(cont.) but i’m still very much of the opinion that nothing should be done to protect people from offending the people who actually adhere to the sects that hold these things ‘holy’. i don’t think there’s anything wrong with stereotypes, AS LONG as people are educated to know that stereotypes are just that. i very much agree that people should really buy the native american crafts from native americans (cont.)

(cont.) and not from huge morally indefensible companies like f21, who don’t give a shit about the people they take the inspiration for these things from. but just because one group of people consider something sacred doesn’t make it so. people should be allowed to desecrate whatever they want, as long as they never harm any humans, or destroy other people’s work (e.g. churches, burial grounds, temples etc.). i’m open to have my mind changed on this, though.

Okay.  To start, I think two things are getting mixed up in all of this:

1) cultural appropriation

2) ‘costumes’, ‘dress up’ and other forms of engaging in perpetrating stereotypes

Both piss me off, but they are not both cultural appropriation.  I’m not going to discuss the second point, just the first, because I think that’s where most of the ambivalence is in people who are just starting to think about this.  Most people already understand why playing ‘dress up’ using racist stereotypes is wrong…and if they don’t, I basically write them off as not worth the time.

Okay.  So, cultural appropriation.  I see two errors with your argument so far:

a) the appeal to common practice: people culturally appropriate all the time, thus cultural appropriation is okay and;

b) a misunderstanding of what ‘restricted’ means.

On the first issue, when cultural appropriation is taking place (as in, restricted symbols are being used/taken without permission), you cannot rely on the fact that it happens to justify it happening.  What I mean is, I’m arguing it’s wrong, and I’m not saying it’s just wrong when it’s native restricted symbols.  The fact that people do it anyway does not change a wrong into a right.  You would have to make an argument about why these symbols cannot be legitimately restricted in the first place.  What doesn’t pass the muster is saying, “well it’s wrong but other people do it so it’s okay for me to do it too”.  That’s the “he did it first!” defence that doesn’t save us as children either :D

Which brings us to b.  A lot of the things you discuss fall under the ‘costume’ category in 2, so we weed those out right away.  They aren’t cultural appropriation per se, and their level of offensiveness depends on the context (i.e. whether they perpetuate harmful stereotypes that are used to justify continuing oppression against a people).

However, while you may not be arrested for claiming to hold restricted qualifications (having an MD etc), you are nonetheless committing a fraud.  Most common law and civil law countries have specific Acts controlling certain types of professions…doctors, lawyers, architects, and so on.  These legislative regimes define who is eligible to become a member of these professions, what qualifications they must have, what obligations and duties apply and so forth.  Thus, not everyone can practice medicine, or law etc.  You can pretend to have these qualifications and you might even get away with it, but what you are doing is still probably illegal.

Now you can argue that anyone should be able to do these things and the restrictions are invalid…but I doubt you will.  There is a reason these restrictions are in place and most people can come up with good reasons for that without delving into the legislative history.

What you can’t do, is convincingly argue that because people are committing fraud by actually impersonating police officers (i.e. not just dressing up as a costume), lawyers, medical doctors and so forth, that this makes violating those restrictions ‘okay’.  That wouldn’t make any logical sense, if you actually understand and support why those restrictions exist.

Analogies are of limited use, unfortunately.  I gave analogies within western culture that would be understandable to settlers.  They are not equivalents to native cultural restrictions.  We don’t write elaborate Acts regulating who can be a warrior, and who can wear a headdress, and who can practice medicine.  Our cultural restrictions are expressed in other ways, and it’s not really that important for you to understand exactly how that works.  Not for this discussion.

It is important, however, to understand that these restrictions exist, and that they are not unimportant merely because you do not come from the culture, and do not understand the reasoning behind them.  An immigrant to Canada, coming from a nation where anyone can practice medicine (I doubt such a place actually exists though) cannot use this lack of restriction in his or home country to justify practicing medicine in Canada.  It would not be allowed.

And here is where analogies just aren’t adequate.  You aren’t living in a First Nation community, and I am not saying that you have to in order for these restrictions to apply to you.  I think they apply outside our communities too, and not just because these lands are originally ours.  Our own people are not allowed to access certain symbols because within our culture they are restricted.  Merely living outside our culture should not extinguish the restrictions and open up the floodgates to non-natives, on precisely the basis that they aren’t us.  That is basically saying that the restricted cultural symbols of all other cultures you are not a member of are open to you (but not to the people in the culture).  And frankly, that would be fucked up. 

It renders the symbol meaningless, stripping it of all its cultural context…while at the same time, the people using it claim an affinity with the culture they are taking it from.  I’m sorry, but you can’t have it both ways.  Steal our restricted shit, and don’t care…but don’t pretend that it honours us or that it is anything less than theft.  (I say this in general, I’m not directing it at you).

And like I say in the longer article, don’t get hung up on the word ‘sacred’:

I do not care if you are religious, spiritual, or atheist.  These are choices you make, and I respect them.  However, because of the turbulent history of religion in western settler philosophy (and in many other parts of the world, from whence Canadians come), the translation of terms from our languages into the word ‘sacred’ can sometimes cause trouble.  Let’s talk about that for a second.

I feel that when other cultures discuss ‘sacred’ things, some people feel obligated to reject or elevate those things because of how they feel about their own religious traditions, or their atheism.  The issue gets confused as being about ‘religion’, when that is not necessarily what is going on.

Usually when we say ‘sacred’, there are more complex terms in our own language that apply…all of which basically mean to impart that the thing in question is ‘important and meaningful in a specific way’.  When you see the term ‘sacred’, please remember that.

Also, desecration of the restricted symbols of oppressed peoples is inherently harmful, as it bolsters already institutionalised systems that continue to oppress us.  For many years, we were denied our cultural practices and our symbols by law.  We were punished for wearing these items, practicing our ceremonies, speaking our languages and so on.  That has changed, but now we see these things used against us in new ways.  Used to stereotype us as all being the same, fitting into ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ caricatures, erasing our actual traditions and culture.  Our symbols and ceremonies are being taken up by people who feel that they do not have to abide by the restrictions, and so these people (being much more numerous than those within our cultures who are allowed to wear/do these things) get to basically define what the symbols/ceremonies mean.  That is cultural erasure and it continues the process of cultural genocide. 

