Tag Archives: Reconciliation

BC attempts Centennial Lands Act Amendment

11 Sunday Feb 2024

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100 years ago this month, the Allied Tribes of British Columbia petitioned Parliament to shut down the report of the Indian Reserve Commission.

BC has very quietly set up a public consultation process on its plans to embed First Nations local governments within its Lands Act.

The lead is buried pretty deep: BC’s original assumption of control of all the land (without treaty or constructive arrangement) was in 1874. It was patently unconstitutional, and, at first, Canada’s Attorney General disallowed it.

What unfolded then was: replacement of the troublesome AG – Telesphore Fournier, with Edward Blake who allowed a new 1875 BC Lands Act, equally unconstitutional and an act of wholesale annexation, on the basis of settler convenience. Then Canada passed the Indian Act, locking Indigenous Peoples into a second-class-state of outlaw and criminalization. Meanwhile the Province of British Columbia sold off and settled prime Indigenous real estate, fencing communities decimated by smallpox into an-acre-a-person Reserves.

Fifty years of protest, petition, and physical defense of the land (1874-1924) did nothing to remedy the situation at the time, but increased BC and Canada’s resolve to the point of legislating the tiny Reserve Boundaries and making litigation on behalf of Indians… illegal (1927).

A hundred years ago this month, the Allied Tribes of British Columbia petitioned Parliament to shut down the report of the Indian Reserve Commission. BC and Canada had set out to finalize the Indian Land question in 1912, with the McKenna-McBride Commission, and unilaterally “quiet the Indian title,” all the while diplomatically shutting the land issue out of courts and the Privy Council forum.

In their 1926 Petition, the Allied Tribes wrote:

14. By Memorandum which was presented to the Government of Canada on 29th February, 1924, the Allied Tribes opposed the passing of Order-in-Council of the Government of Canada adopting the Report of the Royal Commission upon the ground, among other grounds, that no matter whatever relating to Indian affairs in British Columbia having been fully adjusted and important matters such as foreshore rights, fishing rights and water rights not having been to any extent adjusted, the professed purpose of the Agreement and the Act had not been accomplished.
15. By Order-in-Council passed 19th July, 1924, the Government of Canada, acting under Chapter 51 of the Statutes of the year 1920 and upon recommendation of the Minister of the Interior adopted the Report of the Royal Commission.

50 years before that, the Petition of the Douglas Tribes was brutally clear about the Indian Reserve crisis. And the Reserve boundaries have rarely, and barely, shifted since the final cuts of 1924.

The BC plan now, apparently, is to gain the consent of the Indigenous nations, in the form of the individual Indian Bands / First Nations, to their Lands Act after all.

It is appearing like a visitation of the 2009 BC Recognition and Reconciliation Legislation, which was put to death, in ceremony, in 2009 – once the grassroots people caught wind of it. The grassroots people tend to be very cautious about allowing their elected representatives to sign-on with government initiatives, and acknowledge the crown as the legitimate source of power over their lands, peoples, and futures.

However, little is known about this 2024 draft legislation except that it is proceeding as quickly and mysteriously as the 2009 event, which suddenly surfaced early in the Spring and was submerged by the end of summer.

For more information, you can check the:

BC government’s public consultation process

The BC Treaty Negotiating Times – Summer 2009 Analysis and report on the Proposed Recognition and Reconciliation Legislation, opposition, and events.

And this Blog’s timeline of docs under “Land Claims – policy and protest.” for more on the 2009 legislation, Indigenous Alliances and protest of government assumptions.

Check out Archive Quarterly – a new publication featuring newly digitized history that informs the present here in British Columbia. The first issue arrives April 2024. Every issue features key archival papers and artifacts; quotes and interviews with Elders on the issues; and relatable commentary to connect past and present.

Readers can Subscribe, Support, and Contribute: there are many ways to be engaged!

Take a link to the Archive Quarterly website or AQ on Facebook.

