Category Archives: Colonialism

Treaty of Niagara

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Aboriginal Law, Colonialism, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous Treaties

 

There is one more document that must be considered in order to understand the significance of the Robinson Treaties. in 1764, one  year after the Royal Proclamation was proclaimed,  Sir William Johnson who represented the English crown, invited all of the First Nations in the region that would be impacted by the Treaty of Niagara to Niagara to talk him. This has been called the Council of Niagara 1764 and was attended by over 1,700 Indigenous people, including Anishinaabe leaders. At that time Johnson on behalf of the  Crown again assured the Indigenous attendees of their autonomy and stated that the Crown would maintain and protect their title to their lands as was proclaimed by King George in the Royal Proclamation.

He advised them that he was the person responsible to implement the Royal Proclamation. He sent out copies of the proclamation together with strings of wampum. These are shells commonly used in Eastern Canada and they represented the highest forms of nation-to-nation diplomacy. These strings or belts were the indigenous form of treaty “writing.” It is interesting how the parties latched on to Indigenous ceremonies in this “new world.” This was a sign of respect by British authorities to their Indigenous partners. It was understood that they would be partners.

 

The Covenant Chain belt was created through the Treaty of Niagara. It is a belt that shows 2 individuals holding hands representing friendship and alliance. Gifts and wampum belts were exchanged, including the Great Covenant Chain Wampum and the 24 Nation Wampum. The trial judge in the Ristoule case that went to the Supreme Court who momentously rule on the case this past year, described the Great Covenant Chain Wampum as an embodiment of the “merged symbols of diplomacy” between the two groups, visually represented on the belt by two figures holding hands as part of two links in a chain.”

The Treaty of Niagara is what flowed from that historic meeting in 1764.

Aimée Craft is an Indigenous lawyer (Anishinaabe-Métis), an assistant professor at the Faculty of Common Law, University of Ottawa, and an adjunct professor in Native Studies at the University of Manitoba, said this;

“The Royal Proclamation does not stand alone. The Treaty of Niagara is a sister document. It is the foundation of the nation-to-nation relationship between Canada and the First Nations of Canada. Together, the Treaty and the Proclamation provided the first understandings between the English and the Indigenous people of North America about the relationship of the British crown and the indigenous nations. Through the Proclamation, Britain asserted sovereignty over the parts of North America that it claimed, but at the same time, it also acknowledged the sovereignty of the First Nations of Canada. It recognized that lands had not been surrendered or ceded to the British crown and therefore it was necessary to make treaties with Indigenous peoples.”

 

The Royal Proclamation signed by King George said Canada should ensure that indigenous people would not be disturbed or molested in their occupation of land reserved for them. It also said the abuses that occurred in the past in the acquisition of land should not be repeated.  It was acknowledged that too often in the past fraudsters had taken advantage of Indigenous people who often could not read English script.

A fundamental principle of the Royal Proclamation is that no private person has the authority or privilege to purchase land from Indigenous people of those vast lands that had been set aside for them (unceded land). The crown has the exclusive right to purchase such land from Indigenous people or groups and only at public meetings of said nations. The indigenous people had to be “inclined to dispose” of their interest as the nation as involved in the agreement. If they were not so disposed there would no transfer of ownership. This is the foundation of treaty making to this day. Only in this way can land of a First nation be sold or ceded.

Sadly, later there were some lapses in recognizing this legal prerogative, just as there were lapses in failing to honour the treaties, particularly on the part of the non-indigenous people. Perhaps there is no better example of this than the Robinson Treaties, that I will get to in the next post.

The Treaty of Niagara is called a treaty because 200 chiefs showed up from as far away as the Rocky Mountains. They came to Niagara to “make treaty.” 24 nations were represented. Of course, the concept of nations has morphed over time.

These 2 documents, together with the Covenant Chain, mandate non-interference in indigenous governance. According to Professor John Borrows, of the University of British Columbia, this is the foundation for indigenous sovereignty. Those treaties that were negotiated are still the legal basis for the legitimacy of settler presence in North America. They are the basis of the right of all of us non-indigenous people who live in North America to do so with security of tenure.