I’m not talking about moccasins or feather earrings.  There are many items within our cultures that are not restricted and can be used by non-natives.  That does not mean it is all up for grabs, and it certainly does not mean that taking restricted things is not harmful, or somehow an exercise of some noble human right.

I hope  that clarifies things more for you, whether you end up agreeing or not.  Also, you  might consider this….oppressed peoples, colonised peoples, do not have the institutional power to do what you claim should be done freely.  We cannot appropriate the restricted symbols of settler culture, because we would be punished for this.  I don’t want us to have some ‘equal right’ to do this mind, you, but the power imbalance involved should not be forgotten.

Fuck everything about this.

Ah yes, Edmonton.  Still sucking ass and treating us like shit.  Fuck you.

Welcome to the 21st century, where this shit is still going on.

A former employee of the Edmonton Police Service says racist behaviour of her colleagues and her boss forced her from her job.

“I was told by my sergeant within the victim services unit to be less aboriginal at work,” Kathleen Sawdo told a shocked Edmonton police commission Thursday night.

“I was told that my appearance, photos of my children and regalia at my desk — a blade of sweetgrass and a bough of cedar in my office — was culturally aggressive, assertive and obtrusive and I was told my co-workers in the unit found all this to be offensive.”

Sawdo was a civilian employee in the victim services unit at the time.

She complained about the reprimand, but no one was disciplined, she said.

Instead she was isolated from her team and forced to leave the southeast division and work at headquarters downtown.

“I went to work everyday in fear, with no support,” Sawdo said.

A promised cultural sensitivity session was never held, she said.

She was bullied by her co-workers to the point she quit in March 2011 after almost one year on the job.

Sawdo also accused her colleagues and bosses in victim services of failing to engage or support the aboriginal community in the city.

Although most of her clients were aboriginal, she was dissuaded from helping them, she said.

“Given the attitude and behaviour of victim services employees, very few received the support they deserved and are entitled to,” she told the commission.

“I had to sit there and listen to victim advocates take a look at the name ‘Cardinal’ and say, ‘No, they’re aboriginal,’… and refuse to send out a victim impact statement,” Sawdo said.

“I’m sorry, I’m ashamed,” she told commission members. “I’m ashamed of your service and that needs to be fixed.”

What do you know about farming among the Prairie nations?

Here’s what I knew.  I knew that after the annihilation of our main economic base, the buffalo, native peoples in the Prairies were encouraged to become farmers.  I knew that ‘experts’ were sent by Indian Affairs to teach on-reserve populations how to farm.  I knew that were specific provisions in the Treaties to provide the people with farming implements and seeds:

the following articles shall be supplied … four hoes per family …two spades… one plough for every three families…one harrow …two scythes and one whetstone, and two hay forks and two reaping hooks [etc]…

…. for each Band, enough of wheat, barley, potatoes and oats to plant the land …also for each Band four oxen, one bull and six cows; also, one boar and two sows, and one hand-mill…

(A Treaty 7 farm.)

I knew that many people considered us ‘wholly unsuited to farming’, believing us lazy, shiftless and much too nomadic to prosper in such ‘civilised pursuits’.  This sentiment in particular was hammered into my head and soul via a thousand comments from teachers, brief textbook descriptions and newspaper articles that mentioned us at all.  Although I believed that indigenous peoples are perfectly capable of farming (just look at the many nations who were doing this long before settlers came along to ‘teach them how it’s done), I nonetheless half-accepted the idea that here on the Prairies, perhaps we just weren’t capable of shifting from a buffalo/trapping/fishing lifestyle to a farming lifestyle with any great ease.

Perversely, the above knowledge existed along-side my familiarity with the farming prowess of any number of Métis and First Nations families in Treaty 6 area and beyond.  In fact, many Métis families pride themselves on coming from hard working, self-sufficient and talented farming stock, so the stories are not hard to find.  In addition, there is good evidence that First Nations in the Prairies were not wholly unfamiliar with farming pre-Contact.

However, I never once read about this or any of these farming families in the textbooks, nor did I hear any ‘expert’ admit their existence.  Thus I suppose I felt that our own understandings carried less weight?  The ‘official’ story supplanted my own family’s history.  Maybe these families were merely exceptions to the rule.

Cui bono (to whose benefit)?

An important fact that gets lost or distorted when indigenous peoples are discussed by settler texts and educators is the issue of ‘for whose benefit’?

(Duncan Campbell Scott, poet and Indian Agent. “Scott truly believed that the only “authentic” Indian was a pre-contact Indian. In other words, Scott perceived the Indian of the past as a “noble savage,” and the Indian of the present as merely in the way of progress.”)

For many years, it has been asserted that virtually every government program designed and enacted by Indian Affairs was ‘for the benefit of the Indians’.  This has been the official position for everything from the creation of the Gradual Civilisation Act, to the creation of the reserve system, to the institution of Residential Schools.  Clearly, as facts emerge and become more widely known, this official position has been altered.  Officially, Canada no longer asserts that Residential Schooling was a positive endeavour, nor that the High Arctic relocations were carried out in the best interests of those who endured them.  Nonetheless, the belief that Canada did its best for indigenous peoples, good intentions always at the forefront, remains, deeply entrenched in the socio-political consciousness.

It is one thing to not believe this to be true, and it is another to understand exactly to what extent ‘for the benefit of the Indians’ is a lie.  We are still taught that the numbered Treaties were signed for our benefit, to address the desperate situation so many indigenous peoples found themselves in when the buffalo were exterminated over a few decades.  And if you read correspondence from First Nations leaders at that time, our need is absolutely evident:

“…Our country is getting ruined of fur-bearing animals, hitherto our sole support, and now we are poor and want help – we want you to pity us. We want cattle, tools, agricultural implements, and assistance in everything when we come to settle- our country is no longer able to support us.

