harper’s… you know

More outrage at Stephen Harper’s ignorance of Canadian history. More to the point, though, outrage in the Queen’s University Journal at the Canadian media, and at Canadians in general.

hmmm… which one do i like?

There are five candidates confirmed, set to run against each other and eventually replace Phil Fontaine at the Assembly of First Nations. Two are considered front runners, possible or likely to win. Two others are considered never-minds; not even also-rans. And one is a bit of a dark horse with a slim chance of moving up to serious contender. Their names are here, and you can decide for yourselves who fits my three categories.

Clue? Which candidates does Indian Affairs consider the least offensive. That, sadly, is one of the prerequisites for the job, and the band council chiefs with an AFN vote know it. Don’t believe me? Remember how quickly Ovide and Matthew found themselves on the government’s shit list, leading to cuts to programs, which precipitated grumbles within the ranks. It’s called a pattern of behaviour, behavioural conditioning, and some other much less polite terms that I can think of.

more on the peru massacre

Survival International has a story. Note the Canadian oil company involved.

Oil companies ‘should withdraw’ as Peru ‘faces its Tiananmen’ (8 JUNE 2009)

Survival International today called on all oil companies operating in the Peruvian Amazon to suspend operations as the country comes to terms with the worst political violence since the Shining Path insurgency in the 1980s.

The companies include Anglo-French Perenco (a major gas supplier to the UK), Argentina’s PlusPetrol, Canada’s Petrolifera, Spain’s Repsol, Brazil’s Petrobras and many others.

welcome to canada

I read a story by Thomas King awhile ago about a Plains Cree or Sioux mother and son trying to get back into Canada after attending ceremonies in the United States. A Canadian border guard asks the usual questions: Where do you live? Where are you coming from? What is your citizenship or nationality?

Welcome to Canada, eh.

If I remember the story correctly, the mother tells the border guard that she is Sioux or Cree from some place in southern Alberta. This isn’t what the caucasian border guard wants to hear. It’s not on his list of officially acceptable answers. What is her citizenship or nationality, he repeats? The mother says again: Sioux (or Cree).

This begins a day-long standoff with this woman and her son, suddenly rendered stateless refugees, stuck in a no-man’s-land between U.S. and Canada customs sheds, victims of typical Canadian bureaucratic idiocy.

ivison blows

Do as I say, not as I do. That’s the message I get from Chuck Strahl and the Conservative Government in Ottawa these days.

John Ivison’s column in the Irrational Compost a couple of days ago illustrates that, though I doubt that’s what the writer intended. I genuinely think Ivison fell for the government’s sweet talk about improving lives, cleaning up corruption, and demanding accountability.

 

Bushwah.

Ivison writes (Tories plan First Nations overhaul, June 3) that Strahl is set to “unveil a new approach” in the way it funds status Indians and their reserves. Those with “good prospects of economic success” will get more money. Those deemed “bad prospects” won’t get any more money than they do now. Nothing in Ivison’s column or Strahl’s words excludes possible cuts to seriously under-funded communities if Indian Affairs decides they need to be taught a lesson in obedience because it really doesn’t like their attitude.

So what’s new in this approach? Ever since I remember, the federal government has rewarded Indians and organizations it considered “good,” and punished those it didn’t like or agree with. “Bad Indians” found themselves on the Indian Affairs’ shitlist. Good little Indians found themselves appointed to the Senate.

T’was ever thus. Ovide Mercredi was “Gandhi” one day, a shitty ass frozen out by Indian Affairs the next. Matthew Coon Come stepped out of line and found the funding to his Assembly of First Nations slashed in half. You have similar examples in Canadian mainstream. Talk to Danny Williams in Newfoundland or the folks down in Nova Scotia. What makes you think that this same type of coercion and patronage doesn’t happen in Indian country too?

Strahl & the Plan

Boss, da plan, da plan

If Indians dared ruffle the feathers of GR8 White Faddah ™, riled his anger by choosing an MP from an opposing political party, went to the news media to complain about the lack of any coherent funding policies at Indian Affairs in Ottawa, the complete lack of consultations and accountability at Indian Affairs, idiotic or incompetent civil servants, and so on… they might find repairs to their schools denied, contaminated water systems ignored, decrepit housing left for another government to deal with. And they got away with it, time after time.

 

Why? Because journalists like Ivison actually believe it when an Indian Affairs official like Chuck Strahl shows up saying he’s there to help. Wake up, Ivison. Indians have been hearing that bs for more than a hundred years. You can’t be that gullible. If so, I have this bridge in Manhattan I think you’d be interested in.

Indian Affairs and Indian Affairs’ ministers get away with this form of government-sanctioned bribery/coercion because too many journalists become deaf, dumb and blind at the strangest times.

