Travel Founded on Indigenous Activism

I thought long and hard about what it was exactly I wanted to convey in this entry; months actually. Throughout this entry I’m going to attempt to shed light on the precarious relationship between indigenous North Americans and their non-indigenous neighbours. My hope is to inform the traveler to Canada. I want the traveler to Canada to know that their visit is enabled by Indigenous activism. Even though my title suggests that the area of concern is Canada, I want to note why I am going to swing between Canada and the United States. The history between indigenous people and these two nations has many similarities. Much of what I will write about Canada will also be true in the States. Further, I will also refer to specific historical issues in the U.S. simply because they illustrate my point well.

Yet, as a Canadian who has never lived in the States, I don’t feel comfortable making assertions about the social climate between Americans and their indigenous populations. I can, however, speak confidently about these issues in Canada. I have lived here all my life and worked directly with the indigenous population in an urban setting for five years. Many Canadians have spoken to me about their views on indigenous people. Therefore, I will sometimes refer to Canada, sometimes to the United States, and sometimes to North America in general.

The Dispute of Land

Now to the point, the issue at hand is and always has been land. Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian presented this conclusion to me, if I’m being truthful. He writes, “If you understand nothing else about the history of Indians in North America, you need to understand that the question that really matters is the question of land.” This idea has been presented to me before, but perhaps because of my own paradigms the concept didn’t really stick.

No matter the generation, the unsteady relationship between indigenous peoples and Canada or the States can be boiled down to the dispute over land. How to wrest the land from indigenous people’s hands? That was the pre-eminent question concerning North American governments and their ‘Indian problem’. This uprooting took many forms. In the United States, forceful eviction from their ancestral homes to designated reservations. In Canada, chiseling down to the most undesirable portions of land from a band’s original territorial borders.

Nation-building Requires Land

Both new nations found that moving indigenous people to the smallest, most undesirable portions of their land was not sufficient in the pursuit of building a modern nation. You see, both nations understood land in the same terms as most non-indigenous peoples understand today: as a commodity. Consequently, land has a value both in what one can extract from it and for what one can get for it. We see these ideas come to fruition everyday on this continent.

The Cost of the Average Home

For instance, the average Canadian laments over the price of buying a home, especially in large and popular cities, like Vancouver.  In the 2020s, the price of buying a single-detached home in Vancouver is so far out of reach it is nearly impossible without some form of generational wealth. A down payment is what our parents paid in total for the same home in the 1980s. And you can be sure that our wages have not kept pace with this inflation.

And frustrations with resource extraction are no small part of North American culture. The average non-indigenous person sees what income and job security they can gain from resource extraction. Corporations see a bloating bottom line and governments incapable of negotiating a fair deal for riches that these businesses claw at.

Unlike Norway, Canada did not set-up an investment fund in the people’s name to manage the wealth that could be accrued from an oil-rich landscape. No, instead Canada adopted a free-market approach assuming that this would be more attractive to oil companies. Now, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global is the envy of every resource-rich nation that blew its opportunity to do the same. Alberta was once the beacon for middle and working class people to get ahead. During the oil and gas crisis of 2019, the province had its hand out to the federal government asking to be propped up. (Rightly so, as Alberta had been the economic powerhouse of the country for years). If only Canada had done the same as Norway, there would be billions of dollars set aside to aid in transitioning this industry to cleaner energy.

Land from an Indigenous Perspective

Alas, a scathing review of Canada’s mismanagement of land and its resources was not the point of this article. Let’s return to the reason for this narrative. So, if the land is about profit and value to non-indigenous people, what does it mean to indigenous people? For indigenous people, land is inseparable from language, oral history, culture, and its people. Land encompasses what it is to be an indigenous person. One’s knowledge comes from the land. Let me give you an example.

