First nations of Canada

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by vid

People from the west say we're in the east. Corporations say we're in the west because they service us from Winnipeg. Our tourism board says we're in the North because it sells but we're further south than Vancouver. People from the far north think of us as south. We're in the middle of the continent but far away from everything. It's a very strange location. We're the Istanbul of Canada. The Gibraltar of the Canadian West.

And thank you.

Curiously do you speak cree?

[shreddog]

Originally Posted by vid

And that's why our hospital has those paintings: It serves a large native population, and helping them feel at home helps them recover. Out hospital even serves traditional native food to native patients to assist their recovery.

Missed responding to this last post - to me this is the one of the key things that you see moreso in western canada including T bay (and what I was alluding to earlier on). The native connection is more for FN people and less of the rest of us.

On another note, I haven't been to PA landing for over 5 years, how are these holding up??

[lio45]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

... many meetings and conferences are started by "acknowledging that they are taking place on unceded Musqueam and Coast Salish territory" (which is said so passively that it's become as generic as "hi how are you")

So, if these people were to speak at a conference in, say, Strasbourg, they would acknowledge the conference taking place on unceded Gaul territory, as well as on unceded Roman Empire territory, as well as on unceded Frankish territory, as well as on unceded Lotharingian territory, and then it changed hands between France and Germany a few times, some of them through conquest, so, unceded again...?

Sounds like a particularly complicated way of saying "hi, how are you?"...

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by ue

Yeah, come to think of it, First Nations don't really feel that visible in Vancouver. When I think of the ethnographic makeup of Greater Vancouver succinctly, I think of it as Whites, East Asians, and South Asians. The FN presence is more felt in the urban fabric through public art and such. It's odd, because I know Vancouver has a pretty high FN population, especially compared to Eastern Canada, but it doesn't feel noticeable like in Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Calgary. I don't even remember seeing visibly FN people the last time I was in Vancouver.

Public art is a very good point. First Nations murals, totem poles and other such motifs are absolutely everywhere. Vancouver as a site of oppressive colonization is a story ingrained into the popular mindset. The symbolic Native presence here is huge.

But your visit wasn't an anomaly: it's very rare to see them in everyday life, and the larger issue of poverty that exists within their community (the Downtown Eastside is a prime example of this) is shared by people of many other races in the same locations, so it doesn't feel like a Native issue specifically.

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by lio45

So, if these people were to speak at a conference in, say, Strasbourg, they would acknowledge the conference taking place on unceded Gaul territory, as well as on unceded Roman Empire territory, as well as on unceded Frankish territory, as well as on unceded Lotharingian territory, and then it changed hands between France and Germany a few times, some of them through conquest, so, unceded again...?

Sounds like a particularly complicated way of saying "hi, how are you?"...

That's a bizarre narrative since it seems only bretons remain.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by Boris2k7

I would say that on the Prairies, aboriginal issues are very visible, but the culture is not embraced. You'd probably avoid bringing it up at a dinner party, as you'd be likely to hear some responses along the lines of "the reserves were a mistake, we should have just gone ahead and forcefully integrated them a long time ago." If you want to open up that can of worms at a party, be my guest.

That's starting to change of course. But change is slow.

It's a bit harsh to use the word "forcefully", but yes, this is the root of the problem. Isolation (and to some extent self-segregation) is the root of all the problems. There is no way to properly solve any of the problems without acknowledging and acting on this.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Stryker

That's a bizarre narrative since it seems only bretons remain.

Ethnically the area is actually much more Germanic than Gaulois (let alone actually Breton). My greatgrandma is from there, BTW (not that it has any bearing on the argument).

Tons of places were conquered, it seems strange to insist on acknowledging it daily. Do modern Brits of Anglo-Saxon ethnicity actually begin their day with a ritual acknowledging they're on stolen Celtic land?!? Seems outlandish to me.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by lio45

So, if these people were to speak at a conference in, say, Strasbourg, they would acknowledge the conference taking place on unceded Gaul territory, as well as on unceded Roman Empire territory, as well as on unceded Frankish territory, as well as on unceded Lotharingian territory, and then it changed hands between France and Germany a few times, some of them through conquest, so, unceded again...?

Sounds like a particularly complicated way of saying "hi, how are you?"...