 

 

Royal Proclamation 

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Colonialism, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous Treaties

 

Shortly after the ending of the Seven Years War between France and England, and after England assumed European control of North America, a number of North America’s First Nations, including the Anishinaabe, rose up against the French. After all, unlike France, most of them had not signed a treaty with the British.

In response England through its monarch King George issued a famous Proclamation commonly referred to as the Royal Proclamation of 1763. This proclamation is now part of the law of Canada. It has been called by the Supreme court of Canada, a defining moment in Canadian history. I shall return to it again and again. The Supreme Court also said it provided the impetus for the Robinson Treaties.

As the Mr. Justice Jamal of Supreme Court said, in the Ristoule case in 2024 dealing with the Robinson Treaties

“In the Proclamation, the Crown unilaterally asserted sovereignty over what is now Canada, but also affirmed pre-existing Aboriginal title and ownership of unpurchased lands. The Proclamation created special rules for the purchase and sale of “Lands of the Indians” to prevent fraud and abuse, prohibited private parties from purchasing such lands, and stipulated that they could only be surrendered to the Crown.”

 

One of the effects of the Proclamation was that colonial governments, in what is now Canada and the United States, were forbidden to survey or grant any unceded lands. This particularly riled the Americans who were expecting to develop and open up the west for American enterprise and government.  The Americans saw it as British interference. They hated this constraint and it was an important cause of the American Revolutionary War. The Americans wanted to control the continent.

As a result of the Royal Proclamation, colonial governments were forbidden to allow British subjects to settle on Indian lands or to allow private individuals to purchase them.  There was an official system of public purchases developed in order to extinguish Indian title. The English did not want anyone asserting claims to ownership which might lead to  a dubious foundation in law for such titles  as this would provide an insecure foundation for development. Settlers and business people all wanted secure title to land, or they would not invest in it.

Added to that, even the King of England realized he had no authority to simply take land from other nations in either English law or international law.  This meant that England would have to establish a sound legal basis for obtaining title from Indigenous people. This is part of the treaty making process and an important part of the motivation for treaty making by Europeans and later Canadians. Modern Canadians often forget about this context when they complain about treaties. In the view of the British and Canadian governments this secure foundaton was very important.

Americans had fewer scruples. They believed that conquest, if necessary, would provide a secure foundation.  However, its Indian Wars were horrendously expensive and the English and later the Canadians blanched at the thought of following the American lead. After 1776, Americans were spending about 1/4 of their federal budget on these wars

Added to that, even when King George wanted to assert jurisdiction over parts of Canada, as he did, he had to wrestle with this problem. Frankly, he also did not have the military strength to just take it all. So, King George had problems and the Royal Proclamation was his way of dealing with some of those problems. As a result, King George asserted jurisdiction but also recognized the limitations of doing so.

 

 

Context of Robinson Treaty

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Colonialism, Indigenous Treaties

 

I will now describe to you what the Supreme Court of Canada said about the  factual background or context to the negotiation and implementation of the Robinson Treaties.  I want to remind readers that the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada was rendered by Mr. Justice Jamal who spoke on behalf of the entire court. In other words, all 9 judges of the Supreme Court agreed with his decision.  How often do think the 9 judges agree on what day it is?

I will borrow heavily from his written decision. It is actually an amazing primer in Aboriginal Law, a subject that has engaged my interest for about 2 decades. I learned very little of this in Law School. In other words, I, like most law students at the time of my graduation, was pitifully ignorant of aboriginal law. It was not even a subject at the time.

Justice Jamal also pointed out how the essential facts in this dispute that lasted for 100 or 150 years depending on how one counts “are not materially in dispute.” How could they argue then for so long, you might ask?  That is a good question.

Justice Jamal pointed out, as I will., that “the historical setting of the treaty provides a valuable context for understanding” the issues and what must be done to implement it.

