In Memoriam, Harriet Nahanee 1935 – 2007

Harriet Nahnee and Betty Krawczyk

By Stuart Richardson

I was not speaking but listening and hearing stories of struggle and hope at the press conference of Harriet Nahanee the native leader seen in the photo above, the conference was called to address her recent passing and her treatment in the legal system and denial of basic human rights. Harriet was a unique person who refused to see the world as it was but seen it as it should be and did not mind putting herself in harms way to uphold this ideal.  She was certainly a fighter to the end, she was arrested at age 71 for blocking a highway expansion at Eagle Ridge Bluffs a sensitive and fragile ecosystem.  She had issues with the process of how the land had been expropriated and simply wanted to argue her constitution rights in a court of law and be judged by a jury, she was denied this right as an injunction strips those rights in favour of private developers and she is guilty even before she steps into court .  Her rights as a basic citizen to have a fair trial and her aboriginal constitutional rights were denied.

 She would have argued her rights under the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which addresses native rights to the land formerly known as Upper Canada and Rupert’s Land. This proclamation forms the basis of land claims and clearly states that the crown does not have jurisdiction over natives. This proclamation is mentioned in section 25 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  The charter is very clear in it’s text from the department of justice website.

The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed to as to abrogate or derogate from any aboriginal, treaty or other rights or freedoms that pertain to the aboriginal peoples of Canada including

A)Any rights or freedoms that have been recognized by the Royal Proclamation of  October 7, 1763 and

      B)any rights or freedoms that now exist by way of land claims agreements or       maybe so acquired.

As history tells us some laws are more important then others and some people are more important than others, as with Harriet who was sent to prison in ill health and died shortly after her release. Someone who survived the horrors of residential school and spent her entire life fighting for justice and redress, Harriet imagined a different world and did not want to accept things the way they were. Maybe she recognized that after all the feudal

attempts and unjust policies and laws the native community is still here. The community is still hear and proud and now more than ever wants to be heard and more than a few are seeking the truth.

 I have always believed things happen for a reason and there is no such thing as a political accident, to understand a people and their struggles we always need a historical perspective before we move forward so let’s examine key elements and perspectives of Canada’s beginnings. The face of Canada is one with different ideals and goals than those to the south, the idea of perfection and American exceptionalism with higher ideals of democracy promotion seemed like an impossible and unreachable goal for Canadians. “Canada instead is a land of peace, order and good government as the official story goes”[2], it does beg the question peaceful to whom, orderly and good at what. If society is to accept these lofty words of peace, order and good government we must first answer to the historic reality and present state of affairs.

There is an unfortunate reality to be faced that much of history is skewed and written down by those enlightened white men and their cronies. But once a social historical context is considered we must face the facts that our novel government is guilty of shameful and systematic racism towards its first nation’s people that reflects in regressive state actions and the passing of laws that facilitate the unjust universal suffering of a people. Although some progress is being made to correct injustices of the past the dramatic and tragic impacts of this colonial project ring as true today as when they first reared their ugly heads.

There is an old cliché that goes, if you don’t know your own history then it’s like you were born yesterday and have no future. As our text points out “most historians were only interested in Canada’s so called march to progress and prosperity that took the nation from a colony to nation”. Canada after all was simply the expansion of Europe and did not include the stories or history of the “wandering Indian”[3], it is only recently within the last couple of decades that some truth about natives is being seen and read showing us that they were active key members in the re-making of the county.

Misconceptions began with the very first French colonial interactions with the native population of the east coast. Although most French back home have never met a native from Canada they already knew or could imagine them, as in article 1.2 L’Homme Savage points out that these were very religious and medieval times in habits and in the way people thought. Anyone for example who lived close to nature and not to other men was considered savage and morally inferior. It was therefore very easy to play on European fears and tell stories that dehumanized the first nations people, their was a picture painted of dirty, hairy men that were uncivilized and dangerous.

 While the reality was that the Europeans were really shocked by how often the natives bathed compared to them as they thought bathing may make you sick via the flu etc. And if you look back you see that natives did not like to grow hair on their body (only on their heads) as they disliked the coarseness, in fact many missionaries observed that natives openly mocked the hairy Europeans. These two examples show the propaganda or perception management used back home, this may also disturb many as to the validity of other historical text we learned growing up.

