Applied Anthropology in Canada: Understanding Aboriginal Issues [Second Edition] 9781442687356

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Applied Anthropology in Canada Understanding Aboriginal Issues Second Edition

Since many of us still picture anthropologists as people in khaki-coloured safari clothes peering at fossils or scribbling notes on kinship theory, it is fair to say that public perception of anthropology lags a little behind the times. In fact anthropologists have much to say about a range of contemporary issues but are themselves often reluctant to present their research in a wider social context. In this second edition of a classic in the field, Edward Hedican takes stock of anthropology’s research on current indigenous affairs and offers an up-to-date assessment of Aboriginal issues in Canada from the perspective of applied anthropology. In this central thesis Hedican underlines the opportunity of anthropology to make a significant impact on the way Aboriginal issues are studied, perceived, and interpreted in Canada. He contends that anthropologists must stop lingering on the periphery of debates concerning land claims and race relations and become more actively committed to the public good. His study ranges over such challenging topics as advocacy roles in Aboriginal studies, the ethics of applied research, policy issues in community development, the political context of the self-government debate, and the dilemma of Aboriginal status and identity in Canada. This book is an impassioned call for a revitalized anthropology – one more directly attuned to the practical problems faced by First Nations peoples. Hedican’s focus on Aboriginal issues gives his work a strong contemporary relevance that bridges the scholarly and the public spheres. EDWARD J. HEDICAN is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph.

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Applied Anthropology in Canada Understanding Aboriginal Issues Second Edition

EDWARD J. HEDICAN

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1995, 2008 Published 1995, Reprinted 1997, 2000, 2007 Second Edition 2008 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-0-8020-9907-5 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8020-9541-1 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Hedican, Edward J. Applied anthropology in Canada: understanding aboriginal issues / Edward J. Hedican. – 2nd ed. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8020-9907-5 (bound). – ISBN 978-0-8020-9541-1 (pbk.) 1. Native peoples – Canada. 2. Applied anthropology – Canada. I. Title. E78.C2H43 2008

305.897'071

C2008-901194-5

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

For my father, Edward J. Hedican (1921–2001), who was always happy to scrutinize any idea

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Contents

Preface to the First Edition

xi

Preface to the Second Edition Acknowledgments 1. Introduction

xiii

xv

3

What’s in a Name? Definitions and Terminology 5 Aboriginal Issues in Canada: Historical Dimensions 11 Contemporary Aboriginal Issues: An Overview 14 The Emergence of Anthropology in Canada 17 Anthropology in Canada after the 1960s 22 The Scope of the Book 27 2. Anthropology and Aboriginal Studies 28 Introduction 28 The Philosophy of Cultural Relativism 29 Professional Ethics in Anthropology 34 Research on Aboriginal Land Claims 38 Restless Natives? 40 Anthropology as Image-Maker 42 Fieldwork: Anthropology as a Close Encounter 45 Research in Anishenabe Country 47 Understanding Fieldwork Situations 54 Learning from Fieldwork Experiences 56 Conclusion 59

viii Contents

3. Research Strategies: Advocacy in Anthropology

60

Introduction 60 The Advocacy Question in Applied Anthropology 62 Culture and Commitment 66 The Notion of Social Responsibility 67 Advocates and Consultants among the James Bay Cree 69 Advocacy as Conflict Management 71 Brokers: Bridging the Culture Gap 74 The Anti-Advocacy Position 77 Land Claims and the Advocate Role 82 Ethical Considerations in Aboriginal Studies 87 Conclusion 89 4. The Controversial Side of Applied Anthropology: Notes from Northern Ontario 91 Introduction 91 The Whitesand Land Problem 92 Some Historical Dimensions of the Issue University Involvement 96 The Problem of Role Enactment 97 The Mediator Role 99 The Facilitator Role 101 The Animator Role 102 Conclusion 104 Postscript 107

93

5. Aboriginal Policy Issues: Anthropological Perspectives

109

Introduction 109 Anthropological Perspectives on Public Policy 110 Research on Aboriginal Issues: Some Contradictions 115 In Anthropology’s Defence 117 The Corridors of Power 118 The Land-Base Problem 123 Country Food Production: The Hidden Native Economy 126 Hunting and Wage Work: The Economic Balancing Act 132 Who Owns the Wilderness? 135 Algonquin Provincial Park 136 Anthropology and Aboriginal Rights 138 The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 140

Contents ix

The Ipperwash Inquiry (2007) 143 Appropriation of the Stoney Point Reserve 143 The Occupation of Camp Ipperwash 145 Entering Ipperwash Provincial Park 146 The Shooting of Dudley George 149 Recommendations of the Ipperwash Inquiry 150 Discussion of the Ipperwash Inquiry Recommendations Conclusion 153

151

6. Development in Aboriginal Communities: Economic Strategies and Policies 156 Introduction 156 Views on Development 158 Development and the Politics of Dependency 159 Native Women and Development Issues 166 Prospects for Change 169 The Service Sector Economy 170 Development among the James Bay Cree 173 The ‘Cultural Dependency’ Question 177 Conclusion 179 7. The Political Context of Aboriginal Issues: Self-Government and Institutional Structures 182 Introduction 182 Institutional Frameworks 183 Education Cutbacks: Policy Dilemma or Institutional Neglect? 185 An Institutional Problem: The Non-Reserve Native Community 188 The Problem of ‘Ethno-Status’ Distinctions 190 The Anthropologist and Aboriginal Issues 192 Municipal Incorporation: Prospects for Change 194 The Northern Communities Act 195 The Self-Government Issue 196 Administrative Control and Self-Government 197 The Politics of Encapsulation 199 The Imposition of Non-Indigenous Political Structures 202 The Municipal Model of Self-Government: The Sechelt Case 204 Administrative Dependency and Control: The Fort Hope Case 209 Welfare Colonialism? 211

x Contents

Nunavut: Canada’s New Land 212 The Inuit and Aboriginal Issues 214 Conclusion 217 8. The Ethnopolitics of Aboriginal Status and Identity

219

Introduction 219 The Concept of Indianness 220 Canada as a Multicultural Society 222 The Politics of Ethnic Identity 226 Bill C-31 Update 227 Aboriginal Ethnic Identity 229 Natives as Ethnics? 232 Racism versus Ethnicity 233 Aboriginal Ethnopolitics in Canada 237 The Metis Experience 241 The Micmac: Negotiating Ethnic Identity 244 Reclaiming Aboriginal Identity: Education and Community Change 245 Conclusion 246 9. Applied Anthropology: Challenges for Today and Tomorrow 248 Introduction 248 Ethics, Advocacy, and Aboriginal Issues 249 Research, Policies, and Community Development Aboriginal Studies in Anthropology 255 Aboriginal Self-Determination 256 Conclusion 259 References 261 Index 287

251

Preface to the First Edition

Readers might remember a cartoon in the Far Side series showing several African Natives scurrying about in a grass hut. Two of them are attempting a hurried retreat clutching a VCR and a television set, while another looks out the window and exclaims, ‘Anthropologist! Anthropologist!’ At one level the cartoon is humorous because the image of an anthropologist, dressed in pith hat, shorts, and safari jacket and accompanied by an entourage of African Native carriers, confirms in the public’s mind a view of anthropology as esoteric, anachronistic, and elitist. For the anthropologists themselves such a cartoon suggests that anthropology fosters a distorted sense of reality, one in which Aboriginal peoples are kept in a permanent state of preservation, a kind of cultural deep freeze in which the initial colonial encounter is seen to be kept intact. There is a ring of truth to all of this, since it is only in recent times that anthropologists have shown any interest in contemporary Native peoples and the impact that colonialism, racism, and imperialism have had on them. This is also true in the more general sense concerning the way social issues have been treated in anthropology. Most research is conducted in out-of-the-way, rural areas where the indigenous people suffer from various degrees of poverty and exploitation, yet anthropologists for the most part have not been entirely successful at increasing awareness of their research in the wider public arena. Part of the problem has to do with a lingering hesitancy to bring applied anthropological research to bear on the practical concerns of society at large, coupled with an outdated public perception of anthropology as being concerned only with such ‘peculiar’ topics as kinship theory, fossil primates, and the like. In actual fact, modern anthropology has much to

xii Preface to the First Edition

say about a wide range of contemporary issues, many of which will be explored in these pages. Essentially, this book is about anthropology’s struggle to maintain relevance in the modern world, especially in the context of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. Part of the book takes the form of a dialogue concerning the role anthropology should play in the study of Aboriginal issues. For example, should anthropologists become advocates and champions of indigenous causes? Should they be involved in questions concerning land claims, race relations, public policy, and development? The position taken here is that anthropologists must quit lingering on the sidelines debating whether or not to become involved, because if they linger they will lose the opportunity to make the sorts of contributions to social knowledge that were the hope and aspiration of the original founders of the discipline. Pioneers such as Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Margaret Mead would surely be disappointed if today’s generation of scholars stood by and did little to push their anthropological research forward in the interest of the public good. Anthropology can yet make a significant impact on the way Aboriginal issues are perceived, studied, and interpreted, but there must be more discussion about the basics: where we have come from, where we are going, and what we are going to do about it. Like the anthropologist in the Far Side cartoon, reality may be hidden behind the walls of a grass hut, but a great deal can be achieved if we persevere, undaunted by the magnitude of the difficulties that lie ahead. This book is meant to appeal to a university audience and to the interested lay person. Though it treads lightly over the convoluted anthropological jargon common in some textbooks, I feel confident that no important information has been lost as a result. Most of the questions raised are the result of discussions over the last fifteen years with university students in Native study and anthropology courses. I know what the concerns of these students are, and I have attempted to address them. I have been motivated as well by a desire to bring together the results of my own anthropological research over the last twenty years – research that has been informed to an immeasurable degree by my conversations with Aboriginal peoples from the urban centres of the south to the bush communities of Ontario’s northland. As a result of these discussions it is my belief that there is a need for a wider understanding of Aboriginal issues so that all peoples can develop an appreciation for the complex interplay of problems and opportunities Canada offers as a multicultural society. It is my goal that this book be seen as a contribution towards this wider understanding.

Preface to the Second Edition

In the midst of writing the revisions to this second edition of Applied Anthropology in Canada the report of the Ipperwash Inquiry was released by the Ontario government in May 2007. It was obvious to me that this large report, containing nearly 800 pages and 100 recommendations, was a highly relevant document for understanding contemporary Aboriginal matters. The Ipperwash Inquiry was primarily about the killing of Dudley George of the Stoney Point First Nation, but there were larger issues discussed pertaining to Aboriginal rights that need to be considered. It is for this reason that this second edition contains a rather extensive discussion of the Ipperwash Inquiry and its recommendations, especially as these relate to the earlier report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), released in 1996. This new edition also has an updated list of references and an expanded discussion of research in Canadian applied anthropology relating to contemporary Aboriginal issues. As well, it focuses on such matters as an update to the changes in the Indian Act pertaining to Bill C-31 (1985) that relate to matters of First Nations employment, housing, identity issues, and other repercussions resulting from the drastically expanded population of status Aboriginal people. A more in-depth discussion of terminology relating to First Nations people is also included in this second edition, along with a more extended treatment of the history of anthropology in Canada from an applied perspective. In all, although much has changed in the twelve years since the first edition of this book appeared in 1995, the goal of studying Aboriginal issues from the perspective of applied anthropological research in Canada remains the same. Just as relevant today as ever are

xiv Preface to the Second Edition

the challenges that academic disciplines such as anthropology face regarding the need to define more clearly what we really stand for, and to confront the oppression of indigenous peoples.

Acknowledgments

The ideas that form the basis for this book have accumulated over at least four decades, and many people have contributed to this endeavour along the way. I am particularly indebted to the Aboriginal people who have encouraged me to write about the issues discussed in these pages: Donald Patience, Peter Patience, Duke Redbird, Linda Staats, Sogo Sabosons, Tom Wastaken, Kate Cross, Kathie Lannigan, and Jaime Mishibinijima. In academic circles I am indebted to my friends and colleagues at the University of Guelph, namely Stan Barrett, Nora Chebotarev, Linda Gerber, Victor Gulewitsch, Ted Hadwen, Frans Schryer, and Victor Ujimoto. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my friend and colleague the late Richard Salisbury, who helped me out in so many ways over the years. Thanks also go to my valued associates in the applied anthropology area, namely, Ken Dawson, Carmen Lambert, Ed Rogers, Philip Salzman, Peter Sindell, Sandy Ervin, Noel Dyck, Colin Scott, John Van West, Harvey Feit, Dick Preston, Barnett Richling, Jim Waldram, Wayne Warry, and Sally Weaver. And I extend special thanks to the members of the Society of Applied Anthropology in Canada for providing the focus and rationale for the type of research found in this book. I would also like to express my sincere appreciation to the anonymous readers from the Social Science Federation of Canada (SSFC) and the University of Toronto Press for their constructive comments on this manuscript.

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Applied Anthropology in Canada Understanding Aboriginal Issues

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CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

I hope to demonstrate that a clear understanding of the principles of anthropology illuminates the social processes of our times and may show us, if we are ready to listen to its teachings, what to do and what to avoid. — F. Boas, Anthropology and Modern Life

This book is about the study of Aboriginal issues in Canada from the perspective of research conducted in the field of applied anthropology. The birth of anthropology took place in the age of colonialism. This was the age of civilization, exploration, pax Britannica, and encounters with primitive and barbarian cultures. The first anthropologists stepped into the interface, into the void of comprehension, between colonizing and colonized peoples. Right from the beginning the anthropologists faced a precarious existence. On the one hand there was the daunting task of seeking out some measure of acceptance among a people who were apt to resent intruders. On the other was the problem of justifying one’s existence to newcomers who might only be interested in manipulating or subjugating the indigenous population. From its early beginnings the history of anthropology has been characterized by what could be called ‘the struggle for relevance.’ In large part this struggle has involved an interplay between a concern for a largely theoretical approach to human social organization among some and a desire to provide practical understanding of social issues among others. Granted, the theoretical and applied facets of the discipline of anthropology should not perhaps be portrayed in such a stark, dichotomous way; but there is little doubt that, historically, anthropologists

4 Applied Anthropology in Canada

have marched to the beat of two different drummers. Yet even the most theoretically oriented anthropologist has probably had much to say, if not always in print, about the social and living conditions of people such as the Orokaiva of New Guinea, the Tzintzuntzan villagers of Mexico, the Irish islanders of Iris Beag, or communities in a thousand other places around the globe. In the largest sense this book is about the applied side of anthropology, but it is also concerned with the way anthropologists have studied Aboriginal issues. There is, therefore, a ‘reflexive’ bent to much of this work that takes it beyond a mere compendium of research reports and into a kind of dialogue about the way anthropology is conducted in the modern world. In the chapters on advocacy, economic development, or public policy, for example, an attempt is made to present a critical assessment of anthropology’s contributions to these substantive areas. For instance, one of the themes that begins to emerge centres on the ambivalent or contradictory nature of anthropological inquiry, an ambivalence that stems in part from a lack of clearly defined objectives concerning anthropology’s role in the modern world. It is no longer tenable, for example, that anthropology should be the science of primitive cultures, because these cultures have mostly disappeared or have been vastly transformed. Anthropologists are forging ahead into a new and largely uncharted future. Given this uncertainty, there is always a need for anthropologists – and social scientists in general – to spend time in studying their roles as researchers, theoreticians, and culture brokers instead of working in relative isolation from others who are doing pretty much the same thing. There is a certain amount of anonymity in this approach, but it does little to help others make sense of the common threads that are now being woven into the shape anthropology will take in the future. Perhaps some would argue that anthropology does not have a future, at least not as an autonomous social science, and that anthropologists have gone in so many different directions that the discipline might well be regarded as only an adjunct of development economics, rural sociology, comparative political science, or a host of other cross-disciplinary lines of work. I would argue, however, that it is anthropology’s eclectic nature that could well provide its most distinctive advantage. Anthropologists have long held that it is fieldwork – the long-term familiarity with local people gained through participant observation – that provides the basis for anthropology’s claim to be a separate area of scholastic endeavour. I could suggest, now that we have entered the twenty-first century, that it is time anthropologists began to take account of their research contributions as they pertain to Canadian Aboriginal issues. This accounting

Introduction 5

has to be more than just a summary of specific field reports and journalistic articles. A more useful approach would be one that draws upon the commonalities of the anthropological experience, thereby making a start towards clarifying some of the common goals and achievements, as well as areas where new knowledge is needed.

What’s in a Name? Definitions and Terminology Many have found that the myriad names applied to Aboriginal people have caused enormous confusion and misunderstanding. Some clarification of this matter is therefore a useful place to start. In this book I have used the term Aboriginal to refer to Native people in the widest sense of the word. The following definition is derived from that given in Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982, which states, ‘In this act, “aboriginal peoples of Canada” include the Indian, Inuit, and Metis peoples of Canada.’ My usage differs somewhat. I prefer to capitalize the term Aboriginal even though a capital letter is not used in most instances because the word often appears as an adjective. I prefer the capitalized form out of deference to the wishes of the Aboriginal peoples themselves, as a way of showing respect to their identity as distinct peoples. Of course the term has a political connotation as well. In my Oxford dictionary, Aboriginal is defined as ‘indigenous, existing in a land at the dawn of history, or before arrival of colonists.’ In this sense, the term is more clearly indicative of a concern with Aboriginal rights as specified in the Constitution Act, to wit: ‘The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed.’ The term Aboriginal nations, used in the final report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) in 1996, referred to ‘a sizeable body of Aboriginal people with a shared sense of national identity that constitutes the prominent population in a certain territory or collection of territories.’ The term Indian was more widely used in the past than it is today. This is partly a result of its pejorative connotation among some people, especially those who point out that it was associated with Columbus’s case of mistaken identity. However, it does have a rather specific definition in Canadian law, such as that given in the Indian Act 2 (1): ‘“Indian” means a person who pursuant to this Act is registered as an Indian or is entitled to be registered as an Indian.’ In this context the term has a legal connotation because it specifies types of Aboriginal people with special legal rights, as opposed to ‘non-status’ Indians, who lack the special rights conferred under the Indian Act. One can therefore interchange the terms registered, legal, and status to denote Indian people who are a federal government responsibility.

6 Applied Anthropology in Canada

Because of the special rights that adhere to the term Indian in Canadian jurisprudence, those with special status under the Indian Act are not willing to dispense with it despite its negative connotation among some people. This is especially so for people belonging to the national organization representing ‘status’ Indians, the Assembly of First Nations (formerly called the National Indian Brotherhood), and its provincial affiliates. Status Indians are people who are entitled to have their names included on the Indian Register, which is an official list maintained by the federal government. Only status Indians are therefore recognized as Indians under the Indian Act and are entitled to certain rights and benefits under the law. Non-Status Indians are not recognized as Indians under the Indian Act because they have either lost their status or have been unable to prove that they are entitled to Indian status. As such, non-status Indians are not entitled to the same benefits and rights as status Indians. The term Native is also widely used, though it has been largely superseded by Aboriginal as a general cover term. The term Native, however, was used by the Native Council of Canada (the organization representing non-status individuals) until the organization changed its name to the ‘Aboriginal Congress of Canada’ in February 1994. Native American is a commonly used term in the United States and describes the descendants of the original peoples of North America. This term is not widely used in Canada, probably because of its association with U.S. citizenship. Some of these terms have themselves undergone changes in government ministries, which is an interesting situation in its own right since various levels of government have different degrees of responsibility towards Aboriginal peoples. In the early 1970s, for example, the provincial government of Ontario set up what was called the Indian Community Branch within the Ministry of Community and Social Services. Later the name was changed to Native Community Branch, to reflect the fact that it dealt mainly with Aboriginal people who were outside the federal jurisdiction of the Department of Indian Affairs – that is, non-status people – and who lacked access to the special services provided for their status counterparts. The Ontario government then used the name Native Affairs Secretariat for a while before changing it to the Ontario Secretariate for Aboriginal Affairs. This latter term describes a branch of the provincial government of Ontario that has a broader sphere of activity, especially in the areas of community relations and policy. The Ipperwash Inquiry (2007) has called for the creation of a ‘Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs,’ although it is not clear how such a proposed ministry would coordinate with the Secretariate for Aboriginal Affairs.

Introduction 7

These different areas of government activity at both federal and provincial levels have policy implications, of course, since they are indicative of the diversified – or, more precisely, fragmented – jurisdictional problem of Aboriginal politics and administration in Canada. At one level, the British North America Act seems to indicate that the federal government has jurisdiction over, and therefore obligations to, all Aboriginal people on Canadian soil, regardless of the degree to which specific statutes such as the Indian Act may define, exclude, or otherwise partition the Aboriginal population. As it is, the question, ‘Should Parliament legislate for all Natives or just for some?’ remains unanswered on Parliament Hill. As times change so does the terminology, as evidenced by the manner in which the term Aboriginal is now largely replacing Native in common usage because the latter is now increasingly seen as outdated. Reserve is another problematic term, meaning the land set aside by the crown for the benefit and use of a band. Today many Aboriginal people prefer the term First Nation community. While reserve is starting to lose acceptance, this term still retains a prominent place in the Indian Act. The term First Nation began to come into common usage several decades ago, during the 1970 to 1980 period, as it began to replace Indian and band. Many Aboriginal people today prefer to be called First Nations people instead of Indian; however, the term First Nations should not be seen as a synonym for Aboriginal peoples in general because it does not include the Metis or Inuit. First Nations people, nonetheless, would include both non-status and status Indians. Aboriginal peoples in Canada can be classified in various ways depending on their historical relationship with the federal government and whether or not the Indian Act applies to their situation. Thus, Aboriginal people could be grouped under any number of terms, such as reserve versus non-reserve, status versus non-status, or treaty versus non-treaty. Treaty Indians are descendants of Indians who signed treaties with the Canadian government or, earlier, the British crown, and who have a contemporary connection with a treaty band. The Six Nations Iroquois did not sign treaties yet have reserve status and are included under the Indian Act. Notice also that the Constitution Act makes specific mention of the ‘Metis Peoples of Canada’ as one of the three Aboriginal peoples, indicating that they have special ‘Aboriginal rights’ in this country. In everyday speech Metis is meant to indicate Native people of mixed ancestry. Dictionary definitions of Metis tend to accentuate racial characteristics, referring, for example, to ‘half-breeds, people of French and Indian ancestry.’ Of course, a Metis group could comprise people of English and Scottish background as well, so a definition referring simply to

8 Applied Anthropology in Canada

physical characteristics could be incomplete or inaccurate. The term today is broadly used to describe people of mixed First Nations and European ancestry and who identify themselves as Metis. There is a certain negative connotation associated with terms such as half-breed, which implies that such people are not whole or complete. The Indian reference to burnt-sticks (the French bois brûlé) casts the Metis in a similar negative light. Actually, the Metis tend to regard themselves as the only true Canadians, or the only true Aboriginal peoples. As the logic of this argument goes, the Metis ‘race’ is unique because it is the only one that originated in North America; others, including Indians, are all considered immigrants. In 1938 the Alberta government, under the Metis Betterment Act, set aside 1.25 million acres of land for eight Metis settlements or ‘colonies.’ However, the Alberta government does not recognize any special legal rights for Metis who live away from these settlements. This is a special problem because of their predominantly urban concentration, as approximately 65 per cent of Metis live in cities (RCAP, vol. 4, 1996: 217). In 1980, about 4,000 Metis lived in the Alberta colonies, yet the off-colony Metis population of Alberta is estimated to be between 8,000 and 15,000 (Frideres 1998: 36). The Metis now have their own national-level political organization, the Metis National Council, which broke away from the Native Council of Canada during the constitutional talks of 1982. The main reason for this rift was the feeling on the part of the Metis that the Native Council of Canada (which changed its name to the Aboriginal Congress of Canada in 1994) was dominated by non-status Indians whose main political goals related to a reinstatement of their Indian status. On the other hand, the goals of the Metis people have focused on issues relating to Metis identity and the assertion of Metis rights. In this regard the proposals in the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in 1996 that promoted a ‘nation-to-nation’ approach were regarded in a favourable light by the Metis. The commission distinguished between the ‘Metis Nation members who trace their roots to the western fur trade’ (1996, vol. 4: 203) and other Metis. The RCAP report called for Metis governing structures that are similar to the federal system, with a Canada-wide Metis national government and provincial Metis governments. Also in the Constitution Act of 1982 is a reference to Inuit, as the people who speak the Inuktitut language prefer to call themselves. Inuk is the singular form of Inuit. The word Inuit means ‘the people’ in Inuktitut and therefore a term such as Inuit people is seen as a redundant one. The

Introduction 9

preferred use of Inuit as a noun is simply ‘Inuit,’ rather than ‘the Inuit.’ Inuit also replaces the term Eskimo, an Algonquian (or Algonkian) word meaning ‘eaters of raw meat.’ The term Eskimo is, however, sometimes still used in Alaska as a cover term for Inuit, Yupik, and Aleut, who are related linguistically to one another. Inuit occupy the Canadian Arctic archipelago and coasts to northern Labrador, as well as areas in northern Alaska and along the Greenland coast. The Indian Act does not apply to Inuit. The Supreme Court of Canada, however, in a decision made in 1939, interpreted the federal government’s power to make laws affecting ‘Indians, and Lands reserved for Indians’ as extending to Inuit. The main Inuit political organization is the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, founded in 1971 and representing about 25,000 people of Inuit ancestry. In constitutional terms the position of Inuit is somewhat ambiguous, since they are not specifically mentioned in the Indian Act and did not sign treaties with either the British or the Canadian government. Nonetheless, the Inuit have successfully negotiated a vast tract of land (more than 300,000 square kilometres) in the Northwest Territories that they call Nunavut (or ‘Our Land’) and that was officially established in 1999. The claim of Inuit for political control over their Aboriginal territory promises to be an important political issue for decades to come. In this discussion of terminology it is important to emphasize the fact that many of the names commonly used to refer to Canada’s Aboriginal populations are not the names Aboriginal peoples use to describe themselves. Indian and Eskimo are two cases in point, as we have noted. Many other so-called Aboriginal terms also fall into this category. For example the term Assiniboine, referring to the Siouan-speaking people of southeast Saskatchewan, Montana, and North Dakota, is actually an Algonquian term meaning ‘those who cook with stones,’ or more specifically ‘eating stones’ (ahsin meaning ‘stone’, and eboine, ‘to eat’ in Anishenabe or Ojibwa). The word Sioux is also Algonquian, meaning something akin to ‘snake’ (or ‘enemy’). Even a term in such widespread use as Ojibwa is not used by the people themselves. (The etymology of Ojibwa is a matter of some conjecture; it is thought to mean ‘puckered moccasins.’) The Ojibwas prefer to call themselves Anishenabe, or ‘the people.’ They sometimes also attach the suffix inini or equa to indicate, respectively, a male or a female. It can be said with some certainty that the terminology referring to Aboriginal peoples is a complex matter. A term such as Indian, which formerly was widely used, is now more or less restricted to jural or legislative contexts such as the Indian Act. Aboriginal is used in the Canadian

10 Applied Anthropology in Canada

constitution, but because it refers to Inuit and Metis peoples in addition to so-called status Indians, it is somewhat vague. In all, it is wise to be aware that all this terminology is a means of grouping people together for various purposes – social, political, or whatever – and that these various linguistic contexts have important legal and social ramifications (Dickason 1992; McMillan 1988; Miller 1991). Some Aboriginal groups have names applied to them from a European origin, such as the French term Montagnais, meaning ‘people of the mountains.’ Another French name, Saulteaux, referring to the Aboriginal people of southern Manitoba, actually occurred as a result of fur traders mistakenly believing that such people had migrated from the Sault Ste Marie area of Ontario. Some Aboriginal groups in the western provinces are called Bungi, which would imply a separate tribal or cultural designation. Yet, bungi in Anishenabe or Ojibwa simply means ‘a little,’ which is a term people use when asking for something, and therefore the so-called Bungi are closely related linguistically to the Anishenabe or Ojibwa. The Naskapi of Labrador and the Montagnais now prefer to be called by their Aboriginal name, Innu. In all there are approximately six language families of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The Algonquian (or Algonkian) family is spread over the eastern part of North America, and in the 1700s many moved into the Plains area with the spread of the fur trade and the availability of horses. The Algonquians comprise such groups as the Anishenabe (or Ojibwa and Cree as some still call them) in northern Ontario, Manitoba, and Quebec. The Micmac and Malecite live in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, while the Blackfoot, Blood, and Peigan inhabit southern Alberta. The Five Nations of the Iroquoian family (namely, Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Seneca) moved into southern Ontario in the late 1700s when Joseph Brant and his followers received a large parcel of land, called the Haldimand Tract, along the Grand River because of their aid to the British during the American Revolution. Later the Mississauga, allies of the Iroquois, moved to a portion of the Brantford Reserve called New Credit and formed the ‘sixth’ nation. The Dene (or Athapaskan as they used to be called) live predominantly in the western part of the Northwest Territories and are northern relatives of the Navajo and Apache. Examples of this language family include the Kutchin, Chipewyan, Tutchone, and Dogrib. The Inuit belong to the Eskimo-Aleut family and comprise the Netsilik (‘people of the seal’), the Iglulik, and Caribou Inuit, among other designations, yet they all speak the same Inuktitut. In British Columbia the Salish are the

Introduction 11

largest language family, comprising coastal groups such as the Cowichan of Vancouver Island, the Squamish near Vancouver, and the Bella Coola farther up the coast. The interior is inhabited by other Salish such as the Lillooet, Okanagan, and Shuswap. The Wakashan family, north of the Salish, comprises the Nootka and Kwakiutl, among a few others. Thus, in terms of the Aboriginal linguistic and cultural groups of Canada, a prominent theme is one of diversity rather than homogeneity. When the Europeans arrived in the 1500s there were nearly fifty distinct Aboriginal languages spoken in Canada. As such, the use of one cover term such as ‘Indian’ to refer to all of these culturally and linguistically diverse Aboriginal peoples was, and is, clearly inappropriate.

Aboriginal Issues in Canada: Historical Dimensions Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, but he did not actually ‘discover’ North America. That had been done many thousands of years before (scientists suggest about thirty thousand years ago) by people who walked rather than sailed. The ‘heroic age of discovery’ (Trigger 1985) that Columbus set in motion was really not much more than a period of European rivalry over who could save the most souls, barter the most furs, and steal the most gold. Of course the early European explorers really had no idea of the vast extent of the continent, or of the diversity of Native peoples that inhabited it. Even near the end of the 1700s a Spanish crew had rebelled against their captain’s order to sail farther up the northwest coast, as they feared the misty waters and the sea monsters they imagined lived in it. The trade in sea otter pelts that did take place a few years later has been described as ‘a predatory affair, merely a looting of the coast’ (Fisher 1977: 1). On the east coast, Jacques Cartier expressed a loathing for the country: traversing the Labrador coastline and noting its bleakness, he reckoned that this was ‘The land God gave Cain.’ As it turned out, this land was not as barren as Cartier first thought it to be. It was rich in furs, and barter sessions with the Natives were lively: ‘They bartered all they had to such an extent that all went back naked without anything on them’ (Biggar 1924: 49). In subsequent decades, after 1660, the merchants (or factors) of the Hudson’s Bay Company built numerous northern trading posts in the area known as Rupert’s Land, thereby setting in motion a process of trade and exploration that would profoundly influence the early economic and political growth of the nation that would become Canada. The fur trade also had far-reaching

12 Applied Anthropology in Canada

consequences for the Aboriginal populations, who over large regions began to abandon their autonomous, subsistence-based life for one of hunting and trapping for exchange purposes, thus moving into a dependency relationship with Europeans (Bishop 1974; Francis and Morantz 1983; Innis 1970; Krech 1984; Ray 1974; Yerbury 1986). The indigenous populations of Canada were seen as an economic asset by the first Europeans, but eventually these populations were also regarded as an effective military buffer in the east against further American expansion northward. This was the so-called protectionist period of British colonial policy, the cornerstone of which was the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which stated It is just and reasonable, and essential to our interest, and the security of our colonies, that the several Nations or Tribes of Indians with whom we are connected, and who live under our Protection, should not be molested or disturbed in the Possession of such Parts of our Dominions and Territories as, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us, are reserved to them or any of them as their Hunting Grounds.

This document could be considered the foundation of the concept of Aboriginal rights because it recognized that ‘Indian and Inuit peoples were the original, sovereign inhabitants of this country prior to the arrival of the European colonial powers’ (Canada 1975: 6). The proclamation also stipulated that Indian lands could only be bought or ceded through negotiations with the British crown. The Royal Proclamation was also the basis for the Indian Act of 1876, as well as the legal backing for the treaty period during which reserves were created and Aboriginal peoples ceded their right to sole ownership of the territories they inhabited (Morris 1880). Official lists were made up of only those individuals who lived on the reserves and had ‘treaty status,’ thereby creating a division in original First Nations populations between those officially recognized as having Aboriginal rights (status Indians) and those who were officially denied Aboriginal status (i.e., non-treaty, Metis, and enfranchised Natives). The period after Confederation, up to about 1960, has been called the ‘assimilation era’ of Canadian Indian policy (Bowles 1972). There was a general suppression of Aboriginal cultural practices during this era, with bans on the potlatch, certain dances and rituals, and political organizing. Reserves were thought to be temporary habitats for First Nations people, who would eventually take up agriculture, adopt Christianity, and move into the

Introduction 13

mainstream. During this period large numbers of Aboriginal children were removed from their homes and placed in residential schools, where, according to numerous later reports, many were physically and/ or sexually abused. There was a short-lived ‘termination’ period in the 1960s during which the government issued its White Paper (1969) proposing to disband the Indian Affairs and reserve system, with the provinces taking over responsibility for the administration of Aboriginal areas of concern. The Native response was quick and unequivocal. As Cree leader Harold Cardinal explained, ‘The new Indian policy promulgated by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s government ... in June of 1969 is a thinly disguised programme of extermination through assimilation. For the Indian to survive, says the government in effect, he must become a good little brown white man’ (1969: 1). The 1960s was also a period of Native activism, as exemplified in the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the Red Power movement. Natives in Canada issued their own proclamation, the Red Paper, which strongly condemned the government proposal under Indian Affairs Minister Jean Chrétien (Frideres 1988a: 288–92). In particular, the response of Aboriginal peoples was that the Indian Act should be changed, not repealed; and that the Department of Indian Affairs should be made more accountable, not phased out. They also wanted a more explicit recognition of Aboriginal rights in Canadian legislation, something that was partially achieved with the Constitution Act of 1982 (Murray 1988). This was also the year Native politics in Canada underwent a fundamental movement back to the grass-roots level, when the former National Indian Brotherhood was transformed into the Assembly of First Nations, which was to be governed directly by the 573 Indian chiefs across Canada. With the passage of Bill C-31 (An Act to Amend the Indian Act) in 1985, the Indian Act itself was to undergo a significant change, making it less sexist in orientation. The idea was that the bill would end discrimination against Indian women and bring the Indian Act into line with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Prior to this revision the Indian Act stipulated that Aboriginal women with official status as ‘Indians’ would lose their status upon marriage to non-status males, regardless of their ancestry. On the other hand, the marriage of status males to non-status females did not result in a loss of status for the men, and non-status females actually gained Indian status, whether or not they had any Native heritage – legislation clearly discriminatory against Native women. With the passage of Bill C-31 the Indian Act was

14 Applied Anthropology in Canada

amended so that neither Indian women nor men would lose their status upon marriage to non-status individuals.

Contemporary Aboriginal Issues: An Overview In Canada today there are approximately 700,000 registered Indians, a population that has nearly doubled over the last twenty-five years. The term registered Indian refers to those persons who are under the legislative and administrative jurisdiction of the federal government and are regulated by the provisions of the Indian Act. Aboriginal people constitute about 4.5 per cent of the total Canadian population, yet despite their relatively small numbers they have played a significant role in the country’s economic history, sense of identity, and settlement patterns. It has been estimated by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs that Canada has a total Aboriginal population of about 1.4 million (DIAND 2004: 4). About one-half of this number comprises persons classified as status Indians, that is, persons registered under the Indian Act, of which about 30 per cent are living off reserve. An ever-increasing number, about 55 per cent of the total Aboriginal population, live in urban settings, about 30 per cent live on rural reserves, and about 20 per cent live in communities that are in isolated, often far northern communities. More than half of the registered Indian population live in three provinces – Ontario (22 per cent), Saskatchewan (17 per cent), and British Columbia (16 per cent) (Statistics Canada 1998). A contentious issue here is that the Indian Act still accords official status to some Natives but not to others, thus fragmenting Canada’s Aboriginal population into various competing interest groups: the Assembly of First Nations, the Native Council of Canada (representing non-status Natives), the Canadian Metis Society, the Inuit Tapirisat, the Native Women’s Association of Canada, and a plethora of provincial and regional groups. With so many Aboriginal organizations one could be excused for asking, ‘Who are the Aboriginal people? Who speaks for their interests? Why are all these special interest groups necessary?’ As Boldt (1980: 15) has cogently commented, ‘The context of Indian leadership … [is] ... characterized by conditions of cultural marginality and lack of structural definitions.’ Despite previous attempts to unify the Canadian Aboriginal population into a more cohesive political force, there is still much that stands in the way of this possibility. It is for this reason that Aboriginal leaders

Introduction 15

would like to build on the various First Ministers’ Conferences (1983–7) by having more explicit recognition of Aboriginal rights ‘entrenched’ in any document that succeeds the (failed) Meech Lake Accord. In addition, the Assembly of First Nations would like to incorporate all Aboriginal people (status, non-status, treaty, non-treaty, etc.) into a larger, more effective Native lobby in Canada (Erasmus 1991). The number of Canadians with Indian ancestry is probably double the registered population. This means that the land-base problem is a particularly difficult one for Aboriginal people because about 70 per cent of the registered Indian population is located in remote communities or rural areas, compared to 25 per cent for the Canadian population as a whole (Hedican 1987; Frideres and Gadacz 2001: 56). The various parcels of land reserved for Canada’s Indian population constitute a total area of about 3 million hectares, or more than 6 million acres (Siggner 1986). The average size of the more than 600 Indian bands (representing about 2,300 reserves and settlements) in Canada has increased to well over 500 people, compared to about 200 in 1950. In other words, the total area of reserve lands per capita has decreased over the past twenty years: in 1959 there were 13 hectares per capita; today there are about 11.5. Overall, the land base has remained relatively stable over the last thirty years, reducing the land per capita available to Canada’s Indian population by roughly one-half over the last generation. In addition, with relatively high birth rates, the Indian population since the 1950s has been growing faster than the nonIndian population, growth that places a continual strain on the demand for education, social services, and jobs. Federal statistics (Canada 1980; Corrigan 1991; Silverman and Nielsen 1992; Statistics Canada 1998; DIAND 2004) provide a vivid picture of the massive obstacles that confront Indians today. For example, the average Aboriginal person’s income is only two-thirds of the national figure, and among Indians living on reserves, 60 per cent are on welfare and another 30 per cent receive their income from part-time jobs, short-term training programs, or unemployment insurance. In brief, the history of Canada’s past policies towards Aboriginal people has been largely a record of failure. Given the existing situation, there would appear to be many reasons to welcome the sentiment once expressed by the Indian Affairs minister concerning a new concept of Indian self-government: ‘If it is achieved in concert with other measures in areas such as economic development and education, it offers Indian people their best hope to lift themselves to a full, free partnership with other Canadians’ (Globe and Mail 1986).

16 Applied Anthropology in Canada

The hope is that self-government for the Indian population will be a major step towards solving the vast number of problems plaguing Canada’s Native people. But what are the prospects for reversing the trends of the past in the years to come? The fact is that roughly three-quarters of Canada’s Aboriginal population live in rural or remote areas. This figure alone would indicate that the prospects for positive change are not bright, since it is in these very areas that the people depend heavily on the land as a basis for their livelihood. The problem is compounded by a lack of proximity to job opportunities in more urbanized settings, and a diminishing land base. It is not surprising, then, that off-reserve migration is steadily increasing; today about 30 per cent of the Indian population are not living on reserves. However, although job seeking is one of the major reasons for their migration, Indians living off the reserves experience rates of unemployment and welfare dependence running from 25 to 30 per cent (Canada 1980: 4; DIAND 2004: 4). With the rural nature of the Aboriginal population, it would appear that any program aiming for positive socio-economic change must focus on two areas: making more effective use of the resources currently available to the Indian population on their reserve lands; and increasing the amount of such land, at least to the extent that the available per capita acreage does not fall substantially below existing levels. In addition, we need to ascertain the real potential of reserve lands for sustaining rural development. The Department of Indian Affairs has indicated that ‘the resource potential of the reserve land base is generally comparable to the capacity of the land in Canada’ (Canada 1980: 4). Nonetheless, there are also four major problem areas concerning reserve lands: the resources already available have not been generally developed; 45 per cent of the land is relatively inaccessible; blocks of land often do not form viable economic units; and the distribution of productive land does not correspond well to the Aboriginal population distribution. Thus, while an increase in the land base for Indians as a whole would no doubt benefit them, such a change also needs to be accompanied by more effective use of all land occupied by people of the First Nations of Canada. As George Erasmus (former national chief, Assembly of First Nations, from 1986 to 1991, and co-chair of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples from 1991 to 1996) has indicated, ‘we have a vision of the sort of country we want to live in and to build in collaboration with other Canadians. It is certainly not the sort of country we have now, one in which our people have been relegated to the lowest rung on the ladder of Canadian society; suffer

Introduction 17

the worst conditions of life, the lowest incomes, the poorest education and health; and can envision only the most depressing of futures for our children’ (1989: 1). It is up to the rest of the Canadian population to attempt a better understanding of Aboriginal issues in this country – to try to comprehend the social, economic, and political factors that have contributed to the deplorable conditions that Chief Erasmus rightly finds so distressing about Canadian Aboriginal life.

The Emergence of Anthropology in Canada The discipline of anthropology has had a long history of involvement in the area of Aboriginal issues, from descriptive recordings of particular cultures, or ethnography, to the scientific study of Aboriginal languages, which is the field of anthropological linguistics. In its broadest sense anthropology can be taken to mean the holistic study of all human beings, societies, and cultures, both past and present. Anthropology, literally ‘the study of man,’ comprises both cultural and biological dimensions. There is also a mix of history and anthropology, called ethnohistory, that examines Aboriginal cultures through the use of written documents. Physical anthropology is another of the subdisciplines. It has a strong biological emphasis and deals mostly with the evolution and diversity of human populations, taking into account the environmental and hereditary bases of humanity. Archaeology is a field that attempts to understand the characteristics of human material cultures as they existed at some period in the past. It also tries to explain the factors underlying cultural change over fairly large time frames in the prehistoric past. However, our concern in this book is primarily the area of social or cultural anthropology, especially in terms of its applied, or practical, aspects as these relate to Aboriginal people. In Canada the development of anthropology probably owes its origins more to the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth century than it does to any European scholarly influences (McFeat 1980). Certainly the Jesuit Relations, a massive compendium of notes and letters comprising seventythree volumes (Thwaites 1896–1901), provides ample testimony to the black-robed fathers’ interests in the multifaceted social, political, and religious life of the Iroquoian peoples of southern Ontario. The Jesuit correspondence also provided the inspiration for Alfred Bailey’s (1937) ground-breaking ethnohistorical research, The Conflict of European and Eastern Algonkian Cultures, 1504–1700, for Leacock’s (1954) work on the fur trade and family hunting territories, for Trigger’s various publications on

18 Applied Anthropology in Canada

the Huron (1969, 1976, 1985), and for later historical research on the James Bay Cree by Francis and Morantz (1983). Other ethnographic-styled accounts were written by the Moravian missionaries, operating out of London, who lived among the Inuit in the coastal regions of Labrador starting in the 1770s (Taylor 1974). The Moravian descriptions of Inuit life were particularly sympathetic, appreciative of their struggles in a seemingly harsh (to the missionaries) environment. Anthropology in Canada began as a somewhat amateuristic curiosity – a common characteristic in the early development of the discipline in other parts of the world. Sir Daniel Wilson of the University of Toronto was such an example and has been labelled ‘Canada’s first anthropologist’ (Trigger 1966a). Although Daniel Wilson was a professor of English and history, he did produce a commendable body of anthropological work, most notably in his study Prehistoric Man (Wilson 1862). Much of this work was tinged with the evolutionary ideas common for his time, yet he did collect some first-hand data on the Aboriginal peoples of the Great Lakes, so his ideas were much more than idle speculation. George Mercer Dawson was another nineteenth-century scholar who played a significant role in anthropology’s early development in Canada. Dawson was born in Nova Scotia and earned a doctorate in Britain. In 1875 he was appointed to the staff of the Geological Survey of Canada and began an extensive exploration of the British Columbia coast line. During these explorations he kept detailed accounts of various Aboriginal peoples in the area, such as the Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Shuswap of the interior plateau. Dawson’s accounts detailed the Northwest Coast peoples’ various ceremonies and described their language, subsistence patterns, and religious ceremonies. Dawson was particularly concerned with what he perceived as the deteriorating conditions of Aboriginal life caused by an influx of Europeans, and he urged the Canadian government to establish a museum so that Aboriginal art, crafts, and other material culture could be preserved for future generations (Trigger 1966b; Van West 1976). Just after the turn of the twentieth century there was a concern with policy-related issues. Some of the earliest contributions to public policy, such as Boas’s research on immigration policy in the United States – especially his report Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants (1910) – sowed the seeds for the undermining of racial determinism (Hicks and Handler 1978: 300–9). Further evidence for anthropology’s early concern with applied and policy issues is represented by Mooney’s studies of the Ghost Dance religion and the Sioux revolt in 1890 (Wallace

Introduction 19

1976). In Canada, John Maclean published a hefty volume entitled Canadian Savage Folk: The Native Tribes of Canada, which contains a particularly insightful chapter, ‘The Conflict of Races’ (1896: 540–52). In 1884 a special committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was appointed to investigate the desperate plight of the Aboriginal people of British Columbia (McIlwraith 1949). This committee secured the services of Franz Boas four years later (Darnell 1992) and, with the aid of the new Ethnographic Bureau of Canada, laid the foundation for Boas’s voluminous works on the Kwakiutl (1897) and the Bella Coola (1898). Thus, much of Boas’s scholarly reputation, and the subsequent professionalization of anthropology in North America, can be attributed to these Northwest Coast ethnographic origins and, it is suggested, ‘paved the way for his dominance in Canadian anthropology’ (Cole 1973: 41). By 1909 the National Museum served as the focus for anthropology in Canada, headed by Boas’s most gifted student, Edward Sapir (Preston 1966, 1980). Sapir’s presence set in motion a flurry of ethnographic surveys, such as Mechling’s (1914) visit to the Maliseets and Micmac in 1910, or Skinner’s (1911) sojourn throughout northern Ontario and Quebec. It was also in 1911 that the Anthropological Division of the Geological Survey of Canada was established, with a staff of Diamond Jenness, Marius Barbeau, and Edward Sapir, among others, who conducted research in ethnography and archaeology. During the 1920s the Anthropological Division was incorporated under the auspices of the National Museum of Canada, which today is called the Museum of Civilization. For most of the early part of the twentieth century the National Museum accounted for most of the anthropological research that was conducted in Canada. Edward Sapir was a linguist and a pioneer in the study of North American Aboriginal languages. In anthropological circles he was famous for the formulation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which stated that people’s thought processes are largely determined by the structure and vocabulary of the language they use. Sapir was also responsible for breaking the riddle of the mysterious Wyot and Yurok languages of California, which he proved belong to the Algonquian language family, whose speakers at one time inhabited most of eastern North America. Edward Sapir was largely responsible for establishing the Anthropological Division as the pre-eminent research institution in Canada, spread across anthropology’s major subareas of ethnography, linguistics, physical anthropology, and archaeology (Darnell 1975, 1976; Sapir 1911).

20 Applied Anthropology in Canada

With Sapir’s departure in 1926 the energetic Diamond Jenness was appointed the National Museum’s curator, initiating a career of such high productivity that it has scarcely been equalled since (Richling 1989). Jenness’s first fieldwork was among the Maori of his New Zealand homeland, and eventually included a Canadian Arctic expedition. Over Jenness’s lengthy career he conducted fieldwork among the Copper Eskimo, the Eskimo of northern Alaska, and the Carrier, Ojibwa, Sekani, Sarcee, and Salish, resulting in his enduring work The Indians of Canada (1932), which is still recognized as an authoritative reference in the field of Native studies. It was probably Jenness’s love of fieldwork that led him to understand the problems of Aboriginal peoples on a personal level. He was suspicious of colonial administrators and traders, and considered them responsible for the Maoris’ fear both of forced imprisonment for engaging in shamanism and of the abduction of young men for the labour camps of the mines and plantations (Richling 1989: 73). It was these formative experiences that led Jenness to press for the New Zealand model of relations with the Maori to be applied in Canada, with designated parliamentary seats for Native people in the House of Commons. In a similar vein, he drew attention to the Danish school system in Greenland as superior to the Canadian Inuit schools (Price 1987: 2). His five-volume work, Eskimo Administration (Jenness 1964), stands as a lasting testimony to his thoughtful concern for the destiny of the Canadian Arctic Inuit population. We must, however, remain guarded, or at least sceptical, about some of Jenness’s conclusions regarding the beneficial aspects of assimilating Inuit into a southern-Canadian lifestyle. Such an ‘experimental’ approach to social and cultural change probably would have had disastrous results for the Arctic inhabitants targeted by such proposals. Jenness and his staff at the museum, such as Marius Barbeau, were also early Native advocates who, because of their first-hand involvement with Aboriginal people through their fieldwork, had a genuine understanding of First Nations’ cultures and issues. They were especially critical of government practices that denied Native consultation on policy issues (Price 1987: 1). In this regard they actively protested the banning of the potlatch and the Indian dance known as the Tamanawas from 1882 to 1951 (LaViolette 1973: 43–97). Several anthropologists also protested against the general repression of Native religious and political practices, such as the 1927 amendment to the Indian Act that denied Natives the right to lobby and organize by prohibiting the political organization of Aboriginal peoples beyond community levels of government (Frideres 1988a: 260–2; Patterson 1972). From 1910 to 1934 the prairie

Introduction 21

provinces also outlawed the sun dance, a cultural tradition that was similarly suppressed among the Utes and Shosones in the United States (Jorgensen 1972). The guardian spirit ceremonials among the Salish of southern British Columbia was another Native tradition that government attempted to curtail, an attempt, Jilek suggests, that ‘served as an instrument of imposed acculturation in this province ... Church and Indian Agency united forces to discourage this “pagan” ritual’ (1974: 6). The third member of the National Museum’s triumvirate, after Edward Sapir and Diamond Jenness, was the equally prominent anthropologist Marius Barbeau. Barbeau joined the museum at its inception in 1911 and continued to make significant research contributions until his death in 1969 during a remarkable fifty-eight-year career (Nowry 1995). He was the first Canadian to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, and be attended Oxford University before joining the National Museum. While at the museum he played a prominent role in conducting ethnographic research among Northwest Coast and Iroquoian cultures, as well as promoting the career of the Aboriginal artist Emily Carr. Barbeau was also largely responsible for establishing the discipline of folklore as a major area of interest for the museum, and was instrumental in making EuroCanadian cultural phenomena an important focus in anthropology, along with Aboriginal peoples’ traditions (Barbeau 1915; Preston 1976). A group of University of Toronto anthropologists and historians held a conference in 1939 to examine the contemporary situation of Native peoples, and published an edited work, entitled The North American Indian Today, in which they urged government administrators to ‘plan the broad outlines of an Indian policy’ for Canada (Loram and McIlwraith 1943: 18). Thomas McIlwraith was a Canadian who received his training in anthropology at Cambridge University, and thus served to curtail the dominant influence of American anthropology in Canada since the Boasian period (Barker 1987). During the early 1920s (1923–4) McIlwraith conducted fieldwork along the central coast of British Columbia among the Bella Coola (McIlwraith 1948). Following this, in 1925, McIlwraith was the first anthropologist to receive an appointment at the University of Toronto. Progress was slow for the next several decades in the development of anthropology in Canada. The University of Toronto, which established Canada’s first anthropology department in 1936, did not offer a Master’s degree in anthropology until the 1950s. McGill and the University of British Columbia created their own anthropology departments over the next several decades (Trigger 1997). Yet it was not until the 1960s that there was a significant impetus in the building of new universities offering anthropology

22 Applied Anthropology in Canada

degrees with a concentration in Aboriginal studies. York, Trent, Simon Fraser, and several other universities formed anthropology programs in the 1970s. In all, twenty-four anthropology deparments were created during the 1970s, along with eight anthropology additions to existing sociology departments. By then, from McIlwraith’s original appointment at the University of Toronto, the number of academic positions in anthropology at Canadian universities had grown to about 500 (Ervin 2001: 18).

Anthropology in Canada after the 1960s By the 1960s anthropologists were themselves playing an even greater role in the development of policy initiatives. The Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada (1966–7), directed by Harry Hawthorn at the University of British Columbia and Marc-Adelard Tremblay at Laval, was a massive undertaking based on research by about fifty ethnologists – a work that has subsequently become the standard by which one assesses Native policy in Canada. The result was some 150 recommendations concerning economic, political, and educational needs and policies. Perhaps the most enduring aspect of the project was the famous seventh recommendation: Indians should be regarded: as ‘citizens plus’; in addition to the normal rights and duties of citizenship, Indians possess certain additional rights as charter members of the Canadian community. (Hawthorn 1966–7: 13)

Native organizations took up the term Citizens Plus as their banner in the fight against the assimilationist policies of the Trudeau government. Government policies towards Native people have changed considerably since that time, in no small measure because of the support for issues of Native self-determination by the anthropological community (Cairns 2000: 36–9). In Quebec, the history of anthropology can be traced back to Samuel de Champlain and the Jesuits. Gold and Tremblay have reviewed the development of francophone anthropology, concluding that ‘Only a few anthropologists of the sixties were action-oriented. But without exception all the anthropological studies of Quebec communities of this period were to show how the changes of the “Quiet Revolution” in Quebec were being reflected at the regional level ... The anthropology that many students in Quebec’s universities wanted in the seventies was l’anthropologie du Quebec français. Quebec nationalism, and the issue of

Introduction 23

who controlled the Quebec economy, preoccupied many anthropologists’ (1983: 55). Thus, the controversy surrounding the James Bay hydroelectric project was seen less in the context of Aboriginal rights and issues than of Quebec nationalism and economic independence from the rest of anglophone North America. This should not be taken to mean that Aboriginal issues were ignored in Quebec. There was, for example, the publication of the five-volume Review of Ethnohistorical Research on the Native Peoples of Quebec (Proulx and Vincent 1985). Also, and of particular note, is the journal Recherches Amerindiennes au Québec, which has had special issues dealing with such Aboriginal concerns as housing (1975), land issues (1982), health (1982), justice (1983), and women’s studies (1984). In addition, the applied work on the northern Cree by anthropologists at McGill University further highlighted this focus on Aboriginal studies (Salisbury 1986; Silverman 2004). The 1970s was a period dominated by resource and development issues, such as the James Bay hydroelectric project in Quebec and the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry in the Northwest Territories. At McGill University research interest in developmental change among the Cree and Inuit populations has a long history. In 1960 Nelson Graburn of the McGill anthropology department wrote one of the first Master’s theses on the Sugluk community of northern Quebec, later published as Eskimos without Igloos (1969). The McGill Cree Project was initiated in 1964 under Norman Chance (1968) and, as the name of his subsequent book implies, initial concern was with the Conflict in Culture between the Cree and non-Native Quebecers. Richard Salisbury took over as director in 1971, when the project’s name changed to the Programme in the Anthropology of Development (PAD). At that time Salisbury initiated a pattern of consultant-oriented research, as shown by the program’s first major work, Development and James Bay (Salisbury et al. 1972), prepared under contract with the James Bay Development Corporation. Subsequent research was undertaken primarily for the Indians of Quebec Association and the Grand Council of the Cree. A wide range of reports was produced under PAD’s Brief Communications Series, including Not by Bread Alone: The Use of Subsistence Resources among James Bay Cree (Elberg et al. 1975), Development? Attitudes to Development among the Native Peoples of the Mackenzie District (Salisbury et al. 1974), and (an assessment of) The Income Security Programme for Cree Hunters and Trappers (LaRusic 1979a). One of the continuing and principal goals of the McGill program has been to develop strong interactions between the theoretical and applied

24 Applied Anthropology in Canada

aspects of anthropology and the more traditional stance of treating them as separate areas of inquiry. This means that the research and negotiations leading to the James Bay Agreement were seen ‘as a laboratory for applied anthropology under pressure of the plans to develop dams’ in northern Quebec (Price 1987: 3). Salisbury further explains this important relationship between application and theory: within Canadian anthropology both theory and application have advanced alternately in a dialectic [of] mutual stimulation ... the present high international status accorded to Canadian applied anthropology can be related to its strong emphasis on theory (at least in the fields of economic and transactional anthropology), and to the mutual trust that has developed in Canada between researchers and policy-makers. (1979: 229)

Another important contribution of the McGill program has been the training of applied anthropologists (Salisbury 1977a). Many of PAD’s reports in the Brief Communications Series were researched and written by graduate students, so the program opened up opportunities for students to meet Native peoples, listen to their concerns, and gain experience in communicating their findings to audiences larger than a small seminar group. It also opened up employment for anthropologists in non-academic settings, especially in administrative and consulting areas. In western Canada during the 1970s the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry headed by Chief Justice Thomas Berger produced a report, Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland (1977), that generated considerable controversy. The inquiry heard from people in communities all along the Mackenzie corridor, as well as Native studies specialists such as Asch (1982, 1984) and Brody (1975). On the controversial side it soon became apparent that the inquiry was about more than oil and gas issues; it also became a forum for discussions concerning the future development of the northwestern part of Canada (Dacks 1981: 125–67). The inquiry served as a means for investigating sensitive Native issues that had been pent up for generations, such as the political dependency of the Dene Nation (Coates and Powell 1989; Watkins 1977). Another controversial area, from an academic perspective, concerns the social scientific nature of the report as exemplified in Salisbury’s (1977b) criticisms in Social Sciences in Canada, entitled ‘The Berger Report – But Is It Social Science?’ This was not just a trivial matter of academic infighting, because the integrity of Canadian social science was brought into question. As Price explains, ‘While it was extremely expensive, and weak as

Introduction 25

social science, the “Berger Report” is in many ways a model of the high road to applied anthropology, combining analysis from engineering, potential ecological damage, and acculturation problems’ (1987: 4). In Berger’s defence, and to temper this criticism with a degree of fairness, he did not set himself up as a social scientist and therefore should not necessarily have been constrained by extraneous codes of research. In addition, he had more far-reaching goals than most social scientists would have – that is, to bring issues of Canadian policy into a wider sphere of discussion. In the case of northern development, he was most successful. The results of the Berger inquiry were accepted by the government, which stipulated a moratorium of ten years on further gas and oil development in the Mackenzie District until such time as Aboriginal land claims and environmental impact problems were resolved. One could argue about the methods and procedures of the inquiry from the perspective of social science, but the results are more difficult to challenge. The Berger inquiry, at another level, exemplifies some of the unfortunate processes by which public policy and legislation are formulated in Canada. For example, extensive use is made of expensive royal commissions and ad hoc inquiries. Politicians, judges, and lawyers survey a fairly biased selection of interviews and other information without too much regard for the usual social scientific standards of sampling, questionnaires, and data analysis. The results in such instances can appear amateurish in a social scientific document, and partly for this reason the politicians might feel compelled to ignore the resulting recommendations. The lesson for anthropology here concerns methods one might use to gain access to the corridors of power as a means of influencing the manner in which policies are implemented in this country. By the 1980s the applied emphasis became more solidified with the formation of the Society of Applied Anthropology in Canada (SAAC) in 1981, followed by the Canadian Association for Medical Anthropology (CAMACAM) in 1982. These associations have served to introduce a new generation of applied anthropologists to expanded research opportunities such as gerontology, mental health, cross-cultural studies in education, sex-role issues, and so on. The anthropological research of Sally Weaver (1981, 1986, 1990) was particularly noteworthy during this period as she focused on the development of government policy towards Aboriginal people. Weaver’s examination of the Department of Indian Affairs in Making Canadian Indian Policy (1981) broke new ground in anthropological research in her attempt to study power elites and the manner in which they set political agendas.

26 Applied Anthropology in Canada

Into the 1990s, anthropologists at the Arctic Institute of North America in Calgary continued a tradition of focusing on First Nations and social justice issues (Ryan 1995; Ryan and Robinson 1996). Milton Freeman (1998) provided a thought-provoking study of Inuit whaling and the importance of sustainability regarding Arctic resource use. Aboriginal people have been over-represented in Canadian prisons for a long period of time, and recent research on the criminal justice system has reflected this statistical fact (Leonardy 1998; Rudin and Russel 1993). James Waldram has presented an insightful and sympathetic study of Aboriginal spirituality in Canadian prisons in The Way of the Pipe (1997). Applied anthropology nonetheless remains a relatively small and somewhat divided effort in Canada. Yet it does have an interesting history and promises to be around for some time in the future, continuing to provide insights into Canadian Aboriginal issues and problems on the first-hand basis provided by anthropological fieldwork. The history of anthropology in Canada, especially in terms of its applied emphasis, has been summarized in the following manner: ‘Canada has an anthropology devoted to many domestic issues. It continues its research on First Nations, as first established through the efforts of the National Museum. Some of it is still oriented toward cultural traditions and ethnohistory, but with much more emphasis on modern issues such as political self-determination and the sociocultural dimensions of Native health and welfare’ (Ervin 2001: 20–1). One can expect in the future that there will be a continuation of research focused on First Nations issues similar to that undertaken in previous decades. Given its fertile intellectual past, anthropology in Canada is likely to engender novel and innovative approaches that will illuminate our understanding of Aboriginal issues for years to come. Yet when it comes to the question of what makes anthropology in Canada unique from that in other countries, there is no simple answer (Sweet 1976). Thomas McFeat has suggested that ‘While there were opportunities for a uniquely Canadian anthropology to develop, it did not’ (1976: 148). Regna Darnell, a University of Western Ontario anthropologist who has conducted extensive research into the history of anthropology in Canada, has offered the opinion that ‘the national discipline combines features of disciplinary organization and historical context in patterns that are unique’ (1998: 155). In a later paper she goes on to explain that ‘In Canada, a critical mass of First Nations languages and cultures maintains them with a saliency in the national forum unparalleled in the United States’ (2000: 170).

Introduction 27

The Scope of the Book The stated intention of this book is to provide an analytical examination of Aboriginal issues in Canada from the perspective of applied anthropology. In addition, it is hoped that it will provide more than a mere compendium of research reports, and instead will offer an opportunity to examine the way anthropologists conduct their research on contemporary social issues and also come to some conclusion or critical assessment about the possible contribution of anthropology to the field of Aboriginal studies. This more reflexive stance is a matter of stocktaking on the one hand and of charting out the viability of possible future directions for anthropology on the other. With these objectives in mind, the scope of the book is intended to be a fairly broad one. Chapter 2 is an examination of the relationship between anthropology and Aboriginal studies, focusing on such topics as the philosophy of cultural relativism, ethical considerations in applied research, land claims, and fieldwork by anthropologists in Aboriginal communities. Chapter 3 continues with a focus on contemporary research strategies, especially concerning the role of advocacy in anthropology. More specifically we examine the role of advocates and consultants among the James Bay Cree as an illustrative case. An important question here concerns the degree to which researchers should become committed to the causes of the people who are the subjects of anthropological research. The implication here is that anthropologists are enacting new roles, but that these new areas of activity are not, at present, particularly well defined. In chapter 4, my own role in a land-claims dispute during the 1980s in the Lake Nipigon region of northern Ontario is examined, especially in terms of the problems associated with a consulting role for anthropologists. Chapter 5 shifts to an examination of Aboriginal policy issues in Canada. Included in this discussion are the possible contributions anthropology can make to the policy arena, to research on subsistence production – living off the land – and to other resource-oriented issues. In chapter 6 the concern is with the economic development of Aboriginal communities, with an emphasis on wage and labour questions and the so-called cultural-dependency problem. Chapters 7 and 8 concentrate on the political context of Aboriginal issues, such as self-government, institutional structures, and the ethnopolitics of Aboriginal identity. In conclusion, chapter 9 discusses the challenges for today and tomorrow, including concrete ways to change the way Aboriginal issues are conceptualized and studied in Canada. It also provides a summary of the book’s arguments as a whole and offers suggestions for further research.

