The Inconvenient Indian (12 page)

Forever.

Twenty years later, the Newash band was forced to give up its 4,000-hectare reserve once again to make way for more White expansion. This was followed by further “surrenders” in 1851, 1857, and 1861 as the Ojibway in the area were pushed onto smaller and smaller parcels of land.

“Forever,” it turned out, was a conditional rather than an absolute concept.

Farther to the west, the Songhees of Vancouver Island were being beguiled with the same adverb. In 1850, James Douglas, Chief Factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, signed a treaty with the Songhees in which the band gave up a large parcel of land in exchange for a smaller parcel that was to be held in perpetuity for them and their descendants.

Forever. Again.

By 1859, the folks living in Victoria had become annoyed with Indians living next door and began suggesting that the Songhees be moved. Douglas, to his credit, objected, but after he retired in 1864, enthusiasm for relocation gathered strength and momentum.
Finally, in 1911, the federal and provincial governments reached an agreement among themselves to move the Songhees to a reserve near Esquimalt. After all, the Songhees, according to the wisdom of the time, were only occupying the land. They didn’t really own it. They hadn’t improved it. They didn’t appreciate its real value. Ergo, they didn’t deserve it.

Ergo
. There’s nothing like a little Latin to brighten a logical fallacy.

In 1935, the Métis of Ste. Madeleine in Manitoba were confronted by the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act, which allowed the government to turn farmland into pasture land in an attempt to control soil erosion in the prairies. Under the act, when pastures were created and people displaced, farmers were supposed to be compensated and relocated to other lands close to the lands that had been lost. But, technically, that applied only to farmers whose tax payments on the land were up to date. While the Métis had been living at Ste. Madeleine and working the land since around 1900, under the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act they did not have the same legal standing as their White neighbours. In spite of their tenure on the land, they were deemed squatters and evicted with little fanfare. Their houses were burned to the ground, and their community was destroyed. No compensation. No land to replace the land that had been lost. The Métis of Ste. Madeleine weren’t relocated. They were simply removed.

But in 1942, about 2,000 Mi’kmaq living in some twenty scattered locations in Nova Scotia
were
relocated. The government decided to concentrate all the Mi’kmaq in the two largest settlements at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie. As the Mi’kmaq were mostly Catholic, the government enlisted the Church’s support
in its relocation plan. The Church was only too happy to help sell the idea of relocation, since concentrating the Mi’kmaq would make the Church’s work in religious instruction and assimilation considerably easier. The Mi’kmaq at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie weren’t keen about a large influx of new residents, and the Mi’kmaq who were to be relocated weren’t keen on moving. Both groups complained, sent letters of protest, and petitioned the government to reconsider.

Which was more or less like throwing mud at a wall.

Of course, the Mi’kmaq were “consulted.” After all, Canada is, according to Canada, a just society. There were meetings. Government officials, armed with maps and charts and pie graphs, flew in to talk with Native people about a new future. The officials, sometimes with a respected member of the community at their side, sometimes with a local cleric in tow, coaxed, argued, cajoled, badgered, pleaded, and, on occasion, threatened. Sometimes relocation agreements were signed, and sometimes they weren’t. The only constant in the process was that, long before the government ever raised the question of relocation with the people themselves, Ottawa had already decided what it wanted to do, had already decided what would be best for the Department of Indian Affairs, had already decided that what Natives wanted or what Natives thought wasn’t terribly important and would have little or no bearing on the final outcome of the “negotiations” and “consultations.”

Was relocation—or, as the government called it, “centralization”—going to be good for the Mi’kmaq? That was never really the question. We do know that the government was looking for ways to cut costs, and the centralization of the Mi’kmaq made
sense from an administrative point of view. As for the promises of houses, jobs, and a better future?

Relocation of the Mi’kmaq began in 1942. By 1944, only ten new houses had been built at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie. By 1946, many of the families who had been moved to the two reserves were still living in tents. By 1948, unemployment at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie was rampant, even for the original residents, and the entire community was on welfare. By 1949, the government finally admitted that relocation hadn’t been the money-saver they’d hoped it would be and shut the program down, leaving the Mi’kmaq worse off than they had been before the program began.

