Who you calling Canadian?

Page 4

AFN chief Matthew Coon Come told the whole world on his first day in office that he is a Cree, not a Canadian citizen. This was no doubt meant to send a message to Canada. Just in case they didn't realize it yet, Coon Come made it clear that the Liberal Party/Indian Industry soft-ballers had left the building and had gone back to their government jobs; some new players had taken over, and these guys and gals played hard ball.

You could tell right away that Coon Come's statement sent a shiver down Joe Canada's spine. The thought of a radicalized Indigenous movement is scary to most people: "What the heck happened to our nice Aboriginal Canadians?"

Actually, come to think, people probably didn't get all that intellectual about it. Still collectively jacked up on an 'I Am Canadian' buzz, the reaction was visceral, and the mainstream media was quick to censure and demonize Coon Come as a dangerous radical stoking the fires of ethnic conflict. You could almost hear all those fat old rednecks in Calgary crowing at the radio, like, 'Dang Injun', if he don't want to be no Canadian, send him back where he . . . umm, came from, eh. Well, anyway, send that traitor somewhere!'

Sorry Joe Canada, but this is our country; we've been here forever and only started calling it Canada a few years ago.

Coon Come is right on: we are not Canadians. And why should we be so eager and willing to be citizens of their country? Has the citizenship legally forced on our people a generation ago helped get land back, gain compensation for past injustices, or made our communities healthier? Of course it hasn't (we should also remember that citizenship was rejected by the Elders in most communities). Forty years of citizenship and we're more assimilated now than ever before, and we're losing our languages and traditions at a heartbreaking rate. What citizenship has done over the years is undermine in people's minds the idea that we have a separate existence and distinct collective rights (witness the recent attacks on Mi'kmaq treaty rights - the ignorant Prime Minister saying the 'law must be upheld the same for all Canadians' - and the ongoing general effort to force taxes and provincial authority on us, for example). No matter what our lawyers argue or what the judges say about 'Aboriginal rights', the tide of public opinion is against us and it's easy to see why the government feels comfortable defying its own Constitution to support the non-Native majority's interest.

The public mind sees a logical contradiction that no complicated legal theory can overcome: how can you be a member of a 'First Nation' and then turn around and say that you are a part of another nation -Canada? You can't-not as a citizen of a liberal democracy based on the principles of equal representation and majority rule.

We play right into this contradiction by watering down our position on nationhood and calling ourselves Canadians. In the generation since citizenship was imposed, our politicians have been leading us down a dangerous path, telling us that we could achieve dignity and respect within Canada. At the same time, they have been trying to convince Canadians that the only thing that Aboriginal people want is to be treated fairly and to be given equal opportunities to succeed in this society. Canadians are asked only to treat us fairly and to give us equal opportunities, as they would any other person. That sounds nice and our politicians have been successful to a certain degree, but the danger lies in the unspoken premise of this approach: it offers us dignity and respect only as persons --the crucial trade-off being that as our individual rights as citizens are enhanced, we have to sacrifice our collective rights. If we continue on this path, we will soon be asked to sacrifice our nations.

The only way for us to survive the onslaught of the ignorant majority and resist being swallowed up is to preserve the notion of our political independence and demand resect for our rights as peoples in a nation-to-nation relationship with Canada. This is the form of equality, peace and friendship our ancestors fought and died for and what our treaties represent, not subservience or citizenship. History has shown that nations of people can survive war, dislocation, poverty, and disease, but when a nation loses its sense of itself and a connection to its own past-its identity -that nation is truly defeated and not long for this world. Our peoples have been in intensive contact with Europeans for 400 years, most of those years embroiled in conflict stemming from European attempts to change us or to take away what is ours: our land, our freedom, our languages, our names.

Those of us who are still here should have learned one thing by now: survival means never giving up.

It wears on the soul to be constantly fighting battles, always embroiled in tension, holding out. So many of us do give up and try to get along because we're tired of all the politics and just want to get some peace in our lives. Some of this has to do with feeling surrounded and afraid, too. It takes guts to go to a hockey game and refuse to stand for the national anthem, with all those people glaring at you. It's hard to refuse a job because you won't swear an oath to the Queen. But I've been told that being born Indian is to be born into politics; we all make the choices and take whatever stands we have to. But we should not forget that it will be tenacity and the courage of our convictions that will separate those who will survive seven more generations from those who leave nothing for their Canadian children but a psychic longing to know what is to be Onkwehonwe, the real people of this land.