More Than Protesting
What Can Be Done
By Meaghie Champion
We've protested and we've protested. The protests have gotten larger and more
frequent, but still there has been very little response from the Canadian
government. They haven't even repealed bill C-45. Many of us are asking,
"What more can we do?"
There are some ideas. Block more highways? More ferry terminals? More
railroads? Blockade the border crossings? Occupy government buildings? Build a
village in the path of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline? Build a village
on the lawn of the parliament building? More hunger strikes? Something even
more confrontational?
Idle No More has grown from four women and a twitter account into a major
international movement. We haven't gotten the Canadian government to do anything
except another pointless meeting. Yet we have the attention of the media and
the public in Canada and large parts of the rest of the world. United Nations
officials have publicly advised Canada to deal with us fairly.
We have made history already, but at this point, we need a strategy for what to
do next. Many of us could and would keep protesting day after day for years if
necessary, but we might not hold the attention of the world if we do. We
probably could not keep the number of people participating in the protests
going up unless there is some sign that we are going somewhere with this. Prime
Minister Stephen Harper seems determined to give no indication that anything
will ever really change.
He'll meet with chiefs. He'll say some words to the media. But he is doing what
governments usually do when faced with opposition: refuse to admit they have
ever made any mistake in their entire lives and carry on.
One reason they can get away with this is that the whole idea of a political
struggle between protestors and government is completely one-sided in favor of
the government. To keep the protests going, the Idle No More movement has to
mobilize and coordinate thousands of protestors to keep holding protests. It is
a significant effort. What does government have to do? A few guys raised their
hands to vote for C-45. That's all. If thousands of people protest for months
sometimes in freezing weather, risking arrest, the government might, maybe,
repeal bill C-45. Or part of it so they don't have to admit the whole thing was
a mistake. Then, when the protestors go away, they can just pass it again under
a new name. They have to raise their hands one time. We have to mobilize
thousands of people for months.
There's a reason they think they can outlast us. Protesting only brings victory
if the government gives in and does something. Government doesn't have to
convince us to do anything. They can vote for bills and we can't stop them.
They can implement the bills and we can protest while they implement them anyway.
We need a strategy that reverses this. What if protestors were not trying to
get the government to take action? What if, instead, the protestors themselves
were carrying out the action we want done? Then, if the government did what it
usually does and just waited for the protestors to go away, the protestors win.
We would have successfully carried out what we wanted done.
Whether this is much of a victory depends a lot on what the protestors want
done and how long we can keep doing it. After all, the protestors can't protest
all day every day. Eventually people have to go home. People have to go to work
or go to school or take care of their kids. Regular life calls.
Government officials are getting paid to do what they do. They can do it all
day every working day. Protestors are taking time away from the things they
normally do. Protestors are suspending their normal life to oppose government.
Government officials carry on regardless because what they are doing IS their
normal life. The way this works almost guarantees that the government can just
wait and the protestors will go away. Maybe a few homeless activists can camp
out somewhere 24/7, but not hundreds of people or thousands or more.
We need to change this situation. To do this, we need two things:
1) We need a way that if the government ignores the protests, then we win.
2) We need a way that protests can continue all day, every working day.
The way to change things so that we win if the government ignores the protests
is for protestors to do something that accomplishes our main objective instead
of asking government to do it.
What is the most important objective that aboriginal rights activists can
accomplish? The repeal of bill C-45? No. The government can just wait a few
years and pass a new bill. Or pass it in bits and pieces hidden in other bills.
What we need to repeal is their ability to decide what the law is in our
territory.
We are told that they have the right to pass laws because they are the
government. We are told that we have to obey laws because we are the citizens.
Yet it was not so long ago that our people were told we were not citizens of
Canada. Why not? Because we were part of other nations -- our own nations.
Nations do not pass laws for other nations to obey. No matter how large or how
small, nations make their own decisions. This is a principle of international
law called sovereignty.
Before the non-natives came here, our nations had sovereignty over the lands
and waters here that are now called our traditional territory. They were our
sovereign territory. The non-natives say that ever since they arrived, our
nations do not exist any longer. How did that happen? Did we surrender? No.
There was no surrender. There wasn't even a war. Not here. Not on Vancouver
Island or anywhere in BC. Was there a treaty? Did we agree to give them our
lands and let them rule over us and call this place part of Canada? No. When
did our nations go out of existence? When did this land stop being ours? Ask
the elders. I have heard their answer. The answer is "never". The
lands are still ours. Our nations still exist. We still have sovereignty over
our traditional territory. That means it doesn't matter what bills they pass in
Ottawa. Nobody in Ottawa has the power to make laws that we must obey. If they
try to force us to obey their laws in our territory, they are the criminals,
not us.
