The Inconvenient Indian (20 page)

I wonder if the Indians in question felt much the same way, that they did not want Whites expanding their boundaries unless they bought land at fair market value from willing Indians. In the early years of Indian-White relations, Native people saw land as a shared resource rather than as a commodity. Since then we’ve learned our lesson.

But the booklet was published in 1976, and although I’m angered by its blatant racism, into the fire it goes.

1985. Everything before that goes on the pyre. Everything before that is committed to the flames. Ashes to ashes.

And, in the spirit of generosity and new beginnings, and to show you I’m serious, I’ll add Gustafson Lake (1995), the Mount Graham Observatory (1997), and Burnt Church (1999) to the pile even though they happened
after
my cutoff date. I’ll even throw in the 1996 class-action lawsuit that Elouise Cobell (Blackfeet) filed against the U.S. Department of the Interior for the gross mismanagement of billions of dollars that never made it to the asset accounts of individual Native Americans. The case
took fourteen years to settle and resulted in a $3.4-billion award against the U.S. government.

As a corollary, I’m even willing to admit that Native people have made some rather grievous errors, have had significant lapses in judgment. We’ve done a reasonably good job of injuring ourselves without the help of non-Natives. For instance, for decades we’ve beaten each other up over who is the better Indian. Full-bloods versus mixed-bloods. Indians on reservations and reserves versus Indians in cities. Status versus non-Status. Those who are enrolled members of a tribe versus those who are not. Those of us who look Indian versus those of us who don’t. We have been and continue to be brutal about these distinctions, a mutated strain of ethnocentrism.

Helen, who happened to be looking over my shoulder as I was writing this, raised the issue of the Cherokee Freedmen.

I’d prefer to avoid that one, but because we’re beginning anew, I’ll touch on the highlights of the matter. Though “highlights” is most certainly the wrong term.

Since the mid-1800s, the Cherokee have been embroiled in a running political/economic/racial fight over who is a Cherokee and who is not, or more properly, who is Cherokee enough to vote in the Nation’s elections and to share in the tribe’s assets.

The Cherokee participated in slavery. In 1835, there were over 1,500 African slaves within the Nation. When the Cherokee were forced to move to Indian Territory, many of the slaves went with them. Then, in 1866, after the Civil War, the Cherokee signed a treaty with the United States that, among other things, extended Cherokee citizenship to Cherokee slaves who had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. These former slaves, of African
blood and African-Cherokee blood, are the Freedmen and were, according to the treaty, to have “all the rights of native Cherokees.”

But many Cherokee have never been happy with the idea of Freedmen being members of the Nation, and in the 1970s, Ross Swimmer, Principal Chief of the Cherokee, issued an executive order that required all Cherokee Nation citizens to have a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB). There are three distinct groups in the Cherokee Nation, Cherokee by blood, Freedmen, and Whites who intermarried. The thrust of Swimmer’s order was to make sure that the only group with voting rights was the Cherokee-by-blood group. This effectively disenfranchised the Freedmen.

In the late 1980s, Wilma Mankiller became Principal Chief and reaffirmed Swimmer’s order on CDIBs and voting. But in 2004, Lucy Allen, a Freedman descendant, took the matter to the Cherokee Supreme Court, and the court, in a split decision, said that the descendants of Freedmen were, in fact, Cherokee, could apply to be enrolled, and should have the right to vote.

The reaction was immediate, and in 2006, the Principal Chief, Chad Smith, led a successful effort to change the Cherokee constitution and allow the Nation to restrict tribal membership and voting rights.

This has led to a series of cases currently before the courts, in which the Cherokee and the Freedmen continue to argue the matter. The Cherokee insist that, as a sovereign nation, the tribe has the power to set its rules of membership. This is absolutely true, and as it should be. But sovereignty and self-governance come with obligations, some legal, some moral. In the case of the Freedmen, while the 2006 vote to change the Nation’s constitution was an affirmation of Cherokee sovereignty, it was also a vote
on economics and race. The sad reality is that many Cherokee did not want to share tribal assets with the Freedmen, nor did they want Black people allowed in as full members of the Nation.

