion used where others would have needed nation: “The notion that dissimilar peoples can share land, resources, power and dreams while respecting and sustaining their differences.” “There can be no peace and harmony unless there is justice.” This reminds me of the old Canadian motto of Peace, Welfare and Good Government, in which welfare refers to the public good or justice. I describe this in A Fair Country.
Here is one more quote. Alexander Morris, lieutenant governor of Manitoba in the 1870s and chief treaty negotiator: “[I wish] to take the Ojibwa by the hand and never let go your hand.” We know that his motives were mixed, even confused. But we also know that these words were “accepted and understood in a moral as well as literal sense.” And he knew this himself. That’s why he used the words. He wished them to be understood that way. He committed the state to a permanent reciprocal relationship. It hardly matters what the legal papers say because in an oral relationship the legal relationship is oral. That is why the Supreme Court so often decides for the Aboriginal side.
A court of justice cannot reward hypocrisy or outright lies. The government and its representatives repeatedly constructed Canada by using the language and meaning of Aboriginal peoples – the language of long-term commitments in the most complete sense. As the strength of indigenous peoples returns, the courts are holding our governments to the language they used in order to gain power.
That is good for all of us, and for a very good reason. To the extent that Canada was built through the use of Aboriginal concepts, the door is open to all of us imagining ourselves in a way that is both interesting and appropriate. And the growing Aboriginal leadership has already made an invaluable contribution. It has given itself the skills necessary to understand not only the indigenous points of view but also the cultural confusion of the rest of us. This matters because we have not yet learned to listen. I think this is why so many indigenous intellectuals are making the effort not only to explain themselves, but to describe how they see the system.
Jim Dumont: “The prevailing and dominating worldview that surrounds us today and to which we are compelled to respond is one that is narrow in its vision, exclusive and detached in relating to the total environment, analytical and deductive in its perception and thinking, linear in its doing, and hierarchical and competitive in its management of the field of activity.” In other words, it is “deficient in most of the qualities of higher intelligence.”
But wait, the crisis is in the Aboriginal world. Is it not? Yes, there are unresolved indigenous problems, many of them the outcome of policies and structures maintained by Canada.
But is the more profound crisis not in the non-Aboriginal world? If not, why would we find it so difficult to listen – to listen seriously – to the points of view coming from the founding pillar of our civilization? Are we so insecure? So frightened to absorb views that after all have been central to Canada’s establishment and survival? Or is it a lack of sensibility? An emotional wall constructed unconsciously to protect ourselves from the reality of this place? Or a simple lack of consciousness? Or all of the above?
Leroy Little Bear: “Any individual within a culture is going to have his or her own personal interpretation of the collective cultural code; however the individual’s world view has its roots in the culture – that is, in the society’s shared philosophy, values and customs. If we are to understand how Aboriginal and Eurocentric world views clash, we need to understand how the philosophy, values and customs of Aboriginal culture differ from those of Eurocentric cultures.”
I began A Fair Country by saying that Canada is a métis civilization, a civilization influenced by the Métis model of complexity. The Métis people have demonstrated that complexity can be a civilizational model. Their power and influence through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and their role as political and economic intermediaries are an illustration of this. Look at how important they were in shaping the fur trade, making possible what the Europeans called exploration and negotiating relationships, including treaties. We non-Aboriginals are somehow a disordered version of their formalized complexity. Leroy Little Bear argues that the last hundred and fifty years have undone, but not destroyed, separate existences, and have left Aboriginal peoples with “a heritage of jagged worldviews.” “[A] random puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle.” You could say the same of non-Aboriginals. The difference is that indigenous peoples have a conscious sense of this complexity. “Aboriginal consciousness became a site of overlapping, contentious, fragmented, competing desires and values.” The challenge today is how to use this complexity. As the indigenous elite grows stronger, its members are drawing from this overlapping fragmentation the very different roots and shapes of their own origins. How? By using their “ambidextrous consciousness.”
Key to this has been the emergence of formalized, written indigenous philosophy, schools of philosophy based in universities. It is a burgeoning world. Things are being said. Philosophers are proposing ethical outlines for society. And their arguments are rooted here. Compare this with the mainstream departments of philosophy, mired as they are in footnoting European ideas, an arid world of colonial references.
Where does all of this leave non-Aboriginals? On the surface we have slowly declined into an unhappy state of self-satisfaction based on utilitarian views of society. Public policy is reduced to self-interest and the mechanics of administration. This satisfies no one, so we must be distracted by wildly improbable attempts at jingoism. And jingoism takes us back to the old European models of belonging.
So the philosophical questions are important. How are we to imagine ourselves? The answer shapes what we think we can do.
Jim Dumont: “The circle, then, being primary, influences, in every way, how we see the world. In the process of how life evolves – how the natural world grows and works together, how all things move toward their destiny while changing from one stage to another – the circle should be evidenced everywhere we look.”