I have no idea how they would speak in other locations, but as I mentioned in my post just above, the mindset of Vancouver as stolen land is pretty out in the open. So I guess the reference to this is supposed to absolve us of this conflict, to prove that we're aware of it. But it has become pretty meaningless in the frequency and carelessness of its repetition. In fact, it's almost always the exact same phrase used every time:

"Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that this event is proceeding on the traditional, unceded territories of the Musqueam and Coast Salish people"

Mayor Gregor Robertson uses it to start off most of his public events, board meetings, etc. I hear it at UBC from virtually every guest lecturer. I'm sure it's becoming more common in other situations as well.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Architype

It's a bit harsh to use the word "forcefully", but yes, this is the root of the problem. Isolation (and to some extent self-segregation) is the root of all the problems. There is no way to properly solve any of the problems without acknowledging and acting on this.

I agree in theory, but residential schools have cast a long shadow on integration, and it will be remembered for many generations to come. We tried it once, it was a disaster, and now any attempt at integration will be met with understandable and justified suspicion.

I actually do think that full integration will happen one day, but it will have to be mostly self-driven and it will take a lot of time.

The reserve near which I live is going through massive development, which includes a Mills mall, a strip mall, thousands of housing units and an industrial park. This will blur the boundary between reserve and off-reserve. I think these sorts of developments will be the future of urban reserves. Erase the boundary between the reserve and the city and integration occurs naturally.

That only really works for urban reserves though. Dealing with the ones sprinkled across the Prairies far from any communities will be much tougher. And even then, there are plenty of Natives in major Prairie centres already, and their problems persist. Spatial integration may work fine, but when systemic barriers such as poverty and discrimination persist, it won't get you very far.

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by Architype

It's a bit harsh to use the word "forcefully", but yes, this is the root of the problem. Isolation (and to some extent self-segregation) is the root of all the problems. There is no way to properly solve any of the problems without acknowledging and acting on this.

Why not simply come here in the first place if we weren't invited.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by Stryker

Why not simply come here in the first place if we weren't invited.

Because that was the way of the world. People simply did these things for various reasons. It was a world of winners or losers (black & white), act first, don't ask nuanced ethical questions in today's terms. Christianity gave them all the license and ethical reasons they needed. Don't kid yourself, that's still the way of the world because it's human nature. Only in a world where we feel totally secure, do we have the luxury of asking such questions.

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by Architype

Because that was the way of the world. People simply did these things for various reasons. It was a world of winners or losers (black & white), act first, don't ask nuanced ethical questions in today's terms. Christianity gave them all the license and ethical reasons they needed. Don't kid yourself, that's still the way of the world because it's human nature. Only in a world where we feel totally secure, do we have the luxury of asking such questions.

What year are you using for "back then".

[vid]

Originally Posted by ue

Well that's kind of awkward, seeing as the work was created by a Metis artist.

Métis don't use Syllabics.

Originally Posted by Stryker

Curiously do you speak cree?

My ancestors are Ojibwe, and I don't speak the language. The last person in my family who spoke it was my great-grandmother as a child. She never spoke it again after residential school.

Originally Posted by shreddog

Missed responding to this last post - to me this is the one of the key things that you see moreso in western canada including T bay (and what I was alluding to earlier on). The native connection is more for FN people and less of the rest of us.

On another note, I haven't been to PA landing for over 5 years, how are these holding up??

They're holding up well, the corten has turned them red. The wood around the spirit circle is getting a bit rough. I don't think they used treated wood.

Originally Posted by lio45

So, if these people were to speak at a conference in, say, Strasbourg, they would acknowledge the conference taking place on unceded Gaul territory, as well as on unceded Roman Empire territory, as well as on unceded Frankish territory, as well as on unceded Lotharingian territory, and then it changed hands between France and Germany a few times, some of them through conquest, so, unceded again...?

Sounds like a particularly complicated way of saying "hi, how are you?"...

Those wars were ended with agreements and treaties. In Vancouver's case specifically, there never was an agreement or treaty. White people simply started building there and never compensated the local population.

Almost all of BC is like that, that's why BC has a different treaty system than the rest of Canada.

In Thunder Bay's case, we declare that the city is on traditional lands (which have been ceded, although the particular area of Fort William First Nation is not what was originally promised, as the white people who wrote the treaty got the orientation of the river wrong) and that's partly to facilitate reconciliation with the reserve in the aftermath of their land claim on a significant part of the city.

And also since the native population is growing so fast, it's basically just part of local culture now.

Originally Posted by lio45

Tons of places were conquered, it seems strange to insist on acknowledging it daily. Do modern Brits of Anglo-Saxon ethnicity actually begin their day with a ritual acknowledging they're on stolen Celtic land?!? Seems outlandish to me.