The Freedmen saga reminds me of the old adage that democracy has to be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

I could say something mundane such as “this is an unfortunate chapter in Cherokee history,” but that is such an overused phrase. Still, in our history, the Cherokee have looked smarter and behaved better.

And while we’re on the subject of Native failings, I should probably own up to the alcoholism, drug abuse, poverty, crime, and corrupt leadership that plague many of the reserves and reservations. The news media have certainly been helpful in bringing these matters to public notice, and I salute the fifth estate for their simple-minded diligence. By now you should have some sense of the history that has made these such complicated problems. Nevertheless, the solutions, in the end, remain our responsibility.

Okay. All done.

But before we move on, I would like to remind everyone that, contrary to the stories that periodically appear in the newspapers and on the evening news chronicling Native poverty and despair, many of the tribes in North America are managing reasonably well. Some have developed strong economies. Of course, it helps if the tribe has natural resources, oil or coal or timber—the Cree at Hobbema, the Navajo in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, and the Alaskan tribes—or if the reservation is in an area that lends itself to tourism and eco-tourism, as with the Seminole in Florida.

In addition to the improvement in Native economies, Indians have also become more active in politics and the arts. Throughout North America, hundreds of Native organizations—grassroots, regional, national, and international—have come of age and are pursuing a variety of issues and concerns. Among these are the Native American Rights Fund, the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation (now Indspire), the American Indian Policy Center, the Native Women’s Association of Canada, the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, the Native Council of Canada, the Indian Arts and Crafts Association, the National Association of Friendship Centres, the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, the National Indian Child Welfare Association, the National Indian Women’s Health Resource Center, and the Métis National Council.

We’re cops, teachers, judges, writers, musicians, painters, soldiers, dancers, chefs, business men and women, pilots, architects, hockey players, singers. We’re doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs. We’re everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Just a reminder of our cultural persistence and adaptation.

But enough of this boosterism. Let’s get back to 1985 and our new beginnings.

By the way, this sloughing off of history is not an idea I came up with on my own. It is an approach to North American Native history that has been around for a while and appears to be gaining in popularity. One of the books that came out of the 2006 Mohawk land protest at Caledonia in Ontario,
Helpless: Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy and How the Law Failed All of Us
by
Globe and Mail
journalist Christie Blatchford, is a proponent of this style of scholarship.

Ignore the past. Play in the present.

In the introduction to the book, Blatchford writes: “This book is not about Aboriginal land claims. This book is not about the wholesale removal of seven generations of indigenous youngsters from their reserves and families … or the abuse dished out to many of them at the residential schools.… This book is not about the dubious merits of the reserve system which may better serve those who wish to see native people fail …”

Which raises the question, what
is
the book about?

As it turns out, the book is about the adverse effects that the occupation of the Douglas Creek Estates has had on the non-Native residents of Caledonia, the negligence of law enforcement in failing to protect the residents of Caledonia and their property, and the culpability of senior command officers and provincial politicians in not providing the necessary leadership.

Ignoring the past is certainly an expedient strategy. But without the long-standing Native land claim dating back to the 1700s, a claim that has been ignored and dismissed by Ottawa and the province, a standoff such as the one at Caledonia doesn’t happen. Still, by uprooting itself from the landscape of history, the book is able to concentrate on the trees without having to consider the forest.

Using this approach as a template, one could write a book about the United States dropping two atomic bombs on Japan without having to mention World War II.

Still, a promise is a promise, so let’s give our 1985 start date another try. And let’s turn our attention to Canada. It’s a great country, and for the period after 1985, Canada has most of the interesting stuff.

Bill C-31, for example.

If we really believe that we have moved beyond historical prejudices, if we believe we’ve left racism behind, then explaining Bill C-31 is going to be … difficult.

