Walk-a-Mile Film 1 - Coming To Terms

The first film, Coming to Terms, will draw us from a consideration of racism to that of colonialism.

So from the outset the story of Thunder Bay is the story of resource extraction. So how are we to understand the connection between “drastic colonial processes” and the exclusion of the “original inhabitants of Anemkii Wequedong”?

Indigenous Peoples were vital participants in the fur trade society which lasted for approximately 250 years. How did they come to be excluded over the last 150 years?

Anemkii Wequedong?

• anemkii: thunderbird
• wequedong: bay

Thus, anemkii wequedong means bay of the thunderbird in anishnaabemowin.

By the way, if you’re not aware, thunderbirds aren’t to be messed with…just so you know.

So the observation that shifting demographics has brought racial tensions to the surface, suggests that such tensions may have been lingering below the surface for some time.

Are we at a “pivotal moment” in our history?

Of course, to understand a pivotal moment, we need to understand what comes before and what comes after, and how they differ.

Does the shifting demographic carry with it a powerful transformative force?

If so, what is this force and what does it mean?

What is the transformation that might be in play at this pivot point? What substantive differences need to be in play for this to be a pivotal, transformative moment?

The view that Native People would “fade away” was certainly the attitude of post-Confederation Canadians. And if the Indians needed a little nudge, the Confederation colonial society was prepared to do their part. For example, the Indian Act and residential schools come to mind.

Oops, “the Indians are back”.

So, why is that a problem for our story?

Is the disappearing of the Indians vital to the Canadian story? Is this why their resurgence is so problematic?

• “…definitely racism in Thunder Bay…”

Is this unusual to Thunder Bay?

Is Thunder Bay unique in it’s culture of racism?

And how should we understand and approach racism as an issue?

• “…denial…”

How should we understand this denial?

Is it a case of conscious lying? Is it a conscious act of hypocrisy? Is it an act of willful blindness?

Or is it an authentic act of honest people not seeing what is in fact right in front of them?

Of course, denial was key to the Freudian interpretation of neuroses, the unconscious and the divided psyche at war with itself. Such considerations may prove helpful in understanding strategies and tactics of colonial cultures. For now, we will simply make note of that possibility.

• “…its basically dehumanization…”

How should we understand dehumanization?

What’s the value or strategic benefit to be derived from dehumanizing a group of people?

Hint: the doctrine of discovery.

For now, we will simply note that historically, the doctrine of discovery was the legal basis upon which Europeans claimed territories outside Europe where Europeans found themselves making conflicting claims. This papal-blessed doctrine stated that the first European power to discover a territory could claim legal title to it. This doctrine worked in conjunction with the concept of terra nullius, that is, that the land was empty of habitation.

Thus, dehumanization became central to the practice of this doctrine insofar as Indigenous Peoples, by virtue of not living on territories in a fashion legally recognized by European law, were deemed not to be truly human. Viewed as living off the land more like animals, Indigenous Peoples were not recognized as capable of making a claim of legal title to the lands in which they lived. Bottom line, they did not have farms with fences so they could not claim legal title to property.

So dehumanization became a central part of the colonial rationalization for why immigrant populations could claim title to Indigenous territories and the domination of Indigenous Peoples.

So dehumanization is historically important to the founding story of the colonial state and society and to the ideology of legitimacy whereby they sought to take control of Indigenous Peoples and their territories.

Is this why the resurgence of Indigenous Peoples is an unhappy event for our story? Because it threatens to contradict the colonial version of events?

• “…cannot find a place to live…”

This may certainly suggest a culture of exclusion, going beyond a tight housing market, where exclusionary cultural norms operate behind, if not within, the legal framework of a colonial society.

Is this principle of exclusion simply racism, or is there something more to it?

There are many races in Thunder Bay, insofar as it reflects the multicultural modern history of Canada. Racial difference and racial tension is not unusual where races mix.

• “…you should not have to change your name…”

Changing names is not that unusual an experience in Canada. Many immigrant communities have stories about how families changed their names to fit in or were changed by immigration officers or any government official tasked with writing peoples names into some kind of official record. The name as written became the name as lived.

Of course, such name changing is often a reflection of dominant versus subordinate cultures in a mixed society. And again, this is reflected in the stories of modern, multicultural Canada.

However, is the Indigenous experience simply to be subsumed under the immigrant experience of a subordinate Other by a dominant group?

Or, should we be on the lookout for something more than this kind of immigrant experience of Otherness, when it comes to understanding the experience of Indigenous Peoples in their own country? Is there something similar but profoundly different in play here? Can the immigrant and the indigenous be equated? And is multiculturalism the conceptual operator used to attempt to create this equation?

What is the relationship between multiculturalism and colonialism? And how does this relationship play out across the relationship between immigrants and Indigenous Peoples?

• lazy
• drunks

We are not going to attempt to unpack these perceptions in any detail here, except to observe, regarding lazy, that living successfully off the land was not without its arduous challenges. So the perception of lazy here may need to be set against the measure of the modern industrial work environment with which Indigenous Peoples may not entirely identify. Gratuitous material accumulation and a non-sharing economy may not draw unqualified motivation from Indigenous traditionalists.