Reconciliation means Municipalization

29 Friday Sep 2023

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Part 5 of this week’s blog, No More “Reconciliation Sticks”

In the 1970s, at least one informant in the Canadian government was relaying the state’s plans to Indigenous political leaders.

        The obvious question is, why did the Governors Attorney and General, the Superintendents, judges and Ministers have secret plans?

In one easily cracked nutshell, the Canadian state was already wildly liable for attacking the British Crown’s “Allies; the Tribes and Indian nations with whom We are Connected” – and fur trading partners – in their own protected territories, so peace and good faith would be hard to recover. And because, in the case of the Colony of British Columbia, the British wouldn’t give them any money for Treaties. So the politicians and judges could not very well speak out about what they had in mind – at least not plainly.

The many-headed word “reconciliation” aids them there.

In Canada, it has taken three centuries of brutal tactics, and the martial law of Indian Act Band Councils, and the colony has still not convinced the nations to become consenting colonial districts.

Today, Canada is more desperate than ever to manufacture this consent.

Using the “concept of reconciliation,” among many coercive tactics, a replacement Indian Act targets Indigenous communities under duress.

            Attempting to transform constitutionally and internationally protected peoples, owners of rich and substantial land bases, into virtually landless provincial municipalities, Canada has passed into law an entire framework to replace the Indian Act. You may remember the First Nations Governance Act, revised; the First Nations Fiscal Accountability Act; the First Nations Land Management Act, et al, as the omnibus Bill C-45, 2012, which sparked the Idle No More protests.

            The crucial difference with this municipalization plan, is that the present day First Nations’ entry into confederation would be achieved by consent. Consent to the state and recognition of “crown interests” are achieved incrementally in delegated jurisdiction agreements concerning education, child welfare, housing, health, and such; as well as in negotiation of land claims under the 1974(78) Comprehensive Claims Policy and the 1995 Inherent Rights Policy (the leading extinguishment programmes in Canada today),

There, reconstituted under Canadian law – having ratified an individual First Nation constitution; having released and indemnified the colonizers; having accepted cash as the full and final settlement of Aboriginal rights – the First Nations will be outnumbered in provincial unions of municipalities. There, First Nations will be dependent on five-year provincial funding agreements and occasional aid for natural disasters, and will not retain their autonomy, or sovereignty, or even those controversial Aboriginal rights.

Today’s article looks at the mechanism of the “concept of reconciliation” at play in the municipalization of Indigenous communities. Municipalization is the only future, under Canada’s runaway judges, consistent with their regularized practice of complete abrogation and derogation from “Aboriginal and treaty rights.” It is the only possibility that conforms to the reconciliation program, as described by the Supreme Court of Canada.

            It will not be achieved by any means consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

            But hey, if First Nations want to make Final Agreements that extinguish their rights, who’s to stop them.

From unilateral legislation to coercion

So, in the 1970s, Walter Rudnicki was working for the federal government. He shared confidential information with the leaders of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. He confirmed the intention of Canada to finally coerce the assimilation of every Indian Band as a provincial municipality, and thereby liberate itself from the burden of acquiring title. A consensual union would also indemnify the state of past harms.

Here’s the setting.

            The legendary 1969 White Paper, the Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, had just failed spectacularly up: forging extensive political allegiances from coast to coast to coast. It had been a play to unilaterally assimilate the nations by legislation, demolishing the Indian Act and every line of constitutional ink that described the burden of legally acquiring title to the Indian territories.

            The Nishga case, Calder v. The Attorney General of British Columbia, got a 1973 admission from the Supreme Court of Canada that Aboriginal title continues to exist in Canada, unextinguished.

            Trudeau the First and his Minister of Indian Affairs, Jean Chretien, passed the federal Comprehensive Claims Policy within the year. Any Indigenous nation could apply within the process it enabled, and they could get small cash and smaller land deeds as a final settlement of their title, rights, and interests in the surrendered area.

The Comprehensive Claims Policy, 1978 update, is the leading negotiating policy today.

