Ray asks when a contract is not a contract. Well, in my opinion, a contract is
always a contract. However, much depends on how it is administered and whether
there is a neutral authority looking over the shoulders of both sides to ensure
that they are giving and getting the deal that has been agreed on. In the
context of Canada's Native people, that authority, the federal government, has
been one of the parties to the contract and has been in the position to
manipulate carrying out the contract to its advantage. It has not always been
neutral in supervising the conduct of the contract. As well, it has often been
somewhat negligent in ensuring that the contract did what it was supposed to.
About twenty years ago, I did a study of the ability of several Native
communities in our northern prairies to accept mining development. I spent
some time in several communities. Here's what I wrote on one of them:
A Symbiotic Community
Monday, July 13, 2009
Discussion of the problems of our aboriginal peoples with a friend prompted
me to look up something I wrote many years ago while working on a project in
the northern parts of one of the prairie provinces. The following is an
abridged version of what I wrote. I'd suggest that it applies to many of our
aboriginal communities.
Undoubtedly, the community had valid economic and social reasons for
existing at one time. During the fur and mission era, it serviced a largely
subsistence, partly commercial (fur trapping, commercial fishing, casual labor)
population that was widely dispersed on the land much of the time.
The descendants of that population were drawn into town by a series of
government requirements that were imposed mostly during the post WWII era: the
requirement that kids attend school regularly; that the school be in the
community; that health and hospital services be provided where people live
(which was turned around into the requirement that people live where the health
and hospital services are provided); that people be housed at national and
provincial standards for Indians, and that community physical and service
infrastructure exist to support that housing; that people be conveniently
located so that welfare and other forms of subsidy could be administered to
them; etc.
It has become a symbiotic community: All of the institutions have been
provided in a single place which in the administrative view is appropriate to
the population and that allows government institutions to provide their
services conveniently. The people, having lost their independence need the
institutions. But the institutions also need the people to justify their
existence in the community.
Socially, the population maintains many of the values and attitudes of its
land based culture. The people continue to try to be hunters, trappers, fishers
and foragers, though being those things while living in the community full time
is very difficult. So some of the land-based skills and attitudes have been
converted to skills that allow survival in town, with foraging for money among
the various bureaucracies being an especially useful skill.
Such foraging makes economic sense, since the community has no industrial
base. The only real income base, now and in future, is government, supplemented
by occasional construction, some local business, some fishing, etc.
Yet the money that the foragers obtain does not always make good sense
socially. Wives often see one purpose in money - feeding the family - but
husbands all too often see quite another - having a good time with their
friends. This often leads to family violence.
The government institutions which service the community are there not only
to support and service the population, they are there to change it. They are
not really support services in the sense of helping people achieve their own
aspirations, they are coercive agents of social change - social engineers. When
they put some of the administration of programs into local hands, they
nevertheless maintain tight control to ensure that it is their objectives and
not those of the local people that are met.
The outcome has been a disruption and fragmentation of the community. Many
people buy into the institutionally driven values, attitudes and actions, and
the old ways get pushed into the background. The elders remain respected as
custodians of old memories, but in reality wield little influence. They have
taken on the roles of cultural icons, not much more.
Ed_______________________________________________
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