PETITION TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
WE, the undersigned citizens of Canada, draw the attention of the Government of Canada to the following:
THAT whereas the Indian Act and Section 91(24) of the Constitution Act, (1867) have divided Canadians by race and heritage; Continue reading Petition to END RACE BASED LAW in Canada
Canadians believe in equality, that all men and women have equal rights. We have determined that all shall be treated fairly and that no one shall be shut out of Canadian life, and especially that no one shall be shut out because of his, or her, race.
Only a policy based on this belief can enable Canadians of Aboriginal heritage to realize their needs and aspirations.
Native Aboriginal relations with other Canadians began with special treatment by government and society, and special treatment has been the rule since Europeans first settled in Canada. Special treatment has made of the Aboriginals a community disadvantaged and apart.
Obviously, the course of history must be changed.
The changes proposed recognize the simple reality that the separate legal status of Aboriginals, and the policies which have flowed from it, have kept the Aboriginal people apart from, and behind, other Canadians. The treatment resulting from their different status has often been worse, sometimes equal and occasionally better than that accorded to their fellow citizens.
What matters is that it has been different.
We can no longer perpetuate the separation of Canadians.
Now is the time to change.
On Using The Term ‘Indian’
“Indian” is the precise, legal and denotative term for what is in fact a purely race-based legal category of persons in Canada. It’s in the title of the ‘Indian Act’ and used throughout that statute. It’s in the Constitution of our country, referring to that class of aboriginals who inhabit southern Canada. (The other two legally defined types of aboriginals in the Constitution are “Inuit” and “Metis”.)
“It’s used by our courts in their many decisions emanating out of this burgeoning area of law. Indeed, in an important Court decision, ‘Keewatin‘, the court extensively discussed what it clearly regarded as the important and worthy concept of “Indianness”.
“To me, it’s offensive and counter-intuitive to our basic civic values that we should still have, and want to permanently keep, any category of Canadians defined solely on the basis of their race — and who would possess a whole series of special legal rights and entitlements based solely on the mere fact of their race — the mere accident of their birth…
“Canada’s ultimate goal in this regard should be for us all to have no need or desire to have the word “Indian” in our Constitution, in any of our statutes, or to be a meaningful legal term generally. Canadian history at least provides us with an explanation and a reasonable “excuse” for the original legal separation of Indians from non-Indians.
“But now, there is no reasonable excuse for our courts, our governments and governing classes generally to further entrench and expand this inherently illiberal and segregationist concept into our laws and civic life.
But even though they have the best of intentions, that’s what they’re doing…
“Therefore, in order that the essentially segregationist and benignly-racist nature of this case be brought to the fore and kept there — in order that the wrong and discomfiting nature of what is happening be not just read, but felt — I will be using, as if it were a verbal hairshirt, that precise, legal, racial term “Indian”.
“If the reader feels uncomfortable seeing and reading the word everywhere because it “sounds racist”, then good! That’s the point — it is inherently racist! And as such, it’s inherently wrong that it’s in our Constitution, statutes and court decisions in the way it is.
“For the same reason — clarity of unpleasant thought — I will be trying to avoid as much as possible the use of those other sanitized, progressive-sounding terms now being used to denote Indians — terms such as “natives”, “elders”, “urban elder”, “aboriginals”, “indigenous” and “First Nations” (the last, a complete recent fabrication, nowhere to be found in the historical record or in the wording of any of the original treaties).
“These are soft, vague, very emotive, relatively modern terms. They’re politically inspired and biased terms, connotative of pre-fall Edenic perfection, poorly supported in law or history, favoured and used by governments, the media, academia and by the “Indian industry” generally, and all of whom use the word “Indian” only when, usually for legal or technical reasons, they absolutely have to.
“These terms all have the deliberate effect of masking the fundamentally (albeit unintentional and benign) racist, segregationist nature of the current situation.
“They also have the Orwellian effect, as most mandated politically-correct terminology does, of clouding clear thought and deliberately constraining and debasing free speech and public discourse on this issue.”
