#Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada

[dailyanarchistposts]

Canada’s first national park

In 1871, AS A CONDITION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA JOINING Canada, the Canadian Government had to agree to build a transcontinental railroad linking BC to the rest of the country. Of course, the construction of a transcontinental railroad also established a claim to the remaining parts of British North America not yet integrated into either the Canadian or America nation-states. It comes as no surprise that Banff National Park was created in 1885, the year of the defeat of the Metis Rebellion, which cleared and opened the west for settlement, tourists and capital investment.

The official story goes that in 1882, Tom Wilson, a surveyor for the Canadian Pacific Railway, “discovered” Lake Louise, the most accessible centerpiece of the park, on the way through the Rockies. A year later the Cave and Basin Hot springs were discovered by three railway construction workers. People began to flock to the site, hotels went up and the town of Banff was born.

The truth, however, is that it was people from the Nakodah First Nation that guided Wilson to the Lake. In fact, they already had a name for it, they called it “The Lake of the Little Fish.” The Nakodah (also known as Stoney) are descendants of the Dakota and Lakota nations of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, part of the large Sioux Nation.

The name “Stoney” was given them by white explorers because of their technique of using fire-heated rocks to boil broth in rawhide bowls. The Nakodah were familiar with the area, having lived throughout it for at least several hundred years. They knew the trails and passes as part of their hunting grounds. There is archaeological evidence pointing to human occupation going back at least ten thousand years, but apparently the Nakodah came from somewhere around the Mississippi after an outbreak of smallpox in the 1600’s.

In any case, by the time the Railroad was being built, the mountains were part of their home. I’m not aware of any uprisings to protect their homelands, however the “Stoney” were signatories to Treaty 7. (In order for the transcontinental railroad to make its way across Canada, it had to go through what were recognized as the traditional lands of different aboriginal peoples. So it was important for the Canadian State to negotiate Treaties with the distinct tribes living along the route to allow the railroad to be built.) Regardless, the whole territory was evidence of long term harmonious human occupation, much like Yellowstone.

Sadly, during the first decades, park managers would do regular predator hunts, believing that mountain lions, coyotes and wolves, for instance, should be killed to save deer and elk. And now, only a hundred and thirty years later, many of the Park’s eco-systems are threatened, as are several of the animals who live within it, and the Nakodah live on a reservation.

In its 2007 annual report the Parks Canada web site states: “Parks Canada continued to work with the Siksika Nation and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada to resolve the outstanding specific claim in the park.” The claim is by the Siksika First Nation. Furthermore, in May 2000 the Siksika threatened “ to occupy Castle Mountain in Banff National Park to pressure the federal government into handing it over. The Siksika, who live east of Calgary near Gleichen, say they’ve been trying since 1960 to gain control of a 68-square-kilometre parcel that was used by their ancestors for rituals.[4]”

The Siksika are part of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which consists of four different tribes, the Pikuni/Peigan, North Peigan Pikuni, Blood/Kainai, and Blackfoot/Siksika. Banff is the most heavily developed national park in North America, entertaining more than five million visitors a year and has been the site of fights between environmentalists and developers. Environmentalists claim that added development “will put added stress on a fragile lake region where grizzly bears, lynx and wolverines are already threatened by the presence of as many as 20,000 tourists a day.[5]”

[tartrazeen]

I hate that this is the thing that caught my eye in your review, but the writer called the department "Aboriginal Affairs"?!

There was a tiny period of like four years where it was called "Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Affairs Canada". For DECADES before that, it was "Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. After that, they switched to "Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada" - presumably 'cause they had too much INAC stationary leftover - and now it's Indigenous Services Canada and some other little half-name on the side (Indigenous Relations Canada, I think). Only like a few years ago did they finally even change legal name from "Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development" to CIRNAC, which omg I'm not spelling out but the I is for Indigenous and the A is Affairs again. The department exists to blah-blah-blah about the INDIAN Act.

So this person cut through ALLLLLLLLLL of that...

... to pick the five seconds in history where the 'A' stood for Aboriginal?

That's not just lazy. That's actively committed to rewriting history. I can't even say it's trying to use the 'more appropriate modern term' (in a book about pre-Alberta 🙄), because they went juuuuuust far enough to not use Indian, but decided Indigenous was too modern or something?

I know it's minor, but the effort that had to have gone in to actively search out that name and that name alone is so goddamn dedicated to being wrong that it's like, "Oh, you did do some kind of research. And you picked this part on purpose. Got it."

Just a bit wooooooow.

THE TORTURE IS OVER

ALSO I KNEW THIS AUTHOR WAS FUCKING AMERICAN

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Is the First Nations Water Boil Advisory federal or provincial jurisdiction

Its the Federal Government’s responsibility:

“Legally, the protection and provision of water to First Nations is a responsibility of the federal government, specifically Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC). Band Councils, AANDC and Health Canada share responsibilities for providing water services to Aboriginal communities.“

[thedigital-witnesses]

Rethinking Reconciliation and the Desire to Heal: Decolonizing Indigenous Healing, Conciliation, and Aesthetic Action in Canada

By: Alyssa Logie, M.A. 

In December 2015, the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released its final report including 94 “Calls to Action” urging all levels of Canadian government to contribute to the project of reconciliation. In 2015 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instructed the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs to officially implement these calls. As such, the Canadian government agreed to embark on the journey of reconciliation. According to the TRC, “reconciliation” is about “establishing and maintaining a mutually respectful relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in this country” (A Knock on the Door 142). While this goal may seem advantageous and has had positive impacts as a response to the harms caused by Canada’s Indian Residential School System and the ongoing traumas of colonization, it is necessary to reflect upon the underlying sentiments that underpin the Canadian Government’s desire to participate in reconciliation. As this paper will highlight, many Indigenous and non-Indigenous people assert that the Government of Canada is pushing the discourse and project of reconciliation as an extension of the colonial project itself. In order to unpack how this may be, this paper pays particular attention to the Western implications of “healing” that underpin the TRC’s tenets of reconciliation. The push for “healing” as it is defined by the TRC and the Government of Canada ultimately places the responsibility of achieving reconciliation via a Western framework on the shoulders of those who already suffer at the hands of colonization and, as a result, silences Indigenous folk in order to further the Canadian government’s exploitation of Indigenous bodies and land. 

This paper will first unpack how the TRC and the Government of Canada make particular use of the Western notion of healing as a necessity for reconciliation. Following this analysis of Western notions of healing within the TRC, I will unpack Indigenous notions of healing. This consideration of Indigenous notions of healing will further emphasize the colonial nature of the push for healing within the TRC’s hearings and final documents. After a consideration of Indigenous notions of healing, I will turn to Indigenous artists who are enacting “aesthetic action” in order to counter the Western notions of healing that permeate the reconciliation/colonization project in the hopes of rethinking what reconciliation really means in Canada. 

The TRC’s Focus on “Healing” Indigenous Wounds and the Need for Conciliation

As stated by Métis scholar and artist David Garneau, “the sanctioned performance of Reconciliation [on behalf of the TRC and the Government of Canada] is foundationally distorted” (Garneau 23). Garneau reminds us that testimony produced for the TRC is “constrained by non-Indigenous narratives of healing and closure” (Garneau 23). In this way, the TRC hearings were part of a “theatre of national Reconciliation” (29). Although Garneau does acknowledge that survivors who shared their stories during the TRC hearings did so for a number of productive reasons (to bear witness, to speak the truth), he insists that we must also consider the peculiar “display mechanisms” these survivors and their testimonies became “caught up in” (30). Although the act of sharing testimony can and has had positive outcomes for survivors and their communities, and can and has contributed to the general understanding of Canada’s colonial past and present, we must remain critical of the underlying motivations for these testimonial acts to take place. Garneau looks at the TRC’s “Our Mandate” page to get a sense of what this motivation may be. The first line of the mandate reads: “There is an emerging and compelling desire to put the events of the past behind us so that we can work towards a stronger and healthier future” (TRC.ca). Whose desire is this? If it is the Government’s colonial desire, then the process of sharing testimonies at TRC hearings is nothing more than a “continuation of the settlement narrative” (Garneau 31). According to Garneau, “the present ‘colonial’ desire is to ‘put the events of the past behind us’ and reconcile Indigenous people with this narrative” (31). In this way, Reconciliation as it is conceived of and understood by the government is nothing more than a mutation of the colonial project. Following this logic, we can see how the TRC and ultimately the Government of Canada make use of Western understandings of healing instead of turning to Indigenous notions of healing. This is problematic, as it proposes a colonial answer to a supposedly de-colonial project. 

