Native leaders look back at evolution of politics

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When Canada celebrated its 100th birthday, politics to Helen Gladue simply

meant keeping harmony among her six school-age children on Alberta's Enoch reserve.

But two years later that changed when Pierre Trudeau's new government recommended Indians be assimilated into white society with the universally despised White Paper on Indian Policy.

In keeping with Trudeau's philosophy that no Canadians be accorded special rights, the paper recommended scrapping the Indian Act.

That made political activists out of Natives across Canada, including Gladue,

as they formed national groups to fight for their rights.

"They were ready to do away with Indians, turn reserves into municipalities -

no special status, no treaty rights," Gladue said from her home at a trailer park west of Edmonton near her reserve.

"I remember on the reserve people were just all riled up. They were scared."

Indians from across Alberta jammed into a hall on a reserve at Hobbema, recalled the Cree Indian who's now in her late 50's.

"Where are we going to take our children? Who's going to pay for their education, which is our treaty right," she asked.

"That was my first political speech in front of a crowd like that."

It wasn't her last. She has worked since with the Indian Association of Alberta

to win better rights for women and treaty Indians.

Gladue's transformation from housewife to Indian advocate symbolized how politically involved Canadian Natives have become since the centennial, just seven years after they were given the unconditional right to vote federally.

"There's been a tremendous amount of changes since that date, when the image

of the drunken Indian was always there," said Richard Davis, former vice-president for Treaty 8 in the Indian Association of Alberta.

After the White Paper, Natives harnessed their outrage to draft a "red paper" that reaffirmed their rights and identity.

Their condemnation forced then-Indian Affairs Minister Jean Chretien, now leader of the Liberal party, to withdraw the plan a year later. In a rare public admission that he was wrong, Trudeau conceded to a gathering of Indian chiefs in 1980 that the paper was ill-conceived.

The Native groups, including the Assembly of First Nations formed in 1970 to represent status Indians, now numbered at about 500,000, have grown. Members worked tirelessly to educate themselves in white policy-making and laws - and to teach whites about Native issues.

For centuries, Natives and their culture were considered backward and savage by European settlers. The purpose of the Indian Act, up to the mid-1900s, was to assimilate Natives into white society.

For more than 100 years, beginning in the 1830s, the federal government separated Native children from their families to attend Christian residential schools, where they were punished if they spoke their mother tongues.

And it wasn't until 1951 that a ban on traditional ceremonies, such as the potlatch on the north-west coast and the spiritual sundance on the Prairies, was dropped from the Indian Act.

Recognition of Native rights was as foreign to whites as burning sweetgress to cleanse the spirit.

"In 1969 if you mentioned aboriginal rights, they looked at you as if you were from outer space," said Ron George, president of the Native Council of Canada, which represents non-status Indians.

"And when you started progressing to land claims that was even more of a pipe-dream."

To Indians, their rights - to get an education, hunt and trap and govern themselves - are set out in treaties signed between their ancestors and the British Crown before and after Confederation, based on the Royal Proclamation Act of 1763.

To Ottawa, those rights are less specific, the 1982 Constitution recognizes them in Section 35, but they have not been legally defined.

It wasn't until Elijah Harper - standing with a sacred eagle feather in the Manitoba legislature - scuppered the Meech Lake accord in 1989 that Ottawa sat up and took notice.

But for George, Harpr was a "stroke of luck," and the stand-off between Mohawks and the military at Oka, Que., in 1990 was the real turning point for Natives.

The Lubicon Cree in northern Alberta, the James Bay Cree and Natives in B.C. logging territory have also resorted to blockades to force recognition of their land claims.

"The only time our issues were dealt with were when it was sensational," said George.

Roadblocks may have put Natives on the national news, but tough bargaining by lawyers won them a place at the latest constitutional reform talks, where the groundwork was laid for self-government.

Danny Christmas of the Union of Nova Scotia Indians in Sydney is heartened by the so-called third order of government. That will give Natives more control over their own destiny, as did the band councils people fought for in the 1970s, he said.

"The transfer of control from Indian Affairs to band councils had the most dramatic impact," for the Native movement, he said.

When he was a young boy on the Membertou reserve in Sydney, his grandfather, the chief, would have to travel to the largest nearby reserve to get permission for clothing or a food ration from one of the two white government Indian agents responsible for the five reserves.

"They were nickel-and-dime things they needed permission for," said the thoughtful 35-year-old Mi'kmaq. "Leaders were spending so much time on just getting the essentials of life."

Band councils allowed Natives to set their own agenda for better social programs and education, he said.

"You now have a generation of young aboriginal leaders who are educated and eloquent and who are able to speak well for their people.

"We now understand the political and economic systems," said Christmas. "Aboriginal people have taken the white man's tools and learned how to use them. They have won victories on the Canadian playing field," such as legal challenges over land claims.

He points to Ovide Mercredi, grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations, who fought hardfor a seat at the constitutional reform table. "He's a lawyer, he's very fluent, he comes across well on TV and in print."

But despite progress at the political level, more than 500 land claims are outstanding, many Natives suffer the legacy of abuse from residential schools, and poverty and violence are rampant on reserves. In the past decade, almost half of Indian reserve housing didn't meet standards and about 40 per cent were without running water or toilets.

Living conditions on the Membertou reserve, where Donald Marshall Jr. grew up and where the murder he wrongly spent 11 years in jail for was committed, have improved since 1967, said Christmas. Then it had limited water services, dirt roads and poor housing stock.

"But in terms of employment and economic development, it's quite minimal on reserves. Social problems-alcoholism, drug abuse, family violence - are still plaguing us."

Compared with non-Natives, aboriginals die younger, are less likely to have a job and more likely to commit suicide, abuse substances and end up in prison. And racism against Natives hasn't gone away.

But Christmas has seen an improvement in relations between the Mi'kmaq, the provincial government and non-Natives since the inquiry into the Marshall case.

"The Marshall commission opened a window for the Nova Scotia people to find out who their Mi'kmaq neighbors were."

That may be true across Canada. Just five years ago, what Canadians knew about Natives would probably fit into a chapter of a Grade 5 textbook. But this year a survey suggests about 60 per cent of Canadians support Natives' constitutional right to govern themselves.

And while the centennial birthday party included an Indian princess pageant, Canada 125 put on a school contest to identify aboriginal heroes.

Nonetheless, for some Natives, July 1 was no reason for hotdogs and fireworks.

"I consider it almost in the same category as the Columbus 500-year anniversary" also being marked this year, said Marilyn Buffalo, a schol board member for the Samson band at Hobbema, Alta. "Forget it. It's not where my nation started."

"We should all agree that the first 125 years was nothing to brag about," said George. "This is 1992 and I think people have decolonized their thinking toward aboriginal peoples to the extent they're sorry that the Indian Act stopped us from speaking our languages and caused us to lose our culture."

But by the 150th birthday, "I see the third order of government participating in the celebrations, and perhaps languages still intact, our culture being celebrated genuinely instead of the touristy aspect of it."

Christmas was ambivalent about the 125th birthday.

"I still carry a sense of bitterness because the government has so dishonorably dealt with our concerns. Yet I have in my heart a pride in Canada.

"My father felt enough for the country to fight for it and he was critically wounded. I can't harbor a grudge for Canada because my father didn't."

And he is optimistic for the next 25 years, as more aboriginals are welcomed into political and legal institutions.

"There's no way to avoid it, there's going to be change."