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The previous chapter provided an outline of two major organizing themes of the historical Canadian discourse on Aboriginal peoples, vis., the Noble Savage and the Vanishing Indian Race. In this chapter, a few contemporary examples of that discourse will be examined in order to determine the degree to which the themes outlined above persist. Again, these examples simply serve to illustrate this paper’s thesis, and do not in any strict sense provide the sole basis for its claims.

To put it mildly, 1990 was an eventful year for Native/non-Native relations. Over the course of that year’s “Indian summer,” two major incidents occurred: the failure of the Meech Lake Accord and the so-called ‘Oka Crisis.’ To recap briefly, the ‘Oka Crisis’ involved the setting up of a roadblock on the Kanehsatà:ke reserve by a group of Mohawks known as the ‘Warriors,’ who were protesting the planned appropriation of historically disputed lands by the nearby non-Native community of Oka. According to the perception of the federal and Quebec governments, the situation at Kanehsatà:ke did not represent any such historically motivated act on the part of the Mohawk people. Rather, the governments chose, in the words of then Canadian Justice minister Kim Campbell, to regard the “situation we see at Oka today [as] a law enforcement situation.” Campbell continues, indirectly addressing the notion that Mohawks, as a self-determining people prior to the invasion of proto-Canadian forces, do not fall under Canadian authority:

The governments of Canada and Quebec cannot and will not accept that the Warriors are not governed by the laws of this country, including the Criminal Code.

They receive the full protection of our laws, including the Charter. Neither they nor anyone else in Canada can pick and choose the laws they obey.

The Criminal Code applies to everyone in Canada. There are no exceptions. Only those with legal authority and who are under the control of democratically elected governments may use firearms and force to uphold the law. Our government will not tolerate such use of force by others [emphasis added].

This passage is an extremely telling one for the analysis of dominant Canadian discourse about Native peoples. Firstly, left entirely unstated by Campbell’s view and yet fundamental to its logic, is the mythical notion of European conquest, a fundamental aspect of the Vanishing Indian Race theme. ‘We won,’ so the logic goes, and thus any and all ‘misguided’ notions on the part of the Indians that the lands they have traditionally occupied are still theirs is about as worthy of consideration as the notion that they are still ‘real’ Indians. In other words, Native peoples, their histories, their experiences, and most of all, their lands belong to Canadians now.

Secondly, by drawing upon the discourse of law and order, Campbell effectively displaces mainstream attention away from the historically based grievances of the Mohawk nation, framing their actions in a criminal context instead. Moreover, by situating the confrontation in Oka, Campbell localises events in geographical and historical terms, and thus restricts their significance, when in fact much larger issues are at stake. As Debbie Wise Harris points out,

The term ‘Oka Crisis’ itself constrains the meaning of the set of events. The word ‘crisis’ denotes a temporary, escalated, critical moment, a notion which negates the reality of the permanent crisis in which Native peoples all over Canada (and the world) are living and have lived since colonization. Also, the modifier “Oka” situates the events in an isolated geographical place (Oka), although demonstrations were also happening in [Kahnawá:ke] (Chateauguay) and all over the country; it also defines the location in legitimized terms of the state… preferring the meaning of the ‘crisis’ as a crisis for Quebeckers (and not for Native people).

Finally, Campbell, by referring to the polarized notions of “we” and “others,” calls up explicitly the dichotomy underlying imperial discourse as identified by Said. The discourse Campbell employs continues to rest upon a White/non-White, European/non-European, us-and-them ontological and epistemological division. Thus, “we” are lawful, they, being “others”, are not. “We” have had a long tradition of self-government; “they” have not. All of this goes a long way towards legitimizing and entrenching the continued imposition of foreign authority on historically Native lands. The repeated failure to mention this fact is simply to erase the real domination of its effects.

Another major recent Canadian event impacting on Native/non-Native relations was the 1992 referendum on the Constitution. Within the constitutional package agreed to by the federal government, all the provincial and territorial leaders, and certain representatives of Native peoples, was a significant set of proposals regarding ‘Aboriginal self-government.’ In the weeks leading up to the actual vote, a great deal of debate took place on the possible risks Canadians might be taking in ‘giving’ ‘self-governing’ powers to Native peoples. Of all the opinions expressed which were critical of the self-government component of the package, the comments of William Johnson of the Montreal Gazette are perhaps most representative. In a May 5, 1992 column entitled, “Not all are leaping on the self-government bandwagon,” Johnson begins his comments by positioning himself as the neglected voice of reason languishing on the fringes on mainstream thought:

The conventional wisdom accepts recognizing Indian self-government as an inherent right. The Beaudoin-Dobbie report favored it, as does Joe Clark. It seems that self-government is a done deal.

Not to be outdone, Johnson cites the credentials of Patrick Lewtas, a Toronto lawyer who not only worked for the Windigo Tribal Council (and thus, so the logic goes, must ‘know’ what Indians are all about) but went to Harvard and the University of Toronto Law School as well. According to Said, the ushering in of such ‘authoritative’ sources is a common discursive tactic employed by those pleading the imperialist case. As we shall see, Johnson sees no irony in his position as one who is able to make his claims in the absence of any effective counter-response. His sovereign viewpoint as self-appointed representative of the dominant Canadian consciousness does not acknowledge that his capacity to speak authoritatively on these matters is a relatively privileged position, one ultimately based on a recourse to force. Such a position of authority, including the ability to have one’s self widely heard, is simply not possible for Native peoples given their comparatively weaker status in the Canadian context.

According to Johnson’s source, the real problem facing Native peoples is to be regarded as follows:

The real issues that are facing us are not political issues. The real issues are social and economic. By making them political you not only miss the real problems, you put in place institutions and create vested interests that make it very difficult to address the real issues…

Later on in the article, Johnson’s ‘expert-in-the-field’ gets to his main point:

‘Self-government’ will not usher talented Indians into important positions in the larger world… It will instead mould them into a governmental elite with a vested interest in its people’s inequality… With self-government, Canada would acquire a collage of legal systems under which different groups would exercise different powers and different people would enjoy different rights. Race would be the standard by which rights are allocated.

Finally, Lewtas concludes that

It seems that Indians must live in the modern world and must adopt modern culture to do so. Aboriginal cultures depend too much on obsolete lifestyles to be salvageable. And the attempt to save them through self-government will produce modern totalitarianism rather than traditional culture.

In other words, the Noble Savage is alive and not so well. Johnson ends his article by citing a common refrain of opponents of Aboriginal self-government, namely, that “the current system of funding native organizations has produced an Indian middle class that is almost totally dependent on the [Canadian] public purse.”

What Johnson’s article reveals in a rather rich and complex fashion is a direct reliance on the themes of the dominant Canadian discourse on Native peoples. To apply the analysis of Said, Johnson is first and foremost a Westerner consciously speaking on behalf of other Westerners, his railings against “conventional wisdom” notwithstanding. Eurocentrism clearly colours his perspective. Indeed, at one point in the above article, he compares the aspirations of Aboriginal peoples to those of the Middle Ages in Europe. The implication being that Native concerns can only be understood in terms of what they represent within a European conceptual framework.

That the Noble Savage paradigm is clearly in use is demonstrated by the dichotomy Johnson and his source impose between the “modern world” and presumably less advanced Aboriginal cultures. As if to offset such a bald-faced claim, Johnson includes references to the discourses of race and equality as well, claiming that by instituting Aboriginal self-government Canada will become a ‘racist’ state with “different powers” for “different groups.” Such a discussion fundamentally distracts from the fact that Aboriginal self-determination is predicated on the recognition of Native peoples as members of “Nations,” not as a race. And once again, the end result of this discourse on the unrelated matters of race, not to mention “equality,” has been the effective masking of the on-going domination perpetrated by the Canadian nation-state against those who have held historic claims to their lands for thousands of years.

. . . . . . . . . .

Where there are no Indians,
there is no wealth.

Franciscan (Spanish) proverb,
circa 16th century

The irony of the above statement is a painful one for the many Indigenous peoples of this world. For the non-Native recognition of the wealth of Aboriginal lands has seen Native peoples systematically dispossessed of those lands and their lives indelibly scarred. And yet, Native peoples and their cultures have persevered. Regrettably, so have imperialism and colonialism. And while it is undoubtedly disturbing to recall these events, even more disturbing has been the manner in which the dominant discourse of the West has so callously, liberally and high-handedly discussed these matters.

In this paper, I have argued that one of the major mechanisms of imperialist and colonial power which continues to organize Native/non-Native relations in Canada has been the discourse of Aboriginality. Two principal themes of this discourse, namely, the Noble Savage and the Vanishing Indian Race, have been identified, along with an indication of how they work to maintain relations of domination. I have demonstrated the dominating effects of this discourse by examining some contemporary examples of these themes at work, which have been located within the context of their long and continuous history. It is worth repeating that this paper has not argued for individuals’ personal motivations as the prime determinant of political relations. Rather, it has sought to address the certain degree of relative autonomy intrinsic to discourse, and how that discourse ultimately draws upon certain recurring and thus recognizable themes.

