When I was a Hydroid, I took a training course which included a video by a very fast-talking psychologist with a strong Texan accent. The video was entitled, if memory serves me correctly, “Who You Are Is Where You Were When”. The premise of the video was that your gut level reactions to things are burned into you by age six, and you have little chance of modifying those first reactions. I remember him saying that he was a kid in Texas when the Jim Crow laws were in effect, and so of course he had some negative initial reactions to African-Americans. The video went on to present the notion that if you are honest with yourself and sufficiently reflective, you will come to recognize your built-in prejudices and you can modify your behaviours to overcome those gut-level first reactions.

Where I was a kid in rural PEI I had no prejudices against Black kids (are you allowed to say Black, with a respectful capital? Should I say African-Canadian?) because there were none. I think I had my first social interactions with a person of colour when a coloured family moved into Montague in my Grade 11 year. Similarly, my knowledge of Native peoples was that “the Indians” lived on Lennox Island, and we never saw them. There was a reserve at Scotchfort, about 40 or 50 Km from our home, but I wasn’t aware of that fact until I was a young adult. The upshot of that discussion is that I don’t believe I have any automatic ingrained prejudice against our Native Canadian brethren.

Of course, when you start a discussion with “I’m not a racist, but…” you are likely to then go on and say something that demonstrates exactly what kind of racist you are. So, with all of that said, if there is an issue about which I’m conflicted, it’s the issue of what to do with the indigenous people of Canada. I imagine that by the time I’m done with this article, I’ll have branded myself as a reactionary right-wing asshole. I hope not….but we’ll see.

In 2007 The United Nations approved a declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. Four countries voted against that declaration, those countries being Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States; countries with large populations of indigenous groups. Eleven countries abstained. On May 23, 2021, unmarked graves of 215 indigenous children were identified at Kamloops BC. In June 2021, Canada accepted the UN declaration when the Trudeau government adopted Bill C-15 which sets out a framework for implementation of the United Nations declaration. The more cynical among you might interpret that as a knee-jerk reaction to attempt to regain status on the world stage after that horrific discovery. (Count me among the cynical.) The government news release on the topic says “Budget 2021 proposes to provide $31.5 million over 2 years, starting in 2021 to 2022, to support the co-development of an action plan with Indigenous partners to implement this legislation and to achieve the objectives of the declaration. This process will support Indigenous self-determination and enhance nation-to-nation, Inuit-Crown and government-to-government relationships.”

It seems like a noble thing to do, to agree to follow up on a document issued by the rest of the world saying “shame on you for mistreating your indigenous people.” The problem is that I don’t like everything in the UN declaration.

The UN declaration says some very good things. It affirms that policies based on advocating superiority of one race over another are “morally condemnable and socially unjust”. Indigenous people should be free from discrimination. Indigenous communities should be responsible for the “upbringing, training, education and well-being of their children, consistent with the rights of the child”. They should have all human rights and fundamental freedoms. And also, “Indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence, including forcibly removing children of the group to another group.”

However, the UN declaration has a bunch of other stuff in it that I believe Canada was wise to reject the first time around, and which I believe the Trudeau government should have considered a little more carefully before stepping tamely into line.

The UN Declaration affirms that “indigenous peoples are equal to all other peoples, while recognizing the right of all peoples to be different, to consider themselves different, and to be respected as such,
Affirming also that all peoples contribute to the diversity and richness of civilizations and cultures, which constitute the common heritage of humankind,”. From that “Equal but different” philosophy springs a number of statements about how we need to let the indigenous people practice their traditional religions, customs and ceremonies. They should be allowed to educate their children in their own tongue and traditions, even for those natives who are living outside the indigenous communities. However, at the same time, they should have full access to a modern education. They are encouraged to have their own government, but at the same time they are to have full access to participation in the larger schemes of government. One article says “Indigenous peoples have the right to the dignity and diversity of their cultures, traditions, histories and aspirations which shall be appropriately reflected in education and public information.”

