Rediscovered Self: Indigenous Identity and Cultural Justice 9780773576742

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THE REDISCOVERED SELF

mcgill-queen’s native and northern series (In memory of Bruce G. Trigger) Sarah Carter and Arthur J. Ray, Editors 1 When the Whalers Were Up North Inuit Memories from the Eastern Arctic Dorothy Harley Eber 2 The Challenge of Arctic Shipping Science, Environmental Assessment, and Human Values Edited by David L. VanderZwaag and Cynthia Lamson 3 Lost Harvests Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy Sarah Carter 4 Native Liberty, Crown Sovereignty The Existing Aboriginal Right of Self-Government in Canada Bruce Clark 5 Unravelling the Franklin Mystery Inuit Testimony David C. Woodman 6 Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785–1841 James R. Gibson 7 From Wooden Ploughs to Welfare The Story of the Western Reserves Helen Buckley 8 In Business for Ourselves Northern Entrepreneurs Wanda A. Wuttunee 9 For an Amerindian Autohistory An Essay on the Foundations of a Social Ethic Georges E. Sioui 10 Strangers Among Us David Woodman 11 When the North Was Red Aboriginal Education in Soviet Siberia Dennis A. Bartels and Alice L. Bartels

12 From Talking Chiefs to a Native Corporate Elite The Birth of Class and Nationalism among Canadian Inuit Marybelle Mitchell 13 Cold Comfort My Love Affair with the Arctic Graham W. Rowley 14 The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7 Treaty 7 Elders and Tribal Council with Walter Hildebrandt, Dorothy First Rider, and Sarah Carter 15 This Distant and Unsurveyed Country A Woman’s Winter at Baffin Island, 1857–1858 W. Gillies Ross 16 Images of Justice Dorothy Harley Eber 17 Capturing Women The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in Canada’s Prairie West Sarah A. Carter 18 Social and Environmental Impacts of the James Bay Hydroelectric Project Edited by James F. Hornig 19 Saqiyuq Stories from the Lives of Three Inuit Women Nancy Wachowich in collaboration with Apphia Agalakti Awa, Rhoda Kaukjak Katsak, and Sandra Pikujak Katsak 20 Justice in Paradise Bruce Clark 21 Aboriginal Rights and Self-Government The Canadian and Mexican Experience in North American Perspective Edited by Curtis Cook and Juan D. Lindau

22 Harvest of Souls The Jesuit Missions and Colonialism in North America, 1632–1650 Carole Blackburn

34 Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay Stuart Houston, Tim Ball, and Mary Houston

23 Bounty and Benevolence A History of Saskatchewan Treaties Arthur J. Ray, Jim Miller, and Frank Tough

35 The American Empire and the Fourth World Anthony J. Hall

24 The People of Denendeh Ethnohistory of the Indians of Canada’s Northwest Territories June Helm 25 The Marshall Decision and Native Rights Ken Coates 26 The Flying Tiger Women Shamans and Storytellers of the Amur Kira Van Deusen 27 Alone in Silence European Women in the Canadian North before 1940 Barbara E. Kelcey

36 Uqalurait An Oral History of Nunavut Compiled and edited by John Bennett and Susan Rowley 37 Living Rhythms Lessons in Aboriginal Economic Resilience and Vision Wanda Wuttunee 38 The Making of an Explorer George Hubert Wilkins and the Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913–1916 Stuart E. Jenness 39 Chee Chee A Study of Aboriginal Suicide Alvin Evans

28 The Arctic Voyages of Martin Frobisher An Elizabethan Adventure Robert McGhee

40 Strange Things Done Murder in Yukon History Ken S. Coates and William R. Morrison

29 Northern Experience and the Myths of Canadian Culture Renée Hulan

41 Healing through Art Ritualized Space and Cree Identity Nadia Ferrara

30 The White Man’s Gonna Getcha The Colonial Challenge to the Crees in Quebec Toby Morantz

42 Coyote and Raven Go Canoeing Coming Home to the Village Peter Cole

31 The Heavens Are Changing Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity Susan Neylan 32 Arctic Migrants/Arctic Villagers The Transformation of Inuit Settlement in the Central Arctic David Damas 33 Arctic Justice On Trial for Murder – Pond Inlet, 1923 Shelagh D. Grant

43 Something New in the Air The Story of First Peoples Television Broadcasting in Canada Lorna Roth 44 Listening to Old Woman Speak Natives and Alternatives in Canadian Literature Laura Smyth Groening 45 Robert and Francis Flaherty A Documentary Life, 1883–1922 Robert J. Christopher

46 Talking in Context Language and Identity in Kwakwaka’wakw Society Anne Marie Goodfellow 47 Tecumseh’s Bones Guy St-Denis 48 Constructing Colonial Discourse Captain Cook at Nootka Sound Noel Elizabeth Currie 49 The Hollow Tree Fighting Addiction with Traditional Healing Herb Nabigon 50 The Return of Caribou to Ungava A.T. Bergerud, Stuart Luttich, and Lodewijk Camps 51 Firekeepers of the Twenty-First Century First Nations Women Chiefs Cora J. Voyageur

52 Isuma Inuit Video Art Michael Robert Evans 53 Outside Looking In Viewing First Nations Peoples in Canadian Dramatic Television Series Mary Jane Miller 54 Kiviuq An Inuit Hero and His Siberian Cousins Kira Van Deusen 55 Native Peoples and Water Rights Irrigation, Dams, and the Law in Western Canada Kenichi Matsui 56 The Rediscovered Self Indigenous Identity and Cultural Justice Ronald Niezen

The Rediscovered Self Indigenous Identity and Cultural Justice RONALD NIEZEN

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2009 isbn-978-0-7735-3529-9 (cloth) isbn-978-0-7735-3530-5 (paper) Legal deposit second quarter 2009 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Niezen, Ronald The rediscovered self: indigenous identity and cultural justice/ Ronald Niezen. (McGill-Queen’s native and northern series; 56) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-7735-3529-9 (bound). isbn 978-0-7735-3530-5 (pbk.) 1. Native peoples – Canada – Ethnic identity. 2. Native peoples – Canada – Civil rights. 3. Native peoples – Canada – Legal status, laws, etc. 4. Native peoples – Canada – Politics and government. 5. Indigenous peoples – Ethnic identity. 6. Indigenous peoples – Civil rights. 7. Indigenous peoples – Legal status, laws, etc. 8. Indigenous peoples – Politics and government. i. Title. ii. Series: McGill-Queen’s native and northern series; 56 e99.e7n54 2009

323.1197’071

Typeset in Sabon 10.5/13 by Infoscan Collette, Quebec City

c2008-907968-x

To Bruce Trigger

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Contents

Figures

xi

Preface

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1 Introduction

3

2 Transnational Indigenism 17 3 Digital Identity 44 4 Culture and the Judiciary 66 5 The Secrets of Exposure 92 6 The Politics of Suicide 125 7 Therapeutic History 149 8 Conclusion Notes

