Justice for First Nations in Canada – I. Why We as Christians Must Care

I am making an assumption that I am largely speaking to a Christian audience so I will address this topic from that perspective. However, if the reader who is not a believer is interested in this topic, you will find much here that will speak to you too. 

Now, with a title like this, it would appear that it is understood that there is an issue with justice for First Nations peoples. In other words, there may be some INjustice.

1. As Christians, we are called to be concerned about injustice wherever we encounter it. So, maybe I could end this discussion right there. That would not be very helpful though. We need to look at this more deeply than that, particularly as I think some of us wonder really why we should care.

2. There is another aspect to being Christian that I want to name and include in this discussion. That is the biblical Christian concept that we are a people.  It is rally only in the last couple of centuries in the history of the human race that we have begun to think of ourselves as individuals as we do now in our Western Culture. That does not mean that is the biblical way to view ourselves though.

God created us to be a people. When we were redeemed, we were saved to be a new people. This people is to consist of all colours and races and ethnic groups. That includes all of our backgrounds, and it includes First Nations Christians. This is to be a people united as God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are united. So, as Christians we need to be concerned for our First Nations brothers and sisters and their issues because they are part of us.  If they have problems in our society because they are First Nations, by extension we have to be concerned about the problems that affect all First Nations, insofar as they also affect Christian natives. If we do not see them in our churches, if they do not feel welcome here, I think we have an issue.

There are other factors that we should bring out before we get to addressing the injustices, because they are there, and have been there for hundreds of years.

3. In the first place, as Canadians, we owe the First Nations a huge debt of gratitude. If it were not for them and their worldview and their knowledge of how to live I this land, we would not be here; there would be no Canada.

Think of it. The First Nations vastly outnumbered the European arrivals to begin with. They could easily have killed them all. But that was not their way. They did not immediately anticipate what the later result of the arrival of these white strangers would be. If they had, they might have killed our forefathers. I don’t think so though. It was not their way. First Nations peoples still believed in hospitality and being inclusive. The land was large. There was room for all.

4. Besides that, they taught our ancestors what they needed to know how to survive and prosper in this land. They taught us about things medicinal. They taught us about how to dress here. They may not have had the wheel but they had the canoe, and what better way to get around this land with all its waterways.

5. It was not long though before both sides began to see hat they needed to reach some agreements to go forward. These are called treaties. It was a concept the First Nations peoples were familiar with. However, the difference was that they saw them at a much deep level than the white folks. To the white folks it was just politics and business. To the First nations it was also a process rooted in their spirituality. It was something much more holistic and honourable. It was something ethically binding.

Now, some of you may be thinking – stop! Our ancestors weren’t even here yet when all of this was going on.  Why should we be responsible for what others did? Remember what I said about a people, a community. We are all part of the European race who was meeting the Indian race, as they were first called by us. So, there is a factor there to be considered.

Secondly though, some of the worst things to happen to our First Nations neighbours happened after the British and French colonies became Canada. We are all Canadians. That also makes us responsible as a people, as Canadians. So, as a recent slogan that some of you may have seen has it – We are all Treaty People.   We can’t escape it.

We won’t go into all the details about how the Europeans treated the Indians because the whites thought the Indians were pagan savages, inferior to Europe culturally and technologically. That was the attitude held by many though. To be fair, not all thought that way. There were many who appreciated the First Nations for who they were. There were some who tried to treat them honourably. However, the majority saw them as a people to be subdued so their land could be taken and its resources exploited for the benefit of of the Europeans. Just one example of this attitude is how the King of England in 1670 thought he could just unilaterally decide to give almost one third of North America to what became known as the Hudson’s bay Company for their commercial purposes. The people on the ground, at the front lines, realized they needed to get along with the natives to accomplish this. Hence the treaties.

Unfortunately, our people were not always the most honest when they made the treaties, let alone in how they honoured them. Let’s be blunt. There was a lot of deception gong on. The Indians did not all know what was going on. By the time they did, it was too late. The invading powers were gaining rights to the land and its resources in ways that increasingly and effectively cut the natives out of the loop when it came to the benefits of this.

6. When the white people started to arrive in increasing numbers and push their way westward across the continent, the next step was to establish what we in Canada call reserves, and in the US, reservations. It may have been put forward as a place of sanctuary where the natives could live. However, it soon became a place in which they were in effect imprisoned. It did not help that many of these reserves were on poor land. After all, the whites wanted the better land for farming, which wasn't one of the natives’ strong pints. They were nomadic hunters and traders. It also wasn't long before the reserves became smaller and smaller and some outright disappeared. So much for good intentions and honoring treaties. We stole their land.

