Statement of Reconciliation, 1998

Canadian Federal Government

Canada is known for, and prides itself on, the great variety of cultures, ethnicities, races and religions which live within its borders. We are taught in primary school that Canada is a ‘salad bowl’ where cultural diversity and ethnic self-identification are promoted and encouraged in contrast to the ‘melting pot’ of our Southern neighbours, where people are Americans first and foremost. Indeed, in the 1996 census approximately one third of Canada’s 31 million plus population did not choose the category of ‘Canadian’ when asked to describe their ethnic origin (multiple answers were allowed), and only 5 million identified themselves as solely Canadian. Canada is praised internationally as a model of cultural diversity and has an admirable reputation for its progressive anti-racist policies. It was the first country in the world to adopt a comprehensive policy on multiculturalism and has always been a vocal critic of racism and staunch defender of human rights in the international arena. However, despite Canada’s unquestionable achievements in cultural pluralism and anti-discriminatory practice, racism remains a significant issue.

The living standard of Aboriginal peoples in Canada falls far short of those of non-Aboriginals, and they, along with other racial minorities, continue to encounter barriers in gaining equality. Aboriginal life expectancy is lower; they have fewer high school graduates, higher unemployment, almost twice as many infant deaths and spend more time in jail. They have lower incomes, enjoy fewer promotions in the workplace and remain, as a group, the poorest in Canada. In Canada, ”suffering clearly continues to be related to the politics of race.”

Why should this be so in a country viewed by many as a paragon in the field of human rights? As Felice notes, ”modern states have been built by powerful groups at the expense of the less powerful, [often] with racial prejudice underlying the … process.” Indeed, the obvious inequity in socio-economic conditions between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals in Canada can be seen to be the result of history; in particular the processes of conquest, colonialism, state building, migration and economic development, and the institutional racism which accompanied them. In recent times, Canada has taken steps to address issues of discrimination and inequality faced by minorities, not least of all Aboriginal peoples, and has, as we shall see, been successful in a number of areas. However, the priority which has been given to stopping anti-discriminatory practices has arguably served to make racism in Canada a more covert act, it’s most distinguishing characteristic being the vigour with which it is consistently denied. The resulting systemic racism is difficult to address.

I will begin with a brief description of Aboriginal societies pre-contact to give context to the subsequent summary of the history of Canada’s state building process and the institutional racism which accompanied it, including: Treaties and the Reserve Creation Process, Indians Acts, Enfranchisement, and Residential Schools. I will then identify a number of positive steps that are being taken to address some of these issues, and how Aboriginal populations are themselves working to heal their communities. I will conclude, however, with a look at how the legacy of the institutional racism of the past continues to affect Aboriginal peoples in Canada, and has contributed to the systemic racism they face today.

(Note: Aboriginal groups across Canada refer to themselves by a variety of names including First Nations, Aboriginal, Indian, Native or Status. In this paper, I will use these terms interchangeably.)

At the time of the first European contact, in the late 15^th century, Aboriginal peoples occupied all of the six major regions of the northern half of the continent. Some, such as the Inuit in the north were egalitarian societies comprised of small loosely constructed groupings in the winter, and larger ones in the summer, as was demanded by their environment, a harsh one requiring the efforts of all to sustain the community. Other Nations, like those of the West Coast, with an abundance of natural resources such as timber, marine life and game at their disposal, were organized into more stable consistent groupings which were hierarchical and often patriarchal in structure. Still others, mainly on the East Coast, practiced agriculture and enjoyed a more sedentary, though by no means settled, lifestyle, such as the Iroquois. Over fifty languages were spoken, some language isolates such as Kutenai, while others were members of the eleven major language families. Some nations developed trading partnerships, and others established political alliances, perhaps the most notable of which was the Iroquois Confederacy, a political system involving 50 sachems, or chiefs, established by the Great Law of Peace in response to years of warfare between the five Iroquoian tribes. In addition, as Steckley and Cummins point out, these societies had systems of social order, and laws which were recorded in the oral tradition and interpreted by the elders.

The earliest European contact was with Norse whalers in around 1000 AD. No attempts seemed to have been made at permanent settlement at this time, and the relationship appears to have been one of mutual respect. By the early sixteenth century, vessels from England, France, Portugal and Spain were taking advantage of the plentiful fisheries off the East Coast of North America. By the eighteenth century, European interest in the ”New World” shifted to the fur trade and Britain and France began to establish more permanent settlements.

The effects of European settlement and trade would have disastrous effects on Aboriginal populations throughout Canada. European diseases, particularly smallpox and tuberculosis, devastated Aboriginal populations, killing, by many estimates, upwards of 50%. In addition, the trade in alcohol and guns introduced foreign notions of private property and promoted the individual to the detriment of the community.

While it stands as an important recognition of the rights of Aboriginal peoples and their status as nations, the Royal Proclamation is also the first instance of legislation passed over First Nations citizens by the British government. It took away the Indians right to freely deal with their land and interposed the Crown in any such dealings. It recognized the Indians tribes not as independent Nations, but as Nations living under Crown protection and thus the seeds of Indians as wards of the State were sowed.

