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Tag Archives: Meech Lake Accord

Canada’s Amerindians: Enfranchisement

24 Sunday May 2015

Posted by michelinewalker in Aboriginals, Enfranchisement

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

"Marrying out", Access to Higher Education, Assimilation, Enfranchisement, Gradual Civilization Act, Maxine Noel, Meech Lake Accord, Oka Crisis

20016ac

Ancient Messages by Maxine Noel (Sa-Cinn Native Ent. Ltd.)

Maxine Noel

Maxine Noel, who signs her art work by her Sioux name, Ioyan Mani, “to walk beyond,” attended a Residential School. It may have been a good residential school. There are times when one good person makes the difference.

After leaving Residential School, Maxine worked as a legal secretary, but decided to take a course on advanced design and was singled out as a particularly gifted and promising artist.

Her work is lovely. The flowing lines, the composition, the stylization (faces, hands), the graded colours. In the print shown above, the fanciful orangey dots gives a very successful sense of unity to Maxine Noel’s artwork.

—ooo—

“The Great aim of our legislation has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respect with the other inhabitants of the Dominion as speedily as they are fit to change.”

John A. Macdonald
Canada’s first Prime Minister

enfranchisement

Enfranchisement is “terminating a person’s Indian status and conferring full Canadian citizenship” (See Enfranchisement, Indigenous Foundations.)

Enfranchisement, i.e. terminating an Amerindian’s status, is the worst problem Canadian Aboriginals have faced since New France was ceded to Britain, and it was not addressed in the Canada Act of 1982. It is not stated that the Canada Act of 1982 terminates the Indian Act of 1876.

The purpose of Residential Schools was to enfranchise, or assimilate, young Amerindians. Therefore, the development of residential schools was one of many attempts to enfranchise Amerindians. Children are vulnerable and cannot defend themselves.

3021ac

A New Beginning by Maxine Noel (Sa-Cinn Native Ent. Ltd.)

But let us list a few events:

  • in 1857 the Gradual Civilization Act was passed;
  • in 1869 the Gradual Enfranchisement Act was passed;
  • after Confederation (1967), both Acts were incorporated into the Indian Act of 1876.
  • in 1885, the federal government banned potlatches, the “Potlatch Law;”
  • between 1885 and 1925 (1914 and 1925 to be precise), dancing was gradually prohibited: powwows and Sun Dances;
  • in 1928 the Sexual Sterilization Act was passed in Alberta, allowing any inmate of a native residential school to be sterilized upon the approval of the school Principal. At least 3,500 Indian women are sterilized under this law. (See Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust.)

So assimilation, or enfranchisement, was the goal of the Indian Act of 1876 that followed Confederation. It was abusive and several clauses didn’t make sense. In Indigenous Foundations (University of British Columbia [UBC]), we read that: 

“[t]he Gradual Enfranchisement Act also granted the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs extreme control over status Indians.” (See Indian Act, Canadian Encyclopedia.)

Of “good moral character”

For instance, as per the Indian Act of 1876, an Amerindian’s status did not depend on his or her being born a status Amerindian, but on his or her being considered a status Amerindian by the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, or another “official.” This policy can be construed as assimilative. A “good moral character” became the criterion used to determine whether or not one was a genuine Aboriginal, with all rights and privileges.

“For example, the Superintendent [of Indian Affairs] had the power to determine who was of “good moral character” and therefore deserve certain benefits, such as deciding if the widow of an enfranchised Indian “lives respectably” and could therefore keep her children in the event of the father’s death. The Act also severely restricted the governing powers of band councils, regulated alcohol consumption and determined who would be eligible for band and treaty benefits. It also marks the beginning of gender-based restrictions to status.” (See Indigenous Foundations, UBC [University of British Columbia].)

the-listener-sm-660x212

The Listener by Maxine Noel (bearclawgallery.com)

The White Paper of 1969: a turning-point 

About a century later, assimilation remained the goal, but the rationale was somewhat different. Pierre Elliot Trudeau wanted to put all Canadians on the same footing. Consequently, the White Paper of 1969 reflected that goal. At the time, Jean Chrétien was Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. The White Paper proposed the assimilation of Canadian aboriginals. It therefore unleashed a furore and a ‘Red Paper’ was written. The furore then fizzled out, but the “white paper” was both the culmination of various assimilatory strategies and the beginning of an era when Aboriginals would be protected.

