Five years ago I wrote about a speech from former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson who pointed out that all Canadians are treaty people.
Now more than ever I want to underscore that fact. Idle No More is drawing attention to the fact that Canada has been founded on a relationship, a relationship that has been set out many times in treaties. Treaty rights are so foundational to the existence of this country that they are enshrined and protected in the Constitution of Canada.
A lot of recent rhetoric from settler Canadians in the last few months has focused on the benefits that flow to First Nations as a result of treaties. But we haven’t had the conversation about the benefits that flow the other way.
Under Canadian law, Aboriginal title exists in places where there are no treaties. This is the case for most of British Columbia, although no First Nation has yet made the case under Canadian Law that they hold title. But the concept is simple and it is clear. Without the consent to enter into a different kind of relationship between First Nations and Canada, Aboriginal title exists. Where Aboriginal title is proven to exist, it has massive implications for Crown land ownership.
Over the past few hundred years, the Crown and later the Crown in right of Canada acted upon the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and pushed its claims further westward making treaties as it went to cement and clarify the relationship with First Nations. This process continues today in BC. In effect this meant that, in exchange for a few benefits flowing to First Nations, the Crown gained control of lands and resources such that it was able to issue title, permits and licenses for use of land. If you own land privately or you lease it or you have a permit to operate on Crown land or you extract resources from the land, you are a treaty beneficiary. You are a treaty person.
Some of the most ridculous opposition to treaty rights comes from people who believe that First Nations should not receive special benefits or have their treaty rights enshrined in the Constitution. This is the same Constitution, by the way, that guarantees the freedom for people to make ridiculous speeches about First Nations. Most who opposed to treaty rights would have a fit if their free speech rights were taken away, but the rights have exactly the same weight in Canadian law: the are protected in the Constitution.
Opposition that is littering comments sections around the web essentially comes down to this: we should tear up the treaties and just have indigenous people assimilate into Canadian society. But this is a ridiculous position. If we tear up treaties, then the contracts are broken and the ownership of the land reverts to First Nations.
If people want to restart the relationship, fine. I’m sure that First Nations will be more than happy to return the billions of dollars of benefits for the trillions of dollars of land value. Then we can start negotiations again. What would you pay now for the right to own private land, or the right to earn a living extracting resources? Trust me, setller governments got the bargain of the millenium. Never has so much been given away for so little, the billions that flow to First Nations every year are a small portion of the trillions that are earned off of formerly Aboriginal-owned lands..
Every Canadian is a treaty person. Every Canadian benefits from treaties made with First Nations, and every Canadian has responsibilities under those treaties as well. First Nations have rights and under treaty have responsibilities too. Idle No More is simply about respecting that we have a relationship and that we all have to live up to it. It is very difficult to do so when huge numbers of your “partners” don’t even acknowledge that they have made a bargain that benefits them.
So allies, make this point to your friends and those who don’t understand the relationship. Ask them where they think the right to own land comes from? It comes from treaties. If they don’t believe you, point them to the Delgamuukw court ruling which says that Aboriginal title cannot be single handedly extinguished by the Crown. It’s simple. When you realize how much you have gained through the power of a longstanding and honourable relationship, you should be thankful. If you still resent the benefits and rights that First Nations enjoy under this relationship, then offer back your land and your ability to make a living and feed yourself and keep your hard earned tax dollars. You cannot be a Canadian without inheriting the legacy of treaty makers. You cannot have the benefits without the responsibilities. This country would never have existed without these agreements and that is why they are protected.
Such a small price to pay for such a huge benefit. Why not celebrate and honour the agreements that make Canada possible?
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Since 1986 I have been working for our communities across Canada. I have met every national chief since George Easmus and am on a first name basis with two of them. I have worked in probably more than fifty communities but have hosted meetings with citizens of almost every First Nation in Canada. Much of my work is geared towards making things better, and in my life time I have seen improvements.
#IdleNoMore is one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my 26 years of working in our communities. It is a grassroots voicing of many concerns and issues, but it focuses on one thing: honour. If you have been wondering what First Nations want, let me break it down for you, because it is nothing new. We are asking for a simple honoring of existing agreements, studies and plans. To make it easy, here is a five point plan for radically changing First Nations communities for the better without doing anything new:
- Implement existing treaties. The Crown made treaties with First Nations starting in the 1700s specifically to manage the relationship between governments. It is a simple matter to continue to implement these treaties as they are existing commitments that both sides can continue to live by. Existing treaty process are simple contemporary ways to work the relationship. Sme First Nations have chosen this path of reconciliation and they should feel free to continue to have that right to invite Canada to a legally binding relationship.