Photo from: www.trc.ca 

Garneau asserts that the notion of “reconciliation” as used by the TRC and the Government of Canada has its roots in Western, particularly Catholic, traditions. Garneau explains how the process of reconciliation assumes that communities and individuals can only be healed “by telling a secret to those in charge,” much like the Catholic practice of confession (33). This is problematic; as Catholic institutions are highly responsible for the traumas experienced at residential schools across Canada. To enforce a Catholic-inspired notion of reconciliation and salvation upon survivors of such traumas is entirely cruel and counter-productive. Additionally, the emphasis on the “spectacle of individual accounts (confessions) and healing narratives (forgiveness and penance)” is inherently colonial, as the ultimate goal is for survivors to heal, forget, and move on. According to Nehiyaw writer and community helper Suzanne Methot, the push on behalf of the TRC and the Canadian Government for Indigenous peoples to move on after sharing their stories of trauma is inherently motivated by the desire to mold Indigenous peoples into passive subjects, ultimately silencing the so-called “indigenous problem” of today (Methot). By rejecting Indigenous ways of knowing, “colonial systems and structures control the nature of the debate and contain it within settler-colonial parameters. This creates yet another opportunity for the colonizer to effect control upon Indigenous peoples” (Methot 205). Essentially, if Indigenous peoples “heal” according to Western notions of “healing”, they will stop complaining about the past and they—as well as their land—become easier to exploit in the interest of settler-colonial capitalist gain. 

Suzanne Methot further explains how Western traditions of “talk therapy” have their limitations in serving Indigenous peoples. Methot describes these limitations: 

The European focus on talking as a form of therapy has its roots in the writing of Rene Descartes and reflects his belief that “I think, therefore I am.” The resulting Cartesian dualism—wherein the mind is separated from the natural world—does not reflect Indigenous ideas on healing or wellness (Methot 233).

If reconciliation is predicated upon Western notions of healing that are incompatible with Indigenous knowledge systems, what other means can be used to genuinely take up the trauma of the IRS that do not fall into the historical pattern of colonialism? For Garneau, and other scholars such as David McDonald, the notion of “conciliation” can help to decolonize the process of truly healing and making reparations for Canada’s genocidal past, as conciliation is an “ongoing process, a seeking rather than the restoration of an imagined agreement” (Garneau 31)1. For Garneau, the reconciliation narrative should be “recast as a continued struggle for conciliation rather than the restoration of something lost (that never quite was)” (32). For conciliation to be possible, Indigenous sovereignties pre-contact must be acknowledged and upheld; Indigenous worldviews must be held up to the same degree as Western worldviews—this especially applies to Indigenous notions of healing that assume a continuous, never ending reflection on traumas of the past. Cree artist, poet and oral historian explains how the nêhiyawak (Cree) word used in reference to the residential school experience is ê-kiskakwêyehk, which means ‘we wear it’” (34). In this way, a wound is not something that goes away after a healing process—it is a scar that is never fully healed or forgotten, that influences the life of a people forever.

Indigenous Notions of Healing: A Pathway Towards Conciliation

After unpacking the Western-colonial desires that underpin the TRC’s and Government of Canada’s push for the healing of Indigenous peoples, it becomes necessary to turn to Indigenous notions of healing that can and must be used in the process of conciliation. In 1998, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF) was established in Ottawa, Ontario as an Indigenous managed, non-profit corporation with a mandate to “support the development of sustainable healing processes related to the legacy of Canada’s residential school system” (Archibald 1). During its operation, AHF received $515 million in funding from the Government of Canada that was used to create and support hundreds of Indigenous healing programs, and centers across the country (AHF.ca). As such, the AHF became the spearhead in organizing and ensuring funding for Indigenous healing initiatives across Canada. Before funding for the Foundation was cut by Stephen Harper’s conservative government in 2010 leading to its closure in 2014, the AHF provided hundreds of community-based Indigenous-centered healing initiatives for Indigenous folks in Canada, and published numerous reports and resources on this history and legacy of colonization in Canada (Archibald 2006). The AHF’s Final Report indicates that out of fourteen different forms of healing activities offered by initiatives funded by the AHF, Western therapies were the least effective in treating trauma and intergenerational trauma (2006, 37). Across the board, Indigenous-centered initiatives proved to be the more effective, with elder interactions, ceremony, one-to-one counselling and healing talking circles, and traditional medicine being the most popular and effective of all (37). 

In the third volume of the AHF’s Final Report the term “promising healing practices” is used to define “models, approaches, techniques and initiatives that are based on Aboriginal experiences; that feel right to Survivors and their families; and that result in positive changes in people’s lives” (Archibald 2006, 7). These Indigenous-centered practices address what the AHF refers to as the “three pillars of healing” Indigenous trauma: reclaiming history, cultural interventions, and therapeutic healing (18). As opposed to a Western-oriented notion of healing, this definition includes the necessity of not only individual therapeutic interventions, but also a more holistic process involving the re-establishment of “a spiritual connection with the land using traditional teachings, values and practices” enforcing the “regaining of cultural identity, personal enlightenment and wellness that prepares residents for better reintegration back into their communities” (25). Essentially, the individual can only be healed alongside the reclamation of collective history, land and culture—all essential components to Indigenous healing that Western individual-based approaches ignore. According to a report prepared by Linda Archibald for the AHF, “the central lesson learned about promising healing practices is the immense value and efficacy of incorporating history and culture into holistic programs based on Indigenous values and worldviews” (52). 

Image from: https://www.fnha.ca/what-we-do/traditional-healing

It is also crucial to remember that not all Indigenous notions of healing are uniform, and not all Indigenous peoples respond to the same healing practices in the same way. According to a report prepared by James B. Waldram for the AHF: 

What clearly emerges from our research is the importance of flexibility and eclecticism in the development of treatment models. There is no singular Aboriginal client, as there is no singular Aboriginal individual. Some clients are very firmly entrenched in Aboriginal cultural experiences; others, however, have had extensive experience with the broader, non-Aboriginal influences of mainstream Canada. One legacy of the residential school and substitute care systems for Aboriginal people has been the lack of Aboriginal cultural experiences for many. These individuals are not culture-less, as many popular accounts of Aboriginal experience might suggest; rather, they simply have had little or no experience in an Aboriginal cultural milieu, especially during initial developmental stages (Waldram 2008, 4). 

In this way, Waldram reminds us to refrain from utilizing Pan-Indigenous language when referring to processes of healing and conciliation. Additionally, according to Linda Archibald: 

While adaptations and sharing of Indigenous practices take place across cultures, an increased resistance to viewing Aboriginal people as having a homogeneous set of traditions and practices is evident. At a global level, efforts are required to maintain and support the cultural diversity that currently exists. At the community level, there is some evidence that culturally-appropriate healing interventions are most effective when rooted in local practices, languages and traditions (Archibald 2006, 50).

With Waldram and Archibald’s assertions in mind, what specific Indigenous healing practices have been successfully used in the past, and can be used moving forward, in the process of conciliation?

The process of reconnecting with community, culture and land are three fundamental tenets of Indigenous healing. According to Suzanne Methot, connecting to the natural world a “transformative force, one that is key to healing and change” across all Indigenous peoples (Methot 239). Additionally, Methot cites “recreating the structures of belonging” as another key aspect to Indigenous healing. By “structures of belonging,” Methot is referring to the return of Indigenous peoples to their own communities and cultures. To support Methot’s assertion, in 1997 the Assembly of First Nations “identified the following common strengths among the projects it reviewed in a paper on successful Indigenous health programs in Canada, the United States and Australia: projects tend to be tradition-based and values-based; interventions focus on the entire family; links are made between spirituality and therapy; there is an intimate knowledge of the tribal community and a drawing together of traditions; projects respond to the needs of the community; and the community supported healing and recovery” (Archibald 2006, 39). The number of healing practices formed upon the values and worldviews of Indigenous peoples is extensive and beyond the scope of this short paper. According to Archibald, some of these promising traditional healing practices include: healing circles, sweat lodges, pipe ceremonies, dream interpretation, fasting, herbal medicine, returning to a traditional diet, cleansing and prayer, ceremonies including singing and drumming, counselling by a healer or Elder—all of which can be used in tandem with one another (Archibald 2006, 54). 