7. One aspect of the treaties was that the natives had rights to ground to six feet under. After all, that is all you need to bury someone in. But where did that leave mineral rights? Another aspect was to give the Indians tools to begin to learn to farm. Well, some did learn to farm, and farm well. But then what happened? The whites schemed not to buy their grain as opposed to the whites’ grain and many were forced to give up farming and even starved. The parts of treaties about education and health care that the government was to provide them? 150 years later and we are still seeing First Nations education rates and wellness rates far too low compared to the rest of us. Something is wrong with this picture brothers and sisters. So, we took away their economic base and have not even provided them the same level and utility of education, health and well-being that we have.

8. Then, the whites, the Europeans, the colonialists bean to realize that the Indians weren’t changing rapidly enough to become like us and assimilate into our society that we were creating here. Wait a minute. Whose society being created where? That’s pretty arrogant I would say. Whose land were we on. Or whose had it been?

So, enter phase two of the process of subjugation – the residential schools. Make no mistake about it. By this time there were some in government who talked openly of the Indian problem and how to get rid of it. What they really wanted was to get rid of the Indians. We know that in the US there was a much more violent approach taken. Many were simply massacred and chased off their lands. Our people were watching and taking lessons.  It seems we still think the Americans have something to teach us. Just look at how our current government has followed the American political and military way, and even surpassed them in a negative approach to the environment, not only when it comes to things like global warming, but how our mining companies are abusing people around the world in their attempts to exploit the resources in their lands. You’d think we would have learned by now.

So, it was thought we would start with educating the children to our European Christian values and then they would become good productive Canadian citizens, like the rest of us.

So, let’s stop and think about that. What would your fathers have done if the government had said, OK, give us your children. They won’t be allowed to speak German even though that's all they know. They won’t be allowed to dress the way they are used to or wear their hair the way they are used to. They can’t have the religious beliefs they have grown up with. They can’t see their parents except may be twice a year. Would your ancestors have accepted that?

What does that do to families? What does that do to a people? You are basically destroying the fabric of the whole society. You are destroying their families. Indeed that’s what happened. When you’re taken from your parents at age 5 or 6 and raised by aliens, how do you expect them turn out? How do you expect them to know how to parent when they finish these schools and go out into the world to start their own families? They did not know how to do this. They were strangers to their families by the time they were grown. Not to mention the brokenness of the parents and grandparents who had been robbed of their children.

Nor did they have their religion to turn to for comfort. It was in many ways forbidden. What do you do? What happens? You get depressed. There is no one to help. You are all in the same boat. Where do you turn.  Unfortunately, alcohol was too available.

What do you do when all avenues seemed close to you? You lose hope, you wander the streets, looking for help. You move to the cities to find work or maybe get an education. But you are not welcome. You are not white. You become depressed. You turn to drugs and alcohol. You gravitate to the poorest parts of the city. The First Nations people who may not have been caught up in this are working back on their reserves. Or they are in schools and in places of employment. They are not seen like the unfortunate who have nowhere to turn and nothing to do. Those wandering the streets, drinking, abusing drugs, getting into fights and committing suicide at a rate far higher than the rest of the country; they are the First Nations people that too many of us other Canadians are familiar with. We have come to think that they are all like that. That, unfortunately, is the incorrect stereotype that many of us have of the Indian. But we have not understood, as I have just outlined, how they became like that. We made them that way. We as a nation and a people.

9. And our churches played a major role in that because they ran the schools that committed this atrocity against our Indian brothers and sisters. It would have been bad enough to take them away from their families and culture as we described. However, as we know hundreds and thousands were physically and sexually abused on top of that.  Can you imagine what damage it that does to a person's identity, character, sense of worth and self-esteem?

10. What does that do to a child's overall health? We now know again that hundreds and perhaps thousands died prematurely in the schools and too many were buried without any thought being given to sending them back to their families to be buried with respect. We were probably too ashamed to do that, knowing that they died in our care.  

11. Not only that, but the drinking began to have effects on children yet unborn. Again, we know that the proportion of First Nations children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and all of the disability that that entails, is far higher than in the rest of the population.

12. We also know that because of all of this, many First Nations people, desperate and angry, understandably, have turned to crime and end up in jail. We have heard the statistics. Proportional to their representation in the population, our jails are overcrowded with First Nations People. And, too high a percentage of those people have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and can't function normally in free society in the first place without our support.

Have I said enough? Do you know now why we should care?

All of this is why we should care and should be doing something to turn that around.

NOTE: An extended version of the above accompanied by a PowerPoint of the same was presented to about 35 people in the Adult Education Hour after our Sunday morning worship service in my home congregation in Richmond BC, Peace Mennonite Church, on June 23rd 2013.