From the time of the Proclamation, the Crown negotiated treaties with the Indian Tribes and Nations across Canada, British Columbia and Quebec being the notable exceptions. By these treaties, the Crown sought to extinguish Indian title and thus Indians ceded their Aboriginal lands in return for reserves, hunting and fishing rights and other economic and health benefits. Where treaties were not entered into the federal and provincial Crowns, through the joint reserve commission, laid out reserves for the various bands and tribes consistent with their populations. Reserves were areas where the Native title was confirmed. The debate continues as to whether the creation of reserves outside the treaty process had the effect of extinguishing their rights to their traditional lands outside the reserves.

Important cultural practices such as the Potlach of the West Coast and the Sun Dance of the Prairies were banned in 1884 along with other Native customs deemed barbarous, or as impediments to the spread of European values. The potlatch in particular, likely due to the ‘giveaways’ involved with it, was seen as particularly threatening to the principles of private property that the government was trying to instil, and was oftentimes viewed as ”communist” .

In 1885 General Middleton introduced the Pass System in western Canada, under which Natives could not leave their reserves without first obtaining a pass from their farming instructors permitting them to do so. While neither the Indian Act nor any other legislation allowed the Department of Indian Affairs to institute such a system, and it was known by government lawyers to be illegal as early as 1892, the Pass System continued to be enforced until the early 1930’s. As Natives were not permitted at that time to become lawyers, they could not fight it in the courts.

And finally, the measures which had initially been designed to protect reserve lands were abused in many areas to allow for farming, settlement or other non-Aboriginal uses of the land such as mining or forestry. When Aboriginals began to press for recognition of their rights and to complain of corruption and abuses of power within the Indian department, the Act was amended to make it an offence for an Aboriginal person to retain a lawyer for the purpose of advancing a claim.

Almost 50 years later, this view would be echoed in a government policy paper, now known as the 1969 White Paper, which laid out a plan for the instant and forced enfranchisement of all status Indians. However, the paper caused massive and vocal outrage from the Aboriginal population and was never adopted.

The enfranchisement criteria particularly discriminated against Native women, specifying in Section 12 (1)(b) of the Indian Act that an Indian status woman marrying a non Indian man would loose her status as an Indian, as would her children. In contrast non Indian women marrying Indian men would gain Indian status. This discrimination ran counter not just to modern notions of equality of the sexes, but also the notions of matrilineality held by many First Nations. Beginning in 1970, Native women who had lost their status brought legal challenges to these provisions. The Lovelace case went before the International Court of Human Rights, and in 1981 the United Nation condemned Canada for this discriminatory practice. The Canadian government reacted and, with the passage of Bill C-31 in 1985, the discriminatory clause of the Indian Act was removed, and Canada officially gave up the goal of enfranchising Natives.

The 1876 Indian Act gave the federal government responsibility for Native education and by 1910 residential schools dominated the Native education policy. The government provided funding to religious groups such as the Catholic, Anglican, United Church and Presbyterian churches to undertake Native education. By 1920, attendance was made compulsory and there were 74 residential schools operating nation wide. Following the ideas of Sifton and others like him, the academic goals of these schools were ‘dumbed down’. As Campbell Scott stated at the time, they didn’t want students that were ”made too smart for the Indian villages”:

The funding the government provided was generally insufficient and often the schools ran themselves as ”self-sufficient businesses”, where ‘student workers’ were removed from class to do the laundry, heat the building or perform farm work. Dormitories were often poorly heated and overcrowded, and the food was less than adequately nutritious. A 1907 report, commissioned by Indian Affairs, found that in 15 prairie schools there was a death rate of 24%. Indeed a deputy superintendent general of Indian Affairs at the time commented:

While the death rate did decline in later years, death would remain a part of the residential school tradition.

The worst aspect of Canada’s residential schools, and that which Steckley and Cummins say ”might readily qualify as the single-worst thing that Europeans did to Natives in Canada” was the endemic abuses; emotional, physical and sexual, for which they are now known. Punishments were often brutal and cruel, sometimes even life threatening or life ending. Pins were sometimes stuck in children’s tongues for speaking their Native languages, sick children were made to eat their vomit, and semi-formal inspections of children’s genitalia were carried out to name but a few crimes.

Most residential schools closed in the 1970s. Criminal and civil suits against the government and the churches began in the late 1980’s and shortly thereafter the last residential school closed. In the 1990s, beginning with the United Church, the churches that ran the residential schools began to issue formal apologies. And in 1998 the Canadian government issued the Statement of Reconciliation, and committed $350 million in support of a community-based healing strategy to address the healing needs of individuals, families and communities arising from the legacy of physical and sexual abuse at residential schools. The money was used to launch the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

