Media.Knet.Ca

From PressTV.ir

Canadian government under fire for "distorting" history of aboriginals

Ashantai Hathaway, Press TV, Montreal - Apr 25, 2013

Aboriginals in Quebec blame the Canadian governemnt for keeping a majority of people in the dark over the history of the country's indigenous inhabitants. They are now demanding the government stop re-writing history and tell and teach the truth.

No where in Canadian history books, in primary schooling, or secondary schooling will you find the truth about Aboriginals and what happened as a result of the Europeans.

Aboriginals in Quebec plan to change that and are demanding that the government correct history. A petition was launched in March calling for the Quebec government to require that all Canadians in secondary school be taught the history of the aboriginal people and that it be mandatory and not elective. 

This week Montreal will play host to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The commission takes record and allows aboriginals to tell their stories about Indian Residential Schools set up by the Canadian Government, and the impact it had on aboriginal children. More than 150,0000 first nations were taken from their families and placed in these schools, many suffering from emotional, physical and sexual abuse, overcrowding, unhealthy eating and poor sanitation. 

In November 2010 Canada officially endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. It acknowledges collective rights of indigenous peoples, as well as their rights to culture, identity, language, employment, health, education and other issues, but many aboriginals say that it is simply the first step and injustice continues but its' time to educate non-natives and that should be done by natives. 

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From O.Canada.com

Idle No More movement 'different' from anything the government had ever seen before, documents reveal

National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Shawn Atleo, centre, drums as he takes part in a protest on Parliament Hill in Ottawa last month.PHOTO: FRED CHARTRAND/THE CANADIAN PRESS/FILES

Jordan Press and Michael Woods - April 9, 2013

OTTAWA - On Dec. 12, an Aboriginal Affairs communications worker emailed his regional director about ongoing Idle No More protests.

"What do you mean 'idle no more'?," Atlantic region director Ian Gray responded to Steve Young's email.

"Idle no more is the rallying statement for all the First Nations protesting Harper government actions. In other words, we aren't going to sit by and take this," Young wrote back. "Since mainstream media isn't giving alot (sic) of coverage they are using social media quite effectively ... it's actually a great case study in grassroots use of new technology."

Eight days later, then aboriginal affairs minister John Duncan was warned in a briefing note of a potential turning point in relations between the Crown and First Nations. By the time the protest movement captured headlines around the country, a social media analysis for the government concluded what that first email suggested: This was a movement the likes of which the government had never seen before.

The Dec. 20 briefing note to Duncan about the Assembly of First Nations special meeting in early December also suggests that the Harper government would have a harder time selling legislative changes, including those passed in the omnibus budget bill late last year, and potentially future legislation that affects First Nations.

"The Special Assembly could represent a turning point in the Crown-First Nations relationship and with the AFN in particular. As you are aware, chiefs briefly suspended their activities on the first day of the Special Assembly to protest on Parliament Hill," the briefing note reads.

"The National Chief (Shawn Atleo) made clear that he and the rest of the AFN executive would support First Nations chiefs and communities in their efforts to oppose the Government of Canada legislative and policy agenda."

One of the resolutions of interest passed at the meeting, singled out among others in the briefing note, puts the "government of Canada on notice that any further imposition of legislation and/or policies will be met with appropriate measures."

"There is genuine discontent regarding the Indian Act and its application; however, proposed federal legislative changes are causing concerns in First Nation communities and no clear way forward is being proposed by First Nation chiefs in this area," the briefing note reads.

The briefing note then identified Jan. 24, the anniversary of the landmark Crown-First Nations Gathering, as a key date to keep an eye on, followed by election of chiefs in Quebec and Alberta in late January and February, respectively. The dates the calendar has yet to hit include the release of census data on May 8, the AFN general assembly in July, and Oct. 27 - the 250th anniversary of the Royal Proclamation.

The documents were released to Postmedia News under the access to information law.

Also included in the documents is an email to workers at the Yellowknife office of Aboriginal Affairs, telling them that if they planned to join a Dec. 21 Idle No More rally outside their office, they had to "submit leave to their manager" and follow the ethics code for public servants.

The briefing note came amidst growing coverage of the Idle No More protest movement, a grassroots indigenous sovereignty movement spurred on and organized through social media, that quickly ramped up across the country last fall in response to the Conservative government's two omnibus budget bills.

