First Nations chiefs spent the day in Ottawa with the Prime Minister, the Governor General and a load of cabinet ministers talking about trusting one another.
The Prime Minister seemed to agree: the Indian Act is a hurdle. But where National Chief Atleo thinks it’s time to move on, cut down the Indian Act tree and deal with one another nation to nation, the Prime Minister feels the tree’s root have grown too deep and the stump too big to simply yank out now — even with the backhoe of combined effort.
No doubt it is complicated. The Indian Act has become our history. But it hasn’t worked out so well for its subjects, whether you’ve been trying to make Ottawa understand you can govern yourself, thanks, or even if you’re one of the non-natives who think it’s all about tax exemptions and free education.
The Indian Act is not an act of trust. It’s not an act of good faith.
Successive governments in Canada — federally and provincially — have used the Act to control First Nations. Generally, First Nations prefer self-control. Resistance in 1969 when the then Liberal government in Ottawa proposed wiping out the Indian Act was a little different because that proposed extinguishment of title as well as ending the Act. But, from First Nations’ experience with how the Crown handled treaties, it’s easy to see where the distrust came from. And evidently, the bad faith spread.
For some, patronizing as it is, the Indian Act was regarded as a means of ensuring treaties were still an obligation — even though the Act did nothing to ensure the treaties would be fulfilled. People who had already lost everything — land, resources, opportunity, equality — feared losing the one last thing they thought the Act was there to provide: the certainty that someone was looking out for their best interests. So though there was no dignity in being treated like a ward of the state, the prospect of getting kicked to the curb by the warders was unacceptable.
But times have — and are — changing. Section 35 of the 1982 Constitution Act is the most recent legislative tool created to echo the terms outlined in treaties and alluded to in the Indian Act. It’s allowed some to argue the Constitution provides the commitment and assurances that were promised in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which laid the foundation for native/non-native relations. All of which meant it had become acceptable to consider ditching the Indian Act.
But after all that, it still all comes down to trust. Do you trust the Indian Act? Do you trust the treaties? Do you trust section 35? Do you trust the pledges made on January 24, 2012, and do you trust the people who made them?
And what was pledged anyway? That we’ll start again, with good will? That people will have control over resources on the parcels of land identified as their territory? That resource sharing will be implemented now? That we’ll share the responsibility of developing sustainability of First Nations in “have not” locations? That quality education will be provided in the places we live? That treaties will be fulfilled? Comprehensive claims resolved?
What was pledged was a desire to renew the relationship. A promise to issue the first progress report on what’s been done since this meeting by January 2013.
It’s not terribly concrete. Not as concrete as waking up tomorrow in a community with a school full of computers. Or a clean, potable water system. Or recognition of the legal capacity to turn down — or accept — a pipeline project in your own frontyard.
So can you have faith in the goodwill of the players? Trust your instincts and be of good will.
A horrific but too often ignored situation in Canada received some very high profile attention this past month.
The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) and the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA) announced that the United Nations will be conducting an inquiry into the hundreds of murders and disappearances of Aboriginal women and girls in Canada.
Photo courtesy to Ben Powless. Ottawa, ON.
But while that announcement was welcomed by many, another announcement in December wasn’t so warmly received.
The Standing Committee is a group within Canada’s parliament responsible for examining legislation, reports and departmental policies and programs related to women.
According to MP Irene Mathyssen (NDP) — the Standing Committee’s own chair — the report has been watered down by politics.
In March of 2011, the Standing Committee tabled an interim report in the House of Commons that involved testimony from more than 150 witnesses at hearings held in 14 communities across Canada.
At the time of those hearings, the Standing Committee was an intergovernmental group operating in a minority government. But that all changed when the Harper Conservatives took power.
Mathyssen says that major political shift meant major changes to the report. “New parameters were set and this included how much was spent in each of the areas,” she said. “The analyst could only go in and utilize what was said in connection with these new parameters. It wasn’t the report that we envisioned.”
Mathyssen says the framework of the interim report took into account the 580 pages of testimony from witnesses, a great deal of it outlining problems and offering solutions to violence against aboriginal women and girls.
“The second report is what the government wanted it to be. It was not what we heard, it was not what we promised,” Mathyssen says. “All they [the government] wanted to do was show that they invested money.”
Sharon McIvor is an Indigenous activist and academic involved with FAFIA. She says the Standing Committee’s second report was remarkably different. “In their interim report the Committee saw the issue of missing and murdered women as a pressing issue. They really backed off from that.”
A total of nine recommendations were made in the new report but McIvor says all of them fell short. “None of them were very comprehensive and the last one was very disturbing as it said, ‘Should funds become available, this is what we’ll do.’”
“When you have a body like the UN getting involved in an issue, I think it is because they came to the conclusion that things are not proceeding in the way that they should in a certain country,” says Claudette Dumont Smith, Executive Director with the Native Women’s Association of Canada.
Women's March Memorial, Vancouver, BC
“They will leave no stones uncovered, and by the end of the day they will provide the recommendations needed to change the status quo.”