Regarding drunks, simply to say for now, alcohol was introduced into Indigenous societies by Europeans and with the deliberate intention of distorting fur trade negotiations to the benefit of Europeans. However, we will set this topic aside for now.

• “… stereotypes…a story that we’ve created in our own heads…”

These observations bring us closer to the crux of our present concerns. The concept of stereotypes bring us face to face with the social construction of individual perceptions and interactions. And what are the social, political, economic and cultural drivers of these social constructions?

Although the suggestion here is specifically regarding “a story that we’ve created in our own heads…”, as Rachel will go on to ask, where do these stereotypes come from, or if you like, how did these ideas come to be inside my head? Did I make them up or did my society deliberately foster them for distinct purposes?

• …to perpetuate…dehumanization…
• …to maintain colonization
• …to normalize colonization
• …to alleviate settler guilt

Jana-Rae’s remarks bring us to the heart of the issue: colonialism.

What is colonialism?

How is it related to dehumanization?

What is involved in maintaining and, especially, normalizing colonialism?

Who benefits and who is disadvantage by the colonial version of our story?

I’m inclined to gently disagree with Jana-Rae’s final remark regarding alleviating settler guilt. I disagree to the extent that, I think it is questionable whether colonial society is significantly burdened by guilt. From my reading of colonial history, I don’t sense that John A. Macdonald or Douglas Campbell Scott were burdened by guilt, rather they were confident in the righteousness of the colonial program. So confident, they wrote much of it down and built monuments to its success. In any case, understanding colonial mentalities, policies and institutions is central to our concerns, because we need to understand just what it is we are dealing with, and it seems unlikely that guilt is what it is.

Here we have an important link suggested between racism and colonialism.

Racism, as Cynthia notes, is a reaction to the difference which Indigenous Peoples represent in maintaining their cultural practices and collective forms of being.

Why is this a threat to mainstream Canadian society?

We will argue that racism against Indigenous Peoples is a symptom of a deeper cause which is colonialism.

As we indicated earlier, dehumanization is linked to the doctrine of discovery, to the colonial state and society’s claims to legitimacy in Canada.

So, what’s colonialism?

In order to get started discussing colonialism, we begin with the standard definition which a Google search serves up:

• acquiring full or partial control over another country
• introducing settlers
• exploiting that country economically

So we are going to pursue this definition and ask: whether and how it might apply to the history of Canada? In fact, in a nutshell is this our story?

If so, how does the story of colonialism relate to the story we hear on Canada Day about how Canada is the home of freedom, equality and diversity?

And what does this all have to do with those 150 losses in court by resource corporations and resource governments?

Does the story of Indigenous Peoples in Canada threaten the story the Canadian state produces about who we all are?

Here, we make another small detour from the content of the films.

In January, 2015, Maclean’s published a cover story dealing with racism in Winnipeg and was picked up typically in headlines asking whether Winnipeg was the most racist city in Canada. see source

I heard it first via the CBC National news, with the presenter striking a slightly sneering tone from an aloof platform set, of course, in self-promoting, multicultural Toronto.

At the time, I was teaching a course at Confederation College in Thunder Bay in the Aboriginal Studies department, so I brought the story to class.

My response to the story that Winnipeg is the most racist city in Canada was (and is)…“not even close”.

The two most racist cities in Canada are Ottawa and Toronto…why?

Because, these are the two cities that orchestrated the ethnic cleansing project called…Confederation.

James Daschuk’s book, Clearing The Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life, outlines the story of how the Macdonald government controlled the food supply and the policy of starvation, disease and death, to control the threat of resistance by plains First Nations to the settler and colonial railroad society’s project to settle the West with immigrants as part of the global economic system which the local Confederationist elites wanted to take over from their distant British masters.

So what’s remarkable then about cities like Winnipeg and Thunder Bay, is that these are simply cities where this ethnic cleansing project has visibly failed. Not to suggest that there are not symptoms of racism in these communities, but that it is important to understand the underlying forces animating these racial conflicts.

It is colonial policies hatched in the colonial capitals of Toronto and Ottawa which set new immigrants against Indigenous Peoples for the benefit of certain economic and political interests. It is that underlying historical conflict which we are trying to better understand in order to help explain why we are going back to school for this stuff now.

The racial conflicts experienced by folks living in Thunder Bay need to be recognized as an expression of a wider historical strategy of colonial domination and not simply as a crude manifestation of socially inept communities who somehow can’t figure out how to get past their racial differences. The colonial divisions are manifestations of deliberate policies and institutions which pit immigrants against Indigenous Peoples and the range of threats which the Indigenous Peoples represent to the colonial order.

To understand that threat we need to understand the nature of the economic and political interests which see Indigenous Peoples as threatening. Just as Macdonald and his government did in the late nineteenth century.

So how do we make this racialized colonial conflict part of our story?

Ok, so how does our story go again?

What’s the story where we can all listen and see ourselves represented in a true and believable way? A story, in which we are all truly in this story together?