The Indian—Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

MR. LEAL:

Mr. Beaver, Mr. Minister, ladies and gentlemen: Our distinguished visitor and speaker today, John Wesley Beaver, as President and Chief Executive Officer of Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation Limited, surely must have more energy than anyone else in the world, and if that makes him an eager beaver--so be it!

The Churchill Falls hydro-electric plant in central Labrador, now completed and fully operative, has an installed capacity of 5,225,000 kilowatts, or 7,000,000 horsepower. Each of its eleven units consists of a 475,000 kilowatt generator driven by a turbine rated at 648,000 horsepower and turning at 200 revolutions per minute under a net head of 1,025 feet.

The Churchill Falls development is owned and operated by the corporation which in turn is owned twothirds by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, and one-third by Hydro-Quebec. The development cost $950 million dollars. It was completed ahead of schedule and within its budget and John Beaver runs it and its satellite community to his great credit and to the advantage of us all.

He is an Ojibway Indian, born on the reserve at Alderville, Ontario on Rice Lake. The reserve has existed since 1837 at which time the tribe moved there from Grape Island on the Trent River. He graduated from Queen's University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and after graduation served with Ontario Hydro as Line Superintendent at Barrie; Production Manager, Nuclear, at Deep River; and Operations Manager, North East Region, North Bay. In 1972 he was appointed General Manager and Vice President of Churchill Falls Corporation at Churchill Falls. Two years later he became Executive Vice President, and in the same year, President and Chief Executive Officer in Montreal.

He served overseas in World War II with both the RAF and the RCAF.

Our guest served as Chief of his tribe for four years following his graduation from university in 1949. When I talked to him recently on the telephone, I detected a note of pardonable parental pride, when he told me that one of his sons and his daughter are graduate biologists, a second son is with Crum & Forster of Canada Ltd., insurance brokers in Toronto, and the third son is at home. May we all have such ample reason to be proud of our progeny. It was a happy circumstance that he was able to be with his daughter here last evening to celebrate her birthday.

At a recent series of lectures at York University, Walter Currie, a professor at Trent University, said:

"I would like to speak with you this afternoon as Walter Currie, as a Native Person, as an Ojibway, as an Anishnawbe, as an Indian. I would like to take all the feathers out of my hat which talk about being a professor or being on the Human Rights Commission.

"I don't know whether I've had the pleasure of being in a meeting with some of you before, but if I haven't, then I would like to take this opportunity as a Native Person to welcome you to North America."

On your behalf, I extend a warm welcome to John Beaver, a kindly and gentle man, a truly great Canadian, and invite him to address us on "The Indian Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow".

MR. BEAVER:

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: when I was asked some months ago to address the Empire Club, I agreed, recognizing that I would join the growing list of Indians who across Canada have been saying essentially the same thing: that there is something seriously wrong with the whole philosophy of dealing with native peoples given the results that are occurring.

I have talked with many Indian leaders and governmental officials and almost without exception they all agree that the past one hundred years have been for Indians an unmitigated disaster.

It might be useful to review the circumstances, events and conditions that have played a major role in this tragic descent of a once proud race.

The Indians in North America, prior to the coming of the white man, were as varied in their culture and development as all other peoples--from the poor family unit of root-gathering Shoshone in Utah to the sophisticated state of the Aztecs in Mexico whose capital city, with a population of 300,000 in the early 1500's when the Spaniards first arrived, was larger than London.

Almost all Indian technology was related to food, clothing, housing, medicine and travel. It is not then surprising that the commodities Indians had to offer were vital to early European arrivals.

At this time, Indians were cultivating more than six hundred varieties of corn, all the kinds of beans known today (except soy beans which came from China). Indeed, the recipe for "Boston-baked beans" was taught by the Indians to the pilgrim fathers.

A sophisticated use of medicinal herbs had been developed, so much so, that today none has been rediscovered that was not known at that time to local Indians.

The initial contact between Indians and other peoples frequently led to greater immediate material prosperity for the Indian. The Indian was independent. socially, politically and economically and tended to accept voluntarily those new "cultural" objects which suited him. Similarly he made his technology available to the newcomers.

The impact of Indian dependence on European tools, weapons, food and clothing was later to have far-reaching effects. Combined with increasing time spent in pursuit of fur and less on his historic pursuits, the pattern of gaining his livelihood began to change greatly. This process continued over many generations, starting in the east and moving westwards.