The UN declaration makes a number of statements about what we must NOT do, with which I am in general agreement. Generally, we must not discriminate against nor suppress indigenous culture. I would expand that requirement to say that we must not discriminate nor suppress any minority culture. If it makes sense to have Chinese street signs in certain areas of downtown Toronto, then by all means, fill your boots. But the more affirmative approach taken by the UN is to declare that we must actively take on a whole bunch of tasks to support the preservation of indigenous culture.

I am not a fan of perpetuating and supporting dying cultures and languages. In December 2021, I wrote an article on the process of supporting dying cultures and in that article, I said this. “We should aspire to a world full of racial mongrels speaking a common language and revelling in our common humanity, rather than a world full of pure-bred races disputing over our differences. To that end, we should exercise, at best, passive tolerance of those who want to preserve language and culture. But, our governments should not actively participate in those preservation activities.” I didn’t have our indigenous population in mind when I wrote that, but I stand by it today. I wish them luck, but I want no part of it myself.

I have no interest in Native American culture or traditions, nor do I need to see them reflected in education and public information. I am irritated when I see TV coverage of a medicine man “smudging” a gathering place. Religious superstition isn’t my thing, and the fact that it’s a fairly primitive religious superstition doesn’t make it somehow more mystic or spiritual. And my reaction to seeing Prince Charles trying to dance a natives’ dance? Anachronisms – both the dance and the prince. We should try to move on and embrace the 21st century.

On Monday, May 31st, 2021, the Charlottetown City Council voted to remove from the downtown area a bench on which you could sit down and be photographed sitting next to a statue of Sir John A MacDonald. That action was taken as a response to the unmarked graves discovery, in recognition to the fact that Sir John A was the driver behind the establishment of residential schools. I don’t disagree with the action. I think Sir John A was right when he advocated for assimilation, but I absolutely agree that residential schools were the wrong response to the question of how we should assist the indigenous peoples to become assimilated into Canadian society.

What?!!! Assimilation? Am I seriously arguing that assimilation is a desirable thing? Why yes, I am. Assimilation should still be encouraged, although never forced.

If you look at the United Kingdom today, there is no identifiable Saxon minority. Or Danish minority. Or Norman minority. There is a small group trying, rather pathetically, to preserve Gaelic language and culture. But largely speaking, the various tribes that made up the British gene pool (oops, I forgot the Briton minority) have been assimilated by the grinding millstones of time and history into one people. And it’s happening all over again with coloured immigrants. Despite some racial tensions in the UK, the Indian Chicken tikka masala has been voted for as the most popular UK dish. And it is of little tidbits like this – the acceptance of a tasty dish, the popularity of a certain sport, the adoption of an item of clothing – that assimilation is made. People don’t wear kilts in Scotland anymore, except as fancy dress for weddings and other formal occasions. Why not? Because they’ve moved on to something more sensible. Assimilation is about all of us adopting the sensible practices of our neighbours and rejecting the ones that don’t work….like smudging your meeting room or wearing large feathered headdresses. Those things don’t lead us to anything useful in the future.

Despite my seeming antipathy towards native culture, I am very sympathetic to the plight of native peoples. There are some things we need to fix. The first is drinking water.

It’s shameful that many Indigenous communities don’t have clean drinking water. That shouldn’t be a hard thing to fix. It’s not like provision of good drinking water is a technical mystery that we have to solve. Drinking water in Ontario is managed by the Ministry of Environment, and specifically by Drinking Water Ontario, a department within that Ministry. So why are native communities unable to get good drinking water? Because drinking water on reserves isn’t the responsibility of the provincial governments. It is the responsibility of the Federal government’s Indigenous Services Canada ministry.