CHAPTER TWO

Anthropology and Aboriginal Studies

Men of power who plead ignorance perpetuate their own belief in the great lie of their ancestors. Some Indian people have come to think that there are two schools of anthropology: one that brings men knowledge of themselves, and another that replaces the missionaries as the servant of the state. We honour Franz Boas and those who have truly inherited his gifts. — G. Manuel and M. Posluns, The Fourth World

Introduction Franz Boas (1858–1942) can be credited with almost single-handedly wrenching the budding discipline of anthropology from the ethnocentric roots of armchair speculators to the twentieth-century world of ethnographic fieldwork and cultural relativism, by which we mean that all cultures have equal validity and should be understood in their own terms. The turning point in his life occurred in 1883–4, when he made a journey to Baffin Island as a geographer and returned as a cultural anthropologist. The Central Eskimo (1888) can quite rightly be called the first published ethnographic monograph of the modern era, and this was only one of a long list of firsts that Boas was to establish in the field of anthropology. Boas’s main area of specialization was in the languages and cultures of North American Aboriginal people, particularly the cultures of the British Columbia coast. During the course of his life’s work, Boas was largely responsible for moving anthropology from the veranda to the field. The hallmark of Boas’s anthropology is a deeply felt commitment to an understanding of various social issues. His books and scientific papers,

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such as Anthropology and Modern Life (1928), and Race, Language, and Culture (1948), for example, demonstrate a particular concern with issues of racial equality and human rights. But Boas was not content with appealing to people’s emotions or sense of justice; he wanted to prove his theories scientifically. It was this striving for scientific accuracy that separated Boas from his predecessors and that set anthropology on a new course in which conclusions about human cultures were backed up by concrete, first-hand observation and measurement. Anthropology, as inspired by the Boasian tradition, is founded on an element of trust. It is not a contract between anthropology and Aboriginal people in the formal sense. It is more of a commitment to strive for certain scholarly ideals, the cornerstone of which is the concept of cultural relativism. It is also taken as axiomatic that there are no universal standards by which cultures can be judged and that the activities of the anthropologist should be constrained by ethical guidelines, such as protecting the identities of individuals and their right to privacy. Of course, all this is much easier to put down on paper than it is to carry out in practice. Part of the problem stems from beliefs the individual anthropologist might hold as a private citizen concerning, say, war and peace issues, different forms of government, or human rights, and how these might reflect on the more strictly academic pursuits of a particular field study. The concept of cultural relativism should also entail reflection on the many current activities of anthropologists who have taken an active role in advocating particular causes. Since the concept of cultural relativism has been considered one of the main philosophical underpinnings of anthropology, we begin this chapter with a discussion of this concept in terms of its contributions and its problems within a discipline such as anthropology, which seeks to understand cross-cultural behaviour. There is a considerable debate in anthropology today about the continued usefulness of cultural relativism, especially in terms of the enactment of new roles, and so the following examination of some facets of this controversy will serve to place the discussions in this book in a wider context. This is especially the case when we consider another important topic, professional ethics, particularly when the conduct of applied anthropological research could possibly bring harm to participating informants.

The Philosophy of Cultural Relativism Cultural differences are at the centre of anthropological curiosity about other peoples. This curiosity is based on a certain degree of tolerance for

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these differences – an attitude inherent in the concept of cultural relativism – in that each cultural pattern is believed to have an intrinsic worth of its own. Nonetheless, anthropologists do make ethical judgments about different sorts of cultural patterns – for example, poverty or warfare need not be seen as cultural patterns of intrinsic worth in order to justify a scientific study of such phenomena. It is not necessary that an anthropologist be free of bias in order to carry out a scientific study, only that care is taken that these biases do not become integral factors that influence the results of the ethnographic research (Jorgenson 1982). Taken to its extreme, the concept of cultural relativism leads to a rejection of all causal viewpoints, a situation characteristic of the historical particularism of the Boasian period. These ‘particularizing approaches’ have become increasingly popular among anthropologists since the 1980s, and in recent years the emphasis has been more on the interpretation of cultural differences than on the explanation of the underlying patterns or regularities that produced these differences in the first place. In this context, the chief aim of anthropology is seen to be the study of the internal dynamics of a culture: its symbolic systems, its members’ view of the world, and its members’ basic values and philosophy of life. Of course, this type of approach tends to deny the existence of any sort of objective reality that can be apprehended by scientific means. It is relativism taken to the extreme because it leads to the belief that there are as many interpretations of cultural phenomena as there are people capable of observing it. We are also left to wonder if this idea of anthropology, with a political agenda or at least with a social conscience, would have constructive results, especially for the conventional subjects of ethnographic research. As Barak explains, ‘the self-determination and emancipation of anthropology’s subject peoples is as much (if not more) contingent upon the recognition of their common experiences as of their differences’ (1988: 101). In fact the organizational efforts of Aboriginal peoples – such as the internationally based World Council of Indigenous People, comprising Maoris, Samis, North American Native peoples, and others – were founded on the commonalities of the colonial experience, as aptly illustrated by one of its founders in The Fourth World (Manuel and Posluns 1974). It is the commonalities of experience that have motivated resurgent and politically active indigenous populations, much more than a self-reflective concern with each people’s own notions about how they differ socially or culturally from others with whom they share these experiences. If anthropology is understood to mean the comparative study of human cultures in historical perspective, how then do we square this concept with the Boasian agenda for a more or less exclusive focus on

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singular groups of people? Anthropology’s comparative angle thus becomes problematic in a relativistic context. In this sense we are forced to ‘bring history back in,’ which one presumes was Boas’s intention all along when he used the term historical particularism, but which was left out in the subsequent criticisms of evolutionism. People’s beliefs and values are not fixed in time but are continually changing, forming the basis for the way human behaviour changes. The term historical relativism is an appropriate characterization of the recognition of the idea that cultures should be studied holistically and understood in the context of particular historical periods (Trigger 1986). The ethnohistorical studies of the Huron by Bruce Trigger (1976, 1985) highlight the difficulties of attempting to use a relativistic orientation in which more than one culture is involved. As he explains, ‘I found that trying to understand the mentality of seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries required almost as great an act of anthropological imagination as did understanding the perceptions of the Hurons of that period’ (1986: 67). In this case a major historical effort is involved in attempting to explain the behaviour of Aboriginal people separated by several centuries from contemporary Euro-North American culture. Yet despite the historical difficulties, the concept of cultural relativism has had a great influence on the way North Americans have come to view First Nations societies. In the first place, a relativistic orientation engenders a holistic approach, which in turn leads to a fuller appreciation of the complexity of Native societies and how their own ethical and moral principles have led to the actions, beliefs, and practices characteristic of the different Native cultures. Second, a turning away from the earlier, outdated, unilinear evolutionary perspective also leads away from the idea that the Native societies are not worth studying because they are dying out anyway. Aboriginal people are still here in North America, albeit changed from their forebears, but with a renewed cultural vitality that should be appreciated. The problem for modern anthropology is that an involvement in social issues and activities in a changing world serves to raise, rather than to solve, traditional problems of objectivity and cultural relativism (Hedican 1986a, 1994; Waldram 1993). Such problems have become particularly evident to the anthropologists whose research was conducted during the emergence of independent states in tropical Africa (i.e., Marquet 1970). Such anthropologists had expected that their discipline would be well received in the newly independent nations, but some in the new nations felt that earlier anthropological studies were biased in favour of colonial regimes, and there was concern that future studies would have a similar undesirable orientation. Lewis, for example, has

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indicated that the ‘anthropologist who insists on the role of “objective” observer in a colonial setting greatly compounds an already existing relationship of inequality’ (1973: 586). As a result, an unforeseen result of the decolonization process has been the casting of doubt on the objective and relativistic character of anthropology. This argument about cultural biases is similar to the one that says anthropology should become a humanistic discipline more explicitly. Those who argue this case suggest that relativistic anthropology is an admirable alternative to ‘the reductionism and ethnocentrism of traditional science’ (Scholte 1984: 542). Ridington makes an analogous suggestion in his study of the Athapaskan (or Dene) phenomenology about knowledge and power. He argues that long-term fieldwork is a crucial aspect of understanding this Athapaskan phenomenology, since ‘the careless and uncritical application of ideas from academic traditions to the thought worlds of subarctic people may produce bizarre and ethnocentric results’ (1988b: 98). Of course all long-term fieldwork has a tendency to close the gap between positivist and relativist interpretations of cultural phenomena. In this regard, particularism retains its appeal because short-term research does not provide investigators with the depth of contact necessary to shake the (mistaken) underlying perception that these ‘others’ lack societal order. If we were able to break out of this conceptual bind, then cultural relativism could be an aid in the comparative study of Aboriginal issues while serving to curtail some of the excesses of an overzealous comparative framework, which is both demeaning and inappropriate to the cultures involved. As an ideological thesis, relativism states that each culture is a unique entity with its own special genius, world view, and behavioural characteristics. While this view of cultural ‘uniqueness’ is more or less taken for granted, in our practical reality we must realize that if a culture were really unique it would be incomprehensible to us and that there must be something about even the most unusual human cultures that we recognize as similar to something else. The issue then is not so much whether or not comparisons are possible, for they surely are; the issue is the appropriateness, reliability, and methodological correctness of these comparisons. If anthropologists were to hold to an extreme relativist position, the whole enterprise would ultimately decline because such a position would eventually destroy the cross-cultural relevance of all ethnological knowledge so far accumulated. This includes the doctrine of cultural relativism itself, because all knowledge would only be relative to the cultural context in which it originally developed (Kaplan and Manners 1972: 5–11). Thus there is a mutual contingency factor that binds together

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both the relativistic and comparative sides of anthropology, making each stronger because of the existence of the other. Taken as a whole, a discussion of the subject of cultural relativism has a tendency to reopen many long-standing issues in anthropology, such as, Is anthropology to be humanistic or scientific, subjective or objective, paradigmatic or non-paradigmatic, inductive or deductive? The point here is that debate about the value of a relativistic focus in anthropology is not by any means a recent phenomenon but is about a diversity of unresolved epistemological issues in the discipline. As much as anything else, it is all probably a matter of how one broaches the relativist question, the sorts of training and experiences one has, and whether or not one is predisposed to look at humanity with a micro or macro perspective. As Scholte has suggested, ‘The ethnographer’s situation is defined not only by the Native society in question but also by the ethnological tradition in the head of the ethnographer’ (1972: 438). As we know, at the basis of cultural relativism is the idea that one should tolerate behaviour and cultural conventions that differ from one’s own. Thus stated, cultural relativism as a value theory does not provide a basis for the positing of value judgments that are meaningful in different cultures. But the fact is that some cultures do not tolerate behaviour different from their own, a situation that has divisive effects on the anthropologists themselves. On the one hand, anthropologists attempt in their role as scientists to maintain or support the validity of cultural relativism; on the other hand, they might well wish as private citizens to condemn acts perpetrated in other cultures. Such a dualism unfortunately separates knowledge into two realms – that of the scientist and that of the citizen – leaving the impression that scientific knowledge is irrelevant to social action (Schmidt 1968: 173). It would be fair to say that most modern anthropologists would have no quarrel with a discipline based on the ethnographic foundation of ethical and moral relativism. Yet the question of political neutrality always seems to burst onto the scene, especially when it comes to the treatment of Aboriginal peoples. Marvin Harris has put the issue of relativism in proper focus with reference to subjects one would not work on: ‘Cultural relativism, at its best, would represent a state of moral and ethical confusion characterized by contradictory, weak, unconscious, or disguised value judgments. In ethnography, it is not at all clear that a cryptic or confused moral and ethical stance is preferable to an openly avowed one’ (1968: 163). He then goes on to discuss whether reliable descriptions of practices such as cannibalism and infanticide are possible from ethnographers who oppose such customs. In actual

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fact, though, there is much anthropological research that is supported by organizations with avowed value commitments concerning poverty, disease, and so on, so Harris’s concern with ethnographic neutrality is probably beside the point. In a most basic sense, our questions and concerns about cultural relativism are essentially questions about the source and nature of knowledge and the epistemological basis of anthropology. Anthropologists are not just collectors of cultural facts; they are also interpreters of the ‘reality’ in which they exist. The question of existence, or more properly the interpretation of existence, is what the job of anthropology is all about.

Professional Ethics in Anthropology Ethical considerations in applied anthropology are similar in several ways to those of journalism, because ‘we go to the informed source and offer confidentiality and accuracy in exchange for information and the consent to use it’ (Price 1987: 36). In recent years there has been an increased concern with the ethics of fieldwork (Barrett 1984a; Jorgensen 1982; Whittaker 1981). In anthropology the researcher has become more concerned with the rights of the individuals to their privacy. This concern is manifested in efforts to protect an informant’s identity and an insistence on acquiring consent for the different phases of a research project. This implies that research subjects can now be considered equal partners in the research process. As a consequence, research subjects should be expected to share in the benefits of the research, as in the case of royalty payments for books or other publications. Even an application for a research grant will probably have to pass through a local university ethics committee, which no doubt will be concerned with protecting research subjects from possible harm. Another concern of such committees is that research subjects have access to the results of the project. Even though a concern with professional ethics is a relatively recent phenomenon in the anthropological literature, it does not mean that such issues have not been around for a considerable period of time. In one sense, the changing social climate and circumstances of anthropological research have contributed to the raising of an ethical consciousness. For example, Native people themselves are becoming increasingly familiar with the books and reports produced in anthropology, and in some circumstances have demanded a greater accountability from researchers for an accurate portrayal of their people. Native people themselves have even joined the ranks of the anthropology profession, creating additional changes in the discipline. It would be fairly accurate to say that most anthropologists have acquiesced in these changes, although there have been some dissenters.

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Belshaw (1976), for example, thought that the code of ethics developed by the American Anthropological Association in reaction to research conducted during the Vietnam War was too stringent. He gave as an instance the case of an interracial marriage involving the territorial administrator of Papua, New Guinea: ‘much damage would have been done to the two individuals ... by the publication of the details of my research. If any professional body had then informed me that by doing this I was unprofessionally engaged in clandestine research ... I would have told them to mind their own business’ (1976: 284). This kind of clandestine or secretive aspect of anthropological research has also become a topic of discussion in more recent times with regard to more current research on racial issues. If the whole problem of racial intolerance essentially has to do with the control of power in society, as Barrett (1987: 341) would suggest, then this poses a difficult and novel problem for anthropological fieldwork: studying up, rather than down. In fact the problem has not gone unnoticed even among the subjects of anthropological research. The Aboriginal leader George Manuel, for example, reminds us in an insightful manner that ‘Men of power who plead ignorance perpetuate their own belief in the great lie of the ancestors’ (Manuel and Posluns 1974: 78). What this means for anthropologists is that they have come, tacitly at least, to play a role in perpetuating the subjugation of indigenous populations by collaborating with the ‘men of power.’ Manuel goes on to explain: ‘Some Indian people have come to think that there are two schools of anthropology: one that brings men knowledge of themselves and another that replaces the missionaries as the servants of the state’ (ibid.). There is no doubt that anthropology has been perceived often in this light – as the servant of the political elite – because its work has been conducted largely among the downtrodden victims of colonial and imperialistic forces. On the whole, anthropologists have either been too timid to engage in studying up or have been prohibited from doing so – that is, studying the locus of power. In this sense they have become just other collaborative agents in keeping those at the bottom in their place. In a highly relevant article for contemporary anthropology entitled ‘Up the Anthropologists,’ Nader (1982) provides a persuasive argument that anthropologists must begin to study the political, economic, and social elites – the power centres of societies. What this would take is the virtual reinvention of anthropology, a reversal of the usual way fieldwork is conducted, which now depends upon certain power relationships tending to favour the anthropologists. Nader also argues quite persuasively that the act of studying up is a pressing matter because ‘There is a certain urgency

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to the kind of anthropology that is concerned with power, for the quality of life and our lives themselves may depend upon the extent to which citizens understand those who shape attitudes and actually control institutional structures’ (1982: 456). While this is no doubt a worthy goal, we are also led to ask if it is at all practical, for there are many obstacles in the way. There are, for example, problems of access to the elite groups, who are apt to guard their privacy jealously, a fact Powdermaker (1966) was made painfully aware of in her study of Hollywood film producers. There are also important ethical problems that are raised in studying elites because of the implicit double standard: that there is one ethic for studying up and another for studying down. This matter of ethical considerations in the study of right-wing organizations is also one to which Barrett (1984a) devotes considerable attention because of what he terms the ‘subversive nature of anthropological inquiry.’ He notes that it is only recently that an interest in ethics has attained any degree of prominence in the literature, not because of any raising of ethical consciousness but because anthropologists have lost their anonymity. As pointed out by George Manuel and Bea Medicine, the anthropological literature is being read by the ‘Natives,’ and this factor is apparently making anthropologists more accountable for their actions. This issue of accountability has probably also made anthropologists more conscious of the desires of Aboriginal peoples for knowledge about their own past. In this sense, anthropological research can be used by First Nations to reconstruct their history. As Ron Ignace, a Secwepemc First Nations anthropologist, so eloquently explains, ‘Anthropological research provides a way for us to piece together the “broken cup” of Secwepemc cultural knowledge, practices, and meanings’ (Ignace and Ignace 2004: 379). The field of applied anthropology would also appear to have a greater degree of responsibility towards the subjects of a study because of potential areas of conflict between research sponsors and informants. On the one hand, the applied anthropologist has a responsibility to produce a body of research that is of some use to the sponsors; on the other hand, the confidentiality of the informant has to be respected. A conflict could emerge when research sponsors feel that, because they are paying for the expenses of collecting the data, they in turn should be entitled to decide on its possible uses. A second area of conflict may arise from the fact that much anthropological research takes place in cross-cultural settings in which the people

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being studied are unclear about or unaware of factors such as the researchers’ motives for conducting the research, their responsibilities towards sponsors, or the long-term implications of that research. In addition, there is the possibility of personal conflicts arising between anthropologists and their informants. Since anthropologists are apt to find themselves in fardistant places working in cultures where values and behaviour differ in significant ways from those of their own society, and since they frequently become deeply involved in the local community, the potential for serious ethical problems in fieldwork is likely to become more accentuated than would normally be the case for researchers in the other social sciences. In the Canadian context it is now common for Aboriginal communities that have a long-term association with anthropology to require the researcher to sign legal contracts before he or she is allowed to work in the community. For example, Effrat and Mitchell (1974), anthropologists working for the British Columbia Provincial Museum, have written about their contracts with certain Aboriginal groups on Vancouver Island. In essence, the following stipulations were placed on their research: (1) any publications resulting from the research would first be submitted to the Aboriginal people for their comment and criticism, and these remarks would be appended to the published work; (2) if possible, local Native people would be hired as research assistants; and (3) royalties that might be forthcoming from any publications would be assigned to the Native band that provided the information on which the research was based. It should also be noted that Aboriginal communities in British Columbia were to become embroiled in various other conflicts over the possible uses of anthropological research. For example, there is the instance of Mary Lee Stearns’s (1981) book on the Haida. Haida leaders had the book banned from the community, in essence because they did not want problems in the community publicly known. The larger issue here pertains to possible restrictions on, or censorship of, the dissemination of research findings that criticize an Aboriginal community. Yet anthropologists are often quick to disparage government agencies and private industry. Of course there are those who will point in all of this to the possibility that an avoidance of criticism and legal complications can lead to a distortion of the ethical dimension of anthropological research. In an attempt to address this problem the code of ethics of the Society of Applied Anthropology in Canada (SAAC) indicates that ‘Applied anthropologists have the obligation to speak out publicly in areas of their professional expertise, thereby contributing to the understandings upon which public opinion and policy are derived’ (Price 1987: 41).

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In summary, the topic of professional ethics in anthropology is a particularly important one because it goes straight to the heart of the relationship between anthropologists, their sponsors, and the subjects of the research. Since the social, political, and economic climate in which most modern anthropological research is conducted is changing considerably, the ethical requirements of the discipline must by necessity change with the times as well. In the main, these changes involve a greater degree of accountability on the part of anthropological research and an increased participation on the part of the subject peoples in most phases of the investigation. The following discussion of anthropological research on Aboriginal land claims in Canada provides a useful forum for examining various dimensions of the ethics issue.

Research on Aboriginal Land Claims The issue of social involvement poses a certain dilemma for anthropologists. They have never been too sure about the extent to which they should become involved in the social and political affairs of local people, if at all. Certainly there has been a long-standing recognition that social involvement on the part of anthropologists can negatively effect the outcome of a particular problem under study, and that for this reason participation in local affairs should be kept to a minimum. On the other hand, there are those who would argue that a participatory mode of research is a longstanding, and credible, manner of collecting material. In any event, such proponents would also suggest that there is a tendency to overrate the role of the anthropologist in actually changing local conditions. The two sides to the issue of social involvement are not really as clear cut as this, and there are various intermediate positions that one might take. It is a fact, though, that many anthropologists are taking on a number of new roles – as mediators, advocates, and consultants, for example – that were hardly dreamed of just a few years ago. As stated above, because of the movement away from what might be called ‘traditional role performance,’ anthropology is currently undergoing a considerable period of change. Where it will all lead is anyone’s guess. What is clear is that a new relationship is being worked out – mostly on an ad hoc basis, one suspects – between anthropologists and the people who are the subjects of social research. What is different about anthropological research today is that the Aboriginal people themselves are becoming more actively involved. They want to know about the possible benefits such research could

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bring to their community, its relevance to their own concerns, and its possible uses in promoting their own interests. In this context the anthropologist must approach a community leadership group with a concrete research agenda that has practical application to local community interests. A kind of partnership must be worked out so that everyone involved has a clear idea of what is to be expected. Of course, this is of considerable advantage to anthropologists because they are apt under these circumstances to have greater cooperation and participation from the Aboriginal people. Unfortunately, it also poses additional difficulties that impinge on the autonomy of the researcher. The case of John Cove, an anthropologist from Carleton University in Ottawa, is an interesting example of the predicament facing the modern researcher whose subjects of study demand a pragmatic application of ethnographic work. In the preface to his book Shattered Images (1987), Cove explains that he planned initially to conduct research into traditional Northwest Coast salmon fishing in order to test certain ecological theories about the potlatch. He applied for and received a grant from the National Museum of Man (now the Canadian Museum of Civilization) to conduct fieldwork among the Gitksan, a branch of the Tsimshian. When he arrived in Gitksan territory, Cove was in for a shock. The Gitksan-Carrier tribal council refused him permission to conduct the research. ‘Their grounds,’ he explained, ‘were the irrelevancy of my topic to the needs of the people, and questions of insufficient native control over data and reporting’ (1987: 3). It took some time, but a compromise was eventually reached, mainly due to the efforts of the Gitksan’s director of land claims. As a first step Cove cancelled his museum sponsorship and signed a contract with the tribal council. The project was changed so that there was more of a focus on traditional land use, although it would still incorporate some of his initial interests in Tsimshian mythology. In this way he was able to proceed with the fieldwork, though his final assessment was that it ‘had not been all that valuable due to limited time and a more practical focus than I had wanted’ (1987: 3). But he returned for an additional eight years of part-time research, and in the process found cause to reflect on the role of anthropology. Cove found that he became frightened with the type of personal commitment that the land claims process demanded. Yet his extended discussions with the Gitksan served to ‘strip away layers of rationalizations [such that] much of my ambivalence about being relevant began to make sense’ (1987: 4). The Gitksan tribal council would appear to have had good reason for questioning the value of anthropological research, especially given the

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1991 judgment of the British Columbia court, which denied the GitskanWet’suwet’en land claim (Feit 1991; Hume 1991; Waldram 1991). The judgment of Chief Justice Allen McEachern of the B.C. Supreme Court could also be seen as a criticism of anthropology as a discipline, and of the manner in which anthropologists practise their craft. As an example, the chief justice dismissed the testimony of three anthropologists as adding ‘little to the important questions that must be decided in the case’ (Waldram 1991: 26). The fact that the anthropologists had actually lived with the researched population was interpreted as evidence of sufficient bias to make the anthropologists’ opinions unreliable. In other words, McEachern’s decision was essentially a denunciation of participant observation as a research technique, since it would taint the researcher’s observations and conclusions. The implication here is that ethnographic fieldwork is unscientific because the core technique of participant observation is not ‘objective’ enough to produce reliable scientific results. Thus, regardless of one’s view of the land claim itself, there is considerable reason for concern about the way anthropology is viewed in the wider public arena beyond the comfortable confines of the university. In anthropology’s defence, though, an article in the Vancouver Sun notes, ‘Historians usually deal with dusty documents and dead people. They seldom have the opportunity to eat, talk and joke with the warm, sweaty, fallible but always wonderful human beings who are the anthropologist’s subject. It’s a dangerous practice, getting close to people – one that could cloud your judgement’ (Hume 1991: A3). Of course, this helps to put anthropology in a more favourable perspective vis-à-vis ‘dead’ disciplines such as history, but it does not do much to strengthen the credibility anthropology must build if it is to become more acceptable to Aboriginal people themselves.

Restless Natives? In Cove’s case, he was able to work out a mutually beneficial relationship between himself as academic researcher and the Gitksan people as informants, but this has not always been true in the past. If there has been dissatisfaction on the part of the local Native population concerning anthropological research, what then has been the source of this difficulty? A colleague of Cove’s at Carleton University, Stephen Richer (1988), offers the opinion that the Natives are restless because a trust has been betrayed. The anthropologist is taken into the communities and treated as a guest by people of other cultures. Indeed, as Bea Medicine,

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an anthropologist and a Sioux, indicates, ‘It is astonishing that the rules of hospitality and graciousness extended to ethnologists in the Wissler and Lowie periods [1910–40] is prevalent in many areas today’ (1971: 28). Richer’s suggestion is that the guest-host relationship that characterizes the fieldwork situation is at the root of the difficulty, because it is essentially an asymmetrical one. The anthropologist guest is apt to benefit in a substantial way, such as through career enhancement, while the informant host gains little. The romanticism associated with fieldwork, Richer proposes, serves to disguise what is actually taking place. Fieldwork should not be seen as a noble quest, the way some anthropologists see it, but as simply another form of work. In fact, as the argument goes, the anthropologistas-hero image is actually an elaborate concealment mechanism that serves to obscure the benefits the ethnologist derives from field studies. For the anthropologist, ‘the ethnography becomes a commodity – it can be exchanged with universities, colleges, and publishers for a host of values, including advanced degrees, professional reputation, career mobility and book revenues, to name a few ... The exchange value of the ethnography, as manifested in career enhancement of various forms, is undeniably, I submit, in excess of the capital invested’ (Richer 1988: 412–13). Now, to bring the Gitksan case into perspective, the Natives are restless because of the private appropriation of the benefits derived from fieldwork, which tends to engender a feeling of alienation and betrayal. As the president of the Gitksan tribal council said to Cove, ‘Well, I guess we’ll never see you again. You anthropologists come in and get what you want, then leave. We’re still here, and never seem to get back anything in return’ (Cove 1987: 3). Yet despite the chief’s admonitions it is nonetheless true that there has been an acceleration of political activity by anthropologists (Hedican 1986a) – as mediators, consultants, and advocates of Aboriginal issues – but these new roles, by Richer’s way of thinking, should be understood not as acts of altruism but ‘as a rational response of anthropologists to the reality of greater native control over their own culture’ (1988: 417). The critical view of ethnography – as a sort of personal, self-interested narcissism – has other proponents as well, aside from sociologists like Richer. The Sioux actor (Dances with Wolves) and musician Floyd Westerman has recorded a song called ‘Here Come the Anthros’ (1982), which has become a cult classic. The sentiments expressed are quite similar to those of the Gitksan leader:

42 Applied Anthropology in Canada And the anthros still keep going like death and taxes to our land to study their feathered freaks with funded money in their hand Then back they go to write their book and tell the world there’s more but there’s nothing left to write it’s all been done before

Anthropology as Image-Maker These lyrics are a heavy indictment of the anthropological endeavour, but perhaps not one without a degree of justification. For example, certain Aboriginal people, such as Vine Deloria (1970), have been critical of anthropologists for contributing to the public’s erroneous ideas about contemporary Indian life. Most anthropologists would probably hope that they have contributed in a positive sense to the understanding of Aboriginal cultures, something that Deloria discounts. Yet it is no doubt also true that Deloria’s remarks are distressingly correct in other aspects. This is especially so regarding the tendency in anthropology to show a greater interest in the study of traditional Aboriginal life than in its contemporary counterpart. When anthropologists have studied modern Aboriginal societies, it is often to examine disruptive or pathological behaviour rather than to focus on Native peoples’ attempts to cope with the disorientation associated with the encroachment of white society. Honigmann’s (1965) study ‘Social Disintegration in Five Northern Canadian Communities’ is a case in point. The communities include Lower Post, a settlement of Kaska Indians in British Columbia; Old Crow, a Kutchin Indian community in Yukon; Attawapiskat, a Cree community in northwestern Ontario; Great Whale River, a mixed Inuit and Algonquian Indian village on the east coast of Hudson Bay; and Frobisher Bay, an Inuit town on Baffin Island. All communities exhibit a high degree of stratification, containing a high-ranking stratum of EuroCanadians and a larger stratum of indigenous people. All of the communities were studied between 1944 and 1963, a twenty-year period that saw significant changes in the Canadian north. This was a period of extensive intervention by the federal government in the lives of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Many were uprooted from their traditional lives of hunting and trapping and taken to the newly

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created towns and villages where there was little in the way of a viable economic life. Schools and nursing stations were built, and quarters were constructed for a wide variety of outsiders: missionaries, lawenforcement officers, health-care officials, and bureaucrats from the Department of Indian Affairs (Paine [ed.] 1971, 1977). For Canada’s Aboriginal population this was an extremely stressful period, and community social life began to manifest associated problems: family quarrels, delinquency, drunken aggression, and so on. In the Canadian north, as elsewhere, anthropologists have played a role, for better or worse, in forming the public’s image of the indigenous population. This in itself is a source of criticism about anthropology that should be dealt with. As we have seen, anthropology is like no other discipline because it demands personal involvement with local people, the kind of involvement that makes it necessary to engage in a dialogue about the possible uses of ethnographic information concerning Aboriginal populations. This is an important consideration because the images of people that are portrayed by the anthropologist are ultimately conveyed to the public forum. Images of northern Native life such as those formulated by Honigmann and others are also conveyed to a larger audience, thereby becoming part of the Canadian collective conscience. These images are also resistant to subsequent reformulation, as though the die, once cast, becomes the standard by which others are judged and interpreted. As Chambers aptly notes, spokespersons from the ranks of minority groups ‘early on demonstrated that their disadvantage in relation to the dominant society was not so much a matter of their inability to understand their relationship to the rest of society as it was a problem in countering prevalent public images of their cultural status’ (1985: 27). The problem is therefore not only one of ‘image-making,’ which is quite a neutral term, but also one of cultural stereotyping. Perhaps no better example of this process can be found than in the way the image of the Plains Indian has come to dominate our perception of all Aboriginal peoples. Bea Medicine, the Dakota (Sioux) anthropologist, has written an informative account of anthropology’s role as ‘the Indian’s ImageMaker.’ From her perspective, much of the problem of representation in anthropology stems from the importance attached to the printed word; this has ‘resulted in the corrupting concept of the ethnographic present which has posed the Native American in a stilted, static stance which has had great repercussions in the image-moulding of American anthropology’ (1971: 27). Anthropology has served as a conduit through which

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various selected facets of Native American life have been funnelled into the myth-making machine of North American society. The reason for this is partly historical, to the extent that anthropology grew along with the colonizing of Indian territories. From very early on, fieldwork in anthropology was thereby oriented to collecting, displaying, and storing material objects in museums. The repercussion of this historical development, as Medicine reiterates, is that ‘The over-riding conviction of the disappearing native hastened the collection of a record that has formed a congealed ethnographic present impervious to change. The image of the Plains Indian generally remains fixed in the mind of the public’ (1971: 27). This has led, she goes on to say, to the rejection by students in Native studies programs of anthropological reporting on their tribes. In this light, anthropologists are apt to be seen as patronizing or romanticizing individuals, and the image of the discipline of anthropology as a whole is ever more likely to be seen in these terms by the public at large. Perhaps the greatest failing of North American anthropology has been the inability to adequately portray the effects of the external changes forced upon indigenous societies by Western industrialized nations. Initially, there was concern with salvaging ethnological materials, a focus that later gave way to many decades of acculturation studies. Whether intentional or not, the image conveyed was that of a dying Indian culture, or at least one vastly transformed. The myriad studies of social disorganization lent support to the view that Natives were either resistant to or incapable of adapting to a new lifestyle. What anthropologists did not study were the deleterious effects that treaties and government policies had in undermining the infrastructure of Aboriginal societies. Anthropology had come to show its paternalistic side, professing on the one hand to represent the special interests of First Nations people while on the other working to find ways for them to fit into the dominant mainstream society. In summary, there is some truth to the criticisms that have been levelled at anthropology. The important question is, how are these criticisms to be dealt with in the discipline? So far there has not been very much discussion in the anthropological literature about these problems, and this might lead one to conclude that anthropologists are either ignoring the issues or are unaware of their existence. Anthropology is unique among the social sciences, especially in terms of the close working relationship that can develop between fieldworkers and the people who are the research subjects. Anthropologists often live for long periods in small,

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relatively isolated Aboriginal communities. This aspect of fieldwork no doubt enhances the credibility of such research, but familiarity of this nature can pose its own set of problems.

Fieldwork: Anthropology as a Close Encounter The construction of ethnography is largely a matter of organizing our ‘reflexive understandings’ of the fieldwork experience in anthropology. It is a process fraught with difficulties of interpretation as we attempt to grapple with an accumulation of ‘realities’ – ours and that of the ‘other’ – that have been built up over time. The fact that we are able to provide a plausible account of this experience is perhaps a minor miracle in itself. Our success depends pretty much on how we are able to organize our understanding. We group our ideas together in various ways, by discussing issues and problems, thereby building up larger spheres or facets of the culture we seek to portray. Thus, this process of ethnographic construction becomes central to the problem of verification in fieldwork. Anyone who has done fieldwork is quite aware of the possibility, even the probability, that quite different accounts of the same ‘reality’ can be expected in anthropology. However, it would be a mistake to conclude that ethnographies are by their very nature unreliable documents because of the methods of research used. Granted, despite our best intentions and preparations, the world has a tendency not to appear as we intend or would like but is at times a pot-pourri of incongruous situations and events. We strive in various ways to grasp the threads of understanding that make such situations intelligible. To take up anthropology can be an exhilarating experience, not only because it can be a risky business but also because it allows us to see ourselves in a different way, thus giving us a glimpse of who we are as individual people. In all of the social sciences, it has been the anthropologists who have been on the front lines of research concerning Aboriginal peoples. It has been the anthropologists, more than researchers in any other discipline, who have experienced ‘close encounters’ with Native people in their own villages, houses, and social settings. This close proximity, coupled with the length of time that the research is normally conducted, means that anthropologists are sometimes the focus of others’ frustrations. In large part these frustrations are the result of feelings of helplessness in the face of alien cultures. The anthropologist, as white person, thus becomes the focus of the anxieties and uncertainties that result when the Natives’ world has been turned upside down.

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In the Aboriginal village it is anthropologists who are out of their element, and thus vulnerable. Any venting of frustrations that occurs also involves an element of trust, however, as those doing the venting let down their guard. Floyd Westerman (in ‘Here Come the Anthros’) is entitled to his opinions, because there is some justification for them, even though some anthropologists would not like to admit it. Yet there is another side to the anthropologist-Native encounter that largely goes unnoticed and unreported. Here, as an example, is one of those true-life experiences that makes anthropological research so interesting. When I was in my mid-twenties, a graduate student out of McGill University, I was conducting research in a small village of Native people in an isolated region of northern Ontario (see Hedican 1986b, 2001a). This was a log-cabin community without cars, electricity, running water, or other modern amenities. Yet there was a closeness among the people, and much visiting and mutual aid and support. My main contact in the village was a stout, barrel-chested Metis man with a black beard. He was the sort of voyageur type one could picture portaging a 500-pound pack on his back. One evening he invited me to a friend’s party. This was the sort of opportunity I looked forward to, because I could meet a variety of people in a relatively informal setting. When we arrived, about twenty people were sitting around the inner wall of the cabin smoking and chatting, while country-and-western music played in the background. It was generally pretty dark in there, so people did not pay much attention to me, and I got a chance to listen intently to the local Ojibwa dialect in action. Around midnight I decided it was time to go home (I lived in a small cabin in the centre of town). As I walked through the cabin door, I fell over something in the doorway and went stumbling out into the snow. I realized then that my friend had tripped me, and as I looked up in disbelief he bounced around over me swinging his fists as if preparing for a fight. At first I had visions of bouncing up and slugging it out with him, winning his admiration in the process. Then I realized how foolish that would be – I wasn’t there to fight with these people. Besides, I had no idea why he was trying to provoke a confrontation. So I got up slowly and tried to keep my distance while talking to him constantly. What was going through my mind was, Here I am in this small, out-of-the way place trying to study such lofty academic issues as economic development and the like, and I’m being forced to grovel around just to protect myself from being beaten up. Eventually he gave up chasing me around and, to my surprise, invited me back to his place. We had a few glasses of wine and talked for

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hours through the night. This was my first real chance at establishing some kind of rapport in the village, and I treasured it, though I was very tired. As he talked I noticed on the wall behind him a large poster depicting an elderly gent with a turban and walking stick. Underneath was the caption, ‘Every man is a Moses, who should see the promised land in his own time.’ On another wall was a picture of a soaring bird with the notation, ‘You can’t fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren.’ I began to realize how sensitive my friend was about the state of affairs in his village – the lack of services and particularly the lack of health care. He began then to tell me about his niece, who had a brain tumour and suffered epileptic fits. In those early hours of the morning it all started to overwhelm him, and he began to cry a little, then hurled a plastic glass against the wall as he blurted out questions about the shabby treatment given to Native people in this country of immense wealth. He seemed to hold me responsible for the Natives’ plight. I felt uncomfortable. I squirmed in my seat, wanting to appear attentive and sympathetic but also feeling slightly put out by the accusations. Later, as I walked home through the snow, I felt saddened yet strangely invigorated. I had had one of those meaningful experiences that do not come along very often. Through the months that followed there were other experiences like this one, experiences I saw as part of my fieldwork but that had only indirect relevance to my study of politics and development: the day I followed the tracks of a child in the snow and found him asleep beside the stove in the schoolhouse; being given the leg bands of some Canada geese because the hunter thought I was a game warden; being asked to give medical assistance to a boy with a cut hand because he heard someone call me ‘Doc.’

Research in Anishenabe Country The Ojibwa-speaking people of northern Ontario refer to themselves as the Anishenabe. They live in a rugged country, much of it covered with water, swamps, rivers, and lakes. The land is also covered with dense spruce and birch forests, typical of this area of the Canadian Shield in the eastern subarctic. Generally the Anishenabe live between the southern area of the Shield, just north of Lake Superior, up to the Albany River, where there is a gradual cultural merging with the Cree (Rogers and Taylor 1981: 231–43). This section of the chapter describes in a narrative format various episodes and situations that happened during the

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course of my anthropological research among the Anishenabe or Ojibwa in northwestern Ontario. The life experiences described here are factual events that occurred (at the time of fieldwork in the 1970s to 1990s) while working among Aboriginal people in an isolated region where the Anishenabe live in tents and log cabins and do not possess cars or trucks, as there are no streets or roads. They hunt and fish on a seasonal basis, and rely little on store-bought foods. The history of the Ojibwa and Cree over the last three hundred years has been dominated largely by the fur trade and their interaction with the Hudson’s Bay Company. This territory (previously known as Rupert’s Land), extends from roughly Lake Nipigon north to Hudson Bay and only became part of Ontario in 1911 with the signing of Treaty 9. Even today many Ojibwa live in relatively isolated settlements, mostly of fewer than 500 people, that are usually situated on the larger lakes and rivers. Since most roads running from the south terminate at the Canadian National Railway line, the usual mode of transportation in the area is by boat, snowmobile, and bush plane. For the most part, the northern Ojibwa have subsisted on fishing, trapping, and wild rice harvesting, but all of these activities do not have the income potential to adequately support the growing population. There is an acute lack of jobs suited to the remote locations, skills, and lifestyles of the Aboriginal people. The tourist industry, governmentsponsored work projects, and commercial fishing provide the main sources of employment. While not readily evident to the passerby, most communities have a ‘hidden’ economy of subsistence hunting and fishing, firewood collection, and the manufacture of local products such as snowshoes, sleds, leather products, and handicrafts for sale to tourists. Ethnographic research in the area of northwestern Ontario has not been overly intensive (Rogers 1981: 19–29), mostly consisting of a variety of ethnological sketches and surveys done in the early part of the twentieth century and then shifting to the more involved, problemoriented research of the 1950s. Alison Skinner (1911), for example, conducted ethnographic survey work over an extensive area of northern Ontario and Quebec, visiting Aboriginal groups along the Albany River for a few days here and there. Ruth Landes (1937), a former student of Franz Boas, conducted fieldwork in the Kenora-Rainy River area in the 1930s, thus initiating a period of more intensive ethnographic work. This was followed by Irving Hallowel’s (1949, 1992) focus on the Ojibwa of the Berens River area, near the Manitoba border, over a twenty-year period from the early 1930s to the 1960s.

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Further fieldwork in the 1950s produced more rounded community studies, such as Dunning’s (1959) work on social and economic change in Pekangekum, and Rogers’s (1962) study of Round Lake, now called Weagamow. Farther south, Baldwin (1957) conducted a study of social problems in the Collins community, northwest of Lake Nipigon. In the 1970s, an ethnohistorical account was written concerning the Osnaburgh House Band (Bishop 1974). A focus on emergent leadership among the Ojibwas along the Canadian National Railway line continued a trend of more focused ethnographic work (Hedican 1986b, 1990a, 2001a, 2001b). However, for the most part Rogers’s (1962: 2) comment that ‘so little field work has been conducted in this area [i.e., northern Ontario] that comparison and generalization are impossible’ is still largely true today. It is no doubt unfortunate, but there still has been relatively little substantive published work on the contemporary Aboriginal peoples of this area. The ethnographic research described in this section of the chapter portrays fieldwork conducted in a remote part of northern Ontario between Lake Nipigon and the Albany River called Whitewater Lake, situated about 350 kilometres north of Thunder Bay. The Whitewater Lake area was part of a historically important chain of lakes and rivers in the fur trading area, as it was a major transportation route linking the interior of northern Ontario with the Hudson’s Bay Company posts on James Bay via the Ogoki and Albany Rivers. Today, while still in a remote and relatively inaccessible region, it is known more as an attraction for adventurous canoeists and fishing enthusiasts than for its productivity in beaver pelts. It was because of the relatively pristine environment and abundance of pickerel that the Aboriginal residents of Collins decided to build a tourist lodge on Whitewater Lake, hoping to establish a tourist industry that would form the basis of a reliable local economy. Successful fieldwork in anthropology is often a matter of taking advantage of opportunities when and where they present themselves. I had the good fortune to arrive in Collins when the tourist lodge project was still in the planning stages, so there was an opportunity for me to study various aspects of the construction process from its initial inception to the eventual completion. The facets of this lodge construction that interested me concerned the Collins leadership group’s organization, called Ogoki River Guides Limited, and its negotiations with government officials over the funding for the lodge (it eventually cost more than a million dollars to build). Also of interest were the economic aspects of the construction phase, such as the structure of work crews and their duties, as well as the larger sphere of the social organization of family life in and around the lodge.

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At Whitewater Lake the social organization was largely defined by the work activities required for construction of the tourist lodge, involving a hierarchy of construction bosses, foremen, skilled craftsmen, engineers, and laborourers. At this juncture some clarification is necessary concerning the term ‘Whitewater social organization.’ As used here, the term refers to the Aboriginal (Ojibwa) population on the construction site. There were non-Aboriginals, or what one may refer to as EuroCanadians, on the construction site, such as plumbers, electricians, and engineers, but for the purposes of the present discussion they are not included in reference to the construction site’s ‘social organization.’ It is also necessary to indicate that there were other facets of the camp organization that were not directly tied to the construction activities, such as the families – the wives and children of the workers – who had set up about a dozen campsites of varying size in the vicinity of the construction site. These families lived in tents and engaged in a certain amount of hunting and fishing to meet their subsistence needs. In this regard the Whitewater social organization had a much more ‘traditional’ appearance than the Collins community to the south on the rail line, or for that matter the communities supporting other sorts of construction projects in general. But appearances can be deceiving. There is no reason to assume, because the physical set-up resembled that of an Aboriginal (Ojibwa) bush camp, that this camp reflected the traditional social make-up of such camps as well. In fact, one of the research problems that I began to work on at Whitewater Lake was the social composition of the bush camps, compared to that of Aboriginal residential groups in the past as described by previous ethnographers: R.W. Dunning’s (1959) study of the (northern Ojibwa) Pikangekum community near the Ontario-Manitoba border in the 1950s is one example. My research strategy was to document the characteristics of the Whitewater Lake social organization in terms of kinship ties and the step-by-step evolution of the camps. My main goal was to determine to what extent the wage economy at Whitewater was a determining factor in group composition, and the extent to which economic factors in previous decades, such as those existing in the fur trade period of the 1950s and before, were significant factors in group composition. My research had originally started in the non-reserve community of Collins, but by necessity it branched out to include the quite different community setting of the construction camp at Whitewater Lake. New research perspectives were also necessitated by these different settings, and this forced me to devise innovative and intellectually creative

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approaches distinct from those I had utilized in Collins. The research problems that presented themselves to me were different in these two separate settings, yet they had to be tied together at a higher level of abstraction. I therefore focused my research in the different settings on issues relating to social organization, economic pursuits, and leadership characteristics. In a curious sort of way, I was intrigued by the Collins-Whitewater Lake dyad. For Collins people the activities at Whitewater Lake were a return to a nostalgic past of fondly remembered bush life. I sensed that much of the appeal of life at Whitewater Lake for Collins people was that it epitomized an ideal amalgamation of the traditional and modern worlds. At Whitewater people could engage in the wage economy and make a decent living, while at the same time enjoying the outdoor life of fishing, campfires, and fresh air. There was also the appeal of an optimistic future in which people could continue their life in the bush while engaged in economic activities that they liked doing and had some measure of control over. As a fieldworker, I participated in this dream to some extent. I shared in the people’s vision of a better future, one that made sense in a shared image of the ‘good life.’ As far as I was concerned, fieldwork in Anishenabe country was exciting right from the beginning. My first trip to Whitewater Lake in a bush plane was exhilarating yet at times filled me with apprehension. A trip by Beaver float plane over the northern bush country is both exciting and dull – a strange mixture of semi-panic and sleepiness. The roar of the plane’s motor is exciting enough, as if it were straining far beyond its capacity. At any moment you expect to hear a sudden ‘thwop, thwop’ sound as the propeller disengages, and then the inevitable dive bomb to a crash landing below. There is so little distance between the plane and the tops of the spruce trees that the flying experience is more one of skimming over an overgrown lawn than it is of actually being airborne. The flight is also dull because of the relatively monotonous terrain with its patches of blue and green. There is little topological relief to the country and its coniferous forest, since it was not that long ago, in geological terms, that the glaciers scoured the land flat and left behind melted pools that formed lakes and rivers. The plane’s motor slowed down, and my mind snapped back to the reality of our plane circling around the bay at the end of Whitewater Lake. The construction site was below, but it was only a cleared patch of ground at this stage. I also noticed that it was starting to become dark and the pilot was anxious to unload his cargo and get airborne again without delay, as he still had to fly back to Armstrong – about an hour’s flight

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away. He motioned to the other side of the bay as he twirled a device to lower the rear flaps. ‘That’s where all the people are camped,’ he said. ‘Do you see the smoke coming up from the trees? Somebody will see our plane land and come over to get you by boat – you can’t walk over there.’ I was amazed at how quickly he was able to land and then jump back into the air again. Before it made the leap into the air, the Beaver evoked a familiar image of its namesake, with its tail gently slapping the water. From the clearing, I watched the plane dwindle to a pinpoint in the sunset, as the roar of its motor became an ever-quieter drone. At that early stage, the construction site consisted of a partially constructed shed, a few digging tools scattered about, a large stack of logs, and not much else – apart from the clouds of mosquitoes and blackflies coming out of the bush in waves. There was no sign of the rescue boat the pilot had promised. As a way of attracting the attention of the campers on the other shore, and in an attempt to ward off the bugs, I busily began to scrape together some dry leaves and twigs into a pile and set it on fire. Once this little blaze was going at a good clip, I then smothered it with a pile of green leaves, which sent a column of white smoke up into the air. It didn’t take long for the alarm to be sounded at the base camp, and I could hear the commotion across the bay as the aluminum boats banged against the rocks and the outboard motors roared into action. My rescue party consisted of a single boat driven by a man I recognized as Tommy Wapose, but I didn’t think that he was part of the construction crew. When he recognized me, Tommy started into an involved explanation about how he had volunteered to see what the smoke was about because he had to pick something up there anyway. On seeing me, he then proceeded to convince me in the most earnest fashion to accompany him to the far side of Whitewater Lake, where his family was camped. Tommy explained that he was working for a tourist operator, as part of a ‘fly-in’ operation linking Whitewater and the Ogoki River. In any event, he explained, his wife and children were coming back to the base camp of the construction site the following afternoon, and I could return with them if I wished. It sounded like a good idea to me at the time, as I was curious about the camp characteristics among people who were not involved directly with the construction activity. Perhaps this would be an opportunity to set up a comparison between the two types of family camps – those working for tourist operators and those directly tied to the construction site. Tommy took out his Winchester rifle and steadied it at the stern of the boat. I thought this was in case we met a moose swimming across the

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lake, because I had heard before about Aboriginal people in this area shooting moose in this way. However, I was not sure how they managed to drag them back to shore. We sped off into the semi-darkness, leaving all those nasty mosquitoes behind in a stationary cloud. In no time at all we were in virtual blackness, as there was not much of a moon. The starlight glistened off the waves, and the motor hummed along at a steady roar. I marvelled at how Tommy could find his way through this channel, around this island, swerving to avoid this shoal, and so on, mile after mile in terrain that was hardly visible by now. It took about two hours for our trip. At last, the motor slowed its pace, and my hearing started to return. I noticed a long section of land jutting into the lake with what appeared to be several white canvas tents pitched near the end of the peninsula. There was also the rather eerie sight of long strands of moss blowing in the wind, like so many beards of decapitated men. It puzzled me. Tommy paid no attention to this strange apparition as he hurried to haul his boat up on the shore. ‘Well, here we are,’ he said with a snicker. ‘Make yourself at home.’ There was also the odd sight, to my mind at least, of an electric wringer-washing machine sitting out here in the middle of nowhere. It was evidently hooked up to a small generator, and had probably been brought in by bush plane. Upon further reflection I realized that the appliance would be of immense practical help to the women of the camp. The tents housed several families and were set up on plywood platforms. The wind blew incessantly, the sides of the tents flapped loudly most of the time, and I wondered if I would get used to the noise. Then I remembered the mosquitoes back at the construction site, and wondered no more about why we were camped on this long windy finger of land protruding out into the lake. Tommy pulled back the opening flap, and we crawled into a dimly lit area. His wife, named Otsie in Anishenabe, but Elizabeth in English, hardly looked up. She was busy attending to a baby that was stretched out on its back, and then I realized what the dried moss was for – it was used as a lining or diaper for the child, whose bottom was then wrapped in a sort of bag, as they called it. The baby was then stuffed inside the opening of a cradle board, or tikenahgen, which was sewn up in front with several laces. Otsie seemed at bit nervous about me watching this operation, but it wasn’t long before we were all asleep, sprawled out across the floor. My first introduction to the morning was the sound of the crackling

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fire outside, and the smell of bacon frying in a pan. In short order there was an elaborate breakfast of eggs, toast, and bacon set out for me. I appreciated the effort but didn’t feel that hungry. It struck me that this was the sort of shore lunch the tourists would eat before their fishing trip, and that maybe Otsie thought this was what a white man expected to eat every morning. Before long we were back in the boat, skipping across the water, away from my ‘moss bag retreat.’ Otsie was just as adept as her husband at skirting the islands and maneuvring through the channels. Even though it was now daylight, I felt just as confused about the terrain as the night before. Heaven forbid, I thought, I should ever become lost out here. The return trip did not seem to take as long as the night before. Otsie skilfully guided the boat up to the rocks near the construction base camp, across the bay from where Tommy had picked me up the previous evening. I grabbed my old green pack and skipped out, uttering a short ‘Thanks.’ As I left, Otsie hardly seemed to notice, and that was the only chance we ever had to speak to one another.

Understanding Fieldwork Situations At the Whitewater Lake construction site there were about eight or ten white canvas tents, most of which were pitched on platforms – like those at Tommy’s place at the other end of the lake. Some, more elaborate than Tommy’s, were erected over a frame of spruce poles with walls four or five feet high. A small kitchen area was crowded into a central area of the camp, and I was told that there were quite a few other families camped out along the shore and on an island across the bay. This base camp was mainly for the single men, who shared sleeping space, two or three to a tent. I had made arrangements to stay with a young engineering student from New Zealand whose brother’s firm was employed to coordinate building of the tourist lodge. He was an amiable chap and soon set out to make room in the tent for my sleeping bag. The odd reminiscence that I have of this first encounter was his comment that the mosquitoes had no effect on him. Only later did I learn that he was taking some sort of pills to reduce the effects of the bug bites. The country surrounding the camp was a virtually pristine environment. There was hardly any underbrush, and the ground was covered with a thick layer of sphagnum moss. There were also various types of mushrooms, large and small, growing in the moss, and I made a mental

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note to buy a book on mushrooms on my next trip out. The moss, though, held in a lot of moisture, which made walking a soggy venture, so I headed back to the base camp. There were numerous bush planes arriving throughout the day, and I was busy recording the comings and goings of the people involved. I was particularly interested in the manner in which a camp was forming on an island site across from the base camp. Initially, it was occupied by two sisters and their husbands and children. Then the extended family of one of the husbands arrived (his mother, single brother, and two sisters). Later on, the husband of one sister flew in with his own parents. I began to make kinship diagrams of these various relationships, and found an intricate pattern of family ties. The emerging formation of this camp seemed to me to be an opportunity to develop a hypothesis about the formation of residential groups under conditions of a wage-work economy, but within a bush-oriented environment. My field notes were filled with comments about the various kinship relationships and what their possible significance could be. The people themselves seemed to feel that they just moved where ‘they felt like it,’ and I was disappointed at the lack of a more ‘structuralist’ orientation to their explanations. Other books on the social structure of the northern Ojibwas (Dunning 1959, or Rogers 1962, for example) appeared to find consistent patterns in community life, and yet here I struggled with many contradictions and unresolved sociological problems. As it turned out, there was an important lesson for me here: that is, to try to accept the ‘field data’ as they are, just as I recorded them. It is the differences between the researcher’s own data and those of previous ethnographers, rather than the similarities, that are most important and are most apt to lead to new insights. These ‘new insights,’ in the case of my own particular field study, had to do with the way people employed the pre-existing flexible social relationships of their home community of Collins to adapt to the conditions of the wage-work setting at Whitewater Lake. In order to guide the analysis of field data regarding the formation of family groupings, I formulated a hypothesis to try to account for the formation of Whitewater Lake family camps on the basis of more general historical factors. Hypothesis: The evolution of residential groups in the context of a wage-work economic system tends to develop on an ad hoc basis, depending upon pre-existing relationships with individuals already settled into the work camp.

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This, then, is the general pattern of analysis by which I proceeded. First, I documented particular cases as accurately as possible. I then undertook two modes of analysis: first, I examined the various interrelationships and general patterns of the specific details in the internal patterns of the cases; then I engaged in more wide-ranging thinking about what these specific instances might mean in the larger context of Anishenabe (Ojibwa) sociology and cultural practices.

Learning from Fieldwork Experiences From my fieldwork experiences at Whitewater Lake I learned that it is the documentation of specific details that is the most important aspect of any study. These specific details provide the concrete foundation that one can return to over and over again for subsequent re-analysis and interpretation. Other modes of analysis are also important in their own way, but for different reasons. The field analysis of specific cases serves more to provide an orientation for what one is doing than to lay out in any specific way the wording of the analysis that will eventually take place at the writing stage. The preliminary analysis forces the researcher to think about general patterns and arguments while still living in the field. In turn, this has an effect on what field materials the researcher is likely to collect, because he or she is constantly thinking in terms of general patterns and issues. Though the analysis will probably be changed later, sometimes in a major way, this preliminary analysis has the side benefit of allowing the researcher to see how his or her thinking has changed over the course of the fieldwork, how ideas get started, and how they relate to the types of issues that he or she begins to think are important during a very preliminary stage of the data collection phase. My fieldwork experiences among the Anishenabe people of northwestern Ontario provided me with a unique opportunity to learn how to conduct research in anthropology. I began to see Whitewater Lake, for example, as a small laboratory where I could try out and experiment with new ideas. The evolving social organization of the construction camp at Whitewater Lake was a paradigm of the way my ideas changed and developed. I originally came to Whitewater Lake armed with R.W. Dunning’s classic study conducted in the 1950s of the Pikangekum Ojibwa community in the Berens River area near the Ontario-Manitoba border. Dunning (1959: 108) had analysed the composition of hunting families, which he called ‘co-residential groups,’ noting that ‘The new population grouping

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[situated in the village, rather than the bush] is less bound by environmental strictures and consequently changing social norms are free to develop more uniformly along lines of a sociological form rather than an environmental control.’ My strategy for my own research at Whitewater Lake was to utilize Dunning’s observations on Ojibwa social structure as a hypothesis that I could use to initiate my own study of the social groupings in northern Ontario. I expected that there would be important differences in the nature of Ojibwa social organization between those of Dunning’s earlier period and my own, and I intended to use these differences to launch my own analysis. For example, in Dunning’s time the families were mainly fur-trapping units, and the ebb and flow of family life followed the dictates of this economic pursuit. However, at Whitewater Lake there was more mobility in family life because the workers were participants in a wage economy, even though the people still lived in the bush, as at Pikangekum. For my part, I was able to document the forms and shapes of family organization from the ground up, as the family units evolved with each successive wave of flights from the Native communities to the south. Some families quickly located their camp beside one or more other families, while some chose a more isolated location, away from the others. Using Dunning’s phrase about population groupings developing along ‘lines of a sociological form,’ I was curious to know the basis for the decisions members of families were making when they chose the location for their camp. As one might guess, the reasons for each family’s particular decision varied considerably. Some expressed a desire to be with other family members, such as brothers and sisters, while others wanted to be near friends from their home communities. In other cases, people chose their location simply because they didn’t want to be near particular people, or just wanted to be left alone. All in all I was able to put together a fairly complete picture of the emerging social organization of the Whitewater Lake camp, and to make reasonable attempts to explain the reasons for this organization, based on several earlier studies of Ojibwa life in northwestern Ontario. This, then, was my fieldwork strategy. Collect as much accurate, firsthand information as possible, using whatever techniques seem most appropriate, or likely to yield the best results at the time. If it meant being perched up in a tower all day so that I could observe the flow of work activities on the construction site, then that’s what I did. I also participated, to the extent that I was able or allowed, in many of the camp’s activities – eating meals with the working men and

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women, joining fishing parties after work, or chatting around a camp fire in the evening. Conducting interviews was an important part of my research strategy as well, to obtain first-hand information from workers, crew bosses, the construction foreman, and the women and other family members of the workers in the various camp sites in the vicinity of the lodge. In other words, I employed primarily the conventional fieldwork methodology of participant observation, supplemented with questionand-answer data-gathering techniques in what is usually referred to as an ‘unstructured’ interview format. Even though the questioning of informants was often quite unstructured, I did have an evolving plan or research design, so that there was a purpose for the information that I was gathering. This design had three primary facets to it: first, studying the economic and political strategies of the Ogoki River Guides leaders along with their goals and objectives. Second, identifying the economic and organizational factors involved in the construction of the tourist lodge. Third, studying the structure of social life with a focus on the workers and their families at Whitewater Lake. The overall design of the research, with its three-pronged approach, allowed me to keep in focus the rationale for data collection and, at a later date, to integrate the data from three research areas into a larger theoretical argument. There was also an important personal side to this research, that I was to some extent aware of at the time, and that had the effect of changing me as a person. On the basis of these experiences at Whitewater Lake, I became less intolerant of life’s ‘trials and tribulations.’ When I am struggling with some aspect of my life, I think for a moment about how the Anishenabe people up in the bush country of northern Ontario also struggle, with fewer resources at their disposal than I have. They carry on with their struggles with acceptance and dignity, rarely complaining about their lot in life. It is true that my research in the Whitewater Lake country involved some difficulties, but I had to endure these for only a relatively short period of time. I always had the option to leave the area if I wished, and had the means to do so. This was not true for the Aboriginal people themselves. Whatever hardships I suffered, I didn’t have to cope with them all my life, as the northern residents had to do. The temporary trials that accompanied my research are part of everyday life for northern people. The hardships are many for these people – planes crash; people are burnt in house fires or freeze in snow banks or are hit by trains; and they live at an economic level that southern Ontario residents would find

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hard to tolerate. Research in the northern bush country allows the fieldworker to appreciate not only the rewards of life in a northern environment but also the benefits of living in the south. Overall, one could say that fieldwork gives us a better awareness of life in general because we are able to see our own life’s path in a larger, comparative perspective. The content of fieldwork is the stuff of everyday life: the details, background, and personalities that shape our life experience, imbuing it with meaning, however obscure, and that serve to propel us forward in time.

Conclusion Fieldwork in anthropology is filled with close human encounters like those I had at Whitewater Lake. In my view, such experiences are not only what makes anthropology unique in the social sciences but also what makes it personally rewarding. Anthropologists are able to gain first-hand experiences that are impossible to obtain from reading books in the library or administering questionnaires to people one never meets. Yet there is also a price to pay for this close contact. We are apt to become vulnerable in ways other social scientists will never know about, because we are able to participate for a limited period of time in the frustrations, anxieties, and real-life problems of people in settings far removed from the affluence of the urban world. These are settings that hardly anyone outside the discipline knows about, or perhaps even cares about. These are real people who have experienced considerable hardship because of their contact with a rapacious industrial society that wants the resources – the trees, water, and minerals – of the hinterland, but not the people. Fieldwork puts the anthropologist in direct touch with local-level social issues in a unique way that is integral to the enduring strength of anthropology. The study of Aboriginal issues from an anthropological perspective should be seen as an opportunity to learn more about the social processes that shape our experiences in our own time. It can enable us to learn something about what to do about the problems and injustices in this world. Is there any other more important reason why human societies should be the subject of our scrutiny and study?

CHAPTER THREE

Research Strategies: Advocacy in Anthropology

As a scientific moralist fully in sympathy with races hereto oppressed or at least underprivileged, the anthropologist would demand equal treatment for all, full cultural independence for every differential group or nation. — B. Malinowski, A Scientific Theory of Culture

Introduction Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1946), one of the leading figures in the history of British anthropology, has been hailed as ‘the patron saint of applied anthropology’ (Firth 1981: 193). Malinowski’s contribution to the idea of anthropology as a form of public service goes back to at least 1918, when he presented evidence to an Australian government inquiry on labour conditions in the western Pacific. He was also a forerunner in his criticism of colonial administrations that expropriated the lands and labour of indigenous peoples and disregarded the customary practices of the people concerned (Asad 1973; Lewis 1973). Malinowski thereby laid the foundation for an advocacy role in anthropology very early on in the history of the discipline. Anthropology may have been founded on colonialism, but some of its earliest practitioners became critical of it when they began to reflect on the human condition of the people they were studying. We have already commented on Diamond Jenness’s complaints concerning the Maoris’ conscription into mines and plantations in New Zealand, as well as his later protests about the banning of the potlatch and the Tamanawas dance in Canada. Similarly in the United States, James Mooney was infuriated over

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the outlawing of the sun dance among the Utes and Shoshones, and he sent letters of protest to the American government over its suppression of Aboriginal religious and cultural practices. The advent of fieldwork in anthropology was the critical factor in this change of orientation – the movement up from the armchair of the early evolutionists, off the veranda of the colonial administrator, and into the local villages. Malinowski held the view that it was the ethnographers’ responsibility, in the study of cultural change, to formulate their conclusions in such a manner that they would be taken seriously by those in a position to form social policies towards indigenous peoples. Malinowski was particularly concerned with the way colonial practices exploited these people, destroyed their social institutions, and generally restricted their freedom. It was these sorts of sentiments and ideals that laid the foundation for a modern brand of ‘proactive’ anthropology in which the fieldworker is more involved in local issues. Still, the practical details and problems of this sort of involvement have yet to be worked out in any systematic way in the discipline. There are times, for example, when anthropologists find that they have become involved in particular social issues, not as a result of their own choosing but because such issues are part of the research problem they are studying. Initially this involvement might not have been anticipated, and was apt to inflict a sense of stress and confusion upon the researcher. Discussed in this chapter are two such incidences. For example, Rosalie Wax and her husband were conducting fieldwork among the Gokachi, an Aboriginal community in the western United States, when they inadvertently raised tribal hostilities by appearing to act as leaders while embroiled in a factional dispute over which they had no control (1971: 334). This incident is interesting when compared with another case in which outsiders were resented for assuming a leadership role though for entirely different reasons. This latter case involved advisers and consultants among the James Bay Cree of northern Quebec during their land claim negotiations of the mid-1970s (LaRusic 1979b). It is not uncommon for anthropologists to face volatile incidents during the course of their fieldwork. Such incidents pose a personal as well as a professional, academic difficulty for them. On the one hand, they might wish to become personally involved in order to help out one particular party or another; on the other hand, restraint might be called for because of the likelihood that such involvement would bring about unforeseen changes in the activity under study. Part of the problem stems from the fact that not only have anthropologists not been satisfied

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with an observational mode of inquiry, they have also wanted to participate in local affairs as a means of gathering additional information. This chapter begins with a basic discussion of issues involving the advocacy role in anthropology, followed by a more specific focus on the issue as it relates to the study of Aboriginal people.

