“An Indian Act: Shooting the Indian Act” Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun
“Race isn’t the father of racism; racism is the father of racism” Wab Kinew
[Reconciliation and the TRC, Toronto, February 24, 2016]
This blog will analyze the over-criminalizing impacts of the Indian Act, Canada’s core legislation that dispossess the rights of Indigenous peoples. The Act institutionalized the reserve system, residential schools, and the pass system (Indian Act, 1985). All of which enacted social, cultural and political colonial controls. Overall the Act created a legal framework that is discriminatory and majorly disadvantageous to Indigenous peoples. Subsequently, worldviews of many non-Indigenous Canadians are built on false narratives that continue to serve Canadian state control over Indigenous bodies rather than supporting rights to self-determination and self-government.
I will do my best to identify the specific Nation and heritage of an Indigenous person or group of people in Canada. If unknown, or I am writing generally, I will use the terms Indigenous person/peoples/communities in Canada.
Understanding how colonization is constituted in Canada should be learned by all social workers. We must shoulder the responsibility of this profession’s practices in cultural genocide facilitating ‘The 60’s Scoop‘. We must also shoulder our colonizing power working with people and communities, particularly in child welfare and the justice system where a disproportionate number of Indigenous people are represented (Gough, Trocmé, Brown, Knoke & Blackstock, 2005; Correctional Services Program, 2015). And in working relationships between white and racialized colleagues that can produce effects of structural violence (Sinclair & Albert, 2008).
Truthfully, it has only been in the past few years that I have dedicated real energy to critically understand Canada’s colonial paradigm.
I worked in Kenya and saw Indigenous groups fight the same fight as those in Canada – for rights to ancestral lands and rights to practice culture freely. In witnessing these struggles I was reminded of my own ignorance about the Canadian landscape and Indigenous peoples.
I grew up all over Saskatchewan, criss-crossing Cree, Dakota, Saulteaux and Nakota First Nation territories within Treaty 2, 4 and 6 boundaries (Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, 2010). For two years I lived in Lloydminster, a city home to First Nations, Métis and Inuit people, and situated near Onion Lake Cree First Nation which comprises two reserves. I was taught “Native Studies” by an uninformed teacher, with peers who were so disinterested and racist that I was name-called simply for showing interest. Instead of hearing their comments for what they were, I pitied myself, retreating into the ‘woe is me’ mindset rather than challenging my peers or trying to understand how their racism impacts the lives of actual Indigenous peoples. Due to my inaction, I have been and continue to be complicit in racism.
If part of reconciliation is truth telling, it is time for us non-Indigenous folk to recognize our implications in the colonial paradigm. We must understand how racism informs and shapes harmful experiences that are normalized in the stark silence of colonization that maintains Indigenous peoples as ‘Other’ (Sinclair & Albert, 2008). This ‘Othering’ is embedded in social contexts and relationships, and it causes deleterious personal and structural effects (Loppie, Reading & Leeuw, 2014). Although I know this, all too often I remain shamefully silent to colonization and racism.
To shift power and enable healing, it is our collective responsibility to engage in un-learning and take actions that deconstruct and dismantle colonial systems. This goes beyond our 9-5 work efforts and implores us to appreciate our daily interactions and motivations to actually work toward social change. To understand how Canada’s colonial paradigm criminalizes Indigenous peoples, I will look at how the Indian Act is connected to Indigenous experiences with the “justice” system, and I will discuss the rallying cries of Indigenous peoples and the United Nations about the “true north strong and free”.
Next post: Details on the Indian Act and policy impacts.
Sources:
Correctional Services Program. (2015). Youth correctional statistics in Canada, 2013/2014.Statistics Canada. Retrieved from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2015001/article/14164-eng.htm
Gough, P., Trocmé, N., Brown, I., Knoke, D. & Blackstock, C. (2005). Pathways to the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in care. Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare. Retrieved from http://cwrp.ca/sites/default/files/publications/en/AboriginalChildren23E.pdf
Indian Act (1985, c. I-5 ). Retrieved from the Department of Justice website: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/I-5/
Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (2010). First Nations Map of Saskatchewan. Retrieved from: https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/DAM/DAM-INTER-SK/STAGING/texte-text/fnl_1100100020617_eng.pdf
Loppie, S., Reading, C. & Leeuw, S. de. (2014). Aboriginal Experiences with Racism and its Impacts. National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health. Retrieved from http://www.nccah-ccnsa.ca/Publications/Lists/Publications/Attachments/131/2014_07_09_FS_2426_RacismPart2_ExperiencesImpacts_EN_Web.pdf
Macdonald, N. (February 18, 2016). Canada’s prisons are the ‘new residential schools’. MacLeans. Retrieved from http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/canadas-prisons-are-the-new-residential-schools/
Sinclair, R. & Albert, J. (2008). Social Work and the anti-oppressive stance: Does the Emperor Really Have New Clothes? Critical Social Work, 9(1). Retrieved from http://www1.uwindsor.ca/criticalsocialwork/social-work-and-the-anti-oppressive-stance-does-the-emperor-really-have-new-clothes
Cartoon #1: https://inequalitygaps.org/first-takes/racism-in-canada/inequalities-of-status-and-the-indian-act/
Cartoon #2: https://blogs.ubc.ca/karenshi/
Pathways to Prison 