TORONTO -- For many indigenous people and others, last fall's national referendum on the renewal of the Canadian Constitution was a significant first because of the deal's commitment to native self-government. But despite its touted potential to bring historic gains for aboriginal people, the Charlottetown Accord was sacked -- and conspicuous on the no side were the very people it was intended to have helped: Native people voted nearly 70 percent against the reform proposal.
The previous round of constitutional dealing three years ago, which resulted in an accord known as Meech Lake, had contained little acknowledgment of aboriginal nations. It was effectively blocked by a Cree member of the Manitoba legislature, Elijah Harper, who was pictured in the nation's media holding the feather of an eagle. Within weeks of this 1990 defeat, Canada was rocked by a violent and explosive confrontation in the heart of the two societies that were at the center of this fall's constitutional conflict: the Mohawk Indians of Oka defending their territory in the largely French province of Quebec.
Harper's eagle feather, and the AK-47s of the Mohawk warriors, served to raise the public profile of aboriginal peoples and their concerns as no amount of lobbying and conferences ever could. When last year's round of efforts to renew the constitution began, the leaders of the four largest native groups in the country were invited to the table. However, not until well into the discussion would the premier of Quebec return to the talks, insisting that the negotiations held nothing new for his province. Instead, a vision of Quebec separating from Canada was circulating again, with a renewed energy.
"Distinct society" became the password of Quebec. It conveyed the French-Canadian insistence that the French be acknowledged as a founding nation of Canada, but it stuck in the craw of many English Canadians who read "special rights" when they saw "distinct society." "In my Canada, everybody is equal" would become a slogan of those opposed to any "appeasement" of Quebec.
HOWEVER, NATIVE PEOPLE across the country, and especially those inside Quebec, were watching the English-French tussle with special interest. After all, the natives predate both of these "founding nations." A tragic irony of this process was the reality that Quebec's premier expressed no intention of accepting native government of any of the vast regions of Quebec that the Cree and Inuit occupy and claim. It was probably no coincidence that Oka, the most violent white-native confrontation in a century, saw the fervently sovereigntist Mohawks entrenched against the heavily armed police of Quebec, the province that had denied even "distinct society" for indigenous people, let alone nationhood.
However, much as it appeared that leaders of these two groups had dug in for a long stand-off, late summer brought a changed scene. Not only was Quebec back at the constitutional table, but some real compromises between their delegation and the native leaders were on the horizon. By August 28, the already infamous Charlottetown Accord was reached.
The reaching of the accord was in itself a complex, often impossible-to-follow process for many Canadians. But the months that followed, leading up to the October 26 plebiscite, were even more confusing. Small cracks in the Quebec political leadership became huge fissures as more and more French Canadians judged as inadequate the gains their premier had achieved in the constitutional dealings.
But this was easier to comprehend than the crumbling of the "unity" that many white Canadians assumed existed among native peoples. Canadians learned the hard and frustrating lesson that "indigenous" does not mean "homogeneous." Many non-natives threw up their hands, saying simply, "The Indians can't agree on what they want." Somehow missed were the years of reminders from the Haida and the Innu and the Haudenosaunee and the Dene that they were distinct peoples, diverse nations.
But distinct nations or not, what was it about the process or the product that made native peoples vote in such overwhelming numbers against a deal that "national chief" Ovide Mercredi, head of the Assembly of First Nations, had signed and was very actively supporting? Some opposition grew from the absence of any guarantee of a land base for many peoples. Other nos were cast by native people who saw no guaranteed funding for self-government. Still others were critical of the lack of consultation with native women.
ANOTHER SIGNIFICANT but largely unacknowledged factor in the lack of support among natives was the role played by Mercredi. For many of the indigenous peoples here, there is no tradition of prescriptive or directive leadership. In hunting/gathering peoples, leaders were followed because and as long as they showed the way toward security and health for their relatively small kinship groups.
Among the more sedentary, agricultural peoples, leadership often was slightly more structured, but it was usually female and highly consensual. In few cases would a leader have attempted to direct or control the activities of others.
Into this came the Band Councils, a creation of 19th-century legislation called the "Indian Act." These chiefs are elected by their communities, but their control of funds gives them a great deal of coercive power in the communities. These local chiefs in turn choose a national chief, presently Ovide Mercredi -- who became the pivotal character for aboriginal concerns around the constitution.
Some have questioned whether Mercredi is a legitimate spokesperson for natives, given that his position is a product of the white-imposed Indian Act. It was clear that white politicians were ready to run to Mercredi to have him speak for, and make deals on behalf of, "the Indians." It was far less certain that he truly spoke for a diverse group of nations ready to live by what he delivered.
Dan David, a Mohawk journalist, points to a telling Ottawa confrontation between Mercredi and a well-known Mohawk, Billy Two-Rivers, as a symbol of this tension. With news cameras spinning, Two-Rivers stabbed a finger at Mercredi and shouted, "You don't speak for the Mohawk! You don't have the mandate." "Yes, I do," was all the national chief could respond.
Two-Rivers, a former wrestler, actor, and comrade of the militant Mohawks, doesn't have the appeal to the staid Canadian public as the pin-striped lawyer Mercredi. Yet somehow the exchange suggested that the constitutional accord was a deal built with the tools of the European and ready for delivery by the hirelings of a European people.
The package assumed leadership traditions that had little standing in native communities. And the self-government that it was intended to deliver was essentially native control of health and education institutions -- institutions created for natives by the colonial government, which in many cases do not reflect indigenous needs or aspirations.
And so the deal died. But Canadians do appear to be listening to native peoples as never before, if only because they must. Constitutional packages may come and go, but the people of the first nations are empowering themselves in new and stronger ways -- and out of that changes will come.
Rick C. Bauman worked in the Native Concerns Office of Mennonite Central Committee in Ontario when this article appeared. He also had lived and worked for three years in Sheshatshit, an Innu community in Labrador.
'Horror, outrage, and shame'
Canada's attention in late January was riveted on a tiny Innu village on a barren island off the coast of Labrador. There, on January 26, in the village of Davis Inlet, Newfoundland, six Innu children -- ages ranging from 10 to 16, filled with despair and hopelessness at their life prospects and grieving the tragic house-fire deaths last year of six of their friends -- attempted a mass suicide by sniffing gasoline fumes. A home video seen on television screens across the nation showed the children in minus 40-degree weather resisting efforts to save their lives.
The children's attempted suicide -- in a village that has four suicide attempts per month -- prompted horror and outrage across Canada, but also shame at the worse-than-Third-World conditions experienced by the Innu. In 1967, the Innu community was removed against their will from their traditional moose-hunting grounds and relocated to the remote island, with government promises of decent housing, sewage systems, and running water never fulfilled -- and with virtually no basis of self-support.
The Innu people have long demanded that the government return them to their ancestral home on the mainland, and in the meantime provide the needed infrastructure and proper health and treatment facilities on the island. For 26 years, provincial and federal officials have either passed the buck back and forth or ignored the Innu entreaties altogether. But in the wake of this winter's dramatic events, the government suddenly announced in mid-February that it would relocate the entire community to the mainland and pay to airlift 60 Innu youth and their parents to a substance-abuse treatment center in Alberta.
The incident at Davis Inlet is only the latest example of a growing reality of Canadian politics: that the needs and voices of indigenous people can no longer be ignored. As author Rick Bauman explains, native Canadians have become significant players in national politics, with prominent involvement in issues ranging from the restoration of land and treaty rights to the recent attempts to substantially revise Canada's Constitution.
-- The Editors
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