McIvor agrees that changes are needed.
“We have a colonial history which has had an impact on the place of aboriginal women in Canada,” she says.
“Men know they can prey on Indian women and no one is going to hold them responsible and we know that. We’ve got 600 plus missing and murdered and very few people have been held accountable,” added McIvor.
McIvor and others often cite the situation in Mexico (where the UN conducted a similar inquiry) as comparable to Canada.
In 2004, CEDAW concluded its first inquiry into the abduction, rape and murder of Indigenous women in the Ciudad Juarez area of Chihuahua, Mexico.
“The inquiry had really highlighted the problem [in Mexico],” says McIvor. “They identified systematic problems and the policing was a systematic problem. I suspect that when they come into Canada we’ll get the same kind of report and Canada cannot turn a blind eye to it.”
Although the inquiry itself will be confidential, McIvor says it was important for NWAC and FAFIA to go public with their announcement. “First, to let people know there will be [an inquiry] happening. Two, to try to get people organized so that when the inquiry does come, we can make sure that the inquiry hears from people other than the government sources.”
But if the Canadian government is in any way concerned about the UN inquiry, they’re certainly not showing it. There has been no official response, and Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose was unavailable for comment after numerous attempts were made to contact her.
Ho-leh, the Canadian media world is getting browner and browner these days.
Or so it seems to me. From print to radio to television to the world wide interweb, a new Indigenous face or voice practically emerges every few weeks. To my mind, that is an indisputably good thing for all concerned, not least, for Canadian audiences.
There was once a time — perhaps even as recently as the 1980s or 1990s — when you could maybe count on one or two hands the number of working Aboriginal journalists combined in this country. These days, I bet APTN National News’ core of reporters alone would exceed those tiny totals of yesteryear.
Indeed, you could say we have achieved critical mass in this regard.
Oh yeah, I did say that. (I’m so prescient.) Or, at least, I raised the possibility that a ‘tipping point’ has been reached in the numbers of First Nations, Metis and Inuit journalists now plying their trade North of 60.
But see the other piece to my tweet? The bit where I implicitly ask what more can be made of all that storytelling talent, experience and skill? Could that corpus of creativity perchance be amassed and thereby generate a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts — in, say, the form of a Canadian Aboriginal Journalists Association? (First order of business: find a far better name.)
Here, I’m simply thinking of some form of regular, quasi-formal, in-person networking where participants from all four corners of Canada would connect and compare their experiences. Beyond that, it’d be up to us ‘members’ to decide what we did when gathering together. It could be no more complicated than enjoying over drinks the shared relief of not always being the only brown voice bobbing about in a vast sea of non-Aboriginality back in our respective newsrooms. (APTN being one of a few obvious exceptions.) But, knowing the wide pool of wickedly smart Indigenous journos that exists out there, I’m confident we’d figure out all sorts of cool reasons to connect and craft a multitude of ways to help each other out personally and professionally.
That’s the vague idea, anyway — deliberately so, in fact, because any truly member-based association would necessarily have to be member-driven.
So, my fellow AboJournos, I invite you to tell me what you think of all this in the comments area below. Meantime, as you compose your thoughts, take a glance at the compilation of Aboriginal ‘media tweetas’ below. It should give you an idea of just how many Indigenous press types are out there. It is indeed a respectable number, an ever-evolving list to which new names will be consistently added, I expect, so check back often.
UPDATE [Sat Dec 24 @ 1 pm MT]: Just wanted to alleviate any confusion that could arise over criteria I’m using when adding names to list below. Number one, the Twitter accounts I’m including are those of individuals only, not a company or entity that produces/presents Indigenous reportage. So, for example, that’s why grizzled veteran reporter Duncan McCue’s account [@DuncanMcCue] is included, but not the account for his awesome site, Reporting in Indigenous Communities [@RiICnews]. Secondly, the account has to be active: if the person hasn’t tweeted in weeks, they’re by definition inactive. Hope this helps!
Your guide to Aboriginal politicians in provincial and territorial governments
Nunavut's Chamber of the Legislative Assembly
As I’ve pointed out in my previous ‘Who’s Who’ posts, a small but growing number of Aboriginal people have been running for and winning seats in the federal government.
Now here’s a quick overview of how many Aboriginal people are already sitting in provincial and territorial governments, as of December 2011.
Enjoy!
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Yukon Legislative Assembly
In the Yukon Territory, where 25% of people identify themselves as Aboriginal, just 3 of 18 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA’s) are Aboriginal. They are:
The Yukon has no Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs, Aboriginal Affairs Minister, or even legislative committees for Aboriginal people.
Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories
NWT operates under a so-called “consensus government,” which means NO political parties. Those who aren’t members of the executive council or caucus serve as an unofficial opposition.
In the Northwest Territories, where 50% of the population is Aboriginal, 9 of 19 MLA’s are Aboriginal. They are:
Like the NWT, the government operates without political parties. There are no committees on Aboriginal Affairs but the territory does have a Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs.