The idea of conceiving society in this way is no longer a mystery to many Canadians. We have learned something over the last few years. Or remembered. But we seem now to be at the point where some will say – Ah yes, the circle, of course, of course – as if to say – Enough, let’s get back to something serious like rational management, as if already nervous to be on non-linear territory. There is still a strong sense that only the rational, linear approach is properly sophisticated and requires constant attention and study, while the circular, inclusive approach is somehow romantic and simplistic. I could easily argue that the exact opposite is true.
Here we come close to why the Aboriginal comeback is so important for all of us. Look, for example, at Canada’s approach to immigration and citizenship. It owes nothing to the Western rational idea of how to organize a nation state or to define belonging. That is why it is successful. It is entirely a product of circular ideas of belonging, the almost unconscious outcome of immigrants being welcomed here in a particular way over three centuries by indigenous peoples. When it goes wrong – the migrant workers program, for example – it is always the result of an attempt to rationalize or Europeanize or Americanize the system.
The risk of veering off track is heightened today by the growing atmosphere of fear in the West, pushed hard by the various security services and the revived old-style nationalists. Those who function through fear cannot help but see the relaxed, open, happily confused Canadian approach to immigration and citizenship as a threat. If our system works, well then, their own devotion to fear is suddenly misplaced.
Do they really care? I certainly notice the negative pressure on our approach whenever I am in an international gathering of experts, for example on security or immigration. They seem comfortable talking only about migrants, identity politics, the impossible differences between ethnicities and religions. They don’t want to talk about immigrants transforming themselves with relative ease into engaged citizens and working with others in a relaxed way across ethnic and religious differences.
Here you see the power of the indigenous conceptual approach to belonging. Leroy Little Bear: “The function of Aboriginal values and customs is to maintain the relationships that hold creation together.” This is the exact opposite of the deconstructive approach dominant in the West.
During the 1960s and 70s a small group of Westerners, including Rachel Carson, Barbara Ward and Maurice Strong, developed environmentalism into an international movement. Phrases like sustainable development and biodiversity emerged. Maurice Strong’s role has been that of organizer across cultural lines, both political and intellectual. He organized the UN’s 1972 environmental conference in Stockholm, then the United Nations Environmental Programme, then the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. He was closely involved with and influenced by indigenous peoples in Canada. This began in 1945, when he left school in southern Manitoba, aged sixteen, to work in the Inuit community of Chesterfield Inlet, now known as Igluligaarjuk, in Nunavut.
Why do I mention this? Because the environmental movement seems now to be held back by Western intellectual structures that have sidelined the major questions, like global warming, into a confusion of competing facts and a desperate attempt to analyze these questions from a linear, utilitarian point of view. Any conceptual or holistic approach is ridiculed or punished. But you can only change directions on major issues through a conceptual, holistic approach. Leroy Little Bear: “All things are animate, imbued with spirit, and in constant motion. In this realm of energy and spirit, interrelationships between all entities are of paramount importance, and space is a more important referent than time.”
A few years ago this would have been automatically dismissed as talking to rocks. Now we can see that it is a philosophy that allows biodiversity to make sense, as well as the idea of sustainability. And for that matter the ideas of balance and harmony.
E. Richard Atleo (Umeek) explains that Western ideas of democracy miss a whole series of essential elements present in indigenous philosophy. Why do we have so much trouble taking sustainability seriously? Because our underlying ideas of progress and individual rights eliminate it. Continuity is not a Western democratic idea. But it is an indigenous idea. Atleo: “The democratic principle of continuity, which addresses the fundamental issue of the right of life forms to continue their ways of life, does not formally exist within the constitutions of the Western world.”
In other words, the Aboriginal comeback carries with it many ideas and approaches to ideas that represent a great advantage for all of us.
On March 8, 2013, for the second time in a young year, the courts spoke out on Aboriginal issues and more specifically on Métis questions. This time it was the Supreme Court, and it settled the question of the rights of the Manitoba Métis to land. Once again the Court came down clearly on their side. Since the 1870s the Métis have argued that the federal government had acted improperly and unfairly toward them. And now, at last, the Supreme Court has made it perfectly clear that the Manitoba Métis had been cheated out of their land by the Government of Canada. That is, by you and me. That the Government of Canada betrayed the Honour of the Crown. And we are the Crown. You and I.
It had taken almost 150 years, but in 2013 the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Manitoba Métis land claim, a quest begun by Louis Riel (1844–November 16, 1885). © Glenbow Museum, NA-504-3.
So there will be some sort of restitution. This is the inevitable evolution of events. This is where we are going.
But the old question remains. Will we – you and I – once again prevaricate, drag it out, haggle? Will we allow our government and their lawyers – our lawyers – to act this way? Or will we embrace this restitution with enthusiasm as an opportunity to right a wrong and so put our country back on track?