Antoine de Montchresthen dramatist and economist (1575-1621) found that regarding natives

“subtle enough mentally, but ignorant of our arts, weather nature or war, they do not believe that land belongs to individuals , only more than does the light to the sun. They lonely labour and cultivate enough to provide for their sustenance. They are totally given to liberty, and are not industrious. They value bravery above all, in short if it were possible to remove them from their faults, replacing them with virtue above all, without our vices, they would be worthy men. “[4]

As we see the savageness and apparent problem with natives is that they are not like Europeans, this is the crutch of the issue and resonates throughout most historical dealings and policies towards our first nations. We enlightened ones must transform a people for their and our own good, and we thus have nothing to learn from their savage ways. As we also see in Document 1.2 Father Biard’s letter home, I quote “they are ignorant, rude and lawless, they are wanderers with nothing to attach them to a place, neither homes nor relationships, possessions or love of country, they think themselves better then the French, richer than we are”.

Once again the farther sees nothing positive from the natives but only seems threatened and enters into an adversarial way of thinking. Great evils are done when one assumes a paternalistic roll and sees themselves as morally superior. It may have been difficult for the spiritual leader to imagine a world without private property, consumer possessions, market economics or nationalism but it was easy for the farther to imagine a new world for the savage, a world that he is more comfortable  that does not challenge his values.

This superior way of thinking carried throughout the colonial policies and continued when the British took over. For example the school system was set up based on race and cultural superiority,  as we know in the European model in which Canada was being designed access to education would define the new leaders and opinion makers of the new world and needed to be taken seriously. Although the early school system seen erratic attendance for colonial children as child labour was in high demand we often had seen fierce resistance from whites in Upper Canada. towards black families trying to enrol kids in school. In some cases second school houses were built to accommodate those “unsuitable for a regular British classroom”. At the same time missionaries in first nations offered subjects that were deemed “suitable” for their status and promoted “civilization”

Civilization  meant then as it did later when residential schools were set up threw missions , the idea of becoming more British and less savage or Indian. Indian children were taught to deny and suppress their heritage and were taken long distances from their families and community. Late native leader Harriet Nahanee spoke of a time while in residential school she had rocks put in her mouth for 3 weeks so she could not speak her own native tongue, so we see a pattern of the initial colonial perspectives of first nations followed by the treatment of their children, one must wonder where and who were  the native leaders in all this.

Well we know the mistrusted “savage” was a trusted and close military ally and played a huge role in helping the British fend of the Americans. We also know that British policy towards the natives was a combination of segregation and protection, civilization and assimilation. Once the natives were no longer needed as economic and military allies things went downhill fast. The colonial assimilation project continued with many natives objecting, and the reserve system became a vehicle of cultural survival. The racist policies and assimilation of the culture was a powerful weapon and when leaders that used peaceful political means as did Little Pine (Shingwaukonse) the laws were changed like the cliché goes, when the people threaten to rule the rules are changed.

As we see in the classic story of Little Pine, a very significant native leader who comes to Upper Canada in his later years from the US. He was a cunning leader and was accused of using “scheming white man ways”. He wanted his band to get 2% of the mining royalties for the companies doing business on his peoples land, he made powerful business allies in the white community and diversified the native economy (planting European crops etc). He led a successful protest in Toronto and upset the local population, he had a white lawyer named MacDonnell who championed his interest.

 He out manoeuvred the government at every turn until they changed the law introducing a bill which made “inciting Indians or half breeds “ an offence punishable by up to 5 years in prison. This intimidated supporters including MacDonnell and prohibited any further legal council. So Little Pine’s Ojibwa were left with little power or control over resources and faced a future living on small reserves and watched as many white promises were made and broken. This was a massive injustice by both the government of the day and the white community who did not protest the law, Little Pine still remained a thorn in the side of authority until his death.

The natives were never a defeated people but they were successfully manipulated and bullied by the laws of the state, when you consider the history of the Canadian North and conservation laws it almost brings us full circle to first French contact and public manipulation. As we see in article 11.2 northern natives were seen as savage beast who had no consideration for the land and its wild game, the conservation movement was not politically neutral but was based on an ideology of the late colonial period. The Canadian north was seen as an idea, not a location or place people live, it became a romantic idea in art and literature and became part of our National Identity.

The group of seven showed the north as lonely and vast and magnificent, an isolated and barren place which effectively erased aboriginal people from southern conceptions. This perception of the north guided the policies and land claims, ecology and human welfare were enacted on the basis of the imagination of the legislators who mostly had no experience or knowledge of the area. Many laws passed to limit hunting by conservation groups had no real hard scientific evidence but rather portrayed images of the “wantonly destructive” Indian.