Make provision for us against years of starvation. We had a great starvation the past winter, and the smallpox took away many of our people, the old, young, and children. …”

     – Chief Sweetgrass 

Nonetheless, the numbered Treaties undeniably benefited the Canadian government far more than they have ever benefited us.  These Treaties opened up unimaginably vast tracts of land for settlement in return for a pittance.

I do not belabour this point without reason.  “For whose benefit” cannot be a question that is pushed aside or believed to be of secondary importance.  Keeping this in mind, I want to turn to the push to create farmers out of the people of the Plains nations.

Lost harvests

As with so many issues facing aboriginal peoples versus non-aboriginal peoples in this country, the level of control the government has and had over the lives of each must be contrasted to see a clear picture.

(For an excellent resource on the topic.)

The Prairie reserves were created in the 1870s, and at this time settlers who chose to farm had very little in the way of legislative regulation to contend with.  In contrast, the Indian Act micromanaged reserve life to a level incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it.  This micromanagement of course included all facets of reserve agriculture.  To whose benefit, this extreme control?  History stands witness to the fact that it did not benefit First Nations.

What happened?

Many reserves were located in areas not suited to farming, and many grain seeds and farming implements promised to First Nations never materialised.  In addition, natural phenomena such as floods and frost turned a bad situation even worse.  Agriculture on the reserves took a back seat to focusing on increasing numbers of settlers flooding into the Prairies.

However, even with these impediments, farming was at first very successful in a number of First Nations communities (p.5-6):

During the early 1880s … many First Nations farmers were successful in competing in the farming economy along with the non-aboriginal farmers.  Utilizing newly developed dry land farming techniques and acting as a collective, many First Nations won local prizes and awards for their crops

Stolen Harvests

(I’m getting the feeling you weren’t sincere about wanting us to become good farmers?)

Despite the lack of any real effort to support reserves in implementing an agricultural lifestyle, many First Nations managed, through communal effort, to make it work.  You might expect that the federal government would be pleased by this, but instead, it went out of its way to sabotage these efforts by implementing a number of harmful policies (from the previously linked document, pages 5-8):

1. severality – reserve farmland was divided into 40 acre plots and no one farmer could own more than 160 acres.  The intention was to promote ‘individualism’, directly undermining successful collective efforts.  Also, any ‘left over’ land could be surrendered and made available for sale to non-natives.  
2. peasant farming – this is when ‘experts’ were sent in to teach native farmers what to do. The purpose was to reduce output to subsistence levels, essentially just enough to support a single family.  Thus expensive large-scale machinery would be unnecessary, and aboriginal farmers would become ‘more self-sufficient’ by using peasant-methods of production instead of the more advanced techniques they’d been using.
3. the pass and permit system: these systems restricted the ability of  First Nations peoples to leave the reserve, as well as severely curtailing their ability to sell their products or purchase farming implements.  In essence, these systems ensured that aboriginal farmers could not compete with non-aboriginal farmers.

The Greater Production Campaign

The early twentieth century saw attention focused further abroad as WWI broke out.  At the same time, great efforts were made to first lease and then alienate reserve lands for cultivation by non-natives. The Greater Production Campaign was announced in 1918 at the end of the war.  During this time, vast amounts of Indian lands were already being taken up and provided to settler veterans resulting in significant erosion of aboriginal lands.  (This, as aboriginal veterans were denied benefits afforded to their non-native counterparts, and often left without ‘location tickets’ which would have entitled them to settle back on their home reserves.)

The Greater Production Campaign (p. 57) resulted in many amendments to the Indian Act, making it easier to alienate (take) lands that were not being cultivated.

(Cree farmer, File Hills Colony 1920)

Can we just take a moment to think about that?  The most unsuccessful First Nations were given land unsuited to farming, or were not given the farm stock, seed and implements promised in their Treaty.  When some First Nations did well despite this, an entire system was put into place to ensure their farming ability, including methods, would only be the most ineffective and small-scale possible.  After that, any lands not properly cultivated according to Indian Affair’s standards were essentially ‘up for grabs’ because the lazy Indians just couldn’t handle farming.

Oh yes.  That is bitterness in my tone.

Non-native farmers didn’t care much for the Greater Production Campaign as it applied to them, and it was pretty much scrapped in 1919.  It had held a mostly advisory role anyway.  On the reserves, however, Indian Affairs had absolute power via its office of the Commission for Greater Production up until 1924.

Sweeping and absolute power

The Commissioner for Greater Production was given the power in 1918 to use as much Prairie reserve land as he liked, and to spend Band monies, including all the profits from decades of agricultural efforts if he wished.  The plan was threefold (p.74 of last link above):

1. lease as much reserve land as possible to non-native farmers
2. create government-run Greater Production farms on reserve
3. stimulate agricultural activity among reserve residents.

No monies were expended to help individual farmers.  Most of the financial focus was on the Greater Production farms.  For example, a farm tractor was purchased for the Alexander reserve (near Onoway, AB) but it was not allowed to be used by native farmers and instead was given to a Mr. Laight who ran a ‘homestyle’ Greater Production farm there.

All purchases desired by individual First Nations farmers came out of their own pockets or Band funds and had to be approved by the Commissioner…approval that was often withheld.

(Cote First Nation, Sask 1982.)

Since no real effort was put into accomplishing the third goal of stimulating agricultural activity among reserve residents, it is unsurprising that it failed miserably.  Some managed to find part time work as labourers on their own reserves in the Greater Production farms.  The Greater Production farms enjoyed some profits, though not princely in sum (p.139), all of which went back into Indian Affairs coffers.

In addition, the lands on reserve which were taken up for Greater Production farms were not leased to paying tenants, and that loss of potential revenue is immense. Appendix B of the last linked document estimates what that rate of return would have been on a number of reserves between 1918-1924. The land had been released for production without fee during the war time period “as a patriotic gesture”, but its use continued long after the war ended.