The Advocacy Question in Applied Anthropology Anthropological fieldwork frequently involves research among Aboriginal people who have pressing social problems, such as unemployment, inadequate housing, and lack of food and health care. In such situations a conflict can arise between the anthropologist as a private individual who wishes to alleviate these difficulties and the anthropologist as a professional researcher involved in the business of collecting data, testing hypotheses, and interviewing informants. In a strict sense these ‘peripheral’ social and economic issues sometimes have little to do with the actual research problem under investigation. As such, there are moral and ethical considerations about whether one is adequately prepared to help, especially when a social problem might possibly be exacerbated by well-intentioned but ill-informed intervention on the researcher’s part (Dyck 1991; Dyck and Waldram 1993; Waldram 1993). There are no easy solutions or cut-and-dried answers. Individuals must assess the consequences of their actions for themselves. At this point in anthropology’s development most of the current issues have to be addressed on an individual basis because there is only a sparse literature describing the problems that anthropologists have encountered during their fieldwork, and how they overcame them. One opinion beginning to emerge is of the ‘If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem’ variety. The argument here is that anthropologists who do not actively use their knowledge and skills to bring about a solution to local problems simply make it easier for those with differing or opposing views to win out. Such anthropologists, it could be argued, are themselves part of the problem. The basis of advocacy anthropology is the view that objectivity in the social sciences is for the most part an illusion (Harris 1991: 355). Furthermore, one’s failure to push for the implementation of a goal represents a form of advocacy in itself. The reason objectivity is considered illusory is because personal and political biases frequently play a role in controlling the anthropologist’s commitment to study one situation rather than another. To opt out, to refrain from action, is itself a form of advocacy

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because one’s inaction ensures that the actions of others will have a greater effect on the final outcome of a situation. How then can these new, modern stresses and tensions be lessened? One possibility is to accept outright that the advocacy role is a legitimate one for the researcher, thus eliminating all the ‘searching of the heart’ now going on in the discipline. As Ervin explains, ‘no one has the authority to say that anthropology cannot have as one of its domains a professional anthropological advocacy or that advocacy is not compatible with anthropology’ (1990: 26). Of course, as he also indicates, we have to become involved in the process of training ourselves and our students to be more effective advocates. Part of this training process would appropriately involve a study of the accounts that other anthropologists have provided regarding their experience with troubling situations. The fact that divergent interest groups exist in society means that researchers must at times serve in intermediary positions, or as bridges of understanding to permit otherwise antagonistic groups to work with one another. Such situations, however, can be fraught with potential trouble for those willing to assume an intermediary role vis-à-vis the disputing parties. As Sjoberg and Nett have warned, ‘Tensions adhere in the mediator role. As a specialist, the social scientist may wield considerable power and authority, but in the negotiation process the combatants often try to co-opt him, each side seeking through a variety of means, overt and covert, to gain his support. Or, as a neutral player he may become the focus of hostility on the part of one or both factions’ (1968: 90). As Rosalie Wax suggests in a study of a Japanese-American relocation camp during the Second World War, ‘When groups are forced into confrontation each takes what it needs from the confrontation and does not perceive it in the same way even when both are moving toward a satisfactory rapprochement’ (1971: 52). This would imply that the role of the anthropologist in an intermediary capacity should be to study carefully the various attitudes and perceptions held by the people who are party to the confrontation. It is easy to see such misunderstanding at the root of much group tension and conflicting interests. But how do anthropologists avoid becoming the focus of hostility and resentment during fieldwork? After all, the anthropologist is a relative outsider, and to blame such a person may be the most effective means of assessing responsibility and defusing tension. One way is to avoid controversy on the one hand and competition on the other, as Leighton (1964) attempted to do in his research at the Poston relocation camp. As director of Poston’s Bureau of Sociological Research, for example, Leighton (1964: 393) established explicit guidelines that members of his research team were expected to follow, such as:

64 Applied Anthropology in Canada 1. In giving statements, the Bureau must attempt to avoid getting involved in controversy, or taking sides. 2. The Bureau must avoid becoming a competitor with any group or persons in any issue whatever.

A conscious effort to ‘avoid getting involved’ was probably Leighton’s reason for adopting the passive ‘counsellor’ role. It should also have been a reason why his bureau was an object of suspicion by some evacuees, who saw evidence of the FBI in it, and who regarded the research team as ‘snoopers’ for the top administration (1964: 379–80). In turn, ‘“sociological research” was for the administrative staff associated either with social welfare or with remote and “useless” activities of a “pure science” nature’ (1964: 379). Leighton’s approach was quite a cautious one, but there again, a war was on and these were difficult times in which to conduct social-science research of any kind, let alone in a guarded detention camp where tensions were at a high pitch virtually all the time. What is interesting here is to compare the differences in approach between Leighton’s research at Poston and the fieldwork of Rosalie Wax at the relocation centres of Gila and Tule Lake (Wax 1971: 59–174). Unlike Leighton, Wax describes herself as a ‘particularly involved participant’ (ibid.: 166) who had to work under conditions where the ‘tension and hostility rose so high that in some centres ... a few men who expressed “ProAmerican” views were waylaid at night and beaten’ (ibid.: 62). At times she was welcomed because she could be used as ‘an informant and advisor’ (ibid.:123), while at others she was branded by camp administrators as a ‘general troublemaker’ who ‘had tried to subvert WRA [War Relocation Authority] policies’ (ibid.: 169). It is also interesting that in a later field trip to the Gokachi Indian tribe of the Midwest, her involvement in a dispute over hunting rights led to her denunciation by the tribal council as a ‘communist agitator’ (ibid.: 334). Given, as she says, her peculiar involvement, it is perhaps not surprising that Wax’s views on role playing should be somewhat unorthodox. As she explains, ‘many of the researcher’s most useful roles are spontaneously invented and developed by the combined efforts of his respondents and himself. These new relationships are sometimes peculiar or even fantastic, and they rarely fit precisely into the social structure of either of the participants’ (1971: 52). It is also perhaps not difficult, given this statement, to excuse WRA administration members and the Gokachi tribal council for misunderstanding her intentions. In Wax’s defence, though, she had shown

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much courage for attempting to cope with novel and difficult research circumstances. There was little in the history of anthropology to guide her, and so she was pretty much left to her own devices. As stated earlier, one of the seemingly more bizarre accusations of the tribal council was that Rosalie Wax and her husband were attempting to assume the leadership of the Gokachi tribe (1971: 334). The circumstances surrounding this charge were not explained in any great detail, except for Wax’s comment that ‘We knew that certain members of the Establishment hated and feared us and that, come what may, they would do all in their power to get us out’ (ibid.). Although the details of Wax’s account are somewhat confused, it is evident that her research into the tribe’s educational system had raised hostility in the Indian community. The hostility also served to mark more clearly the boundary between the two dominant factions in the community, and the Waxes, not fully comprehending the role of their research in the dispute, were forced to choose sides. They decided not to side with the tribal council – the dominant faction – whose members thought the Waxes were attempting to mould opinion among those opposing the council. Hence the charge that the Waxes were trying to play a leadership role in the tribe. We owe a debt to people such as Rosalie Wax for the increasing recognition that fieldwork inevitably generates stress of various kinds, and in some cases outright hostility. Part of the stress is generated by the alien milieu in which much anthropological fieldwork is conducted, especially the stress stemming from the fieldworker’s attempt to establish a rapport with strangers. In such cases the anthropologist is apt to feel that the anxiety over fieldwork is liable to produce additional interpersonal conflicts. Similarly, in his paper ‘The Ethnologist as Stranger,’ Nash writes that ‘in establishing rapport, and in attempting to acquire fairly complete data on the culture in a few months, the ethnologist encounters an extreme condition of strangership which lends a “do or die” atmosphere to his expedition. For few other strangers is the adaptive problem so extreme, and for few does so much hinge on successful adaptation’ (D. Nash 1963: 157). Nash then goes on to explain that anthropologists will likely adapt and be productive if they separate their feelings and affections from their academic pursuits. But what does the researcher do when attempts to maintain a neutral position are not tenable? How does one conduct an interview when the researcher must indicate some degree of agreement or sympathy with a particular point of view? In all, the relativist stance of the anthropological fieldworker can undergo considerable strain as a result of informants’ opinions and points of view.

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Culture and Commitment As Rosalie Wax found out, where local issues have divided a community into competing factions, the anthropologist may also be caught between informants. This sort of situation is apt to disadvantage fieldworkers and their research, especially when the researchers themselves come to be regarded as a threat to the well-being of the community. It is precisely this kind of predicament that led Henry (1966) to argue that in certain cases interaction with an elite population could be crucial to the successful outcome of research. In such instances some degree of commitment on the part of the researcher is essential to the viability of fieldwork. In addition, as far as Margaret Mead (1970) was concerned, the topic ‘culture and commitment’ is a central problem of our time. She recognized that it was becoming increasingly difficult for people to find themselves within the conflicting versions of our culture, a situation that also makes it difficult for people to make choices about which ideals, if any, they should commit themselves to. For the anthropologist the issue of commitment is an especially important one if the discipline can help to inform people about competing ideological forces. ‘It is my conviction,’ Mead explains, ‘that in addition to the world conditions that have given rise to this search for new commitment and to this possibility of no commitment at all, we also have new resources for facing our situation, new grounds for commitment’ (ibid.: xii). This sense of optimism, tempered by a sober realization of human frailties, was the foundation of her life’s work, and the basis for her outspokenness on such wide-ranging issues as nuclear disarmament and generational conflict. Not all researchers would feel at ease with the positions taken by Henry and Mead. Raymond Firth, for example, contrasts commitment and engagement: ‘My own reaction to problems of applied anthropology has not been one of detachment. But it has been one of engagement rather than commitment – a conviction of the importance of problems rather than an assurance as to the nature of the solutions or of my own role in relation to them. Probably this is partly a matter of temperament, partly a result of early environment’ (1981: 196). Firth seems to discount the fieldworker’s own role in research, at least to the extent that one can become ‘engaged’ without becoming ‘committed.’ In both cases the stress and anxiety of certain fieldwork situations may be unavoidable, especially when a sense of involvement creates role conflicts for the anthropologist. This predicament is described in a particularly poignant manner in Powdermaker’s account of a would-be lynching in Mississippi. She did not know whether to help the man or remain outside the situation to study the

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behaviour of the participants. As she explains, ‘The open tensions were resolved by my recognition that I did not have the power to save the Negro and that the only rational role open to me was that of the observer of the whites in the situation (1966: 293). Should Powdermaker not at least have made an attempt to contact the police, especially since a human life was in danger? Surely she would not have stood idly by, notebook in hand, watching this wretched man wriggle away at the end of a rope. But then, what else could any of us have done under the circumstances? In sum, the role of applied anthropologists in the modern world is a precarious one, fraught with potential difficulties such as stress, tension, resentment, and hostility. These ‘stresses of involvement’ result from myriad factors, including the fieldworker’s psychological temperament, political persuasion, and moral position, as well as local factions and interests. With increasing regularity anthropologists are finding themselves caught up in such situations, to the extent that the discipline can no longer ignore the various dilemmas and ramifications of fieldwork conducted in contemporary settings. The emerging situation today is one in which anthropologists enact new roles as mediators, advocates, and consultants. This new trend suggests a movement away from an older tendency to sidestep the effects and repercussions of anthropologists’ involvement in local affairs. Certainly one must wonder what Malinowski had in mind when he referred to ‘that impartial cold-blooded passion for sheer accuracy which the anthropologist can provide’ (1970: 20). Apparently anthropology has changed a great deal in the interim.

The Notion of Social Responsibility A problem for contemporary anthropology concerns the nature and extent of participation in the affairs of local people, and the unexplored avenues this involvement could entail. The matter is complicated by the fact that anthropologists have traditionally conducted their fieldwork among disadvantaged people who were frequently exploited by outside regimes and colonial powers. In these cases the personal element was bound to creep in, leading to a desire on the part of the anthropologists to aid the people in some manner. Malinowski was one of the first to recognize this tendency. In his paper ‘Practical Anthropology,’ originally published in 1929, he referred to this involvement as an ‘anthropological no-man’s land’ (1970: 13). He also suggested that anthropologists could act as advisers to colonial administrations whose indigenous populations were undergoing rapid and sometimes devastating changes.

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A novel case of local involvement by an anthropologist occurred in the 1940s when Holmberg (1954), who played a direct role in changing the lives of an isolated band of Siriono Indians in eastern Bolivia, introduced, among other things, machetes, dogs, and firearms. Holmberg wrote a much-respected ethnography of the Siriono, called Nomads of the Long Bow (1969; first published in 1950), but he also saw his role as that of an ‘innovator’ (1954: 105), describing his activity as an ‘experiment’ and ‘adventure’ in cultural change. It is a curious matter in anthropology that, even though the issue of social involvement remains an unresolved one, or even one widely discussed in the discipline, anthropologists have nonetheless been pushing steadily ahead into new areas of activity. Not surprisingly, there are those who suggest that caution should be exercised: for example, Raymond Firth warns that anthropologists should be prepared ‘to accept a notion of social responsibility’ (1981: 200), reflecting a call for a more socially responsible social science over the previous several decades (Berreman 1978; Gjessing 1968). Since the ‘socially conscious’ 1960s, various new roles have emerged involving conflict mediation, advocating minority group causes, or consulting and advising for particular vested interests. The issue is no longer whether anthropologists should become more involved in these sorts of activities, but rather what the effects of these kinds of involvement will have on the future shape of the discipline. The enactment of new roles means that anthropologists have begun more than ever to find themselves in the midst of controversy. The problem is that in their traditional role as ethnographic researchers, anthropologists are ill-equipped, for the most part, to deal with the conflicting demands of the participants in disputes. A major reason for this difficulty is that they lack appropriate role models to act as guides as they attempt to learn how to handle such situations. Or rather, there is not so much a lack of role models as a diversity of such models in the literature. Some of these roles have a certain degree of consistency with other similar forms of activity, while others are not mutually compatible because they are at odds over basic principles. Sol Tax, for example, suggested the adoption of a consultant-type role that would serve to ‘free the [Fox] Indians to make changes that they wish and which would appear from our hypothesis to be in their interest’ (1958: 19). Another position is that the anthropologist should act as an advocate, willing to defend and maintain the cause of minority groups (Jacobs 1974; Paine 1985; Peterson 1974, 1978; L. Thompson 1976). As Peterson explains, ‘My relationship with the Choctow tribe is that of a brief lawyer who is responsible for an analysis of possible courses of action suggested by the client and who, after the

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decision among alternatives is made by the client, proceeds to prepare the best possible case for his client along the lines of the alternatives chosen’ (1974: 312). This role is similar to that articulated by Cove for the Tsimshian of British Columbia, who ‘wanted to prepare for both litigation and negotiation of their claim, and consequently needed a systematic analysis of precontact society’ (1987: 3). In both cases it was up to the various tribal councils involved to decide for themselves how the results of the research would be utilized. What these and other similar cases suggest is that there is a potential problem concerning the extent to which the anthropologist’s traditional autonomy could be compromised by situations where the researcher neither selects the problem to be studied nor plays a role in deciding on the criteria used to determine its solution. For example, Clinton describes the perils of working as a ‘hired hand,’ a case in which the researcher is pressured to produce results that will benefit his employer. Clinton warns that this employer can exercise various options, such as a threat to fire the researcher, in order to ensure his or her compliance. In fact, when Clinton himself objected to the ‘fudging’ of one set of research results, he was reprimanded and told, ‘If I go down, you go down with me’ (1975: 201). Clinton could no doubt be excused for wondering if anthropology was just a job or whether there were more important principles at stake that could affect the reputation of the discipline. Of course, Clinton is probably not the first scholar to wonder about this sort of issue. In summary, it would be unwise to suggest that this kind of pressure on the ‘hired hand’ is a common problem in the social sciences, because the available literature won’t allow us to draw even the most tentative conclusions. One might even suggest that Clinton has overstated his case, and that this is an unfortunate case of whistle-blowing that only serves to tarnish the reputation of applied as opposed to more theoretically oriented research. However, it would be prudent also to acknowledge that when a researcher’s methodology and scope of inquiry are determined by vested interests, there is corresponding potential for the misuse of anthropological research. In general, however, there can be no doubt that social responsibility should be an integral ingredient of the research process.

Advocates and Consultants among the James Bay Cree All through the tense negotiations between the Cree and the provincial government over the terms and provisions of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, the Cree, as LaRusic indicates, ‘were dominated

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by their consultants’ (1979b: 27). The Cree style, he noted, was ‘marked by a dependency on consultants and by confrontation’ (ibid.: 39). The reason for this was that, ‘in order to respond to the challenge of negotiations in a meaningful way, the Cree had to rely heavily on hired experts. This situation is what has led to the dependence of the Cree upon consultants, a dependence which has not lessened since then’ (ibid.: 42). Further on we learn about the effects of this dependency: ‘From such a situation, it is not surprising that one already sees some signs of a potential resentment developing among the Cree concerning the power of consultants and the difficulty of controlling them’ (ibid.: 51). People like the Cree who are involved in a complex negotiation process clearly are in need of a variety of experts so that they can make the most effective decisions possible. When the participants to the negotiations come from such different societies as isolated bands of hunters on the one hand and urbanized Euro-Canadians on the other, the need for people who can help chart out a middle ground is also clear. In such situations it is not surprising that a dependency relationship favouring the consultants should develop. But is this relationship one of domination, as LaRusic implies? A different interpretation is offered by anthropologist Richard Preston (1982) of McMaster University. Preston was not a participant in the McGill team of which LaRusic was a part, yet he nonetheless had spent several decades conducting ethnographic research in the James Bay area and no doubt was well known to the Cree. This is probably the reason he was chosen to participate in a consultation meeting involving representatives of the Nemaska Band, the Department of Indian Affairs, and a variety of other consultants. The meeting was held at the proposed site for the new Nemaska community because the old village was to be flooded by the hydroelectric project. The meeting lasted four days, beginning with a bear feast and ending with a community plan. Initially, Preston was sceptical that such a planning strategy could work: ‘To me, and probably to many social scientists, the consult plan appears too slick and prepackaged to be likely to work well for a small and rather unorganized aggregate of hunter-trappers ... like a kind of Orwellian submersion of the Crees, providing only fantasy and alien solutions to complex, overwhelming problems’ (1982: 38). Yet eventually this scepticism melted away, leading to the conclusion that, ‘These qualms never were substantiated; the consult was a clear success’ (ibid.: 38). There are evidently quite different opinions here involving the role of consultants. Perhaps each author, in an attempt to provide as strong a

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backing as possible for his position, has overstated the case: Preston in presenting too uniformly optimistic a picture of the consulting role, and LaRusic in his sanguineous portrayal of external influences on Cree decision making. Salisbury, leader of the McGill team, has attempted to reconcile these positions with a more balanced point of view, indicating that ‘one would say that the Cree, after a period in which they employed a disproportionately large number of anthropologists and lawyers as advisers, have acquired the skill and the competence to employ specialists of all kinds, for jobs where Cree are currently not available’ (1986: 155). One conclusion is nonetheless clear: the Cree consultant dialectic has resulted in a fundamental change in the way the Cree arrive at decisions, and in the overall bureaucratization of Cree society. The irony here is that, rather than lessening the Cree’s dependence on the dominant society, the James Bay Agreement appears to have increased it. A variety of consultants now play a more overriding role in the life of the Cree than did their previous patron, the Department of Indian Affairs. Thus, in the case of the Cree and the Gokachi, outsiders acting as advisers and consultants have raised some resentment among local people. In both cases the advisers were accused of assuming a leadership role, but for different underlying reasons. Advisers to the Cree lacked hegemonic designs but were attempting to fill a vacuum left by the Cree themselves. On the other hand, the Waxes were drawn into a Gokachi political dispute from which they could not extricate themselves without provoking resentment from the local population. The challenge to anthropology is how to lessen conflict and tension at the local level, not exacerbate it. This is largely a matter of what could be called conflict management.

Advocacy as Conflict Management The difficulties associated with the consulting and advocacy roles for anthropologists has spawned another approach. This stance, as discussed in Marx’s (1981) research on Bedouin land expropriations in the Middle East, emphasizes the role of mediator or ombudsman for anthropologists. The idea here is that the mediator occupies more neutral ground than the advocate, therefore being in a position to benefit the various parties concerned more generally. This does not mean that the mediator is any less sensitive to the issues as they may appear to one particular group or another, only that a resolution of inter-group conflict is apt to benefit all the parties involved. The logic behind this more neutral position, as articulated by Salisbury, is

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that when the social scientist ‘commits himself to one side only, he nullifies many of the benefits that his professional training could give to that side’ (1976: 257). Taking sides tends to cast some participants in the role of allies and others as adversaries; researchers who can avoid doing so enhance their credibility as problem solvers rather than as problem creators. It is therefore evident that diverse points of view exist concerning appropriate roles for the anthropologist in the modern world. These points of view have become somewhat polarized between those pushing for a more impartial stance and those arguing that anthropologists should start taking a position on social issues. On one side are the advocates who suggest that social scientists are more useful when they serve the cause of minority groups directly. On the other side are the mediators who regard an advocacy role as self-defeating in the long term because it is liable to impede attempts to reach negotiated solutions to mutual problems. Choosing from among the alternative courses of action is not any easy matter; there are few guidelines to follow, and there is not very much by way of debate among anthropologists themselves about what they should be doing. What remains are decisions made on the spur of the moment, without much time for reflection on the possible consequences of these decisions. ‘No consensus exists,’ Harris explains, ‘among anthropologists about how to resolve these different views of the proper relationship between knowledge and the achievement of controversial practical goals. Perhaps the only resolution of this dilemma is the one that now exists: We must search our individual consciences and act accordingly’ (1991: 355). Part of the reason for these divergent views is that only in recent times have social scientists begun to move beyond their traditional roles as academic researchers into new, but largely uncharted, areas of activity. This new activity is apt to involve an intercalary role in negotiations between minority groups and government representatives. Since these negotiations frequently involve an element of conflict, ‘mediation’ in whatever form can become a precarious venture with numerous potential pitfalls for those lacking appropriate skills and information. At present, one’s common sense is about the only guideline for such activities, with the result that each anthropologist goes about the business of mediation on a more or less ad hoc basis, relatively isolated from others doing much the same thing. A particularly poignant case concerning the immigrant East Indian community of Saskatoon is discussed by Sharma (1989). The ethnic makeup of the community is quite complex, with members representing all the

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major religious groups: Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians. Sharma notes that the community as a whole was fairly well integrated and frequently came together on festive occasions. However, the relatively tranquil nature of life in the community was disturbed in the 1980s by events occurring in both India and Canada. For example, conflict developed between the Sikhs and Hindus because of difficulties in the Punjab state. Canadian television coverage of terrorist killings in Punjab served to malign the entire Sikh population in Canada. There were also further repercussions in the aftermath of Mrs Gandhi’s assassination and the Air India disaster (23 June 1985). As a Hindu and an anthropologist, Sharma attempted to play a mediator role in order to curtail anti-Sikh sentiments and prevent further hostilities. As a first step, he was elected president of an ethnocultural organization whose membership had lapsed considerably because of the conflicts and the resulting rift in the community. Various social functions were organized in an attempt to bring the disputing parties together and to discourage sectarian slights in public gatherings. Over time there was the growing realization that the problems of Punjab and India could not be solved in Canada, and that expressions of HinduSikh hostility could lead to further discrimination by the larger society. Whatever success Sharma was able to achieve resulted from his attempts to initiate a process of rapprochement within the community. Being an anthropologist was an asset because his training prepared him to understand community dynamics, yet it was his role as an insider that was probably the most crucial factor in alleviating tensions. As Sharma explained, the lessons he learned from his involvement were that anthropological knowledge must be tested through use and application, and thus refined. This is contrary to a commonly held assumption that applied anthropology consists of the application of already established anthropological principles to a problematic situation. Such an idea is also misleading because it projects the overly narrow view that client relationships with anthropologists primarily result when clients seek out anthropologists to consult them about a problem. In Sharma’s case the role of mediator emerged more from his own initiative than from the parties involved in the conflict. Of course, such role playing was based in large measure on the knowledge he was able to bring to the situation because of his insider position, suggesting that someone outside the East Indian community would have been less successful. On the basis of his involvement with the James Bay Cree in their negotiations with the government of Quebec, Salisbury (1976) has summarized

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the personal and professional attributes necessary for an effective intermediary role for the anthropologist. For example, this role can be enacted successfully only under specific circumstances, such as the existence of a relatively enlightened central bureaucracy willing to accept that local views tend to differ from its own. Moreover, a clearer expression of local problems results in more acceptable central policies and plans. Thus, the mediator becomes a communicator of information that must flow both upwards and downwards. A successful mediator should also be able to diagnose the problem area separating local people from official planners. But in order to move beyond diagnosis towards a remedy for the problem, anthropologists must be able to communicate their diagnoses to official planners – which means they must be able to speak the languages of both local people and officials. (The danger is that an ‘improvement’ in official plans is apt to be seen only in terms of how local practices should be changed to meet the needs of the outside officials.) A third condition for successful mediation is that local people are willing to place their trust and confidence in the outsider. He or she would also require the cooperation of officials whose decisions would affect the outcome of the situation. The cooperation of local people, of course, is just as important.

Brokers: Bridging the Culture Gap The idea of societal mediation is that the anthropologist should aim for a neutral, ombudsman-like role that would serve to bring people together and to alleviate inter-group conflict. The anthropologist in this case would be an information source only, not an advocate for a particular policy or position. In today’s world there is a need for increased communication between the bureaucracies of central governments and grass-roots or local groups that have relatively less power. To a large extent, the latter groups lack power because they lack information. Thus, there is a role here for the anthropologist, who can be a communicator of information both upwards and downwards, so that both the bureaucracy and the local groups can become better informed about each other’s intentions and plans. Since the anthropologist might also be the first non-governmental professional local people get to know, the development of personal trust is an important factor in how successful the flow of communication will be between the parties involved. This view of the role of the anthropologist is supported by those who see the social scientist as a ‘broker’ whose ‘task is to provide the public

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or decision makers with the data upon which to base their judgments and formulate policy. The broker’s ultimate purpose is to assist in alleviating the conflicts and strains that inhere in the relations among groups, particularly in pluralistic, industrial orders’ (Sjoberg and Nett 1968: 89). But does this then mean that anthropologists should not protest when politics dominate a situation because they may then alienate themselves from influence of any kind? The implication in situations of privilege and power is that the anthropologist could be forced to take sides, or at least to decide whether to oppose the existing system or work within it. It is this political dimension of intercultural brokerage that places the anthropologist in a particularly difficult position, especially if he or she is concerned about maintaining an image of impartiality. Although it is true that anthropologists have become habituated, because of their training, to diagnose what is wrong from the viewpoint of the local village or ethnic group, this does not necessarily mean that they have to take an adversarial stance against the planners and bureaucrats from the central agencies. To do so could further retard the achievement of the aims and objectives of the very people the anthropologist is presumably trying to help. There is, then, a paradox or dilemma in the brokerage role that stems from this imbalance of power. This dilemma has a great deal to do with whom the anthropologist is trying to help. He or she might be hired by the government yet committed to the objectives of the local population, in which case the role of intermediary will eventually erode into one of distrust for the anthropologist. Alternatively, the view could be held that any facilitation of communication is likely to benefit both sides, since it can only help break the impasse of apparently insoluble problems that inevitably emerge in pluralistic societies. Because of the very orientation of anthropology, however, the bottom line is that the ultimate usefulness of the anthropologist’s contribution is closely linked to his or her ability to provide some of the knowledge that will enable local people to bargain with outside officials on a more equitable basis. This sense of working together is described by Williamson (1989, 1991) in connection with his involvement in the ‘sealskin wars’ of the Canadian Arctic: ‘Certainly those of us who can should act responsibly to inform the societies involved. Most forms of advocacy reside more properly amongst the prerogatives of the native peoples themselves, and we should avoid taking issues out of their hands. But there are some occasions where anthropology still has a communication role, very often in concert with the indigenous organizations and spokespeople’ (1989: 54).

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The act of lobbying on behalf of one particular party or another also requires that an analytical distinction be made between a person who is simply a conveyer of information between groups, and someone who uses the information for political ends. As Paine explains in his study Patrons and Brokers in the East Arctic, the task of lobbying is, ‘in fact, subtly performed in acts of brokerage. A broker is a typical middleman role; however, it should be distinguished, in analysis, from another: the gobetween. The distinction relates to the manner in which the task of intermediary is performed: where messages or instructions are handled faithfully, we recognize the role of go-between, but where they are manipulated and “processed,” we recognize the role of broker’ (1971:1). In this sense, our concept of the broker is clearly distinct from our concept of the ombudsman or mediator as discussed above, mainly because the act of processing information has a subtle way of increasing the dependence of those receiving it because of the need for a contextual interpretation of its content. If the anthropologist is engaged in such an activity, it further means that both sides are ‘bent towards the middle,’ so to speak, and that the act of conveying information tends to become imbued with political, and possibly self-serving, overtones. Once again we encounter an ethical issue here, because of the political dimension of the role that is enacted. Essentially, the ethical issue revolves around the extent to which the anthropologist is able to foster dependence on him or herself through the conveyance of information. The anthropologist is typically in the field for a relatively long period of time – time enough to know the needs and aspirations of local people and how these might relate to those on the outside. A central government, for example, often finds itself at too great a distance from the sorts of communities that interest the anthropologist in the hinterland, so that the role of a middleman can become well entrenched, in a structural sense, between a local population and the central administration. Anthropologists are presumably equipped with a culturally relativist perspective, yet they are nonetheless in a position to play a role in the dissemination of values of their own choosing. This might be intentional, because they feel they are helping their local informants, or it may be unintentional because of an incomplete ability to separate personal and professional behaviour in the field. This is the sort of problem that all anthropologists are likely to face at some time or other in their careers, no matter where in the world they work, so it is worth thinking about. Certainly one would hope they do not become ensconced to the extent that they become accepted as spokespersons for a local community vis-à-vis

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the government. Such a role would have the effect of influencing the information collected in the field to a very large degree, and would put too much of a burden on the anthropologist to sort out which information is the result of his or her own activity and which is not. Yet given the fact that a ‘participant observation’ mode of inquiry is quite acceptable in anthropology, one is left to wonder if this ethical dimension is an ethereal one, dependent pretty much on one’s own perspectives and opinions. There is no reason here for assuming Machiavellian intent on the part of the anthropologist, but on-site activities are worth monitoring. I am not suggesting that anthropologists’ role playing be scrutinized on an individual basis (though in some cases that might not be a bad idea), only that the information each worker has gleaned in the field be passed around-on a professional basis. This activity would serve the useful purpose of allowing people to compare their own experiences with those of others in similar circumstances, thereby developing a sort of ‘theory of anthropological role playing.’ It would also have the practical benefit of assessing the direction in which modern anthropology is heading. This direction currently appears to be hidden from most, if not all, of us. The matter probably has much to do with how actively anthropologists are engaged in searching out solutions to various problems in cross-cultural settings. In this regard we are reminded of Firth’s suggestion that the problem of engagement and detachment in anthropology is ‘to adopt the concept that there is no single best solution of a practical problem, but only some compromise between conflicting interests’ (1981: 199). This would probably make sense to most of us because of the common perception that much anthropological work takes place in an arena of conflict, with local populations striving to achieve their own goals in the face of external pressure to inhibit their achievement. Compromise is often the key that allows progress to be made. Unfortunately, compromise usually benefits the more powerful outside agency, which is able to co-opt or subvert local goals.

The Anti-Advocacy Position The issue about whether or not anthropologists should function in the capacity of advocates has become a topic of heated discussion in the anthropological literature. In the journal Current Anthropology, for example, Hastrup and Elsass (1990) ask the rhetorical question ‘Is anthropological advocacy a contradiction in terms?’ As far as they are concerned, advocacy and anthropology are incompatible, although they are willing to

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admit that anthropologists may feel some obligatory pressure, even moral compulsion, to engage in an advocacy role. As they explain, ‘Anthropology seeks to comprehend the context of local interests, while advocacy implies the pursuit of one interest. We also argue, however, that anthropology may provide an important background for engaging in advocacy, which in some cases may present itself as a moral imperative’ (1990: 301). Their basic position is that, if anthropologists choose to espouse advocacy, then they must do so outside the profession because ‘no cause can be legitimized in anthropological terms’ (ibid.). The illustrative material Hastrup and Elsass bring forward in support of their case is certainly cause for thought. In 1988 they were conducting ethnographic research among the Arhuacos of northern Columbia. During the course of this research they were approached by a sector of the local population who asked them to aid in the promotion of a development program that would reintroduce intensive horticulture into the area. The beneficial aspects of this scheme would be a strengthening of traditional subsistence patterns and would eventually make the Arhuacos a more autonomous people. But despite these benefits the researchers declined to become involved. After some thought, they reasoned that the local people only wanted them to do the paperwork in the Arhuacos’s dealings with the Bureau of Indigenous Affairs. There was also the complicated matter of the Arhuacos’s internal divisions: would the anthropologists take sides and support the interests of the traditionalists in opposition to the views of the modernists? Hastrup and Elsass drew these conclusions: ‘When some of the Arhuacos asked us to plead their particular cause to government and funding agencies, they immediately had our sympathy as well as our professional interest. They still have it; but before we can go on we must talk with them about the complexity of the social reality’ (1990: 307). In this case, the complex ‘social reality’ had to do with attempts by the Arhuacos to present a united front to the outside world and conceal their internal dissent. Deciding not to become involved under these conditions, the researchers hoped the Arhuacos would eventually be able to work out their differences and come ‘to speak more convincingly for themselves.’ Negative reaction to this position on the Arhuacos case came in the form of a particularly caustic commentary in the journal/newsletter Proactive, published by the Society of Applied Anthropology in Canada (Ervin 1990: 24–7). The position here is that ‘their conclusions seem equally patronizing’ (ibid.: 24); furthermore, ‘I find their points of view basically irrelevant to applied anthropology. First of all they didn’t indicate whether they actually

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participated in the advocacy exercise or not, although one would be led to believe that they did not. Secondly, did they have any previous expertise or experience in applied anthropology to be really useful regarding these issues? Frankly, their view of applied anthropology is very superficial’ (ibid.: 25). At the cutting edge of the controversy is the growing rift between ‘basic’ and ‘applied’ anthropological research. In Ervin’s case, his objection apparently has to do with a perception that there is meddling in applied research by those whose lack a commitment to this area yet who feel expert enough to counsel others on whether or not advocacy is an appropriate role model. There is also concern about the practice of the traditional brand of anthropology that, in Ervin’s words, ‘lies gathering dust in libraries and is too arcanely constructed and inadequately framed, theoretically and methodologically, to deal with public policy issues’ (1990: 25). The message is to lay off the criticism until there is a greater familiarity with the issues involved, and until one has had practical experience of playing an advocacy role. The difficulties anthropologists have encountered in performing their new, unaccustomed roles has also led some to disclaim advocacy as an appropriate role model for the social scientist for other reasons. There are those who would exercise caution before jumping too quickly into an advocacy position, because most Aboriginal groups today have their own people who can function in that capacity and no longer need or want an advocate to plead their cause for them (Hedican 1982a: 268–70; Salzman 1981: 32–7). There is also the suggestion that when anthropologists function as advocates they tend to turn their employers, who are also their subjects of study, into clients (Henriksen 1985: 119–29). In an effort to overcome this problem, Henriksen discusses the involvement of anthropologists in the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA). The goal in this case is to provide a context in which the anthropologist can function in a role that does not compromise the interests of indigenous peoples or the anthropologists themselves. As far as the IWGIA group is concerned, the problems of indigenous peoples around the world have quite similar characteristics: struggles for rights to lands and resources, and struggles for the right to maintain their culture and identity. For the anthropologist, there is a role to play as an agent of change in the efforts of ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples to gain some measure of self-determination within the context of the ethnic diversity and cultural pluralism of the nation state. Henriksen’s (1985) suggestion – one

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that I believe is endorsed by many others – is that the special contribution anthropologists bring to the transformation process of nation building is the insistence on holistic perspectives. In fact, this is usually considered to be the traditional strength of anthropology, its raison d’être, if you will, and one that allows the researcher to make transcultural comparisons and translations. As Henriksen explains, ‘It is through holistic analysis that we are able to provide ethnic groups with models, which they can in turn use to inform their perception of their own situation and their relations with other ethnic groups and the state’ (1985: 120). It is through the anthropological perspective of holistic studies, then, that the anthropologist can play an important role in researching the issues of human rights and cultural diversity. That is, it is important to learn more about what the concept of human rights means in different cultures, so that goals aimed at a more equitable existence for all people can be more readily achieved. While these goals are perhaps too utopian in intent and vision for many because of the current realities of the world in which we live – widespread famine, environmental destruction, and so on – they are nonetheless goals towards which many groups are working. The problem with the present world of multi-ethnic societies is that there is quite an imbalance in the way resources are distributed, so much so that many indigenous peoples live under impoverished conditions while the upper strata live a life of relative wealth. In many industrialized nations the indigenous populations are viewed as obstacles to the state’s extraction of the resources that lie on Aboriginal lands. This view of ‘Natives as anti-development’ lies at the basis of a rationale that restricts the legal and political rights of the indigenous minorities in the ‘interest of the public good.’ In many instances these ethnic minorities continue traditional economic subsistence patterns of hunting or pastoralism, and this is seen in some circles as backward, or at least as standing in the way of the expansion of agricultural and industrial areas. In a similar vein, because long-standing traditional patterns of making a living are seen as somehow irrational in the context of a modern industrial society, it follows that indigenous populations tend to be regarded as incompetent. As Paine (1977) has so aptly illustrated in his work on the Canadian Arctic, people following a traditional cultural pattern are seen as unable to make adequate decisions regarding their own affairs, including the management of their own territories and resources. The idea of the Native as incompetent, then, becomes entrenched in a tautological scheme of rationalizations that are subsequently enacted in

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various policy directives. For example, leaders who are seen to be less incompetent are placed in positions of local power because they achieved their positions through an elective process. But these elected leaders must rely on government sources for their position and for incoming resources, and this makes them vulnerable to local criticism. In the case of the Inuit, ‘The whites themselves are responsible for the inception of the programmes, and the programmes themselves are, in large measure, responsible for the stimulation of the dependency needs which the whites deplore among the Inuit’ (Paine 1977: 12). There is much here that suggests a self-fulfilling prophecy. For the purposes of our discussion the important question is, ‘What can the anthropologist do about it?’ The most obvious point to be made is that anthropologists must avoid becoming just another layer of bureaucracy that suppresses the achievement of local goals and objectives. If anthropologists, even with the best of intentions, set themselves up as expert advisers or pleaders of the local case, then they become just another hurdle local people have to overcome to break loose from a dependency that prohibits them from speaking for themselves. In fact, the anthropologist as advocate can do more harm than might be intended, especially when traditional land-use patterns are presented in such terms as to appear ‘primitive’ and therefore unrefined. Intervention by the state could then be called for on the basis of improvement or replacement of a pattern of life that is seen as serving to keep the indigenous minority in a state of poverty. In an even more serious scenario, anthropologists can be played off against each other when each offers a different point of view on a particular issue. This matters a great deal when the very livelihood of a people is at stake. Take, for example, the issue of land claims and hunting territories among the northern Indians (Tanner 1986). If the Aboriginal populations of northern Canada can demonstrate that they have been users of their hunting territories ‘from time immemorial,’ they can then lay claim to certain rights from the government, such as economic aid, community development, education, and so on. Without a valid legal basis for this claim, the Aboriginal rights of the people can be denied on the basis that they are newcomers to this land like everyone else and as such do not deserve any special treatment or status. The ‘hunting territory debate’ that has been going on in anthropological circles for quite a few years has important theoretical implications within the discipline itself, but it also has immense practical implications for Aboriginal populations that are attempting to pursue their claim in courts of law.

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Land Claims and the Advocate Role The role of the anthropologist as an advocate in land claims is highly controversial today. Edward Rogers, former head of the ethnology section of the Royal Ontario Museum, goes so far as to pose the startling question ‘Are expert witnesses whores?’ (1986: 210). These are rather stark terms for the staid pages of an academic journal, but there are important issues at stake here. This age of litigation over Indian land claims is apt to strain the capacity of anthropologists to deal with important theoretical issues, mostly unresolved, and to present them in a coherent way to those who seek this knowledge. The land claims issue is mainly about land tenure, trapping territories, and whether or not the Natives held these in traditional, pre-contact times. As the special issue of Anthropologica (volume 18, 1986) on northern Algonquian territoriality indicates, there is no unanimity among the researchers themselves concerning the problem of contact versus pre-contact land tenure. As they say, the fire of controversy has produced a great deal of smoke but not much light. What all this does is bring into question the credibility of anthropological evidence, even though the anthropologists themselves are trying hard to find the correct answers to the questions that both Aboriginal people and the courts are asking. In the past, anthropological debates took place through the written word in scholarly journals. Today they are apt to be placed in the context of plaintiffs (the Aboriginal position) and defendants (government agencies) who call upon ‘expert witnesses’ to play roles in the adjudication process. All evidence undergoes close scrutiny; in some cases millions of dollars are sought as compensation for past wrongs. There is another important ethical issue at stake here. When the anthropologist takes the witness stand and is called upon to tell the truth, which of the various versions of the truth is he or she to advocate? First there is the ‘classic’ view that family hunting territories existed in pre-contact times. The alternative, ‘post-classic’ position is that these territories emerged after the arrival of Europeans, especially in the context of the fur trade. Even this does not exhaust the possibilities, since there is current research that is now seeking to refine these positions through an examination of archival documents and other related evidence. On the one hand, this matter of ‘truth’ has deep epistemological implications for anthropology; on the other hand, in the realm of litigation, the problem cannot be readily resolved because the expert witness may feel the need to duck under the crossfire of conflicting opinions.

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Perhaps one of the most dreaded scenarios for anthropology is the spectre of various anthropologists arguing against each other in a litigious dispute. A witness for the defence (of the Native position, say) presents convincing evidence based on radio-carbon dating of caribou bones, styles of projectile points, and associated information to ‘prove’ that Canadian Aboriginal people have inhabited this country for at least thirty thousand years. Another witness (for the government side) testifies that in his opinion the previous information is inconclusive because the caribou bones in question were probably the age claimed but were subsequently worked into implements many years later; and that in any event the bones were not in ‘clear association’ within a generally accepted archaeological context that would serve to tie the artifacts to the Native people involved. A third witness argues that attempts to tie particular groups of Native people to particular sites places an unjustified burden of proof on the evidence; that the various archaeological sites in the territory in question are undoubtedly the previous habitation centres of the ancestors of the Aboriginal people involved in the court case. A fourth witness indicates that, yes, this might be true, but his lifelong study of the ethnohistorical writings and accounts of the fur traders and missionaries demonstrates that particular Native groups are quite clearly rather recent migrants to the territory in question, even though they share many social and cultural traits with the area’s previous inhabitants. This is a hypothetical scenario, but nonetheless an instructive one. What is likely to happen in such instances is that those anthropologists who work against the Aboriginal peoples’ interests are apt to become personae non gratae among such a population. They are therefore denied the opportunity to do new research on modern community life, and presumably restricted to poring over dusty records and documents. In a sense such cases open the belly of anthropology, exposing the sorts of controversies and issues that place the reliability of the discipline as a whole in question. If so many seemingly correct conclusions are possible, as might be suggested, and when everything seems so tentative and inconclusive, how can anthropology be counted on to provide reliable information? Yet even with these difficulties, anthropologists are still in demand because they play a crucial intercalary role between the modern nation state and its indigenous populations. The authorities in power need anthropologists as cultural translators or go-betweens because anthropology is recognized, if only by default, as a ‘science of man’ that provides a needed perspective on minority-majority relationships. The

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anthropologists are conversant in the language of the majority and also, to some extent, that of the Aboriginal minority. While they can be thought of as understanding the rules of the game, they can also be counted on to present arguments that the opposition can then refute on their own terms (Henriksen 1985: 121–3). Of course this is also the accepted practice not only in courts of law but in the larger sphere of science as well. These various characteristics of anthropology as science, translator, and go-between might ultimately serve to enhance the status of the discipline outside academia, where it is practically unknown, but also to make it more susceptible to various ethical considerations. If, for example, the anthropologist is seen as successful in presenting the case of the indigenous minority to the larger powers, then it probably also means that these powers will be in a more favourable position to understand the goals and aspirations of the minority’s interests. This is a mixed blessing, because increased knowledge also lays open the possibility of increased manipulation and control. Alternatively, as the language of anthropology becomes better understood, the actions of the anthropologist as expert/advocate also become more predictable. If anthropology is hoist on its own hook, so to speak, as a science of human cultures and societies, its language should be free from moral and emotional overtones. The anthropologist as expert witness therefore becomes less capable of providing convincing arguments outside the technical concepts of the discipline and in the larger arena of human rights, equality, justice, and morality. Anthropologists should be concerned with such issues, of course, as we all should. But when we begin to talk about cultural relativism, about the fact that each culture is understandable in its own context, and about the lack of universal standards by which cultures can be judged, then there is the possibility of playing into the hands of those who would manipulate anthropology’s holistic, crosscultural perspective to win court cases. ‘Do you mean to say,’ a lawyer might argue, ‘that Nazi Germany has as much right to exist as any other “culture” because there are no universal ethical or moral standards?’ In reply we would probably say, ‘Well, not exactly ...’ and the rest would be lost in a flurry of claims and counter-claims. There is much to be said for getting one’s act together as well as possible and as soon as possible in the beginning, but anthropologists as a whole are not like that. The point is that, unless the arguments presented by the anthropologist are convincing – that is, stripped of the controversial details that are in the forefront of the discipline’s quest for knowledge – it will be easy to ignore

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or refute them. An informative example is contained in a 1968 article entitled ‘Limitations of Applied Anthropology: The Case of the Indian New Deal,’ in which Julian Steward reflects on the strategy of advocacy he was involved with in the era of the New Deal. He suggests that it was a strategy that had little success because anthropologists did not have much practical advice to offer the American Bureau of Indian Affairs when the American government sought concrete suggestions in the 1930s. The problem was that anthropologists lacked the power in the politicalbureaucratic system to make their opinions heard. As a consequence, anthropologists could do little more than ‘respond to the same evolutionary processes that create popular discontent with the status quo ... Meanwhile [the anthropological] role is necessarily limited to furthering goals that are generally acceptable to existing society’ (Steward 1968: 15). One wonders whether Steward’s feeling of resignation would still be appropriate today. It is probably still true that anthropologists do not have any great influence on the bureaucratic and political systems of power. Yet the ‘popular discontent’ that Steward speaks about is possibly more pronounced today, if we can use as an indication the widespread objections among the Canadian populace to the federal government’s handling of the Oka crisis in the early 1990s, or the backing given to Elijah Harper over his opposition to the Meech Lake Accord in the same period. The general population appears to be more informed about environmental and Aboriginal-rights issues than ever before; but whether the people come to voice their concerns is another matter. Information is one thing, complacency another. We have skirted around the issue of advocacy and land claims, but these related aspects of power, bureaucracy, and public opinion are important contextual matters. LaRusic, who worked for several years as a researcher in McGill’s Programme in the Anthropology of Development and as a consultant for the Cree during the negotiations over the James Bay Agreement, reminds us that, ‘from the point of view of the bureaucrat responsible for developing policy, the non-advocate anthropologists tend to remain invisible so that the profession is judged from the activities of the advocates’ (1985: 25). He makes a strong case for involvement by anthropologists in the area of policy development for Aboriginal people, yet there is apt to be considerable confusion about how this is to be achieved. The fact is that most anthropologists know practically nothing about the bureaucracy of the Department of Indian Affairs, or about the financial and jurisdictional constraints under which this department operates. On the other hand, the Hawthorn-Tremblay

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Report (Hawthorn 1966–7) stands out as a clear case in which the complex environment was not underestimated when the authors put forward their policy recommendations. The implication here is that anthropologists will probably not change the policies of a nation single-handed, but that they can have a subtle moulding effect on public opinion by using their first-hand knowledge of the living conditions of indigenous cultures as a basis for making constructive suggestions. The bureaucrats and politicians responsible for Aboriginal affairs are not going to be impressed with the anthropologist as desk-thumping zealot calling for the destruction of colonialism and capitalism. What could be more useful is what Maybury-Lewis (1985) has termed a ‘special sort of pleading.’ Maybury-Lewis is an anthropologist at Harvard and the president of Cultural Survival Incorporated, an organization particularly concerned about the destruction of South American tribal societies that are seen to stand in the way of development. He recognizes that ‘Land is the key to the cultural and often even the physical survival of indigenous peoples’ (1985: 137). If forced off their land, tribal societies can be physically annihilated. They are in a sense cast adrift with no way to fend for themselves in an alien society – a common trend in the Americas as various nations seek to counteract spiralling international debts by ruthless exploitation of their hinterlands. In these circumstances indigenous populations come under immediate threat because of an inability to maintain their land holdings in the face of vastly more powerful settler populations that are apt to regard indigenous peoples’ claim to land as inconclusive at best. In these circumstances there is constant pressure on Native societies to fragment their communal lands and treat them as individual, marketable holdings. This means that ‘The defense of Aboriginal land rights is a complex matter, even when they are not threatened by ruthless and unscrupulous interests. The view that Native peoples have a dubious claim to land if other people can make better (i.e., more productive) use of it is very common in developmental circles ... Such arguments can usually be exposed as flimsy justifications for exploitation’ (Maybury-Lewis 1985: 139–40). This ‘exposition,’ it is suggested, is best achieved by a return to ‘ordinary anthropology,’ which is to say maintaining a holistic approach and continuing the tradition of extensive fieldwork and careful documentation of particular cases. In this way advocacy efforts are enhanced and made more credible because they are based on the most rigorous anthropological analysis that the discipline can offer. After all, Boas himself would have maintained that anthropological research must first be properly scientific.

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Ethical Considerations in Aboriginal Studies It is sometimes claimed that anthropologists involved in advocacy work are really not very ‘scientific’ at all because they are biased in favour of the indigenous society. There is even the suggestion that anthropologists want to keep traditional societies in their ‘backward’ state just so they can be studied. Anthropology is seen in this context as self-serving, clinging to tradition, and resistant to change. From the perspective of the anthropologist, on the other hand, a desire to enter into an advocacy role stems less from paternalistic self-interest than from an interest in developing a close association with people from underprivileged ethnic groups. This involvement engenders a sense of conviction that a wrong has been done, although it is probably not all that clear how to set things right. This is an ethical stance, but there is also a problem of representation here – Who speaks for these ‘victims of progress,’ as Bodley (1975) has so aptly called them? The ethical consideration is mostly about the issue of how involved anthropologists should become in representing the people in other societies, the method of this representation, and the conditions under which it should be conducted. One facet of the issue has to do with the varying states of contact that exist for indigenous populations. It might be presumed, for example, that a tribal society with very little contact with the outside non-Native population needs advocates to speak for it in the national forum at large. A different type of role would be suitable where Native groups are able to speak on their own behalf but might require advocacy in a supporting role, such as that provided by the Canadian Alliance in Support of Native People (CASNP). In such a case, an appropriate type of aid could be made available in the form of fund raising, providing the halls and auditoriums in which to hold public events, and making Aboriginal issues known to a wider audience. Consultation with the Aboriginal group should, of course, be at the foundation of this advocacy support role. Yet the ethical question might well arise concerning which leaders among the Native population should be supported. There is no reason to assume that the Native group is going to have complete unanimity about which courses of action it should follow, and it would be paternalistic on the anthropologists’ part to make decisions on the group’s behalf before the people have a chance to work the issues out for themselves. Of course, information such as which groups in government represent the official view and which do not is always useful, as is information about comparable cases and their outcomes.

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The pro-indigenous advocate, to use Maybury-Lewis’s term (1985: 138), can also help Native communities analyse the consequences of their own actions and the possible outcomes of the various processes that affect them. When it comes to land-claims negotiations it is likely that the tribal communities may express a desire just to be left alone, to remain unmolested on the territories that have been traditionally theirs to occupy. Despite the anthropologists’ desire to accede to local wishes, they realize nonetheless that getting a quick start in preparing a case is a vital matter in the negotiation of land rights. The people will also have to realize that in order to hold their land, even a portion of it, they will have to be prepared to fight. The politicians and bureaucrats who make decisions about development and land use will also have to be persuaded that a Native claim should be taken seriously. This is the sort of advocacy role a McGill University team of anthropologists played in negotiations over the Cree-Inuit territory in northern Quebec, as described by Salisbury (1986) in A Homeland for the Cree. In this case the Quebec government had no initial intention of negotiating with the Native population but was eventually forced to do so, first by a mounting tide of public pressure, and subsequently by the courts. The anthropologists played various roles in aiding the Cree, such as training the people to conduct their own research into land use, the harvesting of resources, possible impacts on trap lines, and so on. It was this sort of evidence that became crucial support for the Cree claim that the hydroelectric proposal to dam the northern rivers would have dire and irreparable consequences for their subsistence way of life. On the question of the role of consultants in the negotiations, Salisbury (1983a; 1986: 12, 154–6) makes a special effort to counter the suggestion that the Cree were dominated by their advisers. It was the Cree themselves, he insists, who made the decisions during the entire ten-year process of working out the agreement with the government and then implementing it. Salisbury’s summary of this long experience is particularly instructive: The particular roles they [the anthropologists] have played – as consultants, employees, advisers, technical workers, trainers of local experts, critics using comparative experience, or as friends offering other friends the opportunity to talk through problems – have rarely been the roles that are evoked by the stereotype of the early twentieth-century anthropologist, notebook in hand, participantly observing ‘his people.’ I hope that the listing of what they have done may encourage the reader to examine more closely the question of the role of the social

Research Strategies 89 scientist in a modern world where states continue to become more heterogeneous, with ethnic minorities of different cultures expressing their distinctiveness, and where understanding and working with people of different cultures is a major problem for us all. (1986: 12)

Salisbury, McGill’s dean of arts, died shortly after writing this introduction to his book, and with his passing left a legacy of understanding and compassion of which anthropology in Canada should be proud. It is doubtful whether the role of anthropologists in the modern world could be expressed in a more elegant, insightful manner.

Conclusion Over the last several decades anthropologists have tended to become more involved in the social and political affairs of the subjects of anthropological inquiry. This has meant a considerable modification in the traditional role of fieldworker, with the result that anthropology’s longheld position of objectivity and relativism has been brought into question. An anti-advocacy position has also been expressed by some researchers on the grounds that, in anthropological terms, no particular cause is legitimate. Differences of opinion on this question can be expected. Yet it is nonetheless a fact that, as more anthropologists take advocacy and mediation roles, the strains of this sort of social involvement will become more evident, and there will be an increasing need to engage in discussion concerning the ethical considerations that are brought about by these new roles and their effects on First Nations people. Among Canadian Aboriginal people, the land-claims controversy is a fitting example of the changing role of anthropologists as they perform roles such as advocate, mediator, and consultant. It is further evident that this modern brand of anthropology has generated a number of tensions and conflicts that have resulted from the differing perceptions concerning which behaviour is appropriate to each role. This ‘stress of involvement’ takes many forms because the personalities and convictions of anthropologists are not the same, nor are the various conflict-producing situations they encounter in their fieldwork. How this tension and conflict are overcome is at this stage pretty much a matter of personal trial and error. There is a better sense of the difficulties involved now that some anthropologists have published their experiences. But we still have to rely on personal experience as we attempt the balancing act of trying to help out while at the same time avoiding

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the trouble that such situations are apt to bring about. Still, much of this is out of the anthropologist’s control. After all, tension, conflict, and reflection on the preponderance of power are common enough, having existed long before the unwary anthropologist arrived to conduct his first research. From the description of anthropological activities in this chapter, it is apparent that a diversity of possible roles could be used as advocacy models in the field of Aboriginal studies. It is further obvious that the roles enacted by anthropologists have changed considerably since the time of Boas and Malinowski. For this reason, any discussion of the social involvement of anthropologists should consider issues of social and ideological change. Raymond Firth’s (1981) view that compromise between conflicting interests is always preferable presupposed the legitimacy of all parties, which, in Firth’s day, included European colonial interests. Today, the interests of such colonial powers are no longer generally regarded as legitimate, especially in the context of Aboriginal rights. It is all probably a matter of where we stand on particular sorts of issues and how these issues are perceived within changing cultural traditions.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Controversial Side of Applied Anthropology: Notes from Northern Ontario

There are millions of acres of land surrounding this Lake [Nipigon] and I cannot understand why the Ontario Government officials are adverse to giving these people enough land to live on in a locality where they can earn a living. — Indian Agent W.R. Brown, Port Arthur It would appear that the Indians have now all the land that they are entitled to on Lake Nipigon, and it does not seem advisable that the shores of this lake should be further cut up by setting apart Indian lands. — A. Grigg, deputy minister of lands and forests, 1917

Introduction Fieldwork in applied anthropology frequently involves the participation of various parties – Native peoples, consultants, government officials – who are apt to have different views and perceptions about how a particular project is to proceed. Conflicts are likely to result in these situations, and applied anthropologists should be prepared to incorporate such occurrences into their research. This chapter discusses the controversial side of research in a northwestern Ontario land-claims dispute, as a way of highlighting the various dilemmas facing the involved anthropologist. It is also meant as a cautionary note for those who might hold the view that fieldwork in applied anthropology differs little from that in any other area of social or cultural anthropology.

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To illustrate this point I will discuss my involvement in a resettlement program in the Lake Nipigon area of northwestern Ontario. The people concerned are members of the Whitesand Indian Band, who are scattered along the Canadian National Railway line in such places as Armstrong, Mud River, and Collins. The people were negotiating with the Department of Indian Affairs to have a permanent location for their reserve. As the story goes, when the 1850 Robinson-Superior Treaty was signed, ceding that vast area north of Lake Superior up to the height of land south of the Albany River, only three reserves were actually set aside for the Ojibwa or Anishenabe people of this region: Fort William, now called Thunder Bay; Pic Mobert, near the town of Marathon and the Hemlo gold fields on the north shore of Lake Superior; and Gull Bay, on the west shore of Lake Nipigon. Apparently the idea was that, as the hunting peoples of northern Ontario began to settle down and presumably take up agriculture, additional reserves would then be allotted for the Ojibwa population.

The Whitesand Land Problem The Whitesand Band of Ojibwa Indians in northern Ontario has waited a long time for a plot of land to call its own. Even though it has been more than 150 years since the Whitesand people signed the RobinsonSuperior Treaty, band members are still negotiating for a reserve on which to live. Pulp and paper companies, the Canadian National Railway, and a multitude of tourist operators now own or hold long-term leases on most of the available land formerly occupied by the people of Whitesand. In this case the Native people’s ability to make sound plans for the future is severely restricted by decreasing opportunities to participate in the economic and social growth of the region. A sense of urgency was felt by most members of the band, hastened by the rapid growth of government and resource-company interests during the last several decades. Because they had less good land to choose from each year, some Whitesand people felt that a settlement should be reached with the government as soon as possible. On the other hand, others were of the opinion that only the outsiders would gain if a hasty decision were made and, given the consequences for future generations of Whitesand people, that more time should be spent on thoroughly assessing any government offer. Conflicts had also emerged between a consulting firm and the band, and between the band and the Department of Indian Affairs over which sites could reasonably provide an economic basis for the newly settled community.

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My initial involvement with the Whitesand Band was as a university-sponsored coordinator, someone to help band administrators sort out issues and implement decisions. As events occurred and the situation changed, this role was augmented by my attempts to mediate among a variety of conflicting interest groups. At other times animator and facilitator roles were also employed, but with varying degrees of success. This experience suggested to me that applied researchers should be prepared to actively explore new roles for themselves, especially as these relate to a mediating capacity.

Some Historical Dimensions of the Issue The people now known as the Whitesand Band were not always known by this name. When the Robinson-Superior Treaty was signed in 1850, all the Native peoples around Lake Nipigon were grouped together under the rubric Nipigon Band, and only one reserve (Gull Bay) was established for these people. Evidently the idea was that other reserves would eventually be set aside for the Lake Nipigon Native population as the people decided to settle in more permanent village communities. One group, the forerunners of the Whitesand Band, lived seasonally on Jackfish Island near a Hudson’s Bay Company fur trading post in the southern part of Lake Nipigon. The leaders began sending petitions to the Canadian government in the 1890s asking about the status of their reserve lands. The Native people did not receive any communication from Ottawa on this matter, so in 1907 chiefs in the Lake Nipigon area wrote to the deputy superintendent of Indian affairs: We the Indians want to know definitely whether Jackfish Island is an Indian Reserve. We do affirm to your Department that our Indian Agents, particularly the present one does not attend to our affairs, nor will he answer a letter. He promised us that he would pay all the Indians at this reserve, he failed to do this. On that account Indians do not like to come here. (Letter, 17 July 1907, from Chiefs Wegwans, Kwisises, and Bouchard, Gull Bay Ontario)

It was not until 1914 that Jackfish Island was confirmed as a reserve by the Province of Ontario. However, only 363 acres, not the 1,000 or more originally requested by the band, were included in the transfer. In any event, by that time most of the Jackfish Island population had moved to the north end of Lake Nipigon, with better access to the new (1911) Canadian National Railway line.

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Three years later, in 1917, the Indian agent in Port Arthur (Thunder Bay) wrote to the secretary of Indian affairs stating that: Chief James and all the Indians who reside on Jackfish Island Reserve are very anxious to surrender this reserve and have a new reserve set aside on the north bank of the Whitesand River. The Indians who live on the reserve can find no employment there and could not find a market for berries or fish. At least 1000 acres should be secured as fully forty families would reside there. (Letter, 18 September 1917, from W.R. Brown, Indian agent, Port Arthur)

This information was then sent to the deputy minister of lands and forests, whose response to the request for a reserve change was less than enthusiastic The Indians have now all the land they are entitled to on Lake Nipigon ... I would suggest to you that if your application was amended and that you would apply for, say, from one to two hundred acres of land, that a Licence of Occupation to your Department on behalf of these people might be given consideration. (Letter, 25 August 1917, to A. Grigg from J.B. McLean, assistant deputy minister of Indian affairs)

It was in response to this letter that the Port Arthur Indian agent wrote to his superiors in Ottawa complaining that such a small parcel of land, ‘when there are millions of acres of land surrounding this Lake,’ would not provide a sufficient basis for the people to make a living. Indian Agent Brown also pointed out that he ‘found Chief James to be a good levelheaded Indian and I consider that he knows what he is doing when he asks for this transfer.’ The issue of the land transfer generated further controversy when Chief Fire Ranger McLeod submitted his report: ‘In looking at it from the Forest Reserve standpoint, it would make another scar on the shores of the Lake, and to me, old Lake Nipigon is the most beautiful Lake in the world.’ Included in the correspondence was also the response of one Indian who expressed the opinion that ‘the Ontario Government should bring in a law to shoot all Indians so that the moose and fish would not be molested.’ Antagonisms were clearly emerging among the various interest groups – Natives, forestry officials, Indian agents, railway concerns, tourists – early on in this area of the province. Chief Tommy James, also growing impatient, wrote to Indian Affairs asking for two square miles on the Whitesand River with a two mile frontage on Lake Nipigon. A surveyor arrived a few months later and laid out a plot containing just 500 acres. The surveyor then wrote to Indian Affairs stating, ‘I told the Chief that I would lay out 500 acres for

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him in the required shape wherever he wished to have it and he could fight for [the rest of] it afterwards.’ The band objected to receiving so little. The Ontario government, acting on the recommendations of the chief ranger in the area, further reduced this amount. In 1919 the Province of Ontario granted a Licence of Occupation (not a reserve) for 276 acres of the poorer land on the site, and with a small lake frontage, at the nominal fee of ten dollars per annum, to be paid by the Government of Canada to Ontario. The Indian agent could have sent this information to Chief James himself. The fact that he asked Ottawa to send it indicates some reluctance on his part to be the bearer of bad news. In any case, a letter was sent to Chief James setting out the conditions, which the chief should ‘please be careful to comply with.’ Over the next forty years there was a steady decline in permanent Indian occupation of the Whitesand lands. In the early 1940s flooding appears to have occurred in part of the Whitesand allocation, possibly due to Ontario Hydro’s program of water diversion and dam construction on Lake Nipigon during this decade. In 1951 the Whitesand Band was affected, as were many other bands in Canada, by a revision (Section 74) of the Indian Act governing band elections – namely, the condition that only those residing on reserves could vote. By this time there appear to have been no members of the band in actual residence on the Whitesand River; moreover, the band did not have legal status as a reserve, although few people seem to have known this. The band was not heard from again until 1967, when one of its members wrote to the Department of Indian Affairs inquiring about possible compensation for the flooding, and for clarification as to the status of the Whitesand land: ‘It’s getting worse there now. All the old houses were washed out. That’s why the Indians don’t stay in Whitesand Reserve any more.’ The Department of Indian Affairs refused to consider compensation for the band’s losses at Whitesand. In 1970, without consulting with the band (which did not have a council at the time), Indian Affairs cancelled the Licence of Occupation of Whitesand land. In subsequent developments in 1977, the Minister of Indian Affairs repealed Section 74 of the Indian Act, making band elections possible. After holding a meeting of its members, the Whitesand Band established some basic election rules and elected its first council in many years. The first band council resolution appeared in August 1977, to wit: ‘The first priority of this council is to regain reserve land for the Whitesand Band.’ The Union of Ontario Indians was then instructed to make representations on their behalf. By the following summer the band had identified a number of preferred areas and had approached Indian

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Affairs’ regional planner with a request for a feasibility study. Minutes of band meetings indicate that by 1979 three potential sites had support: the old band area on the Whitesand River, and two sites close to the railway. In a vote on site selection each obtained about one-third of the votes cast. The band further indicated a desire for approximately 640 acres as a reserve. The Ministry of Natural Resources indicated a preference for the sites near the railway, comprising about 400 acres each.

