The Hate Capital of Canada

2022 Inferior Trip to Superior, Colonialism, Exploitation, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous Treaties

I love Thunder Bay, where I spent my first night on my inferior jaunt. It is beautiful.  Some call it God’s country.  I liked that. I was meandering through God’s Country.  But it has a dark side. It is a region of the country that has been deeply affected by racism.  Perhaps it is god-forsaken country for how could God countenance racism?

As I traveled through this beautiful country I listened to a podcast about the Thunder Bay region  on CBC radio.  Tanya Talaga was the host and one of the producers of the show. The podcast referred to Thunder Bay as the “hate capital of Canada.”    No doubt this is in part a reflection of the abundance of first nations people in the region.  As a result of deep racism in the area many people—too many people—hate the local indigenous people.  Hate of course breeds hate in the other side.  So both sides end up hating each other. What a pity. What a poor way to treat this beautiful country.

The CBC podcast referred to 7 high school students who had been attacked and murdered in the area in the recent past. Tanya Talaga the producers of the podcast also wrote a book on the subject called 7 Fallen Feathers referring to those 7 students. Thunder Bay has attracted so many indigenous youth because many of them have no choice but to go there for high school. The government in the treaties promised free education to youth of the First Nations, but often that means they must travel a considerable  distance from their home to the schools in Thunder Bay, the largest city by far in the region. Many of their communities, it is thought, are too small to support a high school. In cities like Thunder Bay many of those students have been subjected to deep racism so far from home. Many of them live alone, often torn apart by desperate loneliness. Often the students must go without the support of their families who remain back home.  As a result many of them are vulnerable and predators like nothing better than vulnerable people. Some of those students, like the 7 fallen feathers, were victimized by violence that sometimes turned lethal.

The last part of my drive into Thunder Bay was stressful. It was dark and there was a lot of traffic that moved fast.  Big trucks were rushing by. To keep going and arrive in Thunder Bay I had to push it. It started to rain and this reduced visibility on the road and made things a little a slippery. This was a mistake caused by my lack of a navigator. I missed Chris. She would normally arrange for hotel reservations as we drove and would make sure we pulled in before it was too late. I don’t like driving in the dark and the rain on holidays. It just is not necessary.

As a result, I was looking for a hotel room after 10 p.m. and of course, ended up paying too much at the Days Inn for a modest hotel room. The motel clerk just told me, “That’s Thunder Bay.” She added that the only reason that room was available was that someone had just cancelled, or they would not have even had one room.  So, under pressure, I took the room. It was high time to pack it in and I didn’t want to go room hunting at night.  Thunder Bay is on the Trans-Canada highway and the major town in the region. I really wanted to pack it in and go for dinner. It was all Chris’s fault!

I had a fine meal in a local restaurant filled with indigenous people.  Right beside me were to men with 2 lovely children with sparkling eyes.  I speculated that the younger man was the father and the elder the grandfather.  I wondered who could hate these people? How as that possible? Racism is a sword that cuts both ways, hurting the people who inflict it on others as much as the recipients. Racism diminishes all. It is an ugly scourge.

The Honour of the Crown

2022 Inferior Trip to Superior, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous Treaties

 

I continued on my inferior trip to Lake Superior as I have called it.  I love northwest Ontario particularly with its magnificent little rocky islands. To me they express the wonder of this beautiful country. I saw a few fine ones on this little jaunt and could not stop myself from stopping to photograph them. Some people say this country is just rocks and trees. They find them boring. Friends have told me this. I think only boring people could be bored by the stunning beauty of the country.

 

Some people think the government should renege on contracts (treaties) it has made with First Nations even though it continues to enjoy the benefits of those treaties. Is this a viable option?

There is a critically important concept the courts have enunciated in explaining the constitutional relationship between the federal government and indigenous peoples. That is the notion of the honour of the Crown. The crown is expected to be honourable. The crown must be honourable.

The honour of the Crown must be the basis of the relationship between the Crown (the government now) and the First Nations? Would failure to honour our obligations to first nations people not amount to the erosion of the rule of law in this country? Is that really what we want?

People often ask me why does the government give so much money to First Nations? Well, in large part, because they entered into contracts with First Nations by way of Treaties, that obligate them to do that! It is not free money Canada is giving away. It is money it owes the First Nations for sharing the land with them. Don’t we think we should pay that? Should we renege on the bargain? Would that be the honourable thing to do? Would that not require us to give our right to share the land back to the indigenous peoples?

Although each treaty is different, basically those treaties legally require the government of Canada, in return for getting to use the indigenous land, together with the first nations, to provide those first nations with schooling, housing, health care, and education. In simplified terms that is what Canada as a sovereign nation agreed to. It is bound by those treaties. The First nations are also bound by those treaties. They are considered sacred agreements by First Nations peoples.

 

f Canada walked away from its legal obligations would it not, as Professor Bohaker asked, “invalidate our legal system?” Do we want to do that? I know I don’t want to give up ownership of my house. What about my lease for our cottage on land owned by the Buffalo Point First Nation pursuant to Treaty 3? I don’t want to give that up either. I had to rush this short jaunt because my family was gathering on Thanksgiving Weekend at Buffalo Point to sand and stain our deck. I don’t yet want to give that cottage away, though I could do without the work.