The Anishinaabe of the upper Great Lakes are members of several First Nations who historically inhabited and continue to inhabit the northern shores of Lake Huron and Lake Superior. That is exactly the region Christiane and I travelled through on our trip to the east coast in 2024. The Anishinaabe were organized in bands (communities), each occupying and harvesting discrete territories considered as communal property.

 This is important. The Anishinaabe like so many other Indigenous people did not share the same views of property as the Europeans who settled what we now call Canada. The Anishinaabe believed they owned land in common. No Anishinaabe person could claim to hold any particular piece of land as his or hers. They owned it together. They were a community.

The Supreme Court also noted that the Anishinaabe spoke different dialects of their Indigenous language, Anishinaabemowin.

The lands that were subject to the Robinson treaties were huge. The land exceeded more than 100,000 sq. kilometres. That’s bigger than Portugal. It included many communities such as Thunder Bay, Wawa, Sault  Ste. Marie, Blind River, Sudbury, and many more. When the treaties were signed in 1850 there were 1,422 individual (indirect) beneficiaries of the Robinson-Huron Treaty and 1,240 of the Robinson-Superior Treaty. The number of current beneficiaries has not yet been determined, but it is believed, on the basis of evidence at the  2017 trial,  that there could be 29,926 beneficiaries of  Robinson-Huron Treaty and 13,546 of the Robinson-Superior Treaty. It affected a lot of people and still does so. In each case it includes people living on and off reserves.

These two treaties, which I together refer to as the Robinson Treaty or treaties was also an important precedent for subsequent treaties.

As the Justice Jamal of the Supreme Court explained,

“The Robinson Treaties built on a close relationship between the British and the Anishinaabe of the upper Great Lakes that existed long before 1850. That relationship was guided by the Covenant Chain alliance, dating back to the 17th century, which symbolized the close connection between the British Crown and Indigenous peoples, including the Anishinaabe. The British and the Anishinaabe maintained this connection in part through annual gift-giving around sacred “council fires” as expressions of mutual generosity and goodwill… As European settlement increased, the Crown assured the Anishinaabe that their autonomy and title to land would be protected.”

The problem was that the Crown, in this case the government of Canada West (Ontario),  could not always be trusted, as the Anishinaabe learned.

 

 

Robinson Treaties

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, civilization, Colonialism, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous Treaties

 

Treaties are very important for relations between Indigenous People and first the British government and then the emerging country of Canada, as it came to be called.  One of the most important or significant of those treaties was entered into before 1867 when Canada became an partially independent country. This was actually a series of treaties referred to as the Robinson Treaties or the Robinson-Huron and Robinson-Superior Treaties. The story of these treaties is one of the most fascinating stories in Canadian history and helps to explain that relationship between these nations.

 

Much of this region we drove through from Thunder Bay to Ottawa was part of the land that was subject to the Robinson Superior Treaty that was signed in 1850 in Sault Ste. Marie. That treaty has become very controversial in Canadian law at least until a landmark decision was made by the Supreme Court of Canada this year, 2024.

 

The Robinson Treaties, saw Canada secure almost all of northwest Ontario for settlement and resource development. That is what Canada and Ontario wanted. New in these agreements were provisions made for reserves based on sites chosen by Indigenous leaders. These Robinson Treaties of 1850 are credited with laying the foundation for what later became known as Western Canada’s Numbered Treaties that were entered into between Canada, after Confederation in 1867, and various First Nations. Treaty making during this period was not just confined to the eastern and central areas of what would become Canada.

 

These treaties were very important for both the indigenous people who were confronting an avalanche of immigrants from Europe, and elsewhere, and of course they were very important to those immigrants who had created a new national entity—Canada.  We are all treaty people. Those treaties are very important. Canada realized that it would never be able to develop the country without being able to grant secure title to land that these newcomers would want in order to come here. Canada did not want to follow the mistakes the Americans were making to our south. Americans were spending 25% of their entire federal budget on fighting Indian wars.  The country to the south had many more people and much more money than us Canadians to the north.  So much money was a burden even on them.  Canadian officials realized that such expenses would bankrupt their country just as it was, in their view, getting off the ground.  Canada decided, rightly in my view, that it would be much better for all to come to an agreement. An amicable agreement. Canada chose to negotiate treaties with the inhabitants.