Legislative Assembly of British Columbia
Despite 5% of the population being Aboriginal, none of the 85 MLA’s in British Columbia are Aboriginal (correct me if I’m wrong).
As you can see, ‘all’ two belong to the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta. In October 2011, the province’s Ministry of Aboriginal Relations was folded into the new Ministry of Intergovernmental, International and Aboriginal Relations, with Premier Alison Redford at the helm.
Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan
When the Saskatchewan Party (SP) swept to power in November 2011 (winning 49 of 58 seats), they brought with them 3 successful Aboriginal candidates, making the total of number of Aboriginal MLA’s in Saskatchewan 5.
According to Statistics Canada, Saskatchewan is home to nearly 1-million Aboriginal people!
Legislative Assembly of Manitoba
Another province with a whole lot of Aboriginal people (almost 14% of the population). But of 57 seats in Manitoba, only 3 are held by Aboriginal MLA’s.
Robinson, a well-known politician in Manitoba, also serves as the Minister of Aboriginal and Northern Affairs (the second time he’s done so).
Legislative Assembly of Ontario
Ontario joins BC in having no elected Aboriginal officials (they’re called Members of Provincial Parliament (MPP) here) and therefore should stand in the corner for a bit.
They do have a Minister of Aboriginal Affairs. Sort of. In 2011, First Nation Chiefs in Ontario were angered to learn that Minister of Aboriginal Affairs Kathleen Wynne would only be performing those duties part-time.
The first Aboriginal MPP elected in Ontario was Peter John North (?), NDP, way back in 1990.
National Assembly of Quebec
Another province with a different title for elected officials (Member’s of the National Assembly (MNA) here), and one more without any elected Aboriginal officials. The first Aboriginal MNA was Ludger Bastien (Huron), elected in 1924.
Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick
In 2009, Thomas James “T.J.” Burke (Maliseet), LIB, became the first (and so far only) Aboriginal person elected to provincial office in NB.
Nova Scotia Legislature
From what I’ve seen, NS has never, nor does it currently have any Aboriginal MLA’s. I think I speak for all of us when I say, “you’ve got to get on that, man.”
They do however have an Office of Aboriginal Affairs and Darrel Dexter serves as the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs.
Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island
PEI should read what I wrote about Nova Scotia above, and then think long and hard about it.
House of Assembly of Newfoundland and Labrador
In 1993, Wally Anderson (Innu), LIB, became the first Aboriginal MNA (Member of the House of Assembly) for Newfoundland and Labrador. He stepped down in 2007, amid allegations of fraud and breach of trust.
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So there you have it. Of 753 elected provincial and territorial officials, only 41 are Aboriginal (just over 5%). And as with the other ‘Who’s Who’ posts, that’s either much browner than they thought, or altogether way too brown for their liking.
I have a strong feeling this list is far from complete so if you know of anyone I might have missed, or if I got someone’s affiliation wrong, feel free to register and leave a message below.
Just please don’t ask me to do ‘An Aboriginal Who’s Who of Canadian Civic Politics.’
After a record number of Aboriginal candidates participated in the last federal election, just how browner is Canada’s parliament?
As you can see in this updated ‘Who’s Who’ of Aboriginal politicians in Canada’s Parliament, the numbers have risen slightly, but the biggest gains have been within the Conservative ranks. Read on!
The House of Commons
Made up of 308 (By 2012, this number will rise to 338) Members of Parliament (MPs), the House of Commons is arguably the most visible arena of Canadian politics. It’s where bills are born and often fiercely debated (until they die because of prorogation). But just how many Aboriginal voices ring across those hallowed halls? Good ask!
As of December 2011, of the 308 MPs, seven are Aboriginal (five of them Conservatives):
A total of 31 Aboriginal MPs have been elected to the House of Commons over the years, beginning with Conservative member Angus McKay (Metis) way back in 1871! Check out the full list on the Parliament of Canada website.
The Senate
Consisting of 105 members appointed by the Governor General (on the advice of the PM), the Senate is the upper house of Parliament, aka the “sober house of second thought.” Here, bills are sent for scrutiny before either being returned to the House of Commons to become law, or outright rejected. (Bills are only occasionally first introduced in the Senate).
So how many Aboriginal people are in the Senate? Glad you asked! As of December 2011, just six of the 105 (non-elected) Senators are Aboriginal: two Conservative, two NDP, two Liberal. How balanced!
While all the yelling and hammering of the House may seem exciting (and definitely gets the most airtime), much of the actual work of government takes place in Committees. This is where policies get reviewed, budgets hashed out, and reports get produced.
In the House of Commons, issues relating to Aboriginal people are discussed in (where else?) the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development (AANO).
As of December 2011, the 11-member AANO committee includes:
Four members, or a third, of this 12-person Committee are Aboriginal.
So there you have it. Depending on who you ask, Canada’s Parliament is either much browner than they thought, or altogether way too brown for their liking.
Regardless, it can be interesting stuff for political wonks like me and — if you’ve read this far — you too!
