Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Aboriginal Peoples
Issue 17 - Evidence - February 15, 2017
OTTAWA, Wednesday, February 15, 2017
The Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples met this day at 6:47 p.m. to study the new relationship between Canada and First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
Senator Lillian Eva Dyck (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good evening. I would like to welcome all honourable senators and members of the public who are watching this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples either here in the room or listening via the Web.
I would like to acknowledge for the sake of reconciliation that we are meeting on the traditional lands of the Algonquin peoples.
My name is Lillian Dyck from Saskatchewan, and I have the honour and privilege of chairing this committee. I will now invite my fellow senators to introduce themselves starting on my left.
Senator McPhedran: Marilou McPhedran, senator from Manitoba.
Senator Watt: Charlie Watt, Nunavik.
Senator Sinclair: Murray Sinclair, Manitoba.
[Translation]
Senator Mégie: Marie-Françoise Mégie, senator from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Pate: Kim Pate, Ontario.
Senator Boniface: Gwen Boniface, Ontario.
The Chair: Thank you, senators.
Today, we continue our study on what a new relationship between the Government of Canada and First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples of Canada might look like. We continue looking at the history of what has been studied and discussed on this topic. Today it is our great pleasure to welcome Professor David Newhouse from Trent University, which I believe is the most long-standing indigenous studies department in the country.
Professor Newhouse, I understand you have an opening statement which will then be followed by questions from senators.
I want to thank you, Professor Newhouse. I know you had teaching commitments today and you've gone out of your way to appear via video conference. You have the floor, professor.
David Newhouse, Professor, Trent University, as an individual: Thank you very much, Senator Dyck.
I want to thank you for inviting me to your group to speak and to talk a bit about my experience and the research that I have undertaken. It's quite a pleasure to be here and to try to make a small contribution to improving the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous people and also trying to improve Canada.
I've taught at Trent for 25 years. I've been Chair of the Department of Aboriginal studies for 25 years. I taught at the undergrad level, our first year course, for the last 15 years. I teach a senior level course on reconciliation and a graduate course as well.
When I received the invitation, I wasn't quite sure what to say or how to start because it's such a broad topic. An incredible amount has been written on the relationship, and I was tempted just to say look at the work of the royal commission and at all of the studies before. I decided it would be hard to say something different. So I decided what I was going to do was talk about what I've been doing and finding as I begin to talk about reconciliation because I think that's the topic on which we are beginning to see in indigenous and non-indigenous relationships.
Over the past year, I have been speaking about reconciliation to a wide variety of audiences across the country and also teaching about reconciliation to fourth-year students and graduate students. That's where I wanted to start to frame my comments.
I also want to acknowledge that in my talks and in my discussions with people, I've found at this time in history there is an enormous amount of goodwill to try to improve the situation. I haven't found many people who are not interested in trying to improve things or not interested in trying to improve relationships. I think that in the work of Michael Adams from Environics and in his studies on public attitudes toward Aboriginal people begin to show that there is the beginning of a change in the way in which non-indigenous Canadians see this as well.
As I go across the country, I'm getting fewer and fewer questions about reasons for life circumstances of indigenous people and fewer questions about what happened. There are more people, I think, that know the broad outline of the history and know that Canada has treated indigenous people very badly.
The challenge for most people is trying to find a way to action: What can I do? How do I get involved? How can I help? This has been the most persistent question that I have been asked as I talk to academics, students, the public service, business people and also the community people. People want to help but don't know how to find their way into the dialogue and into a place of action. I think that is an important question. If people don't know how to help or do not know how to get involved, then they're not going to become involved, and that makes changing the relationship extremely difficult as well.
I sent you a copy of a PowerPoint presentation that I've been using on how to start dialogue. I always frame my comments, when I'm speaking to various groups, as an invitation to dialogue and an invitation to action. I try to give a very short history about the relationship that I characterize as "the long assault.'' What I've found in talking to business people and to community people, if I talk about colonialization, it stops the conversation cold. People simply do not believe that Canada has a history of colonialization. So I needed to find a way to bring people into the conversation and begin to help them to become receptive to what needs to be done.
So that's why I talked about the idea of the long assault. It's an idea that I think most people can relate to and one knows that it has long-lasting consequences. One can then begin to see exactly what's happened and begin to see the lengthy time it's going to take to improve indigenous communities and also the relationship. After an assault, it takes a fair amount of time to restore relationships.
I also wanted to show in my presentation that there is at this point in Canadian history a convergence between an indigenous agenda and a federal agenda around the issue of reconciliation and also to say that if we stand in front of each other and we see each other as problems, then it becomes a challenge in order to find a solution to the problem of living well together.
I don't believe that we can find a way to solve this by viewing each other's problems. What I lay out there is that Canada sees Indians through the lens of problems and indigenous leaders see Canada through the lens of what I call "White Canada.'' So we're sitting there looking at each other and thinking to each other as [inaudible] and I'm not sure that's the best way to try to build a good relationship.