 

The Robinson Treaties were made before Confederation in 1867 and the Robinson Treaties of 1850 were the template for the numbered treaties that followed after 1867. It laid the groundwork for the later treaties and development of the country and unfortunately, that foundation was not as solid as the people had hoped.  I should mention that there were also peace and friendship treaties that had been made with indigenous people on the east coast that also preceded the numbered treaties and I will deal with them when this journey gets to that part of Canada.

 

There had been a lot of conflicts with indigenous people on the east  coast that hindered development of the country that the arrivals from Europe yearned for. As a result, in light of those conflicts and the changing political, social, and economic dynamics, the years between 1764 and 1836 saw the newly created colonies of Upper and Lower Canada negotiate roughly twenty-seven (27) land purchases to secure the lands falling within their newly defined territories.

 

This also coincided with the post-1812 shift in colonial policy away from military alliance, and towards demands that Indigenous people abandon their traditional life ways and adapt an agrarian and sedentary lifestyle. The Europeans saw these plans for “civilization,” as they called them,  as a shift from cash payment and trade relationships, in favour of annuity payments used to develop permanent agricultural communities. As non-Indigenous settlement moved west and conflict over land and its resources escalated, colonial officials sought to speed up land secession agreements around the areas of Lake Huron and Superior. Officials’ laissez-faire approach in making treaties with Indigenous communities, whose territories they were moving into, resulted in an armed insurrection at Mica Bay on Lake Superior in 1849.

 

Of course, now we know that the ideas of the European settlers contained many elements, such as harmful ideas of white supremacy, that are entirely inimical to civilization. In many respects, the development by Europeans of Canada result in the destruction of civilization and the imposition on Indigenous People of what might with more justification be called barbarism.

 

This was not a good start. But it got even worse.

More than Beauty

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Colonialism, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous Treaties

 

The north shore of Lake Superior is more than just a beautiful coastline along the world’s largest freshwater lake. It is that, but it is much more than that.  It is a place where a lot of important history has occurred.  It was an important place in the history of Canada’s fur trade.  That means it is an important part of Canadas’s history after Europeans made contact with the indigenous people that lived in the country.

 

After lunch in Wawa, Christiane  and I continued travelling but stopped at High Magpie Falls. This was a gorgeous set of falls and I could not refrain from photographing them. There were 2 interesting plaques nearby. One celebrated the Michipicoten First Nation. According to their own website, “We  are Anishinaabeg who understand our responsibility to care for our Nation. Under the guidance of Creator, our ancestors, and our history, we walk with our people to mino-biimaadiziwin (the good life, the life of wholistic well-being).”

The Nation (original Peoples’) in their own Creation Story relates how

“Ojibwe or Ojibway (pronounced Oh-Jib-Way) are related to Original Man or Anishinaabe (An-ish-in-awb). The Ojibway are said to be the Faith Keepers; Keepers of the Sacred Scrolls and the Water Drum of the Midewinwin (Midi-win-win shamanic society for healers). The fundamental essence of Anishinaabe life is unity, the oneness of all things; the belief that harmony with all created things can be achieved and that the people cannot be separated from the land with its cycle of seasons or from the other mysterious cycles of living things – of birth and growth and death and new birth. The people know where they come from; the story is deep in their hearts and it is told in legends and dances, in dreams and symbols.”

 

This is exactly what I was posting about earlier under the subject of Indigenous spirituality. Don’t believe me; believe the Ojibway.

