In the Canadian
and US federal systems of government, Native Indians or First
Nations are considered to be semi-self-governing states within
states. Just as Ontario is a province within Canada, or Nevada is a
state within the US, aboriginal groups have their own state-like
status within the provinces and states. These territories are often
called reserves or reservations. In many cases, the settler
(European ancestry groups) forced the natives onto the least
productive land, so these reservations were not ideal places for a
people to lead an independent life.
Canada is a
very large country that was settled by Europeans from east to west
between the 16th and 19th centuries. Thus the contact with a great
diversity of indigenous people happened within a great diversity of
historical periods.
The historical
context and legal framework of treaties were different in each time
and place. Treaties also had to deal with the Metis--those people of
mixed European and indigenous blood who had become quite numerous by
the time the British and Canadian governments came to enforce their
laws on the land.
Terminology for
referring to indigenous people is problematic. In Canada it has
become common to speak of First Nations, but terms such as Indian,
aboriginal, and native are still used, with some confusion about
which are acceptable and not offensive.
Members of
First Nations have rights within their groups, but it is difficult
to establish fair rules of membership when people marry with
outsiders. Should status be inherited through fathers or mothers, or
both? What happens when “the blood gets thin” over generations and
people have adopted the culture of mainstream society? Many legal
frameworks define aboriginal status through a "blood quantum." Over
several generations, such a system is likely to lead to a decrease
in the number of people who qualify.
The treaties
were usually broken, and they were problematic in terms of the
implicit understandings the two sides had about their meaning. The
aboriginal groups had no tradition of written language, so the
written documents didn’t have the same significance for them as they
had for the settlers. The settlers would point out what was
specifically stated in the written text (if they honored the treaty
at all) as if it were a contract, but the aboriginal groups would
emphasize the ongoing trust, friendship and concern for mutual
benefit represented by the commitments made in the past. Just as a
married couple would not mistake their marriage certificate for
their relationship, the natives emphasized the importance of
co-existing in good faith as circumstances changed in ways no one
could have predicted when the treaties were first signed.
Today, First
Nations are not very interested in full political independence
because they know their primary battle is economic independence, and
many sovereign, independent nations are still effectively colonized
by stronger economic forces. Control of resources, maintaining
traditions and a clean environment are the key issues. Sometimes
they don’t even want to use the resources they have because the risk
of environmental destruction is too great.
This concern
creates conflict with resources companies and governments that wish
to influence First Nation governments. These days, the biggest
struggle is not with the outsiders but with the First Nation leaders
who have made development deals with resource companies. These
companies promise jobs and integration with the modern world, but
many natives see this as a road to ruin.
In fact, many
natives have held on to a firm belief, ever since contact with
Europeans, that the outsiders are a temporary nightmare that will be
gone after a few hundred years. They must plan for a day when their
civilization will collapse and humans will have to live on the land
in the ancient low-tech way they used to live.
Some people
like to promote the virtues of Western Civilization such as
democracy, human rights, accountable government and so on. They
argue that all is for the best. Though they may acknowledge the
mistakes of the past, they promote the continued assimilation of
aboriginal culture into the mainstream of society. They claim it is
pessimistic and useless to believe that civilization will collapse,
the world population will decline by billions, and we will go back
to hunting and agrarian lifestyles.
Another
important chapter in Canadian history (which is similar in the US
and Australia) is the period in the late 19th and early 20th century
when native communities were shattered by a policy of breaking bonds
between parents and children. Children were forcibly taken from
their parents and put into residential schools run by the Catholic
and Protestant churches. This was an attempt to destroy their
cultures and languages, but it failed to integrate them into
Canadian society. They were often abused by their teachers, but even
when they were treated well, the original crime of abducting them
from their families could not be erased. The graduates of these
schools went back to their communities but had no traditional
survival skills. They didn’t even have the skills to be husbands,
wives, mothers and fathers because they had experienced no family
life as children. Drug, alcohol and crime are now prevalent in First
Nation communities, and the damage goes down to the next generation.
This history was not taught to Canada until very recently.
As a result of
past policies, many native communities are sociological disasters
which no one knows how to fix. There have been some success stories
of cultural and linguistic revival. Things started to improve in the
1990s when a generation of well-educated aboriginals went back to
their communities or into politics, but still this "success" is
controversial because it is the white man's version of success, and
it often depends on money that flows from resource extraction:
lumber, oil and minerals. Some aboriginals disagree with making any
accommodations with resource companies.
It is
impossible to cover this large topic in just one week and one
ninety-minute class. Whatever resource I chose would be limited in
its scope. I chose the documentary film Treading
Water because as a case study of one small community it
highlights many of the problems we can see generalized throughout
the world wherever aboriginal communities are facing crises and
struggling to co-exist with the capitalist economy that surrounds
them.
I chose this
film partly because it generalizes to another topic that is on
everyone’s mind these days: the destruction and trauma caused by
natural and human-caused disasters. The film illustrates something
that is too common in all these disasters. The people most affected
by them are the people who have a history of being at the margins of
society and being mistreated in the past. When a disaster strikes
they are in double trouble. The disaster by itself is bad enough,
but they must also fight to be seen and treated as equals.
The film
Treading Water
tells the story of a native community that was destroyed by a flood
in 2011. Coincidentally, it happened at the same time as thousands
of people in Japan were also dealing with an enormous flood, the
tsunami of March 2011. (
I
wrote about this connection on my blog). The film shows the
general effects of such a natural disaster, but it also reveals the
historical and continuing racism and strained relations between
natives and the settler community. At some times we see government
officials and activists trying especially hard to treat First
Nations people well because they sincerely care, and sometimes
because no one wants to be accused of racism. But this leads to
money being spent too quickly when no one has a plan for a systemic
solution to the problem. Simply giving people cash to live in hotels
increases their alienation. The wasted money then causes “ordinary
taxpayers” to complain that minorities get help but “regular people”
get nothing, even though some of the victims of the flood were not
from First Nations groups.
This story
actually happens in many places. You can replace some of the
variables (flood, earthquake, nuclear meltdown, forest fires, oil
spill, other minority groups, urban populations vs. rural
populations) but still see the same phenomenon. It happened on a
much larger scale in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of a hurricane in
September 2017.
Puerto Rico is
a former Spanish colony that got its independence from Spain thanks
to military assistance given by the United States in the late 1890s.
However, it was never given a chance to be an independent country.
The United States turned it into a colony during its first period of
expansion outside of North America when it also colonized Cuba, Guam
and the Philippines and annexed the sovereign nation of the Hawaiian
Kingdom.
Puerto Rico was
never given equal status as a state, and its Spanish-speaking
population was regarded as foreign and apart, even though they were
American citizens. Now hurricane Maria has destroyed Puerto Rico, so
the island’s inhabitants can expect a struggle like that experienced
by the people of Lake St. Martin in Manitoba (in the film Treading
Water). However, the scale of the problem is so much
larger. In the Manitoba floods, 2,000 people were affected. The
population of Puerto Rico is 3,000,000.
Concluding
comments made in the film Treading
Water (from
45:20~):
I
think there are equal parts responsibility on all those three
levels of government: the provincial, the federal, and First
Nations, but fundamentally it's a result of the artificial
management of the water in this province. And yet the perception
of them is that they are essentially moochers living off the
largess of the government flood programs.
They
actually should be considered heroes for protecting other lands.
It's about
time as Canadians, I think, we recognize that for too long we've
had a system that has allowed third world conditions to develop in
First Nations communities, from no fault of First Nations
themselves. It's actually a direct result of government policies
decade over decade. They, by taking the hit, have saved a lot of
us. Now it is our turn to help them.