[Marxism] Re: British Genocide and intentionality

["Richard Fidler" <rfidler@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Ted Crawford:

But let me defend the British colonialists (up to a point). However
oppressed the indigenous people in Canada may be today I think I am
correct
in saying that there were NO, yes NO "Indian Wars" in Canada from the
1820s
onwards although on the prairies, the tribes ecology etc etc were
exactly
the same as in the USA south of the 49th parallel. Sioux etc. There was,
however inadequate and one sided, some sort of legal framework on the
Canadian frontier that was enforced, to some extent, against lawless
settlers - or at any rate the most lawless. This was not so in the
"Great
Republic". In Canada the tribes may have been cheated by agreements they
did
not understand, but it was not the case that the agreements could never
be
enforced particulaly after the Mounties were created. It was much, much
worse in the States.
(The Red River Campaign of 1867, Riel's rebellion, was waged against the
metis, not the tribes.)
Ted Crawford

This is wrong on almost all counts. I am surprised that a military
historian of Ted's repute would make such statements.

To mention only the two best-known incidents.... In the fall of 1869,
just as Ottawa was preparing to proclaim its control of the territory
west of Ontario, the Métis led by Louis Riel, himself a Métis, seized
control of the Red River colonial settlement (Lower Fort Garry, now
Winnipeg, Manitoba), issued a declaration of independence and
established a provisional government, which they held until dislodged by
a military expedition from the East in 1870. In the mid-1880s Riel led
an armed uprising by Métis and Indians further to the west, in what is
now Saskatchewan; after a number of skirmishes, they were finally
outnumbered by Canadian troops and defeated at Batoche after a three-day
battle. Riel was hanged, as were eight Amerindians and one other Métis;
81 Amerindians and 46 Métis were convicted of lesser crimes; many if not
most died soon after in captivity. Below is a rather sanitized summary
of the events; the author, Olive Dickason, a Métis scholar, is the
author of a number of major works on the aboriginal peoples, including
"Canada's First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest
Times".

If the repression of the native people in Western Canada was not as
brutal as it was in the Western United States, that is only because of a
somewhat different relationship of forces. Until the Northwest Rebellion
of 1885, the native peoples were a clear majority of the population west
of the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains. And because of extensive
inter-marriage with French fur traders and colonists, many were
French-speaking (Métis) and regarded as compatriots by the French in
Quebec and the Maritimes. The struggle by the British and the central
government in Ottawa to gain control over prairie colonization and
settlement was also a struggle to ensure Anglophone control of the
central government and Canada itself as the country expanded to the west
and north following the original Confederation of four colonies in the
east in 1867. The defeat of the Northwest rebellion meant that western
Canada would be English, and the French would be confined to Quebec and
marginal areas immediately adjacent to Quebec. In subsequent years the
French-speaking Quebecers, who had defined themselves as "Canadiens" or
Canadians in differentiation from the "British" or English-Canadians
came to call themselves first French-Canadians and later "Québécois" and
to see themselves as a distinct nation territorially defined by Quebec's
boundaries. The suppression of the rebellions in western Canada was
strongly opposed in Quebec.

When Riel and leaders of the rebellion were tried for treason there were
massive protests in Quebec, including the largest demonstrations ever
before the WWI Conscription crisis. It was one of the major political
crises in Canadian history.

So Ted, there is no cause for a Marxist to "defend the British
colonialists" on this question (or on any other, for that matter). The
"British colonialists" were no friends of the native people in Canada;
there were Indians wars here too throughout the 19th century, as the
British, first directly then through their "home rule" government in
Ottawa, asserted, established and maintained their control over the
territory north of the 49th parallel, and sought to frustrate Yankee
pretentions of "manifest destiny" to their north.

-- Richard Fidler

Riel, Louis
(1844-85)

Métis leader and founder of the province of Manitoba, Canada
National hero of the Métis, Louis Riel is a key figure in Canadian
history. In formulating the aspirations of his people during the
difficult years following the confederation of Canada (1867) and acting
to realize them, he became a catalyst in the French-English and
Catholic-Protestant rivalries that dominated the Canadian political
scene of the period.

Of Franco-Chipewyan descent, he was the grandson of Marie-Anne Gaboury,
the first white woman in western Canada. Riel was born in the Red River
Settlement (at that time under the governance of the Hudson's Bay
Company), and went to Montreal to study for the priesthood but turned to
law instead. He returned to the West the year following the
confederation of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia as the
Dominion of Canada. An immediate challenge to the fledgling government
was the transfer of the huge expanse of Rupert's Land (essentially
present-day Northwest Territories) from Hudson's Bay Company (HBC)
administration to that of the new dominion. The date set for this was
December 1, 1869.

