The White Paper vs The Red Paper "We will keep them in the Ghetto as Long as they Want"

“We do not want the Indian Act retained because it is a good piece of legislation. It isn’t.

The White Paper

1969

Presented to the First Session of the Twenty-eighth Parliament by the Honourable Jean Chrétien, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development:

“To be an Indian is to be a man, with all a man's needs and abilities.

To be an Indian is also to be different. It is to speak different languages, draw different pictures, tell different tales and to rely on a set of values developed in a different world.

Canada is richer for its Indian component, although there have been times diversity seemed of little value to many Canadians.

But to be a Canadian Indian today is to be someone different in another way. It is to be someone apart - apart in law, apart in the provision of government services and, too often, part in social contacts.

To be an Indian is to lack power - the power to act as owner of your lands, the power to spend your own money and, too often, the power to change your own condition.

Not always, but too often, to be an Indian is to be without - without a job, a good house, or running water; without knowledge, training or technical skill

and, above all, without those feelings of dignity and self-confidence that a man must have if he is to walk with his head held high.

All these conditions of the Indians are the product of history and have nothing to do with their abilities and capacities. Indian relations with other Canadians began with special treatment by government and society, and special treatment has been the rule since Europeans first settled in Canada. Special treatment has made of the Indians a community disadvantaged and apart.

Obviously, the course of history must be changed”. (Government of Canada, 1969)

            Obviously, the course of history must be changed, but changed how? And for whose benefit? What was wrapped inside the 24 page document presented under the cloak of anti-discrimination and equal status amounted to nothing short of cultural genocide. Indian reserves would be (further) sold by the federal government into private ownership, all Indians would lose their Indian Status and be assimilated into the Canadian population, and what little independence and commitment to culture that was enjoyed by the Indians was quickly to evaporate. None of the existing treaties would continue to be honoured and no further discussions on land or harvesting rights would be entertained.

            This was in many ways the opposite of what most of Canada’s Indigenous families were hoping for. They had been dealing with the state taking away their children, at gunpoint if necessary, and watching the church and the state continue to steal their culture and education via residential schools and assimilationist policies. With one document the federal government hoped to end its “Indian Problem” once and for all. While the Indigenous hoped to take back their own education and self-governance it became suddenly apparent that a century of oppression and cultural destruction was far from over.

            Harold Cardinal, Cree writer, political leader, teacher, negotiator, and lawyer was one of few university educated Indigenous People in the country in the late 1960’s. His education and well-spoken demeanor quickly elevated him to the position of leader of the Indian Association of Alberta, a position he would be voted in to at the tender age of 23 and hold for an impressive nine terms. Cardinal quickly became a voice for change and activism as well as Chief of the Sucker Creek Indian Band. After Trudeau’s government consulted with first nations from across the country, promising a move towards self-governance and honouring treaty rights, the paper proposed the opposite. Cardinal was outraged and later had this to say.

“We do not want the Indian Act retained because it is a good piece of legislation. It isn’t. It is discriminatory from start to finish. But it is a lever in our hands and an embarrassment to the government, as it should be. No just society and no society with even pretensions to being just can long tolerate such a piece of legislation, but we would rather continue to live in bondage under the inequitable Indian Act than surrender our sacred rights. Any time the government wants to honour its obligations to us we are more than happy to help devise new Indian legislation.” (Cardinal, 1999)

Consider this, though a racist and oppressive document, The Indian Act is the sole piece of existing legislation ensuring any Indigenous rights. And giving it up meant surrendering any existing legislative claims to special Indigenous rights as there were no other policies or documentation but the Indian Act that ensured such rights. Where the government thought it had a splintered opponent it quickly discovered that the recent world wars in which thousands of Indigenous had served, even without Canadian citizenship had the twofold effect of opening up communication between the different bands across the country and opening up the eyes of Canadians and Indigenous alike to growing recognition of human rights.

            The white paper would prove to not only be a huge misstep and ultimately a failure and embarrassment for the Canadian government, but it would also prove to unite and empower the Indigenous communities from across the country. Trudeau, in a famous statement, claimed that native rights could not be recognized because “no society can be built on historical might-have-been’s.”

 Further, Trudeau said, “We’ll keep them in the ghetto as long as they want.” The response would be the “Red Paper” which we will get to next and the rise of protesting and activism in the Indigenous community. In 1970 Blue Quill Residential School would be occupied by the parents of Indigenous children for 17 days of peaceful protest before ultimately evicting the church presence completely from the school, becoming the first Indigenous run school in Canada.