Of course, the government and the police and the newspapers say differently.
They say this is part of Canada and maybe native people should get more money or
something for losing their land, but it's gone and it's too late to undo that.
The truth is that the non-natives have not "taken our land." The land
is still there. The land is still ours. They just built things on it. Even if
we let them get away with that, they do not have any right to tell us what to
do on our own land. They may say they got the land in the Douglas Treaties.
Read the treaties. Nobody ever gave them permission to rule us.
So how do we get them to stop ruling us? The answer is to start doing what's
right according to our own traditions and ignore their laws. This is why we
blockade highways. Their law says it's a highway and the public can drive on
it. Our law says it's still our land and people shouldn't drive on it without
our permission. Sometimes we revoke that permission just to make the point.
It's an important point to make. Especially since it gets attention for a
vitally important issue. But it gets attention because it causes problems for
people. Ordinary non-native people are inconvenienced when we block highways
they're trying to drive on. Some of them may sympathize with our cause, but it
is a problem for them. If we chose different laws to ignore, we could do things
that would be good for them instead of inconvenient for them. For example, the
Canadian government used to admit that it had no right to tax us. Now, more and
more, they are finding ways to tax us. Non-natives often say we should pay
taxes "like everybody else".
The law should treat people fairly. There is no good reason why some people are
forced to pay taxes and others are exempt in the same jurisdiction. Natives
didn't create this situation. The government of Canada created this situation.
They created this situation by trying to impose their laws on sovereign aboriginal
nations. They haven't quite gotten away with taxing the native people as much
as they want, but they have gotten away with taxing the non-natives in the
territory of aboriginal nations. The truth is that if a place is the sovereign
territory of Canada, and Canada imposes a tax that is legal and moral, then
everyone should pay the tax. It is also true that if a place is the sovereign
territory of some other nation, that Canada has no authority to impose any
taxes or laws on anyone there.
That is just as true whether the other nation is the United States or the Haida
Nation or the Six Nations. The attitude of non-natives will change if they find
that instead of arguing that we should get a special privilege of not paying
taxes in Canada that we are arguing that this place isn't part of Canada and
nobody has to pay taxes here.
If the struggle is natives versus non-natives, we are horribly outnumbered. If
the struggle is natives and our non-native friends and everybody who'd rather
not pay taxes against a few people in the government and their cronies, then we
will outnumber them. If that happens, we will win. Not in 50 years. Not in 10
years. Much sooner. Every law, tax and regulation of theirs that is not
enforced in our territory is a victory for us. This is how they will lose the
power to write laws to rule us with.
So there is a way that if the government ignores the protests, then we win. If
we ignore their laws and they ignore us, they aren't ruling us anymore and we
win. That's item one on the list. Let's consider item two.
1) We need a way that if the government ignores the protests, then we win.
2) We need a way that protests can continue all day, every working day.
Thinking about the way to make it possible for protestors to continue every day
and never go away, I look at the government. The government never just gives up
and goes away. Why not? Because the law establishes a government? That's not
the reason. The government keeps going even when it's breaking the law. I think
the main reason people working for the government keep doing what they do is
simply because it's their job. They get paid to do it.
Maybe we can find a way to make protesting our job and get paid to do it.
Here's how. We find something that is a regular job, but one that the
government says you need their permission to do. Then we do it without their
permission.
For example, catching fish and selling them. Or selling native handicrafts by
the side of the road. It could be anything. Carpentry work. Cutting peoples'
hair for money. Cleaning houses for money. Gardening, junk hauling, making
pizzas and selling them, offering native tours to tourists, canoe rides for
tourists, running bingo games to fundraise for elders needs or other worthy
causes. Driving people in an informal taxi-service, running a 50/50 raffle,
etc. It could be anything economic in nature. The government says you need
their permission to do any of these things unless you do them entirely on an
Indian Reserve. Some of them, they say you have to get their permission and
follow their rules and pay them money even if you are doing it entirely on an
Indian Reserve. They need a reminder of whose territory this is.
They don't call it begging for permission to earn a living. They call it
applying for a municipal business license if you are in a city or registering
your business with the province even if you're not in a city. You might think
that just making and selling native art isn't a business. It's just an artist
working. The government says even if you are just working to earn a living by
yourself, that's still a business and you must ask for permission. Even just to
make and sell native art.
