Une chronologie sur le Blanchiment de l’identité autochtone et l’extinction des Droits intrinsèques

Posted on by Abitawiskwe

Malgré l’établissement colonisux européens depuis 1534, 229 ans se sont écoulées sans législation de l’identité autochtone.

Nous avons tendance à nous référer à la loi constitutionnelle de 1867 comme étant la principale loi qui aura permi au gouvernement d’imposer le statut d’Indien, de gérer les terres des réserves et les fonds communautaires.

Mais l’intention de mettre fin aux droits des Peuples autochtones aura débuté 104 ans avant la Loi sur les Indiens.

Voici la chronologie:

1763: La proclamation royale. Proclamée «Magna Carta indienne». Elle garantissait certains droits et protections et établissait comment la Grande-Bretagne pouvait acquérir des terres.

1850: Loi pour une meilleure protection des terres et des biens des Indiens du Bas-Canada. Sont inclus tous les descendants de ces personnes, les non-Indiens qui «se sont mariés avec de tels Indiens», les personnes dont les parents étaient considérés comme des Indiens et «toutes les personnes adoptées par eux»

1857: La cinquième législature de la province du Canada adopte l’Acte pour encourager la civilisation graduelle des tribus sauvages en cette Province. Tout Indien qui sait lire ou parler anglais ou français, n’a aucune dette et qui est de bonne moralité, est considéré comme une «personne morale» et «civilisé» aux yeux du gouvernement britannique.

1869: l’Acte pourvoyant à l’émancipation graduelle des Sauvages. Cette définition plus restreinte de qui était considéré comme un Indien. Seules les personnes d’un quart de sang indien pouvaient être reconnues indiennes.

1870: Loi sur le Manitoba. Les particuliers résidant à proximité de la ville de Winnipeg actuelle se sont vus offrir Scrip, un billet à ordre donnant à chacun une propriété privée de 64 hectares en échange de leur titre foncier indien.

1876: Loi sur les Indiens. Destinée à consolider toutes les ordonnances précédentes visant à mettre fin à la culture des Premières Nations en faveur de l’assimilation à la société euro-canadienne. Une grande partie de la loi relative à l’identité et aux exclusions fondées sur le sexe a depuis été abrogée et la loi a fait l’objet de plusieurs modifications.

Tous les descendants des personnes qui ont été exclues par l’une de ces lois restent victimes d’injustices historiques du fait de leur colonisation. Nous sommes notamment empêchés d’exercer nos droits au développement conformément à nos propres besoins et intérêts, et notre droit à l’autodétermination est refusé.

Le calcul du coût d’une reconnaissance de l’identité métisse: trop cher, mais nécessaire?

Posted on by Abitawiskwe

Je me suis réveillé en pensant aux économies d’échelle et à l’identité autochtone.

Je pense que le nombre de Métis est gonflé pour une raison financière.

Voici pourquoi:

Afin qu’une communauté métisse soit reconnue, ses membres doivent avoir recours aux tribunaux.

C’est généralement pour faire face à des accusations relatives aux droits de récolte ou de l’occupation territoriale des terres de la Couronne.

En passant, les terres de la Couronne devraient automatiquement être restituées aux Premières Nations et aux Inuit.

En général, cela commence quand une personne est arrêtée pour «chasse illégale» ou parce que des «cabanes de chasse» étaient réputées être illégalement sur les terres de la Couronne.

C’est ainsi que débute un long parcours le système judiciaire – qui sera garanti se rendre jusqu’à la Cour suprême du Canada.

Chaque niveau doit être financé par des centaines de milliers de dollars. Le ou les défendeurs doivent engager des avocats et des témoins experts et assumer tous les coûts associés.

Les témoins experts doivent fournir des preuves empiriques de l’existence historique d’une communauté – avant la vague notion coloniale de «contrôle effectif», qui est une date non définie et différente partout.

Chaque membre de la communauté doit fournir au moins une lignée ancestrale validée reliant un ancêtre «indien», avec les enregistrements de naissance et de mariage.

Les documents civils sont difficiles à obtenir (voir ma publication concernant les registres de baptêmes non-indexés de ma communauté) et obtenir une généalogie complète avec ses documents coûte plus de 250 $ chacun.

