What Does Being a Canadian Aboriginal Mean to You?: The Importance of Indigenous Self-Identification in Canada
An Essay by: Alyssa Logie, Western University, (BA in MIT)
According to Andrew Woolford, the first step of controlling a group of people is to “define the population to be controlled” (Woolford 84). Therefore, it is highly problematic that the Canadian government gets to determine who is Aboriginal and who is not. In Canada, a person is only seen as legally native if they adhere to parameters laid out and decided upon by the Canadian government through the Indian Act. This paper will explore the impacts of not allowing people to self-identify as Aboriginal in Canada, as well as how the UNGC’s definition of genocide “fails to capture Canadian Aboriginal notions of being”, allowing the traumatic events of colonialism and residential schools to go unrecognized as a genocide in the eyes of both the government and the Canadian public (82).
The non-Aboriginal signification of who is considered Aboriginal in Canada was largely solidified by the 1876 Indian Act—a statute that is still followed today. The Indian Act is a “Canadian Act of Parliament” that organizes relations between the Canadian state and the 614 First Nation bands in Canada (Fullerton-Owl 1). The Indian Act has been altered many times due to great controversy and discontent by both native and non-native Canadians; the legislation has undergone over twenty-two “major changes” since its creation in 1867. However, the main purposes of the initial act remain intact: to “define how reserves and bands can operate” and to “define who is, and who is not recognized as an ‘Indian’ through ‘status’ or ‘registration’” (1). A Canadian woman identified as Aboriginal according to the Indian Act stated that “the government’s definition of who I am is different than who I say I am” (Council of Ontario Universities 38). Many Aboriginals share this feeling that the Indian Act does not define what it really means to identify as Aboriginal from an Aboriginal perspective. The Indian Act violently suppresses Aboriginal notions of identity, and “does not give pattern, reason or logic to the rhythm of First Nations ‘dialogue.’ Yet, it speaks directly to, it speaks directly for, and speaks directly against First Nations cultural integrity, political autonomy and human dignity” (Fullerton-Owl 1).
Ontario “Indian Status ID Card”.
New amendments to the Indian Act continually reduce the number of Canadians who can be officially regarded as “status Indian”. The fine-tuning of the legislation is particularly violent towards native women and their children, as more and more women who self-identify as native are no longer considered “status” in the eyes of the Canadian government. Canadian lawyer, Pam Palmater stated that “every time they just tinker with [the Indian Act] a little tiny bit, they create new forms of discrimination and leave out people and they have to tinker with it again to try and fix that” (Narine 7). For example, before amendment C-31, “status women who married non-status men, lost their status. Men, on the other hand, who married non-status women, not only retained their status, their non-status wives and their children could gain status” (7). Amendment C-31 attempted to deal with this obvious gender discrimination within the Indian Act; however, it caused further discrimination against some children by granting status to those “whose status grandparent was a man, but not to those whose status grandparent was a woman” (George and Fiske 10). The unclear definitions and gender-biased conditions surrounding the requirements for status leave many Canadians who self-identify as native disillusioned and disconnected from their communities. During an interview for this paper, Kaytee Dalton from the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nations band said that “It’s frustrating to see so many native folks feeling displaced from communities and resources simply because the government gets to decide who is ‘status’ and who isn’t” (Dalton).
Kaytee Dalton, Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nations.
“Blood quantum” is another official mechanism of controlling and limiting the number of Canadians who can be considered status Indian; however, the practice is not widely known or understood by the Canadian public. Blood quantum was “created by colonial governments and eventually adopted by large bands like Six Nations” (Dalton). The practice disallows people from living within their own communities or to be recognized if “their DNA isn’t ‘native-enough’” (Dalton). Sokolow provides a useful definition for the practice:
The term "blood quantum" is used to refer to the fraction of Indian blood present in an individual applying for membership in a federally recognized Indian tribe. To count toward membership in a federally recognized Indian tribe, Indian blood must be that of a recognized tribe. A person can have blood from more than one Indian tribe, but most tribal constitutions and existing federal law allows a person to claim membership in only one Indian tribe (Sokolow 12).