Not only that, you must pay $70 for the cheapest way to get that permission.
Another $100 or so every year if you ever do business with anyone who lives in
a city. If you are actually earning enough to pay the bills for yourself and
your family, they will say you now have to work for them as a tax collector.
You will be required to collect sales tax from every customer, even if the
extra cost drives away some of your customers. You must fill out papers and
send them to the government. You also have to pay tax on your own income in
many cases, even if you are an Indian. If you live off reserve or if you
do work off reserve or you deliver products off reserve or if you're not a
status Indian or if your chief and council agreed to a treaty that lets the
government tax you even though you are a status Indian on reserve, then the
government says you owe part of every dollar you make to them.
What if the next time we show up at a shopping mall and do a round dance and
sing and drum, we also bring things to sell and sell them there without
permission from the government or the people running the shopping mall and
without collecting or paying any taxes? Of course, we would choose a shopping
mall that was built on native land where there either is no treaty or where the
treaty has been broken by the government. It would also be appropriate to
obtain permission in advance from the true owners of the land where the event
will be held. Not who Canadian law says the owners are. Get permission from
whoever ancient aboriginal traditions say is the real owner or authority over
that land where the shopping center was built. Not the chief and council unless
they are also the traditional authorities.
I realize that there will be objections to trying to make money at an Idle No
More protest. Or any protest. There are people who tell us this is not
appropriate at a protest. Maybe it wasn't before, but I am suggesting we should
make it a strategic goal of the protests to create sustainable economic
activities in defiance of the "colonial" authorities. Before I
explain why this is an important strategic objective that the Idle No More
protests could achieve, I first want to talk about some common ideas about
money and economics and how they relate to our traditions.
Some people tell us that Indians were not materialistic and owned very little
or owned everything collectively as a tribe. There are people who will tell us
that earning money is something corrupt that we learned from the non-natives.
Some people tell us that being Indian means being poor. Well, nowadays, being
Indian usually does mean being poor. That's not tradition. That's what's been
done to us. It may be true that some aboriginal peoples had very few material
possessions. Nomadic hunters of the plains had little use for more possessions
than they could carry with them as they followed the buffalo herds. That was
fine for them, but they're not nomadic anymore. Most aboriginal people on this
continent were not nomadic in the first place. Here in Coast Salish territory
and all the nearby territories on the coast, people lived in permanent
settlements and they were not poor. They were prosperous. They could even be
described as wealthy. They did own property and land and fishing grounds. Not
collectively as a tribe but individually or as a family. And yes, we were, and
still are, a bit materialistc. Not like the Europeans. In Coast Salish culture,
people did not ordinarily go hungry because they were poor. Wealth served a
different function in society. Because of the "potlatch" system,
people gained more by giving things away than by hoarding wealth like greedy
fat-cat bankers of today's financial crises. The most honoured people or si'em,
were wealthy, but wealth alone did not make you a si'em. A si'em also used
wealth to help their friends and relatives. Our economy worked very differently
from those in Europe, but it did work and it worked very well and sustainably
for a very long time. Thousands of years. In other areas, other aboriginal
nations may have different traditions, but theirs also worked for them. We were
not the only prosperous people.
Working, trading with others, even those far away, as well as earning and using
wealth the Coast Salish way are an important part of our tradition. We even
invented several different kinds of money before the Europeans ever showed up.
A particular kind of seashell found only in deep water was one kind of money we
used. Hand woven blankets especially those made with mountain goat wool were
another. Pieces of copper were also used at times. And then there's also wampum
from our Eastern Brothers and sisters. In Canada, many universities teach a Marxist
view of economics and history. Karl Marx had some important insights, but he
was a European in Europe and his ideas are part of European culture, not ours.
The economic system he called capitalism was also a European thing and there
was really no parallel to it here until the Europeans brought it with them. The
Marxist view is a universalist view that is supposed to apply to the whole
world. My Coast Salish view is that the whole Marxist versus Capitalist
struggle is a struggle within European culture for reasons that are distinctly
their own. Lenin reworked Marxist ideas to identify capitalism with European
colonialists such as those we had here and to identify native resistance in
various parts of the world with Marxism. These were popular ideas in the 20th
century, but they are still European ideas invented by Europeans in Europe.
Lenin was not an Indian. He was a European. The idea that aboriginal people
oppressed by a capitalist system imported from Europe need to have solidarity
with other poor people and replace the capitalist system with socialism in
order to achieve freedom and prosperity is an argument for assimilation.