I decided that what I needed to do as an academic is to begin to try to change the dialogue. I made a very small contribution to change the dialogue in the way in which we begin to see each other while hidden in plain sight that Aboriginal contributions to Canada —
The Chair: Professor Newhouse, sorry to interrupt you, but the interpreters are having difficulties translating because you are speaking a little quickly. If you wouldn't mind slowing down just a little, thank you very much for that.
Mr. Newhouse: Okay.
What I've been doing — contribution toward — in which we see each other. If we continue to see — then the probability of coming up — how we're going to live together on this continent as well.
The Chair: Professor Newhouse, sorry. We're having difficulty with the connection. Your voice was breaking up. If we can pause just for a moment, the clerk has gone to speak to the IT people and we'll clear that up.
The committee suspended.
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The committee resumed.
The Chair: Professor Newhouse, I believe you can continue and we'll see how it goes. Thank you.
Mr. Newhouse: Sometimes the connections aren't great in the evening as many people are surfing.
The point I was trying to make is that part of reconciliation is changing the way in which we see each other. We have to begin to see each other differently, I think, if we're going to begin to find a way to live together.
Most of the time, Canadians see us as a problem and don't see all of the vibrancy, all of the work that is under way within indigenous communities to try to improve our communities. What I have been trying to do is bring that to the forefront and make people aware, because what I found in my own experience is that if I show people and invite them to the table, then they come and they become involved. I think that's quite important.
I was surprised by the work that we did with Michael Adams on the urban Aboriginal peoples study in 2011, which to me revealed an underlying optimism about the relationship. We surveyed 2,600 Aboriginal people who live in cities. They said that the city was home, that they were not going to move back to rural communities. More importantly, they said that they believed that they could improve their lives in the city and could undertake action in their communities to improve their lives.
We found that the level of civic engagement by indigenous people in the city was higher than that of non-indigenous people. Indigenous people were actually working hard to build vibrant communities in cities. All of that is invisible because mostly we see the poverty. We only see what the newspapers tell us and all of this activity is hidden. All of the contributions that we made are hidden.
By focusing exclusively on problems, I think that we hinder our ability to work together. That's why I believe it's important to begin the change.
I also think it's important that we begin to think about the relationship at two levels: one at the nation-to-nation level, which is the work of politicians, and one at the individual level or community level by, which is the place where most people [inaudible].
We need to pay attention to our relationship with our neighbours, our classmates and our businesses within a community.
Sometimes in our research and in our dialogues, we forget. We spend all our time focusing on the political relationship and not enough time focusing upon the community and the [inaudible] relationships.
In thinking about how we begin to move forward and how we begin to invite people to reconciliation, how we get them to begin to take some action and find a place for themselves in reconciliation, I tried to think about reconciliation through four different elements. If you look at slide 19, you'll see a chart I developed that talks about reconciliation as consisting of at least four elements.
One is what I call closing the gap, or equity, and that is improving the life circumstances of indigenous peoples as individuals and as collectivities.
The second is improving the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians. That's the harmony or race relation area.
Third is the recognition and resurgence, which is recognition of the indigenous rights, Aboriginal rights, of constitutions. That's also where Aboriginal activist lawyers' work as well.
The last one is the critical conversation about how Canada incorporates indigenous peoples into politics. A good example of this is the way in which the royal commission saw Canada as not comprising just provinces and territories but also Aboriginal nations, and Aboriginal nations as headed by Aboriginal governments, and incorporating Aboriginal governments as the third order of government. So there is a conversation to be had about country and its governance by itself.
Part of changing the view is recognizing that indigenous people come to the table with a set of well-developed ideas and plans for action for developing their own communities and their nations.
We held an RCAP forum in Winnipeg to recognize the twentieth anniversary of RCAP, and we invited a variety of people to come. We had about 160 people. The speaker who had the most impact was Natan Obed, President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and he made a very strong point that as indigenous people, we have our own ideas about relationships. We have our own ideas about [inaudible] relationship and ideas about how we ought to structure it. And don't forget that. I think that's quite important for policy-makers and for business people to understand. Often what I find is that people from outside our communities tend to forget that we have been thinking about it for a long time.
The other message that came through very strongly from the RCAP forum was that we need to change the focus of our work. We need to change our focus to that of developing institutions as opposed to just funding governments programs, either the federal government or the provincial government.
If we're going to make some headway in improving Canada, improving the quality of life for indigenous people, we need to develop two types of institutions, the first one focused upon the institutions of governance to help us to manage the relationship within Canada on a nation-to-nation basis. An example of this is a new federal, provincial, territorial and indigenous working group. That focuses upon the large picture of a [inaudible].
