News article:
Why Canadians side with militant Indians
by Richard Day, Dept of Sociology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON
published in the Toronto Star – Toronto, Ont – ONT Edition
May 20, 2007
It is well known in all quarters that the job of Phil Fontaine, as the head of the Assembly of First Nations, is to moderate
longstanding tensions between the Canadian state and those his organization purports to represent. That’s why it was rather surprising when Fontaine, speaking this week to the harrumphing curmudgeons at the Canadian Club, said that indigenous peoples and agents of the Canadian state are more likely to be meeting at the barricades than in the boardrooms this summer. That’s enough to put any captain of industry off his lunch, to be sure, and it should be of concern to all of us.
No one can deny that there has been a gathering wave of direct action over the past months, from the ongoing Six Nations standoff to the more recent occupation of a quarry by the Tyendinaga Mohawk. Out west, resistance to the Olympics is being spearheaded by the Native Youth Movement, and Harriet Nahanee, a Squamish elder, was
imprisoned for protesting against the expansion of the ironically named Sea to Sky highway (the road to Whistler actually leads to a town-sized shopping mall).
This week, a group calling itself the Railway Ties Collective sent out a news release inviting people to view a video posted on YouTube. The video showed how one might, with a single wire, cause all of the trains on a line to come to a halt. Although no one knows who produced the video, there are indications that it originated from settlers who support indigenous struggles at Tyendinaga and beyond, and that it was aimed at eliciting further support from non-indigenous activists. Transport Canada asked YouTube to pull the video, and they complied. It is very likely, however, that it is circulating on other sites and will make its way through the web to those who want to view it.
What is happening here? Why are so many people, all over the country, apparently giving up on due process and the rule of law? Why are we seeing this resurgence of the ‘Indian problem’, just when we thought we were beyond all of that? And, perhaps more importantly for the Canadian government, why are so many members of the settler society — non-indigenous Canadians — adding their voices and bodies to this tide of militancy?
A simple answer might be: the Canadian state is not itself following the rule of law, nor has it ever done so with regard to indigenous peoples. The double standards are many and obvious, but this does not stop them from being applied. One need only reverse the roles to see the violence and absurdity of the situation. Imagine that someone walked up to your front door with a gun, told you to get out of your house, and took it and everything you own. You go to the police, and they tell you to get in a line, they’ll deal with you soon. You stand there for a day, a month, a year, several decades, while generations of home invaders run your formerly well-kept home into the ground.
This would never happen, of course, to a member of the settler society, but it is, and has been, the norm for the indigenous peoples of the Americas. If it did ever happen to a ‘mainstream’ Canadian, I imagine that most people would understand if they decided, even after only a day or two — rather than several centuries — to simply take the house back.
Railway lines have long been iconic fibres, making geographical and symbolic connections that could be said to constitute Canada as we know it. It is therefore fitting that they now are being used to demand justice for the indigenous peoples of this continent, without whose help we would not be here today. Obviously disrupting a railway line is an imposition on travelers. Probably commerce will be slowed. It is doubtful, however, that Canadian society will be all but destroyed by these kinds of actions, as so many indigenous societies have been. Rather, we can hope that it will be improved, that the Canadian government will take this as a clear message to stand by the rule of law, in every case, for every race.
Given the shameful behaviour of our economic and political leaders, it is not at all surprising that many Canadians are siding with militant indigenous groups. For, by all of the principles that Western civilization holds dear, they are in the right and we are in the wrong.