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References 213 Index

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Figures

3.1 Dynamics of cultural transference in the indigenous peoples’ movement 49 3.2 A United Nations cyber school bus web page (detail), http://cyberschoolbus.un.org/indigenous/index.asp, viewed 2 November 2006 52 3.3 Cree computing resources download page (detail), http://www.creeculture.ca/e/language/fonts_kbds.html, viewed 17 June 2008 59 3.4 Cree cultural resources page (detail), http://www.creeculture.ca/e/resources/index.html, viewed 17 June 2008 61 5.1 Cross Lake protesters listening to speeches at the Plaza of Northern States Power, Minneapolis, 22 June 1998 104 5.2 Ratification ceremony of the Hydro Payment Law, Cross Lake, 30 October 1998 107 5.3 Spectators at the ratification ceremony of the Hydro Payment Law, Cross Lake, 30 October 1998 107 5.4 Pimicikamak Cree Nation’s certificate of citizenship 109 5.5 Floating debris near the spillway of Manitoba Hydro’s Jenpeg Dam, 1998 115

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Preface

The Rediscovered Self is an outcome of the realization that the more one examines a chosen topic, the more one becomes aware of previously overlooked or underestimated things that call for consideration. It gathers together a set of essays that I wrote following up on themes touched on but not fully developed in my two most recent books, The Origins of Indigenism and A World Beyond Difference. In Origins, I tried to make a connection between emerging standards of human rights and a new form of transnational identity, built around the concept of “indigenous peoples.” One of the central arguments in this previous book is that the indigenous peoples’ movement, as a transnational, legally grounded source of identity, is simultaneously encouraging both global networking and the assertion of local goals of autonomy. During the five short years since its publication, developments in the areas of human rights standards, the further proliferation of non-governmental organizations, and new information and communication technologies have made it clear to me that the (now) global phenomenon that I refer to as indigenism should be described in more detail at both ends of a spectrum: at one end, as a transnational phenomenon that is pushing the boundaries of supra-state activism and, at the other, as a source of legal standards and expectations of social justice that are contributing to ethnic formalism, sharpening the boundaries of belonging, and redefining the cultural reference points of collective identity. More than this, the development of indigenous transnational activism suggested the need for further consideration of ways that public assertions of rights and identity might be found together. They can be seen, for example, in judicial decision making, in transnational

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lobbying in pursuit of local or regional grievances, and in the values associated with the production of knowledge – all issues that I examine in the chapters included in this book. In The Rediscovered Self I am also engaged in pursuing themes first broached in A World Beyond Difference. In that book I was centrally concerned with the cosmopolitan imaginings and strivings that emerged out of the challenges and opportunities of “global shrinking.” This global theme meant that I was unable to fully develop an account of the new motives and institutional mechanisms of ethnic formalism. Several chapters included in the present volume take up this starting point by describing some of the paradoxically intercultural, collaborative pathways for redefining the local and asserting identities that are legally and culturally circumscribed. This includes (in chapter 7) a postcolonial literature that is tolerant of or encouraging towards efforts to recover suppressed histories as foundations of belonging. Shifting our emphasis away from ideas or hopes of an emerging cosmopolitan world culture allows us to see more clearly the uses and consequences of the utopian imagination for reasserted collective identities. In this book I am also acting on an opportunity to further describe and reflect on ethnographic material and experience from aboriginal communities in northern Canada. One of the central findings of this research – that aboriginal peoples are seeking and acting upon new opportunities for furthering rights claims, largely through greatly expanded networks of collaboration – provides an opportunity to take the subject matter of aboriginal peoples out of the wellestablished regional specializations and into a more comparative approach, with implications for global patterns of social change. If the unlimited-length titles of the nineteenth century were still fashionable, I might have entitled this book something like: “An investigation into the rediscovered sense of collective selfhood attendant upon the pursuit of cultural justice, with due consideration given to consequences thereof for the foundations of anthropological and historical knowledge.” This exercise in antiquarianism would have to include issues that would have been odd or unfamiliar even fifty years ago. Anthropology and related disciplines have developed an approach to culture that stresses its contingency, the porous and artificial nature of boundaries, and the dislocations and inventions of history. At the same time a prominent theme in the ever-expanding

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globalization literature emphasizes new challenges to cultural continuity through acceleration of processes of disembedding and dissolution, mobility, migration, and dispersal of populations, scattering those who might once have been more securely held together by common institutions, territories, and traditions. The discontents of civilization are not only outcomes of social orders that impose excessive constraints on individuals but also of social (dis)orders that impose excessive and uncomfortable conditions of dissolution and confusion regarding social membership and self-knowledge. This has introduced unprecedented forms of tension between the ideals of cosmopolitan freedom and the needs for cultural security, social belonging, and a historically grounded understanding of the self. At the same time that the coherence and survival of distinct peoples is more commonly under threat, the tool kit of social defence that emphasizes cultural continuity has expanded through new legal regimes, forms of communication, and methods of organization. The most important challenge for those who are marginalized by these circumstances now becomes making effective use of new opportunities to establish one’s place within or among dominant powers, to redefine conditions of belonging, and, in the process, to make one’s collective distinctiveness, one’s innermost inherited qualities, clear to oneself and others. In choosing the title The Rediscovered Self, I was in part inspired by Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self (1992), a historical survey of key concepts in the Western philosophical tradition that emerged from the crumbling of theistically grounded morality, which cumulatively amount to (though Taylor doesn’t put it in these terms) a distinct civilizational tradition. Taylor accomplishes an intellectually sophisticated account of philosophical identity construction, defining moral choices within the Western philosophical tradition as possible anchorages or sources of security in times of ideological turmoil and danger. This theme in Taylor’s survey of Western intellectual history might seem a long way from my concerns with the connections between justice and identity, except perhaps for its indirect suggestion of the following: among those who have vital histories and memories of domination and dispossession, one process by which key features of collective identity are articulated is marked by rediscovery, recovering an essence seen to have once been a part of one’s innermost being but that was temporarily lost, maligned, and

