Dec. 2, as my people lie sleeping, I slowly left our valley created by the Battle River and Cut Knife Creek, heading west on Highway 40 towards the land of the Upstream River People of the Cree People, to Kispatinow, the Louis Bull First Nation, one of the four bands located around Hobbema, Alta.
It was a four-hour drive, but worth the effort as I was going to listen in on an event organized by Tanya Kappo, a dynamic Cree woman and recent graduate from law school, from Sturgeon Lake First Nation in northern Alberta. This event was called, Idle No More, which was to inform our people of proposed changes to the Indian Act by the Canadian Government, innocuous sounding enough, but potentially harmful to the Indigenous People of Canada and to the land and resources of this land.
The Indian Act, drafted in 1876 by the Crown, is a set of laws that governs Indians and their transactions within Canada.
Louis Bull is a pastoral looking community just south of Wetaskiwin, meaning "Place of Peace." The road turns right from Highway 2A to a secondary highway that traverses the community of neat and well kept homes and small farms. The event was held at the Louis Bull Recreation Centre, a complex that hosts round dances and other cultural educational and political events and celebrations.
The event was already underway as I entered the building. A group of Grade 5 students recited a prayer in Cree and a young man sang a song that was once sung by the late great Chief Robert Smallboy, a cultural leader who led his people into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in the late 1960s to try to preserve traditional Cree values and lifestyles. Local chiefs addressed the audience using the traditional Cree oratorical structure and the language. I was struck by the presence of the old ways within this contemporary political event. Old ways the white man has been attempting to eradicate since they arrived on the shores of this island, Ministik, on a mission from a distant regent.
This was a grassroots event, not funded by any grants or programs, but was organized solely by our people's determination and a will to survive. The main presenters were Sylvia McAdam from the Big River First Nation, Janice Makokis from Saddle Lake First Nation and Dr. Pam Palmeter from the Mi'kmaq Nation of Nova Scotia. All gave dynamic and enlightening presentations. One felt pride at these emerging articulate leaders and that they were leading this fight here in the West. They were fine examples of the prayers of our ancestors who wished our people would have education and come back and help their people. We are witnessing this today. Many in the audience sat writing notes in their books or studied reading material provided by the organizers. They were being informed.
Kappo took the initiative to organize this event primarily to inform our people as there was no information being provided in regards to the major changes Prime Minister Harper is pushing forward in the House of Commons. These changes would affect the people in a real and possibly immediate way. Harper is pushing these changes in direct conflict to the protections of our treaty and aboriginal rights especially as it relates to land. In her opinion, these effects are serious enough a legal obligation to consult aboriginal people and they have not been consulted.
Kappo's presentation included an analysis of Trudeau's White Paper of 1969 which created a massive outcry from indigenous people across Canada. Trudeau did rescind this paper due to vocal opposition. The difference now is that what is currently being debated in the House of Commons is law, and it is being fast tracked allowing for the potential removal of our lands. Harper's current agenda is not very different from the White Paper of 1969 she pointed out in her PowerPoint presentation.
Briefly, what is being debated is an omnibus bill that has one direct reference to the Indian Act. This concerns lowering the threshold of consent of band members to enable the designation or surrender of reserve lands. If there is a referendum called for a vote in the community for land designation or surrender and only a handful show up, the results of their vote will stand and will affect every single member of their community.
Bill C 27 is Harper's agenda to make the chiefs accountable. This bill does two things that bring serious consequences. First, it forces the communities to publically disclose all financial information, regardless of the source. So even if it is not a government funded program or service, it must be publically disclosed. And the second is, it gives authority to the minister to decide to cut off funding to any community that does not comply with the reporting, including that of the band's businesses. Clearly, cutting off funding would have dire and serious consequences to any community that finds themselves in this situation, for any reason.
Kappo says that the answers lay in the book, The Red Paper, penned by the great Cree leader, and her father, Dr. Harold Cardinal. Those answers are in our treaty rights, and to honour not just the written text, but the 'Indian' understanding of the treaty. The answers are rooted in the treaty relationship and not in government laws and legislation. The Indian and the Crown's understanding of the treaty diverge on many points.