Of course, there have been a number of areas which certain limitations of space and time have not permitted me to explore. These include the internalization of the discourse of Aboriginality by Native people themselves, a phenomenon perhaps best seen within the 1992 constitutional rhetoric of Native leaders. In light of Foucault’s understanding of power, one must question these leaders use of such terms as ‘inherent right’ and ‘sovereignty’ as possibly unconscious usages of the discourse of ‘equality’ and ‘right.’ Then again, the employment of these terms may simply indicate the exigencies of entering into any form of discussion with the dominant society. After all, one must articulate one’s desires in terms others can understand.

Engaging with the discourse of Aboriginality for the possibilities of resistance raises other potential research questions for the future. According to Foucault, given that resistance is simultaneously present wherever power can be seen to circulate, it would no doubt prove fruitful to examine such attempts to negotiate the discourse of Aboriginality. In my opinion, some of the most exciting discursive negotiations being carried out are by Native artists such as Gerald McMaster, Robert Houle, Jane Ash Poitras and Joane Cardinal-Schubert, to name but a few. All four artists recently took part in the ground-breaking exhibits, Indigena and Land, Spirit, Power, at the Museum of Civilization and The National Gallery respectively, in Ottawa.

Other key moments in the Canadian Native discourse in need of further research are its sheer possessiveness vis-à-vis Native peoples, a discourse which speaks of “our” native peoples, “Canada’s” Indians, Native “Canadians,” and the Native peoples “of” Canada. How this appropriation of Native experiences has served the Canadian ‘nationalist project’ is an issue I was unable to deal with here. Indeed, if I had to predict the future shape of Native/non-Native relations in this country, I would have to say that in addition to the deeply felt issues of land occupying the main focus of those relations, culture will be the greatest source of contestation. In the process, perhaps the popular social science notions of ‘identity,’ ‘race,’ ‘culture’ and even ‘the nation’ will finally come under the scrutiny they deserve.

SOURCES CONSULTED

BOOKS

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Cassidy, Frank (ed). Aboriginal Title in British Columbia: Delgamuukw v. The Queen. Lantzville, BC and Montreal: Oolichan Books and The Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1992.

Fisher, Robin and Kenneth Coates (eds). Out of the Background: Readings on Canadian Native History. Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman Ltd., a Longman Company, 1988.

Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. London: Routledge, 1989.

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Green, L.C. and Olive P. Dickason. The Law of Nations and the New World. Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 1989.

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Monet, Dan and Skanu’u (Ardythe Wilson). Colonialism on Trial: Indigenous Land Rights and the Gitskan and Wet’suwet’en Sovereignty Case. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1992.

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Newman, Peter C. Company of Adventurers: Volume One. Markham: Penguin Books Canada Ltd., 1985.

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Ross, Malcolm. Poets of The Confederation. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1960.

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Weaver, Sally M. Making Canadian Indian Policy: The Hidden Agenda 1968-1970. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981.

PERIODICALS AND NEWSPAPERS

“Aboriginal research clogs governments.” Vancouver Sun, 26 April 1991: A13.

Amiel, Barbara. “The gun barrel created this land.” Maclean’s (10 September 1990): 11.

Bemrose, John. “A History of Wealth.” Maclean’s, Vol. 98 No. 43 28 October 1985: 67-68.

“Blockades bringing big losses.” The Financial Post 18/20 August 1990: 1.

Boswell, Randy. “A clash of perspectives.” Content (March/April 1991): 18.

_________. “Oka: crisis in journalism.” Content, (January/ February 1991): 16-17.

Bryden, Joan. “A leap of faith: how to define ‘inherent right to self-government’?” Montreal Gazette, 22 February 1992: B4.

Byfield, Ted. “Native self-government goes beyond what Canadians think.” The Financial Post, 21/23 March 1992: S3.

Byfield, Link. “Do Aboriginals need self-government? No.” Toronto Star, 19 July 1991: A23.

_________. “The central flaw of Indian self-government is welfare.” Alberta Report Vol. 7 No. 4 (24 February 1992): 2.

_________. “The Indians will have to be told that self-government has a price.” Alberta Report, Vol. 7 No.2 (10 February 1992): 2.

Brown, Jennifer S. H. “Newman’s Company of Adventurers in Two Solitudes: A Look at Reviews and Responses.”  Canadian Historical Review, Vol. 67 No. 4 (1986): 562-571.

________. “The Company is Full of Life.” Winnipeg Free Press, 2 November 1985.

Camp, Dalton. “Did Harry Swain really misspeak?”  Toronto Star, 5 August 1990: B3.

Campbell, Kim. “The benefits and limits of Aboriginal self-government.” Canadian Speeches: Issues of the day, (January 1992): 18-22+66.

_________. “The Warriors and the criminal law.” Canadian Speeches: Issues of the day, (October 1990): 68-69.

“Canadians like idea of self-government.” Montreal Gazette, 15 February 1992: A8.

“Cannot tolerate anarchy, Justice Minister declares.” Globe and Mail, 24 August 1990: A6.

Chrétien, Jean. “Indian policy — where does it stand?” Speech given at the Empire Club. Toronto: 16 October 1969.

_________. “Statement by Minister of Government Policy.” House of Commons Debates (Hansard). Ottawa: Queen’s Printer for Canada, 25 June 1969.

_________. “The Government Policy on Indians: What is the debate about?” Speech given to the Saskatchewan Women’s Liberal Federation. Regina: 2 October 1969.

Clark, Joe. “Most substantial reforms ever to meet Aboriginal concerns.” Canadian Speeches: Issues of the day, (January 1992): 23-28.

Clark, Joe. “Only self-government can free Aboriginal peoples.” Canadian Speeches: Issues of the day, Vol. 6 No. 2 (April 1992): 19-27.

Cleverley, Fred. “Native self-government won’t cut the tax bills at all.” Winnipeg Free Press, 27 January 1992: A7.

“Confrontation is still the bottom line for Canada’s natives.” Globe and Mail, 15 June 1991: D4.

“Dealing with Native demands.” Globe and Mail, 30 April 1992: A24.

Dick, Lyle. “Renegade in Archives: Peter C. Newman and the Writing of Canadian Popular History.” Archivaria, No. 22 (Summer 1986): 168-181.

“Enshrining Native ‘distinct society’ backed by 59%, poll finds.” Winnipeg Free Press, 27 March 1992: C37.

“Federal official calls warriors criminals.” Globe and Mail, 24 July 1990: A1-A2.

“Few ask right questions about Native self-rule.” Toronto Star, 30 July 1992: A21.

“‘Forged’ letter heats up chiefs’ struggle.” Winnipeg Free Press, 7 August 1991: A8.

French, William. “Of Profits, Beavers and a Lasting Legacy.” Globe and Mail, 17 October 1985.

Gibson, Gordon. “Indians must face reality in seeking new concessions.” The Financial Post, 1/3 September 1990: 7.

_________. “Let’s not use racism to tackle Native needs.” Globe and Mail, 1 June 1992: A15.

Goar, Carol. “Siddon redeems image with a sensitive speech to irate native chiefs.” Toronto Star, 15 September 1990: D4.

Hall, Tony. “Treating Native activists like common criminals.” Globe and Mail, 26 March 1991: A21.

Harris, Wise Debbie. “Colonizing Mohawk Women: Representation of Women in the Mainstream Media,” Resources for Feminist Research, Vol. 20, No. 1/2, 15-20.

“‘Impact of colonization’ felt for generations.”  Globe and Mail, 5 June 1992: A7.

“Indians want official out for criminal comments.”  Vancouver Sun, 24 July 1990: A1,A4.

“Inherent but unclear.” Winnipeg Free Press (Editorial), 27 March 1992: A6.

“Iraq, Quebec and Native questions.” Globe and Mail, 30 October 1990: A8.

Johnson, William. “Native self-government is negotiable, but not sovereignty.” Montreal Gazette, 2 August 1990: B3.

_________. “Not all are leaping on Native self-government bandwagon.” Montreal Gazette, 5 May 1992: B3.

_________. “Self-government: How can we accept a system we don’t understand?” Montreal Gazette, 21 July 1992: B3.

_________. “Self-rule not the answer for Indians.” Vancouver Sun, 15 October 1990: A10.

_________. “Time to Rethink Myth of Native self-government.” Toronto Star, 7 July 1992: A9.

_________. “White guilt won’t help the Indians: natives must undertake to adapt to times.” Montreal Gazette, 12 October 1990: B3.

Koch, George. “Vague, and getting murkier: Joe Clark promises Indians constitutional self-government.” Alberta Report, Vol. 6, No. 29 (23 September 1991): 9-10.

Lautens, Trevor. “This is affirmative apartheid.” Vancouver Sun, 15 February 1992: B5.

Lavelle, Patrick J. “Native self-government needs economic base.” Canadian Speeches: Issues of the day, (April 1992): 23-27.

“Leader has lived Indians’ anger.” Calgary Herald, 4 February 1992: A5.