Regardless of whether capitalism or socialism or some mixture of the two is
better, they are all part of European culture and giving up our own traditions
to adopt these is assimilation and means the end of our culture. Why should we
be talking about Marxism and a Marxist view of our history? Why aren't
Europeans talking about Coast Salish economics and a Coast Salish view of their
history? Maybe they really should. Just once to get a very different viewpoint.
There is a lot that could be learned.
One thing we can learn is that this idea that money is the root of all evil and
any kind of economic activity besides socialism is morally wrong comes from a
foreign culture that doesn't even know how our economic system works. We are
also flooded with newer ideas that long-distance trade is only possible because
of fossil fuels that are horribly destructive and unsustainable and we simply
must reduce all economic activity to local biospheres. Maybe European-derived
cultures don't know this, but the Coast Salish people carried out long distance
trade with many other nations for thousands of years before fossil fuels were
even discovered. Early European explorers reported that our people already had
iron knives. They assumed we got them from other Europeans, but recently
scientists studied one of those old knives and proved that it came originally
from Japan. If this is surprising, it is only due to how little our culture is
understood. They still call our ships "canoes". They were sailing
ships larger than those used by Columbus. We traded with Japan. Back when the
Roman Empire still ruled most of Europe, you could travel from Vancouver Island
to Hawaii and on to the Marquesas Islands 3,000 miles away all by sailing ship
and never run into anyone who had even heard of Europeans. Long distance trade
can be very sustainable and mutually beneficial and does not have to involve
multinational corporations running everything. We know what we're talking
about. We've done this stuff for a long time.
So I say all this to try to clear away the European mindset so that as soon as
I talk about work and money, that it doesn't sound like I'm saying we're going
to have capitalism and we should be happy just to have jobs. That's not even
remotely what I'm talking about. When I refer to "jobs" I mean
opportunities to work and earn money or profit by barter. I mean mutually
beneficial transactions for everyone that create more wealth, not transfer
wealth unfairly from one person to another. I mean mutually beneficial trade,
not "expropriating the products of the labour of the working class".
In Coast Salish society traditionally all sorts of economic
societies existed in order to preserve different aspects of the culture. Some
of these economic societies were strictly religous or spiritual in nature. But
there were also economic societies that existed for mutual aid and protection.
Marriages in Coast Salish culture were arranged institutions to allow all
families participating the ability to increase their trade routes and trading
power and increase military alliances for mutual self-defence from our enemies
from the north.
But getting back to the point at hand. I am not talking about people getting
"McJobs" and being happy about it. I mean self-employment and work
within traditional groups called "tsetsuwatil" in our language. I
mean being competent to negotiate deals and trade, to create and carry out
economic activities for yourself and for your family and your extended family
of families just like our ancestors did. I don't mean being a low paid employee
of some huge corporation. I mean rebuilding our economy our way, the way we
have done it successfully for thousands of years. We were not just primitve
"hunter-gatherers" barely one step up from cave-men and the most
important aspects of our economy work as well or better with higher technology
than they did in earlier times. That's why the colonial authorities outlawed
"potlatch" ceremonies and confiscated all property used in them.
Until we were poor, they could not hope to dominate us. So they destroyed our
economy.
In a very real sense, trying to brainwash generations of Aboriginal children
(regardless of their actual historical culture) into believing that it's some
sort of virtue for "All Indians" to be poor, is a horrific sort of
oppression in and of itself. It's one of the ways that the colonial regime has
kept our people oppressed for so long. We have been told over and over again
that the only kind of economic activity that the courts will recognize as
needing to be protected are those that result in only subsistence. Not
commerce. The reality is however, Coast Salish people engaged in commerical fishing
for thousands of years. We smoked huge amounts of fish and other seafoods and
then traded it for scarce commodities from our relatives and trade partners in
the interior.
No nation can sustain itself or even survive without a functioning economy. When
we had it, we were very strong. When it was destroyed, we became weak. Until we
rebuild it, we will remain weak. If we don't rebuild it our way, if we look to
European models of capitalism or socialism or democratic socialism or mixed
market or free market or any of that and ignore our own economic traditions...
we will have already been assimilated.
It will take a lot of creativity and a lot of work, but we could take the
protests to the next level this way. It could start with selling some
handicraft items to shoppers at a mall. It could grow to where we occupy a
strip by the side of the road and set up tents and tables and have our own
mall. Like we do at modern pow wows. Or we could offer to sell services
tax-free to anyone and refuse to get any kind of permission or pay or charge
any kind of tax. We could temporarily occupy a park that is really native land
and set up a table for each such "business" and invite the public,
native and non-natives both to come learn what economic activities we are doing
and see if they want to hire us to mow their lawns, clean their houses, paint
their houses or if they want to buy anything we have made or grown or cooked
that we have for sale.