While Western traditions on their own cannot serve to provide healing for Indigenous peoples, Linda Archibald’s 2006 report for the AHF describes how many healing programs have successfully incorporated, adapted, and blended traditional and Western approaches (Archibald 2006, 50). According to Archibald’s report: 

Traditional ceremonies, medicines and healing practices are being incorporated into the therapeutic process while Indigenous values and worldviews are providing the program framework. Some core values, such as holism, balance and connection to family and the environment, are common to Aboriginal worldviews across cultures; others are clearly rooted in local customs and traditions. The variety of therapeutic combinations in use suggests a powerful commitment to the values of adaptability, flexibility and innovation in the service of healing. This is consistent with the holistic approach to healing common to Indigenous value systems (50). 

While Western approaches may be incorporated into Indigenous healing initiatives, it is essential that Indigenous values and world views remain the foundational framework for such efforts. 

The Future of Indigenous Healing in Canada 

The AHF’s Final Report suggests that “10 years is the average period required for initiating, establishing and evaluating therapeutic healing from residential school trauma in a community or community of interest” and that it “takes time for individuals and communities to reach the ‘readiness to heal’ stage” (Archibald 2006, 39). Because of this, continued stable government funding is required for communities to “engage in a continuum of healing” including processes of reaching out to survivors, dismantling denial, creating safety, and engaging participants in therapeutic healing (39). While the AHF had incredibly positive outcomes for Indigenous communities and individuals, according its Final Report, “20% of the communities are just beginning their healing activities, 65.9% of the communities accomplished a few goals, but much work remains and 14.1% of the communities accomplished many goals, but some work remains” (31). Unfortunately, the de-funding and dissolution of the AHF has left hundreds of community-based healing initiatives without necessary funding, and new initiatives struggle to acquire financial support. The Government of Canada’s cut to such funding is detrimental to the ongoing healing work that Indigenous communities require, and is antithetical to the promises of the TRC’s Calls to Action. How can the Government of Canada support the mandate of the TRC while actively denying funding for community-based, Indigenous-led healing initiatives? Without the actual funding, these Calls to Action are nothing more than empty promises and lip service. 

In 2012, Linda Archibald prepared a report entitled Dancing, Singing, Painting, and Speaking the Healing Story: Healing through Creative Arts for the AHF. In this report, Archibald asserts that along with traditional Indigenous healing practices, the creative arts can and have had profound healing effects for Indigenous peoples. Archibald’s study ultimately asked: “what happens when art, music, dance, storytelling, and other creative arts become a part of community-based Aboriginal healing programs?” (Archibald 2006, 1). According to the results of the study: 

The role of the arts is explained through three interconnected models of healing: the first focuses on the innate healing power of creativity (creative arts-as-healing); the second speaks to the use of the arts in the therapeutic process (creative arts-in-therapy); and the third encompasses a holistic approach to healing that includes creative arts, culture, and spirituality within its very definition (holistic healing includes creative arts). The first two models can be found in the existing art therapy literature. The third model, which grew out of the research, was necessary to complete the picture with respect to Aboriginal people because so many of the responses to the survey and interview questions transcended the two existing models. In these cases, creative arts were considered inseparable from culture, spirituality, and holistic healing. Traditional healing encompasses culture, language, history, spirituality, traditional knowledge, art, drumming, singing, dance, and storytelling as well as knowledge specific to the healer’s area of expertise and the type of healing being undertaken. It is a comprehensive, holistic approach aimed at restoring balance. (2-3). 

This study shows how creative arts are not only productive in Indigenous healing practices, but are actually inseparable from Indigenous cultures and spiritualities. As such, it is necessary to look at when and how the creative arts have been utilized by Indigenous peoples to facilitate healing through the return to traditional communities, cultures and lands. 

Indigenous Aesthetic Action: Combatting Colonial Notions of “Healing”

As previously described, the creative arts are an inseparable component of Indigenous cultures, spiritualties, and, consequently, healing. I will now turn to examples of Indigenous artists and/or projects that have made use of the creative arts to not only practice healing, but also to question and combat the Western colonial notions of healing that underpin the notion of reconciliation put forth by the TRC and the Government of Canada.

Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin utilize the term “aesthetic action” to describe creative endeavors that “unsettle us, provoke us, and make us reconsider our assumptions” (Robinson and Martin 3). Aesthetic action does not refer to aesthetics in the traditional sense of the word; it alternatively refers to the affective quality of the arts and how the arts can move us—most importantly to how they move us to action. In accordance with Garneau and McDonald’s assertions, Robinson and Martin assert that “the concept and practice of reconciliation must be continually interrogated and reimagined” (3). More specifically, Robinson and Martin believe that art—aesthetic action— “is the ideal mechanism through which this can occur” (3). In this way, we can view creative endeavours that function as healing practices and as critical interrogations of the colonial notion of reconciliation as works of aesthetic action. While there are numerous exceptional examples of Indigenous works of aesthetic action, due to the limited scope of this paper, I will focus on three such examples: Digital Natives, Walking with Our Sisters, and (official denial) trade value in progress.

Image from: https://twitter.com/livresCAbooks/status/822114905004253184

Digital Natives (2011) 

Digital Natives (2011) is a collaborative project produced by Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, a non-profit collective of Vancouver-based individuals, and was curated by Lorna Brown and Clint Burnham (Image 1). During April 2011 (coinciding with the 125th Anniversary of the City of Vancouver) the project displayed ten-second text messages in English and Indigenous languages, interrupting the usual rotation of advertisements on the electronic billboard at the Burrard Street Bridge. Curators Brown and Burnham invited artists and writers from across North America to contribute messages (digitalnatives.othersights.ca). The messages “responded to the site’s charged history,” and the billboard itself “became an artistic and literary space for exchange between native and non-native communities exploring how language is used in advertising, its tactical role in colonization, and as a complex vehicle of communication” (digitalnatives.othersights.ca). More specifically, the project aimed to expose the “lack of public acknowledgement that Vancouver is built upon unceded Coast Salish territory” (Robinson and Zaiontz 43-44). Some of the messages included: “In 1913, all traces of the original village were burned to the ground…,” and “Your grandparents’ unacknowledged debts return to you as rage against the car in front.” Some of the messages were censored by the owner of the billboard, Astral Media, leading Brown and Burnham to add printed lawn signs upon a city-owned piece of land in front of the Burrand Street Bridge. One of the censored messages written by Edgar Heap of Birds pointed directly to the traumas of the residential schools, and the hypocrisy of Vancouver’s relationship with this history (specifically during the 2010 Olympic games in Vancouver), stating: “IMPERIAL CANADA AWARDED SEX ABUSE TO NATIVE YOUTH BY THE BLACK ROBES NOW PROUDLY BESTOWS BRONZE SILVER GOLD MEDALS WITH INDIAN IMAGE” (uppercase in original).

Photo from: https://covapp.vancouver.ca/PublicArtRegistry/ArtworkDetail.aspx?ArtworkId=467

Digital Natives is an example of aesthetic action in that it provides a healing opportunity for Indigenous folks who are able to reflect upon and share their own personal traumas, while also challenging Vancouver’s hypocritical position on reconciliation. On June 17h 2014, the City of Vancouver tabled a motion to become “the world’s first city of reconciliation” (Robinson and Zaiontz 47). What does becoming a “city of reconciliation” really mean, when the city actively resides on unceded Coast Salish land? And, as asked by Robinson and Zaiontz, “what tangible benefits will First Nations secure from the subsequent development of protocols with the City of Vancouver?” (47). Robinson and Zaiontz claim that “to develop a civic infrastructure of redress means to develop a corresponding model for urban planning that acknowledges Vancouver’s location on unceded Coast Salish territory” (48). It is not enough for a city to simply proclaim that they are a “city of reconciliation”—this must be coupled with concrete action and redress. As a work of aesthetic action, Digital Natives commandeered the city’s infrastructure, reclaimed Indigenous space, and served as a direct intervention of the empty rhetorical promises of “reconciliation” espoused by the City of Vancouver.

Image from: https://othersights.ca/digital-natives/

Walking with Our Sisters 

Walking with Our Sisters is a commemorative art installation for the missing and murdered Indigenous women of Canada and the United States curated by Christi Belcourt (Image 2). Walking with Our Sisters is “comprised of 1,763+ pairs of moccasin vamps (tops) plus 108 pairs of children’s vamps created and donated by hundreds of caring and concerned individuals to draw attention to this injustice” (walkingwithoursisters.ca). According to the installation’s website:

The work exists as a floor installation made up of beaded vamps arranged in a winding path formation on fabric and includes cedar boughs. Viewers remove their shoes to walk on a path of cloth alongside the vamps” (walkingwithoursisters.ca). Each pair of vamps represents one missing or murdered Indigenous woman. The unfinished moccasins represent the unfinished lives of the women whose lives were cut short. The children’s vamps are dedicated to children who never returned home from residential schools. Together the installation represents all these women; paying respect to their lives and existence on this earth. They are not forgotten. They are sisters, mothers, aunties, daughters, cousins, grandmothers, wives and partners. They have been cared for, they have been loved, they are missing and they are not forgotten (walkingwithoursisters.ca). 

