Category Archives: Indigenous–Reconciliation

A hodgepodge

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Indigenous--Reconciliation

This is a badly burned hotel that has been abandoned it would seem along side the Trans-Canada Highway in northern Ontario.  I must admit, sometimes I think of Canada this way. Not always, thank goodness., but too often. Is this what Canada is like?  I will come back to this photo later.

I love travelling, and an essential part of travel, for me, is learning. I want to learn new things about new places from new people. Or, learn more about places I already know to some extent.

One of the things I wanted to learn about was Canada.  I lived in Canada my entire life except for the last 10 years where we lived in Arizona for 3 months and Canada 9 months each . Give or take.

I thought I knew Canada. But did I really know it?  Of course, not. I had a lot to learn. One of the things I have been trying to learn more about for at least a decade and even more, is the relationship between indigenous people and the descendants of the European settlers as well as an amazing array of immigrants and their descendants who came to live in Canada a country that was already clearly occupied. They have all made for an incredibly interesting place here in Canada. Not a melting pot. Rather, a hodgepodge.

What is a hodgepodge? According to Vocablulary.com

“A hodgepodge is a random assortment of things. A dorm room might be furnished with a hodgepodge of milk crates, antique mirrors, and a poster of a kitten hanging on a branch with one paw. Hodgepodge is a funny-sounding word for a somewhat funny occurrence — a grouping of things or people that don’t fit together.”

 

They don’t fit together. Yet they do. Somehow, inexplicably, they do. They make it work.  The phrase is partly French and partly English.  Pretty appropriate to Canada. We have been trying to put the French and English together for hundreds of years. Lately, we have come to realize there is another very important group of people we neglected for too long. These of course are the indigenous people who were here all along. Yet painfully, awkwardly, and wrongly forgotten or neglected. Again, according to Vocablulary.com,

“In the case of hodgepodge and hotchpotch, the rhyme is not an accident. These words came to English from early French in the form hochepot. The spelling was changed to make the second half of the word rhyme with the first. In French hochepot was a stew of many foods cooked together in a pot.”

 

I love stews. Through ingredients into a pot heat them up and enjoy. Great in theory. But does it work? We must admit it has not worked very well in the past. But we can do better. I think we want to do better. First, we must be willing to learn and willing to change. We must in humility admit our mistakes of the past and honestly try to do better. That is what reconciliation is all about.

How can we do that? I wanted to think about that and how we got into this hodgepodge in the first place. As Chief Justice Murray Sinclair, the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada often said, “You can’t understand where you are unless you understand how you got there.”

I wanted to consider that on this journey through the eastern part of Canada. How did we get into this hodgepodge? Is there a way out?

 

A Voice for Justice: Murray Sinclair

Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools, Indigenous--Reconciliation

 

I first heard about Murray Sinclair when he and I were both pretty young lawyers who both worked in the same judicial district of Manitoba. He worked out of Selkirk and I worked in Steinbach.  He became an associate for Howard Pawley a lawyer and cabinet minister in the Ed Schreyer government and later a premier of Manitoba. I had a modest rural practice.

 

Justice Sinclair was born about 2 years later than I. He was appointed a judge of the Provincial Court of Manitoba, later of the Queen’s Bench in Manitoba. I vaguely remember that I was a bit jealous when he was appointed a judge. After all, I thought, he was younger than I was. How could that be?  Well, its simple. He earned it. He later became Associate Chief Justice of Manitoba and served on the Manitoba Justice Inquiry looking in to the unjust treatment of indigenous people by the provincial judicial system.

We only met once many years later after he had been appointed as Chair to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (‘TRC’) of Canada. I vaguely remember when that Commission was established, I thought people were making too much fuss about those schools. It was my ignorant evaluation that those schools were a matter of a few Catholic priests who were bad apples and who had horribly sexually abused children. What they had done to the children in their care was awful, if true, but no one else was to blame. I was wrong—dead wrong as it turned out.

A few years after the TRC was established and stories starting coming out that things were much more serious than we had realized. It was much more than  a few bad apples. Those schools were a result of systemic racial segregation, white supremacy and suppression of many indigenous children by the government of Manitoba and often by schools operated by various Christian churches.   Many children had been taken against their will from out of the love and care of their parents or guardians.

I remember the first time I heard Justice Sinclair speak on the history of residential schools, to a group of people who had been appointed to various government commissions and administrative bodies. Then I heard him a second time when he spoke to a group of Canadian lawyers at a meeting of the Canadian Bar Association. Those were  eye-opening experiences. I realized then that the issue of residential schools went deep into Canadian society and was a serious mark on that society. It was a stain on our honour.  After his talk I went up to thank him personally for opening my eyes.  Had he not opened my eyes I might have remained ignorant of the injustices created in the name of Canada against some of its most vulnerable citizens. We owe him and his fellow commissioners a great debt for the work they did on our behalf.