- Update and implement the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples findings. When RCAP was created in 1992 it was in response to the way in which Canada had handled the 1990 Oka crises. It was an acknowledgement of the realities facing indigenous communities and it asked for and listened to thousands of hours of testimony about current conditions and possible solutions. It represented the best and brightest thinking of its time, and it proscribed hundreds of recommendations that would have changed things for the better. Thirty years later, only some of those recommendations have seen the light of day, and they have been half hearted implementations at that.
- Revisit and implement the Kelowna Accord. In 2005 there was an unprecedented process that brought together First Nations leadership, provincial premiers, territorial leaders and the prime minister to reach consensus on a ten year program to seriously and collaboratively address the health, education and social needs of our communities. As one of his first acts in taking office, Stephen Harper scuttled the deal citing the $4 billion price take as too high. It was merely a fraction of what he was eventually willing to spend on fa handful of fighter jets, but it represented an historic opportunity to seriously make a dent in the socio-economic gaps between indigenous and non indigenous people in this country. By the way BC went ahead and implemented many of the Kelowna principles on their own and although there was so much they could do as a province without the Feds involved, they have made bigger strides than any other province since 2005.
- implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Canada was one of the last countries in the world to ratify this declaration, but ratify it they did in 2010. All it takes now if for the federal government to work with first nations communities to create theologies that would ensure that indigenous rights are protected and responsibilities are implemented by rights holders, such as governments and social institutions.
- implement Canadian law with respect to consultation with First Nations on legislation that may infringe rights. Aboriginal law is very complicated, but the Supreme Court of Canada has been very clear about the processes that governments must follow to adequately consult with First Nations on issues in which rights might be infringed. Whenever the federal government fails to do this, court cases generally go against them. So a cheap solution would be to engage in a consistent, honorable, legal and high level consultation protocol. If such a process had been followed with respect to the current government’s omnibus bills, #IdleNoMore would never have started.
In my lifetime I have witnessed the entrenchment of Aboriginal rights into our constitution and that many major initiatives that never got off the drawing board. My generation did what we could and now the young ones are saying “it’s our turn.”. And they are rightly saying that we haven’t done enough in the last thirty years. And they are speaking from a place of resourcefulness, connection and creativity that is totally different from what we had in the 1980s.
So Canada, make it easy on yourself. Just complete the good things we started together. Let’s just try that. Nothing new, nothing complicated, nothing we haven’t talked about doing before. But this time, let’s commit.
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Very few of us have our hands on the real levers of power. We lack the money and influence to write policy, create tax codes, move resources around or start and stop wars. Most of us spend almost all of our time going along with the macro trends of the world. We might hate the implications of a fossil fuel economy, but everything we do is firmly embedded within it. We might despise colonization, but we know that we are alos guilty of it in many small ways,
The reason challenges like that are difficult to resolve is that we are embedded within them. We are a part of them and the problem is not like something outside of ourselves that we apply force to. Instead it is like a virus or a mycellium, extending it’s tendrils deep into our lives. We are far more the product of the problems we wish to solve than we are the solutions we long to develop.
Social change is littered with ideas like “taking things to scale” which implies that if you just work hard enough, the things you will do will become popular and viral and will take over the world. We can have a sustainable future if “we just practice simple things and then take them to scale.” The problem with this reasoning is that the field in which we are embedded, that which enables us to practice small changes is heavily immune to change. Our economy, our energy systems, our governments are designed to be incredibly stable. They can withstand all kinds of threats and massive changes, This is a GOOD THING. I would hate to have the energy system that powers my life to be fickle enough to be transformed by every good idea that comes along about sustainable power generation. So that is the irony. In the western world, the stability that we rely on to be able to “make change” is exactly that which we desire to change.
We are embedded in the system. We ARE the system. That which we desire to change is US. You want a peaceful world, because you are not a fully peaceful person – violence has seeped into your life, and you understand the implications of it. This is also a GOOD THING. Because, as my friend Adam Kahane keeps quoting from time to time “if you are not a part of the problem, you cannot be part of the solution.” Real change in stable societies like Canada comes only from catastrophic failure. That may be on our horizon, but I call you a liar if it’s something you desire. It will not be pretty. Living on the west coast of Canada, I sometimes think about it because a massive earthquake will strike here – possibly in my lifetime – and it will change everything instantly and massively and forever. So, while climate change and economic collapse are probabilities, earthquakes are certainties.