Indigenous leaders did not particularly need an inside informant to confirm the meaning and intent of that. But it may have been helpful, in some cases, to have a little advance warning of the next strategy being formulated.

            It was helpful in 1981, in the case of Trudeau’s next best plan, the attempt to get a new Constitution from Britain: one which did not include any obligations to the now occupied nations.

            It was helpful in 2009, when British Columbia had tried to simply legislate the Bands under provincial jurisdiction.

Someone gave the Union of BC Indian Chiefs a copy of the September, 2004 “Secret Framework for Renewing Canada’s Policies with Respect to Aboriginal and Treaty Rights.” Emphasis in the original.

The draft Framework begins by reminding us that the Speech from the Throne, April 2004, stressed finding more efficient ways of concluding self-government agreements. (Self-government means municipalization under Canadian law and abandonment of original Indigenous titles and jurisdictions, at least the way Canada uses the term.)

            It mentions the “sectoral follow-up table on expediting land claims,” which are “a key component for transforming relationships.” (That is, until First Nations abandon original claims and accept delegated Canadian authorities in Final Agreements, they won’t get any.)

            It says,

“The Speech from the Throne and the establishment of the sectoral table on land claims and self-government reflects the reality that establishing cooperative relationships with Aboriginal peoples on quality of life issues must be underpinned by effective policies and processes for addressing Aboriginal and treaty rights.” (That is, there won’t be any improvement in on-Reserve quality of life until extinguishment agreements are signed – as above.)

            The Aboriginal participants at the same sectoral follow-up voiced the exact opposite set of priorities:

“Aboriginal groups emphasized that joint work on quality of life issues must be situated in the broader transformative agenda based on recognition and respect for Aboriginal and treaty rights.”

The secret draft writers resolved that stitch by reminding the secret reader,

“The Supreme Court of Canada has stated that the basic purpose of section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, is the reconciliation of the pre-existence of Aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the crown. Reconciliation has become the key organizing principle which the courts have used in addressing issues related to Aboriginal and treaty rights.” (That is, the court has taken the political lead and reduced legal rights to issues, so the government’s job is just to follow suit.)

            Note: We looked at that in Part 2 – Theft by Chief Justice, where the term “reconciliation” was coined.

The 2009 British Columbia “Recognition and Reconciliation Legislation” was crafted under Premier Gordon Campbell and his cabinet of hungry skeletons, particularly Mike deJong, Wally Oppal, and former QC Geoff “they never had any title and if they did it was extinguished by the presence of the crown” Plant.

            This legislative flop was certainly influenced by the 2004 secret plan – if nothing else, it must have been lent audacity. The province’s 2009 Re&Re Legislation even came with sign-off from the First Nations Leadership Council (FNLC)[i] and their lawyers from Mandell Pinder.

            Only thing was, the FNLC hadn’t mentioned anything about the legislation to its members, or their respective peoples and constituents, when the right honourable Mike deJong announced to media the “seismic shift” that was about to occur in BC.

            And consent is sacrosanct. The bluff was called, retracted, and turned to ash – like the White Paper Policy 1969.

            The government’s only working plan now is coercion.

Instead of consent, all these years, there’s only forcible imposition

Canada has forcibly imposed the Indian Reserve and Indian Band structures – on non-treaty and treaty nations alike.

            British Columbia plays a huge part in the necessity that mothered that invention.

The province of BC was written into existence in 1858, unbeknownst to any Indigenous leaders west of the Rockies, by the Queen of the British Empire – precisely one-half the circumference of the globe away. Then she forgot about it, and nobody in England wanted to pay for treaties there.