LeBlanc, Alfred. “Answer to Native self-government: give Canada’s First Nations their own province.” Financial Post Daily, 16 June 1992: 16.

“Legacies of mistrust: Suspicion fuels Indian fears.” Maclean’s (10 September 1990): 26-27.

Malling, Eric. “Time for a new attitude.” Content, (March/April 1991): 16-17.

“Mercredi: how he made them listen.” Vancouver Sun, 11 February 1992: A13.

Morrisseau, Miles. “Will self-government set Natives against  each other?” Montreal Gazette, 18 August 1992: B3.

“Mulroney warns Indians deal won’t get any better.” Vancouver Sun, 19 October 1992: A4.

“Native demand confusing.” Calgary Herald, 21 March 1992: A5.

“Native self-government: racist by definition?” Alberta Report Vol. 7 No. 20 (15 June 1992): 8.

“Native self-rule on the agenda.” Globe and Mail, 4 September 1990: A4.

“Natives’ definition of self-government can vary greatly.” Montreal Gazette, 28 September 1990: A5.

“Natives search for self-government.” Calgary Herald, 15 February 1992: A10.

“‘Natives will suffer death of Meech Accord’.” Calgary Herald, 1 February 1991: B6.

Newman, Peter C. “Bourassa is just as distinct as Mercredi.” Maclean’s, Vol. 104 No. 36 (9 September 1991): 30.

_________. “Response by Peter C. Newman to Jennifer Brown.” Canadian Historical Review, Vol. 67 No. 4 (1986): 572-578.

“Niceness not enough to build a nation.” Globe and Mail, 19 July 1991: A10.

“Off-the-record rules misunderstood.” Calgary Herald, 29 July 1990: C6.

“Oka gave voice to aboriginals.” Globe and Mail, 10 July 1991: A7.

Olive, David. “Peter Newman: It’s hard not to think of the Bay.” Quill and Quire, (21 November 1985).

“Ottawa had big questions about self-government.” Montreal Gazette, 5 November 1992: B1.

“Ottawa short on answers.” Winnipeg Free Press, 5 November 1992: B16.

“Ottawa urged to cripple Warrior society: members must be disarmed.” Montreal Gazette, 25 July 1990: A1-A2.

“Ottawa vague on self-rule.” Calgary Herald, 10 September 1991: A9.

“PM says he wishes he could right Métis wrongs.” Vancouver Sun, 5 October 1991: A10.

“Poll shows support for self-rule.” Vancouver Sun, 17 February 1992: A4.

“Price of native rule high, Siddon says.” Globe and Mail, 11 April 1992: A6.

“Quebec must end standoffs, Indian Affairs Minister says.” Globe and Mail, 27 July 1990: A4.

Richardson, Boyce. “Ovide Mercredi: Speaking Softly, Hitting Hard.”  Canadian Forum, Vol. 70 No 803 (October 1991): 6-12.

Schreiner, John. “A stinging critique of Native self-government.” Financial Post Daily. 9 October 1992: 11.

“Self-rule issue splits Natives, unity panel.” Toronto Star, 9 January 1992: A9.

Sheppard, Robert. “Maybe it’s racist, but it’s a good thing.” Globe and Mail, 2 June 1992: A17.

“Siddon backs deputy on Oka.” Calgary Herald, 25 July 1990: A2.

“Siddon backs his deputy minister: uproar follows.” Globe and Mail, 25 July 1990: A4.

Siddon, Thomas. “Indian plan benefits all Canadians.” Calgary Herald (Letters), 13 August 1992: A6.

_________. “Natives, Ottawa are building a new relationship.” Toronto Star (Letters), 13 July 1991: D3.

_________. “The fateful turning point at Kanesatake standoff.” Canadian Speeches: Issues of the day (October 1990): 63-67.

_________. “Positive native vision” Globe and Mail (Letters), 7 May 1991: A16.

Simpson, Jeffrey. “From the cheap seats: a way to handle the native issues.” Globe and Mail, 21 November 1991: A20.

_________. “The demands for full sovereignty can’t be met.” Globe and Mail, 17 August 1990: A14.

_________. “The telling nature of the new royal commission on aboriginal affairs.” Globe and Mail, 30 August 1991: A14.

“Sovereignty demand scuttled possible deal.” Globe and Mail, 29 August 1990: A6.

“The dangerous next step: Canadians call for real change.” Maclean’s (10 September 1990): 28-29.

“The fury of Oka: The crisis at the barricades lends urgency to the search for solutions.” Maclean’s (10 September 1990): 16-19.

“The pith of myth.” Vancouver Sun, 28 November 1992: A17.

“TV viewers told of Canadian ‘genocide’.” Winnipeg Free Press, 24 January 1992: C35.

Wagamese, Richard. “Do Aboriginals need self-government? Yes.” Toronto Star, 19 July 1991: A23.

“Why Native leaders don’t want Charter.” Montreal Gazette, 10 October 1992: 11.

The purpose of this chapter is to apply the model of analysis suggested by the insights and methodologies of Said and Foucault to Native/non-Native relations in Canada. To reiterate the major points of this analytical model, the primary focus of examination is placed not at the level of individual subjective intent but at the more concrete level of the discursive effects of power. The idea that power is best understood to operate as a function of expressed intent is bracketed in favour of an approach to power which recognizes that ideal objectives and the reality of lived experience bear no necessary correlation. Moreover, as the strategies and mechanisms of power are best seen as constantly evolving, an analysis of its effects must be historically located if the continuity of these effects is to be determined. According to Foucault, from such an historical perspective, politics in Western democracies emerge as simply war continued by other means.

Accordingly, this paper situates its analysis of Native/non-Native relations in Canada within an understanding of the effects of that relationship’s approximate 500 year history as a whole. The immediate implications of adopting such an approach are obvious: the analysis of the relations between the Indigenous peoples of these lands and what are properly seen as European immigrants to them, must take as its starting point the various material conditions and circumstances of Aboriginal cultures prior to contact with Europeans. Thus, a fundamental operating assumption of this paper is that, pre-contact, these cultures had total and undisputed control over their lives and the ways in which they related to the lands they traditionally occupied; now, clearly, they do not. A second assumption is that, unless these peoples are the only known group in the history of the planet to freely, willingly and unilaterally give up this ability en masse to determine their own lives, on their original lands, one is forced to conclude that such lands have been taken, and continue to be held, by force.

This chapter sets down two major themes of the dominant Canadian discourse on Aboriginal peoples: namely, The Noble Savage and The Vanishing Indian Race. As shall be argued throughout the remainder of this paper, both of these themes rely upon the fundamental Western assumption of European superiority. This assumption clearly recalls the analysis of Said, and thus provides an opportunity to reiterate and apply the major operating assumptions of imperialist discourse discussed in the previous chapter. Again, Said presents three major organizing categories of imperialist discourse: its Eurocentric perspective, its positioning of the Orient as a problem, and the dehumanizing consequences of its cosmic view of the Orient. While the two broadly conceived themes under discussion do not cover the entire scope of the discourse of Aboriginality, together they capture much of its essential content. However, before proceeding to an examination of these two themes and their political implications, some comments concerning the methodological aspects of this paper’s approach are in order.

Firstly, the examples to be cited in this chapter are not to be regarded as the sole source of evidence upon which this paper’s thesis is based. Rather, the examples to follow simply serve as illustrations of the theoretical analysis put forth by this paper concerning the discourse of Aboriginality. Thus, the true test of this paper’s thesis will consist not in the specific examples it produces here, but in the general applicability and plausibility of its theory. This approach owes a direct debt to that of Said in Orientalism:

It should be noted at once that even with the generous number of books and authors that I examine, there is a much larger number that I simply had to leave out. My argument, however, depends neither upon an exhaustive catalogue of texts dealing with the Orient nor upon a clearly delimited set of texts, authors, and ideas that together make up the Orientalist canon. I have depended instead upon a different methodological alternative—whose backbone in a sense is [a] set of historical generalizations…

In the case of this paper, such historical generalizations are of a thematic and ideological nature, namely, the hypotheses of the Noble Savage and the Vanishing Indian Race.

The other methodological consideration to note here is that the examples included in this chapter reflect neither a random nor whimsical process of selection; indeed, it is this paper’s contention that similarly effective examples exist close at hand at virtually any given point within the discourse. In other words, the examples to follow are neither exotic nor obscure. Instead, as Said points out, they merely indicate the fact that discourse operates precisely by making itself and its putative object widely and readily available. Discourse is not a subterranean phenomenon lurking within the depths of society but rather one which functions everywhere at the level of appearances. Again, given that the main argument of this paper rests on its general application, no amount of specific examples will clinch it.

