Cardinal vs. Trudeau

["Smith, Gerard" <gsmith@xxxxxxxxx>]

In the following article Ric Dolphin calls Canadian Indian struggles against
genocide-headed by Harold Cardinal-- "the petulant voices of children [at]
their loudest."  I forward the article to James Craven who read and rebutted
the racist bias on his radio show Mitakuye Oyasin. Perhaps I'll goad him
into responding here.  I've also included, with permission, Gary Night Owl's
editorial response.  The Dolphin article provides evidence that "genocide
denial" is still alive in Canada, as well as in the United States. Dolphin
writes: "In 1969 other Indian lobbyists joined Cardinal in his cries and a
brand new, hyperbolic word [genocide] was hatched."   Perhaps Dolphin should
contact victims of residential school abuse, victims who were kidnapped from
their villages as children, victims who were tortured for speaking their
native language or for practicing traditions such as mourning the dead.
Dolphin should ask them if the word genocide is an exaggeration, and who
"hatched up" the idea to "ethically cleanse" the American continent in the
first place.

Gerard


Editorial: Gary Night Owl
Wotanging Ikche and Native American News
Copyright c. 1996-2002 nanews.org

O'siyo Brothers and Sisters!

  I have included an article in this issue I really didn't want to,
titled "PM had Solution to Native Problem".  It is so incredibly biased
and so very obvious in its open pandering to the masses who have bought
into the notion that treaty obligations are "Indian Welfare."

  In the end I decided to include it for the very same reasons I run
issues of "Indian Helper" transcribed by Barbara Landis.  We must not,
we can not, ever cease to be vigilant against those who believe the
only answer to the so called "Indian Question or Indian Problem" is to
force the Native population into mainstream Amerikkana through legislation
or assimilation or both.

  Everything that can be done to make us disappear as a People has been
done, short of outright slaughter, and the IHS and their involuntary
sterilizations have proven even that is not totally unthinkable.

  It isn't just a matter of poor word choices by a few bigoted editors;
but as this article shows it is a mindset of the entire dominant media
that treaty obligations are "the Indian Problem".  It was the same when
theft of our Sacred lands were still the primary focus of the Department
of the Military in both the U. S. and Canada.  The blatant deliberate
bias was to refer to every win by the invaders as a victory and every win
by the Natives as a massacre.

  The "war on terrorism" that has become global in its manifestation
has also resulted in the erosion of individual rights for even members of
the dominant society.  I can promise if you and your tribe are not
watching every single move, every single legislative act, somewhere when
you least expect it, some hotdog legislator will slip through a bill that
will all but solve the "Indian Question" in the only way they can relate
to... no more Indians.