            There is no need for me to re-write what happened once the Indigenous protest reached a critical level. This is from Bruce Clark’s “The Error in the Tsilhqot’in Case,” 2018:

“In 1874 British Columbia enacted a Crown Lands Act that regarded all crown land as if it were public land available for disposition, even though the land is part of the continental reserve for the Nations or Tribes of Indians, not being “ceded to, or purchased by Us.” In a report to the Canadian Privy Council, Attorney General Télésphore Fournier recommended disallowance under section 90 of the Constitution Act, 1867, on the ground of conflict with the proclamation and section 109. The report was approved in a Minute in Council dated 23rd January 1875 and endorsed by the Governor General.”

“British Columbia then made a proposal to Canada to resolve the Indian problem by establishing a commission to investigate and “set apart” provincial Crown lands as “reserves” for Indian use. This led directly to the Indian Act, 1876. The Acting Minster of Interior Affairs in a report dated 5th November 1875 recommended approval of the provincial plan, which was done by the Canadian Privy Council pursuant to Minute in Council dated 10th November 1875. This entailed leaving the originally disallowed Crown Lands Act to its operation, i.e., reviving it. Attorney General Fournier was elevated to the Supreme Court and was replaced in office by Attorney General Edward Blake. Blake reported under letter dated 6th May 1876 to the Governor General explaining that “Great inconvenience and confusion might result from its disallowance.” As recommended, on second thought, the Governor General did leave the statute to its operation. Treaties were not made thereafter in mainland British Columbia. There was no need, since all Crown land was thereafter unconstitutionally regarded as public land available for disposition. It was as if the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the “subject to” proviso in section 109, BNA Act, duly had been repealed or had never existed.”

When Canada passed the Indian Act, everything an Indigenous nation would need to do to survive was criminalized. In the legislation, Indians were defined negatively as “a person is anyone other than an Indian.”

If Indigenous Nations didn’t consent to be governed by the Indian Act, why go along with it?

Because someone had to take those roles in the leadership and administration of the office; in the Band Council.

            No, they really had to.

You can’t have an economy based on the resources in a few acres of Indian Reserve, and you’re not allowed to sell anything anyway. Not even vegetables or produce, when it makes competition for settlers at their markets.

            In 1935 the Indian Act was amended to reflect that there must be one (1) Chief Counselor per Band, and that he should be elected by popular vote, in the prescribed fashion. This did not resemble any Indigenous structures.

            But without that, the Band can not receive the relief funds provided by the government which took their land. That relief program started approximately at the time the plains peoples were starving because the settlers wiped out the buffalo… to make sure they would starve.

            In BC, it started in 1927, after DC Scott and his colleagues in the Judicial Committee, in Ottawa, dismissed the Claims of the Allied Indian Tribes, formally. The relief was the “BC Special” – $100,000 per year, “In lieu of treaties.”

            There were more than 200 Bands at that time. The <$500 per Indian Band per year, a pittance – and most of it paid to the Minister of the Interior to administrate the fund, hasn’t quite kept up with inflation here in 2023.

This is what makes things like “economic reconciliation” sound attractive to First Nations. This is how “the reconciliation of aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the crown” is achieved: under duress.

Pitawanakwat, 2000

In an Oregon County court, Justice Stewart compared OJ Pitawanakwat’s situation in Canada with members of the Irish Republican Army in Ireland. She found it was manifestly the same. Just as Spain refused, in the 1990s, to extradite IRA members to Britain, Justice Stewart refused Canada’s extradition request.

            Pitawanakwat was present at the Gustafsen Lake police siege, 1995, and had subsequently been charged, detained, and released on bail after two years. He fled to the USA.

            Now, because of the facts that “his conviction was of a political character,” and in a “politically charged climate,” were recognized by an American judge, he lives there still, unable to return home to Anishinabek territory.

At Gustafsen Lake, they said no to the Indian Act; they said no to municipalization; and they said no to extinguishment in full and final settlements. The Attorney General declared war on them.

“We’re not going to agree to anything that will affect our economy.”

Thus spake the province’s negotiator at the St’át’imc Chiefs Council protocol table, in 2008. He might as well have been speaking on behalf of the Canadian state.