The Métis communities of the Northwest, the product of the fur trade
that was still flourishing in those regions, had been developing for
more than two centuries. Far removed as they were from the centers of
colonial government, they already had a well-established tradition of
independent self-sufficiency. Nowhere was this more evident than at Red
River. Years earlier, in 1816, when the HBC had sought to enforce
regulations that the Métis considered to be against their interests, the
people of Red River under the leadership of Cuthbert Grant (c.
1793-1854) had mounted successful resistance in a confrontation known as
the Battle of Seven Oaks. It was a moment of truth that confirmed the
Métis in thinking of themselves as a "new nation," a people neither
Amerindian nor white, but a combination of both. Beginning in the 1840s,
the Métis at Red River presented a series of petitions to the HBC and to
the imperial government in London, asking for recognition as a separate
people and a voice in government. Officials dragged their heels,
suspicious of these people who did not fit into established social
categories.

As the date for the transfer of the HBC lands to Canada drew closer,
tensions mounted in Red River. When government surveyors arrived
unannounced and set to work, Riel and a group of Métis stopped them, on
October 11, 1869. The alarmed Métis then organized the Comité National
des Métis (National Committee of the Métis) to defend their interests.
In the meantime, Canada had named a former commissioner of crown lands
with a dubious record regarding his dealings with aboriginal
territories, William McDougall (1822-1905), as lieutenant governor of
Rupert's Land. When he arrived at Red River, his entry was blocked by
Riel and the Comité, on the grounds that the settlement had not been
consulted about his appointment. On November 2, the Métis took peaceful
possession of Lower Fort Garry, the HBC's regional headquarters—a move
that symbolized the Métis' control of Red River. All this they
accomplished without firing a shot.

A furious McDougall, unwilling to accept what had happened, slipped into
the settlement during a snowstorm on December 1, the day that had been
scheduled for the transfer, and read the proclamation that had been
prepared to announce Canada's takeover. His action formally ended HBC
authority without providing any effective official authority to take its
place; in effect, he created a political vacuum. Under the
circumstances, the Métis were legally free to form a provisional
government, which they did, with Riel as president.

Opposition was not long in developing, however, its major manifestation
being a group calling itself Canada First, based in English-speaking
Protestant Ontario. The aggressive behavior of some of the Canada
Firsters in Red River led to arrests, and eventually to the
court-martial and execution of one of them, Orangeman Thomas Scott. As
Ontario cried for vengeance and Quebec sprang to the defense of the
Métis, Ottawa rushed the Manitoba Act through Parliament, carving out of
the Northwest Territories a new province—Manitoba—that guaranteed equal
rights to French and English speakers and provided for a separate
Catholic school system; in addition, 1.4 million acres of land were set
aside for Métis.

For Riel, the consequences were not so happy. In spite of Ottawa's
promise of amnesty, Ontario continued to demand that he be brought to
justice for the execution of Scott. Although Riel was twice elected to
Parliament, in 1873 and again the following year, hostility against him
was such that he was never able to take his seat. In 1875 he was
banished from Canada for five years, with the promise of amnesty
afterward. Nervously exhausted from the strain of his position, he began
to see himself as a prophet of a new form of Christianity that would be
based in Canada—an unorthodox position that lost him support among the
Catholic clergy. Under the name of Louis R. David, he was hospitalized
in Quebec for a little more than a year and a half. Upon his discharge
he returned west to work as a trader and interpreter, and to become
involved in regional politics. In 1881 he married a Métis woman,
Marguerite Monet. In 1883 he became a U.S. citizen, and the following
year he accepted an invitation to teach at the Jesuit mission at Sun
River, Montana. Soon after he settled there, a delegation of Canadian
Métis arrived to ask his help in a crisis that had been precipitated by
the passing of the buffalo herds.

The situation in the Canadian Northwest in 1884 was very different from
what it had been in Red River in 1869-70. In addition to the
disappearance of the herds, the transcontinental Canadian Pacific
Railway was nearing completion, and the federal North-West Mounted
Police were a strong presence. But in one unfortunate respect, things
were all too much the same: Ottawa was still having trouble hearing the
voice of the West, particularly that of the Métis. Frustrated at the
slow pace of negotiations over the place of the Métis in the province,
Riel, on March 8, issued a ten-point bill of rights for the North-West
Territories. The manifesto included provisions recognizing the rights of
Amerindians and white settlers as well as the rights of the Métis. When
Ottawa did not respond, Riel proclaimed a provisional government on
March 19 (the name day of Saint Joseph, the patron saint of the Métis)
and seized the parish church at Batoche, on the Saskatchewan River.
Within a week, with the help of the new railway, federal troops were on
the scene.

The armed conflict that followed was quickly over, but the same cannot
be said for its consequences. The repercussions from the hanging of Riel
for high treason on November 16, 1885, are still being felt. The cause
of the Métis had received a severe setback, but it was not destroyed. It
has in fact been regaining momentum in the closing decades of the
twentieth century. A testimony to this was the inclusion of the Métis as
one of Canada's three aboriginal peoples in the Constitution of 1982,
and the federal government's recognition, in 1994, of the aboriginal
right to self-government.

Thomas Flanagan, ed., The Diaries of Louis Riel (Edmonton: Hurtig,
1976); A. S. Lussier, ed., Louis Riel and the Métis (Winnipeg: Pemmican
Publications, 1988); George F. G. Stanley, Louis Riel (Toronto:
McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1963).
Olive Patricia Dickason
University of Alberta

http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_033400_riellouis.htm




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