Actor & musician Tom Jackson made Attawapiskat the last stop on his 2011 Christmas tour – and he brought a camera crew with him, including Algonquin filmmaker Caroline Monnet.
The result is a short documentary about the remote northern Ontario community, which gained international recognition after it was learned that some residents were forced to live in tents because of chronic housing shortages.
Jackson performed for the community and met with Chief Theresa Spence, as well as a mother who told of how her family of six shared a cramped 10×10 space.
Frazer Smith Sr. stands by his son's grave in Tsartlip (photo from timescolonist.com)
In Tsartlip, a Coast Salish community near Victoria, BC, a family grieves the loss of a loved one for the second time.
Back in 1999, a fatal car accident took the life of then-30 year old Frazer Joe Smith Jr.. Thirteen years later, the family struggles to understand the removal of a totem pole memorializing Smith. The graveside artwork was uprooted and stolen from the small community cemetery on February 21.
But such thievery should not be viewed as an isolated incident.
As Indigenous people, we are all too familiar with the theft and displacement of that which is sacred to us. Across the globe, non-Aboriginal museums, art galleries, archives and private collections are filled with our totems and ceremonial regalia, even the remains of our ancestors.
The widespread theft of our sacred objects reflects a gap between Indigenous and western systems of meaning, and the way this gap manifests in law and other sites of power. During the early days of colonialism, the theft of our artifacts was seen as a way of capturing a ‘dead’ or ‘dying’ race; removal of those items, therefore, was meant to preserve or salvage remembrances of past-tense people.
Here in the present, we see that — despite the unrelenting efforts to assimilate us or obliterate our ceremonies — Indigenous peoples and cultures are thriving.
Although Indigenous artists create work for sale in the contemporary art market, sacred places and sacred objects have retained a meaning far beyond their monetary value. These pieces made for ceremony are infused with an explicitly spiritual significance, and are placed in sacred spaces, such as graveyards, to honour ongoing ancestral and spiritual relations.
That such complex inspiration was at work in the case of Frazer Joe Smith Jr.’s memorial pole is clearly evident. According to Smith’s father, the pole was visited regularly by family members, who revered it as a representation and reminder of this late young man.
As police begin their investigation into this unthinkable act, it is worth exploring how it reflects the larger relationship between Canadian law and the theft of Indigenous property.
Masks seized at a raid on a potlatch ceremony in BC in 1922 (Royal British Columbia Museum)
Indeed, one could say that some forms of theft have been facilitated through Canadian law. In BC, where few signed treaties are in place between Canada and Indigenous groups, land theft is a clear and present example. The theft of Indigenous children from their homes — initially through federally-legislated residential schools, subsequently through generations of discriminatory child apprehension policies — also reflect the use of law to forcibly displace Indigenous people from their communities and territories.
And then there is the realm of culture: the Indian Act facilitated the theft of ceremonial regalia and other spiritually significant items, for example, the banning of the potlatch from 1884 to 1951. In order to support efforts to assimilate Indigenous people to Canadian and Christian ways, regalia was forcibly taken by Indian agents and other government representatives.
These examples illustrate how a powerful system of law permitted individual Canadians to steal from Indigenous people who were jailed if they resisted. Indigenous objects taken into non-Indigenous institutions meant their true spiritual significance was lost as they became trinkets for consumption within entirely different cultural contexts. Looking at this history, it seems that stealing from ‘Indians’ is not really stealing — i.e., something you’d normally regard as unusual or deviant — so much as it is par for the course in processes of colonial settlement.
Thankfully, once-lost family members, ancestors and ceremonial are finally (if slowly) coming home. So too are those Indigenous children who were removed through discriminatory child welfare policies. As lengthy and laborious efforts to negotiate treaties in BC continue, we also see a growing series of partnerships between Indigenous communities and museums over the repatriation of human remains and cultural artifacts. These latter efforts constitute some level of recognition that these items were indeed wrongly taken, and still belong to the Indigenous communities from which they were taken. As seen on the websites of the U’mista Cultural Society or the Haida Repatriation Committee, Indigenous peoples across Canada are working to regain the stolen remains of their ancestors, along with grave materials and cultural items, from across the globe.
Yet while some laws facilitating the theft of Indigenous property, people and cultural items have been repealed or changed, Canadian law does not yet reflect a legal commitment to repatriation. Unlike the United States, Canada has no positive legislation on repatriation of cultural property; it has merely developed policies, which often work in tandem with the policies of individual museums such as the Museum of Anthropology. The power of social and cultural norms are used here in the absence of legal protection, perhaps as some gesture toward mending relations between these institutions and the Indigenous communities whose artworks are displayed on their walls.