Image from: https://twitter.com/christibelcourt/status/1004250177379688448

According to curator Chirsti Belcourt, “what we are doing here is not an exhibit… it’s a memorial. It’s commemoration and it’s a ceremony” (walkingwithoursisters.ca). As such, the creation of the installation itself was a healing process for all of those involved. Additionally, those who come to view the installation become implicated in a healing practice as well. As the installation travels to various locations, more and more Indigenous and non-Indigenous folks can bear witness to the trauma of not only Canada’s colonial past, but the current epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. The installation is never complete as people can add vamps to the installation at any time. Walking with Our Sisters is always actively growing and never complete, emulating the previously discussed nêhiyawak (Cree) notion of ê-kiskakwêyehk meaning “we wear it”—healing from trauma is a continual, active process that is ongoing, and, like Belcourt’s installation, never complete. Walking with Our Sisters resists the Western notion of healing as a destination to be reached, combatting the problematic rhetoric of reconciliation, and moving towards the necessary work of conciliation. 

Photo from: https://www.easterndoor.com/2017/07/07/walking-with-our-sisters-steps-into-kahnawake/

(official denial) trade value in progress (2014) 

(official denial) trade value in progress (2014) is another collaborative project curated by Leah Decter and Jaimie Isaac. The project “asks members of the public to contribute written and sewn responses to Harper’s G20 statement through a series of participatory events” (Decter and Isaac 97). Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors were asked to write down anything they desired in response to Harper’s statement inside a set of books. Next, other contributors were asked to select a statement from one of the books that resonated with them, and stitch it onto a set of reconfigured Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) blankets. The G20 statement is “machine sewn in formal font” at the centre of the blankets, around which an “ever-increasing corpus of responses” are hand-stitched (100). The project allows Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors to work together on a healing initiative that is never finished, and constantly being added to—much like how the Walking with Our Sisters installation encourages ongoing, active memory-work. In this way, (official denial) trade value in progress allows for a healing conciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous folk that does not place the sole responsibility of healing on the shoulders of the colonized. In this way, settlers “undertake the work of decolonizing themselves as a step in decolonizing the settler colonial regime that underpins the nation state of Canada” (Regan 2). Additionally, the project responds to official narratives of reconciliation in that it directly unpacks and criticizes Stephen Harper’s controversial “apology” that encouraged Indigenous people to “move on” from historical and ongoing trauma. To add another layer of aesthetic action, the fact that the contributor statements are sewn onto the iconic HBC blankets imbeds the project “into a larger context of colonial policies that intersect with economics, land, culture, and sovereignty (Decter and Isaac110). As a project of aesthetic action, (official denial) trade value in progress functions as a healing initiative implicating both Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations in the process, and as a critical resistance to the Canadian government’s hypocritical promise of “reconciliation.” 

Photo from: https://www.communitynewscommons.org/our-city/politics/official-denial-trade-value-in-progress-a-response-to-stephen-harper/

By unpacking three creative projects, Digital Natives, Walking with Our Sisters, and (official denial) trade value in progress, the role of aesthetic action in allowing Indigenous healing initiatives to take place alongside the critical resistance to official narratives of reconciliation becomes emphasized. For conciliation to be achieved in Canada, the Government of Canada can no longer rely on empty promises of healing through Western-oriented approaches. Indigenous values and worldviews must be embraced in order to continually educate the public and to continually address Indigenous wounds inflicted by the colonial state. While art cannot hold all of the answers for achieving conciliation, as this paper has demonstrated, aesthetic action through the creative arts proves to be an invaluable tool for decolonizing healing for Indigenous peoples and combatting official projects of “reconciliation” that insidiously benefit the colonial project in Canada. In the words of David Garneau “art is not healing in itself, but it can be in relation” (Garneau 39). 

Photo from: https://www.communitynewscommons.org/our-city/politics/official-denial-trade-value-in-progress-a-response-to-stephen-harper/

End Notes

1 See MacDonald, David Bruce. The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian residential schools, and the challenge of conciliation. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2019.  

Works Cited

Aboriginal Healing Foundation. A Healing Journey: Final Report Summary Points. 2006.

Archibald, Linda. Dancing, Singing, Painting, and Speaking the Healing Story: Healing through Creative Arts. Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2012.

Archibald, Linda. Decolonization and Healing: Indigenous Experiences in the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Greenland. Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2006.

Archibald, Linda. Final Report of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation Volume III:

Promising Healing Practices in Aboriginal Communities. Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2006.

Decter, Leah and Jaimie Isaac. “Reflections on Unsettling Narratives of Denial.” Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, edited by Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016.

“Digital Natives.” digitalnatives.othersides.ca. Accessed September 2020.

Episkenew, Jo-Ann. Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing. University of Manitoba Press, 2009.

Fontaine, Phil and Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. A Knock on the Door: The Essential History of Residential Schools. University of Manitoba Press, 2016.

Garneau, David. “Imaginary Spaces of Conciliation and Reconciliation.” Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, edited by Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016.

Martin, Keavy, et al. Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin, Editors. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016.

McCall, Sophie, and Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill. The Land We Are: Artists & Writers Unsettle the Politics of Reconciliation. ARP Books, 2015.

Methot, Suzanne. Legacy: Trauma, Story and Indigenous Healing. ECW Press, 2019.

Robinson, Dylan and Keavy Martin. “The Body is a Resonant Chamber.” Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, edited by Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016.

Regan, Paulette. Unsettling the Settler Within. UBC Press, 2010.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Canada's Residential Schools: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015.

Waldram, James B. Aboriginal Healing in Canada: Studies in Therapeutic Meaning and Practice. Prepared for the National Network for Aboriginal Mental Health Research in partnership with the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2008.

“Walking with Our Sisters.” http://walkingwithoursisters.ca. Accessed September 2020.

Wesley-Esquimaux, Cynthia C., and Magdelena Smolewski. Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing. Prepared for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2004.

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5 Seats: A Timmins-James Bay Case Study

Public development projects – especially in Northern Canada, involve discussions between both governmental and non-governmental parties. It is important to include representatives from various backgrounds to ensure a fair decision is made and that all possible effects are taken into consideration. For the sake of my post, I chose the Timmins-James Bay area as a case study for the proposed construction of a transportation route. Here’s who I believe should have a seat at the decision table:

Firstly, a representative from the company leading the project should be present; perhaps a representative from Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation or another affiliated organization. This individual will explain the details of the project and clarify any questions the community may have.

Secondly, public consultation is important for an equitable decision; I believe that the mayor of Timmins, George Pirie (below) should have a seat to speak on behalf of its citizens. Pirie won the 2018 election with almost twice as many votes as his closest contender, Steve Black. He will have the city’s best interests in mind and is familiar with the challenges that the city currently faces. He will best understand how the proposed project will serve to benefit or hinder the societal needs of Timmins.

Photo of George Pirie following his victorious election in 2018 - taken from an article by Len Gillis in The Timmins Times

Thirdly, an appropriate governmental representative should be consulted regarding development in the region. NDP leader Charlie Angus (below) has been the elected Member of Parliament for the Timmins-James Bay riding since 2004. He will have relevant local knowledge having been born and raised in Timmins, Ontario. Two years after being elected, the Toronto Star named him as one of the top-ten most effective opposition MP’s. Further, Angus is a known activist for First Nations rights, he was previously appointed as NDP critic for Indigenous and Northern Affairs and also served as a member of the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development committee until 2016. With the motivation to be re-elected, Angus will seek the most beneficial outcome for his riding.

Charlie Angus, taken from Wikipedia

Fourthly, the consultation should include an Indigenous community member/leader of whose traditional territory the proposed development encroaches on. The Timmins area lies in Treaty 9 territory, on land traditionally belonging to Ojibway/Chippewa, Oji-Cree, Mushkegowuk (Cree) and Algonquin peoples. It is imperative that these communities are included in the decision-making process including the incorporation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). According to the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC), as of 2016, over 11% of Timmins’ population identifies as Aboriginal, which is more than double the national average. Not only is the consultation of Indigenous Peoples mandated by federal law, it is also a positive step toward mending the post-colonial relationship between First Nations and the Government of Canada.