Justice Murray Sinclair was a giant of Canada who together with his fellow Commissioners brought to the attention of a nation the horrendous abuse, discrimination, and suppression of indigenous children in Canada. In doing that he did a great service to our country because he brought these injustices to the attention of the world and opened a path toward reconciliation. Otherwise, many white people like me would have remained ignorant of this great injustice. Justice Sinclair was a powerful voice for justice and the world should be grateful.  He was a true hero of Canada who made the world a better place. of Canada.

Lately I heard Justice Sinclair say there will always be those who deny history.  I agree. we see that all around.  After all, there are always those who prefer comfortable myths to the truth. For example, a few years ago the premier of Manitoba at the time, Brian Pallister, believed the myth that European settlers who came to Manitoba came solely to build and not destroy.  I wish it were that simple.

I remember what Justice Sinclair said: “this nation must never forget what it once did to its most vulnerable people.” Who has ever uttered a greater truth?  Justice Murray Sinclair was a great and clear voice for justice. He was a Canadian treasure. A Canadian hero if ever there was one.

Am I racist?

Indigenous--Reconciliation, racism

 

Recently, I posted that I agreed with the government of Manitoba when they decided not to financially support the request of families of indigenous women who had been murdered to find the remains of their bodies believed to be in a local landfill.  It would cost at least $84 million and perhaps as much as $184 million and might not result in a successful search. I also wonder what those remains will be like after months in the landfill. Frankly, I was very uneasy about my position. I won’t be buying a billboard to brag about how I am standing firm.  I am uneasy about my position.

 

I am usually on the side of indigenous people as readers of this blog will know by now. That does not mean I always agree with them by rote. I want to consider each issue on the merits. I know many people that I know and respect who disagree with me strongly on this issue.

I also want to respect indigenous families who believe that the human remains of deceased people are very important, even though I do not agree with this view.

Governments every day get requests for money and often big ones. As a result our political leaders must make careful decisions to spend public money wisely. Money is never unlimited even for governments who have much more than we do. We expect government to weigh competing claims carefully, dispassionately, based on logical reasoning and taking into consideration all relevant facts. This is not always easy.

I said that I would reach the same conclusion if the family claimants were white people from Wellington Crescent. I also believe that if members of my family ever made such claims, they should be treated the same way, even if I in the circumstances changed my views because they are so important to me. We naturally tend to advocate for our own families.

Governments however must treat like cases with like results. Race is irrelevant. If some groups place more importance on burying all remains that should be taken into consideration and in some cases might result in like cases being treated slightly differently. I think that might be justified.

As a result, I do not think I was racist in my views.

I take comfort from the fact that the recent survey showed 60% of indigenous people believed the government should pay to have a search made for the remains even though it was very expensive and might be risky for the people undertaking the search.  I take comfort from this because that means 40% of indigenous people polled did not believe the government should take such actions. Are the indigenous people who believe that, being racist? I think not.  I think people can reach the conclusion to the question on the basis of racism. But I think I was not racist in this case.

Does anyone disagree with me?

Moral Bankruptcy of the Conservative Party

Conservative, Death of Truth, Indigenous--Reconciliation

 

This past week as the Manitoba election draws to a close, the governing party in Manitoba, the Conservative Party, has demonstrated its moral bankruptcy. 2 despicable political advertisements have shown that they cannot be allowed to speak for us. I will just comment on one of them today. The other one is equally pathetic.

One was a one-page ad published twice in the Free Press lauding Premier Stefanson’s promise to “stand firm” on the issue of searching the Prairie Green landfill for the remains of two slain Indigenous women.

It is one thing to come to a hard though-out position not to support the expensive search for remains. It is entirely different to brag about that to a base of voters largely unsympathetic to indigenous causes such as that of the Conservative party. That base may include  racists who will treat this as permission to turn ugly. It seems to me the Conservative Party has decided to try to electrify voters against indigenous people who don’t want to spend the money to find the remains of the two indigenous women.

Those remains are believed to be in a Winnipeg Landfill. As I bogged yesterday, I am not satisfied that such expense would be justified and that the money could be better spent elsewhere because money is never unlimited. Even governments have limited resources and must use them wisely. But I want to make it clear, that I dissent entirely from the actions of the Progressive Conservative Party. In fact, I admit I am uneasy about being on the same side as the Conservative Party on this particular issue.

