MAIDEN AUNT CANADA HOIST ON HER OWN PETARD AGAIN: Glenn Babb

MAIDEN AUNT CANADA HOIST ON HER OWN PETARD AGAIN

by Glenn Babb

Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practised at spare moments; it is a wholetime job.

Canada has always sung in the front of the choir in the chorus of disapproval of South Africa’s racial policies and sniffily regards itself as the frontrunner in the international morality stakes. Many ironies arise from this posture. Firstly, all recent research shows how South Africa copied Canada in forming its homeland policy. After the Nationalists came to power and instituted the Tomlinson Commission, the government paid special attention to the Canadian model of reserves separating the natives from the civilisers. Reports record governmentfunded study tours of Indian reserves. One was a particularly long and detailed tour in 1949 by Peter Cook of the South African Native Affairs Department of the Canadian and US Indian reserves and, later, in 1954, Frederick van Wyk, sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation who was “interested in knowing something of our native populations”. The most significant fell to Ambassador Willem Dirkse van Schalkwyk in 1961/2 who was enthusiastically and proudly accompanied by senior officials of both External and Indian Affairs. Records of this cooperation emerge from the archives. [Canada’s Apartheid Pierre Bélanger & Kate Yoon, Lapsus Lima November 27, 2018] Van Schalkwyk’s study coincided with the Transkei’s transition to autonomy in 1963. Another irony is Canada’s own indecisive and floundering policy on “native peoples”. No better indicator of this is the constant flip-flop in naming and nomenclatures: Native Peoples, Indians, Eskimos, Métis, Inuit, Aborigines, First Nations, recently coming to rest at Indigenous and Northern Peoples. The original purpose with the indigenous peoples was acculturation and assimilation. The earliest Canadian legislation made this abundant-

ly clear. Prior to the Indian Act (1876 - still in operation), the Gradual Civilisation Act (1857) revealed how the dominion wanted to deal with its native people. The Indian Act defines an Indian as anyone registered on the Band Register of any reserve, of which there are 632. The law was conceived unblushingly in the policy of a civilising mission and allows for forbidding the use of tribal garb, interference in band councils by the authorities … all recent research and forcing hunting to folshows how South Africa low provincial ordinances. Indians, Métis and Inuit are copied Canada in forming not obliged to register on a its homeland policy. Band Register but they forego the subsidies given to every registered Indian, whose numbers (2016) are only 1 008 955 (392.000 living on reserves) of a total of all Indians, Métis and Inuit of 1 673 785, or 4.9% of the national population. The Indians registered on a Band Register are called “status” Indians. For status Indians, the budget of the Department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs amounted in 2018 to C$7.96 billion. If you do the math, that means a sum of C$7.895 each, for every status Indian man, woman and child. This does not get given to the recipients – it gets dispensed by a huge bureaucracy of 4 000 civil servants in a vast building in Gatineau, Québec, who have an indisputable interest in maintaining the status quo. To this amount must be added the free health services of Canada and Provincial support. With all this goodwill and sloshing money, what (Continued on page 35)

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has gone wrong? From the assuredness of the civilising mission in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Canada began, in the 1970’s to take stock and under international pressure for greater freedom and independence of indigenous persons, it has had a prise de conscience. Basic to the assimilation were the Residential Schools which separated Indians from their clans, reserves, language and culture. The Indian Act was amended in the 1920’s to make it compulsory for Indian children to attend Residential Schools. The schools, numbering over 130, were the cornerstone of the acculturation and assimilation policies. The Indians were taught exclusively in French and English and the schools were predominantly managed by the Catholic (70%), Anglican, Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian churches.

It was in the proximity of the Catholic Residential School of Kamloops, British Columbia that 215 children’s skeletons were recently discovered, raising questions about Indians’ treatment here and at other schools. Canada had long been aware of the neglect at these schools. Already in 1906, the Chief Medical Officer of the Department of the Interior revealed that the death rate at the residential schools could be as high as 42% [The Story of a National Crime Dr PH Bryce, MD James Hope & Co, Ottawa 1922], and even more recently, in 2011, bones of schoolchildren, which had been burnt and dismembered were unearthed at an Anglican residential school near a Mohawk tribe.

The past mistreatment of the children led to the establishment in 2008 of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission which concluded that attendance at the Residential Schools amounted to cultural genocide. The government, on the Commission’s recommendation, set up a fund which was to pay the survivors of these schools (about 28.000 of them) compensation, in total, C$3.4 bil-

lion. The Commission heard evidence from 6.900 witnesses and found that between 3.600 and 6.000 children died in the residential schools, but the chairperson said this was probably an underestimate.

Of course, apologies have been the order of the day. In the wake of the Australian Prime Minister’s example, when the first Aboriginal was ever admitted to the Australian Parliament, on 11 June 2011, P.M. Stephen Harper said the following mealy-mouthed words in the Canadian Parliament: “We now recognise that, in separating children from their families, we undermined the ability of many to adequately parent their own children and sowed the seeds for generations to follow… You have been working on recovering from this experience for a long time and, in a very real sense, we are now joining you on this journey.” [The Globe and Mail, Toronto, 12 June 2008.] Then P.M. Trudeau lite tearfully did the same in Newfoundland on 24 November 2017: “The treatment of indigenous children in residential schools is a dark and shameful chapter in our country’s history. For all of you, we are sincerely sorry.”