(See The White Paper, Indigenous Foundations [University of British Columbia] UBC.)

“In spite of all government attempts to convince Indians to accept the white paper, their efforts will fail, because Indians understand that the path outlined by the Department of Indian Affairs through its mouthpiece, the Honourable Mr. Chrétien, leads directly to cultural genocide. We will not walk this path.”
Harold Cardinal, “The Unjust Society” (See Harold Cardinal, Wikipedia.)

—ooo—

In order to keep this post relatively brief and precise, I will now use a few quotations.

Access to higher Education

“A First Nations person lost status or ceased being an Amerindian if they graduated university, became a Christian minister, or achieved professional designation as a doctor or lawyer.” (See Indian Act, Canadian Encyclopedia.)

Women could not “marry out,” but men could

Moreover, there was gender discrimination. A woman who married a non-status Indian, lost her status as an aboriginal. Men could ‘marry out.’

“In 1977, the Canadian Human Rights Act was passed. In it, Section 67 exempted it from being applied to provision in the Indian Act, largely understood to be an admission that the Indian Act would not meet human-rights standards. That section was repealed in 2008″ (See Indian Act, Canadian Encyclopedia.)

“In 1981, the United Nations Human Rights Commission ruled that Canada had violated Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in the case of Sandra Lovelace — a Maliseet woman who had lost her status through marriage.” (See Indian Act, Canadian Encyclopedia.)

The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1991)

The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was established in 1991 after the Oka Crisis and the Meech Lake Accord.

Oka Crisis, 1990 

“The Oka Crisis was a 78-day standoff (11 July–26 September 1990) between Mohawk protesters, police, and army [Royal 22e Régiment (the “Van Doos”)]. At the heart of the crisis was the proposed expansion of a golf course and development of condominiums on disputed land that included a Mohawk burial ground.” (See Oka Crisis, Canadian Encyclopedia.)

Meech Lake Accord, 1987

As for the Meech Lake Accord, it was an attempt on the part of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to encourage Quebec to sign the Patriated Constitution of 1982. It was proposed that Quebec be looked upon as a “distinct society.” However, one of the ten provinces objected: Manitoba. “Phil Fontaine was one of the Manitoba First Nation leaders who led the opposition of the Meech Lake Accord.” (See Phil Fontaine and Ovide Mercredi, Wikipedia.)

The Commission found that a new beginning was essential. It produced a 4,000 page report recommending another Royal Proclamation and “set out a twenty-year agenda for implementing changes.” (See The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples,  Wikipedia).

I should think that the Residential School Settlement Agreement (2007 – 2008) and the formal apology presented by Prime Minister Stephen Harper on behalf of all Canadians for harm inflicted on Aboriginals constitute a new beginning.

Let that be my conclusion.

RELATED ARTICLE

  • Residential Schools for Canada’s Amerindians (21 May 2015)

With kindest regards ♥

Grigory Sokolov plays Jean-Philippe Rameau‘s “Les Sauvages”

walk-beyond2-sm-660x660© Micheline Walker
24 May 2015
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To Walk Beyond
Maxine Noel
(albertanativenews.com)

45.403816 -71.938314

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Shooter Aimed at Premier-elect Pauline Marois

19 Saturday Jan 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada, Quebec

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Canada, Front de libération du Québec, Meech Lake Accord, Parti Québécois, Pauline Marois, Quebec Premier, Richard Henri Bain, Thomas Hobbes

Quebec City Flag
Quebec City Flag

One Man dies, one is critically injured

In a post on Thomas Hobbes‘ “Private Force,” dated 15 January 15 2013, I wrote that during the October Crisis, the Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, had sent in the troops, at the request of the Quebec Premier, Robert Bourassa and Montreal Mayor, Jean Drapeau.  Trudeau used the War Measures Act and put an end to several years of terrorism.