It is also regrettable that their advertisements are not truthful. They claim the efforts to locate the remains will cost $184 million when the estimate they received said the cost would be between $84 and $184 million. Added to that, the ad claims the Premier took that decision “For health and safety reasons.”  This ignores the fact that some experts say it can be done safely. For these reasons Dan Lett of the Winnipeg Free Press called the ad “a symphony of misinformation.”

I also believe the advertisement  subtly alludes to last year’s Trucker Convoy, whose leader frequently used a similar statement during that strike and her subsequent arrest. I don’t think that similarity is accidental. Some members of their base will be attracted to that. I don’t believe the majority of Manitobans will agree.

Simply put, fuelling rancid debate like this is not what we expect of our Premiers. It certainly is not an act of reconciliation.

Charles Adler a long time conservative voice in Manitoba was bluntly harsh in his criticism of the Conservatives:

“I never thought the PCs would exploit murdered young Indigenous women to make some clumsy point about leadership character. The billboard which I first saw on Kenaston Boulevard just days ago, after doing a shop at Costco, made me want to buy a barf bag. “Stand Firm” falls flat. The message does not evoke strength of character. It does the opposite.Standing Firm on the remains of murdered Indigenous women is a confession of moral weakness. It illustrates the total collapse of values in today’s Manitoba Progressive Conservatives. As a person, who until this week has been for the most part, a reliable PC voter, I now view the party of Duff Roblin as the party of Maxime Bernier.”

 

Personally I  predict  the Conservatives’ attempts to sow division in Manitoba will fall flat and they will be roundly defeated in tomorrow’s election. Most Manitobans  are not Trumpsters.

2023 Reconciliation Day

Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools, Indigenous--Reconciliation

Today was Reconciliation Day.  Many of us still don’t know what that means. We want to  support reconciliation but don’t know how to do it. I am not saying I do. I remember though what Niigaan Sinclair  a well-known indigenous spokesman in Manitoba told me af few years ago when I asked what an old white guy could to to participate in a small way towards reconciliation.  He said it was not up to him to tell  an old white guy from Steinbach what he should do to. He said it was not his business to tell me that. It was up to me to offer something. It was not up to the offended to tell me what to do.

Sinclair though did give a hint. He said I could talk to white friends.  Many of those, he said, would not listen to him, or read his articles in the paper, but the white guys might listen to me. I assured him not many would, but I thought then, and do now, that this made sense.  I should reach out to white guys and women and just offer my point of view.  For what its worth (I know not much as I am certainly not an influencer) but I might reach a couple of people. Maybe not convince them but to engage them. That is one of the reasons I have continued to blog about some of these issues.

Today I accepted an invitation to the Seniors club in town to attend a dinner in recognition of truth and reconciliation. We were entertained first by 2 young indigenous hoop dancing girls Kimberley and Charisma Mason. The girls were 14 and 15-years-old.  They were descendants of residential school survivors. Trauma from such schools, one of them said, had changed the lives of the student. For example, it disconnected them from the love of their parents, kin, and communities. That was not surprising. Until fairly recently, indigenous people were not even allowed to practice or share their ceremonies, including dancing or potlucks. Who ever though such a prohibition was a good idea?

They explained how pleased they were to present to us Steinbachers as for many years indigenous people were not allowed to perform their own dances or ceremonies. They also explained that the dancing “told a story.”  For example, with the hoops they made images of an eagle fledging from a nest. Or a hunter firing a bow.

Later Lorne, an indigenous  male dancer also performed in full regalia. He said he was a professional dancer who was paid a lot of money to dance.  As well he had spoken to music students at Yale University to explain his form of dancing and how it was related to music. He said he had used the example of a baby at a powwow falling asleep to the beat of loud drums, because the baby felt it like the mother’s heart beat in the womb.

The most interesting thing for me was seeing how thrilled the performers were to share their culture.  They were very proud to do it and were very happy to have us old white people from a seniors club in Steinbach see them perform.

Reconciliation, no doubt, will take generations. Probably as long as the abuse took, which is about 150 years. But it was nice to participate, even in a very small way.

Meegwetch

It’s all about the Land

2022 Inferior Trip to Superior, autumn, Colonialism, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous--Reconciliation

 

 

North Shore of Lake Superior

My drive along the north shore of Lake Superior was stunning. It was a cloudy day. Not good for scenic vistas, but great for the fantastic colours of  autumn foliage. I was in heaven. At least so it felt. I made many stops to photograph what I saw. And it was never enough. The land was beautiful. As John Denver said, “It’s almost heaven.”