Many indigenous peoples said the bills loosened environmental protection of waterways and infringed upon First Nations' right to self-govern.

"Although the movement originally began due to tension from the proposed changes to the Indian Act by the federal government, it soon became a catch-all for Aboriginal issues," reads a social media analysis prepared for Aboriginal Affairs around Jan. 1.

"Organized and promoted through social media, Idle No More has been able to do something that other movements in the past have not been able to do or manage to sustain. It has people leaving their homes to participate."

The analysis concludes by saying that social media has had "chatter" in the past around aboriginal issues, including the Crown-First Nations Gathering, but Idle No More "is quite different from what we've seen before in terms of activity and rhetoric."

Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence became the face of the movement during her liquid diet, which she began on an island near Parliament Hill to protest the government's legislation and demand a meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The peaceful protests reached their peak on Jan. 11, when thousands of protesters marched on Parliament Hill. While drumming and dancing filled the streets, Harper met with First Nations chiefs to discuss issues such as treaty rights and comprehensive land claims. Spence boycotted the meeting, saying that Gov. Gen. David Johnston had to be there as well. (Johnston met with chiefs that night at a ceremonial meeting in Rideau Hall.)

A number of other chiefs supported Spence, denouncing the leaders who attended the meeting and protesting outside the prime minister's office.

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From FirstPerspective.ca

Why First Nations can't ‘just get over it'

by: Maurice Switzer - 25 April 2013

Probably the most important outcome of the Idle No More movement has been to pique the curiosity of Canadians about exactly what it is that is making the Natives so restless.

High-profile INM spokesperson Pamela Palmater says she's constantly having Canadians come up to her and ask: "Why don't First Nations people just get over it", but none of them can tell her what the "it" is that First Nations people are supposed to just get over.

Canadians were really wondering what "it' is on Jan. 16, when Idle No More demonstrators - many of them First Nations citizens -- stopped passenger trains between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, stalled major highways and rail lines in parts of Manitoba, Alberta, New Brunswick and Ontario, and slowed traffic across the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and Detroit , North America's busiest border crossing.

A national day of action included round dances and prayer circles in shopping malls and public spaces across Canada. It's easy for police to disperse and discredit demonstrators who are breaking store windows. But you better not turn the riot squad loose on people who are engaging in spontaneous outbursts of prayer or traditional dancing.

Actually, First Nations people have gone to jail for practising their culture in Canada. Sacred objects like Pipes and Wampum Belts were confiscated by authorities, and spiritual practices like smudging, dancing and drumming went underground to avoid the scrutiny of Indian agents.

This is just one of those "it's" that First Peoples find difficult to "just get over".

Another one is the network of residential schools that the federal government operated for over a century, resulting in the abuse and even death of thousands of Indian children who were taken from their parents and forced to attend. The last one -- Akaitcho Hall in Yellowknife - just closed its doors in 1996. I have been inside that building and others, and can tell you that the experience made my skin crawl in the same way as it did when I visited former Nazi concentration camp sites in Europe.

This "it" was a Canadian genocide, an attempt to "kill the Indian in the child," as a government official put it. Unfortunately, the experiment actually resulted in killing a lot of the children, as well as crushing the spirit of many of their classmates.

There are simply too many "it's" for First Peoples in Canada to "just get over".Where does the list start?

Highest youth suicide rates in the world, 80,000 First Nations residents living in homes without a supply of potable water, 25% of children living in First Nation communities living in poverty, highest incarceration and unemployment rates in Canada.

When will the list end? When Canadians truly understand their own history, and demand that their elected representatives respect the rights of all peoples within its borders to live their lives in human dignity, with equal opportunity to education, employment and healthy communities.

Idle No More has played a key role in helping stage "teach-ins" that educate Canadians about the tragic legacies of historic government actions, which include breaking treaty promises and ignoring aboriginal rights protected by the courts and the Constitution.

It is a cop-out for Canadians - much of whose "education" about First Peoples issues comes from ill-informed journalists - to dismiss issues raised by Native leaders as simply more political rhetoric; when Grand Council Chief Patrick Madahbee talks about the need to "break the shackles of colonialism" he is not merely reciting some party line. He experienced an "it" first-hand; he was forbidden to speak his own language when he attended a government-operated day school on Manitoulin Island.

