Wesakechak

Is this a form of racism where Aboriginal people are the racists? It is not clear what issues surround the entire episode from this editorial. The criticism may be accurate, but it would help to get more context other than a few short words taken from a letter. It cheapens the debate when the National Post editor mixes powerful imagery with little information to support his argument and glosses over what could be a much more complicated issue.

In any other Canadian context, such bald-faced racism would be illegal, not to mention a scandal of the first order. Imagine, for instance, if blacks were thrown out of a gated community on this basis — or if Jews were turfed from an apartment building by order of some neo-Nazi on the building’s management committee. Yet native bigotry against whites is somehow considered a breed apart — distinct from the “bad racism” that we otherwise deplore in the rest of society. And Kahnawake is not alone: All across Canada, band councils routinely make arbitrary decisions about who is, and who is not, permitted to live in reserve housing — often evicting people on short notice based on their native status, or even their particular clan.

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Really? Raise the spectre of Neo-Nazism and attempt to draw some parallel between that and the action of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake? It seems to me that eviction is a far cry from gas chambers and attempts at genocide, but then it is possible I am missing the point, or perhaps the National Post Editor needs to seek better arguments and stop attempting to raise the spectre of horrible atrocities committed in the past with this event now.

It is a morally perverse double standard. Yet Canadians simply take it for granted — as if it were perfectly normal, in 2010, for human beings to be thrown out of their homes because of the colour of their skin. White trumping black is evil. But red trumping white is ho hum.

For decades, the prime directive of our country’s native-policy brain trust has been to protect aboriginal culture in little cocoons called reserves — even at the cost of undermining bedrock principles encoded in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It’s a fool’s bargain, of course: In the end, no amount of government policy will ever prevent the eventual integration of natives into the much larger, more prosperous society that surrounds them. All our policy accomplishes is the embitterment of whites who suffer under such double-standards: the non-native residents of Caledonia, Ont., the non-native Salmon fisherman of British Columbia, and now, the non-native exiles of Kahnawake.

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Perhaps there is an underlying truth in the idea that seeking justice for one group at the expense of another is not justice at all — but there is also something to be said for making certain that justice is given to a people that have suffered (and in some cases continue to suffer). Ignoring promises made in the past because it is difficult to meet those promises in the present is not an excuse to say, “whoops – we didn’t realise this was going to be difficult, sorry we have to break our promise”. It seems the National Post should turn an eye toward our current governments who could act on behalf of those people being evicted and attempt to negotiate a better solution. I am not completely aware of the agreement past governments made with the Kahnawake, but the time for the public to take action was when the original agreement was negotiated; to cry foul now because we do not like how the other party interprets the agreement seems naive.

There are a tremendous number of problems facing the west-cost salmon including impact of farmed fishing, overfishing of the existing stocks, etc. — to present all of these complex issues as somehow related specifically to Aboriginal people and racism might make good press, but it does very little for informing readers and helping the general public. There are some complex issues facing the environment, fair use, jobs and employment, and Aboriginal people in Canada. Oversimplifying or attempting to apply labels does very little in the long run other then sell papers and fuel an ignorant public into knee-jerk reaction.