If you are a young Aboriginal woman age 16-25 (or know someone who is ) interested in community leadership skill development, check out my UN Live interview below with Natasha Latter, coordinator of the “Indigenous Young Women: Speaking our Truths, Building our Strengths” project for details on how to apply.
A joint initiative of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network and Girls Action Foundation, the project will see young Indigenous women from across Canada gather in Saskatoon this November for 4 days of workshops, mentorships and solidarity. As the project literature says, it will offer
opportunities to come together as sisters, with the inclusion of Elders and other traditional leaders in the spirit of unity to discuss what is happening, and act upon our vision of what needs to change in our communities. This is the time to be yourself, all of yourself and celebrate it!
Quickly thought I’d share yesterday’s Aug. 9 interview I conducted on UN Live with Craig Benjamin, Indigenous rights campaigner with Amnesty International Canada, on account of that day being International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.
I invited Craig on to evaluate the present social, economic, political and ecological state of affairs for Indigenous people in the Americas, not least right here in Canada. Listen in and tell me what you think of his analysis.
It’s a day meant to promote and protect the rights of Indigenous peoples. To recognize the achievements and contributions they’ve made to the world around them.
James Anaya, Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples
They’re achievements James Anaya knows like the back of his hand. He’s the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Appointed by the UN, his job is to get Indigenous issues onto the global radar.
A document meant to protect the collective rights of the world’s Indigenous peoples — especially those rights not covered by the laws in each nation — the Declaration was adopted by the UN in 2007.
“At the international level, we’ve seen a significant amount of attention paid to Indigenous peoples: greater avenues of access, greater institutional energies within the UN,” says Anaya.
University of British Columbia professor of political science Sheryl Lightfoot (Lake Superior Band of Ojibwe) agrees, calling the declaration “a huge accomplishment.”
“This is the first time that the right-holders had participated in the process. It is the first real articulation of Indigenous rights globally,” says Lightfoot. “It’s also the first time collective rights have passed as a human right standard in any sort of international venue.”
“It clearly sets a standard globally on what is expected of countries and states,” she adds. “That said, the implementation part of it is problematic.”
She says that when countries like Canada, the US, New Zealand and Australia adopted the Declaration “they qualified it, and constrained it so much that what they were actually agreeing to is not the global standard.”
“They qualified it so much they watered down the whole set of rights,” says Lightfoot.
That term — ‘qualified’ — refers to how the governments accepted the Declaration, but only insofar as it applies within their constitutions and laws. For its part, Canada ‘endorsed’ UNDRIP “in a manner fully consistent with [its] Constitution and laws.”
According to Pam Palmater, a Mi’kmaq lawyer originally from Eel River Bar First Nation in northern New Brunswick, that qualified support means “the statement of support offered by Canada is really an illusion of justice. The best a state can do once they voted against it is offer a statement of support, which isn’t the same thing [as full and formal endorsement],” claims Palmater. “In my opinion, legally and politically, Canada has not ‘endorsed’ it. It has come out at with a qualified statement that says, ‘Very nice, it’s your aspiration, but it doesn’t apply here in Canada.’”
Anaya admits there is still a lot of work to do.
“Where things are still lacking is in our conditions on the ground, and ultimately that is where it matters,” notes Anaya.
“We see greater attention and awareness internationally around basic standards of human rights of Indigenous peoples — the actual implementation and improvement of those standards for Indigenous peoples on the ground lag significantly behind,” he adds.
Despite these challenges, Anaya says it’s important to not get stuck on the Declaration’s limitations. “Its a commitment by the governments of the world to those principles, and that needs to be taken at face value,” he says.
“While the declaration itself is not strictly speaking a legal instrument, it would be unfortunate to get hung up on technicalities about its precise character and lose sight of what it really signifies,” says Anaya.
In fact, the Declaration has already been used as a legal reference.
In 2007, the Supreme Court of Belize cited the Declaration in Cal v. Attorney, a case affirming the land and resource rights of the Mayan people. (To learn more about that decision, consult this article by The Dominion‘s Kim Petersen.)
Palmater thinks the same can happen in Canada. She encourages Indigenous people to bring their claims to the international stage, as Sandra Lovelace did in 1977 and more recently, Sharon McIvor. Both of those cases dealt with gender discrimination and so-called ‘Indian Status.’
“It could also be used to sway the public: I think the public is largely left in the dark about Indigenous issues, domestically, and internationally,” says Palmater.
“In countries where human rights norms matter, you can get some political traction off of that,” says Lightfoot. “Because you can play the guilt and shame on countries, and you may get some movement.”
