The Inconvenient Indian
Thomas King (2012).? The inconvenient Indian: A curious account of Native people in North America.? Doubleday Canada
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xi? There’s nothing like a good quotation to help a body escape an onerous task
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xi? we should know by now that facts will not save us
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xiii-xiv? “First Nations” is the current term of choice in Canada, while “Native Americans” is the fashionable preference in the United States … but … “Indian,” … remains the North American default … The Métis are one of Canada’s three official Aboriginal groups, Indians (First Nations) and the Inuit being the other two … use “reservations” for Native communities in the United States and “reserves” for Native communities in Canada, and “tribes” for Native groups in the United States and “bands” for Native groups in Canada … I actually prefer “Nation” or a specific band or tribal name … “Whites” … the term is neutral and refers to a general group of people as diverse and indefinable as “Indians.”
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xv? when we look at Native-non-Native relations, there is no great difference between the past and the present
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2-3? History is the stories we tell about the past
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6-7? the massacre at … Almo … The story is simply a tale someone made up and told to someone else, and, before you knew it, the Almo massacre was historical fact … the story is a fraud
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8? Pocahontas and Captain John Smith … Personally, I don’t believe that Smith knew Pocahontas
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11? Canadians, like most Americans, have a shockingly poor grasp of their own history
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12? Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan … we have … made the people and places we attack responsible for our aggression
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14? Custer’s Last Stand … we don’t need the truth.? We have the legend
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23? Explorers who treated with Indians in the early years tended to report on Indian-White relationships in generally positive terms
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24? iron pots, blankets, guns … Protestantism and Catholicism … Europeans were perplexed, offended, and incensed that Native peoples had the temerity to take their goods and return their gods
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26? From the beginning of the European colonization of North America, Indian-White relations were an itch that both parties scratched until someone broke the skin
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28? Eugenics … was a very popular idea in the early part of the twentieth century
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32-33? James Earle Fraser’s 1915 sculpture The End of the Trail … was the single most powerful icon of Indians in North America
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34? Chris Eyre … “Indian people have been the longest running subject of films out of anyone.”
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39-41? Will Rogers … was a Cherokee … An Indian … a social commentator … “We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.” … In the 1930s, he was the most famous man in America, Indian or White
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50? the [Canadian] Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network (APTN), the only Aboriginal television network in North America
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53? North American popular culture is littered with savage, noble, and dying Indians, while in real life we have Dead Indians, Live Indians, and Legal Indians
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65? there are over 600 recognized nations in Canada and over 550 recognized nations in the United States.? “Recognized.”? I like that term.? Makes me feel almost real
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68-69? In Canada, Legal Indians are officially known as “Status Indians,” Indians who are registered with the federal government as Indians under the terms of the Indian Act … In the United States, federal “recognition,” the American version of “Status” is granted to tribes rather than individuals
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70? the Indian Act … originally struck in 1876 … has been the main mechanism for controlling the lives and destinies of Legal Indians in Canada
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78? “Why didn’t we kill you off, when we had the chance?”
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79? The ancient Romans, Chines, Egyptians, the Maya and the Incas, didn’t practise democracy, or Christianity for that matter, and they managed to create civilizations that were vigorous, civilizations that we admire
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81-82? three U.S. Supreme Court decisions … 1823.? Johnson v. McIntosh … 1831.? Cherokee v. Georgia … 1832.? Worcester v. Georgia … These three cases unilaterally redefined relationships between Whites and Indians in America.? Native nations were no longer sovereign nations … Canada would formalize an identical relationship with Native people a little later in 1876 with the passage of the Indian Act
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84? Vine Delora … “America has yet to keep one Indian treaty or agreement.”
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90? The majority of relocations in Canada began in the 1940s, almost a century after the mass removals of Native people in the United States
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100? North American Indian policy in the last half of the nineteenth century had many of the qualities of a bad movie
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101? Throughout the history of Indian-White relations in North America, there have always been two impulses afoot.? Extermination and assimilation
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103? Francis Jennings … called Christianity a “conquest religion.” … Missionary work in the New World was war
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105? I’m reminded of the television series Star Trek and, in particular, the Borg, whose battle cry, “Resistance is futile.? You will be assimilated,” could well have been spoken by John A. Macdonald and Andrew Jackson.? Or Stephen Harper and George W. Bush
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107? 1892? … Richard Pratt … “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man”
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109? Francis Paul Prucha … the main concern of the Catholic and Protestant missions was not so much Native education as it was outdoing each other in the race for Native converts
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110? And whether you like the idea or not, religion and culture are products.? Just like hot dogs and frosted cereal … in 1879, along came Richard Pratt and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School
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113-114? In Canada, residential schools began popping up in the 1840s … Children were forcibly removed from their homes and kept at the schools.? As with their U.S. counterparts, schools insisted that the children not have any extensive contact with their families or home communities.? Students were forbidden to speak their languages or practise any part of their culture
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114? In 1907, Dr. Peter Bryce submitted a report to Duncan Campbell Scott … which set the mortality rate for Native students at residential schools in British Columbia at around 30 percent.? The rate for Alberta was 50 percent … In 1919, Scott abolished the post of Medical Inspector for Indian Agencies
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119-120? Native people have never been resistant to education.? We had been educating our children long before Europeans showed up … North America decided that Native education had to be narrowly focused on White values … This was the first abuse of the residential school system.