Despite these efforts to repatriate items to their rightful owners, the theft of spiritual items continues. A hunger for Indigenous artifacts, which are now highly valued within the market economy, goes on unabated.
So how will the police and Canadian legal system help in this case, I wonder? And given its cultural grounding in Canadian values, is Canadian law equipped to deal with the theft of this memorial pole from a young man’s grave site? Moreover, how will Indigenous and non-Indigenous people work to stop the free-for-all theft of Indigenous lands and resources, human remains, and cultural artifacts?
This is clearly a long, ongoing process of building relationships anew and changing social norms. But for the people of Tsartlip, these attitudes can’t change soon enough, as they wait for their loved one’s memorial pole to be returned to its rightful place.
Runaway Dreams: Poems by Richard Wagamese
Richard Wagamese Ronsdale Press 129 pp | 2011
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I must confess: I’ve read novels by Richard Wagamese, and I’ve liked them.
I’ve looked at his picture and I think, here’s a guy who smiles easily. And maybe it’s a romantic notion, but I have always thought poets aren’t quick to grin, so somehow he seems just that much more intriguing.
And while poetry readers may typically be the type to pack a wicker basket picnic and wander into a meadow to laze about and read poems in the waning afternoon light, I ended up reading a lot of these poems on the subway. Some others with the news blaring in the background. But always — always — the words of Wagamese, the poet, were the loudest, the most alluring distraction.
You can hear it when he writes in “Medicine Wheel” about being a boy catching minnows in a creek (“you lay across a long flat stone to dip your mason jar elbows deep and hung there, suspended in your boyhood”). You can hear it when he writes in “Geographies” about what he sees at night (“to sit at the window overlooking the mercury platter of the lake”). You can hear it when he describes this land in “The Canada Poem”:
“Riding out of Elkhorn with a gang of transients in the back of a stake truck after stooking wheat for ten days in the Manitoba heat. There’s easier ways to make a buck but you take what you can get when the Rambler Typhoon breaks down in the middle of nowhere and the Mounties shake you awake by the foot sleeping behind the Esso and give you the choice of ‘jail or job.’
Still, the food was good and when the guy beside you asks for a smoke you give him one because he told a real good one about Cape Breton one night around the fire that made you laugh like hell … everyone came with stories that crackled with the light of the fire outside the bunk house … and you could look up and see the moon hung like a blind man’s eye throwing everything in the prairie night into a mazy, snowy blue…”
Poetry, by Wagamese and all poets, is a unique universe. It’s documentary rather than fiction. It’s a feature film more than a reality show. It’s the kind of writing you can’t really slide into a novel because it slows down time and makes you drift.
Children’s verse author Eleanor Farjeon says poetry “is not the sea, but the sound of the sea.” Robert Frost says “A poem is a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness…” The poems of Richard Wagamese, in this, his first collection, are like that. All you know is beauty and hurt and a wry sense of picking up on the things you missed the first time.
If there is a theme to Runaway Dreams, it is the shared longing of all to leave a legacy when we go; the shared fear we will not. But here Wagamese states it plainly in the 29th, the 44th, and in this, the 15th of 48 poems in the book: “We are the story of our time here … and in the end it is all we carry forward and all we leave behind…”
Runaway Dreams is a magnificent story spoken in poetry.
A march in support of missing/murdered Aboriginal women in Vancouver
For the past six years, families who have lost a loved one have been brought together from across the country at special, commemorative events by the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC).
Known as ‘Family Gatherings,’ they’re an opportunity to honour a missing or murdered Aboriginal female family member, to ‘give voice’ to their story and share their journeys with one another.
NWAC hosted the first gathering in 2005 as part of “Sisters in Spirit” (SIS), a largely educational initiative that also developed and maintained a database of the hundreds of missing or murdered Aboriginal women and girls in Canada.
When federal funding for that initiative was discontinued in 2010, many wondered what would happen to the gatherings. The next year, it was discovered that new funding meant ‘Sisters in Spirit’ would evolve into a new campaign, ‘Evidence to Action.’
While the new campaign eliminated the database and limited much of the outright advocacy of SIS — changes that prompted much protest and condemnation by victims’ families and politicians — the family gatherings survived (the next one is scheduled for Jan. 27-29 in Ottawa).