The Noble Savage

While the conventional theme of the Noble Savage recurs consistently throughout Canadian discourse on Native peoples, it does so in a variety of forms. Nonetheless, at the core of all these various manifestations have been a number of key, albeit contradictory, assumptions. These assumptions can generally be seen as falling into one of two groups. The first group of assumptions posits the existence of a global hierarchy of man, wherein the perceived superiority of European culture places it above all others. This notion of cultural hierarchy derives from the intellectual ties of the Noble Savage to Christian cosmogony, which sought to explain the origin and history of all humankind. The presence of Aboriginal peoples in the ‘New World’ thus created certain theoretical problems for Orthodox Christian thinkers, who subscribed to the notion that God created all peoples at one time and in one spot. In order to preserve this monogenetic account of the world, Christian thought developed two responses: the first, the idea of a land bridge connecting the New World to the Old, solved the dilemma of the Indian’s physical presence in the New World; the second, the notion of cultural degeneracy, accounted for the cultural and social differences between Native and European peoples. From this logic emerges the conclusion that Native peoples exist as a degenerate and derivative form of human beings who occupy the lowest rank of human socio-cultural evolution. Thus, it is not long after contact that one can see what Said refers to as the Eurocentric perspective in operation. According to Robert Berkhofer Jr., the positioning of the world’s peoples on an evolutionary scale persists through and beyond the period of the Enlightenment, and to the extent that Western thought presumes

the fundamental unity of all humans in psyche and intelligence, then the Christian belief in the brotherhood of all God’s souls left its impression on the subsequent social sciences. In these basic outlooks the Christian parenthood of the social scientific image of the Indian becomes apparent.

The other major group of assumptions underlying the notion of the Noble Savage in a sense celebrates the so-called ‘primitive’ aspects of Native societies as a romantic alternative to European life. European Primitivism, a tradition of thought existent around the time of the Renaissance, sought to criticize Western society for what were perceived to be the ills and inequality of its social order. As a notion with roots in the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman mythical traditions of Paradise and the Golden Age, primitivism inherited a vision of an ideal landscape in harmony with nature and reason. This quest for paradise on earth influenced many Renaissance explorers, and consequently shaped the vocabulary with which they described and portrayed the indigenous populations of the New World. Their accounts, in turn, appeared to corroborate in fact the theoretical propositions of primitivist thought.

Eventually, Native peoples come to be understood by the West as a contemporary representative of mankind in its original ‘state of nature,’ or a condition of existence where social organization has yet to achieve the ‘advanced’ form then known to Europeans. In the eyes of Europeans, then, pre-contact Indians live in a ‘pure’ and ‘untainted’ manner free of the attendant evils of ‘civilized’ Western society. The nobility of the ‘savage’ Indian, therefore, resides within his simplicity.  It is this same quality, however, that permits the European to regard the Indian as ‘primitive’ and ‘unpolished.’ In the process of romanticizing Aboriginal peoples, European writers are quick to remind themselves and their readers of their inherent superiority as Europeans. That this notion persists within the later Canadian context as well is a proposition to which this essay now turns.

Providing an early example of the Noble Savage theme within the context of New France, the precursor to French Canada, is the Jesuit Relations. The Relations is a chronicle produced annually by the Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century intended to convince their financial supporters back home of the worthiness of their religious pursuits of conversion and civilization of the ‘savages’ of the Americas.  In order for such ‘savages’ to be capable of conversion, however, they had to be acknowledged in some sense as human beings. The theme of the Noble Savage thus serves two functions: on the one hand, it allows the Jesuits to designate Native peoples as human, indeed rather nobly so; yet, on the other hand, it makes such nobility conditional, as a degraded and simplistic form of human social organization. Sieur de Cobes, who visited the missions of New France in 1605, concluded that Native peoples are amenable to evangelization, and his comments serve as an accurate reflection of the prevailing European attitude towards Indians at that time:

Now to describe the nature of those that inhabit it, you should know that they are very handsome men, white as snow, who let their hair grow down to their waists (both men and women), with high foreheads, eyes burning like candles, strong in body and well proportioned. The women too are very beautiful and graceful, well formed and dainty, so much so that given the fashion of their clothes which is somewhat strange one would say they were Nymphs or some goddesses, very charming and tractable, but apart from that prepared to be massacred rather than consent to their dishonour, or have knowledge of any other man besides their husbands. Apart from that, in their manner of living they are very brutish…

The above quotation provides an indication of the excessive attention of imperialist discourse to detail, a literary device Said regards as the prerogative of the Eurocentric perspective. Rather than choose to focus on the more human aspects of Aboriginal social and cultural life, the European observer reduces such aspects to constituting mere functions of their physical environment. Drawing upon the suggestive analysis of Said once again, these notions of biological determinism create a rather schematic view of the Indian, wherein Native peoples cannot be understood except as the embodiment of certain patterns within their physical surroundings.

Ultimately, what the connection made by European discourse between the Noble Savage and a ‘primitive’ and ‘wild’ state of existence permits is the intrusion of Western forces on Indigenous lands. Returning to the ideas of Cobes, his comments reveal the imperialist motivations accompanying the ostensibly religious project of the Jesuits:

…but they are beginning to become civilized and to take on our manners and our ways. They are easily instructed in the Christian religion and are not too opinionated in their Paganism, to the extent that if Preachers went down to them I believe that in a short time the whole country would give in to the Christian faith without being otherwise constrained, and that by this means the way would be opened in the whole of the remainder of America for the conquest of souls, which is greater than all the lands one could ever conquer.

The dovetailing aspects of the imperialist and civilizing projects thus revealed, the political implications of the notion of the Noble Savage become glaringly obvious. The West’s portrayal of the Indian as an individual in dire need of the finer attributes of civilised, Christian society obfuscates the inherently violent nature of its colonial presence in the ‘New World.’ Although the initial attempts at French colonization met with only partial success at best, the stage for its eventual justification had been set.

Over the course of the 16th to the 19th centuries, lands traditionally occupied by Aboriginal peoples come to be increasingly encroached upon by predominantly French and English settlers whose numbers grew steadily with each passing decade. Facilitating the dispossession of Native lands throughout this period is the key tenet of the policy of civilization, namely, the permanent re-settlement of Native peoples on reserves. The reserve system, where Native peoples are forcibly segregated on land often less arable and desirable than that allotted to European immigrants, was a policy made directly possible by the notion of the Noble Savage. For a common conception (or misconception—the difference is slight) introduced by the Noble Savage theme is that Native peoples were largely nomadic, and thus wandered ‘aimlessly’ across the countryside. The reality is quite different; while it is true many Native peoples did relocate from time to time, this relocation was designed to prevent the physical over-use of any one particular area. Nonetheless, the Noble Savage paradigm, by positioning Native peoples as nomads who move without purpose or reason, served to justify European occupation of lands they perceived as either ‘unused’ or insufficiently so for the ends of ‘progress.’

The persistence of this notion of Native nomadicism is so strong that one Canadian author, writing in the early 20th century, echoes it almost verbatim, couched in terms of protecting the Indians “as a people of limited intelligence.” As a result of such perceived beneficence on the part of Canadians, the author claims the “Indian became practically independent and self-supporting.” The author concludes that

All over the Dominion [the Indians] are prosperous and content; nomads as they are bred up wholly to war and the chase, they have nevertheless acquiesced peacefully on the new conditions of life which the onward march of the white man has imposed on them, because they have been treated with justice and with what even more to the purpose, with a sympathetic tact.

Implicit within the above 1907 comments is the notion of the White Man’s Burden. Individuals who subscribe to this notion see their self-designated mission and responsibility as Westerners to take up the perceived ‘challenge’ of bringing civility, reason and progress to the uncivilised parts of the globe. While usually attributed to the English poet Rudyard Kipling, Canada had its own inimitable version of the great White Man in the person of Duncan Campbell Scott, whose own assimilationist policies as the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Canada were justified in terms that could easily pass for those of Nazi Germany: “final results may be attained, maybe in four centuries… by the merging of the Indian race with the whites [emphasis added].”

A critical feature of the Noble Savage theme most evident within Scott’s “Indian policy” is the inability of the Savage to take care of himself in light of the superior and advanced ways of the Europeans. In Scott’s view, the Indians were “indeed a problem.” In his 1931 tract, The Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada, Scott begins by laying out the entire history of Native/non-Native relations prior to and post-Confederation:

Whenever new countries are opened up, disease and degradation will be found among the outriders of the march of civilization.  These our [sic] Indians encountered… Thus in their first contact with the white man and his ways the Indians tended to sicken and deteriorate. As colonization proceeded they began to leave their healthy teepees and became shack and cabin dwellers. Of sanitation they knew nothing. They fell a prey to tuberculosis and other maladies hitherto unknown to them. For a time it seemed that they were doomed. But the Government [of Canada] determined that the race should be saved.

One witnesses not only Scott’s commanding view of history but a heralding of his department’s openly paternalistic attitude toward Native peoples as well.  Indeed, throughout The Administration of Indian Affairs, Scott presents many prime examples of the organizing categories of imperial discourse as identified by Said.  At one point, he refers to the tested and true “procedure[s] and methods of dealing with Indians [emphasis added]” of Sir William Johnson, who, after the so-called “conquest” of Native peoples, “extended to the territory now known as Canada the principle of administration which had made his treatment of the Indians a success [emphasis added].” Clearly, ‘The Indian,’ that universal yet individual whole, presents not a human face but an administrative problem for Scott and his department. As one might by now expect, “success” is a standard to be measured by Westerners, not Indigenous peoples who after all are but “minors in the eye of the law.”