Mind you, these lessons didn’t seem to alter the general thinking in Ottawa, and in the 1950s and the 1960s, the Canadian government pressed ahead with its dubious ideas on relocation. In short order, the policies were inflicted on the Inuit at Hebron and Nutak in Labrador, the Sayisi Dene in Manitoba, a number of the Yukon bands—Aishihik, Champagne, White River, Ross River, and Pelly River—the Gwa’Sala and the ‘Nakwaxda’xw of British Columbia, and the Mushuau Innu of Davis Inlet, Labrador.

You know what they say. If at first you don’t succeed, try the same thing again. Sometimes this effort is called persistence and is the mark of a strong will. Sometimes it’s called perseveration and is a sign of immaturity. For an individual, one of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again in the same way and expecting different results. For a government, such behaviour is called … policy.

Nothing to worry about, really. But if we ever get to the stars and find a new world that can support our version of life, and we
decide to terraform the place, it would be best to keep the Department of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Affairs as far away from that planet as possible.

The removals of the Saugeen, the Songhees, and the Métis of Ste. Madeleine were early examples of pushing Native peoples out of the way. But because most reserves were not in close proximity to White settlement, such removals, in Canada at least, were not the rule.

It wasn’t until after World War II, as the economy began to heat up, that Indians across North America found themselves being moved and relocated once again, this time to make way for large-scale industrial projects. In particular, hydroelectric projects.

From British Columbia to Pennsylvania, from Saskatchewan to the Missouri River, from the Northwest Territories to Arizona, from Quebec to Washington, from Labrador to California, North America began building dams. Many of these dams were built on Indian land. The Army Corps of Engineers, in particular, was able to determine with amazing regularity that the best sites for dams just happened to be on Indian land. Even when there were more suitable non-Native sites available.

Dams in the United States and Canada destroyed Aboriginal hunting and fishing resources, flooded villages and sacred sites, and forced the relocation of Native people. One of the jokes that went around Indian country in the early 1960s, when the Kinzua Dam was being built in Pennsylvania, was that if Custer had brought along two or three Army Corps engineers, they would have built a dam across the Little Bighorn, drowned the Lakota and the Cheyenne, and made enough off the waterfront lots to pay for Custer’s entire campaign.

Helen tells me that I need to balance my generalizations with some examples. Luckily, I can do that.

Initially authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1944, the Pick-Sloan Plan for flood control and navigation on the Missouri River created a system of dams and reservoirs on the backs of over two dozen tribes whose lands lay along the river in the Missouri River basin. None of the tribes was consulted about the project. The Army Corps of Engineers simply ignored the various treaties that were in effect, acquired the land through
eminent domain
, and built the dams. While the Pick-Sloan Plan affected some 23 reserves, forced the relocation of over 1,000 families, and flooded about 155,000 acres of Indian farmland, the plan somehow avoided flooding any of the non-Indian towns along the Missouri.

In 1967, construction began on the hydroelectric project at Churchill Falls in Newfoundland in spite of the objections of the Innu, who lost over 1,900 square miles of traditional hunting and trapping land to the subsequent flooding.

The 1971 James Bay project on La Grande River in northwestern Quebec, in violation of earlier treaties with the Cree and Inuit, flooded over 11,500 square kilometres of Aboriginal land, and forced the relocation of a number of Native villages. Apologists for Quebec and Ottawa like to point out that, in 1975, the Cree and the Inuit freely relinquished their claims to the land that was to be flooded when they signed the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, for which they received exclusive hunting and fishing rights to a large block of replacement land, along with $250 million in compensation. The agreement has been hailed as a model for “White-Aboriginal co-operation,” though it’s difficult to see the co-operation. The
Cree and the Inuit were not consulted about the project. Their strong objections to the project were not considered. Quebec and Ottawa didn’t give a damn what the Cree and the Inuit thought or wanted. And the agreement that was signed in 1975? Well, that wasn’t a negotiation so much as it was the Cree and the Inuit making the best of a bad situation.