Are there large populations of Celts still living in England, dealing with transgenerational trauma after being forcibly put into schools that taught them they were worthless and savages and needed to be reformed to be accepted? Did the English rulers have them sign treaties that neither they nor the English really understood, with the intention of just killing them off or forcible assimilating them later on, except they survived?

You can't draw a direct parallel between Celts and English. And besides, many of the Celts (Irish, Welsh, Manx, Scots) have significantly more self determination than any of North America's indigenous people.

But basically you're making a mistake that a lot of white people tend to make: forgetting that indigenous people still exist. They were never really conquered or assimilated, they were just oppressed.

Originally Posted by GlassCity

"Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that this event is proceeding on the traditional, unceded territories of the Musqueam and Coast Salish people"

Mayor Gregor Robertson uses it to start off most of his public events, board meetings, etc. I hear it at UBC from virtually every guest lecturer. I'm sure it's becoming more common in other situations as well.

Thing is, out of all of the recommendations from the truth and reconciliation report, saying "This land is on unceeded/traditional territory of X nation" is literally the easiest one to implement.

Originally Posted by Stryker

What year are you using for "back then".

If you look at how the US behaves with regard to Muslims, you could just as easily use the year 2017.

To bring this post full circle: Syllabics were invented by missionary James Evans in the mid 1800s, with the purpose of teaching the Cree how to read and write so they could understand the bible and convert to Christianity. It was then modified by a missionary in China to spread the religion among linguistic minorities of that country. It was originally based on the Devenagari abugida, the basic shapes of the consonants is very similar.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by vid

Those wars were ended with agreements and treaties.

Not all of them. Many did not. For example, currently Paris, Bruxelles, Zürich, Frankfurt, London are all on "unceded" Roman territory.

Are there large populations of Celts still living in England, dealing with transgenerational trauma after being forcibly put into schools that taught them they were worthless and savages and needed to be reformed to be accepted? Did the English rulers have them sign treaties that neither they nor the English really understood, with the intention of just killing them off or forcible assimilating them later on, except they survived?

Yes, pretty much that, except that I don't believe there were treaties involved at the time.

If it's acknowledged that the land is "stolen" and is illegitimately occupied, then why isn't it just given back? And if it can't be given back, then it's simply entering the large club of lands on this globe that have at one time been taken away from a group by another group, might as well get over it.

JMO, obviously - but it really feels extremely strange to have official stuff start with an acknowledgement you're on "stolen" lands, yet no one does anything about it.

[vid]

Originally Posted by lio45

If it's acknowledged that the land is "stolen" and is illegitimately occupied, then why isn't it just given back?

Because all of our shit is on it? Honestly in the case between Thunder Bay and Fort William, the reserve specifically said they didn't want the land back (it is severely contaminated from a century of industrial use), they just wanted a share in the century of profit the land has given to the city. Which they got. It sits in a trust fund for the residents in perpetuity.

Originally Posted by lio45

And if it can't be given back, then it's simply entering the large club of lands on this globe that have at one time been taken away from a group by another group, might as well get over it.

JMO, obviously - but it really feels extremely strange to have official stuff start with an acknowledgement you're on "stolen" lands, yet no one does anything about it.

Except that lots of things have been done about it. The land claims process is literally the government doing something about it. A fifth of my city is located on land that was literally stolen from Native people between 1848 and 1905 (as in, it was part of the reserve, then the government said "no we need this" and kicked them off the land so they could give it to white people, in many cases for free), and over the past few years, the federal and provincial governments have paid that reserve hundreds of millions of dollars (which the reserve has put into a trust and used for housing, education and infrastructure initiatives), the province gave them additional land that was taken for literally no reason (the province never did anything with the islands they took in the early 1900s, they just said "these are ours now" and that was that), and the city gave the reserve's Economic Development Corporation a large segment of underused industrial land which the reserve promptly cleaned up and now rents out to numerous companies to raise money for the community, while also paying taxes to the city itself.

That's not "nothing". Land claims themselves were literally illegal until just a few decades ago.

And if you think half a billion dollars for ~120 square kilometres is "a lot" (it's actually only $16,000 per acre, about a fifth of the market rate for that land in our market), what do you think the accumulated value of Thunder Bay's economy is since 1848? Our GDP was about 8 billion last year. About 8 billion the year before that. In just two years the city's economy has created 16 times the value we gave to that reserve to have possession of the land where we generate all that wealth. This is the part of the calculation a lot of white people miss: while natives were banned from claiming the lands they used to own, Canada was literally making trillions of dollars off of it. Adjusted for inflation, the value of Canada, the value of what we've taken from indigenous people to have an economy for the past 150 years, is probably over 100 trillion dollars. The value of our natural resources still in the ground, alone, is estimated to be about the same.