Timmins Native Friendship Centre, established 1974

Lastly, the fifth spot at the table should be reserved for the environmentalist tasked with conducting the project’s environmental impact assessment (EIA). An EIA is required before any major development project is approved - in accordance with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA 2012). The results of EIA’s are made available online and are then subjected to a public review period of 30 days. The goal of this process is efficiency and transparency. An expert in this field will bring experience and scientific data to the discussion. Their report will contain suggested alternatives and mitigation plans for the proposed impacts of the transportation route. The individual will also help by answering any questions that the other stakeholders may have regarding the environmental risks of the project.

Current environmental impact assessments associated with northern development lack adequate consultation processes with both the public and Indigenous communities. People contain different opinions and biases and given the opportunity, can bring up concerns that were perhaps missed in the initial evaluation. Including stakeholders from multiple backgrounds ensures the final decision is made as fairly as possible and considers all parties and ecosystems affected.

References

http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/news_centre/timmins-must-come-grips-indigenous-relations - Ontario Human Rights Commission

https://www.timminstimes.com/news/local-news/george-pirie-wins-timmins-mayoralty-with-huge-vote - Article by Len Gillis, The Timmins Times

https://ofl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017.05.31-Traditional-Territory-Acknowledgement-in-Ont.pdf - Traditional Territory Acknowledgements in Ontario

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-15.21/index.html - Government of Canada, CEAA 2012

[troyyzrl456]

Aboriginal Law - University - Indigenous Law Firm

Bergner also serves as advice for supporters seeking regulative authorizations as well as approvals and assists with the growth of assessment programs https://followus.com/cglawgroup as well as the settlement of impact-benefit agreements. He represents task advocates and governments in charms and also judicial testimonials challenging job approvals. John Hurley is a partner and leader of the Aboriginal legislation team at Gowling WLG's Montréal workplace. His technique concentrates on First Nations, federal government relations, power as well as infrastructure, environmental regulation and also governing matters.

The breadth as well as deepness of our lawyers' skills as well as experience in Native' affairs enable White Raven Legislation to meet our goal of giving Indigenous communities an innovative strategy to handling legal obstacles with honesty and compassion.

From equal wages for Indigenous stockmen in 1966, to securing Muckaty Terminal from coming to be a nuclear waste dump in 2014, we are honored to collaborate with Aboriginal as well as Torres Strait Islander people to deal with injustice.

His method concentrates on First Nations, government relationships, power as well as infrastructure, environmental law as well as regulatory issues.

That all transformed in 1954 when the late William Wuttunee finished from the College of Saskatchewan, ending up being Western Canada's very first standing Indian legal representative.

He has actually established as well as executed countless jobs including; Spirit Transforming2012, Flicker2016, Speaking Past Each Other 2018, and also Mînowin 2019.

Terri-Lynn acts as a member of the Legislation Society of British Columbia's Truth and also Reconciliation Committee's Advisory Committee and also as the co-chair of the Aboriginal Engagement in Governing Matters Task Force. She is an Honourary Supervisor of the nationwide ecological charity Ecojustice, an Affiliated Research Scholar with Canada Environment Regulation Effort, as well as a board participant of the Haida Gwaii Singers Culture. In 2021 she placed 21 on Maclean's "Power Listing", identifying 50 Canadians who are breaking ground in their field and in 2020 she was identified as a "Changemaker" in Canadian Attorney's Top 25 A lot of Significant Legal representatives of 2020. The legal representatives of White Raven Legislation use a distinct mix of legal and also Indigenous expertise that sets us apart. The breadth and also deepness of our lawyers' skills and experience in Aboriginal' affairs make it possible for White Raven Law to meet our objective of offering Aboriginal neighborhoods a cutting-edge strategy to dealing with lawful challenges with honesty and also empathy. As a firm that brings an one-of-a-kind indigenous point of view to the technique of legislation, we totally understand the obstacles that native areas face.

He additionally functioned as the MSR to the Preacher of Indigenous and Northern Matters and the premier of the Northwest Territories relating to the Akaitcho Go to the website Dene and NWT Métis Nation negotiations in the Northwest Territories. His published jobs have actually been mentioned favorably by the High court of Canada and various other courts. Isaac has actually shown up prior to the High court of Canada and also many other courts as well as tribunals throughout the nation. Before this, Elly functioned as a lawyer at Central Land Council, a legal body standing for traditional Aboriginal land proprietors.

Alswa Solutions

Hurley has long dealt with Native peoples in Québec, especially the Crees as well as the Inuit, on a range of matters, consisting of federal government relationships, power and natural deposits, ecological evaluation, regional and local government, tax and financial development. He helps business clients with the advancement as well as implementation of power generation tasks, consisting of wind, hydroelectric, biomass, cogeneration and thermal jobs. Hurley acts for clients with respect to power acquisition arrangements, affiliation matters, regulatory and also tariff matters, joint ventures as well as collaborations, task arrangements, site acquisition, environmental analyses and federal government relations. In our study, Indigenous law incorporates Indigenous, Métis and also Inuit treaty and also other legal civil liberties.

Expert Regulation Services & Very First Countries Advocate

Elizabeth substitutes the Haida through lawsuits as well as various other legal approaches to advance their title, civil liberties as well as rate of interests and suggests on administration and also land and resource problems. Elizabeth has had the opportunity to deal with top-level litigation for the Haida Nation guided at environmental protection at the BC Supreme Court, BC Court of Allure, Federal Court of Allure and also the Supreme Court of Canada. Elizabeth techniques law due to her commitment to making use of all available tools to improve Aboriginal social justice as well as to safeguard the setting from unsustainable practices. In addition to its leading duty in Aboriginal Regulation Burchells is well identified for its general lawsuits and also organization relevant techniques, which are naturally of rate of interest https://disqus.com/by/carolgodby/ to Aboriginal Peoples. Burchells' long standing working connections with lots of Aboriginal teams prepare us to deal with the particular social and also social matters that can emerge when offering lawful recommendations worrying these areas of legislation.

We pay our respects to the cultural authority of Indigenous individuals from other lands & waters of South Australia and also Australia. 2 weeks right into the trial, the parties got to a settlement after the Federal Government agreed not to act on the election of the website by the Northern Land Council. Maurice Blackburn filed a legal difficulty versus the Commonwealth Government as well as the Northern Land Council in June 2010 over plans for a contaminated waste dump on Indigenous land in the Northern Territory. Our team believe Aboriginal and also Torres Strait Islander rights are worth proactively defending.

From equal earnings for Aboriginal stockmen in 1966, to securing Muckaty Terminal from becoming a nuclear waste dump in 2014, we are pleased to deal with Indigenous as well as Torres Strait Islander individuals to deal with oppression. We have actually submitted a pro-bono course action on behalf of asylum seekers that we affirm were illegally apprehended over the past six years. We have submitted a pro-bono class action for people looking for asylum that were apprehended between August 2011 and also July 2017.

Advice to a number of Aboriginal neighborhoods on details cases, expropriation as well as economic advancement concerns. The members of the MLT Aikins Native technique location offer a high degree of concentrated expertise and also work collaboratively with the company's various other method locations to bring our clients the benefits of a full-service business law firm with a significant understanding of the one-of-a-kind concerns dealing with Aboriginal areas. We are called on often to provide lawful suggestions to customers with passions in the northern and also remote areas of Canada as well as have comprehensive experience with North Land Insurance Claims Arrangements.

[staycationinthenation]

Fort Ann Nova Scotia From 1871-1877 and 1899-1921 eleven treaties were signed between the crown and the First Nations, the Treaties layed out a deal to transfer large tracts of land from the First Nations to the Crown in return for different promises laid out in the treaty. Some of the Key representatives of the Canadian Crown were Adams George Archibald, Alexander Morris, David Laird, Duncan Campbell Scott and Wemyss Mackenzie Simpson. Today, these treaties are still upheld by the Government of Canada, administered by Canadian Aboriginal law and overseen by the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. A proud @staycationinthenation movement @indigenous_history_ @theindigenousfoundation @staycationinthenation @sitntours @sitn.ca #jointhemovement #indigenoushistory #landtreaties #numberedtreaties #indigenousfoundation (at Nova Scotia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CUvZaokL_6w/?utm_medium=tumblr

[indigenousnow-blog]

Alex Janvier (1935 - ), Other Worlds (1984) Acrylic on canvas Collection: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada

[fycanadianpolitics]

In January 2017, two young girls took their lives in a suicide pact at Wapekeka First Nation. Desperate for mental health workers, the First Nation — a fly-in community 600 kilometers north of Thunder Bay — requested $376,706 in emergency funding from Health Canada. According to Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler, they were told it was an “awkward time” to be considered for funding approval.

