No Peace Pipe

An earlier protest against the evils of democratic rule.

The current widespread protests in Canada over the Coastal GasLink pipeline crossing Wet'suwet'en lands encapsulates something odd about the popular attitude towards indigenous people.

The Wet'suwet'en elected band councils, although themselves far from models of democracy, have approved the pipeline. The popular protests oppose them, in favour of a group of hereditary chiefs, who do not.

Now, imagine the equivalent thing were happening in the Canadian mainstream: the parliament of Canada wanted to build the pipeline, but the Queen was objecting.

Would people really be flooding into the streets to support the Queen? To support hereditary privilege? To back the House of Lords?

Why the difference?

Why do we want and insist on democracy for ourselves, but oppose it for indigenous people?

Yet this is also, in the end, the same logic we employ in declaring special “aboriginal rights.” These too are hereditary rights. So it is emblematic of the entire enterprise, of our entire relationship with the fellow citizens we designate “Indians.”

Part of it may be, of course, that environmentalists want any possible excuse to oppose any pipeline.

But at least part of it, I suspect most of it, is a common notion that Indians must not be allowed to make decisions for themselves. They are innocents; like children, like wild animals. They are not fit for democracy.

This is the myth of the noble savage.

It is not necessarily that protesters think the hereditary chiefs are wiser. But they represent the old and traditional ways, and their decision now is to do nothing. This serves to protect the innocent and picturesque Indians from entering the sinful modern world.