PM had solution to native problem
Ric Dolphin
Calgary Herald
Saturday, June 22, 2002
  [Photo Caption] Jean Chretien, right, was named an honorary chief
   of the Blood Indian band during a visit near Lethbridge in 1988.]
  Thirty-three years ago, a dashing young Indian Affairs minister named
Jean Chretien figured he could solve the Indian Problem.
  In a White Paper released on June 24, 1969, Chretien proposed abolishing
the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND),
repealing the Indian Act, and giving Canada's 237,000 Treaty Indians the
same rights and responsibilities as the rest of the population.
  Indian bands would be given full control of their reserves. In return,
their members would receive the same services as other citizens from the
same agencies and be required to pay income taxes like the rest of us.
  For a period of five years, the federal allotment to Registered Indians
would increase to upgrade the housing and education for a population in
transition. After that, a level playing field.
  Although Chretien presented it, the paper was conceived by his boss,
Pierre Trudeau. The prime minister was new to office and still perhaps
believed that egalitarianism might be applied universally in his "Just
Society."
  "If it had been passed, it probably would've worked," says a retired top
DIAND official, who served in the 1970s. "We probably wouldn't have the
apartheid system we have now. As it is, I can't see any future now except
entrenched entitlement."
  The late 1960s, of course, were the days of rampant idealism. Trudeau
and his gang believed they could solve anything, and the Indian problem
was a big one.
  Since the war, the conditions for Canada's aboriginals had gone from bad
to worse, despite some apparent improvements in their treatment and status.
  Thanks in part to the lobbying efforts of the National Indian
Brotherhood and the Indian Association of Alberta, natives had won their
right to vote in 1960 even though they didn't pay taxes. And -- despite
significant opposition from many of their own -- they'd also won the right
to drink in bars.
  This last advance was as dubious a benefit as the advent of welfare.
Social assistance had begun in earnest after the war as a means of taking
care of a reserve population that was losing agrarian jobs to advances and
consolidations in the agricultural industry. It didn't seem to do any good.
  A welter of Liberal government aid programs in the 1960s -- housing
benefits, educational initiatives, various and numerous counselling
programs for the increasing number of urban Indians -- had also failed to
alleviate what amounted to ghetto conditions on reserve and off.
  And so, for a moment or two in 1969, Chretien's and Trudeau's White
Paper seemed like a wonderful, egalitarian solution to a problem that had
seemed unsolvable, and everyone loved it.
  Len Marchand, a Conservative MP and the only Indian in the House of
Commons, felt it was the perfect tonic to decades of paternalism. "We
cannot be treated like children forever," he said.
  Unhappily, the proposal came at a time when the petulant voices of
children were their loudest.
  The youthful, anti-establishment politics of the day, demonstrated most
theatrically in the Vietnam marches, had seeped north and become a popular,
televisual force that mainstream politicians ignored at their peril.
  In Canada, this howl of youthful entitlement was embodied in the
unlikely person of Harold Cardinal, a pudgy, horn-rimmed, buckskinned and
politically ruthless 24-year-old Cree from the Sucker Lake Reserve near
Slave Lake.
  With the help of some American activist friends, Cardinal wrested
control of the IAA, disbanded the association's non-Indian advisory board,
became the top Indian spokesman in the country and waged war on the
federal government. That same year year, he penned a screed entitled The
Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canada's Indians.
  "The present policy of Indian Affairs towards assimilating Indians or
making them nice little brown white men is doomed to failure," was a
typical utterance.
  The first part of Chretien's White Paper -- the bit about turning over
the control of the reserves to the natives -- was fine with Cardinal. It
was the rest -- paying taxes and meeting the same welfare criteria as
regular citizens -- that he didn't like.
  "We are 'Canadian citizens plus,' " he said, in a famous phrase that had
a timely Quebecois sort of ring. "Canadian citizens will have to accept
and recognize that we are full citizens but also possess special rights."
  These special rights included the pursuit of land claims, something that
Cardinal and his activist friends, many of whom went on to lifetimes of
being paid consultants for assorted tribes, would drag out for decades.
  As Colby Cosh points out in his excellent account of the era in the
latest volume of Alberta in the Twentieth Century, the only whites that
Cardinal would allow into his circle were the lawyers, who, in the ensuing
years, have become permanent employees of the land claims industry.
  In 1969 other Indian lobbyists joined Cardinal in his cries and a brand
new, hyperbolic word was hatched.
  "We fear the end result of the proposal will be the destruction of a
nation of people by legislation and cultural genocide," said Walter Deiter,
chief of the National Indian Brotherhood.
  Soon, all the mainstream politicians who had supported the White Paper
were backpaddling in an attempt to avoid the genocide cataract. Chretien
said the White Paper had been nothing but a trial balloon.
  The final embarrassment came in June of 1970 when Cardinal and a number
of Indians in headdress marched into the cabinet room on Parliament Hill.
Cardinal delivered his entire 100-page Red Paper on what the government
should be doing for the Indians.
  "The Red Paper was rich in rhetoric about Indian self-determination and
'partnerships with government,' terms that would become very familiar in
the bumpy decades ahead," writes Cosh. "But it was really the show -- the
sight of ministers of the Crown taking their lumps from the Sucker Creek
boy and his crew -- that people would remember."
  It was possibly the only time in his political career that Trudeau
publicly ate crow. "It may be naive," he said of the White Paper, "It may
be shortsighted or misguided."
  Given the events of the ensuing 32 years, what was probably more
shortsighted and misguided was backing down to a bunch of theatrical
activists. But that's politics and, hey, Jean's still there.
  Harold Cardinal served briefly and unsuccessfully in a senior position
with DIAND, before writing another screed, pursuing a career in consulting,
Indian politicking, running unsuccessfully as a Liberal in Athabasca in
2000, and occasionally popping up to lambaste those who would criticize
his views on native entitlement.
  In the 32 years since Cardinal came in and wrecked the Liberals'
perfectly reasonable plan, conditions on reserves do not seem to have
improved. Native unemployment, alcoholism and suicide remain at
ridiculously high levels, DIAND continues to exist, and its expenditures
have risen exponentially.
  About the only difference I can see is that the DIAND bureaucracy has
been reduced. Jobs that department people used to do are now farmed out to
the native bands themselves.
  According to the retired DIAND official, and according to similar
accounts from all over the country, this shifting of work has resulted in
an explosion of corruption on the reserves.
  Band officials, operating without accountability, enrich themselves,
often with the complicity of DIAND people.
  "There's definitely enough money out there for the needs," says the ex-
official, " but it ain't getting to the needs. The culture of corruption
is worse than it ever was."
  Perhaps Jean Chretien -- assuming he isn't too far lost in his own
culture of corruption -- realizes how bad things have become in Indian
country, as well as inside a government department that, for the same sort
of political reasons that gave Cardinal his victory in 1969, has always
escaped thorough audits.
  Certainly, Chretien's own Indian Affairs minister, Robert Nault, a
crusty former railwayman from Kenora, is starting to make noises that
sound a wee bit like the ones his boss was making those many years ago.
  The First Nations Governance Act, introduced last week, will impose
strict rules on how Indian bands choose their councillors, spend their
money and pick their executives.
  The chiefs, represented by the Assembly of First Nations, are squawking
in ways that Harold Cardinal squawked 30 years ago. Their constitutional
rights are being violated, etc.
  Speaking to the National Post, Nault dismissed the AFN as a "lobby
group" that does not speak for most Indians. He indicated that he fully
intends to push the bill through in the fall.
  Although it is the most significant change to the Indian Act in 126
years, the bill hardly begins to do what Chretien's White Paper could have
done 33 years ago.
  But, in the Indian Wars and other skirmishes, Chretien has learned to be
an incrementalist.
  Slow and steady wins the race. The brave new world of 1969 died on the
order paper.
Ric Dolphin can be e-mailed at dolphinr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Copyright c. 2002 Calgary Herald


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