The Ojibway were the earliest inhabitants of the Michipicoten River. They explain that the archeological sites excavated at the mouth of the Michipicoten River make it evident that there has been an continued uninterrupted occupation of this region by the aboriginal people for 7,000 years or more. Some of those archaeological sites that have identified from the period just before the arrival of the Europeans (between 700-1500 AD) and those sites showed that the Ojibway people whose “summer grounds” were located at the mouth of the Michipicoten River  where members of tribes from the south and east frequently intermarried The ancient canoe routes also showed that the mouth of the Michipicoten River and Magpie Rivers were a hub of transportation and gateways to the interior as far north as James Bay with access to the vast interior of what is today northern Ontario and connecting it with the other Great Lakes and the inland sea of Hudson’s Bay.

After the arrival of Europeans, at the height of the fur trade from the 17th to 20th centuries, many Europeans who came to the region took Ojibway wives and their descendants lived the native way of life making a large part of their livelihood by fishing and trading furs with the Hudson’s Bay Company and other settlers.

There is another aspect to the history of this region to which I and my friends were entirely oblivious when we drove through it in 1967.  That year we must remember, was 100 years after Confederation. We used to say, we were celebrating the 100th anniversary of the creation of our country. That was just plain ignorant on our part. It ignored the incredible history and culture of the people who lived here long before the “whitemen” arrived.

The history since European contact with Indigenous people  was not without its difficulties.  One of the ways the people tried to resolve those difficulties was through treaties.

A treaty is a legally binding agreement outlining the rights and duties of its signatories and is protected by international law. Negotiated and agreed to by two or more sovereign nations, treaties are formal agreements used to reinforce and protect relations between those parties.  For example, in Canadian law, treaties are seen as constitutional documents. They are as fundamental as the constitution.

In North America, Indigenous societies and colonial powers often held divergent traditions and understandings on the composition and structure of these agreements. These understandings were informed by their own social, political and economic norms. Far from homogenous, pre-colonial laws, customs, and practices informed Indigenous treaty agreements. This frequently led to misunderstandings that stood in the way of congenial agreements.  Many of these principles were shared among Indigenous nations, ensuring that all parties upheld their obligations. Many Indigenous nations recognize this treaty legacy and continue to advocate that the original intent of these agreements with the Crown, and then Canada, be honoured.

Conflict between competing empires often made its way to North America, and almost always involved Indigenous peoples.  Each European side sought allies in North America and expected their allies to fight on their side. The Great Peace of Montreal serves as but one example of an agreement that brought to a close prolonged periods of conflict. Signed in 1701 between New France and forty (40) Indigenous groups of Central and Eastern North America. This treaty ushered in several years of peace. Treaties such as this lay the groundwork for peace and cooperation between colonial powers and the areas Indigenous populations, and were tested and fractured time and again when European rivals clashed overseas and brought their conflict to the Americas.

In the area of North America that eventually became Canada, there have been five distinct phases of treaty making between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. These are the Peace and Friendship Treaties of eastern Canada from 1725 to 1779, the Robinson Treaties in 1850, The Douglas Treaties from 1850 to 1854, the Numbered Treaties from 1871 to 1921, after Confederation, and the Modern Treaties from 1922 to the present. One new one has just recently been signed, the Metis Treaty. Treaty making is an ongoing process to this day.

All of them were important. The Robinson treaties were particularly important for the region north of Lake Superior which we travelled through. And there were some big problems with those treaties that had to be resolved by the Supreme Court of Canada, 2 months before we began our trip to the east coast of Canada.

 

 

Fundamental Misunderstandings Lead to Fundamental Grief

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, civilization, Colonialism, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

 

As I have been saying many of the problems between Indigenous Canadians and non-Indigenous Canadians are the result of misunderstandings in the past, and misunderstanding that have continued.

 

As a result of all of these misunderstandings, when many years later the Europeans approached the Indigenous people to make treaties, it was very difficult for their differing world views not to influence what they thought they were agreeing to. For example, Indigenous People thought they were agreeing to share the land while the newcomers thought the indigenous people were agreeing to cede or give up the land to the newcomers.  That very fundamental differing point of view has seriously disturbed relations between them ever since.