Set up to fail

It is clear that the extreme interference in First Nations agriculture in the Prairies led to conditions which made it all but impossible for native farmers to succeed and thrive. As with so many other aspects of indigenous life in Canada, success in agriculture was met with policies which undid all those hard-won gains.  When racist opinion columns allude to indigenous ‘laziness’ as a reason for current levels of poverty, these facts are never mentioned.  It is doubtful that the authors of such vile screeds are even aware of the history.

It is time we are all made aware of the history.  It is time to put these lies to bed.  I don’t want another generation of native children growing up in the Prairies being told that their ancestors were too lazy and stupid to survive the horrific collapse of their traditional economic base.  The fact is, our peoples adapted swiftly to a set of completely new conditions, and we were damn good at it.

Our resilience and ability to adapt is constantly underestimated and glossed over.  We are seen as incapable of adopting new technologies, despite the fact that we have demonstrated again and again just how easily we do precisely that.

This centuries-long era of infantalisation can only end when it is recognised that we were adults all along.

awretchedgirl:

tânisi nitôtêmitik, welcome to Treaty Talk With âpihtawikosisân!

In previous episodes, we’ve explored the way in which modern treaty making resembles the approach taken during the creation of the historical numbered Treaties.  We’ve also looked at how ‘without prejudice’ agreements stall and perhaps undermine the maintenance and exercise of Aboriginal rights, as an alternative to real treaty-making.

Today, we’re going to go back, back in a time a little.

Early treaty making in Canada

For some time in our early relationship, colonial powers dealt with indigenous peoples on a fairly equal basis.  This was of course during a time when European numbers were low in comparison to the indigenous population, and at a time when Europeans desperately needed help to survive these climes as well as surviving the military aggression of their fellow Europeans. Treaty making during this period focused on these specific needs and were not about land so much as they were about securing military and economic aid from the eastern First Nations.

(Two Row Wampum. Darren Bonaparte has an excellent article on the subject.)

Growing up in the west, I knew very little of these kinds of treaties.  My relations live mostly in Treaty 6 and Treaty 8 territory, so my understanding of treaties as a thing was very coloured by that context.  The idea of treaties not being about taking land and shoving native peoples on to successfully smaller and crappier pieces of land was just something I hadn’t considered as being possible.

To be honest, I don’t think I really ‘got it’ until I came and lived in the east, and became surrounded by this earlier view of treaty-making.  I took my daughters to Darren Bonaparte’s wonderful presentation of the “Wampum Chronicles” last year, and all of our moccasins were blown off by a very coherent explanation of the timeline and purpose of those early treaties. The various bits and pieces I had learned over the years from members of those eastern nations finally came together in my mind, and I was left thinking, “we need to get back to this kind of relationship”.

When the wholesale acquisition of land does not even truly enter the equation via treaty, it is much more difficult to claim that the original intentions were indeed ‘you give us everything, and we regift you a tiny piece back’.

The Gradual Civilisation Act

The period of ‘Contact and Co-operation’ (as it has been styled in the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 1996 report) was followed by a period of heavy-handed colonialism.  European settlement, already begun in earnest after the 1780s as Loyalists flooded into Mi’gmaq and Maliseet lands,  increased significantly after the war of 1812.   The Robinson Treaties began ‘opening up lands’ for settlement and the population tide shifted very much in the European’s favour.

An Act to Encourage the Gradual Civilization of Indian Tribes in this Province, and to Amend the Laws Relating to Indians, was passed in 1857.  (By this time, my community of Lac Ste. Anne had an established Mission in an area peppered with the children and grandchildren of Louis Callihoo Kwarakwante.)

This Gradual Civilization Act opens with the following:

WHEREAS it is desireable to encourage the progress of Civilization among the Indian Tribes in this Province, and the gradual removal of all legal distinctions between them and Her Majesty’s other Canadian subjects, and to facilitate the acquisition of property and of the rights accompanying it, by such Individual Members of the said Tribes as shall be found to desire such encouragement and to have deserved it….

They sure didn’t mince their words back then!  “We want there to be  no more such thing as a category labelled ‘Indian’!”  This Act introduced the idea of enfranchisement, where Indians stopped being Indians and instead became British subjects.  This was seen as a positive thing because of course, ceasing to be Indian meant you were civilised.  Yeeeeehaw!

This desire to assimilate aboriginal peoples into ‘mainstream Canadian society’ for our benefit, is one that remains deeply entrenched in the Canadian socio-political consciousness. It was also a major theme throughout various pieces of legislation that proceeded the Indian Act.

The Indian Act is born

The first iteration of the Indian Act was brought into the world in 1876.  This marked a definite shift from an earlier approach which viewed indigenous peoples as autonomous quasi-nations which were to be protected from molestation by unsavoury characters.  The belief that indigenous cultures and societies were inferior passed into official policy:

 Our Indian legislation generally rests on the principle, that the aborigines are to be kept in a condition of tutelage and treated as wards or children of the State. …the true interests of the aborigines and of the State alike require that every effort should be made to aid the Red man in lifting himself out of his condition of tutelage and dependence, and that is clearly our wisdom and our duty, through education and every other means, to prepare him for a higher civilization by encouraging him to assume the privileges and responsibilities of full citizenship.

(This is a 1932 pass, giving permission to its holder to leave the reserve. The pass system was official policy in the Prairies but never had a legislative basis.)

‘Civilising’ the ‘aborigines’ under the Indian Act (at the same time that the numbered Treaties were being made) meant micromanaging every aspect life for Indians.  Here are some highlights from among the various amendments made to the Indian Act over the years:

• 1885: Prohibition of several traditional Aboriginal ceremonies, such as potlaches (sundances were outlawed in 1895).
• 1905: Power to remove Aboriginal peoples from reserves near towns with more than 8,000 people.
• 1911: Power to expropriate portions of reserves for roads, railways and other public works, as well as to move an entire reserve away from a municipality if it was deemed expedient.
• 1914: Requirement that western Aboriginal peoples seek official permission before appearing in Aboriginal “costume” in any public dance, show, exhibition, stampede or pageant.
• 1918: Power to lease out uncultivated reserve lands to non-natives if the new leaseholder would use it for farming or pasture.
• 1927: Prohibition of anyone (Aboriginal or otherwise) from soliciting funds for Aboriginal legal claims without special licence from the Superintendent General. This amendment granted the government control over the ability of Aboriginals to pursue land claims.