Unfortunately politics has become so dominated by polarized viewpoints that even the most reputable public figures can become the source of skepticism; their audiences are tuning them out.

I once heard Elijah Harper advise Canadians to stop waiting for elected leaders to do the right thing, advice being followed by Idle No More supporters.

If Canadians are more likely to listen to non-elected voices speaking about First Nations issues, maybe they are closer to understanding there are some things you don't "just get over."

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Maurice Switzer is a citizen of the Mississaugas of Alderville First Nation. He serves as director of communications for the Union of Ontario Indians and editor of the Anishinabek News.

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From Slaw.ca

"What Do Those Indians Want, Anyway?": Some Legal Issues Underlying Idle No More (Update)

by Michael Posluns

The arrival of a group of Cree youth from Whapmagoostui, the northernmost Cree village on Hudson Bay at the end of a 1,500 km walk (and the many friends they picked up along the way) after a two month trek through the northern bush should remind us that the spirit of Idle No More (INM) has not died. It has simply gone off the grid. The young people left Whapmagoostui (aka Great Whale) on January 16 and were expected in Ottawa on March 25. The first long leg of their journey - from Whapmagoostui to Chisassibi was on snowshoes and camping out at minus 40-50 Celsius. They were walking to keep the message of INM and Chief Teresa Spence alive in the minds of interested and caring people.

I would be surprised if there were any other protest movement in Canadian history that arose so largely from legal issues as Idle No More (INM), and from the First Nations political movements as a whole. I am using "legal" in a fairly broad sense and include objections to current bills and proposed legislation. I do that because in my many years working with First Nations political organizations or watching them from a distance I have been struck by the extent to which First Nations leaders (spokespersons) are conversant not only with the legislation that affects the constitutional, legal and political rights of their communities but also judicial decisions interpreting those rights and, from time to time, ministerial statements and departmental memoranda aimed at undermining those rights.

Government MPs curtail hearings of Special Committee on Violence against Aboriginal Women
In January, the Government countered the Opposition demand for an inquiry into the large number of violent and unsolved deaths of Aboriginal women with an offer of a special committee of the House of Commons. At the committee's first meeting, the Government MPs (including 3 parliamentary secretaries) voted to limit the meetings of the committee to Thursday afternoons between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. With such a truncated sitting time the committee is unlikely to finish hearing all those wanting to be heard in this Parliament. Further, this time works well for the parliamentary secretaries who have to stay in Ottawa through Friday' sitting of the Commons when they speak for their ministers who are out-and-about but, not so well for Opposition MPs who try to catch a Thursday evening flight back to their ridings.

The impetus for Idle No More movement came from an exchange of tweets among four young women Saskatoon came from four Indigenous women in Saskatoon with considerable post-secondary education some of whom were also steeped in their own Indigenous teachings, ceremonies and laws. The cause that they took up was the defence of the Aboriginal and treaty rights "recognized and affirmed" by s. 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982 but under serious attack by" introduced by the Harper Government's the "suite of bills" on a variety of Aboriginal and First Nations issues (and which I will outline momentarily). In the goal of stopping those bills they were at one with the almost all the leaders across the country. INM also stood in solidarity with Chief Teresa Spence of Attawapiskat who undertook a prolonged hunger strike on Vancouver Island in the Ottawa River just below Parliament Hill.

Three features of the "mainstream" print media (including print online) that struck me at the height of INM's activity and Chief Spence's fast. First, the extreme badmouthing of Chief Spence in the mainstream (white?) media was over the top. One did not have to agree with her demands to treat her with respect. She was accused of depleting the funds of the Attawapiskat First Nation, a charge which was quite unsupported, notwithstanding the release of five years of Attawapiskat financial statements by the Government. Columnists said that she needed to go on a diet anyway. When Sen. Jacques Hébert went on a hunger strike in the foyer of the Senate over the de-funding of a youth movement I don't recall the kind of ad hominem attacks endured by Chief Spence. If such vitriol were directed against a Black leader or a Jewish leader I wonder whether the mainstream press would have carried the articles.

Secondly, the more civilized comments centred on "What do those Indians want, anyway?" I have been writing with, for or about First Nations leaders and their issues for 40 years. I have also reviewed and summarized most of the testimony of First Nations leaders, their counsel and sympathetic academics since Confederation.

