Walk-a-Mile Film Project

Welcome to a discussion of the Walk-a-Mile film project, developed as a joint effort of Thunderstone Pictures and the City of Thunder Bay’s Aboriginal Liaison Unit. The films were created by film maker Michelle Derosier of Thunderstone Pictures.

Although the discussion presented here was developed as part of preparing facilitation resources for the cultural awareness sessions associated with the films, the views expressed here, apart from those simply represented as excerpted materials from the films themselves, are not endorsed or authorized by either the City of Thunder Bay or Thunderstone Pictures. The views expressed here are intended as supportive, but nevertheless independent of the films producers and sponsors.

The Walk-a-Mile film project has been developed as part of a cultural awareness training session mandatory for all City of Thunder Bay employees. It has been taken up by a number of organizations in Thunder Bay and region as part of their staff training. In addition, there have been a number of open sessions presented to the public, for example, at public libraries in Thunder Bay.

So, in this context, we simply begin by asking the question…*why are we doing this?*

In other words, why is there a need or desire for this kind of training or public awareness at this time?

So, our presentation here attempts to explore something of the wider context, historical, regional and national, in which this project has been undertaken.

The quoted description above of the Walk-a-Mile Film Project is taken from the City of Thunder Bay’s web page introducing The Film Project.

At this point we simply wish to draw attention to the emphasis being placed on the need “to educate and encourage frank conversations” about “the life and history of Aboriginal peoples”.

So why do we need to have these frank conversations?

And why do these frank conversations need to be about the life and history of Aboriginal peoples?

Here is a light-hearted but perhaps telling description of how the word “frank” is interpreted in diplomatic language and which may suggest how we might interpret the above remarks. This comes from the New York Times back in the day (1982) entitled Frank and Fruitful Exchange:

Frank is the diplomat’s way of saying: “We did not agree on a thing.” Full means: “It went longer than we figured, lunch got cold, the chef is miffed.” Full and frank means: “It looks like war.”

So, while the code words of diplomatic language may not be precisely what is intended here, nevertheless, there does appear to be an expectation of strong differences of opinion when it comes to these conversations regarding Aboriginal peoples and Canadian history. But why?

Why should we expect strong differences of opinion about the “life and history of Aboriginal peoples” in Canada? Is there no consensus on the facts? On the social, cultural and political values at stake in that history?

Again this description is taken from the City of Thunder Bay web site for the film project.

At this point, we simply note that it will deal with some difficult topics: treaties, racism, violence against women, and the way forward.

So why? Is the existing relationship between the City of Thunder Bay and urban Aboriginal Peoples fundamentally problematic? If so why?

And why do we have these special sessions for Aboriginal Peoples? Will there be future sessions regarding the way forward focusing upon Irish or Scots or Italians or Finns?

And if not, why not?

Why do Aboriginal Peoples get this special attention? Is Canada not a multicultural society based on principles of equality and fairness? So why this special attention on this one relationship?

Hint: do non-Aboriginal cultural groups in Canada have treaties with the Canadian state?

And if not, why not?

Answer: we offer an answer drawn implicitly from Supreme Court of Canada decisions, which is because they have never lived in self-determining or self-governing societies before the formation of the British-Canadian state.

Who did live in self-determining and self-governing societies prior to the formation of the British-Canadian state?

Answer: First Nations, the Métis nation, and, I might add for future consideration, la nation canadienne.

These nations all existed prior to the formation of the British-Canadian state, and make claims to rights of self-determination and, to varying degrees, to rights of self-government.

At any rate, this is the line of discussion we will be pursuing in this presentation.

Again, from the City of Thunder Bay’s web page for the Walk-a-Mile film project, the overall objective places the emphasis on “misinformation and myths” and the need for “informed discussions” with the idea there is a need to work on “respectful relationships”.

Hmmm…?

But again…why?

After 500 years?

It was in the 1500s that Jacques Cartier and John Cabot started poking around the shores of what was to become Canada. Europeans and their descendents have been living alongside Aboriginal Peoples in varying degrees for 500 years.

So how is it that “misinformation and myths” persist in the “broader Canadian community” about Aboriginal Peoples?

How did Canadians come to be in this state of misinformation?

Recall that these films have become a key part of public and training sessions to deal with the perceived state of misinformation and myths on the part of the “broader Canadian community”.

Why is the broader community having to go back to school for all this? Why was it not covered in the first place?

Canadian society prides itself on the quality of its education system, so how could it have propagated “myths and misinformation” and generated a population in such need of “informed discussions”?

Remember, we’re not talking about some new-fangled, shiny thing here, some new cutting-edge way of looking at the world. We’re talking about a 500-year-old relationship.

So what gives here?

All cultures and societies generate stories about themselves. So at the heart of the issue of Canadians being uninformed and propagating misinformation and myths about a 500 year old relationship, begs a fundamental question:

What’s our story?

How is it that the story or stories, which have been passed from generation to generation for 500 years, could lead, in our era of lightning fast communication, to a population suffering from uninformed states of misinformation and myths regarding this 500-year-old relationship?

