Reconciliation

The following excerpts come the the text
Autonomously and with Conviction: A Métis Refusal of State-Led Reconciliation


I was asked to come and speak to you tonight about reconciliation.
I think it is important for me to begin this talk by telling you that I have no interest in reconciliation (at this time) and that I think the concept is a state-led smoke screen used to advance a more sophisticated policy of assimilation. I want to talk a little bit about reconciliation, decolonization, the difference between the two, and the role of the state in all of this.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed in 2007 after residential school survivors won the largest class-action lawsuit in Canadian history. They modelled it after the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, which was fitting, seeing as how South Africa looked to the Canadian reservation infrastructure for inspiration in setting up their own racist and segregated system.

As most of us know, the TRC concluded with 94 actionable measures that the government, educational institutions, and individuals could take to pursue reconciliation between settler and Indigenous communities. Universities started implementing new educational curriculum about colonization. Trudeau started wearing shorter sleeves so we could all see his Haida raven tattoo. Land acknowledgements began popping up everywhere. The government of Canada recently released their 10 Points of Official Reconciliation, which is a document that I will refer back to during my talk.

I’m honoured to sit here tonight and tell you that reconciliation – as we know it – is an impossible lie.

Official Canadian reconciliation centers on accepting the past, apologizing, and moving forward together. It doesn’t necessitate physical reparations for the history of colonization. In fact, it discourages that sort of rhetoric as divisive. Counterproductive. Difficult.

There exists a fundamental problem here, because settler-colonialism doesn’t exist in the past. Its violence is pervasive and ongoing, right now, tonight, everywhere we look. Reconciliation is the erasure of this current settler-colonial violence.

Reconciliation – as a term – is about resolving a conflict, returning to a state of friendly relations. It can also mean the bringing together of two positions so as to make them compatible.

Decolonization – on the other hand – is about repealing the authority of the colonial state and redistributing land and resources. It also means embracing and legitimizing previously repressed Indigenous worldviews.

Decolonization isn’t a light word. We have to think about what colonization is to understand it: the complete administrative and economic domination of a people and place. Repealing that is a big deal.

Nevertheless, you will often see these two words thrown around almost interchangeably, especially in the university context where folks using them aren’t actually actors in struggle. I would argue that this is inappropriate.

The occupying and dominating force in our context is the state of Canada.
I don’t see the creation of the Canadian state as coinciding with the signing of the British North America Act in 1867, but as a slow process of institution-building that began at first settlement. Confederation was just the official recognition of that process.

Canada was created in order to govern, exploit, and expand the territories swindled, settled, and stolen from Indigenous peoples of this land. That wasn’t a by-product, it was its primary function. It still is. It always will be. It can’t escape that.

So how can the Canadian state reconcile with Indigenous peoples?They certainly can’t “go back” to a state of friendly relations because there never existed such a time. Reconciliation can only mean eliminating the conflict by enmeshing Indigenous and settler communities, which is the second version of that definition that I shared, making conflicting positions compatible.

This means assimilating Indigenous peoples by having them give up their claim to sovereignty in exchange for the promise of the economic equality within Canada. And it means Canadian people get to devour Indigenous ideas and symbols into their own settler stories, their own canadiana. This is the only path possible under the Canadian state.

The return of land and the power to govern said lands could never be possible under this structure. The resource-based frameworks that define land and water under the logic of Capitalism could never be reconciled with giving away so much money to Indigenous communities. The state-based frameworks that define territory under the nation-state system could never be reconciled with giving away so much power. It just couldn’t happen.

To those who feel as though what I’m saying is too binary, that there is still good to be done under the system of a Canadian state, I offer you the logic of Canada’s 10 Points of Official Reconciliation and ask you to ponder the question of “rights.”

Let’s look together at some of these points.

1) Canada recognizes Indigenous rights to self-determination.

2) Canada sees reconciliation as fundamental to Section 35 of the Constitution Act.

3) Canada recognizes it needs to act with integrity.

4) Canada sees Indigenous self-government as part of the federalism of the provinces

5) Canada says it needs to uphold the treaties.

(Six and seven I’ll come back to.)

8) Canada desires to construct a new fiscal relationship.

9) Canada recognizes that reconciliation is flexible.