We can also have dances and drumming and signs to protest what the government
has done wrong and is continuing to do wrong. But we won't just be trying to
get the government to give in and treat us fairly. We will be removing their
laws from our territory. If they write a law, but it's not enforced, it's just
a piece of paper. We will also be building our own economy in our own
territory. We don't have to do it their way. We don't have to be greedy or
mistreat people or destroy the environment. We don't have to operate
"businesses" that exist only to make a profit or "corporations"
that do the same, often on a larger scale. Did we have these things in the
past? Are they our tradition? In the hul'qumi'num language of the Coast Salish
people, we have the word "tsetsuwatil". It means "working
together" or "helping one another". It's still work. It can
still involve money, though traditionally it was often done with barter. There
can be profit, but the idea is that everyone who participates benefits. It is
not easy to define the difference, but there is a different spirit to it.
Some people's idea of "business" is to trick customers into thinking
they are getting a benefit when they aren't. Or to do huge, long-term damage to
the environment to get a short term profit for a very few. Or to build
expensive houses on native land, sell them to non-natives and leave the natives
living in decrepit houses, never asking for permission for the use of their
land nor paying them anything for it. Or getting a license from the government
to carry on a highly profitable business -- like banking -- that other people
can't do because they don't have the license, then using the profits to hire a
lobbyist to make it even harder for anyone else to be in that business. Those
kinds of things may be "business", but they are defnitely not
tsetsuwatil and never will be.
The beautiful thing about using tsetsuwatil as a protest strategy is that when
it works, we can do it every day. It can be our "job". It can pay our
bills. We won't ever go away. It can be very non-confrontational. It doesn't
have to be done in a shopping mall or a public park where the government can
pretend we don't have a right to be there. After it gets going, we could pay to
use places if necessary or set up tsetsuwatil markets on reserves if enough
shoppers will come there. We could work our way up to more ambitious projects.
I don't know what, but huge potlatch type activities, perhaps. Internet
activities? Our own shopping malls? Manufacturing? Organic farming to provide
alternatives to factory farms and genetically modified foods? Shipbuilding,
possibly ships that don't use fossil fuels? I don't know what will work, but
all sorts of things are possible. If we can succeed on a small scale, we can
start to succeed on a larger scale. We could even earn enough money to buy back
lands that the government says don't belong to us anymore. They'll admit it's
our land if we have a title deed. Then we can sue the government for the price
we paid to buy our own land back. Whether we win or lose the lawsuit, we still
get the keep the land.
One of the best things about Idle No More is how it has brought out non-native
protestors to help us. Tsetsuwatil can mean natives and non-natives working
together for mutual benefit. There is no reason non-natives would not support
us building our own economy using the ideas of tsetsuwatil. Many will prefer to
buy from us just to help our cause. They are the sort of people who are already
supporting our protests. Even people who don't support our protests would still
like to buy things without paying sales tax. We can help them. Tsetsuwatil is
not about any kind of confrontation. It is about helping one another. Who could
this approach possibly harm?
People who are on our land and paid to be there, but never paid us? We don't
have to go into their shopping malls if they don't want us to. But having our
events in their malls probably draws more shoppers into the mall than they
would otherwise have. That helps them. If we start buying out non-natives to
get our land back, that puts lots of money in their hands and drives up the
prices of "their" real estate. They profit from it. They don't lose.
Who else could be harmed? Businesses that collect sales tax and sell the same
things we might sell without sales tax? Maybe. But only if they keep collecting
the government's tax. The native authorities can give them permission to stop.
It's our territory. Canada doesn't actually have the authority to impose taxes
here anyway. Not without our permission. That's what sovereignty means.
Idle No More protestors using a tsetsuwatil strategy would be helping everyone.