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excoriated by outside forces, in some cases slated for elimination though state-sponsored policies of assimilation. The rediscovered self is the articulation of collective being that has been brought back from an imposed condition of oblivion and forgetting. While acknowledging the plurality of possible identities involved in this process (which I sometimes refer to as a “repertoire”) it is at the same time important to recognize that the orientation of identity reconstruction is often towards coherence, unity, singularity and, at times, exclusivity. The condition in which identities are re-discovered and re-constructed under these circumstances gives them a greater hold on peoples’ imaginations, makes struggles over competing ideals more poignant, and makes more salient the contradictions and paradoxes of identity formation in the processes of legal and institutional formalization, a central theme running throughout this book. This recognition of the ideological and, at times, politically mobilized pull (even if it is unrealizable and unattainable) of security, along with the singularity of collective identity in conditions of conceptual and practical insecurity, leads me to address several central questions: In what new ways are people establishing coherence to their histories, institutions, and essential qualities? How are they seeking stable, orderly, and secure forms of belonging in circumstances of ideological and social flux? How might they be overcoming the injuries of imposed change and social exclusion by rearticulating and redignifying the self? And what are the consequences of the success or failure (or both, in different ways and degrees) of these efforts? These are, of course, the kind of issues that define an intellectual era, and they cannot be satisfactorily dealt with in one short volume. By taking up my focus on indigenous peoples with these questions in mind, I hope only to make whatever contribution I can to better understanding the collaborations, contestations, and misunderstandings inherent in emerging forms of group identity. The Rediscovered Self would not have been written without the support of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation, whose aspirations towards justice and well-being are the subject of chapters 5 and 6. The circumstances in which my family and I were invited to Cross Lake (described briefly in chapter 5) involved an innovation in communitybased research support, based on a heightened sense of the uses of knowledge for political accountability. In the later stages of this

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project, I was supported very differently, but no less significantly, by a Canada Research Chair in the Comparative Study of Indigenous Rights and Identity. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I approach the task of thanking those individuals who contributed to The Rediscovered Self with the awareness that I cannot possibly mention all who in some way added to a varied research program over the span of some twenty years. Many colleagues from the various institutions in which I was employed or to which I was affiliated have influenced the ideas and information included in this book. Of particular note are James Anaya, Laurence Kirmayer, Arthur Kleinman, Sally Falk Moore, David Maybury-Lewis, Jennifer Brown, Martin Scheinin, Mark Watson, Andre Costopoulos, John Galaty, Colin Scott, Lisa Stevenson, Margaret Lock, and Allan Young. I am also grateful to my students and former students whose own research overlapped with the subject matter of this book, among them Galit Sarfaty, Noorjehan Johnson, David Lessard, Rémy Rouillard, Scott Matter, Tammy Cree, Jessika Tremblay, Megan Harvey, and Katherine Saunders-Hastings. I also find myself indebted to a number of individuals who, it seems, can only be grouped together under the unsatisfactory rubric of “activist”: Arnold Devlin, Bob Epstein, Ted Moses, Ann Stewart, Janet Anderson, Colin Gillespie, and Will Braun. Several research assistants made significant contributions, both practically and indirectly through active intellects that approached the material from other fields of research: Daniel Johnson, Laura Chassaigne, and Marie-Pierre Gadoua. Each of the main chapters in this book is the outcome of a distinct research project, and at this point my thanks should be directed more specifically to the support I had in their production. I am above all grateful to the publishers of each of the sources in which my work has appeared previously for permission to republish it here. Chapter 2 consists largely of reworked material previously published under the title “The Global Indigenous Movement,” in volume 2 of the Smithsonian Institution’s Handbook of North American Indians, edited by Garrick Bailey. The research for this chapter was supported by the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou

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Istchee), which included me as an observer delegate to a variety of international meetings, and by the Sami Council, which included me in a meeting of the Arctic Council. Chapter 3 was previously published as “Digital Identity: The Construction of Virtual Selfhood in the Indigenous Peoples’ Movement” in Comparative Studies in Society and History 45, 2 (2005): 532–51. Because of rapid changes in information and communication technologies (and their uses by activists), this subject matter has a limited shelf life. I am therefore grateful to those who provided invitations to, and comments in, subsequent talks on this topic: the Society for Technology and Development (standd) at McGill University (2005); the annual conference of the Sociology and Anthropology Graduate Student Association at Concordia University, Montreal (2006); the Institute for European Ethnology, Humboldt University, Berlin (2007); and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany (2007). Chapter 4 appeared previously as “Culture and the Judiciary: The Meaning of the Culture Concept as a Source of Aboriginal Rights in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 18, 2 (2003): 1–26. It began from a kernel of inspiration provided by Paul Joffe and ultimately took the form of a project jointly financially supported by the Assembly of First Nations and the Grand Council of the Crees. Chapter 5 was the subject of a paper presented to the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. It has since benefited from several years of direct and indirect feedback from my colleagues and students at McGill. Chapter 6 was the subject of a paper presented to a 2007 meeting of the National Network for Aboriginal Mental Health Research sponsored by the Canadian Institute of Health Research, with the institutional support of the Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry, Culture and Mental Health Research Unit, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal. I am particularly grateful to Laurence Kirmayer for sharing his impressive range of knowledge about aboriginal mental health and for including me in the innovative, interdisciplinary project under his direction. Chapter 7 was the topic of a paper presented in 2008 to the Department of Anthropology at Boston University under the title “Therapeutic History: Post-Colonial (Self-)Knowledge and the Critical Process.” I am grateful to Charles Lindholm for sponsoring this

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talk and to those who attended for providing a stimulating and encouraging response. Finally, it is important to acknowledge that I was not alone during the field research in northern Canada, which serves as a foundation for this book. My sons Erik and Alexander sometimes surprised me with their own (at the time) child’s-eye perspectives on life in an aboriginal reserve community, and my wife, Barbro Bankson, was throughout this project a source of support that defies categorization – a combination of muse, editor, and moral compass.

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THE REDISCOVERED SELF

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1 Introduction

the age of identity So much importance is attached to the process of discovering the essence of who we are in relation to others that the term “identity” might reasonably be used to capture the historical distinctiveness of the age in which we live. Despite the persistent dream of a world beyond difference, the most common political response to the experience of deracination involves making assertions of cultural difference and rearticulating the foundations of belonging, sometimes in ways that involve a cumulative process of ethnic formalization. The value that one is to place on identity attachments has been one of the persistent questions associated with establishing a postcolonial research agenda. One trend in the postcolonial literature is deeply suspicious of any kind of exclusive identity construction. This can be seen in Edward Said’s legacy of professedly antinationalist humanism – “exilic, extraterritorial, and unhoused,” rooted in the “dispora” status of the exemplary scholar.1 “Everyone of us today is a composite person,” he declaimed to the 2000 graduating class of the American University in Beirut, “and it is the rankest folly … to believe that individuals, or cultures, or nations, or religions, can be separated like sheep from goats into warring entities.” The most important obligation of the non-Western intelligentsia is to avoid narrow-minded exclusivism, while remaining “in a position of the curious and skeptical consciousness, always on the alert and receptive to the challenges … of the world beyond [one’s] borders,” and in this way “to see the whole of human history as common enterprise.”2