Financial restraints on Indigenous economies

In the aftermath of loss, community spokesperson Joshua Frogg laid bare Ottawa’s fiscal power over their children: “It was awkward to break ground in permafrost so that we can bury these children. It was awkward for our youth to cry at the funeral.”

A few years earlier, the federal government chose a curious time to send the Canada Revenue Agency and Aboriginal Affairs into Elsipogtog to collect overdue bills. They came knocking at the height of the community’s anti-fracking protest against SWN Resources that shut down highways in New Brunswick — years after the debt was incurred.

“They are really pulling the financial strings hard,” stated band councilor Scott Sanipass to APTN News. Aboriginal Affairs threatened to hold back tuition payments and almost a million dollars owed to the band, in addition to 15 per cent of the band’s annual funding until the amount was paid back in full.

What ties these cases together, and so many others like them, is a document that all First Nation bands and organizations must negotiate with the federal government to release core funding.

The Contribution Funding Agreement.

The Contribution Funding Agreement is a key aspect of what Arthur Manuel called the 0.2 per cent economy in his book Unsettling Canada: A National Wake Up Call. This figure indicates the total percentage of the land base of Canada that is occupied by Indian reserves. As he explained, the implication of the 0.2 per cent economy is poverty and dependency: “I need to be blunt: you cannot improve child and family welfare and health services on Indian Reserves because you cannot generate any revenue from these depleted and minuscule 0.2% territories.”

For most communities, federal transfer payments are the sole source of income. So if First Nations rely on the government for most of their money, we need to look at what Ottawa does with the power this implies. Instead, the public has been staring down the wrong end of the barrel, obsessed with First Nations poverty rather than by its deliberate creation. [...]

Throughout the 1990s until today, numerous reports, audits, Royal Commissions, and Auditor General of Canada reports have cited the palliative nature of federal transfer funding to First Nations. Identifying chronic underfunding as a core concern, these evaluations consistently note that rigidly administered fiscal programs serve to prolong First Nations dependency in what we may call an indefinite limbo of permanent austerity.

The spending that First Nations ostensibly control is mostly transferred in CFAs that provide a core operating budget for band councils and funding for basic services and programs. But this funding barely covers costs.

Discrepancies in education, housing, and health spending between First Nations and other Canadians are not an accidental oversight. They are the product of deliberate tactics of fiscal brutality.

The current system of federal transfer payments evolved over a number of years. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the federal government made efforts to disentangle itself from the poverty on reserves that owed largely to broken treaties and loss of lands.

An AFN report describes how there was also increased pressure to provide services to First Nations at this time, services that were available to Canadians more generally with the post-war expansion of government social programs. But these new services offered no rights to economic benefits from treaty and traditional lands. Instead, new programs locked First Nations into social assistance programs with no prospect of real economic development and self-determination.

End goal: assimilation

Canada still hoped that the Indians would become Canadians. In that case, the funding burden of respecting nation-to-nation relations could be removed once and for all. In the backlash to the White Paper of 1969 that boldly promoted this kind of assimilation, Indigenous peoples fought instead for the establishment of core funding for Aboriginal organizations and won. But it was short-lived when widespread devolution programs were introduced in the 1980s as the Tories set out to shrink the government and deficit.

Neoliberalism affected all Canadians at the time. But the distinct nature of the fiscal crisis on reserves separated out Indigenous peoples from most other citizens. To take just one example, more than double the number of homes on reserves than elsewhere were in need of major structural repair. First Nations were also alone among Canadians in the high incidence of settlements lacking indoor plumbing and proper water sanitation.

Indian Affairs’ federal officials dubbed their devolution of services “the buffalo jump.” The “buffalo jump” is a reference to a hunting technique practiced in the prairies by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years; it involved killing their prey by expertly luring and chasing them off a precipice. The animals would be carved and cooked in a camp below.

The buffalo jump was technically a program review that recommended most federal responsibilities towards First Nations be transferred to the provinces and bands. Expenditures related to housing and infrastructure came under particularly severe attack, recommending “exit strategies” in funding by abolishing programs, cutting health care, and post-secondary education; relaxing standards in infrastructure management to ensure that “modern suburbs in the northern bush” were not created; introducing privatized program and service delivery; and the removal of incentives such as housing benefits for families to remain on reserves with high unemployment. [...]

Regime change changes little

In 2015 there was supposedly a regime change. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated: “It’s time for a new fiscal relationship with First Nations that gives your communities sufficient, predictable and sustained funding. This is a promise we made, and a promise we will keep.”

The two per cent cap implemented by the previous Liberal government was finally lifted. But the “disparities” continue to grow. A Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled that Canada discriminates against First Nations children by failing to provide the same level of child welfare services provided for non-Indigenous Canadians. Since the ruling, the tribunal has been forced to issue three compliance ordersto the Liberal government, which has failed to step in to provide funding parity.

Instead, Trudeau is doing what he does best: a public relations campaign about fiscal relations, rather than making any meaningful change.

In that regard, he is doing his favorite thing, which is setting up a process. The “First Nations – Canada Joint Committee on the Fiscal Relationship” with the Assembly of First Nations has given itself until the end of the year to complete its work, which is to negotiate a new fiscal framework with the federal government. The goals of the committee include the provision of sufficient funding.

Trapped in the 0.2 per cent Indigenous economy

Though $18 billion has been promised in the Liberal budget for First Nations, all of this money is reserve-focused funding: the 0.2 per cent economy. And most of it will not even be released until after the next election in an attempt to lead people along.

The federal government seems to still be operating under the buffalo jump policy. Pamela Palmater calls this system of fiscal relations “managed poverty.” She notes that while colonial law and policy created the dependency relationship, the current federal law and policies “maintain the national crisis of poverty in First Nations which in turn results in their premature deaths.”

Blueprints for change, however, abound. The Penner Report recommended that bands should be considered equivalent to provinces and receive financial support on those terms, as a distinct, constitutionally-protected order of government. A coalition of prairie chiefs including Peepeekisis First Nation proposed to redesign the CFA to receive direct funding from the Treasury Board, which was ignored.

As Chief Wallace Fox of Onion Lake First Nation explained to Ricochet in 2014 regarding the CFA: “They starved our people out hundreds of years ago and corralled us onto reserves . . . . They instituted a Pass Law where you couldn’t get approval to leave reserve . . . . We couldn’t hunt and couldn’t physically get a deer without going down to the Indian Agent’s office and asking permission. So we ended up begging for rations. We have a right to this land, further affirmed under treaty, and they’re trying to hold us hostage?”

“The underlying factor is that they want the land,” Chief Fox stated. “They got everything else from us, now they’ve come for the land.”

[sixstringnation]

Back in February of 2012 I was invited to do a keynote presentation for an Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada conference in Yellowknife. Naturally, I pointed out the presence of Acasta Gneiss - the oldest rock in the world - inlaid on the first fret of Voyageur as part of my presentation. Among the attendees that day was Dr. Janet King, then President of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency. A bit of a buzz went around the room when I mentioned the gneiss and somebody said, "You need to meet Janet King". Although she was there in an official bureaucratic role, it turns out she had originally come to the north as a young geologist working for the federal public service - doing lots of surveying work in the NWT barren lands and helping to establish a High Arctic Research Station. As part of her work as a scientist, she had discovered and named Acasta Gneiss - so this was quite the reunion!⁣ ⁣ In August of 2018 she was appointed Associate Deputy Minister of Public Services and Procurement, responsible for federal science infrastructure.⁣ ⁣ Find out more about the project and book a live presentation at https://www.sixstringnation.com⁣ ⁣ .⁣ .⁣ .⁣ .⁣ .⁣ .⁣ .⁣ #NWT #NorthwestTerritories #SpectacularNWT #CanadianHistory #CanadianMusic #SocialStudies #CanadianGuitar #CanadianTeachers #indigenous #TRC #keynotespeaker #CdnEd #ETFO #OSSTF #onted #VoiceEd #NWTed #acousticguitar #geology #rocks #imaginED via Instagram http://bit.ly/2JPXIST

[allthecanadianpolitics]

This is a big series of endorsements for Niki Ashton’s from Canada’s Labour Movement!

