The Legacy Remains Genocide Through Paper

The Legacy remains Genocide Through Paper Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, Ph.D. The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

Stephen Biko (as cited in "World Cultural Geography,"1998)

Introduction: Having debated the finer points of Aboriginal governance systems many times over the years, but not finding myself rewarded with the kinds of answers that would satisfy frustration at what is mostly regarded by the Canadian government as indifferent progress, I have been forced to turn my gaze towards different theories of leadership and practice (Wesley-Esquimaux & Calliou, 2010, Anaquot, 2007, Bopp, 2002). But, where does one turn when there is a multitude of reasons put forward by academics, bureaucrats, and laymen as to why Aboriginal peoples continue to grapple with the creation of “sustainable governance and communities” and when looking over the other shoulder there are plenty of very good examples of thriving peoples and economies?

Most of those Aboriginal success stories do not garner news and have not been given due consideration as powerful examples of the very kinds of sustainability and strength so readily dismissed by Eurocentric policy. This is a different kind of social and economic violence, one that replays doubt, resistance, and confrontation as tired and useless hallmarks to progress.

The suggestion in March 2011 that the people at Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) still need to “find solutions that will prompt and sustain community wellness, self-reliance, and sustainability, while respecting that communities are at different stages of capacity, pace, and circumstances” (INAC, 2011), leaves one breathless and deeply concerned about the possibility of real change. Can we, as mutual societies, even get to true acknowledgement that we are speaking at cross-purposes and not putting forth methods and tools that will free essential elements for those kinds of successes to occur everywhere? I stand firm behind the conviction that the very best way to improve the circumstances of Aboriginal peoples across this land is to get out of the way and allow their ‘own ways’ to renew and unfold into community driven practices.

They have powerful narratives that still resonate strongly at the core of their cultures and will guide their progress forward. Most continue to express deep respect for those who lead by example and clearly articulate collective pathways. This is because Aboriginal people understand that it is always “the story” that we are told, tell, and learn to live that most profoundly directs the trajectory on which we find ourselves. This is the first question we need to ask, because the story told is always the set-point of the nation, but have we all forgotten how to listen? Historically, the use of a powerful and authoritative “voice” was considered a primary mark of leadership and the gift of oratory prowess was regarded as a strong indicator of ability and cognitive strength (Couture, 2000). The ability to illustrate history, political positions, and even hunting success through oral tradition was and remains highly regarded. These things have not gone away, they are present, and even though they have been strangled in webs of condoned societal violence turned inward, they can still be heard and continue to have purchase amongst our

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governments no matter how twisted by Indian Act dictates and legislation they have become.

Aboriginal leadership can state unequivocally that too much continuing “help” is as detrimental as none at all when it comes to the redesign and implementation of traditional governance and societal structures long decimated by the “good practices and intentions” of the increasingly malevolent, masquerading as benign, colonizing force called government (SM, 2009). Not enough can be said about the need for INAC and other “good intentioned” agencies to provide adequate resources, supports, and requested assistance only, and then to get out of the way of those working on the ground to stabilize and rebuild ravaged Nations and Indigenous identities across Canada in their own image, not that of the Canadian State. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples calls this self-determination, and has invited Nation States and Indigenous people to honour and restore this principle globally and in conformity with International Law (UNDRIP, 2007).

Where Governance Matters: Canada is not a country that readily responds to ideology that veers away from its vision of itself as world peacekeeper. To be held up as a detrimental force to what is useful and supportive is anathema to Canadian sensitivities, and flies in the face of seeing oneself as being a welcoming home to millions of early settlers and more recent immigrants. The poor, tired, and huddled masses that the United States welcomed to its shores are far away from the educated, talented and economically viable that we welcome to ours (Lazarus, 1886). Unfortunately, today, it is the Indigenous population, especially the young, that more readily mirror the poor, tired, and huddled masses so poetically cast as subjects by Lazarus from where they subsist along the bottom rungs of this country.

There they are forced to respond daily to a Eurocentric government that relentlessly interferes in their ability to plan, build and sustain viable societies and economies out of their own ‘wise’ practices and beliefs (Wesley-Esquimaux & Calliou, 2010).

I have had occasion to travel into remote northern communities for work, discussion, and academic research and always found a plethora of viable and engaged community members working hard in a variety of arenas, all of which bring sustenance and satisfaction to their people. This is also true in the south, albeit manifesting in significantly different ways and expressing a multitude of governance results and successes. It matters to all of these communities that they have capacity, and they are building the necessary internal mechanisms to support and grow their own economies and programs. This kind of ‘ground zero’ development is not necessarily based on the fiscal and intellectual consideration benevolently delivered by INAC and those deemed “responsible” for the continuation and success of these peoples and their governments. In many ways that kind of deliverance has become more of an impediment than a boon.