Even the Canadian government. It doesn't seem like it. It seems like a
tsetsuwatil strategy that ignores the government's laws undermines the
government's authority and reduces their tax revenue. But in fact, this is only
true on unceded aboriginal territory or territory ceded by sovereign native
authorities where the treaties have been broken. Canada does not actually have
any right to exert authority or collect taxes in these areas. Not legally. Not
morally. What Canada does have is an enormous political mess that it has not
been able to solve. The people of Canada, by a huge majority, want to do the
right thing. They want to be good people. They want the world to see them as
good people. They want the natives to see them as good people. How can this be
when they have broken the treaties, treated our people terribly, built on land,
especially British Columbia, where there was never any treaty? How can they
ever look us in the eyes and say they are our friends? Can they say that to the
residential school survivors? The baby scoop kids? Those who were taken away to
foster care and abused and neglected while under the care of the Canadian
government? When they see a clearcut forest where we used to hunt and harvest
cedar bark, when they read that the Pacific Salmon is in danger of extinction,
when they remember the herds of buffalo that used to roam the plains, how can
they look us in the eye? When another native child of the new generation -- our
only hope for the future -- commits suicide because Canada has left her no
hope, how can the non-natives look us in the eye and say they are our friends?
How can they tell themselves they have done the right thing. How can they
believe they are good people?
A lot of them don't know what to do and therefore don't want to think about it.
Sometimes when they do think about it, the whole situation makes them angry.
They don't want to be bad people, they refuse to accept that they or their
family or their country has done anything wrong, so they look for ways to blame
the Indians and direct that anger towards us. It is all because they
don't know how they could ever possibly make it right.
We can give them back what they have lost. Something more precious than lands.
More valuable than money. We can show them the way to make it right.
We will rebuild our nations. We will make jobs for ourselves in our own way. We
will relearn our native languages and continue our ancient traditions. We will
prosper again as we did in the past. We will not be poor. We will buy back our
land if we have to. Non-native people can be part of this, as residents of our
nations, not occupiers. All we need to do is go work on it. All the government
needs to do for us to create a solution to their "Indian problem", is
stay out of our way. So far, the government has been staying out of the way of
the Idle No More protests. If they keep doing that, and we do tsetsuwatil like
this, we win. Everyone wins. They may not think of it as a victory at first.
They may not like seeing native traditions and laws replacing their own in
large parts of the land they call Canada. They may not like our nations being
autonomous or even having the right to decide whether to be completely
independent. But if Canada can allow Quebec to preserve its own language and
culture and decide for itself whether to be an independent country, it must
allow aboriginal nations the same right. And it is our right. It is a right
called "the right of self-determination of peoples". Virtually every
nation in the world acknowledges this right. It is mentioned in the Charter of
the United Nations. Every year on November 11, Canadians wear red poppies. This
is to commemorate November 11, 1918, the end of the Great War. One of the
principles that so many Canadians, British, French and Americans fought for in
that war was "the right of self-determination of peoples". The same
right that says the aboriginal people have a right to self-determination, the
right to be sovereign nations if we choose to. Canadian soldiers were told they
were fighting and dying to preserve that right for all peoples, for all time,
in a war that was so big and so terrible that they thought it would be
"the war to end all wars". It was not the last war. The right to
self-determination of peoples has been violated many times since. But Canada
can at least uphold that principle today where it has the power to do so.
Canada can be the good guys. We can show them how. Tsetsuwatil.
Despite all that has happened, there is almost no talk of revenge amongst
aboriginal people. There is almost no talk of forcibly evicting non-natives
from lands even where they have no lawful right to be there. We do not want to
give up our lands, not a single acre, but if our ownership were admitted, we
would be generous to those who have built their homes and their lives here and
are our neighbors. We might let them stay there, rent-free for their entire
lives or for three generations or for 100 years. We might ask only a token
amount of rent or none at all. If we have to buy back our lands and sue the
government for the price we had to pay, we don't have to be paid right away. We
don't have to charge interest on the debt. Maybe, when we have regained control
of all our lands and waters, when our nations are restored to full health. When
our languages and traditions are thriving throughout our territories and we are
prospering, when many years have passed and the government has treated us
fairly for a long time and paid diligently on the debt their own courts ruled
that they owe us... maybe we will even forgive that debt as we forgive our
other friends and relatives for their mistakes.
Our greatest gift to Canadians will be to mend the wound in their soul that is
ripped open all over again every time the Canadian government adds a new abuse
or injustice to the record of their relationship with us. The Canadian
government does not see how it could ever afford to pay us enough money to be
able to keep lands that we would not sell for any price. The Canadian
government does not see any way to help us prosper except to assimilate us and
we keep telling them to stop the assimilation and let us be ourselves. The
Canadian government sees this as a conflict between natives and non-natives or
at least between the natives and the government. We can show them we are
building a solution that will work for them and for us. We won't need their
permission. We just need them to keep ignoring us and hoping we go away. Like
they are doing now.