This last one is a Big Deal.  Treaty 11 was signed in 1921, marking the end of the signing of numbered Treaties.  A great many claims of Treaty violations were starting to come forth, and Canada legislated away our ability to seek any recourse.  The Pass System, enacted in the Praries but not written into law, helped prevent indigenous peoples from ‘collaborating’ to pursue grievances as well.  This provision was not repealed until 1951.

The glacial pace of negotiations

Most Canadians cannot comprehend why on earth these issues have not yet been resolved.  How can there still be land claims?  What the hell is going on?

Well, there was no federal comprehensive land claim policy until 1973.  Between 1927-1951 it was illegal to raise funds to pursue claims, and then it wasn’t until 1973 that any sort of framework was put in place to hear them anyway (outside the courts).

That is a significant period of time within which, we were unable to do anything to pursue land claims or seek recourse for treaty violations.  It took some nations up to 32 years to settle land claims (page 13 has a chart), even though they filed their claims mere days or months after the federal system was set up. Many others claims launched around the same time have not yet been resolved, and still other claims were stalled and not launched until the 90s or early oughts.

Let’s keep this in perspective, shall we?  The numbered Treaties were signed within 50 years, between 1871-1921.  NINETY-ONE YEARS LATER and there are a vast number of unresolved claims sitting in Canada’s ‘inbox’.

Have we advanced so little in nearly a century, that we still haven’t resolved these issues?  Canada, you can do better.

Are we human, or not?

This article is intended to very briefly outline a context that you may not be familiar with.  Canada did not just wake up one day and decide that treating us like inferiors was wrong.  The whole notion that we might indeed be human beings, equal in worth to non-natives, is a very recent shift, and not one that has fully gained traction yet.

I want you to keep this  in mind when I finally get down to writing about the way aboriginal organisations are being slashed and burned wholesale.  I want you to remember the way the relationship between indigenous peoples and Europeans began, and how that changed.

I want you to think about the stated goals of assimilation (civilisation), and of the intense restriction of indigenous lives, and whether this is something you support?  Was it not okay back then?  Is it okay now?  What do you think has changed?

The Indian Act is just one piece of legislation.  Furthermore, it applies only to Status Indians.  Nonetheless, it represents a series of beliefs and approaches that have been applied to all indigenous peoples in Canada throughout this nation’s history.

I firmly believe that if Canadians were to view this situation through a ‘foreign’ lens, as though it were happening somewhere else, it would be quite easy to condemn.  Familiarity does tend to breed contempt, however, and the myopic view this nation has of its relationship with indigenous peoples seems to shroud the dialogue in a cloud of justificatory claims such as ‘well our situation is different’.

The current climate is hurtling us dangerously backwards in time.  If that meant we were going to return to a pre-Confederation, egalitarian approach to treaty making, then I’d be all for it.  But let’s not be silly, because that is not what is happening.  If anything, the current budget slashing and time-frame restrictions are emulating 1927 Indian Act restrictions, making it more and more difficult for us to actually resolve these problems.  Nor will this change, unless Canadians want it to.

We have to fix this relationship eventually.  Are we going to put it off for another century?

What a pleasure it is to send my girls off to school, and then come back home to write!  It’s been a while since I had this luxury.  Not super long, mind you…I was an unemployed, unpaid ‘writer’ for months.  I’ve only been at this teaching gig for about 4 weeks or so, but it’s been intense and I guess it feels like longer!

What a challenge!  I go to work every day excited, because I have no idea how things are going to play out.

Ups and downs galore though.  There’s nothing quite like planning what you think is an utterly kick-ass lesson, and then having only two girls in class.  Or having it bomb completely.  All the excitement and joy you had inside about this little gem you thought you created for your students just oozes out your toes, taking your spine and liver and spleen with it.  Blleeeechhhhhhh and you just bleed out that enthusiasm.

Until you remind yourself that none of this is about you.  Not the direction of the lessons, not the relevance, not the impact, and most definitely not what the girls are coming into class feeling.  These are complex human beings with their own lives, and you forget that at your own emotional peril.

So I focus on the good things, which there exist in abundance.  My students are coming to school fed and well rested.  They are not being physically or sexually abused right now.  They are not being neglected.  They have access to a plethora of resources and are surrounded by people whose job it is to ensure their health and safety.  My students didn’t have that kind of context when I taught previously in the North, and dealing with kids immediately experiencing crisis, with no support, was unbelievably difficult.

I haven’t hit my stride yet, for sure.  I lack even the most basic of educational materials.  There is not a textbook in sight.  I create all of my materials from scratch, and from a handful of websites.  I have students who range in skill level from grade 3 in certain areas, to grade 11.  To call this a challenge is an understatement.  Not to mention that many of the students are often absent for appointments or home visits, and so the concept of building on previous skills is one that cannot be easily implemented.  I chunk my units into smaller and smaller units of time to address this.  I am trying to build up resources for more individualised programs.  It’s coming together slowly, but it IS coming together.

One thing I am certain of…this work is SO much better than being in the legal field.  It allows me to be creative (which I absolutely need), and constantly challenged to shift my perception and tactics.  It allows me to interact with others in a very humbling way…to these kids, I may be ‘the teacher’, but that doesn’t make me all that important in their eyes.  They tolerate me, and only as long as I respect them, regardless of what they throw at me. This means I have to engage in a lot of critical self-analysis to ensure that I am not reacting to them out of wounded pride, or arrogance, or a sense of superiority.  We are all of us incomplete humans, and this job allows me to grow in a way the legal field simply did not have room for.

Some days I want to gouge my own eyes out in frustration, but I can see progress and I know that eventually, many of these students are going to be okay.  Not because I’m some amazing “Dangerous Minds” type teacher, but because they are incredibly resilient.  They’ve gone through things most adults can hardly imagine, and they are still able to grin impishly and play tricks on you like children should.  Of course they lash out.  Of course some days are really, really bad.  The fact that not all days are shit is unbelievably amazing. 