The “reconciliation” proposed by Canada would be achieved, if ever, because it is the only prescription for change that Canada will agree to. And that change is: Indigenous nations must submit to their bisection and reduction to scattered postage-stamp communities, where less than a quarter of their own Band membership has room (or housing) to live. They also must relinquish all claims against the province, the state, and “anyone else” for past harm. They must reconstitute themselves, starting with a new Constitution for each First Nation, and enter the hallowed halls of the Union of BC Municipalities.

The conditions under which that kind of “consent” would be achieved, would not hold up under international scrutiny.

It would be achieved under a colonially imposed, extra-legal regime, rather than by authentic governance procedures. It would be achieved by denying Indigenous titles, and capitalizing on the financial ruin which has resulted from this. It would be achieved by refusing to recognize authentic and legitimate holders of the rights to political decisions, who can be marginalized by the imposed ratification procedures.

But, to the great credit of humanity – which will go down in history forever – Indigenous Peoples may be cash poor, but they’ll surely survive these lean, mean years and live their own way.

Thank you very much for reading. Takem i nsnukw’nukw’a.

[i] Executives of the First Nations Summit (BC Treaty Process); Assembly of First Nations (BC region); and Union of BC Indian Chiefs.

Reconciliation as Subtergfuge

27 Wednesday Sep 2023

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Part 3 of this week’s blog, No More “Reconciliation Sticks”

The term “reconciliation” has morphed from the 1996 Van der Peet ruling into government “Statements on reconciliation,” into the 2009 formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), into the judicial results of aboriginal title cases.

            What has not morphed is the Canadian government’s policies.

Does the PR campaign match the policy?

“The concept of reconciliation,” as the federal government more cleverly put it in their secret policy, four years before the TRC would be mandated by the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, might butter more toast than the reality of the government’s Comprehensive Claims Policy (CCP). 

The secret policy writers noted that the concept of reconciliation would secure investment, because it sounds good, without adding any liabilities by talking about it, because they don’t mean anything good by it: just making Aboriginal societies conform and resign to colonial control.

Government policy on “land claims,” the bottle neck corridor through which any and all state recognition of Indigenous land ownership is achieved, is book-ended by discretionary suspension of Indian Act relief funds in the case of non-compliance, or roadblocking, or refusal of an Indian Band (First Nation) to negotiate its way into becoming a provincial municipality and releasing the government from liability for past harm.

“Reconciliation” has not shifted this policy.

Reconciliation in the decisions of aboriginal title cases

In 2017, the 20th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada’s Delgamuukw decision (1997) was marked by heavy equipment building pipeline access roads over the unsurrendered, unceded properties of Wet’suwet’en Chiefs whose title to the land was fully evidenced at trial. Any Canadian can read the transcripts and see the maps.

Briefly, the head chiefs Delgamuukw (Gitxsan) and Gisdayway (Wet’suwet’en) were suing for a declaration of title and jurisdiction on behalf of their nations, with small exception. The Supreme Court of BC and CJ Allen MacEachern dispatched the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en claim in 1991 with some of the most racist language ever heard in a court room.

            In Delgamuukw v. British Columbia at trial in BC in 1990 and 91, British Columbia had counterclaimed for a declaration that the appellants have no right or interest in and to the territory or alternatively, that the appellants’ cause of action ought to be for compensation from the Government of Canada. MacEachern agreed with them, on the whole. The province’s lawyers were, after all, from his old law firm of Russell and DuMoulin. MacEachern pointed out the impossibility of wandering “vagrants” such as the plaintiffs to have title to land. And if they ever did, he reasoned, it was displaced by the presence of the crown.

At the Supreme Court of Canada, Chief Justice Antonio Lamer didn’t declare any title either. He found a lot of errors in MacEachern’s reasons and in the province’s arguments, ultimately confirming the clear appearance of Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en title; ordered a retrial; and took the chance to tell them:

“Ultimately, it is through negotiated settlements, with good faith and give and take on all sides, reinforced by the judgments of this Court, that we will achieve what I stated in Van der Peet, supra, at para. 31, to be a basic purpose of s. 35(1) — “the reconciliation of the pre-existence of aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the Crown”.  Let us face it, we are all here to stay.”

