Le devoir de mémoire et les politiques du pardon

Aboriginal traditions of tolerance and reparation : Introducing Canadian Colonialism

ABORIGINAL TRADITIONS OF TOLERANCE AND REPARATION Introducing Canadian Colonialism Darlene Johnston As societies around the world struggle to contain ethnic and religious conflicts, Canada is often seen as a beacon of multicultural hope. Canadian jurists, scholars, and politicians are proud to export our now-entrenched ideals of respect for equality and protection of minorities. Few would mention Canada and colonialism in the same breath. As a matter of political history, Canada is understood to have shed its colonial status sometime between Confederation and the Second World War, with the patriation of the Constitution in 1982 definitively signalling the emergence of the post-colonial Canadian state. Aboriginal people, however, understand that colonialism is more than a matter of the political and legislative arrangements between former empires and colonies. On the ground, colonialism turns on the dispossession of Aboriginal peoples by settler societies. While it is hard to deny that Aboriginal people in Canada have been and continue to be colonized, few Canadians self-identify as colonizers. They are deemed to be a thing of the past, with the event of colonization a fait accompli. The act of dispossession is seen as a past tragedy, not as a continuing wrong. Even if enlightened Canadians can agree, with hindsight, that colonial dispossession was morally wrong, few are prepared to extend that judgment backwards in time to question its legal validity, or the legitimacy of the successor regime. For citizens of Canada, however, there can be no perch outside the social dynamics of colonialism. Questions of blame aside, there is no difficulty distinguishing the victims from the beneficiaries of colonialism. But what, if any, responsibility should the beneficiaries bear ? In my view, every citizen is responsible for knowing the history of the aboriginal land upon which they live. Who has been displaced ? How did the displacement happen? Where are the displaced people living now? How are they living now? The sad answer is that Aboriginal people live in third-world conditions in the midst of a first-world country. In his 2005-2006 Report on Plans and Priorities, the Minister of Indian Affairs acknowledged that “applying the United Nations Human Development Index would rank on-reserve Aboriginal communities 68th among 174 nations, while Canada overall was ranked first.”1 As long as the displaced continue to live in poverty and despair, in shocking contrast with the displacers, or their place-holders, colonialism is alive and well in Canada. 144 Le devoir de mémoire et les politiques du pardon Blindness to the persistence of colonialism requires the corrective lenses of memory and truth. The transition to post-colonialism is not simply a matter of constitution making or institutional change. It must be purchased by an acknowledgement of the Wrong of colonialism and reparation to the Wronged. In Canada, colonialism was facilitated by the refusal of Europeans to respect Aboriginal ideals of reciprocity and non-contradiction. Ethnohistorical evidence from the early encounter period demonstrates that current Canadian ideals of tolerance and pluralism were deeply embedded in Aboriginal societies. Judged by indigenous standards, the disrespect and interference which characterized Canadian colonization were clearly wrong. However, an exploration of the language and protocols relating to Aboriginal reparations can provide guidance to Canadians seeking a path to postcolonialism . COMPARING CANADIAN COLONIALISM I take dispossession and marginalization of Aboriginal peoples to be the markers of colonialism. When this dispossession occurs without the consent of the dispossessed, and in breach of promises that were purchased and relied upon, then the wrong of colonialism should be incontrovertible. Canadian colonial consciousness, however, is assuaged by a sense of relative superiority. When compared to the violent history of our British imperial cohorts, the United States and Australia, the Canadian colonial experience appears almost benign. The absence of conquest, however, does not mean that the dispossession was less radical in Canada. In fact, in spite of a well-established treaty protocol, Aboriginal people in Canada have managed to maintain the smallest percentage of the national land base when compared to U.S. tribes and Australian Aborigines. According to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, “lands acknowledged as Aboriginal south of the sixtieth parallel (mainly reserves) make up less than one-half of one per cent of the Canadian land mass.”2 By contrast, considerably more lands have been allocated to proportionately smaller Aboriginal populations in the United States and Australia.3 American Indians, constituting 0.008 % of...