These kids will become the kind of adults that have inspired me the most in my life, who have struggled and come through and who understand suffering on a level that many people cannot conceive of.  As a result, they became some of the most compassionate and passionate people I’ve met.  I see those qualities in all of these kids.  I want them to stay alive long enough to realise their potential.  That’s all I want.  I want them to live. 

If I can help them do that, in any way, then what I am doing is worth the bad days.  All of them.

adailyriot:

If you’ve heard the term 60s scoop and thought it had something to do with ice-cream in ye olden days, I’m here to enlighten you. I prefer the term stolen generations, because the scooping I’m about to discuss didn’t end in the ’60s, and arguably still goes on today.

I am referring to the wholesale removal of aboriginal children from their families.

In the mid ’60s, the federal and provincial governments collaborated to provide child welfare coverage in First Nations communities. Before this, no real system was in place for First Nations people.

The similarity to tactics used during the height of the residential school system is eerie. Aboriginal children were taken en masse from their families and adopted out into non-Native families:

Child welfare workers removed Aboriginal children from their families and communities because they felt the best homes for the children were not Aboriginal homes. The ideal home would instill the values and lifestyles with which the child welfare workers themselves were familiar: white, middle-class homes in white, middle-class neighbourhoods. Aboriginal communities and Aboriginal parents and families were deemed to be “unfit.”

Research has shown that in British Columbia alone, the percentage of native children in the care of the child welfare system went from almost none to one-third in only 10 years as a result of this expansion. This was a pattern that repeated itself all across Canada.

There is evidence that at least 11,132 status Indian children were removed from their homes between 1960 and 1990. However, it is clear the numbers are in fact much higher than this, as birth records were often closed and status not marked down on foster records. Some estimate the number, which included non-status and Métis children, is more like 20,000.

The ’60s scoop picked up where residential schools left off, removing children from their homes, and producing cultural amputees.

Child welfare reforms not working

In the late ’70s, it was recognized that the approach up to that point was inadequate. There were efforts made to turn more power over to First Nations themselves and to keep children in their communities rather than being adopted out across Canada, into the U.S. and even overseas.

In 1982, Manitoba Judge Edwin C. Kimelman was appointed to head an inquiry into the child welfare system and how it was impacting native peoples. He had this to say:

“It would be reassuring if blame could be laid to any single part of the system. The appalling reality is that everyone involved believed they were doing their best and stood firm in their belief that the system was working well. Some administrators took the ostrich approach to child welfare problems — they just did not exist. The miracle is that there were not more children lost in this system run by so many well-intentioned people. The road to hell was paved with good intentions, and the child welfare system was the paving contractor.”

Nor was this his strongest condemnation of the process, and he made it clear that the system was a form of cultural genocide (page 44).

Unfortunately, by 2002 over 22,500 native children were in foster care across Canada, more than the total taken during the ’60s scoop and certainly more than had been taken to residential schools. Aboriginal children are six to eight times more likely to be placed in foster care than non-native children. To ignore the repeated attempts to annihilate aboriginal cultures and instead place the blame solely on “dysfunctional native families” is to take an utterly ahistorical and abusive view.

“…[this] over representation…is not rooted in their indigenous race, culture and ethnicity. Rather, any family with children who has experienced the same colonial history and the resultant poverty, social and community disorganization…may find themselves in a similar situation.”

Systemic discrimination and underfunding

On April 18th, a historic ruling came down from the Federal Court regarding the underfunding of child welfare services on reserves. This case is a judicial review of a decision made by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, which dismissed the claims on a technicality.

The Federal Court has sent the case back to the CHRT for a full hearing:

“Repeated studies have shown funding for child welfare on reserves is far below that available to children off-reserve and results in far lower levels of service. In particular, the lack of funds available for programs that can help families before they are broken up results in far higher rates of children being taken into foster care on reserves than off reserves.”

No situation involving children in need of protective services is a happy one. The stories regardless of the background of the child will chill your blood, and rightfully so. But when only 21 per cent of children in a province like Manitoba are native, yet account for 84 percent of children in permanent care, something is deeply, and terribly wrong. Something that cannot be chalked up to just bad parenting.

The main reason aboriginal children enter the child protection system is due to “neglect.” Neglect in cases involving aboriginal children is driven primarily by three structural risk factors: poverty, inadequate housing and substance misuse.

Inadequate housing is a serious, systemic problem in many First Nations communities. Overcrowding, lack of indoor plumbing or potable water, mould-infested homes and crumbling infrastructure all play a part in what constitutes “inadequate housing.” It is also a factor that is rarely something the families in question can directly control. Attawapiskat recently provided stark evidence of this.

Aboriginal children and their families are being punished for being faced with unacceptable living conditions that no one living in Canada should have to contend with.

The legacy of over 100 years of concerted cultural abuse, particularly directed at taking children away from their families, has taken its toll on our communities. There is no denying it. In my opinion, the question now needs to be: Will Canada acknowledge this and do what it takes to redress these wrongs?

A more detailed version of this article was posted on the author’s blog, âpihtawikosisân.

fucking lol so hard that I had to see this reposted on tumblr before knowing that ICTMN had published my article.

If you’ve ever heard the term “60s scoop” and thought it had something to do with ice-cream in the old days, I’m here to enlighten you.

I prefer the term Stolen Generations, because the scooping I’m about to discuss did not end in the 60s.  In fact, many argue that it didn’t end with a single generation either, and perhaps hasn’t actually ended at all… hence the title.  Similar policies  were put into place in Australia with equally unhappy results.

You could delve into this sordid history and lose many hours uncovering details, but I’ll provide you with a brief outline and enough links to allow you to do that digging if you wish.  I recognise that some people will find my style overly hyperbolic.  Personally, I don’t feel I’m able to give these topics justice in the short space I’m allowing myself.

Adoption as Cultural Annihilation

It is important to remember that many of the services Canadians take for granted, such as education, health care, and social welfare programs are in the main, designed and administered by the provinces and territories.