 

In the film Colonization Road, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a writer and academic says we are not having the right conversations in Canada because even when we talk about reconciliation we don’t talk about land. According to indigenous people and the European settlers and their political representatives, the treaties were about land. Land was the foundation of it all. How would the land be shared? That was the nub and too many people have forgotten this. As she said,

“We are talking about reconciliation, but we are not talking about land. We are talking about murdered and missing indigenous women and girls but we are not talking about the land. Where the root cause of every issue that indigenous people are facing right now in Canada right now comes from dispossession and erasure and it comes from the system of settler colonialism that keeps us in an occupied state.”

 

As Hayden King said in the film,

” Y’know the land is the basis of the Canadian economy. Indigenous peoples have been kicked off the land, dispossessed of it, to make way for the Canadian economy…The objective is to get rid of the Indian. And traditionally the method has been very overt. ‘We’re going to eradicate your culture, we’re going to eradicate your language, we’re going to get you off the land. We’re going to separate you from your family and your communities. We have today a different form of trying to kill the Indian. Canada has been very sneaky with the institutional and legal tools it’s used to kind of push the native people out of the way.”

 

 

 

Teika Newton made a very another important point. She said,

“The creation of Canada is something that has been very violent. It’s been violent consistently towards indigenous women and it’s been very violent consistently towards the land. They didn’t see the poetry in our language. They didn’t see our children and our old people as being valuable. They saw resources. They saw money.”

 

As the Eagles said in that magnificent song, aptly titled ‘The Last Resort,”

 

Some rich men came and raped the land
Nobody caught ’em
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes
And Jesus people bought ’em
They called it paradise
The place to be.
They watched the hazy sun
Sinking in the sea.

 

Many indigenous people, like Chief Al Hunter, believe the Canadian extractive economy has mined the natural resources with few long-term benefits, particularly to indigenous people. It is a boom and  bust economy. As he said, reversing an old cliché, “It’s short-term gain for long term pain.”

 

Our Home on Native Land

2022 Inferior Trip to Superior, Colonialism, Indigenous--Reconciliation

 

The Idle no more movement raised some instances of racism in Canada. For example, in Fort Frances, which I drove through on this trip, a white person drove a truck into a protester. Thunder Bay another city I visited on this jaunt, an Anishinaabe woman was raped. What generates such hate? What generates such hate in a country like Canada which prides itself on being reasonable, polite, and hate free? In the incident in Thunder Bay one of the white rapists said to the woman, “you people don’t deserve your rights.”

 

Some people don’t like it when indigenous people start to rock the boat. It seems like Canadians expect them to know their place and behave. But is some obnoxious behavior not justified when people have suffered more than a century of abuse? How long are they expected to just “take it”? Yet as soon as they starting talking or complaining about colonization, or treaty violations they are not as welcome in Canadian society any more.

 

As Jeff Denis, professor of Sociology said, “What is distinctive about settler colonialism as opposed to other forms of colonialism, is that the settler come to stay. They make this their home on native land.”

 The fact that the national anthem of Canada refers to Canada as “our home and native land,” seem deeply ironic in this context. Don’t you think?

 

 

 

Why Can’t You be Just be Like US?

2022 Inferior Trip to Superior, autumn, Indigenous--Reconciliation

 

Still thinking of Manitoba

 

The Thunder Bay area where I stayed my first night on short autumn jaunt has a deep history of racism and residential schools. It is beautiful country with a very dark past. After I arrived after my first day’s drive I checked into a hotel and immediately proceeded to a local restaurant. There were many indigenous looking people in the restaurant, but of course that is not always easy to discern who is first nations and who is not. It didn’t matter. At a table next to mine I watched two indigenous men with 2 young girls. Everyone was having a fine time. Life was good.

 

I recently watched a documentary called Colonization Road. I highly recommend it to one and all for some interesting points of view.

As one indigenous Canadian Chief of the Rainy River First Nation and writer, Al Hunter,  asked on the documentary, “We hear it a lot over and over—why can’t you just be like us? What does that mean?” The question of course is rhetorical. The answer is obvious. That means why don’t you assimilate with us? Become like us, because we are better than you. Those really are the suggestions of such a question. But  Hunter had an answer however in the film

 

“We want to be who we are. We want our culture to be strong. We want them to know that the past and the future and the present are actually alive. And we want respect, for wanting that for ourselves.”

 

Is that too much to ask? Is it really so obvious that we whites are better than our indigenous neighbours?

 

We have no history of colonialism

2022 Inferior Trip to Superior, Colonialism, Indigenous--Reconciliation

As I drove on my trip along the Trans-Canada highway I was thinking about colonization. That was partly because the country I drove through was particularly affected by it and also because I had recently been alerted to some new issues.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper made an astonishing statement on colonization:

“We are one of the most stable regimes in history. There are very few countries that can say, for nearly 150 years they’ve had the same political system without any social breakdown, political upheaval, or invasion. We are unique in that regard. We also have no history of colonialism.”