–Peter Best, “Terminology”
http://nodifference.ca/essay/chap1
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It’s amusing (as well as offensive) watching our ‘legal beagles’ and government agencies trying to grapple with the ‘definitions’ that are necessary for the continuation and administration of “race based law”…
but if you’re going to administer people by racial and ethnic categories, then you must divide people into racial and ethnic categories, which means that you must first define the racial and ethnic categories:
From Canada Revenue Agency’s page:
“Note: We recognize that many First Nations people in Canada prefer not to describe themselves as Indians. However, we use the term Indian because it has a legal meaning in the Indian Act.”
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/brgnls/ndns-eng.html
And from the Canadian Bar Association…
(“A voluntary organization representing over 35,000 lawyers across Canada”):
“The term “First Nation” has come into popular use as a term of respect for the position of aboriginal people as the original inhabitants of Canada. However, it has no consistent legal definition and its actual application is becoming uncertain as it is increasingly defined in various statutes. Generally speaking, it applies to Indian Bands or groups of Bands and to Indian people, and it is used in that way in this script…”
And: “The Metis are people of mixed aboriginal and non-aboriginal ancestry, but their precise legal definition is not certain… There still remains a great deal of ambiguity.”
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“I am aware that some will argue that “First Nations” is indeed accurate, given that some aboriginal groups assert that they have never given up their sovereignty, and assert nation-state status.
“However, to label a collective of 300 or 3,000 people a ‘nation’ or ‘nation-state’, when ‘collective’ or ‘cohort’ {or ‘extended family’} is more accurate, is to make language opaque and undercut its purpose. I side with Aristotle and George Orwell, who asserted that one purpose of language is to clarify, not to confuse, proper conceptions.”
–‘Government spending on Canada’s Aboriginals since 1947’,
Mark Milke, Fraser Institute – ‘Centre for Aboriginal Policy Studies’, December 2013
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/uploadedFiles/fraser-ca/Content/research-news/research/publications/Aboriginal-spending-2013.pdf.pdf
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Petition to END RACE BASED LAW:
Trudeau and Gosnell
‘Nisga’a Chief James Gosnell, at the 1983 First Ministers’ Conference:
“It has always been our belief, Mr. Chairman, that when God created this whole world, he gave pieces of land to all races of people throughout this world — the Chinese people, Germans, and you name them, including Indians. So, at one time our land was this whole continent — right from the tip of South America to the North Pole… It has always been our belief that God gave us the land…and we say that no one can take our title away except He who gave it to us to begin with.”
‘To which Prime Minister Trudeau responded:
“Going back to the Creator doesn’t really help very much. So, He gave you title but, you know, did He draw on the land where your mountains stopped and somebody else’s began…? God never said that the frontier of France runs along the Rhine…
“I don’t know any part of the world where history isn’t constantly rewritten by migrations and immigrants, and fights between countries changing frontiers. And i don’t think you can expect North America or the whole of the Western Hemisphere to settle things differently than they have been settled anywhere else — hopefully, peacefully here.”
–quoted in “Our Home or Native Land?”, Mel Smith, p.149-150
http://www.amazon.ca/Our-home-native-land-governments/dp/0773758216
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“So, this year we came up with a proposal. It’s a policy paper on the ‘Indian problem’. It proposes a set of solutions. It doesn’t impose them on anybody. It proposes them — not only to the Indians, but to all Canadians — not only to their federal representatives, but to the provincial representatives, too, and it says we’re at the crossroads. We can go on treating the Indians as having a special status. We can go on adding bricks of discrimination around the ghetto in which they live and at the same time, perhaps, helping them preserve certain cultural traits and certain ancestral rights. Or we can say you’re at a crossroad — the time is now to decide whether the Indians will be a race apart in Canada or whether it will be Canadians of full status.”
