INDEPTH: ABORIGINAL
CANADIANS
A brief
history
Martin O'Malley, CBC
News Online | June 21, 2005
Back, back in
time...
If you fly beyond Old Crow Flats in
northern Yukon you can see the remains of ancient logs that
form massive, man-made structures once used to catch caribou.
Aboriginal Canadians call them "the caribou corrals."
 The corrals were designed to
capture migrating caribou. The log walls of the corral were
higher than the caribou. The animals entered at a place where
the corrals were about five kilometres wide. The corrals
gradually narrowed until the caribou were trapped, providing a
convenient bin of live meat, enough to feed dozens of families
over the long Yukon winter.
Finding the caribou corrals
excited archeologists, anthropologists and paleontologists.
They discovered that some of the logs used for the corral
walls had been fashioned by stone axes, which suggested the
corrals might have been used in prehistoric times. By
carbon-dating fossil bones by the corrals, scientists
determined they were 30,000 years old, which proved to be a
rare instance of direct evidence of human activity in the
Western Hemisphere.
There is more to be learned from
aboriginal culture than caribou corrals and stone axes. The
federal systems of government in Canada and the United States
are modeled on the system of government devised by the
Iroquois.
The Iroquois system took care to protect
individual liberties and freedoms, including gender equality.
Thomas Jefferson, America's third president and one of the
drafters of the U.S. Constitution, observed that among the
Iroquois "every man, with them, is perfectly free to follow
his own inclinations. But if, in doing this, he violates the
rights of another, if the case be slight, he is punished by
the disesteem of society or, as we say, public opinion; if
serious, he is tomahawked as a serious enemy." Jefferson used
this to draft his First Amendment, which allows freedom until
it violates another person's rights.
In their 1991 book
Occupied Canada, authors Robert Hunter and Robert
Calihoo devote a chapter to "The Great Gift of the Iroquois,"
in which they describe some of the workings of the Iroquois
Confederacy: "Factionalism with the confederacy was reduced by
building in a system of clan kinships that transcended the
borders of different tribes. Thus, the clans of the Hawk,
Turtle, Wild Potatoes, Great Bear or Deer Pigeon would have
had members among the Mohawks, Seneca, Onondagas, Oneidas, and
Cayuga alike, and these individuals would view each other as
members of the same family."
 Benjamin Franklin was so
impressed by the Iroquois Confederacy that he championed it as
a model to unite the new colonies, urging that each colony
become a state with control over internal affairs, with a
federal council responsible for external matters. This became
the basis of the Articles of Confederation.
The story
is rich, vast, complex.
What's in a
name?
Consider, for a start, the nomenclature. Is
it "aboriginal Canadians" or "first peoples" or "natives" or
"Indians" or "First Nations People" or "indigenous people"?
They're all correct, with some mild fretting over
politically-correct hemlines, which at least has eliminated
such clunkers as the English "redskins" and the French
sauvages. We still call it "the Department of Indian
and Northern Affairs." Aboriginals find demeaning the use of
possessives such as "Canada's aboriginals" and "Canada's
natives," though "native" is acceptable if used to modify
"people" and "leaders" and "communities."
Consider the
languages. The largest aboriginal language group is
Algonquian, spoken by some 100,000 people. The Algonquian
language group actually contains nine aboriginal languages:
Abenaki, Blackfoot, Delaware, Mi'kmaq, Maliseet,
Montagnais-Naskapi, Ojibwa, Potawatomi, and Cree. The Crees
are spread across Canada in various groupings, each with their
own dialects: Plains, Swampy, Northern, Woods, Moose, and
East.
On the matter of the Mi'kmaq, the word comes from
"nikmaq," which aboriginals gave to the French and Basque
fishermen and explorers in the 17th century. Essentially it
means "my kin-friends." The Mi'kmaq, when referring to
themselves, use the term "L'nu'k," which means "the people" or
"humans." Mi'kmaq is pronounced Mig-mow(as in
"owl").
 The complexity cries out for
perspective, which I found one afternoon in May, 1975, in
Inuvik where the Mackenzie River empties into the Beaufort
Sea. I was talking to an Eskimo named Abe Okpik. Abe and I
were both on assignment with the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline
Inquiry, popularly known as the Berger Inquiry after the
chairman, Mr. Justice Thomas Berger.
"Three times this
morning I heard someone say Inuit," Okpik told me. Then, with
exquisite timing over his mug of coffee, he added, "The
anthropologists must be early this summer."
Okpik died
early in 1998, by which time he had comfortably embraced the
use of "Inuit" to describe "Eskimos," a southern aboriginal
expression for "eaters of raw meat." And why not? "Inuit"
means "the people," as in "people everywhere." It is also
plural; one Inuit is an "Inuk." Abe told me an Inuk can denote
two Inuit by somehow saying Inuuk.