So in order to address the generation-to-generation understanding of Canadians as being misinformed by myths and misinformation, perhaps we should first look to those institutions tasked with cross-generational communication: formal education.

For the time being we will simply outline some points drawn from the Canadian Encyclopedia.

Early Jesuit education in New France focused upon literacy given the oral traditions of Aboriginal communities. Loyalty to King and God were expected outcomes. British patriotism and Judeo-Christian morality equally drew emphasis in British colonies. After Confederation, curriculum was based upon common conservative social values and to maintain the distinctive identities of selected groups.

By the mid-1800s, state-controled schooling emerged as the principle tool for assimilating “alien” elements through the establishment of libraries, centralized text book presses, professional teachers and land grants for universities. In other words, formal education emerged as a universal institution for inculcating the population with state-sponsored objectives through hierarchically organized institutions. Currculum was implemented through uniform textbooks and policed through inspection and examinations with the objective of building “a system that aspired to have all children taught to believe, to think and to behave in a similar way”. (see History of Education )

So with this short overview, we have some indication of the institutions and interests which may have contributed to the present state of knowledge and belief of the broader Canadian public and the misinformation and myths which characterize its 500-year-old relationship with Aboriginal Peoples. So perhaps we should keep this in mind as we proceed. With special emphasis on the story of how formal education emerged as a universal institution for inculcating the population with state-sponsored objectives through hierarchically organized institutions.

Resource Rulers: Fortune & Folly on Canada’s Road to Resources

Summary

After winning an unprecedented 150 court rulings in the Canadian resource sector, it’s natives – Resource Rulers – who now determine the outcome of resource plays. The defining feature of this historic struggle has been the remarkable rise of native empowerment. Today, many resource-rich regions are low-level conflict zones where government, industry, eco-activists, and natives vie for supremacy. This book offers a way forward with new rules of engagement for resource development and for winning outcomes in the road-to-resources sweepstakes. source

Author

The author of this book – a former federal energy regulator, treaty negotiator, and dispute settlement facilitator – was a key participant in some of the most turbulent resource sector disputes in modern times. He unravels the complex forces driving resource sector development and explains how today’s Resource Rulers are re-drawing the map of our home and native land. source

Here we make a slight detour from the film content, however, the idea is that this detour might help us appreciate why we are undertaking these kinds of cultural awareness sessions now regarding the the life and history of Aboriginal Peoples.

The book begins with a remark by Mathew Coon Come on the occasion of Pierre Trudeau’s funeral in 2000: Trudeau woke us up!

In brief, Mathew Coon Come was referring to the 1969 White Paper produced by the Pierre Trudeau government when Jean Chrétien was the minister of Indian Affairs.

In essence, the 1969 White Paper sought to turn Aboriginal Peoples in Canada into Canadians just like non-native Canadians, with no special rights. The result? A backlash that ultimately led to the 1982 Constitutional Act (35) which states that “Aboriginal and treaty rights are hereby recognized and affirmed”.

It is in this context that the 150 wins, which Bill Gallagher’s book, Resource Rulers, catalogues, need to be understood. Section 35 created a constitutional baseline which the courts now had to address and, thus, it is from these events from 1969 to 1982 that the 150 wins, regarding resources on native land, begin to flow.

Having facilitated a number of Walk-a-Mile sessions with the Thunder Bay Police, I often ask at this point, what would you make of a situation where you took a set of charges or range of related cases to court and you lost 150 times?

Of course, consideration of how many times you won, would balance that judgement. Nevertheless, generally, the response is it would suggest there is something wrong with how we are preparing or interpreting these charges.

Furthermore, Gallagher’s book is clearly intended to indicate that these 150 losses form a significant historical trend line. So it is understanding this trend line which should draw our attention.

So who went to court with Indigenous Peoples over natural resource rights and lost 150 times?

Given that the Thunder Bay Walk-a-Mile web page specifically addresses the myths and misinformation of the “broader Canadian public”, we might ask, is it the average Canadian who is taking or being taken to court by Indigenous Peoples over resource rights?

Or is it resource corporations?

And resource governments?

No one in any of the sessions I have facilitated has opted for answering: average Canadians.

And, of course, having read Gallagher’s Resource Rulers, it’s pretty clear the answer is resource corporations and resource governments.

In other words, the losers were entities with deep pockets to purchase the best legal advice money can buy! And yet, they lost!

So what’s going on here?

So if you take your story to court and lose 150 times, what does that say about your story?

If we are going to get to the bottom of this, I think we need to start asking some very basic questions.

Who are we?

And what’s our story?

Do those losses by resources corporations and resource governments, indicate a profound misunderstanding of our own history reaching deep into the board rooms and government councils, as well as, the broader public of Canadian society?

So, this brings us to what is perhaps the dominant question of this presentation: are we living inside a profoundly false story of who we are as Canadians?

So with this question in mind, we will attempt to review the Walk-a-Mile films with the goal of collecting the clues and evidence that will allow us to better understand the basis of the alleged myths and misinformation which burden the broader Canadian public, as well as, those deep-pocketed resource corporations and resource governments.