October 2008 issue
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Aboriginal Awareness
A History of Violence
Is what European settlers practiced on the Americas genocide? You be the judge, says our Aboriginal Awareness columnist. But wait until you’ve got a more complete picture than the one traditional history books paint
Editor’s Note: The following is the 10th installment in our series of columns designed to improve awareness of Aboriginal issues. These articles stem from an APEGGA goal to increase Aboriginal representation in the engineering, geological and geophysical professions. Check The PEGG Online for earlier stories in the series.
BY Robert Laboucane
President, Ripple Effects Ltd.
History books tell us little about the terrible methods and effects of the invasion of the Americas by colonists from Britain, Spain, France and other European countries. Yet there is clear evidence that this destruction did happen, and at the very least it fits an emerging United Nations definition of genocide.
Genocide is the deliberate killing of a targeted group with the intent of destroying it completely. The United Nations, however, is reviewing its definition, which could soon include the term “acts of advertent omission.”
If this happens, many documented incidents of violence and dispossession against Aboriginal people could be declared genocide. But no matter what they’re labeled, the details are horrific.
Similar events have happened elsewhere, as we all know. Between 1929 and 1939, some 18 million people perished in Europe from human-made famines based on the perceived ideology of somehow purifying the society of the day. Many minority groups were seen as guilty and duly executed, without ever having committed crimes.
Research by many scholars also asserts that from 1200 through to 1700 AD, about two million people died in Europe in the infamous witch hunts. Well, guess what? A strikingly similar thing happened in America from 1492 onward.
Genocide Travels Well
With the “discovery” (a gentler word for invasion) of America, Europeans began taking land, taking whatever treasures they found and taking slaves.
Christian ideologies were accompanied by European diseases that swept through Aboriginal communities. Churches of the day were obsessed with spreading their “true” faith and saving souls in the name of their god. These ideals were among the Europeans’ justification for many of their atrocities — atrocities that led to the near-extermination of Aboriginal peoples.
Conformity to European religious beliefs and practices was required of the heathens, heretics, pagans, those practicing idolatry and those thought to be practicing witchcraft and sorcery. Fears that the huge populations of Aboriginals would not change their ways caused much uneasiness among the invaders.
People either assimilated, converted and stopped practicing their cultures — or they were destroyed. Christianity would not tolerate in its midst what was considered Satanism.
Aboriginal people, through no fault of their own, were seen as sub-human. They were savages and pests, and the act of de-humanizing First Nations people helped the invaders justify enslavement, violence and murder.
Diseases and genocide nearly exter-minated the Aboriginal population of the Americas, and much grief continues today through the vast social ills plaguing these communities.
The American Story
Researchers and authors tell us that 60 to 80 million innocent Aboriginal people were slaughtered by the end of the 17th century in the Americas, far more than all the other known genocides and holocausts put together.
There were 18 million Aboriginal people in 1500 AD, in what would become the United States. The country’s census of 1900 shows 237,000 Indians remained in the wake of the European capture of slaves, gold and land. Government policies drove Aboriginal peoples from their traditional territory to allow white settlers to take their place.
These events in British America predated the American Revolution. And in the newly minted United States, the anti-Aboriginal attitudes prevailed in subsequent years and decades, and the conquering continued.
Settlers such as the Puritans who came to the Eastern Seaboard of the present-day U.S. in 1620 did not recognize any Aboriginal claims to the land and thought of the First Nation people as pests. By this time, Aboriginal populations had already suffered such terrible losses of life due to disease that the landscape was practically devoid of them.
Whatever resistance was attempted was quickly and viciously suppressed. There really wasn’t much European opposition to the encroachment — these civilized Christians believed that those who weren’t cultivating the land didn’t deserve to have it.
At the Treaty of Hartford in 1638, the Pequot Nation was declared dissolved. Later tribes such as the Beothuk of Newfoundland, the Wisconsin and the Illinois disappeared forever.
Policy of Extermination
The official United States military policy was to exterminate the Indians. Once displacement was complete, attacks continued by the conquerors. If there was resistance to European religions and cultural habits, the attacks intensified.
“Nation-building means pursuing the Indians to extermination and driving them beyond the conquerors’ reach,” noted Thomas Jefferson.
“Root the Indians from their dens and kill Indian women and their whelps,” said Andrew Jackson.
Disillusioned yet? Here are the words of another political heavyweight, George Washington: “The Indians are like wolves and beasts who deserve nothing from the white man but total ruin.”
The man who would become the first truly 20th century U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt, also offered his views: “The extermination of the American Indian and the ‘appropriation’ of their lands are inevitable and beneficial. Such conquests are sure to come when a masterful people finds itself face to face with a weaker and wholly alien race which holds a coveted prize in its feeble grasp.