The main point is that Indians viewed and understood these treaties to be an agreement to coexist and share the land, whereas the Crown views these treaties as our agreeing to surrender our lands and extinguish our title. We can question the validity of the Crown's good faith when we consider that already in 1870 the Crown had drafted the Indian Act, well before the signing of Treaty Six in 1876. The idea we surrendered our lands is questionable when we read Cree Chief Sweetgrass, when told the Hudson Bay Company had sold its lands and holdings to the Crown in 1870, he wrote the Crown asking, "How can one sell something that is not yours." He demanded the Crown come and make a treaty with the Indian Nations of the Plains. Good faith negotiations is the basis of any contract or international treaty agreement.
As a grassroots Indian, the potential impact of these bills I can see is significantly harmful as I know the problems that emerge when a community tries to have a referendum vote on anything. The lack of money and transportation and the dispersal of our members to cities across the country make it virtually impossible to have a proper show of hands to pass any referendum.
Also, to give the minister the power to cut off funding is draconian to say the least, if not controlling and fascistic. All of our lives since treaty, our people have lived with laws that controlled our social, spiritual and economic lives. These policies led to the poverty one now sees on our reserves. It did not happen overnight, nor is it due to a lack in our genetic make-up, but it is due to a century of repressive laws and racism.
The brief respite we had from these repressive laws since the 1960s, when leaders like Harold Cardinal, Dave Ahenakew, Noel Starblanket emerged from the log cabins and forest and plains of their homelands and demanded our rights, which led to a general thaw in the control of the Canadian Government, a humanism, a respect, are now gone. The policies and laws of the Harper government are not only a throwback to the old days, but are also more concentrated in attempting to dispossess us of our remaining lands and erasing our hard fought for treaty rights. This seems to be the focus of the ruling Conservatives, many of whom are from the old Reform Party, who argued against 'race based' rights, not understanding that the rights we have are based on treaty.
I asked Margaret Kappo, why is Harper and his government so focused on getting rid of our treaty rights and destroying us as a people? "To get at the land and the resources. With all of these pipelines and development going on, they don't want indigenous people getting in the way," was her response. So this is all about money it seems. '
"The life of money is short," I had heard an elder say once.
The event closed with an address by Councillor Wayne Moonias, who had risen to the challenge and put the resources of Louis Bull to support this event and also the food and coffee. A feast was provided to all who had come. This was in keeping with Cree tradition, as food is sacred to our people and one must share food with travellers and guests. It is food that comes from our Mother Earth, the land that defines us as indigenous people that the women had spoken so eloquently about at the event.
As I drove back to my community through a snow storm I could not help but feel a measure of comfort knowing there are leaders such as those I heard that day in Louis Bull. Individuals fighting for our people in an old way, without funding or high priced hotels and conference rooms, which are far removed from the common people who took the time and effort to come out and listen and support.
I arrived in the valleys of my home in the dark of night, all was quiet and seemingly peaceful on the Poundmaker Cree Nation. I wondered how many are aware of what is going on far to the east in Ottawa where our futures are being debated and will result in laws that would disrupt our communities.
There Harper, like a magician in a stone tower by a mighty river, with a wave and flourish of his magic pen, could legislate us into extinction. Then our grandchildren could potentially have no homeland in which to seek refuge, no place of safety except to be dispersed into the cities and ghettos of this fair country.
Canada will finally have gotten rid of its "Indian problem," by increments, by slight wording of a text. This has always been Canada's goal since the days of Sir John A. McDonald, the first prime minister of this dominion.
I could not help but think also that, no doubt there are some fellow indigenous people working with the current government in drafting these laws, how else could these potential laws come this far without having had some Indigenous business and political consultants? No doubt they too are sleeping peacefully on this night, thinking of the financial gains and political prestige that may come their way once this land is opened up to complete exploitation, since, as a collective, we as indigenous people could quite possibly be silenced.
Silence is assimilation, and by what I saw earlier in Louis Bull, this is not what our people want.
