“I think that [the reports are saying] what First Nations leaders like myself and others have been saying for a long, long time. We’ve had an aboriginal youth tsunami coming our way for a long time, and now it’s here. We’ve got 25 per cent growth rate compared to six per cent in the rest of Canada. And when you’ve got the kinds of social challenges, poverty, rates of incarceration outstripping K-12 graduation, it really does create a moment of incredible opportunity, and at the same time if not responded to appropriately in a bold and rapid manner, could cause a continuation of the kind of challenges that we face,” Mr. Atleo told The Hill Times.
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute released two reports recently: “Canada and the First Nations: Cooperation or Conflict?” by Douglas Bland, and “New Beginnings: How Canada’s Natural Resource Wealth Could Re-shape Relations with Aboriginal People,” by Ken Coates and Brian Lee Crowley—highlighting the importance of immediate action to address First Nations concerns.
“They’re timely, and they’re helpful to bring the focus and attention that’s necessary for bold, dramatic, and transformative change that is required now,” said Mr. Atleo.
The first report, written by Mr. Bland, explores what he believes to be the realistic possibility of aboriginal communities from across the country uniting to rise up, and potentially engage in an insurgency against the state. He theorizes that a convergence of factors ranging from an explosion in the number of socially and economically alienated young people to infrastructural vulnerabilities make an insurgency feasible.
Mr. Bland’s report outlines the possibility of a potentially violent conflict between aboriginal peoples and the Canadian government.
Mr. Atleo stressed that “the overwhelming majority” of First Nations people want to effect change peacefully, but he also expressed frustration with Ottawa for not acting swiftly enough to a variety of similar reports.
“The problem is that these reports [and others like them] have been sitting collecting dust. We’ve yet to have a federal government step up to express serious political will,” said Mr. Atleo.
This past January, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Assembly of First Nation chiefs met to discuss a variety of issues Mr. Atleo and other First Nations representatives brought forward.
Mr. Atleo said that First Nations are still waiting for government action “in full partnership with First Nations and not the unilateral decision-making that is top-down and Ottawa-centric.”
Mr. Bland’s report is based on Oxford economist Paul Collier’s research which suggests that civil conflict in a given country is based on something called ‘The Feasibility Hypothesis.’ ‘The Feasibility Hypothesis’ essentially states that there are five factors that contribute to an insurgency: “social fractionalization”; a population’s proportion of young males; a state’s topography; a state’s export-based economy; and a state’s ability to respond to an insurgency.
When those feasibility factors are applied to the aboriginal population in Canada, a threat of an insurgency is possible, according to Mr. Bland. He offered the Oka crisis and Caledonia—confrontations that severely impacted local economic development and caused political chaos—as small-scale examples of what a nation-wide uprising might look like.
Mr. Bland, who spent more than 30 years in the Canadian Forces and is a retired lieutenant general, told The Hill Times that his paper is not a prediction and that a potential insurgency should not be confused with the Idle No More movement, which he described as a “peaceful, and almost a happy kind of set of demonstrations.”
He wrote in his report, however, that a “disruptive confrontation between Canada’s aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities” is certainly feasible in today’s Canada because of the social, health and economic factors that have kept many aboriginal peoples in poverty.
A 2010-2011 Statistics Canada report shows that aboriginal males represented 24 per cent of all prisoners in the male youth correctional system and aboriginal females comprised 34 per cent of all prisoners in the female youth correctional system, though each represent only about six per cent of the general youth population in Canada.
Once in prison, Mr. Bland wrote, young people are recruited into criminal gangs. This produces what Mr. Bland called a “warrior cohort”: an angry, unskilled pool of criminalized young men who might have ‘a taste for violence.’
Potential for the warrior cohort rising up against the state depends significantly on aboriginal leadership, Mr. Bland said. He described Mr. Atleo as a “moderate” who “is not a pushover,” but warned of more radical grand chiefs.
“If this and future cohorts were aroused by older leaders who focus on historical grievances—stolen lands, treaties betrayed and the horrors of the residential schools—young people might be tempted to forego criminal activities and to launch armed challenges against the civil authority to “take back the land” as they did at Oka and Caledonia,” he wrote.
One of the key elements to Mr. Bland’s theory, though, is that aboriginal “warriors” do not need to engage in pitched gun battles with state forces in order to wage a successful insurgency. He said, “in any internal conflict in Canada, the nation’s resource economy—the flow
of taxes from the sale of resources—would become the ultimate ...
target of the attack.”