Here’s a full transcript of the screen caps above for those who find reading from images difficult. It’ll be under a read more, because there’s a lot of text:

After the 2015 Federal election, New Democrats across the country decided that we needed a bold vision to take us into the future, and to capture the hopes and imaginations of Canadians. That’s why, as long time labour and community activists, we are proud to support Niki Ashton to be the next leader of Canada’s NDP. Niki’s platform and policy, her principles and practice, are exactly the kind of strong progressive vision and action our party, and country need. And that’s true now more than ever, with the incredibly unsettling times we are living through. The political right in Canada, and around the world, are openly flirting with extreme white supremacy organizations. The gap between the rich and the rest of us is growing, and precarious work is on the rise. This is the first generation that can expect a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. And for those who hoped that the defeat of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives would mean real change, the disappointments keep growing.   Trudeau’s reliance on “photo op politics”, combined with his casting aside so many of the platform piece that Canadians voted for proves how the Liberals aren’t ever going to deliver the kinds of solutions our communities need. The cynicism in politics that this approach fosters only serves to decrease people's hope that real change is possible – but we know it doesn’t have to be this way. We know we need to build a movement to create real change for ourselves and for future generations.  Now is the time to be bold, to be brave, and to demand better. New Democrats need a strong, smart, experienced, and progressive person to take the helm, to work with community allies, coalitions, labour and all those fighting for social justice, to build that movement --- and Niki Ashton is the woman to do just that. Niki has a lifelong commitment to progressive politics. She is the child of immigrants, both of whom worked tirelessly for labour and equality rights. She was raised in union meetings, at demonstrations, and in the women’s movement - as a result her determination to fight back are deep in her bones.   Niki is an experienced member of the New Democrat Caucus in Parliament, having served as critic for Aboriginal Affairs, Status of Women, Post-Secondary Education and Youth, and most recently, as the critic for Jobs, Employment and Workforce Development. Her work in caucus, and in the House of Commons, has always gone hand in hand with on the ground work with her constituents – it's why she was recognized as best constituency MP by Maclean’s magazine as selected by her colleagues in 2012. Hailing from the north, Niki has long been a fierce champion for better living conditions for Northern and Indigenous peoples, and is proud to represent communities that tirelessly fight for a more progressive Canada that includes reconciliation with Indigenous people at its core. Niki will stand firm against the corporate agenda, she will bring comprehensive reforms that will always be on the side of everyday folks. She won’t just take on the Liberals in the House, she will stand with the people on the street as we fight together for a better future.   Niki’s proud to support the labour movement and its struggles in support of working people, and has been a fixture on many picket lines because wherever workers are fighting back, Niki is there. She is an activist, loud and proud, standing up for the rights of those facing inequality in Canada and around the world.  She understands the urgent need to act on climate change and build environmental sustainability AND good jobs for our future.   Niki’s plan sets her apart in this leadership race. Niki has already changed the debate in this leadership race, with her truly bold, progressive and unapologetic stance in defence of working people, against the forces of the market and those in the 1%. Niki dares to dream of a comprehensive vision for social, environmental and economic justice that can bring people hope; that can inspire momentum; that will build our party and our country. She’s in this to be the first woman NDP Prime Minister in our history! And to do this she needs us -- she needs our support.  And we are so very proud to offer it to her, and to encourage you to do the same. Please join us in supporting Niki Ashton for the next Leader of Canada’s NDP.

In solidarity,

Fred Hahn, President CUPE Ontario

Jenn Prosser, UNIFOR 880 and organizer for Alberta Union of Provincial Employee

Morgan Gay, Public Service Alliance of Canada

Orion Keresztesi, CUPE Local 1281 President

Murray Cooke, CUPE Local 3903 Bargaining Team, Former Executive Member

Tiffany Balducci, CUPE Ontario Board Member, 2nd Vice- President Durham Region Labour Council

Ryan Culpepper, CUPE Local 3902 President

Pam Griffin-Hody, CUPE Local 2424 President

Aminah Sheikh, Labour Organizer

Brad Walchuk, Staff Representative and Chief Negotiator, CUPE 3906

Danielle Adams, UFCW 232

Blair Hudson, Retired, former Union representative for UFCW Local 832

Graeme Reniers, Chair of CUPE 3903

Jennie Miller, Member of OPSEU Local 503 and co-chair of OPSEU's Provincial Human Rights Committee

Michael Bueckert, CUPE 4600 & Former President, Carleton University Graduate Students' Association

Julie Jacques, UNIFOR 880 and organizer for Alberta Union of Provincial Employee

Barb Nederpel, President Kamloops and District Labour Council

Ellen Dale, Thompson Teachers Association, Manitoba Teachers Society, Thompson Labour Council

Marianne Welsh, CUPE National Representative & Atlantic Region Representative, Women’s Committee, Canadian Staff Union (CSU)

Mandi Gray, anti-violence activist

Hammam Farah, Palestine Solidarity Movement in Toronto

Niall Clapham-Ricardo, Co-Président des Jeunes NéoDémocrates du Québec (JNDQs)

[writ200-blog1]

The Government on Aboriginal Inclusivity in the Workplace

This blog is about the inclusion of Aboriginals in the workplace, and the efforts of the government to give aboriginals a chance to thrive in the Canadian economy.

Throughout history, Canadian Aboriginals have suffered a great deal at the hands of the government. There is no excusing what was done to the native people of this land. But in an effort to somehow better the wrong that was done, the Canadian government has put forth programs and opportunities for Aboriginal people to excel in the workplace, and improve their quality of life. For example, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada “educates employers about the advantages of hiring Aboriginal employees, and helps them with the process (Aboriginal Employment 2016, Dec 8). Along with programs like this, the government has also organized training opportunities for Indigenous people to gain the skills needed to find and keep employment. For working parents, the ESDC provides access to child care services and after school programs. And also provides coaching and training for people with disabilities. “All Indigenous people, including First Nations, Inuit and Metis, may access ASETS programs and services, regardless of status or location (Aboriginal Skills and Employment Training Strategy 2018, Dec 28).    

https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/indigenous/asets.html

https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100033790/1348508851503

[manuscript-or]

tagged by @interstellarvagabond

Rules: answer questions, tag people (make a separate post) :3c 

1. Nickname: none, my name isn’t long or weird enough to warrant a nickname 

2. Zodiac: Sagittarius 

3. Height: 5′8 

4. Last movie I saw: last movie or last TV show? I was just watching Dragon Pilot, but the last movie was Bandersnatch I think 

5. Last thing I googled: aboriginal affairs and northern development canada it’s for a story I swear

6. Favorite musicians: Watsky, Wrabel, Spose, Hozier 

7. Song stuck in my head: Conversations with My Wife 

8. Other blogs: nothing that I use 

9. Do I get asks: pppssshhhhh nope

10. Amount of sleep: 5-7 hours depending on the day

11. What I’m wearing: jeans, long sleeve shirt 

12. Dream Job: research scientist 

13. Dream Trip: I’m stealing yours and saying space 

14. Favourite food: god, pasta, any kind 

15. Play instruments: nope, I’m the least musical person 

16. Favorite Song: hhhhhhhhh atm?? probably Knocking on Wood 

17. Random fact about me: I absolutely love writing even those I’m a biochem major :/ 

18. Describe yourself as aesthetic things: hot tea, tight chest, succulents, skeletal structures of molecules, and podcasts 

I tag @bllds1 :3 enjoy!

[ericfruits]

An Aboriginal Argument Is Rejected

The Tribunal Hearing Division of the Upper Canada Law Society has denied motions filed in response to these matters

 Between March 2016 and February 2017, the Law Society received several complaints about the conduct of Glenn Bogue (the “Lawyer”) in various litigation matters. These complaints led to six Law Society investigations involving the Lawyer.

An order was entered suspending the attorney on an interlocutory basis and then 

In a motion filed on December 1, 2017, the Lawyer sought a number of orders. Following a Proceedings Management Conference on December 11, 2017, the parties agreed that a hearing would proceed on January 11, 2018, but only in respect of two of the orders sought in the Lawyer’s Notice of Motion, as follows:

  An Order appointing an Indigenous Chair to oversee an Indigenous Tribunal comprised of members of the Indigenous community. The Indigenous Chair should be a Clan Mother, and the three member Tribunal should be an Indigenous person from the Status community, the non-Status community, and the Métis community, appointed by the Clan Mother.

  An Order transferring this file, including this Motion, to the Indigenous Tribunal.

