Racism: Federal policy

Page 5

The recent confrontations over Mi'kmaq fishing in the East and Native logging in British Columbia have shown just how strong the prejudices against our people run among the immigrants to our territories who call themselves Canadians. People show their true nature in times like these, and right now it seems that the heart of whiteness is a very cold and hard place. When it comes to attitudes about Indigenous people, this is a country with a pretty thin veneer of toleration hiding an ugly mass of racism.

I say "toleration" because smug and self-satisfied white people often tout Canada as a tolerant country. I doubt many of our Indigenous sisters and brothers (or any other non-white) would agree with this statement on the surface. But even if it were true, what does it mean that Canadians see themselves as tolerant, anyway? To tolerate something means that you put up with or endure it. It is a distant and arrogant attitude rooted in a superiority complex; it tells us a great deal about the way Canada sees non-white and especially Indigenous people. I believe that in the hostility and violence that come our way whenever we assert our rights and defend what is ours, we find out what it means to be a tolerated people.

We often forget just how thin even the veneer is. It has only been one generation since our people were forced to live with a system of open and organized racist oppression in this country. Until the 1960s, the kind of back-of-the-bus and separate washroom apartheid made infamous in the United States' treatment of blacks was commonplace in Canada toward Indians. Things have changed, but have attitudes? Open racism is seen to be impolite and crude these days, but that doesn't mean that mainstream Canadians are not racist. It only means they don't show it.

Am I overreacting? Consider the fact that the Reform Party has a huge political constituency, millions of supporters and great influence on the government as the Official Opposition in Parliament. The same Reform Party has an official policy of promoting the legal and social assimilation of Indigenous peoples and a cancellation of Canada's historic treaty obligations toward our peoples. This is fancy wording for a simple idea: terminating Indians.

When the Mi'kmaq achieved a limited recognition of their treaty rights in the recent Marshall decision, the Reform Party called for a "stay" of the decision, meaning they called for the government of Canada to ignore the Supreme Court. The fact that there is no legal process or constitutional way to do such a thing as "stay" a Supreme Court decision didn't seem to matter. Plainly, in the view of the Reform Party, Indigenous peoples and Indigenous rights are not due the same constitutional protection as other peoples affected by the Constitution of Canada. The saddest thing is that the federal government agreed with the Reform Party that the rule of law does not apply to Indians and that a "stay" would indeed be possible if negotiations failed to satisfy a group of angry white fishermen. It is one thing when a party of ignorant racists calls for the termination of Indigenous rights, but quite another and more serious matter when the federal government begins to contemplate governing the country to satisfy an ugly white backlash movement.

We should not forget that there have been other countries that have suspended the rule of law for certain groups when their rights conflicted with the interests and beliefs of the majority. Jews in Nazi Germany suffered the same treatment as the Reform Party is advocating for Indigenous peoples in Canada. If they want to "stay" pro-Indian Supreme Court decisions, how far can they be from advocating policies to achieve a Final Solution to the entire Indian problem? Putting this all in a historical perspective, the Reform Party's slogan of "one law for all" begins to sound eerily familiar to the sounds echoed from scary black-and-white films of jack-boot Nazi Germans chanting theirslogan of "one fatherland, one party, one Fuhrer."

It's not only the Reform Party that represents prejudice in this country. Canadians love tame Indians who perform on stage and screen to satisfy the mythological image of the noble savage conquered and nearly civilized by white people. But when Indigenous people stand up for who they are and for justice, they are attacked and put down by force with the support of those same tolerant Canadians. So long as Indigenous people are satisfying Canadians' self-created historical fantasy and living the identity Canadians have created for us, we are safe. But if we act to preserve our own identity and rights, we are a threat. In the so-called "1990 Oka Crisis" Mohawk people were attacked with armed force by Quebec police and our communities laid siege by the armed forces of Canada because we stood in defence of an ancient graveyard (the rule of law was again suspended for Indians). And now, the Mi'kmaq are being attacked violently for acting on a subsistence right to fish, a right formally recognized by the Supreme Court.

When push comes to shove, the government of Canada doesn't care whether an Indian is right, it always moves to set aside its Constitution and defend with force the violent and illegal interests of the white population - truth and justice count for little. The legal processes Indigenous people have been encouraged to trust to achieve justice are worthless when the government begins to contemplate abandoning the rule of law whenever we are proven to be right. The thin veneer of toleration has been pulled back to expose the greed and selfishness that are the true core of Canadian attitudes toward Indians, and the foundation of government policy.