My family holds reunions at the St. Peter’s church virtually every summer, just north of Selkirk and on the banks of the Red River in southern Manitoba. Growing up, I never knew why we did, nor cared really; the homemade pie was far more of a concern.
Last summer, we held races, a candy scramble, and ended in a water fight around the underground well pump – which happily gushes as it has for generations.
Just a few metres from our reunion site is Chief Peguis‘ grave. Just a few more there are headstones, with dozens of names of my relatives. On the other side remains the foundation of the old St. Peter’s Store. Not to be forgotten is the church, a powerful spiritual place that has held up well over the years.
In all this beauty, you would never know what happened here in 1907. After bribing leaders and waiting until much of the community was absent, government agents visited and held a vote for removal. You see, unscrupulous Manitoban citizens and farmers desperately wanted the fertile and rich land the Cree and Anishinaabe residents of St. Peter’s had negotiated through treaty and lived on. The vote – in which anyone who voted “yes” was promised $90 and no voting record was kept – unsurprisingly passed.
The following years were rife with violence as St. Peter’s residents were forcibly removed north, where Peguis First Nation now sits. Those who remained were harassed by police, forced to squat on their own territory, and subjected to ridicule when they entered town looking for work.
Amazingly, and regardless of this violence, my ancestors persevered. Many eventually made homes in Selkirk. Some bought back their family homelands. The Selkirk Friendship Centre became a meeting place for all of us. In fact, that’s where I first learned of the removal.
That’s because, inexplicably, I never heard about St. Peter’s in school, in town, or read about it on any monument.
Surrounded by the very land in which this happened, this history was never mentioned. I grew up surrounded by the erasure and silence created by one of the most violent and unjust acts in Manitoba’s history.
That is until every summer, when my family showed me the complexity of the story of St. Peter’s through laughter, food, and water fights. While I have never forgotten the painful parts, I remember far more the beautiful gifts they give me.
Later, as a researcher and writer, I discovered the most amazing thing of all: this story is not unique. It continues to be, however, one that few know. Like it, there are many more. Stories of relationships, resisting violence, and resilience are everywhere; our province is filled with powerful visions and experiences told through the eyes of Aboriginal peoples.
All of Manitoba should hear these stories in order to get a full understanding of all that has happened in this place; the beauty, the struggles, and everything in between. This is what my co-editor Warren Cariou and I hoped to do while assembling the anthology Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water.
Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water is a anthology of Indigenous storytelling and writing, available Feb. 3, 2012. Get a sneak preview Thursday, November 17, 7:00 p.m.at the Millennium Library in Winnipeg, at a reading featuring authors Alyssa Bird, Warren Cariou, Althea Guiboche, Wab Kinew, Emma LaRocque, Columpa C. Bobb and Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair
Note: Manitowapow or “the narrows of the Great Spirit” is the original Saulteaux and Cree name for the lands and waters in and around what is now known as Manitoba . This name honours the sacred sounds when waves hit the loose surface rocks on the north shore in the narrows of Lake Manitoba – sounds that traditional peoples believed came from the drum beats by Gichi Manitou (The Great Spirit).
But the distance between word and action is long, as noted in an earlier writeup in MI. “Sorry” can and does end up simply being a stand-in for “NOW will you go away?”
So just when you’ve gotten into the groove of dismissing those kinds of apologies, along comes University of Manitoba Vice-Chancellor David Barnard with something that sounds completely different.
Here’s a guy apologising before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the fact that his institution failed to challenge the forced assimilation of Indigenous people into the colonizing culture, when it had a self-proclaimed responsibility to do so.
It’s an admission that bystanders too have obligations. And that doing nothing is as bad as letting others do the wrong thing.
Who apologises for that? At any time in history?
Mr. Barnard concludes that having spoken the truth in his apology, the next step is reconciliation. It is the next step. Barnard’s kind of apology makes that easier.
I was picking grapes in the Annapolis Valley when, at 65 years of age, Elouise Cobell died in Montana due to complications from cancer. The news didn’t reach me out on the south slope of the so-called “North Mountain.”
Cobell’s funeral was held on October 23. You’ll remember her from the stories MEDIA INDIGENA posted about her last year. Or maybe you never heard about her until now.
Plenty of people who knew and admired Cobell — some described her line-in-the-sand stand with government as “no longer, no further, no more” — sent letters of condolence remembering her. The tributes poured in from far and wide. From U.S. President Barack Obama. From a teacher on the Nez Perce reservation in Idaho. From representatives of the Cherokee and Choctaw Nations. The Seminole in Florida. The Navajo. The Oglala Sioux. Them and dozens more, regular folk and dignitaries alike.
Their thoughts ran something along the lines of this message from Jackie Trotchie, a friend of Cobell’s and a native rights advocate in Montana:
“Elouise will always be remembered by me as a woman who fought the battle many of us didn’t know how to fight, and she did it with integrity despite the bullets to her chest and the arrows in her back. She will be remembered as the one and only modern-day female warrior who honored all those individual land owners who passed before her.”
