Question the use of the dreaded "R" word

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Medium Rare

Have you noticed how many journalists and newspapers use the dreaded "R" word these days? Not long ago, they would have gone into a fit if confronted with the you-know-what word. They understood that it had to be used carefully because of its explosive nature and the passions it could set loose. Not anymore.

This began to change about 15 years ago. That's when the right-wing began another attack against Aboriginal and treaty rights, indeed the entire system of Canadian Indian policy, because they said it gave an unfair advantage to a specific group of people. They used half-truth, distortion and myth to create the impression that good, hard-working white people were carrying an increasingly heavy tax burden so that Native people could sit in their backyards sipping mint juleps.

When they said so, in just that way, they were dismissed as right-wing cranks, and justifiably so. Had they ever been to a reserve? Seen the decrepit shacks? Smelled the backed up sewage? Drank from the well of contaminated water? Gone to the funeral of the latest victim of crib death or teen suicide? Watched the one-legged diabetic hobble down the road? Talked to the mother whose children were snatched by the child welfare system or the justice system? Spoken to the folks with no jobs, no hope and no prospect of change? If they had, they'd know reserve life was nothing like a tropical island paradise.

But that wasn't the end of it. The right-wing changed tactics. They needed something that would confuse the issue so that what they proposed might seem reasonable. What needed to be done, they decided, was to make everyone "equal." Equality became their mantra. Who could possibly argue against that?

The solution to the "Native problem," they decided, was to dispense with so-called "special rights" for Aboriginal peoples. No one knew what those "special rights" were so who would miss them? Treaties were useless bits of paper that nobody respected anyway, they said. Why bother with the pretense? Get rid of these bums. Save the Canadian taxpayer $6-billion.

No one else gets free housing, free health care or free education. Why are reserve people hooked like junkies on welfare while enjoying tax-free status? Why should Native people on reserves work or start businesses when they can live the life of Riley tax-free? Where's the incentive to improve things when everything is handed to them on a platter?

Hang on. It gets better.

They insist that too much federal money props up chiefs and band councils in mini-dictatorships on reserves. It's one clique ruling over everybody else, using Third World tactics to keep people cowed, complacent and dependent. Honesty, hard work and individual enterprise are condemned. People who criticize the band council are punished. Reserves are cesspools of corruption and all band councils are poorly managed and unaccountable. Dismantle reserves and turn them into municipalities, they suggested.

The problem with reserves, the right-wing says, is the lack of individual ownership of land. How can people on reserves break this cycle of dependency when they can't take advantage of the same tools that everybody else uses to better their lives? Native peoples can't get bank loans to become entrepreneurs because they can't put their land up for collateral. Therefore, they cannot become participants in the Canadian economy. Therefore, they will continue to be poor and dependent. Get rid of the notion of commonly-held Aboriginal territory and declare a regime of fee-simple, or individual, ownership of land.

According to the right-wing, a system of apartheid is the foundation of the "Native problem" in Canada. "Separateness," apartheid, creates a parallel system of laws that creates unequal advantages and disadvantages based on race. This "race-based" system not only discriminates against Aboriginal peoples, but also against non-Aboriginal peoples. The only right, just and moral thing to do is to get rid f these "race-based" laws and programs and make Aboriginal peoples "equal" to white Canadians.

Seductive, isn't it? It's an Orwellian spin at its most effective. It makes wrong seem morally right. It cloaks injustice with legal justification. It completely dismisses 133 years of legal and historical reality and the long struggle to have the rights of Indigenous peoples recognized in Canada. The beauty is that so many people fall for it, including many Aboriginal people.

Occasionally, someone speaks out. In 1998, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) got tired of certain journalists undermining advances in Aboriginal relations by condemning them as "race-based" discrimination. The AFN called it "Indian bashing" when journalists dismissed advancements in treaty and land rights "as 'race-based' policies."

"Our nations have been here forever," Phil Fontaine said at the time. "It is offensive for journalists to suggest that governments are somehow doing us a favor by negotiating to restore lands and rights that were stolen from us in the first place."

But the media doesn't get it. Journalists and commentators, from Gordon Gibson in the National Post to Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail, use the phrase "race-based" as though it actually explains something. It doesn't. It's completely inaccurate for one thing. Worse, it's code; a euphemism that inflames racial tension and even incites hostility.

Surprisingly, Canadian journalists have never discussed the use of this phrase at any of their conferences. No one has ever complained about its use by journalists to the local Press Council, Ombudsman or Human Rights Commission. As a result, even judges use the phrase to try to turn back the clock on decades of advancement in Aboriginal law.

As Ken Deere, a Mohawk and editor of the Eastern Door newspaper at Kahnawake, wrote in the Montreal Gazette, "The concept of race-based rights must be eradicated so no other judge can use this kind of racism in the court system. Th fishing rights of the Indigenous peoples in B.C. must be upheld based on their rights as nations and peoples."