Yet not only is Scott considered an able administrator, he is also thought of by the past and present literary establishment as one of the great poets of Confederation. In adopting what Said might term a third-person omniscient perspective in much of his poetry, Scott conveys a totalizing picture of Indian life. Indeed, in his sonnet “The Onondaga Madonna,” Scott summarily consigns the Indian race to a quick and inevitable end in the face of European encroachment:

She stands full-throated and with careless pose,
This woman of a weird and waning race,
The tragic savage lurking in her face,
Where all her pagan passion burns and glows;
Her blood is mingled with her ancient foes,
And thrills with war and wildness in her veins;
Her rebel lips are dabbled with the stains
Of feuds and forays and her father’s woes.

And closer in the shawl about her breast,
The latest promise of her nation’s doom,
Paler than she her baby clings and lies,
The primal warrior gleaming from his eyes;
He sulks, and burdened with his infant gloom,
He draws his heavy brows and will not rest.

Not only are the form, a sonnet, and the main archetype, the madonna, employed by Scott clearly Eurocentric, so is his supervisory and judgemental capacity as narrator. Scott’s ultimate control over the narrative denies all agency to highly romanticized Native protagonists, who can only await their “tragic” fate.

As demonstrated above, the political implications of the Noble Savage theme are clear: if the Indians “of Canada” are to be weaned from their primitive state, they must “progress into civilization and finally disappear as a separate and distinct people not by race extinction but by gradual assimilation with their fellow-citizens.” The difference seems hardly worth noting.  Ultimately, however, the policy of assimilation was widely regarded as a failure, for Native peoples did not integrate with their “fellow-citizenry.” According to most interpretations of that policy, the major reason for its alleged ‘failure’ lay in the white mainstream’s consistent rejection of Native people. Yet in the apparent rush to deem assimilationist policy as a ‘failed’ attempt at cultural genocide, as so many claim, a crucial question remains unasked: what has that ‘failure’ in fact accomplished? It is here that we are compelled to recall the approach of Foucault to power. For whereas the stated goals of colonial policy have long been to assimilate the Indian, the effect of such policy has ultimately been to isolate Native peoples on reserves. In other words, the very actions of the federal government reveal the more global aims and objectives underlying and motivating colonial power: to displace and dispossess the Indigenous populations of their lands.  Again, this larger strategy of colonialism neither resides nor derives from the intent of one or more individual subjects. Rather, colonialism operates through those individuals, including by means of their thought, writing and speech. Thus, those writers who echo the claims of policy makers as to the utter ‘failure’ of assimilationist policies in fact fail themselves to note what such policies have achieved beyond such reputed goals.

It was a scant 38 years after the administrative regime of Duncan Campbell Scott that Jean Chrétien, then minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development in the Trudeau government, would voice a similar lamentation of the White Man’s Burden:

Some of you may ask what is wrong with the present system of land management? Well, let me tell you how it works. First, the band Council decide that they want to do something constructive and reasonable with a piece of their land as many of them want to do. They pass a Council resolution which they hand over to the Department’s Agency office. It is sent from there to the Regional office. The Regional people, anticipating that their superiors in Ottawa will ask questions, attempt to outguess the Head Office and ask questions themselves. Back it goes to the Agency and back to the Band… Eventually all the questions are answered and it comes to me. I look at the date and find it is over a year old.

I complain, but I find that all the questions were reasonable if you consider that I am the trustee and could be held to blame if they had not been asked. The fact is, the position of a trustee is never satisfactory to the beneficiary or to the trustee himself. [emphasis added]

The length of this quotation is merited by the degree to which it points out the irony of Chrétien’s 1969 statement. For 1969 was the year Chrétien and Trudeau devised the infamous White Paper on Indian policy. The essential premise upon which the Paper was based was the elimination of the so-called ‘discriminatory’ aspects of the Indian Act so as to allow Native peoples to finally become “equal partners” with the rest of Canadian society. What is ironic in the above statement (and in fact the entire policy-making exercise of the White Paper) is the complete lack of recognition on Chrétien’s part of the circumstances which have allowed him to be in the position of colonial administrator. Although Chrétien may consult with Native peoples, only he can initiate those discussions, as it is only he, and not Native people, who sets the final terms of debate. Ultimately, it is Chrétien and the government who decide as to the place Native peoples are to be given within Canadian society. And yet, under the guise of ‘equality before the law,’ the Liberal government attempted to effectively eliminate what little guarantees Native peoples had of the unique treatment afforded them by virtue of their special status as the original inhabitants of this land. The federal government’s appeal to the notions of ‘equality’ and ‘right’ thus masks its efforts to erode Native people’s historical claim to the land. The government, in its attempt to ‘force Native peoples to be free’, employs a discourse which articulates Native peoples’ own best interests for them: as such it is extremely condescending and not at all inconsistent with the historical theme of the Noble Savage. To paraphrase Said, the Canadian state’s grand vision of equality overrode the historical narrative of Native/non-Native relations by posing the situation as an ahistorical, single-issue problem of right. While the Paper was eventually dropped, some Native peoples claim the federal policy of transferring responsibility for Native peoples to the provinces remains an unspoken goal of that policy.

The Vanishing Indian Race

The actual appearance of the Vanishing Indian Race theme in Canada did not occur in earnest until the 19th century; in other words, when the threat of Indian retaliation was safely past. The myth of the vanishing Indian race is inextricably linked to the notion of cultural purity.  As an “inferior” race (a European concept), Indian people cannot hope to continue in their primitive, albeit “noble,” ways for very long in the face of continued encroachment by the so-called advanced Europeans. This perception locks Native people into an inert view of Aboriginal culture that must remain the same if it is to continue to be regarded as ‘authentic’ by Europeans, who saw their own cultures as naturally ‘progressive.’

In short, to be Native was to be static. By lamenting the tragic ‘loss’ of Native ways of life, writers deny Aboriginal peoples’ ability and right to change like any other dynamic culture. Europeans thus perceive there to be an irresistible and inevitable force working against Native peoples.  Usually, this inevitable force takes the form of Western progress, as we see in this excerpt from the 1873 travel writings of George Grant:

Poor creatures! not much use have they ever made of the land; but yet, in admitting the settler, they sign their own death warrants. Who, but they, have a right to the country; and if ‘a man may do what he likes with his own,’ would they not be justified in refusing to admit one of us to their lakes and woods, fighting us to the death on that issue?  But it is too late to argue the question; the red man, with his virtues and his vices—lauded by some as so dignified, abused by others as so dirty—is being civilised off the ground.

Grant was not alone amongst his contemporaries in the assumption that “these vast regions were surely meant to maintain more than a few thousand Ojibways.”

The anachronistic view of Native culture held by Euro-Canadians ensures that Native people lose in two ways, in a kind of cultural ‘Catch-22’: by even taking on some of the more superficial aspects or elements of Western culture, Indians are seen to lose their “Indian-ness”; and by not doing so, Indians are seen to be dying out as a race and as a culture. Such a narrowly defined view of culture and race assumes that Native culture is one monolithic culture when in fact it contains a number of cultures. Just as the cultures of the mainly French and English colonists were originally composed of many different ethnic groups before coming to take on their more familiar nation-state form.

A major political implication of the Vanishing Indian Race theme is the belief that the best and brightest years of Aboriginal culture have long since passed. Aboriginal peoples are conquered and vanquished, and their eventual disappearance, to recall the sentiments of Scott, is only a matter of time. While such a fate can be seen by Canadians to be either a negative or positive development for Native peoples, it is ultimately the needs of the former which must prevail. In 1910, Ernest McGaffey, a Canadian journalist and poet, had this to say regarding the appropriation of Native lands in British Columbia:

the Indian, except in occasional instances, will not labour, and he should give up the land to those who will work.  The tools to the man who not only can but will use them.

According to McGaffey, these weaknesses would seal the doomed fate of Native peoples, who must yield in the face of White Anglo-Saxon superiority:

For it is so that the wilderness falls before the axe, that the old order passes as the new regime comes in;  that you cannot stay the current development by a dogged refusal to go with the tide; and that the iron pen of history has written time and time again, the survival of the fittest is the law of the nations.

