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Good primer for Aboriginal issues education

Author

Taynar Simpson, Windspeaker Contributor

Volume

19

Issue

8

Year

2001

Page 19

Nation to Nation: Aboriginal Sovereignty and the Future of Canada

Editors: Bird, Land and Macadam

Irwin Publishing

268 pages

$26.95 (sc)

Nation to Nation: Aboriginal Sovereignty and the Future of Canada is a compelling collection of work composed by several contemporary experts on Canadian Aboriginal issues. The book is designed for the reader who wants a snapshot of the current Aboriginal/government relations landscape and is the second edition of the 1990 original.

Nation to Nation takes both a micro and macro approach to presenting the Aboriginal reality in Canada. The book is written with an analytical perspective for the general public but, as co-editor Lorraine Land mentions, has been picked up for college and university courses. There is a balance of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal contributors.

Each of the 28 essays has a specific educational purpose, however, the concepts and foundations of the overall argument are continually overlapped to produce an entirely cohesive and readable text. The book is divided into four units.

The first unit, comprised of six essays, is an historical analysis of the federal government's use of its own legal documents to claim the vast majority of Canada. In this first unit the authors lay out how the newly arrived Europeans justified to themselves the taking or claiming of Terra Nullius (unoccupied) lands.

George Erasmus, who co-wrote the first essay, describes a process of broken treaties and broken promises through which sovereignty was never surrendered. The authors argue that the Indian Act is a tool used by the federal government to keep Indians submissive and is in fact one nation's successful attempt at legislating its own authority over another.

The second unit, "The Road Back to Sovereignty", consisting of seven essays, suggests a holistic approach to achieving the necessary objectives of Aboriginal self government. Self government is introduced logically with appropriate explanations and examples of progress to date. The underlying theme of this unit is to provide contrast to the popular public opinion that Aboriginal society and culture is ill prepared to weather self government and self-determination. On the topic of Aboriginal sovereignty, essayist Joanne Barnaby states, "we must be allowed to change, and to direct the evolutions of our cultures . . . Aboriginal rights are only fundamental human rights that have yet to be recognized for Aboriginal peoples."

The third unit, "Transition and Struggle: Community Stories" contains seven essays. Through a case study approach, this unit highlights the lengths to which the Canadian governments will go in order to maintain the status quo and to protect non-Aboriginal commercial interests. Several case studies are presented in this unit . Most are portrayed as historic and contemporary black spots on Canadian society. However the Nunavut and Nisga'a case studies provide moderate doses of hope and optimism.

Case studies include a Manitoba community relocation, low-level flying over Innu territory, the Gitxsan Wet'suwet'en struggle with the Delgamuukw case and the plight of the Lubicon Cree in Northern Alberta. Nisga'a leader Rod Robinson recounts how Nisga'a sovereignty was achieved within the Canadian structure. He claims that the Nisga'a were acutely aware that simply amending the Indian Act would accomplish little towards ending the vicious cycle of dependency, despair and poverty. The unit ends optimistically with an insightful essay on the creation of Nunavut. John Amagoalik portrays Nunavut as "a beacon of hope" that reconciliation between peoples can occur.

As the book mentions, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples showed that, in the long run, it would be more expensive to not implement its recommendations. The book reports that the federal government has done exactly what the RCAP said should not be done, and that is tinkering with the Indian Act and implementing only minor canges in programming ad policy.

The final unit, Becoming Partners, contains eight essays. These essays, written by non-Aboriginal authors, generally walk the reader through their journey of self-discovery, revelation and learning, usually paralleled with a specific Aboriginal rights project.

Murray Angus writes, "The prevailing attitude seemed to be that, while injustices had admittedly been done, they had been carried out by earlier generations. While we no doubt continued to benefit from the unequal deals, we could not be held personally responsible for them. Morally speaking then, our hands were clean." This unit contains several enlightened non-Aboriginal pearls of wisdom on Aboriginal issues such as: "The best thing non-Native Canadians can do is to challenge our own governments, ourselves, and each other to take responsibility for what is being done to Aboriginal peoples."

Nation to Nation balances the good with the bad, the hope with the despair, and the joy with the sorrow. One minute I was cheering the incredible progress of the issues, the next minute I was convinced that the issues had actually regressed since Confederation. The book left me with the notion that the primary cause of continuing collective Aboriginal grief was indeed the federal government of Canada. Through this book, I was able to conclude that despite the overwhelming will of Aboriginal people to be sovereign, Aboriginal sovereignty can only be achieved if it is also the will of the federal government.