The second is one we also need to pay attention to is local institutions. It is things like schools and school boards, things that give people control over local schools and help them develop schools to meet their own needs, things to help their child welfare organizations and businesses, all of the institutions of everyday life, and to complete the work the royal commission called for in its 20-year-old report. The royal commission said that the indigenous community was institutionally incomplete. It focused largely on the urban Aboriginal community, but I think that's true for the indigenous community writ large as well.
So I think it's time to shift our focus from just programs to creating institutions. That's where we'll have the greatest impact in the change in the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous people. Then institutions can bring indigenous nations into the everyday business of Canadian life and government life so that they can begin to work together.
I will stop there. I would be pleased to answer your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Professor Newhouse.
Our technicians cut the video so that the audio feed we are receiving from you is better. I don't know if you can see us now.
Mr. Newhouse: I can't see you now, but that's fine.
The Chair: I want to indicate that we've had a number of other senators join us, and I would ask that they introduce themselves.
Senator Raine: Senator Nancy Greene Raine from British Columbia.
Senator Martin: Senator Yonah Martin from B.C.
Senator Enverga: Senator Tobias Enverga from Ontario.
Senator Beyak: Senator Lynn Beyak from Ontario.
Senator Oh: Victor Oh from Ontario.
The Chair: I'll start out with one quick question, Professor Newhouse.
You made some very interesting comments about the RCAP forum in Winnipeg. Was that last year? Do you know if a summary report of what was discussed at that forum is available on the Web or elsewhere?
Mr. Newhouse: The forum was in November 2016. We're just now in the process of preparing a report on it. We expect to have it out at the end of March, early April.
The Chair: The one point that you did make very clear from that meeting was that you thought it was critically important that in the future we look to build institutions rather than programs. Programming, we could say, comes mainly from Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, whereas institutions would be more free-standing, indigenous controlled? Is that how you see these institutions?
Mr. Newhouse: Yes. An example of an institution is a community health care organization, an indigenous health board, a school board or a school. It's important for these things to be under indigenous control but also connected to mainstream organizations. We have to live together. We have to find a way of working together. That's one type of institution.
It is also important that we build institutions at the municipal level that connect First Nations communities with local planning processes. I did a study for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 20 years ago on the economy of Six Nations. We found that there were no connections between the Six Nations' economy and the local/ regional governments and local planning councils and planning committees. There were no connections there whatsoever. So when they were planning, they saw Six Nations primarily as a market for their products. They didn't see this large, vibrant economy in their midst. It was pumping at that point about $190 million back into the local economy.
Senator Enverga: I was looking actually at your list. How will we know when we have reconciled? It's a wide variety of things that we should accomplish. From this end, where do you put self-sufficiency or self-determination? Is it supposed to be part of this reconciliation part?
Mr. Newhouse: I think it is an essential part of it. In order to build self-sufficiency, you need resources, and in order to manage those resources and use them well you need institutions. You also need businesses. You also need a series of social institutions that help people to participate, to ensure they are in good health, well-educated, housed and that they have a positive regard for themselves in order to practice their culture and languages and participate as an indigenous person in society. Self-sufficiency does not just have an economic dimension; it also has a social dimension.
Senator Enverga: You mentioned four reconciliation documents. It looks like there is an ongoing process right now. Do you think we are on the right track? Do you think the way we are going we will be able to achieve our goals?
Mr. Newhouse: Do you want my honest answer?
Senator Enverga: Yes, please.
Mr. Newhouse: I teach business management as well, and the challenge is that we are not managing the process. We are not doing much in order to help us achieve the goals that we set aside.
I want to turn your attention to a slide called "Managing the Process?'' Without managing the process, the probability of us achieving what we would like in reconciliation is going to be virtually nil.
I have been teaching reconciliation for three years. I have been looking around to see what works and what increases the probability of success. The best that I found is a small paper that came out of the African Centre for Constructive Resolution of Disputes. It talks about reconciliation in Liberia. It defines reconciliation as a complex action that is long term and requires many actors as well. They said that one needs to do three things to be successful. This comes from Liberia's experience after a civil war. They said you need to build a critical mass of public support and political buy-in. The public needs to be onside. You need to take steps to build public support. You also need to take steps to ensure that the politicians buy in to the process.
Second, you need to ensure that the structures you set up in order to advance reconciliation are seen as legitimate.
Lastly, you need to have some coherent program that you are putting forward to advance reconciliation.
I look at this and ask myself, "Are we doing this as Canadians?'' We have the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. It has a mandate to monitor, to a large extent. But I keep asking myself who is dealing with the critical mass of public support. How are we building political buy-in? What is the government doing in order to build this critical mass? What are they doing to ensure that politicians are buying in across the country? What structures are being put in place in order to advance reconciliation and what's the reconciliation program? How will we do this?
We have 94 recommendations. That's a lot of recommendations. Only a certain number of them are within the federal purview. So what's our reconciliation program beyond the 94 recommendations?