Here in Canada, it is already known far too well that, “First Nations are not funded to succeed, or to even create any kind of substantial change” (Gray-Mckay, 2009). In fact, it is the constant barrage of paper and the onerous reporting required to justify the transfer and reception of inadequate monies and assistance that prompted Chief Connie Gray-McKay of the Mishkeegogamang First Nation in northern Ontario to declare that, “we look at other countries where genocide is outright killing of people, but here in our

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country, it is cleverly and intentionally done through paper…” (JTO, 2011). It is not that Chief Gray-McKay and other Native leaders are unaware of the social and economic violence that is the result of over-regulation and low expectations of success and viability; it is the challenge of finding a way out from under that oppressive weight of paper to the freedom of expression essential to living, leading, and choosing well.

Perhaps the issue is not only one of practice but also perception, and the unrelenting imposition of an ideology that simple does not fit the circumstances of peoples living in remote regions, or balancing contact and culture in more urbanized settings. Perhaps, the real problem is a federal government that has long cast itself in the role of saviour and hero, but is increasingly exposed in the harsh light of today’s realities as the villainous destroyer of Indigenous competency and independence through excessive interference and ubiquitous support. It is a double–edged sword that brings funding in perpetuity through historic agreements, and then undermines self-sufficiency and social efficacy through benevolence. How, one might ask has it gone on so long, and in what way specifically has it been condoned, and by whom exactly? There exists fertile ground and ample room for discussion, speculation, and wonder at where we find ourselves today, together. I would suggest that the theme of Widdowson’s vitriolic book “Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation” may well have generated an intense and necessary debate if she hadn’t instead attacked the very people she purported to protect from the vulgarities of greedy consultants and a sizable bureaucracy (2008). The point of having the discussion at all should be to identify what is “right” about the progress out of colonialism that has already occurred, and, what still needs to happen to allow further fruition of practice and sustainable community development for Aboriginal peoples that respects their own sensibilities. The problem remains the speaking past and over the very people the discourse proposes to “help” and the vapid double-speak that continues to pass as policy and progress generated by federal and provincial governments.

Sometimes it is unrelenting “help” that creates the most painful forms of hopelessness and dependency and prompts blind unresponsiveness to ones own tenuous ability to move forward and succeed, a hidden ability languishing beneath thick admonitions of incompetency and supposed irresolvable vice. Where there is sexual violence and child neglect, we find the most solicitous and overwhelming advice whether it comes from INAC or inadequately funded Aboriginal child services. What are we to think and feel when everything is done for us and runs rampant over our ability to take charge of our own emotions and collective outrage? Even the rest of Canada has no real opportunity to share its outrage in this unending saga of inequity and culture specific pain. Shelagh Rogers has noted that, “we are not outraged people here in Canada, we are quiet about our outrage, but we shouldn’t be”, especially, we might all add, when there is so much to be outraged about (SM,T&R, 2009).

What about the Children?

There are many examples of the failure of the state to meet and promote a system that respects and endorses effective and efficient programming for Aboriginal peoples.

As recently as March 14, 2011, the decision of the Chair of the Canadian Human Rights

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Tribunal, Shirish Chotalia, suggested that, “the Federal Government can provide a different, and inequitable, level of service to First Nations children so long as it does so consistently to all First Nations children living on reserve” (CanNews, 2011). In turn the Tribunal Chair, noted that the services INAC provides to First Nations children in Ontario cannot be compared to the level of service provided by the Provinces to non onreserve children; as both are different service providers and each serves separate service recipients (CanNews, 2011). Are these ‘service recipients’ the same children that Canada purports to value above all else? This particular double-speak says that Canada can treat Aboriginal children with disdain, as long as they consistently treat all Aboriginal children with the very same disdain.

Child and youth advocate Mr. Elman, stated in response, "Here in Canada 8 generations of First Nations children have been denied the right to equitable treatment first through the residential school system and now through the failure of INAC’s funding of First Nations child welfare. It is unacceptable to me as Ontario's Child and Youth Advocate that it is permissible for a two-tiered system to exist between the province and the federal levels of government" (CanNews, 2011).