Nunavut
and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples
Chief Jim
Antoine when he was 26, talking to Judge Thomas Berger
in 1975. Antoine became Premier of the Northwest
Territories. | The Berger Commission was a watershed event in the
history of aboriginal Canadians, examining the lives and
living conditions of the people of the Mackenzie Valley and
further north to Sachs Harbour and Holman Island. Judge Berger
held formal hearings in Yellowknife, and community hearings in
scattered villages and encampments across the western Arctic.
He ended up taking his commission across southern Canada, all
the way to the Maritimes.
"We possess a terrible
self-centredness, even arrogance, as a people," Berger said,
referring to non-aboriginal Canadians. "History is what
happened to us. We dismiss as a curiosity what has gone
before. The culture, values and traditions of native people
amount to more than crafts and carvings. Their respect for the
wisdom of their elders, their concept of family
responsibilities extending beyond the nuclear family to
embrace a whole village, their respect for the environment,
their willingness to share - all of these values persist
within their own culture even though they have been under
unremitting pressure to abandon them."
 On April 1, 1999 the eastern
portion of the Northwest Territories became Nunavut. It was
the first time the map of Canada was changed since
Newfoundland joined confederation in 1949.
Nunavut
means "our land" in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit. The
territory of Nunavut is fives times larger than Alberta, with
a population of 24,000, of whom 85 per cent are Inuit. Ottawa
agreed to pay Nunavut $1.2 billion over 14 years, ending in
2007.
I heard it often during my time in the Mackenzie
Valley working on a book on the Berger Inquiry, which was
titled The Past and Future Land. I finally found a way
to reply when we were in Fort Liard and I met Chief Harry
Deneron, who testified at the inquiry that the local nurse had
posted a sign on the door of the Hudson's Bay store that
warned: DO NOT DRINK THE WATER.
"Well, it's okay for us
- like a doctor can tell us this because we're humans," Chief
Deneron told Judge Berger. "Most of us will probably know what
they're talking about, but what we can't get at is, how can we
get the message across to the animals that are depending on
this water, the fish and that?"
In the book I
wrote:
"It is a good question, one that confounds those
white people who like to put a priority on things, with
humans and their things definitely at the top and all the
rest, the beasts and fishes, definitely lower down. The
whole of the Northwest Territories, they say, could easily
fit into Toronto's CNE Stadium, and it's true if by 'whole'
you mean only the humans. For sure you won't get the land
in, not the land that is one third of Canada, or the
animals, not the herds of caribou that thunder by in numbers
exceeding 100,000. But just the humans, yes. It is like
measuring a Caesar salad by counting the
croutons."
At the start of 1998, the
Canadian government formally apologized to the aboriginal
Canadians for they way they have been mistreated.
This
was in response to the 1996 report of the Royal Commission on
Aboriginal Peoples, a massive document that recommended a new
era of partnership.
A section of the report titled
"Looking Forward, Looking Back," begins: "After some 500 years
of a relationship that has swung from partnership to
domination, from mutual respect and cooperation to paternalism
and attempted assimilation, Canada must now work out fair and
lasting terms for coexistence with Aboriginal
people."
As a starting point, the royal commission
listed four reasons why this must be done:
1. Canada's claim to be a fair and enlightened
society depends on it.
2. The life chances of
Aboriginal people, which are still shamefully low, must be
improved.
3. Negotiation, as conducted under the
current rules, has proved unequal to the task of settling
grievances.
4. Continued failure may well lead to
violence.
Other recommendations:
1. The creation of what would essentially be a
third order of government: an aboriginal
parliament.
2. An independent tribunal to decide on
land claims.
3. More money to be spent to improve
housing, health, education and employment.
4.
Establishment of a native university.
5. An
"immediate and major infusion of money" that would see $2
billion added to the present government spending of $6
billion a year on aboriginal
Canadians.
The report cites the Royal
Proclamation of 1763 as a defining document in the
relationship between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people in
North America. The document, signed by King George III, says:
"It is just and reasonable and essential to our
interest and security of our colonies that the several
nations or tribes of Indians with whom we are connected and
who live under our protection, should not be molested or
disturbed in the possession of such parts of our dominions
and territories which, not having been ceded to or purchased
by us, are reserved to them or any of them as their hunting
grounds."
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FACTS: |
Total population of
Canada: 31,414,000
Total people of aboriginal
origin: 1,319,890
Origin
North
American
Indian:
957,650*
Métis:
266,020*
Inuit:
51,390*
More
than one aboriginal
origin:
44,835
Reserves
People
of aboriginal origin living on reserve:
285,625
People of aboriginal origin living off
reserve: 1,034,260
People of non-aboriginal
origin living on reserve: 36,230
(Source: 2001
Census, Statistics Canada)
*includes people of
a single aboriginal origin and those of a mix of one
aboriginal origin with non-aboriginal origins
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