À ce propos, même les Métis de la rivière Rouge doivent avoir *une* seule ligne ancestrale vérifiée. La famille Powley aussi.

Ensuite, une communauté doit démontrer des preuves de son existence jusqu’au moment de «l’infraction».

La défense poursuivra ses efforts pour prouver que la communauté était réellement “absorbée” par le pouvoir en place, c’est-à-dire par la gouvernance anglaise ou française du temps.

Les tribunaux veulent que cela soit prouvé comme s’il existait une sorte de «club» doté de rôles d’adhésion, de procès-verbaux et d’assemblées générales annuelles.

Tout cela coûte beaucoup d’argent. Au moment où une affaire est jugée auprès de tout le système judiciaire, nous estimons que la facture totale se situe à près d’un million de dollars, voire plus.

Il y a beaucoup de tactiques de blocage. Parce que le temps égale plus de frais d’avocats.

À moins qu’une société avec un intérêt acquis ou une sorte de bienfaiteur soit prêt à payer la facture, les membres d’une communauté doivent supporter les coûts.

Bien entendu, les tribunaux prennent rarement en charge ces coûts.

C’est tellement pernicieux et cela ouvre la porte à ce que les communautés s’entraînent avec des sociétés d’extraction de ressources qui offrent des services de consultation:

Cette liste publiée par le gouvernement de l’Alberta est une compilation de consultants en recherche autochtones reconnus. Vous remarquerez les grands acteurs habituels tels que Stantec et SNC Lavalin:

https://open.alberta.ca/publications/list-of-alberta-historic-resource-consultants

Ainsi, dans des endroits comme le Chicot, sans ressources commercialisables connues, la quête de la reconnaissance de notre communauté, avec seulement environ 300 ménages qui s’identifient comme Métis, nous devrions en supporter les coûts nous-mêmes.

Donc:

$1 000 000 ÷ 300 = $3 333 par ménage

3 333 $ par ménage pour prouver l’existence d’une communauté métisse.

C’est un coût trop difficile à supporter pour une région économique où le revenu moyen des ménages est inférieur à 50 000 dollars par an.

Ainsi, la seule option serait de créer une sorte de société ou de club, d’ouvrir un registre et de choisir des abonnements à 50 dollars la carte pour générer un revenu permettant de couvrir les coûts.

$1 000 000 ÷ $50 = 20 000 membres.

Environ 1 200 personnes s’identifient comme Métis au Chicot.

En tant que planificateur financier, ces chiffres n’ont aucun sens.

Un million de dollars n’est même pas un investissement, car il n’y a aucune récompense autre que la reconnaissance à la fin de décennies de procédures judiciaires.

Cela amènera seulement le gouvernement à “reconnaître” l’existence du Chicot.

Alors, entre-temps, moi-même et les autres Métis Chicot continuerons de nous appeler des faux, des fétis, des appropriateurs culturels.

Et le gouvernement colonial se réjouit.

Can you spare $1,000,000? The Economics of proving Identity

Posted on by Abitawiskwe

I woke up thinking about economies of scale and Indigenous Identity.

I think numbers of Métis is inflated for a financial reason.

Hear me out:

To have a Métis community recognized, its members must use the Courts.

Usually, it’s over Harvesting rights or territorial occupation of Crown lands.

p.s.: Crown lands should automatically be returned to First Nations and Inuit.

Usually, it’s initiated when someone is arrested for an “illegal hunt” or because their “hunting cabins” were being deemed to be illegally on Crown land.

Hence, begins a long and drawn-out path thorough the Court system – which will be garanteed to be fought right up to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Each level of Court take hundreds of thousands of dollars to see through. The defendant(s) must hire lawyers, expert witnesses and cover all costs associated.

The expert witnesses need to provide empirical evidences of a community’s historical existence – prior to a vague Colonial concept of “effective control” which is a non-defined date different everywhere.

Each member of the community must provide a minimum of one vetted ancestral line linking to an “Indian” ancestor, complete with birth and mariage records.

Records are difficult to obtain (see my posts regarding the un-indexed records of my community) and cost upwards of 250$ each.