You can see through this example how Aboriginal peoples find themselves huddled against bureaucratic adversity and the special kinds of violence reserved especially for them even while they are still children and unable to defend themselves. It is a violence of reason that is unfathomable in a country that touts the needs and services its children receive as paramount in the fight against poverty and exclusion. What about Aboriginal children, must they always be the ones left behind, casualties of a resource allocation war between federal and provincial coffers? Cindy Blackstock launched “Jordan’s Principle” because she believed that once exposed, the federal government would move to address discrepancies in child welfare across Canada (Blackstock, 2007, 2010). Academic literature has meticulously documented how over the past two hundred years, Native children were forcefully removed from northern communities by social services, churches, and child welfare agencies (Miller: 1996, Milloy: 1999). It isn’t necessary to reiterate the numbers or rationalizations here for taking children into care by social service agencies and missionary societies because this information is known and readily available through research. We should however, all immediately and vociferously “speak forward” to the value of passing legislation such as that defined in Jordan’s Principle to protect future generations of children. In addition, the continuing overrepresentation of Aboriginal youth in the Canadian justice system also tells us that we need to boldly “act forward” as well to ensure more youth are not caught in the same depressing cycle. And, isn’t it possible that youth who have ‘aged out’ of those social services networks might have something extraordinary to offer to the recognition and development of “wise practices” in this country (Thom, 2007) when it comes to effective and sensitive child care options for Aboriginal youth and their families? While both the federal and provincial governments say they embrace the principle that the safety and well-being of the child is of primary concern, the truth is that jurisdictional disputes have far too often superseded the interests of Aboriginal children living on reserves established and maintained by those very same government institutions and their policies (WesleyEsquimaux & Smolewski, 2004, Blackstock: 2007, 2010).

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In the meantime, as Bob Goulais also points out in a recent blog, “The Federal Government will not provide any substantial child welfare funding and direct services.

Why? Well, the Department of Justice will advise government not to take on further jurisdiction and liability for child welfare. If they fund First Nations child welfare providers any further, government may open themselves up to further claims of First Nations jurisdiction. [Therefore] common sense and doing the right thing are thrown out the window. I’m sure the Tribunal Chair feels bad. I’m sure the Department of Justice lawyers feel bad. They know the reality. They know the need. But at the end of the day, they make their legal argument, then go home to their children, their dog, their white picket fences and their stately homes, all funded by Canadian justice system” (Goulais Blog, 2011). And, for First Nations, and the children who bear the brunt of substandard and inequitable funding, justice remains elusive.

From whence they came: There are many forms of intangible but deeply felt experiences of violence that have thwarted an ability to build cultural competency in those who have experienced diaspora from their home reserves and territories. Many have admitted to little or no competency with their own cultural practices and history, and this competency is critical to healthy identity formation (Waldrum, 1997). Many of the youth that land in urban centres have a strong conviction that they cannot go home (Na-Me-Res, personal interviews, 2009), but, there is nowhere else that they feel safe either. It is essential that Aboriginal peoples have space to structure teachings and community development initiatives that highlight and give strength to the ability of people to choose. We have long been aware of a special need to build and promote models of transformation that can give direction and support towards creating personal efficacy and competency in Aboriginal youth and in northern peoples in particular because of more controlled social and cultural expressions (Hallowell, 1955). Hallowell observed a northern penchant for “internally generated” sanctions on behavior, which could draw unwanted attention to personal attitudes and conduct. However, as our youth and adults transition into southern or urban centres these behavioural sanctions can seriously inhibited their ability to compete in such a highly competitive environment. We know this, but do those charged with the development of sustainable community and the drafting of policies which will govern our securing educations, housing, and governance understand this and know how to ease those critical transitions?

Canada has not been a good ambassador when it comes to integrating northern peoples into its societal structures, and they remain standing on the outside looking in from so many different vantage points. It matters not that one might have the skills and cognitive abilities to compete on a fairly even basis. This exclusion exists because there remains an underlying resistance to Aboriginal inclusion unless it is on Eurocentric terms. In addition, for many more Aboriginal peoples across Canada the insistence that historic grievance be regarded as a thing of the past and that they move away from a deeply rooted ideology that sustains that grievance as real and present is incredibly strong. The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs holds an equally strong conviction that they have answers that will solve what they see as the problem, if only Aboriginal peoples would pay attention and get past the past. Their bureaucracy has long

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been an immoveable force in the battle of wits and will. As my grandfather Lorenzo Big Canoe put it in the 1950’s, “INAC is like a rubber wall, you push and it moves, but as soon as you stop pushing, it bounces right back to where it was” and nothing changes (Paull, Big Canoe, 1951).

Who called their name?