10) Canada recognizes that Indigenous peoples are all different.

I chose not to read out the expanded points of this list because I think it is a generally useless and boring document. A perfect example of the bureaucratic skill of using an abundance of words to say absolutely nothing. But I would encourage you to peruse it on your own, if you feel so inclined.

Pay particular attention to the careful phrasing to describe where Indigenous people fit into the imagination of this post-reconciliation utopia. For all the fancy wording, there is no promise of sovereignty, only money that will bring Indigenous people up to the standard of living of Canadians, so that they are readily available and willing to be absorbed into the project of Canada.

I give you a quote from point 2 to illustrate this:

“Reconciliation is an ongoing process through which Indigenous peoples and the Crown work cooperatively to establish and maintain a mutually respectful framework for living together, with a view to fostering strong, healthy, and sustainable Indigenous nations within a strong Canada.”

There are different incarnations of this subtle assertion of Canadian supremacy in points 2, 3, 4, 8, & 10. Now let’s go back to points 6 & 7, arguably the most important in this document.

Point 6 talks about securing the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples in regards to their land when Canada wants to take it, develop it, or exploit it. This wordy section is full of phrases like consensus and consent, collaboration and consultation: it actually has all of those in one little section.

Point 7 – a much shorter section – immediately revokes that false commitment. It says that, consultation is an aspiration, but that the control of land supposedly held by Indigenous peoples can be overridden in any situation beneficial to the state of Canada.

Indigenous peoples, even under the banner of reconciliation, do not have the right to say no to the state of Canada. The right to say no is critical to the realization of sovereignty, of consent, of freedom.

But it should come as no surprise to Canadians who are paying attention. States operate on the illusion of rights. The government has the right to seize your property too. It can expropriate any piece of land that it needs to serve its goals of economic expansion, whether that be for a dam or an airport or a highway or a pipeline.

This is because rights “given” to you by the government can be taken away by the government. These rights aren’t real. This is fake freedom.

It is my belief that there can be no reconciliation that recognizes the self-determination of Indigenous peoples so long as the state of Canada exists.

I’d like to challenge this framework and, instead, offer a circular view of history embraced by my Indigenous teachings. I don’t think we need to “go back” along a linear timeline of so-called progression. There is no going back. But I want to return to the ideas of my ancestors and see it as moving forward, or maybe just as movement, directionless.

I’d like to see an anarchy of my people and the anarchy of settlers (also my people) enacted here together, side by side. With an equal distribution of power, each pursuing healthy relationships, acting from their own ideas and history. Just as the Two Row imagined.

I would like to see the centralized state of Canada dismantled. I’d like to see communities take up the responsibility of organizing themselves in the absence of said central authority. Community councils meeting weekly to discuss the needs of the community and the limitations of the land to provide for those needs, with a renewed emphasis on staying within those limits. Decisions made on consensus, with a more active participation from all persons. Participation made more accessible by the lessening of work necessary with the return to a subsistence economy rather than one of accumulation. I’d like to see more conversation, more cooperation, more shared production. A system that may have regional communication and collaboration, but always with an emphasis on the primacy of the community to determine its own needs and values.

I think beautiful things would follow from these changes naturally. I think that if it were up to communities to decide whether it was worth it to open a gravel pit in their territory if it meant risking their only water source, we would see less gravel pits. The violence of centralized authority means creating sacrifice zones without a thought.

Even in this lovely future, there would still be conflict because conflict is a constant and that’s okay. Not all newly sovereign communities – Indigenous or settler – would immediately institute reciprocal relationships with the planet because, as we know, there are plenty of Indigenous capitalists out there alongside settler capitalists.

But the new relationship to place and focus on interdependence will give settlers a chance to genuinely form a new connection to this land themselves. To adopt their own traditions and values that deal with the ethics of consumption and growth.

Over time, I think we would see the blending together of communities of settlers and Indigenous folks who committed themselves to the same ideas. The love of land would bring some people closer. The new site of conflict would be less based on a racialized claim to land and more based on defending a worldview that calls for its defense.

This. This point is where I think the word reconciliation could be used between our communities.

The Canadian state cannot reconcile with Indigenous communities. But you can, as individuals. It starts with you making choices. Autonomously. With conviction.