So looking at this from the perspective of managing the process to achieve a result, I ask myself, "Are these things in place?'' I would have to say most of them probably are not, and that makes me somewhat pessimistic of what we can achieve with reconciliation.
The Chair: I wonder, professor, if you could point us to where we might find this reference. Can you send us the information or email us the information so that we can track down this report?
Mr. Newhouse: Okay, I will do that.
Senator Sinclair: In order for us to move forward to talk about a new relationship at this committee level, it seems to me we need to start thinking about what kind of structural changes we need to identify and address. So let's begin with the question of the Indian Act. What are your thoughts with regard to the nature of any legislative structure that needs to be put in place in order to renew or revive or establish a better relationship between indigenous people and Canada?
Mr. Newhouse: First of all, you can't do it on the back of the Indian Act. The premises of the Indian Act are in colonization. It is an act from 1876, and you are asking it to do work in 2017 that it was not intended to do. It has been jerry-rigged and changed. People have tried to change it over the years.
What one has to do is begin to think about a new set of legislation. I don't think there is any choice about that. The challenge is how does one transition from the Indian Act into that new set of legislation? But I think it's fundamentally important to find a way to transition out of the Indian Act.
The royal commission talked about a path for First Nations, and it began to talk about a new relationship and about Aboriginal and fiscal relations. That's one model for beginning to think about it.
Senator Sinclair: The intent of my question was to see if you could help us frame the conversation that we have to have about what kind of legislation we need in the future, if any. I'm thinking not only about legislation concerning First Nations people but also legislation, if we need it, for Inuit and Metis that helps to define the relationship. Could you comment on what kind of legislation are we talking about?
Mr. Newhouse: All three groups — First Nations, Inuit and Metis — are different. I think one legislative solution is not going to work. There are different realities as well.
For First Nations communities, one has the reality of reserves and communities that have been in place, as a result of Indian Act, for over 100 years, and people feel very strongly about those. One then needs to think about how one ensures that that land is protected and is able to be used in a productive fashion. People then begin to build relationships with those around them.
I was watching very closely what was happening with the Nisga'a as they came out of the Indian Act, came into the treaty, and now have begun to move into fee simple ownership of Nisga'a land and the conversation that they have there. That might be a way of thinking about it as a process of moving out, and set up the legislation so that it facilitates that process.
Senator Sinclair: In your presentation you talked about having done work with the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in the 1990s. Could you talk about the model for the relationship between indigenous and non- indigenous people that the royal commission recommended and tell us whether you think that's still a feasible model going forward?
Mr. Newhouse: The relationship that the royal commission advanced was the idea of an Aboriginal national relationship. They talked about the creation of Aboriginal nations in some form or another and proposed three different forms for that relationship to take place.
Some colleagues and I are just beginning to look at what is happening on the ground as a result of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. It is very early, but what we are beginning to find is that people have thought about these three models and we are beginning to see them emerge across the country. Nunavut is an example of government beginning to see some form of relationship around communities of interest and around education, and we are beginning to see Aboriginal governments emerge in areas around land claims and treaties. All three models of relationship are beginning to emerge.
The question, to a large extent, is the recognition of government. It's good for all these things to occur, but while they give people some degree of self-control, self-determination and self-government, they are not yet fully recognized in the governing structure of Canada. That's the next step that one needs to go to.
Senator Sinclair: Let's talk about that issue for a moment. Could you share with us your thoughts about what indigenous people have to do in order to put the relationship on a proper footing?
Mr. Newhouse: We have to do a variety of things. We have to do our own thinking about how we see the relationship, how we see these institutions and how we see them working. We need to do that policy work. We need to begin to talk to municipal, provincial and territorial government leaders about our ideas. We have to begin to do our homework about what we see as the way Aboriginal governments would fit into this and to demonstrate that they are, indeed, working for it as well.
We also have to work to begin to talk in the language of experimentation and the language of trial and error. Governments work in trying things, seeing if they work and then trying them again.
One of the issues that has hindered us is we always expect everything to work perfectly, not allowing ourselves to make mistakes. Western governments didn't develop overnight. We have to begin to think about the process of relationship development, nation development, government development, and characterize it and present it as a process as opposed to an end point. If we characterize it as a process, we allow ourselves to try different things, and it begins to unfreeze and move us away from the expectation that things will be perfect.
Senator Sinclair: We may come back to that question of structure and change in a minute, but I wonder if you might share with us your thoughts about the importance of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and what you think this committee should say about its utility in helping to define the relationship in the future
Mr. Newhouse: I think the United Nations declaration is foundational. I don't think that you can have a conversation without referring to it, without building upon it. It sets the framework for talking about the relationship.
Senator Sinclair: How do you see that document becoming part of the dialogue on relationship in Canada? Do you see it as a document that needs to be legislatively enacted, or is it a guideline for discussion? How do you propose that it be referenced in the future?