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This humanistic, cosmopolitan agenda can be set against a body of literature that is more encouraging of efforts to not only cast off the tutelage and paternalism of dominant societies but also, beyond this, to recover the suppressed histories of subaltern subjects as foundations of belonging. The idea of a cosmopolitan intelligentsia possessing the only legitimate way to transcend the power interests in social knowledge is not an attractive solution to many of those who see themselves as oppressed colonial subjects. To them, knowledge must have more than the blunt edges of uncommitted humanist contemplation; it must affirm primordial origins and act as a source of self-discovery and liberation. This starting point leads to a difficult challenge. If one continues to believe that attachments to language, homeland, and way of life are essential aspects of human fulfillment, then how does one represent these vitally significant things to oneself and others? If the historical experience of domination and forced cultural assimilation are basic to an understanding of one’s collective being, how is this history to be portrayed and by whom? There is also a world historical dimension to the significance of collective identity. One of the most significant effects of the quickened pace of communication, the high mobility of goods and people, and the traffic in cultural meaning is an increase in the importance of local control over the process of interpreting and reshaping cultural intrusions and innovations. Under these circumstances, cultural particularity, which commonly used to be seen within enclosed spaces, is now almost universally considered in conjunction with global forces, as an outcome of processes of collective definition or self-characterization. Inda and Rosaldo, for example, attach great importance to the perspective in the anthropology of globalization that insists that “the peoples of the periphery do not simply or necessarily absorb the ideologies, values, and life-style positions putatively embedded in the foreign cultural goods they consume. More often than not they actually customize these imported forms, interpreting them according to local conditions of reception.”3 This implies that those dynamics of human interaction usually associated with the rise of cosmopolitan world culture – mobility, disembedding, diaspora – at the same time lend increased importance to the countervailing trend towards assertions of local distinctiveness, including ideas associated with cultural enclosure, purity, and connection with the past.4

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This quickened and multifaceted process of cultural communication has implications for the formation of collective identity. In very general terms, relatively stable, socially defined status and pathways in life have given way to a wider range of options, possibilities, doubts, and insecurities, making more salient than ever before the questions “who am I?” and “who are we?” or, more fully stated, “who am I (are we) in a social world situated in conditions of individualization, pluralism, and global integration?” In these changed and changing circumstances identity has more commonly become an active accomplishment of the subject, whose sense of self is sometimes the outcome of strategic risk-taking in projects of public selfrepresentation. Those who were once held to be distinct through their conceptualization of the universe are more often recognized as distinct through their conceptualization of themselves. The complexity of this task of representation can easily be underestimated. For one thing, ethnic primordialism is challenged by a destabilized approach to culture, which has become one of the main currents of reflection on problems of collective identity and identity conflict. Steven Lukes captures the essence of this approach when he writes, “the idea that cultures are wholes, rather than clusters or assemblages of heterogeneous elements with varying origins is a systematic exercise in the reduction of complexity based on mythical thinking.”5 The words “culture,” “tradition,” and “identity” are often used interchangeably and in ways associated with mutability and flux. The extending reach of neoliberal modernity is widely seen to be bringing about cultural exchange, collision, and deracination, out of which traditions are invented, cultures claimed, and identities asserted. At the same time, the pursuit of collective justice is producing ideas about culture and tradition that have an independent, boundaryenhancing effect on the ways that identity is expressed. For all those who have suffered historical inequities (and their sympathizers), there is a growing commitment to the value and possibility of redress, to the idea that systemic injustices can and should be corrected to the point at which there are legal protections of traditional ways of life and ancestral knowledge and at the same time a regular, fair distribution of the benefits of national and international society. At a time when most scholars of history and society are cautious towards the concepts of culture and tradition, emphasizing their processual,

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opaque qualities, legal activists and institutions are giving them new significance and definiteness. Contradictions are even built into the basic vocabulary of selfrepresentation. The word “identity,” derived from the Latin identitas, or “sameness,” has developed two contemporary meanings that combine to suggest a basic paradox built into the process of identity formation or of collective self-representation. It refers, first, to the individuality of a specific person or thing, the qualities that make it different and distinct. The collective presentation of self in this sense would comprise those shared attributes that make a group identifiable, that make it possible to construct boundaries of difference, of inclusion and exclusion. But identity also has a meaning that appears to be the opposite of distinctiveness, referring to the condition of being or feeling the same as someone or something else. When we identify with persons facing a predicament, we allow ourselves to sympathize with them, with our sympathy following from our ability to imagine the qualities we share with them. Identity, therefore, can include an assumed, described, or claimed condition of sympathetic sameness, equivalency, or equality. This quality of sympathy and sameness can be seen with particular clarity in the juncture between identity and cultural justice. Ideas and assertions about culture and identity now have a central place in social justice activism, which uses the institutions and mechanisms of law to achieve conditions of equal access to the benefits of rights and prosperity by those categories or groups of people that are in significant ways marginalized, excluded, and systematically treated unjustly on the basis of such qualities as race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. The sympathy of a public that recognizes and possibly acts on the distinct challenges to equality and prosperity facing a distinct group or category of people is the major source of energy that sets justice movements in motion. Public opinion was defined at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde as “a momentary, more or less logical cluster of judgments which, responding to current problems, is reproduced many times over in people of the same country, at the same time, in the same society” and was already a phenomenon of great importance, brought into being by new forms of communication (principally newspapers) that had “transformed, both enriched and leveled, unified in space and diversified in time, the conversations of individuals.”6 The influence of public opinion can also be seen in

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the more recent connections between information and communication media and social activism. A central historical feature of social justice is its progressive resolution into popular movements, especially during the past half century or so, with groups forming around common identities of oppression and shared strategies for achieving recognition and redress. Essentially the same communication and lobbying processes that are making it easier for people to mobilize on the basis of common beliefs, values, and forms of suffering apply to those defining and defending more politically vexed rights of territory, citizenship, and nationhood, such as ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples. The ideals of collective justice, through new forms of communication and organization, are closely connected to emerging forms of group identity. Growing out of new possibilities for influencing public opinion, the phenomenon of indignation – tantalizingly defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “wrath excited by a sense of wrong to oneself or, especially, to others” – has become the central source of energy in movements of political and legal reform. I have sometimes used a similar phrase, “the politics of embarrassment,” to imply that political action on behalf of the powerless follows from a sense of shame among those in power, a phenomenon likely to be unreliable at best. It might be more useful to shift perspective, to consider the common motives of public mobilization, the various forms of popular political emotion that are the driving force of policy reform. Indignation has a better fit with political activism. It leads more directly to action through a sympathetic sense of political harm or injustice. This tells us that injustice should be understood not just as a formal contravention of law but also as the source of a powerful sympathetic emotion, sometimes expressed through a sense of personal moral outrage, even towards distant injustices involving unknown actors. And, like compassion, it is cultivable, stimulated into growth by strategic representation. If we combine the possible uses of the term “identity” with the need for strategic collective representation in campaigns of justice we would expect the distinctiveness or individuality of a mobilizing group or community to be frequently arrived at through collaborative relationships built upon a shared sense of indignation and some measure of compassion, imitation, or emulation. This means that the creation of cultural communities in the age of identity is very much an intercultural process. Claims of distinct status and rights