Enough examples. You can look up Kemano and the Cheslatta, Grand Rapids and the Chemawamin, Glen Canyon and the Navajo, Warm Springs and the Pomo, Shasta and the Winnemem Wintu, and the constricting of the Columbia River on your own. If you’re so inclined.

What needs to be said is that removals and relocations, as federal policies in both countries, allowed Whites to steal Aboriginal land and push Native people about the countryside. I know this sounds harsh, and, although it’s accurate, I have to concede that if theft is legally sanctioned, it is no longer theft. So I should probably apologize for using the verb “to steal.”

“To appropriate” might be more generous and less inflammatory.

Moving Indians around the continent was like redecorating a very large house. The Cherokee can no longer stay in the living room. Put them in the second bedroom. The Mi’kmaq are taking up too much space in the kitchen. Move them to the laundry. The Seminoles can go from the master bedroom into the sunroom, and lean the Songhees against the wall in the upstairs hallway. We’ll see if that works. For the time being, the Ojibway, the Seneca, the Métis, and the Inuit can be stored in the shed behind the garage. And what the hell are we going to do with the Blackfoot, the Mohawk, the Arapaho, and the Piaute?

Do we have any garbage bags left?

Of course, moving Indians around was not enough. Native people were always in the way, always under foot. God knows North America spent a great deal of time and money—Allotment in 1887, Termination and Relocation in the 1950s, Termination once again in the late 1960s, but this time in Canada—trying to find places to put them. But such efforts never seemed to suffice. Even after all the tribes had been moved out of that metaphorical house and into that metaphorical shed, Indians were still in the way. Worse, they were still Indians. While many Native people spoke English, while many had converted to Christianity, while many were small business entrepreneurs, Native culture remained alive and well in North America. Removal and Relocation had been effective in displacing and disrupting the lives of Native people and taking their lands, but these policies and practices had not been the answer to the Indian Problem.

Still, North America was nothing if not resilient. Plan A hadn’t worked. Time for Plan B.

WHENEVER SOMEONE SAYS
“Plan B,” I’m instantly reminded of that wondrously horrid movie that Ed Wood wrote and directed back in 1956.

Plan 9 From Outer Space
.

The film was shot in just five days and cost less than $20,000 to make, much of the capital coming from a group of Baptist churches. How Wood got these folks to invest in a horror/science fiction movie is a mystery, although the best story has him convincing the clergy that if
Plan 9
was successful, the profits could be used to make twelve movies, about the lives of each of the apostles. In any case, the churches took their role as investors seriously, insisting that the original title,
Grave Robbers From Space
,
be changed, that any dialogue they considered profane be removed, and that all the members of the cast be baptized. The part about baptism is probably apocryphal, but had it been a deal-breaker, Wood would, no doubt, have obliged.

In the film, aliens try to stop human beings from creating a doomsday weapon that will destroy the universe. In 1980, Michael Medved hailed
Plan 9
as the worst film ever made, but when I look at the movie with its cheap sets, its dreadful script, its pedestrian acting, its incompetent direction, and its rumours of mandatory conversion, it reminds me a great deal of North American Indian policy.

Indeed, North America Indian policy in the last half of the nineteenth century had many of the qualities of a bad movie. It was a low-budget affair with a simplistic plot: politicians, soldiers, clerics, social scientists, and people of unexamined goodwill dash about North America, saving themselves from Indians by saving Indians from themselves. But, unlike
Plan 9 From Outer Space
, Plan B didn’t include the option to get up and leave the theatre.

For 250 years, Whites and Indians had fought as enemies, had fought as allies, had made peace, had broken the peace, and had fought each other again. But when Great Britain, France, and the newly formed United States sat down in 1783 to hammer out the details of the Treaty of Paris that would officially end the American Revolution, Native people, who had fought alongside both England and the colonies, were neither invited to the negotiations nor mentioned in the treaty itself.