As if to ensure that Native peoples are indeed eliminated from public view, Canadian historians have contributed a rather distorted picture of that country’s development as a nation by consistently failing to include the contribution of those peoples. In his 1983 review of historical writing about the Indian in Canada over the period of 1972-1982, James W. St.G. Walker provides a synopsis of the role Native peoples have played over the past three centuries according to recent Canadian historiography:

The Indian’s allotted place in Canadian history was in keeping with his personal qualities, or lack of them. Indicative of the Indian’s historical position was the ways in which he was first introduced into Canada’s story. The typical history began with geography, then the Vikings, then John Cabot, and then Cartier, when the first reference would be made. They would appear suddenly to greet Cartier, or they would be introduced to explain some of the hardships faced by the early settlers. Indians were treated as part of the setting, the environment in which the history of the European newcomers would unfold. Once the Whites arrived, the Indian was given a role of subservience…

In fact, Walker continues, the only two events in Canadian history where most historians acknowledge the involvement of Native peoples were the War of 1812 and the Riel Resistance of 1885, which Walker terms the Indian’s “final curtain call.” A recent historical account published in 1992 by Olive Dickason entitled Canada’s [sic] First Peoples appears to stray little from the pattern outlined above by Walker.

The final aspect of the myth of the Vanishing Indian Race theme involves the ‘inter-mixing’ of Native and non-Native peoples. It is here that one hears of a threat posed by such intermarrying to Native peoples’ “original integrity,” an idea that in part refers to the prevailing association among Europeans of Native people with the wilderness. These “children of nature” recall the “pure” state of man and serve as a contrast to the so-called developed men of European society. The effect of such notions is to undermine Native peoples’ ability to experience cultural dynamism. Canadian authors, by not allowing Native peoples to determine for the outside world what are to be regarded as Native cultures, contributed to an entrenchment of European cultural assumptions about Indians that, as demonstrated in the next chapter, linger to this day.

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PART IV > The Contemporary Discourse of Aboriginality

In outlining Michel Foucault’s account of power, the previous chapter spoke of the role juridical theory played in fixing the legitimacy of the King’s rule in Medieval Europe. Foucault claims that jurists effectively masked the dominating effects of royal power by locating the central focus of their discourse on power in the sole personage of the King. In this sense, the theory of sovereignty appears to be a reflection not so much on power as of power. Thus, power’s greatest advantage over its opponents is its privileged ability to ‘tell its own story’ as it were and, in turn, have that story stand as the authoritative version of events.

In the first part of this chapter, the reader will be introduced to the methodology and insights of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Said applies the Foucaultian notion of discourse to the intellectual and imaginary posture of the West towards its one-time Oriental colonies. As a former colony of the West, the Orient was and in many ways remains a region profoundly affected by the ideas and behaviours imposed upon it by European imperialism. Said reveals how, here too, imperial power gets to tell its own ‘self’-centered (hi)story as Europe gains and consolidates its foothold in the Orient:

Taking the eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient.

Enabling these authoritative dealings with the Orient, of course, is the historical fact of Europe’s physical and political domination of that region. Indeed, as Said makes explicit in Orientalism, any attempt to seriously understand how certain ideas, cultures, and histories come to predominate over all others must first grasp their relation to power:

To believe that the Orient was created—or, as I call it, “Orientalized”—and to believe that such things happen simply as a necessity of the imagination, is to be disingenuous… The Orient was Orientalized not only because it was discovered to be “Oriental” in all those ways considered commonplace by an average nineteenth-century European, but also because it could be—that is, submitted to being—made Oriental.

In this regard, Said’s analysis immediately presents itself as a suggestive model for the purposes of this paper. For in both the colonial Orient and the area that has now become Canada, indigenous peoples were initially dominated by the imperial forces of Europe; in the case of the latter colony, however, that imperial presence remains. In both cases, moreover, the principal imperial actors were the countries of Britain and France, with the former eventually coming to supersede the latter as the dominant player in both regions. Given this similarity in their respective circumstances, it would be useful to consider within the context of the burgeoning Canadian nation-state Said’s analysis concerning the Orient.

Again, the main contention of this paper is that the active campaign by the dominant society to explain away through its discourse the violent and persistent efforts of the Canadian nation-state to forcibly remove Aboriginal peoples from their lands must be seen as complicit in those efforts. These efforts must be identified as the genocidal and ethnocidal practices they in effect are in their continued assault upon Native peoples and their unique ways of life. In that respect, Said’s analysis bears a great deal of relevance to what is a fundamentally similar set of historical circumstances—European imperialism and colonization.

As Orientalism employs many of the same analytical tools as Foucault, the instructiveness of its approach for this paper stems not so much from its theoretical component as the method of its application to the material aspects of discourse, namely, texts of a literary and scholarly nature. According to Said, power displays itself within the form of its discursive elements; that is, that despite power’s best (or worst, depending on one’s perspective) intentions, one is able to discern a high degree of consistency in the operations of a given discourse that gives the presence of power away. In short, discourse is not only an instrument of power but a sign of its effects as well. What this paper draws from the analysis of Said in particular are a number of broad themes that serve to characterise the manner by which Orientalism operates. These themes include Orientalism’s intrinsic Eurocentrism, its problematising nature and the ultimately de-humanising effects of its schematic and cosmic vision of the Orient. Undergirding all of these themes is the fundamental ontological and epistemological division between the Orient and the Occident.

In exploring these Orientalist themes, this chapter will identify and describe the kinds of discursive claims to which the West has found it necessary to appeal in order to warrant its occupation of the Orient. Taken as a whole, these themes can be seen to constitute a broad model of analysis that, once established, will permit this paper to interrogate the discourse surrounding Native peoples in Canada. Forming the background concerns of this chapter are the following questions: first, by what process of exposition can we claim that an operational link between power and knowledge is present? Secondly, what kind of evidence can we marshall to support this line of argument? Obviously, what is at stake in the posing of these questions is both theoretical and political in nature: in the first case, the utility of the ideas of Foucault and Said to establishing this paper’s thesis, namely, the existence of a systematic and recognizable discourse on Native peoples in Canada; in the second case, the relevance of that discourse to the form and operation of Native/non-Native relations in Canada.

Eurocentrism

While it may appear largely self-explanatory to discuss the notion of Eurocentrism, what it refers to is by no means self-evident. At base, a Eurocentric perspective is an intellectual and creative attitude toward the world that is almost entirely centered on the ideas, concepts and theories of the West. Yet, the significance of this perspective for the depiction and representation of the East cannot be determined by restricting one’s analysis to a search for a

correspondence between the language used to depict the Orient and the Orient itself, not so much because the language is inaccurate but because it is not even trying to be accurate. What it is trying to do… is at one and the same time to characterize the Orient as alien and to incorporate it schematically on a theatrical stage whose audience, manager, and actors are for Europe, and only for Europe.

This narrow point of view, which in fact may be as easily held by non-Europeans as by Europeans, does not present itself as the partial and biased view that it actually is. Instead, it has come to lay a virtually culture-wide claim to objectivity, the implication being that views of a non-Western origin are thus subjective and biased, if not superstitious. This partiality of the East thus established, it is only fitting to the West that it assume the burden of apprehending and comprehending the world. Naturally, this sovereign viewpoint of the West extends to the East, a move facilitated by its physical presence in that region:

[T]he imaginative examination of things Oriental was based more or less exclusively upon a sovereign Western consciousness out of whose unchallenged centrality an Oriental world emerged, first according to general ideas about who or what was an Oriental, then according to a detailed logic governed not simply by empirical reality but by a battery of desires, repressions, investments, and projections.

What makes Eurocentrism as an assumed mode of understanding so difficult to recognise is the subtle and gradual manner, by which it has come to be insinuated within everyday Western life, often under the guise of ‘modernity.’ The Eurocentric perspective is in a sense, so pervasive, so entrenched, so ubiquitous within the very fabric of the various institutions and traditions of Western society that it is about as noticeable and conscious an act as breathing. In other words, Eurocentrism is what this society takes for granted in its large or small interactions with the rest of the world: European superiority. Again, paving the way for the predominance of European intellectual and imaginary paradigms in the Orient is the overwhelming physical presence of European forces entrenched there. Such presence took many forms, including the institutions of colonial governments, consular corps, and commercial establishments, not to mention the missions and, most certainly, military outposts.

The chief way in which Eurocentrism manifests itself within the Orientalist discourse is in a constant, if implicit, self-reflexiveness on the part of Western subjects vis-à-vis their putative colonial object in the Orient. Where the ostensible focus of European literature or scholarship is on the customs or people of the Orient, one recognises an ultimate concern with the needs and motivations of the West. For example, the French authors Nerval and Flaubert brought with them to the Orient a long cultivated taste for the ‘exotic,’ particularly in the area of sexuality; their dogged pursuit of such ‘fare’ only served to confirm their pre-conceived impressions and expectations of the region and its peoples. Underlying and emboldening this self-concern is an awareness that, as a Westerner, one is a member of an empire which has asserted itself into a position of dominance within the geography and affairs of another part of the world. By identifying with this position of dominance, one is able to put forth with supreme confidence a view of the Orient that requires little if any empirical substantiation, including from the Orient itself. Said notes how Flaubert’s highly sexualized image of the quintessential Oriental woman, based on a single encounter with a Egyptian courtesan, came to be widely circulated throughout Europe: her consent, of course, was a non-issue. Similarly, the British author, Alexander William Kinglake, could boldly assert in 1844 that the Arabian Knights is too lively and inventive a work to have been created by a “mere Oriental, who for creative purposes, is a thing dead and dry—a mental mummy.” Such sweeping generalizations can be made by the Orientalist even though, in the case of Kinglake, he has no working knowledge of any Oriental languages.