The government’s roles and responsibilities document on that subject says “Chiefs and councils manage the day-to-day water and wastewater systems on reserves. This includes:
• sampling and testing drinking water
• issuing drinking water advisories (DWAs) in their communities
• planning and developing facilities that provide the basic infrastructure needs of the community
Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) provides funding and advice for water systems on First Nations reserves.

That situation would seem to fit well with the UN declaration which says “Indigenous peoples, in exercising their right to self-determination, have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions.” One could argue that the fault is therefore with the natives in that their local governments are failing to provide acceptable drinking water. I do not, repeat do not, subscribe to that notion. We have isolated native peoples on reserves for a century and a half, and we have perpetuated a culture of racism and suppression of indigenous people’s development. For us now to say “see, we let you look after water supplies and look what has happened” is just unfair. No, I think that one has to look at either the funding, or the quality of advice from the federal government. Probably both.

Let’s face it, Federal governments of any stripe aren’t good at the provision of services. They should download the cash to the provincial governments and let those provincial departments, which are successfully providing water to the vast majority of the country, do it for the indigenous communities. After all, why do we need the duplication of services by multiple levels of government?

And yes, let’s encourage education of young native people in water quality management and chemistry and engineering and all the other things that will enable them to operate water systems. But we should continue to operate those water systems under the guidance of the provincial regulating agencies. This is entirely consistent with the way the vast majority of municipalities are responsible for their drinking water systems, but operate under the watchful eye of a provincial regulator.

The next thing we certainly need to do something about is the legacy of the residential schools. It’s shameful, embarrassing, and disgusting that we ripped children from their homes and trapped them in residential schools where some died, and we need to pay for that. Those payments might be large, but we should not be nit-picking when it comes to distribution of such payments, because what was done to those people was just plain wrong. And these payments are more than just punishment. Don’t think of it as punishment. Think of it as cure. The damage done to that community may take two or three generations to heal. We should all accept that establishing living standards and incomes that are on a par with the rest of Canada is a fundamental part of overcoming the residential school legacy.

Now, for some issues that are less easily resolved:

I cringe every time I hear a politician step to a microphone and acknowledge that they’re standing on traditional native lands. Really? I’m afraid it all sounds very politically correct and artificial to me. A little research will show you numerous “how to” articles describing why you should make an acknowledgement and how to do it properly. They are all, in my opinion, painfully steeped in political correctness. I think we can start off every meeting, and every hockey game, and every concert for the next 100 years this way, and it won’t accomplish anything. These acknowledgements are trumpeted as a necessary first step on the long road to reconciliation. I cannot agree. Clean drinking water would be a good first step. Decent housing would be a meaningful mark of respect. “I’m standing on land that used to be yours. Sucks to be you”? Not nearly as good.

“Well”, the politically correct apologists will say, “it’s just a meaningless courtesy. Doesn’t hurt.” Does it not? Are we sure? Man, if I were a lawyer contesting an indigenous land claim in court, would I play videos of Justin Trudeau and Ottawa mayor Jim Watson and Ron MacLean and hundreds of others making these un-ceded lands acknowledgements? I surely would.

That un-ceded lands issue is a major one. Emma McIntosh, writing in Canada’s National Observer in January, 2020 says “the Maritimes, nearly all of British Columbia and a large swath of eastern Ontario and Quebec, which includes Ottawa, sit on territories that were never signed away by the Indigenous people who inhabited them before Europeans settled in North America. In other words, this land was stolen. (It’s worth noting that territories covered by treaties also weren’t necessarily ceded ⁠— in many cases, the intent of the agreements was the sharing of territory, not the relinquishing of rights.)