 For example natives were blamed for declining wood bison numbers based on the comment of one northwest mounted police officer. Some quotes of the day say that “for natives it is nothing but kill, kill, kill everything they meet, natives are naturally destructive in their relationship to wildlife”. Images of large caribou slaughters were put in front of the public as a weapon of public perception. While the fact is that Inuit hunting has a complex set of ecological relationships that get passed down threw generations based on ecological intimacy, the land is seen as more than just a “view” but as something they are part off.

After the second world war their was an assumption that trapping and hunting were not longer viable and natives had no choice but to accept poverty or the southern ways associated with wage employment and industrial development. As a final note it is no coincidence that the caribou crisis occurred with advancement of roads and airports and military infrastructure. Once again we see the combination of propaganda and misinformation guiding a racist policy towards our first nations.

Our southern conservationist should now hold themselves accountable for the current day feeding frenzy of mining and environmental destruction going on in Canada’s north, I wonder if they will paint that picture for us. If you dispute the racism I quote an enlightened activist of the day Stephen Best “I own the native culture, I bought it with my taxes. I won about two-thirds of it” and from Canada’s major news of the day, “aboriginal people have not lost their spiritual relationship to the land because they never had one”[8]

Things are changing but very slowly for our first nation’s people, the road has been long and hard as an entire people have been the victim of policy based on racism and cultural superiority. We like to think of Canada as a first world  enlightened society that cares for all citizens equally but the reality does not match the propaganda, it is to easy to talk of equality when you have always had a leg up. But try to imagine a culture recovering from residential schools that ran up until 1996 when the last one, Gordon Residential closed in Saskatchewan. Imagine having repressive laws like the “Gradual Assimilation Act that passed in 1857” assimilating native children to the margins of mainstream society. Imagine not being able to vote or considered a citizen until 1960 and living under repressive legislation like the Indian act.  When the greater society can imagine this we can start to act and redress the natives without patronising them.

When I say patronize I quote an open question put to the readers in the Globe and Mail on November 4, 2001. This kind of treatment of natives is typical in the media of the day.

 “Do you think natives should have special status, or should all Canadians, native or not, have the same rights? “

A sample response letter reads

All peoples in Canada must have the same rights and privileges and abide by the same set of laws. The system will not work if some have special rights and privileges accorded them. The first step is to eliminate the reservation system. Aboriginals must be educated and trained to fend for themselves. If not this problem will go on forever. Aboriginals have gotten quite enough from society, it is time the pulled their weight.
Orlin D. Olsen

Although the majority of main stream Canada will never hear the voices and see the passion displayed at Harriet’s press conference in our media the impacts will be felt. I noticed people from all walks of life in the room and this gives me hope things will move forward for the better as injustice breeds dissent.  History is about the past and present and is about “struggle and fighting and losing and continuing to struggle”. Our struggles and voices get passed along and things start to change as we see in the native community where their struggles are no longer just “Whispers in the Wilderness” but intertwined in all our humanity.  With better understanding and moral courage we are moving forward in creating a better future and a history we can be proud of.

Numbered Notes

1)      Harriet Nahanee Photo, being arrested at Eagleridge Bluffs while presenting Royal Proclamation of 1763 to police , West Vancouver, BC, 25 May 2006 , Photo taken by Christopher Grabowski

2)      Government of Canada Justice website, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,1982,  Section 25

3)      Seager ,Allen , Spoke of in Lecture, History 204, Canada as a country with ideals of Peace, Order and Good Government. SFU

4)      Comacchio and Errigton,  People , Places and Times Readings in Canadian Social History, volume 1 Pre-Confederation (Toronto: Nelson, 2007) pages 3-4

5)      Dickason, Olive P, The L’Homme Sauvage, in Comacchio and Errigton,  23-34

6)      Farther Biard’s First Letter Home, in Comacchio and Errigton,  45-46

7)      Children and Childhood in Comacchio and Errigton , 335-337

8)      Chute, Jane E, A Unifying Vision: Shingwaukonse’s Plan for the Future of the Great Lakes Ojibwa, in Comacchio and Errigton 517-528

9)      Sandlos, John, From the Outside Looking in: Aesthetics, Politics , and Wildlife Conservation in the Canadian North,  in Comacchio and Errigton, People , Places and Times Readings in Canadian Social History, volume 2 Post-Confederation (Toronto: Nelson, 2007) 483-498

10)  Assembly of First Nations Website, www.afn.ca , residential schools

11)   The Globe and Mail Newspaper, November 4, 2001, question put out to public for readers’ response.