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There are a lot of misconceptions of the history of Canada’s indigenous population. Some of them appear in the latest column from Xerxes, my weathervane for understanding the leftist hive mind. He laments that all Canadians are “trespassing” on indigenous territory.
To begin with, indigenous people are not who Xerxes, or perhaps you, think they are. Indians are not, of course, actually indigenous, but came, like the rest of us, from somewhere else. And I do not just mean across the land bridge from Asia. Most tribes were nomadic; they did not remain in one place, and had no ties to any one place, but were in constant migration. In this sense, settlers are more indigenous than any native group.
Studies suggest that 50% of the population of Quebec, and 50% on the Prairies, have some native genes. I do not have figures for other parts of Canada. Meantime, essentially everyone living on reserves has some European blood. Any racial distinction is nonsense, unless we are talking about recent immigrants. Do we want a distinction between “pur laine” Canadians and recent immigrants?
Why is it ever okay to make two tiers of citizenship, based on who was here first?
As for those folks arbitrarily separated from the rest of us and living on reserves, nobody seems to notice that indigenous land claims were settled over a century ago, in treaties signed in Ontario, the Prairies, Western and Northern Quebec, and the Northwest Territories. All legal claims to the land outside reserves were waived, by mutual consent and with payment. For comparison, does your home still belong to the previous owner? Are you trespassing?
What about the Atlantic Provinces, lower Quebec, or BC? No specific land settlements, as opposed to surrender of sovereignty, were signed there.
In the St. Lawrence Valley, the indigenous population are unambiguously the Quebecois, even apart from intermarriage over the centuries. When Champlain brought the first French settlers to Quebec and Montreal, there were no indigenous people in the area. The Iroquoian culture Cartier had encountered sixty years earlier had disappeared without a trace.
As for the Atlantic Provinces and BC, there were indigenous populations. But―brace for impact—they did not own any land. “Aboriginal rights” elsewhere in Canada were bestowed as a gift by King George III in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. They applied only to the Indians living in the lands draining into Hudson’s Bay, and to the area of the Great Lakes. It did not cover the Atlantic Provinces, the St. Lawrence Valley, or BC.
In common law, and in natural justice, nobody can actually own land any more than they can own the air or the water. God made these things for all mankind. Nobody has a right to appropriate any of it to themselves and exclude others. One rightfully only owns one’s labour, and the products of one’s labour.
“Land ownership” occurs only when one’s labour is sunk in the land in such a way that it cannot be easily separated from it; for example, if you build a house on the land, or if you till it, tend it, work it. This is why “squatter’s rights” are recognized. If nobody else was using the land, you get the right to it if you put your labour into it.
Most indigenous groups put no labour in the land. They built no permanent structures, and they simply lived off its fruits. Ergo, no ownership was established—applying the same rules in America as would be applied in Europe.
This might still seem unfair. The Indians were accustomed to living by hunting and gathering, and if the land was taken for agriculture, they would at least involuntarily lose their way of life. But 89% of Canada’s land is Crown land even today, and not under cultivation. Indians retain the right to hunt and fish and scavenge on it. If anyone is minded to live the same way indigenous people did before Champlain arrived, they can.
Of course, they do not. Instead, they find it preferable to live in one way or another off the presence of the newer settlers.
Meantime, something is to be said for the fact that now tens of millions are being sustained in greater prosperity on a fraction of the land mass.
All recognized native groups have also been given free land, the reserves, adequate for them to farm if they do not want to continue to live by hunting and gathering. If they have been given a bad deal, it is better than the Europeans got.
Xerxes misunderstands the concept of terra nullius, cited disapprovingly by Indian activists (often not themselves particularly Indian) as the legal doctrine under which Indian land was “taken.” He thinks it means that a land has no inhabitants, or that the inhabitants are not human. Of course it does not mean that; how prejudiced we are prepared to be against our own ancestors. It means a land with no government—“with no master.” A state of virtual anarchy or gang rule. When such a situation is encountered, it is a humanitarian duty to introduce law and order—to protect the rights cited in the US Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men”
A near-total absence of government is a fair description of the prior state of most Canadian indigenous tribes. The term “tribe” more or less asserts this, as an anthropological term. Which is why the left insists on the word “nation,” incorrectly, for what are effectively extended families. As the French used to say of their native neighbours, “sans loi, sans roi, sans foi.” In such a state private property could not exist. Possessions, or the fruit of one’s labour, could be stolen at any time. Since we were speaking of land ownership.
In other words, if any Indian today owns land, they have the European settlers to thank for it.
A few “indigenous” groups had a relatively developed social structure, and so were able to farm—the Iroquois, the Huron, the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. But their societies always operated in violation of human rights: practicing torture, genocide, slavery, cannibalism, and human sacrifice. As a matter of morality and international law, and based on the doctrine of human rights and human equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence, a government, which violates rather than protects human rights, needs to be suppressed or overthrown. This doctrine has been reaffirmed as recently as Kosovo and Rwanda. The French and English came to impose peace. If they are honest, few Indians today would really prefer to return to the risk of torture, slavery, or violent death.
Xerxes repeats the claim that the doctrine of “terra Nullius” comes from a Bull issued by Pope Urban II with reference to Muslim lands. This is a myth. Urban wrote no bull by this title or on this subject. He then blames Pope Alexander for the “Doctrine of Discovery,” which supposedly divided the world between Spain and Portugal, refusing to recognize the sovereignty of any non-Christian lands. But this is obviously nonsense. If the Treaty of Tordesillas really did not recognize the sovereignty of the Aztecs or Incas, it equally did not recognize the sovereignty of England or France, or any other Christian lands. The pope was simply trying to keep forces apart to avoid war between two nations in conflict.
It seems to be the real case that British and French control of Canada came about by and large as a matter of mutual consent; by the native people embracing the social contract.
But let us suppose it came about instead by conquest. If so, the experience of the Indians would hardly be unusual in world history. And yet we seem to treat it as a unique injustice. Are the English trespassing on what once was British land? Why do we make no land acknowledgement to the French, from whom Canada was taken by conquest? Are the Texans and Californians trespassing on Spanish territory? These cases are at least far more clear-cut examples of involuntary conquest than the Canadian Indian experience.
If a Pakistani family moves next door, do I get reparations?
Even after I marry their daughter?
Read more in my book Playing the Indian Card.
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