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by the dispossessed and marginalized are frequently asserted through conceptual reverse engineering, through the creative use of dominant societies’ terminology and institutions of emancipation. Yet the indigenous peoples’ movement that I consider here bases much of its legitimacy on idealistic notions of “natural” homelands or the spirit of the people, on a common sense of self or an inner spark that cannot be fully described, defined, or conceptually categorized. The idea of a collaboratively constructed collective essence seems somehow false or contradictory. The importance of one’s distinctiveness as the central source of one’s worthiness of respect does not sit comfortably with the idea that one’s expressions of difference are arrived at through accommodation of the ideas and expectations of (often dominant) others.

the lessons of indigenous peoples Nowhere are the essential qualities of the project of reshaping or rediscovering collective identity better illustrated than in the phenomenon that has become known as the international movement of indigenous peoples, or its shorthand terms “indigenism” and “indigeneity.” In some ways, the term “indigenous” has served much the same broad purpose as did the term “native” before it was tainted with the prejudices and condescension of colonialism. But it also has a wide range of political uses and implications. A good part of the legitimacy and currency of the term “indigenous peoples” follows from the claims to self-determination with which it is associated, together with a global consensus on the illegitimacy of uncontrolled, excessive state or corporate domination. A major dimension of the contests with which indigenous and state representatives are engaged involves the possibility and the will to extend the definition of colonial supremacy to include internal colonialism, the unwanted reach of state power and extractive industries to distinct peoples in the margins of states, and thereby to extend the meaning of decolonization to include the liberation of those peoples who are illegitimately controlled and marginalized by nation-states and transnational corporations. The material on indigenous peoples that I present in this volume introduces three interconnected developments that have in the past several decades increased in significance to the point of comprising points of departure from previous forms of territorially inscribed

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collective justice movements: (1) the rise in use and strategic significance of transnational lobbying, (2) the ethnic formalism that follows from pursuing collective legal claims, and (3) the uncomfortable paradox of collaborative dynamics inherent in the defence and assertions of cultural distinctiveness. Transnationalism Most obviously, assertions of local sovereignty have become increasingly transnational. Michael Hechter, in a historical analysis of internal colonialism in the British Isles, presents evidence of a transition among disadvantaged, peripheral groups, from projects of assimilation into dominant societies to reactive assertions of autonomy and cultural distinctiveness.7 In the indigenous peoples’ movement we can see this as a globally interconnected transition, in which reforms to international law and new networks of transnational activism have reinforced aspirations of self-determination and cultural integrity among marginal peoples worldwide. As I discuss in more detail in chapter 2, indigenous transnationalism was first built around the idea of a distinct form of society that could be called “indigenous.” The initial goal of initiatives sponsored by the International Labour Organization on behalf of indigenous peoples in the 1950s was to include indigenous and tribal peoples more fully into the development projects of nation-states, in essence to bring about their disappearance in regimes of greater political, economic, and cultural equality. With a global category of the poor and underprivileged as a foundation, international non-governmental organizations (ngos) began initiatives in the 1970s around the indigenous peoples’ concept. The expanded reach of ngos then created new opportunities for groups whose autonomy was being challenged by states to mobilize as indigenous peoples, connecting the goals of protecting distinct culture with “belated nation building.” Even though the term “indigenous” implies solid attachment to local lands and forms of life, it would be of little use if it did not apply broadly, if it did not transcend hemispheres. The leaders and organizations that represent indigenous peoples have thus in a remarkably short space of time constructed an international movement that takes the form of a global network of those who share a consistent sense of self, a common sense of timelessness and fragility, and complementary aspirations of self-determination.

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The Rediscovered Self

Ethnic Formalism The development of the term “indigenous peoples” as a legal concept is an example of the process by which those seeking to assert their rights as distinct societies are subject to the complexities of formally articulating their boundaries of culture and citizenship. The most significant byproduct of new opportunities for social self-definition seems to be the accelerated process of ethnic formalization in which culturally distinct subjects are formed by crises of justice. Pursuing grievances that follow from violations of rights means defining in particular terms who is the beneficiary of those rights and who is not. It may be true that legal positivism seems to have more conceptual than practical power; and ethnographers commonly recognize the untidiness of formal categories and the shifting, contextually based nature of identity attachments. But the process of making legal claims still makes more salient the problem of identifying the collective beneficiaries of rights. It calls for clearly defined subjects, attached to specific communities, ideally identified by ethnonyms and demarcated territories, to whom specific rights and duties have been allocated.8 Collective rights and claims are consequently inextricably connected to the processes of ethnic formalization or nation building. As soon as homelands and practices are defended with the tools of justice, distinct ways of life begin to be expressed through new media, rules, and processes. There is in distinct societies a direct connection between the pursuit of collective rights and the development of constitutional acts of citizenship. If all peoples have a right of cultural development as a major component of their right of self-determination, then what is the culture that is to be developed? How is this right to be exercised? Does development allow room for imprecision and contestation? Or is it to be built around a dominant ideal? Collaboration The pursuit of indigenous rights requires a new form of leadership that is able to deal with the complexities of written law and formal procedures, to work with (and within) ngos, and to communicate their knowledge globally. This has encouraged a transition from the authority of elders to a formally educated leadership that is able to work collaboratively with a wide range of experts and politically

Introduction

11

organized sympathizers. It also means that the possibilities of meeting the goals of global social justice movements are subject to a “lobbying-divide” in which those who do not have the knowledge and institutional capacity for transnational collaboration with ngos will not be effective in communicating their grievances, representing their culture as a form of common heritage, resisting forced displacement and imposed conditions of poverty, and ultimately achieving conditions of collective survival.

themes Collaboration thus refers broadly to the strategy of public outreach used as a way of cultivating political and legal influence. It is not enough to shape a way of life and set boundaries of membership with the participation of those willing to belong. The need for lobbying and recognition as a precondition of fair treatment by dominant powers means that those seeking justice must represent themselves in ways that will likely have broad appeal, will influence distant strangers to act in their favour, and, above all, will stand out from the claims of others. This is one of the common themes in the chapters included in this book. The moral persuasiveness of indigenous peoples’ claims to recognition and rights derives ultimately from a more universal perception of collective grievance, cultural loss, and nostalgia, that is to say, from a sympathetic public that looks to timeless ways of life as a source of personal or civilizational improvement. To make a convincing formal claim of distinctiveness, leaders of a potentially recognized cultural community must first make a broadly influential demonstration of difference in the form of a strategic outreach to innumerable, unidentifiable others. In chapter 2, I illustrate the ways that the reasserted cultures and political strategies of indigenous peoples are often grounded in the ideas and institutions of “rights,” especially collective human rights. This involves them in a number of ambiguities: the term “indigenous peoples,” for example, has only quite recently come into wide usage, yet it carries with it a sense of permanence, intergenerational continuity, inviolable tradition, and perhaps above all a willingness to defend these ideals against the forces of destruction, the levelling powers of nation-states and transnational corporations. It is grounded in ideas of primordial essence, yet, in effect, has only recently come into being. Indigenous peoples

