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Historical Relationships and Impact:
Our relationship with our White brothers is one that realized a major transition for our people. This impacted upon the traditional integrity of our peoples throughout this country. Inasmuch, they had to conform to a new system of living which is both foreign and alien, as is their understanding of how life should be lived. At the time of treaty making our peoples knew the consequences of such and as Chief Big Bear stated in the late 1880's.
"I have been grasping, but I have yet to receive the gifts they have promised me. I am afraid to give up the liberty of my lands and take up a reserve".
This legacy, that's been forcibly bestowed upon our peoples, through concerted efforts of Canada's governmental policies are the agents of modification. Specifically, the Indian Act which has become the most vicious mechanism and form of social control that exists in Canada today. The process of the Indian Act began in 1670 and it's implementation has created isolation, control, and enforced poverty. Moreover, on the one hand it has accorded Aboriginal with special status, legally and constitutionally, but on the other hand it has denied them equality in any realm of Canadian life. Consequently, a large majority of Canadians feel Aboriginal are to blame for their own conditions. Due largely to the none written text of Aboriginal histories and the established educational curriculums which imposes a negative view upon Aboriginal as savage, and uncivilized. Clearly, this is racism and discrimination in the highest form. However, this ideology in many regards played a major role in governmental policy with respect to acquisition of First Nation lands and resources. The concept of ownership is best explained by Chief Seattle, who stated.
"How do you own a tree, a rock, or even your mother. These things are given to us, to use, yet even we only borrow them from our grandchildren. What we do to the web of life we also do to ourselves."
Francisco de Virtoria in 1532 argued that Spain could not claim the lands of the Aboriginal by right of discovery since this doctrine applied only to lands that were unoccupied. Pope Paul III who, in bull, Sublimus Deus, issued in 1537, stated that: Indians are real men... they may and should freely and legitimately enjoy their liberty and possession of their property. Nor should they be in any way enslaved, should the contrary happen, it shall be null and void. Hence, Aboriginals were regarded as equals throughout the know world of 1532 and must be treated as such. However, the most effective defense of minority rights is found in Article 27 of the United Nations International Covenant of 1966, on Civil and Political Rights, it states:
In those states in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of the group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or use of their language.
Accordingly, the ethnic minority is entitled under international law to it's inherent autonomy. Canada has not maintained it's obligations under treaty and through the implementation of the Indian Act, has clearly contradicted Article 27 of the International Covenant of 1966. |