Artist: Juan Travieso
Elouise Cobell was born Inokesquetee saki (‘Yellow Bird Woman’) on a Blackfeet reservation in Montana. She grew up without electricity and ended up winning the largest government class action settlement in U.S. history.
Her fight was over government mismanagement of Indian trust fund money. She started by pursuing $176 billion, ended up pushing for a compromise of $27.5, ultimately settling for $3.4 billion dollars. Despite her win, the money hasn’t been handed down because yet another appeal has delayed things.
Cobell’s fight for justice went on for 16 years. Her spirit will endure forever.
Extra Indians
Eric Gansworth
Milkweed Editions Press
272 pages | 2010
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Extra Indians is a story about identity and the occasional inexplicable, maddening impossibility of being who you are. The vehicle for telling the tale is the friendship between a native man and a Texas truckdriver who soldiered together in Vietnam, then came home and tried to live with the experience with mixed results. In short: one makes it and one doesn’t.
The tale just earned Onondaga author Eric Gansworth the 2011 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. The name of the Foundation implies an emphasis on First Nations. Not so, even though Gansworth has an extensive collection of books behind him that do just that.
Extra Indians is undeniably about being native. But it’s also about non-natives living just outside that identity. The truckdriver has an affair with a native woman who has his child, though he doesn’t know it. The native man has a child but hands him over to the truckdriver to raise as his own because he doesn’t feel capable of doing it. But in the end, it’s the native man who becomes the “extra” Indian, trying to make it as a Hollywood actor, and ultimately failing for what industry insiders insist is not being Indian enough.
The contradiction between being read as “an Indian story,” versus telling a tale that isn’t “traditional enough,” is inevitable. The “traditional” life many are looking for in books is often a stereotype. It either doesn’t allow for contemporary lives or identifies such lives as a betrayal of the way things ought to be. Or it imposes some sort of halo on top of the experience of being native.
There is, in my reading of the book, no mistaking the authenticity of the life described by the native man who turns to acting. Nor of the misfit truckdriver whose life is marred by an absence of identity. Read it, even if just to see whether the gut-wrenching events in the tale are something you can identify with.
Proud to be a media sponsor last year providing daily reports from the festival (an archive of which you can check out via our VIMEO page), this time around we just wanna be spectators again. If all goes well, you’ll be right there with us, sharing an armrest.
Today in the neighborhood coffee shop, I spotted a poster made by a local designer for an upcoming music festival. Hence the sigh.
A tomahawk and feathers had somehow made their way onto the poster for a West Coast band consisting of three bearded white guys. As I stood in front of the poster, noting the word ‘primitive’ in the write-up below the piece, I looked over and saw a blond girl with a Pendleton-style bag and a guy wearing a knitted Cowichan sweater… or maybe a look-alike he bought at The Bay. Another sigh.
[ Editor's note: the poster in question does not appear anywhere in the body of this blog entry (though it was later shared by someone else, in the comments that follow); what images do appear here were taken from other sources as a way to illustrate the author's general arguments. We're sorry for any confusion this has caused. ]
Headdress a la hipster
Non-native hipsters, I know that native imagery is trendy right now, that your friends are wearing it and the blogs and magazines you read are telling you to join in the fun. But when you and I look at those dreamcatcher earrings at the mall, I’m pretty sure we see different things. So I’d like to take a few minutes of your time to share my perspective, as a real live native person. Maybe in exchange for wearing my culture on your chest, you could allow me to suggest a slight re-jigging of your fashion trend.
I come from a family of artists, so I appreciate the aesthetic value of our artwork. My family is full of carvers, weavers, dancers, and singers. I’m lucky that way. But it isn’t just luck that allowed these artforms to be practiced today, it is years of political struggle and resistance.
For close to 100 years, in an effort to get rid of “the Indian problem” in Canada, the Indian Act made it illegal for us to practice our traditions. You see, non-native hipsters, your ancestors wanted to obliterate us in order to clear up the land for colonial expansion, and getting rid of our artforms and cultural practices was at the heart of those efforts. It was only the mid-1950s that this was written out of Canadian law, so that my relatives were no longer imprisoned for using our masks, blankets and other regalia in ceremonies.
I know you probably didn’t learn this in school, but it is a part of the local history that accompanies native culture. Each Indigenous culture around the world has its own history of suppression, its own story of resisting attempts to obliterate them so that industrial capitalism could flourish. Hey, you in the sweater — do you know what it took to maintain Cowichan knitting practices in the face of residential schools, intense poverty and assimilative policies?
Separating native people from our culture, and the politics and history from the images, serves to erase us. It makes it easier for native people like me, and the woman who knitted that sweater, to remain marginalized and silent while our imagery becomes a consumer object as part of mainstream culture. This is an old tactic, part of broader political efforts to forget the history of colonialism upon which this country is founded. Sports teams, band names and brand names which use Indigenous words and icons contribute to turning a marginalized people into a commodity.
