Native Rights and Wrongs

Dear Abbot:

Regarding what is currently going on at Caledonia: do native people deserve rights the rest of us do not have?

An American in Paris, Ontario


Dear American:

No. This violates the principle of equality before the law on which both the US and Canada were founded.

If recognized native groups deserve extra privileges for being here before others, do I deserve extra privileges, since my relatives arrived in 1789, over those whose ancestors arrived more recently? We could have several different grades of citizenship on that basis.

The dividing line seems more arbitrary when you consider that the current Inuit culture seems to be no older than 600 years; while there have been Europeans in Canada for at least a thousand years. And, as has been noted, most of the Mohawks in Canada—some of my own ancestors, incidentally—moved here from what is now the US, most of them since the Revolution. So are they natives of Canada, or immigrants like the Europeans? After all, Europeans are similarly "native" in whatever countries they came from. Is a Salish Indian from the BC Coast really "native" in Newfoundland? If so, why aren't the Irish-descended Newfoundlanders?

All told, it seems to me that "native" or "aboriginal" status is purely a legal construct.

Don't get me wrong. Treaties are legal agreements and should be enforced. Hence Metis, too, have special rights in Canada: on the basis of the deals under which they sold their lands, on which they were already settled, to the government. But there are no residual or intrinsic rights involved in being a "native," in my mind, beyond the negotiated rights bestowed by treaty. It was a question of a certain group selling their title to a certain piece of land for certain considerations.

It is incumbent on the present government to honour the deal made. A deal is a deal.

On the other hand, what about "native" groups who have not formally sold their claim? That's a tough one. I suppose if they are still using the land in some way, they have some claim to title.

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

Is it really length of tenure that matters? Isn’t it rather the lousy way we treated the natives, taking their land and culture, that we are atoning for?

An American in Paris, Ontario


Dear American:

If the latter, then I submit that nothing is owed. After all, besides paying for the land, “we” (?-the early European settlers) brought the tribes with whom we/they first traded great wealth. These native groups were able to make a lot of money acting as go-betweens with tribes further into the interior. Not to mention getting firearms before their enemies did. They surely welcomed the first Europeans—it was like striking oil.

Remember too, the North American natives were in the Stone Age when the Europeans arrived. So they benefited massively from new technology: the wheel, metals and metal tools of all sorts, all the techniques of settled farming, wool, cotton, weaving, the horse, modern weaponry, writing, printing, settled government, and on and on. Their lives are infinitely wealthier materially now thanks to what the Europeans brought.

How about this thought: should the descendants of those Indians now retroactively be obliged to pay for all this?

No, surely at this late date that would be unjust.

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

I have some trouble with your claim that Europeans have been in Canada for a thousand years. I take it you are referring to the Norse in L’Anse-aux-Meadows, Newfoundland. But there is no evidence that anyone stayed.

An American in Paris, Ontario


Dear American:

It would of course be fairly easy to demonstrate with DNA testing that some of the current residents of Canada still have Danish or Norwegian blood. The Europeans might have been absent for some period, but they showed up again on the Grand Banks. In all likelihood, though, you are right, settlement was not continuous.

But neither was Indian settlement, in Newfoundland, where the Norse settled—was it? Should Newfoundland, at least, then be exempt from any payments to natives, since the present European inhabitants have demonstrably been there longer even continuously than any native group? Remembering too that Newfoundland only signed on to Canada in 1949?

You may argue that this is obviously unfair—Indian settlement in Newfoundland was not continuous largely because the European settlers killed many of the Beothuks.

But the comparison is still apt: according to the Norse sagas, the Norse abandoned Newfoundland largely because of attacks from another people they found living there, whom they called Skraelings.

You may argue that, if a person’s ancestors lived continuously anywhere in Canada for longer than the earliest Europeans lived here, they should still have special status. They needn’t be in the same province. But Canada's present boundaries had no significance in Indian terms. Moreover, the Indians and the Inuit were almost all nomadic; it is fairly unlikely that none of their ancestors ever crossed the border into what is now the US, or indeed across to Russia, for a generation or ten, and pretty impossible for any of them to prove this.

Remember, too, for what it's worth, a Salish Indian in Newfoundland is a fair bit further away from his “ancestral homeland” than a Newfoundlander of Irish extraction.

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

So might is right? If they got pushed off, tough luck?