University Involvement My role in the Whitesand resettlement issue began in an almost accidental manner. The University of Guelph had what was called the Rural Development Outreach Project (RDOP) when I arrived in 1978. For the first two years we worked with various university personnel on what was called the Moose Factory Island Servicing Project, on a contract with the Department of Indian Affairs. When that was over the superintendent of Indian Affairs in Thunder Bay asked if we would like to help the Whitesand Band in Armstrong select a new location for the reserve. No one at Guelph knew where Armstrong was or had any familiarity with this area of northern Ontario, but as chance would have it, for nearly two years in the mid-1970s I had conducted ethnographic fieldwork only twenty miles away in the rail-line village of Collins. Since Whitesand people also lived in Collins, I was familiar with their problem as well as other related facets of the case. When asked to become part of the Guelph team and to live in Armstrong for the summer, while three others served in a support role at the university, I accepted, although with some trepidation. I wondered in the first place why Indian Affairs would want a team from as far away as Guelph to work on this project when its members were so unfamiliar with the area. Why not a team from Lakehead University or even Laurentian University, both of which have strong Native studies components? The big problem, I thought, was that the summer would be over before anyone really began to grasp what was going on, and in my more sceptical moments I reasoned that this was perhaps all part of the ‘non-assistance’ assistance – or mock progress – that DIAND had a reputation for offering. It was apparent that Indian Affairs was primarily interested in having the university act as a community development intermediary between the band and the department. RDOP associates accepted the offer because they saw the Whitesand problem as an opportunity to explore Native selfdetermination with a cooperative people. RDOP’s original proposal stressed Whitesand self-determination more than the development of an

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intermediary role. My own role as the main contact person in Armstrong, the site of the band’s headquarters, was not all that clearly defined, and I began to realize that each party in this affair saw it somewhat differently. As RDOP saw it, our role would be to 1. assist the band council in determining band priorities; 2. assist the band council in accessing information and developing skills; 3. assist the band council and band membership to build greater selfreliance and self-determination through which their need for assistance would progressively diminish; 4. evaluate the role of an independent community assistance agent in the process of building band self-determination. These were lofty and important goals, though I thought they probably could not be accomplished in any great measure in one summer of work. As it turned out, RDOP attempts to fulfil these objectives were greatly influenced by a number of unforeseen factors, not the least of which was a tendency for conflicts to emerge when things appeared to be going well. Thus, the resolution of conflict was a pre-condition for the achievement of the wider objectives concerning Whitesand community development. This situation meant that RDOP personnel were frequently called upon to act in an intermediary capacity.

The Problem of Role Enactment Right from the beginning the band was pushed into making important decisions, such as choosing a consulting group from the three offered by DIAND. The chosen consultants arrived almost at once, took a few soil samples here and there, talked with people from the Ministry of Natural Resources base (who are the real power in many areas of northern Ontario), and then stopped in at the band office. Without so much as talking with the chief or council members, who were at work all day, the consultants rushed back to catch the last flight out of the Thunder Bay airport. Several weeks later they notified the band that their report was finished and that they wanted a general gathering of the band to discuss their recommendations. I still remember all the people packed together in that vacated garage: the consultants with their flip charts and fast-talking land-use terminology; the old people, who understood little English, frowning at one another. The people were told they should hurry up and make a decision

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about which site they wanted because other bands also wanted reserves and DIAND’s planner might have to move on and deal with their needs. I took all of this to be a not very thinly disguised threat. I had expected the meeting to take place over a period of days so that decisions could be talked out and various views presented. But the officials said that the band was disorganized and not really prepared to make a decision. Of course there was a certain amount of truth to these accusations, but I had understood that the main purpose of these consultation meetings was to help the Whitesand people become better organized, and thus better prepared to arrive at decisions. In any event, it was easy to see that the situation smelled like a whole lot of trouble. The consultants showed very little sensitivity to the cultural differences involved, or to the fact that the Whitesand people did not all have degrees in land-resource science. The charts depicting the possible layout of the community also seemed too utopian for a bush environment. There was a lot of concern about where the laundromat was to be located, when in reality most of the people probably grew up washing their clothes in the lake. The consultants also said the proposed community would be situated on a virtual sand dune, ‘so of course no one can cut down any of the trees or else everything will end up blowing away.’ How would anyone be able to heat their houses, I thought, or even build them in the first place, without making use of the wood around them? Maybe this was the usual way DIAND and the consultants dealt with their Native clients, but I strongly questioned their methods. I began to wonder what I was doing there when there were clearly some rather large hurdles that had to be overcome if the project was ever to get off the ground. What I understood from the RDOP directives was that I was supposed to lend assistance primarily as an animator; that is, I was to help band members access information and develop skills, and to ‘animate’ band aspirations for more knowledge. From the perspective of the superintendent of Indian affairs and his planning director in Thunder Bay, it became evident from our discussions that they preferred that my role be that of a mediator, someone who would act as a go-between serving to bring the various parties – DIAND, the Whitesand Band, and the consultants – together. This was a desirable role from the administrative perspective because relations between DIAND and the band were far from cordial. The band felt pretty much alienated from DIAND personnel in Thunder

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Bay, who tended to treat them in a perfunctory manner. For example, they would require the Whitesand people to make the 160-mile trip over a dusty road on a regular basis while they rarely made the reciprocal trip to Armstrong. In any event, the Whitesand people had a long-standing distrust of government officials because of the previous questionable land dealings involving the Licence of Occupation and the equivocal status of their previous ‘reserve’ on the Whitesand River.

The Mediator Role Within weeks of my arrival among the Whitesand people, events occurred that determined the course of the summer’s activities. In May two members of a Toronto-based consulting firm arrived to give the band a summary report of a land-use study of one of the proposed sites, called Jojo Lake. JoJo Lake was close to Armstrong and the railway but smaller (400 acres) than the band had hoped. It did, however, have the backing of many Whitesand people (fluctuating from 30 to 60 per cent of the population) and the Ministry of Natural Resources. Just after the consultants’ arrival, a physical planner and a construction manager from the DIAND offices in Toronto drove to the Whitesand area. Their intention was to call a band meeting to discuss the consultants’ report and prepare for the summer’s construction work. The manager of the Whitesand Band then approached me. He said the band council was very confused about what they should do because it had been their impression that the consultants were to spend the summer preparing a feasibility study, and that this would give band members time over the winter months to discuss the report and arrive at their own decisions. No one, he claimed, had agreed to the accelerated submission of the report, yet everyone (meaning the consultants and DIAND) was acting as if all the preliminaries had been settled. When this matter was raised with DIAND’s planner, he responded that it would be in the band’s best interest to move quickly that summer because there were other Native communities in the Thunder Bay district making urgent requests for land-use studies. The implication was clear: by holding to the terms originally agreed upon between DIAND and the band, the Whitesand people risked being bypassed in favour of more compliant Native settlements. The band came to the conclusion that DIAND, in concert with the consultants, was trying to rush them through a difficult negotiation process. From DIAND’s perspective, the band was not prepared for visits

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from DIAND staff because band members were not making the best use of their time. By the end of the first week, communication had broken off between the band members and their visitors. Despite the turmoil, some semblance of band solidarity around this issue began to emerge. But before a way around the impasse was found, I was unwittingly tossed into the fracas myself. The day the outsiders were to leave, a breakfast meeting was arranged for all the parties involved, at a restaurant across from the band office. I was one of the last to arrive, and as I walked into the room it was evident that an earnest discussion had been going on for some time. Before I could pour a cup of coffee, one of the consultants began to take me to task for ‘agitating the band.’ DIAND’s planner then interceded, offering the opinion that the cause of the impasse was not any inherent weakness in the relationship between DIAND and the band but the failure of RDOP personnel to act as effective intermediaries. The evening before, I had given some thought to the possibility that such a situation might develop, reasoning that the consultants would not likely blame their clients (DIAND and the Whitesand Band) for the deadlock. RDOP was destined to play an ‘easy victim’ role, and over the next few hours I struggled to press my explanation of the problem – lack of band-DIAND communication – on somewhat unwilling ears. Essentially, my argument was that the Whitesand Band had never really had much meaningful contact with DIAND – or with any government officials, for that matter. The fact that many Whitesand people spoke only Ojibwa, and the fact that band members were scattered over a wide area, meant that DIAND would have to make special efforts to establish effective bandDIAND dialogue. An aloof, paternalistic DIAND presence, I argued, would only serve to further isolate and antagonize Whitesand people. Despite the acrimonious nature of this breakfast meeting, the discussion did serve several useful purposes. Most of the contentious issues were openly discussed for the first time, and while they were not solved immediately, a consensus began to emerge on which problems needed to be handled first if the project were to proceed. Also, because the meeting was so heated, it was brought to the attention of DIAND’s planning director for Ontario, who subsequently attempted to ameliorate the crisis by the following actions: a letter was sent to the Whitesand Band indicating that the time for the band’s response to the consultants’ report had been extended; the consulting company’s association with the band was terminated; a new district superintendent of Indian affairs was appointed for the Thunder Bay region (a Native man from the Fort William Reserve); a

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plan was initiated to fill the planner’s position in the Thunder Bay office so that there would be little need for the Whitesand Band to deal directly with DIAND’s Toronto office; and, finally, the planning director encouraged RDOP to continue working with the band. In summary, the planning director saw that much of the problem stemmed from the communication difficulties between the band and DIAND, especially at the district level. The steps he took served to strengthen RDOP’s position that a continued lack of communication between the band and outside interests would have a negative impact on the band’s attempt to acquire information and develop planning skills. The role of the anthropologist as mediator could at times be interpreted as having aggravated an already difficult situation, but it did have the positive effect of helping to bring the difficulties out in the open so that the roles of the different participants could be more closely scrutinized. Yet from the position of the anthropologist, while some positive results could be seen in the anthropologist’s role, these results were mostly not consciously intentioned ones. The ad hoc nature of the anthropologist’s role still brings into question what the most appropriate role should be in such situations of social involvement. There is the possibility, then, that a combination of roles could be the most effective form of involvement – that is, moving beyond mediation into areas such as facilitation and animation.

The Facilitator Role The intervention of the planning director and the appointment of a Native person as district superintendent made the Whitesand people feel that some hope still existed for their land-claim and resettlement program. They now had access to positions of power within the Department of Indian Affairs, but for the most part they were not sure how to benefit from their position through the use of these new channels. One benefit did accrue almost immediately: there was more time for reassessment of the Whitesand situation. Like people on the brink of signing something they do not fully understand but feel they should sign in order to save face, the band council began to search for a more comprehensive understanding of their predicament. What the people thought they needed was a wider perspective on local issues of land tenure and access to resources. By midsummer new questions were being raised: ‘Where can we find out about all the treaties that have been signed? What was the James Bay Agreement all about? Can we learn anything from the McKenzie Valley pipeline debates? Are there films and books on these subjects?’ My imme-

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diate reaction to these rhetorical questions was, yes, there was much information on these topics that could be useful in the preparation of their position. We then began an examination of several works on the various Canadian treaties and land surrenders (Canada 1891; Morris 1880), and these provided useful information on the amounts of land reserved for other bands by the Robinson-Superior treaty. In all, one cannot be sure that the specific details of the various land claims, treaties, or agreements we examined were of immediate use to the Whitesand people. But what they did learn was probably more helpful in the band’s long-term planning: that land settlements must be carefully prepared; that the spoken word carries little weight in a court of law; and, finally, that ‘selling short’ under external pressure is to be avoided. What the band had yet to determine was how to strengthen its bargaining position by an aggressive interaction with outside officials, a problem caused in large part by the band members’ lack of confidence in their dealings with the larger Euro-Canadian society. This lack of confidence was most evident during the band-DIAND conflict. In situations of external conflict band members tended to withdraw into a form of passive resistance rather than actively demand an explanation for the questionable treatment meted out by the various government agencies with whom they had interacted over the years. One of the main reasons for the band’s withdrawal in situations of external controversy – apart from feelings of powerlessness when confronted by outsiders – was confusion over how to act to get the results they wanted. Greater experience in Native-white negotiations would have gone a long way towards solving this problem, as would exposure to the literature illustrating how other Native communities had successfully handled problems similar to those faced by the Whitesand people. Persons who can act as intermediaries or facilitators between the community and outside sources of information can therefore serve a useful function: they can suggest possible alternative courses of action that might be open to the community. By the end of the summer the band members could visualize different paths to the achievement of their goals, and this, it was hoped, would result in more effective planning in the future.

The Animator Role When the people in the Whitesand Band realized the extent to which outside sources of information could be useful in local problem solving, at least in suggesting alternative ways by which problems could be handled, they began to inquire about ways to gather their own information. Thus,

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‘information management’ came to be seen as a crucial part of the band’s development. As such, RDOP had a role to play in helping band members gather information and develop skills; that is, in ‘animating’ band aspirations for more knowledge. A number of examples can be used to illustrate the specifics of this role, such as assisting the band council in (1) developing a usable inventory of information on the band, its activities, skills, education, and so on; (2) identifying the training and skills needed; (3) developing appropriate methods of consulting with band members; and (4) identifying sources of assistance, including provincial and federal social service programs. Progress in achieving these objectives was soon made on a number of fronts. The Whitesand Band Human Resource Inventory was developed to assist the council when decisions had to be made on the abilities and needs of families likely to move to the new reserve, as well as on the development of skills-training programs. In addition, the band council planned to conduct mini-workshops for the Whitesand people living in the scattered settlements along the railway. The purpose of these gatherings was to inform the more isolated band members of new developments concerning such things as the consultants’ land-use report and the progress of the land settlement with DIAND and the Ministry of Natural Resources. Another purpose was to gather feedback from band members in a more structured format than the one then in use in regular band meetings. In what could be taken as an encouraging sign, in their attempts to build greater self-reliance the band decided that DIAND and RDOP would not be represented at the workshops. It was felt that band members would be more comfortable expressing their opinions about the proposed reserve without outside observers, and without having to continually use English to express their ideas. Both the Human Resource Inventory and the workshops are examples of results that can be obtained when an appropriate animator is able to stimulate local participation in information gathering. For Whitesand band members the animator’s next step was to provide assistance on how to utilize this information so that the band could make its own assessment of the findings and use these findings to guide the planning of policy objectives. When band members were able to refine these abilities, they achieved a sharpened sense of their objectives and priorities regarding community development. In summary, the animator role had further potential for helping the band realize its capacity for undertaking progressively more complex activities.

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Nonetheless, the problem of information remained at the forefront of many of the band’s difficulties. It had been my conviction that the main barrier to Whitesand resettlement was the faulty passage of information among the main parties to the dispute. Historically, Indian agents and forestry officials had failed to give the Whitesand people the pertinent facts, and it was evident that attempts had been made at times to conceal or disguise information that would benefit the band. Lack of consultation withh the band was a related problem, such as when the Licence of Occupation was issued or when Ontario Hydro supposedly caused the flooding of Lake Nipigon in the 1940s.

Conclusion If we look at RDOP’s objectives with respect to the Whitesand Band, we can see that the intentions of both had a similar underlying philosophical base. RDOP saw success as a progressively diminishing need on the part of Native people for assistance, until outside support roles could be eclipsed by the new organizational strength of the community. The issue then becomes one of duration – when can it be said confidently that a particular Native community has no more need for outside assistance? Actually, the outside supporter has, or should have, minimal input into this decision, since it is the Native community that must ultimately decide on the uses of the external aid. This suggests that the societal mediator best serves by filling a void in Native affairs and, if successful, eventually becomes unnecessary. A related observation is that societal mediators who wish to avoid spending an ever-increasing amount of time on the sidelines could make better use of their talents by anticipating the future needs of the Native group. This may also help to identify distinctive ‘niches’ through which outside support can be more effectively delivered to the Native group. The alternative roles of animator, facilitator, and mediator are examples of niches that non-Natives can fill, at least on a temporary basis. The mediator role, for example, is based on conditions in which communication problems exist between outside agencies and local groups. It is a ‘piggy-in-the-middle’ sort of situation, but this role can be useful when it serves as a focal point for bringing problems to light. There is a tendency, however, for the person enacting this role to gravitate towards the local group if trouble becomes endemic. At its best this role can serve to ameliorate trouble, improve the conditions for successful goal achievement, and reduce local-outsider tensions

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over development schemes. At worst it may aggravate such tensions, making the achievement of such goals more difficult. The facilitator role is based on the rationale that there is a need for a wider perspective on local issues. The facilitator in this case interprets and synthesizes existing social-scientific knowledge and experience in comparable situations. The role has the potential to expand on alternative courses of action, reduce confusion over alternative paths to goal achievement, and make for more effective planning and project implementation. On the negative side, this role may only serve to shift the focus away from the main track of local objectives, leading to a futile wild goose chase into the quagmire of unresolved social scientific issues and debates. The so-called animator role is based on the condition where there is a local desire to participate in information gathering and assessment of findings. The challenge in this case is to serve as a translator of research methodology into the local idiom. In a positive vein, the animator can help demystify the research experience by establishing a direct relationship between the local need for information and the various techniques that can be used to gather and analyse it. The animator also has the capacity to increase local self-confidence and self-consciousness and to decrease the need for expensive outside help. There is also the possibility that the animator can help sharpen local objectives and priorities and encourage an analysis of the various cause-and-effect relationships in which local people are involved. Conversely, this role can instil a false sense of confidence, leading to the mistaken belief that methodological techniques alone are the surest path to knowledge. In other words this is what Kaplan has cogently referred to as the ‘myth of methodology,’ which is to say, ‘the notion that the most serious difficulties which confront behavioral science are “methodological,” and that if only we hit upon the right methodology, progress will be rapid and sure’ (A. Kaplan 1964: 24). On the whole, though, it can be said that anthropologists have not been overly concerned with developing a sophisticated methodological basis for their discipline, and this, given the diversity of their research situations, is probably not such a bad thing. The problem with all these different roles – or more precisely, the different perceptions that were held about my activities on the part of the university, DIAND, the consultants, and the Whitesand band members – was that it was difficult, some might say impossible, to meet all the expectations of the different parties involved. I saw my role mainly as an anthropologist with some expertise in Native affairs who was trying to help the

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band members arrive at the best decisions while protecting their interests. These interests were evidently not seen in exactly the same way by DIAND or the consultants, so there was a considerable potential for conflict, which I didn’t initially realize. In this case there could be some justification for the charge that I was a well-meaning person but nonetheless just another bungling outsider who made the situation worse. I will accept that for the moment, but ultimately will argue against this accusation. For example, I told the band that they should push to get the best deal they could, even if they had to wait for a few more years, because they would have to live with their decision for many years to come. Meanwhile, DIAND’s personnel wanted to have the band settle on a new reserve as quickly as possible. A fragmented band was harder to deal with, and anyway, the whole mess about the Licence of Occupation and the flooding of the original reserve had got into the newspapers and had become an embarrassment that DIAND wanted to get rid of as soon as possible. The consultants, for their part, had prepared a report, and they were interested in the band’s speedy approval of it. What this all meant was that DIAND and the consultants did not look at my ‘go slow, protect your own interest’ approach with any great enthusiasm. In fact these two parties began to look at me as not fulfilling my mandate from RDOP, which they understood was to move the band’s decision-making process along more quickly so that the new reserve could be built without any more wasted time. They did not share my view that the Whitesand Band should be given all the time it needed even if it meant greater expense. My rationale was that the Whitesand people would have to live with the results for many generations to come – a point considered much less crucial by DIAND and the consultants. To clarify just how serious this whole situation was – at one point the consultants accused me of actually harming the band’s best interests by impeding the implementation of their (the consultants’) plan. Luckily I had the backing of the RDOP people, who had some confidence in what I was doing, because -I had taken the precaution of briefing them beforehand about the Armstrong area and what they could expect with regard to DIAND. What eventually happened was what I had originally predicted several months earlier: the band showed signs of protecting their own interests and saw those interests as essentially at odds with those of DIAND, with the result that DIAND personnel became more antagonistic in an attempt to bring the band back in line. My part in the conflict then became the focal point for the hostility because I could be blamed with impunity.

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In summary, the lesson here for applied anthropology is that there is a considerable potential for controversy that we should be aware of and try to learn more about. Fieldwork in applied anthropology frequently involves the participation of various parties who are apt to have differing views and perceptions about the role of the applied anthropologist. It is important to try to anticipate those areas where potential conflict is most likely to occur, and to prepare beforehand, to the extent to which it is possible, ways to accommodate the views and aspirations of the participants in a project. The future success of applied anthropology might well hinge on developing novel ways of countering these old difficulties.

Postscript In 1984 the Whitesand Band said it would accept the offer of 2.5 square kilometres of property for a reserve near the town of Armstrong. However, although the band said it would accept the offer its leaders later changed their mind when a deeper issue arose. As Chief Sinoway explained, ‘We began to realize there was something wrong. All around us there was development and we still had a high unemployment rate in the band. We ran into all kinds of private interest in property around us when we were looking for [a reserve site]. We wanted a partnership in its development’ (McGrath 1989: 23). The band subsequently developed a new attitude towards its relationship to the larger society. Chief Sinoway, for example, indicated that they did not want to own the property in question because, ‘We have to look at a different approach here with land claims. If there is a settlement, the term settlement implies a debt is settled. We want to have a mutual agreement for the future.’ The Whitesand Band then became caught up in a much larger dispute over the initial Robinson-Superior Treaty of 1850 in which various bands contend that they were not represented when the treaty was signed. The bands want more control over the mineral and timber-rich territory stretching from Thunder Bay to the Pukaskwa National Park near Marathon and up north to the Atlantic-Arctic watershed. This is a vast area that includes the rich Hemlo gold fields, forest industry woodlands, and several towns and villages. The Ontario Court of Appeals at one point ruled, though, that even if a band had not signed the treaty, their ancestors lived in the area covered by the treaty and received its benefits and were therefore considered treaty Indians. The director of DIAND’s specific-claims office further said that the Indian bands themselves must share the blame for the long-drawn-out disputes. Said then Director

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Klein, ‘Indian organizations waste time and effort when they know the policies we are working under, and [they] still ask for more. We’re trying to deal with matters 100 years old or older. If it takes another year or two to arrive at a settlement, that would seem insignificant.’ Given the long-standing climate of distrust that had permeated the negotiations between the parties over the years, such a prediction may have been overly optimistic. There are potentially many years ahead for involvement by land-claim researchers and social scientists, including anthropologists, before any definitive settlement can be reached between the government and the increasingly politically active Native groups. The challenge for the social scientists of the future is how to participate in this settlement process in an effective and meaningful way.

CHAPTER FIVE

Aboriginal Policy Issues: Anthropological Perspectives

The ultimate failure to include Indians raises the basic question of how the demands of the Indians at the consultation meetings were perceived by the policymakers inside government. It also requires us to understand how ‘the Indian problem’ was defined by the policy-makers and the public, for defining the problem that a policy is to solve is the first and the most crucial step in policymaking. — S.M. Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy

Introduction The so-called Indian problem has been one of those political footballs that has been tossed about in Canadian politics since the time of Confederation and before (Dyck 1991). It is an issue that appears to defy a rational, problem-solving sort of approach, since there are so many different perspectives that have to be taken into account: historical, political, administrative, and cultural. It is a multifaceted situation that cuts to the heart of Canadian identity – how we see ourselves in a multicultural sociopolitical setting, and how this view is played out in actual policies and administrative programs (Howes 1992). There is no doubt that Canadians have perceived the Aboriginal population to be in a disadvantaged position for a considerable period of time, yet successive governments have vacillated from one policy direction to another: protectionism, assimilation, termination (Ponting and Gibbons 1980: 16–30). There has been so little consistency from one historical period to the next, from one government administration to the next, that it has been virtually impossible to define the parameters of ‘the

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problem,’ with the result that Aboriginal policy making in Canada has been inconsistent, contradictory, and at times discriminatory. This chapter focuses on some of the key policy issues concerning Aboriginal peoples in Canadian society, beginning with a general overview of public policy from the perspective of applied anthropology in order to provide an orientation to Aboriginal policy in the context of social scientific research. For example, one of the most important historical processes affecting First Nations societies is that the land base for the Aboriginal population has been continually shrinking, on a per capita basis, with the result that a large percentage of this population has left its reserves and communities. Some of this overflow population has migrated to the cities, but large numbers of the ‘off-reserve’ (or non-reserve) Native sector are living on crown land in squatter communities. There is a jurisdictional problem here, since the off-reserve Natives are technically a provincial responsibility yet the provinces have historically treated almost all Native concerns as a federal problem. This off-reserve migration has proved to be a problem without a readily available solution, but the situation is changing with greater provincial involvement in Native affairs, such as the establishment of Ontario’s Native Affairs Directorate. If the Native population is to become more influenced by various provincial measures and statutes, a key issue that has to be worked out in the future is whether there is to be a fundamental change in the present structure of Aboriginal communities as they move closer to municipal incorporation.

Anthropological Perspectives on Public Policy Anthropologists, perhaps more than other social scientists, are in an advantageous position in addressing significant policy issues. This is partly because the research methodology of anthropology mainly involves participant observation, which serves to provide information concerning the problems and issues encountered by the residents of local-level communities on a first-hand basis. As we have seen, it is also because the underlying philosophical basis of anthropology, namely its cultural relativism, encourages a non-directive, non-judgmental perspective towards a multiplicity of norms, behaviours, and traditions. Granted, the advantages that anthropologists bring to the area of policy concerns are themselves the subject of debate within the discipline itself. Part of the discipline that has gained momentum in recent years is based on the idea that anthropology must begin to become more relevant in finding solutions to social problems of poverty, sexism, racism, and so

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on. The advocacy model is one avenue that has been suggested, but there are a variety of other approaches that involve roles such as mediator, consultant, expert witness, and advocate (Crysdale 1991). A case can be made that anthropology has some relevance and advantages in the policy field (McFarlane 1992; Sawchuk 1993). There is the familiarity with local problems, and there is some degree of historical precedent for being practical and action-oriented. Having said this, we now could well ask, ‘What is the problem? Why have anthropologists not been in the forefront of major social issues or addressing existing policy?’ It is true that a few members of the discipline have made significant contributions to our understanding of certain issues, such as Aboriginal land claims or northern development. But on the whole, anthropologists have not been very active in initiating a strong and forceful response to certain issues. In recent years, however, there has been a much more active involvement by anthropologists in policy-related issues, if the research output over the last decades is any indication. Take, for example, Waldram’s (1988) study of the forced relocation of the Cree community of Chemawawin in northern Manitoba as a result of hydroelectric development. Other relocation studies have been conducted on the James Bay Cree (Preston 1982), and Richling has published papers on community resettlement in Labrador (1985a, 1985b). The area of health-related issues has also been the focus of much recent work, such as Shkilnyk’s (1985) study of the effects of mercury poisoning in a northern Ontario Ojibwa community, Aboriginal treatment practices in a modern context (Jilek 1974, 1983; Morse et al. 1987; Turner 1989; Young et al. 1989); health care and cultural change in northern Ontario (Young 1988); Speck’s (1987) book, An Error in Judgement, on the politics of medical care in a B.C. Native village; as well as a special issue of the Native Studies Review (Waldram and O’Neil 1989) devoted to Aboriginal health research. The subject of policy issues relating to Aboriginal peoples has been the focus of considerable anthropological research over the last two and a half decades (Hedican 1982b, 1989; Surtees 1982; Weaver 1981, 1986; Brownlie 2003; Shewell 2004; Tsing 2005; Ervin 2005, 2006a, 2006b; HaigBrown and Nock 2006; Hedican 2002a). Other related topics include Asch’s (1984, 1997, 2001) studies on Aboriginal rights; the politics of Native identity (Barron and Waldram 1986; Ervin 1987; Hedican 1991; Minor 1992; Nagata 1987; Neizen 2003, 2004; Tanner 1983; Waldram 1987); and Native community-development issues (Carstens 1991; Driben and Trudeau 1983; Halpern and Christie 1990; Hansen 1987;

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Hedican 1986b, 1990a; Knight 1978; Lithman 1984; Salisbury 1986; Wien 1986; Bielawski 2004; Chambers 2000; Clark 2005; Cooke and Belanger 2006; Cummins 2004; Dickson-Gilmore and La Prairie 2005; Preston 2004; Hedican 2001a, 2002b, 2006; Goulet 2004). Anthropologists have also taken an active interest in food, diet, and nutrition (Feit 1982, 2004; Hedican 1985, 1990b; Koennecke 1990; Szathmary et al. 1987; Wagner 1986; Wenzel 1981, 1986, 1987, 1991). Of course, this brief overview hardly does justice to the work involved, and I surely do not mean to slight by way of omission any that are not mentioned here, but it does give some idea of the rather large scope of applied anthropological research regarding Aboriginal issues in Canada over the last decade or so. There have also been a number of retrospective accounts of anthropology’s involvement in public policy issues. For example, as T. Weaver indicates, ‘Anthropologists appear to be confused about the use of anthropology in public policy’ (1985: 97). Cyril Belshaw has gone so far as to see the anthropologist working in the public policy area as a sorcerer’s apprentice, a view that invokes notions of magic, mysterious ritual, and inscrutable behaviour. He explains that ‘We have our utopias, we may try our hand at forecasting, we may indulge in futurology. But when we gaze in the crystal ball, we are involved in a kind of sorcery, a task for which the anthropologist is an apprentice, playing with forces that require much more work to be understood’ (1976: 14). Of course this refers to the EvansPritchard study of the neophyte conjurer among the Azande, who would not dare ask whether his mentor’s teachings were mere tricks but learned them anyway because some things are beyond the realm of questioning. It is just like the anthropological mentality to take something that many people regard as fairly straightforward and attribute to it a sense of mystery and deep ideological foreboding. The more one delves into these deeper meanings the more difficult it is to move off the mark, to move one’s ideas from thought to action. There is a sort of inhibition at work, partly due to academic self-consciousness and partly due to a respect for the wide, even immense, field of what could be called culturally based solutions to practical problems (as in Ross’s [1992] discussion of ‘alternate realities’). The very idea of ‘policy’ is problematic in anthropology because of the possibility for an ethnocentric transference of Western-derived values and assumptions to the patterns of other societies. Of course, this is a problem with just about every aspect of the crosscultural comparisons anthropology deals with, so we begin, as we do with other comparisons, to look for the universality of the aspect involved in our definitions so that they can have meaning, or validity, over a wide range of societies and social institutions.

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This means that there is a way out of the anthropological malaise concerning public policy. To find the escape hatch we must cease being selfconscious about the mysteries of policy, as if it were the special preserve of the high priests of government: the political scientists, politicians, or economists. They have their say about social and political issues, but others have the right to speak out as well. Chambers helps us with this line of thinking by explaining that ‘The word policy is a lot like the word culture. It can mean almost anything, practically nothing, or it can be operationalized to mean something very particular. [Generally], the policy idea represents those intentions which can be associated with deliberate action in any sphere of human activity’ (1985: 38). What this does is place the idea of policy back on familiar ground for the anthropologist. The idea of policy, then, is much like those other areas of social organization that are familiar in ethnography – marriage, the family, politics, and so on – that require a loosening up of our usual definitions so as to accommodate a wide range of specific, culturally derived contents. We begin with the assumption that any action, whether it affects many people or few, starts with some notion about what the outcome of that action will be. This is what Chambers calls the ‘intentionality of human activity’ (1985: 38), which is to say that these notions of intent are what come to represent policy. In actual practice it matters little whether these intentions are clear or vague, bizarre or appropriate, because this is a matter for some future assessment. Considering this broad idea of policy as having to do with human intentions and outcomes, it starts to become evident that a notion of policy is also central to the notion of applied anthropology, in the same way that a notion of culture is integral to the wider discipline. Applied anthropology is in the business not only of understanding but also, at times, of directing cultural and social change. And it is this sensitivity to cultural processes and the close working relationship with various decision makers at the local community level that allows the anthropologist to make a unique contribution to policy issues. This also means that the applied anthropologist should be concerned with the normative structure of the local population, which is to say, with those policies that are institutionally sanctioned. This does not necessarily mean that policy formation is tradition bound, or that consensus must always take place. Many policies are the subject of intense debate, such as in traditional societies undergoing rapid social change. The world of policy is sometimes an arena of competition where people with contrasting intentions meet to debate their competing points of view. The role for the anthropologist is to try to make these points of view intelligible, to articulate them in relation to a wider stream of change, and thereby to see in the to and fro of confrontation the emergence of new

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directions for human action. Public consensus around particular issues may emerge or it may not; it may be enduring or it may be fragmentary. Whatever the case, the applied anthropologist has the task of interpreting specific sociocultural processes to a wider audience interested in the generalization of human social change. The success of this translation process is, of course, also contingent on the success one has at understanding the language involved – that is, understanding the language of the people making the decisions and the discourse that serves to define the characteristics of particular public policies. The realm of debate that leads to the emergence of policy has some advantages for the applied anthropologist. In many cases discussions take place in informal settings and involve relatively small groups, so that traditional techniques of participant observation and open-ended interviewing can be used. These are effective means of gathering information about the views that different people hold and about how these emerge in eventual policies concerning action. This was the case for much of my research in a northern Ontario Ojibwa community (Hedican 1986b) involving a locally based development organization called the Ogoki River Guides, or ORG for short. The bosses of ORG usually made their decisions around a kitchen table after many cups of coffee, debating this approach and that to determine which would give them an advantage in their negotiations with a government agency supplying money, in this case for the construction of a tourist lodge. As it turned out, these discussions were the backbone of whatever success ORG had in their negotiations. The leaders hammered out a course of action – a policy, if you will – and then stuck to it. They decided to go after a lot of small projects, to get their foot in the door first, and then start delivering on their employment promises to followers. This greasing-the-wheel policy instilled a sense of confidence in community members, who were then more willing to lend their support in the struggles ahead. The leaders then had a platform to build on, from which they launched step two, which was to unify the small projects into a concerted effort to build a large-scale tourist industry, not just the sort of fly-in, shore-lunch variety that was common in the area. This led to many confrontations with government personnel over how much money should be given to ORG, how the money was to be accounted for in terms of labour versus capital costs, and who should be accountable – all of which involved a steady stream of telephone calls, letters, and meetings. As the researcher, I usually stayed in the background, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, though I would leave periodically to

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indulge in a flurry of note taking. These notes turned out to be even more important in the long run than I initially thought. They gave me an ability to assess the flow of changing intentions of the ORG leaders at various points in time, and how some of these eventually emerged as concrete actions. While I did not actually think of it at the time, what I was studying was local-level policy formation in the context of Nativegovernment interaction over development issues. It was this first-hand involvement that made my work more successful than it would have been if it had been based on study at a distance or for a shorter period of time. It takes awhile to understand the various personalities, to predict their intentions, and to have some idea of their larger perspectives and plans for the future. Even in small ‘traditional’ communities there can be quite diverse opinions about how a particular goal can be achieved, even though a more unified course of action may eventually emerge. The ability to question the various participants about their goals and intentions and to observe these in action are strengths that anthropologists seem to have in abundance. For the fieldworker, it is not just a matter of involvement versus neutrality. At first I was particularly concerned with how my presence might affect the outcome of events. As I questioned the leaders, they in turn kept asking me questions about my thoughts concerning the probable outcomes of the suggested courses of action. Later I began to realize that any ideas I could contribute were not really new, that the leaders had thought of them before I had. What they were actually looking for from me was some degree of confirmation that their actions would lead to the intended results. From that point on my contribution to the flow of dialogue was largely nondirective, though in this new role I did come to understand the context of ORG’s decisions in greater depth and detail than I might have otherwise.

Research on Aboriginal Issues: Some Contradictions Policy decisions should be informed by solid basic research. Yet there are a number of contradictions or dilemmas that are raised by the very notion of research on social problems, especially when there is a commitment to resolving them. Barrett (1984b: 228–34) has raised a number of objections that would appear to dissuade anthropologists from studying social issues. Take, for example, the extensive research that anthropologists have conducted on the Aboriginal people of North America. The charge has occasionally been made that anthropological research has been of little use to Aboriginal people because the traditional interest – in

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kinship terminology, cross-cousin marriages, and the like – has too much of an ivory-tower orientation and no practical application. Even when anthropologists have studied Aboriginal issues such as housing or land tenure, their observations have usually been written up in esoteric language that nobody could understand and published in obscure journals that were impossible to find. Given this propensity among anthropologists, it is no surprise that they have seldom been consulted on practical matters and that their research has had almost no impact on Aboriginal policy. A related point is that the social and economic deprivation of Native people is so great that it would appear to have no feasible solution. In this situation the anthropologist is faced with an impossible task, made all the more so by the complex and contradictory historical factors that have led to the present situation. Neither can the anthropologist offer any real solutions to the problems, and so he or she is left with a vaguely conceived advocacy role. This issue also brings into question another, largely unresolved issue about whether or not the social scientist is in any way better equipped than the informed citizen to decide what is best for society. There is a moral issue here as well. Millions upon millions of dollars have been spent on research into the lives of deprived people. Leaving aside the question concerning the effectiveness of this funded research in alleviating the living conditions of deprived populations, as Barrett points out, ‘If a social problem is really severe, it may be immoral to devote one’s time and funds to studying it rather than using those resources to relieve the suffering of individuals concerned’ (1984b: 230). Famine and drought victims fall readily into this category, and even the ongoing research on Aboriginal peoples, whether theoretical or applied, could be a luxury that North American society cannot afford. The contradiction here is that ‘the more severe the social problem, the less it should be studied’ (ibid.). There is also a political dimension. For example, few anthropologists would be willing to admit to contributing to the efficacy of colonial rule. As Kuper points out, ‘The anthropologist from Britain can no longer assume that if he behaves himself he will be free to study “natives.” Social anthropology has a bad name through its association with colonialism, and the anthropologist has an even harder time than most of his social science colleagues even getting permission to do fieldwork in the newly independent states’ (1975: 233–4). The role of anthropologists in colonialism has been downplayed for the most part, although there have been a few serious attempts to study the issue (Asad 1973; Lewis 1973).

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Lewis suggests that an anthropologist who works in a colonial setting ‘greatly compounds an already existing relationship of inequality’ (1973: 586). One of the reasons for this is that social research tends to benefit the colonial administration more than it does the colonized. Anthropologists thereby aid, perhaps unwittingly, in the domination of the powerful over the powerless. Of course, one side of the issue has to do with the old adage about ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune,’ which is to say, those who fund the research get to use the research as they see fit. The social scientist would be naive in the extreme to be unaware of this, but it does open up a rather insidious side to the relationship between research and the exercise of power. Anthropologists have not conducted as much research among the powerful elites as they have among those in impoverished areas. Researching a social problem may actually make it worse, because ‘To study a group is to expose it and to show how it can be controlled’ (Barrett 1984b: 232).

In Anthropology’s Defence Any attempt at this point to engage in a defence of anthropology against the charges or objections raised above could probably be seen as a rather gratuitous attempt to justify anthropology’s continued existence in the face of strong evidence to the contrary. However, there are several factors that should be kept in mind. First, consider that the above objections are for the most part ones that anthropologists have raised about themselves. This capacity for critical self-examination leaves some hope that there is a recognition that problems exist and that solutions can be worked out. In addition, it is not altogether fair to blame contemporary investigators for the errors of the past, any more than modern historians or economists might be accountable for the flawed studies of earlier times. There is no reason to be overly apologetic about all this, but it is important to recognize the obvious fact that any social analysis is going to be at least partly contingent upon or influenced by the particular historical and sociopolitical period in which it was produced. By recognizing this, we can identify as a valid area of study the pre-existing social and cultural factors that produce various modes of sociological (and anthropological) interpretations. A second point is that anthropology is currently undergoing a considerable upheaval as the traditional subjects of study, the Aboriginal peoples, are undergoing rapid change. There is hope in all of this that past difficulties can be corrected and that new relationships with indigenous

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populations can be forged. This could mean a reversal of trends established in the colonial era, whereby Aboriginal groups will come to call the tune. There are areas, such as land claims research, in which the local group is now the beneficiary. In this new era, anthropological research will have to be made more relevant to the needs of Aboriginal people as they see and define their own problems. One can expect that Native groups will also require more control over the use and reporting of data, and will demand that research contracts be signed directly between the researcher and the band councils. For example, Cove was initially refused permission to do research by the Gitksan-Carrier Tribal Council of British Columbia. As he explains, ‘a compromise was later reached. I cancelled my Museum sponsorship and signed a contract with the Tribal Council [which subsequently provided the financial support for the research]. The project changed to Gitksan pre-contact relations with nature, a topic combining their concerns with traditional land use and mine in symbolism’ (1987: 3). There would appear to be few grounds for feeling apprehensive about these sorts of changes. They open up new opportunities, with the possibility that Aboriginal people will be more willing to cooperate in research, all of which has to be regarded in a positive light.

The Corridors of Power There are opportunities to change the discipline, to reorient its focus to more productive ends. Whether the challenge will be taken up by the conduct of actual research is a different matter. If there is the perception that the crisis in anthropology has passed for the time being because there is an apparent new relationship being worked out with the Native populace, then there is a corresponding tendency to let up, to go slow on the drive for change. Innovations that would set the discipline on a new course take a back seat to the various accommodating measures at work. Eventually none of this will pay off because Aboriginal people will begin to realize that the essential relationships of power have remained unchanged, that all that has happened is that they have been seduced into thinking they have a new measure of control, when in reality it is the same old powers in government and industry that control the show and make the decisions that really count. For the anthropologist it is difficult to think about the powers that be, because they often appear quite remote from the local towns and villages in which the researcher has traditionally worked. It is also difficult

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to ‘think up’ when we are always looking down. It has now been more than twenty years since Laura Nader published her article ‘Studying Up’ (1982), yet there has not been any great rush in the intervening years to focus on the power centres in society. Years ago, in the 1940s, Powdermaker attempted a study of Hollywood in which she related that ‘It is not easy to unravel the tangled threads of an exceptionally complex personal and social situation’ (1966: 211). For her the ‘situational problem’ was a difficult one to grasp hold of. There was no perceived community in the sense of the type of clearly bounded social setting that had been the focus of her previous work. Clearly, the biggest problem for the anthropologist in studying up has to do with ascertaining where the centres of power are. Who are the people that make the important decisions? Where do they work, live, and play? Anthropologists are not apt to be wealthy individuals, so they seldom travel in the same social universe as the rich and powerful. Members of the power elite are also guarded about their lives and protected by security systems, personal secretaries, watchdogs, and other buffer mechanisms. Access is difficult, but the more important question is, access to what? How do we determine who has power, and how much? Does power correlate with wealth, status, and prestige, position in an organization, or what? A senior administrator, a member of Parliament, or a high-ranking executive in industry may have little personal wealth yet have control over vast resources belonging to the organization. As Powdermaker has said, these tangled threads are exceptionally complex. But does this mean that attempts at studying up should be abandoned? If the answer is yes, then anthropologists had better forget about carving out a new area for the discipline, or ever having a role to play in the politics of public policy. I would suggest, first of all, that a new mindset is required so that we can begin to see those in power as interesting opportunities for research rather than labelling them oppressors or some other pejorative term. Remember cultural relativism? Are we not supposed to suspend judgment and hold our personal views in check? Should this attitude not also be extended to those on top? I suggest that the problem is mainly an attitudinal one. If it could be overcome, new doors might open, allowing better access to the corridors of power. Here is an example of what I’m talking about. While writing this chapter I received a telephone call from an administrator in the Economics Branch of the Department of Indian Affairs in Ottawa. He explained that I had been recommended to him by his staff, who knew of my previous research on economic development in northern Native

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communities. A few other scholars were also being invited to submit research proposals for a national study of Native employment needs and trends. Without thinking about it too much, I rather bluntly told him I took exception to the closed-shop approach that Indian Affairs was taking. I asked if the department had taken the trouble to contact Native researchers, who I felt should be given the opportunity to participate in formulating the research to suit their needs as they saw them. The conversation lasted about twenty minutes, and in the end I told him I was not interested in submitting a proposal. He said he was sorry he had offended me but that he took exception to what he saw as my derogatory comments. In the end I felt satisfied that I had played a small part in supporting Native rights and putting that arch-rival, the government bureaucracy, in its place. Over the next few days, when I had time to reflect, I became aware that certain regrets were forming in my mind. What purpose was served by my being so discourteous to this well-intentioned individual? It was not very professional on my part, and I saw that he was now likely to look at me as just another foolish anthropologist. But my main concern was that I had effectively cut off an opportunity to learn how government policies are formed, and to acquire knowledge about the relationship between research and public policy. And, I thought, is this not just the area we should be moving into? I knew I had done the wrong thing. Yet as luck would have it the administrator called me back. He explained that a research proposal had been selected and asked if I would like to examine it and make an assessment as to its credibility, its coverage of the literature, and so on: ‘Yes,’ I said, as politely as possible, ‘I would be happy to.’ My attitude now is that we anthropologists have a professional responsibility to use our expertise whenever we have opportunities to interact with decision makers in both government and industry. There is no reason, as the saying goes, to cut off our nose to spite our face. If we do so, this important research will only be conducted by others in the social sciences, and anthropology will languish on the sidelines. We are used to being independent, maybe too much so, and are perhaps overly concerned about selling out to those in high places. It is now evident that this is the wrong sort of mindset for anthropologists working in the twenty-first century. Whether we realize it or not, there is a transfer, or devolution, of power going on between governments and Aboriginal populations. The Department of Indian Affairs in Canada, for example, has largely given

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up its previous assimilationist policies of the 1960s and before. The idea now is not that reserves should be abandoned but that they should be a focus for community development. Local bands have been given greater control over funding, education, law enforcement, housing programs, and social services. However, social scientific knowledge has not kept up with the pace of this transfer of power, with the result that social scientists will have little influence on how further policies are developed. Several years ago, in the aftermath of the Citizens Plus recommendations of the Hawthorn study of the 1960s, Salisbury warned that If the verdict on social science knowledge is that there is a large store of it, that much of it is related to outdated issues, and that what is relevant to current policy issues is not recognized as applicable, the question of how far it is used in policy making is very simple to answer. Hardly at all. (1975: 3)

The question today is, How much of a change has taken place over the intervening years? Salisbury learned about this on a first-hand basis during the litigation over the James Bay hydroelectric project. He and his colleagues at McGill University had engaged in a large research project into the social and economic impacts on the Cree and Inuit that could be expected when the dams were constructed. Because of his extraordinary experience in this area, Salisbury was invited to appear as an expert witness, but in the end he waited on the sidelines and was never called upon to give testimony. While I never heard him express any dissatisfaction with this turn of events, he must have been particularly disappointed that the evidence of a social scientist would be taken so lightly by judges, lawyers, and government agencies. With the exception of the exemplary works by Asch (1984) and S.M. Weaver (1981), anthropological input into the research of Indian Affairs has been conspicuous by its absence. For those who have looked into the role of anthropology and public policy in a general sense, this has long been a matter of some concern. T. Weaver (1985), for example, finds few successes and many failures. Chief among the reasons for the failure of anthropology as a policy science are that anthropologists are ‘(1) unfamiliar with policy and politics [and] (2) lack experience with administrators’ (1985: 101). Similarly, Hinshaw concludes that ‘anthropologists have not had significant, visible impact on policy formation in any major domestic or international policy area’ (1980: 516). I have already indicated the lack of input by anthropologists in Native policies and affairs in Canada, and apparently the same can be said for

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anthropologists’ lack of involvement with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and other agencies in policy-related matters in the United States: An embarrassment of riches faces the student of anthropology and public policy in the case of American Indians. No other ethnic category has been subject to such elaborate and shifting policy, and the discipline of anthropology in the United States has been largely shaped by its involvement with North American Indians. In no other case have anthropologists had equivalent opportunities to influence policy decisions. (Hicks and Handler 1978: 294)

Yet it would appear that anthropologists have been largely ineffective in influencing Indian policy in the United States, just as they have in Canada. The reasons for this singular lack of success are many and varied. For example, the work of applied anthropologists has mostly focused on development and change rather than on the processes involved in the formulation of public policy. As a consequence, this research has been removed from discussions in the political field, and anthropologists have remained relatively unfamiliar with changing administrative situations and policy processes (Eddy and Partridge 1978: 275). A further result is that the needs of policy makers and politicians have been neither addressed nor understood by anthropologists. This also brings to mind the problem of communication between the anthropologist and the non-anthropologist. There is no doubt that the specialized language of anthropology is often quite esoteric to the non-initiate, making anthropological knowledge difficult to assimilate by the general public. The lesson to learn here is that when addressing policy makers, specialized jargon and concepts should be left in the classroom. What this comes down to is anthropology’s concern with the corridors of power. We would do well to draw inspiration from Bailey’s pioneering work Stratagems and Spoils, in which he advises that ‘To understand a political system is to construct verifiable hypotheses about the mutual dependence of a political structure and its environment’ (1969: 17). If anthropologists are to make a more effective impact in the fields of social issues and related policy matters, then the realization that their work is part of their political environment should make them more concerned with developing effective communication with those empowered to make decisions about policy matters. The opportunities are there. It is probably a matter of cultivating the will to follow up on them with the same vigour and enthusiasm with which anthropologists might pursue segmentary lineage, the avunculate, and the couvade.

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In conclusion, over the last several decades anthropologists have conducted research into a variety of issues that have a direct relevance to the public policy arena. Some of the most important of these issues concern Aboriginal peoples, especially in the fields of ethnic relations, community relocation and development, medical care, diet and nutrition, and Aboriginal rights. This body of research has a unique contribution to make to questions of public policy because it is based on a first-hand involvement with people at the local community level. This research is also conducted among people in out-of-the-way rural and hinterland areas that are not often the focus of conventional sociological research. The problem for anthropologists is how to communicate the findings of their research more effectively to a wider audience, as well as to the government administrators and decision makers responsible for developing the policies that affect the small, local communities in which anthropological research is conducted. We now turn our attention from a general study of policy issues in applied anthropology to a specific focus on several important Aboriginal policy issues in Canada: the land-base problem, subsistence hunting, and the use by Aboriginal people of crown lands and provincial parks as economic resources.

The Land-Base Problem For Aboriginal people, land is much more than an economic resource and much more than a source for the creation of wealth and profit. From the Native perspective, the land is the basis of the spiritual relationship between all creatures and elements of the universe. The land is a prerequisite to and vital for both their spiritual and physical survival. Indian people assert that their rights flow from their relationship with the land. As Chief Gary Potts of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai explains, ‘The forest belongs to the life that lives within it and ... the future generations of this life are dependent upon the continuity of the forest. Human beings must respect forest life and integrate human uses of the forest in a manner compatible with the continuity of forest life. Forever’ (1989: 208). In 1982 the federal government established a special committee of the House of Commons to investigate the possibilities for promoting Indian self-government (Canada 1983). Some of the most significant recommendations of the committee focus on Indian access to and use of the land and its resources. For example,

124 Applied Anthropology in Canada The Committee is convinced that, in order to ensure that self-government becomes a reality, each Indian First Nation must have full rights to control its own lands in the manner it sees fit. This would mean power to decide upon methods of land-holding and land management on reserves. The Committee recommends that the main way of expanding the land and resource base of Indian First Nation governments be through a just and effective land claims process.

The federal government is thus on record as recognizing the importance of an adequate land base for the economic and political vitality of its Indian people. Recognition, however, does not in itself constitute a solution. Various problems continue to be unresolved. Part of the problem is that in some instances the Indians’ land base has been substantially reduced through its involuntary surrender for such purposes as highways, dams, and railways. Other lands have been lost through rights of way and leases (Frideres 1988a: 93–9). The chief of the Nipissing Band in northern Ontario has described these other instances: Many of the bands have lost land in the last number of years by different means. Some of them are called surrenders of land, and some could be deemed invalid. There has been shoreline erosion of the bands’ property, caused by power project damming, the raising and lowering of water levels causing shoreline erosion and flooding. Those are specific items that have contributed to the loss of our land base for many of our bands. (Canada 1983: 107)

Part of the difficulty encountered by Indian people in establishing an adequate land base stems from existing legislation, such as the Indian Act. This legislation describes how Indian lands can be alienated (the disposal of land by sale, lease, or other means), but does not indicate any mechanisms by which Indian bands can acquire land. Increased population through natural growth or the return of members now living away from reserves will only put additional pressures on existing lands. This is an especially important consideration given the passage of the amendment (Bill C-31) to the Indian Act, which restores Indian status to all women (and their first-generation offspring) who had previously lost their status through marriage to non-Indians. There is, in fact, the distinct possibility that Indian women and their children who have been reinstated may return to their reserves. If this is the case, and large numbers move back, the growing population will further deplete the land base and community resources.

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One of the more obvious mechanisms for increasing Indian lands involves the federal government’s giving priority to the fulfilment of outstanding treaty obligations. In some cases, negotiations over the choice of reserve lands have been going on for decades. There are also Indian bands that have had land but whose members have moved away because they lacked decent housing, schools, and other basic services. All told, it is essential that priority be given to providing a land base for all Indian communities. Field research in northern Ontario (Hedican 1990b) serves to illustrate some of the economic dimensions of the Indian land-base issue. In a remote bush community called Collins, people rely mostly on subsistence production to feed their families. In fact, if one were to place a monetary value on the moose, beaver, fish, and waterfowl hunted, it would amount to roughly one-quarter of the community’s total income. If the people could no longer hunt and fish because no rightful land was available, they would have to switch to a store-bought diet of expensive and less healthful carbohydrates. The forest is also an important source of firewood (for heating and cooking), logs (for house building), and summer employment (for Native people who act as guides for the tourist industry). For the Anishenabe (Ojibwa and Cree) of northern Ontario, their traditional reliance on food from the land has become increasingly threatened by the encroachment of outside developments. Pulpwood companies have begun harvesting the last substantial stands of spruce left in Ontario’s northland. These same companies have also been responsible for depleting fish stocks and/or poisoning the food chain through the dumping of mercury effluent into the rivers (Michalenko and Suffling 1982), with disastrous consequences for local community life, as witnessed by the infamous Grassy Narrows and White Dog Reserves. Similarly, tailings from mining activity have had a negative impact on the quality of the water supply (Coates and Powell 1989: 24–32; Dacks 1981: 126–8), a problem further complicated by the damming of rivers and lakes for hydroelectric development (Waldram 1985, 1988). In all, it is not so much that Native people need to adapt to the outside world. What they need to do is survive the calamitous consequences the modern world brings in its wake. In summary, the majority of Canadian Native people live in rural or remote areas of the country. Here the land and the resources it contains remain crucial to the continued economic vitality of Native community life. Indian communities are sustained through subsistence hunting,

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fishing, and trapping. Land is crucial here, to provide employment in the tourist industry and as a source of wood for heating, cooking, and house construction. While the standard of living in Native communities remains low, it is threatened even further by a steadily diminishing land base through increasing outside economic activities. The implication is that the socio-economic well-being of Native people will deteriorate further unless ways can be found to increase the land currently available to them. In addition, given the reinstatement of legal status to Native women (and their children) and the possibility of considerable expansion in the size of Indian communities, the land problem in Canada promises to become more severe in the immediate future. Possibilities for increasing the land base do exist. These include allowing Native people greater access to vacant crown lands, settling land-claims issues in a more expeditious manner, and establishing all the reserves that Indian people are entitled to through various historically enacted treaties. Unless history reverses itself, however, it would appear unlikely that these palliatives will be adequately used.

Country Food Production: The Hidden Native Economy The Native peoples of Canada have hunted, fished, and collected wild foods from time immemorial, and country food production continues to constitute a significant proportion of the food they consume today (Hedican 1986b: 72–8, 1990b; Koennecke 1990; Wein et al. 1989). But their ability to utilize subsistence resources is now severely threatened. The source of this threat is a multifaceted phenomenon involving a diminishing wildlife habitat and environmental degradation. At this point in the history of Native peoples the news is certainly not good concerning Native country food production in Canada. To complicate matters there is also a wide range of other economic problems that have an impact on country food use, such as the decline in fur trapping sales, the rising cost of hunting and fishing equipment, and the uneven integration of hunting communities into the wage/labour economy. For policy makers and governmental planners the problems associated with the modern Native economy must seem virtually insurmountable. A review of published reports reveals that there has been a proliferation of basic research concerning food patterns, subsistence ecology, and socioeconomic change among Native peoples – in particular, the degree to which traditional hunting and fishing activities are changing as a result of outside industrial society. For example, studies have been conducted on

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the role that socially prescribed patterns of behaviour play in organizing the subsistence activities of the Clyde River Inuit of Baffin Island (Wenzel 1981, 1991), and on the alternative economic strategies utilized in the Inuit community of Rankin Inlet (Jansen 1979). In a study of commercial fur trappers and fishermen from the Chipewyan community on the Upper Churchill River in Saskatchewan, Jarvenpa (1980) employs geographical mobility as a variable in explaining the organization of economic-subsistence activities. Additional surveys of the changing economic life of northern Native people have focused on the Mackenzie River valley in the Yukon (Berger 1977; Usher 1976), the southwestern region of Alaska (Nowak 1977), and the eastern James Bay coastline of Quebec (Salisbury 1986). The issues involved in much of this research have been put into perspective by the Hon. Thomas Berger, who conducted the highly acclaimed study of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline debate. The problem, as Berger indicates, is that ‘there has always been a traditional renewable resource sector in the North, but instead of trying to strengthen it, we had, for a decade or more, followed policies by which it could only be weakened or even destroyed’ (1983: 366–7). In this sense, much depends on the extent to which government agencies dealing with northern and Native issues are adequately informed on the current economic concerns of the Canadian north. The provision of statistical materials derived from first-hand research is thus one of the pressing necessities for informed policy decision making; but much also hinges on how these materials are interpreted and acted upon. In this regard, researchers and Native people alike should find it disturbing that the Department of Indian Affairs’ survey of Indian economic conditions in Canada (Canada 1980) virtually ignored the non-wage sectors of fishing, hunting, and trapping. However, the survey did note that ‘a substantial proportion of income for many communities is derived from non-wage (traditional) pursuits: hunting, fishing, and trapping ... [and that] the value of the non-wage sector in three sample communities varied between 41 and 58 per cent of total community income’ (Canada 1980: 59). One might conclude from such reports that these figures on hunting and trapping suggest that more attention could have been devoted to examining the role of non-wage activities in the Native community. It is also possible that the hunting, fishing, and trapping activities are far more significant to the economic well-being of the Indian and Inuit communities than is implied by the scant mention of them in government reports. However, informed governmental decisions on the modern

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Native economy are also very much dependent on informed research that has a certain degree of consistency with regard to the recommendations put forward, and on which government decision making can be reliably based. An example of this problem: despite the growing body of literature on the subject, it is still possible for a book on northern public policy to claim that ‘However else they may differ, authorities on the subject agree that there does not exist at present adequate information on the following basic features of the renewable-resource economy: the number of fish and animals currently harvested. The actual weight of meat obtained from this harvest. Reliable measures of the real economic benefits to Native people of the harvest’ (Dacks 1981: 168). Lacking adequate information, one could be led to the conclusion – based on the reasoning behind the policies referred to by Berger – that the traditional Native economy is in rapid decline and will disappear altogether. (See Feit 2004 for a more recent update.) There is weighty scientific research to contradict such a conclusion, yet a large part of the problem concerns how this research is to be interpreted. Diamond Jenness, for example, held the view that ‘the economic prosperity ... of an Eskimo community today is roughly proportional to the amount of wage employment it obtains, and not, as formerly, to the wildlife resources that exist in its neighbourhood’ (1978: 144). It is not my purpose to refute such statements but to indicate that we need to exercise caution in interpreting them, because such statements may promote the mistaken view that there is little economic value to be gained by the increased utilization of local resources. From the perspective of the industrial economy, we could also be persuaded to the view that wage work should reign supreme, and that it should, as the reasoning goes, take precedence over other forms of employment as part of the natural evolution of the Canadian hinterland economy. The denigration of the non-wage economy (even the term non-wage tends to cast traditional hunting and fishing in a negative light) finds expression in various forms. Even the Indian Affairs survey mentioned above discusses traditional Indian pursuits under the category ‘Unemployment’ (Canada 1980: 59). Given such a climate of interpretation, Berger is certainly correct in noting that ‘people who tried to earn a living by hunting, trapping and fishing had often been regarded as unemployed’ (1983: 367). For those involved in research into the contemporary economic life of the Native community, there are nonetheless alternative interpretations. The larger issue at stake is the increasingly critical stance taken by researchers with regard to the ‘modernization’ or ‘dual economy’

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perspective on the north, which is seen to consist of one ‘backward’ sector that exploits traditional resources and a ‘modern’ one that largely exploits non-renewable resources. To contrast ‘modern-backward,’ or ‘modern-traditional’ is an inaccurate characterization of the issues involved in northern development. For one thing, there are various perceptions of what constitutes development and of how this development is defined and is to proceed. This contrast of modern and traditional has also led to a polarization in the debate over resource development in the Canadian north. Commenting on the Mackenzie Valley pipeline debate, for example, Asch has taken particular exception to the view that, as time goes on, ‘the inherent superiority of the rational industrial economy is such that it will inevitably replace the backward and irrational one’ (1982: 4). In the north, part of the problem has to do with the disruption of fish and game populations associated with industrial development projects (Frideres 1984: 61), lending credibility to the view that there exists an inherent competition between the wage economy on the one hand and the non-wage, traditional sector of the economy on the other. Rather than adopt the view of inherent competition between hunters and wage workers, another, perhaps more appropriate approach would be one that looks at northern economic change as a complementary process. Thus, a comprehensive view of Native economies would include a creative mesh of local production activity and cash transactions. Berger, for example, has referred to this combination or synthesis as ‘the mixed economy’: ‘In the north today, the lives of many native families are based on an intricate economic mix. At certain times of the year, they hunt and fish; at other times they work for wages’ (Berger 1977: 122). The implications of this perspective for government Native policy are such that there is a need for a wider recognition of the benefits to be derived from a more extensive utilization of local resources. At present, the pattern as exemplified by the George River Inuit of the Ungava District in northern Quebec is fairly widespread: ‘DIAND maintains the standard of living at an artificially buoyant level, and gives the illusion of economic viability’ (Arbess 1967: 68). There is a problem in attitude here concerning how one views the importance of the traditional Native economy. As the George River case illustrates, an alternative to the large-scale dispensation of relief is a greater effort towards the creation of programs aimed at developing viable and self-supporting local economies. I believe such goals are not possible, however, until government agencies cease to ignore the economic

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value of traditional hunting and fishing activities. On the other hand, in order to live off the land today, even for part of the year, one needs good gear with which to hunt the game, so cash is a necessary prerequisite for the successful hunter. As an alternative to welfare dependency, policy makers must also give more consideration to a guaranteed annual income program for Native people engaged in wildlife harvesting, such as Quebec’s Income Security Program for Cree hunters that was part of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (LaRusic 1979a; Feit 1982). Such programs encourage participation in hunting and fishing activities. They also ensure the continuation of subsistence hunting and fishing as a viable option and means of livelihood in the face of the disincentives to such activities created by external conditions. In addition, there is good reason to believe that any means of ensuring the hunting way of life will serve to increase the self-determination and autonomy of the contemporary hunting peoples. In all, I am suggesting, in concert with research reported by other authors, that this area of investigation of Native economic trends be extended through the adoption of a more comprehensive approach. This approach would involve an examination of Native subsistence production in conjunction with the increasing participation of Native people in wage employment. My intent here is not to promote stop-gap measures on the road to the eventual eradication of the hunting way of life but to suggest ways of working out an advantageous mix of country food production and a cash economy. In fact, my contention is that the very survival of Native communities, especially those in northern areas, depends on a more complete utilization of local renewable resources in conjunction with outside income sources. From a policy perspective, the first step is to begin regarding hunting, fishing, and other forms of country food production as employment in their own right, rather than as residual or peripheral activities. It is also important to regard local subsistence resources as income producing, at least to the extent that effort spent on securing food reduces the necessity for cash to spend on food imported into the community, usually at considerable extra cost. With this in mind, an accent on wage work should be counterbalanced by a discussion centring on the contribution of country food production to modern Indian and Inuit life. One suggestion emanating from this discussion, then, is that wage work will encourage the procurement of country food, at least to the extent that higher incomes would allow for increased investment in better hunting equipment and lower maintenance and transportation costs. While this idea of an interrelationship between wage work and country resources

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will have to be modified in various ways to suit the needs of particular Native communities, it does have the merit of standing in contradiction to the older view that casts wage work in direct opposition to traditional hunting and fishing. It is not widely recognized by the Canadian public, but there are still many Native communities in which the people continue to speak their traditional language, heat their homes with firewood, and prefer a diet of moose meat, bannock, and fresh fish. As elsewhere in the world, these are people concerned most of all with making a living, raising their children, and getting along with their neighbours. In this case, of course, making a living does not mean nine-to-five jobs in plant or factory; what it means for the most part is a complex pattern of hunting, fishing, and working seasonally for wages. What goes on in these communities is hardly ever brought to the attention of the wider public, except when tragedies such as the mercury poisoning at White Dog and Grassy Narrows Reserves occur. As a result, the needs of such places are not given much priority in matters of Canadian public policy and are hidden from view. But these needs are important ones because the very survival of many of these Native communities is at stake. It should take less than the poisoning of Canadian Native populations before governments begin to act to alleviate this and other threats to their survival. As we have seen, the basic interrelated issues for many Native communities are the problem of a land base that is shrinking on a per capita basis every year, and the necessity of making a living from the land. While the situation varies from community to community depending upon such factors as population size, fish and game stocks, and the cost of commercial foods, one could say with a fair degree of accuracy that many Native communities today secure anywhere from 10 to 50 per cent of their food from the surrounding country. Does this then indicate that in the next few decades the use of country food will completely pass from the diet of Native peoples in Canada? I believe the answer is no, because there are sound economic reasons even today for continuing to hunt and fish. Consider the rising cost of meat, and the fact that local incomes are not rising at the same rate; this is added incentive to return to the bush for food, and to invest in the capital equipment necessary for the hunt. Although there are probably fewer men engaged in hunting and trapping on a proportional basis than in previous years, those who continue these activities are able to maintain high yields through labour-saving technology. They are also better able today to exploit the more inaccessible and

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distant parts of their territories where game and fish populations, as a result of underutilization, have remained relatively high. While such territories are the most productive of economic effort, travel to them is costly compared to areas closer to home. Learning how to juggle the costs of expensive capital equipment, work for wages, and hunting proficiency is key to making a living in many Native villages today.