This means aboriginal peoples could set up blockades to prevent natural resources from getting to market, which would be disastrous, Mr. Bland said.
“One of the most important feasibility factors is the enormous vulnerability of our economy, our transportation economy especially, to interference. And everybody knows that,” he told The Hill Times. “And on occasion people will use that to their own effect as Shawn Brant did on the 401 and on the railways. They can bring the whole system to a stop. Often when there is a discussion between a civil government—provincial, federal, or even municipal—the aboriginal peoples on the locale will say ‘Okay if you don’t want to play ball we’re going to turn off the highways.’ Or in Manitoba, one chief told them they’re going to turn off the water supply to Winnipeg. And, gee, governments come around pretty fast.”
Liberal aboriginal affairs critic Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul’s, Ont.) came out firmly opposed to Mr. Bland’s conclusions. In an email to The Hill Times, Ms. Bennett wrote: “It is a significant and unfortunate distortion to suggest that justified aboriginal frustration in Canada is likely to turn violent, in fact recent activism has proven the opposite. There is no question that the Conservative record of ignoring pressing social and economic issues in aboriginal communities, while disregarding aboriginal and treaty rights on issues like resource extraction and environmental protection, has created preventable hostility, but the overwhelming response from indigenous peoples has been peaceful.”
NDP aboriginal affairs critic Jean Crowder (Nanaimo-Cowichan, B.C.) told The Hill Times that she agrees with only some aspects of Mr. Bland’s analysis.
“The Idle No More movement was largely driven by younger people. The young people I’ve been talking to have indicated that they are losing patience with the slow pace of change,” said Ms. Crowder. But she also said that it was not “helpful” to identify young aboriginal males as potential insurgents.
In response, Mr. Bland said he’s happy to hear MPs are “uncomfortable” with the report.
“I’m glad to hear they’re uncomfortable about it. I hope that all the political parties might pay more attention to the file,” he said. “The main difference in an insurgency and a civil disturbance is that an insurgency usually has a defined political agenda. So we can use words differently but at the root of it all there is a possibility of a serious civil disturbance between the aboriginal communities in Canada and the civil governments. Which way that goes depends on the actions of both sides.”
Meanwhile, the second report by MLI, “New Beginnings” attempts to demonstrate that the boom in Canada’s resource sector, coupled with a series of aboriginal legal victories over the last half-century, offer a shining opportunity for tangible improvements in aboriginal wealth, empowerment, and quality of life. Mr. Coates said many aboriginal communities are in fact thriving, and a continued improvement in the overall economic well-being of indigenous communities is far more likely than civil unrest.
Sustained economic growth, therefore, relies upon the development of a fair, mutually beneficial relationship between aboriginal communities, government, and industry. Many of those communities have protested—and are currently protesting—their lack of involvement in development processes, potentially risking billions of dollars in both domestic economic activity and foreign direct investment. This doesn’t mean, however, that First Nations communities are hostile to resource development projects.
“The assumption is … that all aboriginal communities are opposed to development and that they fight any mine or forestry project, and that is so far from the reality that we need to draw that out,” Mr. Coates told The Hill Times.
What is crucial, according to the report’s authors, is that those aboriginal communities’ concerns regarding potential environmental degradation, and appropriate compensation and employment opportunities are addressed.
Mr. Crowley and Mr. Coates note that two important aboriginal achievements in development related issues—the emergence of negotiated land claim settlements in 1973 and a 2004 Supreme Court decision requiring government to “consult and accommodate” aboriginal communities when planning major resource development—demonstrate that there is a foundation for aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities to work together to reach mutually beneficial resolutions to resource conflicts.
Those resolutions have paid dividends for some First Nations communities.
“If you look at James Bay, for example, they signed their agreement in 1975. Those communities have a whole bunch of locally-owned businesses, they’ve got a lot more employment than you might think,” said Mr. Coates, noting that the northern Yukon community of Old Crow is another example.
“They own their own airline. Air North, it services the Yukon very nicely. It’s a community of 400 people that is inaccessible by road, and it’s actually doing really well.”
Mr. Coates said, however, that misery is still the norm for far too many First Nations communities living on reserves, but he argued that a collaborative approach to resource development represents the best way forward to promote reconciliation and increase aboriginal prosperity.
Mr. Coates described the paper he co-authored as optimistic in outlook.
“The reason our paper is optimistic is that we can say, ‘here’s what’s already happening.’ It’s not a question of ‘if you do this, everything’s going to be fine.’ Our point is that if you follow the examples that are already in place … you can see not instant solutions but major improvements.”
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: MATT MOIR
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