Those words were spoken back on Aug. 8, 1969, by then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau at the ‘Aboriginal and Treaty Rights’ meeting in Vancouver…
“We will recognize forms of contract which have been made with the Indian people by the Crown and we will try to bring justice in that area, and this will mean that perhaps the treaties shouldn’t go on forever. It’s inconceivable, I think, that in a given society, one section of the society have a treaty with the other section of the society.
“We must all be equal under the laws and we must not sign treaties among ourselves. And many of these treaties, indeed, would have less and less significance in the future anyhow, but things that in the past were covered by the treaties…things like so much twine, or so much gunpowder and which haven’t been paid, this must be paid. But I don’t think that we should encourage the Indians to feel that their treaties should last forever within Canada…”
“They should become Canadians as all other Canadians and if they were prosperous and wealthy, they will be treated like prosperous and wealthy and they will be paying taxes for the other Canadians, who are not so prosperous and not so wealthy — whether they be Indians or English Canadians or French or Maritimers.
“(This) is the only basis on which I see our society can develop as equals.
“But aboriginal rights, this really means saying, ‘We were here before you. You came and took the land from us… We want you to preserve our aboriginal rights and to restore them to us.”
“And our answer — it…may not be one which is accepted, but it will be up to all you people to make your minds up and to choose for or against it… our answer is ‘No’…”
–‘Trudeau’s words about aboriginals resonate’, Robert Head, Calgary Herald, Tuesday, January 03, 2012
http://spon.ca/trudeaus-words-about-aboriginals-resonate/2012/01/04/
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Petition to END RACE BASED LAW:
https://endracebasedlaw.com/petition
#ENDRACEBASEDLAW
“The history of progress in the world is the history of ‘detribalisation’, and the race or ethnic politics that goes with tribalised societies.
We see enough of these in today’s world to know better than to romanticise tribalism – or do we?”
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“The case for ‘co-governance’ between the government and “iwi” {aboriginals} is justified, according to cultural recognition and ‘social justice’ beliefs. However, that is to make a fundamental error — one that ignores the dangers of including ethnicity into the political arrangements of a democratic nation.
” ‘Ethnicity’ refers to ‘race’ – that is, the concept that a socio-cultural group is defined in terms of its genetic ancestry. This doesn’t, of course, mean that ethnicity/ race is a scientific term. We are in fact 99.9% the same, with the remaining 0.1% being differences between individuals, not between groups. But some groups like to define themselves in terms of their genetic ancestry, as do New Zealand’s ‘retribalists’…
“Interestingly, ‘ethnicity’ has nudged race aside only recently. By the beginning of the 1970s, almost no one used the term ‘ethnicity’. By the end of the decade, almost everyone did. If our ‘Race Relations Office’ had been established even one year later than it was, it would have the ethnicity title.
“But changing a word doesn’t change the concept signified by that word. Ethnicity still means race; still means a genetic criteria for membership.
“Earlier this year, the ‘Herald’ and the ‘NZCPR’ published a piece I had written about the incompatibility of tribalism and democracy. Recently, I discovered that the ‘Nigerian Observor’, in referring to my article, had used my conclusion – that there is a fundamental incompatibility between the two sociopolitical systems – to say this:
“There is urgent need for robust public discussion, review and referendum—if needed—on the democratic and political systems in Africa, with focus on the re-introduction of parliamentarism. We need to move forward.”
“What is fascinating is that progressive discussion in Africa is advocating moving towards parliamentarianism while in New Zealand {and Canada} we, or a significant number of the politically influential, are seemingly unaware of the jewel that we have in our own parliamentary system… In that innocence, they are unaware of the threat to that system.
“From the 1980s, the rather benign idea of recognising Maori culture in the wider society became a political biculturalism that has enabled a small but extremely influential group of ‘retribalists’ to capture the moral high ground of ‘social justice’ — but in their own interests.
(It shouldn’t be forgotten that the numbers of Maori in poverty has actually grown during the bicultural decades.)
“On the way to elite status — with its associated political power and economic wealth — the retribalists have successfully manipulated the rather naïve belief that social justice comes from cultural recognition – a belief which got support for biculturalism in the first place.