It’s effectively the same as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reporting that Indigenous Peoples “must” come to “mutual respect and recognition” with the colonizer. Presumably, complete forgiveness on the part of the Indigenous goes along with that.

Neither “reconciliation” nor court rulings have altered the bottom line in Canadian policy and practice.

Antonio Lamer’s successor as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada is CJ Beverly McLachlin. She has picked up the torch of reconciliation with total enthusiasm, letting the truth of reconciliation’s subversive powers burn brightly.

            In Tsilhqot’in Nation, 2014, she reasoned:

“The Court in Delgamuukw confirmed that infringements of Aboriginal title can be justified under s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 pursuant to the Sparrow test and described this as a “necessary part of the reconciliation of [A]boriginal societies with the broader political community of which they are part” (at para. 161), quoting R. v. Gladstone, [1996] 2 S.C.R. 723, at para. 73.” [16]

                Just to rephrase: infringement of Aboriginal title is a necessary part of reconciliation. Incidentally, so is impairment of Aboriginal title and rights; and, apparently, the extinguishment of Aboriginal title and rights by negotiation under the Comprehensive Claims Policy.

            She further clarified:

“As Delgamuukw explains, the process of reconciling Aboriginal interests with the broader interests of society as a whole is the raison d’être of the principle of justification.” [82]

(Note: The Supreme Court of Canada devised the “justification test” in 1990, when it ruled on the Sparrow fishing case. The category keeps growing, but Aboriginal rights and titles can justifiably be infringed that Canada and the provinces want rally badly: logging, mining, the settlement of foreign populations to do those things; development; ski resorts; hydro-electric facilities; roads; etc.)

The result of Tsilhqot’in Nation was a declaration of Aboriginal title to part of the Tsilhqot’in traditional territory. It is the first and only land with such a designation, arriving 40 years since the first admission of Aboriginal title in the Canadian common law, in 1973 with Calder.

                Ten years later, jurisdiction on the ground remains rather fully snarled in bureaucratic reluctance. Justifiable infringements carry on like business as usual.

This is the policy that “reconciliation” is all about.

Subterfuge is consistent with the historical record

Even in a brief survey of examples which come to mind right away, the legacy of deceit – from bad faith to fraud – make it hard to believe the idea that Canadians are going to do the right thing this time. It makes no sense to ignore the past. Indigenous Peoples aren’t going to.

To make a clean sweep that encompasses the beginning and the present, we should start with the fact that the British crown honoured none of its promises. It has never held Canada accountable to the Executive Orders it delivered by the monarchs and the Privy Councils, and, from the Canadian side, the Governors and Attorneys General have only ever stonewalled Indigenous attempts to access “British justice.”

It’s a pattern repeated around the globe, where British forces route whole villages, coastlines and interiors; supplant Chieftains with Magistrates propped up by force and coercion; populate the place with re-purposed chattel shipped out from Scotland, Ireland, prisons or orphanages; funnel resources out of the newly colonized and re-populated country; and later some Governor or judge scratches his head, for the record, and notes that the law as it was written appears to have been mislaid.

Canada is no exception.

In 2007 the First Nations Unity Protocol Agreement saw the alignment of every Band involved in the BC treaty process (except one) stage massive protests: the government’s negotiating mandate was not consistent with the basis of the BC Treaty Commission, the 19 Recommendations made by the BC Task Force that formed it in 1991. Furthermore, the Delgamuukw decision, SCC 1997, elevated judicial recognition of Aboriginal title well beyond British Columbia’s working definitions, but this did not change the negotiating mandate.

            The negotiating mandate follows the Comprehensive Claims Policy, 1974, updated in 1978. The province knew that was its mandate when it entered negotiations, loaning hundreds of millions to First Nations and putting them within the purview of third-party remedial management, based on their Indian Act financial responsibilities.