So let’s forget about prototyping new things and “taking them to scale.” But let’s not forget about prototyping new things. Because one of the big lessons from the living systems world view is that change happens in an evolutionary way. It happens deep within the system and it requires two resources we all have – creativity and time. It does not require hope. Living systems do not hope. They just change.
Years ago I was inspired by Michael Dowd’s ideas captured in “Thank God for Evolution” in which he talks about mutations as the vehicle of change in evolving systems. Of course this is a widespread thought, but it was quite liberating to me when I first discovered it because it compels us to use our own creativity to make change. Practicing something different, as some small level, is not a useless endeavour. There is no way to know what will happen when you mutate the system. And so that is a reason for practicing. That is why I love Occupy and #IdleNoMore and other social gathering practices. They are creative mutations of the status quo. And they are undertaken without any expectation of massive change. Instead they seed little openings, the vast majority of which don’t go anywhere. In an evolutionary system, mutations may introduce new levels of adaptability, but they might alos kill off the organism. But to survive and evolve, an organism needs to mutate. Remaining the same is also suicidal, because everything else is mutating and changing, and you will lose your fitness if you don’t also change.
So the second resource we all have is time. if you are beholden to making change along a strategic critical pathway, especially in a complex living system, you will suffer terrible delusions. Very few of us have that kind of time. The kind of time we do have is the time to let whatever we do work or fail. To orient yourself to this kind of time, you need to practice something with no expectation of it’s success. The moment you cling to a desired result is the moment suffering creeps into your work, and the moment you begin to lose resilience. Adaptability is reliant on creative imaginations working resourcefully.
So changing from within has something to do with all of this. Watching #IdleNoMore is to witness a celebratory mutation in the system of colonization. It is impossible to say if it will have the desired results that people project upon it. But of course it will “work.” We need to sit and watch it work as a mutation in a living system. And the bonus is that we get to round dance while we do it!
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Have you been following the #IdleNoMore movement?
Well I use the word”movement” but what I really mean is “occupation” because that is what it is…indigenous people deeply occupying traditional lands and traditional languages, and being joined by settlers. It is another example of the active decolonization that has been going on largely unseen in indigenous communities for many years now. These efforts take all kinds of shapes and forms but they are almost always initiated by youth and Elders together. They are rarely led by traditional indigenous organizations or leaders.
The purpose of things like this is awakening. It is not that a few simple sounding demands need to be met (although the hunger strike of Chief Teresa Spence and the protest of federal legislation are providing a simple focus). The mainstream and the powers that be love to have a simple goal. They continually asked the Occupy movement to put out some demands. It is easier that way, both to respond to it and to fight it.
But Occupy and #IdleNoMore are not lobby efforts. They are prototypes of new ways of being. They are arenas for the practice of a new kind of conscious living. They are not fully fledged revolutionary moments in time that have a definite start and end. They are far more sophisticated than that; they wake people up.
#IdleNoMore has beautifully woken up settlers, and that is one of the things that makes it different. Most indigenous protests move along barely registering on the minds of non-indigenous Canadians. i’m willing to be that few readers of this blog (and you guys are in te know) have actually engaged with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process in Canada. It’s kind of absurd, that there is a major examination of the legacy of residential schools being worked over, that deeply important stories are being told and very few Canadians are there to hear them, let alone be a part of the compassion, forgiveness or reconciliation. Most days it feels like indigenous people in Canada are reconciling with a ghost.
That one-sided invisibility is largely why #IdleNoMore has sprung up this winter. Teresa Spence has been a target of powerful political interests for more than a year, when the housing crises in her community shed light on the appalling policies of the current federal government. And their response to her was to have her investigated and pilloried in the media for wasting money and not being a responsible leader, none of which was true. And now you have this absurd moment where a democratically elected leader is camped out near Parliament Hill, on a hunder strike to ask the Prime Minister to meet with her. And so far he won’t.
And so all across Canada people are engaging in round dances and bone games, organized flashmob style. Indigenous and settlers are celebrating the historic occupation of North America by it’s original peoples and while the dancing and the playing is going on, minds and hearts are being opened. This is the first time in my life when I have seen such broad based engagement between ordinary non-indigenous Canadians and their traditional hosts. So if you are non-indigenous, what can you do to play? A question many non-indigenous people are asking is how can I decolonize myself?
Well, beyond understanding the situation a bit, and helping to spread the word and stand as allies with Elders and youth, there are a few other things you can do. First of all, notice how you speak.
