ugnet_: CANADA IS A RECIST COUNTRY

[Mulindwa Edward]

Where Did Ahenakew's Anti-Semitic Rant Come From? By Roy MacGregor The Globe and Mail| 12-21-2 "Racism is as Canadian as Hockey Night In Canada." David Ahenakew, Sept. 29, 1983 No one ever accused David Ahenakew of holding his tongue. The former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations was always, even friends would say, "a bit rough" around the edges, rather coarse and often profane -- none of which should be surprising for a high-school dropout who served 16 years in the army, much of his time as a hard-nosed sergeant. Those who have known the 69-year-old native leader over the years usually dismissed his shortcomings as rude or simply silly -- such as his insistence he be addressed as Doctor Ahenakew after receiving an honorary degree. But not this time. This time, David Ahenakew's rogue tongue has turned into no laughing matter to anyone, friend or foe. The story is now a week old. But it is also centuries old and, unfortunately, will likely go on for centuries to come. A week ago, Mr. Ahenakew told a conference, and then a newspaper reporter, that Hitler had the right idea when he "fried" six million Jews. Had the German dictator not stopped them, Mr. Ahenakew argued, "Jews would have owned the goddamned world." He went on to assail Canada's "goddamned immigrants, East Indians, Pakistanis, Afghanis, whites and so forth" whom he accused of being racists themselves by calling his young great-grandson "a dirty little Indian." Nearly 20 years ago this same man, then still national chief of the AFN, went before a parliamentary inquiry to say that "racism is alive and kicking here" in Canada. "It's not something confined to the southern United States, South Africa or the slums of London, England," he told the Commons committee on visible minorities. And racist attitudes, he argued, go far beyond the "underbelly of society" and can be found among judges and doctors and politicians -- specifically, he said, in Senator Richard Donahoe of Nova Scotia who, in discussing aboriginal constitutional rights, had been heard saying to colleagues, "Wouldn't it be simpler if they just did what they did in Newfoundland and shot them all?" Mr. Ahenakew had demanded an apology and then went on to offer a list of "institutionalized racism," covering everything from the Indian Act to school textbooks. Canada is forever holding itself up as a tolerant society, and in many ways is, but there is, as Mr. Ahenakew argued that day on Parliament Hill, a long, long history of racism, particularly with respect to the treatment of natives. Back in 1763, the commander-in-chief of British North America, Jeffrey Amherst, advised his successor "to infest the Indians with sheets upon which smallpox patients have been lying, or by any other means which may serve to exterminate this accursed race." In 1886, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald told the House of Commons that Indians "are simply living on the benevolence and charity of the Canadian Parliament, and, as the old adage says, beggars should not be choosers." In 1975, Defence Minister James Richardson asked of native Canadians, "What did they ever do for Canada? Did they discover oil? They didn't even invent the wheel. Why, when we came here, they were still dragging things around on two sticks." We are now in the 21st century, a time when police dump native drunks outside the Saskatoon city limits in freezing weather, when Canada's jails overflow with natives and where racism, someone might say, is still "as Canadian as Hockey Night In Canada." Aboriginals, of course, are hardly alone in persecution. The Chinese had a head tax. Japanese and other new Canadians were sent to camps during war. Saturday Night magazine in 1912 called black boxer Jack Johnson an "impudent" we-shall-not-say for marrying a white woman. As for the Jews, the list would rival the natives: from refugees turned back to their deaths in Europe, to Holocaust deniers in classrooms and on the Internet. Given the "Final Solution" mentality of Amherst and others toward the native population, one might expect a certain understanding might exist between natives and Jews -- and indeed, that has often been the case in recent Canadian history. "There has been a natural bonding," says Bob Epstein, an Ottawa-based activist who has spent three decades working on behalf of the Crees of James Bay. He was seconded to Ahenakew during the constitutional years and was a critical force in the entrenchment of native rights. "I cried when I heard him," Mr. Epstein said of the Ahenakew outburst. "I just cried." Mr. Epstein recalled when he applied to