But it turns out that was good news only for some families.
During the 2011 Christmas season, NWAC mailed out packages that included a holiday card, a memo about the 2012 family gathering and, in the case of at least 3 family members, a letter telling them not to attend. (A copy of the letter can be found at the end of this article.)
Among ‘non-invitees’ like Sue Martin, those letters have proven controversial. Martin’s daughter Terrie Ann Dauphinais was murdered in 2002. “To receive a letter like that kinda threw us over the edge,” says Martin.
Based in Ingersoll, ON — a few hours’ drive from Ottawa — Martin says she doesn’t understand why NWAC would tell her not to attend: “It was like salt being thrown into the wound all over again.”
Furious over the perceived snub, Martin asked NWAC to remove her daughter’s name from their database and told the organization that they are no longer to use her story. At least one other family has followed suit.
Bridget Tolley of Kitigan Zibi, QC received the same package from NWAC over the holidays. Her mother Gladys Tolley was struck and killed by a Sûreté du Québec cruiser in 2001.
“The families that are able to make it should not be told, ‘No, you cannot come,’” says Tolley. “It’s in your own city.”
Tamara Chipman
Gladys Radek is the aunt of Tamara Chipman, a woman who disappeared in 2005 along the Highway of Tears in northern British Columbia. Radek also received a non-invite from NWAC.
“I don’t understand their mentality,” says Radek. “They are picking and choosing. You don’t pick and choose family members, I’m sorry.”
Radek says she had no intention of attending the 2012 event anyway: “They (NWAC) made their voices very clear that they want nothing to do with us and you know what? We can do without them.”
The letters coincide with a tumultuous time for NWAC.
The past two years have seen the ending of Sisters in Spirit after a very public and political battle for new funding; it’s also seen a shift in leadership in the election of a new president, Jeannette Corbiere-Lavell.
That instability has left some family members questioning the strength of NWAC’s political voice, overall leadership, and commitment to the cause.
“I feel like they (NWAC) sold us and threw us underneath the bus,” says Martin of NWAC’s transition away from Sisters in Spirit to Evidence to Action. “I think it has to do with politics. I think she (Corbiere-Lavell) bowed down to the government.”
Tolley agrees, adding bluntly, “I think the money has been more important to them. Things were strong and NWAC was powerful but these past few years, I don’t know what happened. It seems like it has gone downhill.”
Tolley is a co-founder of Families of Sisters in Spirit (FSIS), a non-profit group meant to support the families of missing or murdered Aboriginal women and girls.
It was while SIS awaited word on whether its funding would be renewed that FSIS formed. According to Tolley, as FSIS fought to keep SIS alive throughout this period, NWAC began to grow quieter. Tolley says this caused tension and division.
Radek agrees. “It had everything to do with funding,” she says. “If they (NWAC) didn’t shut up they weren’t going to get any kind of funding. It all boils down to the money.” And, Radek believes, to leadership. “When the new president took over, it changed from the family members’ issues to a money issue.”
“The reason why NWAC got the funding in the first place was because of those families,” says Radek.” “Now, that NWAC has turned their backs on them, they are vying for new families’ members.”
Irene Goodwin is the Director of Evidence to Action. She admits it was bad timing on NWAC’s part to send out the non-invites, but denies there was any negative or fearful motivation behind them. “One of the things that was pointed out in previous family gatherings was the lack of balance from the four directions,” she says.
The reference is to NWAC’s plans to have equal representation from each direction. Due to funding limitations, however, only four family members from each direction will be attending. “It is the first time we are doing this and I know it is a little bit of a change for some families. We can’t be changing rules to accommodate one group of people.”
According to Goodwin, funding is an issue right across the country. “While it may look like we are focusing on funding, we’re really focusing on the issue.”
“The problem might have been more of an attachment to the name,” says Goodwin, referring to the family members who feel left out. “The fact that NWAC had a department dedicated to the missing and the murdered (Sisters In Spirit) — all programs and initiatives do come to an end. Evidence to Action will be one of them.”
She applauds the work being done on the ground, especially by Families of Sisters in Spirit. “More needs to be done and we certainly do support our grassroots organizations. (But) we can’t be dealing with the issue of violence by poking at each other,” she says.
Del C. Anaquod, a professor of Indigenous Studies at the First Nations University of Canada in Regina, says that, in any given organization or community, internal debate and dissent is healthy and demonstrates democracy. But he also acknowledges the fine line aboriginal organizations have to walk when it comes to funding.