Other factors had significant impact: one was the spread of European diseases in epidemic form. While the full extent of this is not exactly known, in many documented cases up to 50% of Indian tribes died during outbreaks of smallpox, cholera and other diseases.

Increasingly, the Indians were drawn more deeply into the economy of the whites. They became more dependent upon trade goods of all kinds. In the end, this trend weakened their political autonomy and of course by this time they had become involved in wars and depended upon the Europeans for military aid.

At the same time as the Indian's life was changing in all these fundamental ways, efforts were being made to change his life by religious conversion. This frequently involved the necessity to settle in one place in an agricultural life. In this way, in the mid-seventeenth century, Canada's first reserves were created.

With the creation of reserves and the progressive settlement of the Indians on them, the final phase of the growing Indian dependence was begun. Many decades were involved in this period as the broad sweep of Indian decline moved inexorably from east to west, their status changing from independence to dependence and colonialism.

By the end of the nineteenth century, most Indians lived on reserves. Indians in the territories and certain other parts of Canada technically never were consigned to reserves. Rather arbitrarily, we may consider the Indian Act of 1876 as the start of the Indian colonial period. For the first time Indian dependence was clearly spelled out by legislation. This colonial period has produced:

-A race of people 50 to 60% unemployed. As a consequence, 25% of the Indian Affairs budget is for welfare. This is more than twice as much as for economic development which could cure the disease of poverty rather than just masking the effects.

-94% of Indian students can be considered drop-outs from the formal school system.

-In some provinces, Indians who make up approximately 10% of the population constitute 60% of the prison population, most crimes related to alcohol.

-In 1963, the average life expectancy of an Indian male was 33.4 years, a figure as low as it is because of the high death rate of Indian children.

I could go on and on but surely all of these problems are man-made and should not be beyond our ingenuity to solve.

Since the end of the Second World War there has been a sharp upturn in Indian populations. With this increase has come the growth of provincial and federal Indian organizations purporting to speak for Indians generally, and the growth of Indian leaders articulate and capable of using organizational and media techniques.

What they are saying is not something newly created. It has existed all along in the minds and hearts of Indian people.

In general terms it is this: native people have always seen the Europeans as intruders who imposed themselves upon the land as usurpers and who were destroyers of Indian rights and heritage. They, therefore, have the same feelings and views as third world peoples who now are emerging also from colonialism. George Manuel of the National Indian Brotherhood recently wrote a book called The Fourth World in which he described this relationship and argued the necessity for coexistence of cultures.

There is a great tendency to continue the principle of Indian integration in which they are treated as just another contributing unit to the cultural mosaic of Canada. There is the feeling that if native people are given enough assistance they can compete as ordinary Canadians within the economic and political framework as it now exists.

The Indians in this country have never accepted this view. Because of their original land rights, they feel they have an equity interest in resource development and a special degree of political autonomy within Canada. Without these two ingredients, no aboriginal people has ever escaped the valley of degradation, poverty and despair that occurs when faced with a technological society.

Traditionally in Canada, the view of the Department of Indian Affairs has been that the Indian must play the Canadian game. Assistance is given only on a gratuitous basis, almost as charity, rather than as a right. Integration has not worked but it is better than the segregation policy", which was also tried at various times in Canada as well as in other places in the world. Indians in Canada are coexisting as a separate people. There is very little integration and equality.

Indians feel strongly that they do have a special status under the Canadian constitution, Canadian law and by government policies.

I believe these views must be accepted if a successful relationship is to be established. This acceptance should include returning decision-making processes to Indian organizations to solve their own problems, thus giving them real political and economic clout. These rights were originally recognized by Europeans but more than a century of whittling has reduced them to a figurative sliver.

In many cases, these rights were pared or eliminated by treaties, the spirit of which was not lived up to. In other instances no settlements at all were considered or made. In any event, in completing treaties surely there is an assumption of free consent and equality of the contracting parties. This was rarely the case, as the native people seldom understood the full implications of a treaty. At any rate, the superior power and interests on one side saw to it that a treaty provided the Indians with only enough to prevent active resistance. The Indians were not equipped with enough history to understand the dreadful fate to which they were consigning themselves. A result is that the original treaties were not even designed to prevent or alleviate the tragedy of today which has been spawned by unfolding events. Surely any just government would recognize this and accept that negotiating treaties where none existed before still leaves much unfinished business, business that should not be rejected because it has budgetary implications for the Canadian people.