On the one hand, there’s this community that’s limping along because it’s funding has been kept at pre-Confederation levels. They’re plugging holes in the walls of homes with newspaper. Kids are almost strangers to their parents because justice officials think that Indians of a certain age should get a criminal record.

On the other hand, there’s Chuck Strahl. He looks like the reporter. He talks like the reporter. He comes from the reporter’s community. So when Strahl says that the reserve described above isn’t making the grade, that they aren’t pulling themselves up by their bootstraps quickly enough or high enough to suit him… reporters believe him. They actually get sucked in.

Are there rich reserves that could be doing more? Sure there are. Just as there is an emerging Indian middle class that could be doing more to help their own communities, but prefer the latte at Starbucks. But that is not most reserves, nor the day-to-day reality of most Indigenous peoples in Canada. It’s time for Indian Affairs, and the minister, to stop blaming the victims of s system they devised and keep chugging along.

uppity Mohawks and their bridges

Then there are those uppity Mohawks. They won’t accept the rules that say they’re supposed to live in poverty. They see a loophole in economic development regulations, the ones that stipulate they must go cap in hand for approval from Indian Affairs before anything gets done, and they ram a truck through it. They actually build their own economies. Traders and merchants that they are, they have the timerity to then flip the bird at GR8 White Faddah ™.

Sovereignty? My ass, says the minister. Bad Indians. Baaad Indians. We’ll need to teach them the “rule of law.”

Is this the same as “Honour of the Crown?” Respect for treaties? Upholding legal commitments and Agreements passed by the Parliament of Canada? That “rule of law”? Or the one used only when it’s convenient to hammer down uppity Indians?

Educate yourself, John Ivison. You’re writing from a position of ignorance about issues that you seem to know next to nothing about. This leaves you open to manipulation by politicians who have engaged in these types of abusive behaviours for decades – and getting away with it thanks to writers like you. Your readers deserve better. Indians deserve better.

shameless plug

There were lots of things I didn’t like about Winnipeg when I lived there for a couple of years. They were eclipsed by the things I really loved. One thing above all else was the sense of social activism and involvement. The city was alive with people doing things, not just sitting there waiting or looking the other way.

What brings this my attention? Colleen Simard. She writes from time to time for the Winnipeg papers and is, IMHO, one of the better, more graceful and classy writers and journalists out there. Take her latest guest bit in “View From The West” at the Winnipeg Free Press. She knocks down some ridiculous but hard to kill myths and stereotypes but in a way that makes you wonder afterward what your guts are doing down there on the floor.

Why the U of S turned down half a million is simple enough: the kind-hearted donor stipulated she didn’t want the money going to aboriginal people. Of course, that’s discrimination because you’re excluding a race of people. If you don’t understand that you should be doing some educational reading of your own.

Read up on the Canadian Human Rights Act. And before you start firing off those angry emails, stick with me.

Sure, it’s fine to set up a scholarship for “white people,” but don’t set up a scholarship that expressly excludes a race.

See what I mean? That’s just the tip of her dagger.

But to get the full effect, head on over to read the whole thing.  Then check out her Urban DND(oops!) NDN publication – then ask yourselves why can’t we do something like this Montreal, or Ottawa, or Kingston? Blimey!

Two big thumbs up for Colleen.

canada’s 19th century policies

The United States may be moving toward recognition of the United Nation’s International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Australia has already announced it will do so. New Zealand may be re-considering its opposition the the Declaration as well. If so, this will leave Canada the only member in the UN voting against it, because Canada (as usual) is hoping to legislate Indians out of existence before that’s necessary.

The fact that Canada will be alone in its refusal to recognize Indigenous rights should not surprise Indigenous peoples, nor should it anyone else. Canada has maintained hypocritical, illogical and ridiculous positions on Indigenous rights all along.

• Canada says it respects the right of self-determination while making sure its legislative leghold traps remain firm, keeping Indigenous peoples in a system of internal colonialism.
• Canada says it wants to resolve disputes about Indigenous rights to land and resources by honouring existing treaties and land agreements, but continues to be the main reason for the huge back log at land claims, wasting millions of dollars each year, and provoking legal bar fights over resource issues. 
• Canada says it supports Indigenous rights, but does not seem to have a clue what that means. Or if it does, Canada seems to be stuck in 19th century attitudes and legal opinions about Indigenous peoples and their rights.

So here’s a suggestion. Follow this link and read. Canadians really need to educate themselves about the Indigneous peoples that their governments deny even exist. They may need to drag their country into the 21st. century.

The critical point here is that nation states assume their citizens accept the government and the political and cultural rules of social and political process. This, however, is a main point of contention between nation states and indigenous peoples, who have their own cultures, forms of government, economies and communities. Indigenous peoples live in communities or nations that are organized differently than nation states and many indigenous peoples do not recognize the authority or power of nation states, although they are often compelled to abide by their rules.