12

The Rediscovered Self

represent forms of society with ascribed identities that give, as much as possible, predictable patterns and outcomes to individual life histories. But in defence of these collective values they are calling on human rights institutions and bodies of law that are based mainly on principles of equality and individual rights. The collaborative dimension of indigenous identity formation is especially evident in its iterations on the Internet, which I discuss in chapter 3. Indigenism involves the rise of a new elite with the legal/bureaucratic skills to navigate through international law and the institutions of global governance, and the linguistic and technological skills to use the Internet as a tool of global networking, lobbying, and self-expression, all the while being dedicated to applying these skills to the defence of ways of life popularly depicted as requiring patience, fortitude, simplicity, and careful attention to the rhythms of the natural world. The digital artefacts of indigenous identity often present an array of legal information and resources, oriented towards defending subsistence-based economies and the local production of technology – qualities that express and affirm primordial identities. But what happens when all the usual strategic pathways to political agency and cultural expression are obstructed? Under some circumstances, the ways by which rearticulated cultures find their way into campaigns of social justice can become blocked; institutional reform and the flow of cultural meaning can be frozen in a stalemate of mutual exclusion. Participants in a social justice movement, as Anna Tsing points out, “may be drawn into a framework of global observation and classification in which cultural difference becomes yet another brick of administrative data with which to be walled in.”9 What choices are left to people when structures of justice only raise expectations, without delivering on their promises? How are aspirations towards self-determination acted on in the near total absence of possibility? I show in chapter 4 how the judicial reference points for determining the scope of aboriginal cultural rights by the Supreme Court of Canada have in recent decades been narrowed down to specific practices of the precontact ancestors of contemporary aboriginal peoples. It has approached aboriginal rights in a way that reduces the effect of their distinctiveness, isolating them with sharp focus and specific content, removing them as far as possible from the

Introduction

13

context of self-determination.10 The legal instruments of minority protection can not only shelter culture and identity, but, at the same time, they can narrowly define the kind of culture that is worthy of protection. This is another of the ways that the law of minorities and collective rights can produce a limited scope for ethnic selfidentification and self-determination. These limitations have called for efforts that bypass the pursuit of remedies through the judiciaries of states that have vested interests in the outcome of judicial decisions. Use of the term “indigenous peoples” has involved the mediation of national and transnational lobby campaigns directed towards a sympathetic public. I illustrate this in chapter 5 with a study of the justice-seeking campaign of an aboriginal community in northern Manitoba. This campaign further illustrates the dilemma that I describe in previous chapters, in which the processes by which justice is restored and lives improved depend on the ennoblement of the sufferers of injustice. The products of indigenous self-discovery cannot be entirely separated from a wide base of (inter)cultural consumers, from transnational relationships of organizational and cultural collaboration based upon broadly shared anti-modernist sentiments. When there is nothing left, there is still the possibility of belonging through a shared condition of suffering and isolation. In chapter 6 I make an effort to understand the causes and consequences of a suicide crisis in an aboriginal community in northern Manitoba. The events and narratives surrounding this crisis suggest that, where the political and economic agency of young people is grossly diminished, and where their families are irremediably broken, they can form connections to others through outward expressions of suffering, including self-harm and suicide. The absence of almost any channel for productive activity or possibility can contribute to a distinct form of identity that begins with the loss of self-esteem and that moves on to normalizing suffering and, eventually, to accepting or even ascribing positive value to ending one’s life. This identity too is implicated in the opportunities and pathologies of distant suffering, at least insofar as crises are intensified by the media exposure that has occasionally become the central strategy through which communities facing suicide crises are able to garner adequate resources to develop programs of prevention and intervention. Aboriginal youth suicide indicates not only the breakdown of identity formation

14

The Rediscovered Self

but also its misdirection into a shared acceptance of hopelessness and self-destruction as essential qualities of existence, mediated by public exposure and consumption of suffering. I consider some of the intellectual defences against this kind of despair in chapter 7. Here I broaden the issues of representation as widely as possible in a discussion of an approach to the study of history and culture that centres on interpretations of the origins of nations, peoples, and communities through collective selfrepresentation. Therapeutic history explicitly or implicitly stresses the use of knowledge as a means of recovery from the abuses of colonial domination or as a spiritually elevating reconnection with a collective self that had been largely, but not entirely, expunged or forgotten. Besides offering the potential for the recovery of selfesteem, this process of collective rediscovery is a clear manifestation of the localization of nationalist sentiments that Anthony Giddens once anticipated as a consequence of globalizing modernity, with all the ambiguities and range of potentialities for rearticulating and acting upon collective belonging that go with it.11 Therapeutic history in its present form is inseparable from the colonial experience and the postcolonial state of anxiety about ongoing intellectual and cultural domination, the sense that liberation entails rediscovering and rearticulating those collective attributes that were, and sometimes continue to be, castigated, maligned, and slated for elimination in a civilizing process but that can be seen today as a source of selfdiscovery, self-esteem, and recovery from the abuses of the powerful. It provides an epistemology that privileges collective self-knowledge and self-recognition over forms of knowledge associated with the imperialist strivings of the West. But in its assertions of knowledge-integrity based on subjective criteria of truth – the way that an idea makes one feel, the way it reinforces the esteem of a marginalized community – the therapeutic approach to knowledge often runs up against historical and anthropological knowledge claims, which are based upon the scientific truth-value of the critical process. The increasing salience of micronationalism and indigenism, which turn to therapeutic history as the knowledge base for political reassertion, is resulting in a greater frequency of intellectual impasses involving distinct knowledge communities, in which basic premises fail to overlap, eliminating the possibility of communication, in which neither the assertions of

Introduction

15

primordial collective integrity nor of critically oriented methodological rigour can make any headway. This incommensurability is significant not only for the sometimes prominent controversies it produces but also for its more readily taken for granted manner of resolution. It often happens that the only way to resolve a history-based controversy in which political and material interests are at stake is through some form of legal or bureaucratic mediation or intervention. When all the resources of persuasion through rhetoric and the accumulation of evidence and expertise are exhausted without leading to the emergence of a victor, law readily becomes both the vehicle of dispute resolution and the arbiter of the truth. Therapeutic history, in other words, is associated with the juridification of knowledge. The relative absence of meaningful engagement with questions surrounding cultural self-knowledge has at the same time created conditions in which public outreach in defence of distinct ways of life has the paradoxical effect of stereotyping peoples and reducing the range of human difference. At its extreme, politically tinged souvenir-shop sentiment has found its way into widely accepted discourse. The myth of the nobility of those living close to nature masks the suffering and pathologies of oppression. The presentation of indigenous peoples as inherently environmentally sagacious is in tension with more demonstrable histories and consequences of forced displacement and dependency. Another unifying theme of the chapters I have gathered in this volume is the resilience of aspirations of belonging and distinctiveness in conditions of cultural dislocation and instability. This theme in itself runs up against some of the more hopeful, cosmopolitan approaches to globalization. It indicates that ideas of “flexible citizenship” fail to properly account for the rise of social enclosure that follows from global forces of insecurity. Simple visions of a cosmopolitan world order, in which belonging is effortlessly able to adapt to different contexts without developing any form of exclusivity, do not reflect the multifaceted, challenging social lives of people on the margins of dominant societies. Distortion is inherent in the use of Western genres of futurism as foundations for describing ways of life that commonly turn to the past as a source or moral anchorage. These futurist ideals are therefore directly opposed to the aspirations of those whose greatest hopes are oriented