Hunting and Wage Work: The Economic Balancing Act In historical terms it is true that while Native people in Canada have undergone a slow process of integration into, and dependence upon, the outside world, for the most part, especially for people living in interior locations, Native people have remained on the margin of the EuroCanadian social and economic system – something Dunning (1959: 208) has called ‘acculturation at a distance.’ However, contacts with the outside are accelerating in today’s world. This is especially true with regard to areas such as education, wage work, and government subsidy. Yet complete incorporation into the wider society seems unlikely in view of the isolation of many Native communities and some basic conflicts between wage work and the demands of village life. One of these conflicts stems from the fact that full-time jobs are mostly absent in the small communities, and long periods away from home mean a difficult family life. Another conflict is between country food production, a necessary activity to support life in many Native settlements, and the need for money to purchase other essentials. The tradeoffs are not easily resolved, especially when cash and bush food are both scarce resources. What this means is that Native families have some difficult decisions to make about how to allocate their time between living in the village and trying to earn some cash, and making a living out on the land by hunting and fishing. This is a difficult economic balancing act non-Native Canadians know nothing about. What is the relationship between subsistence production and wage work in the Native economy? Conventional wisdom on the subject would have us believe that these are, for the most part, two largely incompatible spheres of activity and that wage work will displace subsistence production. There is much to contradict this mode of reasoning. There is no inherent reason for concluding that a healthy subsistence economy cannot coexist in the face of wage-work opportunities. Much depends, however, on the interrelationships of these activities, such as the availability of each and the emphasis placed on them by the local

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population. In fact, rather than being mutually exclusive, it is altogether possible that each of these two economic areas can make a positive contribution to the other, such that subsistence production is enhanced by wage-work opportunities and, alternatively, a healthy subsistence sector can create additional opportunities for earning cash. The evidence to support this idea (Hedican 1985, 1986b, 1990b) is based on comparative data – on per capita income levels, and quantities of bush meat consumed per day – collected from a number of Anishenabek (Ojibwa and Cree) communities in northern Ontario and Quebec. My initial assumption was that rising incomes in a community would tend to lead to decreased utilization of country food. Only those with low incomes, the argument might go, would continue to hunt and fish. In fact, in this sample, a different correlation was discovered: the higher the per capita income, the greater the amount of country meat consumed. While it is evident that more research is needed in this area before any firm conclusion can be established, the evidence to this point is that some of the most prolific hunters in northern Native settlements are also those with some of the higher-paying jobs. What this suggests is that rising incomes increase country food consumption because those with higher incomes can afford better hunting equipment and more frequent expeditions to the more remote and less utilized hunting and fishing areas. A high income also allows the part-time hunter to make more effective use of peak periods in game cycles, such as fish spawns, deer yarding, or geese migrations. These sources of food are widely dispersed throughout most of the year and, aside from times when large numbers can be found, the return on effort is low. For example, as indicated for the Waswanipi Cree of Quebec, ‘for each animal species the Waswanipi harvest, they attempt, like for the moose, to utilize it at times when chances of success are highest and the efficiency of capture is maximized’ (Feit 1973: 120). This would appear to be a fairly widespread pattern among Native hunters, especially given the fact that most have work other than hunting. For the Indian and Inuit hunter, then, the most effective strategy is to exploit country food resources during high points in faunal cycles, and to work for cash when the highest-paying jobs are available. Unfortunately for many Native communities, the best times for hunting and wage work often overlap. Jobs such as construction work, guiding, and firefighting are all occupations that absorb the most workers during peak hunting and fishing times. Thus those who have difficulty securing wage employment are doomed to a double dilemma: they must hunt and fish when a return

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on their effort is uncertain, and yet they do not have the necessary cash to buy capital equipment and maintain it, or to pay transportation costs to increase subsistence production. Clearly, then, hunting efficiency is dependent upon a number of important factors, many of which have little to do with hunting skills – such as having sufficient time and energy, both of which tend to vary depending on the density of available game in a particular region and the hunter’s ability to reach it. These factors will consequently have a bearing on which game the hunter will seek. At Mistassini in north-central Quebec, where game is dispersed and densities are low, several hundred hectares could be needed for a hunter to support his family (Rogers 1966: 93–7). This means that the Mistassini hunter, in comparison to others in more favourable regions, will have to expend a great deal of energy travelling the area in search of game. In order to compensate for this loss of energy, the hunter in all probability will try to hunt big game in order to secure enough meat. However, in more favourable areas a hunter needs less territory to support himself and his dependents, and the energy expended in subsistence activity would as a result be less. With a greater concentration of game, the hunter could secure a greater yield in a shorter period of time, freeing him from a reliance on large game and giving him an opportunity to secure a living from small game and fish, if that is his preference. The lesson here is that this sort of variability, along with factors such as socio-spatial organization and settlement characteristics, should not be overlooked or even treated as constants. It is clear, for example, that variability in the local biotic resource base, distribution of people vis-àvis resources, distance to markets and distribution centres, prices of local goods, and related factors will intervene and complicate consumption rates of bush food versus store food. Although it is beyond the scope of the present work to assess in any detail the importance of such variable patterns on Native subsistence systems, these patterns are nonetheless important enough to bring them to the attention of the reader and to suggest that they be made a focus of future research in the area of Native country food production. In summary, an important policy consideration for Native people is the necessity to guard against the replacement of a protein-rich country meat diet by a diet of store food high in carbohydrates that could seriously lower health and nutrition standards. One of the reasons for this problem is that increasing expenditures on store food also tend to reduce the amount of cash available for capital investment and maintenance. What is

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to be avoided is the downward spiral of dependency that occurs when subsistence hunting is completely given up in favour of increased wage employment, while wages never catch up with the built-in inflation of store prices. Only the extensive utilization of local resources will give Native peoples a buffer against this kind of inflation and the economic means to keep prices down. The implication for government policy, therefore, is that the pattern of economic diversity in Native settlements should be encouraged because it tends to lessen dependence on outside sources for food, fuel, and other renewable resources. When this happens, everyone benefits.

Who Owns the Wilderness? In 1850 the Ojibwa people of northern Ontario, then called Upper Canada, ceded to the British crown a vast territory extending from Lake Huron, around the shore of Lake Superior, and up to the height of land near the top of Lake Nipigon. In return, the Native inhabitants received ‘the sum of two thousand pounds of good and lawful money ... a perpetual annuity of five hundred pounds ... [and] reservations set forth in the schedule hereunto annexed’ (Canada 1891: 147). Both treaties together comprised less than five pages of text, yet they were quite clear on the subject of Indian hunting rights: ‘Her Majesty and the Government of this Province, thereby promises and agrees ... to allow the said Chiefs and their tribes the full and free privilege to hunt over the territory now ceded by them, and to fish in the waters thereof, as they have heretofore been in the habit of doing’ (Canada 1891: 149). In this regard the Robinson-Huron and Superior Treaties are clearly an extension of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 in preserving the Indians’ access to their traditional hunting grounds. The point is that Native people in Ontario have a long, ‘entrenched’ right to hunt and fish in the province on lands not privately owned. Yet the issue of Native hunting is apt to be a matter of some contention. Some people resent having to buy hunting licences or hunt and fish only during certain seasons when Native people are not similarly constrained. There is always the latent suspicion that Native people are hunting and fishing for their own personal use more than they are entitled to, or that they are in some other way abusing the privilege. Many cases of Native people hunting out of season or hunting restricted species have been brought before the courts. In these instances some nonNatives expressed the belief that ‘Natives are citizens just like us, and

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therefore shouldn’t have any more, or less, rights than we do.’ There is also much confusion in the courts over which pieces of legislation have priority – the pre-Confederation treaties, as quoted above, or provincial game and fish laws. And, of course, there is the additional matter of whether Native concerns are a federal or provincial responsibility. The issue of special hunting and fishing rights for Aboriginal peoples has also become more controversial in Ontario as non-Native groups retaliate. One of the more significant moves was that of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH), which was awarded intervener status by the Supreme Court of Canada in its appeal of the Howard Case. George Howard, a status Indian under the Williams Treaty, was charged with fishing out of season. The Ontario Court of Appeals upheld the charge, but it was later appealed to the Supreme Court. Native bands signatory to the Williams Treaty gave up special hunting and fishing rights for financial compensation in 1923. However, the provincial government held meetings with Williams Treaty Native peoples in order to reinstate these rights. OFAH’s intervention outlined to the Supreme Court the effects of out-of-season harvests on fish and wildlife conservation. As the federation’s president also indicated in a newspaper interview, ‘OFAH will do everything in its power to make sure that this conviction [the Howard Case] is finally upheld and that conservation wins.’ Most people, even those in the OFAH lobby, probably have no trouble with the idea of Natives hunting and fishing to feed their families in unoccupied crown territories; that is, most of the province excluding the major cities of southern Ontario. But how do people feel about Native hunting in, say, provincial parks? Here we find a different set of sentiments and quite divided opinions on the matter. For example, take the granting of Native access to hunting in Algonquin Provincial Park. It is issues such as this one that bring into focus the question about who owns the wilderness.

Algonquin Provincial Park Algonquin Park, established in 1893 and situated on the southern edge of the Canadian Shield between Georgian Bay and the Ottawa River, is the oldest provincial park in Ontario. The brochures used to advertise it conjure up an image of the pristine beauty and mystery of Canada’s northland: ‘the call of the loon echoing from rocky lake shores, the sunset silhouetting a solitary pine, and a beaver forging a rippling wedge

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across a glassy pond ... the wild music of wolves wafting over the hills.’ You might almost think you were a Radisson or Groseilliers beholding a majestic wilderness for the first time. The image portrayed by the tourist industry is one thing; the reality of big business is another. The business side goes back to the 1830s when the first pioneer loggers, pushing up the Ottawa River in search of big pine, reached the park region. The result of the logging was dramatic: within about fifty years the vast pine country of the Ottawa River watershed had been cut, or burned by fires fuelled by pine slash. By the time Algonquin Park was created, there was very little of the old-growth forest left, and the primitive landscape was already a thing of the past. The creation of the park itself is a curious affair. It originated, ostensibly at least, because of a concern for the future of Ontario’s natural forest and wildlife resources. The park was to serve as a wilderness sanctuary, yet logging was not to stop. In fact, the logging companies welcomed the park’s creation, one company going so far as to request that its cutting area be included in the new park. Ever since its creation, then, Algonquin Park has been providing Ontario with forest products such as yellowbirch veneer, pulpwood, and logs for lumber and furniture. The recreational history of Algonquin Park does not begin until the 1930s, but around that time it became evident that there was a distinct clash of interests between loggers and tourists. Efforts were made early on to separate logging and recreation by prohibiting cutting on islands and along shorelines, and over the years certain other restrictions were imposed on the logging industry. Eventually, the Ontario government decided to produce a master plan for Algonquin Park in an attempt to resolve the conflict between canoeists, who wanted Algonquin to be a wilderness park, and the surrounding communities, whose livelihood had depended on logging in the park area for more than a century. The plan, released in 1974, attempted to define a path between competing forces; that is, ‘to provide continuing opportunities for a diversity of low intensity recreational experiences, within the constraint of the contribution of the Park to the economic life of the region.’ The forgotten factor throughout the entire history of the park was that it was the ancestral home of the Algonquin Indians, who have inhabited the area for more than five thousand years (although the evidence for this is disputed). Successive provincial governments and park administrations apparently failed to take account of the Native interests – which is perhaps the most crucial factor influencing the future of the park. As fate would have it, a court ruling indicated that the Algonquin Indians’

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interests in the park’s territories were never properly extinguished, especially when it came to hunting and fishing rights. What this meant was that nearly half of Algonquin Park would become the terrain of the Golden Lake Band, whose members would be allowed to hunt animals such as deer, wolf, and moose. This decision sparked considerable controversy and set various interest groups against each other. Some groups, such as the Ad Hoc Committee to Save Algonquin Park, based in Dwight, Ontario, questioned the validity of the band’s claim. There were also newspaper articles such as the one in the Guelph Daily Mercury entitled ‘Will sanctuary disappear? Glorious park is threatened by encroachment’ (Kell 1991: 14A). The article was really more an editorial than news coverage, because the author made no attempt to conceal her opinions, as indicated by this closing statement: ‘Wildman [Ontario’s then minister of natural resources] may have his politics right in giving something to the welldeserving natives of our country, but should that sweep under the carpet the rights of peaceful people whose aim is to leave the park as they find it?’ The description of the park as ‘one of the last bastions of untouched wildlife in this province’ indicates that the appeal was to the emotions rather than to historical accuracy or the park’s true character.

Anthropology and Aboriginal Rights The issue of hunting in Algonquin Park is similar in many ways to other issues that have made the news in past decades. In the 1970s, when the James Bay Development Corporation announced it would flood rivers in northern Quebec, environmental groups led by San Francisco’s Sierra Club became involved. Boyce Richardson’s first book on the subject, James Bay: The Plot to Drown the North Woods (1972), was described on the cover as ‘A Sierra Club Battlebook.’ His next book (1975) had the provocative title Strangers Devour the Land. The issue of logging on British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Islands led to a similar environmental backlash. In this instance the traditional occupants of the islands, the Haida, were caught in the middle of the dispute. They were not unalterably opposed to logging, because their own people were occasionally employed in this industry. What the Haida wanted was recognition of their legal claim to the islands and a greater say in any further development of the territory. The ongoing dispute in the Temagami area of northern Ontario is a further manifestation of this pattern. Here, the logging industry is opposed by an environmental lobby called the Temagami Wilderness Society (Bray and

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Thomson 1990; Hodgins and Benidickson 1989). The claim of the local Native population, the Teme-Augama Anishnabai, is based on their contention that the territory in dispute has never been ceded by treaty because its leaders were not participants in the original Robinson-Huron Treaty of 1850. As a consequence, from the Native position, logging has been carried out illegally because existing Aboriginal rights to the Temagami area have never been extinguished (Potts 1989). There is a curious aspect to the way in which these various disputes evolved. In the James Bay case the Sierra Club was clearly behind the Cree in their struggle with the Quebec government. It was a sort of David and Goliath situation; in fact, the environmentalists were very clearly sympathetic to the Cree interests, as were the Cree to the interests of the environmentalists. In the case of the Queen Charlotte Islands, the Native-environmentalist coalition became divided, with the Haida seemingly as much of an environmental threat as the loggers. In the Algonquin Park controversy the pendulum of debate swung yet again, with the ‘Save Algonquin Park’ group pitting itself directly in opposition to the Aboriginal cause. Does anthropology have a role to play in any of these disputes? At present the answer would appear to be very little. The problem, as it has been traditionally, is one of ambivalence about how to proceed. In the 1970s, the McGill Cree Project was more clearly allied with the Native side, in practice through its various research projects, and in sentiment as well, as indicated by the many demonstrations held by McGill students and faculty in support of the Cree. I believe the sentiment and support are still there, but research into Native occupancy issues waned in subsequent years. It is difficult to know whether this means that the Natives found anthropological support to be much less useful than we suppose. Maybe Aboriginal people found that demonstrating for their rights through academic research was less useful than devoting their energies to marshalling public support through the news media. The anthropologists themselves have also not been much help in clarifying their own position, which could have led to a Native perception that anthropologists perhaps do not care enough about Native rights. An incident at the 1990 general assembly of the Canadian Anthropology Society (CAS) in Calgary is a good example of the problems surrounding this issue. A well-known anthropologist stood up in the audience and asked if the executive committee would be willing to issue a press release in support of the Lubicon Cree (of northern Alberta) in their negotiations with the provincial government. The committee huddled

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together for only a short time (perhaps because they already had a response in mind). The CAS president then explained that the society’s constitution did not allow it to lend official support to any particular cause. What the anthropologist had suggested was that individual anthropologists, as concerned citizens rather than as professional CAS members, should write letters to members of Parliament, and so on, in support of the Lubicon people if they so wished. This issue – what form anthropological support for Aboriginal rights should take, if any – will not go away. The CAS newsletter contained some thoughtful comments entitled ‘The judgment on the GitksanWet’suwet’en’ (of British Columbia) by the then new president of the Canadian Anthropology Society. In his commentary the president noted that the judgment by Chief Justice Alan McEachern ‘touched on the testimony of several anthropological witnesses as individual specialists, but in his ruling he, at least by implication, raised anthropological issues more generally’ (Feit 1991: 7). He noted in particular that the judgment rested on a ‘series of outdated ethnocentric standards’ by which the judge ‘ignore[d] at least three-quarters of a century of [anthropological] research’ (1991: 7–8). The larger issue at stake was that it was becoming clear, from such instances as the Gitksan-Wet’suwet’en judgment, that anthropologists had not been very effective in communicating their general findings about other societies to an informed public.

The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples A significant attempt to explore the complexity of Aboriginal rights is contained in the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), which was released on 21 November 1996. The commission was co-chaired by George Erasmus, the former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations (1976–83), and the Hon. René Dussault, a former Quebec deputy minister of justice (1977–80). In all, the commission published four special reports – on land claims, justice, suicide, and relocation of the Inuit – and two commentaries on self-government. Altogether the report comprised five volumes consisting of 3,500 pages. Costing nearly $60 million, RCAP was reputed to be the most expensive federal inquiry in Canadian history. The four-year commission heard from 3,500 witnesses. The commission eventually put forward more than 400 recommendations, including the suggestion that Parliament issue a royal proclamation admitting to past mistakes. It also called for the establishment of an Aboriginal parliament, to be called ‘the House of First Peoples,’ to represent

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Aboriginal peoples from across the country and to function as an advisory body to the federal government. This recommendation envisaged that the many reserves in Canada, numbering more than 2,000, would come together as some thirty to fifty Aboriginal Nations. It was anticipated that these Nations would have powers similar to the provincial governments as these pertain to Aboriginal people. RCAP also recommended that for twenty years after the release of the report (i.e., 1996–2016) the federal government should commit to an expenditure of some $38 billion above present spending in an attempt to resolve Aboriginal issues. As it now stands, the report notes that about $2.5 billion a year is currently spent in an attempt to deal with the poverty of Aboriginal populations, so this would represent an existing expenditure of $50 billion in any event over the twenty-year period. In addition at least $1 billion is spent every year on social assistance programs for reserves because of the nearly 80 per cent unemployment rate and deplorable living conditions. The commission further noted in its report that since about one-half of the Aboriginal population in Canada is under twenty-five years of age, by 2016 the government’s cost for just maintaining the status quo would amount to about $11 billion. Investing in additional social programs starting in 1996 would result in substantial savings over the twenty-year period up to 2016. The proposal of the commission was therefore that federal government expenditures be increased by $1.5 billion for the first seven years (1996–2002), and then by $2 billion per year for the remaining thirteen years (2003–2016). Many of the commission’s financial proposals entailed a high ‘up front’ cost, such as the necessity of constructing many more new homes to deal with the Aboriginal housing crisis, but over the ensuing years, it was argued, such remedial costs would tend to decrease. It was anticipated by the commission that the reduction in housing costs alone over the following decade would result in substantial government savings and increased revenues because of a more productive Aboriginal population. In turn, these savings and revenue increases could be utilized to implement training programs and to upgrade Aboriginal economies that in the long run would help to finance self-government and land claims (Frideres 1998: 228–32). Cairns (2000: 116) commented that, ‘The Report provides the most thorough Aboriginal constitutional vision to have appeared since the defeat of the 1969 White Paper. Although we do not know the inner workings of the Commission, we may reasonably assume that the Report

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reflects an Aboriginal perspective, as four of the seven commissioners, including the co-chair, were Aboriginal.’ The reaction of Aboriginal leaders to the RCAP report was generally quite supportive – the Metis National Council, for example, strongly supported the commission’s recommendation for an adequate Metis land base. However as commission co-chair George Erasmus warned, ‘If the reality is that once more [Aboriginal] people’s hopes have been dashed, and that this was all for nothing, then what we say is that the people will resort to other things.’ Given that the royal commission was initiated in large part as a response to the Oka crisis of 1990, at a time when Aboriginal frustrations were at their highest in decades, Mr Erasmus’s warning of dire social and economic consequences was taken as a serious prognostication of future government-Aboriginal difficulties. Since the commission’s report was first tabled the federal government has virtually ignored the recommendations. As a consequence, many Aboriginal people have come to feel that Canadians as a whole do not regard Aboriginal issues as of much importance. The RCAP report would seem overwhelming to many. Some of its hundreds of recommendations concern issues relevant to specific areas of the country, while others are of more general relevance. There is also the regrettable neglect in the report of issues pertaining to urban Aboriginal people. In 1966, for example, less than 20 per cent of the registered (status) Indian population lived off reserve. By 1991 the offreserve population had increased to nearly 40 per cent (Frideres and Gadacz 2001: 144). Nearly 80 per cent of the Aboriginal people living off reserve reside in large metropolitan centres. Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Toronto, for example, are estimated to have Aboriginal populations of from 40,000 to 50,000 each. Despite the large number of Aboriginal people living off reserve in urban centres, the RCAP report hardly concerns itself with the urban dimension. The concern instead in the report is that a land base for Aboriginal people is an essential aspect of cultural survival. As one commentator noted, the commission’s focus ‘on a land base as the locus of its hopes for the reinvigoration of Aboriginal culture, inevitably marginalized urban Aboriginals – 45 per cent of the Aboriginal population – as well as many of the additional 20 per cent off-reserve rural Aboriginal populations’ (Cairns 2000: 123). The view of the future for Aboriginal people offered by the commission’s report did not seem to reflect modern realities. The urban Aboriginal population does not appear to form a part of the commission’s

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future vision. In urban society the Aboriginal experience is seen as problematic because of its high rates of intermarriage with non-Aboriginals and the diminished use of Aboriginal languages in urban settings. The credibility of the commission’s report was not helped by a lacklustre response from the federal government. The minister of Indian affairs noted that the commission’s report was two years late in being submitted, and that the department had already begun to deal with many of the issues discussed in the report. In addition, the prime minister declined an offer to attend an all-chiefs conference to discuss the implications of the RCAP report.

The Ipperwash Inquiry (2007) The Ipperwash Inquiry was initiated by the Government of Ontario on 12 November 2003, under the Public Inquiries Act. Its mandate was to inquire into and report on events surrounding the death of Dudley George, who was shot in 1995 during a protest by First Nations people at Ipperwash Provincial Park. The inquiry was also asked to make recommendations that would help all parties avoid violence in similar circumstances in the future. The Honourable Sidney B. Linden was appointed commissioner. The inquiry was separated by the commissioner into two phases, which ran concurrently. The first phase dealt with the events surrounding the death of Dudley George (the evidentiary hearings), and the second phase (the policy and research part) was concerned with the issues related to avoiding violence in future Aboriginal protests. The hearings began in Forest, Ontario, in July 2004 and ended in August 2006. The commission’s final report, containing the findings and recommendations pertaining to both phases, was released to Attorney General Michael Bryant and made public on 31 May 2007. (For our purposes in this chapter the discussion of the Ipperwash Inquiry focuses on the ‘Executive Summary,’ an abridged version of the final report comprising the ‘Investigation and Findings, Volume I,’ ‘Policy Analysis, Volume 2,’ and ‘Recommendations’.)

Appropriation of the Stoney Point Reserve Dudley George was a thirty-eight-year-old Aboriginal man from the Stoney Point Reserve near Windsor, Ontario. He was one of a number of Aboriginal people, including men, women, and children, who gathered

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at Ipperwash Provincial Park on Labour Day, 4 September 1995, to protest the refusal of the federal government to return the Stoney Point Reserve to its original inhabitants. Under the War Measures Act, the federal government had appropriated this reserve to be used as a military training site, with the promise that reserve lands would be returned to the Aboriginal people after the Second World War. However, over the ensuing five decades the appropriated reserve lands were not returned to the Stoney Point people. Frustration among the Aboriginal people grew as their persistent attempts to persuade the Canadian government to return their land were not successful. Ipperwash Provincial Park was occupied on 4 September 1995 by former residents of the Stoney Point Reserve and other First Nations people to protest the lack of action in returning the reserve to its rightful owners. A confrontation developed two days later between Aboriginal people outside the park and the Ontario Provincial Police, at which time Dudley George was shot and killed by the police. In order to understand the reasons behind the Aboriginal peoples’ occupation of the Ipperwash Provincial Park it is necessary to discuss some of the details pertaining to the history of land settlement of the Stoney Point band. The ancestors of the Stoney Point people, called Anishenabek, lived near the St Clair River and in the area around Lake Huron during the eighteenth century. The British crown sought to establish a friendly relationship with the First Nations people in the area and issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763 under King George III, sometimes referred to as the ‘Indians’ Charter of Rights.’ This proclamation acted to situate the British crown between the Aboriginal inhabitants and the colonists. It stipulated that the land inhabited by Aboriginal peoples had to be voluntarily ceded to the crown before non-Aboriginal settlers could occupy it. The Treaty of Niagara followed in 1764, securing an alliance between the British crown and the more than 1,500 Anishenabek chiefs and warriors gathered at Niagara Falls. In 1827, the Anishenabek ceded some 2.1 million acres of land to the British crown with the signing of the Huron Tract Treaty. The British Indian Department treated the Anishenabek (or Chippewas, as they were called by the Europeans) who had signed the Huron Tract treaty as one large band that had a shared interest in four reserves: Walpole Island, Sarnia, Kettle Point, and Stoney Point. Between 1860 and the 1880s the various reserves began to separate from one another. Further land surrenders followed. The Kettle Point Reserve was pressured to surrender its beach-front property in 1912 for recreational

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development. Similarly, the shoreline at the Stoney Point Reserve was surrendered in 1928 under pressure from the Indian agent and the Department of Indian Affairs, on the rationale that such property had little value because it could not be used for agricultural purposes. In 1936 some of the surrendered land was used to create the Ipperwash Provincial Park. A year later the chief and council of the Kettle and Stoney Point Bands indicated that a burial ground was situated on park property and asked that the burial sites be protected. There were apparently never any steps taken by the Ontario government to protect the burial site. Human remains were discovered at Ipperwash Provincial Park in 1950 and photographed by the park superintendent’s wife. The Department of National Defence decided during the Second World War that it should establish an army training facility on the site of the Stoney Point Reserve. Despite protests by the residents of the Kettle and Stoney Point Bands, and a vote of 82 per cent against the proposal by eligible voters, 2,240 acres of Stoney Point Reserve property were appropriated on 14 April 1942, under the War Measures Act. Residents of the Stoney Point community were evicted from their land, many houses were bulldozed over, and others were moved. The people were forcibly relocated to the much smaller Kettle Point Reserve, which was not prepared to house its reluctant guests. Furthermore, Aboriginal soldiers returning home after the war were shocked to find that their homes were gone and their community had disappeared. The land at Kettle Point lacked the resources necessary to sustain the additional families. The residents of both the Kettle and Stoney Point Reserves suffered great emotional and physical hardship as a result of the forced relocation. It was not long before tension was created between members of the two communities, which prior to the relocation had had a mutually harmonious relationship.

The Occupation of Camp Ipperwash After the war, the Stoney Point people expected that the federal government would return their land as promised in the original appropriation order of 1942. Over the next several decades numerous attempts were made by the Aboriginal people to negotiate the return of the Stoney Point Reserve, but the Department of National Defence insisted that it continued to need the camp for military training (of army cadets). Since all attempts to persuade the federal government to return the reserve had failed, the former residents of the Stoney Point Reserve, out of a

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growing sense of frustration, decided to occupy the military ranges of Camp Ipperwash in May 1993. A group of Stoney Point people entered the military camp through the main gate and set up tents and a trailer. Their intention was to push forward the negotiation process and to reclaim their land. Members of the Stoney Point Band also marched to Ottawa in September 1993 in protest over the military’s persistence in remaining on the Camp Ipperwash land. First Nations people continued to occupy the military camp into the summer of 1995. After several altercations between the Aboriginal occupiers and the military police, the military eventually left the camp on 29 July 1995. The Department of National Defence made no attempt to re-enter the military camp after this date. However, a dozen officers of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Emergency Response Team travelled to the area. Four of the officers were assigned to the park disguised as campers. Apparently the OPP were of the opinion that Aboriginal people planned to assume control of Ipperwash Provincial Park, in addition to the military camp.

Entering Ipperwash Provincial Park On 28 August 1995, a meeting of senior OPP officials took place. Tactics were discussed with regard to the possible occupation by Aboriginal people of the Ipperwash camp ground. On 4 September 1995, First Nations people entered Ipperwash Provincial Park. The reason for the occupation stemmed from the belief that the provincial parklands were part of the Stoney Point traditional territory. Stoney Point people also believed that they had a right to this land because their interests had not been adequately represented by the Indian agent when the land for the park had been purchased from the band in the 1920s. Another reason for the occupation of the park was to protect the sacred burial sites that had been neglected since the creation of the park. On 4 September 1995, several altercations developed between the OPP and the Aboriginal protesters. A car door made contact with a police cruiser causing minor damage. Flares were thrown in the direction of the officers by an Aboriginal person. The rear window of a police cruiser was smashed with a stick. Tension escalated throughout the day. Around 11:00 A.M. Ministry of Natural Resources and OPP personnel attempted to serve legal papers on the occupiers, who refused to accept the documents. Throughout the day of 5 September 1995, First Nations people arrived at the park to support the occupation. They included Stoney Point people

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who had been living at the military camp, residents of the Kettle Point First Nation, and people from other reserves and communities such as Oneida and Walpole Island. The OPP were attempting to arrange for the transport of armoured vehicles to the area for defensive purposes. The occupiers were being monitored from the air by helicopter, from Lake Huron by boat, and in the dark with night-vision goggles. There was a noticeable increase in the number of OPP cruisers and general police surveillance. The next day (6 September 1995) OPP officers marched into the park with shields and guns. Evidence indicated that the numbers of Aboriginal park occupiers fluctuated from between ten and forty people, including women and children. From all reports at the time the protest was a peaceful, non-violent one with no weapons visible. There did not appear to be any immediate risk to public safety. Government representatives later claimed that they had little specific information on the grievances of the Aboriginal occupiers other than the claim that a sacred burial ground existed in the park. On the morning of 6 September, the day Dudley George was shot, Attorney General Harnick told Deputy Attorney General Taman that Premier Mike Harris wanted an injunction immediately and the Aboriginal occupiers removed from the park within twenty-four hours. This decision was made during a twenty-minute meeting at the Ontario Legislative Building in a ‘dining room’ next to the Premier’s Office. The meeting was attended by Premier Harris, various ministers, and their support staff. Attorney General Harnick testified that while he was taking his seat for the meeting he heard Premier Harris say in a loud voice, ‘I want the fucking Indians out of the park.’ Mr Harnick testified at the Ipperwash Inquiry that he was ‘stunned’ by Mr Harris’s ‘insensitive and inappropriate’ remark. Premier Harris denied that he had uttered the words reported by Mr Harnick and that he considered such words a racist statement. Mr Harris did, however, acknowledge that he could think of no reason why Mr Harnick would fabricate or concoct such a statement. It was also certainly not in Mr Harnick’s best interest to provide false information to the Ipperwash Inquiry or to testify that he had heard such a statement by Premier Harris if he had did not. More than ten years had elapsed since the former premier was reported by Mr Harnick to have made this derogatory statement. Furthermore, there was no evidence that the statement had had any influence on the OPP operation on the night of Dudley George’s death. However, as Commissioner Linden has indicated in his written summary of this situation, ‘In my view, Premier Harris’s

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comments in the dining room, and generally the speed at which he wished to end the occupation of Ipperwash Park, created an atmosphere that unduly narrowed the scope of the government’s response to the Aboriginal occupation. The Premier’s determination to seek a quick resolution closed off many options’ (2007: 49). According to testimony at the Ipperwash Inquiry from the Aboriginal occupiers of the park, the evening of 6 September 1995 was terrifying and unsettling. At 9:00 P.M. the OPP closed the roads leading to the park. Thirty-two OPP officers from the Crowd Management Team (CMU), an additional eight officers assigned as an arrest team, two canine teams, and two prisoner vans assembled at the park boundary. The CMU commander and his force marched in darkness to the park. Members of the CMU were dressed in ‘hard Tac’ equipment – shin guards, thigh guards, forearm guards, helmets and visors, and bulletproof vests, and carried batons and guns. The arrest team wore the same equipment as the CMU but did not carry shields. In turn, the Aboriginal occupiers, numbering about twenty to twenty-five people after the departure of women and children, collected rocks, stones, and sticks, and a few carried baseball bats. OPP officers testified that they believed, mistakenly as it turned out, that the Aboriginal protesters were armed with ‘a number of assault weapons … AK-47s, hunting rifles, and Molotov cocktails’ (2007: 65). At approximately 10:27 P.M. the forty-officer unit, canine teams, and prisoner vans moved towards the park in a tight ‘box formation.’ The Aboriginal people had no protective clothing, body armour, or head protection. They had stockpiled some rocks and sticks near the park fence. By accounts given at the inquiry, the Aboriginal people ‘felt greatly outnumbered. As the police officers marched toward Ipperwash Park, the First Nations people were anxious and terrified’ (2007: 66). The first casualty was a protester’s dog, which was kicked by an officer as it was barking, sending the dog spinning in the dirt. The Aboriginal occupiers then began yelling that the officers were standing on sacred ground; grandfathers were buried on this property. One of the CMU officers then yelled ‘punchout’ – a tactic used to intimidate and frighten protesters – and the police, beating on their shields, quickly advanced towards the Aboriginal occupiers. An Aboriginal man struck an officer on the edge of his helmet with a steel pole, breaking the plexiglas shield in half. The officer responded by striking the man’s shoulder area with his baton. A number of confrontations broke out in the near-darkness.

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The Shooting of Dudley George Acting Sergeant Ken Deane claimed that he saw a muzzle flash from the interior of a bus driven by a sixteen-year old boy. Suddenly, a car swerved towards about ten CMU officers. A number of officers then opened fire on the approaching vehicle, firing several rounds into the driver’s side. Bullets also hit the bus, shattering a window. Acting Sergeant Ken Deane also claimed to have seen two muzzle flashes coming from the bush area. He then saw a man who he thought was responsible for the muzzle flashes walk onto the roadway. Deane also claimed that the man, Dudley George, shouldered a rifle in a half-crouched position, aiming it at several OPP officers. Ken Deane then fired three shots at Dudley George in rapid succession. Dudley George dropped to the ground immediately and was then carried away by Aboriginal people who had come to his rescue. Ken Deane claimed that Dudley George’s gun had fallen to the ground after the shooting. However, he did not attempt to retrieve the rifle but left it on the road. Other officers could not corroborate Deane’s version of the events, as they did not see a firearm carried by Dudley George. At no time, in fact, during the confrontation were any Aboriginal occupiers reported by the police to have been seen carrying a firearm. It was a puzzling matter to the Ipperwash Inquiry that Acting Sergeant Deane did not attempt to retrieve the rifle that was allegedly in Dudley George’s possession, especially since there was a danger that other occupiers could have used this gun to threaten other OPP officers. Also, the supposed rifle would have been an important piece of evidence that the Aboriginal occupiers of the park had weapons. Officer Deane also did not report over the police communication system that an Aboriginal occupier had tried to shoot at the police officers; he simply reported that an individual was down and an ambulance was needed. The inquiry did not accept Acting Sergeant Deane’s version of the events, concluding unequivocally that ‘Dudley George did not have a rifle or firearm in the confrontation with the police on the night of September 6, 1995’ (2007: 72). In 1997 Ken Deane was convicted of criminal negligence causing the death of Dudley George. He died in a car accident shortly before he was scheduled to testify at the Ipperwash Inquiry. The inquiry concluded that, besides Acting Sergeant Deane and Inspector Carson (the OPP commander), ‘the OPP, as an institution, also needs to be accountable and take some responsibility for the tragedy that resulted on September 6, 1995’ (2007: 77).

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Recommendations of the Ipperwash Inquiry The recommendations in the Ipperwash Inquiry report fall into three broad areas. The first area, ‘Investigation and Findings,’ deals with matters principally pertaining to police planning for responding to Aboriginal protests and occupations. The second area, ‘Policy Analysis,’ is concerned with suggestions relating to settling land and treaty claims in Ontario. The third area delves into the nature of public inquiries and will not be discussed here. Altogether the inquiry report contained 100 recommendations, the majority (78 recommendations) falling into the second, ‘Policy Analysis’ area. Of the 19 recommendations in the ‘Investigation and Findings’ section, recommendations 5 and 19 appear to be particularly significant. Recommendation 5 focuses on facilitating negotiations: 5. The Ontario Secretariat for Aboriginal Affairs, in consultation with Aboriginal organizations, should compile a list of available negotiators and facilitators who could assist the government to quickly and peacefully resolve Aboriginal issues that emerge. (2007: 96)

As the inquiry report indicates, ‘Failed intelligence and miscommunication led to tragic consequences… The OPP’s lack of communication in this operation was a very serious failing’ (2007: 61). The police were largely unaware of the underlying reasons for the occupation of Ipperwash Park by First Nations protesters. The OPP were apparently not aware that the occupiers were in the park to protect a sacred burial site and that this was a deeply felt emotional and spiritual issue for the Aboriginal occupiers. All the police were aware of was that Aboriginal protesters were in the park illegally and that the Ontario premier and his cabinet wanted the occupiers removed in an expeditious manner. A facilitator or go-between could have communicated to the OPP and government representatives the reasons for the occupation of the park, and, in turn, could have set in motion a series of actions that might have defused the situation. Recommendation 19 focuses on redress of identified grievances: 19. The federal government should immediately return the former army camp to the peoples of the Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation and guarantee that it will assume complete responsibility for an appropriate environmental clean up of the site. (2007: 97)

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If the appropriated lands belonging to the Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation had been promptly returned as initially promised to the original owners of the Ipperwash military camp shortly after the war it would have saved decades of grief, frustration, and wasted mental anguish. Instead the federal government, in particular the Department of National Defence, went back on their promise to return the disputed lands, resulting in the eventual death of Dudley George following sixty years of needless confrontation between band members and the forces of the Canadian military and OPP. In the second set of recommendations dealing with ‘Policy Analysis,’ three of these are particularly important because they have far-reaching implications for Aboriginal land claims in the province: 1 The provincial government should establish a permanent, independent, and impartial agency to facilitate and oversee the settling of land and treaty claims in Ontario. The agency should be called the Treaty Commission of Ontario. 2 The Treaty Commission of Ontario should be established in a provincial statute as an independent agency reporting directly to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. The Treaty Commission of Ontario should have permanent administrative, legal, and research staff and should be fully independent from the governments of Canada, Ontario, and First Nations. The statute should specify that the purpose of the Treaty Commission of Ontario is to assist Ontario in discharging its treaty responsibilities. 3 The provincial government should create a Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs. This ministry should have a dedicated minister and its own deputy minister. (2007: 99)

Discussion of the Ipperwash Inquiry Recommendations Every year across Canada there are numerous Aboriginal protests. Roads and railways are blockaded. Marches to Ottawa take place. Buildings and parcels of land are occupied. In various instances the protests lead to confrontations with local police, the OPP, the Canadian army, and even with local non-Aboriginal citizens. The protests sometimes lead to injury or even death on the part of the protesters or those who confront them. Hardly ever during these episodes do proper rules of engagement appear to be followed. When emotions run high and frustration mounts, the gathered assembly begins to appear like a mob out of control. Why do the same unfortunate scenarios play themselves out in Canada over and over again without order or resolution? Why have our Canadian legislators, who are empowered to provide structure and coherence for such protests,

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turned a blind eye to these catastrophes? In the civil democracy that Canada purports to be there should be ways to resolve such disputes other than by the use of armed troops to pummel protesters into submission. Canada has a long history of suppressing Aboriginal cultural practices and political dissent. The potlatch was banned in the 1880s, and some of its Aboriginal practitioners were incarcerated. In 1906 a petition to King Edward VII over the lack of land settlements in British Columbia led by Chief Joseph Capilano of the Squamish Delegation was denied (LaViolette 1973). A national ban on Aboriginal political organizations was enacted in 1927. Aboriginal people were not allowed to vote in provincial elections until the 1950s or in federal elections until the 1960s. The Trudeau government’s White Paper proposals of 1969 were termed ‘a thinly disguised programme of extermination through assimilation’ (Cardinal 1969: 1). In the late 1960s the OPP used armed force to suppress a burial ground protest at Anishenabe Park near Kenora, Ontario. It took the Quebec government sixty-five years to fulfil its treaty and land obligations to the Cree, Inuit, and Innu people as specified under the Quebec Boundaries Extension Act (1910) and finally acted upon in the James Bay Agreement (1975). It took until 16 July 2007, another thirty-two years, for the federal government to reach a $1.4 billion settlement with the Cree over outstanding land claims. Some of the sexist and discriminatory practices of the Indian Act were not eliminated until the Bill C-31 amendment of 1985, an amendment that created a new Aboriginal population possessing second-class Indian status. Government laws and other legal initiatives have fragmented the First Nations of Canada into a myriad of competing interest groups – treaty versus non-treaty, status versus non-status, and reserve versus non-reserve. There are diverse political groups set against one another, such as the Metis National Council, the Assembly of First Nations, the Aboriginal Congress of Canada, and the Inuit Tapirisat. It can be difficult to identify which First Nations peoples are protesting and to understand what their claim is about. Aboriginal occupations and protests seemingly occur without warning. The issues are often quite diverse and complex in nature, ranging from a perceived desecration of burial sites, unsettled land claims, intrusions on hunting and fishing rights, resource development issues, or concerns over transportation initiatives involving highways, railways, or bridges. Many people are familiar with such names as Oka, Caledonia, Ipperwash, Burnt Church, and Gustafsen Lake. How long will such Aboriginal protests and occupations continue, sometimes with deadly results?

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The recommendations of the Ipperwash Inquiry, if acted upon by the Government of Ontario, would lead to constructive changes in the laws and public institutions of Ontario. In turn, such legislative changes would diminish the need for enervating protests and lead to the building of peaceful relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people over the ownership and control of land. As the Ipperwash Inquiry report reiterated, ‘Nearly all of the lands and inland waters in Ontario are subject to treaties between First Nations and the British and Canadian governments. These treaties are not, as some people believe, relics of the distant past. They are living agreements, and the understandings on which they are based continue to have the full force of law in Canada today’ (2007: 80). The experience of the Kettle and Stoney Point First Nations peoples serves to illustrate the deeply felt anger and frustration that results when provincial and federal governments fail to deal constructively with their extant treaty obligations. The proposal of the Ipperwash Inquiry to establish a provincial Treaty Commission and a Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs has the potential to deal constructively with disputes over treaty rights and other unresolved issues concerning burial and heritage sites. Implementing these proposals would also help to mitigate the deleterious consequences of a failure to take seriously Canada’s legal obligations towards First Nations people and, it is hoped, would prevent further needless loss of life such as the tragic death of Dudley George.

Conclusion Royal commissions and other public inquiries are expensive, so one always hopes that their costs were justified. A cynical view might see such commissions as a waste of money designed to give governments some breathing space in times of crisis and to deflect criticism away from them. As anthropologist Regna Darnell has observed, ‘Royal Commissions provide politicians with space to avoid confrontation and conflict. Extremists on both right and left are wont to mutter about the “anesthetic’’ quality of the always numerous and broad-ranging recommendations’ (2000: 171). The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) of 1996 cost Canadian taxpayers, including Aboriginal people, $60 million and produced 400 recommendations. As far as has been reported in the literature (Cairns 2000: 5; Frideres 1998: 229), the federal government has virtually ignored all of the commission’s recommendations. Since RCAP

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is reputed to be the most expensive federal inquiry in Canadian history, one is entitled to ask ‘What was the point?’ RCAP has been described as the embodiment of ‘the politics of ambivalence, shifting identities and elusive borders … most Canadians and all politicians found the recommendations too unrealistic even to inspire backlash’ (Darnell 2000: 171). The failure of RCAP to get a response from the federal government has been described as ‘disturbing and astonishing’ (Cairns 2000: 5). The Ipperwash Inquiry (2007), on the other hand cost $13.3 million, a relatively low price tag compared to RCAP, and made 100 recommendations. It is too soon to tell if the Ipperwash Inquiry will suffer the same fate as RCAP. The Ipperwash recommendation to create a Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs for Ontario is similar to RCAP’s recommendation to institute an Aboriginal parliament, or ‘House of First Peoples,’ which would act as an advisory body to the federal government. Either of these proposals would seem justified given the lack of intermediary links between local reserves and the higher levels of provincial and federal governments. Lacking such links, communication to appropriate governmental agencies of Aboriginal peoples’ concerns about such things as employment, land claims, housing, or breaches of treaty agreements is often not effective. Aboriginal political organizations, such as the provincial-level Union of Ontario Indians or the federal-level Assembly of First Nations, are often not very effective in this communicative role because they tend to serve a limited Aboriginal constituency and at times take an adversarial position vis-à-vis federal and provincial governments. In any event, one wonders whether the $73.3 million spent on these two inquiries alone might have been put to better use in improving the housing conditions of the Aboriginal population, or in job-creation efforts – anything rather than have this precious money gobbled up by commissioners and their witnesses for plane fares, car rentals, hotel accommodations, and restaurants meals. Perhaps some would regard it as unfair to single out anthropologists for neglecting to comment on such commissions and inquiries, and thereby failing to influence the formation of public policy. After all, we can thank Darnell for reminding us that academics often serve on royal commissions (2000: 170–1), so that academics who criticize the recommendations they helped to formulate appear to have a conflict of interest. Certainly there are those who would see in Canadian anthropology a dramatic shift or transformation over the past several decades from a discipline mainly concerned with more traditional academic interests towards one ‘which sees the redress of social injustice as an increasingly

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important goal.’ Such a transformation ‘is bound to have a lasting impact on our ability and willingness to engage in research which might depart from the rather narrow scope circumscribed by the job description of a well-meaning “advocate”’ (Scheffel 2000: 185). It is no wonder that anthropology is often misrepresented, or is ignored altogether. Part of the problem is that research findings are often disseminated only to small audiences of professional colleagues or to university classes. Some anthropologists may also lack the skills needed to write effectively for popular audiences. But more could be done to communicate anthropological findings in non-specialist forums involving teachers, policy makers, and writers, who could then transmit the message to a wider audience. The lack of a clearly defined anthropological position on Aboriginal rights is a poignant reminder that we need to rethink the dialectic concerning professional responsibility versus individual initiative. As Maybury-Lewis reminds us, ‘The sins of the anthropologists are ... usually more of omission than commission. They do not, and all too often cannot, do enough for the people they study’ (1974). The controversy over what constitutes development for Aboriginal peoples is one of those issues in which anthropology’s holistic viewpoint has potential to reveal useful insights. Large-scale projects often include developers and government planners as well as the Aboriginal communities involved. At issue are the different views concerning what constitutes development and which parties will be allowed to make the final decisions. There are also questions about who would benefit from development in the resource sector, and what the costs of such schemes would be. These questions are examined more fully in the following chapter on developmental policies and strategies.

CHAPTER SIX

Development in Aboriginal Communities: Economic Strategies and Policies

A fascinating challenge ... the conquest of Northern Quebec, its rushing spectacular rivers, its lakes so immense that they are veritable inland seas, its forest of coniferous trees concealing fabulous mineral resources of all kinds. The whole history of Quebec must be rewritten. Our ancestors’ courage will and must live again. — Quebec premier Robert Bourassa There is only one thing good in all of it: we won’t have to go far for our water. — Cree elder Annie Neeposh

Introduction The term development in anthropology is generally taken to mean the study of economic change with an accent on its cross-cultural perspective. Of course this accent is a major problem for anthropology because there are so many different ways that ‘development’ can be interpreted. The idea of defining development in a more narrow, economic sense, as an increase in per-capita gross national product, would appear too broad to incorporate the sorts of cultural practices that would lead us to an understanding of what development means in various parts of the world. At present our perception of development is largely rooted in Western notions of political economy, and it is this ethnocentric orientation of conventional economic approaches that has led to many disastrous failures in the area of international development. For example, many people believe economic development only takes place through the industrialization

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process. According to this concept, in a ‘developing’ economy there is a trend away from traditional patterns of economic diversity and towards full-time wage work and occupational specialization. If local people resist these trends, a study is apt to be conducted on various ‘barriers’ impeding a project’s implementation. Studies of this sort often concentrate on psychological or social factors, such as problems relating to punctuality or community pressures restricting greater participation in the wage economy. In such studies relatively little effort is spent examining the advantages of maintaining economic diversity; instead, most of the effort is directed towards changing local attitudes or behaviour in order to minimize disruptions in official planning. Those who have conducted research in a cross-cultural setting are apt to feel uneasy with this modernist perspective on community development. Experience has taught that what outsiders often call barriers or obstructions to development are understood not so much in the context of national economic expansion but in the context of locally perceived opportunities and restrictions. In addition, there is concern that the modernist approach is apt to lead researchers away from important areas of study, such as the benefits to be derived by using local resources, or the contribution of traditional economic activity to the viability of community life. Aside from the economists’ conception of development, in which changes in per capita income are a main indicator, development for many people has an added dimension: it is a means to achieve greater independence from outside-controlled goods and services. A related issue is the extent to which development objectives take social and cultural factors into account. Goldschmidt, for example, suggests a comprehensive approach ‘built on cultural values and motivations, to harness existing sentiments for development. For this reason, social and cultural factors should be incorporated into planning’ (1981: 59). But one problem with this approach is that a diversity of ‘existing sentiments for development’ may be found in the same ‘culture,’ as Salisbury (1977c) discovered in his research on the perceptions of Cree and Quebeckers concerning the James Bay hydroelectric project. What this all means is that there are major reasons for rethinking what development means from the vantage point of anthropology, thereby helping to clarify anthropology’s general orientation to the study of Aboriginal socio-economic issues. This chapter examines the roles that different perceptions about development can play in the formulation of economic strategies within the Aboriginal community. Cree communities in northern Quebec serve as a

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focus for this discussion, partly because their case illustrates the impact of such large-scale projects as the James Bay hydroelectric scheme, and partly because of the availability of research on Quebec Aboriginal development issues. In the course of this discussion we also examine several larger issues, including the politics of cultural dependency and development within the service-sector economy.

Views on Development The James Bay project is so ‘fascinating,’ to use Bourassa’s term, because there are so many different facets to it that stymie our ability to comprehend it all. There is an ecological view of the project that sees in it the excesses and evils of modern industrial society. This is essentially a hostile, ‘development as disaster’ view of the project, in which the world of capitalist exploitation is seen to run rampant over a pristine environment. According to this view, Aswan, Peace River, and James Bay were all negative developments that showed the worst in modern society: greed and consumerism, exploitation of minorities, domination by corporate America, the artificiality of industrial society. To the francophones of Quebec, the James Bay project is seen as a heroic quest for the assertion of the French identity in North America; it is a ‘national self-realization,’ a linking up with the noble past of the coureurs de bois and the voyageurs. The vision is as much an appeal to a political audience as it is to an economic one, although the provision of industries and jobs is an important factor as well, to the extent that the project could be seen to lessen Quebec’s dependence on the outside world. The sheer magnitude of the project was not a negative factor, because it demonstrated the outstanding technological and engineering skills of Quebeckers that could enable them to take on one of the largest construction schemes ever attempted. These were all reasons to take pride in the growing prowess of the Quiet Revolution. The Cree held yet another view of development. For them the project was just another incomprehensible ‘white man’s’ activity – illogical, destructive, and disrespectful of the natural world. The project also demonstrated the capricious and insensitive nature of the white man. In 1912 the federal government had transferred this vast tract of ‘Nouveau’ Quebec to the province on the condition (according to the Quebec Boundaries Extension Act) that Quebec ‘recognize the rights of Indian inhabitants in the territory ... to the same extent, and will obtain surrenders of such rights in the same manner, as the Government of Canada.’ Not only did successive provincial administrations do nothing about settling the land

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claims, there was not even any intention of doing so when the project was announced. The Cree had to claw their way through the courts to protect their rights. In the end the James Bay Agreement of 1975 did not make much difference. The Cree received, on a per capita basis, about what they would have received in welfare payments. The rivers were flooded anyway, and the people were forced out of their homes. For the Cree it must have seemed like some macabre joke, a gruesome dance of death with the inscrutable white man. As Annie Neeposh sarcastically said, ‘[at least] we won’t have to go far for our water.’ The most obvious lesson here is that there are a variety of perceptions involved, but also that these perceptions become culturally structured. The perceptions are part of a cultural history that has had a subtle moulding effect on the way we perceive the changes happening in the world around us. There is also a cultural consistency to the way these development views are shaped, partly as a result of the ‘world view’ of a people, but also as a result of their interaction with those immersed in other cultural traditions. With such a reality, any ‘development’ would appear doomed from the start, at least in the sense of satisfying the intentions of all the parties involved. The Cree and francophone populations of Quebec have lived pretty well separate existences for most of recent history, but the drive to make Quebec a more autonomous province through the creation of HydroQuebec and the subsequent damming of northern rivers was deleterious to the hunting life of the Cree. Thus we learn a related lesson, that progress has its victims (Bodley 1975), usually the smaller, Aboriginal groups that are divested of their land in the name of development. Progress also exacts a price in the malnutrition, disease, and deprivation that result from a loss of livelihood when the land is taken away or ruined by industrial pollution. To many, development simply means a natural process of evolution and growth. Others see, however, that there is a sense of inevitability to the word that can allow us to overlook the coercion and deliberate manipulation of indigenous economies.

Development and the Politics of Dependency A study of Indian welfare in Canada by Hugh Shewell (2004) over the 1873–1965 period is entitled ‘Enough to Keep Them Alive.’ Shewell embarks on the ambitious task of surveying nearly a century of social assistance and relief policies developed by Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs. As Buchanan indicates in a review of Shewell’s historical study, ‘the central premise is that welfare dependency among Aboriginal peoples is a

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result of more than simple economic deprivation and unemployment; rather, it is an effect of pervasive attempts to erode the cultural and political autonomy of First Nations’ (2005: 122). Two distinct phases of Indian welfare are identified by Shewell. The first of these is termed the ‘subjugation phase,’ which covers the period from Canadian Confederation to the end of the Second World War. During this phase, relief for Aboriginal peoples was only grudgingly provided on the basis of responses to various crises that emerged. There was the omnipresent concern with fostering greater Aboriginal dependence, managing fiscal restraint, and inculcating an industrious selfreliance in the Aboriginal population. The second period that Shewell identifies is termed the ‘citizenship phase,’ characterized by a concerted attempt to integrate Aboriginal peoples into the fabric of Canadian society. Relief evolved in this period into a form of social assistance that was utilized in such a way as to effect a transformation or integration of Aboriginal societies into the state structure, based on Euro-Canadian social models, in an attempt to implement community development strategies. Throughout both the ‘subjugation’ and ‘citizenship’ phases, Shewell asserts, Aboriginal welfare dependency has been a complex form of resistance to a socio-economic order that Indian nations neither choose nor fundamentally accept’ (2004: 324). This statement stands in contrast to the general tenor of his work, which gives one the sense that Aboriginal peoples have had an adverse government policy inflicted upon them, not that First Nations have played a dynamic role in challenging Indian Affairs policy and administration. One is left to wonder how Aboriginal peoples themselves experienced such welfare and relief measures – did they act as challenging and negotiating dynamic communities, as Shewell implies, or were they passive recipients of measures provided by a paternalistic bureaucracy? ‘More could have been done to incorporate an Aboriginal perspective on the effects of poverty, marginalization, and dispossession,’ Buchanan (2005: 124) rightly asserts. In addition, some discussion would also have been useful regarding the extent to which Aboriginal peoples’ traditional ethics and values of sharing and reciprocal exchange were influenced by the government’s welfare and relief programs. This is an especially important point since Shewell (2004: 4, 132) does comment during his historical discourse on what is perceived to be a cultural incompatibility between Aboriginal values and Indian Affairs’ provision of relief, welfare, and social assistance. Shewell’s study nonetheless makes a convincing historical case that Aboriginal social assistance and relief were not necessarily provided by a

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benevolent Indian Affairs administration, but rather were a forcible attempt to transform or undermine social values and assimilate Aboriginal populations. Thus, when it comes to Aboriginal people in the modern world, it is not surprising that a frequently asked question is ‘Why are Natives in such a position of dependency?’ (Dyck 1991). As Frideres has remarked, ‘There is no doubt that Natives find themselves in a position of economic dependency, i.e., unable to manipulate the operative elements of an economic system. Put another way, Natives lack the capacity to function as an independent, autonomous entity’ (1988b: 91). The standard response to the Native dependency question is that, in the early colonial period of Canada’s development, Aboriginal cultures and institutional structures were essentially in an ‘archaic’ form and that in many Aboriginal communities today there has not been much change from a basic traditional structure. The assumption is that the underdevelopment of Aboriginal culture is the result of some peculiarity in the economic or social structure of Aboriginal communities that prevents, or retards, progress towards a rational capitalist system. A related assumption is that economic development takes place in a series of stages, beginning with some pre-capitalist form and eventually ‘taking off’ into capitalist production and distribution (Rostow 1960; Galbraith 1965). In their essential form, these suggestions do not differ greatly from Morgan’s unilinear evolutionary model, depending as they do on a preoccupation with the notion of ‘progress’ that is deeply rooted in Western socio-economic thought. There is a certain exasperation expressed by scholars and government agents when dependent peoples just do not seem to get the idea of ‘progressing themselves,’ or incorporating into their cultures the basic elements of science that would allow them to make that leap into the rational, capitalistic scheme of things. As Galbraith suggests, ‘Some of the poor countries lack the social institutions and manpower which enable them to make effective use of capital and hold out a reasonable promise of repayment. In other words the social system is unfavourable to effective capital use’ (1965: 10). It is interesting that Galbraith gives us a critique of Rostow’s ‘take-off’ model. This is worth noting because he attempts to broaden the discussion of underdevelopment from a more narrow series of economic stages to the wider context of the social and political climate that led to the lack of development in the first place. For example, Galbraith notes that ‘The notion of take-off, a comparatively brief period when there is technological change ... radically minimizes the obstacles that the poor country encounters. As a consequence, the notion of development has become associated in the popular mind with an ease and certainty, and a rate of possible improvement,

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which is unfortunately at odds with reality’ (1965: 19). Similarly, Geertz observes in his Indonesian study, Peddlers and Princes, that ‘The introduction of the concept of “take-off” into recent discussions of the process of economic development ... is likely to lead us to employ per capita income as an exclusive index of the process of economic development and in so doing cause us to focus our attention on those points in the process where the changes are most dramatic’ (1963: 1–2). The suggestion of both of these authors is one of broadening the focus of our attention to the wider ‘realities,’ in Galbraith’s terms, in which a poor country or society finds itself. Obviously, one of the most important of these is the historical reality of the interaction between powerful and less powerful people. Furthermore, in the context of the colonization of North America, it is clear that the early colonizers were only interested in the Aboriginal populations as potential markets for the products of the European manufacturing industries. They were also interested in using Native people as primary producers for the fur industry, and Natives were only incorporated into the European commercial system at these basic levels. Aboriginal people were then relegated to the margins of the economic and political development of Canadian society. When the fur trade went into decline at the turn of the twentieth century, the colonizers brought in technology and skilled labour from their home country rather than attempt to develop it locally. Native communities, because of the reserve system, had been relegated to the hinterland, far removed from the markets, so that local production was largely for their own use. The cultural and racial differences between the Natives and the Europeans restricted interrelationships between the cultures, further isolating the Aboriginal populations. In the Cypress Hills region of Saskatchewan, for example, Bennett (1969) has studied the historical development of the dependency relationships between Natives and settlers. The early settlers to the Plains were responsible for undermining the Native subsistence base by slaughtering the buffalo to extinction, so that the Native population was forced to move to the reserves established by the government in order to survive. They then sold their horses to the settlers as another survival tactic, reducing further whatever wealth they had. The income of the ‘Jasper’ Indians at the time of Bennett’s study in the 1960s is derived almost solely from government relief, the sale of fence posts, manual labour for ranchers, fees from white ranchers who rented pastureland, and the sale of cows given to the Indians by Indian Affairs (1969: 162–3). As Bennett describes it, the housing situation was particularly severe: ‘Jasper Indians lived, at intervals, in old shacks, plywood one-room houses, or tents on the reserve, in a

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camp on the Jasper town dump or in shacks on the edge of town, or simply in their jalopies’ (1969: 142). The historical developments that have led to such a deplorable plight for Aboriginal people has been described as ‘the ethics of domestic dependency.’ As Jorgensen explains, ‘Since corralling Indians on reservations, the dominant white society has demanded that Indians observe the Protestant ethic, or as it is also known, the work ethic: a narrow, competitive, individualistic code of conduct that has served American capitalism well’ (1978: 7). From Jorgensen’s perspective, the issue of Native American development is more regional and political than strictly economic. He puts forth the so-called metropolis-satellite concept in which capitalist development is seen to involve expropriation and exploitation, thereby inevitably causing underdevelopment in the satellite-rural area. In this case the metropolis-satellite economy is seen as a single integrated structure in which the former grows at the expense of the latter. In an ironic twist, the relegation to the hinterland actually benefited some Aboriginal groups, such as those who found their country barren on the surface but rich in oil, gas, or minerals underneath. Land expropriations that took place throughout Canada’s colonial history – such as of that vast territory called Rupert’s Land, whose title was transferred to the Hudson’s Bay Company without any sort of negotiations with the Native inhabitants – entrenched an economic system that ensured a relatively powerless Native populace. Legislation such as the Royal Proclamation of 1763, long touted as a recognition of Aboriginal title by the British crown, only served in reality to maintain the ascendency of the external powers. The Indian Act was the final capstone. It ensured that Natives would be kept separate from the rest of Canada, and because of its various restrictions concerning private property, elections of local officials, and so on, the Native people had little hope of breaking out of a situation of dependency and inequality. Peter Carstens explains in The Queen’s People that ‘the Okanagan [people] were incorporated into the political arenas of the Province of British Columbia and the Dominion of Canada, not as equal partners in confederation, but as people of special status defined by the Indian Act ... The Okanagan and other reserve dwellers occupy socio-economic positions which are not unlike those occupied by many peasants and proletarians’ (1991: 103). It is certainly not an invidious comparison to characterize the Aboriginal population in Canada as a landless proletariat, hemmed in economically, socially, and politically by the institutions of the larger EuroCanadian society, such that a dependency position between the two was

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practically inevitable. What this all means is that arguments concerning Native underdevelopment and dependency that focus on Native culture as backward and progress-inhibiting have a particularly racist bent to them when viewed in the larger reality of Canadians’ historical treatment of the Aboriginal population. In the case of Carstens’s portrayal of the Okanagan people, considerable debate has ensued over the accuracy of anthropological descriptions of Aboriginal societies in Canada. For example, in a lengthy review of Carstens’s ethnography in the Native Studies Review, Wickwire and M’Gonigle suggest that, ‘Inaccurate in its portrayal of these people, the book does deserve analysis for this very reason – not as a reliable ethnography of the Okanagan people, but as a critique of the study process itself, from the new self-critical perspective of appropriation’ (1991: 98). In particular, these reviewers have taken exception to ‘His overriding concern [which] is to characterize the Okanagan as victims of a hegemonic relationship in which they fit the mould of a peasant “class”’ (ibid.). This theme of dependence upon the central government and the need to break away from this pattern finds expression among those who would argue for an ‘internal colonialism’ model as an explanation for Aboriginal underdevelopment. As Wien explains, ‘When the underdevelopment of culturally distinctive racial and ethnic groups is analyzed from a dependency perspective, an analogy to the colonial experience is often made’ (1986: 104). Similarly, in Patterson’s (1972) history of the Canadian Indian, he points to the parallels between the colonial expansion of Europeans into Africa and their penetration of North America. His ‘catalogue of parallel experiences’ includes such commonalities as an exposure to European diseases, the establishment of missionary centres, a loss of Aboriginal lands, and the creation of colonial administrative bureaucracies. The colonial approach also finds expression in Frideres’s (1993: 4–8) text in which he argues that the policies of federal and provincial governments have been an impediment to self-determination and development. As he explains, ‘The control exerted over Indians is viewed as the only way Natives will be able to escape their poverty and marginal existence. The resistance of this control by Natives has been interpreted as further evidence that Natives are unable to change by themselves, and has thus enhanced the resolve of the government to increase their control and force change’ (1993: 515). There are those researchers, however, who find difficulties in this approach. As Wotherspoon and Satzewich explain, ‘In relation to the

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internal colonial model, we agree that a focus on the state is crucial to understanding the dynamics of aboriginal economic development and underdevelopment. Where we disagree is in the explanation of the dynamics of the activities of the state’ (1993: 252). These authors, for example, point to the tendencies to overly personalize the failures of Aboriginal economic development and to inject conspiratorial overtones into the interpretation of the activities of Indian Affairs officials. When this occurs, the failures of state policies become reduced to the personal inadequacies of government bureaucrats. In other words, the existing political and economic relationships linking Aboriginal communities to government become reduced to explanations based on the presumed incompetence of state officials. On the other hand, one wonders about the extent to which department officials are able to act as independent agents, and the extent to which such agents could remain uninfluenced by the wider forces of government policies and relationships. At least one such official, namely Cam Mackie (1986), has written about several of these issues. Mackie was a coordinator of the federal government’s Native Economic Development Program and assistant deputy minister in the Department of Indian Affairs in the late 1970s. Before working for the government, he had received prior training in community development in Manitoba, thus having an opportunity to meld his practical experience with the sometimes utopian aims of government policy. From Mackie’s perspective, although he does not say so directly, a deficiency in the internal colonial model is an exaggerated emphasis on the failure of government practices to improve the conditions of Aboriginal people in a general sense. Such a model does not adequately account for ‘successes’ in economic development initiatives. Yet one is hesitant to give the government too much credit. Even Mackie points out that A recent conference on native women and economic development was the first conference for almost half the women there. Most of them were successful businesswomen whose companies included construction, restaurants, fine arts stores, clothing manufacturing, consulting services, fishing lodge operations, and so on. The majority of the successful businesses have never received any financial support from government. They did it the hard way, on their own initiative. (1986: 211)

It appears that there are a number of useful examples of successful economic change upon which future initiatives could be advantageously

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built. We might also note that most of these business opportunities are in the service sector.

Native Women and Development Issues Mackie’s portrayal of successful Native women in business conveys a positive image of women’s role in local economic development. Other researchers provide similar examples of women’s high socio-economic status in Aboriginal economies, such as Klein’s (1980) analysis of Tlingit men and women in the context of economic change. In a similar vein, Fiske found that, among the Carrier people in central British Columbia, State intervention, combined with capital inflows and development, left salmon, the most valued resource, in the hands of women, and at the same time reduced the resources exploited primarily by men ... Appreciation of women who provide well for their families and communities has implications for women as political actors and community leaders. Today, women and men often rationalize female political actions by reference to their abilities as fisherwomen. (1988: 186)

This linking of gender, status, and political activity was given a modern twist when revealed in the media coverage of the confrontation at Oka, Quebec, in the summer and fall of 1990, in which Ellen Gabriel and other Mohawk women were seen as playing particularly active roles. In general socio-economic terms, however, Native women tend to fare less well than their male counterparts. In terms of male-female differences in labour force participation and income levels, there is considerable evidence that Native women are less active in economic activities than men (Hedican 1986b: 61). In terms of Native labour force participation, for example, Frideres (1993: 163–71) notes that while Aboriginal people are participating more in the labour force over time, this participation is still marginal and not representative of the jobs that characterize a postmodern industrial society. In all, in the period studied (1981–91), Native participation in the labour force was about 20 per cent lower than the national rate. Among status Indians living on reserves, more than 40 per cent of the men and nearly 25 per cent of the women were employed. Higher rates of employment were found among the non-status Aboriginal population: nearly two-thirds of men and over 40 per cent of the women had jobs. Overall, during the decade, the percentage of people working full time

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decreased for all Canadians, although the rate of decrease was greater for Natives than for non-Natives. There are several reasons that could account for these figures. In a 1991 study, ‘Indian Attachment to the Labour Force,’ Peters and Rosenberg suggested that while employment and labour force activity are patterned over various demographic and socio-economic groups, gender and family status are important characteristics patterning wage work. Participation rates appear to be lower for females than males, and unemployment rates higher. They also found that gender was more important than educational levels in predicting average incomes: women, both on and off the reserves, earned lower incomes than men (1991: 26–33). It is possible that sexual discrimination is the factor that accounts for these disparate participation rates in the work force between men and women. Ryan (1978), for example, suggested that Aboriginal women leave their reserves because their economic needs are given low priority in the reserve community. Nicholson has come to the conclusion that ‘It is evident that considerable discrimination on the basis of sex also exists in many aboriginal communities. For example, few women hold positions on band council or in native organizations, yet in many cases these institutions control economic development resources on reserves’ (1987: 123). However, the generality of such attitudes across different Aboriginal reserves should be the subject of closer scrutiny and research. One reason for questioning Nicholson’s conclusions at the general level is that, as far as women are concerned, family status is an important factor affecting work patterns in Aboriginal communities. There is no doubt that parenthood affects one’s readiness to engage in wage labour. In addition, certain kinds of family status, such as single parenthood, could be the reason for discriminatory practices in relation to economic activities. In her study ‘Matrifocal Families in the Canadian North,’ Cruikshank (1975: 105–19) documented the tension emerging between Aboriginal men and women when the women were required to seek out wage work in order to support unemployed husbands. Much of this tension arose from the Aboriginal women’s belief that mothering children should be considered a full-time occupation, and the attendant fear that wage work would prevent them from properly performing their motherhood role. In such instances, women who had to work to support husband and family might come to resent the way this activity took them away from their children. Single parenthood, another factor affecting economic participation by women, could also play a role in the discrimination associated with

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certain types of family status. Women from the Tobique reserve in New Brunswick, for example, indicated that single parents occasionally had difficulty obtaining both housing and financial help for housing repairs (Silman 1986). On some reserves there is a stigma attached to being a single mother, as Falconer (1991: 203–4) suggests. Such attitudes towards family status could well act as a barrier to employment for women, especially when wage jobs are in short supply, which would be the condition on most reserves. Furthermore, some economic strategies could only be feasible when undertaken in the context of extended family groupings. This is evidenced by Driben’s (1990) study of women among the Ojibwa in northwestern Ontario. He showed that the roles male and female spouses engaged in were essential if hunting units were to remain productive. After the death of two mature Ojibwa women, the economic prospects of their families appeared bleak. How much of an economic disadvantage do Native women face in Canada? This specific question was the subject of research by Gerber using 1986 census data to compare males and females among people who claim Aboriginal ancestry (Indian, Inuit, and Metis) on both paternal and maternal sides. The main conclusion of this research report was that ‘Canadian women appear to be at a distinct disadvantage whenever their incomes and educational or occupational achievements are compared with those of men, and women with combined minority statuses seem to suffer multiple jeopardy’ (Gerber 1990: 69). Her comparison between sexes and across the three Aboriginal groups supports a conclusion that Native women are doubly disadvantaged as females of ethnic minorities. Such women also carry an additional handicap because of the dependent status of Aboriginal peoples on their reserve-based communities within Canadian society. Gerber’s analysis of Canadian 1986 census data supports the hypothesis that the most disadvantaged Canadians in terms of educational attainment, labour force participation, and income are members of visible minorities, are female, and, more specifically, are Aboriginal. Several explanations are put forward. For example, from an exchange theory perspective, social attraction is determined by the resources of the parties to the exchange. In cases where resources are unequal, ‘superior’ and ‘subordinate’ roles are created, with the former providing services and the latter offering deference and compliance in return. These resource inequalities result in power differentials and the emergence of a class structure in which power is self-perpetuating. The position of women in exchange relationships is weakened by limited resources and devalued attributes.

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From the perspective of a political economy model (Frideres 1993: 2–22; Wotherspoon and Satzewich 1993: 1–14), Aboriginal people suffer disproportionately because the Indian reserve in Canada is an exploited internal colony controlled by external economic and political forces that create substantial barriers to development. Taking this argument further, it could also be suggested that Aboriginal women face a ‘triple jeopardy’ as a result of these conditions – first as women, then as members of a visible minority, and finally as residents of uniquely dependent communities.

Prospects for Change Facile solutions have not worked in the past, and there is every reason to believe that ‘Band-Aid’ measures that only treat the symptoms of a problem will have little chance of working in the future. What is evident is that a change of attitude is necessary throughout Canadian society. Such changes have already started with the ‘blame the victim’ mentality that is prevalent today. This attitude sees the problems Natives are experiencing as a result of their own lack of effort and unwillingness to change their old ways, or difficulties inherent in the traditional nature of Native cultures. Canadian society at large must change its focus, away from the internal dynamics of Native societies and towards the institutional and structural encumbrances that stand in the way of Native initiatives. The issue is partly social, because access to jobs and opportunities is denied Native people on the basis of race and culture. But such discrimination may only retard socio-economic mobility; the main economic problem has to do with limited sources of income and means of production. The reason Native people occupy a marginal position in Canada has a lot to do with their access, or lack of it, to various kinds of resources, such as skills, technology, and capital. It is these sorts of factors that most powerfully determine employment levels and the extent of income distribution. In other words, the reasons Aboriginal people remain in a dependency state are as much structural as they are social. Ultimately, the problems of Native people are those of the economic, political, and cultural structure of the Canadian nation itself. In fact, Native people have been saying pretty much the same thing for a long time. This was particularly evident during the constitutional talks, when Native people were fighting so strongly for an entrenchment of their Aboriginal rights, under the banner of equal rights for all. They saw that all Canadians should be engaged equally in defining and protecting their rights; that the external

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factors that impinged upon Aboriginal people impinged upon everyone else as well. It is just that these impinging factors are more extensive in the case of Aboriginal people because of legislation such as the Indian Act and the various treaties, which have restricted Native autonomy more than that of the average citizen. The Indian Act is still a primary piece of legislation that regulates just about every aspect of Native people’s lives. It defines who is an Indian and who is not, and it is the basis for deciding who can live on a reserve and receive government programs and who cannot. It also places many restrictions on Native people. For example, it prohibits private ownership of land and controls how the land is developed. Natives must obtain consent from an Indian agent or other administrator in order to act in a wide range of situations. The legislation also controls reserve elections, the duties of councils, and how band revenues are to be spent. The Indian Act is the principal means by which the federal government has retained control over the lives of Native people and maintained them in the state of dependency that the government ostensibly deplores so much. Without changes to the administrative and legal structure of the Indian Affairs administration to allow for greater access to the use of existing resources and an increase in band autonomy in the form of self-government measures, there appears to be little hope that the underdeveloped state of the Aboriginal community will change. Such changes, while not a total solution, would be a step in the right direction.

The Service Sector Economy In many modern industrial countries, more than half the work force is employed in the service sector. In Canada, for example, the tourist industry generates almost as much income as the automobile, resource extraction, or manufacturing industries. Since the last century, those with a materialistic orientation have seen the service sector as a drain on the ‘real’ sources of wealth, such as industry or farming. Despite this older perspective, service employment is a definite growth industry that will only increase in decades to come. It is also a reasonable assumption that increasing service employment is a means to achieve the diversified economy and higher living standards that constitute ‘development.’ However, one change that would benefit this type of employment immeasurably would be the establishment of increased local controls in the delivery of services, as opposed to the existing situation in which services are planned and staffed by people in metropolitan centres (Salisbury 1988).

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In a study of Native employment in the tourist industry in northwestern Ontario involving an Ojibwa community, I have suggested that service employment is one of the most effective means to pursue a development strategy for this region (Hedican 1986b). The high unemployment in many of the Native communities ensures a readily available supply of labour. This labour is underutilized for the most part, yet the people are skilled and knowledgeable in the environmental setting of the northern forests. The service sector is one means to develop the local economy along the lines of what the people themselves see as ‘development,’ which is to say, economic changes that fit in with their way of life and do not destroy the environment. Here are both human resources and the beauty of Canada’s north country. What is needed now is the seed capital to get projects started. This is not to say that changes in existing practices are not also required. As it now stands, the tourist industry in the north does not generate much income for the local Native population. Aboriginal people work as guides, cooks, and machinery maintainers, while the betterpaying positions in management are often held by those brought in from outside. Most of the profits go to the initial investors, with little left over to circulate in the Native community. The typical tourist operation in northwestern Ontario today has an owner-operator who owns several small aircraft. His clientele usually come from the northern United States and stay a week or two. Native guides, often with their families, are stationed at several tent-camp locations situated within an hour’s flight from the base camp. The Natives are not paid an hourly rate, since the amount they receive is based on the number of fishermen or hunters serviced at the various camps. Also, since the Native guide and his family receive minimal supplies, the cost of which is deducted from their pay, they spend much time foraging from the land. By the end of the season, Native guides usually do not have much to show for a summer’s work; the tourist operators, meanwhile, return to their homes outside the region. How can the tourist industry in the north provide more benefits for the Aboriginal population? The most obvious answer is that Native people have to break into its upper management levels. Their jobs as guides have meaning for them at a personal and cultural level, yet there is no reason why they could not also become involved in other, more lucrative, facets of the tourist trade, such as scheduling arrivals and departures, ordering equipment and other supplies, accounting, hiring personnel, advertising, customer relations, and so on. Of course, the

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training programs required would cost money, but this would be counterbalanced by reduced expenses for unemployment insurance, welfare, and other related transfer payments. Government personnel would likely have to play a role initially to help get the ball rolling, but it wouldn’t take long before local controls were phased in to avoid merely substituting one set of outside bosses for another. The overall plan is to integrate the northern Aboriginal population into the growing service sector of the economy more effectively, in a way that utilizes their existing knowledge and skills, augmented by additional training in management so that they can start to make their own plans for the future, taking their own views about development into consideration. In the past, attempts to solve the so-called Indian problem have been imposed largely from the outside, with government personnel taking the initiative and local people acting in compliance. People in local communities were never really sure what was going on, and they showed little initiative as a result. Outsiders have been responsible for the inception of programs in the Native community – programs initially designed to overcome the dependency problem – but unfortunately these programs have been largely responsible for an increase in the very dependency relationships that the programs were initially designed to overcome (Driben and Trudeau 1983; Lithman 1984; Paine 1977). The emergence of these relationships then became one of the more formidable barriers to any locally conceived plans for developing the local economy. Money entering the local economy from government sources does create employment, especially as it bolsters the administrative apparatus that is required to manage the funds. To illustrate, in the Inuit community of northern Quebec, ‘DIAND maintains the standard of living at an artificially buoyant level, and gives the illusion of economic viability’ (Arbess 1967: 68). Without any systematic vocational programs, there is little opportunity for Native people to begin to manage their own affairs. Many projects fail because there is a general lack of managerial skills in the local community and little in the way of outside managerial assistance. The lack of appropriate training facilities and poor management mean that little faith can be placed in the potential success of new programs, and they are often expected to fail, as others have done in the past. A common pattern is that ‘no real industry developed [and] the lack of training and education pre-condition the people to a welfare type of approach’ (Arbess 1967: 71). Some writers have gone so far as to argue that this dependency relationship is inevitable for most Native groups because of the legal and

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political relationships between tribal and federal governments (Schusky 1975). Under these conditions the initiative for the development of Native leadership is severely restricted, and it is therefore imperative for a change to take place in the way government officials influence local Native economic and political affairs. There has been a tendency in the past for government to invest in social welfare schemes that only treat the symptoms of an underlying malaise. The problem is that a lower priority is placed on planning for economic development purposes. In the future, it will have to be local Aboriginal leaders who take the initiative in formulating developmental strategy. This can be facilitated if local people are in a position to hire their own professional planners, who in turn are accountable to the local community rather than to external administrators. It is a strategy that could serve to curtail dependency relationships and stimulate a clearer commitment to long-term economic development in preference to ephemeral, short-term programs designed simply to increase employment levels. With greater local control, Native decision making would become more effective, and there would be a greater possibility for Native management and eventual ownership of new enterprises. The case of the James Bay Cree is one model that shows how the development of service sector employment can lead to increased local economic control and a regional form of self-government.

Development among the James Bay Cree The James Bay Agreement (1975) is sometimes thought of as the first ‘modern’ treaty. There were extensive negotiations leading up to the agreement, and Aboriginal people had considerable influence, relatively speaking, in the eventual terms that were reached. The agreement was also quite comprehensive, as it included, considerable financial compensation and territorial provisions. In return for their Aboriginal sovereignty over the some 410,000 square miles of northern Quebec, the Cree, Inuit, and (later) Montagnais-Naskapi received a financial settlement of $225 million, most of it to be paid out over an extended period of time. For example, $75 million was to be paid out over a twenty-year period, $75 million when the hydro project was completed (or by 1996), and $75 million in Quebec bonds (date of maturity: 1995). There has been a suggestion that the James Bay Agreement was patterned after the Alaska Settlement of 1971, in which funds were distributed on a more individual basis and Natives became individual shareholders in their particular regional corporation (Price 1978: 256–63).

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In both cases the financial settlement was quite large – for example, the 80,000 Alaska Natives received more than $1 billion in cash payments and royalties. However, the Quebec agreement also gave Natives special rights to hunt and fish, which were not part of the Alaska settlement, and the Quebec Natives were given a guaranteed income plan (the Income Security Programme) for Cree involved in wildlife harvesting (Feit 1982; LaRusic 1979a). The main development problem for the Cree and Inuit was how to plan for the future in terms of making investments. Since most of the money was tied up in long-term bonds and securities, there were actually very few funds available for initiating projects. Nevertheless the Cree embarked on a variety of economic ventures, under the auspices of a central authority called the Grand Council of the Cree, most of which were directed at developing the service sector industry in northern Quebec. It is important to note here that the organizational development of the Cree was one of the most important effects of the agreement. Prior to their opposition to the James Bay hydroelectric project there had been virtually no politicization or unification of the various Cree villages. The Grand Council of the Cree, a breakaway group from the Indians of Quebec Association (IQA), provided an independent structure through which Cree opposition became focused. In turn the Cree Regional Authority (CRA) was formed in order to administer regional services to Cree villages, including Cree boards of health, schools, housing, and economic development (Salisbury 1988). Surrounding the eight Cree villages is a territory administered by the CRA that is comparable to an Indian reserve but is now called Category 1 lands. In other lands (categories 2 and 3), the Cree have certain hunting and fishing rights, as well as a role to play (as game wardens) in the supervision of wildlife harvesting. The financial board of the CRA did not have the funds to make radical changes, but it set up what it called Cree Constructions to help build the new villages, and it invested in an airline called Air Quebec. In times past, government officials made the decisions; however, a technical staff now exists among the Cree. NonCree consultants and technical advisers are still called upon, but it is Cree decision makers who evaluate the advice that is offered, and they follow it only if they see fit. Since the agreement, the greatest impact in northern Quebec has been the steady build-up of administrative structures for the Cree region, which plans and delivers services to 7,000 people scattered over many thousands of square miles. The hydroelectric development of northern

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Quebec has not particularly benefited the Cree, since few of them worked in construction and no villages are linked to the high-voltage transmission lines. On the negative side, there has been a highway cut through Cree land from north to south, with branches to the four dams. Some fifty hunting territories have been flooded, affecting three northerly bands, while logging for the pulp industry has decimated others. The hydroelectric program has not provided the Cree with a basis for their own industries; any development that has occurred has been in the form of services delivered to the villages by the Cree themselves. Salisbury (1988: 239–56) studied the changes in Cree incomes over a ten-year period, from 1971, before the agreement, to six years after it, in 1981. Overall, the increase in total incomes over the ten-year period, when adjusted for population and cost-of-living increases, is a change in constant dollar-per-capita terms of 83 per cent. This means that the Cree got wealthier at a faster rate than most Canadians. Even so, by doing better in terms of income, the Cree moved up from a point below the poverty line (in 1971), to a level comparable with that found in many rural communities in other areas of the country (in 1981). The most dramatic changes occurred in relation to three common sources of income: hunting, fishing, and trapping; wage work; and transfer payments. Welfare and family allowance benefits, for example, dropped from 16 to 5 per cent of total income, and salaries increased from 23 to 52 per cent. The hunting sector tripled in production, but declined somewhat as a proportion of the total product. In other words, wage work became the major economic activity of the Cree, surpassing the formerly dominant hunting sector. However, hunting now also provides cash income through the guiding of sports fishermen and through summer outfitting camps. For the Cree, hunting has remained a vital part of the economy but is not now the prime developmental mover. Hunting has also allowed the Cree to maintain a high degree of autonomy, because productivity in the subsistence sector has remained high. As a result, the wage earner is better able to pick and choose from among the available jobs. In other words, a successful hunter has a better opportunity to enter skilled occupations paying higher rates and is less likely to be forced to take low-paying wage work. Conversely, if hunting had become unproductive, there would be more pressure on the Cree to engage in unskilled wage labour, which is a problem also faced by Ojibwa workers in northwestern Ontario (Hedican 1986b: 72–8). The most dramatic change for Cree economics was the tenfold increase in salaried incomes. The number of workers doubled, with the

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average wage about five times as high, mainly because most of the new workers were in skilled or professional jobs. Over the ten-year period the average worker changed from a seasonal manual labourer to a person in the skilled category of occupations. In addition, where they were virtually absent before, women made up about a third of the whitecollar and professional workers. In the pre-James Bay Agreement period the skilled jobs delivering services to the Cree villages were held by Euro-Canadians. These were the people who staffed the schools and nursing stations, managed housing programs, installed plumbing, and planned budgets. Local Cree now perform most of these tasks. They also now staff the offices of the regional government, the school, the boards of health, and so on. The result of these changes is that most salaries for services paid by government agencies now go mainly to the Cree people in the local villages. An additional economic factor is that the Cree are more apt to spend their money locally, leading to ‘multiplier’ effects in the local economy, while the transient white workers spend little of their salaries in the villages. The Cree workers live at home rather than in the subsidized housing whites were given, and their incomes are spent on goods and services in the villages. In turn, this provides employment opportunities for local businesses, with all locally bought services and housing going to provide employment. With increased incomes at the local village level, there is more money available to support such enterprises as corner stores, restaurants, taxi and truck services, and cooperative stores. Increased communication with the outside world also led to the start of the tourist industry in Creeland. Most villages now have a motel, so that outsiders coming on official business have a place to stay. Various sport fishing camps were taken over by the Cree, giving them increased opportunities to capitalize on their traditional hunting and bush skills. The Cree also started summer courses in guiding, to train their people in customer relations – a development that has provided a basis for a more viable industry in the future. In summary, over a ten-year period (from the 1970s to the 1980s) there was a great increase in the social services and housing in Cree villages, an increase that preceded the development of an industrial base, and facilitated it. In all, the most critical changes were that local people became able to supply their own services, and that the new salary base provided by this employment led to a diversification in the village economy. The subsistence economy (hunting and fishing) remained a prominent economic factor that actually bolstered the growing service sector

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by providing additional employment in the outfitting and sports camps. All this meant that the Cree succeeded in developing a locally controlled and sustained development of their village economies.

The ‘Cultural Dependency’ Question The sceptical mind is apt to ask, who paid for this increase in Cree wealth, who benefited from it, and were new dependency relationships formed? In all, there was some unequal sharing of benefits, but these did not split the Cree into inimical groups. The increase in professional jobs for the younger, educated Cree did not take place at the expense of older workers in the subsistence sector. More women had salaried jobs, and better housing was a benefit shared by everyone. There is also the question concerning whether the range in village incomes led to a division between Cree hunters and Cree professionals. Hunting families earn less cash, about $1,000 on average, but produce food and housing worth considerably more. No clear-cut division emerged between the two groups, since salaried workers also expend disposable income in the subsistence sector on spare-time hunting. Both the full-time hunter and the salaried worker live well because the cost of living in the villages is generally low. The sharing and reciprocal arrangements by which services and food are distributed in extended kin groups also diminish the likelihood of divisions, since Cree families are apt to contain both hunters and salaried workers, thus reducing interpersonal disparities and potential conflicts. The fact remains, though, that most employment for the Cree continued to be generated by government funding of social services, and few new industries were actually developed. But did this expansion of social services not merely create a situation of greater dependency? The Cree received material and service benefits, but did they lose their cultural heritage along the way? A positive answer to these questions, particularly the last one, presupposes a static Cree culture – a slightly ethnocentric orientation, to put it mildly, since the Cree have been a changing society for many thousands of years. The ancestors of the Cree found ways to adapt their culture to the changing ecological conditions brought on first by the receding Ice Age many millennia ago and then by the coming of the Europeans and the fur trade. The James Bay Agreement and the subsequent hydroelectric development are no different, in essence – these are only new challenges that the Cree culture has had to face in order to

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survive and flourish. In fact, in historical terms the Cree have been one of the most successful Aboriginal societies in North America. In adapting to changing environmental and economic conditions, they have spread across Canada as middlemen in the fur trade and adapted to multiple environmental settings, including the subarctic forest, the eastern woodlands, and the central plains. Their language is flourishing: more people now speak Cree than any other Aboriginal language. It can be said with some accuracy that ‘In many ways the Cree are the most important North American Indian group in Canada. [No other Native people] can lay claim to the central historic position, to the geographical extensiveness, or to the contemporary significance of the myriad Creespeaking bands spread across Canada’ (A.D. Fisher 1973: 126). The question concerning the loss of the Cree cultural heritage in the face of modern developments is then a particularly hollow one. Shouldn’t the Cree change like anyone else, rather than be locked in a temporalcultural setting of flint-tipped arrows and birch-bark canoes? These items served their purpose in the past, but rifles and motor boats are more efficient. In any event, it is important to note that the Cree have maintained a grasp on the salient dimensions of their original culture – on the family, kinship, and village settings that have always given meaning to their lives. They have also maintained their links with their hunting heritage, thus providing a continuity from past to present, from generation to generation. If anything, the Cree have experienced what could be called a cultural enhancement or revival in which some aspects of their culture have been given new significance while others have been discarded along the way. From an anthropological perspective, these sorts of cultural changes are fairly common. They should be viewed not as retrogression but as a way of making a constructive leap from one stage to another. As far as the question of cultural dependency is concerned, the mere posing of such a question places an unfair burden on the Cree to ‘develop,’ but in a way that is completely autonomous. Development means forging constructive new relationships, not ones that give the advantage to one side or the other. In any event, who in the world is truly independent today, with our free trade agreements and global economic communities that transcend regional and national boundaries? The world is becoming a more ‘mutually contingent’ place, and the Cree are quite naturally moving towards an ethnic regional society within this emerging system. They are clearly not moving towards a strict economic dependency, since there is almost full employment within Cree villages. It is true that there has been a strong inflow of goods from the

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outside (snowmobiles, televisions, stereos, trucks, and so on), which has made the Cree more dependent on outside manufacturing than they might like to be, but in this they are no different from any other community in Canada. All other Canadians earn money to spend on goods that they do not manufacture, without having to answer questions about whether they are less independent than before. In this larger sense we are all probably less autonomous, but this is one of the costs of living in a country with a high standard of living. The Cree, one would think, should not be denied the benefits of this living standard simply because of sociopolitical characteristics that can only be dimly articulated.

Conclusion The Cree provide us with an important message concerning the anthropology of development. An essential element of development has to do with expanding the choices and options that people have available to them. In different cultural settings there will be variations in how people assess their options and make decisions – which are apt to be made with a combination of traditional and modern factors in mind. The Cree, for example, have sound reasons for not abandoning the traditional pursuits of hunting and fishing. The reason is partly a matter of economic efficiency, because locally available resources cost less than products imported from the south. But the reasons are also cultural and ideological (Tanner 1979) since hunting maintains important relationships in Cree culture, especially ritual relations between hunters and game animals. People are part of human society, but in the Cree view, people are also part of a natural world that has to be respected if it is to provide sustenance to human beings. The quotations at the beginning of this chapter illustrate the divergent views of development that emanate from different cultural traditions. From the tone of Premier Bourassa’s imaginative description – ‘fascinating challenge ... conquest ... fabulous mineral resources’ – the implication is that the development of northern Quebec is seen as a heroic quest, along the lines of the coureurs de bois and the voyageurs. Accordingly, the rivers, lakes, and forests are to be subdued in the interest of wealth creation on the one hand and the pursuit of political sovereignty on the other. The Cree, alternatively, see themselves as the guardians or even the protectors of the forest and its inhabitants. The idea of flooding the land is beyond their comprehension, and the white man is an inscrutable creature who has no respect for the environment.

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The difficulty for anthropology is how to reconcile these divergent views of development. The Cree and francophone views about how to develop northern Quebec are pretty much diametrically opposed to one another. Who is right? Should anthropology support one perspective or another, or should it try to understand both views by placing them within the wider cultural contexts in which they originate? Of course this wider context should also acknowledge the fact that NouveauQuebec development is more than a Cree-francophone question. Bay Street, Wall Street, the Inuit, and Greenpeace are all players in the matter, and none of these parties falls neatly on one or the other side of a good guybad guy line when it comes to making decisions on economic development issues. It is nonetheless true that the anthropologist, because of fieldwork in local communities, is apt to have considerable sympathy for the less powerful people who are the victims of mega-projects. This is particularly so when these projects undermine the economic subsistence base of a people whose livelihood is irreparably harmed by the self-interested decisions made in the corporate boardroom. However, the inability on the part of anthropologists to study up this corporate ladder in order to better understand why these decisions are made makes them less effective allies of the local people. They would be more useful if they could provide an analysis of corporate decision making, with a view to suggesting safeguards or accomodations, so that harmful effects on local communities are minimized. In the case of the Cree, the Programme in the Anthropology of Development at McGill University provided a wide range of socioimpact studies of the consequences of the hydroelectric project. These allowed the Cree to prepare their case so as to emphasize the threats to their subsistence base. This resulted in measures such as the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, which set aside certain territories for the exclusive use of the Cree, reserved some twenty-two species of fish and game for the exclusive use of Cree people, and instituted a program for Native game wardens that enabled the Cree to monitor the effects of white society’s incursion into their hunting territories more effectively. The Cree also acquired a stake in outfitting operations in the region, and joint control of decisions concerning sport-hunting quotas. The agreement established the right of the Cree to the yield of meat, and the Income Security Programme for Cree hunters and trappers provided an economic safety net that evens out fluctuations in the hunting yield. Of course there were local instances of disaster as a result of the flooding,

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resulting in a drastic drop in productivity in some fifty hunting territories. Logging for pulp has also decimated other territories. If this is the price of development, the Cree have done about the best they could to mitigate the most harmful consequences of hydro development. Other Native groups, such as the Easterville community in Manitoba (Waldram 1988), have fared far worse as a result of hydroelectric dam construction. The Cree of Quebec organized themselves quickly, under a dynamic group of young leaders headed by Chief Billy Diamond. The Grand Council of the Cree provided an effective umbrella organization for all the Cree villages and a focal point through which the negotiations could be funnelled. The Cree drew strength from this unity of action and, aided by the media, were more able to stand up to the Quebec government for the rights they wanted protected in the James Bay Agreement. Clearly, it is important to consider the political context of Aboriginal issues – a subject explored more fully in the following chapter.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Political Context of Aboriginal Issues: Self-Government and Institutional Structures

We know from bitter experience that others do not know what is best for us. We are engaged in a fight we will never give up, a fight to implement the policies we know will help us lift ourselves above our present problems. — George Erasmus, ‘The Solutions We Favour for Change’

Introduction George Erasmus is a former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. In his parting address he outlined what he calls the ‘Solutions We Favour for Change’ (1989: 295–302) in such areas as constitutional change, treaty rights, and self-government. The problems, and solutions, are essentially political ones, with the underlying assumption that Aboriginal people will retain a significant role in the Canadian political scene from now on: ‘We have always been here. We are not going anywhere. And the Canadian political system eventually will have to treat us as a permanent, and important, part of this country’ (1989: 295). For too long in Canada the image in the public’s mind has been one of the vanishing Indian, fading off into the sunset on horseback with feathers dangling behind. Either that or the image of the assimilated Native, with shirt and tie and office job, indistinguishable from his workmates except for his brown skin. Neither scenario turned out the way people might have imagined it. Certainly Aboriginal people are still here, but their aspirations have seldom been those entertained by other Canadians. Aboriginal Canadians are working towards managing their own affairs, legalizing Aboriginal rights in the Canadian constitution, and

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keeping their tradition of spirituality intact. When it comes down to it, these are important goals, not only for Aboriginal people but for everyone else as well. Maybe our lifestyle is such that too much is taken for granted. Maybe we owe a considerable debt to Aboriginal people for aspiring to protect the rights of all citizens in our democratic society. However, because the realization of Aboriginal goals must take place within the context of Canadian political and institutional structures, it is appropriate here to consider the nature of this context.

Institutional Frameworks Aboriginal life in Canada takes place within the context of various legal and legislative structures, both federal and provincial (see, for example, discussions in Boldt 1993; Hawkes 1991; Fleras and Elliot 1992). These structures not only serve to regulate the lives of Aboriginal people; they also act to provide the parameters for achieving their goals and aspirations within the social and cultural confines of Canadian society. Aboriginal people have a historical relationship within the Canadian state that differs from that of other Canadians and that entails special rights and obligations as specified by the various treaties and other pieces of legislation. The Indian Act is the principal regulator of Aboriginal life in Canada. It enters into an Aboriginal person’s life from the moment of birth until the time he or she leaves this earth, and every day in between. Since it is such a comprehensive piece of legislation, its significance cannot be underestimated. For example, the Indian Act begins with various definitions of who can be registered legally as ‘an Indian,’ and what constitutes an Indian band and reserve. It even has a section that deals with ‘mentally defective or incompetent’ Indians. There are sections on illegitimate children, marriage regulations, and the maintainance of band lists. The act contains sections on everything from the election of band councils to the control of undesirable weeds. Taxation, schooling, farming, and money management are all covered by specific regulations. In all its many facets, the act is the primary instrument that controls Aboriginal life. The Indian Act has had numerous repercussions for the Aboriginal population. Its original intent was probably to act as a legislative protector, or buffer, facilitated by Indian agents and the establishment of the reserve system. A secondary intent was to facilitate the gradual movement of Aboriginal populations into the mainstream of Canadian life. However, this assimilationist policy had different results over the long term. For one thing, the Indian Act did not facilitate integration but

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actually hampered it. Reserve life and the administrative apparatus of the Indian Affairs bureaucracy only served to ensure the poverty and inequality of Aboriginal people and to curtail their freedom. The responsibility for the implementation of the Indian Act rests with the Indian Affairs branch of the federal government. The Indian Affairs bureaucracy is a very complex administrative structure with a multimillion dollar annual budget (Ponting and Gibbins 1980; Ponting 1986). The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development comprises four main branches or programs: Northern Development, Financial and Professional Services, Indian/Inuit Affairs, and the Office of Native Claims. In the Indian/Inuit Affairs Programme there are about seven branches, including the Policy, Research, and Evaluation Group, the Reserves and Trust Group, and the Finance Branch, as well as nine regional district headquarters. The four main programs are headed by assistant deputy ministers (ADMs) who are directly responsible to the deputy minister. At the regional and district level, the administrative structure of ‘Headquarters’ is led by a regional director general who oversees a network of district managers and support staff. The Indian Act and the administrative apparatus of the Indian Affairs bureaucracy place Aboriginal people in a unique position within Canadian society. No other population within this country is subject to such legislative and administrative control. Ponting further describes this situation, and the various perceptions of paternalism that accompany it, in the following terms: The excessive regulatory burden that smothers Indian bands is prone to being interpreted as paternalistic by virtue of its very existence. The behaviours of bureaucrats who enforce those rules or regulations, or who refuse to bend them, are a second potential source of perceptions of paternalism. Indeed, the band leaders’ distrust of DIA [Department of Indian Affairs] predisposes them to perceive overtones of paternalism in the behaviour of individual DIA staff members. (1986: 107–8)

From Ponting’s perspective it is appropriate to view Indian/nonIndian relations in Canada according to what is called the internal colonial model. He reasons that Aboriginal peoples’ relationships with the Canadian state are dramatically different from the relationships experienced by other groups, in that the Aboriginal-state relationship is characterized by pervasive subordination and control. In fact this relationship has been likened to a ‘total institution’ (Ponting and Gibbins 1980: 9) because it shares close parallels with institutions such as armies, prisons, and hospitals.

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There are authors, however, who have resisted interpretations of the total institution and internal colonial model variety. Speaking about the Canadian west and the North-West Rebellion, Barron (1986) describes how Aboriginal people resisted Indian agents and other early vanguards of state control. Events at Battleford and Duck Lake in 1885 clearly indicate that the Indians and Metis were far from passive victims of colonial rule. Wotherspoon and Satzewich (1993: 6–12), arguing along similar lines, are also critical of the colonial model, pointing out that Aboriginal peoples ‘have attempted to carve out and define their own experiences on their own terms’ (ibid.: 35). More recent events, such as the Oka confrontation of 1990 or the Aboriginal opposition to the Meech Lake Accord initiated by Elijah Harper, also illustrate an active resistance to state control measures.

Education Cutbacks: Policy Dilemma or Institutional Neglect? It seems that hardly a day goes by when we do not pick up a newspaper and read an article about a particular Aboriginal issue in some part of Canada, or turn on the television news and see yet another Native demonstration on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Native people have made us conspicuously aware of their problems, and it is to their credit that their adroit use of the media has given us a sense of urgency, even alarm. For example, consider the demonstrations in the 1980s over educational cutbacks. Aboriginal people from across Canada staged a caravan of protest to register their concern over what had been called Bill E-12. Under this proposed legislation the minister of Indian affairs, Pierre Cadieux, was seeking to cut back the department’s spending on postsecondary education for Native students. The facts are fairly well known to most Canadians, at least generally speaking. The McGill Journal of Education (Synnott 1984), for example, reported that only 16 per cent of fourteen- to eighteen-year-old Natives were still in school compared to 72 per cent for non-Natives, and that the gap was widening. Although there had been a substantial increase in the number of Native students in university, from 320 in 1970 to 7,100 in 1985 (Frideres 1988a: 184), participation was still under one-half the national level. In 2003 the federal government created a $12 billion endowment fund for scholarships for Aboriginal people who wish to go to postsecondary schools. By 2004 the number of Aboriginal students attending postsecondary educational institutions increased to about 30,000. However, as Frideres and Gadacz (2008: 122) point out, ‘This reflects an increase from less than 1 percent to about 6 percent in the past

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two decades for those in the 17–34 age group. Nevertheless, this is still considerably lower than the overall national rate of over 12 percent.’ While these figures, therefore, show a substantial improvement over the last several decades, they lend credibility to the view that the Canadian educational system has conspicuously failed Aboriginal students. They also raise serious questions about the accessibility of education, and the role that educational inequality plays in contributing to social and economic disparity in Canada. Educators expressed a deepening concern over the fate of Canada’s postsecondary educational system, in which the Native situation was symptomatic of intensifying fiscal issues. Even the rather staid Bulletin of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) issued an editorial by its president, Peter King, who spoke out against the Native cutback proposals (Canadian Association of University Teachers 1989). King was particularly concerned that the Mulroney government might choose to turn a successful program into yet another sterile constitutional debate over who was or was not responsible for its continued financing. This was a perceptive observation, because it pointed to the wider context of problems faced by Native people in Canadian society. Do Native people represent a policy dilemma for the federal government, or is it all a matter of their continued neglect in an institutional sense (Hedican 1989)? The position of the personnel in the Department of Indian Affairs was that they were not picking on Natives; it was just their general policy to cut back government spending, and all social programs were vulnerable. In other words, from the government’s perspective it was a policy dilemma. There was no doubt that the federal government had a longterm commitment to Aboriginal people through its treaties and other legislation – a commitment to provide funding for health and welfare, community development, and education – but the financial resources, it argued, were not unlimited. The government dilemma centred on its legal obligations to support the Native population on the one hand and its budget constraints on the other. The message was that Canadians were supposed to shrug their shoulders, say, ‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ and let the government off the hook. But there is another, equally valid, perspective – one articulated by the Aboriginal people themselves – who said that the Bill E-12 proposals were not by any means isolated incidents. When it comes to government spending on social programs, Native people have had to struggle for everything they’ve got, even when they were legally entitled to it. When cutbacks have been made in housing, employment, health, or educational

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programs, Native people have been among the first to feel the effects. Large corporate citizens, the suggestion goes, benefit immensely from the Canadian taxpayer in the form of depletion allowances and exploration grants, while the relatively powerless in Canadian society live in poverty and situations of comparative disadvantage unknown in the suburbs of southern Ontario. The message of the alternative, non-government perspective is that the social problems in Canada are integral to the fabric of Canadian society; they are part of the institutional framework that separates the haves from the have-nots. The situation is best characterized as chronic institutional neglect, not a policy dilemma. It would seem that only concerted political activity could change such a situation, or at least bring it to the attention of politicians. The opposition to the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords (1990–2) by Aboriginal leaders illustrated the effectiveness of a vocal and disenchanted minority on the Canadian political scene. Such events also forced Mulroney to change his course with regard to the First Nations of Canada. Initially, his government seemed anxious to cut back both treaty rights and funding for Native people, particularly those involved in postsecondary education. But events at Oka, Quebec, and elsewhere apparently prompted a change of heart. It is certainly evident that Aboriginal students are another group in Canada who face access problems as a result of changes in student grant criteria. Let’s look at some statistics: from 1984–5 to 1990–1 Aboriginal postsecondary student enrolment levels rose from 8,616 to 21,609; yet in 1988–9, 40.4 per cent of all Canadians aged eighteen to twenty-four attended university and college on a full-time basis, in comparison with an Aboriginal post-secondary enrolment of only 3.4 per cent (figures from the Canadian Association of University Teachers [CAUT] Bulletin, November 1992). In addition, from 1973 to 1987 all registered Indian and Inuit postsecondary students who applied for and were eligible for financial assistance received it under the Post-Secondary Education Assistance Program (PSEAP). The funding covered all expenses incurred for tuition and registration fees, books and supplies, special shelter allowances, counselling services, living allowances, and transportation. There was no strict monetary limit to the assistance available to the individual student. There was, however, a maximum of ninety-six months of study for which a student could receive funding for all postsecondary studies. Practically all of these provisions changed after March 1989, when the Mulroney government announced a series of regulatory changes in the

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new Post-Secondary Student Assistance Program (PSSAP). As indicated before, CAUT and other organizations complained about its major feature: the de facto capping of benefits to Aboriginal students. For example, maximum levels of living-expense assistance were established based on certain cost calculations, such as high-rental areas versus other areas of Canada, rather than on student need. Overall, funding for student assistance is now provided `within the limits of funds voted by Parliament.’ These changes led to a number of deferrals – applications for assistance under PSSAP that were deferred for a minimum of one year. Since total PSSAP funding did not keep pace with the increase in the number of prospective Aboriginal students, approximately 1,100 such deferrals occurred from 1989 to 1991. As a result of these deferrals, considerable acrimony arose between the federal government and Aboriginal groups over PSSAP’s worth. To help ameliorate this situation, the Mulroney government announced in April 1991 that PSSAP would receive an additional $320 million in funding during the five-year period from 1991–2 to 1995–6.

An Institutional Problem: The Non-Reserve Native Community Over the last three decades my anthropological research has focused on what I have come to call the non-reserve Native community. These communities are more numerous than one might imagine, but no one is sure how many there actually are. Since they are not Indian reserves under the meaning of the Indian Act, they have no official status, and the federal government does not consider them Indian communities at all. Such non-reserve communities are an example of the way the Canadian legal system has played a role in fracturing the Aboriginal population into various sorts of categories, such as status versus non-status, treaty versus non-treaty, and several others. The non-reserve settlements are composed of some Aboriginal people who have lost their official status as Indians, mainly because of a marriage, within the family tree, to a non-Indian, while others have lost theirs through voluntary enfranchisement. Other non-reserve community members have not lost their status but have chosen to leave their original reserve for various reasons, such as overpopulation back home, a diminishing access to subsistence resources, or some factional political dispute. Such communities are often made up from the migrant populations of a number of different surrounding bands, and are frequently situated on crown land. The irony of the situation is evident to most residents of these

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communities: they had their land taken away through the treaty ‘negotiation’ process, outsiders (such as the railways, mining companies, and timber contractors) moved in, and the Aboriginal people themselves were left as impoverished squatters on their ancestral lands. The focus of much of this research into non-reserve communities has been the socio-economic and political characteristics of a Native village called Collins. This is a settlement of about 150 people situated near the Canadian National Railway line (CNR), 200 kilometres north of Thunder Bay in northern Ontario’s subarctic forest zone. There are no roads or cars in this community, and to some it would have an idyllic appearance. Imagine thirty or so log cabins nestled here and there in the jackpine forest of a northern lake. A maze of footpaths interconnect the cabins; the sweet smell of wood smoke wafts from the chimneys and settles in a light haze over the lakeshore. Nearby, a group of boys wrestle with a large lake trout caught in their father’s net. Other youngsters busy themselves with a snack of blueberries, which grow in profusion around the settlement. One does not hear people complain about the conditions of life in their community. In fact, they say that they live where they do because this is the sort of lifestyle they prefer. They point to the availability of the fish and game, to the clean air and the quiet sensibility of their village. They also say that they could always move to the city if they wanted to. Yet despite the advantages of bush life, there are difficulties here. Access to health and medical attention, especially on an emergency basis, is one of the most pressing concerns. I have seen a desperate father clutching his baby daughter as he ran beside a freight train trying to hitch a ride to Sioux Lookout Hospital because the baby was having an epileptic seizure. There is no running water in any of the cabins. Though there are now three wells in the community, it is still a tough chore for the women to carry water, especially in the winter months. The men now have to travel three or four kilometres for firewood, and good supplies are diminishing as the pulp companies encroach upon the village area. Snowmobiles are now a necessity for bush life because of the distances that have to be covered to find fish, game, and firewood. But there are few jobs, and most hunting equipment is becoming too expensive. At the time of the events described here, per capita income was $1,680, which is not bad by Third World standards, but quite low for a developed nation such as Canada. In Collins the people got together and decided that what they needed was a tourist-lodge business. This would allow them to earn needed cash

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yet continue their subsistence hunting and fishing. The only problem was acquiring the necessary start-up money – some seed capital. They eventually made their pitch to the Department of Regional Economic Expansion (DREE) through its Ontario affiliate, the Agricultural Rural Development Agency (ARDA). The basis for their application was Section 12 of the Federal-Provincial Rural Development Agreement, which states that ‘Ontario may apply ARDA programs to Indian lands and Indian people. In the event that Indians are involved in a program, Canada will negotiate special cost-sharing arrangements to the extent that Indians are involved.’ The people were disappointed to learn that ARDA had turned down their grant application on what they believed was a technicality. They were informed that since they did not live on a reserve they could not rightfully be termed Indians and did not qualify under the terms of the ARDA agreement. Eventually, when a Globe and Mail reporter wrote an article about the plight of their community, they did get their funding. The article, entitled ‘Squatter Community Struggles for Dignity’ (Platiel 1973), pointed out that the Collins ‘project plans have repeatedly been delayed, in large measure due to the slowly grinding bureaucratic mills of government.’ This was a clever political ploy on the part of the Collins leaders because it quickly brought ARDA officials scrambling back to the negotiation table. All of a sudden the term Indian had a new, broadened interpretation that allowed ARDA to fund the tourist-lodge project.

The Problem of ‘Ethno-Status’ Distinctions The point of this discussion of the Collins situation (and of non-reserve Native communities in general) is that the social and political life of Aboriginal people is made more difficult by the various ‘ethno-status’ distinctions that have served to institutionalize a fractured Native populace. Cardinal has referred to ‘This legal hocus-pocus [which] continues to play a divisive role among Canadian Indians’ (1969: 20). In the western subarctic these status legalities are made more complicated by the Metis presence. As one man relates, ‘I used to say I was Indian, but now they tell me that I can’t say this so I say I’m Irish’ (Waldram 1986: 279). A Native person’s identity is therefore partly a matter of self-identification and partly a matter of government edict. For example, in Saskatchewan as late as 1920, individuals with mixed Indian-white ancestry were given the option of registering as Indians with the federal government, thereby acquiring band membership. The membership question at that time was ‘based upon socio-cultural

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considerations and the choice of people of aboriginal ancestry either to be treated or not to be treated as Indians’ (Dyck 1980: 30). At the community level, for many years there has been an increase in segmental divisions between those with treaty status who are allowed to live on a reserve and those without status who are forced to live on the periphery. This peripheral zone is characterized by inferior services, housing, and employment opportunities. In the Mackenzie District, Slobodin commented on this ethnic segregation in housing: ‘A partial segregation may be developing at present, however, here, as in some other settlements, for [the] Indian Affairs Branch is assisting Treaty families in the construction of new housing which is being erected on two new streets at the back or landward side of the settlement. Non-Treaty Metis families receive no direct assistance in house-building’ (1966: 20). Similarly, Sawchuk has commented on the manner in which housing presents a noticeable boundary between different segments of a community: a visitor, he noted, takes them ‘to a reserve near his home, [and] shows them the relatively new and well-built houses in which the Indians are living. The reserve has no fence or boundary to mark it off, but when driving out of the reserve he points out the dilapidated shacks along the road and says, “We are now leaving the reserve and entering the Metis community”’ (1978: 42). Places like Collins have status Indians, non-status Indians, and Metis all living in the same settlement. The case of ARDA’s objection for its initial refusal to grant funding for the tourist-lodge project rests on a confused understanding of who should be referred to as an Indian. In all, there are legal, social, cultural, and political aspects to the Native identity question. As far as legal responsibilities are concerned, the Collins case illustrates the administrative difficulties inherent in dealing with a diverse Aboriginal population. For the administrator, Indians are usually considered a federal responsibility in historical terms. This is probably the reason ARDA personnel in Ontario thought they should not be burdened with Indian Affairs’ responsibilities. In other words, this was another example of that nebulous area that non-status and off-reserve Native people occupy with respect to provincial/federal areas of jurisdiction. Legislation such as the ARDA agreement between Ottawa and Ontario has been a special source of frustration for Aboriginal leaders because of its lack of specificity – it does not specify whether the reference is to treaty Indians (that is, Indians registered under the Indian Act), non-status Indians, or both. The matter is made more complex by the large numbers of Natives with legal status who have chosen to live

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off their reserves. Such people are apt to be treated as though they did not have any status at all. Historically such ambivalence or ambiguity has worked to the disadvantage of Aboriginal people because it has provided a loophole for the abrogation of both federal and provincial responsibilities towards Native peoples in Canada. This problem of complicated and confused areas of jurisdiction is one of the major reasons why many Aboriginal people have fallen through the cracks of various social service programs, all of which strengthens my contention that Native issues in Canada are more a matter of longterm institutional neglect than the policy dilemma of a particular level of government. The non-reserve community is a classic case in point. Natives leaving the reserve for whatever reason are often considered beyond the realm of federal jurisdiction. Yet at the provincial level, if we take Ontario’s Native Affairs Directorate as an example, there has never been much of a concerted effort to deal with the problems and concerns of the Aboriginal population. The directorate only tends to act in a crisis, such as when polluted water is making children sick or a forest fire is threatening to overrun a community. Or the Ontario Provincial Police will intervene when a killer is on the loose. But there has never been much of an effort to construct the institutional infrastructure that would provide services to the Aboriginal population in such crucial areas as off-reserve housing, health, education, and employment. Institutional neglect is most prominent in the area of provincial policies that could fill the gaps between federal and provincial social programs.

The Anthropologist and Aboriginal Issues As an anthropologist my long-term association with northern non-reserve Native people has tended to make me sensitive to the myriad problems faced by these people in the course of their everyday lives. For example, there is an incident I would like to relate that illustrates the most pernicious aspects of this federal-provincial boundary dispute over Native issues. It is an incident that I found most repugnant because it effected the most helpless ones, the Native children. The school in the non-reserve village of Collins was originally built and staffed by the Department of Indian Affairs in 1960. This was an unusual situation because Indian Affairs does not usually construct schools off the reserve. But since the local fur trader was pushing strongly for it, and the majority of residents were status Indians and therefore a DIAND responsibility, Indian Affairs funded the construction of the school and hired a

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teacher. Things went along reasonably well under this arrangement – both status and non-status children attended – until the mid-1970s, when the one-room schoolhouse became overcrowded. Rather than build an addition or build a new school, Indian Affairs promptly sent a notice to the parents that only status Native children would be allowed to attend in the future. During the course of my research I had seen the school records, and I always thought it was a curious matter that there was a notation beside each child’s name: N.S. for non-status and S for status, along with each child’s band number and reserve of origin. An example: Elija Yellowhead (S), Fort Hope, #647. I sometimes wondered why the authorities did not just tattoo the numbers on the children’s arms as a matter of expediency. That way it would be easier to determine if the child’s education should be funded by Indian Affairs in Ottawa, or, as in the case of non-status children, by the provincial government. The overcrowding problem at the school started to become nasty as years of frustration with the seemingly artificial and capricious way the community’s children were divided up into favoured and less favoured groups began to fester. It was also the first time I was aware of a coming together of the people in the village over a single issue in defiance of the white authority structure. The parents eventually withdrew their children and boycotted the school, and the teacher left. It was incomprehensible to me that the children’s school year should be lost in a useless and shameful flap over constitutional concerns, made especially critical because innocent children were used as pawns. As it turned out, the incident produced several beneficial results. Most important was the realization by the parents of the community, perhaps for the first time, that they could have a hand in controlling their destiny. One of their first ‘acts of liberation’ was to form their own school board, so that they would have the administrative capacity to hire and fire teachers, control the school budget, and generally manage their own educational affairs. The parents also sought to remove their school from DIAND’s jurisdiction and began to forge a good working relationship with the Ontario Ministry of Education. They eventually built their own school, an impressive log structure consisting of three large classrooms, a gym, the principal’s quarters, and two large wood/oil stoves. What a stark contrast to the one-room tin shed that had served as the previous school, which had plumbing that routinely froze after Christmas, a leaking oil stove in one corner, and teachers who never stayed more than two years. From the 1980s onwards there have been several teachers with three or four years’ residence in the community, living in a modern teacherage, and owing

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their allegiance to the village people themselves rather than to some distant bureaucracy in Ottawa. The purpose of this narrative is to illustrate that people can act effectively to better their lives, even in remote, seemingly powerless situations. Its second purpose is to make clear that anthropologists encounter these sorts of situations on a fairly regular basis because of their first-hand involvement with local people through field research. The problems at the Collins school are also the sort of thing that should be documented and studied, and parallels should be drawn, so that incidents like this can be placed in a wider frame of reference. Fieldwork will ultimately remain the enduring strength of anthropology, and it is through fieldwork that channels for addressing social policy concerns will be opened. For it is through first-hand involvement with local people that anthropologists can hope to understand their problems and concerns. A historical perspective is necessary, nonetheless, since the isolated incidents encountered in the field may be viewed as quirks or policy dilemmas when in fact they are examples of ongoing institutional neglect. As the Collins school problem illustrates, it is also evident that a strong drive by local people to play a greater role in managing their own affairs can be an important factor in overcoming long-standing institutional problems. But the main question is, ‘What are the possibilities for cultivating local initiative and encouraging the development of more self-governing Aboriginal communities?’ For the non-reserve Native community this is a difficult problem because of the jurisdictional issue. Yet it would be useful to explore the possibility of some form of municipal incorporation as an alternative to the existing ambiguous legal situation in such Native settlements. Looking at ways to develop new structures and relationships is one of the ways to break out of the longterm institutional problems facing the Native community.

Municipal Incorporation: Prospects for Change In northwestern Ontario today there are fifty-three Native reserves and settlements. The Ontario government has designated nineteen of them (or 25 per cent) as Native settlements having a resident population of about two hundred people. In addition, there are about a dozen small towns and villages in the area with high Native populations, including Sioux Lookout, Armstrong, Savant Lake, and Nakina (Hedican 1990a). Native non-reserve settlements are usually situated on crown lands, and are thus technically under the purview of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. These settlements do not have any formal procedures or

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guidelines for forming councils or electing local officials, except by what is sometimes referred to as band custom. In some instances the Department of Indian Affairs holds title to several acres of land on which the local school is built, probably because many non-reserve settlements have a large status-Indian population. For the northwestern Ontario population as a whole, it is estimated that about 10 per cent of the residents live in what are called unorganized centres. As such, the people in these places usually lack the benefits of local government, the capacity to finance basic services, and the means to plan orderly debt. It also means that there is a multiplicity of government agencies, both federal and provincial, that have some form of jurisdiction or influence over such settlements. If there are to be any prospects for change in the non-reserve settlements, it is incumbent on some level of government to recognize the basic needs of these Native residents. This recognition could conceivably begin with the granting of some sort of municipal or township status to the non-reserve villages, so that the site of the settlement could be surveyed and individual lots allocated to the various families. With title to the land, the village would then be in a position to participate in the services and improvements available from the provincial government. And, if local development groups exist, their administrative structure could be expanded to include settlement councils capable of coordinating changes in the village as a whole. These are some preliminary ideas, and more could certainly be added. At the centre of the non-reserve problem is the issue of whether villages are to receive some form of official recognition that would allow them to be incorporated into the provincial/municipal structure of services. At present these non-reserve villages are being kept in limbo, facing the same type of day-to-day uncertainties with regard to health care, sanitation, work, and food provision that squatter communities in the Third World routinely face. There is also little point in moving non-reserve people to other communities – for instance, back to their original reserves – because the reserves have problems of their own, an argument for keeping the communities where they are. In addition, an advantage for many non-reserve communities is their relative isolation, coupled with small population bases, which means that local resources such as firewood, fish, and game will not be overly taxed in the immediate future.

The Northern Communities Act In the mid-1970s the Ontario government introduced a bill, commonly referred to as the Northern Communities Act, as a measure to incorporate a

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form of municipal organization into the so-called unorganized communities of northwestern Ontario. This bill was based on the idea that ‘It is a generally accepted principle of government operation that the provincial government will contract to provide essential or basic social and physical services only to those communities which have some form of legally recognized municipal organization’ (Ontario 1974: 1). It also indicated that the local Roads Board was the only form of legally recognized self-government in unincorporated communities, and that there were well over a hundred such communities in the rural areas of northwestern Ontario. Overall it would appear that the Ontario government is reluctant to provide permanent services with long-term financing arrangements to communities with little or no economic base. In Ontario, hundreds of social and physical services programs are scattered over fifteen to twenty government departments. There has been little effort to develop a coordinated application of these programs and their numerous criteria, regulations, and guidelines. This lack of a coordinated interministerial policy to deal with the problems of social and physical services in unincorporated communities is also partially to blame for the rather drastic plight of some isolated settlements in Ontario’s northland.

The Self-Government Issue At one level the intent of the Northern Communities Act would appear to be misdirected because it attempts to propose one structural solution, namely the creation of community councils, to the problem of local selfgovernment. Perhaps it would be advisable to authorize a number of local municipal-government arrangements, to allow each community to select the format that appears most appropriate to the particular needs of the community. In its uniformity the bill also fails to respond to the degree and diversity of required services in unorganized communities. With some exceptions, such as special rural housing projects, local community associations or development councils are not permitted to contract directly with government to acquire services. However, elections to a community council can be controlled according to the regulations of the Ontario Municipal Elections Act. In this case, by acting on his or her own initiative, the minister would be completely empowered to override the decisions of local residents – a certain deterrent to the development of effective local self-government. The only form of local government unique to the north is the improvement district, which is not really local government at all but an

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extension of the administrative apparatus of the provincial government. For example, Dacks has discussed the role of the improvement district as a basis for local self-government in the Northwest Territories. In particular he notes that ‘In the Fall of 1980 the Yukon Legislative Assembly passed a municipal ordinance ending the five local improvement districts and permitting smaller communities to become either hamlets or unincorporated settlements. This ordinance resembles the system used in the N.W.T. during the 1970s, in that the unincorporated settlements have councils with only advisory status and the powers of the hamlets are largely restricted to the provision of hard services’ (1981: 109). The key to the community council idea, then, is to create a structure that can deliver services at the lowest possible administrative cost and at the same time exploit the democratic advantage of a small size in the local population. In all, it would be important to resist the temptation to impose a ‘metropolitan formality’ in the informal setting of the northern rural community. A related difficulty hindering the implementation of basic services in northern settlements has to do with an interministerial conflict over planning. For example, one reason for the Ontario government’s failure to undertake any systematic planning for land use in the north is the necessity of resolving bureaucratic conflicts. Both the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Treasury have planning powers, Natural Resources under the Public Lands Act and Treasury under the Planning Act. Natural Resources is hesitant to exercise its own powers because of resource-industry opposition, and it is not willing to let Treasury use its own powers. The result is a compromise that allows Treasury to do only minimal planning.

Administrative Control and Self-Government Aboriginal people in northern non-reserve settlements, as residents of unincorporated communities, have expressed concern over the administrative implications of the Northern Communities Act (Hedican 1990a: 26–8). They have wondered, for example, if there would be an increase in administrative control in areas where the government currently exercises minimal influence by promising services that local residents would have to pay for in the long term. And would this be accomplished by the creation of bureaucratic links through elected councils, which the government would ultimately control through provincial statutes? An important additional concern is that the provincial government, by incorporating unorganized communities, might burden the settlements

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themselves with the task of providing the essential services they have been demanding from government for so long. In fact, local autonomy was provided for only in those areas where the government chose, for economic reasons, not to assume responsibility. We might note that S.M. Weaver has also considered the fiscal restraints on self-government proposals in a wider perspective, suggesting that ‘what has happened in the federal government is that the system of financing, rather than the needs and aspirations of people, has become a driving force in policy formulation. From this flows a system of rules and regulations whose values are based on cost-benefit analysis, [and] on conformity to regulations – basically technocratic notions’ (1984: 67). From the point of view of the local residents, an important question has to do with the extent to which the implementation of municipal organizations would hinder, or enhance, whatever local autonomy now exists. In fact the Hawthorn Report, which still contains one of the most in-depth discussions of the implications of having Indian communities adopt a municipal form of government, makes special mention of the autonomy issue. For example, ‘The policy-making discretion of local government officials is further reduced by the proliferation of conditional grants. These grants tend in effect to turn local governments into agencies for the fulfilment of provincial purposes. The growing importance of municipal governments in providing services and amenities for their citizens is thus coupled with a decline in local autonomy’ (Hawthorn 1966–7: 289). It should be concluded, then, ‘that the complete movement of Indian communities into provincial frameworks of municipal organization might only provide limited gains for selfgovernment’ (ibid.: 299). The residents of non-reserve Native communities are also concerned about the probable new tax structure that would appear in the event of municipal incorporation. As one local leader expressed it, ‘We would never have the tax base for such grand schemes. You can’t expect the government to give us these services for nothing.’ He also went on to ask, ‘What does the government mean that it needs “official mechanisms” to implement basic services? The Ministry of the Environment [in Ontario] built our wells didn’t they, and without official channels’ (Hedican 1986b: 97–8). The implication here is that the powers granted to community councils under municipal organizations would be mostly illusory ones, as the decision-making abilities of local residents would not necessarily be enhanced in any significant manner. What is at issue here is the matter

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of local resistance to the imposition of outside political structures, which is apparently a common phenomenon in northern areas. Commenting on the Inuit, for example, Dacks notes that ‘The structure of the local councils was an imposed southern structure that was alien to the existing political practices in the communities ... the structures imposed were too rigid to accommodate Inuit approaches to politics and often produced confusion and alienation among the Native residents of the smaller communities’ (1981: 106–7).

The Politics of Encapsulation Several questions emerge from the discussion thus far. For one, are there suggestions that could be made whose goal would be to ameliorate the deleterious effecs of external administration? From the perspective of applied anthropology, are there insights of a cross-cultural nature that could be brought to bear on this problem? The literature in political anthropology is large and ponderous, and we could not hope to adequately cover it all here. Yet I can make a few observations of a general nature. For example, the issues we have discussed here regarding administrative control and jurisdictional disputes have much to do with what has come to be called ‘the politics of encapsulation.’ British social anthropologist Fred Bailey (1969: 1–17) provides the following description of what he calls encapsulated political structures. He first explains that political structures can be recognized at all levels – from families and villages to regions and states – and that these can be compared to one another. In addition, anthropological research has discovered and made sense of societies that appeared to have no authorities and yet enabled their people to live orderly lives (such as the studies found in the classic work Tribes without Rulers, Middleton and Tait 1970). As Bailey reiterates, given the anthropologist’s strong interest in small communities encapsulated within larger societies – in villages, tribes within nations or colonial dependencies, sections of urban populations, and so forth – who seem to operate political structures in spite of the fact that the State authorities are only occasionally involved, he has no choice but to consider these political structures which are partly independent of, and partly regulated by, larger encapsulating political structures. (1969: 12)

This reference to political structures which are ‘partly independent of, and partly regulated by’ these larger encapsulating units, would appear

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to be a key observation because it begins to approach the problem of intersocietal adjustments. Encapsulated structures make all sorts of accommodations between this structure and the (social, political, economic) environment in which it is situated. But dependency can be a two-way interactional process involving accommodations from both in and out, so that the mutual environment shared by both is modified in the process of the interaction. A comparative study of indigenous political structures in the Middle East, ‘Tribal Chiefs as Middlemen’ (Salzman 1974), gives an apt illustration of this mutual dependence factor. In pre-pacification times – that is, prior to 1935 – the Middle East was composed of a wide variety of political and leadership structures. In Iran, the focus of Salzman’s study, there were various tribes having various degrees of centralized and decentralized political authority. The central political authority of the Baluchi tribe, for example, was the shah, although his authority was weak. This shah, or chief, was the Baluchis’ symbolic representative, their war leader, and their diplomatic representative in their relations with outsiders. In all, the shah had little sanctioning power and very limited control over resources. After pacification his role evolved into that of middleman between the tribe and the agents representing the encapsulating Iranian state. In a contrasting case, that involving the Yomut Turkmen of northeastern Iran, there was a converse correlation between the traditional decentralized structure and the inability of the Iranian state to rule effectively through the use of traditional tribal roles. Since a middleman role did not emerge from within the indigenous political structure of the Turkmen, agents of the Persian government hierarchy became the representatives of the government among the Turkmen. In other words, indirect rule was not maintained among the Turkmen because it was ineffective, and it was ineffective because there was no appropriate indigenous structure to accommodate it. Salzman sums up his main hypotheses concerning the encapsulation of tribes in the Middle East: First, from an administrative perspective, tribes with an indigenous centralized authority structure can be more easily encapsulated than tribes with indigenous decentralized structures. Second, agents of the encapsulating power would, if possible, make use of indigenous structure and personnel in a traditionally centralized tribe, whereas a centralized administrative structure would be imposed by the encapsulating power upon a traditionally decentralized tribe. (1974: 209)

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I would suggest that this description of the establishment of a colonial administrative apparatus in the Middle East has several close parallels with, and considerable relevance to, the encapsulation of Aboriginal societies in Canada. There is no doubt that leadership and political organization has an important history in the traditional cultures of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. Yet there has been a considerable variation in the social organization of these peoples – from the hunting bands of the boreal forests to the settled villages of the Iroquois and the highly structured societies of the Pacific coast – as well as a concomitant variation in their political organization. This variation in turn played a significant role in the manner in which the Aboriginal peoples interacted with the colonial presence. For example, the interest of the English and French in establishing a commercial empire based on the fur trade necessitated Native cooperation, and so the prerequisite for successful economic exchange was a friendly interaction between the two parties. Price has aptly described this situation in the following terms: The north has been protected by its isolation. Much of the north is still more colonial than neocolonial, though Whites try to be economically, politically, and ideologically dominant everywhere over Natives. However, when Natives have a clear numerical majority as in the Northwest Territories, they can usually retain some self-pride, social status, and other defenses against White domination and destruction of their culture. (1979: 85)

It is also understandable that such previously band-organized societies as the Dene and Inuit now have more political awareness, and internal organization, than they have had at any time in the past. The role of the Dene in halting the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, the Inuit demand for the creation of their own (sovereign) territory called Nunavut, and the Quebec Cree’s influence over the James Bay project illustrate the creative defences that bands have been able to mount against the forces of assimilation. The political response to the pressures of colonialism by Native peoples in other parts of Canada was of a more confrontational nature. In the Plains area, for example, the Blackfoot and other tribes had little use for the fur trade. Because they also had a traditional ability to protect themselves in a military sense, there was a more active resistance to the colonizers, especially when there were threats to the bison herds, the mainstay of the Plains Indian economy. In the end the domination of the colonizers was realized by non-military means. The Blackfoot population was greatly

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reduced by the smallpox epidemics of the early 1800s. By the late 1880s the buffalo were eliminated from their territory, and the surviving Blackfoot people were pressured into signing treaties and settling onto reserves. The Pacific Coast cultures were the largest and most complex of all Aboriginal societies in Canada. In anthropological terms these societies have been classified as chiefdoms, which is to say they had a centralized political economy, dense local populations, sedentary villages, and elaborate social ranking. Early Indian-white relationships were tinged with hostility. Several European ships were captured and whites taken as slaves. Indian hostages were taken by the Europeans, as well, which fuelled the discontent. In more modern times, between 1884 and 1951, the Canadian government enacted legislation outlawing the potlatch, a central political and economic institution in Northwest Coast Indian societies, although it was apparently practised in secret in some areas. The potlatch still survives today, but more as an ethnic cultural event. The most intensive conflicts between Aboriginal peoples and whites in British Columbia’s history have taken place over fishing and land claims issues (R. Fisher 1977; Knight 1978; LaViolette 1973). The Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Nishga of the Nass Valley have both conducted long-standing land claims against the government. The Aboriginal people were also able to organize into a cohesive labour force, forming various unions to protect their access to fish stocks on the Pacific coastline and to ensure better wages from the fish canneries. In turn the labour unions played an important role as a foundation for the modern Aboriginal political movements and organizations across Canada (Patterson 1972: 145–88).