Today on Urban Nation LIVE, home to my alter-media-ego on Winnipeg’s STREETZ FM,I had the opportunity to discuss the provocative thesis of my friend Chris Powell‘s new book, “Barbaric Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Genocide.” An assistant professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba, Powell’s thesis is provocative because he applies the book’s radical premise — that “civilization produces genocides” — not only to places like Rwanda and Nazi Germany but to Canada as well.
Indeed, as you’ll hear in the interview, Powell asserts that this country’s deliberate design, construction and support for the ‘Indian’ residential school system (a system whose multiple legacies we continue to live and struggle with today) is only the most recent example of Canada’s calculated campaigns of genocide against Indigenous peoples.
An Ontario government report released several weeks ago confirms what many Indigenous people already know: that First Nations children are still vastly overrepresented in Canada’s child welfare systems.
Indian Residential School, c. 1894
In fact, statistics show that there are more First Nations children in government care today than at the peak of Indian residential schools. In his report, “Children First,” John Beaucage — former Wasauksing First Nation chief and recently-departed Aboriginal Advisor to Ontario’s Minister of Children and Youth Services — calls this generation of child apprehension “the Millennium Scoop,” echoing the wave of apprehensions known as the “Sixties Scoop,” in which thousands of First Nations children were unilaterally adopted or fostered out into non-Indigenous families, often without their families’ or communities’ consent or even knowledge. (That said, Beaucage’s report does note that child welfare systems have changed in that they attempt to ensure that children remain connected to their communities and families, rather than being raised with the explicit assumption or desire that they would assimilate into white society.)
While the federal government apologized for residential schools, there has been no such apology for the continued dismissal of Indigenous sovereignty and our inherent right to care for our own children. In fact, recent agreements about on-reserve health care are said to entail less control by First Nations, and more by the feds, something that has never led to increased opportunity, health or wellness for our children and families in the past. It seems that improving quality of life for First Nations has a price: moving further away from control over our own lives.
I would argue that rather than seeing today’s apprehensions as distinct from those of previous generations, it might be more useful to think about them as part of a historic continuum of government intervention and control. It is difficult to separate the roots and the impacts of the residential school system, the beginnings of the child welfare systems in various provinces across Canada, and the ongoing over-representation of First Nations children in care. At the level of lived experience, many families and communities struggle with the compounding, inter-generational effects of apprehension, separation, and grief. These impacts cannot be parceled out into distinct, distant forms of seizure.
It is also difficult to separate out these government systems of “caring for” and “educating” our children from other forms of government intervention which together impact the quality of life for First Nations families. At the heart of the matter is Indigenous sovereignty, including our ability to care for our own children and help shape the systems that determine our well-being. Yet mainstream descriptions of the situation, like those found in a July 31 piece by the Canadian Press, blithely assert that “poverty, addiction, history and politics [have] conspired to separate First Nations children from their parents.” It is easy and convenient to blame poverty for conspiring against our children, rather than the people and policies behind systemic poverty. Racism is alive and well in all of the systems that shape the lives of First Nations children: the education system, legal system, health care system, and broader Canadian society. Individuals, including politicians and Canadian citizens, create and perpetuate a society in which the racialized divisions between rich and poor are created and sustained. And those individuals also created and enforce the Indian Act, provincial and federal jurisdictions, policies and programs which determine the quality of life for our children.
Some First Nations, such as the Anishinabek, have drafted their own child welfare law to ensure that their children are being cared for within standards set by their community. However, one challenge facing these efforts is that different approaches are being used within the provinces, as child welfare is determined provincially rather than federally. Struggles over jurisdiction and political power stand at the heart of Indigenous peoples’ control over child welfare, as with other assertions of sovereignty.
Beaucage’s report states that child welfare laws and jurisdictional issues may need to be resolved in order for child welfare to improve. Indeed, he says that “a whole new paradigm shift” is required in order for real change to happen. In my mind, that requires moving beyond or outside of the federal and provincial systems of control, as they perpetuate the very problems they claim to be interested in solving. Luckily for us, we have alternative paradigms in which to make decisions about the well-being of our children: Indigenous law, governance and ways of life. It seems to me that empowering these traditions through assertions of sovereignty is a necessary part of making real change in the lives of Indigenous children and youth in care.
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If you are a young Aboriginal woman age 16-25 (or know someone who is ) interested in community leadership skill development, check out my UN Live interview below with Natasha Latter, coordinator of the “Indigenous Young Women: Speaking our Truths, Building our Strengths” project for details on how to apply.