Sacred Land Disregard

In 1868, the US government and the Lakota signed the Fort Laramie Treaty that guaranteed the Black Hills in South Dakota and the Powder River Country in Wyoming would be closed to white settlement. The Lakota would keep these parts of their ancestral lands. However, cue the discovery of gold on “Indian land” and all bets were off. Gold rush fever saw a swarm of white miners fill the Black Hills digging, blasting, and clear-cutting private land. The Lakota went to the US president to ask that the treaty of 1868 be honoured and the Whites removed from their land. The government, instead, insisted that a new treaty was needed and the Lakota would have to give up the Black Hills and move to Indian Territory; for a total of $25,000.

The Lakota refused to sign any new treaty. They refused to move to Indian Territory. The Fort Laramie Treaty still stands as a valid peace agreement between Lakota and the US government. One of many reasons the Lakota refused to move off their land was The Six Grandfathers. A medicine man named this mountain after a vision. The vision was of the six sacred directions in Lakota teachings: north, south, east, west, above, and below. In their culture, the directions represented “kindness and love, full of years and wisdom, like human grandfathers”.

The Disrespectful Origins of Mt. Rushmore

This mountain is better known as Mount Rushmore. The faces of four US presidents sliced into its sacred cliff-side. The idea is credited to South Dakota historian Doane Robinson. However, his original plans were to feature a mixture of settler and indigenous faces including Oglala Lakota chiefs Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, Buffalo Bill Body, Lewis and Clark, and their expedition guide Sacagawea. The sculptor responsible for the work, Gutzon Borglum, disagreed. It’s argued that he wanted a wider appeal for his work and chose the four presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

For many Lakota and indigenous people the faces of four colonial presidents on a culturally sacred mountain is the perfect analogy for settler/indigenous relations. Washington and Jefferson were slave-owners. Roosevelt coined the term, “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”. And the day after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he ordered the execution of 38 Dakota at Fort Snelling. Furthermore, the mountain’s relatively unknown origin is representative of most non-indigenous people’s knowledge of the history of settler/indigenous relations.

Treaties, by Hell or High-water

In Canada, the Indian Act brings us to the issue of treaties. The treaties signed between the government of Canada and First Nations bands of Canada were a means to secure land for European settlement and resources. Many chiefs from different nations signed the numbered treaties with the Canadian government. Each had reasons for doing so. Many felt they had no other viable option. Settler expansion from the East decimated their traditional economies, like hunting bison.. They saw the treaties as an opportunity to provide a future for their peoples and at the same time secure their traditional ways of life, such as hunting and fishing.

However, many chiefs were equally suspicious of these treaties. They felt that their concerns were not being taken seriously and that their way of life was in jeopardy as a result. Unfortunately, they weren’t far off the mark. Verbal commitments made to chiefs were entirely left out of the written treaties in order to get some chiefs to sign. Because of language barriers, it would have been impossible for an indigenous signatory to realize that the verbal commitment was missing from the written.

Intentional Omissions

These omissions were often intentional. Treaty 11 is a good example. The government delegates struggled to get bands in Treaty 11 territory to sign. Culturally, these groups did not have chiefs, so the delegates rotated indigenous men in and out of the signatory chair until they could find an agreeable candidate. One thing that all candidates had in common was their desire to secure their traditional way of life: hunting, trapping, fishing, and access to the land. A translator for these negotiations, Victor Lafferty, claimed he did not “read or translate any piece of paper or writing” during the negotiations. The commissioner of the treaty negotiations, Henry Conroy, made oral promises to the signatories guaranteeing their right to their traditional way of life. However, these promises were never reflected in the final written version.

Paradigm Disconnect

The confusion about what exactly was agreed to can be exemplified by the signatories understanding of the use of land. While by signing, they were effectively surrendering the land, they did not have the tools, either language or concept, to understand this. Indigenous signatories had perceived the treaties as peace and friendship agreements, not land surrender. In fact, in 1973 a Supreme Court judge ruled that a nation, (the Dene), could file a claim on these grounds, although it would be later overturned.