At the risk of being uncharitable, I'm inclined to think that anybody who needs to ask "Who do those Indians want?" hasn't been paying attention. The INM demands do not differ greatly from the demands you would hear if you sat in the back of an All-Chiefs' Assembly for three days. Those demands are not greatly different than the ones put forward by chiefs and others to the succession of Joint Committees on the Constitution from 1969 to the 1992 Charlottetown Accord or the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and a succession of other reports. The one big change during that long time was the incorporation of section 35 as a free-standing Part II of the Constitution Act, 1982, incorporating "existing Aboriginal and treaty rights" as constitutionally protected rights without the limitation that section 1 places on Charter rights.

Governments of all stripes since 1982 have sought to "read down" and minimize the scope and significance of section 35, and particularly the purposive interpretations rendered by the Courts. First Nations communities and persons have been moderately successful in litigating s. 35(1) rights because the Court has insisted that section 35 not be interpreted as being without meaning, as the Government argued in Sparrow in 1990 and periodically ever after.

Here is a summary of the rights sought in the last year with brief mention of some of their recent historical sources:

One could say that the first demand, certainly since 1982, has been the application of the rule of law to the rights of Indigenous peoples: the need to give a purposive interpretation to s.35 is no different from the need to give such an interpretation to Charter rights. Indeed, Chief Justice Dickson borrowed in his s. 35 decisions freely from his earlier Charter decisions.

Recognition of First Nations self-government as it was described in the 1983 Report of the Special Commons Committee on Indian Self-Government (Penner Report). (Recognition is critical because delegated governance is what already exists and is in constant jeopardy.)

Recognition that a right to self-government is inherent in the recognition and affirmation of Aboriginal and treaty rights. (No doubt that deserves some elaboration. I hope to provide that elaboration in a later note.)

The Supreme Court has repeatedly noted that the Courts are not the best forum for negotiating the application of s.35 to hunting, fishing or other gathering rights or to Aboriginal title. They have repeatedly urged negotiation. In prosecutions under fishing and hunting regulations, the Court has suggested that it would be preferable to defer the prosecution and proceed either to a negotiated interpretation or a reference asking the Court's interpretation, outside of the context of a prosecution. The Crown can decide what to do with the prosecution after the Court has rendered an interpretation of the regulation. No Canadian or provincial government has shown a serious desire to enter into such negotiations with the possible exception of the B.C. Government following the Delgamuukw decision of 1997.

Indian Control of Indian Education was the name of a policy statement presented by George Manuel to the Commons Committee on Indian Affairs in 1972. Jean Chrétien, who was then Minister of Indian Affairs, promised to make the statement government policy. Education has been the cutting edge of the movement for self-government ever since (and possibly well before). Sadly, Chrétien never sought to implement the statement in a serious way and when departmental officials speak of such a policy today what they seem to mean is the very model of "reading down" or legislative minimalism.

First Nations control of First Nations education requires that school committees receive the same moneys for each study as the government pays to provincial or separate schools rather than something in the neighbourhood of two-thirds that amount.

I'm not going to try to review here the raft of bills introduced by the Harper Government on Aboriginal matters in the current session. Perhaps, following this background I will go into that kind of detail in a follow-up piece or two. However, some things can be said here in a summary fashion.

The Court has repeatedly said that the Crown, in right of both Canada and the provinces has a duty to consult with First Nations likely to be affected by legislation, primary or delegated, or the application of legislation to a given situation, e.g., granting of permits. This applies not only where an Aboriginal right has been established but even where it has been asserted and a neutral party would consider that the claim has some likelihood of success: Haida Nation, 2004, Mikisew Cree Nation, 2005.

A recurring theme through the bills of this session has been attempts to discount the need to consult, particularly as regards to the current bills and the rights they are seen to jeopardize. (This jeopardy has been identified not only by First Nations leaders and their counsel but by the Canadian Bar Association and various academics.) In order to support their discounting Ministers have claimed that there are no rights at stake; but the Court has consistently said that consultation is necessary if there is a likelihood that a right is at stake, e.g., if dumping in a waterway may affect a fishery.

Far from fostering any kind of First Nations control of education the Government is seeking to establish a First Nations education body which it will control, but without any provision for parity in funding.