According to Barbara Huck,

“Though decision-making was by consensus, most North American cultures put great stock in individuals and lauded efforts on behalf of the community. Status was achieved not by owning property but by giving it away.  Religion permeated every aspect of their lives and was based on respect for the Earth and all living things.”

 

That did not mean all relations between Indigenous groups were peaches and cream. There were conflicts between groups. And those conflicts were real and sometimes vicious. Europeans did not have a monopoly on violence. Disputes between indigenous groups often turned violent and often escalated after that. Yet the overall attitudes of newcomers were radically different.

The world views of the Europeans were very different from that of Indigenous peoples.

As Huck said,

“The newcomers from Europe had a very different world view. Theirs was a class society, governed in an authoritarian way by men who viewed land and its resources as objects to be exploited. They greatly admired the accumulation of personal wealth and assigned positions of power to those who were particularly successful at amassing goods and money. Generosity was viewed as philanthropy, an act of charity, not necessity.”

 

Some of us may be surprised to find that Indigenous people were more democratic than the new comers.

There was another very important difference between the two groups. The Indigenous People saw themselves as part of the natural world, particularly identified with the land in which they lived. They had a deeply spiritual relationship to that natural world as a result. The Europeans saw the natural world as something to own individually and exploit.  Barbara Huck explained the European attitudes this way:

“Their primary allegiance was to the concept of the nation-state and national identity was closely tied to language, religion, and race. They believed implicitly in European superiority and felt compelled to try persuade other cultures to embrace their world view. Yet with few exceptions, Europeans proved woefully unprepared for survival in North America. The first 250 years of European contact were fraught with disorientation, disaster, and privation. Native North Americans provided guiding services, information, interpretation, clothing, medicine and food., as well as wives and extended families. All this was in addition to the furs that were the primary objects of early French and later British interest. And time after time, they rescued the newcomers from starvation. Yet Europeans never did comprehend that this spontaneous, culturally entrenched generosity required  reciprocity. Instead, native North Americans in need were termed beggars.”

 

To the natives of North America, reciprocity was not just a cardinal virtue, it was a religious principle. The newcomers did not catch on. They were prepared to accept gifts from the natives, but often failed to reciprocate when the opportunity arose.  Who is the more civilized? These differing attitudes prepared the ground for misunderstandings and eventually conflicts.  As Huck said in her book on the fur trade of North America,

“This climate of misunderstanding colored the fur trade and the progress of Europeans across the continent. From the 16th century St. Lawrence Valley to the Pacific Coast 300 years later, the pattern was repeated again and again. Recognizing it is fundamental to appreciating the profound changes that took place in North America, between 1550 and 1860, and perhaps just as important in understanding today’s attempts to rectify some of the mistakes of the past.”

 

This is where learning comes in. To learn from our mistakes is important. But to do that our mistakes must be honestly confronted. How else can we get better? Unfortunately, people are often reluctant to admit mistakes, and that makes matters worse. Not better.

 

European Savages

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, civilization, Colonialism, History, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

On our trip across eastern Canada I had many opportunities to consider Canadian history.

The Indigenous people encountered by Europeans were definitely not savages.  They were members of sophisticated societies that all too often the Europeans did not well understand. Many of the Europeans were blinded by prejudice thinking that they could bring civilization and God to the barbarians and heathens. This was nonsense that the Europeans believed and passed on to their descendants and was largely responsible for the creation of white male supremacy favoured by their clans, but clearly absurd.  The indigenous people were civilized people and had a lot to teach the European newcomers while they were prepared to learn a lot from them as well. That is a wise attitude isn’t it?

It certainly was not true, as many Europeans thought, that this new land was empty of people. England, for example adopted the concept of terra nullius, a Latin phrase meaning “nobody’s land,” to justify their bloody claims. According to this theory, terra nullius included territory without a European recognized sovereign, where no one who counted lived.  Again, this was nonsense.

