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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/luckas02172010.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/luckas02172010.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">February 17,
2010<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Olympics Can't
Mask Country's Human Rights Record on Indigenous Peoples <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Canada's Aboriginal Show and Tell
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By MARTIN
LUKACS <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">T</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>he opening ceremonies at the Vancouver Winter
Olympiad were flush with aboriginal motifs: hundreds of costumed
Indigenous dancers, giant illuminated totem poles, and the broad smiles
of representatives from the "Four Host First Nations." It was a
perfectly choreographed display of Canada's multicultural grace for an
international audience. Ever-sensitive about their reputation as a land
of the fair-minded, Canada's Olympic planners have gone to lengths to
showcase the nation's respect for aboriginals. They made an Inuit design
the official logo. They ran the torch-relay through scores of
reservations. And they bought the support and participation of local
First Nations with a few million in bonds, business ventures and gleaming
buildings. An absolute bargain, if this aboriginal gilding can blind
Canadians and the world to the country's secret shame: the true state of
its Indigenous peoples.<br><br>
The evidence is hard to dispute. Roads into most Indigenous reservations,
some close to the celebrated Olympic slopes, are dirt. Nearly a hundred
communities are on boil alerts, their tap-water undrinkable this in the
country with the world's most fresh water. There is no government
strategy to deal with the toxic mold that creeps up walls of cheaply
constructed houses; even by the government's own estimates, half require
renovation. Aboriginals comprise 4 per cent of the Canadian population,
and almost 20 per cent of the inmates of the country's prisons. One of
the acknowledged suicide capitals of the world? A small reservation in
northern Ontario, where a group of girls once signed a collective suicide
pact. And as I write, I am recovering from a debilitating case of the
mumps, a viral souvenir from a recent visit to a Quebec community seized
by an outbreak. The mumps have been practically eradicated in developed
countries. Not so in the third-world pockets that exist throughout
Canada.<br><br>
Canada's Minister of Indian Affairs Chuck Strahl regularly trumpets the
amounts supposedly lavished on aboriginals. The myth that native peoples
leech off the state serves to disguise the real scandal: that most money
pays for a vast government bureaucracy which only perpetuates native's
dependency and poverty. Billions have indeed been spent not on paving
roads and developing infrastructure and health-care in dilapidated and
diseased communities, but on a legal war opposing aboriginal rights. In
one case alone that ended in 2009, federal departments poured upwards of
$100 million into a court battle against the Samson and Ermineskin Cree,
who were struggling to recover oil and gas royalties mismanaged by the
government.<br><br>
I have it from an Indigenous friend that Canadian officials chuckle about
their public relations campaigns in the halls of international diplomacy.
In British Columbia, where most territory is legally unsurrendered, the
government forces First Nations to sign away ninety-five percent of their
lands as a precondition for discussions. Such agreements were once called
land rights "extinguishment." Officials now coyly advertise it
as "non-assertion." But aboriginals promising to not claim or
"assert" land rights amounts to their being stripped of them.
It was to defend such dismal policies that Canada joined Australia, the
U.S., and New Zealand in opposing the 2007 United Nations Declaration on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Australia has since reversed its vote,
and the U.S. and New Zealand are reconsidering. Only Canada stands
stubbornly by its position. <br><br>
The government has reigned in any Indigenous communities that have dared
act on the basis of the UN Declaration. Since 2008 the leaders of three
communities Big Trout Lake, Ardoch, and Barriere Lake have been
imprisoned for several months. Their crimes? Peacefully protesting
clear-cut logging and mining that would have ravaged their lands. The
government's sermonizing about such wild criminality is a cover for an
undeclared agenda: one land grab after another, to satisfy Canadian
companies and multinationals pining for the riches on Indigenous lands.
<br><br>
"The Olympic embrace of aboriginals is a cruel deception," says
Indigenous activist Arthur Manuel, who marched the last few days in
Vancouver under the "No Olympics on Stolen Native land" banner.
"Canada wants us impoverished to justify seizing our lands. They can
hint, how could Indigenous peoples possibly control their territories,
when they are so uneducated and poor?"<br><br>
The government feigns ignorance about the steps to eliminate such bleak
conditions, but there have been no lack of commissions and inquests and
scholarly reports. The exhaustive 5-volume Royal Commission on Aboriginal
Peoples in 1996 advocated major land restitution, aboriginal
self-government on the level of the provinces and federal state, and
swift compensation for many unfulfilled treaties. It has gathered dust on
a bureaucrat's shelf. Instead the government promotes Indigenous voices
who tell them what they'd prefer to hear. At industry conferences and in
the media their message is applauded: that natives need only pull
themselves up by their bootstraps, like their entrepreneurial peers
hawking traditional wares at the 21st Winter Olympiad.<br><br>
The Olympic games may bring Canada the world's uncritical attention and
adulation. It will last barely three weeks. The plight of Indigenous
peoples will persist for those who care to look, as a blemish on Canada's
enlightened and proud self-conception. Real self-respect will come when
Canadians acknowledge Indigenous peoples' contributions to the country,
recognize their land rights and give them a fair share of the resources
of this abundant land. Not some business deals and a supporting role as
cultural props during a short-lived sports party in the British Columbia
mountains. But genuine justice. Only then will this society deserve the
respect it seeks by other means.<br><br>
<b>Martin Lukacs</b> is a writer and activist in Montreal, Canada,
involved with
<a href="http://www.defendersoftheland.org">defendersoftheland.org</a>.
He can be reached at:
<a href="mailto:martonlukacs@gmail.com">martonlukacs@gmail.com</a><br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000"><b>Notes<br><br>
</b></font><font face="Verdana" size=2>1. Water situation:
<a href="http://www.polarisinstitute.org/boiling_point_0">
http://www.polarisinstitute.org/boiling_point_0</a><br><br>
2. Housing and mold problems, 2003 Report of the Auditor General of
Canada:
<a href="http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_oag_200304_06_e_12912.html">
http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_oag_200304_06_e_12912.html</a>
<br><br>
3: Aboriginal imprisonment rates:
<a href="http://www.vcn.bc.ca/august10/politics/facts_stats.html">
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/august10/politics/facts_stats.html</a><br><br>
4. Crown expenses on Samson Cree court case: Terry Munro, Munro &
Associates, personal communication, February 11, 2010.<br><br>
<br><br>
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