An American in Paris, Ontario



Dear American:

There is an obvious problem with going back in the past and seeking to restore lands taken from one people by another—there would be no end to it. Not least, logically, Mohawks who pushed Hurons and Algonquins off land within historical times would be equally liable to pay reparations. Cree who pushed Athabaskans off land would have to pay. And on and on forever. Not to mention trying to apply the principle in Europe or Asia!

And remember, in the relatively rare instances in Canada when Indians were “pushed off” a given tract of land, the Indian population had generally declined dramatically over recently preceding years—some historians estimate that the Indian population dropped by about ninety percent during the first few centuries of contact, because of exposure to new European diseases. So even in Indian terms, the land was largely abandoned and unused. And in terms of the new technologies introduced by the Europeans, the same tract of land could now support many times more inhabitants than it had at the height of Indian population. So it is doubtful that letting Europeans settle on the land caused the Indians, on balance, any sort of deprivation. It was probably a win-win situation at the time.

Abbot



Dear Abbot:

It is not just the question of the land. Haven’t we been beastly to the Indians since? What, for example, of the residential schools? What about denying the Indians rights to hunt and fish on land promised to them in the treaties?

An American in Paris, Ontario


Dear American:

Of course I have heard of the residential schools. They were all the rage in the Sixties, when enlightened thought called for desegregation. Who would have guessed then that Indians would have ended up preferring segregation?

But in any case, surely reparations are not called for. After all, wouldn’t the British and Canadian governments then also have to pay reparations to their own upper classes, who have always favoured residential schools for their offspring? Harrow, Eton, Rugby, Upper Canada College, and so forth…

As to rights to hunt and fish, this is a simple matter. We need to go back to the texts of the actual treaties and see what was agreed. As I said, the government has a duty to honour the treaties.

Here, for example, is what Treaty Six actually says about hunting and fishing rights: the natives would “have right to pursue their avocations of hunting and fishing throughout the tract surrendered as hereinbefore described, subject to such regulations as may from time to time be made by Her Government of Her Dominion of Canada, and saving and excepting such tracts as may from time to time be required or taken up for settlement, mining, lumbering or other purposes by Her said Government of the Dominion of Canada, or by any of the subjects thereof duly authorized therefor by the said Government.”

In other words, their right to continue to hunt and fish was limited to crown land not being used for any other purpose, and only so long as it was not being otherwise used. And subject to any laws or regulations the government saw fit.

I suspect this has been honoured.

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

But did the natives really enter into these treaties freely? Weren’t they acting under duress, facing the threat of extinction from the rapacious British? The British, for example, had purposefully introduced devastating diseases, and encouraged the Indians to war with each other.

An American in Paris, Ontario


Dear American:

Wait a minute. Do you have solid evidence of that? That Europeans deliberately introduced diseases to Indians in Ontario? I know it is a claim often heard, but when I tried to track it down myself once, the only instance I could find was one in Fort Pitt, in what became the US, in the seventeenth century, and it was a scandal at the time. Hardly European policy; although atrocities can happen in any army.

And British relations with the Indians were very good at the time of the Revolution. Most Indians sided with the British, and the continuing Indian pro-British activity was cited by the Americans as an important cause of the War of 1812. A.k.a. “The British and Indian War.”
As to wars among Indians, I think it was more the reverse: that Europeans tended to get dragged into wars between Indian groups. Anthropologists calculate that casualties from war in Stone Age cultures are much higher proportionately than in modern states, even given the “total wars” of the last century. A typical Indian tribe before European contact was probably more or less constantly at war.

The chance for peace and a guarantee of their lives and lands against aggressors might have been reason enough for many tribes to welcome British suzerainty.

As to the general claim that “the Indians lost their land,” I would say, no, they did not. They are, by and large, still living on it; and they have, by and large, been generously compensated for any lands they have sold. By contrast, it is those who are of European descent who have largely lost their ancestral lands. I would guess that my Huguenot French ancestors would have preferred to remain on their lands in France. They were thrown off them. I imagine that my Irish Catholic ancestors, too, would have preferred to remain on their lands in Ireland. They were thrown off them. My US Loyalist ancestors would probably really prefer to still own large tracts of what is now Brooklyn, New York. They were thrown off them.

By contract, in fact, the native people largely still live where their ancestors have lived. For enjoying a privilege my own ancestors would have dearly loved, but were deprived of, should I now be obliged to pay money to the native people who did not have to move?


Abbot