Bill C-31 is a piece of Canadian legislation passed in 1985 as an amendment to the Indian Act and designed to address the inequity that existed between Status Native men and Status Native women. Status is a Canadian concept. It does not exist in the United States. Indians in the United States have to deal with blood quantum, the amount of Native blood a person has—full, half, quarter, eighth, and on down the line—and with whether or not they are a card-carrying member of a federally recognized tribe. In Canada, Status Indians are simply those Indians who are recognized as Indians by the federal government. In general, Status Indians are also Treaty Indians, though there are reserves created by legislative action rather than by treaty and members of those bands are Status Indians in the same way that Treaty Indians are Status.

If that makes sense.

Prior to 1985 and Bill C-31, when Native men with Status married non-Status women, Native or non-Native, the women and any children gained Status. However, when Native women with Status married non-Status men, Native or non-Native, they and any children lost Status. In this regard, the Indian Act was clearly discriminatory and blatantly sexist.

When Bill C-31 was passed, Native women who had lost Status because of marriage were able to apply to have Status reinstated. The bill also closed the loophole of non-Native women gaining Status through marriage by legislating that no one could gain or lose Status through marriage, though this is slightly disingenuous.
While you can’t gain or lose Status through marriage, whom you marry can affect your children.

So long as Status Indians marry Status Indians and their children marry Status Indians, then no one loses Status. But if Status Indians begin marrying non-Status Indians or non-Indians, then Status for any offspring is at risk.

And once you lose Status, you can never get it back.

So, let’s say that you have a brother, an identical twin. Both of you are Status, full-blood Indians. You marry a full-blood Native woman who is Status, but your brother marries a full-blood Native woman who is non-Status. You have a daughter. Your brother has a daughter. Both of the girls are Status.

The two girls grow up, fall in love, and marry. Your daughter marries a full-blood Status Native man. Your brother’s daughter marries a full-blood non-Status Native man. Your daughter and your brother’s daughter have boys.

Watch closely. Nothing up my sleeve.

Your daughter’s son, who is a full-blood Native, has Status. Your brother’s daughter’s son, who is a full-blood Native, does not.

One child is Status. One child is not. Even though each child has the same Status grandparents, even though everyone involved married full-bloods. What you just watched happen is referred to as the “two-generation cut-off clause.” Marry out of Status for two generations, and the children of the second union are non-Status.

Was this draconian measure something that Native people requested? Or was it an initiative that the government came up with to eliminate Status Indians?

Let’s think about that for a minute.

Because Indians marry both Status and non-Status individuals,
so long as the “two generation cut-off clause” remains in place, more of our children will lose Status. If this continues, at some point, perhaps in the lifetime of my grandchildren, there could no Status Indians left in Canada. There will still be treaty land, held in trust for Status Indians. There will still be Indians, full-bloods and mixed-bloods who have maintained their tribal affiliations and their cultures and perhaps even their languages. But the reserves at Hobbema and Standoff, at Curve Lake and Brantford, at Penticton and Bella Bella, at Cross Lake and Nelson House will all be ghost towns. Or museums.

It is a brilliant plan. No need to allocate money to improve living conditions on reserves. No reason to build the new health centre that’s been promised for the last thirty years. No reason to fix the water and sewer systems or to update the science equipment at the schools. Without Status Indians, the land can be recycled by the government and turned into something useful, such as estate lots and golf courses, and Ottawa, at long last, can walk away from the Indian business.

They were never much good at it anyway.

Bill C-31 will probably wind up before the courts, but what I don’t understand is why the loss of Status and the potential loss of our land base hasn’t been a hot issue for Native organizations in Canada. Perhaps it has and I haven’t been paying attention. What Native leaders and government officials
have
talked about is amending the Indian Act to allow for more local autonomy, and about eliminating the Act altogether. So far, none of the talking has gone anywhere. Treaties are the
sine qua non
of the Act. Technically, I think treaties could function without the legislation. They might even function better.