By the way, even Red river Métis need to have *just one* ancestral line verified. So did the Powley family.

Then, a community needs to show evidences that it continued to exist right up to the time of the “infraction”.

The Crown’s defense will attempt to prove that the community was actually *absorbed* into the ruling power, i.e. either English or French rule.

The way the Courts want it proven is as if some kind of “club” existed with membership roles, minutes and Annual General meetings.

All this costs LOTS of money. By the time a case makes its way through the court system, we’re looking at close to, and even over a million dollars.

There’s lots of stalling tactics. Because time equals more money.

Unless some corporation with a vested interest or some sort of benefactor is ready to foot the bill, members of a community must bear the costs.

Of course, the Courts seldom provide for these costs.

It’s so pernicious, and opens the door to communities becoming embroiled with resource-extraction corporations who offer “consulting”:

This list published by the government of Alberta is a compilation of recognized Indigenous research consultants – you’ll notice the usual big players such as Stantec and SNC Lavalin in there:

https://open.alberta.ca/publications/list-of-alberta-historic-resource-consultants

So, in places such as the Chicot, with no known marketable resources, the quest to have our community recognized, with only approximately 300 households who identify as Métis, we’d have to bear the costs ourselves.

$1,000,000 ÷ 300 = $3,333 per household

$3,333 per household to prove the existence of a Métis community.

That’s too much to bear for an economic region where the average household income is less than $50,000 per year.

So, the only option would be to form some sort of corporation or club, open up a Registry, and shill memberships at $50 bucks a card to provide income to cover the costs.

$1,000,000 ÷ $50 = 20,000 members.

There are only about 1,200 people who identify as Métis at the Chicot.

I’m a Financial Planner and those numbers just don’t make any sense.

$1,000,000 isn’t even an investment because there are no rewards ither than recognition at the end of decades of Court processes.

It will only lead to the government “recognizing” that the Chicot exists.

So, meanwhile, myself and other Chicot Métis will continue being referred to as fakes, fétis, cultural appropriators.

And the Colonial government rejoices.

Métis Nation Colonizers

Posted on by Abitawiskwe

So we spent multiple generations and gathered from everywhere all the names we were known to call ourselves and how other people referred to us.

We then looked for all the research to prove that all these names meant we were not First Nations but were tied by kinship with the Original People.

We chose one name – Métis – that represented us all and had that name recognized by the government and included in the Constitutional Act.

Then, one group, representing a small portion within a delimited geographic area, took all the government money. They use it to campaign against people who shared everything: the names we call ourselves, the research to prove those names and the success in the recognition of the name.

That group trademarked the name Métis and also kept all the other names we called ourselves.

They tell you it’s about White people appropriating Indigenous identity.

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It’s not.

This group, and EVERY SINGLE OF ITS MEMBERS are now Colonizers. Anyone who participates, promotes, supports their actions are COLONIZERS.

White people: stop defining us and defiling our symbolism.

Posted on by Abitawiskwe

I first saw this picture last week. Several people alerted me to this image. The graphic rates well for shock effect. It was published to accompany an article published in the September edition of Maisonneuve magazine, to go along with Halifax’s Saint-Mary University professor Darryl Leroux’s article “Self-Made Métis,” in which he writes how tens of thousands of Canadians have begun calling themselves Métis, and now they’re trying to get the courts to agree. 

I can’t tell you who the artist is or whether s.he is Indigenous. It’s obvious that whoever made this drawing knows something about Indigenous symbolism and was going for a shock factor.

Everyone should be concerned about this image.

Who might fit a stereotypical image of the Noble Indian?

Before you continue reading, stop. Ask yourself if your grandchildren’s grandchildren would loose claim to your Nation, to your community, based on how s.he may physically appear on the outside.

The drawing is being used as a commentary on identity politics between First Nations without status and Métis from outside the branded Métis “Nation” (a specific geographic area that excludes parts of BC and Ontario, as well as all of the NWT, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.)

Let’s face facts:

This picture is violent in nature. It’s blasphemous. It’s full of imagery and innuendos intended to send a clear message of segregation. The image clearly mirrors disrespect for Indigenous symbolism by way of poking fun of sacred objects such as the Medicine Wheel and traditional Regalia. It uses the stereotype of a Caucasian, Aryan-looking male desecrating the Peaked Hood  worn as part of the women of the Wabanaki Confederacy Regalia.