“Biculturalism has a new political meaning but its ongoing support lies in the old cultural one. It now means that two so-called ‘ethnic’ groups have different political interests, which should be recognised institutionally.
{The widely-discredited ‘Separate But Equal’ nonsense. ‘Indigenous’ racism is forcing Western nations to retrace their steps…}
“This institutional recognition — beginning in education and health — began a veritable march into the heart of government. The ‘re-interpretation’ {deliberate misreading} of the Treaty as a so-called ‘partnership’ {just as in Canada} is providing the mandate for the march into the institutions… We see this in recent months, with the assumption that ‘co-governance’ is the natural next step…
“But what is the nature of the group that will be ‘co-governor’? What are the implications for New Zealand’s parliamentary democracy?
…
“The justification for this elite’s power is its claim to represent a tribal people — so, such a people must be created and maintained — hence, the aggressive retribalisation {and ‘decolonisation’} that we have seen in recent years. Access to Treaty settlements requires individuals to belong to a tribe… Educational scholarships require applicants to name their tribe…
‘Detribalisation’ is described as the problem, so ‘retribalisation’ is to be the solution — a slogan that assumes tribalism is a progressive form of social organisation — that it is worth having, that it should not have been destroyed.
“So, let us look at what the tribe or clan is.
“It is the oldest way to organise a social group. The cement is kinship. As the group gets larger, it becomes a race or ethnic group.
The group’s distinctiveness is the result of a shared history which may be very long, as with Australian Aborigines, or relatively short, as with Maori. However, a shared history does not mean that the tribe, or any group for that matter, should have a distinctive political system that never changes.
“If there is no change, then those people are locked into a kin-based political system for all time. There can be no modernity, no progress, no future.
“One of the benefits of colonisation, and there are a number, is the destruction of tribalism.
“For slaves and lower caste people, it was liberation.
“Of course, the chiefly caste did not agree and today we see the resurgence of those who would be their inheritors.
“The new elite is a self-proclaimed aristocracy, justifying their ambition in romantic appeals to an Arcadian past.
“Tribalism must be destroyed for democracy to exist.
Democracy’s superiority as a political system is that it is the final stage in the separation of the kin/race character of a socio-cultural group, from its political character.
“It has achieved this separation by creating the secular public space where politics takes place, and by creating the citizen as the political subject for that space. The separation has not been easy, even in its final stages, as the turmoils of the 19th and 20th centuries remind us.
“We get fascinating accounts of the beginnings of the social-political separation from historian Peter Munz and anthropologist Alan Macfarlane. Munz describes how the Roman invasion of Europe allowed three intertwined movements to weaken European tribalisation so successfully that the pre-conditions were established for new non-kinship forms of governance — although democracy was still a long way into the future.
“The Romans brought Greek civilisation, Roman law, and Christianity. This was a heady combination that undermined tribalism and laid the pre-conditions for the break-up of kin and race-based political structures.
“In his ‘Making of the Modern World’, Alan Macfarlane…also traces the rise of the modern world to the early break-up of tribalism. He refers to the legal right of women in Anglo-Saxon England to will property outside the kin-group, to show the weakening of kinship as a public political organising force by the 8th and 9th centuries.
“The history of progress in the world is the history of ‘detribalisation’, and the race or ethnic politics that goes with tribalised societies…
“Tribal politics is necessarily undemocratic because of the criteria for membership and the system of leadership… This suits those who would lead the tribe because it guarantees a population that only they can represent. Leadership is also undemocratic because there is no clear separation of kin status and political status.
“So, the question for us is not why the ‘iwi’ elite is using retribal strategies to gain increasing political power and economic wealth – any emerging elite that chances upon a direct and easy means to get its way, will take it.
The intriguing question is how has a population with 161 years of democracy under its belt allowed this to happen.