 

Who asked you to speak to us?

 

I think it's an excerpt. He's quoting something.

 

Oh I have no doubt, which was point...

I'll never understand people who copy/paste into forums.

That's all I needed to read, before choosing not to read the rest. Knew it wasn't his personal opinion or words, knew it was someone else's.

Who does that?

 

To start a conversation. Similar purpose as reading groups.

Reconciliation is on most people's minds in canada. So as a starting point for a discussion, I went with some of the most cutting edge analysis currently circulating the discourse.

 

What we got here is a case of Irreconcilable Differences

 

Speak for yourself.

*adds a mountain of whipped cream to a gargantuan slice of pumpkin pie*

 

So you're saying two separate worldviews in eternal conflict with one another? Incompatible.

I did say "most" for this exact reason haha. Why is reconciliation not on your mind? In the communities (both settler and Indigenous) where I'm from, State-led reconciliation is pushed down our throats everywhere we turn. Every little thing is made to look like canada is this magical benevolent utopia, entirely separated from the genocide it unleashed 20 years ago.

 

Assumed you had been speaking of the Colonial period.

I remember Mowhawk troubles in the 80s/90s

 

Savages.

 

Oh, I so dont care about reconciliation in my country, Australia

Which is a special case as it was basically a bunch of white slaves brought over to start the country, and the decsendants of those white slaves are supposed to now feel guilty...for what?

Even if the Aboriginals stayed in power, by 2018 still would have been screwed over by a whole bunch of Chinese property developers and the country still full of millions of other people that emmigrated from every corner of the globe

 

You mean my reference to 20 years ago? Mainly residential schools and the 60's/2000's scoop. But yes, the theft of land that happens to this day is also a form of cultural genocide.

The colonizers? Yeah the genocide of tens of millions generally makes you a savage.

 

Someone's a salty dog.

I liked the movie the Indian in the cupboard” as a kid. Or whatever it was called.

 

I did too. I like American Indians

 

Amen To That.....



Cheers Glen.

 

How so?

It sounds to me that the invasion and colonization of Australia had a very imperialist nature. Actually, it's well documented that it was a state-sanctioned invasion.



"...before the British soldiers arrived in 1788 with a mass of petty convicts to make us part of the British Empire, there were people living here. Those people were a race of intelligent humans with black skin -Aborigines- who had resided here for a known 60,000 years.

What followed was a mass murder of those residents, especially by white police, graziers, army and business-men. Many were killed in weekly turkey shoots for sport, particularly if they were brave enough to defend their families. This continued till even 1950." - Aborigines in Australia

Nope, not guilt. But accountability. Acknowledging the racist history and present of where you live. The privileges living in a racist society entails you. The colonization and genocide that your entire country is built upon. White guilt is a myth. But actually learning and doing something is all folks ask.

I mean, didn't your country literally just admit that Aborigines are even human beings under your colonial law? Looking at headlines from over there, it sounds like you're on the srong side of history bud:

We killed it: Australia Day is officially dead

In Australia, apartheid is alive and kicking

Why can't white Australia just 'get over it'? | Welcome To Country

 

History is printed by those with the guns and money to prevent others from burning it as rubbish. Plato had all the works of his biggest competitor, Democritus, burned throughout the land as "Ugly and demeaning". To nobody's surprise, he became the recognized authority for the next thousand years on ethics and aesthetics, while here in the US they are fighting over how to divide up the internet. You cannot force the truth on those who plug their ears and scream "I can't hear you!" They will only listen if you have more money and guns.

 

First off, you said "to make us part of the British Empire" then later said "your country"

Who is "us" are you some whitey outraged on behalf of aboriginal australia?

If full blood aboriginal then I concede to whatever your opinion is.

But if you are some tryhard white hipster, get ready to get educated

 

Yeah, they're pretty cool. But what about canadian indians?

 

I've never really heard of them, I know that the American Indian went north into Canada I think with crazy Horse at the helm. There'd have of course been indigenous populations in Canada. The Vikings even met some. if they were anything like the American Indians I am sure I would like them.

My dad used to be into the Indians, he's more into Buddha now, although not in a religious sense. He's more into Zen and Karma I Feel without an actual belief.