16

The Rediscovered Self

towards the formation of their constituencies into identifiable, bounded, secure communities. But in another sense, the particularistic claims of culture gain support from the new popularity of utopian universals. Global reform has more commonly become a central reference point for assessing the specific justice claims of non-dominant peoples. A central paradox of modernity can be seen in the fact that strategic assertions of cultural difference and permanence derive strength from politically resonant cosmopolitan imaginings of a world made new.

2 Transnational Indigenism

rhetoric of disillusionment and hope The global movement of indigenous peoples involves transnational networks of peoples and organizations dedicated to protecting those who are the original inhabitants of distinct territories, who now live politically and economically on the margins of nation-states. The networks and institutional supports of this movement within the United Nations system developed so quickly in the last decades of the twentieth century that both indigenous leaders and human rights experts have struggled to keep pace with them. Virtually every institution of global governance now recognizes indigenous peoples as a distinct form of non-dominant society and has elaborated programs and policies oriented towards recognition of indigenous peoples’ distinct rights and/or amelioration of their conditions of life. In the first meeting of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2002, it was found that so many projects and programs had been initiated in the agencies of global governance that the first order of business was to identify them and to make them known to those indigenous peoples and organizations that might make use of them. As an outcome of the complex structure of the United Nations, some of these initiatives have involved the identification of particular critical issues and possibilities for change, following such themes as indigenous health, sustainable development, or environmental protection. Consistent with the advisory role of most global agencies, such initiatives usually proceed through programs of information gathering, which result in further calls for information gathering (a common source of misconception and frustration to those indigenous leaders who

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The Rediscovered Self

expect some form of legal intervention on behalf of the powerless). An example is the broad base of action on behalf of indigenous peoples described in a report resulting from the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janerio, Brazil, mysteriously entitled Agenda 21, which sets out the need for governments and intergovernmental organizations to recognize and strengthen the role of “indigenous people and their communities” in protecting the environment and promoting sustainable development. Agenda 21 considers indigenous peoples to be particularly significant partners in environmental protection because “they have developed over many generations a holistic traditional scientific knowledge of their lands, natural resources and environment.”1 The European Parliament followed with a similar initiative, illustrating a kind of moral contagion in international legal standard setting. Paragraph 11 of the Resolution on Action Required Internationally to Provide Effective Protection for Indigenous Peoples, adopted in 1994 in a plenary session of the European Parliament, “[r]eaffirms the positive contribution of indigenous peoples’ civilizations to mankind’s common heritage and the essential role which they have played and which they must continue to play in the conservation of their natural environment.”2 This resolution gives the European Parliament a mandate that not only encompasses the indigenous peoples of Europe (principally the Sami) but that also allows it to cast light globally on human rights abuses, such as in the 1995 “Resolution on the Situation on the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil,” which finds that indigenous peoples of Brazil “have been and continue to be the victims of invasions, massacres, murders, intimidation and violence of all kinds” and that calls on the Brazilian government to take a more active role in administering justice in its Amazonian frontier.3 Meanwhile, during the past several decades unesco has made it a priority to enhance and accommodate traditional ecological knowledge (tek) and traditional indigenous knowledge (tik); and building on this, the United Nations University has, since 2004, been exploring the feasibility of establishing a research and training centre on traditional knowledge (tk). Each of the acronyms tek, tik, and tk refers to the environmental experiences and explanations that emerge from human societies living in close contact with the environment, including “agriculture and animal husbandry; hunting, fishing and gathering; struggles against disease and injury; naming and explanation

Transnational Indigenism

19

of natural phenomenon; and strategies to cope with fluctuating environments.”4 According to one of unesco’s on-line newsletters, science has already profited from traditional taxonomies and ecological knowledge, with little acknowledgment of their sources. But this partial science-oriented recognition of traditional knowledge “dissects and reduces such knowledge into the categories of ‘useful’ and ‘useless,’ fragmenting traditional systems and leading to their accelerated replacement by science.”5 A view widely shared by those sponsoring tek, tik, and tk initiatives is that ethnological research is often motivated by a narrow approach to discovery, having as its principal task the accumulation of facts and artefacts for scientific analysis or the preservation of knowledge about inevitably disappearing societies. A new phenomenon is associated with indigenous knowledge: “biopiracy” – the unauthorized appropriation of and profiteering from traditional knowledge. There is consequently a pressing need to protect those societies possessing knowledge that remains to be shared with the world and to eliminate the abuses in applied researchers’ relationships with indigenous peoples; or, as one indigenous participant in a un meeting on tk expressed it, the goal should be to end their “marginalization by people who think they know more about us than we do.”6 These are just a few examples among many initiatives sponsored by un agencies for the protection of indigenous peoples. Along with such institutional initiatives, often sketched in legal language, ideas about the essence of indigeneity are sometimes expressed by un officials in ways that seem to do away entirely with the constraints of legal or bureaucratic style. The construction of a global identity was apparent in the ideas expressed by Grø Harlem Bruntland, former prime minister of Norway and former director general of the World Health Organization, when she extolled the important positive contribution that can be made by indigenous peoples to world health: “Indigenous peoples teach us about the values that have permitted humankind to live on this planet for many thousands of years without desecrating it. They teach us about holistic approaches to health that seek to strengthen the social networks of individuals and communities, while connecting them to the environment in which they live. And they teach us about the importance of a spiritual dimension to the healing process.”7 The knowledge and attitudes of indigenous peoples, she said, “teach us how to live more correctly.”8 Evident in this is a striking receptiveness from within the highest