Pauline Marois

Pauline Marois, Quebec’s Premier

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/quebecvotes2012/story/2012/09/05/marois-victory-speech-shot-fired.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/quebecvotes2012/story/2012/09/05/f-quebec-citizen-initiative.html

The above links tell a different story.  How could I be so forgetful?  The Front de Libération du Québec (the Quebec Liberation Front) no longer exists.  However, on 4 September 2012, the day Pauline Marois of the Parti Québécois, an indépendantiste (separatist) Party, was elected Premier of the Province of Quebec,[i] someone tried to shoot her.  The shooter, 62-year-old Richard Henry Bain, lost his footing when an alarmed individual intervened, preventing Mr Bain from killing Quebec’s Premier-elect Pauline Marois.  The shooter then aimed at 48-year-old Denis Blanchette, the person who intervened, killing him and critically injuring a second man.

Parti Québécois

Parti Québécois

This incident was not strictu sensu terrorism.  The man who tried to kill Premier-elect Pauline Marois was not a member of a terrorist organization.  He acted alone and it has yet to be determined whether or not he is fit to stand trial.  However, using plain common sense, it would seem reasonable to assume Mr Bain was extremely distraught and that the Parti Québécois’ victory may have angered him.  He muttered, in French, “les anglophones se réveillent” (the Anglophones are waking up) and, in English, that “[h]e want[ed] to cause trouble.”

For many Québécois and Quebecers, a Parti Québécois victory means yet another referendum: “to separate” or “not to separate” from Canada.  That’s what has happened in the past and it has been motivation to leave Quebec. However, Madame Marois’ victory does not seem no have perturbed anyone seriously, except Mr Bain.  Montreal is a very attractive and cosmopolitan city and will probably remain as it is, whichever way the pendulum swings.

However, as I wrote in my earlier post, Quebec has yet to sign the Patriated Constitution, ie. the Constitutional Act of 1982, which poses difficulties.  There have been attempts to solve this problem, one of which was the proposed Meech Lake Accord[I] (1987).  Had the various Premiers agreed, Quebec would have become an officially “distinct society,” which it is, unofficially or officieusement.  Given the circumstances, a deadlock, it may have been in the best interest of all parties concerned to pour “un peu d’eau dans leur vin,” ie. to make concessions in order to maintain Canadian unity.  The people of Quebec are sitting between two chairs.  They are a country within a country, Hobbes’ “private force.”

Which takes us to gun ownership…

So, last September 4 (2012), Pauline Marois, the current Premier of Quebec, was shot at, a man died, and a second man was critically injured.  Although, the federal government of Canada has relaxed Canada’s gun-control legislation, I do not think this change was a factor.  But given events in the United States, the rapid dissemination of debates through social networks such as Twitter, and last September’s attempt to assassinate Madame Marois, gun-control will and may already be a factor.

What happened to me will probably happen to others.  They will suddenly remember, as I did, that Charles Henry Bain tried to shoot Quebec Premier-elect Pauline Marois.  The American experience, the Newtown massacre in particular, will colour, probably to a lesser than greater extent, the Canadian experience.  In fact, Madame Marois is now remembering that a man tried to assassinate her.  The event is no longer a “glitch.”  Just click on the above links.  The National Riffle Association (NRA) and the militias seem an aberration to me.  Were it not that Canada trusts President Obama and his administration, we just might fear the NRA would gain supporters here.  As I wrote on 17 January, the Obama administration needs a great deal of support and it needs it now.

Jacques Cartier Stamp, 1934 issue

Jacques Cartier Stamp, 1934 issue

Jacques Cartier (31 December 1491 – 1 September 1557) claimed the “country of Canada” for France in 1534.  His three ships were called la Grande Hermine, la Petite Hermine and l’Émérillon.  He captured chief Donnacona’s two sons Domagaya and Taignoagny, but they were returned to their father a year later during Cartier’s second trip in 1535–1536.   Cartier waited too long, so ice prevented him from sailing back to France.  As we will see, Cartier’s men fell ill. Cartier came back to Canada in 1540–1541 in the hope of settling the “Kingdom of the Saguenay.” It was too great a risk, so he went back to France.

One of Jacques Cartier's Three Boats

One of Jacques Cartier’s Three Boats

The Canadian Experience

I do not expect a heated debate.  Unlike the United States, Canada did not have a Wild West.  In Canada, the “security of a free state,” the principle undergirding but now nullifying the Second Amendment, has not demanded that civilians bear arms.  Our November 15, 2012 heroine, Madeleine Jarret de Verchères, lived in a fortress and had guns at her disposal, but that was a long time ago.