The Red Paper

    

       Harold Cardinal’s Indian Association of Alberta responded in 1970 with a paper of their own titled “Citizens Plus” which became known as the Red Paper. The 94 page Red Paper was a counter-proposal to the White Paper. On January 22, 1970, the Indian Chiefs of Alberta sent a letter of concern addressed to Pierre Trudeau, in which they stated:

“This assembly of all the Indian Chiefs of Alberta is deeply concerned with the action taken by the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the Honorable Jean Chretien, regarding the implementation of the Indian policy. Time and time again, on the one hand, the Minister has declared publicly to the Canadian people that the Indian Policy contained proposals to be discussed with the Indian people. On the other hand, Indian Affairs officials have been recruited for implementation teams to go ahead with the implementation of the policy paper.

We find this double-headed approach contradictory. A glaring example is the appointment of the Claims Commissioner. Another example is the concentrated public relations program being conducted to impose the White Paper on the Canadian public. We find this incompatible with the Just Society. Discussions between the Federal department of Indian Affairs and provincial governments have also initiated. This assembly of all the Indian Chiefs of Alberta reaffirms its position of unity and recognizes the Indian Association of Alberta as the voice of all the Treaty Indian people of this province.

“As representatives of our people we are pledged to continue our earnest efforts to preserve the hereditary and legal privileges of our people. At this meeting of Alberta Indian Chiefs, we have reviewed the first draft of our Counter Policy to the Chretien paper. We plan to 192 aboriginal policy studies complete our final draft in the near future, for presentation to the Federal Government. We request that no further process of implementation takes place and that action already taken be reviewed to minimize suspicions and to make possible a positive and constructive dialogue between your government and our people”. (Indian Chiefs of Alberta, 1970)

            In June of 1970 the Chiefs made good on their promise by publishing their 94 page response to the 1969 white paper. While the white paper proposed abolition, the red paper favoured reformation. While the White paper promised to “give credit” to Indian cultural contributions to Canadian society, the Red paper insisted the only way to continue to appreciate Indian culture was to continue to be Indians. With little left of the original treaties left already, giving up the rest and assimilating fully into western society was too much. For the first time in decades organized pushback caused the Federal Government to formally withdrawal the white paper in 1970. The preamble for the Red paper says:

      “To us who are Treaty Indians there is nothing more important than our Treaties, our lands and the well-being of our future generation. We have studied carefully the contents of the Government White Paper on Indians and we have concluded that it offers despair instead of hope. Under the guise of land ownership, the government has devised a scheme whereby within a generation or shortly after the proposed Indian Lands Act expires our people would be left with no land and consequently the future generation would be condemned to the despair and ugly spectre of urban poverty in ghettos.

In Alberta, we have told the Federal Minister of Indian Affairs that we do not wish to discuss his White Paper with him until we reach a position where we can bring forth viable alternatives because we know that his paper is wrong and that it will harm our people. We refused to meet him on his White Paper because we have been stung and hurt by his concept of consultation. 190 aboriginal policy studies. In his White Paper, the Minister said, “This review was a response to things said by Indian people at the consultation meetings which began a year ago and culminated in a meeting in Ottawa in April.”

      Yet, what Indians asked for land ownership that would result in Provincial taxation of our reserves? What Indians asked that the Canadian Constitution be changed to remove any reference to Indians or Indian lands? What Indians asked that Treaties be brought to an end? What group of Indians asked that aboriginal rights not be recognized? What group of Indians asked for a Commissioner whose purview would exclude half of the Indian population in Canada?

The answer is no Treaty Indians asked for any of these things and yet through his concept of “consultation,” the Minister said that his White Paper was in response to things said by Indians.

We felt that with this concept of consultation held by the Minister and his department, that if we met with them to discuss the contents of his White Paper without being fully prepared, that even if we just talked about the weather, he would turn around and tell Parliament and the Canadian public that we accepted his White Paper.” (Indian Chiefs of Alberta, 1970)

Make no mistake, the opinion of the other is the the Indian Act needs to come to an end. However, it must come to an end on OUR terms. Enough land has been ceded and minerals extracted to keep the courts busy for generations to come. Any real end to the legislation that has oppressed us for 6 generations must be negotiated by us. Not the Chiefs, not the councils, and not the government, but from the people.

Darren Grimes