Mr. Newhouse: This is the real challenge. It's a large document that I think is going to take an incredible amount of discussion about how it works.
I'm of two minds on this. One says that what we ought to do is just adopt it holus-bolus and go forward, but I'm not sure that is practical. I think we should use it more as a guideline and then say that this is how Canada is interpreting this principle. At this stage, I see it as a guide for interpretation, legislation and action by government.
Senator Sinclair: I want to talk a bit about treaties. Given your answer to my first question concerning the role of legislation and defining the relationship going forward and that in your view it would be difficult to legislate a relationship for all three indigenous groups in this country, I wonder if you might talk a bit about whether you see treaties and the treaty-making process as an important vehicle for the future definition of the relationship between Canada and indigenous groups and between indigenous groups.
Mr. Newhouse: We have a long history of treaty making, both with ourselves and also with Canada. It's part of our tradition and our political culture. We spent a great deal of time ensuring that Canadians recognized the treaties, and I think we are at the point right now where there is some recognition.
So I would not want to see us jettison all that and go down a different path. I would say that one needs to begin to build more treaties and triple the ones that we already have in a way that they can use to build nations and to improve indigenous self-preservation and self-government. We're too far down the road to turn back and say that our treaties don't work anymore, that they're not useful anymore. They're part of the political culture and therefore part of the way that we are beginning to do things.
Senator Sinclair: Thank you, professor.
Senator Raine: Thank you very much. I really appreciate your depth of knowledge on this subject. It's amazing.
I'm from British Columbia, and as you know, our province doesn't have very many treaties. Treaty-making is kind of occupying everybody's mind at this point. When we look at First Nations in British Columbia, they're often really small communities that, a long time ago, were part of a bigger group. I'm wondering if there's any value in re- establishing the original cultural and linguistic groups into organizations. Is that happening and is that part of the way forward?
If you have a First Nation that's very small and remote, the chance of them ever being able to form a strong governance system is probably pretty tough. But collectively, together, they should be able to re-establish their culture and really draw on their collective heritage.
I'd like you to comment on how it was at contact or even before, if you like, and how it is today. Is this something that we should be looking at in terms of establishing a new relationship going forward?
Mr. Newhouse: Even the royal commission would tackle this problem by saying that it was important for smaller groups to come together. What emerged out of the process of conversation, dialogue, discussion and debate would be 6 to 80 Aboriginal nations that would be larger than individual First Nations today. So there is a recognition that that needs to happen.
I think the challenge is how to begin to get people to do it voluntarily. I was in Indian and Northern Affairs in the 1980s and the Treasury Board decided that Indian bands were too small and they wanted to increase them. They suggested putting them together in order to get larger units that were more efficient from an administrative point of view.
That efficiency is an important value, but one doesn't get efficiency through a process of forcing people to become more efficient. We have at least some structures — tribal councils and strategic alliances — that we can encourage to come together and become more formal political bodies and formal nations.
When we're talking about the creation of Aboriginal nations, and as we know, the process of nation building is turbulent; it requires enormous amount of discussion, debate and leadership.
Senator Raine: There are some examples of how nations came together. If you look at the Nisga'a Nation in British Columbia, they came together over their land rights, and they really did come together.
There are also good examples in the educational field. In British Columbia, we have the First Nations Education Steering Committee. In the Maritimes, of course, they have Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey, and they have really come together over linguistic and cultural educational programs. Is that something we should be encouraging in other parts of the country?
Mr. Newhouse: I'm all for encouraging people to work together in larger groups, because I think that's the way in which one begins to bring a broad range of ideas and begins to build political capital and political clout.
Senator Raine: The First Nations Land Management Act has a land management regime and all First Nations can opt in. That is a way for them, if you like, to opt out of some of the Indian Act dictates. There's also the First Nations Financial Authority and the First Nations Oil and Gas and Moneys Management Act. So as you mentioned earlier, government structures are starting to form. Is this part of what we need going forward? Is there any way it can be accelerated?
Mr. Newhouse: For our part, the way forward, I think they are focused upon particular issues, like oil and gas, education and health. In one sense that is the third approach that the royal commission talked about, the interest of government.
I think one has to be very careful because one then begins to run into the developed Aboriginal nations. We want to ensure that we don't do things that are not going to help Aboriginal nations develop as nations.
Senator Raine: I didn't quite understand that. Could you explain that a little further for me?
Mr. Newhouse: When you begin to develop, let's say, an organization around oil and gas or around health, those are places where people come together and they become centres of power. At the same time, we're trying to build Aboriginal nations, and it's nations that participate in those other institutions, in oil and gas and First Nations' management of lands. If one is not careful, one begins to create a conflict between the two. We need to make sure that what we're doing ensures the primacy of Aboriginal nations. That's where political authority comes from.