            Now, in these times of Reconciliation, that negotiating mandate has not changed. The only possible result of a land claims negotiation between First Nations and the state is that the unsurrendered Indigenous land in question will be relinquished for a financial settlement, sometimes including fee-simple packages of land which are now the property of the province. This is extinguishment of Aboriginal title.

For three decades, UN Committees for implementation of international treaties on Racial Discrimination, Civil and Political Rights, Social and Economic Rights, and more, have made long lists of unresolved violations. Extinguishment, recently re-named as “certainty,” is one of those violations. They have little to show in response to their recommendations to Canada.

The Inter American Court of Human Rights has admitted two national Indigenous-led cases against British Columbia and Canada that there is no “domestic remedy” to the Indigenous dispute with Canada. Among many other reasons, that’s because Canadian courts aren’t an impartial tribunal. One case was brought by the Hulquminem Treaty Group when it reached the above mentioned impasses in the BC treaty process. The international court’s findings have also not affected the government’s negotiating mandate.

            The Tsawwassen Final Agreement was ratified later that year, about 1% of the claimed land area, a cash settlement, and offering a $15,000 payment for every yes vote. The Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Chuck Strahl, said “who am I to say it’s a bad deal?”

After the 2007 BC Supreme Court decision in R. v. William, the Tsilhqotin Nation case, communities across British Columbia lit up June 21 with roadblocks, information check-points on major highways, and various demonstrations. It really was meant to be the longest day of the year for Canadians.

            As of 2010, Canada announced “Aboriginal Day” on June 19th. Grants and organizations piled up in displays of culture and dancing in parks, and the year that Vancouver hosted the Winter Games was cleared of protest ahead of advance delegations of international journalists preparing to cover the Olympics. Coincidence?

Can everyone remember as far back as 2012 and Prime Minister Harper’s Bill C-45? It gutted funding to Aboriginal organizations. Tribal Councils and Friendship Centers lost 75% of their income overnight. That was four years after he apologized for the Canadian government’s role in Indian residential Schools.

            (Note: the funding cuts weren’t related to any corresponding reduction in diamond mining, fracking, logging, fishing, industrial agriculture, or other reduction in exploitation of unceded lands.)

            But the intention of the Indian Residential Schools was exactly the same as the intention of the Bill C-45 budget cuts, and the omnibus bill’s corresponding legislative architecture to municipalize First Nations. (Check back for Part 5: Reconciliation as Municipalization)

Canada’s prima facie goal is assimilation of the Indigenous nations and polities into “the body politic of Canada. Then there will be no Indian Department and no Indian question.” The Superintendent of the Interior, as he was then, Duncan Campbell Scott, was clear and unapologetic about the goal in 1920.

            The only discernible difference today is the performance of apologetic behaviour by leading Canadian politicians like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. But the same goal is clearly defined by the only possible result of the only negotiations, and the only political or judicial recognition, that Canada will engage or afford Indigenous Nations: assimilation into the body politic of Canada.

Which brings us to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Whose truth? And whose reconciliation?

The TRC wasn’t really looking for the Canadian government’s truth. It interviewed survivors of Indian Residential Schools; it held events for the former students and their families; it catalogued testimonials. It did not collect stories from the surviving perpetrators of the crimes, and the architects and financiers of the institutions. It did not search archived government memos concerning the receipt of visiting doctors’ reports that children were starving, being abused, and dying.

            Wouldn’t it be helpful to know – and collect statements – whether the government of Canada knew that the schools were turning into graveyards? If the government officials in charge of those schools deliberately recruited disgraced “teachers” from the notorious Irish industrial schools run by the Christian Brothers? If there is a record of that political decision to ignore what was happening, because it was furthering the stated objective of “killing the Indian in the child”?

            Keep in mind that was the mandate of the “schools.”