Present throughout the Eurocentric viewpoint is the assumption of a high degree of authority over surrounding events and phenomena. This authoritative position confers upon one the ability to ‘uncover’ the perceived ‘mysteries’ of the Orient and Oriental life as if they were mere codes to be cracked or puzzles to be solved. Said characterizes this drive to discover as an essential belief in one’s ability to ‘exteriorize’ the Orient, to make the Orient plain for ‘all’ to see, an attitude typified by the noted Orientalist, Silvestre de Sacy:

In Sacy’s pages on Orientalism—as elsewhere in his writing—he speaks of his own work as having uncovered, brought to light, rescued a vast amount of obscure matter. Why? In order to place it before the student. For like all his learned contemporaries Sacy considered a learned work a positive addition to an edifice that all scholars erected together. Knowledge was essentially the making visible of material… The result was the production of material about the Orient, methods for studying it, and exempla that even Orientals did not have.

This passage also serves to illustrate the inherent self-reflexivity of the Eurocentric perspective. Implicit in such an attitude is the assumption that once people’s behaviour can be made known, it can be predicted; and what can be predicted, can be controlled. Such knowledge is nothing if not practical, for it implicitly prescribes the adoption of certain technical solutions that, ultimately, will come to act upon human beings.

The authority of the Orientalist effectively allows him or her to interpret virtually any act on the part of the non-Western world as merely responding to what are seen as the originating and active energies of the West. According to some Orientalists, for example, in the case of Mohammed (the European version of his name), the Islamic prophet is nothing more than a pale imitation of the European Christ figure. Gradually, Western authors and artists come to regard this ability to interpret the rest of the world, for it obviously cannot do so itself, as a kind of birthright. This includes not only the right to depict whatever an artist or writer may come across, but the right to know everything and anything as well. In fact, artistic licence is often regarded as a kind of sacred trust in the West, an obligation to express ‘the truth’ for ‘all mankind’ at any cost. To suggest that this scholarly and artistic prerogative is based on the physical domination of the target/object of that interpretive gaze is to risk accusations of censorship or “political correctness.” Ultimately, what the Eurocentric tendencies of Orientalist discourse create is a situation whereby the West (and thus the Orient) forms the beginning and end point of its analysis, observation and understanding. What is relevant to the European gaze is only what the Orient means in terms of the needs of the West; in other words, in and of itself, the Orient is not worth much to the Orientalist, except as the first cause of what he or she says. Whether such a self-directed vision of the East by the West is especially reflective of the reality of the dominated Orient appears to matter little to the West when it aids and abets the ends of colonization so well.

The Problematic Orient

A second major theme of Orientalist discourse is the positioning of the Orient and the Oriental as a problem:

so far as the West was concerned during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, an assumption had been made that the Orient and everything in it was, if not patently inferior to, then in need of corrective study by the West. The Orient was viewed as if framed by the classroom, the criminal court, the prison, the illustrated manual. Orientalism, then, is knowledge of the Orient that places things Oriental in class, court, prison, or manual for scrutiny, study, judgement, discipline, or governing.

Whenever a problem arises, it is not too long after that a solution appears seeking to take care of it. In being designated as a problem, either indirectly as a result of one’s behaviour or directly because of who one is, one immediately becomes vulnerable to any and all forms of manipulation and coercion deemed necessary to ‘correct’ the problem.

Lost or overlooked in the problem-solution debate is the source of the diagnoses and treatment of what allegedly ails the Orient. Drawing upon what it regards as impartial and unbiased criteria, the Imperialist countries justify and support their presence in the East by establishing the existence of a certain ‘lack’ in the Orient, which becomes part of the Orientalist discourse. This discourse frames the situation of the East in terms of a ‘crisis’ of endemic proportions, a situation in desperate need of the kind of attention that the West uniquely offers. The perceived ‘lack’ in the Orient is interpreted as inviting the kind of rehabiliative practices and methods of the West, of which it has a fortuitous abundance of expertise. And accordingly, the West must of necessity be directly involved for these recommendations to be established and implemented in a satisfactory and appropriate manner. Hence its physical presence in the Orient. Of course, here again, what is to be seen as a ‘satisfactory’ and ‘appropriate’ result is, in the last instance, for the West to decide, not Orientals themselves.

It is useful here to consider the 1910 comments of Arthur James Balfour, who lectured the British House of Commons on the “problems with which we have to deal in Egypt.” According to Balfour, those members questioning the validity of England’s presence in that country must

look in the face the facts with which a British statesman has to deal when he is put into a position of supremacy over great races like the inhabitants of Egypt and countries in the East… Is it a good thing for these great nations—I admit their greatness—that this absolute government should be exercised by us? I think it is a good thing. I think that experience shows that they have got under it far better government than in the whole history of the world they ever had before, and which not only is a benefit to them, but is undoubtedly a benefit to the whole of the civilised West… We are in Egypt not merely for the sake of the Egyptians, though we are there for their sake; we are there also for the sake of Europe at large.

Thus the West comes to establish the legitimacy of its colonial presence in the Orient. As for the Egyptian who resists this imposed authority, he is more likely to be “the agitator [who] wishes to raise difficulties.”

The West’s concern for the Orient thus reveals itself as concealing other, less altruistic motives for physically implicating itself in Oriental affairs. According to Said, what has in fact motivated such Western ‘concern’ for the area has been simply either the recognition of potential economic or political interests or the perception of a threat to such interests already established. In other words, as comforting as the thought of Western goodwill toward the Orient might be, it has never been a major reason for the West’s being there. And as Said notes,

consistently facilitating that imperial presence was a constantly refined knowledge of the Orient, so that as traditional societies hastened forward and became modern commercial societies, there would be no loss of paternal British control, and no loss of revenue either. However, when [senior colonial administrator] Curzon referred somewhat inelegantly to Oriental studies as the ‘necessary furniture of empire,’ he was putting into a static image the transactions by which Englishmen and natives conducted their business and kept their places. From the day of Sir William Jones the Orient had been both what Britain ruled and what Britain knew about it: the coincidence between geography, knowledge and power, with Britain always in the master’s place, was complete.

One rationale for the West’s imperial solution to ‘The Oriental problem’ was provided by what Said refers to as the Romantic Orientalist project. This project emerged out of a 18th century desire in the West to restore to a largely secularized Europe a sense of its lost holy mission. Regarded as a particularly useful means to that imaginary end was the discursive positioning of the Orient as an ancient and exotic land, fertile ground suitable for the cultural regeneration of Europe. Unearthing the Orient’s obscure and hidden core of riches would be the Orientalist, whose reconstructive activities in the areas of language and mores, even mentalities, now become front and center in the imperial plan.

Prominently featured within this Romantic Orientalist project is a notion stemming from the West’s self-perception as a champion of the ideals and principles of freedom and democracy, an idea

that will acquire an almost unbearable, next to mindless authority in European writing: the theme of Europe teaching the Orient the meaning of liberty, which is an idea that Chateaubriand and everyone after him believed that Orientals, and especially Muslims, knew nothing about… [A]rguing that Orientals require conquest, and finding it no paradox that a Western conquest of the Orient was not conquest after all, but liberty.

One gets the distinct impression that, in its own mind at least, the West feels it is actually doing a service to the Orient by carrying out a project ostensibly designed to restore the region to its once “glorious past.” Ignored entirely by such sentiments is the fact that such recognition comes from the perspective of Europeans and not Orientals. An excellent example of how the Romantic restorative project is realised in practice is the construction of the Suez Canal. A huge and enormously expensive undertaking, the completion of the Canal finally overcame the great physical distance physically separating the Orient from the Occident. Thomas Cook, anticipating its opening, ennobles and romanticizes this vast and physically destructive project, relying, in the process, on a series of Orientalist values attached to a distant European past:

Truly the occasion will be an exceptional one. The formation of a line of water communication between Europe and the East, has been the thought of centuries, occupying in turn the minds of Greeks, Roman, Saxon and Gaul, but it was not until within the last few years that modern civilization began seriously to set about emulating the labours of the ancient pharaohs, who, many centuries since, constructed a canal between the two seas, traces of which remain today.

This heralding of a classical Oriental past is a particularly useful discursive notion for the colonial powers. For it both chastises and historicizes the Orient. It is chastised because it has fallen so far from its original glorious state, and it is historicized because it can never hope to live up to that fixed classical view of Oriental culture. Thus, what little worth the Orient does have, according to the West, is to be found in its past; a past which in its glory deprives the Orient of its agency in the present. The Orient, by constantly failing to live up to the European-imposed standards of the Eastern Golden Age, is thus deemed open to improvement by the West.

