For as long as anyone can remember, the post has gone to non-natives. These people have performed in office somewhere on a continuum between 19th century Indian agents (Bernie Valcourt) and 20th century benign paternalists (Jean Chrétien). The time couldn’t be more perfect to hand the job over to the real experts — natives themselves.
Ten indigenous candidates were elected to Parliament, eight of them Liberals. One of them was Hunter Tootoo, who defeated Conservative cabinet minister Leona Aglukkaq in Nunavut. Remember that name; he might just become better known than his hockey-playing cousin, Jordin.
And there are other strong candidates for the job, including Jody Wilson-Raybould, now the MP for Vancouver Granville, and Robert-Falcon Ouellete, who represents Winnipeg-Centre. If Justin Trudeau wants to signal the end of paternalism on this file, he has no shortage of options to make it happen.
In considering the selection of an aboriginal to run the department, another factor should be taken into account. On election night, it was indigenous people who handed Stephen Harper his Aboriginal Surprise.
Despite Harper’s best efforts to suppress the indigenous vote, aboriginals led the nation in a stunning spike in voter turnout on October 19. Several reserves ran out of ballots, and voter turnout was up by 270 per cent in some places where the indigenous vote was crucial.
If the Fair Elections Act was supposed to blunt the energy of the Idle No More movement by making it harder to cast a ballot, it actually ended up galvanizing the native vote. Just ask defeated Natural Resources minister Greg Rickford, who saw the native vote in his former riding of Kenora rise by 73 per cent.
The Aboriginal Surprise was first and foremost an absolute rejection of Harper’s left-right combination on aboriginal affairs: effectively criminalizing First Nations activists with the passage of Bill C-51, and carrying on the bad faith and paternalism that has dogged this file forever. With respect to aboriginal peoples, Harper exhibited the all the vision of General George Custer.
But the amazing turnout in aboriginal communities also sends an important message about the future. If the rest of Canada wants its aboriginal citizens to work for change within the system, then the system had better start responding to the huge issues now in front of it.
Of all the mountains Trudeau must climb if he is to deliver on the promise of “real change” that swept him into power, there is none higher than the one represented by this stupendously difficult file. The initial vibes have all been good. The First Nations leadership has endorsed the new PM as a “breath of fresh air”. And it will be very good to see the new prime minister announce an inquiry into the disappearances or deaths of more than 1,200 aboriginal women — something that Harper perversely refused to do throughout his time in office. (Heaven forbid that the government of Canada should commit sociology.)
It’s past time for those women to be honoured with the attention of the nation, for us to unearth the whys and the wherefores of their terrible fates, and to recognize them as human beings — so that we’re not still facing this issue a generation from now.
But one public inquiry won’t be enough to deal with the darkest shadow over the relationship between Canada and its aboriginal partners: an almost complete lack of trust. Ceremony and symbolism are no substitute for substance and justice.
The road to the grand reconciliation that Trudeau’s victory makes possible leads straight through the water supplies of First Nations communities. On the campaign trail, Trudeau pointed out that 93 different native communities were under 133 varying boil-water advisories. For seventeen years, the community of Shoal Lake has had to hike across the ice to get its drinking water.
More than a decade ago, the bill to give aboriginals the most basic human right of all — access to clean drinking water — was $600 million. The new prime minister will be looking at a much higher cost — and he has only given himself five years to get the job done. But he must get it done.
Trudeau also has promised significant new funds for native education, $750 million per year for the next four years. Those are Kelowna-like numbers and should do a lot to close the funding gap between students on and off reserves — a gap which NDP leader Tom Mulcair estimated at 35 per cent.
But the deeper problem is that while Canada’s First Nations have experienced a population boom, the growth in their funding has been capped at two per cent since 1995. It is virtually impossible to supply essential childhood and family services without raising that cap — unless the government concludes that a series of one-offs grants will fix these vast, systemic inequities. History shows that such an approach is folly.
The Indian Act itself must be boldly reimagined. As it now stands, its main purpose is to limit who can be defined as an Indian. The judicial argument is moving in exactly the opposite direction. The Supreme Court is now examining the question of whether non-status Indians and Metis are also the federal government’s responsibility under the Constitution. If the answer is yes, the Indian Act will be less than useless — and Ottawa will be facing an aboriginal population inflated by hundreds of thousands of people entitled to federal programs.
As important as all these things are — water, education and health, adequate funding and modernized legislation — it all ends up dwarfed by the monumental issue of treaty rights.
Either those treaties are implemented, or they remain the political battleground of lawyers, bureaucrats and increasingly-frustrated aboriginal leaders. There is no doubt that these treaties are guaranteed by the Constitution. The problem is that they are not defined. There’s a reason why Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development has the largest legal bills in the federal government.
Canada desperately needs fewer court cases and more agreements between Ottawa and Aboriginal Peoples — equal partners in an unfinished history. Pierre Trudeau defined a ‘just society’ as one where the rights of minorities would be safe from the intolerant whims of the majority.
The inhabitants of Turtle Island are still waiting for their place in such a land.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris
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