Conrad Black: Why Canada Must Rethink Its Entire Approach to Indigenous Policy

Commentary

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew’s recent call for the abolition of the Indian Act of 1876 has finally brought to the fore the chaos of what is, in a serious misnomer, currently referred to as “Reconciliation”—the relationship between the native peoples and Canada as a whole. (The phrase “First Nations,” though currently popular, is also a misnomer: Many of them are indistinct clans of only a few hundred and do not qualify as nations. France is a nation; even Paraguay is probably a nation. The unpronounceable and practically unheard-of nomadic groups to whom we silently acknowledge proprietary deference before every public event are not vested with the instances of nationality.)

It has never been clear, and there has been no serious attempt to ascertain, how many indigenous people seriously wish to live a traditional life under a form of governance that is a hereditary dictatorship. It is notoriously well known that the hereditary dictators wish the current system to continue. But many, and I am one of them, suspect that if the question were put clearly, a very large number of people of authentic native ancestry would prefer to retain some level of cultural association with hereditary people and customs—as many identifiable ethnic groups that originally immigrated from overseas do—but they would also like to be assisted in participating fully in Canadian life.

The first requirement in reconciliation is to determine what proportion of authentic natives wish a traditional life, and, if their numbers justify, to assist them in attaining it on a basis that is not so atomized that it is sociologically almost impossible, and also in a way that conforms with elemental Canadian standards of responsible and democratic government.

In the aftermath of Premier Kinew’s suggestion, there was the predictable division of opinion between those native leaders and spokespeople who feared that the abolition of the Indian Act would endanger the great powers they now enjoy to govern their constituencies and negotiate on a “nation to nation” basis with the authentic, world-recognized, 159-year-old sovereign G7 nation of Canada, co-founder of the United Nations; and those who welcome throwing away the racial identification of the native identification card and giving natives and their organizations rights unconstrained by the terms of the Indian Act that established the present completely inadequate framework for reform of this urgent and complex question.

Canadians generally suspect, but very few recognize, precisely what a horrible mess the so-called reconciliation process has been. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission did not provide the whole truth, and what it did provide has essentially been used as the justification for promoting the blood libel against all British and French Canadians of having aspired to commit some form of genocide against the indigenous people. For the more ambitious of the leaders of the native victimhood industry, it has furnished an argument for the 100-percent spurious falsehood that what the early European settlers did to the native people was analogous to the invasion (though not the subsequent occupation) of Poland by Hitler and Stalin in 1939: that our ancestors invaded and occupied a country that was already occupied, governed by, and belonged to the native people.

As nearly as can be estimated, there were approximately 200,000 natives or aborigines in what is now Canada at the time of the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th century. Approximately 95 percent of them were nomads, and the only agriculture and permanent structures were in the Ottawa Valley and in the far west. They were extremely competent outdoorsmen with a life expectancy similar to that of Europeans (other than the small number of wealthy Europeans), but they lived in a Stone Age culture that had not discovered the wheel nor a written language and used animal bones for tools and animal skins for shelter and clothing.

The European settlers and subsequent colonial and Canadian officials mistreated the native people in many ways, and they have many legitimate grievances. But the Europeans also brought them forward 5,000 years in a few decades. The last inquiry into their status, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which was commissioned by Brian Mulroney in 1991 but reported under Jean Chrétien, recommended that approximately one-third of the entire surface area of Canada be divided up into a large number of native zones which would be grouped together as an independent jurisdiction. This would be raised up to the same level of infrastructure and services as the rest of Canada entirely at the expense of the rest of Canada, and would be maintained in that condition by the rest of Canada, and over which the rest of Canada would have no other jurisdiction.

This suggestion was so insanely impractical that it sank with a ripple and almost no one in public, not even the most stentorian advocates of the most radical versions of indigenous rights and reparations, has mentioned it since. It is little wonder that after the commission laid such an egg, that particular method of trying to produce a coherent native peoples’ policy lapsed sine die. That has not prevented us from giving or promising a total of over $7 billion to compensate the current authenticated natives for alleged past mistreatment, much of which is real, and some of which has been confected or exaggerated. We shouldn’t begrudge them that, but the spigot of public funds must henceforth be opened more selectively.

What we need to do is outline two policy options: one, described in the second paragraph above, of incentivizing and facilitating the most complete ability of all native people to participate fully in Canadian life while retaining cultural associations that keep them in touch with their heritage; and the second of concentrating those natives who seriously wish to live in a traditional environment made more comfortable and enjoyable by the existence of modern services, in a number of substantial communities governed by contemporary standards of civil rights and responsible administration, and large and varied enough to give a reasonable chance of sociological contentment.

All of this would have to be worked out with authentic meritocratic native leaders, and not just hereditary chiefs. This broadly is what is required and, if achieved, it will be a model for the world including much of Africa, Latin America, and Australasia. Canada can do it, and we owe ourselves and the world no less.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.