Contrary to such barbaric unfounded prejudices there were people all over the entire western hemisphere when Europeans arrived and these people mattered just as much as the visitors. The Europeans had no monopoly on civilization. In fact, often they revealed a startling lack of civilization. As Barbara Huck said in her book,

“Parts of North and Central America were among the most densely populated places on Earth. Some anthropologists have estimated the total population of the continent 500 years ago, including Mexico and Central America, at between 112 and 140 million. Mexico, the spectacular Aztec capital, was one of the three largest cities in the world when the Spaniards first laid eyes on it.

Much of Canada and the United States was considerably less populated than that—estimates put the total population of both between nine and 12 million—but North America was not, as some have imagined it, terra nullius, a land without people. And many societies, such as the Iroquoians, were healthier, more prosperous and less class-bound than their European counterparts of the same period.”

 

If first contact was indeed a case of civilization meeting barbarity, it is likely that the Europeans were the barbarians!  

It is also noteworthy, the Indigenous people who first encountered these Europeans in many ways did not share European attitudes and values. As Huck said,

“…the Americas were literally a world apart and North American values and beliefs were very different –in some ways almost directly contrary to the perspectives of the strangers who began to arrive on their shores in the early 1500s, the beginning of the contact period.”

 

For example, I have pointed out elsewhere that indigenous people of North American had views that were by no means all the same. They had many diverse views, just like Europeans.  The spiritual beliefs of indigenous people, for example, were very different from the newcomers, and in my view often preferable. We are of course, each entitled to our own views on that and I intend to continue commenting on those differences.

 

They also had very different views about how societies should be organized and how they should be governed and how wealth should be produced and shared. I find the differences profoundly interesting.  Barbara Huck in her book also commented on them:

 

“Indeed, it’s hard to imagine two more conflicting world views. Whether farmers or hunters, the vast majority of the people of what are now Canada and the United States lived communally in groups of varying sizes. The territories they inhabited were not owned, as we recognize land ownership, but rather commonly acknowledged  to be theirs to use. They governed by consensus, valued generosity and self-reliance, and loathed acquisitiveness and coercion. Stinginess and miserly behavior were strongly condemned. Almost everywhere it was considered immoral to allow anyone to go hungry if food was available.”

 

Not a bad way to live. Maybe the Europeans were the savages.

 

North American Farmers: Not What you Think

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, civilization, Colonialism, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous People before Contact

 

Speaking about the east coast and central regions of Canada which we visited on this wonderful trip we could try to answer Barbara Huck’s challenge to her challenge  to imagine a land where people just 500 years ago lived in towns and villages that were very different than we previously believed.  The people were not savages, as some of the Europeans erroneously believed. They were members of a thriving civilization.   As Huck explained,

“They tilled the soil and grew a remarkable array of crops—corn, squash, melons, beans, and tobacco. Not far away, the lakes and rivers were full of fish and the forests abounded with game. The women of this land did much of the fishing and farming; the men, for the most part, had other interests. While their wives and sisters and mothers planted and tilled the soil and cared for the children, the men travelled far from home, trading north and south, hunting, and as often as not, fighting. Theirs was a powerful nation, with many allies and intentions of expanding across a great river at the edge of their land.”

 

 

This all reminded me of what our guides taught us on our trip through the Africa;  often the women carry water and other vital goods on their heads, while the men sat around under trees and discussed important matters.

But who were these farmers Huck described in her book?  They were not Europeans as we might have thought. They were wholly indigenous. This is how she described them:

“The farmers were Iroquoian—the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk—who by 1500 occupied a large territory south of the St. Lawrence River and would soon unite to become the Five Nations Iroquois. To the north were Innu and their Algonquian speaking allies, from the Mi’Kmaq of the Atlantic Shores to eh Anishinabe of the Upper Great Lakes.

These cultures differed from one another as much as Scots differ from Spaniards today, or Finns from French. Some North American societies were settled and agrarian, others were seasonably mobile; some turned to the sea for their livelihood, others lived off the bounty of the inland plains.

As in Europe today, the societies of 15th century and 16th century North America spoke dozens of different languages. And like their modern counterparts most of these languages could be traced to a handful of common language groups.”