Yesterday I was having a conversation with my good friend Khelsilem, who has been involved in organizing not only some of the local #IdleNoMore activities around here, but who has alos been hosting the deeper conversation on what decolonization means. We were discussing this question of what settlers can do and we stumbled on a challenge. Khelsiliem is a language teacher and he was noting that in many indigenous languages there is really no possessive case. You can’t really say “That is my cup.” Instead you say something like “This is the cup I am using.” Also, concepts like want and desire are different too. “I want that cup” is a strange ting to say in Squamish, while “I could use that cup” is more accurate.
You see that English spends a lot of time keeping nouns and verbs seperate (English scholars hate it when people “medal” at the Olympics or “texT” a message or “groundtruth” a concept) and as a result, English has a a lot of rules about how to possess things.
So one way to begin the process of decolonization is to notice how often you use the possessive in English and what it feels like to offer a different sentence construction. This gives some insight into what it is like to live in a way where, in the words of one of my Elders “I belong to everything” rather than a world where the world is full of “all my relations.” Shifting the mindset of possession, of what we belong to and what belongs to us, is a very interesting way to think about what is happening. As indigenous youth reclaim languages across Canada this is the mind shift they are going through as well. When the richness of indigenous language is plumbed, the mindset of belonging to everything sweeps over you and that is accompanied by gratitude, humility and delight.
This is one of the quiet, powerful effects of #IdleNoMore and you won’t find anyone talking about it on the talk shows or in the newspapers or on TV, but it is happening EVERYWHERE and it could be one piece of personal practice that happens to you too. While a Chief is hunger striking and a railway is being blocked,minds are changing and hearts are opening and relationships are being formed. This is the real work that is going on.
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Back in 1986 I was a young man who had grown up in an affluent neighbourhood in Toronto. I was unaware of the full story of my ancestry and although I was interested in the world, it was a pretty sheltered upbringing. I had just completed high school and had my eyes set on attending university to get a BA on my way to obtaining a Master of Divinity. I wanted to be a minister in the United Church of Canada.
As a result of my involvement with youth and social justice issues within the United Church, I was chosen to be one of several hundred Commissioners selected to attend the Church’s biannual policy and decision making gathering, the General Council. In 1986 the General Council was held in Sudbury Ont., and that year a significant and historical event took place: the Church made a formal apology to Aboriginal congregations for the role the Church played in the residential school system and in the devastating advance of colonization across the Canadian cultural landscape.
This was the first such apology in Canadian history between a non-native institution and indigenous peoples. It is perhaps not as well remembered that the indigenous representatives who were present deliberated with the Moderator of the Church for a long time before they announced that they were not accepting the apology but instead would release a ststement at a later date. That statement was two years in the making and in 1988 the response came: the Apology was still not accepted, but it was acknowledged and there was hope that it was sincere and at any rate, “We only ask of you to respect our Sacred Fire, the Creation, and to live in peaceful coexistence with us.” It was a call to alliance.
During the days of that General Council, I sat next to a Cree minister from Island Lake, Manitoba named Tom Little. At one point Tom turned to me and asked: “What will you do to make the apology real?” I made him a promise that, as I was going to Trent University a month later, I would supplement my history degree with courses from Trent’s highly acclaimed Native Studies program. Within months of arriving at Trent I knew my path had opened up. I dropped history and became a full Native Studies major. My life, work and spiritual path completely changed. If not for that decision, my great aunt would never have revealed to me my own indigenous ancestry (which is non-obvious in a genetic sense!). From 1989 I began living a real life of reconciliation, as what one of my teachers called “a living treaty.”
Canadians live in a space in between. We live within indigenous territories. We take pride in our connection to land, but suffer a terrible blind spot when it comes to knowing and understanding the deepest history, language and culture of the land. The zeal to recreate our lives – the zeal that all immigrants share – obscures what is already here. It deprives us of a rich world of thought and meaning that can only make us better humans if we open ourselves to it. If reconciliation is to be a real thing, it must be transformative for people and for the relationships that we share.
If you are a Canadian, now is the time to open yourself to what the invitation to reconcile really means. Who could we become as communities and as a country if we allow ourselves to be changed together rather than simply expecting one group of people to change and heal on their own? What can you do to be an ally?
It doesn’t have to be as life transforming for you as it was for me. But it could be.
UPDATE: Check out this booklet from Jennifer Ellis that documents a gathering around residential schools called UyidYnji Tl’äku: I Let it Go Now.