Senator Raine: In actuality, it comes from the people.
Mr. Newhouse: Yes.
Senator Raine: Right now, we often have conflicting views between grassroots indigenous people and their political structures. We don't always hear the same messages.
Mr. Newhouse: In my view, that's a problem of politics.
Senator Raine: Yes. We live in a world of politics, but as you rightly put in your paper, public policy cannot get ahead of public opinion. Sometimes public opinion is not reflective of indigenous public opinion; it's more the greater public opinion.
Mr. Newhouse: Yes.
The Chair: Professor Newhouse, I'd like to follow up on Senator Raine's last line of questioning. I'm interested in your views on the role of what could be called more grassroots, youth-led organizations as opposed to our typical political organizations, such as the Assembly of First Nations or the Métis Nation, and so on. There certainly are a number of youth-led organizations, such as Idle No More.
What kind of role do you see for these youth-led organizations? They have a very strong membership, are very well organized and are asking for change. So how do you see them participating in what could be called a new relationship or a reconciliation process?
Mr. Newhouse: First of all, I see them as essential to building a new relationship. To a large extent, youths are going to be the ones to take over the building of the relationship from us. Encourage them to become involved in building their organizations; help them build their leadership skills; help them develop their ideas; and help them get both a formal Canadian education and also an education in indigenous knowledge, indigenous culture and their own cultural traditions and heritage. I think that is extremely important.
I also see them as a source of a new set of ideas, because they come to the table with fresh eyes. To some extent, they also serve as people who push us. Those of us who are older tend to see the world in a particular fashion. One of the things I like about university teaching is that one is exposed constantly to young people with their ideas.
I'm very much in support of trying to find new ways in which we support young people to become leaders and to become educated so that they can bring their own ideas together. We teach them how to work together, how to lobby, how to build political capital and how to influence.
I like the idea that has emerged in our communities of building youth councils that are part of our everyday business and including them as political actors in a collective sense.
The Chair: You were saying that you think it's necessary for us, the government, to help the youth and to support them to become leaders. How would you see that being played out in practical terms? What do you mean by that? Should there be programs available, federal programs, money given to individual indigenous communities targeted towards this? How do you see this happening?
Mr. Newhouse: Like I said, in a number of ways. One is through formal education, encouraging people to become educated. That's extremely important.
Natan Obed has a degree from, I believe, Brown University. He is very knowledgeable of his own language and culture and traditions. So he knows how to bring to the table ideas from his own cultural background and ideas from his background as a sociologist. So I think that's one part of the process.
The second part is one that we haven't paid much attention to, and that is mentorship, creating mentorship programs in which students, young people, can work with us, work inside our organizations and learn how things work. We can help them to build some of those leadership skills. There's nothing like practical on-the-ground learning to help people to become strong leaders. I think that's extremely important.
Thirdly, we can also extend that mentorship to our youth to work in mainstream organizations so that they learn how these organizations work and how to work with others and some of the challenges of working with people who don't always agree with them.
I am quite mindful of what my lawyer colleague says: You've got to understand the argument of your adversary. Certainly these aren't adversaries, but you have to understand the argument of others in order to work effectively with them and to achieve some of your own results.
Senator Martin: Professor, I'm going to pick up from the chair's questioning regarding the youth and ways to empower and support them.
Last week's witnesses, professors from Victoria, talked about various activities and movements initiated by youth across the country. They felt that if there was a coordination of these activities — not the activities themselves but just of the youth and the youth leadership — that that would be a very helpful support to the various youth that are engaging in these activities. I remember wondering who would be able to do such coordination.
In your slide on managing the process, one of the challenges is to prioritize the coherence and coordination of such activities through a designed program. Are there entities within the indigenous groups that would do such coordination?
When it comes to youth and education, it's provincially administered. I know there are some really good education programs, but for the indigenous communities, how would such coordination and coherence take place? Which groups or bodies would be best positioned to really work on such coordination? I think that's a very important effort, and it is a challenge in a country of our size, with so many different groups and activities at play.
Mr. Newhouse: I'm partial to friendship centres. I've been involved with friendship centres for 40 years. I've seen what they can do and the impact on our communities. An organization that has a service focus like friendship centres does this very effectively. Most of the friendship centres now have youth programs and youth leadership programs. They bring together elders, educators, healers and a wide variety of people.
I think friendship centres could serve as an organization that could coordinate this. The challenge is trying to find a way for them to work more effectively both on reserve and in rural communities.
Senator Martin: I agree with you that they would be very effective.
Do they have the capacity at this time to take on such a coordinating role? What would be required to increase capacity? Obviously there's funding, but do they have the support from the indigenous community groups? Are they seen as a leading organization to play such a role and to deliver the kinds of projects and services that would facilitate the goals and aims we're talking about?