“Whatarangi Winiata, the Maori Party’s ideologue, was the brains behind the division of the Anglican Church into three racial groups in the 1980s. He must be good because here was the ‘Universal Church’, one that had played a major role in the break-up of kinship organisation since the first centuries AD, meekly accepting a return to race-based division. Winiata has said that the Church’s three-party model is the model for New Zealand. ‘Co-governance’ is the current step…
“As an academic, I find the skill of the retribalising elite’s manipulative strategies fascinating. As a New Zealand citizen, I despair for our country when we do not know the value of what we have got.”
–‘Democracy and Tribalism’,
Dr. Elizabeth Rata, November 17, 2013
http://www.nzcpr.com/democracy-and-tribalism/#more-9879
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“The greatest danger to democracy comes from tribalism.
“In most of the world, democracy usually fails as a direct result of tribalism. People divide up into tribes based on ethnicity, or religion, and vote exclusively along tribal lines.
“The result is that it doesn’t matter what the issues are, or who the candidates are. The result is foreordained…
“Whether we’re talking Shiites in Iran, or Xhosa in South Africa, northern Italians or Japanese nationalists, tribalism covers up corruption and makes free institutions difficult to sustain. Issues don’t matter, the candidates don’t matter, charges of corruption don’t matter. What matters is power, what matters is tribe, and you follow along.”
http://www.danablankenhorn.com/2013/05/tribalism.html
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Petition to END RACE BASED LAW
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mail to: endracebasedlawpetition@gmail.com
JOIN US IN THE FUTURE OF A UNIFIED CANADA
Why does it garner so much fear, just the mere mention to END RACE BASED LAW?
Aside from race laws in our constitution, the Indian Act needs to be abolished, and so many of the aboriginals feel the same way about it, so why are we not all doing this together? Them included.
Why can’t we END RACE BASED LAW, abolish the Indian Act, and stop feeding the Indian Industry?
It’s section 35 in our constitution that’s allowed court cases to carry on all across this country, at taxpayer’s expense, and all it’s done is continue to enable the blame game, keeping us all stuck in that dialogue, which is the backbone to the Indian Industry.
None of these laws really serve anyone, except the lawyers and lobbyists, and those who are out to use them for their own personal benefit, at the expense of others, including the aboriginals.
ALL politicians must be held accountable to the taxpayer, this is not some new concept, it’s OUR money and we have a say in how it’s spent. And so do the aboriginals who are not in charge of that money, but whose leaders get it on their behalf.
Surely if we are able to help people, we can help the individual person without having to feed an ever-growing, ever more costly Indian Industry.
Canada can offer up the programs they need, help with job training, education, and health, but since most of the money is going to lawyers and lobbyists, why are we doing it? Why are the aboriginals not on board with us?
My goal is to open up the conversation to challenge everyone to rethink these laws, and to remove them from our constitution, and get on with the reality of us ALL being in this together.
The personal attacks that came from the cyber gang of “Idle No More” created such an unfortunate image for themselves, it made it nearly impossible for us to concentrate on much else.
HOWEVER, there are many more great people out there in the aboriginal communities who are working hard to contribute positive change, and they’re the people who will make a difference. The haters will only cost everyone.
I just think it’s time for all Canadians, the aboriginals included, to stop acquiescing to the blame game Indian Industry, and to start figuring out how we all move into the future together, because it’s not going to get better the way it’s going. It’s only gotten worse.
This is not an initiative to bash the native culture, to incite hate towards them, or to see them falter.
The opposite.
This is a conversation to talk about how to help fix and change what’s broken, so things get better.
As hard as this conversation is for everyone, we have to have it because things have to change. We can do better, and we have to ask the aboriginals to come with us, and to help nurture a healthier relationship with everyone. The focus needs to shift towards unity and common goals, not on blame, hate, racism and extortion.
The Indian Industry is NOT the average man/woman/child who needs help…it’s non-native and native lawyers, lobbyists and activists who have a vested interest in keeping the blame game alive. It is so detrimental to everyone. It’s created Apartheid, segregation and divisiveness.
Like I say….we can do better.
Michele Tittler
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Petition to END RACE BASED LAW:
https://endracebasedlaw.com/petition
#ENDRACEBASEDLAW
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