British Columba Treaties: Last is Least

My home province, British Columbia, has a unique history regarding land claims. Land negotiations began before BC joined Canada as a province. The governor of Vancouver Island, James Douglas, had intended to buy land from First Nations as the British crown, through the Hudson’s Bay Company, began to colonize BC. He wrote to England and received the following response:

“The acquisition of the title is a purely colonial interest, and the Legislature must not entertain any expectation that the British taxpayer will be burthened to supply the funds….”

With no funding in sight, Douglas had to resort to alternative measures. In 1861, Douglas directed staff of the HBC to start marking out territory for “Indian Reserves”. He issued land proclamations that asserted that the Crown took ownership of all lands in British Columbia. His proclamations would set aside Crown land for indigenous settlement which would be exempt from purchase by settlers. Continually, both settlers and indigenous people could purchase Crown land.

European settlers were unimpressed by Douglas’ measures. They took a far more menacing stance. In response to the land proclamations, the future premier of British Columbia, Amor De Cosmos wrote:

“if they trespass on white settlers, punish them severely … to enable them to form a correct estimate of their own inferiority and settle the Indian title too.”

Unfortunately, the majority of European settlers shared his opinions. Equally unfortunate is that modern sentiment in BC hasn’t improved much. Due to the lack of actual treaties between the province, the country, and the First Nations, land claims and the use of said land have sparked tumultuous disagreements. One example is that of the Coastal GasLink pipeline and the Wet’suwet’en First Nation.

Corporate Interests on Unceded Land

In 2019, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of the pipeline company and gave them unlimited access to Wet’suwet’en territory. Wet’suwent’en territory, like the majority of land in BC, is unceded. There is no standing agreement between this First Nation and either the provincial or federal governments regarding land title or use. The ruling of the Supreme Court was rejected by the First Nation and in 2020 the Hereditary Chiefs issued an eviction notice to Coastal GasLink pipeline.

The Wet’suwet’en set up camps to prevent to progress of the pipeline company, which from their perspective, was trespassing. One such camp was Unis’tot’en. In 2019, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada’s nation-wide policing force, used intimidation and violence to raid the camp. They used chainsaws to break the gates the Wet’suwet’en had constructed. There is video evidence online of officers using force against peaceful protesters, including elders. In short, Canadian taxpayers funded the offense of a private corporation against fellow Canadian citizens on their own land.

As I mentioned before, many settler Canadians view protesting First Nations as a hindrance to industrial progress. This sentiment is particularly strong in anyone employed in the oil and gas industry. The typical rhetoric you’ll hear is that each of us uses a petroleum product or gas-run machine every-day of our lives. If we don’t want a pipeline built, then we should discontinue use of these products.

While true, that claim is missing context. Many people DO want to discontinue use of their oil and gas products and utilities. Yet, most middle to low income families are priced out of the market for clean energy alternatives. Our governments also continue to force through construction of oil and gas industries, such as the Coastal GasLink pipeline, instead of funneling resources and jobs into renewable energy.

Land is Life

Why do the Wet’suwet’en want to prevent the construction of the pipeline through their territory anyway? Well, in short, it’s to protect the environment. First Nations people all over BC depend on their local ecosystems for their livelihoods. They harvest salmon from the ocean and rivers. Baskets and hats are made from cedar bark. They use timber to build long houses. Bears, deer, elk, moose, and caribou are harvested for protein, fat, fur, and tools. The construction of a pipeline through their territory is a direct threat to their way of life.

Understandable Weariness

One only has to look at the safety record of every other previously constructed pipeline in order to learn why Wet’suwet’en are so weary. There are over 49 documented incidents of oil and gas pipelines failing in Canada alone beginning in the 1960s. The Conservation Council of New Brunswick claims that the rate of pipeline leaks and spills has tripled in the last decade. While in Canada, the federal government requires pipeline companies to have an approved Emergency Response Plan for spills in place, there is no way to know if an entire spill was contained. Spills can leak into waterways and groundwater, get trapped in sediment or silt, despite a clean-up crews best efforts, and often times the oil and gas companies who own these pipelines do not put forth their best efforts.  