(Some survivors of the 60s scoop are pursuing a class action lawsuit against the province of Ontario and Canada.)

However, the federal government has been asserting its authority over “Indians and Lands of the Indians” since 1763.  While is still remains unclear whether this includes all Inuit and Métis, it remains true that First Nations must turn to the federal government, not the provinces, for many services.

Canada did not spring from the skull of Zeus fully formed.  The development of social programs and services has been incremental.  Before the mid 1960s, there was no organised federal child welfare system.  The provinces each had their own system, but nothing was in place for First Nations people.

In the mid 60s, agreements started to be formed between the federal and provincial governments to provide some child welfare coverage in First Nations communities.  To be brief, the approach was “take first, ask questions later (if ever)”.

The similarity to tactics used during the height of the Residential School system is eerie.  Aboriginal children were taken en masse from their families and adopted out into non-native families:

Child welfare workers removed Aboriginal children from their families and communities because they felt the best homes for the children were not Aboriginal homes. The ideal home would instill the values and lifestyles with which the child welfare workers themselves were familiar: white, middle-class homes in white, middle-class neighbourhoods. Aboriginal communities and Aboriginal parents and families were deemed to be “unfit.”

Research has shown that in British Columbia alone, the percentage of native children in the care of the Child Welfare system went from almost none, to one-third in only 10 years as a result of this expansion.  This was a pattern the repeated itself all across Canada.

(Survivors have been trying for years to be heard.)

There is evidence that at least 11,132 Status Indian children were removed from their homes between 1960 and 1990.  However, it is clear the numbers are in fact much higher than this, as birth records were often closed and Status not marked down on foster records.  Some estimate the number, which included non-Status and Métis children, is more like 20,000.

Being from a native family was often enough to have a child declared in need of intervention.  This process resulted in thousands of indigenous peoples being raised without their culture, their language, and without learning anything about their communities.  Reclaiming that heritage has been a painful and difficult journey not only for the adoptees themselves, but often also for their families.

The 60s scoop picked up where Residential Schools left off, removing children from their homes, and producing cultural amputees.

Child Welfare reforms not working

In the late 70s, it was recognised that the approach up to that point was inadequate.  There were efforts made to turn more power over to First Nations themselves and to keep children in their communities rather than being adopted out across Canada, into the US and even overseas.

In 1982, Manitoba Judge Edwin C. Kimelman was appointed to head an inquiry into the Child Welfare system and how it was impacting native peoples.  He had this to say:

It would be reassuring if blame could be laid to any single part of the system. The appalling reality is that everyone involved believed they were doing their best and stood firm in their belief that the system was working well. Some administrators took the ostrich approach to child welfare problems—they just did not exist. The miracle is that there were not more children lost in this system run by so many well-intentioned people. The road to hell was paved with good intentions, and the child welfare system was the paving contractor.

Nor was this his strongest condemnation of the process, and he made it clear that the system was a form of cultural genocide.

(Joseph Tisiga explores the intergenerational impact of the 60s scoop in his piece “With Friends”.)

Unfortunately, by 2002 over 22,500 native children were in foster care across Canada, more than the total taken during the 60s scoop and certainly more than had been taken to Residential Schools.  There continue to be three times as many aboriginal children in the child-welfare system as non-native children.  To ignore the repeated attempts to annihilate aboriginal cultures and instead place the blame solely on ‘dysfunctional native families’ is to take an utterly ahistorical and abusive view.

Systemic discrimination and underfunding

On April 18th, an historic ruling came down from the Federal Court regarding the underfunding of Child Welfare services on reserve.  This case is a judicial review of a decision made by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal,which dismissed the claims on a technicality.

The Federal Court has sent the case back to the CHRT for a full hearing.

Repeated studies have shown funding for child welfare on reserves is far below that available to children off-reserve and results in far lower levels of service. In particular, the lack of funds available for programs that can help families before they are broken up results in far higher rates of children being taken into foster care on reserves than off reserves.

The rate of foster care for reserve children is about eight times that of non-aboriginal children, concluded former Auditor General Sheila Fraser in 2008.

When the complaint was filed, the federal government generally spent about 78 cents on child welfare on reserves for every dollar spent by the provinces for children on reserves.

No situation involving children in need of protective services is a happy one.  The stories regardless of the background of the child will chill your blood, and rightfully so.  But when only 21% of children in a province like Manitoba are native, yet account for 84% of children in permanent care, something is deeply, and terribly wrong.  Sometime that cannot be chalked up to just bad parenting.

(Overcrowded conditions in Pikangikum First Nation.)

What makes the situation even more troubling, is the fact that deplorably common conditions found on reserve work against families, not only resulting in children being removed, but also making family reunification out of reach for many.

The main reason aboriginal children enter the child protection system is due to “neglect” (with significantly lower rates of physical abuse than is experienced by non-native children in child welfare cases).

Neglect in cases involving aboriginal children is “driven primarily by 3 structural risk factors: poverty, inadequate housing and substance misuse.”

Inadequate housing is a serious, systemic problem in many First Nations communities.  Overcrowding, lack of indoor plumbing or potable water, mould-infested homes and crumbling infrastructure all play a part in what constitutes “inadequate housing”.  It is also a factor that is rarely something the families in question can directly control.  Attawapiskat recently provided stark evidence of this.

Aboriginal children, and their families, are being punished for being faced with unacceptable living conditions that no one living in Canada should have to contend with. 

The legacy of over a 100 years of concerted cultural abuse, particularly directed at taking children away from their families, has taken its toll on our communities.  There is no denying it.  In my opinion, the question now needs to be…will Canada acknowledge this and do what it takes to redress these wrongs?

Money alone is not going to solve this problem.  Real change needs to occur, and it’s going to start with the story being fully understood.

Many thanks for listening.

There are many stories that Canadians do not regularly learn in school.  Our history is littered with forgotten events, either deliberately overlooked, or rationalised away somehow.

(Canadians of Eastern European decent, forced to labour in internment camps.)