The Imposition of Non-Indigenous Political Structures Canada’s colonial heritage is codified in its existing legislation. As evidenced by the Indian Act, this heritage has acted more to suppress the development of Native political leadership than to encourage it. A revision to the Indian Act in 1927, for example, was a determined attempt to deny Native people the right to lobby for rights and to organize themselves. This restriction prohibited the formation of Aboriginal political groups beyond community levels of government, with the result that national-level organizations did not begin to emerge until the 1960s. In historical terms, what has resulted in Canada is a dependency relationship between the colonizers and the colonized that is difficult to

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disentangle. Some writers, such as Schusky (1975: 230), have gone so far as to argue that this dependency relationship is inevitable for most Aboriginal groups in North America because of the legal relationship between tribal and federal governments. In Canada, for example, most reserve funds are held in trust by the government, and the Minister of Indian Affairs ultimately holds responsibility for approving expenditures. The Indian Act contains many passages referring to this ‘guardianship’ role, such as: •

•

The Governor in Council may determine whether any purpose for which Indian moneys are used or are to be used is for the use and benefit of the band. (Canada 1970: 28) The Governor in Council may by order permit a band to control, manage and expend in whole or in part its revenue moneys and may amend or revoke any such order. (Canada 1970: 31)

It is hard to imagine, under such conditions, how the political and economic development of reserve Indian communities is able to occur when they are severely restricted by a multitude of legislative encumbrances. In Paine’s account of the situation among the Inuit of the eastern Arctic, he suggests that this dependency relationship is at the heart of the ‘ambiguity’ in the colonial situation. He pinpoints the source of the ambiguity further by noting that ‘The whites themselves are responsible for the inception of the programmes, and the programmes themselves are, in large measure, responsible for the stimulation of the dependency needs which the whites deplore among Inuit’ (1977: 12). So we can take from this comment that there was a double standard at work in colonial times, and that it exists even today – a double standard in which expectations for an increased measure of self-government are raised in the indigenous population but are not supported by existing legislation. Frustration and apathy then set in among the Aboriginal people, who are not willing to participate in local politics because such participation is seen as largely ineffective. Local Native leaders are also aware that, because of this double standard, individual members of the community can bypass the chief and consult directly with outside authorities. To complicate matters there was also the possibility, if a chief opposed government policy, that he or she would be circumvented by the outside authorities who were attempting to implement these policies (Rogers 1965: 278–9). In such instances the elected Native official could become an object of ridicule: ‘White officials expect the [Inuit] men to take prominent

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positions in local government institutions. But since those positions are seen to be devoid of power, the men who occupy them are criticised as ineffective ... Some men refuse to accept positions of “authority” for precisely this reason: to accept is to become a target for criticism and ridicule’ (Brody 1975: 196). Thus one of the effects of Euro-Canadian encapsulation of Aboriginal people is that elected Native leaders have little freedom to make decisions for their communities as a whole, and this is a crucial problem compromising their chances for economic and political development. Aboriginal people all across Canada are currently searching for new ways to redefine their relationship with federal and provincial governments. Part of this search involves finding ways to fulfil Native aspirations under the existing legislation, especially the Indian Act, which means exploring new possibilities for change ‘within the system.’ The following discussion on the Sechelt case involves just such an attempt, by an Aboriginal band seeking more autonomy through a municipal model of self-government.

The Municipal Model of Self-Government: The Sechelt Case The idea that Aboriginal communities should be incorporated into existing provincial structures of grants and services has been around for some time. In the 1960s, for example, the Hawthorn survey of economic, political, and educational needs provided a fairly comprehensive overview of issues, advantages, and problems with the municipal incorporation of Native communities (1966–7: 285–311). The Hawthorn Report begins with the observation that the British North America Act gives the provinces exclusive rights to make laws dealing with ‘municipal institutions in the province’ (section 92 (8)), covering such areas as taxation and maintaining institutions such as schools and hospitals, and ‘generally all matters of a merely local or private nature in the province.’ In addition, provincial statutes established the conditions for the incorporation of and the pattern of organization for the various towns, cities, and municipal districts in Canada. Over time the power of local levels of government to provide services has been growing in importance. This has been brought about by the integration of local and provincial governments and a more distant relationship with the federal government. One consequence of this growing provincial involvement has been a diminished power in the local community to regulate its own activities in matters of local importance. The fear in this situation is that if the trend were to continue then the local

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community government would become not much more than a local administrative apparatus through which various provincial government departments could apply their policies and regulations at the local level. In all, there has been a decline in the role of local governments as autonomous decision-making bodies. As far as Aboriginal communities are concerned, at the broadest level there is a matter of choice. Is the advancement of Aboriginal selfgovernment at the local level to take place within the existing, or modified, structure of the Indian Act and Indian Affairs bureaucracy, or is it to take place within the framework of local government as conceived by the provinces for their non-Aboriginal residents? As it now stands, the option is one not simply of establishing more self-government responsibilities but of establishing these more fully within the provincial-municipal framework. Given the historical tendency for increasingly more powerful provincial governments, as evidenced by the demise of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, it would not seem feasible for Aboriginal bands to operate independently of the provinces and maintain their more direct relationship with the federal government at the same time. However, what has happened is that the working through of self-government possibilities has generally not taken place within provincial frameworks but has occurred in practice within the framework of the Indian Act. The reason the Sechelt case is so important is that it was the first concrete attempt in Canada to counteract the long-standing trend whereby Aboriginal self-government is seen only within the particularly narrow confines of the Indian Act and the Indian Affairs bureaucracy. Any change in this direction would by necessity also make the relationship between Aboriginal communities and provincial governments ‘more normal.’ The Hawthorn Report suggested further that any change in this direction would also serve to reduce existing discriminatory practices by which double standards are applied to Aboriginal communities: This [principle that Native bands are to be treated as municipalities] would be a reversal of the present discriminatory situation in which Indian bands are generally excluded except where special provision has been made for their inclusion. The present situation is completely unsatisfactory for it rests on the unacceptable proposition that the possession of the special community status implied in the reserve system justifies exclusion of Indian communities from access to services and benefits routinely provided to non-Indian communities. (1966–7: 305)

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It also follows that Aboriginal representatives should be included on the various boards and commissions that deal with regional matters such as education, highways, police protection, and health. To the extent that Aboriginal communities lie within such regional areas and there is an overlap in local government boundaries, it is not justifiable that Aboriginal residents should be excluded from participation on such boards. Another implication is that the scope of economic and political leadership on the typical reserve as currently constituted should be expanded so as to accommodate such initiatives. Of course it is also possible to consider other institutional arrangements, with the Sechelt case and others like it in the future providing examples of innovative directions for changing existing administrative frameworks to a model different from those admissible under the Indian Act. Today, modern Aboriginal political leaders are faced with a difficult problem. On the one hand, they are attempting to retain what is useful from a traditional political ideology and to graft this ideology to current political realities. The municipal model of government, as illustrated by the Sechelt case, could be viewed as an important opportunity to further the cause of Native self-government by breaking away from the constraints of existing legislation. On the other hand, the Sechelt case could also be viewed by some as just another imposed political straitjacket. Let us now review some of the details of the case. In 1986 the Sechelt Indian Band near Vancouver, British Columbia, became the first band in Canada to develop its own constitution and withdraw its reserve lands from Indian Act jurisdiction (Etkin 1988). In effect, the Sechelt Band set a precedent by creating a new level of government for Aboriginal communities. The implications of this case are important. Rather than have reserve lands that are held by the crown ‘in trust,’ Aboriginal people apparently now have the opportunity to move beyond usufructuary title to ‘fee simple’ ownership. In such a case Indian people on a reserve would have the opportunity to mortgage, transfer, and inherit property. On the surface, at least, clear title to Indian land would help overcome some of the impediments to economic development imposed by the Indian Act. It is important to specify, though, that Sechelt lands are still reserves under the Constitution Act of 1867, and that the land continues to be registered with the Reserve Land Register. Thus the Sechelt people have achieved a government format that is not just a municipality. The Sechelt district is the creation of the federal government, so that provincial laws apply to only a limited degree. In fact, because of its

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unique position, the band council has significant powers beyond those of conventional municipalities: Bill C-93, or the Sechelt Act, sets out as its primary purpose to ... enable the Sechelt Indian Band to establish and maintain self-government for itself and its members on Sechelt lands and to obtain control over the administration of the resources and services available to its members. (Etkin 1988: 87–9)

In this case ‘the resources’ refers to the traditional economy based on fishing, but also to the more recent activities of, logging, gravel extraction, a salmon hatchery, and tourism. In addition, large portions of Sechelt land have been developed and leased to approximately 500 nonNative residents, and this revenue now forms a substantial part of the band’s economic base. One of the special features of the Sechelt Act is the right of the band council to tax non-Indian residents on the land, within the constraints imposed by provincial statutes. Another key section of the act states that the band is a legal entity with all the rights of a natural person, including the right to enter into contracts and agreements. This gives the band the right to acquire and hold property and to sell or otherwise dispose of that property, a provision not allowed for under the Indian Act. The Sechelt Act also provides for the creation of a written constitution, which establishes the mechanisms for the election of a band council, its legislative powers, and its procedures for conducting referenda. In all, these various powers are analogous to current Canadian municipal powers and give the band control over all essential services and land developments. The Sechelt case was decided by a special act of Parliament, and it holds considerable promise as a way for other Native communities to break out of the legislative constraints of the present Indian Act. Yet this so-called municipal model of Indian government has become the subject of some criticism and debate (Boldt and Long 1988: 47–9). The Assembly of First Nations, for example, has refused to endorse the plan, saying that the Sechelt Act is just one step above the Indian Act and should not be referred to as self-government, since the act is seen as a legislative solution that betrays their aims for sovereignty. The so-called Penner Report of 1983, from the Special Committee on Indian Self-Government, also supports the Assembly of First Nations’ criticism of the legislative solution to self-government, noting that such a proposal

208 Applied Anthropology in Canada envisages Indian governments as municipal governments and fails to take account of the origins and rights of Indian First Nations in Canada. A major objection is that permission to opt would be a favour granted to bands that the Minister of Indian Affairs, in his discretion, deemed to be sufficiently ‘advanced.’ The paternalistic role of the Department would be maintained. (Etkin 1988: 98)

The Union of British Columbia Indians has also opposed the Sechelt plan, and was supported by most other Indian bands in the province. Eventually the Sechelt Band resigned from the various provincial and national organizations of which it had been a member. The opposition to the Sechelt plan concerns a wider issue: how to achieve Aboriginal selfgovernment. Opponents are critical of what they call self-government through federal legislation. In such a case the federal government would have the power to veto local proposals it opposed, which the critics do not see as self-government. There is also the wider issue of the Assembly of First Nations’ insistence that the government develop a comprehensive claims policy to settle Native disputes, rather than take the piecemeal approach it sees in the Sechelt case. Whether or not the Sechelt legislation can be interpreted as a betrayal of First Nations’ aims for sovereignty is a difficult question to answer at this point. It is likewise difficult to determine the extent to which the Sechelt example might be useful as a solution for other Native communities. One argument is that such policy initiatives as the Sechelt Act are just another form of ‘institutional assimilation.’ Boldt and Long explain the process: The initiatives are designed to remove gradually the exclusive unilateral ties with the federal government and incorporated Indian collectivities into provincial government structures and federal line departments. Canada’s Indian policy of institutional assimilation is so deeply entrenched and has such a momentum that emerging Indian self-government is sure to be profoundly shaped by it. (1988: 49)

As far as the non-reserve Native settlements of northwestern Ontario discussed earlier are concerned, the Sechelt formula offers hope that a greater degree of local self-government might be achieved through the legislative process. However, unlike the Sechelt Band, the non-reserve Native settlement is continually caught in a jurisdictional bind. Its population is apt to include status Indians, and therefore has some claim on federal government resources. But non-status Indians and Metis live in

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these settlements as well, which would suggest that involvement by the provincial government would also be appropriate. In reality, what has happened is that neither level of government has been active in alleviating the plight of such Aboriginal settlements in northern areas. The Sechelt Indian Band is situated in close proximity to the large urban centre of Vancouver, while the Aboriginal residents of northern Ontario are hidden away in the bush, out of sight and beyond close scrutiny. Yet it is just as important to study government initiatives in these out-of-the-way places, even though these communities lack the publicity accorded the Sechelt case. The following discussion on the Fort Hope Band shows how government initiatives that were aimed at increasing the autonomy of band members ultimately created an even greater dependency problem.

Administrative Dependency and Control: The Fort Hope Case Fort Hope (now called by its Aboriginal name, Eabamatoong) is an Ojibwa community of 600 people on the Albany River in northwestern Ontario. In their book When Freedom Is Lost, Driben and Trudeau (1983) investigate the seemingly paradoxical situation in which existing government policies, despite an origin in honest humanitarian concern, have tended to reduce what little economic freedom band members formerly had. In the Fort Hope case, contacts with the outside society are restricted almost entirely to two federal government departments: Indian Affairs and Canada Manpower (though there are some contacts with missionaries, teachers, Hudson’s Bay Company personnel, and nurses). In 1975 Canada Manpower reached an agreement with the Fort Hope Band to begin an employment-assistance program. The two main objectives of the program were, first, to provide new and meaningful employment; and second, to develop a plan that would allow Fort Hope to become economically self-sufficient by the end of the 1970s – a goal apparently overly optimistic from the perspective of the 1990s and after. The initiative or drive for development at Fort Hope came predominantly from Indian Affairs. Large capital grants were made available from Indian Affairs’ Economic Development Fund for the establishment of sawmills, tourist camps, and fisheries. In addition, the band’s budget for education and community affairs was increased, and more funds were made available for housing construction and administrative positions. Each particular scheme, however, had its own specific problem: poor management, missing supplies, too many employees for the work

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involved, virtually no incentives to increase production, and negative involvement due to a distant sense of ownership. None of the businesses were self-supporting in 1976, all depended on further government subsidy, and Indian Affairs insisted on maintaining ownership. Furthermore, all seven of the band’s businesses accounted for only 5 per cent of the band’s income, while Canada Manpower’s short-term makework programs contributed 35 per cent. More importantly, government salaries and allowances had become the main source of income for the band, increasing from 14 per cent in 1969 to 44 per cent of total cash income by 1975. In fact, the most dramatic effect of the infusion of new government funds was the expansion of the band’s political and administrative infrastructure. The influx of new capital forced the council to hire a band administrator and three full-time office employees, and to create numerous committees. Thirty-six steady government jobs were created in the band where there had been none before. In other words, what occurred at Fort Hope is an oftrepeated story: the government is ready to invest in social welfare schemes but places lower priority on planning for any sort of sustained economic development in the band. The net result was that the Fort Hope Band became even more dependent on government handouts than ever before: ‘The outcome was that the band members were rewarded for becoming dependent, stymied in their attempts to become independent, and left in a position where vulnerability to government cut-backs is now the overriding feature of their lives’ (Driben and Trudeau 1983: 10). There is mounting evidence that the Fort Hope experience is not unique. Aboriginal people living in remote, economically depressed areas of Canada are experiencing greater government influence and control in their lives without the advantage of plans to promote healthy local economies. What has happened is that there has been a general suppression of local leadership, both bureaucratically and through Indian Act legislation, so that local development strategies have become controlled or determined from the outside. In the process, control of development by outside agents will invariably increase dependence and inhibit local initiative. As Belshaw cautioned in his study of Melanesian commercial operations, The problem of control of capital resources raises the question of management and political supervision. Indeed, to insist on too great a caution, with the timidity of many bureaucrats, would be to destroy the spirit of adventure and initiative which is the scheme’s great merit. (1955: 52)

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In Canada, anthropologists have been particularly active in documenting the political effects of the imposition of foreign leadership structures on the Native community. Via the Indian Act, the election of chiefs and councils, along with their duties, are specified in some detail (Canada 1970: 34–40). However, the end result is that ‘The government asserts that authority be vested in the chief, whereby he can carry out his duties. But in the final analysis the chief has lost his former powers and acquired no new ones’ (Rogers 1965: 277). The most prominent conclusion derived from the ethnographic literature concerns Canadian Indian reserves: ‘political sovereignty is attenuated, if not controlled ultimately by the Indian Affairs administration’ (Dunning 1959: 20).

Welfare Colonialism? The subject of colonialism makes most Canadians feel uneasy. Canadians think of themselves as inhabiting a ‘peaceable kingdom’ where equality and peaceful relationships reign supreme. Like racial discrimination, colonialism is something that happens somewhere else, not here. One could certainly argue that Canadian social programs – unemployment and health insurance, for example – are as good here as anywhere, and no doubt there is truth to this claim. But the important issue is how these social programs are used, and their ultimate effect on minority populations. The intent might be to reduce suffering and increase community wellbeing, but there is considerable evidence that existing programs foster dependence on government bureaucracies, destroy local initiative, and, in the end, create a sense of despondency and despair. Self-esteem is the ultimate victim. Paine (1977) has referred to this type of system as welfare colonialism. In this system economic development has a low priority and outside investment is largely in social welfare programs. Attempts to create employment are often short-term and are initiated by outside government personnel who insist on controlling any new enterprises. Because of this control factor, local people do not aspire to management positions, and outsiders make no attempt to train local people for such positions. According to Arbess’s account of the George River Inuit of northern Quebec, ‘If we look at minutes of meetings ... we see the DIAND personnel taking the initiative constantly, with the Eskimo leadership acting in compliance’ (1967: 73). What emerges is a dialectical relationship between government personnel and the local residents: government acts, and the local population reacts; government acts again, and further changes in the local community result.

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Evidence from most available reports indicates that members of the local community tend to respond to changing conditions in regressive fashion when they have little control over the social, economic, and political changes that are affecting their lives (as Dunning [1962, 1964] suggests in his work among the northern Ojibwa of Pikangekum). What we could conclude is that a paradoxical disconnect exists between the aims and results of outside-planned economic development. Financial rewards are provided, but they exist independent of performance. Government projects create additional employment, yet they tend to make local people not less dependent but more so. The problem for many Aboriginal communities is that the Department of Indian Affairs is virtually their only employer, and this gives officials of this department unusual power. As Arbess records concerning George River, ‘DIAND is viewed as the underwriter of George River and the guarantor of Eskimo society’; ‘DIAND maintains the standard of living at an artificially buoyant level, and gives the illusion of economic viability’ (1967: 66, 68). In other words, jobs and training, although positively valued by the Inuit, are not considered a permanent substitute for welfare, relief, and government subsidy. An occupational caste structure exists at George River whereby administrative work and other positions related to policy making are considered the sole prerogative of the qadlunaq (white) world. Qadlunaq occupations are inaccessible to the Inuit, and no systematic vocational programs exist that could change this occupational imbalance. One could conclude from such situations that the lack of training and education precondition the people to a welfare type of approach. When there is a general lack of managerial skills within the community, and when there is little in the way of managerial training provided, there is a sort of built-in justification for outside agents to take control. As a result the local people develop only a distant sense of involvement in their own community because they do not really know what is happening. Ultimately, the local political ideology evolves, in response to white control over most spheres of their lives, from one of autonomy to one of dependence on government institutions. This shift in ideology can be seen as quite a rational adaptation, because the very survival of the Native community is at stake. To survive, the people must come to terms with the economic and political realities of their situation as they perceive them.

Nunavut: Canada’s New Land On 1 April 1999, the map of Canada changed for the first time in fifty years (since Newfoundland joined Confederation in 1949), when Nunavut, a

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vast Arctic landscape, became the third territory in the far north. In a 1995 referendum, residents chose Iqualuit – a government, transportation, and business centre of 4,500 people – to be the new capital of the region carved out of the Northwest Territories. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien presided over the swearing in of Premier Paul Okalik, a thirty-four-year-old lawyer, and his territorial government, which was to govern 25,000 residents (approximately 84 per cent of this population is estimated to have some Inuit ancestry) scattered in settlements over an area the size of Atlantic Canada and Quebec (Stout 1997: 14; Schissel and Wotherspoon 2003: 8). As Chrétien indicated during his speech at Nunavut’s inauguration, ‘It’s personally very important for me because when I started as minister of Indian and Northern Affairs in 1968, we were discussing at that time to establish responsible government in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. For me to be associated with this great step for the Eastern Arctic is extremely important’ (National Post, 1 April 1999). Some people might reflect on the irony of this statement in light of attempts by the Trudeau-Chrétien Liberal government of the time to assimilate Aboriginal peoples into mainstream Canadian society through the White Paper proposals of 1969. The suggestion of this short-lived ‘termination’ period was that the Indian Affairs bureaucracy and reserve system should be disbanded, with the various provinces assuming control and responsibility over the administration of Aboriginal affairs. The suggestion to dismantle the Indian Affairs bureaucracy would have effectively eliminated the distinct access to government that Natives have enjoyed since the various treaties were signed in the 1800s. In fact it was probably this distinct access that made the creation of Nunavut possible. The Inuit had been striving for independence and selfsufficiency for many decades. In the 1990s changes were accelerated with the signing of a land claims deal and a commitment by the federal government to create Nunavut (Legere 1996, 1997, 1998; Malloy 1993; Mahoney 1999; Ohler 1999; Purich 1992; Young 1997). The region nonetheless has many challenges to overcome in an attempt to become truly economically independent. Compared to other Canadians, average incomes are very low, unemployment is high, and drug and alcohol abuse is a significant social issue in many Inuit communities. It is because of these problems that the case has been made that Nunavut is destined to become just another Aboriginal welfare case, as Anderssen argued in the Globe and Mail (5 June 1998). Despite these far from minor problems, Nunavut Premier Okalik appeared optimistic about the future. In delivering his oath of office, for

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example, he pronounced that ‘Today the people of Nunavut formally join Canada. Today we stand strong and we welcome the changes Nunavut brings.’ Then, Prime Minister Chrétien reminded the audience of the day’s historic importance: ‘Fifty years from now school children will be reading of this day,’ he pronounced (National Post, 1 April 1999). Of course Canadians hope that their future children will still hold this day in as high regard as did the participants in the Nunavut celebration. It is certainly not an easy matter to govern a new territory of several million square kilometres of tundra, ice cap, and rocky, frozen coast line. During the Nunavut celebrations one Inuit elder commented that ‘When we had our historical election of February fifteenth [1999], heaven smiled on us. Heaven is smiling again today.’ There is no doubt that the Aboriginal striving for equality and independence in Canada over the last century did not culminate with the inauguration of Nunavut – in historic terms it has probably just begun. The social and political movements that have led to the creation of such apparent success stories as Nunavut must in the long term stand the test of time. It must be demonstrated that the success of one day, at one point in time, was not simply the illusion of another, farther down the line.

The Inuit and Aboriginal Issues As a new millennium dawned with the creation of Nunavut, the Inuit of Canada’s far north were probably the envy of many other Aboriginal groups in the country. The Inuit have been spared, except for the last several decades, the catastrophic consequences of contact with European societies. The Inuit were not decimated by smallpox and cholera; nor did they witness the pillaging of their homeland through mining, deforestation, or pollution. They were not herded into residential schools, prohibited from speaking their Native language, or stripped of their cultural heritage and identity. This is not to say that the Inuit have been spared significant social and cultural trauma in attempting to cope with the intrusions of the modern world. This is especially true for the younger generation of Inuit. Suicide rates for Inuit youth are many times higher than for other comparable age groups in the Canadian population. Overall there is a lack of meaningful employment in most of the isolated northern settlements that the Inuit inhabit. Drug and alcohol abuse is an oft-noted problem in these settlements as well (Anderssen 1998; Ohler 1999). However, these are problems also shared by many other Aboriginal communities in Canada.

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What is different for the Inuit is that they have been spared the three hundred or so years of constant social, economic, and political turmoil that other Aboriginal groups have experienced. The Hudson’s Bay Company, for example, had little interest in the Arctic, except for the elusive silver fox, so the extensive network of fur trading centres and the resulting ecological and economic effects so prevalent in the boreal forest region were mostly absent in the far north. European settlers preferred the American border region, so that the depletion of game and forests affected mainly First Nations peoples. When one looks at the overall historical and cultural picture of European colonization, trade, and settlement in Canada, and the effect of these on Aboriginal populations, several aspects stand out. First, the Aboriginal groups that were situated farthest from large-scale European influences appear to have suffered less dramatic or fewer deleterious effects of contact. In other words, social distance from large colonial powers tends to allow for a measure of cultural continuity and integrity among minority indigenous populations. Remoteness from colonizing powers can have the effect of encouraging the growth or development of local economies. As June Nash indicates in Mayan Visions, ‘The most advantageous conditions for growth in subsistence economies are precisely those considered negative for development: remoteness from areas with large populations of landless people, lack of commercially attractive resources, and absence from competing capital ventures’ (2001: 16). These same conditions can probably be used to describe many areas of rural Canada inhabited by First Nations people. Second, this isolation also tends to allow both for the continuing use of Aboriginal languages and for effective leadership practices that not only buffer outside influences but encourage successful negotiations with the dominant external power. Speaking of Quebec’s First Nations population, for example, Niezen suggests that ‘The issue of ultimate concern to the James Bay Crees, and Canada’s aboriginal leadership generally, is sovereignty, or their rights of self-determination, a concern frequently expressed in a wide range of national and international forums’ (2004: 120). In other words, social and geographical distance from centres of hegemonic power may facilitate self-determination initiatives by indigenous populations. To a large degree the isolation of the Inuit has spared them the dubious benefits of the older model of reserves, treaties, and outmoded colonial practices – a model that was never very practical in the circumpolar region because of demographic and geographical factors. The new

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model of interaction that has emerged with the dawning of Nunavut is clearly based on the concept of indigenous self-determination. Achieving this goal, however, is not simply a matter of redefining Aboriginal identity or more effectively influencing social and cultural affairs at the local or regional level; it also requires a striving towards economic selfsufficiency through the control of material resources. At present the Inuit have little control over the resource base of the Canadian Arctic, and this fact opens an immense gulf between the idealized vision of Nunavut and the practical realities of its implementation. As such, there is an ironic twist to this ‘decolonizing of the north’ process, and that pertains to the regrettable probability that the federal government will need to underwrite over 90 per cent of Nunavut’s funding (Anderssen 1998; Ohler 1999). In other words, Nunavut may foster to an even greater degree a continued dependency on federal government funding in support of the Inuit vision of a self-sufficient homeland. The Nunavut population of roughly 25,000 people simply does not have the needed mass to form a stable tax base. Increases in the cost of living, compounded by ongoing social problems, will also hinder the drive towards self-sufficiency. It may be, though, that this emphasis on material conditions has missed the point of the Nunavut vision. The Nunavut people are only now beginning the process of building their own society. Prior to the 1970s the Inuit lived in many scattered settlements across the Arctic and lacked a common sense of destiny. Since then they have been engaged in a process of redefining themselves in terms of who they are and what their relationship is to be with the rest of Canada. This process of redefinition was aided immeasurably by the creation in 1971 of the Inuit Tapirisat Corporation (ITC), which served to focus cultural, social, and political objectives. The ITC, for example, has suborganizations that focus on various projects such as land claims, broadcasting, national issues, and housing. The ITC is also the umbrella organization for six regional associations stretching across the Canadian Arctic, from the Beaufort Sea of the Mackenzie River delta in the west to the Inuit communities of the northern Newfoundland coast. From west to east, there are: 1. The Committee for Original People’s Entitlement, or COPE, founded in 1970 in the Mackenzie Delta community of Inuvik. This was the first Arctic Association. 2. The Kitikmeot Inuit Association, situated in Cambridge Bay on Victoria Island and extending across the former coast line of the Northwest Territories, now in the jurisdiction of Nunavut.

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3. The Baffin Region Inuit Association, founded in 1975 at Frobisher Bay and now also within Nunavut territory. 4. The Keewatin Inuit Association, founded in 1975 at Rankin Inlet comprising the land north of the Province of Manitoba along the northwest shore of Hudson Bay. This territory is now also part of Nunavut. 5. The Makivik Corporation, administered under the James Bay Agreement of 1975, situated in the northwest corner of Quebec. 6. The Labrador Inuit Association, established in 1974 at Nain. These various regional associations provide a solid grass-roots foundation for the organizational structure of the ITC. Prior to the formation of the Inuit Tapirisat, the Arctic peoples lacked a shared sense of who they were as Aboriginal peoples. This lack of a shared ‘sense of peoplehood,’ as Fleras and Elliot phrase it, was largely responsible for Inuit lack of political effectiveness. ‘This inability to foster pan-Inuit identity and aboriginality,’ they suggest, ‘undermined efforts to exert pressure on central authorities to negotiate territorial self-determination’ (1999: 165). We might therefore conclude that it was the emergence of this ‘panInuit identity’ that was possibly the most crucial factor in the resurgence of the Arctic peoples and the shaping of the Nunavut vision. Collective action among the Inuit was preceded by a shared communal awareness that inspired them to redefine themselves and their aspirations in the context of Nunavut constitutional reform.

Conclusion The problems of white-Native coexistence in Canada will likely continue as long as outside control of local development is based on the assumption that Aboriginal people are not capable of managing their own affairs, and as long as local people continue to regard external structures as the main impediment to their autonomy. It is reasonable to assume that peaceful coexistence will depend largely on the extent to which Aboriginal people are allowed more control in ownership, management, and policy making. Such a change would make both groups responsible for the problems that arise, whatever they may be. It would also be a step towards stimulating local initiative, thus putting Native people in a better position to realize their own aims and objectives in life. In general, more awareness is needed of the fact that policies designed to increase Native economic and political power may only create local fragmentation, internal conflict, and further

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loss of resources for the Native community (as Mortimore [1975] has documented in his study of the Dokis Band on the Nipissing River in Ontario). The essential argument here is that governments, both federal and provincial, should be accountable for the well-being of Aboriginal people in Canada. Many of these people still lack access to adequate housing, sanitation facilities, running water, and electricity. Aboriginal people are working to solve these problems, but their work is hindered by existing jurisdictional difficulties and the long-term tendency on the part of administrators to emphasize control and dependency over true development. It is contingent upon the Canadian governmental apparatus to find ways to help Aboriginal people achieve a sense of permanency in their lives, along with the hope that their children’s lives will be worth living. It is not beyond the realm of possibility, if the will is there to make it happen. Throughout much of the twentieth century, and into the new millennium, Aboriginal peoples in Canada have been making attempts to reestablish the sense of self-worth and self-determination that they enjoyed in pre-contact times, but that has been significantly eroded by contact with colonial powers. The Inuit of Canada’s Arctic have provided a positive model for other Aboriginal groups with the establishment of the relatively new territory of Nunavut. The Inuit vision is being realized, not through insurrection and conflict but through legislative and constitutional reform. The Inuit are ‘decolonizing’ the north and in the process are creating a new paradigm that is redefining government-Aboriginal relationships. This new paradigm has replaced antiquated colonial models with one based squarely on the principles of Aboriginal self-determination and economic self-sufficiency. It is true that the Inuit face a formidable challenge in their attempts to implement their vision, as do all Aboriginal groups. The Inuit are nonetheless building a positive view of themselves as a creator of dreams, and in the process transforming their previous identity as hapless victims into one of a people capable of creative empowerment.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Ethnopolitics of Aboriginal Status and Identity

What is the point of calling attention to the myths concerning ethnicity in Canadian society? In the first place it is to point out how little still is known about the Canadian population, how much historians and social scientists have yet to do to increase our knowledge of our society and particularly of its ethnic dimension. — J. Burnet, ‘Myths and Multiculturalism’ Prejudice and discrimination are important to the community, for whether or not the people of Crow Lake are fully aware of it, the town as a whole is heavily dependent upon the existence of a separate, unequal, and adjacent Native population. — D.H. Stymeist, Ethnics and Indians

Introduction The Inuit of the Canadian Arctic and the establishment of the Nunavut territory in 1999 provide an instructive case study of the importance of identity issues in the modern world. Identity links thought and action; it links culture with political empowerment; and it provides the vehicle for bringing to fruition a shared vision. In today’s world ethnicity and ethnic identity have become significant sociopolitical issues. In this world of rapid change, group membership and ethnic identity are problematic issues because cultural identity is apt to undergo a process of reaffirmation and redefinition. Many social

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movements today are founded on re-evaluations of ethnic identity. Identity is associated with powerful symbols around which political and social forces coalesce. The symbolic importance of identity is a major reason why the concept of multiculturalism has become a hotly contested topic of conversation in Canadian society. There are different opinions in Canada about how we should regard the concept of multiculturalism – as an idea or as a reality. As an idea, multiculturalism is entrenched as a matter of official public policy, but in reality there are many social, economic, and political factors that could make the multicultural ideal difficult to realize in Canadian society. Although Canada is a relatively young society, and potentially open to change, it is by no means free from rigid racial and ethnic sentiments that could lead to increased social tensions in the future.

The Concept of Indianness Aboriginal people have always felt a certain measure of ambiguity about living in Canada and being its first residents yet not actually part of Canadian society. The British North America Act of 1867 makes reference to English and French rights, but not to the rights of the country’s Aboriginal inhabitants. While many people may not realize it, Aboriginal people were not allowed to vote in federal elections until 1960 and in most provincial elections until the 1950s. Under certain conditions Aboriginal people were allowed to vote before these times – the franchise was extended to Aboriginal war veterans in 1944 – but the general prohibition of voting privileges ‘denied Indians the possession of one of the central symbols of membership in the Canadian political system. Possession of the franchise would have symbolized Indian acceptance by non-Indians as political equals, and would have provided a focal point for identification with the political community. Its absence implied the reverse’ (Hawthorn 1966–7: 255). Denial of the franchise also deprived Aboriginal people of an instrument for exercising political pressure. In turn, possession of the franchise would have served as an inducement for politicians and political parties to pay more attention to Aboriginal needs and requests. The enfranchisement provision of the Indian Act – which allowed a status Indian to voluntarily relinquish his or her special status under the act, and which in turn allowed for the right to vote because such a person had then become a ‘regular’ Canadian citizen – also undermined Aboriginal identity. Moreover, since Indian status was a necessary requisite for living on a reserve,

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the enfranchisement provision also created a class of people who were stripped of both their homeland and their birthright. Aboriginal women who married men not registered under the Indian Act were also stripped of their status – until the Bill C-31 revisions to the Indian Act in 1985 – and suffered the same fate as those who were voluntarily enfranchised. Enfranchisement, however, did not necessarily carry with it complete membership in the Canadian community. Social discrimination in housing, employment, and other areas still served to curtail Aboriginal membership in the society at large. Aboriginal people may be considered part of the mosaic in Canada’s official policy of multiculturalism, but they do not possess a coherent sense of Aboriginal identity. This is partly due to the various pieces of legislation that have fragmented the Aboriginal population into myriad competing interest groups, such as status, non-status, reserve, nonreserve, Metis, Inuit, and the like. Each particular tribal identity has also undergone a steady process of decline in importance as assimilation reduces the importance of Aboriginal languages and official legislation ignores Aboriginal cultural boundaries. In the past, tribal identity was exploited by the colonizers as a method of dividing the Aboriginal population, thereby diminishing its overall influence. Under such a system it became easier for the colonial government to control – and manipulate – individual tribal groups. Over time it became difficult to rule such a fractious population and deal with each tribe’s particular demands and problems. It was also difficult to implement policy initiatives under a structure of many different tribal groupings, and so an assimilationist policy began to take shape, a policy that served to reduce individual differences in Aboriginal culture, language, and social type. The basis of Aboriginal identity in Canada is a complicated one. Aside from those having official status as Indians, there is a large yet indeterminate number of non-status people as well. The ancestors of many Aboriginal groups in Canada have signed treaties with the crown, but there are large areas of the country, most notably in British Columbia, where treaties have never been negotiated. The Inuit are another peculiar case. They did not sign treaties, but recently negotiated a large land settlement for the territory called Nunavut. Although the Inuit are not really considered Indians by the society at large, in 1939 a Supreme Court decision declared the Inuit to be Indians under the provisions of the British North America Act. This provision made the Inuit a federal responsibility but excluded them from the normal operations of the Indian Act.

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One can say overall that the concept of ‘Indianness’ in Canada does not have much to do with cultural, racial, or social factors. It is tied more specifically to various pieces of legislation, most notably the Indian Act, although not all Natives fall under federal jurisdiction or are provided for under the mandate of this act. There are also various political and economic implications that stem from these facts, implications having to do with which Aboriginal people are most effective in influencing government policy and in sharing the rewards and resources emanating from political participation. As such, there are important political dimensions to the role of Aboriginal peoples in this multicultural society of Canada.

Canada as a Multicultural Society Canadians pride themselves on being a tolerant nation, and consider it bad form to malign those who are unlike them. Yet according to Barrett, in his book on racism and the right wing, ‘Canada is unexceptional in both its right-wing tendencies and its tolerance. The organized right wing is substantial, but not out of proportion with that in other countries; nor is the radical right’s racist thrust incompatible with the nation’s wider setting and institutions’ (1987: 355). I guess the lesson here is that we are not as good as we think we are, yet maybe not as bad as some would have it, compared to other places in the world. This is not to say that there are not deep questions that need to be asked about how we perceive Canadian society, the reality of life for people of colour, and what can be done to make Canadian life closer to the ideal on which it was originally constructed. What is perhaps ironic is that Canada is often touted as an ideal model on which to construct a more equitable country. In the early 1990s, a news item concerning Israel, for example, proclaimed, ‘Israel: State Urged to Copy Canadian Rights Bill’ (Daily Mercury [Guelph] 1991). A law professor at McGill University, Irwin Cotler (later a federal justice minister in a Liberal government), suggested that ‘In the 1950s the United States played a significant role in regard to lawmaking in Israel: Canada can play in the 1990s the role the U.S. played in the ‘50s to the building of a law culture and a rights structure here’ (1991: 7B). Cotler pointed out that the Canadian and U.S. Bills of Rights differ markedly in several ways. He also suggested that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with its emphasis on group rights and limits on free speech, is better suited to an ethnically and religiously diverse country like Israel than a U.S.-style bill of rights.

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In Canada an unentrenched Bill of Rights was adopted in 1960, and the current rights charter in the constitution was enacted in 1982, about 150 years after the U.S. version. Cotler noted that an important difference between the Canadian and U.S. bills has to do with freedom of speech: ‘In the U.S., all speech, however hateful or racist, is protected under the First Amendment of the [constitutional] Bill of Rights’ (Daily Mercury [Guelph] 1991: 7B). However, Canada has taken the view that racist speech is not acceptable, thus prohibiting such free speech as Holocaust denial, spreading false news, and disseminating hate propaganda, factors that led to the conviction of neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel. Ironically, though, Zundel’s defence was based on the issue of freedom of speech. However, the presiding judge concluded that freedom of expression is not absolute and that it is common for members of the radical right to attempt to transform their cases into free speech issues. Yet in the Zundel case, Zundel himself did not necessarily espouse unlimited freedom of speech. He suggested, for example, that school books that contain ‘excessive stereotyping and slander’ against German people should be removed from circulation and burned (cf Barrett 1987: 156–65). The length of time that passed between Canadian Confederation in 1867 and the passage of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 meant that considerable catching up was needed to provide for the rights of ethnic minorities in the country (Driedger 1989: 370–5). The original British North America Act of 1867 made no specific mention of human rights, aside from provisions to protect the English and French languages. The BNA Act can be seen as a reflection of the dominance of the two colonial powers that shaped the development of the Canadian nation. A major constitutional problem is that the BNA Act virtually ignored the Aboriginal peoples of Canada and recognized almost no rights for them. As Kallen notes, For almost a century after the British Emancipation Act of 1833, which marked the official demise of slavery in Canada, the trend at the federal, provincial and municipal levels of Canadian government was to enact discriminatory legislation. Among the most pernicious pieces of legislation was the Indian Act, whereby Indians were virtually denied all of their fundamental rights. (1982: 43)

The Indian Act has led to the mistaken assumption that Native people have vastly greater rights and freedoms than the average Canadian citizen, when in fact the legislation is primarily restrictive and coercive rather than emancipatory.

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In a similar light, the policy of multiculturalism could inadvertently ‘foster the retention of ethnic and racial animosities and adverse ethnic and racial stereotypes’ (Burnet 1975: 39). Critics of the country’s policy of multiculturalism have seen in it the domination of others by ethnic groups that have gained control over the nation’s institutions, thereby denying to others access to power on the one hand, while stressing the ceremonial aspects of multiculturalism on the other. By the same token, the country’s bilingual policy can be seen as an appeasement measure in an attempt to contain Quebec’s social and political intentions while maintaining the ascendency of the English-speaking elite: ‘Intentionally or not, the multicultural policy preserves the reality of the Canadian ethnic hierarchy – the Vertical Mosaic of ethnic inequality – rooted in longterm discrimination and denial of rights’ (Kallen 1982: 165). Part of the problem that Kallen refers to stems from the somewhat confused public understanding of the concept of multiculturalism. Unfortunately, despite anthropologists’ claim to have special insight into the concept of culture, the discipline of anthropology has done little to clarify the idea. Years ago, for example, Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) claimed to have found some five hundred phrasings and uses of the concept in various articles and books on anthropology. One would think anthropologists would be in the forefront in enlightening both the public and the scientific community about what culture is, and in providing an informative commentary on the multiculturalism policy. Indeed, the inability of anthropologists to make this important contribution has left them open to some justified criticism. In ‘Asian Immigrants and Canadian Multiculturalism,’ for example, Beck makes the somewhat exasperated comment that ‘What culture consists of is something that has troubled the social sciences, particularly scholars working in anthropology, for more than a century. Somehow, the discipline whose raison d’être is to grapple with this issue is still at sea in its attempts to define what their basic subject matter consists of’ (1980: 10). It is also evident that there has been a lack of understanding of the historical dynamics by which a multicultural society evolves. Early on in Canada’s history the special privileges and legal rights of the EnglishFrench charter groups became a part of the country’s social structure, yet the structure created by the various treaties and agreements with the Canadian Native population placed them in an underprivileged position. Aboriginal peoples were forced onto reserves in return for dubious promises, and their lands were subsequently taken over by white European settlers. The treaties and the Indian Act provided a convenient administrative

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structure for controlling the Native population. The reserves themselves are mostly lacking in the resources to sustain the population, and are often in marginal and isolated regions, so that many Natives are leaving the only land they have in search of a better future elsewhere. It is important to note, however, that despite the signing of various treaties, many Native societies continue to regard themselves as separate nations. The name of the national organization of status Indians, the Assembly of First Nations, indicates that this is a widely held view. Many of the treaties themselves are also a contested issue in Canadian jurisprudence, since in some instances they are regarded by the Native people not as deeds of land transfer but simply as documents attesting to the cordiality and peaceful intentions of the indigenous populations that occupied a territory. On a related front, negotiations continue between the federal government and Native leaders over the possibility of Indian self-government and how this concept might be entrenched in the Canadian constitution (cf Long, Little Bear, and Boldt 1982). The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) does make explicit mention of Aboriginal and treaty rights, as, for example, in Article 25: The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed so as to abrogate or derogate from any aboriginal, treaty or other rights or freedoms that pertain to the aboriginal peoples of Canada.

These rights are further reinforced in Article 35: 1. The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed. 2. In this Act, ‘aboriginal peoples of Canada’ includes the Indian, Inuit and Metis peoples of Canada.

The three official meetings in the mid-1980s between Aboriginal peoples and the federal and provincial governments, however, did not serve to clarify numerous issues. Aboriginal rights are still not clearly entrenched, and Native people in many areas of Canada have grown dissatisfied with what they regard as the intransigence of some provincial governments in failing to deal with such issues as Aboriginal land claims. The Province of British Columbia, for example, has historically not recognized the right of Aboriginal people to claim land. Situations such as this bring into question the extent to which the nation-state colonialists are really concerned with minority rights and

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freedoms. Various levels of government in Canada have moved slowly or not at all to resolve past injustices. The large-scale removal of Native people in British Columbia under the Pre-Emption Act of 1870 and the 1884 legislation passed in Parliament outlawing the potlatch (Patterson 1972: 159–63) are the sorts of historical injustices that, one might argue, continue today, though under a softer, legalistic guise of constitutional reforms and amendments. One could conclude further that power politics and ethnic identity are related phenomena, perhaps inseparable from one another.

The Politics of Ethnic Identity A focus on ethnicity and Aboriginal peoples in the North American context is an area of research with a short history. In the late 1970s, a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic Studies was devoted to a historical overview of ‘A Century of Political Economic Effects on American Indian Society’ (Jorgensen 1978). This was preceded by S.M. Weaver’s (1974) study of the Canadian Iroquois in terms of the ‘Judicial Preservation of Ethnic Group Boundaries.’ In this study there is a direct continuity with what Barth (1969) referred to as the ‘social arrangement of cultural differences,’ which in the Iroquois case had to do with Canadian government legislation that restricted marriage between Natives and non-Natives. The Indian Act is the foremost piece of legislation affecting Indians in Canada. Because of its restrictions on whom one might marry without penalty, it could be called Canada’s version of an antimiscegenation law. These restrictions on marriage have led some to refer to the Indian Act as sexist, even racist, in orientation. Frideres, for example, stated that the Indian Act ‘was administered in the interest of benign rule but its implementation created isolation, control, and enforced poverty. It has become the most vicious mechanism of social control that exists in Canada today’ (1988a: 37). Prior to its amendment in 1985, the Indian Act stipulated that Indian women with official status as Indians would lose their status upon marriage to non-status men, regardless of Indian ancestry. On the other hand, marriage by status men to non-status women did not result in a loss of status for the Indian man; instead, non-status women actually gained Indian status, even though they might not have any Native heritage. This legislation was clearly discriminatory against Native women, and with the passage in Parliament of Bill C-31 the Indian Act was amended so that neither Indian women nor men would lose their status

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upon marriage to non-status individuals. However, since the Indian Act still accords official status to some Natives but not to others, it has the effect of fragmenting the Native population of Canada into various competing interest groups. Though the amendment to the Indian Act has removed some of the discriminatory legislation effecting Canada’s Aboriginal population, it still has wide-reaching repercussions as a control mechanism. Stymeist’s Ethnics and Indians (1975), a study of a northwestern Ontario town, for example, pursues a similar theme since it brings into question the role of the concept of ethnicity in the context of racial prejudice. The general theme of control mechanisms and boundary maintenance finds further expression in a variety of studies that focus on the implications of Canadian Native policy for the social and cultural composition of ethnic groups (Dyck 1980, 1990; Hedican 1991; Waldram 1986; S.M. Weaver 1985, 1986). Anthropological research on Canadian Aboriginal peoples has also demonstrated that the question of ethnic identity has become an issue of considerable interest. In this regard there have been studies of the reformulation of ethnic identity among the Metis of Manitoba (Sawchuk 1978), the reunification of ethnicity in the Yukon (Watson 1981), Chipewyan ‘ethno-adaptations’ (Heber 1989), the negotiation of identity by the Micmac of Nova Scotia (Larsen 1983), as well as several comparative studies (Jordan 1986; Kienetz 1986). This interest is particularly evident in the growing body of literature aimed at analysing the ability of Canadian Aboriginal people to maintain their identity by political means (Boldt 1980; Hedican 1986b; Salisbury 1986; Sawchuk 1982; Tanner 1983; Watson 1981; Neizen 2003, 2004). It is therefore evident on the basis of this review that research on Native peoples is becoming an increasingly important focus in Canadian ethnic studies. In fact, one could go further and state that studies concerned with what might be called the ‘ethnopolitics of Native Canadian leadership’ are in the vanguard of this research.

Bill C-31 Update The Bill C-31 amendment to the Indian Act of 1985 was designed to remove a discriminatory piece of legislation whereby Aboriginal women and their children could lose their status upon marriage and non-Aboriginal women could gain status. Prior to the amendment, an Aboriginal man with status could not lose his status no matter whom he married. Clearly, then, the Indian Act prior to the 1985 amendment discriminated against Aboriginal

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women with status, as they were treated differently from their male counterparts, and in an unfair manner. The introduction of Bill C-31 cannot necessarily be seen as an act of benevolence on the part of the federal government, as the Indian Act needed to be brought into agreement with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It has now been over two decades since the Bill C-31 amendment to the Indian Act. Two questions are important to consider here: What have been the results and repercussions of this significant legislative change? And, are Aboriginal people in Canada better off now than before Bill C-31? Under the new rules introduced with Bill C-31 it was possible for people who had lost status because of the discriminatory section of the Indian Act to have their status reinstated. This mainly applied to women who had lost their status because they married a non-Indian, as defined by the Indian Act. In all, there were approximately 20,000 women who had lost their status through marriage to a male who did not have status under the terms of the Indian Act.These women were automatically entitled to band membership if the federal government reinstated them. In terms of subsequent generations, only the first-generation offspring of those people who had had status but subsequently lost it were allowed to be reinstated; that is, registration is restricted to first-generation children of any reinstated person. However, their own children cannot be registered if these first-generation children were themselves parents at the time of registration. These children, once registered, have the ability to extend their status to any of the children that they might have after successful registration. What this means in effect is that not all Bill C-31 registrants are equal as far as the Indian Act is concerned. Basically, those who originally had status but lost it can apply for reinstatement under section 6 (1). Those who would have obtained status from a parent who lost it can apply under section 6 (2). Thus, different categories of reinstatement are possible, and the ability to pass on status is different in each case. For example, if a person obtained status through section 6 (2) and subsequently married a non-Indian, then their children would be considered to be non-Indians and would not be allowed to be registered. On the other hand, if the same person – someone registered under section 6 (2) – were to marry an Indian, then their children would also be considered to be Indians under the terms of the Indian Act. However, if these children were later to marry a non-Indian, then they would be considered to fall under section 6 (2) and would be unable to pass their status on to their children.

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The success rate for applicants (you have to apply, status is a matter of adjudication by the Indian Registration Unit of the Department of Indian Affairs) was not very high. There were 42,000 applications for reinstatement of Indian status by 1985, yet only 1,605 were accepted that year. Over the next five years (1985–90) more than 75,000 applications for reinstatement were received affecting about 135,000 individuals. By 2001 just over 105,000 had been added to the status Indian population through the Bill C-31 registration process since its inception in 1985. This means that of the total status Indian population of about 623,000 for the year 2001, nearly one-seventh of the registered Indian population consists of reinstated persons (Frideres and Gadacz 2001: 31–5). The restoration of legal Indian status to such a large population over a fairly short period of time brought about immense problems that the federal government was apparently unable and unprepared to deal with. Housing, for example, was a major barrier preventing most of the Bill C-31 persons from returning to their home reserves – it is estimated that only 2 per cent were successful in securing reserve housing between 1985 and 1990 (Cairns 2000: 74). It did not help that the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) was opposed to Bill C-31, lending credibility to the view that the reinstated status Indians were not welcome and were not the equals of those who had retained their status. A major problem has to do with band membership – where, and to whom, do the reinstated people belong? Most First Nations communities were already short of adequate housing, employment, and health care, so that without an immediate infusion of money from the federal government it was beyond the capacity of these settlements to cope with any additional members. Since bands have control over their own membership, it was possible to exclude reinstated Indians from the band membership rolls and thus the right to reside on a reserve. Resources on reserves are in most cases stretched too thin to accommodate newcomers, and this fact has been a point of division and discontent within Aboriginal communities. It may be that Bill C-31 served to eliminate sexual discrimination in the Indian Act, but it also created many new problems that have not been seriously dealt with by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups alike.

Aboriginal Ethnic Identity In a book called The Trail of the Hare, about the Aboriginal population of the western subarctic, Savishinsky concludes that ‘An increased de-

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pendence upon whites for livelihood and survival, as well as for leadership, decision-making, and direction ... promoted a diminished sense of identity’ (1974: 219). There is no doubt that the impact of industrial society has had pervasive effects on the sociopolitical adjustments of indigenous peoples. The Native peoples of North America represent a somewhat unusual case in this regard since they constitute a domain of (semi-) traditional cultures contiguous to one of the world’s most highly industrialized societies. Despite its official policy of multiculturalism, Canadian society does not readily offer multiple models of success, or multiple sets of values and goals. As a consequence, Aboriginal peoples have felt that to be successful in terms of the white society has meant that they must abandon their Indian identity. Canada’s long-standing emphasis on the assimilation of Native people, such as the White Paper proposals of the Trudeau-Chrétien era (1968–71), or similar suggestions by the Mulroney government, attest to this policy at an official level (S.M. Weaver 1981, 1986). The paradox is that diminished identity on the part of the Native group does not necessarily mean that one can assume the identity associated with members of the larger society. The Aleuts of Alaska, for example, have adopted many outside values but are prevented from garnering the rewards that such a change would bring, ‘because they are ineligible for membership in their [the whites’] reference group’ (Berreman 1978: 30). Similarly, in the eastern Arctic, white officials want the Inuit to take a more active role in local government institutions, which are based on the assumptions of southern-style politics. However, the local Inuit men and women see these positions as essentially devoid of power, and they refuse to participate in this form of sociopolitical assimilation. To participate in the outside-controlled form of local government not only serves to undermine traditional Inuit concepts of power and authority, it also tends to render the elected Inuit officials ineffective and make them the target of ridicule and criticism (Brody 1975: 196). This is apparently a widespread effect of the imposition of Euro-Canadian-style politics on Native communities. For example, in a study of reserve politics among the southwest Ojibwa, J.G. Smith writes that ‘Almost every former officer of the tribal or reservation councils known during this study has asserted that he would never again accept public office and suffer the abuse that accompanied it’ (1973: 27). The problem in these instances is that there is an identity conflict between the traditional image that local residents have of their leaders and the image the leaders must assume to carry out their modern dealings

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and negotiations with outside government officials. This has been a particularly prominent problem since the 1970s, during which time ethnicity and ethnic identity have generally become significant sociopolitical issues. In a world of rapid change, group membership and ethnic identity are subject to processes of redefinition and reaffirmation. The American Indian Movement (AIM), for example, has sought to create a single American Indian identity, thereby reducing cultural differences. AIM’s pan-Indian emphasis has been crucial to the process of cultural change and adaptation. Ethnic identity may be a matter of individual affiliation, but more probably it involves minority groups within a larger society. When groups are the main area of concern, our focus of interest will be on the role that these groups serve as the centres of social and political movements. In this regard leaders and followers could have different means and ends. Re-evaluations of ethnic identity are at the centre of many social movements in today’s world, and for this reason their implications deserve serious study. The identity question for Aboriginal people in Canada has posed a serious dilemma, especially in the context of sociopolitical unification. Specifically, the problem centres on the myriad legal statuses and possible social identities (Dyck 1980: 37–40): Indian versus Metis, status versus non-status, treaty versus non-treaty, reserve versus non-reserve, and so on. The Native population has been divided in so many ways that the concept of ethnic identity as applied to Native people serves more to confuse people than to produce a sense of security or well-being about their status vis-à-vis other groups in the country. This diversity also engenders a state of adversarial politics, such that each group defines its interests in a way that is different from other sectors of the Native population. A state of competition results where the different interest groups compete with one another for scarce government resources, recognition, and special status. The constitutional talks of the mid-1980s laid bare the tensions between the Assembly of First Nations (the status group) and the Native Council of Canada (non-status). Then, the Native Council was split when a court injunction was filed by the western Metis lobby for separate representation. The debate over the ‘entrenchment of aboriginal rights’ in the Canadian constitution was viewed with wide interest. However, Chief David Ahenekew’s impassioned and eloquent plea for a serious discussion about the pressing problems of Canadian Native people seemed to carry little weight in the face of ongoing provincial disputes. With so many Native groups represented at the constitutional

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talks (the Inuit Tapirisat, Native women, the Native Council, the Canadian Metis Society, the Assembly of First Nations ...) one could be excused for asking, Who are the Aboriginal people? Who speaks in their interest? Why are all these special interest groups necessary? In Canada, as Boldt has cogently commented, ‘The context of Indian leadership ... [is] ... characterized by conditions of cultural marginality and lack of structural definitions’ (1980: 15).

Natives as Ethnics? In terms of furthering our understanding of the problems faced by Canadian Aboriginal people, we are led to ask about the usefulness, and validity, of the concept of ethnicity. Stymeist has made some interesting comments in this regard in Ethnics and Indians (1975), his study of social relations in a northwestern Ontario town. In the town he called Crow Lake, ethnicity played an important role in the self-identity of the town’s population, but only for those of non-Native extraction. Natives came to town mostly as transients – they bought goods, visited the Indian Affairs office, took in some entertainment, then went back to the reserve. Stymeist argues that a structured system of inequality exists in Crow Lake. Native people are prevented from becoming permanent residents because they are prevented from securing rental accommodations, or employment, or otherwise participating in the socio-economic life of the town. Natives even have their own hospital, run by Indian Affairs, which further separates them from the general population. The conclusion that Stymeist reaches in his study is that the concept of ethnicity has some relevance for those of European descent but has less value for an understanding of Native problems. His argument, he explains, is ‘concerned with race prejudice. I suggest that active discrimination against Native people largely prevented them from taking a full and active part in the social and economic life of the town’ (1975: 9). As he indicates in the conclusion of his study, ‘Indians and non-native ethnics in Crow Lake are all “ethnics”: they are all regarded as being part of the “Canadian Mosaic.” But in reality there is a vast gulf between them. The most tragic fact in the Crow Lake situation is that the town is able to benefit significantly from the poverty of native people ... For a native person locked into this system, the hypocrisy of bureaucratic agencies and the violence and prejudice of the local white society become two omnipresent and inescapable forces against which only direct action may seem reasonable’ (1975: 93–4). The concept of ethnicity

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has some relevance for Canadian Native people, but their situation as Aboriginal peoples and the special problems they face in the development of the ‘Canadian mosaic’ calls for a wider basis of understanding – a fuller appreciation of the social and economic context in which Native people find themselves.

Racism versus Ethnicity Stymeist makes some harsh judgments about race and ethnic relations in northwestern Ontario. The underlying theme of his study is that the concept of ethnicity serves to mask the basic prejudice and discrimination faced by all Native people in Canada. In this sense, a focus on ethnicity is the soft underbelly of racism. The ‘ethnics’ in Crow Lake joke with one another and even trade insults, yet there is a certain sense of camaraderie about the bantering back and forth. In a bar a ‘Finlander’ passes around a photocopy of a pistol with the barrel pointed backwards, which a ‘Uke uses for target practice.’ Everyone laughs. A ‘Polack’ complains about a ‘Frenchman’ who keeps waving his hands about when talking and in the process knocks over everyone’s beer. Ethnic jokes and insults are passed around. At times people will defend ‘their’ ethnic category by making disparaging comments about the assumed ethnicity of others. Ethnic ‘cultural’ traits are continually expanded into stereotypes. Finns are expected to eat fish and take saunas. Italians eat spaghetti and make their own wine. A Ukrainian will only drink vodka. It is the stereotypical nature of their behaviour that is the basis of the ethnics’ social interaction. But when it comes to Native people, the joking takes on a harder tone. As Stymeist explains, ‘Indians did not exchange ethnic jokes, insults, or laughter with whites. They would not often join whites at tables in restaurants or pubs, and it was seldom the case that Indians and whites worked together at the same job. In addition, when jokes about Indians were aired they were accepted as jokes, but were told with a certain edge, a harshness of the voice, and were answered by an aggressive laughter that was not present when jokes about Ukrainians, Finns, or Italians were told’ (1975: 6). Stymeist knows what he’s talking about, because he has experienced these situations on a first-hand basis. Much of his information was gathered, not by sanitary questionnaires but while he was ‘slugging it out’ as a taxi driver and an ambulance attendant for the Zone (Indian) Hospital. This ‘harshness of the voice’ that he refers to would have been hardly

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noticeable in the friendly confines of the structured interview; but a participant observer sees and hears things that would probably not come to light using more traditional research techniques. For example, consider Stymeist’s recording of the following comments overheard in a discussion of the proposed amalgamation of the General (white) and the Zone (Indian) Hospitals in Crow Lake: If the hospitals join together the women of our town would have to give birth to their children with Indians lying in the next bed. If you were going to have a baby how would you feel if you found one of those long, black Indian hairs in the linen? Even if you wash the sheets several times you can’t be sure to get it all out. (1975: 75)

There are those who might suggest that these are isolated incidents, that maybe Stymeist has exaggerated his experiences in Crow Lake to make his story more effective. After all, where are all the other corroborating studies? My answer is, Yes, that is exactly the point. No one else has bothered to study racism towards Native people in Canada, let alone northwestern Ontario, so the evidence for how widespread the problem might be is not going to be found in your local library. Go up to northern Ontario and have a look around for yourself; it will not take you long to see what northern residents of Ontario have known all their lives. Try to find a Native person who has not been the subject of prejudice and discrimination – on the job, at the hospital, in a restaurant, or anywhere else. In my year of anthropological research into the rail-line communities along the CNR I heard disparaging comments about Native people all the time. It became so commonplace that I hardly noticed it. One day, for example, when I was about to disembark from the train at an all-Native (or practically so) community, the conductor wanted to know, ‘Why would a white man want to go to such a place? You want to solve the Indian problem? What I would do is drop off a case of wine and a box of hunting knives. Problem over!’ I was astounded. This was a person whose main clientele along the rail line were Native people. He must have been harbouring a lot of hate and resentment for many years, I thought. But what makes a person come to hold such resentment for his fellow human beings? Part of the problem has to do with the social and institutional context in which people grow up. The railway conductor has certain social expectations that are fairly common in northern Ontario. Along the CNR is Stymeist’s Crow Lake, otherwise known as Sioux Lookout. I

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have travelled there on a number of occasions, and am therefore in a position to substantiate some of his observations. For example, I have stayed at the Sioux Hotel, now demolished, where patrons at the bar in the basement of the hotel would have to go out onto the street and then through the main entrance to reach their hotel rooms. Waiting outside at closing time were a number of police officers who would arrest Native people (this was considered an Indian hotel) for being intoxicated in a public place. This is all part of the social reality in which Natives must live in northern Ontario. White resentment towards Natives is seldom seen by those in the south. Yet who could ignore that hateful publication entitled Bended Elbow (presumably named after Wounded Knee), by a nurse at the Kenora Hospital (Jacobson 1975). On the first page the author explains, ‘This book is written without prejudice against the Indian race,’ and then makes the usual patronizing comment about having ‘a lot of Indian friends.’ On the inside cover is a picture of two people with their pants down, one lying atop the other, framed by a heart. There is not any indication if they are Native or not, but one must presume that they are. Above the picture is the caption: The Indians refer to the taxpayer as the ‘white-man.’ When in reality all taxpayers are not ‘white.’ So the phrase ‘white-man’ in this book is Indian slang for taxpayer. (Jacobson 1975)

The book is set at the time of the armed occupation of Anishenabe Park near Kenora in 1974. According to the Natives the occupation was a protest over the unlawful expropriation of Indian lands; in other words, it was a land-claim dispute. The residents of Kenora saw it as an armed insurrection. The Native people involved, largely from the nearby White Dog and Grassy Narrows Bands, were also suffering from mercury pollution and loss of their fishing livelihood, though the outside world had not yet heard of such things. With few jobs available and the traditional economy undermined, the Native population was becoming demoralized, and many resorted to drink to escape their troubles. As Jacobson observed, ‘They shoot each other; stab each other; they get so goddamned [emphasis hers] drunk they lay on railroad tracks to sleep and are cut in half or they drown’ (1975: 5). The remainder of the book goes on to build up the stereotypical case of the Natives as lazy drunks. What most people would not realize from reading Jacobson’s book is that most residents of the surrounding reserves do not show up in Kenora in an intoxicated state. It is the highly visible members of the

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Native population, poverty stricken and homeless, who show up on the streets and pass out on the benches. Whether Canadians want to recognize it or not, Native people are subject to a form of racism that has become intrinsic to the structure of Canadian society – racism that is expressed formally in legislation such as the Indian Act, which systematically denies employment and adequate housing to Natives. According to Carstens (1971), the reserve system for Native people in Canada is the counterpart of the apartheid system in South Africa. Of course many Canadians would deny there is an analogy here. After all, Natives can go where they like in the country, and so on. Still, many Canadians were no doubt embarrassed when Bishop Desmond Tutu visited the Sandy Lake reserve where he was shown the dilapidated housing of the residents. A short time later the CBC’s Fifth Estate broadcast a segment by Eric Malling which made the case that the Natives staged the Tutu visit for political purposes. Thus, the denial is allowed to continue, and the government continues to avoid providing adequate housing on the reserve. A few houses might be built, but when media attention lessens, funds for additional programs dry up. This is an example of what Barrett has characterized as ‘mock change,’ which is to say, Governmental programs set up to instil a sense of independence and self-reliance among native peoples are discontinued just when it appears that they might be successful. The government makes a show of consulting with native peoples, thus putting them momentarily off guard, but introduces legislation exactly the opposite of what was requested by native peoples. (1984b: 190)

The difference between Canada and the United States, when it comes to institutional racism, is that in American history blacks not Natives have been the primary targets of oppression. As Levin and Levin (1982) explain, ‘Native Americans might have qualified for that dubious distinction were it not for the fact that they were pushed aside, ignored, exploited, and even annihilated without the need to resort to complex justifications’ (1982: 30). In Canada the Native populace is larger on a per capita basis, and therefore their relative socio-economic importance is greater. For example, in the Crow Lake case, Stymeist argues that the economic importance of the surrounding Native population is crucial to the town’s economic viability. Native people provide a source of cheap labour as tourist guides, firefighters, and the like, and contribute to the economic stability of the stores, restaurants, and hotels in the town. The type of local labour is one of the underpinnings of what has been called

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the ‘inequitable exchanges involving minorities’ (Blalock 1982: 38–41). This is similar to Frideres’s (1988b: 71–100) argument that Native people in Canada suffer from economic deprivation because of institutional structures that have led to a high degree of dependency, which in turn forces them into a position of marginality. This dependency relationship was fostered by an assimilationist governmental policy, ‘to the extent that they [Native people] would become wage earners and domestic consumers of various goods produced by capitalist entrepreneurs’ (Frideres 1988b: 88). In summary, there are adequate reasons for questioning the importance of the concept of ethnicity as it applies to Native people in Canada. There are deep-rooted institutional frameworks, underpinned by federal legislation such as the Indian Act, that keep the Native population in a state of dependency and marginality. There are other structural conditions, such as the discriminatory attitudes of the Euro-Canadian population, that serve to deny to Native people a greater, more effective, role in the social, economic, and political life of the country. For example, Henry and Tator provide a particularly trenchant commentary on Canada’s treatment of its Aboriginal population: No group has suffered more seriously from racism than our native people, and Canada’s discriminatory treatment of them has been widely documented. The history of the relationship between native and white Canadians has been characterized by exploitation and the denial of the most fundamental rights and freedoms, including the annihilation of native people’s culture, land, and sovereignty. (1985: 322)

Nevertheless, Native people continue to press for a more equitable share of the opportunities that Canada has to offer, in the public arena and in the media, through their local and national leaders. As such, there is a political dimension to Native-white interaction that could be called the ethnopolitics of Native leadership in Canada.