“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indian is a dead Indian, but I believe nine out of 10 are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
In what is now Canada, the British used a different approach by negotiating and signing treaties with First Nations. The toll on the population was much less — it declined only 74 per cent. There was no conquering going on in Canada until the battles with the Métis in the latter half of the 1800s in Western Canada.
But wherever new settlers arrived, their total disregard for the natural environment eventually made it impossible for the Aboriginal people of that area to continue to practice traditional lifestyles and traditions.
Industrialization’s Toll
Today throughout Canada, most Aboriginal communities struggle to preserve and retain their languages, cultures and traditional lifestyles, but unfortunately they are slowly losing the battle to industrialization.
The belief that a person has the right to the profits from his or her labour is called “possessive individualism.” If you fail to put land to productive use, you lose the right to possess it.
This concept is integral to the practice of private property and ownership, which of course was completely foreign to Aboriginal peoples. They believe that no one person can own land — just care for it and give thanks for the bounties it provides.
First Nation peoples in Canada were encouraged to surrender their lands through making treaties, which is another word for contracts. The buffalo no longer roamed the Prairies, which left the First Nations dependent on government supplies to survive.
Starvation is a great motivator and most certainly was used as just another pressure tactic. There was always the threat of American expansion and hunger for more land, and there was some hope that the British Crown would protect its new British subjects and the land.
The British recognized early that garnering First Nation loyalty to the King by way of treaty provided much greater security than total extermination. Once the threat of invasion by the Americans ended towards the end of the 1800s, however, Aboriginal usefulness was over and Aboriginal citizens were cast aside.
Put Them in Reserves
Every treaty was broken and First Nations were relegated to thousands of small, isolated reserves all over Canada.
Over time, special laws were passed that made segregation and isolation acceptable. The practice continues today, and it is simply legalized discrimination against Aboriginals. This is particularly evident in our still-existing Indian Act.
Isolating the nation’s founding people on remote reserves continues to marginalize them and foster an ongoing us-against-them mentality.
It is obvious that most Canadians accept this as normal behaviour from their federal government. They blithely look the other way as Ottawa funds the status quo with tens of billions of dollars every year.
Most Canadians don’t even demand to know where the money goes and for what purpose. Those that do ask are simply ignored.
Such willful ignorance just doesn’t work any more. International communities, in fact, no longer buy this drivel.
Canadians need to stop asking what is wrong with “these people who get everything handed to them.” This attitude of “no matter how hard we try, nothing seems to work with these people” amounts to blaming victims of crime for their misfortune at the hands of others.
These statements indicate how profoundly ignorant many Canadians are of why Aboriginal people in this country are the way they are and how they got there.
Are the Aboriginal people of Canada still deemed the enemy of its citizens by the federal government? If not, then why are they treated with such disdain and disrespect?
Statistically Speaking
Statistics Canada data clearly show the death rate among Aboriginal people continues at a horrific pace for many and varied reasons — internal and external violence, poor health, overcrowded and inadequate housing, poverty, excessive suicides, crime, bad water and so on.
Some more recent experiments to force assimilation, such as the devastating Indian residential schools, have resulted in rather startling outcomes and have cost Canadian citizens dearly.
Forcibly removing children from their families, over a period of 120 years, so they can be indoctrinated or “civilized,” was a tragic failure. We see the results of that experiment on Canadian city streets every day.
Today, the angry, misinformed wailing by too many Canadians continues. What is wrong with Aboriginal people? they moan. What are they doing with all that government money?
Canada’s political system is said to be a participatory democracy, although Aboriginal people have no voice in the system. Historically exploited, removed, relocated, isolated, marginalized, segregated, separated and executed, they are a small minority.
The vast majority of Aboriginal communities in Canada today continue to exist precariously at the fringe of our society.
Although the conquering societies and people gained much through the destruction of Aboriginals, as well as through the making of treaties, the world lost many vibrant cultures and societies. These could have taught us approaches to life and problem solving that no other parts of the world have to offer.
The federal government is now distributing $63 million through the Residential School Settlements Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That will bring some sense of resolution to the living victims of that disaster.
There is so much more to consider, however. For example, will the people who make economic gain their goal in life give adequate consideration to what effect their pursuits will have on our ecological system? I have heard many Aboriginal elders express profound concern about future generations’ ability to survive.
Environmental sustainability, in fact, is one of the very first questions posed to industry and governments whenever resource development on Aboriginal traditional lands is discussed. I believe we have more in common than we think — the very survival of our planet, for example.
At the same time, we must encourage a society that is tolerant and understanding of differences. This means treating everyone and everything with respect and generosity, and developing the will to celebrate our differences and common humanity.
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