Dalton worries about how blood quantum may negatively impact the survival of indigenous bands across Canada, including her own:
If my band used blood quantum, nobody in my family would be status and our community would consist of maybe a hundred people—it’s been a tool of eradication, assimilation and erasure both here and in the States for so long. It ostracises people from their own community and culture. For small communities like New Credit, we would be virtually non-existent if we had adopted blood quantum practices. I believe the reason we didn’t was because New Credit converted to Christianity a few years before the residential system was put into place—we were already ‘assimilated’ (Dalton).
Even if blood quantum was eliminated within Aboriginal bands, The Indian Act would still alienate large members of the Canadian population from associating with their native communities and culture—so, “blood quantum or not, the status system is also a tool of erasure” (Dalton). As time goes on, fewer and fewer Canadians will be officially recognized as status Indian—to the point where some native bands may cease to exist altogether.
Woolford considers such statutes as “Eurocentric tools for reframing native lifeworlds” rather than “resources for native justice” (Woolford 89). It is crucial that European notions of group identity are not forced upon native populations who form entirely different notions for themselves. Aboriginal notions of identity differ quite significantly from Eurocentric notions of identity. For example, territory and culture are essential components of Aboriginal identity, and “First Nations’ dialogue, past, present and future, is grounded in the inherent right and inherent responsibility to protect and preserve our land, language, stories, traditions, customs and laws with cultural integrity and dignity”—all of which are overlooked and neglected by the Indian Act (Fullerton-Owl 1).
The inability for Canadian Aboriginals to self-identify not only impacts the daily lives of natives today, it also obscures events of the past. Aboriginal notions of identity are not included in the United Nations Global Compact’s definition of genocide. As such, perhaps the UNGC’s definition is not adequate to be applied to native groups, as it does not properly encapsulate how native groups define themselves. With the establishment of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the term ‘genocide’ “has come to occupy a prominent position within Canadian mainstream public dialogue”; however, it is usually used in conjunction with the pre-fix “cultural” (391). The trauma and devastation to native communities caused by settler-colonialism and the residential school system is often referred to as “cultural genocide” and not just genocide (Wildcat 391). However, it is important to remember that Aboriginal notions of identity include cultural elements such as land, language, stories, traditions, customs and laws. If these elements were destructed during colonialism and as a result of residential schools, would this not be seen as a genocide in the eyes of Canadian Aboriginals? Members of indigenous communities across Canada still face trauma associated with the aftermath of years of abuse and hardships stemming from Canada’s dark colonial past. As stated by Matthew Wildcat, “If an Indigenous person who continues to have constant experiences of trauma claims that what happened to Indigenous peoples in the Americas is genocide, what is accomplished by denying their claim?” (393). Wildfoot reminds Canadians that it is crucial to remain “sympathetic to the perspective that Indigenous peoples feel [their] communities are under attack”, and that “if processes of group destruction directed against Indigenous peoples continue in the present, is this not a worthy definition of genocide?” (393). When trying to define events of the past as genocide, perspectives of the victim should be placed at the forefront—not definitions created by Eurocentric institutions and governments who had a hand in settler-colonialism in the first place.
The distinction between cultural-genocide and genocide when dealing with indigenous communities is also problematic because under both definitions the end result remained the same: “the destruction of Indigenous collectivities” (Wildfoot 394). Also, “the imposition on a people of the procedures and techniques that are generally glossed as ‘cultural genocide’ is certainly going to have a direct impact on that people’s capacity to stay alive”, as the “acts of violence, coercion, hegemony and duress needed to ensure settler ascendency are inherently destructive to Indigenous collectivities” (394). Claudia Card describes how the “social death” caused by colonialism distinguishes the “true evil of genocides from other mass atrocities” (397). This is because social death destroys the “social vitality of a community that gives life meaning” (397). If life has no meaning, is it really even a life truly lived? Card’s notion of social death is a reminder of the importance of turning to subjective understandings of genocide—the lived experience and understandings of genocide from the perspectives of natives themselves should be the foundational definitions of genocide. As stated by Wildfoot:
We may uncover new and important ways of researching genocide if we start with Indigenous peoples’ self-understandings of how the Canadian state and society seek to enact the destruction of our communities. If we begin discussions from the self-understandings of Indigenous peoples, the tenor of the discussion has to shift from an exercise in how we assess the severity of violence, to one in which we discuss (and confront) why Indigenous peoples have insisted emphatically and forcefully over time that we are victims of genocide. (406).