In the 1970’s and 1980’s Prime Ministers Trudeau père and Mulroney hesitated in the face of the growing and violent protests against a government only marginally interested in the development of indigenous rights. Trudeau père had the ideal opportunity in 1969 to unravel the past complex autonomy accorded to Indian bands and reserves. He presented a White Paper which would have allowed the repeal of the Indian Act (1876), the end of federal tutelage of the Indians who would be treated like all other Canadians, with the bands having local powers. He did not have the courage to pursue this radical and far-reaching policy. First, he met strong opposition from the Indians themselves and had to face the fastgrowing pressure for rights for indigenous peoples at the UN, which led eventually to the 2008 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (which Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the USA voted against). Now, after the discovery of the skeletons in Kamloops of 215 Indians at a former Residential School, this opportunity will never, ever be repeated. Had Trudeau père taken the bit between the teeth, the landscape for indigenous peoples would have opened up. But he did not. He collapsed and in the 1984 First Minister’s Conference on Aboriginal Matters he weakly said: “Institutions of self-government may turn out to be different for different communities in different parts of Canada”, and this line of chopped logic continued under Trudeau père’s successor, Brian Mulroney, who stuck a dagger into the communal Canadian concept in saying at the 1985 First Minister’s Conference on the Rights of Aboriginal Peoples: “I see the aboriginal peoples making their special contribution to Canadian society as Indian, Inuit and Métis. There is no need to sever one’s roots.”

What was it to be in the 1960’s? Assimilation and the disappearance of the reserves and cultural rights of Indians? Or tinkering with the Act and expanding faux autonomy of the band authorities and museumising the Indians, to be trotted out as singing, dancing groups at the Commonwealth Games with the obligatory totem pole?

The real reason for the pussyfooting around the “native question” was revealingly explained by Harry Swain, former Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs: “Because no politician got his bread buttered by taking on the Indian issue” [The Star (Toronto: 30 October 2010]

Umpteen Royal Commissions have reported on the plight of the native people and no clarity emerges from this minestrone soup. The Indians are often their own worst enemies: there may be an Assembly of First Nations, but it does not act with authority, it bickers among itself so grassroots Indians themselves have found ways of getting the attention they need, often violently: • 1995 Stony Point Ojibway Indian killed in protest about military expropriation • 1990 Oka Mohawk resistance to expansion

of a golf course over Oka land – 78-day stand-off with Quebec police • 1995 Gustafsen Lake, 400-armed Mounties face land claimants for 31 days • 1999 – 2002 Micmac fishermen’s traps destroyed, leading to a stand-off with Mounties over three years • 2006 Caledonia Indians occupy land granted by Court to Six Nations - stand-off over six months • 2012 “Idle No More” movement of acrossthe-board indigenous people opposing legislation reducing ecological protection and Indian treaty rights; it is on-going and protests continue over the whole country • 2020 Wet’suwet’n protest against pipeline over their territory shutting down the Canadian National Railways and resulting in hundreds of arrests. So, what will happen now after the weaselly apologies, the distribution of hand-outs and the Canadian prise de conscience? Canada is still left with a messy assortment of 623 reserves governed under a Victorian piece of legislation that will not be repealed as was possible under Trudeau père. Assimilation is a dead letter. Lots of Canadian goodwill effort will go into trying to revive languages, songs, legends, cultural dress and history, to build museums and monuments.

The wellbeing of the Aboriginal peoples will not be changed by that, as the horizons have now closed in – the challenge of making them part of the larger Canadian community festers on. The social problems of non-developing peoples mean that the past just repeats itself. White Papers, Green Papers, Royal Commissions, Aborigine Colloquiums fill rack-space and of the 444 recommendations of the 1996 Royal Commission, only a couple have been implemented. The Indians will continue to commit suicide at 3 times the national average, infant mortality will not improve over the 50% higher incidence than the national average, 40% will still be alcoholics, life expectancy will remain 9 years shorter than the national average and their income will still be 30-50% lower than the national average. As ambassador to Canada, Chief Louis Stevenson invited me in 1987 to visit his Peguis Indian Band. The turmoil created in officialdom and the media was a sight to behold. For weeks the visit dominated the news and innumerable cartoons appeared in every major newspaper. Stevenson knew what he was doing – the publicity could only help to draw attention to his band’s plight. And it did, more than he could have hoped for. Officialdom did take note, so his roads were resurfaced, bridges were repaired and a mall was built. After that? The frustration continues. Only by a wider introduction into the economy, agriculture, education and industry will the Indians open their horizons, protect themselves and their customs and project themselves into a new modern social compact, and that means something on a scale that 623 bands cannot each do on their own. It needs a critical mass.

While South Africa’s homelands have withered away, the Canadian versions limp along without a critical mass to shove them out of the messy restrictions, self-imposed and legislative, and one cannot be optimistic that they will rise above their limited landscape. The turmoil created in offi- (Editor’s Note: It was reported on 25 June 2021 that a further cialdom and the media 751 unmarked graves have was a sight to behold. been discovered at another residential school in Canada, this time located at Marieval in Sasktachewan. Then, on 30 June came a report that an additional 181 new graves have been located at a residential school in Cranbrook in British Columbia. Since, statues of queens Victoria and Elizabeth have been toppled and Catholic churches set alight. For a VERY interesting article on Amb. Babb’s turbulent time in Ottawa, see: http://www.africanrhetoric.org/pdf/4_ayor% 203.3_Babb.pdf ). (Continued on page 38)

By kind permission of Alan King The Citizen (Ottawa) 28 February 1987: