Is Obama's 'Nation-to-Nation' tribal talk worth listening to?

I once had the opportunity to sit and talk with two experienced political advisers from Canada's two main parties. In spite of what most of us see - far removed from the political scene in Ottawa - most people that get involved in politics, do it because they love their country and want to make it a better place to live. The people we see warring on TV have more in common with each other than most realize.

One piece of wisdom that I carried from that encounter made a lasting impression on me. 'Never fall into the trap of thinking that the other party has nothing to offer.' they agreed. Hearing that from the mouths of what I thought would be extreme partisan folk was eye opening.

Now, I am no fan of President Barrack Obama, my impression of the man is that he is all talk, show, and hype. An overwhelming percentage of Canadians support him and they are buying into the cult of personality lock stock and barrel. Most Canadians that support him have little or no knowledge of his actual beliefs, voting record or platform ... they simply like his speeches. It is what most people say they hate about politics, playing itself out before their eyes, yet they fall for it. He provides the late night television instant infomercial solution to all of today's complex problems. Most Canadians do not know that president Obama is against same sex marriage; is against the Kyoto protocol; and supports the coal industry.

In spite of my personal dislike for him however, he is making some very interesting changes in how the White house faces Indigenous issues. See press release:

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 12, 2009
President Obama Announces Tribal Nations Conference WASHINGTON - On Thursday, November 5th, 2009, President Obama will host the White House Tribal Nations Conference. As part of President Obama’s sustained outreach to the American people, this conference will provide leaders from the 564 federally recognized tribes the opportunity to interact directly with the President and representatives from the highest levels of his Administration. Each federally recognized tribe will be invited to send one representative to the conference.
President Obama said, "I look forward to hearing directly from the leaders in Indian Country about what my Administration can do to not only meet their needs, but help improve their lives and the lives of their peoples. This conference will serve as part of the ongoing and important consultation process that I value, and further strengthen the Nation-to-Nation relationship. "
(Source: White House)
****************

The words "Nation-to-Nation", are words that President Obama has said before in dealing with Indigenous issues. You may recognize the words as they have been used in dealing with Quebec in Canada. Whether the nation to nation terminology stems from a Canadian influence, as a friend of mine proclaims, is questionable.

I however, commend President Obama for taking a new approach to the intensely complex relationship between the federal government and Tribes in the US. It is an approach that may mark a new era in what has been a dismal and failing relationship.

Most importantly to us as Canadians watching from afar, the 'nation-to-nation' relationship needs to be looked at seriously in Canada in dealings between the federal government and First Nations. This may be the approach that breaks us First Nations from our cycles of dependency on the federal government. For 'nation' in a First Nations setting in Canada means self-taxation, self-governance, self-reliance, personal property rights and economic independence. It means an end of First Nations reliance on INAC and a reliance on ourselves. A relationship based on equity not hand-outs.

A nation-to-nation relationship also means that First Nations in Canada would significantly have to pony up in how we face our problems. There would be no room for weak kneed leadership and table pounders that whine away their days by blaming the feds.

Beyond language, if anything else comes of our look at US politics and how the relationship between the government and the Indigenous people is being handled Canadian politicos need to look at how president Obama is engaging the US Tribal voters. It is a lesson that Canadian parties of all stripes need to emulate.

The Independence We Deserve

First Nations in Canada have long called ourselves independent sovereign nations that partnered with newcomers to develop and build Canada. Our ancestors signed treaties with the British crown based on a nation–to–nation relationship. Those treaties were the foundation upon which Canada was built, and shape our political ideology and relationship with the rest of the country. The once powerful notion of nationhood, symbolized by the treaties, has however morphed into a cycle of increasingly needy demands and fruitless negotiations. Time and time again we face Canada and ask the crown to, ‘Give us rights!’ ‘Give us self-government!’ ‘Give us what we deserve!’

The first time my parents left my brother, sister and I, barely teenagers, alone in charge of our farm during calving season I learned that independence however, is not something you ask for, or negotiate, or demand, it is something you do. As we found out first hand, it can be very uncomfortable and scary (to preclude a Monty Python spiraling debate about how bad we had it as kids, no I did not grow up in a cardboard box in a puddle). It is time we faced this discomfort and did it, for by asserting our nationhood we can create independence that will overcome the critical social situation we find ourselves in. Canada’s largest looming social crisis will not be solved by anyone but us.