The same resistant ideology stands in the way of attempts to build social efficacy and correct the identity blunders that have been visited upon Aboriginal peoples everywhere in this country, including the Métis and Inuit populations. There have been many attempts to pull together membership codes and constitutions that would more accurately reflect the Indigenous population of this country and represent their own interpretations of selfness. However, the government has so far prevailed in its imposition of criteria and standards of acceptance, even in regards to the Métis of Canada, and as Joyce Green from the University of Regina notes, “One [real] danger of an authentication formula, designed for the purpose of colonial legal and administrative clarity, is that it would subject Métis, in all our diversity, to an external legitimating process. And, as history has shown, only some will be legitimated. Further, such a process indicates that colonialism has been so effective that some Aboriginal people rely on externally imposed criteria for internal recognition” (Fedcan Blog, 2011). It remains a painful point of division in Aboriginal Nations that some have recognition by the Canadian State and some do not, and some will never belong. This is not a decision that should ever have been left in the hands of those who inflict the violence of overregulation under the guise of benevolence.

And, as she so succinctly puts it, “After having messed up Indian and Inuit identity for over 140 years, the federal government has just passed Bill C-3, yet another inadequate amendment to address gender inequity in the membership provisions of the Indian Act. Now the federal government proposes to study and regulate Métis identity.

This aim of regulating Métis identity was conveyed through suggestions that, among other things, federal agencies examine different Métis organizations for consistency of membership criteria. Despite the backpedalling of some bureaucrats and politicians when the media and the Métis National Council (MNC) asked questions, it is reasonable to read this as a government wish to standardize what it means to be Métis, and to define Métis for the purposes of policies, rights claims, and other identity claims. Having unilaterally enforced a limited vision of what it means to be ‘Indian,’ arguably a category created by the colonial imagination, these sorcerers’ apprentices now feel compelled to expand their expertise to the Métis” (Fedcan Blog, 2011). This more recent foray into the realms of Métis identity and the imposition of external criteria for membership are further proof that they (INAC and other government agencies) cannot stop themselves from continuing to tread where they are not welcomed or helpful. This constitutes another example of the chronic interference and judgment of Indigenous practice and process across Canada. It is what keeps Aboriginal governance from thriving and moving past internalized violence and created helplessness. How do we stop a machine fueled by the “good intentions and practices” of those who colonized and feel themselves to be the hands-down winners of the lands and resources of this entire country? How do we turn a force that cannot, will not, hear or integrate a differing perspective or accept that its days as judge, jury and

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jailer must be numbered if we are to have those well, sustainable, and self-sufficient Aboriginal communities they speak of? And how do we collectively re-interpret longstanding conclusions and expectation to more accurately reflect contemporary needs?

The idea of renewed interpretation and perspective is significant in the dialogue that this text introduces and has suggested that “the story” that we are told, tell, and interpret as our present reality as Indigenous peoples on a global scale, adversely affects our ability to be “well” in a social and spiritual sense. Accepting that there are several levels of “reality” for Indigenous peoples, Eduardo Duran has suggested that, “what then is of issue is that something occurred at a very deep psychological level and completely overwhelmed and destroyed the world for [Indigenous] peoples” (Duran, 1995:195).

This then is what we are continuously grappling with and trying to regain control of through the dissemination of a more holistic understanding of the destruction, an unveiling of the disabling levels of help that have rendered our governments moot, and our ability to walk forward free of the violence of imposed social and economic parity on terms that are our own.

This is because when people, any people, anywhere, are constantly bombarded with psychological/spiritual/emotional violence they will struggle to re-group or effectively locate their collective social structures and re-constitute their cultural foundations in a meaningful way. Often, what is (re)created is more reflective of the dominant society’s mores and meaning than the historic and traditionally lived experiences of the affected group, and we see this today across Canada, indeed, around the world. Nations reduced to caricatures of their former selves battling a social and cultural confusion well justified and seen as appropriate given the experienced marginalization and shame generated by the negative impacts of cultural diffusion and acculturation that have become the lived experience of most Indigenous peoples. And, we might consider what Alan Young so eloquently argued almost twenty years ago. That, “the particularity of trauma (and violence) is it being a disease of time in the etiological sense” (1995) and we need to acknowledge for ourselves as Aboriginal peoples, and as the Canadian government, that a considerable amount of time has passed between ‘the story’ of efficacy and strength and ‘the story’ of genocide through paper and tangible loss. Young further noted that, “our sense of personhood (and community) is not only shaped by our active or conscious memories, it is also shaped by our conception of “memory” which means that it is not only direct [traumatic] experiences that can create negative effect, it is also present interpretations of events that can continue to impact our lives” (Young, 1995:4). Therefore, what we continue to experience, such as the rejection of Jordon’s Principle in 2011, imposition of identity standards, and our collective memories of Indian-settler wars, dislocation, and broken treaties over time needs to be rerepresented in a new narrative of “survivance” and strength (Vizenor, 1993).

