"Aboriginal Peoples: Canada's own human rights scandal"

A number of topics are explored in this compilation including colonization, assimilationist policies, economic disparity, racism, treaty rights and Aboriginal self-determination.

Prominent Aboriginal authors include Arthur Manuel (chief of the Neskonlith Band, chairman of the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council and chair of the AFN's Delgamuukw Strategic Implementation Committee) who explores the expectations that the Aboriginal Peoples had of the Royal Commission.

The Shuswap comprise 17 bands in the south central interior of British Columbia, none of which have ever signed treaties with the federal government or representatives of the British Crown. But, Manuel says, "By the end of the nineteenth century, most of our traditional territories were under the influence of merchants, trappers, miners, ranchers and other settlers; Indian peoples were confined to their tiny reserves."

Since 1910 the Shuswap have maintained their proprietary interest in their traditional territories and their inherent rights to the land and coexistence with the settlers. They have sought redress from Prime Ministers and the King of England and, finally, the government had to acknowledge and protect inherent rights under section 35 of the 1982 constitution.

"Unfortunately, successive federal governments have not had the political will to give life to those protections; despite the findings of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP); despite the decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada, such as the Delgamuukw decision (which recognized unanimously in 1997 that Indigenous peoples hold Aboriginal title to their traditional territories); and despite the findings of respected international institutions like the United nations Human Rights Committee which has called on Canada 'to abandon the practise of extinguishing inherent Aboriginal rights.' The federal and provincial governments of Canada have still not recognized Aboriginal title."

The international experts who comprise the Human Rights "treaty body" Committees at the U.N. take a dim view of Canada's domestic record for respect of the human rights of Aboriginal peoples. The record is described fully. Canada is delinquent in producing reports requested by the Human Rights Committees. Unfortunately the treaty bodies have no power to enforce improvements. Having failed with approaches inside Canada, Aboriginal organizations are increasingly turning more to the international community to apply moral and political pressure. This pressure may yet persuade Canadian officials to right injustices experienced by Aboriginal peoples in Canada.

"The quality of life endured by first Nations people in Canada is on a par with the Third World, while our non-Aboriginal neighbours enjoy a quality of life that is unequaled anywhere," writes Manuel. "This is the fundamental injustice in the relationship between Indigenous peoples in Canada and those who have settled among us. The latter have a standard of living that is ranked number one because they exploit our traditional territories and exclude us from their mainstream economies, forcing us to live well behind at sixty-third place. We consider this to be economic racism."

Sharon Venne, a Cree lawyer, examines the treaty process and the change from the times when European nations needed First Nations support for their military stability to the abrogation of treaty provisions when military threats subsided. "As settlement and resource development of their lands increased, it became clear to the Dene that the Canadian state was not honouring the spirit and intent of their treaties, while enacting policies as if Dene rights to their traditional lands had been relinquished."

In 1990, brought to the fore by the Oka crisis, the issues of Aboriginal peoples came to the attention of a bewildered Canadian public on a daily basis as television reports showed unforgettable images of Mohawk warriors staring down soldiers of the Canadian armed forces. Brian Mulroney's government responded with the formation of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), mandated to propose specific solutions to problems that have plagued the relationship between Aboriginal peoples, the Canadian government, and Canadian society. The commission's report, released in 1996, recommended hundreds of changes in Aboriginal/government relations and called for a new relationship with Aboriginal peoples based on mutual recognition, respect, sharing, and responsibility.

Blind Spots examines what has happened from coast to coast since the release of the Royal Commission's report, offering the perspectives of authors who scrutinize how the federal government has - or has not - implemented the recommendations of the commission. This collection of essays addresses aspects of the relationship in which little has improved, areas in which "uneven progress" has been made as well as where the federal government has failed entirely to respond to the Royal Commission's recommendations.

Anthony Hall (professor of Native Studies at the University of Lethbridge) even calls into question the genesis of the commission itself and its failure to use its extensive judicial powers including the power to subpoena documents and witnesses. From episodes presented by Hall it appears that there may have been a tacit agreement not to use these judicial powers to inquire into the relations between the various branches of the government, the RCMP and the Canadian Army during the crises at Oka and the Oldman River in the summer of 1990. "There was nothing in the publicized details of the commission's mandate to prevent it from having employed its judicial powers to peel back some of the layers of the method and attitude that govern state officials when they turn the most coercive instruments of the state toward disabling, demonizing or even killing the more strident proponents of existing Aboriginal and treaty rights. By failing to use their extensive powers in this way, the commission implicitly lent its influence to the retention and entrenchment of a political culture that apparently tolerates, or even rewards, the actions of public officials when they evade any public accountability for their supervision of the dark methods of modern-day Indian fighting."

The failure to inquire is dubbed as one of the Commission's Blind Spots. EWhile not subject to inquiry by the RCAP because they happened later in 1995, Hall also presents information about what happened at Gustafsen Lake and at Ipperwash Provincial Park, where native activist Dudley George was shot.

The government is vigorously pursuing a policy which directly contradicts those key recommendations of RCAP the stress enhancing Aboriginal peoples' access to adequate land and resources. The "Blind Spot" is the continual denial of the resources needed by first Nations to make economically viable communities.

This denial threatens the "new relationship based on mutual respect, recognition and sharing" that RCAP concluded would be in the best interests of everyone in Canada - Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike.

Harold Koehler lives in London, Ontario and is a member of the Aboriginal Rights Coalition.