There has over the last few decades been a resurgence of pride within Aboriginal populations in their heritage and culture, and they have been lobbying, with varying degrees of success for greater control over their communities. Perhaps the most tangible result was the creation in 1999 of Canada’s third territory, Nunavut, which changed the relationship between the Inuit of the Eastern subarctic and the Canadian government permanently, giving them a high degree of autonomous self-government. There have been many other advancements made, too numerous to list in full, but I will mention a few. In 1991, the First Nations Policing Policy was initiated, ”to provide First Nations across Canada with access to police services that are professional, effective, culturally appropriate, and accountable to the communities they serve. In addition to this participation of First Nations in the European model of policing, other forms of policing have emerged including the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society and the Native Youth Movement. Based in part on Aboriginal tradition and in part on innovation, they can most accurately be described as diplomatic policing. In 1992 the Aboriginal Justice Initiative was established and has been working with Native communities to improve justice institutions for Aboriginals and help them move towards greater self-sufficiency in the area of justice. One of the most promising developments has been the creation and adoption of sentencing circles in Northwestern Canada, which provide alternatives to incarceration with a focus on restorative rather than punitive justice. In addition, initiatives in Native education have lead to the funding of First Nations’ language programs, particularly in elementary schools.

The Constitution Act, 1982 was the first constitutional document since the Royal Proclamation of 1763 to acknowledge the distinct place of Aboriginal peoples within Canada, and section 35 recognizes and affirms existing Aboriginal rights. Aboriginal people have since successfully enforced a number of their rights through the Canadian legal system. Most notably in Delgamuukw where the Supreme Court of Canada held that Aboriginal title to their traditional lands survived British Sovereignty and unless clearly extinguished by federal legislation prior to 1982, still existed. Moreover, Delgamuukw importantly held that Native oral history was admissible as evidence on par with the European tradition of written history, thereby lifting an impossible burden of proof which had been placed on Aboriginal claimants. In a series of other cases, rights integral to the distinctive culture of Aboriginals such as fishing and hunting have been upheld. Indians have been compensated for the wrongful taking of lands, timber, oil and gas and other resources.

The overt institutional racism of the past has clearly had a profoundly devastating and lasting effect on Aboriginal communities throughout Canada. European cultural norms have imposed themselves on Native populations in Canada, and Aboriginal communities continue to struggle with foreign systems of governance, of justice, of education, and of livelihood.

Perhaps most palpable is the devastation caused by residential schools. Many of those who attended residential schools have been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, suffering from such symptoms as panic attacks, insomnia, and uncontrollable or unexplainable anger. Not surprisingly, many also suffer from alcohol or drug abuse, sexual inadequacy or addiction, the inability to form intimate relationships, and eating disorders. Three generations of Native parents lost out on learning important parenting skills usually passed on from parent to child in caring and nurturing home environments, and the abuse suffered by students of residential schools has begun a distressing cycle of abuse within many Native communities. However, the legacy of residential schools is only one facet of the problem.

Aboriginal children continue to struggle with mainstream education in Canada. For some Indian students, English remains a second language, and many lack parents with sufficient education themselves to support them. Moreover, education in Canada is premised on a written tradition, quite different from the oral tradition of Native communities. For others, it is simply that they are ostracised for their ‘otherness’; their manners, their attitudes, their speech or a hundred other things which mark them out as different.

Aboriginal populations continue to suffer from poor health. They have seven years less life expectancy than the overall Canadian population and almost twice as many infant deaths. While Canada as a nation routinely ranks in the top three on the United Nations Human Development Index, it’s on-reserve Aboriginal population, if scored as a nation, would rank a distant and shocking sixty-third.

As Phil Fontaine National Chief, Assembly of First Nations, points out, racism in Canada today is for the most part, a covert operation. Its central and most distinguishing characteristic is the vigour with which it is consistently denied. Ironically, many thus argue that Canada’s endeavours in the field of human rights and its strong stance against racism have only resulted in a more politically correct population who have learnt to better conceal their prejudices. In effect, the argument is that racism in Canada is not being eliminated, but rather is becoming more covert, more rational and perhaps more deeply imbedded in our institutions.

Along with common descriptors of ‘underprivileged’ and ‘disadvantaged’, a stereotype of a peoples who ‘have’ or ‘cause’ problems has thus emerged to explain racisms or prejudices. Aboriginal peoples are commonly thought of as lazy, less bright, prone to substance abuse and crime. They are thought of as less civilized, and in many ways less human. These stereotypes are eschewed by many in their promotion of seemingly rational arguments to explain the relative position of Aboriginal peoples in Canada today. The use of negative stereotypes combined with the denial of racism suggests that the inferiority of Aboriginal peoples is systemic, but their discrimination is not. Aboriginal peoples are thus often seen as the problem, or the cause, rather than the victims. In addition, attempts which have been made to correct the current situation are viewed by many in the population as discriminatory and creating ‘special rights’ for a minority group, which serves to further contribute to feelings of resentment towards Aboriginal populations.

That racism is alive is evidenced by the recent referendum in British Columbia by which the provincial government is asking the white majority to decide on a mandate for negotiating treaties with the Indian minority. The results of the referendum will be binding, the government having legislatively committed itself to act on these principles if more than 50% of those voting reply in the same way. Moreover, although it has been revised many times, the Indian Act remains legislation which singles out a segment of society based on race. Under it, the civil rights of Indians are dealt with in a different manner than the civil rights of the rest of Canadian citizens.