If the sum total of all treaties ever signed was computed, it would be a mere pittance for the resultant gain of half a continent.

The present day agreements--they are not called treaties as that might imply Indians are a distinct nation in Canada--should not be regarded as just more real estate transactions, but should be instruments calculated to provide permanent economic and political power. Unless today's agreements accomplish this, they will prove to be as inadequate as previous treaties; and Indians themselves must once again share the blame.

I used the term "permanent" in speaking of economic and political strength. Along this line, I believe the following factors should be integral parts of 411 Indian agreements:

1. The choice of land to be retained should not be made exclusively on the peculiarly Indian preference factors of hunting, fishing and trapping but only after a complete resource inventory has been done. One only has to look at the location and value of some Indian reserves today to understand the importance of this factor.

2. To provide a contingency for the possible failure of native corporations funded by initial cash settlements, royalties in perpetuity should be incorporated.

3. Settlements in the first place should only be made in the face of economic projects the value of which is known and there should be fair sharing based on this knowledge.

4. Indians must be strongly represented in the evolving municipal and regional governments or they will again become an irrelevant group living on the periphery of a government whose decisions primarily are for the new arrivals.

Native development corporations, which now are being created, can obtain the necessary experience and expertise by becoming equity partners with existing Crown and private corporations. A broad program of financial and corporate training of Indians to fill expanding future roles is necessary.

I would hope these corporations would be sufficiently broadly based to permit business funding and development across the whole country, recognizing that priority will be given to the home region. This will provide a much greater possibility for revenue-producing ventures and will give evidence of the traditional Indian qualities of sharing and giving.

Great care should be taken, on one hand to prevent so many strings being attached to these cash settlement funds that the Indians have only exchanged one paternalistic instrument for another, and on the other hand to ensure that wise, experienced management is followed to minimize risks of failure.

If these funds are used primarily for economic development then, for the first time, economic self-sufficiency is possible. An unsatisfactory possibility, though, would be to use these funds for capital improvement projects which produce no revenue--perhaps for community services normally provided from government revenues. Should this happen, then over the years the funds will be dissipated and the people will be no closer to economic self-sufficiency. Government would not really have made an extraordinary payment at all. It simply would have made a lump sum payment, in advance, for services it was already responsible for providing.

I have indicated political power as being important. What is required is national political representation. There have been many private members of Parliament who have been friends and supporters of the native peoples, but an adequate representation of Indian viewpoints has never existed politically in the House of Commons or administratively in the Department of Indian .Affairs. I exclude from these comments the present national and provincial Indian organizations.

Serious consideration should be given to electing an Indian member from each of the provinces and territories. These would be chosen from and elected by all Indian, Eskimo and Metis people. They could be an important link in bridging the increasing gap of mistrust and the lack of communication that has existed for centuries between the government and native peoples. It would alleviate the ever-present problem as to whether any Indian organization properly represents all the Indians they claim they do. With over 2,000 reserves and their associated chiefs and councils, diverse problems and outlooks, historic differences including enmity among tribes, the problem of effective representation, politically and administratively, is a complex and difficult one.

Surely our definition of Canadian citizenship is not so narrow or restrictive as to deny native people the recognition and the institutions so they themselves can find their own long-term solutions.

In speaking of the vision that Indian leaders have for their people, a modern Indian chief has described it in these moving words: "Oh, God! Like the thunderbird of old I shall rise again out of the sea. I shall grab the instruments of the white man's success--his education, his skills--and with these new tools, I shall build my race into the proudest segment of your society. Before I follow the great Chiefs who have gone before us, O Canada, I shall see these things come to pass. I shall see our young braves and our chiefs sitting in the houses of law and government, ruling and being ruled by the knowledge and freedom of our great land. So shall we shatter the barriers of our isolation. So shall the next hundred years be the greatest in the proud history of our tribes and nations."

This vision cannot become a reality without the understanding and support of the Canadian people.

The path will be long and painful. Night comes and the time is short. I hope you will journey and share with us.

On behalf of the audience, our distinguished visitor and speaker was thanked by Mr. John Fisher, O.C., LL.B., LL.D., D.S.S., D.Litt., First Vice President of The Empire Club of Canada.