This lacuna in our collective knowledge is not limited to events which impacted indigenous peoples.  You might reach adulthood without ever once being aware that in 1918, twelve ‘enemy languages’ were banned in Canada, including Ukrainian and German, and that there were periods of sharp repression even after this ban was lifted.  You might not know that 4000 Canadian citizens of Ukrainian decent were interned along with other ‘enemy aliens’ from 1914 – 1920 while 80,000 others were forced to ‘check in ‘ with police from time to time.

You might have no idea that in 2005, a Bill was passed to acknowledge these historical wrongs, only a few years before the last survivors of interment died.  You might not know that a $10 million fund was set up to commemorate these events and to raise awareness.  You might not know any of this unless it is a part of your family’s history (and perhaps not even then), because it was never talked about officially until so very recently.

(The Komogata Maru was turned away during a period of strong anti-Asian sentiment in Canada.)

I bring this all up, because I am often faced with incredulity when I talk about the things that indigenous peoples in Canada have experienced.  People are shocked that they were not aware of these things.  Perhaps they think that it is strange such things have been kept quiet.

I submit that this is not strange at all.  I too was raised within a system that lauded Canada’s achievements at home and especially internationally.  We celebrate the good stories and occasionally mention some of the bad things in a ‘those were different times’ sense.  The overriding narrative is that Canada has always tried its best.  It is a good country that has sometimes done bad things.

I am not here to say the opposite is true.  But our collective national history is not yet complete.  I have lived through the recognition of Japanese internment, an apology for the Chinese Head Tax.  I learned in University and at Holocaust museums that Jewish refugees were turned away from Canada in the 1930s, and how many of those people died in the Holocaust as a result.  These things are slowly coming to the surface.  Bubbling up and becoming part of our national narrative in an official way.

Our history is littered with abuses.  If we want to live up to our reputation as a nation that respects human rights, we have to face the horrors of our past, head on.  We have to acknowledge what was done, and how it was justified.  We are only beginning this journey of self-discovery.

(A Head Tax certificate.)

This is not just the history of individual Sikh and Muslim and Hindu families, of individual Chinese families, of only Jews and Japanese and Ukrainians and Germans and Blacks.  This is Canada’s history, and we do not fully acknowledge it.  In its glories and triumphs, in its failures and repressions.  It is no weakness to admit these things and learn about them. It is considered a truism we must learn from our mistakes, yet we still seem to shy away from talking about them and teaching them.

I have had people say they feel I do not sympathise with the plight of others.  Actually, that’s not entirely accurate.  I have had people say that I minimise ‘white’ settler experiences, as I have yet to have someone from another group make this claim.

In fact, I strongly believe that all of Canada’s closets need cleaning.  I speak from my perspective as a Métis woman struggling to recover her own history, a history that was denied even while it was whispered about in kitchens, around fires.  I freely acknowledge that our story is not the only story, but I cannot bear the burden of speaking for all people.  I cannot even speak for all Métis.

(Anti-Irish sentiment was not just felt in the US, but had strong roots here in Canada as well.)

When I reach out, and explain our history to those who do not yet know it, I am rediscovering it too.  When I reach out this way, I am not telling you that your history is irrelevant.  I cannot spend time prefacing my articles with proof that I understand a great deal of the oppression that has been faced by non-natives in Canada before I tackle the oppression native peoples have, and continue to face.  I can only keep learning the histories.  All of them.

This is all I am asking of Canadians.  I ask that you learn all the histories.  That you learn our history too.  If somehow, this seems like an unreasonable request, or you feel that I am not asking ‘politely enough’, then that is your choice.  kiyam.

(“I’ve got some things to tell you about Canada’s history.”)

Please do not tell me I am wrong in my approach.  That if only I did things the way you want me to, I would be more ‘successful’. Do not expect me to become an expert in your history before I am allowed to tell you about mine.  Do not assume I know nothing of your history merely because I am speaking about mine.

The fact is, I am not alienating every settler out there, because I have had incredible responses from ‘white’ people which have been very heartening.  If you are not among that group, and feel slighted somehow, I am sorry.  It is not my intention.  But I cannot please everyone, and I do not aspire to such.

And sometimes we need to agree to disagree, because communication can become hopelessly convoluted and eventually impossible at times.  That’s okay too.  After all, I am asking for there to be even more variety in experiences discussed at the national level, not less.

I’ll be over here, sweeping out this closet.  Perhaps when we clean out all the skeletons, we can pack those closets with sweeter smelling things.

jisms:

apihtawikosisan:

tânisi!

I see you are confused about what constitutes cultural appropriation. I would like to provide you with resources and information on the subject so that you can better understand what our concerns are.

However, I also want you to have a brief summary of…

recognize that an appreciation of aboriginal culture does not = a satire or parody of it.

i just find myself sighing on tumblr so much nowadays

i think what’s more despicable than mocking a respected idol or symbol is telling someone what to do

You cannot claim to “appreciate a culture” (and it is cultures, plural btw) when you know nothing about it and resist learning.  Further, when it is explained to you (very nicely in fact) why something is offensive, you cannot claim to “appreciate a culture” when you ignore what people from within that culture are telling you. 

To further claim that it is more offensive to take offense, than it is to assert your right to “appreciate a culture” in such a way that perpetrates ignorant stereotypes and actively desecrates a restricted symbol, is double-think of the most stunning kind.

Your response highlights some important issues:

1. To the people tone-policing, claiming that some of us are required to “be nicer” to those who are ignorant and unaware of what they are doing wrong: if someone wants ‘our stuff’, they will take it no matter how nice you are and they will find some way to make it our fault.
2. Ignorance is not the root of the problem…entitlement is.  Even when educated on the subject, many people feel entitled to whatever catches their fancy and no amount of information on the issue will dissuade them.
3. To those who claim that racism is not a factor, please explain how else that towering sense of entitlement continues to be such a motivator? People like the OP do not actually consider indigenous peoples to be human enough to listen to…and before you think up other examples of western settler culture exploiting and ignoring the wishes of other groups, yes, that is also evidence of the same.