At some point the question has to be answered: is it really possible for the perpetrator of the crime to sit in judgment of it and prescribe the actions of atonement?

If the TRC’s report and recommendations can possibly be taken seriously, they would have to be matched equally by a Commission of the Indigenous Nations’ own making. They would have to be qualified and heavily amended to include the recommendations of the Indigenous Peoples. And Indigenous parties would have to have the power to ensure those recommendations would be met.

            Alternatively, why not have an Indigenous-mandated Commission, and that party to the dispute can run the reconciliation program? Does that sound absurd? More absurd than having a Commission that’s mandated and run by Canada – one of the named perpetrators of the crimes under investigation?

But the TRC did not contemplate any crime other than what happened at Indian Residential Schools. And yet, the “reconciliation” that fills the media and the municipal, provincial, and federal government statements are made to refer to all matters of imbalance and grievance between Indigenous Peoples and the state.

Many former students and their family members attended the ceremonial report of the TRC. Many were raptly attentive to the Pope’s apology. And many of them were not able to accept the conditional, highly qualified TRC report; many found they were not able to accept the Pope’s brief apology and extended remarks on the Christian faith.

            Why is that? That’s because Canada still has all the land and all the money from the resources and all the power to enforce all the decisions they make about how to exploit the land. The churches haven’t given back any land that was gifted to them, either by hopeful indigenous leaders or by the government, and the churches are not going to bat for indigenous Peoples on the broader issues.

It’s because Canada still has control of the governance structures that Indigenous nations are forced to crouch under; it has control of the fate of the little children and their families who struggle “on a weekly, daily, and hourly basis”[i] to make ends meet. It has everything – except the consent of the Indigenous Peoples.

It is a very ungainly suggestion that the TRC makes when it reports that Indigenous Peoples “must” engage “mutual respect and recognition” in order for reconciliation to work.

The TRC itself was expressly forbidden, by mandate, to engage in “fault finding” as it heard evidence of gross, mass crimes. The mandate forbade Commissioners to subpoena witnesses, to form criminal charges, and even to record the names of perpetrators proven out in testimonies.

Come a little further away from the mass media noise, and consider. Investigation of the school graveyards was Call to Action numbers 75 and 76. A Commission with no mandate to “find fault” has made itself the authority on proceedings to uncover the victims of first and second degree murder.

            Is it likely that “reconciliation” proceed while “justice” is denied?

The biggest hoax since the Trojan Horse

But we have to stop talking about reconciliation as if it means anything other than what the judges said it does: making Indigenous Peoples conform to the Canadian way of doing things, at least to the point where there’s no competition or conflict for the Canadians.

            This is also the “reconciliation” of the TRC, and the apologies. It’s procedural; it’s “getting over it;” it’s saying “sorry” to make the injured party say, “it’s okay,” and justifying business as usual, as if it has been consented to in the receipt of the apology.

The “reconciliation” of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s tear-stained camera opps – the imaginary world where Canadians are moved by understanding the harm they have caused, and actually change everything – is a Public Relations campaign. Not only in Canada but all over the world.

            The policy is the policy, and it has nothing to do with contrition. Nothing to do with balancing the scales; nothing about Indigenous self-determination, jurisdiction, and title; nothing like reparations or cooperating with an independent tribunal. Nothing about exposing a Supreme Court that is prima facie guilty of judicial inactivity in the presence of genocide, and clearly abetting it.

The Public Relations “reconciliation” bears no resemblance to the policy. The policy constructs a funnel of release and indemnification of “the provinces, Canada, and anyone else” for any and all past harms. It requires that “this is the final settlement of Aboriginal claims.”

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Thank you very much for reading. Today’s post has been interrupted by a computer crash, so it may be improved a little once that’s resolved!

Takem i nsnukw’nukw’a.

Check back for Part 4 – Enforcement of Reconciliation, tomorrow; and Part 5 – Reconciliation means Municipalization, Friday.

[i] The Reconciliation Manifesto, Arthur Manuel, 2017.