Throw him out

Page 5

Why is John Cummins still in caucus, Mr. Harper? It seems the Delta-South Richmond MP, the champion of that most oppressed of all creatures, the middle-aged white male, has said, in public, that we, Native people, should compensate Canadians of European descent for their work to civilize us. And he's still a member of the Canadian Alliance caucus?

We can only surmise that Canadian Alliance Leader Stephen Harper decided that while slagging gays could endanger his unite-the-right plans, spewing insults about Indians is acceptable.

In case you forgot, when another Alliance MP, Larry Spencer, suggested out loud that homosexuality should be recriminalized, he was out the door in record time, suspended from caucus by his leader.

Harper obviously didn't want to endanger a deal that would see his party merge with the Progressive Conservatives. He knew that Spencer's kind of talk would alarm the Tories, people who actually didn't want to round up 11 per cent of the population and put them in camps because of their sexual orientation.

It's generally accepted that anyone who would advocate that is either full of hate and intolerance or is terminally ignorant and not fit to be in a position of leadership or public trust.

And the same might be said about someone who would be of this opinion:

"Contact with Europeans and other societies did improve the life of Indians in B.C. whether it was iron tools or firearms . . . or the benefits of today's . . . health care and society safety net. Most importantly, the stability and security guaranteed by imposition of the British rule of law added a certainty to life in Native communities that was lacking. The benefits of European contact are rarely discussed and never considered in the calculation of paying redress for past wrongs."

The Vancouver Province reported on Dec. 10 that Cummins spoke those words to the Delta municipal council about the Tsawwassen First Nation's vote on an agreement-in-principle that could lead to the province's first urban treaty.

Oh goodness! Where do we start?

Mr. Cummin, ask anybody who actually knows anything about such matters (you may have to look outside your party, we're afraid) and they'll tell you that a subsistence tribal lifestyle (especially on the West Coast) can be quite idyllic. Family connections, community interconnectedness, cultural certainty, a vibrant and rich language and culture, these are the things that Europeans stole from Indigenous people, along with their land and resources.

Now if the newcomers had sat the Indigenous people down at the moment of contact and said "We've got all these things to offer and we're willing to trade them for all your land and most of your fish and trees if you're willing to deal" well, that would have been honorable.

If the Indigenous people had actually been given the option to say, "No, thanks. This is our land. We like the way we live. Go bother some other people in some other territory," well, maybe there'd be a kernel of sense in Cummin's comments.

But that didn't happen. Europeans forced their so-called beneficial ways on Indigenous peoples. They used force and the unequal application of the British rule of law Cummins so admires to decimate the Indigenous population. They created the legal fiction of terra nullius to steal trillions of dollars worth of land and resources. They topped it off with a century or more of the kind of evil, soul destroying racism most people associate with the deep south of the United States or apartheid-era South Africa. Shall we talk about churches and the residential schools?

So how much do we owe you for all that, John? Will you take a cheque? The worst part of this is he probably has no idea how disgusting and infuriating his comments are, and neither does the rest of Canada. Where's the outcry from his caucus? Where's the outcry from the Liberals?

Cummins definition of civilization isn't the only one. That's the fatal flaw in is theory. Western societyreally believes that its way is "normal," that anyone who is different is abnormal or subnormal. It's an incredibly subjective, arrogant and narrow way of looking at the world and unfortunately it does lead to bigotry.

We really think John Cummins should be expelled from caucus. If that move is not made, we can only warn the Progressive Conservatives to change their minds and escape the merger -if they still can.