What does a Refugee/Immigrant owe Canadian Natives?

Just my opinion – what does a refugee/immigrant owe Canadian natives?

October 5, 2021

We are told by our government we are guilty. We, Canadians, are guilty of abusing or having abused our indigenous peoples. We’ve been told many times. We owe the indigenous groups a great deal, having stolen their land and tried to annihilate their culture. They live in poverty. They live in remote areas with no filtered water. They have poor education and health care, while we, most Canadians, live in urban areas with the best health and education facilities. And it is our fault that our natives live as they do.

What is true is that the natives live in poverty compared to the average Canadian; I have seen it personally when I worked for the federal department of Indian Affairs and visited many reserves. I saw it twenty years later when, as a volunteer, worked with natives in Labrador and traveled up north a couple of times to their community, where I witnessed their poverty and poor housing conditions. Up in their village, Natuashish, Labrador, inhabited by the Innu tribe, there is no sustainable agriculture; They import most foods from the South. While there was little in the way of fresh foods – fruits, vegetables, fresh meat, there were loads of frozen foods and manufactured foods like potato chips. Not healthy. The government built their housing to southern standards, ignoring their communal culture, which was unfortunate in my opinion. The house occupants destroyed the walls for firewood. They wanted money from the government to maintain their yards in contrast to suburban culture; where people take pride in maintaining their yards. No question there are cultural differences between the Innu and Canadian cultures and these differences have crystallized in putting an Innu community into a Canadian suburban model that the government built for them. In Natuashish, an Innu community of over 500 people, there were three miles of roads built with no connection to the south. All the Ford150s imported from the south by the Innu roared around for fun on the three miles of pavement. Bears were visible in the neighborhoods.

 In Natuashish, there was one high school graduate (I was there in the early 1990s), and the high school teachers, who taught via an interpreter since the children did not speak English,came from Toronto and the South. The children spoke their native language.

 Health care was provided by imported Health Canada personnel and the RCMP provided policing. What I found interesting was that although some of the local tribal people got out of the village and worked in Vancouver, and elsewhere in Canada, they came home. One woman told me she came back to reconnect with her local people to find support. She did not feel welcome in Vancouver and missed her origin.

Did Canadians force the natives into their poor living conditions? Of course, they did to some extent. The European immigrants pushed the natives further and further away from their settlements. Yes, the Europeans just took the plentiful land for nothing where they could, fought the natives for the land with superior weapons where the natives opposed them, and/or tried to negotiate an agreement for acquiring land by trading. Now we think we negotiated these agreements in bad faith or by offering the natives baubles and other nonsense, worthless by today’s standards. Negotiations to correct previous and perhaps devious deals with the natives have been going on for decades. There is official acceptance today the natives were often duped into letting their lands go to the white settlers for peanuts. There appears to be a Canadian group consciousness of guilt for having dealt with the natives unacceptably. We not only took away their land but also tried to assimilate them into Canadian culture, and the natives believe that there was a purposeful effort to take away their culture. Witness the residential school system. So the Prime Minister designated that the last day of September as the official “reconciliation” day, starting in 2021. He called for reflection, presumably accepting responsibility for subduing the natives, rendering them into poverty, and making us feel guilty about it.

This last point brings me to my dilemma; I came to Canada over seventy years ago with no knowledge of the history of the natives. Not only that, but I have never had any education or acquaintance with the native issue for a long time after arriving in Vancouver in 1957. I cannot recall meeting a native until much later when I worked for the federal Indian Affairs department and traveled to Saskatoon, where I saw many natives on the streets and visited reserves as part of my work, in the 1980s. Frankly, I never felt that I contributed to the misfortune of natives, that I was responsible in some ways for them living in poverty and lacking education. I did not take or steal land from the natives, I never fought the natives for land. So why should I feel guilty about their history? The history that I learned in my old country, Hungary, was that the conquerors take everything by force or by cunning. Attila the Hun took the area that Hungary occupies today by force and we were not taught that he negotiated agreements with the occupants of the land in the fifth century AD. The Ottomans ran over Hungary, followed by the Germans and then the Russians, and there were no negotiations, agreements, and contracts. So what is different in Canada? Perhaps we have new ethical standards. But I was never part of the past activities, taking the land from the natives, disenfranchising them, and contributing to their dismal living conditions. I am not saying that I have no empathy or sympathy for the natives. Via my experience working with them in professional and volunteer capacities, I have a lot of empathy for them and believe we should help to improve their status in life. But I am not presenting this proposition spawned by my guilt feeling but as my feeling towards all people who have not fully participated in what Canadian life offers – whatever the reason.

Canada’s population is 37 million; of which there are close to one million natives, first nations people; only forty percent of these live on reserves scattered across Canada. There are also over half a million Metis living mostly off-reserves and one hundred thousand Inuit, the latter living in the arctic area. So it is a small percentage of Canada’s population. But other poor people in urban and rural areas also deserve some assistance. So, should we be focusing on poverty or ethnicity? Having been an immigrant, I have never felt guilty about the condition of the Canadian natives. Considering that half of Toronto’s population is foreign-born, (and thirty percent of Ontario and BC) I wonder if those people have a pang of true guilt feeling about what the older Canadian settlers did to the natives. And, of course, poverty is not readily visible; one has to drive out to remote areas to see the reserves, it is not something one sees every day. On the very first “reconciliation” day, established by the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister showed a terrible example by going on a surfing vacation in Tofino, on Vancouver Island, instead of participating in one of the native events taking place all across the country. Just my opinion.