I take issue with the notion that the land was stolen. Estimates of the population of North America in 1492 range from less than a million to 18 million. Assuming 10 million allows the math to be much easier, so let’s start there. The land area of North America is approximately 25 million sq km, so the argument that the land was stolen means that at the time of Columbus, every individual, children included, owned 2.5 sq km, or 250 hectares, or roughly 625 acres. To me ownership of land implies that you’ve done something to add value to the property. You have some equity, and some reason to contest that you have rights to this specific piece of property that no other person has. Now there were, to be fair, settlements with permanent housing and agricultural land associated with some of the native tribes. But there were also vast tracts of undeveloped land in which hunter-gatherer groups wandered. I don’t know how one can reasonably argue that they owned that land. I can readily understand that they might be disappointed if someone comes and builds a hydro dam and floods their favourite moose hunting ground. But I don’t believe that “I used to hunt here” rises to the level of ownership of land.

What is it I’m supposed to be feeling when I watch someone acknowledging that we’re walking on land upon which someone’s forefathers walked? If it’s anything more than irritation, I’m not getting there. I mean really – we’re all walking on land that was previously occupied by someone’s forefathers. Is it guilt? I don’t feel any guilt. Maybe I was woefully ignorant of what was happening in my own country, but I was unaware of the residential school problem until perhaps ten or fifteen years ago. And asking me to feel guilty about the failure to adhere to treaties signed in the 19th century is a little bit like asking me to feel guilty for the sins of Adam and Eve….which I don’t.

It is awkward that we have negotiated and broken so many treaties with the indigenous peoples. However, I’m not at all sure that the answer is to try to resurrect all those treaties and put them back into effect. My belief is that those treaties were flawed from the outset. They tried to predict the future, didn’t they? When some bureaucrat mindlessly agreed that the indigenous peoples would control vast areas of territory that was at the time largely un-used, they were thinking “that’s OK” for the country that existed then. But that didn’t allow for change. And making more treaties now promising how we’ll respond to the exigencies of some future day would repeat that mistake.

In 1850, the population of the planet was ~ 1.2Billion. It took 100 years for that population to double. In the 70 years since 1950, the population has tripled, so there are six times as many people around today as there were when Canada came into being. The current population of North America is getting close to 600 million, which means that each individual might aspire to “own” something like 10 acres, as opposed to 625.

So while on the one hand, there’s a 300-year history of broken promises, treaty violations, and forced assimilation that does us no great credit, on the other hand, I really struggle with the concept that we cede territorial rights to great portions of land to the Native Americans. Is that realistic? In a world where population is steadily increasing and we need to maximize productivity, do we willingly concede that huge portions of the country will remain the property of a group of people whose goal is to return to a hunter-gatherer culture that was successful several hundred years ago? I hate to be seen to subscribe to the “might is right” argument – that we’re within our rights to take what once belonged to the Natives because we come as conquerors. But I’m also unable to concede that the Native land rights claims are compelling reasons to cede ownership and control of our future.

In addition to solving the drinking water problem, and funding and facilitating education and development, I think that maybe we need to change the whole landscape with respect to ownership of lands. I have to confess here that I’m pretty damn ignorant, but I believe that reserves are not owned by the Natives but by Her Majesty the Queen. I think reserves for First Nations, managed by a “benevolent” Federal Government, are a terrible idea. I think we should provide deeded ownership of lands/houses to current residents of all Reserve lands. If we need to, provide deeded ownership to some tracts of land that aren’t currently considered to be reserves. Let’s make sure they all get a reasonable allotment of land to call their own. And then, get out and let them deal with their property like any other landowner. Will that be an administrative nightmare at the outset? Absolutely. Will it take a generation or two to satisfy the demands of all potential claimants to these lands? Probably. But is there any reason to believe that we can manage their property any better than they can? I don’t think so.

I’d be happy to include First Nations into discussions of pipeline projects etc, but I’m unwilling to provide Indigenous people, who number about 5% of the country’s population, with veto rights over any important decision simply because they were here 400 years ago. The history of the world is one of brutal conquest as people searched for greener pastures, and it has never been comfortable to be among the invaded. But history everywhere else has rolled on. Shouldn’t we assess the world as it exists today and try to work out the best way to move forward for everyone – First Nations included, but not to the exclusion of everyone else?