Unrecognized Histories and Meaningful Contributions of First Nations, Métis and Inuit Peoples
Inquiry--Debate Adjourned
February 20, 2020
Rose pursuant to notice of December 10, 2019:
That he will call the attention of the Senate to the unrecognized histories and meaningful contributions of First Nations, Métis and Inuit.
He said: Honourable senators, I rise today to outline the purpose and goal of the proposed inquiry entitled Unrecognized Histories and Meaningful Contributions of First Nations, Métis and Inuit Peoples.
To begin, I acknowledge that we are on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin and Anishinaabe people.
Honourable colleagues, the nature of inquiries in this chamber provides senators the opportunity to rise and put on the public record any subject they feel requires attention. The purpose of this inquiry is to bring to light the history of First Nation, Métis and Inuit and how they contributed to the development of the nation we call Canada. I’m hopeful this speech will provide clarity and purpose and help you make a connection.
The importance of this inquiry is to highlight the many Indigenous people who are informed, driven and successful against the odds and despite playing on an uneven playing field. From this inquiry, Canadians will learn that there is a long history of numerous, successful, Indigenous-led initiatives in the realms of business and economic development, medicine, sport, music, law and education, all of which benefit not only Indigenous communities but also the wider social fabric of our nation.
The themes will include but will not be limited to links between Indigenous traditions; ceremonies; language; quality of life and the subjectivity of it; educational attainment; and the benefits of economic success including closing the gap on self-determination, self-reliance, self-sufficiency and wealth creation.
Further topics to explore will include or revolve around the origins of ongoing stereotypes about Indigenous people, continued exclusion from the national economic and financial systems, as well as the positive outcomes despite or in the face of these disadvantages. I believe these topics have been vastly ignored or overlooked and remain an undercurrent within the mainstream of deliberation, debates and discussion.
Honourable senators, not everyone experiences history in the same way, having different perspectives shaped by different walks of life. While one group is prosperous, others may be held back. When one group is optimistic about their future, others see nothing but hopelessness. When one group holds all the political power, other groups may feel repressed. When history records only one group’s truth, the experience of others is often left untold.
We know from the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, or RCAP, that there are varied ways settlers and Indigenous communities approach history. In Volume 1, Part One, Section 3, entitled, “Conceptions of History,” we are presented with observations that Indigenous history is traditionally presented orally and is approached in a nonlinear and non-static manner through narrative techniques that may portray events out of chronological order or present a story told within the main story to tell the moral of the story or use dynamic events versus static events to illustrate a transition taking place.
Further, history told by elders can be employed to portray lessons to the listeners, to share and teach cultural values and/or to validate relationships with the Creator, the wider physical and spiritual worlds.
The Indigenous presentation of history significantly contrasts with Western European views that portray history as a series of unalterable linear events with the purpose of conveying information as objective and factual.
That brings us to the need for this inquiry. Indigenous history has largely been lost or ignored through the government’s attempt to assimilate Indigenous peoples into a Western way of life. Indigenous peoples were, for all intents and purposes, expected to submit to Western European’s version of history, a history not written by them nor told by them, yet written for them with the sole purpose of dragging them into a future and a way of life that would not be their own.
The effects of assimilation were summarized by the Fifteenth Report of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples from the Forty-second Parliament, entitled, “How did we get here? A concise, unvarnished account of the history of the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and Canada.”
In this report, the committee stated:
Assimilation affected Indigenous groups differently depending on the region and their relationship with the Crown, although the effects of relocation and dispossession were especially devastating for all, given the importance of the land as a source of identity, spirituality, governance and sustenance. These policies and the loss of lands have contributed to a complex intergenerational legacy which continues to affect Indigenous communities today. This legacy has led to disparities in areas such as health and education, and the over-representation of Indigenous peoples in the child welfare and criminal justice system, among others.
Colleagues, reconciliation has been identified as the process required to begin to address many issues and, importantly, the negative outcomes of assimilation. Reconciliation has many definitions. In the context of the Indigenous and Crown relationship, it is the recognition of 100 years of forced removal of children and youth to residential schools with the goal of eliminating primarily First Nation cultures but Métis and Inuit cultures also got drawn in. The goal of reconciliation is to work together by building a mutually respectful relationship to ensure we share a prosperous future equally where no one is left behind.
To continue working toward reconciliation, we must examine, appreciate and understand the effects of the considerable diversity of historical perspectives that have resulted in multiple or varied realities, experiences and beliefs about Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the present. We must examine, appreciate and understand the lessons learned and move forward together.
Most reconciliation efforts to date have been to persuade the government to acknowledge its role in the human rights abuses Indigenous peoples have faced and systematically endured for generation after generation. The Calls to Action offered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 provide us with a guide. Among the Calls to Action were the repeated recommendations that Canadians become informed about the histories and legacies of residential schools, treaties, Indigenous law and Aboriginal-Crown relations.
Understanding the effects of forced removal from family and community, lost language and culture, in the name of progress or assimilation will require sustained and purposeful effort. This inquiry is meant to be a contribution to the collective efforts in working to answer the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Today, honourable senators, I will begin by addressing the subject of economic exclusion. The greatest challenge facing many Indigenous communities and businesses is having to look at opportunity from the outside. Too many Indigenous communities and people are still challenged by barriers that prevent them from participating — unique barriers, from a poor quality of life with little to no hope, to the stereotypical, to outright exclusion and no sense of belonging, and an unassuming demeanour stemming from generations of minding one’s station in life.