The second abuse was the unwillingness and inability of the governments of Canada and the United States, and the governing bodies of the various churches, to oversee the schools under their control.
The third abuse, once officials knew … was their failure to act
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124-125? despite the apology, North America’s paternalistic intervention in the lives of Native people continues unrepentant and unabated … while North America is reluctant to support the economic “incompetence” of Native people, it is more than willing to throw money at the incompetence of corporations
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127? For American Indians, injustice has been institutionalized and is administered by federal and state governments. – Leslie Silko, Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit?
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128? malaria … It’s a remarkable disease.? Like colonialism, it can lie dormant for years.? And it can flare up at any moment
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129 ?private ownership of land has been one of the cornerstones of non-Native society and economy … Indians, through inclination and treaty, held land in common
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130? “Why?” was not a question anyone asked of assimilation.? The only proper question was, “How?”
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132-133? 1933 … America … John Collier … was a rare politician, a social crusader who rejected the forced assimilation of Indians and argued instead for a form of cultural pluralism whereby Indians could speak their languages and practice their religions without government interference … but for all his determination and reasonable ideas, he was not destined to prevail
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135-136? 1964 … New Zealand … “we don’t accept immigration applications from Indians.”
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137? Expo 67, the most successful of the world fairs … That year, 1967, was the one historian Pierre Berton called “Canada’s last good year.”
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139? 1969 … Indian role models were few and far between
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146? 1972 … death of … Raymond Yellow Thunder … Melvin and Leslie Hare … were … sentenced to one year in prison … The Hares were the first White men to be convicted of killing an Indian
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156? Native people found themselves in the new millennium with the National Congress of American Indians on the American side of the line and the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, the Métis National Council, and the Assembly of First Nations on the Canadian side
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157-158? Were there ways to frame Native concerns other than with demonstrations, confrontations, and, on occasion, violence?? No … the primary way that Ottawa and Washington deal with Native people is to ignore us
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158? 2010 … Stephen Harper said, “If the world’s richest and most powerful nations do not deal with the world’s hardest and most intractable problems, they simply will not be dealt with.” … Which explains, I guess, why global warming, global poverty, and global conflict are all doing so well
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163? sovereignty and self-governance come with obligations, some legal, some moral
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164? the old adage that democracy has to be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner
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170? 1991 … Aboriginal people – who are 4 percent of the Canadian population – make up over 18 percent of the federal prison population
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172? Perhaps … Royal Commission reports have become the Canadian alternative to action
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172-173? 1987 … the Meech Lake Accord … Native leaders wanted … official recognition of Indian societies as “distinct societies,” a term that Quebec had used successfully … Canada was the confluence of three founding peoples, Aboriginal, English, and French, but the Accord acknowledged only the English and French streams
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181-182? The present, like the past, also has its fair share of bad behaviours, racism, and murder … the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA) … The “injured” group that CERA is sworn to protect is Whites
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185? Somebody once told me that racism hurts everyone.? Perhaps in the broader sense of community, this is true.? All I know is that it seems to hurt some much more than others
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187? Lethbridge … there were many more White drunks stumbling out of the bars on Friday and Saturday nights than there were Native drunks.? It’s just that in North America, White drunks tend to be invisible, whereas people of colour who drink to excess are not.
Actually, White drunks are not just invisible, they can also be amusing … we don’t seem to mind our White drunks … so long as they’re not driving … we just hope that they don’t hurt themselves.? Or others.
More to the point, they get to make their mistakes as individuals and not as representatives of an entire race
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188? Racism is endemic in North America.? And it’s also systemic.? While it affects the general population at large, it’s also buried in the institutions that are supposed to protect us from such abuses … Manitoba … Helen Betty Osborne … the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), who had sat on their hands for fourteen years, finally got serious about the murder … Saskatoon Police … these Starlight Tours were executions
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193-195? If Native people are to have a future that is of our own making, such a future will be predicated, in large part, on sovereignty … Aboriginal sovereignty, by the way, is a given.? It is recognized in treaties, in the Canadian and American constitutions, and in the Indian Act.? It has been confirmed any number of times by Supreme Court decisions in both countries … In 2007, the United Nations passed its Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples … Of course, government has been only too happy to download services onto reservations and reserves.? Ottawa and Washington still control the budgets and set the regulations, while avoiding most of the liabilities
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196? we all know that political rhetoric has little to do with political action … David Wilkins … “The relationship … between American Indian tribes and the U.S. federal government is an ongoing contest over sovereignty.”