Mr. Newhouse: All the friendship centres that I'm aware of have done an excellent job of building relationships and beginning to bring both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples and communities together. As long as the focus is on that service, the development of youth, and they're not seen as a threat in the process, I think then they can do this.
Most of them also have capacity, but I think it would require at least some support for leadership and development programs. Most of the funding for centres comes through social programs and is focused on social problems.
Senator Martin: Are there enough of them across Canada that they could play such a role? Are there other partners that could work with the friendship centres in places where they may not be available?
Mr. Newhouse: There are 118 centres and so they are available in most urban centres right across the country, both small and large.
Senator McPhedran: Professor, thank you very much for the presentation and for the thoughtful answers. I'm building somewhat on the question that Senator Dyck asked, but I'd like to turn our minds to indigenous Aboriginal women.
Many of the community-based organizations are led by women, and increasingly the chiefs are women, and there are strong organizations that are certainly led by indigenous women and they focus very much on issues affecting women and to a large extent often their families.
I was involved in litigation in 1991, when the Native Women's Association of Canada was excluded from the table in discussions at the time of the Charlottetown Accord. I see a similar pattern emerging, where at the present time the Prime Minister has indicated that the groups that will be consulted at the table are all male-led organizations, the national organizations for First Nations, Inuit and Metis. There doesn't appear to be room for the kind of groups we've been discussing: youth-led groups, women-led groups and community-based groups.
Do you have any thoughts on that for a model? Do we need greater inclusion in this process?
Mr. Newhouse: I think it might be useful to remind the Prime Minister that it is 2017, that women make up 50 per cent of the population or a little more, and that the time for exclusion is over. Eighty per cent of our indigenous students at Trent are women, and women are in leadership positions in all of the organizations in Peterborough. The executive director of the health organization is a woman. The executive director of the friendship centre is a woman. Women are extremely important and influential leaders within our communities. We have to at least continue to push to ensure that women are not excluded when women's organizations are not included. I think we can build upon the Prime Minister's view when he was asked about the makeup of his cabinet and why it is 50 per cent women. Pushing in that way will get some results as well.
I like the way in which structurally we have begun to deal with the diversity within our communities by having youth councils and elder councils and to begin in some ways to build women into the political process as collectives. That's less, I think, than elders and youth, but at least some discussion has occurred about that.
Certainly we can't move forward and develop without having women involved and women as leaders.
Senator McPhedran: Professor, I wonder if we could just go further into a possible scenario where, as happened with the Charlottetown Accord, the government stayed rigid and the Aboriginal organizations stayed rigid, and women were locked out of the process, essentially.
If we were to face a similar rigid scenario, do you have any thoughts on ways in which within the indigenous communities in the country that there could be some greater flexibility by creating more porous boundaries to see greater inclusion of youth and women in this more formal process of trying to build a nation-to-nation relationship?
Mr. Newhouse: I think we go back and begin to talk about the role of women and youth in our own traditions. We talk about the way in which indigenous communities have seen women, the role of women within our own political communities in a traditional sense, and we begin then to advance those ideas.
If that doesn't produce much change, then one begins to organize. I don't see any other choice but to begin to organize and use the existing organizations to speak out very strongly and loudly about the inconsistency of the inclusion of women and youth in 2017.
Senator McPhedran: Would I be correct in understanding that implicit in how you answered was that there would be a gender alliance on this and that some men would also come forward with that position?
Mr. Newhouse: Yes, I would think so.
Senator Watt: Thank you, professor. I'm going to try my best to see if I correctly understood your opening remarks. I missed many of the points you made because we are having problems with the sound.
First, I have a question that I would like to put to you. I, for one, know that I'm not First Nations; I'm an Inuk from the Arctic. If I remember correctly, the lead-up to the 1982 constitutional negotiations covered a lot of the areas that we are covering today. In regard to remarks that you made about land being held in fee simple, knowing my fellow Canadians or fellow Aboriginals, the First Nations are not quite ready to accept having land in fee simple.
Have you put some thought into what would be the alternative if we're going to get away from the fee simple concept? Another way of looking at it is recognizing the fact that the people we're dealing with are the original inhabitants of this land. Now they are in a predicament where they don't have the necessary power, jurisdiction and money to continue to enjoy what they have enjoyed in the past. What is your answer to this?
Mr. Newhouse: The way I think about this is through the issue of power. The federal government had an enormous amount of power and imposed a particular legal regime upon indigenous people. That regime of fee simple ownership of land has not been seen as consistent or as a way in which Indian lands can be protected and used collectively.
I like the approach that the Nisga'a have taken around this whole issue of who gets the title in the event of, say, a bankruptcy and the title reverts back to the Nisga'a before it reverts back to the Crown. One can then begin to define what one can see as a land management regime that is going to protect that. One approach is to change the underlying title to an Aboriginal group as opposed to having it revert to the Crown.