Reversing the change from dependency to self-reliance and independence cannot be done by supporting assimilationist policies, championed by Widdowson and Howard in their recent controversial book ‘Disrobing the Aboriginal industry” or Tom Flannigan in “First Nations Second Thoughts”. Nor can our historic nation-to-nation relationship be asserted by removing ourselves from our current Canadian state, as espoused by University of Victoria professor Taiaiake Alfred in “Indigenous Manifesto”. His is an ivory tower model based on an anti-white, racist, romanticized version of us as a people completely removed from reality.

Assimilation is dead, and equally, the idea of removing ourselves from Canada is dead. I like my Canadian passport, healthcare, and Tim Horton’s.

By ‘doing it’ I am referring to asserting our jurisdiction and codifying laws to govern ourselves based on our beliefs, our priorities and our culture – our nationhood. Joseph Kalt and Stephen Cornell from the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development hosted by the John F. Kennedy School of Governance have conducted research with various Tribes in the United States and First Nations in Canada. In their examination of what contributes to successful community-run businesses, they have discovered lessons we can that apply to nationhood.

The first lesson is that the boundary between business and politics must be clear and enforced. In Native businesses where the elected chief and councils are removed from influencing the business and micro-managing the operations, the businesses are five times more likely to succeed than where there is direct political control. If a band operation becomes an employment program for cousins, or constituents, and loses its focus on profits, it will end up not employing anyone.

First Nations must move towards independent dispute resolution systems. These dispute resolution systems must be separated from political interference and influence. Nations must create legislation, codes, and acts to govern conduct. In other words we must create laws.

Laws allow a people to codify their morality. They create an agreed upon base of principals and systems in which everyone agrees to operate. Laws remove governments from acting based on personality and move them towards acting based on rules. Currently there are huge jurisdictional gaps in the laws governing life on reserve. Herein lays the opportunity for First Nations to assert nationhood and build independence. And like the businesses that have a higher chance of success, once we emplace codified systems to run our entities free from the cult of personality and personal gain, they will have a greater chance of success. That goes for economic development agencies as well as social services, housing, education, and public works.

In a First Nations setting we are currently governed largely by the Indian Act. The Indian Act is our law, but it’s an old, outdated law that is full of cracks and voids. On reserves, generally speaking, federal laws have jurisdiction and provincial laws do not (except where there are no federal laws). For example, while on-reserve Native people have to abide by provincial traffic laws, our communities and organizations are not bound by provincial education or human rights acts. Filling the jurisdictional gaps ourselves is a direct method of projecting and practicing our 'nation' status.

We can start by creating First Nations Human Rights Acts and First Nations Education Acts. A First Nations Education Act would ensure a form of legislative oversight and mandate minimum teaching days (there is no legal requirement now). It would also legislate a governance structure, minimum teacher certification and curriculum that are congruent with First Nations culture and language. Presently there are no legal guidelines in place in any of these areas - a newly elected chief could fire all of the certified teachers and place anyone in the job, or close down a school completely, with no legal ramifications. Likewise we can legislate individual human rights for our citizens that model international human rights codes.

The implications extend far beyond the jurisdictional realm. As Dr. Michael Chandler of UBC discovered in his study of suicide rates within first Nations, “…those Aboriginal communities in BC that have, for example, achieved a measure of self-government, or were quick off the mark to litigate for Aboriginal title of traditional lands, and that have otherwise successfully wrestled from the hands of government some measure of control over their own civic lives, have manifestly lower or absent youth suicide rates.”

By asserting our jurisdiction and creating and enforcing laws to govern ourselves, we can take a dramatic step forward in exercising our nationhood. This is what sovereignty and independence is all about. It is about acting to enshrine our rights and exercising our self-determination to produce the self-government systems we deserve.

Rez Dog Redemption

I woke up this morning to find a big hole in the grass on our front lawn. Our dog, Winston, had busied himself in the wee hours of the morning by digging up an imaginary bone that he had placed there in one of his earlier days imagining himself to be a groundhog.