This separation of imagery from politics doesn’t just happen here at a local level, but internationally as well. My ancestor’s ceremonial masks are in museums in Germany, England and New York. Mini totem poles are being manufactured in China and then sold in tourist shops in Seattle, Honolulu and Toronto. In the 1800s, they used to put real, live native people on display as well, remnants of a supposedly dying race. But now it is only our hard-won cultural icons and practices, like dreamcatchers and sweatlodges, that are of interest.
So a tomahawk is not just a tomahawk. It is a symbol of my silence. It is a history of resistance turned into a symbol of cool, devoid of any meaning or political significance. As the write-up below the poster notes, images like tomahawks are seen as ‘primitive,’ as are the ceremonies, laws and ways of life native people still practice.
It is no coincidence that when I go to indie music festivals, I see a whole lot of Cowichan sweaters and not a lot of Cowichan people. Yet it is with great surprise whenever I see a native artist or native musicians – actual Indigenous people – included in such mainstream cultural events. It is not the norm.
Likely, many of you won’t care about all this: apathy has had a long-term love affair with consumerism. It’s a classic co-dependent relationship. But a few of you might ask why you should care, what’s in it for you? Well, for starters, I am trying to save you some energy. Maintaining your hipster culture requires a significant amount of effort in order to deny or forget the history I’m talking about. And in fact, it is far from ‘history.’ On the West Coast, we are constantly reminded about the unfinished business of land claims in this province. The current struggle over the Juan de Fuca Trail is a prime example, where elders from local First Nations are speaking out against development.
Consumer culture depends on you divorcing the politics behind native imagery from the history of struggle it has taken for it, and us, to be here. This is an active forgetting, requiring you to spend energy keeping current issues separate and apart from the images you emblazon on your t-shirts, the ‘tribal’ designs you get tattooed on your shoulder or the native names you use for your bands (Geronimo being a good example).
It isn’t necessarily that there is a problem with wearing Indigenous art or symbols – in fact, my family’s success as artists depends on people like yourself buying their jewelry, t-shirts or masks. The challenge is maintaining a connection between the imagery and the practice of our cultural wealth (including artwork, language, ceremonies, and law) and the history and politics that have ensured their survival. So here’s what I suggest.
Why not take another trend and put it to use here – I’m thinking here about the local food craze. ‘Eating local’ involves creating connections on a small scale, lessening the distance between the ground where your food was grown, and your plate. It involves meeting your local farmer at the market, buying a potato they grew themselves and picked that morning, and eating it for dinner that night. Why not take these same principles and put them to work with native imagery and artwork? Rather than buying a Pendleton-style bag mass-produced overseas and sold at Urban Outfitters around the world, why not buy a t-shirt, sweater or earrings from your local Indigenous craftsperson. Meet them, find out where they’re from, and the history behind their particular craft. In the process, you will be educating yourself about local Indigenous history and political struggles, and putting food on the tables of local artisans.
I know this isn’t a complete solution to cultural appropriation, but it’s a start. And with this local approach, you’ll be better informed and can still look cool while doing it.
The power of stories to tell us who we are is well known, so to lose touch with your people’s stories can lead to a void inside one’s self — or even within a community as a whole.
I was reminded of this today on my radio show, Urban Nation LIVE, when I had the pleasure of speaking with Cree/Métis educator Dr. Kim Anderson about her efforts to gather and honour those restorative narratives in her latest book, Life Stages and Native Women: Memory, Teachings, and Story Medicine. (She’s in Winnipeg today and tomorrow as part of Thin Air 2011, aka the Winnipeg International Writers Festival.)
Sharing the teachings of 14 elders across three cultures, the book is a collection of cultural and lived understandings of the roles and responsibilities of Indigenous women and girls, from pregnancy and birth through to puberty to death.
For those of you who may have missed its original airing, the interview is below.
If you can speak any of this country’s 65 or so Aboriginal languages, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) may have a job for you. According to an ad on their website, Canada’s spy agency is seeking “Translators / Interpreters – Foreign and Aboriginal Languages” who among other things, “possess an excellent ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines without a loss of efficiency or effectiveness.”
Now I can’t say with any certainty why CSIS wants Aboriginal interpreters – and any explanation from them seems unlikely (they ARE a spy agency). But I do believe recruitment of this sort adds even more mistrust to an already nervous Indigenous peoples ‘activist’ community.
For more than fifteen years, I have been working on issues of violence in Indigenous communities in BC. I have become familiar with the state of the justice system in Canada, with its huge over-representation of Indigenous people in detention centres and an accompanying lack of concern for those of us who are victims of violent crime.
It is a norm in Canada to view Indigenous people as criminals, as inherently violent, rather than as human beings worthy of the same protection from violence afforded to other citizens. This should no longer be surprising to me, but some days, the truth seems harder to bear than others.