We've given First Nations, what, a percent of that over that time frame? If that? The treaties literally promised 4 pounds sterling per year in exchange for land. Would you give away 500 acres of land for the equivalent of about $550 a year for the next 150 years, and then stand idly by as the person using it becomes a multi-billionaire?

Do you realize that when it comes to places like Ipperwash, there are people still alive today who remember when that land was taken from them?

Your analogy about the Celts and English would only really match this situation if you went back to the year 950 to make it.

[Loco101]

I enjoyed your comments vid.

Thunder Bay and Timmins seem to be the two places in our province that have many flights to Far-North reserves. And our cities both have many businesses that do business with those communities and their people.

I also want to add that in Quebec it's Val-d'Or and Chibougamau that are service centres to many reserves so it's not just Ontario and West.

You have reserves right near where you live but Timmins doesn't. But both our cities have large aboriginal populations. And many of those people moved down from up North.

I didn't realize that T-Bay now has a Wacky Wings (now knows as Wacky's). It's a restaurant chain that started in the Sault. We have one in Timmins. That's sad that people complained about having a native youth centre. Just total racism and nothing else.

I also like your comments about how many native people live. I have to agree that there is definitely a difference between Indigenous people who live on reserve (even if they are not fully "Indian") and ones who are born and raised in the city as viewed by aboringinals. I also know many Cree and Ojibway people who are very secular and quite a few who are evangelical Christians. Some native Christians see traditional native spirituality as satanic are refuse to participate in anything that has to do with it. I know some Cree Pentecostal kids whose parents pulled them out of an aboriginal unit being taught at an elementary public school because it involved activities that taught about traditional aboriginal drumming, smudging, etc..

[vid]

I haven't noticed evangelical natives much here, but I know a few Christian ones. Mostly, they're either atheist or spiritual.

It could just be that the evangelical natives keep to themselves. In my family, after what residential school did to my great-grandparents, Christianity was seen as something to avoid. There is a sentiment that a native person who is Christian is betraying their ancestors.

[ssiguy]

In the West Native issues are discussed and in a uniformly negative manner. Whether it's poverty, drugs, missing women, abuse, family violence, crime, overdoses..... Natives only get attention when talking about society's social ills. Seriously, think of all the times you have been to Chinese, Indian, Italian, Greek, Japanese, or Middle Eastern restaurants. Now try to think of the last time you went to a "Native" restaurant. When was the last time any of you went to Nativetown as opposed to Chinatown, Little Italy or even the Gay Village? The only areas that one thinks of for a Nativetown is Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Native culture is something politicians drag out of the closet at international events like Vancouver's Olympics but are quickly stuffed back into the closets as soon as the media leaves. I think the vast majority of Canadians think it is deplorable how most of our Native population lives but also do not feel that there should be any more spending on the issues as it is seen as throwing good money after bad to a feudal-type Reserve System and a population that seems to take frightening little responsibility for their own situations and refusing to take the necessary actions {like leaving Reserves/villages with 90% unemployment} for greener pastures.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Loco101

I enjoyed your comments vid.

Same here, interesting to hear from someone who's a lot more connected to this facet of life in Canada. I wonder what vid's armchair quarterback's ideas to improve the average aboriginal quality of life while still preserving traditions and culture would be?

Personally, I like the idea of a native province (forcibly carved out of Northern Saskatchewan, it's pretty central...) then elimination of the special status and reserves. Ironically, had this happened earlier, everyone would likely be better off today. Now, of course, it's unfathomable - so we're basically stuck with the status quo.

[ssiguy]

Another issue that hurts Native's ability to improve their lot is the low levels of political participation. Natives are good at complaining and hence getting media attention about their plight but don't follow up at the ballot box.

In the 2011 federal Election {which for Natives is even more relevant due to much of Native funding is strictly federal than for most Canadians} their voter turnout is lousy. The national turnout was 58.5% with the lowest level being the area with the highest level of Native population..........Nunavut with turnout of just 39.4%. Seconf lowest was the area with the second highest population of Natives...............the NWT with 47.4%.

Elections are held in October so weather is not an issue and every little tiny hamlet in the country has a voting station so neither climate or isolation are excuses. Politicians want to get re-elected and the Native vote is irrevelant and hence so are thier concerns.