I haven't seen any studies that talk about what has happened with the Nisga'a as they adopted that approach. There were huge debates about it and I have seen some of them. There is still an underlying fear that we have to deal with, which is if we don't act collectively and are forced into fee simple, we will lose the land. That's not what people want to happen at all.
Senator Watt: If I understand you correctly, are you saying that we don't have a perfect model or concept at this point on how to deal with this properly. Is that right?
Mr. Newhouse: That's correct. We don't have a good way of dealing with this.
Senator Watt: My next question concerns the jurisdiction to two governing structures. One is a federal responsibility; the other is provincial. I know for a fact that the First Nations, my brothers, have indicated they don't want to have anything to do with matters under provincial jurisdiction but would like to remain under federal jurisdiction. What is your opinion?
Mr. Newhouse: It is not an issue that I've thought a great deal about. I do point out that First Nation leaders are now dealing quite extensively with the provinces, and the provinces are involved now in indigenous affairs in ways that were not contemplated in 1969. In 1969, Indian leaders — the term we used back then — resisted provincial involvement and resisted the federal desire to turn indigenous affairs over to the provinces and to vacate the jurisdiction. They said that they wanted to remain under federal jurisdiction as well. However, over the last 40 years, the provinces have become more and more involved in indigenous affairs. Now that they are involved, how do we structure that involvement?
I'm not a constitutional lawyer. I don't work in the legal area, so I haven't done much thinking about how one goes about structuring those relationships. I would point out that we've gone from a situation in which there was virtually no involvement in indigenous affairs by the provinces to where they are very heavily involved.
Senator Watt: I'm just sure I captured everything you had to say. Can you repeat the last part? I didn't understand.
Mr. Newhouse: We've gone from a situation in 1969 where the involvement in Indian Affairs, as it was said back then, was limited. Anything to do with Indians was seen to be under the jurisdiction of the federal government. We have evolved into a situation now in which virtually every province has a ministry of indigenous affairs and reconciliation and are heavily involved in indigenous affairs.
I don't know if that's the proper structure, but a lot of programs that involve indigenous education and health are under provincial jurisdiction. The service capacity is there.
Senator Watt: To take it a bit further along the lines of two levels of jurisdiction, we, as Inuit, have moved in the direction that you talked about earlier, where we need to start devoting some of our time to creating institutions for education, health, economic, housing, cultural and environmental issues. There are many different areas that we need to move into, and you talked about creating institutions so we could start to move ahead under our own control. That actually happened in Inuit society in Quebec, as you are probably aware, after James Bay. So we do have a school board under our control and the minister has no disallowing power. On top of that, we have an exemption on the language law. Those are achievements we made through negotiations.
I guess what you're talking about is that we have no choice but to get the provincial government involved if we are going to get ahead. Am I hearing you loudly on that?
Mr. Newhouse: In this day and age I would say that the involvement of the provinces is essential.
[Translation]
Senator Mégie: I want to go back to the youth issue. Friendship centres, mentoring and all those things are good. However, I'll extrapolate from another reality. In the Haitian community, the youth don't follow the advice provided much. They're given certain associations to manage, but they say they can't follow our lead, because they haven't had the same experience. For example, they didn't experience immigration. They were born in Canada. They didn't experience the dictatorship that their parents experienced. They tell us that they don't have the same values. So, they listen to us, but we need to let them do as they see fit.
Have you experienced the same situation with your youth, in friendship centres or in other instances?
[English]
Mr. Newhouse: I would say that it's beginning to — I can speak from my experience in teaching indigenous young people in university, and in listening and talking with them about their experiences. The students today were born probably 20 years ago, around 1996. For them the royal commission, all of the constitutional debates, all of the activism in the 1980s and the activism that came out of the white paper is all history to them. It's not part of their lived experience. So what is important to this group is understanding their own traditions, culture and language, finding a job and a way of making a good living today, and also making a contribution back to their communities.
They are operating from a very different set of experiences than those of us who are 50 and 60. Certainly there are going to be some differences and they are going to be doing things differently. Part of the challenge is helping them to understand what we came through and helping them to build a world that makes sense to them.
The elders who teach with us at Trent said that what we have to do is to help our youth live in the world they find ourselves in and help them live in that world using their own cultural ideas, traditions and customs.
I clearly recognize that there are going to be differences, and so that's the reality that I deal with on a daily basis in teaching young people.
What I've learned is to try to help them understand what we've gone through and the world they live in and help them think about how they are going to make a contribution, because they all want to make a contribution. They are not all just interested in jobs. They come to university because they are interested in making a contribution and in having their lives be meaningful.
The Chair: On behalf of the committee, I extend my thanks to you, Professor Newhouse, for appearing before the committee this evening, and for answering such a wide-ranging number of questions from the senators. We certainly have learned a lot from you, and that will contribute significantly to our study as we proceed over the next year or year and a half.
Thank you for your presentation.
(The committee adjourned.)