Angeline (Angie) Pete
Take today, for example. While wasting time on Facebook, I saw a link to an article about the start of this year’s Walk4Justice, a march from Vancouver to Ottawa to raise awareness about violence against Indigenous women. I am familiar with the facts of the high rates of violence against us and the over 700 girls and women who have gone missing from our communities, including the recent disappearance of Angeline Eileen Pete from North Vancouver.
Half way through the article, I read the word “beheaded” and burst into tears, turning my face away from the screen. Apparently, I have reached a breaking point for my ability to hold these truths, as the years and generations of loss pile up on me. I wonder how is it that these ongoing losses, constant deaths, and unrelenting assaults, continue day after day without it being deemed a crisis. And why aren’t First Nations leaders negotiating for a fundamental shift in approaches to ensure Indigenous girls’ and women’s safety, along with our economic development, resource use and treaties? Yes, National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo, I am talking to you.
Where are these ongoing violations in your list of priorities? Women and girls are not just “disappearing” from our communities into some unknown non-space. They are somewhere. They are being made to disappear by individuals acting within a system that has been designed to facilitate our demise.
A few minutes later, I go back online to see if the Walk4Justice has received any media coverage from CBC, and, in the process of discovering there was no coverage, I come across an article about a hearing taking place in northern BC. Last year, some cops covered themselves in face paint and camouflage, drove out to a remote hunting ground and shot a Gitxsan man in the back who had failed to show up for a court date.
Today, the man’s family heard that the man was likely unarmed, holding a rake rather than a gun. The police might have assumed he would be holding a hunting rifle, seeing as they sought him out at place he specifically used for hunting. Did they drive out there assuming he would be armed, wanting to hunt him down as they would an animal? The ‘undertones’ of racism are hardly undertones — they are overt, systemic and endemic to the way justice is structured in this country. What will it take for the system to be acknowledged as part of the problem, serving to normalize violence against Indigenous people, while locking us up at ever-growing rates?
As I continue to harden myself in order to face the ongoing state of assault in our communities, I can only hope more and more people will start to be moved by these losses, rather than experience them as unexceptional, normal, as just another day in Canada.
Oil brings me things. Things like home heating, air conditioning, electricity. It means people aren’t burning trees so I can hike through forests. It means people aren’t burning coal so I can breathe without blackening my lungs. It means communities don’t have to be flooded so someone can jam up a river to create hydro power instead of burning oil.
That means no-one has to bribe someone else to take in the nuclear waste generated by the plant that occasionally goes off-line and leaks radiation. It means I can visit my brothers at either end of the country in under a day. I can visit my mother three-thousand miles away at the drop of a hat. It means some of my friends and some of my extended family have jobs.
Oil-drenched pelican
BUT… I don’t like oil development.
I don’t like the odour at extraction sites. I don’t like the sludge and goo that gets dredged up and left to stain the earth. I don’t like how the industry moves in and chews up the landscape and drives elk and caribou and moose and deer and bears and wolverines away.
I really don’t like seeing ducks and pelicans and cormorants struggling and failing to get the junk that ends up coating lakes and streams off their wings. I hate seeing muskrats and beavers trying to chew the stuff out of their coats.
I don’t like seeing people have to shut down water wells because the water table is contaminated. I really hate how pumping transforms landscapes into industrial moonscapes. I don’t like how when oil is burned it makes breathing a little tricky.
I don’t like the brown haze that sits over cities where a lot of oil and gas gets burned. I don’t like how it generates power that’s used to ship out tax bills so my government can put down more roads and chew up more wilderness.
I don’t like how it’s used to fire plants that generate plastics. I don’t like that it is used in the manufacture of plastics. I don’t like how it generates so much money that people lose sight of what it’s costing to make that money.
BUT… while I’m pretty sure solar is a lot more DNA friendly, I’m also aware oil is a quicker path to ultimately giving me the ability to send my words out to you on the net.
So while I watch the people protest in Washington just now about pipeline development — and the bid to keep that gaping maw that is the tar sands open, its advocates spewing out swill all the while about “environmental protection” — I’m mindful that there is a bit of hypocrisy in the complaints.
The world is right to be sensitive and cautious about the mad rush for more and more oil, and more and more ways to burn it. But though some fight the good fight, for most of us the talk doesn’t resemble the walk.
"Art. 22.2. Together w/Indigenous peoples, States shall act 2 ensure women + children fully protected..."
In an ill-advised bout of social media enthusiasm, I thought it would be cool and nifty and useful if I tweeted the UN Declaration pertaining to Indigenous Peoples rights. Had I known beforehand what it would take to distill the dang thing, I might have re-thought my initial impulse. But I persevered and glad I’m did: below you will find the fruits of my labours, re-purposed via the amazing tool Storify.
If you are a young Aboriginal woman age 16-25 (or know someone who is ) interested in community leadership skill development, check out my UN Live interview below with Natasha Latter, coordinator of the “Indigenous Young Women: Speaking our Truths, Building our Strengths” project for details on how to apply.