Aboriginal peoples must bring a new collective “voice” to each table, which can tell a story of success and overcoming so our young people can articulate a new or renewed interpretation of historic ability and cognitive strength over loss and defeat.

Obviously, we all have some work to do when it comes to detangling the real from the

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unreal, help from disabling control, and truly sustainable actions from the patently unsustainable regulations put forth by the Canadian State.

In Conclusion: Fortunately, there is a growing wave, a virtual tsunami of humanity that is rising up out of the wasteland of regulated and micromanaged communities and bringing forth viable and engaged governance structures that work (Helin, 2006). Aboriginal peoples are renewing their communities, sometimes through an ancient ideology of peace, sometimes through interconnections with non-Indigenous society, and sometimes through forms of reciprocity that can work on both sides of new economic equations. We can look in any direction and see the towers of power and inequity that must be scaled to bring relief to the Indigenous populations of this country. The good will that continues to be generated through the traditional values and wise practices of First Nation communities is not an anomaly that will soon stop, or that will only appear now and again. It remains the foundation of who we are and how we express ourselves in the world, with very small exception.

A wonderful example of this reclamation of “wise practices” and traditional governance comes from the Listuguj First Nation on the border of New Brunswick and Quebec. The National Centre for First Nations Governance (NCFNG) notes that, “in addition to navigating roadblocks when it comes to protecting their children, and defining their own identities and membership, many communities feel restricted in their right to manage their traditional resources. They are frequently left wondering how they might challenge laws imposed by federal or provincial governments, and how they will replace those restrictions with respectful alternatives formulated by their own people” (NCFNG, 2011). What the story of the Listuguj First Nation shows us is the power to fight back by taking responsibility. As the March 2011 report by the National Centre for First Nations Governance states, “The answer, it turned out, was [to fight] not [with] guns or litigation or marching in the streets. Ultimately, the Listuguj Mi’gmaq fought back with the tools of governance: by making credible law – Mi’gmaq law – and then backing it up with competent management and enforcement” (NCFNG, 2011). The Mi’gmaq people believe that they have “sacred duties of stewardship” over fish and other natural resources. As Jeff Basque, senior negotiator for Listuguj Mi’gmaq Government states, “These duties are the basis of Mi’gmaq identity, culture, and livelihood. It is not something we Mi’gmaq people chose or accepted; we are duty-bound. We fish because quite simply, it’s what we’ve done for millennia: we take what we need, no more, and govern our fishing to sustain our future generations” (NCFNG, 2011: profile). If we as Aboriginal peoples are to re-frame ‘the story’ that has and is being told by outside interests, we must all tell ‘the story’ the way it should have been told to our next generations, and then make it our present reality.

“Nothing wants to suffer. The wind does not want to carry the stories of death” (Hogan, 2000:9).

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Blackstock, Cindy and I. Brown, M. Bennett, (2007) Reconciliation in child Welfare. In Brown, Chaze, Fuchs, Lafrance, Mckay & Thomas Prokop (Eds), Putting a human face on child welfare: voices from the prairies, 59-89. Toronto: Center of Excellence for Child Welfare.

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Journey to Oz (2011) Documentary on the Mishkeegogamang First Nation, formerly known as New Osnaburgh, with the Canadian Roots Exchange Program, University of Toronto.

Lazarus, Emma (1886) “The New Collossus” Poem on the Statue of Liberty, New York City, Poems, Boston, 1889, Vol. II. Miller, J.R. (1996) Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools University of Toronto Press: Toronto.

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Waldram, James B., (1997) The Way of the Pipe: Aboriginal Spirituality and Symbolic Healing in Canadian Prisons. Orchard Park, N.Y.: Broadview Press.

Wesley-Esquimaux, C. and Brian Calliou (2010) Best Practices in Aboriginal Community Development: A Literature Review and Wise Practices Approach, The Banff Centre, Alberta.

Wesley-Esquimaux, C. and Magdalena Smolewski (2004) Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing, Aboriginal Healing Foundation, Ottawa.

Widdowson, Frances and Howard Albert (2008) Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception of Aboriginal Cultural Preservation, McGill/Queen’s Publishers: Kingston.

World Cultural Geography (1998) CRY FREEDOM Project, Retrieved from Fairfield Junior High School Web site: http://ffjh.davis.kI2.ut.us/CARPERlCRYFREE.htm Young, A. (1995) The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Princeton University Press.

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