Indigenous peoples are often not, if ever, consensual citizens within the nation states that have assumed power and territory surrounding indigenous communities. Immigrants are asked to become naturalized and take an oath of allegiance to the nation state. Indigenous peoples, however, have been legislated into citizenship, and have not voluntarily taken oaths of loyalty or willingness to uphold or recognize the constitutions of nation states. Indigenous peoples generally are not parties to, did not consent to, and often did not participate in the constitution formation of nation states. While many indigenous peoples are loyal to their nation states, they at the same time want recognition of their political, cultural and territorial traditions.

confused

I’ve been moving away on this blog from responding to every issue that pops up in news reports or idiotic post in the moronosphere. It takes a lot of time and energy to keep up with it all, not to mention the time to do a bit of research, draft what I hope is a reasonable or at least intelligent response, and then post it. There must be better things I can do, I tell myself. But what?

From time to time, I try to post a bit of writing that lies dormant in one of the dozens of folders on my computer. Some of them, I’ve flogged but have had rejected. Others are things I’ve had to get off my chest and poured out through the keyboard. I’m not sure if anyone reads these, and it gets like my old job at CBC Radio where you’d bust your butt getting something done, send it over the air, and then…. hissssss (the sound of static).

One thing I know. Issues that get me thinking require that I deal with them somehow. But the pressure, put on me by me, to react immediately (or at least timely) often results in half-baked ideas get posted. As you can tell, I’m not satisfied. I need to do something here that means something, that I can feel good about.

I’m not sure what that means except it means change. Less frequent postings? More time to think? Better writing? More meaning? Will anybody give a crap except me?

It’s that last one that seem most important to me. Why should I care what anyone else thinks? Do I really care? Should I? Really, should I?

give me strength

Let me see. For centuries, the standard operating procedure in Canada with developers, corporations, and governments at all levels was so simple: just push the Indians out of the way and take the land. What can they do? They have no rights. No political or economic power. Nothing.

Things changed when former Canadian Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, pushed through Parliament a Bill of Rights, which led to a Supreme Court of Canada split decision on Indigenous title in Calder … leading to recognition and protection of “existing” Indigenous (Aboriginal) rights in the Canadian Constitution… further recognition of title and access to resources and benefits in Delgamuukw… and decisions that extended existing Indigenous rights in Haida Nation and Taku River to include a “duty to consult” and “accommodate” the rights of Indigenous peoples BEFORE development. This puts the onus on governments to ensure that these rights are respected, even if a company has a licence to operate. 

In other words, the Supreme Court of Canada consistently told the Governments of Canada – in decision after decision – that it was no longer legal to steal Indian land and resources and consign them to endless poverty and marginalization.  

Some people, of course, don’t like it. Nope. It was so much easier, and profitable, when Indians didn’t have any rights at all, and you could just ignore them, take the land from under their feet, and treat them like garbage. So why not just go back to the way things were?

(sigh) Civilisation really is just skin deep. And some people in the media really do have the collective memory of gnats.

a confession

 

Sri Lankan military and dead Tigers

For some reason, I think a lot (most?) people in Canada believe that Indigenous peoples think only about their own situations. You know, Indian Affairs, Chuck Strahl, reserve life, suicide rates, diabetes, etc. I don’t think they realize that most of the things that affect their lives affect Indigenous folks across Canada just as much, that they worry about events in Burma and Ang Sang Su Kyi, or what is going on in northern Sri Lanka. 

They’d be wrong to think that this doesn’t affect them. I remember when Inuit donated more per capita to send food for families starving during the Somalian famine because, as someone said at the time, they knew what starvation was like.

I remember my grandmother who had no TV, no daily newspaper delivery, and listened to her old radio only when the signal came through which wasn’t most of the time. Yet, she was more politically aware and astute than most of the other people around Kanehsatake, or anyone else that I’ve met since.

I have no idea where she picked up information but she read voraciously when she could. A cherished and much requested gift was a bundle of newspapers from family or friends on their travels to or from Syracuse, New York, Montreal, Ottawa. She knew enough of the world to decide for herself what was right or wrong – and being a tough old bird she would have let people know exactly where she stood. I can remember a few of the late-night debates with her husband, daughters, and their husbands. They put to shame the pretend debates in the House of Commons these days.

I can say this with certainty: She would have been appalled at Canada’s role in the genocide taking place in Sri Lanka. She would have known about Canada’s role in supporting the Sri Lankan military before this, and its government’s inaction during the past year. I know she would have been disgusted by Canada’s duplicity. I suspect that, if she were able, she would have joined the demonstrators in the streets of Canadian cities during the past couple of weeks.

And I’m ashamed that I didn’t.