A joint initiative of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network and Girls Action Foundation, the project will see young Indigenous women from across Canada gather in Saskatoon this November for 4 days of workshops, mentorships and solidarity. As the project literature says, it will offer
opportunities to come together as sisters, with the inclusion of Elders and other traditional leaders in the spirit of unity to discuss what is happening, and act upon our vision of what needs to change in our communities. This is the time to be yourself, all of yourself and celebrate it!
Quickly thought I’d share yesterday’s Aug. 9 interview I conducted on UN Live with Craig Benjamin, Indigenous rights campaigner with Amnesty International Canada, on account of that day being International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.
I invited Craig on to evaluate the present social, economic, political and ecological state of affairs for Indigenous people in the Americas, not least right here in Canada. Listen in and tell me what you think of his analysis.
It’s a day meant to promote and protect the rights of Indigenous peoples. To recognize the achievements and contributions they’ve made to the world around them.
James Anaya, Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples
They’re achievements James Anaya knows like the back of his hand. He’s the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Appointed by the UN, his job is to get Indigenous issues onto the global radar.
A document meant to protect the collective rights of the world’s Indigenous peoples — especially those rights not covered by the laws in each nation — the Declaration was adopted by the UN in 2007.
“At the international level, we’ve seen a significant amount of attention paid to Indigenous peoples: greater avenues of access, greater institutional energies within the UN,” says Anaya.
University of British Columbia professor of political science Sheryl Lightfoot (Lake Superior Band of Ojibwe) agrees, calling the declaration “a huge accomplishment.”
“This is the first time that the right-holders had participated in the process. It is the first real articulation of Indigenous rights globally,” says Lightfoot. “It’s also the first time collective rights have passed as a human right standard in any sort of international venue.”
“It clearly sets a standard globally on what is expected of countries and states,” she adds. “That said, the implementation part of it is problematic.”
She says that when countries like Canada, the US, New Zealand and Australia adopted the Declaration “they qualified it, and constrained it so much that what they were actually agreeing to is not the global standard.”
“They qualified it so much they watered down the whole set of rights,” says Lightfoot.
That term — ‘qualified’ — refers to how the governments accepted the Declaration, but only insofar as it applies within their constitutions and laws. For its part, Canada ‘endorsed’ UNDRIP “in a manner fully consistent with [its] Constitution and laws.”
According to Pam Palmater, a Mi’kmaq lawyer originally from Eel River Bar First Nation in northern New Brunswick, that qualified support means “the statement of support offered by Canada is really an illusion of justice. The best a state can do once they voted against it is offer a statement of support, which isn’t the same thing [as full and formal endorsement],” claims Palmater. “In my opinion, legally and politically, Canada has not ‘endorsed’ it. It has come out at with a qualified statement that says, ‘Very nice, it’s your aspiration, but it doesn’t apply here in Canada.’”
Anaya admits there is still a lot of work to do.
“Where things are still lacking is in our conditions on the ground, and ultimately that is where it matters,” notes Anaya.
“We see greater attention and awareness internationally around basic standards of human rights of Indigenous peoples — the actual implementation and improvement of those standards for Indigenous peoples on the ground lag significantly behind,” he adds.
Despite these challenges, Anaya says it’s important to not get stuck on the Declaration’s limitations. “Its a commitment by the governments of the world to those principles, and that needs to be taken at face value,” he says.
“While the declaration itself is not strictly speaking a legal instrument, it would be unfortunate to get hung up on technicalities about its precise character and lose sight of what it really signifies,” says Anaya.
In fact, the Declaration has already been used as a legal reference.
In 2007, the Supreme Court of Belize cited the Declaration in Cal v. Attorney, a case affirming the land and resource rights of the Mayan people. (To learn more about that decision, consult this article by The Dominion‘s Kim Petersen.)
Palmater thinks the same can happen in Canada. She encourages Indigenous people to bring their claims to the international stage, as Sandra Lovelace did in 1977 and more recently, Sharon McIvor. Both of those cases dealt with gender discrimination and so-called ‘Indian Status.’
“It could also be used to sway the public: I think the public is largely left in the dark about Indigenous issues, domestically, and internationally,” says Palmater.
“In countries where human rights norms matter, you can get some political traction off of that,” says Lightfoot. “Because you can play the guilt and shame on countries, and you may get some movement.”
Today on Urban Nation LIVE, home to my alter-media-ego on Winnipeg’s STREETZ FM,I had the opportunity to discuss the provocative thesis of my friend Chris Powell‘s new book, “Barbaric Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Genocide.” An assistant professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba, Powell’s thesis is provocative because he applies the book’s radical premise — that “civilization produces genocides” — not only to places like Rwanda and Nazi Germany but to Canada as well.
Indeed, as you’ll hear in the interview, Powell asserts that this country’s deliberate design, construction and support for the ’Indian’ residential school system (a system whose multiple legacies we continue to live and struggle with today) is only the most recent example of Canada’s calculated campaigns of genocide against Indigenous peoples.
First Nations chiefs spent the day in Ottawa with the Prime Minister, the Governor General and a load of cabinet ministers talking about trusting one another.