Aboriginal Ethnopolitics in Canada An interesting collection of essays entitled The Politics of Indianness (Tanner 1983) calls attention to the ‘government tutelage policies’ that have influenced the political development of both Inuit and Indians in Canada. If Dunning (1959: 20) is correct in his assertion that the political sovereignty of Native people is controlled ultimately by the Indian Affairs administration, then one should look at the underlying political problems that stem

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from the signing of the various treaties and the implementation of the Indian Act, all of which specify a system of elective local government composed of chiefs and councillors (Indian Act, sections 74–85 incl.). Furthermore, if a particular band shows signs of ‘advancement’ it shall be granted certain additional powers not granted to other bands: Where the Governor in Council declares that a band has reached an advanced stage of development, the council of the band may, subject to the approval of the Minister, make by-laws. (Canada 1970: 39)

Obviously there is no concern here that certain Native bands could have a concept of ‘advancement’ that differs from that of the Indian Affairs administration or, for that matter, that there could be a significant degree of cultural variability among the Native groups themselves over what constitutes advancement. It is also obvious that the language of ‘advancement’ and the like that riddles the Indian Act is the legacy of an eighteenth-century belief in progress combined with unilinear evolutionary theory, social Darwinism, and ultimately a racist disregard for the right of ‘uncivilized’ people to maintain their own particular social, economic, and political traits. Historically the government of Canada’s position has been that some form of legally recognized organization is necessary for the provision of basic social and physical services. The underlying assumption appears to be that a certain compatibility between local band governments and the Indian Affairs administration is a prerequisite for a more effective interaction of the two; and since the government had no intention of making its system coincide with the myriad Native political forms, one uniform system is in the best interest of every group involved. High-handed and paternalistic, to be sure, yet necessary in the interest of efficiency and control. From the Aboriginal perspective an important issue at stake here concerns which groups, local or outside, should have the right to decide on appropriate forms of community representation. The problem for Aboriginal people is that the Indian Act does not allow for much flexibility in making the existing legislation more amenable to their own particular sociocultural situation, whether they be Mohawks with their matrilineal clans, or Kainai (Blackfoot) of the Plains with their system of councils and many chiefs. A related problem for Native people is that the Europeanbased political process tends to produce conflict, which serves to bring about the dissolution of Native interest groups rather than bringing them into harmony with one another (Frideres 1988a: 260–95).

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The system of formal votes and elections tends to cast people into the role of winners and losers, thus promoting division rather than unity. British anthropologist Fred Bailey has many informative comments to make about the study of comparative political systems in Stratagems and Spoils, in which he counsels us to ‘think of politics as a competitive game’ (1969: 1). Yet political systems are ‘encapsulated’ within one another, and there can be dire consequences for those who are severely dominated by encapsulation. It could happen that not only are the political rules of the ‘weaker’ culture abolished, but also that the people who follow the rules are exterminated. As Bailey explains, ‘This has been the fate of some tribes in the South American jungles and for some time once looked like being the fate of North American Indians too: there have been outside powers which have tried to create national uniformity by exterminating those who are different rather than by teaching them new ways’ (1969: 155). He goes on to explain that this extermination may happen not because of any deliberate and malign policy on the part of a national-level government but as a result of its carelessness or incompetence. In this country, the colonial situation has been one where ‘The process of national expansion in Canada is frequently described as one of peaceful penetration, but the activities of colonizers in terms of occupying territories, spreading communicable diseases, and generally disrupting the ecological system posed immeasurable threats to the survival of Native groups. Accordingly when Indian leaders negotiated for lands, they did so from an inferior bargaining position’ (Bienvenue 1985: 200–1). In fact, there is much in the way Canadians interpret their history that serves to cast them in a favourable light. Some would have a certain pride in Canada because Canadians (actually the British) never exterminated the Native people, as happened in Tazmania, although the long-forgotten Beothuk extinction is a point to the contrary. Some would also add that there was not in Canada an overt military clash between the army and Native groups as there was in the United States. Such historical works as Innis’s The Fur Trade in Canada promote the idea of a peaceful cooperation between Indian trappers and European merchants – the Native and newcomer intertwined in the noble quest of free enterprise. Furthermore, the assumption is that the Native people benefited more by selling their furs than the Europeans did by marketing them in Europe. Innis, for example, notes that ‘No monopoly or organization could withstand the demands of the Indian civilization of North America for European goods,’ and drives home the point by quoting from the explorer Jacques Cartier: ‘The savages showed a marvellously great pleasure in

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possessing and obtaining these iron wares and other commodities, dancing and going through many ceremonies’ (1970: 16–17). The picture portrayed in Canada’s history books is one of an amiable Native population, eager for the benefits of European commerce and basically compliant to the newcomers’ mercantile interests. Of course a great deal is covered up by this interpretation. History books record that, ‘Rupert’s Land’ was granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) by Royal Charter in 1670. Yet, this transfer of property was actually an expropriation of Aboriginal lands for which no treaties were negotiated, despite the later Royal Proclamation of 1763, which specified that the autonomy of Aboriginal title be respected. Such an interpretation also denies to Native people a free will to decide their own destiny or negotiate the terms of their interaction with fur traders. Actually, there is much historical work after Innis, studies that use the Hudson’s Bay Company archives, clearly showing that Native peoples in Canada were not only good bargainers but tended to resent the HBC monopoly (Bishop 1974; Francis and Morantz 1983; Ray 1974; Ray and Freeman 1978). For some reason Canadians are prone to deny the colonial encounter that has characterized the historical development of the country and continues to pervade the Native-white political scene today. The imposed system of formal votes and elections is a case in point, where divisions are created in the Native populace that ultimately serve to undermine their own attempts at creating a more unified political force. For northern Natives, Dacks summarizes the consequences of adopting this adversarial political format in the context of a colonial system: ‘Where a degree of unity can be achieved among northerners, political colonialism may well continue to fade. However, where consensus cannot be reached, pressing social and economic problems are likely to persist; conflict is likely to intensify’ (1981: 88). In a similar vein, a nationwide study (Boldt 1981) of Native leaders’ attitudes towards political status also reflects concern over the effects of conflict-style politics on the Native community. ‘The Canadian democratic system,’ as one leader put it, ‘is totally alien to native people. The old way was true democracy ... traditional ways had better results than modern democracy.’ And another leader comments that Canadian democracy is ‘alien to Indians. It divides the Indians into factions. In the old days when the Chief spoke with authority we didn’t have these kinds of divisions’ (Boldt 1981: 548– 9). Such ‘traditional ways’ were also apparently less concerned with defeating opponents than with demonstrating guidance, wisdom, and maturity in leadership (J.G. Smith 1973: 13–21).

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The processes that create divisions among Aboriginal people are mechanisms that tend to undermine their political identity because they bring into question their very right to exist as a people with special status, or ‘citizens plus,’ within Canada. As a consequence, Native people are under continual pressure to reaffirm their identity in order to maintain their sociopolitical integrity in the face of pressures that are apt to dissolve it. This theme of ‘the reification of ethnicity and its political consequences’ has been the focus of Watson’s (1981) research into the means whereby Native people in Yellowknife manage their ethnic identities within the constraints imposed by external powers. From Watson’s perspective, ‘Ethnicity ... is an emergent property of an ongoing interpersonal bargaining process’ (1981: 453). Native people are attempting to negotiate their way into the Canadian political consciousness, and a reaffirmation of ethnic identity is one mechanism by which this is achieved. The problem is that this reaffirmation of identity has considerable costs in terms of using up one’s political capital. The more the identity is reaffirmed in the public’s mind, the more it is also brought into question.

The Metis Experience In the Northwest Territories the reaffirmation of ethnic identities is a tension-filled process, since ‘the labels Indian and Metis are often hotly contested because the implications of making them stick are so consequential. So for many in the North ... the achievement of ethnic identity is consciously problematic: they must struggle to exhibit and maintain it’ (Watson 1981: 454). The Metis in particular have a problem with ethnic labelling: Canadian government legislation does not officially recognize them as Native. In any case, the Metis don’t want either of these labels (Indian or non-Native) so they are continually involved in the process of reformulating an ethnic identity that is both understood, and accepted, by the larger non-Native population. One’s appearance or skin colour is perhaps less important as an identity mechanism than how one feels inside. As Howard Adams explains: In my halfbreed ghetto, finding a job was always difficult because the only employers were whites. It mattered little that I did not look truly Indian: all local employers knew whether I was halfbreed or white. Seeking employment as a native was more than looking for a job, it was asking to be insulted. (Adams 1989: 10)

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For the Metis these external appearances can be deceiving, since ethnic status at times is a self-attributing phenomenon. The former president of the Ontario Metis Society, Duke Redbird, in We Are Metis, believes that ‘Although the political status of today’s Metis has improved considerably, the ethnic status of today’s Metis is largely mythical’ (1980: 52). By mythical Redbird means that the name Metis ‘becomes a catch-all for people with no identity to hang on to ... it becomes a kind of “nonculture” for the Metis themselves’ (ibid.). This feeling of being stripped of your natural identity by powerful outside forces is also aptly illustrated in one of Redbird’s poems, ‘Tobacco Burns’: My eyes seek a vision – For old people told of visions That were not seen by eyes But burned in the mind and mouth Of our men Who fought battles But did not win. (1972: 1)

In a similar way Maria Campbell, in Halfbreed, relates her thoughts about the remorse and bitterness her parents experienced as a result of the Metis experience in western Canada: ‘I never saw my father talk back to a white man ... I never saw him or any of our men walk with their heads held high before white people’ (1973: 9). For many Metis the identity struggle is almost too much to bear, but is nonetheless an inescapable reality of existence in the face of powerful forces that threaten to swallow them up. For the Metis of Manitoba (Sawchuk 1978), the reformulation of ethnic identity has primarily been a response to conditions of deprivation and powerlessness that they currently face in Canadian society. The Manitoba Metis Federation (MMF) is the result not only of a resurgent feeling of ethnicity among the Metis but also of the desperate need for adequate housing, employment, and other community development programs. The Metis have lacked access to these programs in the past because they have not had a political organization capable of lobbying on their behalf. This has involved a new political process that is in marked contrast to the political organization of Metis in the last century. The new Metis have had ‘to accept a drastic modification of the boundaries that once defined their group; it is a reformulation with historical continuity of a distinct ethnic group in western Canada’ (Sawchuk 1978: xi).

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This problem for the Metis is made even more clear in the light of such social-scientific research as Watson’s on the Northwest Territories in which he declares that ‘no one objective criterion suffices to identify a Metis’ (1981: 458). This is not surprising given the confusion surrounding the whole subject of Native identity issues in Canada, yet one is nonetheless left to wonder if an alternative, more ‘subjective’ approach on Watson’s part would not have served to reveal the sorts of criteria he sought through his research. After all, if the Manitoba Metis can be used as an example, the problem is not that the Metis do not know who they are; the problem has more to do with convincing outsiders that they have a valid claim to a distinct status within Canadian society. This is also a matter of reaffirming this status through political processes, such that the historical validity of these claims, through treaties, land allotments, and so on, is also recognized in Canadian jurisprudence. For if, as Sawchuk indicates, one only depends on such strictly ‘objective’ criteria as language type, cultural background, or racial type, without concentrating also on the peoples’ subjective identification of themselves, then researchers are apt to be led into ‘a rather fruitless debate ... over the definition of ethnicity’ (1978: 8). I should add further that such debate has practical consequences when the Metis are also struggling with these issues as a mechanism for their very livelihood and survival. For the Metis there is a constant struggle to break out of what Howard Adams describes as ‘my halfbreed ghetto’ (1989: 10). A negative aspect to the Metis experience is that they have had to negotiate a distinct identity in the face of two opposing forces – Indian and white – that have not readily accepted the reality of their existence. Shunned at times by both groups, the Metis have had difficulty laying claim to a legitimate cultural identity that is distinctive from both Indian and white identities but nonetheless valid in its own right. The Algonquian tribes, especially the Ojibwa, called them wissakodewinmi, meaning burnt-sticks, a name the French colonists later interpreted as bois brûlé. The English called the Metis half-breeds, but this is generally a misnomer, as Redbird explains, because ‘there are few Metis who are actually of pure White and pure Indian ancestry in half and half proportions’ (1980: 1). Obviously none of these group labels have a particularly flattering tone to them. Adams has used the term mixed bloods to mean simply part-Indian and part-white. One suspects, though, that the biological side of the argument, with its reference to various phenotypical characteristics and appearances, is basically beside the point. The point of the Metis experience in Canada is one of marginalization:

244 Applied Anthropology in Canada As Metis people we did not have a choice as to whether we would be Indians, whites, or in between. The dominant society defined us as a distinct subordinated racial minority. The implication of ‘Metis’ is that as native people we live half in the white world and half in the Indian world. Most of us live largely in an obscure marginal native society. (Adams 1989: 7)

The Metis do not have to live on reserves to be isolated and segregated from mainstream society, for this has been accomplished in an almost invisible manner by the social and political institutions of Canadian society.

The Micmac: Negotiating Ethnic Identity For the Native leaders of Canada it is evident that they could achieve their purposes more effectively if they were able to move from negotiating on the basis of their Native ethnic identity to negotiating more directly for the resources that would enhance the livelihood of their people. The dilemma for Native leaders is how to move the focus from ‘structural definitions’ to the active efforts that have engaged them in the establishment of new premises on which Native-white relationships could be based. In this regard, the activities of the Micmac of Nova Scotia (Larsen 1983) are instructive in drawing attention to the negotiative aspects of ethnopolitical behaviour. For the Micmac, political and livelihood issues are intertwined. To make an adequate living on the reserve requires an elevation of ethnic awareness, Larsen suggests. The reason is that economic assets such as welfare are scarce, and people are led into competition with each other over them. ‘Welfare is part of an ethnic estate ... Conflicts are transported to the level of ethnic identity through welfare ... The welfare economy creates a competitive strategic situation’ (Larsen 1983: 127). In such a competitive situation, one may end up denying one’s neighbour’s ‘Indianness.’ Thus, the circulation of welfare as a commodity in the economy illustrates how interpersonal conflicts can end up being an issue of ethnic identity. For the Micmac the unequivocal identification of ‘Indians as Indians’ has become virtually an impossible task. Some Micmac have good jobs, others do not. Many live on the reserve, others live elsewhere. Many Micmac have lost their legal status for various reasons. In the absence of clear criteria of ethnic identity, the basis of negotiation between the Micmac and the government agencies they have to deal with has become a controversial issue. As Larsen so aptly illustrates in his ethnography of the Micmac dilemma, ‘The absence of clear criteria also

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implies that ethnic identity has become a bone of contention among Indians themselves’ (1983: 132). Such situations only serve to increase the difficulty, and uncertainty, of Native sociopolitical life. The Micmac case illustrates the state of disorientation brought about by conflicting expectations. Demands on people that are perceived to be conflicting or incongruous have a deleterious effect on their sense of harmony, and on the behaviour that they would normally expect from those with whom they interact. A sense of ambivalence about how to proceed in the future can be the result of inconsistencies in social and cultural backgrounds. When we become concerned with the process of self-definition with the question of ‘who we actually are’ vis-à-vis others, we are also apt to become preoccupied with the issue of ethnic identification. The identity issue for many is how to get back what has been lost, how to reclaim their Native identity.

Reclaiming Aboriginal Identity: Education and Community Change For Aboriginal people in Canada the educational system has been a major source of the interrelated problems of cultural dissonance and conflicting expectations. Several decades ago, for example, studies of Cree children in northern Quebec revealed a considerable problem with the discontinuities in the enculturation processes of Cree culture. Cree children were removed from their home communities and immersed in a language other than their own, and since success in school was also dependent on the adoption of southern-Canadian styles of interaction and identity, further problems developed. Cree who succeeded in graduating had problems reintegrating back into village life because their new skills were not entirely appropriate for the hunting-trapping way of life. However, the new skills did provide a basis for the development of a new generation of Cree political leaders who succeeded in spite of these handicaps, and who were able to develop a ‘modern Cree’ identity that was neither ‘white-oriented’ nor traditionally ‘Indian-oriented’ (Salisbury 1986: 128). The increased political participation of the Cree in northern Quebec since the mid-1970s has occurred especially in the area of Cree education: schools have been built in the local communities, and ‘non-formal’ curriculums have been developed that allow for the teaching of traditional skills (Salisbury 1986: 117–31). Since the Cree community itself now has considerable influence on the cultural content of the developing educational system in northern Quebec schools, it is easy to envis-

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age the ‘reclamation’ of the educational system, as an important factor not only in reducing previous discontinuities in the enculturation of Cree children but also in placing a more positive emphasis on Cree cultural awareness. Jordan’s article ‘Education and the Reclaiming of Identity’ brings this process into sharper focus: ‘In the past, the identities offered to indigenous people by the dominant society have been negative; assimilationist policies carried out through schooling made the people dependent economically and culturally and that was reflected in their identity. Their claims today are not to new rights; they re-claim prior rights to a positive identity’ (1986: 260). For many Aboriginal people the real problem in countering the divisive effects of cultural discontinuities is one of reconstructing a positive ethnic identity. The new generation of Cree leaders have found they can accommodate a degree of continuity with traditional Cree culture while living in a modern, literate society at the same time. Changes in the educational system have allowed the people to face more squarely the issue of maintaining the identity of their children as Cree. Thus, as Jordan summarizes, ‘The schools have been seen to destroy identity; in contemporary society, indigenous people see educational institutions as the sites for constructing or reconstructing their identity’ (1986: 261). In this sense, when Aboriginal people put forward claims to exert more control over educational institutions it is a sociopolitical act, since these are also claims to control the construction and reaffirmation of their own identity.

Conclusion Contemporary Aboriginal people in Canada face myriad difficulties in establishing themselves in today’s world as a people whose lives have meaning and dignity. The issue for many revolves around reaffirming a cultural identity imbued with positive attributes. It also involves counteracting the divisive effects of the various ‘ethno-status distinctions’ that have been imposed upon them by the social, legal, and political institutions of the larger society. Historically, these various imposed divisions in the Native population have served both to undermine Native identity and to circumvent the development of more cohesive political efforts towards achieving goals common to Native people as a whole. In this sense, the problems faced by the Native leadership loom large: on the one hand they are attempting to counteract the debilitating effects of cultural dissonance; on the other, they are working towards a reaffirmation of an ethnic identity that historically has been undermined by external pressures.

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What hangs in the balance for the future of First Nations societies in Canada is the competence of community members to make their own plans and to implement objectives for constructive changes. The development of competence within the Aboriginal community is further dependent upon the negotiating skills of its leaders in dealing with members of the larger society. This factor is largely a matter of inter-ethnic communication, or what might be termed the ‘ethnopolitics of community competence.’ However, the concept of ethnicity when applied to Aboriginal people is also a matter of some concern, especially in the context of longstanding sociopolitical barriers that curtail the participation of Natives in the larger society. If it is the Aboriginal view that the actions of the members of the larger society have served to relegate the Native population to the periphery, then one can expect that Native political activity will centre on attempts to control or otherwise influence the deleterious effects of changes emanating from the larger society. To the extent that this might be accomplished through inter-ethnic or ethnopolitical activity, much will depend on Aboriginal leaders’ ability to change historical patterns that have worked to the disadvantage of Aboriginal societies, and to ‘reclaim’ certain traditional political strengths that would serve to re-establish some measure of indigenous control over the negotiation process. In summary, I am suggesting that increasing Native control over educational, economic, and political institutions has potential for solving problems of cultural dissonance, and for this reason it should be made an area of further research in Canadian ethnic studies. Such a reorientation, or reclamation, would help to reduce areas of conflict between Natives and the larger society. Holding as it does a considerable potential for reducing Native identity problems, it would also serve to place Aboriginal cultures in a more positive light.

CHAPTER NINE

Applied Anthropology: Challenges for Today and Tomorrow

There was little to indicate to us, in our innocence, that civilization itself was threatened – that we were witness not merely to human moral weakness and error, but to an overwhelming evolutionary process. — P. Bohannan, ‘Beyond Civilization’

Introduction The twentieth century had its wars, injustices, and vast promise. In many ways it was a century of hope. And so we begin this new one with the belief that we are able to meet the challenges of a new tomorrow. We stand on the threshold of an immensely intriguing future, but it is a future that will no doubt be plagued, as it has been in the past, by old garbage that must be brought along in tow. Today’s solutions too often sound like tomorrow’s failed expectations. As Paul Bohannan, a former president of the American Anthropological Association, aptly reminds us, When we reach solutions to today’s problems, the society and culture that we will have built for the purpose will be of a sort the world has never seen before. It may be more, or less, civilized than what we have, but it will not be civilization as we know it. (1971: 54–5)

It is with some trepidation, then, that anthropologists venture into this task of prognostication, mindful of how badly equipped we are for this sort of job. In this final chapter I sum up some of the main issues involved in contemporary applied anthropology and try to give some

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sense of direction for what could lie ahead, specifically as it relates to our understanding of Aboriginal issues in Canada.

Ethics, Advocacy, and Aboriginal Issues Anthropology has sometimes been a study of civilization that ranged over vast epochs searching for clues to the rise, or demise, of various social and technological constructions in human history. The discipline of anthropology is now barely a hundred years old, yet it has undergone significant and fundamental changes since its early beginnings. In its early days, anthropology had a speculative, elitist orientation. It was then yanked back to ground level by enterprising scholars such as Boas and Malinowski, who shifted the focus to skilled research based on first-hand fieldwork. Under this new impetus, the doctrine of cultural relativism emerged as the guiding philosophical principle, augmented by a holistic, comparative orientation. Anthropology prospered with this new emphasis on relevance, establishing itself as a professional science and, in the process, becoming ensconced in the university curriculum of the arts and sciences. The early research agenda of Boas and his associates was to produce well-rounded, ethnographic accounts of traditional Aboriginal cultures. Yet because of the climate of the times during the world wars, anthropology was also drawn into the study of such important social issues as race and culture, beliefs in racial determination, and discrimination in immigration policy. Anthropologists were outspoken about the treatment of Aboriginal peoples – the suppression of their cultural practices, the stripping of their rights and freedoms, their enforced labour, and the unlawful overrunning of Native lands. Anthropologists were also instrumental, in the wake of the Second World War, in documenting the deleterious consequences of long-standing government policies aimed at forcing the assimilation of Native peoples into a European-based society. By the 1960s anthropology’s role as critic or sounding board for government policies towards Native people took on a new dimension with the recommendations of the Hawthorn Report and its insistence that Natives be treated as citizens plus, with rights beyond those of the average citizen. The impact was largely felt in the political arena of Native-government relations, when anthropology began to take on more of an advocacy role, thereby beginning to establish itself as a discipline with a practical side to it. The White Paper controversy at the end of the 1960s drew unprecedented media attention towards Native issues. The public, as never before, was becoming familiar with Native demands to take a greater

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control over their lives. These demands were highlighted by marches and caravans to Parliament Hill and local venting of discontent, as in the armed occupation of Anishenabe Park in Kenora. The big events of the 1970s were the James Bay hydroelectric project and the Mackenzie Valley pipeline debates, which further highlighted the industrial impact on Native lands and the environmental threats posed to the Native way of life. Up until then it was mostly the anthropologists who bothered to venture into the backwoods of the James Bay Cree, the Dene of the Northwest Territories, or the Inuit of the Arctic. For anthropologists, the last twenty years have brought the revelation that the small, traditional Native communities in which they had worked for so long in relative obscurity were becoming increasingly intertwined into the wider political scene (Dyck 1990: 42–3). There were now consultant reports and land-use studies to be prepared, and appearances in the courts to be taken into account. A whole new world was opening up for anthropology, a world that brought with it strains and tensions that were largely unknown to the previous generation of fieldworkers. In recent years the question of professional identity for anthropologists has been a troubling matter, especially with the possibility of so many role conflicts. For example, the contemporary role of consultant, mediator, or advocate has placed a considerable stress on a discipline whose members are attempting to forge a new identity for themselves as they revamp the underpinnings of their discipline’s basic theory and methodology. For some, these strains and the new directions anthropology is taking are seen to spell the end of the discipline. They would point to the serious challenge to anthropology’s relativistic, objectivist orientation, as well as the sharp decline in such traditional preoccupations as kinship and religious studies. Others would argue that changes are inevitable, and that anthropology had better adapt to the contemporary world or drop out of contention and dissolve into a nondescript social science with no discernible characteristics or contributions. This debate has meant that the recent history of anthropology has been a precarious navigational adventure: on one shore are those who see anthropologists as exploiters of Aboriginal peoples for their own self-interest; on the other are those who see the recent switch to consulting and advocacy as debasing anthropology’s scholarly ideals. A central issue for the future revolves around the extent to which an outmoded tradition of ethical neutrality will impede anthropology’s progress in forging a new identity and establishing an agenda for the future. There is no going back to the traditional ethnography of the 1930s and before, yet attempts should be made to preserve the strengths that

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anthropology has built up over its lifetime. The most important of these is the gathering of information through first-hand, extended fieldwork at the community level. The second is the attempt to place these local concerns within a wider context so that comparison and discussion can illuminate broad trends, policies, and relationships. These two preeminent strengths will serve to maintain anthropologists’ interest in current social issues and will emphasize the necessity of making ethnographic findings more relevant to practical and political concerns. This is where the applied side of anthropology comes in. Research in Aboriginal communities is often conducted over an extended period of time, taxing the time and resources of the community. Anthropology’s research capabilities will not be enhanced by a focus on arcane, frivolous, or antiquated topics. There should be a concrete focus, developed in concert with Native leaders, that would employ time and resources as effectively as possible. The researcher in such instances will be required to encourage the community to define its development objectives in the most realistic manner possible. The researcher will also have to examine his or her own values in order to assess the extent to which these might be divergent from community goals. It is also incumbent upon researchers to develop the applied and scientific aspects of their studies, so that the best analysis of the wider implications and lessons of their projects can be made. Publication of data concerning a particular people will have to be discussed with the people themselves, yet one of the aims of applied research should be to disseminate the findings so as to benefit those communities struggling with similar problems and issues. In other words, research should not be conducted unless there is a clear intention to bring it to completion and to disseminate the results by practical and policy-oriented means. Of course a request for anonymity on the part of community members should be respected, but it is probably in the best interests of all concerned if research to be published is kept as free from constraints as possible, especially in cases where meaningful applied policies can be drawn from the data.

Research, Policies, and Community Development As it now stands, anthropology over the last several decades has made some significant contributions that can be built upon further. One of the most important of these areas is the documentation of Native peoples’ subsistence practices of hunting and fishing, and the threats to these by our industrial society. The Natives’ use of local resources is a crucial factor to the very survival of Canada’s indigenous population, yet the

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threats to their local economies by hydroelectric dam construction, industrial pollution, overcutting of the forests, and anti-sealing lobbies have brought severe hardship to Native communities. Anthropologists have lived in these communities, and they know at first hand what the people are trying to cope with. The challenge is how to bring this knowledge to the wider arena of debate, both in academe and in the forum of public policy discussions. So far anthropologists have not done very well in communicating these concerns to the outside world, yet it is hoped that the younger generation of scholars coming along will make this endeavour part of their life’s work. For example, ethnographies of government departments and bureaucracies would help us understand how decisions are made that are formulated as policies towards ethnic minorities and that ultimately become legislation. This new focus could also examine our current immigration policies, issues of Arctic sovereignty, and international migration and trade. A first-hand familiarity with these concerns would be of immense value in formulating the wider comparisons and generalizations that anthropologists are expected to make, but cannot currently accomplish because they lack knowledge in so many important areas. Community development schemes will be more successful in the future when they start to take into account the importance, in Aboriginal communities, of personal relationships such as the kinship ties that bind the different generations together (Price 1978: 280–1). So often today, various government policies have the effect of undermining the institutions that keep Aboriginal communities intact. Some of these problems can be eased if there is greater participation on the part of Aboriginal people in the planning and implementation of development projects. This could mean that many of the consulting and feasibility studies currently conducted by Euro-Canadians could be conducted by Natives trained in such areas as social and economic impact assessment. These changes would help foster a feeling that a community development project has emerged from the Aboriginal people themselves. After all, it is the local people who have a personal stake in the successful outcome of a project, and they are most aware of their specific needs. There is also an important additional factor having to do with how ‘development’ is perceived in the local community, and how it is liable to contrast with the plans of outside promoters with their prepackaged schemes. To the Aboriginal community, successful development means a greater sense of social cohesion and self-esteem, not just simple material gain. It follows, then, that another important challenge for the future is to work out the evolving relationship between Native peoples and the

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anthropology community. Certainly the traditional distinction between researcher and subject-informant has become increasingly blurred in recent years. Many anthropologists now find employment on a contractual basis with Native band administrations. They are being asked to conduct research into areas such as land-use and occupancy studies, which the band itself finds useful in its negotiations with outside governments. These new opportunities should be welcomed by a discipline that is struggling with questions concerning its own relevance and identity. This is especially the case considering the dwindling employment opportunities at universities and museums as a result of budget cutbacks, and the diminished access to independent research funds. The challenge here concerns how anthropologists will cope with this reversal of roles. In the past, researchers were highly independent people who were free to design research projects as they wished, and to conduct them as they saw fit. Today, this independence is curtailed to a considerable extent. The local communities now only allow access for research purposes if there is some direct benefit to the local population. The researcher has to present a detailed plan of action to the local council outlining the rationale behind the project and the contribution it will make to the communities involved. The contribution research could make to anthropology or the social sciences is usually only a distant secondary consideration. The challenge, then, is how to meet the expectations of both parties so that they become compatible and mutually reinforcing rather than competitive. The major benefit for anthropology is that these new rules will create an invigorated relationship with its traditional subjects of study. People will certainly be more willing to cooperate with researchers if they are able to see that the work has some direct relevance to their lives. Of course this band-based, contract type of research should not necessarily preclude research investigations along purely theoretical lines, nor should there be any reason why wider research goals should not also be sought. What it does mean, though, is that future anthropological research will be the subject of increasingly greater controls regarding how it is conducted and eventually used. (Even now, research grant proposals go through a lengthy review process involving peers in one’s own discipline as well as ‘generalists’ in allied fields.) Proposals will also have to be examined by university ethics committees, which are increasingly interested in the extent to which researchers are willing to obtain consent, usually in writing, from the local people involved. This is all in addition to the permission that must be obtained from the Aboriginal communities in order to conduct the research and publish any results that may come from it. Ethics committees

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might not pose much of a problem for disciplines such as psychology, with its more laboratory-oriented setting, but for anthropology there are many additional, practical difficulties. In the first place there is the problem of accessibility. The community in which research is to be conducted may be in Mexico, Thailand, or another place many thousands of miles away. It is not possible simply to hop over to these places, obtain the necessary permission from the local residents, and then skip back home to the university. Another problem has to do with, say, translating a complex and detailed research proposal into a foreign language and a cultural setting that do not have words for the type of research being considered. It is not reasonable to expect to obtain informed consent under these sorts of circumstances, at least not under such rigorous guidelines. I can give an example of this sort of problem from my own experience. For several years I was a member of the Research on Human Subjects Committee at the University of Guelph. Most of the research proposals that we examined were relatively routine, with all the proper forms and signatures attached. But when a proposal from an anthropologist came in, the whole system was thrown into disarray. All the required prerequisites – consent, translation, and intelligibility – provoked a heated debate by the committee members. As an anthropologist I tried to explain the many practical and theoretical difficulties that ethics committees can create for anthropologists, and I asked that their guidelines be ‘loosened up’ to accommodate these concerns. It was usually a lot of hard work to explain the problem, but the discussions did give me a heightened awareness of the need to extend the discourse about contemporary anthropology to a wider audience. I do not mean to imply that anthropologists are not concerned with ethical issues, or that they are trying to skirt around them in some way. What I am getting at is simply that ethical guidelines in a transcultural context have to be considered in a different light than they are in other academic disciplines. There are, for example, rural sociologists, political scientists, and agricultural economists who work in cultural settings much different from their own. Yet it is common for such projects to be funnelled through the government agencies of the host country, so that the ethical questions of dealing with the local population on a social basis are not quite the same as they are for the anthropologist. But what about the anthropological identity issue? Future anthropologists could help make their research more credible if they showed more concern about enhancing the image of anthropologists as professionals

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and tried to prevent the unscrupulous use of anthropological research. What is happening today is that anthropologists are starting a movement whose goal is protection. The suggestion is being made that anthropologists should be certified, linked in some way with a parent professional organization in a relationship similar to that between doctors and the Canadian Medical Association or lawyers and the Law Society of Upper Canada. For example, during the meetings of the Canadian Anthropology Society in 1989, concerns along these lines were raised by the executive board, and a proposal was subsequently put forward called ‘Towards the Certification of Canadian Anthropologists’ (Tremblay, Freedman, and Ervin 1990). As the document explains, ‘These related to recent examples of unqualified or ‘’unethical’’ individuals making claims of possessing anthropological expertise in their practice as consultants or expert witnesses. Protection of the public, the reputation of the discipline and the employment opportunities of properly qualified practising anthropologists were all considered at issue’ (1990: 1).

Aboriginal Studies in Anthropology It is evident that anthropologists today are in the process of working out many different relationships – among themselves because of the certification issue, but also with their sponsors, employers, and clients. In relations with the sponsors of research, for example, anthropologists ‘should always consider the sponsor’s specific goals in the light of the general interests and welfare of the community in which they act. They should be aware that they may not be able to serve the interests of all segments of the community at the same time that they serve the interest of the sponsor’ (Society of Applied Anthropology in Canada 1984: 9). To state this somewhat differently: as the situation stands now, contemporary anthropologists are faced with new roles in which multiple audiences can make contradictory demands upon both fieldworkers and the results of their research. They will have to be prepared to adjust to an ambiguous and stressful role that is forcing fieldworkers to consider personal loyalties and make informed decisions concerning their priorities. This will no doubt result in a certain degree of uncertainty about what the anthropologist’s role in the modern world of inter-ethnic affairs should be. Today anthropologists often find themselves acting as intermediaries in conflict situations between the agents of government and local groups. However, while there is some cause for concern, these conflicts also indicate that a new conception of anthropological work is

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emerging that has important implications for the discipline as a whole. More effort will have to be made in the future to explore these implications, keeping in mind that the new social involvement by anthropologists is taking place in the context of a contemporary world immersed in rapid social and ideological change. A certain amount of self-reflection is in order, especially regarding anthropology’s traditional concern with cultural relativism and objectivity. At the basis of cultural relativism is the idea that one should tolerate behaviour and cultural conventions though they differ from one’s own. Yet some cultures cannot readily do this. In the role of scientist, many anthropologists would attempt to support the validity of cultural relativism, noting that objectivity is required to make meaningful crosscultural assertions. On the other hand, as private citizens they might well wish to condemn acts perpetrated in other cultures. There is a slippery bit of logic involved in this way of thinking, leading to the mistaken assumption that knowledge falls into two realms, that of the scientific world and that of the citizen, which leaves one with the notion that scientific knowledge is irrelevant to social action. I want to argue quite strongly against this notion. Knowledge is knowledge, and there is no doubt that scientific findings are relevant to practical social and political issues. For example, as scientists or private citizens, why should we be willing to endorse a naive relativism that accepts violence as somehow normal or appropriate within certain cultural contexts? One would hope that in the future anthropologists will feel some obligation to interfere when violence threatens the well-being of informants and subjects, even if such actions interfere with ‘objectivity.’ No doubt there are currents of ideological and social change that influence how we interpret our ‘facts,’ which is to say that in the future the question of the anthropologist’s perspective needs to become an object of study in its own right.

Aboriginal Self-Determination The self-government issue is one of those areas where social scientists can safely set aside their relativistic tendency and more actively support Aboriginal efforts to take greater charge of their destiny. Anthropologists, for example, have devoted considerable attention in their research to the various forms of traditional leadership and government among Canadian Native people. There are studies of the Iroquois Confederacy, the personal-level leadership of northern Ojibwa and Cree

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hunters, and the complexities of the Kwakiutl and Haida sociopolitical groups on the Pacific coast. These studies demonstrate clearly that Aboriginal people have always been quite capable of managing their own internal affairs without the dubious interference of colonial administrators. Aboriginal people have continually stated that their most important goal is to govern themselves once again in a way that they choose, so that they can engage in a more complete power-sharing relationship than they now have with Ottawa and the provinces. From the Native perspective, what is required is the creation of another level of government so that Aboriginal First Nations can become an essential part of the Canadian Confederation. There has been considerable resistance to this on the part of many non-Native Canadians, who feel that we already have too many socalled hyphenated citizens. They may also distrust people with laws and institutions separate from their own, especially when government financial resources are seen as backing such a plan. Research in the social sciences could help alleviate such fears by demonstrating how such self-governing measures would serve to reduce the burden on the taxpayer by reducing wasted resources and administrative costs. Even today most Aboriginal communities have a much greater role to play in managing their own social programs, especially in the areas of housing, education, and social assistance. These changes also prove that improved efficiency is being achieved, as resources become more focused on the most important needs and as greater numbers of Aboriginal people receive more effective training for administrative positions. When this process of economic and administrative ‘devolution’ gains momentum, it should mean greater opportunities for Natives to set their own priorities concerning the formulation of budgets. This will not occur to any complete degree until Aboriginal self-government is enshrined in the Canadian constitution. Many politicians and government bureaucrats have been hesitant to accept such a proposal until they ‘know exactly what it is that will be enshrined.’ Of course, as Native leaders have been saying for some time, ‘That is the very point we have been arguing about – we want to make our own decisions, for ourselves, about the most appropriate forms of self-government that suit our needs.’ There is also a lot of room here for dialogue with social scientists who might be in a position to evaluate various courses of action. For example, control over land and resources has been the bedrock of Aboriginal self-government proposals. Their future, financial and otherwise, is inseparable from the ownership of an adequate land base that would give

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the people a way to make a living. Research could contribute suggestions as to how this land base could be made available, through fulfilment of existing treaty obligations on the part of the federal government and through settlement of other land claims that have a provincial component, such as land expropriated for parks and other purposes. There have been various examples of modified self-government provisions in the past, such as those contained in the James Bay Agreement (1976), the Sechelt Act (1986), and the agreement leading to the formation of Nunavut (1999). There is considerable debate today among Aboriginal leaders about these various agreements and whether they should be considered adequate future models of Aboriginal self-government. Under the James Bay Agreement, the Cree, Inuit, and Naskapi have some control over land and resources, but the provincial government of Quebec retains the royalties and makes the decisions about hydroelectric development in the territory. Later, in the Sechelt Indian Band Self-Government Act, many of the same powers accorded to the James Bay communities were also extended to the Sechelt Band. This latter agreement did not involve land as it did in Quebec, but in the British Columbia case the Sechelt Band was given the right to create its own constitution, with prior approval from Ottawa. In effect, the Sechelt Band is now capable of exercising all the powers that are normally under provincial jurisdiction. In these cases, what has been created is a municipal mode of government, outside the control of the Indian Act, in which the Aboriginal communities are capable of exercising fairly extensive power to determine their own future. Most non-Natives would regard these changes as adequately fulfilling the Aboriginal self-government objective. Yet, the majority of Aboriginal leaders have rejected these agreements. There are various reasons for this opposition. Some regard these changes as just another example of Ottawa and the provinces dominating, in a colonial fashion, the destiny of Aboriginal people. The municipal style of government is being done in a piecemeal manner, in which the new powers are the ones that Ottawa and the provinces would allow. The formation of Nunavut in 1999 provides a different model of selfgovernment. In this case the governing body is responsible for one large land mass in which the population comprises both Aboriginal and nonAboriginal persons in a territorial-style government. Although the Inuit form the majority of the Nunavut population (at about 84 per cent), they must still form a government that comprises competing, non-Aboriginal points of view and areas of interest. However, the diversity inherent in

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Inuit and non-Inuit interests is counterbalanced by a uniformity in the Inuit language and to some extent local cultural norms, values, and traditions. In other areas of Canada there is a more pronounced level of diversity among the Indian and Metis populations, making self-government a more problematic issue. There is also the implication that Ottawa has only one model of selfgovernment in mind, the municipal one, which does not leave any room for Aboriginal traditions and customs (Comeau and Santin 1990: 53–63). This individualistic tendency is also reinforced by a perception that Ottawa would rather deal with particular bands and communities than with the national-level Aboriginal organization, the Assembly of First Nations. It is the Assembly’s contention that a comprehensive approach should be taken, one involving a comprehensive land settlement and toplevel negotiations with Aboriginal leaders in a forum for constitutional change. As First Nations, the Aboriginal argument goes, they have an inherent right to determine their own powers and membership criteria.

Conclusion The time has come for members of the academic community to take the same stance against the colonial suppression of Aboriginal people as they have recently been willing to take against sexism and racism. These wider issues concern the extent to which social scientists are willing to speak out on social issues, thereby adding vigour to the debate on issues of national importance by lending the weight of their own research. This will mean that certain attitudes about how research is to be conducted will also have to change, largely through attempts to take greater cognizance of the goals and wishes of the people who are the subject of such study. It will also mean that certain other issues such as those pertaining to ethical neutrality, objectivity, and relativism should come under closer scrutiny. There is no inherent reason why social-scientific disciplines such as anthropology cannot take an advocacy role in today’s society. Nor can it be argued that this role is fundamentally at odds with the cultural-relativist underpinnings of anthropology. In fact, various forms of advocacy have had a very long tradition in anthropology, as far back as some of its most influential figures: Malinowski, Boas, and Mead. I believe anthropology must find ways to get in step with the modern world or it will be shunted into increasingly irrelevant corners of current debate. The vast store of anthropological knowledge that has been collected over the past hundred years is already gathering dust on library shelves.

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This material is not of much use to us today as we attempt to address current social issues and public policy because it is not structured in the right theoretical or methodological terms, and does not ask the questions that will give us the solutions we need. A recasting of anthropology can make it a much more relevant area of study in the future. To achieve this, the directions for research should first come more directly from the people being studied. What are the issues that they want researched? What problems do they see as important and needing solutions? How do they see the role of the researcher in meeting these requirements? This recasting of directions will ultimately mean that our search for relevance will put us in the back seat when it comes to putting together agendas for research. Still, reducing an individual researcher’s autonomy would seem a small price to pay for the opportunity to help modern civilization through its current malaise. This is not to say that discourse on advocacy, relativism, and ethics in applied anthropology should not continue; in fact, there are more reasons for continuing such discussions today than there were in the past. The point is that anthropologists have little reason to feel threatened by criticisms that ‘their research is too ivory-tower oriented,’ or that it does not sufficiently address the practical concerns of society at large. There are opportunities for growth and change here, based on anthropology’s traditional strengths. Anthropologists would be well advised not to abandon the enduring merits of their discipline, which will continue to be the gathering of information through first-hand fieldwork and an empathy for the people who are the subjects of their ethnological research. By conducting research in a participatory mode, there will also be additional opportunities in the future to learn more about local problems and social issues by becoming more actively involved in the search for solutions. As anthropologists carve out new areas of activity, there will also be a reaffirmation of anthropology’s traditional strength of learning through participation. I believe this also indicates a continued growth in the applied sector of anthropology and demonstrates anthropology’s continued vitality and adaptability in the modern world. Anthropology needs to address more squarely, and in a more critical manner, what anthropologists really stand for. We can better prepare the way for those who come after us if we deal with the question of `anthropology and Aboriginal issues’ today. An invigorated anthropology has much to offer to those who will try, in Geertz’s cryptic words, to ‘somehow understand how it is we understand understandings not our own’ (1983: 5), and everyone will benefit from the attempt.

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Index

Aboriginal: definitions of, 3–11; ethnic identity, 220–41, 245–6; selfdetermination, 256–9; studies in anthropology, 255–6. See also selfgovernment; Aboriginal rights Aboriginal rights: and anthropology, 138–40; in treaties, 135–6 Adams, H., 241, 243–4 advocacy role: among the Cree, 69– 71; anti-advocacy position, 77–81; in applied anthropology, 62–6, 87– 8, 111; as conflict management, 64, 71–4; as consulting, 252; ethics of, 249–55; and land claims, 82–6, 92–3 Agricultural Rehabilitation and Development Agency (ARDA), 190–1 Ahenekew, Chief David, 231 Algonquin Provincial Park, 136–8, 139 American Anthropological Association, 248 American Indian Movement (AIM), 13, 231 Anderssen, E., 214, 216 animator role. See Whitesand First Nation

Anishenabe Park, Kenora, Ontario, 235, 250 anthropology in Canada: history of, 17–22; as image-maker, 41–5; in post-1960s period, 22–6 applied anthropology. See advocacy role, in applied anthropology; fieldwork; Society of Applied Anthropology in Canada (SAAC) Arbess, S., 129, 172, 211, 212 Arctic Institute of North America, 26 Asad, T., 60, 116, 121 Asch, M., 24, 129 Assembly of First Nations (AFN), 6, 13, 14, 15, 16, 140, 152, 154, 182, 207, 208, 225, 229, 231, 259 assimilation policy, 12, 109, 183, 237 Bailey, A.G., 122 Bailey, F.G., 17, 199, 239 band membership. See Bill C-31; Indian Act Barak, V., 30 Barbeau, M., 19, 20, 21 Barker, J., 21

288 Index Barrett, S.R., 34, 36, 115, 116, 117, 222, 223, 236 Barron, F.L., 111, 185 Barth, F., 226 Beck, B.E.F., 224 Belanger, D., 112 Belshaw, C.S., 35, 112, 210 Benidickson, J., 139 Bennett, J., 162 Beothuk, 231 Berger, T.R. (chief justice), 23, 24, 127, 129 Berger Inquiry. See Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry Berreman, G.D., 68, 230 Bielawski, E., 112 Bienvenue, R.M., 239 Biggar, H.P., 11 Bill C-31 (1985), 13, 124, 221, 226; update of, 227–9. See also Indian women; Indian Act Bishop, C., 12, 49, 240 Blalock, H.M., 237 Boas, F., 3, 18, 19, 28–9, 249 Bodley, J.H., 86, 159 Bohannan, P., 248 Boldt, M., 14, 183, 207, 208, 224, 227, 232, 240 Bowles, R.P., 12 Bray, M., 138 British Columbia Pre-emption Act (1970), 226 British Emancipation Act (1833), 223 British North America (BNA) Act, 7, 220, 223 Brody, H., 24, 204, 230 broker role. See advocacy role; Whitesand First Nation Brownlie, R., 111 Buchanan, C., 160 Burnet, J., 219, 224

Cairns, A.C., 22, 141–2, 153, 154, 229 Campbell, M., 242 Canadian Anthropology Society, 139– 40, 255. See also Society of Applied Anthropology in Canada (SAAC) Cardinal, H., 13 Carr, Emily, 21 Carstens, P., 111, 163, 164, 236 Chambers, E., 43, 112, 113 Chance, N.A., 23 Charlottetown Accord (1992), 187, 209 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadian (1982), 13, 222, 225, 228 Christie, L., 111 Citizens Plus, 22, 121. See also Hawthorn Report Clark, K., 112 Clinton, C.A., 69 Coates, K., 24, 125 colonialism, 185, 200–1, 211–12, 257. See also assimilation policy; development and dependency; Indian Act Comeau, P., 259 Constitution Act (1982), 5, 7, 13. See also Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadian (1982) Cook, M., 112 Corrigan, S.W., 15 Cove, J., 39, 40–1, 69, 118 Cree, Grand Council of the, 23, 174, 181. See also development, among the Cree Cruikshank, J., 167 Crysdale, S., 111 cultural broker, role of, 74–7. See also advocacy role; Whitesand First Nation cultural relativism, 29–34, 119 Cultural Survival Inc., 86

Index 289 culture: and commitment, 66–7 Cummins, B.D., 112

ethnocentrism, concept of, 32 Etkin, C.E., 206, 207, 208

Dacks, G., 24, 125, 128, 197, 199, 240 Darnell, R., 19, 26, 153, 154 Dawson, George Mercer, 18 Deloria, V., 42 Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND): Indian reserves, administration of, 14, 16, 43, 209–11; schooling, role in, 185–8, 192–4 development: among Cree Indians, 157–9, 173–7; and dependency, 159– 66, 177–9, 209–11, 237; prospects for change, 169–70; views of/definitions of, 156–9, 179–81; women’s role in, 166–9. See also economy, service sector; food, country; wage work Dickason, O.P., 10 Dickson-Gilmore, J., 112 Driben, P., 111, 168, 172, 209, 210 Driedger, L., 223 Dunning, R.W., 49, 50, 55, 56, 132, 211, 212, 237 Dyck, N., 62, 109, 161, 191, 227, 231, 250

facilitator role. See advocacy role; Whitesand First Nation Falconer, P., 168 Feit, H.A., 40, 112, 128, 130, 133, 140, 174 fieldwork (research methods): on Aboriginal issues, 115–17; in anthropology, 45, 47, 258, 260; in community development, 251–5; learning from, 56–9; in northern Ontario, 47–54, 91–2, 114–15, 125, 133; on power relationships, 118–23; understanding research experiences, 54–6 First Ministers’ Conferences (1983–7), 15 Firth, R., 60, 112, 128, 130, 133, 140, 174 Fisher, A.D., 11, 178 Fisher, R., 202 Fiske, J., 166 Fleras, A., 183, 217 food, country (subsistence production), 126–32; and treaties, 135–6; and wage work, 132–5 Fort Hope (Eabamatoong) First Nation, 209–11 Francis, D., 12, 18, 240 Freedman, J., 255 Freeman, D.B., 240 Freeman, M., 26 Frideres, J.S., 13, 15, 20, 124, 129, 142, 153, 161, 164, 166, 169, 185, 229, 237, 238

economy, service sector, 170–3. See also development; wage work Eddy, E.M., 122 Effrat, B., 37 Elberg, N., 23 Elliot, J.L., 183, 217 Elsass, P., 77–8 Erasmus, Chief G., 15, 16–17, 140, 182 Ervin, A.M., 22, 26, 63, 78–9, 111, 255 ethics, in Aboriginal studies, 36–8, 87–9, 253–4; in anthropology, 34–6

Galbraith, J.K., 161, 162 Geertz, C., 162, 260 Geological Survey of Canada, 18, 19

290 Index Gerber, L.M., 168 Ghost Dance religion, 18 Gibbins, R., 109, 184 Globe and Mail (Toronto), 15, 213 Gold, G.L., 22 Goldschmidt, W., 157 government practices. See Agricultural Rehabilitation and Development Agency (ARDA); development; Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND) Graburn, N.H.H., 23 Haig-Brown, C., 111 Haldimand Tract, 10 Hallowel, A.I., 48 Halpern, J.M., 111 Handler, M.J., 18 Hansen, L.C., 111 Harper, Elijah, 85, 185 Harris, M., 33–4, 62, 72 Hastrup, K., 77–8 Hawkes, D.C., 183 Hawthorn, H.B., 22, 86, 198 Hawthorn Report, 22, 85–6, 198, 204, 205, 249. See also Citizens Plus Heber, R.W., 227 Hedican, E.J., 15, 31, 46, 49, 79, 111, 112, 114, 125, 126, 133, 166, 171, 175, 186, 194, 197, 198, 227 Henriksen, G., 79–80, 84 Henry, F., 66, 237 Hicks, G.L., 18 Hinshaw, R.E., 121 Hodgins, B.W., 139 Holberg, A.R., 66 Honigman, J.J., 42–3 Howes, D., 109 Hudson’s Bay Company, 11, 48, 49, 240 Hume, S., 40

hunting and fishing. See food, country Huron Tract Treaty (1827), 144 Ignace, R., 36 Indian Act: and assimilationist policy, 18, 34, 237; definition of Indian status, 5, 9–10, 226–7; federal/provincial jurisdiction over Indians, 7, 12, 188– 90, 192; Indian election procedures, 163, 203–4, 220, 238; and reserves, 15, 163, 210–11, 225, 236; revisions to (1927), 20, 202; rights and freedoms, 223, 249. See also Bill C-31 (1985) Indian Affairs, American Bureau of, 85, 122 Indian women: and development, 166–9; and Indian status, 13–14, 221, 226–7. See also Bill C-31; Indian Act Innis, H.A., 12, 239–40 International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), 79 Inuit (Eskimo), 8–9, 10, 18, 20, 128, 129, 172, 174, 203, 211, 212, 221; and Aboriginal issues, 214–17 Inuit Tapirisat organization, 9, 14, 152, 216, 217, 232. See also Nunavut Ipperwash Inquiry (2007): Camp Ipperwash, military base, 145–6; cost of, 154; Dudley George, shooting of, 143, 147, 149, 153; historical background of, 144–5; Ipperwash Provincial Park, 146–8; recommendations of, 150–3; Stoney Point Reserve, 143–5 Iroquois, 10. See also Oka (Quebec) Jacobs, S.E., 68 Jacobson, E.M., 235 James Bay Agreement, 24, 173–6, 180– 1, 258. See also development, among Cree Indians

Index 291 Jansen, W.H., 127 Jarvenpa, R., 127 Jenness, D., 19, 20, 60, 128 Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (1896–1901), 17. See also Thwaites, R.G. Jilek, W.G., 21, 111 Jordan, D.F., 227, 246 Jorgenson, J.G., 21, 30, 34, 163, 226 Kallen, E., 223, 246 Kaplan, D., 32 Kell, D., 138 Kienetz. A., 227 Klein, L.F., 107–8, 166 Kluckhohn, C., 224 Knight, R.K., 112 Koennecke, F.M., 112, 126 Krech, S., 12 Kroeber, A.L., 224 Kuper, A., 116 land claims, research on, 38–40, 123– 6. See also advocacy role, and land claims; Aboriginal rights, in treaties Landes, R., 48 La Prairie, C., 112 Larsen, T., 227, 244 LaRusic, I.E., 23, 61, 69–70, 71, 85, 130, 174 LaViolette, F.E., 20, 152, 202 Leacock, E., 17 leadership, characteristics of, 14–15 Legere, A., 213 Leighton, A.H., 63–4 Levin, W., 236 Lewis, D., 31–2, 60, 116–17 Lithman, Y.G., 112, 172 Little Bear, L., 225 Long, J.A., 207, 208, 225 Loram, C.T., 21

Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, 23, 25, 127, 129, 201, 250. See also Berger, T.R. (chief justice) Mackie, C., 165–6 Maclean, J., 19 Mahoney, J., 213 Malinowski, B., 60–1, 67 Malloy, T., 213 Manners, R., 32 Manuel, G., 28, 30, 35, 36 Marquet, J., 31 Marx, E., 71 Maybury-Lewis, D., 86, 88, 155 McFarlane, P., 111 McFeat, T., 17, 26 McGill Cree Project. See Programme in the Anthropology of Development (PAD) Mcllwraith, T.F., 19, 21 McMillan, A., 10 Mead, M., 66 Mechling, W.H., 19 mediator role. See advocacy role; Whitesand First Nation Medical Anthropology, Canadian Association of, 25, 255. See also Canadian Anthropology Society; Society of Applied Anthropology in Canada Medicine, B., 36, 40–1, 43–4 Meech Lake Accord, 15, 185, 187, 205 Metis, 7–8, 12, 142, 152, 185, 190, 191, 208, 221, 227, 232, 241 Metis Betterment Act (1938), 8 Metis Federation, Manitoba, 242, 243 Metis Society, Ontario, 242 Michanlenko, G., 125 Micmac, 244–5 Middleton, J., 199 Miller, J.R., 10 Minor, K., 111

292 Index Mitchell, M., 37 Morantz, T., 12, 18, 240 Morris, Hon. A., 12 Morse, B., 111 Mortimore, G.E., 218 multiculturalism, in Canada, 219, 220, 222–6 Municipal Elections Act, Ontario, 196 municipal government, 194–6, 258, 259. See also Sechelt Band Murray, Sen. L., 13 Nader, L., 35–6, 119 Nagata, S., 111 Nash, D., 65 Nash, J., 215 National Indian Brotherhood. See Assembly of First Nations National Museum of Civilization (formerly, National Museum of Man), 19, 21, 26, 39 Native Council of Canada, 14, 231–2 Neilson, M.O., 15 Neizen, R., 111, 215, 227 Nett, R., 63 Nicholson, J.P., 167 Nock, D., 21 non-reserve Aboriginal communities, 188–90, 192–4, 198 Northern Communities Act, of Ontario (1974), 195–6, 197 Nowak, M., 127 Nowry, L., 21 Nunavut, 9, 201, 212–14, 219, 221, 258. See also Inuit; Inuit Tapirisat Ohler, S., 214, 216 Oka (Quebec), 85, 142, 152, 166, 184, 187 O’Neil, J.D., 111

Paine, R., 43, 68, 76, 80–1, 172, 203, 211 Partridge, W.L., 122 Patterson, E.P., 68–9, 226 Peters, E., 167 Peterson, J.H., 68–9, 226 policy, and anthropology, 25, 110–15, 251–5 politics, of encapsulation, 199–202; non-indigenous structures, 202–4 Ponting, J.R., 109, 184 Posluns, M., 28, 30, 35 potlatch, legislation against (1884), 202, 226 Potts, Chief G., 123, 139. See also Tema-Augama Anishenabe Powdermaker, H., 36, 66–7, 119 Powell, J., 24, 125 Preston, R.J., 21, 70, 111, 112 Price, J.A., 20, 24, 34, 37, 173, 201, 252 Programme in the Anthropology of Development (PAD), McGill University, 23, 24, 85, 180 protectionism, policy of, 109 Proulx, J.R., 23 Purich, D., 213 racism: versus ethnicity, 233–7 Ray, A.J., 12, 240 Redbird, D., 242, 243 research methods. See fieldwork Richardson, B., 138 Richer, S., 40–1 Richling, B., 20, 111 Ridington, R., 32 Rogers, E.S., 47, 48, 49, 55, 82, 134, 203, 211 Rosenberg, M.W., 167 Ross, R., 112 Rostow, W.W., 161 Royal Commission on Aboriginal

Index 293 Peoples (RCAP) (1996), 5, 8, 16, 140–3; cost of, 153–4 Royal Ontario Museum, 82 Royal Proclamation (1763), 12, 135, 144 Ryan, J., 26, 167 Salisbury, R.F., 23, 24, 71–4, 88–9, 112, 121, 127, 157, 170, 175, 227, 245–6 Salzman, P.C., 79, 200 Santin, A., 259 Sapir, E., 19, 20, 21 Satzewich, V., 164–5, 169, 185 Savishinsky, J.S., 229–30 Sawchuck, J., 111, 191, 227, 242, 243 Scheffel, D.Z., 155 Schissel, B., 213 Schmidt, P.F., 33 Scholte, B., 32, 33 Schusky, E.L., 173, 203 Sechelt Band (British Columbia), 204–9, 218. See also municipal government self-government, Aboriginal, 182–3; and administrative control, 197–9; and education, 185–8; institutional structures, 183–5; self-determination in, 256–9 Sharma, S.P., 72–3 Shewell, H., 111, 159, 160 Shkilnyk, A.M., 111 Siggner, A., 15 Silman, J., 168 Silverman, M., 23 Silverman, R.O., 15 Sjoberg, G., 63 Skinner, A., 48 Slobodin, R., 191 Smith, J.G., 230, 240 social responsibility, concept of, 67–9

Society of Applied Anthropology in Canada (SAAC): formation of, 25; issues relating to, 37, 78. See also Canadian Anthropology Society; Medical Anthropology, Canadian Association of Speck, D.C., 111 Stearns, M.L., 37 Steward, J.H., 85 Stout, C.W., 213 Stymeist, D.H., 219, 227, 232, 233–5 subsistence production, See food, country Suffling, R., 125 Surtees, R.J., 111 Sweet, L., 26 Synnott, A., 185 Szathmary, E.J.E., 112 Tait, D., 199 Tamanawas dance, 20, 60 Tanner, A., 81, 111, 179, 227, 237 Tator, C., 237 Taylor, J.G., 18, 47 Tax, S., 68 Tema-Augama Anishenabe, 123, 139. See also Potts, Chief G. Temagami Wilderness Society, 138–9 termination policy, 13, 109 Thompson, L., 68 Thomson, A., 138 Thwaites, R.G., 17 tourism. See economy, service sector treaties, 7. See also Aboriginal rights, in treaties; food, country, and treaties; Huron Tract Treaty; James Bay Agreement; Whitesand First Nation, land problems of Tremblay, M.A., 22, 255 Trigger, B.G., 11, 17–18, 21, 31

294 Index Trudeau, R.S., 111, 172, 209, 210 Tsing, A., 111 Turner, E., 111 Union of Ontario Indians, 95, 154 Usher, P., 127 Vancouver Sun, 40 Van West, J.J., 18 Vincent, S., 23 wage work, and hunting, 132–5. See also development; economy; food, country Wagner, M.W., 112 Waldram, J.B., 31, 40, 62, 111, 125, 181, 190, 227 Wallace, A., 18, 19 Watson, G., 227, 241, 243 Wax, R.H., 61, 63, Weaver, S.M., 25, 109, 111, 121, 198, 226, 227, 230 Weaver, T., 112, 121

Wein, E.E., 126 Wenzel, G.W., 112, 127 Westerman, F., 41–2, 46 White Paper on Indian Policy (1969), 152, 230, 249. See also Hawthorn Report Whitesand First Nation (Ontario): animator role in, 102–4, 105; facilitator role in, 101–2, 105; land problems of, 92–6; mediator role in, 99–101, 104; university involvement in, 96–9 Wien, F., 112 Williamson, R.G., 75 Wilson, Sir Daniel, 18 Wittaker, E., 34 World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP), 30 Wotherspoon, T., 164–5, 169, 185, 213 Yerbury, J., 12, Young, D., 111 Young, L., 213