The Conservation Council of New Brunswick writes the following in relation to clean-up costs:

“[The Kalamazoo River spill] resulted in the costliest onshore cleanup in U.S. history, with a price tag of $767-million. The average cleanup cost of every crude oil spill from the past 10 years in the U.S. was $2,000 per barrel, the Kalamazoo spill of diluted bitumen, by contrast, cost upwards of $29,000 per barrel. Long-term cleanup of the spill remains unknown, as sunken bitumen can be absorbed or trapped by sediments and debris, becoming difficult or impossible to see and clean. Disturbances in the shoreline, habitats, wildlife and food chain can persist for years as deposits of bitumen can be released later and over time.”

Essentially, First Nations like Wet’suwet’en don’t trust oil and gas companies and they certainly don’t want them constructing pipelines through their land, threatening their entire existence and way of life. So what do most First Nations, at least in BC, resort to? The age-old protest. This brings us full-circle to what I think visitors to Canada should know.

You May Have an Indigenous Canadian to Thank

Canada is a top-tier adventure tourism destination. Much of the wild that you are able to visit and enjoy exists because a First Nation band protested to protect the land. They protested to protect the land from clear-cutting and pipeline failures. They protested to protect the ocean from oil tanker spills. Despite their limited resources, First Nations communities are always at the forefront of any demand to protect the environment from exploitation. Even when a First Nations band was not the direct reason for land preservation, like the Godwin Nature Preserve in Surrey, BC, their efforts contributed to a culture of preserving land for future generations in Canada. When you visit Canada you must remember this. You must also keep in mind that many settler Canadians hold this against them.

Small Population with a Big Impact

As I mentioned at the top of this post, many non-indigenous Canadians value the land because of resources that can be extracted from it. Indigenous Canadians defending the land from this exploitation are in direct opposition to their goals. When you come to Canada, you’ll be lucky should you get to meet an Indigenous Canadian.  As a group they make up only 5% of the population. However, I would bet money that you’ll meet a non-indigenous Canadian who has something negative to say about the First Nations, Metis, or Inuit of Canada.

It would be preposterous of me to attempt to describe every land disagreement between Canada in its many forms and groups of Indigenous. Even with my truncated version, my blog post is coming in at a length that I assume most won’t finish. If you’ve made this far, I truly appreciate your effort. What we need to remember, as a group, is the centuries long struggle of Canada and the United States trying to wrest the control of land from the grasp of indigenous peoples. North America’s newest inhabitants often view these groups as ‘wasting’ and ‘not making use’ of the land. And in whichever decade in whichever century, there has been a person of authority passing laws to take more and more land from indigenous people of North America.

So, What Should a Visitor do When They Visit Canada?

Attempt to Learn Whose Traditional Territory You’re On

There are plenty of online resources to help you figure out whose traditional territory you’ll be on. I used Native Land to verify the traditional territories of all of the photos in this post.

Attend a Powwow

There are some indigenous events and ceremonies that would be inappropriate for an outsider to gain admittance to but powwows are definitely not one of them. These events are often free and open to everyone. Their cultural origin stems from prairie indigenous people like the Cree and Sioux, however powwows are quite common across most indigenous groups in the twenty-first century.

Purchase Art or Crafts Made by Indigenous Artisans

Make sure your purchase supports an actual indigenous artist and not some corporation trying to profit off of their work. The best bet is to purchase direct from the artisan at a craft fair or event.

Attend an Annual Event.

Depending on the time of year you visit, your trip may overlap with a number of annual Indigenous days of recognition.

National Indigenous Peoples Day is June 21. You’ll find events in most major cities and get to sample a plethora of Indigenous cultures including aspects of dance, food, and crafts.

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is September 30. This is a newer holiday in Canada to acknowledge the abuses and deaths that occurred across dozens of residential schools from late 1800s to 1996. Most major cities will have a public event to acknowledge.

Hoobiyee takes place in first months of the new year, typically February but also could be January or March. The Nisga’a First Nation in British Columbia celebrate this New Year event. You’ll find events in Vancouver.