In the film Colonization Road, indigenous lawyer and activist Pam Palmater said, said this about the effect of treaties made between Canada and First Nations:

 

“Even after the Royal Proclamation why were so many treaties signed? Because they had to have our consent. There was no choice by law or international law. And that’s significant. Treaties don’t take away from any of that, it actually just bolsters that. And now that the treaties are constitutionally protected it means they are. Recognition of our sovereignty and nationhood is the basis of the legal legitimacy of this country. You take away that and Canada has no legitimacy whatsoever. They need to recognize our sovereignty and nationhood in order to even exist as a state. And every other country in the world is well aware of that. And all Canada has to do is make one stupid move and look how quickly Russia or the United States comes in to claim our territory.”

 

No. I think we need to maintain our treaties. They are part of the social and legal framework of this country. We are all treaty people.

 

 

Treaty-making

2022 Inferior Trip to Superior, Colonialism, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous Treaties

 

Some people think Canada’s boreal forest is boring. Nothing but rocks and trees some of them say.  I think only boring people find this country boring. In Particular I love the small islands on tiny outcroppings.  I think that is the essential boreal forest. This is the country I love.

I wasn’t really thinking about treaties and indigenous settler relations all the time as I drove though eastern Manitoba and North-west Ontario. But I was always at the back of my mind.

The process of treaty making began shortly after 1867 with the negotiation of what came to be called numbered treaties. The first treaty successfully negotiated was right in the area I travelled through on my jaunt. This was Treaty One Land. It is beautiful land. It is valuable land. It should be cherished. I also drove through a substantial portion of Treaty 3 land where I happen to have a cottage on land the  Buffalo Point First Nation has developed and offered to people like me with a long-term lease. Thanks to the Royal Proclamation of 1763 declared by the British King George  no one could purchase land from First Nations, but one could acquire a leasehold interest like we did.

 

Treaty negotiations were a means for Canada and the First Nations to work out trade relations between them in a peaceful manner. First Nations though did not see what they had done as “ceding” land to the settlers. They saw it as a means of agreeing to share the land and thought each party would learn from the other. Neither would dominate. They would be partners on the land.

The Royal Proclamation was issued by King George III after concluding the 7 Years War with France.  As a result, he wanted to establish rules for how the land England had acquired would be governed.

As Pam Palmater, a brilliant Canadian indigenous lawyer has  said,

“All of our rights are inherent. That means they were here before anyone else came. And we had those rights because we were nations. And we had our own laws and our own territories. These things all belonged to us before anyone else came here. All the Royal Proclamation did was recognize that. If you read the Proclamation they say why they had to recognize those rights. It was the only way their colony could be secure, or have any justice, is if they recognized and protected those rights because we weren’t giving them up.”

 

Some people think Canada should just walk away from its obligations under those treaties. But those are contracts made between sovereign nations.  How can the government which is presumably law-abiding walk away from its own legal obligations? How can we even have the rule of law in this country if we did that? Would people who live here respect the law if the government didn’t? Those obligations and those rights Canada received as part of the bargains with First Nations were to exist “as long as the sun shines and the rivers flow.” Canada still has those obligations to this day pursuant to those treaties.  Many people think Canada is always “giving” money to First Nations people but to pay money Canada has promised to pay in return for substantial benefits which Canada continues to enjoy is not a gift.  It is the fulfilment of an obligation.

Does Canada want to give the right to share the land back?  I doubt that too many  Canadian would be in favour of that.

I know i am very happy the first nations of this wonderful country agreed to share it with Europeans.

 

The Doctrine of Discovery: Who owns the land?

2022 Inferior Trip to Superior, Colonialism, Indigenous Treaties

 

As I said earlier. I stopped at Lyons Lake right on the Ontario and Manitoba border to photograph the lake, the trees, and the autumn.  This is a photograph of a mountain maple. It is a lovely little spot.  The mountain maples of Manitoba are not as spectacular as the red and sugar maples of Ontario, but I like them. It is a more plain Jane maple, so I gussied up this photograph a bit with a double exposure of the same image in the computer. With some adjustments to each photo I like the effects you can get. Reality in art at least, in the eye of the beholder.

In the documentary film  Colonization Road I saw about this area, Professor Jeff Denis explained the Doctrine of Discovery this way in the documentary Colonization Road:

in the 15th century papal decrees of the Roman Catholic Church decreed that the first European nations to discover new lands, uninhabited by civilized people, by which they meant Christian people, or people who were not using the lands in an efficient manner as determined by Europeans, that the European nations who discovered those lands would have first dibs and sovereign ownership.