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202? perhaps discussing sovereignty as an absolute concept is a waste of time.? Perhaps we should concern ourselves instead with practical sovereignty and … I suggest we concentrate on the issues of tribal membership and resource development
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203-204? Jimmie Durham is … Cherokee, but because he can’t legally say he’s Cherokee, he’s not … “I’m a full-blood contemporary artist … of the sub-group (or clan) called sculptors … I am not a ‘Native American,’ nor do I feel that ‘America’ has any right to either name me or un-name me.? I have previously stated that I should be considered a mixed-blood: that is, I claim to be a male but in fact only one of my parents was male.”
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206? After membership, the second question that Native people have to consider with regards to sovereignty is how we go about creating an economic base for reserves and reservations
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206? In the late 1980s and 1990s, North America decided that Native land would be a perfect place to dump its garbage
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210-213? casinos and the large amounts of money that they generate have allowed certain tribes to do something I never thought I’d ever see .. I assumed that band councils were giving part of the profits to the members of the tribe as per capita payments or spending it on much-needed infrastructure or buying stocks and bonds as long-term investments.
And they were.? But they were also buying land … So far, reserves in Canada have not tried to follow the American example … I can’t help but enjoy the irony.? North Americans, all along, have believed that private ownership of land would turn Indians into Whites, while Native people have learned that the control of land can allow us to remain ourselves
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214? What do Indians want?
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215? Buy land.? They ain’t making any more of the stuff.? --? Will Rogers
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215-218? There’s a better question to ask … What do Whites want? … Whites want land … The issue has always been land.? It will always be land … If you understand nothing else about the history of Indians in North America, you need to understand that the question that really matters is the question of land.
Land has always been a defining element of Aboriginal culture.? Land contains the languages, the stories, and the histories of a people.? It provides water, air, shelter, and food.? Land participates in the ceremonies and the songs.? And land is home.? Not in an abstract way … For non-Natives, land is primarily a commodity, something that has value for what you can take from it or what you can get for it
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219-220? The Alberta Tar Sands is an excellent example of a non-Native understanding of land.? It is, without question, the dirtiest, most environmentally insane energy-extraction project in North America, probably in the world … Yet, in spite of all the scientific evidence, oil corporations, with the aid and abetment of government, are expanding their operations
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220? there is little chance that North America will develop a functional land ethic until it finds a way to overcome its irrational addiction to profit
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222? As for me, I still find it impossible to imagine the Alberta Tar Sands ever coming out of an Aboriginal ethos
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224? As a rule, easily understood language is not welcome in legal documents
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227-247? sometimes a close reading of history is helpful in understanding the question of land, and sometimes representative stories do just as well … One … Ipperwash … Two … Kinzua Dam … Three … Oka … Four … fishing rights … to the rivers of the Northwest … Five … The Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club … Six … Carson National Forest
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249? encouraging signs that Native-White relations were moving in positive directions … the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement
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250? the creation of the Gwaii Haanas National Park and Haida Heritage Site … was one of those rare occasions when Aboriginal concerns, environmental ethics, political will, and good sense came together in common cause
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252? Alaska became a state in 1959
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259? on April 1, 1999, the new territory of Nunavut came into being
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263? Both the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement are flawed accords … how are the needs of our people served by these documents?
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264-265? You can’t judge the past by the present.
It’s a splendid slogan … Ignorance.? That’s our defence … In the history of Indian-White relations, it is clear that politicians, reformers, the clergy, the military, in fact the whole lot, knew the potential for destruction that their policies and actions could have on Native communities … Ignorance has never been the problem.? The problem was and continues to be unexamined confidence in western civilization and the unwanted certainty of Christianity.? And arrogance?
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265-266? an examination of the past – and of the present … can be instructive.? It shows us that there is little shelter and little gain for Native peoples in doing nothing … No matter how you frame Native history, the one inescapable constant is that Native people in North America have lost much … in the five hundred years of European occupation, Native cultures have already proven themselves to be remarkably tenacious and resilient?
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266? Indians are not special … a great many Native people have a long-standing relationship with the natural world.? But that relationship is equally available to non-Natives, should they choose to embrace it.? The fact of Native existence is that we live modern lives informed by traditional values and contemporary realities and that we wish to live those lives on our terms