Lastly, I hope that when you visit Canada you’ll be mesmerized by its wild beauty. And I hope that you’ll be reminded that most likely an indigenous person fought to keep it that way.

All my relations,

Shauna

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Glossary

The average reader might be over whelmed by the differing and inconsistent use of terms to refer to indigenous peoples. I hope this glossary creates understanding:

Aboriginal: The second-to-most recent politically correct term used in Canada to refer to indigenous people of Canada. The most recent politically correct term is Indigenous although you will still find many people, including indigenous people using the term Aboriginal. The term is not considered offensive in Canada.

Indigenous/indigenous: A capitalized Indigenous refers to the first peoples of Canada and is the most recent politically correct term for this group of people. Lower-case indigenous refers to any group of people that are native to a specific area and is not confined to Canada.

Native: An out-dated term used to refer to Indigenous people of Canada. Most lay people will still use this term. Continually, many Indigenous people will self-identify with this term. If an indigenous person self-identifies with an out-dated term that is their prerogative and should be respected.

Indian: The most out-dated and politically incorrect term to refer to Indigenous people of Canada. Most know that Columbus thought he reached India when he ran ashore in the Caribbean and so referred to the locals as Indians. Despite the realization that he was not in India, the term stuck and many people, especially baby boomer and older generations still use this term. Yet, you will also find many Indigenous people self-identify as Indian. Again, as with the term Native, a non-indigenous person should never correct the use of someone self-identifying as an Indian. Many Indigenous people still fall under the jurisdiction of the Indian Act in Canada and have to carry around an Indian Status Card denoting their bloodline. The Act is extremely prejudiced, but self-identifying as an Indian can be seen as a re-claiming act.

First Nations: Any of the Indigenous people of Canada who do not belong to the culturally unique Metis or Inuit people. First Nations exist across all of Canada. Each are unique but often share cultural characteristics with their closest neighbours often due to the ecosystem and climate.

Metis: A unique group of indigenous people to Canada that have their roots around the Red River in Manitoba. The Metis are a blending of the indigenous people of the area, the Red River, and French colonists who melded to create their own unique people. All Metis people can trace their lineage back to these groups in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and eastern Ontario. It is not appropriate to self-identify as Metis if you are indigenous and European ‘mixed’ unless you come from this specific group that developed around the Red River.

Inuit: An ethnic group unique to the most northern regions of Canada and Alaska. The Inuit’s culture and language evolved around the harsh climate of the Arctic and as such their way of their life is very specialized. Their traditional territory is within the two territories of Canada, Yukon and Northwest, and Nunavut, a unique land settlement between the federal government and the Inuit people.

Native American: A term widely used in the United States and deemed appropriate. Not in popular use in Canada.

Native Indian: A term widely used in the United States although I’m not sure how appropriate its use is. I believe the use of the term Indian is more widely accepted in the USA than it is in Canada. Not in popular use in Canada.

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Disclaimer:

My views are my own and I don’t assume to speak on behalf of indigenous peoples of Canada or the United States. My views are largely constructed by my own extensive experience working directly with Indigenous communities.

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Sources

1. https://www.lovemoney.com/news/85476/norway-oil-reserves-norges-investment-fund-returns-strategy
2. https://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/energy/oil-and-gas/norways-oil-history-in-5-minutes/id440538/
3. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/debunking-the-myth-that-all-first-nations-people-receive-free-post-secondary-education-1.3414183#:~:text=Canada-,Debunking%20the%20myth%20that%20all%20First%20Nations%20people%20receive%20free,This%20is%20not%20true.
4. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/taxes/first-nations-pay-more-tax-than-you-think-1.2971040
5. https://blog.nativehope.org/six-grandfathers-before-it-was-known-as-mount-rushmore
6. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indian-act
7. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indian-status#:~:text=Within%20the%20First%20Nations%20population,)%20identified%20as%20Non%2DStatus.
8. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-656-x/89-656-x2015001-eng.htm
9. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/unceded-land-case-wetsuweten-sovereignty