'Here we go,' I thought. I chalked it up onto the list of dubious, perhaps malicious, things he has done in the past: Eating four soccer balls, two volleyballs, and countless toys; destroying half of the living plants in our (and our neighbours) yard; eating all of one of our neighbours Christmas baking (which she had left on her porch in a sealed bucket? I still don't know how he did that one); eating the thanksgiving turkey of another one of our neighbour's (which she had left unattended on her deck, I still don't know why she did that?); the list goes on. To put it mildly, he's a menace. He makes the dog Marley from 'Marley and Me' look like an obedience school master and he keep us on the bottom of the Neighbour of the Year award for eternity.

We have a rez dog.

Like any rez dog, he's part Huskie, part Black Lab ... apparently. With a real rez dog you can never be sure. We speculate, and "someone once told us" that this is his geneeology. Other times, depending on the audience, he's part wolf (seems to keep people on their toes around him, which is wise). He was found as a pup, mere weeks old wandering the streets of town in early winter. We took him in.

He lives outside, like any real dog in Canada should. Yes, even in mid February for those of you that think a dog living outside is abnormal. Oh, and by the way, I've always thought it was funny that some people allow their pets in their beds, but not their kids (they put them in another room, even babies!); while others sleep with their babies in one bed and pets stay outside. Chalk that one up to culture perhaps. But I digress.

Beyond his habit of detroying plants and other people's baking, he brings assorted things home any and very time we let him off his leash, which we do rarely ... you'll see why in a sec. So far the list of things he has brought home are as follows: One very large trout (frozen); two ducks; one 5' X 7' camoflauge net; one muskrat; a bag of white skinning overals; a moose leg (font); a deer leg (rear); assorted balls and toys; and a rabbit. That's off the top of my head. There has been more.

In spite of all of his character flaws however, Winston is my running mate. He diligently trots beside me as I run and he is loyal to a fault. With the amount of bears we have in our area, it is reassuring to have him around the house 24/7. We've learned he has a nuisance bark, an alert bark and a 'take me for a run or I will destroy everything in sight' bark. He also loves pulling the kids on the dog sled.

In so many words, Winston is not unlike most people. He has some serious character flaws, or at least what most humans would call character flaws, but he is what he is and does what he does. We have found our common ground; without it no two people can get along - nevermind species.

Some days we love him, some days we hate him, but he's always there. Unless we let him off his leash anyway, then the Husky in him takes over and he's gone.

Sometimes you just gotta accept that.

Talking circles and other bad things

Talking circles and other bad things


I say 'bad things' in jest … but not completely.

I was sitting in a talking circle a few years back, listening to what others had to say and simultaneously thinking back to what others had to say in past circles. As I sat there in my normal listening manner – head down and nodding slowly - I found myself becoming cynical and jaded.

How come I felt this way? Did I resent what they were saying? Was I judging them, or had I simply heard the same things so many times that I had become desensitized?

Whatever the reasons, since then I have had a hard time sitting through a talking circle. Maybe because when I sit in one it is always for a negative reason. It is to flush away the pain and suffering of residential school, or it is to talk about death or suicide, family violence or sexual abuse, or oppression. Even when the goal of the circle is positive, as on that day a few years back, people tend to turn it into the negative. It slowly morphs into a healing ceremony. At that time all we were doing was sharing what had happened to us the week previous. The first or second person shared something negative that had happened to them the week prior, then that got the negative ball rolling. People scoured their memories as they spoke to find something negative, even minutely negative, that had happened to them that they could share and revel in. Not one person spoke of something positive.

This is the problem.

It had been bugging me for a while but I could never fully grasp it.
We don't use our ceremonies to celebrate life or to rejoice in marriage or love or friendships - we use our ceremonies to heal and only to heal. We use them to come to terms with all the negative crap that has happened to Indigenous people in our past, but not to celebrate anything positive that has happened. If you are so "lucky" (as some say to me) to not have had immense overburdening negative things happen to you in your lifetime, if you have lived a happy healthy childhood and come from a happy healthy family, then it becomes a challenge to fit in to the ceremonial and traditional culture.

