Denying the behavior that caused the problems

Page 5

When I first proposed a "media column" to this news publication, I saw something that would be part-media literacy and part-media watchdog. I hoped to concentrate on the literacy aspect but knew the watchdog function would be an occasional but necessary evil. This is one of those times.

It brings me to complaints about three newspaper columnists. Two have gone to press councils in British Columbia and Alberta. The other, I suppose, wasn't worth the bother.

I won't repeat the worst parts of these columns. Instead, I'll try to explain the positions and arguments.

Last June, journalist Ric Dolphin wrote a column for the Calgary Herald entitled, No simple solutions to Native problems.

"Wherever I travelled during my recent sweep across the West," Dolphin wrote, "there always seemed to be a place nearby where there were cars on blocks, paint peeling from the clapboard and a lot of people of working age who weren't.

"Many Canadians instantly recognize these nests of hopelessness as Indian reserves. They are a legacy of our well-meaning Victorian forbears who believed they were being humane when they gave the conquered tribes a place to call their own."

Despite "billions of dollars a year in aid," free food, housing, education, and health care, no taxes, hunting and fishing at will, special treatment by the courts, the schools and employers, Native peoples live in abject poverty and Third World conditions.

During this fact-finding tour across the West, it seemed the only people Dolphin actually discussed these "Native problems" with were non-Native people.

He sought perspective from a waitress in Winnipeg, who "worked to pay her tuition (something a Native student wouldn't need to do)."

He gained insight "from a "Chinese-Canadian friend... whose parents suffered a discrimination similar to that of their Native contemporaries, nonetheless managed to rise from dishwasher to multimillionaire restaurateur."

Dolphin didn't quite say "some of my best friends are...." But he came close.

The headline was wrong too. Dolphin obviously had in mind a "simple solution" to the Native problem all along. In fact, a final solution. Pay off Native peoples once and for all. Kick them off reserves. Force assimilation.

Now, flip the calendar to July 2002 and there's Elizabeth Nickson, a columnist for the National Post, strolling along the sun-drenched beach at Tsawwassen, a Coast Salish territory near Vancouver.

Nickson wrote that she was seeking enlightenment into last summer's B.C. Native issues referendum. But she was really there to pick a fight with "a Big House Speaker." She described this man, in words dripping with sarcasm and disrespect, as an "advocate with spiritual overtones" who speaks for his family, clan, or nation "for hire."

"Seymour, this morning, was speaking for the Indian Nations, all zillion of them."

Nickson makes clear that she's not interested in anything the man has to say. She's there to flaunt her middle-class values and propose her own solution to that pesky "Indian problem."

"The misery and poverty in Indian country is structural, endemic and increasing. Every policy that treats Aboriginals as wards of the state, as somehow special, serves only to increase dependence and weakness. The rhetoric is pure Ministry of Silly Walks. Our courts and government must normalize the status of Aboriginals so that they have the rights, privileges and responsibilities of all Canadians."

Last month, the Vancouver Province published a column by Susan Martinuk entitled, Natives need freedom from both government and band council. She runs through the familiar litany of statistics: high rates of AIDS, unemployment and suicide. Like Dolphin and Nickson, Martinuk asks why these continue despite billions of dollars in federal aid spent each year.

Same as the others, she concludes that dependence on federal handouts is at the root of this misery. The federal government may be trying to improve things by changing the ndian Act. But to Martinuk and the other columnists mentioned, it's too little, too late.

Her answer is the same as the others only she corrupts this magnificent word "freedom" into a disgusting consequence.

"It's time to bypass the councils and hand the money to individual Natives who then have the freedom to make individual choices to improve their lives. They don't need to be taken care of-they need the freedom to live their lives as non-Natives do."

To be blunt, all three columnists advocate a cultural mercy-killing. Pull the plug, they say, for "a miserable Native culture"-as if there were only one all-encompassing Aboriginal culture.

Collective rights? Treaty rights? Reserves?

Tear them up. Bulldoze them into golf courses.

Freedom? Normalizing relationships? Euphemisms for total extinguishment!

From both a human and a journalistic point of view, it's negligent, irresponsible and foolish to advocate what amounts to nothing less than cultural genocide, a crime against humanity.

It's lousy journalism to propose such brutish plans without considering the ultimately catastrophic social consequences that would result, not only for Aboriginal peoples but for all Canadians.

But they're not arguing for the betterment of Aboriginal peoples. No. They want to deny policies that their society designed to achieve the very result these columnists condemn-the removal of Aboriginal peoples from the land and its resources, the warehousing of these peoples to make way for settlement, the eventual elimination of these distinct Aboriginal civilizations.

The reaction from Indian country was predictable. "Racist," writes one person. "Bigoted," shouts another. More interesting are the reasoned rebuttals from people who do their best to educate, knowing the effort futile.

They might as well have been talking to the Borg.

The Borg is a species in a TV science fiction show. They swallow whole worlds, exploit their resources, absorb their technologies, destroying civilizaions in the process. The Borg turn the people of those worlds into mindless drones operating in assembly-line manner, erasing cultural differences, free will, and individuality.

"Resistance is futile. We will assimilate you."