“I think everyone knows [that] who provides the money, many times has the influence or calls the shots,” says Anaquod.
“A lot of First Nation, Métis or Inuit organizations receive their funding from various levels of government,” he says. “Particularly from the federal government, if you speak out too much, you pay a price.”
Radek agrees that most organizations won’t bite the hand that feeds them and that is why grassroots organizations are key.
“Considering we’re an organization that is done by donation and volunteer, I think we’re a little more ahead of the game than they (NWAC) are right now because they’re being dictated to by the government,” says Radek. “Dictatorship hasn’t worked in addressing awareness for the missing and murdered women. It’s not gonna work.”
For Tolley, she believes the fight must go on for the families of the missing and murdered despite the government bureaucracy.
“I am trying to help everybody, even if it is the East, West or North direction,” says Tolley. “We are doing this out of the goodness of our hearts, we’re not getting paid for this.”
“We did fifty-two events in the past year for Families of Sisters in Spirit,” adds Tolley. “I wish there was some way we could all work together.” Still, Tolley admits she’s grateful NWAC is able to bring the families together.
Goodwin says NWAC has plans to further develop these relationships amongst family members through a mentorship program. It’s a scheduled agenda item for this weekend’s gathering.
For now, Goodwin encourages previous family members to find ways to work with new family members coming into the system: “These new families do need their input, those who have been involved and active for a long time, because they really are the people with the expertise.”
First Nations chiefs spent the day in Ottawa with the Prime Minister, the Governor General and a load of cabinet ministers talking about trusting one another.
The Prime Minister seemed to agree: the Indian Act is a hurdle. But where National Chief Atleo thinks it’s time to move on, cut down the Indian Act tree and deal with one another nation to nation, the Prime Minister feels the tree’s root have grown too deep and the stump too big to simply yank out now — even with the backhoe of combined effort.
No doubt it is complicated. The Indian Act has become our history. But it hasn’t worked out so well for its subjects, whether you’ve been trying to make Ottawa understand you can govern yourself, thanks, or even if you’re one of the non-natives who think it’s all about tax exemptions and free education.
The Indian Act is not an act of trust. It’s not an act of good faith.
Successive governments in Canada — federally and provincially — have used the Act to control First Nations. Generally, First Nations prefer self-control. Resistance in 1969 when the then Liberal government in Ottawa proposed wiping out the Indian Act was a little different because that proposed extinguishment of title as well as ending the Act. But, from First Nations’ experience with how the Crown handled treaties, it’s easy to see where the distrust came from. And evidently, the bad faith spread.
For some, patronizing as it is, the Indian Act was regarded as a means of ensuring treaties were still an obligation — even though the Act did nothing to ensure the treaties would be fulfilled. People who had already lost everything — land, resources, opportunity, equality — feared losing the one last thing they thought the Act was there to provide: the certainty that someone was looking out for their best interests. So though there was no dignity in being treated like a ward of the state, the prospect of getting kicked to the curb by the warders was unacceptable.
But times have — and are — changing. Section 35 of the 1982 Constitution Act is the most recent legislative tool created to echo the terms outlined in treaties and alluded to in the Indian Act. It’s allowed some to argue the Constitution provides the commitment and assurances that were promised in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which laid the foundation for native/non-native relations. All of which meant it had become acceptable to consider ditching the Indian Act.
But after all that, it still all comes down to trust. Do you trust the Indian Act? Do you trust the treaties? Do you trust section 35? Do you trust the pledges made on January 24, 2012, and do you trust the people who made them?
And what was pledged anyway? That we’ll start again, with good will? That people will have control over resources on the parcels of land identified as their territory? That resource sharing will be implemented now? That we’ll share the responsibility of developing sustainability of First Nations in “have not” locations? That quality education will be provided in the places we live? That treaties will be fulfilled? Comprehensive claims resolved?
What was pledged was a desire to renew the relationship. A promise to issue the first progress report on what’s been done since this meeting by January 2013.
It’s not terribly concrete. Not as concrete as waking up tomorrow in a community with a school full of computers. Or a clean, potable water system. Or recognition of the legal capacity to turn down — or accept — a pipeline project in your own frontyard.
So can you have faith in the goodwill of the players? Trust your instincts and be of good will.
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Actor & musician Tom Jackson made Attawapiskat the last stop on his 2011 Christmas tour – and he brought a camera crew with him, including Algonquin filmmaker Caroline Monnet.