In the same month as this court decision, the federal budget introduced a First Nations Job Fund aimed at youth. There had been no consultations with First Nations. The description of this job training program talked of “mandatory participation,” “compliance” and so on. This sounds like very old-fashioned, top-down, authoritarian do-gooding. It doesn’t sound like a respectful approach. And it certainly doesn’t sound like an appropriate way to treat citizens, particularly given the government’s obligation to consult first, as laid out in the Haida court decision. The residential-school movement was filled with language like mandatory and compliance, all done in the best interest of those Indians.
A few months later the First Nations education bill was launched. It eventually produced the resignation of Shawn A-in-chut Atleo as national chief, then ground to a halt.
In the midst of all this confusion of contradictory initiatives, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission came to Vancouver. In the middle of a West Coast downpour, as many as seventy thousand citizens marched through the city in support of the Aboriginal cause.
On June 25, 2014, the City Council of Vancouver voted unanimously to acknowledge that the city sits on unceded Aboriginal territory. This is not merely a politeness or a formality. Yes, it is a gesture of respect to the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. “[T]hese territories were never ceded through treaty, war or surrender,” the motion reads. Beyond reconciliation, Vancouver’s decision represents the beginning of a form of restitution. The city will adopt “appropriate protocols” for doing business. What does that mean? Well, it could mean the first steps in reconceptualizing the public space so that indigenous ways come back into the core of how we do things and what we do.
Seventy thousand citizens march for reconciliation through a Vancouver downpour, September 22, 2013. © Pauline Petit/Reconciliation Canada.
A day later, on June 26, the Supreme Court ruled on the case of the Tsilhqot’in Nation versus British Columbia. They ruled that full Aboriginal title to land does exist. This is a dramatic confirmation of the resurgence of Aboriginal power and influence. It confirms the evolution of the last half century, changes the nature of all remaining treaty negotiations and classifies the need for corporations to deal with Aboriginal authorities as if they have authority. It was a historic day for Aboriginal peoples, but also for all of us. It is one of the most important legal decisions of our contemporary era.
British Columbia’s minister of justice made an almost positive statement in response: “The decision provides additional certainty around processes and tests that are applied to the relationship between the Province and Aboriginal peoples.” The federal minister used the standard avoidance phrase: the government will review the “complex and significant issues” in the decision. But then he tried to drive a wedge between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals, calling for “settlements that balance the interests of all Canadians.” There was no hint of the need to right wrongs. No hint of a right to justice for indigenous peoples. Everything was reduced to a utilitarian argument over interests; that is, self-interest, in which the interests of thirty-two million apparently selfish people are to be weighed against – that is, opposed to – those of less than two million apparently selfish people. This approach is demeaning for all thirty-four million of us. What it means is that the government cannot bring itself to admit what is happening. But it is happening anyway.
In the Tsilhqot’in statement made after the ruling, I noticed these words describing the governmental approach: “[An] impoverished view of title.” And those of Grand Chief Phillip of the Union of British Columbia’s Indian Chiefs: “The Supreme Court of Canada completely repudiated the greatly impoverished and highly prejudicial position of the B.C. and Federal governments.”
Impoverished! I don’t want to be part of an ethically, intellectually, culturally impoverished policy. An impoverishment of the Honour of the Crown.
This is a matter of self-respect. But it is also about politics. Taiaiake Alfred: “Politics is the force that channels social, cultural, and economic powers and makes them imminent in our lives. Abstaining from politics is like turning your back on a beast when it is angry and intent on ripping your guts out.”
There was a small sign of change during the 2014 Quebec election. In the northern riding of Ungava, Inuit and other Aboriginals made a concerted effort to defeat a party that had always held the seat. The Aboriginals had the potential to hold the balance of power, and they succeeded. At both the federal and provincial levels, this could be true in many non-urban ridings. With half the Aboriginals living in cities, it could also be true for many Western downtown seats. Add to this the possible use of their votes by non-Aboriginals who understand that this is the great issue of our time. All together, these votes could represent the balance of power in Parliament and in many legislatures. It is a matter of making it clear to parties and candidates that this is an issue that will weigh heavily when we vote.
There is a great deal of talk today about the importance of authenticity in what people and societies do. More and more of us sense that we must rethink our narrative, re-examine our myths.
What is happening around Aboriginal people today in Canada is all about authenticity. Theirs. Ours. Theirs and ours shared in some way. All of us, from indigenous peoples to the original francophones and anglophones and through the successive waves of immigration to the most recently sworn-in citizen, must examine our actions.
Failure at this time will do more than shape the memory of a government or the reputation of a prime minister. It will affect us all, in the way that the hanging of Louis Riel still affects the reputation of John A. Macdonald and dogs our sense of ourselves as a country.
But if we start down a road of shared reconciliation and restitution, we will have taken a crucial step in building a sense of ourselves and the country. It is a matter of being true to where we are, to what is fair and possible here. That consciousness, that sense of ourselves, will solidify our ability to live together and to do so in an atmosphere of justice.