Those of us with a business background know business can best operate when a free market prevails, allowing competition to determine who is the most effective at delivering services and goods in the best, quickest and most economical way. Businesses must also grapple with other criteria including available labour, affordable real estate, negotiating the tax and regulatory environment, securing leading-edge information and communication technology, transportation links, research and innovation and so on.
Economic development is also a complex undertaking. It too requires a shared vision among stakeholders and, quite often, collaboration and commitment from three senior levels of government; advanced consultation with a broader community and planning and working with prescribed and fixed financial and social resources along with a need to be flexible and adjust to a variety of changing variables such as policies, politics and the aforementioned restraints of fixed resources.
When we apply the tenets of economic development and business to the early experiences of Indigenous people thriving in an unforgiving climate while competing against or cooperating with one another, then we can acknowledge that they were not foreign to mercantilism or socio-economic initiative.
The capacity to overcome the challenges and thrive in the physical and social climate for thousands of years, well before explorers and colonists came along and even then, engaged in trading with explorers, fighting alongside the British and the French and teaching survival in an unforgiving climate and terrain that most were ill-prepared to survive — colleagues, this historical period itself should be enough to disprove the myth that Indigenous people would somehow be incapable of participating in the mainstream.
This fallacy permeates today and serves as a barrier to advancing a broader economic agenda that would benefit all Canadians. The fallacy serves to justify the continued exclusion of Indigenous voices from decisions that directly affect their communities, families and livelihood, including self-determination, self-reliance, self-sufficiency and wealth creation.
The fur trade and fishing markets made European business quite wealthy here in Canada, relying almost entirely on the fishing, hunting and trapping expertise of First Nations, Métis and Inuit, not to mention relying on their survival skills and proficiency in navigating a rugged terrain, fluency in several languages and successful negotiation skills shaped by complex economic relationships among different cultures. These attributes would soon become a threat to settlers’ aspirations for dominion, land ownership and mercantilism.
The Hudson’s Bay Company received its charter from the British Crown in 1670, and for nearly two centuries, HBC and its competitors traded furs with Indigenous peoples in the interior of North America, establishing distinctive protocols for cementing commercial and diplomatic ties in the process. Early colonial governments reflected on this and began to shift their economic policy towards excluding Indigenous people to break apart complex and successful economic systems and did so often through social policy. When this failed, they applied force with the goal of creating an advantage for settlers and the Crown.
When the fur trade became less profitable and agriculture emerged as essential for the settlement of the West, along came the introduction of numbered treaties 1 and 2 in 1871.
Treaty-making was a means to facilitate the settlement of the West and, concurrently, assimilation of First Nations into a Euro-Canadian society, dragging treaty people along into a future and a way of life that would not be their own. To their dismay, First Nations leaders saw a treaty as a way to advocate and protect their traditional lands and livelihoods while securing assistance in transitioning to a new way of life.
Treaties 1 and 2 encapsulate these diverging aims, leaving a thriving legacy of unresolved issues due to the different understandings of First Nations and Euro-Canadian participants. If we study these treaties, these documents serve as non-competition agreements to the benefit of the Dominion and European settlers. They outline that Indigenous communities would receive compensation as a trade-off for their exclusion from the thriving economic markets of fishing, agriculture, hunting, farming, resource extraction and banking.
Senator Klyne, your time has expired. Are you asking for five more minutes?
If I may, please.
Is leave granted, honourable senators?
First Nations would be moved to lands reserved for them. However, for most bands these lands were remote and less fertile, impairing First Nations’ capacity and ability to participate in the economic growth of this nation. The non-competition aspect of this also resonates in the transcript of Treaty 1, when it is stated:
Till these lands are needed for use you will be free to hunt over them, and make all the use of them which you have made in the past. But when lands are needed to be tilled or occupied, you must not go on them any more.
Unexpectedly for the First Nations, these agreements were hard to live by but not enough to neutralize or dampen their fortitude and aspirations to pursue self-determination and self-reliance. When it became apparent that enfranchisement under the Gradual Civilization Act was not achieving the desired results, the government took its control one step further by implementing the Indian Act in 1876. Instead of a nation-to-nation relationship, as originally enshrined in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the treaty agreements, First Nations and Inuit were reclassified as wards of state, the same classification given by the government to prisoners and children.
Four years later, in 1880, efforts were stepped up with the 1880 amendment to the Indian Act, adding compulsory enfranchisement upon any member obtaining a degree or becoming a clergyman, meaning that a band member would have to give careful thought and consideration to choosing between acquiring an education or abandoning their rights enshrined in treaties.
The ultimate purpose of enfranchisement — loss of status rights and, hence, benefits — was to encourage assimilation and reduce the number of people that the federal government was financially responsible for. This failed, and the policy decisions across jurisdictions place the majority of Indigenous peoples at a disadvantage in developing their own businesses and in mobilizing and preparing to compete for quality employment in the mainstream economy.
My first substantial contribution to this inquiry will begin with my next speech, which will be timely, that I have titled: The Economic Contributions of Indigenous Peoples in the Development of Canada, Part One. It will examine the important role of economic independence, focusing on past policies and present realities. I expect to provide examples where, despite the odds, economic development initiative has enabled Indigenous communities and people to successfully pursue self-sufficiency, successfully participate in the mainstream economy and all the while protect, embrace and practise their traditions and ceremonies.
Colleagues, I invite each of you to share any information that intersects and provides insight about the unrecognized histories and contributions of Indigenous people of Canada.
Honourable senators, thank you for your interest in this inquiry and any valued contributions you may make to ensure these stories become known.