One bill requires First Nations to publish their annual statement, not only of the moneys managed by their council for public works or specific programs but also for any corporations in which they have an interest. That this puts First Nations at a disadvantage in economic development does not appear to be a concern of the Government.

Most First Nations publish their annual statement either on their web site or in a newsletter or other publication to their own members. On the other hand, successive Auditors General since 1980 have called for Indian Affairs to reduce the volume of reporting required of First Nations which, the OAG (Office of the Auditor General) has repeatedly said is far more onerous that what is required of local governments of similar size. Ministers insist on the high volume of requests that they receive from members for disclosure of First Nations statements but there is no tabled documentation and no effort to show what percentage of the 633 First Nations communities refuse to divulge information.

In any case, those who do not divulge financial information to their members may be engaged in egregious behaviour but if one supports recognition of self-government, then, as I've said in earlier articles, the role of the federal government should be limited to "a policy of no-policy." As I recall PEI was recalcitrant for several years in refusing to allow citizens to sue their Government after the federal government and other provincial governments had re-written their Crown Proceedings Acts. We did not seize the legislature or suspend equalization payments.

One last thing: apparently, the new funding agreements that require signing before the end of the fiscal year if bands do not want their funding to be interrupted "include a clause that prohibits challenging [federal] legislation through the courts." (Hill Times, 26 March 2013, quoting Dr. Carolyn Bennett MP.) Such a provision harks back to the 1927 Indian Act amendment that made it an offence to raise funds for the purpose of pressing Indian land claims.

That is a brief introduction to the legal demands of the INM and of First Nations across the country and the raft of bills which the present government is attempting to ram down their throats. It is also an answer to the oft-repeated question "What do those Indians want, anyway?"

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From Reclaimthewarrior.wordpress.com

Get Over It

April 17, 2013 by Helen K

Why don't you just get over it?

It's a question posed to Indigenous peoples routinely

These words come laced with traces of manifest destiny

Like people are breathing the same air of the same breeze

That pushed Columbus' sails to shore

Get over it

This equates to being uncomfortable with the privilege

Of living off of Indigenous lands

And on legacies that were built on minorities backs

If you're going to step to me with this blatant dismissal

You better have your rebuttal grounded in facts

• Indigenous spirituality and gatherings were outlawed by policy based on European fear and control
• Laws were put in place to separate families and placed Indigenous kids in residential schools so they could swallow the indian whole
• Treaty processes were tainted with interpreters with forked tongues and signed under duress or under the false pretence that nothing would change.
• Nothing remained the same
• Our traditional ways of governing were undermined and restricted and reconstructed without our consent
• Indians were restricted to the confines of reservations unless they had an official pass from an indian agent
• Sled dogs in the north were mass executed to stop nomadic living and start government reliance
• Indians were banned from getting legal representation and from participating in forms of colonial defiance
• The residential school era cut the tongues out of our mouths, buried babies, and bred dysfunction

If we're looking at how fair treaties are because of so called benefits, well then you're looking at a land reduction
Please know what "it" is before you tell generations of nations to sweep genocide under the rug

Because it makes your history look unclean

Would you have the audacity to tell blacks to silence stories about slavery?

Or south Africa to choke back and swallow apartheid?

What about the Maori, the Aboriginese, the Polynesians?

White guilt and white privilege is getting a complex

So we better hold our lips and keep our version of history in check

We don't want to make anyone uncomfortable with the shifting colours of our presence

Create tensions at the utter mention of the stories that indigenous bodies hold

You act as if this story of genocide and assimilation is centuries old

Like old policies are not chopped up , repackaged

And given back with the same bones

Bones, is what we have been given

The other day I heard a story of a man who was beaten as a child for stealing scraps for starving children in residential school. Scraps that came from the lavish plates of priests and nuns. Scraps that were destined for the garbage.

Beaten for bones.

Bones that were beaten.

So the next time you go to say get over "it" you better realize that "it" is alive and well and it exists in every facet of this society

Every systemic structure is plagued with racial inequalities that are provided as privilege to you and at the expense of minorities.

Maybe you need to get over ethnic superiority, one sided history, and illusion of right to colonial legacy

Just saying though, maybe the "getting over" isn't meant to be applied to me.