There have been some efforts made in Canada in order to ‘allow’ Aboriginals to self-identify. Many universities have made strides to enable prospective and current students to self-identify as Aboriginal through the Aboriginal Self-Identification Project. This project is being implemented in schools across Canada in order to boost inclusion and diversity and to respect the autonomy of Aboriginal students, as well as to respect indigenous knowledge, language and cultures (Council of Ontario Universities 40). While the project still has a long way to go, it is certainty progressive to see government-funded institutions such as universities making steps to enable Canadian Aboriginals to self-identify. David Fullerton-Owl urges Canadians to take on a more ethical approach to identity, in which “the dialogic rhythms are sent and received in a respectful way, which appreciates different worldviews for coexisting equal nations. No one nation is speaking for the other” (Fullerton-Owl 1). The Indian Act and the definition of genocide under the UNGC certainty do not allow for this sort of “dialogic rhythm”—they inhibit Aboriginals from defining their own lives and death. From a cultural perspective, “self-identification includes self-knowledge, self-affirmation, and self-empowerment of ethnically and culturally different individuals and groups”, all of which are necessary elements for the ability of communities to succeed and continue to flourish over time (Young 51).
Kaytee Dalton sums up the primary goal of the Indian Act and other Eurocentric statutes quite eloquently: “Not allowing people to self-identify just furthers the government’s original agenda of forcing us out of our communities and detaching us from our culture, ultimately assimilating us into ‘Canadian Culture’—whatever that means” (Dalton). The only way to amend such Eurocentric failures of the UNGC and other government statutes is to actually “engage with Canadian Aboriginal experience and understandings of group identity”, as well as Aboriginal definitions of “destruction” and “intent” (Woolford 93). Who are non-indigenous people to decide who is native or not, and what constitutes a genocide of their peoples or not? Indigenous perspectives should be the primary source for defining their own identity, as well as their destruction.
Council of Ontario Universities. Aboriginal Self-Identification Project Final Report, Council of Ontario Universities, 2013. Print.
Dalton, Kaytee. Personal interview. 16 Mar. 2017.
Fullerton-Owl, David. Titanic Canada: The Indian Act, 1876. vol. 24, Aboriginal Multi-Media Society of Alberta (AMMSA), 2007. Print.
George, Evelyn, and Jo-Anne Fiske. Seeking Alternatives to Bill C-31: From Cultural Trauma to Cultural Revitalization through Customary Law. Status of Women Canada, 2006. Print.
Narine, Shari. Canada Continues to Fail Indigenous Women Under the Indian Act. vol. 34, Aboriginal Multi-Media Society of Alberta (AMMSA), 2016. Print.
Sokolow, G. A. Native Americans and the Law: A Dictionary. Abc-Clio Incorporated, 2000. Print.
Wall, Goldlin H. Native American Students: Blood Quantum, Identity, and Educational Success, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2015. Web.
Wildcat, Matthew. "Fearing Social and Cultural Death: Genocide and Elimination in Settler Colonial Canada—an Indigenous Perspective." Journal of Genocide Research 17.4 (2015): 391-409. Web.
Woolford, Andrew. "Ontological Destruction: Genocide and Canadian Aboriginal Peoples." Genocide Studies and Prevention, vol. 4 no. 1, 2009, pp. 81-97. Print.
Young, Bernard. "The Importance of Self-Identification in Art, Culture, and Ethnicity." Art Education, vol. 66, no. 4, 2013. Print.
