Sewage in the Canadian soul

The contaminated water at Kashechewan is just the latest evidence of a crime

by Michael Nenonen <mnenonen@republic-news.org>

When it comes to First Nations’ misery, non-Aboriginal Canadians have a habit of blaming the victim. So, the Kashechewan reserve has to be relocated because of a sewage-tainted water supply? Up to sixty percent of the residents require medical attention? Certainly this must be the fault of self-governance and corrupt chiefs. What does it matter if Kashechewan’s leaders have for years been begging the federal and provincial governments for help with this threat, and what difference does it make if they didn’t have the resources to correct the problem on their own? These are Indians we’re talking about. If there’s fault to be found, it must lie primarily with them; if we’re to blame for anything, it’s for naively giving them the rope they’ve hung themselves with.

This subtext seems to underlie many of our discussions about the Kashechewan disaster, as witnessed, for example, by the repeated accusations of First Nations incompetence made by callers to Rex Murphy’s Cross Canada Checkup on CBC on Sunday, October 30 2005. One has to wonder: have non-Aboriginal Canadians forgotten how destitute First Nations communities are, or Canada’s role in making and keeping them that way?

Let’s put this catastrophe in its proper context. Kaschechewan’s plight is just one more consequence of Canada’s early decimation of traditional First Nations economies and political structures, and its subsequent refusal to allow First Nations people to participate in the public and private institutions of the emerging capitalist society.

In the late 19th century, while Canadian governments were giving non-Aboriginal homesteads generous grants of what was once Aboriginal territory, First Nations people were restricted to tiny, isolated, and generally worthless plots of land. Whereas an average of 320 acres were set aside for White homesteads, only 80 acres were allotted to First Nations families; in British Columbia, this figure was reduced to 20 acres. Having lost control of their resource base, and facing innumerable barriers preventing them from participating in non-Aboriginal industries, First Nations people were effectively shut out of the Canadian marketplace.

After stealing their land, Canadian governments prevented Aboriginal people from defending their collective rights in court. In the 1920s, the federal government passed an amendment to the Indian Act prohibiting the collection of funds from First Nations people for the advancement of land claims. The amendment remained in effect until the middle of the Twentieth Century, blocking First Nations people from defending or developing their resource base during the very years when Canada’s industrial economy was coming into its own.

To compound the First Nations’ marginalization, until 1940 Indian Affairs decided which Aboriginal people could and couldn't leave their reserves, and until 1960 First Nations people were even denied the right to vote.

The political and economic assault upon First Nations people was accompanied by a comprehensive cultural onslaught. Looking upon the brilliant panorama of First Nations cultures, the colonizers saw only loathsome barbarism. To eradicate this supposed evil, Canada outlawed traditional First Nations cultural practices such as the potlatch and forced generations of First Nations children into the horrific residential school system. Having created an environment certain to produce unimaginable levels of psychological trauma, Canada and its religious orders conspired to destroy the very cultural traditions that for thousands of years had helped First Nations people cope successfully with terror, shame, and grief.

As the legislation that’s framed Canada’s relationship with First Nations peoples since 1876, the Indian Act may offer them some measure of security, but it’s also severely limited the economic and political power that might otherwise have been available to them. Section 34 of the act, for example, states that the federal government can at any time expropriate reserve land. Those sections that might otherwise have offered First Nations people some hope have often been ignored by the Canadian government. Section 68 is a case in point. Even though this section allows a band to control, manage, and expand in whole or in part its revenue moneys, no band was actually allowed to until 1959, and as of 1998 fewer than 20% were approved to do so.

Few Canadians are aware that South Africa modeled its malignant Apartheid system after our Indian Act. South African “homelands” were in large measure recreations of Canada’s “reserves.” Despite some improvements in recent decades, the conditions on these reserves remain deplorable. As of May 2003, 12% of First Nations communities had to boil their drinking water. About 25% of on-reserve water treatment systems pose a high risk to human health. The Assembly of First Nations reports that 423,000 First Nations “people live in 89,000 overcrowded, substandard and rapidly deteriorating housing units.” 6% of on-reserve houses don’t even have sewage service.

First Nations people continue to be excluded from the Canadian economy. Unemployment rates among Aboriginal groups are at least double those of other Canadians. Those Aboriginal people who have work are overwhelmingly employed in low-wage and precarious positions. Poverty levels among Aboriginal people are much higher than the Canadian average, with 60% of First Nations children living below the poverty line. Meanwhile, the level of service provided to First Nations people from federal, provincial, and municipal governments is far lower than the level received by their non-Aboriginal counterparts. Non-aboriginal Canadians enjoy almost 2.5 times the amount of government services that Aboriginals receive. Despite this imbalance, poverty forces First Nations people to rely upon Canada’s social safety net more than other Canadians. Every time this net’s cut, Aboriginal people fall through the holes faster than anyone else. To make matters worse, in 1996 the federal government put a 2% annual cap on funding increases for Indian Affairs core programs, a rate that keeps pace with neither inflation nor First Nations population growth.

This oppression has grotesque human consequences. According to a 2005 United Nations report, if the quality of life in Canada were judged solely on the experiences of First Nations people, Canada would fall from 8th place out of 174 countries to 48th. According to Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, the life expectancy of First Nations people is seven years lower than for other Canadians. First Nations infant mortality rates are nearly double the Canadian average. The suicide rate among First Nations people is eight times the national rate for women and five times the rate for men. Rates of tuberculosis are 6.6 times the Canadian average. First Nations people are three times more likely to be diabetic than other Canadians, and twice as likely to suffer from a long-term disability. Epidemic levels of addiction, domestic violence, child abuse, and mental illness are predictable consequences of the structural conditions First Nations people are forced to live under.

In our hearts, non-Aboriginal Canadians know that the fouled water in Kashechewan in 2005, like the suicides in Davis Inlet in 1993 and the stand- off at Oka in 1990, is simply another reminder of Canada’s most shameful crimes, crimes whose victims have never recovered, and whose proceeds non-Aboriginal Canadians are still reaping the benefits of today. Of course, this truth is too painful to acknowledge, and so most Canadians continue turning to racist stereotypes of gangster chiefs and imbecilic savages to comfort our collective conscience. The filthiest sewage isn’t in Kashechewan’s water supply, it’s in Canada’s soul, and it’s deeper than we can possibly imagine.

****