In seeking to act upon the problem presented by the Orient—”its sensuality, its tendency to despotism, its aberrant mentality, its habits of inaccuracy, its backwardness”—one Orientalists have so expertly discovered and identified, the imperialist powers implement a wide array of bureaucratic and administrative techniques and procedures. Of all the various aspects of Orientalist discourse this area is perhaps the easiest to recognise. Recommendation of the above measures are often articulated in the form of direct or indirect questions which serve to establish both the existence of a problem and the implicit mandate to propose solutions. Typical examples of such queries include, “How are we to address the Oriental problem?”, or, “How do we help the Orient to help itself?” Given that with the posing of every problem there comes the suggestion of an implicit solution, the discourse can therefore be better seen as not merely descriptive but prescriptive as well. Once again, at no point in this scenario does it seem relevant for the West to wonder whether the Orient is actually desirous for any of these decisions made on its behalf.

Finally, at some point in the discourse, one eventually finds numerous exclamations on the part of sincerely frustrated individual Westerners—”who only want to do what’s right for these people”—ruing the uncooperative attitude among Orientals. This frustration may seem odd, given the fact that if a real ‘solution’ was to be found, the ‘problem’ and thus the rationale for the West’s presence in the Orient would disappear. Rather than constituting any kind of contradiction, however, the fact of such genuine passion being directed at ‘helping’ the Oriental only serves to reinforce the fact that good intentions and the effects of colonial discourse by no means correspond. Indeed, in the eyes of Orientalists, imperialism is not a unilateral act of foreign invasion but one invited by what is perceived to be the deteriorating condition of the Orient. After all, so the logic goes, would the countries of the West go out all that way and remain there if the situation did not cry out in some way for their special brand of assistance? One can see how the act of imperialism itself provides its own theoretical justification.

The Scheme of Things Oriental

The last major theme of Orientalist discourse to be drawn upon here is its schematic and cosmic vision of the Orient. Such a view adopts a kind of universal perspective on the Orient, assigning to everyone perceived to fall within its purview a specific set of functions to fulfil as part of their specifically prescribed roles. In describing the implications of such a ‘visionary cosmology’ for an understanding of the Orient, Said cites Isaiah Berlin, who asserts that to

know the ‘cosmic’ place of a thing or a person is to say what it is and what it does, and at the same time why it should be and do as it is and does. Hence to be and to have value, to exist and to have a function (and to fulfil it more or less successfully) are one and the same. The pattern, and it alone, brings into being and causes to pass away and confers purpose, that is to say, value and meaning, on all there is. To understand is to perceive patterns… The more inevitable an event or action or a character can be exhibited as being, the better it can be understood, the profounder the researcher’s insight, the nearer we are to the one ultimate truth.

Again, the underlying domination permitting the doling out of such assignments by Westerners is neither recognised nor consciously acknowledged as being in any way responsible for the privileged position they occupy. Instead, this prerogative of interpretation is seen to be the result of a unique vision, considered at once grand and universal in its scope and intent.

For Said, the ‘visionary’ aspect of the Orientalist discourse is central to appreciating the utterly dehumanizing effects of its practice. By taking a unitary view of the Orient and the millions of people who dwell within it, Orientalism eliminates all traces of human diversity and individuality, collapsing the behaviours and thoughts of millions of people into an immutable whole. If one fails to live up to the roles expected of him or her as an Oriental, one is immediately accused of undermining social stability, and dealt with accordingly. According to Said, Lord Cromer, England’s representative in Egypt, understood this hierarchy well:

There are Westerners, and there are Orientals. The former dominate; the latter must be dominated, which usually means having their land occupied, their internal affairs rigidly controlled, their blood and treasure put at the disposal of one or another Western power… For, if according to Cromer, logic is something ‘the existence of which the Oriental is disposed altogether to ignore,’ the proper method of ruling is not to impose ultrascientific measures upon him or to force him bodily to accept logic. It is rather to understand his limitations and ‘endeavour to find, in the contentment of the subject race, a more worthy, and it may be hoped, a stronger bond of union between the rulers and the ruled.’

Yet roles do not exist only for those who fall within the category of ‘normal’ Oriental practice. Indeed, there exists a kind of standardized view of deviance as well within Orientalist discourse. If, for example, an Oriental rejects Western mores and institutions, it is not understood to be for reasons having anything to do with a rejection of Western imperialism. Rather, the correct, Orientalist interpretation would perceive such rejection as a mere attempt, and a quite poor one at that, to replicate the nationalist ideals and behaviours of the West. The alternatives as presented by the West are clear: either submit to the ‘harmony’ and ‘civility’ promised by the institution of a Western idealized social hierarchy, or, lapse once more into sheer, chaotic, irrational ‘anarchy.’ As if to ensure that ‘anarchy’ is indeed what such independent action on the part of Orientals would bring, the West forcibly intervenes and severely punishes those responsible for such actions. Nevertheless, irrespective of how Orientals may react to the selflessness and good graces of the West in its effort to redeem the Orient, the nations of Europe were determined to bear the heavy moral burden of saving the Orient from itself.

The assumption of an Orientalist vantage point is perhaps best understood as an attitude overwhelmingly grounded in texts, as a sufficient means by which to come to understand and know the Orient. Thus, a textual attitude is one which holds to the notion that a first-order reality like the Orient can be largely and sufficiently understood, comprehended and ultimately addressed on the basis of an inherently second-order knowledge of that reality. Encouraging and underlining that textual attitude is imperial power, with Orientalist discourse a major and necessary means of its exercise. By remaining chiefly at the level of texts, Orientalism thus limits the actual degree of human engagement by its practitioners, preferring instead the coherent and internally consistent world-view encouraged by texts. Said describes this predominance of texts over reality as “the defeat of narrative by vision.” By narrative, Said is essentially referring to the complex and multifaceted ways by which a given group of people change over time as the result of a number of inter-connecting and overlapping historical, political, economic and socio-cultural forces. The Orientalist ‘vision,’ by contrast, essentialises such change, attributing the uneven events of history to what it regards as the immutable, generic, even genetic, traits of the original Oriental character. However, this holistic triumph of vision is a conditional one and is under constant pressure from

narrative, in that if any Oriental detail can be shown to move, or develop, diachrony is introduced into the system. What seemed stable—and the Orient is synonymous with stability and unchanging eternality—now appears unstable. Instability suggests that history, with its disruptive detail, its currents of change, its tendency towards growth, decline, or dramatic movement, is possible in the Orient and for the Orient. History and the narrative by which history is represented argue that vision is insufficient, that ‘the Orient’ as an unconditional ontological category does an injustice to the potential of reality for change.

Above all, what the dominant imperial representation of Oriental life as unchanging, dependent, and utterly ineffective reveals itself to be according to Said is nothing more than “a will to power, a will to truth and interpretation, and not an objective condition of history.”

Perhaps more than any other aspect of Orientalism, it is the unitary vision of the Orientalist which belies the presence and functioning of imperial power within the Orientalist discourse. As mentioned earlier, the ultimate achievement for the Orientalist, as the professed expert on the East for the West, is to render the Orient plain for all to see through the accumulation of knowledge on and about the region and its people. Thus, the Orientalist, by displaying his or her knowledge of the Orient and Orientals made them available, and thus amenable and open to, certain administrative and bureaucratic practices of the West. In this way, knowledge of the Orient informs and thus facilitates imperialist practice. Over time, this ‘Oriental’ knowledge develops a kind of institutional and material presence, lending officiality and permanence to the conclusions and tenets of its discourse. Thus, any text emerging out of and relying upon this official infrastructure is

not easily dismissed. Expertise is attributed to it. The authority of academics, institutions, and governments can accrue to it, surrounding it with still greater prestige than its practical successes warrant. Most important, such texts can create not only knowledge but also the very reality they appear to describe. In time such knowledge and reality produce a tradition, or what Michel Foucault calls a discourse, whose material presence or weight, not the originality of a given author, is really responsible for the texts produced out of it.

According to Said, the main impetus underlying Orientalist scholarship has always been a quest for power and land. As the hinge on which Orientalism depends, the individual Orientalist has produced theories about the Orient, and the Oriental, which have, inter alia, served to elevate his specific role in the imperial equation. The net effect has been the identification of the Orient with individual European (and thus Eurocentric) perspectives, a factor which goes some way toward explaining the coherent nature of such views of the Orient. It is their struggles to contain the Orient, to get a handle on it, to make it manageable, that have led some, including Hannah Arendt, to conclude that “the counterpart of bureaucracy is the imperial agent.”

. . . . . . .

In the first chapter, I began to advance the link between knowledge and power above and beyond the mere juxtaposition of image and effect, to the point where one can see the outlines of a unitary, systematic functionalist vision at work as an active, permissive, prescriptive and productive force. This vision does not nullify so much as sanctify the de-humanization of Indigenous peoples through knowledge practices. Moreover, an inhuman conceptual framework only serves to institute and maintain inhumane political practices. In the next chapter, I will advance two of the historical themes by which Aboriginal peoples in Canada have been positioned as objects of knowledge within similarly dehumanizing theoretical frameworks.

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PART III > The Historical Discourse of Aboriginality