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Traditionally embroidered with beaded swirls, the Peaked Hood is sacred to the woman of the Confederacy. In this case, a Christian crucifix that looks like a Nazi cross replaces the bottom embroidery.

The Peaked Hood is placed on top of a camouflage-coloured baseball cap that would somehow imply that everybody seeking to assert Indigenous identity is doing so for hunting privileges.

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Along with the rappala fishing lure that misappropriates the use of the Sacred Medicine Wheel, while featuring colours of the four directions in wrong order, the graphic seeks to reaffirm the trope that Indigenous Peoples get free, unlimited money and harvesting rights in Canada.

The Fleurs de Lys: an image associated with the French-Indian war, a symbol used by Louis Riel’s provisional government. The Fleur de Lys was a symbol of resistance to the Hudson Bay Company and to British colonization.

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In what should be seriously examined as an affront to all Métis, the artist misuses the Fleurs de Lys, a symbol close to the heart of every Métis with French ancestry as well as every First Nation  who held alliances with France.

S.he makes it about how Québécois identity is not compatible with Indigenous identity and reduces the history of Indigenous Peoples to British colonial rule.

Last but not least, the red nose. Symbolism of the drunk native. Reducing to a stereotype the blood quantum theory at the basis of the Indian act.

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One can assume the image content displays that whatever DNA is left in a mixed-blood native individual is a genetic leftover of generational alcohol dependency. The drunken Indian stereotype, one of the most harmful discriminatory tropes associated with First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples, seemingly is what remains during Whitewashing, all cultural traits diminish and are lost yet only the worst stereotype remains, carrying forward to future generations.

I’m sure I’m missing a few more imageries in this egregious art piece. I’ve relied on the keen eye of a few Métis and First Nation artists (who wish to remain anonymous).

Readers may or may not agree on the definitions of Indigenous identity.  These are important, crucial discussions that should not be influenced by White academia, in my opinion, no more than the criteria that states community acceptance be dictated by its Own People and not by the Settler’s governments.

We owe it to ourselves to speak out. We need to do it for our grandchildren’s grandchildren; those not yet born, for whom we hold land, traditions and culture.

The image has been made public and no copyright infringement is intended during this artistic critique and study of this work. 

Culling the Indians: A Timeline

Posted on by Abitawiskwe

Everybody tends to refer to 1876 as the benchmark of Canada’s legacy of colonialism. But the intent to terminate Indigenous rights began 103 years prior to the Indian Act.

Here’s the timeline:

1763: The Royal Proclamation. Proclaimed as the “Indian Magna Carta“. It guaranteed certain rights and protections. It established how Britain could acquire lands.

1850: An Act for the better protection of the Lands and Property of the Indians in Lower Canada. Included are all descendants of such people, non-Indians who “intermarried with such Indians,” people whose parents were considered Indians, and “all persons adopted by them”

1857: An Act to Encourage the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes in the Province was passed by the fifth Parliament of the Province of Canada. Any Indian who can read or speak English or French, has no debts and is of good character becomes considered as a “legal Person” and “civilized” in the eyes of the British government.

1869: An Act for the Gradual Enfranchisement of Indians, the Better Management of Indian Affairs, and to Extend the Provisions of the Act. This further restricted definition of who was regarded a Indian. Only persons of one quarter Indian blood could be acknowledged Indian.

1870: The Manitoba Act.  Individuals residing in the vicinity of present-day Winnipeg were offered Scrip, a promissory note giving each individual a private ownership of 64 hectares in exchange of their Indian land title.

1876: The Indian Act. Meant to consolidate all the previous ordinances aiming to terminate First Nations culture in favour of assimilation into Euro-Canadian society. Much of the Act pertaining to identity and the exclusions based on gender have since been repealed and the act has gone through several amendments.

Any descendants of the people who became excluded by any of these laws remain victims of historic injustices as a result their colonization. We are prevented from exercising, in particular, our right to development in accordance with our own needs and interests and denied our right to self-determination.