These Iroquois nations got together and created a democratic system of government that the framers of the American constitution were inspired by when they created what is often called the world’s first constitutional democracy. These Indigenous People y were certainly not savages.

Rife with Sexual Predators

Abuse of Power, Colonialism, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

Canada’s Indian Residential Schools, as we now know, were rife with sexual predators that attacked boys or girls.  As always they chose the most vulnerable.

There were not just a few rotten apples among the religious leaders, like many Canadians believed. I know that was my initial opinion when I first heard about Indian Residential schools as an adult. I thought it must be just a few bad apples. The system could not be abusive. Could it? I was wrong.

The schools were infested with sexual predators. For decades children were kidnapped by legal authorities, taken against their will from their parents and families to get rid of the “savage” influence from parents, and dumped into residential schools often far from home, where the children were isolated from their families and then were vulnerable victims of horrid abuse.  It is not coincidental that where victims are powerless, the exploiters find a safe haven.  That is how abuse works. In fact for decades the Canadian governmnent knew what was going on, but little to stop it.

As CBC series host Duncan McCue said, “The abuse poisoned every aspect of school life, even stuff that was supposed to be fun.”

That is how Canada tried to change “savages” into good Christian citizens

Canada’s Alcatraz: Kuper Island Residential School

Colonialism, Exploitation, Genocide, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools, Residential Schools

 

Penelakut Island, formerly known as Kuper Island and renamed in 2010 in honour of the Penelakut First Nation people, is located in the southern Gulf Islands between Vancouver Island and the mainland Pacific coast of British Columbia, Canada.  The Penelakut First Nation people are part of a larger group called Hul’qumi’num people. The island has a population of about 300 members of the Penelakut Band. It is not a large community, but it has suffered largely. Through no fault of its own.

The island and the Indian Residential School were the subject of a CBC radio series turned into podcasts. It is worth listening to it.

 

The host of the show, Duncan McCue travelled to Penelakut where the Kuper Island Residential School was located.  Some people called the school “Alcatraz.”  Think about that for a moment. A school supported by a church and the government of Canada was called Alcatraz. Canada’s Alcatraz.

 

Long after the Kuper Island Residential School was torn down, the survivors are still haunted by what happened there. Investigative reporter Duncan McCue of the CBC  exposed buried police investigations, confronted perpetrators of abuse as well as victims of abuse.  He also witnessed a community trying to rebuild — literally on top of the old school’s ruins and the unmarked graves of Indigenous children. The podcast he helped produce is well worth listening to as long as you can stand uncomfortable truths. I know that many of us can’t while others are tired of hearing about them. Some of these say, ‘Why can’t we get over it?’

That is a good question. Others say that their people also suffered abuse. Mennonites, for example, in some cases make such claims too. And they are right. But I don’t want to get into a suffering Olympics.  The point is not who suffered worse. I just want to point out it is difficult for survivors of residential schools, and even their descendants who have suffered inter-generational trauma, to  “get over it.”  We should learn about what happened to them first. The rest of us should be sympathetic before we become critical. Not many people in Canada had inflicted upon them schools where they had to attend even though they were designed to disparage their parents, inflict physical, emotional, and sexual abuse upon the children.  These schools were part of a Canadian system of oppression. Some even called it genocide. Who knows how we would react to such a situation.

 

The rest of us are lucky sit didn’t happen to them. Even though this happened for many decades, it was kept secret. I went to school in Canada for 20 years, including 7 years at university, and never heard of it once until after I had left that university. When I first heard about residential schools  found it hard to believe and later I thought it was a case of a few bad apples. It was more than that. More than 130 residential schools operated across Canada. As the Canadian Museum for Human Rights has described them, “The schools were a deliberate attempt to destroy Indigenous communities and ways of life. They were part of a broader process of colonization and genocide.”

I have read the executive summary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. I recommend all Canadians do the same. This history was hidden from us. I want to learn about that history. I think it is important for us to know that history.

Right now, I ust want to look at what happened in one residential school.  1 school out of 130. It was Kuper Island Residential School.