 

This is one of the most profoundly ignorant statements I have ever heard. It only made sense because he really believed—as do so many other Canadians—the colonization was benign or benevolent. Compared to other countries such as the USA there was much less violence.  But it was still deeply oppressive to the original inhabitants of this continent and their offspring.

As Haydong King said about Harper, he believed we had

“…peaceful colonization where very nice European settlers came and met with very nice but savage native people. And we helped them through Christianity and religion and we taught them how to farm, and we paid for their school. So that has been colonization and it has been a very benevolent one.”

It was certainly benevolent if you are the right side of the issue.

The Premier of Manitoba Brian Pallister made a very similar remark about settler coming to Manitoba. They did not come to bring violence. They were builders not destroyers, he said. Pallister rightfully got in a lot of trouble for that wooden-headed remark.

When Canada’s political leaders make such comments, it is obvious that they don’t understand the relationship of indigenous people and the governments of Canada and the provinces. They are looking at that relationship through the lens of a descendants of those colonizers, or their successors.

This summer Christiane and I with our granddaughter Nasya spent a few days in Gimli.  I remember driving by Colonization Road.  It is always a bit shocking to see a road called that. Would Germany or Poland have a Holocaust Road?  I saw another such road later on my trip in Fort Frances. There are roads like that in many other towns in Canada including Kenora, Dryden, And Emo.  It shows how successful colonization has been. People see it as natural. Certainly not anything to be ashamed of or concerned about.

Patrick Wolfe one of the theorists who has studied settler colonialism, said, “settler colonialism is a structure not an event. It is something we reproduce every day through our actions.”

If we want to achieve reconciliation with indigenous people we must learn to understand colonization. Ignorance like that from our Prime Minister and Premier just won’t cut it.

 

 

A shield or a pathway to Action

Indigenous--Reconciliation

 

As usual, in a wonderful Winnipeg Free Press article, Niigaan Sinclair said it much better than I could. Like me he has been saying how enthusiastic he has been about what he has seen in Manitoba in the last couple of years. In fact, he has been eloquent  in his praise. That is saying a lot because he is an astute and relentless critic of colonial subterfuge and chicanery. Recently, he said how impressed he was to see an elementary school playground filled with young students of all ethnicities and races, wearing orange shirts, playing together while expressing their solidarity with indigenous people and their complicated relationship with non-indigenous peoples.

As Sinclair said,

“Dressed by parents who want children to know that relationships with Indigenous Peoples are important, these children are receiving some of the best and most inclusive and complete education in history.”

 

He also pointed out how most Canadian students are now learning about residential schools, treaties, and the complicated relationship shared by Canadian indigenous peoples from dedicated teachers. When I was growing up, we received no such education.  This will give Canada a chance for a better relationship to come. Thankfully too, we have not had much of a backlash from conservatives who don’t want their children to learn things that might make them feel uncomfortable as Americans are now experiencing.  This change has occurred without a lot of opposition, other than perhaps, some naysaying old men at coffee shops around the country in places like Steinbach. But those are just nattering nabobs of negativity as American Vice-president Spiro Agnew once said.

This might just open up a significant door. After all, as Chief Commissioner Murray Sinclair has repeatedly said, “Education got us into this mess and it is the only thing that can get us out of this mess.” As always, wise words from the Honourable Murray Sinclair.  His son, Niigaan Sinclair added this in his column:

“This is an opportunity few had in school. Most, including me, still carry the residue of the racism we were taught or the deafening silence that guided us to ignorance or entitlement.”

 

 Me too! I too carry the residue of that racism that I am trying hard and probably not hard enough, to erase. It is not easy. But it must be done.

Niigaan Sinclair said he has seen a change in the air in Manitoba. A change that has been a very long in coming.  As he said,  “This province and city, however, are different. This place is different.” He went even farther. As I said, he was lavish in his praise:”

 

Anyone who has read this column knows I’ve never said our community is perfect or even close to it, but readers do know I am frank and often uncomfortably blunt. So, with all bluntness I can muster, I say something special is happening in this place.

 Once again,I don’t want to sound like Pollyanna but I want to echo his words.

Yet—and this is important—Sinclair warns us that we must not be satisfied with baubles.  We need action.  This is how he eloquently put it: “Still, most in this community continue to wear an orange shirt. Let’s just hope it’s not used as a blanket or shield, but as a pathway to action.”

Boy I wish I had said that.