Mr. Bogue self-identifies as a member of the Kinakwii Nation/Confederacy.

The claims

The Lawyer’s arguments, although difficult to follow, were based on his notions of “Equity” and “Aboriginal Law,” without any cogent relationship to our statutory jurisdiction. The Lawyer argued that the June 29, 2017 Report of the Equity and Indigenous Affairs Committee adopted by Convocation, together with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and Indigenous laws of “Equity,” require the Tribunal to have a wholly Indigenous panel to address matters involving Indigenous licensees, and that this panel has the jurisdiction to create such a panel.

In making this submission, the Lawyer further argued that the panel had the authority to declare or establish such a panel and, indeed, the authority to transfer this matter to an Indigenous Tribunal based on a number of historical enactments and provisions. In his submissions the Lawyer referred to the following:

Recommendations number 42 and 45 of the Truth and Reconciliation Inquiry’s Calls to Action (“TRC”);

Canada’s filing its non-objector status to the UNDRIP at the United Nations;

the Two Row Wampum Treaty of 1613;

the Royal Proclamation of 1763;

the Jay Treaty of 1794;

s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982; and

the June 29, 2017 Report of the Equity and Indigenous Affairs Committee adopted by Convocation.

 To illustrate the evolving and expanding purview of Indigenous rights and law in Canada, the Lawyer further referred the panel to more recent jurisprudence: Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, [1997] 3 SCR 1010, 1997 CanLII 302 (SCC); R. v. Daniels (Indian Affairs and Northern Development), 2016 SCC 12 (CanLII); R. v. Sayers, 2017 ONCJ 77 (CanLII).

The Law Society, in its submissions, put forward the following response(s):

That the Law Society, the Law Society Tribunal, and this panel are governed by the statutory framework under the Act and its Regulations. This includes the creation of the Law Society Tribunal, its jurisdiction, its composition, its two Divisions, and the appointment of its Tribunal members and the procedure under which they act.

That the relief sought by the Lawyer could only be effected by way of legislative and regulatory means, including by Convocation of the Law Society Benchers, who are granted jurisdiction over various matters by the Act.

That none of the enactments or provisions cited by Mr. Bogue in the various enactments and reports establish, or grant jurisdiction to establish, an “Indigenous Tribunal,” as sought through this panel, on this motion.

Disposition

The Law Society Tribunal, including its jurisdiction, function, and procedures, is a creature of statute created pursuant to the Act and its Regulations.[4] While the Tribunal is required to act in accordance with fairness and the tenets of natural justice, it is not a Superior Court with jurisdiction to issue declaration(s) of right. While the Act and Regulations are subject to constitutional conformity, constraints, and parameters, like any other piece of legislation, this Tribunal panel does not have any jurisdiction to declare the statutory provisions unconstitutional, nor order the creation of a body not found in its enabling statute, which is what the Lawyer seeks.

At no time during his submissions did the Lawyer point to any specific provision that directly spoke to the relief he sought, nor to any specific, statutory or constitutional authority that could ground jurisdiction to declare, create, or transfer our jurisdiction to an “Indigenous Tribunal,” as requested by the Lawyer. This includes the Lawyer’s references to recent jurisprudence. We find these references were simply illustrative and general, and not directly tied to the otherwise narrow issue(s) before this panel on this motion, and our jurisdiction to grant the relief Mr. Bogue seeks. At no point did Mr. Bogue articulate or make any submission(s) with respect to any relief under s. 52(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982, with respect to any provision(s) of the Act or Regulations governing our composition or jurisdiction as a panel of the Law Society Tribunal.

The panel lastly notes, in passing, as put forward by Law Society counsel, that Mr. Bogue has made similarly vague and untenable arguments in other Courts, which have been dismissed, namely: The Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa v. A.C., Endorsement of the Court of Appeal for Ontario dated April 1, 2016; The Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa v A.C., Reasons of the Divisional Court dated May 11, 2016;The Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa v. A.C., 2016 ONCA 512 (CanLII); R. v. Anderson, 2016 BCSC 2170; R. v. Anderson, 2017 BCCA 154 (CanLII). While these cases are not strictly binding on this panel, they are nonetheless worth noting for the fact that they confirm and support this panel’s conclusions with respect to Mr. Bogue’s similar arguments before us, with respect to issue(s) before the panel and our jurisdiction.

For these reasons the motion is dismissed.

(Mike Frisch)

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2018/04/the-tribunal-hearing-division-of-the-upper-canada-law-society-has-denied-motions-filed-in-response-to-these-matters-between.html

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2018/04/the-tribunal-hearing-division-of-the-upper-canada-law-society-has-denied-motions-filed-in-response-to-these-matters-between.html

[atlanticcanada]

Potlotek First Nation chief hires water experts from Ireland to assess crisis

The chief of Potlotek First Nation has taken the fight for clean drinking water on the reserve into his own hands.

Chief Wilbert Marshall has hired an independent company from Ireland to investigate why discoloured water continues to pour into the reserve’s treatment facility.

The company has set up its own system to test the water to try and find a solution.

“It removes all the bacteria, anything that's in the water,” says Les Walsh of Brewal Ireland Ltd. “In this situation we're hoping for 70, 80 per cent reduction in a very high level of manganese and iron. That's just for this test rig. When we put the full unit here we will be able to take it down to Health Canada standards.”

Residents living on Potlotek First Nation say their water is so dirty, they’re hesitating to wash clothes with it.

“It's frustrating for an operator and a community member here. I'm tired of it also. I'd like to resolve this problem as soon as we can,” says water treatment facility operator Alex Marshall.

Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development says design work is underway for a new water treatment facility, but that is a long-term solution. For the community of 600 people, they say they can't wait that long and need a solution now.

In the neighbouring First Nation community of Membertou, Chief Terry Paul is angry water is still an issue.

“That problem has been going on for years,” Chief Paul says. “We had the same issues when I was growing up in the 60s … This is unacceptable. It's a serious health issue.”

Some residents are angry they were not notified sooner.

“They got the letter on Aug. 25 and they should've let everyone know on the reserve. Everybody has been itching and they're wondering why,” says resident Michael Marshall.

Chief Wilbert Marshall is vowing the problem will be fixed, whether he has to pay for it himself or not.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Kyle Moore.

from CTV News - Atlantic http://ift.tt/2h4QSbR

[tenwithken]

Innovation at Nipissing: 3 Qs with Mike DeGagné

In September, the 10K crew went on location to the 2017 Ontario Universities’ Fair, to interview a dozen higher ed leaders about trends in innovation.

When Mike DeGagné was appointed President of Nipissing University in 2013, he became one of the first Aboriginal university leaders in the country. He had 25 years of public sector leadership experience in federal government departments and non-profits focused on Indigenous affairs, and has published and spoken internationally on Aboriginal reconciliation and healing.

In this special bonus episode, Ken asks Mike to answer 3 key questions about higher ed innovation.

  Innovations at Nipissing?

Mike observes that Nipissing has long been innovative in developing flexible program delivery to meet the needs of students, from the summer Aboriginal Teachers Certification Program to one of the first Concurrent Education degrees in Canada. The majority of Nipissing’s students get experiential and work-integrated learning because so many of the programs are applied, such as Teaching, Nursing, and Social Work. Nipissing also has extensive partnerships with colleges and associations to meet learner needs.

  The Decade Ahead?

Mike predicts that government and PSEs will start providing more secondary and tertiary education options in remote Aboriginal communities, and that universities will need to be more flexible in offering bridging programs to Indigenous students who have not been exposed to university-level courses in high school. He observes that northern institutions have the opportunity to partner more, and expects microcredentials and short-term programs to grow in popularity, particularly in the North. It is a critical task to help Canadians understand why Indigenous issues are important, and curricula at all levels will continue to be more nuanced and detailed in its exploration of Aboriginal history and society.

  Culture of Innovation?

Mike agrees that universities are among the oldest institutions in the world, and have a deep reverence for tradition which limits their ability to be nimble, or launch new programs quickly. He believes the best way to challenge those traditions is collegiality: shared governance structures, discussions about efficiency, and market research can provide common goals for everyone on campus. But while market research may indicate demand for new programs, Mike emphasizes the need to balance student trends with traditional humanities programs that are critical for an educated populace.

  Watch for more interviews soon, or to be sure you don’t miss them, join more than 15,000 Ten with Ken subscribers and followers on any of a dozen platforms. Stay in the Loop by subscribing to our free email newsletter at http://eduvation.ca/subscribe/

  Check out this episode of Ten with Ken!