 

Really this idea was not that dissimilar from Mennonites and other settlers of the land in Canada, who believed indigenous people were not using the land so they could just take it.  Plain and simple. To them the notion of land in the natural state, without subjecting it to cultivation as in the case of grasslands, or draining wetlands, was an anathema. It was their duty to change the land and make it useful. It is part of the European attitude that nature is there for humans to dominate.  It has Biblical origins and has had powerful effects on the landscape of North America as a result. That doctrine has led to a lot of ecological harm. The indigenous people of Canada had a very different attitude to nature.  I intend to blog about it.

Eventually that doctrine of discovery was disavowed to some extent by the Catholic Church, but that did not diminish its profound influence on European colonialism. It has been cited in numerous court cases in North America. Even though it made no sense.

Here is what the doctrine provided with clear references to the fundamentals of Biblical doctrine in Psalm 72:

“He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him and his enemies shall lick the dust… Yea, all kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall serve him.”

 

In the documentary,  Professor of History Heidi Bohaker said that this doctrine was “the source of full legal title for Canada after Confederation in 1867, the Dominion of Canada. We may have forgotten in the secular age just how predominantly Christian, overwhelmingly Christian, Canada was.”And some parts of that Christianity Canada inherited was downright ugly. There really is no other way to describe it.

For 4 days on this jaunt, from Manitoba to North-west Ontario,  I drove through and photographed this land I love—Canada. It struck me that this doctrine was a pretty wobbly foundation for claiming dominion over the country over the objections of people who inhabited the land before the first Europeans arrived. Later King George III in England claimed a large portion of this land for the English crown in 1763 through a Royal Proclamation, (now called “The Royal Proclamation) but admitted indirectly that the rest of this land, basically all the land west of the Mississippi and outside of land already occupied by Europeans in 1763, belonged to indigenous people. He also said no Europeans could acquire title without acquiring it by way of agreement between the first nations involved and the English crown.  All people could then only acquire land from the Crown and were forbidden to buy land directly from indigenous people.

 

It is also a fundamental principle of English law, inherited by the country of Canada when it became an independent country in 1967, that no one could convey better title to land than he or she had. That has been a fundamental principle of Common law for centuries. So what really is the basis for Canada claiming dominion over this wonderful land? I submit the basis is shaky, except to the extent that title was obtained from the people who owned it by voluntary agreement with them. This is thorny stuff.

Yet as Professor Denis said, “That is really at the root of the Canadian legal system, the American legal system, the Australian legal system, any of those former British colonies.” I taught real estate transactions for 10 years at the Law School, and always felt the legal basis of our title at least when not based on treaties was shaky. Surely just taking it was not enough?

The fact is that Canada realized all along that this root of title in Canada on which it was relying was dubious. It was not a sound basis of developing Canada.  Canada needed a firmer legal foundation for its society. Canadian government officials saw how the Americans were struggling with this problem too and basically how they decided to base their claims on power. That is how Americans have traditionally operated. Canadians saw how that led to Indian wars in the United States. They saw how at one time that country was spending 25% of its annual revenue on these Indian wars. Canada thought it could not afford to spend so much as its wealthier neighbour to the south could spend. So, Canada sought a better way. They decided to negotiate treaties with indigenous people as a sounder and firmer foundation for title to the land. Frankly, this made a lot of sense, but there were problems with this approach as well.

The land I drove through on this trip was subject to Treaty No. 1 and Treaty No. 3 the first and third treaties negotiated by the new government of Canada.

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.

 

 

Beautiful Manitoba 

2022 Inferior Trip to Superior, autumn

 

Many people think Manitoba is dull and boring. They are wrong!

 

My trip turned out to be amazing. The scenery of autumn was glorious, but then I encountered something unexpected.  I listened to a strange CBC radio podcast that described a series of incidents in Thunder Bay. I was going to stop there my first night so my ears perked up, where I would stop on my first and second night. I had also recorded a film based on the same series of incidents although when I recorded it I did not realize that. It was a happy coincidence. Benign forces perhaps. Finally, a friend of mine sent me a link to another film in response to a post about reconciliation.  These forces created a perfect storm of beauty and darkness. What could be better?

 

The first thrill of the trip was—get ready for this—Manitoba. I tend to forget, that Manitoba is also beautiful in the autumn. The autumn leaves were stunning. Not many reds, but the colours were jumping. This was a wonderful start!  I could not resist stopping and taking a few photographs from beside the Trans-Canada highway. This was aspen gold at its finest.

 

My next stop was Lyons Lake near the Ontario Border. This is a lovely gentle spot. No power boats allowed. Many years ago, Christiane and I used to go here early in the year to try to catch trout. Always without success, even though the lake was stalked. We just tried to fish from shore and used corn kernels as bait. Someone told us that was good bait, but it never worked for us. But we loved the spot.

 

I listened to some very interesting podcasts including one about Freedom Road which I passed along the way my first day. The road is very near the Ontario border. I will blog about it later. It is a story of Canada at less than its finest. I ended up staying in Thunder Bay for the night. I have always enjoyed Thunder Bay even though I had heard disturbing stories of racism there, including a special report by Justice Murray Sinclair the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

It was an unsettling first day of my short and puny and inferior jaunt. But I was on a high. I was ready for adventure.