work for the Crees back in the early 1970s he was asked by Albert Diamond, a Cree leader, "What would you say if we told you we wouldn't hire you because you were a Jew?" When Mr. Epstein replied that they would be making a mistake, a happy partnership was formed that later included a number of Jewish lawyers, including the late William Grodinski of Montreal, who worked full-time for the Crees until his untimely death. The relationship, Mr. Epstein said, had evolved into virtual "family" -- and has never so apparent to him as over this last year as he himself has struggled with a health setback. "I've felt such affection from the Crees," Mr. Epstein said. "It's huge and it's generous." What Mr. Ahenakew said, however, is, in Mr. Epstein's opinion, "the worst stuff I have ever heard in my life." Matthew Coon Come, head of the AFN and former Grand Chief of the James Bay Crees, was quick to "unconditionally reject, condemn and denounce these hateful, ignorant and unacceptable remarks" of Mr. Ahenakew. And Mr. Ahenakew, after several days, did resign his public offices and apologize. "Such comments," he said, "have no excuse." "I have clearly embarrassed our people. I admit my own stubbornness, my pigheadedness and my own personal embarrassment prevented me from coming forward immediately to do the right thing in light of what I have caused by such irresponsible and painful comments." "Abject," Mr. Epstein called the apology -- but still inadequate. "He never addressed the significant historical truths of his original statement," Mr. Epstein said. "Where did that come from?" The same question consumes Andrew Orkin, a Hamilton-based lawyer who came to Canada from South Africa and served native groups as an expert in human-rights issues, as well as constitutional and environmental law. "I felt a rekindling of fear as a Jew, but that's never far from the surface anyway," Mr. Orkin said. "And for that reason, I think what he said -- the sense that this was a job that needed to be done, and needs to be completed -- has caused harm, irreparable harm. "I don't know if that can be apologized away. This was not about race. This was about extermination. And you exterminate cockroaches." Like Mr. Epstein, Mr. Orkin is baffled by the origins of Mr. Ahenakew's thinking. Like many, they cannot believe such an outburst can be explained away by some obscure reference to "health" considerations. Did it come from his time in the military? Are the roots possibly in his early education? Like many other Jews, Mr. Orkin and Mr. Epstein are gravely concerned over whether or not criminal proceedings against Mr. Ahenakew should go ahead. While few take the apology as going as far as it needed to, many are worried that prosecution over the spreading of hatred would merely provide a forum for the like-minded, as it has for those who deny that the Holocaust occurred. Mickey Posluns, a Toronto doctorate who has advised the AFN on government policy, has circulated an e-mail in which he argues, convincingly, for obscurity rather than notoriety for Mr. Ahenakew. Mr. Posluns says, in the e-mail, that he is "deeply disturbed by the demands for a criminal prosecution of Ahenakew. "There has been a growing tendency to a knee-jerk response to treat every piece of misbehaviour as though the only remedies available were those in the Criminal Code. A criminal prosecution can only serve to postpone and to prevent the possibility of healing within those communities which have been so deeply wounded by Ahenakew's foul-mouthed and mean-spirited remarks." Mr. Posluns -- who calls himself "a committed Jew whose commitment to Jewish values has been expressed in large part through my work with First Nations" -- says in his e-mail that he finds the Canadian Jewish Congress's desire for criminal proceedings "deeply saddening." "Likewise," he adds, "the idea of rescinding Ahenakew's Order of Canada opens up for debate the whole notion that such awards for meritorious service can be withdrawn for later stupidity." A far better solution, he says, would be to "let this broken old man hobble off to the privacy of his own home. "Meanwhile, let those of us who care about such things get on with the business of healing those communities which have been deeply wounded by his malicious speech." Mr. Orkin, torn between wishing for criminal proceedings and wishing never again to hear Mr. Ahenakew's name, says he found the best answer possible in the Posluns e-mail. "Let him fade in shame," Mr. Orkin said, "to the obscurity he so richly deserves." http://www.theglobeandmail.com        The Mulindwas communication group "With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"