Survival …

The following thought may not have reached all if any textbooks, but the truth is that, from the earliest days of New France, Canadians have needed the Amerindians.  Jacques Cartier’s men would not have survived their first winter in Canada (1535-1536).  They were dying of scurvy.  The Amerindians could have let them die, but didn’t.  Instead, they supplied the marrooned French with thuja occidentalis or annedda.  The men survived.  Annedda, contained Vitamin C, the remedy, and could be made using birchbark.

Moreover, to travel westward and collect Canada’s gold: beaver pelt, French settlers, coureurs des bois to begin with, and, later, voyageurs, needed the Algonkian birchbark canoe.  If a canoe was destroyed shooting down potentially deadly rapids, one could be rebuilt without recourse to anything that was not immediately available.  In fact, the canoe used by voyageurs and explorers may well become one of the seven wonders of Canada (CBC.ca).  Amerindians also fed the voyageurs.  They prepared sagamité.

As for élite voyageurs who wintered west, minding the company store, they had signed a three-year contract, at first, with a bourgeois and, later, with either the Hudson’s Bay Company, established in 1670, or the North-West Company, active from 1779 to 1821.  They may have had a wife on the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, to whom they sent money, but the voyageurs needed a spare wife, an Améridienne.  Thus a people was born: the Métis.

Métis Family ca. 1826 (Bata Shoe Museum P80.982)

Métis Family, by Peter Rindisbacher, ca. 1826 (Bata Shoe Museum P80.982) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Peter Rindisbacher (12 April 1806 – 12 August or 13 August 1834; aged 28)

Les Filles du Roy

Jean Talon, Bishop François de Laval and several settlers welcome the King’s Daughters upon their arrival. Painting by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We know, moreover, that France was somewhat slow in sending women to Canada.  The filles du roy, the King’s Daughters, arrived between 1663 and 1673 and many married men who were members of the Régiment de Carignan-Salières.  These soldiers arrived in the middle of 1665.  They were invited to stay in New France where most became seigneurs.  Among French-speaking Canadians whose ancestors arrived in New France before 1663, many, if not most, have Amerindian ancestry.

The Snowshoe and Canoe Mythified

It follows that Canadians have mythified the beaver, the canoe, the lumberman’s snowshoes and Louis Riel, the Métis “Father of Manitoba,” but a tragic figure in the history of Canada.  Despite an endless border with the United States, for most of Canada’s history, its citizens have not required firearms to ensure their security.  Not only did Canada need its Amerindians, but there was too little room in the beaver-pelt laden canoes to accommodate several rifles.  Moreover, rumor has it that the Mounties arrived before the settlers.  As for settlers, they were directed to specific areas.

Yet Canada has its factious “private force” (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Part II, xxii), the separatists.  For a few years, during the 1960s, the “private force” had its terrorist wing.  Canadians do not bear arms, but last September 4, someone, not an indépendantiste, did try to shoot Pauline Marois and caused the useless death of Denis Blanchette, the man who tried to prevent an assassination.  He will never come back and Madame Marois now remembers.  But, will she remember long enough not to hold a referendum?

© Micheline Walker
January 19, 2013
WordPress
 
Photo credit: Wikipedia
____________________
[i] Pauline Marois defeated Premier Jean Charest of the Parti Libéral (federalist) and François Legault of the Coalition Avenir Quebec CAQ), also an indépendantiste party. 
[ii] Also see Gerald L. Gall, “Meech Lake Accord,” The Canadian Encyclopedia.
 
composer: Erik Satie (17 May 1866 – Paris, 1 July 1925) 
piece: Gnossienne No.1
performer: Lang Lang
Related articles
  • Accused PQ shooter’s psychiatric report might be released (cbc.ca)
  • Thomas Hobbes on “Private Force” (michelinewalker.com)
  • ‘I believe it was an assassination attempt’: Pauline Marois says there was ‘political’ aspect to attack on election night (news.nationalpost.com)
  • Pauline Marois: I believe election night shooter wanted to kill me (calgaryherald.com)

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