Summer is around the bend for Idle No More

The Idle No More movement isn’t like anything we’ve seen before. It’s not like movements that have happened in the 60s, 70s or even the 80s. However, what all of the movements have in common is the fact that they’ve all been grassroots driven from local perspectives to national and even international ones.

Kenneth Deer, who sits on the United Nations Indigenous People’s forum, was instrumental in the 70s in his community of Kahnewake. The traditional Mohawk government hired him as an education counsellor, of sorts, to help guide the youth in the local public high school. Far ahead of their time, the community began to take back education from the local school board.

Deer said he took a cutting edge course in Toronto to learn to work in the education system.

“It was the beginning of Indian control of education. We had elementary schools in town and took them back piece by piece.”
Just awhile before the traditional Mohawk community began taking control of Indian education, there was a national movement, which was the birth of the Assembly of First Nations as it’s known today.

Policy analyst Dr. Michael Posluns recalls his time with George Manual, the second national chief of the National Indian brotherhood and co-author of Fourth World: An Indian Reality. Posluns said Manual sat in on all of the parliamentary hearings for the 1969 White Paper. But, when the document came out, “it bore no resemblance to what any of the Indians said in those hearings.”

 “Repealing the Indian Act was Trudeau’s thing,” said Posluns. “Manual was sure no Indians said that. It made them angry enough to form some organizations.”

While Manual was doing his national work, Posluns said two of Manual’s sons back home were leaders of the ‘Red Power” movement. Although the views of father and sons were similar, their methods to achieve recognition for Aboriginal rights were very different. Posluns points out how both types of work complimented one another, “Even with his sons leading movements on the west coast, it was George’s thought that centrist views would get people’s attention if there was a strong left-wing.”

Another grassroots movement, perhaps lesser known, but no less important, was the Native Brotherhood. A cultural program implemented in jails and prisons across the country. This brainchild belongs to Gitsan Elder Bobby Woods, who is the founder of Native Spiritual Voices’ Society.  Woods, who was in prison at the time, felt it was important for Aboriginal inmates to learn something of their culture, their identity.

“They allowed me to go from prison to prison to talk with the inmates to talk about how the brotherhood could help.”

Many years after he was released and learned more about spirituality, he ran the first sweatlodge ceremony in a prison in the country. The sweat was held in federal institution Collins Bay penitentiary in Kingston, Ont. in 1983.

All three men remember Oka, a memory that stands strongly in many of the minds of First Nations and Canadian citizens alike, for different reasons.

According to Posluns, the Oka crises had a number of positive outcomes. For example, he says, “the clear cutting never went ahead, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People’s would never have gone ahead.”

Deer was a negotiator for the first four days of the crisis before the Mohawk traditional government sent him to Geneva to talk about the crisis on an international level, as Deer says, “to keep Canada on its toes.”  Woods was also in the community.
“I was with Kenneth at his home.”

That wasn’t Deer’s first trip to Geneva. The Traditional Council actually sent him to Geneva in the early 70s to find out why the United Nations were talking about Indigenous People.
Throughout that time, Deer says he never missed a meeting, and calls it the ‘wildest’ of educations, meeting with all kinds of Indigenous peoples. All groups had things in common.

“It was amazing how together we were. You’d think we’d all have different ideas. But we all had the same experiences of being dispossessed. Some of our experiences were slightly different, our causes were the same, even though we didn’t speak the same language, we found common ground and moved forward.”
Deer remembers the work which went into the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“When I started going in 1987, academics said Indigenous peoples will never be able to get it done.  We fought hard, it took many years, but it came through.”

He likes the Idle No More movement.

“I’m impressed with the movement. It’s grassroots, the people are taking back the politics of our land from AFN and chiefs. People felt like they needed a voice to rise up and say something.”

Many movements over past decades have always started, according to Posluns, “under direct threat.”
“The governments of various levels making these threats is the common thread running through all of the movements.” He uses the 1969 White Paper and Oka crises as examples of threats.

One of the advantages the INM has today, said Posluns, is the benefit of social media and a common language. He says, movements in the 60s faced many ‘civil disabilities’, including Indian Act laws stating that it was illegal for more than three Indians to meet and it was also illegal to raise funds to make claims against the government. In addition to those civil disabilities, Posluns says many of the grassroots leaders spoke their mother tongues and English was a second language, if not third or fourth. Leaders across the country had to learn to come up with a common political language to advocate for their rights.
However, with many pluses, Posluns wishes First Nation leadership would appreciate the magnitude of INM and its ability to help push issues forward.

“I think it’s a shame that the AFN leadership today is not listening.  They don’t realize how much they need a youth group or radical group in order to command people’s attention. I think there has to be a more radical grassroots wing that makes the centrist group more appealing.”

Meanwhile, Deer says, “The current government is so hostile and sticking to their own agenda.  INM is so important to keep going. The chiefs haven’t got the government to change, so it’s getting back to the people.”

Deer also points out that INM has had an effect. “The chiefs are shaken up because they’re not in control,” he said.

Some have said that INM isn’t focused enough or isn’t clear enough about what it wants – but it’s still early in the game. We have yet to see how the Idle No Movement will roll out. It was a busy winter with demonstrations throughout Canada, but summer is just around the bend, and it promises to be a busy season.