If our ceremonies serve no other purpose than to heal, and you are healthy, you become an outcast. I have encountered people who have even had the audacity to attempt to make me feel bad for having a wonderful childhood full of unconditional love.

Modern western medicine has grown away from the old textbook definition of 'health' as ‘the absence of illness from the body’ to a more holistic balanced definition that recognizes spirit, emotion, cognition and our physical selves. Am I crazy to think that our ceremonies are stuck in the same archaic western definition of health as western medicine used to be? Do we only use our ceremonies to "keep away the bad" or to heal those already burdened with illness and pain and suffering?

I went to a sweat once in Mandan country. The men had our own sweat, the woman had another near the men’s. We all went in naked, which was a hugely uncomfortable embarrassment for the other guys from Canada that I was with. The Mandan thought nothing of it. They laughed at us, they held their sweat lodge and would poke their heads out from under the covering if they needed some fresh air, they would come and go as they pleased. All of us northerners sat there shyly taking up as little space as possible and were shocked at their 'lack of seriousness' and even mumbled to ourselves that it was therefore less sacred a ceremony. I look back now and realize that most of those Mandan guys I was in there with came from healthy abundant families, that they associated ceremonies with celebration and joy, not suffering, not recovery. Sure they knew how to suffer, those Mandan’s really knew how to suffer, trust me, but their approach was different. In retrospect I would like to emulate them and their approach to traditional health (sweat lodges, circles etc.). Traditional health services that look beyond 'the absence of illness' and move towards a more holistic approach to well-being.

How satisfied are you with your school?

First Nations schools in Canada need reforming. I cannot think of many people that would disagree with me on that opinion. We are crippled with 30 - 40% less funding than our provincial counterparts, we are overcrowded, and most importantly, there is no actual 'system' in place on reserve. There are no laws which regulate our reserve schools. While provincial schools are regulated by provincial Public Schools Acts, and Educational Administration Acts, First Nations schools are governed by Indian Act sections that are sparse and archaic (they mostly deal with truancy). Our collective outcomes demonstrate the issues we are facing.

How we reform however, and where we go with this reform is open to debate.

E.D. Kain has an interesting post on http://www.newmajority.com/ that looks at education reform in the U.S..

Most American parents are happy with their schools, and this has been true for decades. The public school system is one of the best expressions of local government (and indeed government of any scale), and represents an opportunity for communities and their youth to come together not only to learn but to express what those communities stand for and believe in. The federal government can never replicate the success that we’ve had as a nation locally no matter how brilliant the education wonks they hire are, or how clever their standardized test writers may be. We simply can’t rely on central planners to manage education. They’re too disconnected from the trenches, and too bound by their own clever ideas to respond to the realities on the ground.

We suffer from a 'lack of confidence' in our education system. Reform of the system in the end, will need to come from our communities themselves, with the suppport of the federal government. In the end it will be the parents that will demand schools, school systems and educational laws that their children deserve and that they are 100% satisfied with.

Multiculturalism

There is an excellent piece published in today's Globe and Mail. How has multiculturalism changed? Doug Saunders looks at a U.K. example.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/melting-pot-or-mosaic-neither-thanks/article1310212/

A number of people here – including the most important ethnic-minority leaders – have come to the realization that in our efforts to define ourselves (or others) as members of predefined “communities,” we have locked large numbers of people into the prison house of identity.

“In general,” London philosopher A.C. Grayling writes in his new book, Liberty in the Age of Terror , “it can be said that the fewer identities people acknowledge themselves as having, the less free they are.”

A concern I have relates to multiculturalism on reserve. Many First Nations are becomming monocultural as we gain more capacity, education and training in different fields. What will this mean for the global youth of the next generations?

I define myself as; a father, Cree, Scottish, brother, son, uncle, teacher, Ranger, triathlete, man, administrator and husband as the context determines. Will our future generations have the same opportunities?

Here goes

I've started a blog. We'll see how this goes. I'll talk about life, Manitoba, Aboriginal issues, parenting, politics, training, and whatever else suits my fancy.