20

The Rediscovered Self

echelons of a global administration to the spiritual and cultural influence of those defined as indigenous peoples. Although such receptiveness is not shared throughout the un system, and tends to be notably thin among state government representatives, it has begun to correspond with efforts to develop knowledge and policies in international institutions that reflect the environmental concerns and distinct knowledge of indigenous peoples. At the same time, much of the growth of knowledge and many of the changes of policy that have taken place in the institutions of global governance have been overlooked or viewed with skepticism by the representatives of those indigenous peoples intended to be the beneficiaries of them. As early as 1997, a mere three years into the first International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People, Ted Moses, then ambassador to the un of the Grand Council of the Crees, signalled his disappointment with the negligible progress the United Nations had made on the Decade up to that time: “The International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples [sic] appears to be an orphan within the un system. It is barely recognized or acknowledged by the United Nations and appears not to affect the work of the United Nations.”9 At the close of the Decade, in December 2004, Taiaiake Alfred and Jeff Corntassel expressed disillusionment with the initiatives undertaken within its mandate: “The Decade,” they wrote, “has been remarkable only in the emptiness of the un’s rhetoric and in how so little has been done by states and international organizations to bring practical effect to their lofty rhetorical concern for Indigenous peoples.”10 And turning their attention in particular to a centerpiece of the Decade, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, they expressed their disappointment in more blunt, strident terms: “Given its severe limitations in addressing or acting on the blatant injustices and continuing genocide perpetrated against 370 million Indigenous peoples worldwide, structuring the Permanent Forum to function solely as an internal report writing and data-gathering agency for state policy circles is tantamount to an act of criminal negligence on the part of the un.”11 The discourse with which indigenous representatives have assessed the efforts of institutions of global governance often contains distinct elements of skepticism, disappointment, disillusionment, and frustration, directed above all towards the ongoing absence of clear and consistent recognition by states and institutions of global governance of indigenous peoples’ rights of self-determination.

Transnational Indigenism

21

Temporarily at least, the rhetoric has become more optimistic, even buoyant, after the long-awaited approval by the un General Assembly of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in September 2007 (even though I found that the following meeting of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues was punctuated with frequent mention by indigenous delegates of the “no” votes by the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia). Victoria TauliCorpuz, chair of the Permanent Forum, initiated a worldwide chorus of celebration with a prepared statement delivered after the vote: “The 13th of September 2007 will be remembered as an international human rights day for the Indigenous Peoples of the world, a day that the United Nations and its Member States, together with Indigenous Peoples, reconciled with past painful histories and decided to march into the future on the path of human rights.”12 But the focus on progress or its absence in the elaboration of human rights standards, particularly recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights of self-determination, obscures the very dramatic changes that have taken place in the ways that indigenous peoples express their distinctiveness through the politics of identity. It emphasizes legal recognition, without pointing to changes that have taken place in the collective identities of those societies seeking to be recognized; it stresses reluctance or deficiency in state approaches to pluralism and power sharing without revealing the far-reaching implications of making claims for the protection of indigenous ways of life through new uses of human rights and the laws of nations. To more fully understand indigenous representatives’ assessments of emerging human rights standards, we should therefore also consider some of the changes that have occurred outside the mandates of international institutions. This requires a shift of view from public policy and the immediate goals of transnational activism to a perspective that considers new dynamics in the politics of identity and processes of collective self-representation. The history of the international movement of indigenous peoples illustrates a central paradox: flux and uncertainty have become inducements to collective self-images of permanence and timelessness. An increase in the reconfigurative powers of collective identities has contributed to the rise of distinct socio-political entities with formal membership and sharper cultural boundaries. But this process of cultural rediscovery has not always resulted in expected forms of political and economic opportunity. The implications of the un’s

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The Rediscovered Self

efforts to build institutions and legal standards directed specifically towards those who claim indigenous identity cannot be understood merely by considering at face value shifting expressions of disappointment or hope. The indigenous peoples’ movement, oriented as it is towards primordial forms of knowledge, is ironically an outcome of profound and, in historical terms, rapid changes in the relationships between those who seek recognition as distinct peoples and the nation-states in which their territories are situated, mediated by new processes of legal reform, recognition, and collective selfexpression in the institutions of global governance.

precursors Having just stated that the indigenous peoples’ movement is an outcome of recent historical changes in regimes of rights and processes of recognition, it is necessary to try to modify that claim, to look for possible historical precedents of this movement, partly in an effort to broaden our historical understanding of the rights claims of dominated peoples and partly to bring out the unusual aspects of more current initiatives and events. If the global indigenous movement seems to have burst onto the scene with little or no precedent in the last several decades, that impression has likely been reinforced by historical and ethnological conventions, which long downplayed the legal sophistication of “primitive” or tribal societies on the margins of states or empires. An emphasis on the pristine, picturesque, and exotic qualities of those who represented human difference long concealed from view these peoples’ drive to defend their cherished values and better the conditions of their lives using almost any political tool at their disposal, including the quintessentially non-exotic tools of literacy and law. There is a sense in which the indigenous peoples’ movement of today is consistent with efforts in previous centuries by conquered and colonized peoples, under the rule of expanding states and empires, to express their grievances to the highest levels of the power that dominated them in the hope that some form of recognition and redress might come their way. The strategy of petitioning a colonial, imperial, or national power that has established dominance and control from a remote capital follows the logic that, if one cannot deal successfully with those unjust and unsympathetic local agencies or representatives with whom one is immediately negotiating, then

Transnational Indigenism

23

it still remains possible to appeal to that remote higher power to which one’s oppressors are, perhaps, answerable. Petitioning the British monarch was, in particular, a long-recognized strategy of political activism by those under British colonial rule – a strategy that usually resulted in nothing more than a polite hearing. On a few occasions, however, measures were taken to redress such grievances, at least often enough to make these petitions politically worthwhile.13 In 1704, for example, the Mohegan sachem Owaneco submitted a formal petition to the English Crown that complained of his peoples’ dispossession of lands at the hands of the Connecticut colonial government. In 1705 an imperial commission established by Queen Anne found that the lands in dispute had been unjustly appropriated and should be retuned to the Mohegans, a finding that placed the Connecticut authorities in a more tenuous position as they attempted to act upon plans for construction, cultivation, and control of territory. This decision indicates a willingness on the part of the Crown to consider the presumably conquered Indians in their colonies as “peoples” with distinct rights to their reserved lands.14 At the same time, it indicates a readiness on the part of conquered peoples to subvert the claims of colonial powers to authority over them and their lands.15 There is a growing literature documenting similar petitions submitted to the Crown from many regions under British control, making it increasingly clear that this strategy had an almost global dimension.16 In 1846 the Aborigines of Finders Island off the coast of Tasmania, on the opposite side of the globe from similar petitions forwarded from elsewhere in the British Empire, found themselves in a desperate situation in a sanctuary called Wybalenna, run with ruthless discipline by a certain Dr Jeanneret. Their petition to the Queen first describes in favourable terms the inhabitants’ relationship with the British Crown: “We Your Majesty’s Petitioners are your free Children that we were not taken prisoners but freely gave up our country” and goes on to request: “We humbly pray Your Majesty the Queen will hear our prayer and not let Dr. Jeanneret any more come to Finders Island.”17 The colonial office followed up by recommending that Wybalenna be closed and the inhabitants moved to another location.18 In the first decade of the twentieth century the Cowichan leadership of British Columbia had become desperate as a result of a provincial development strategy that resulted in loss of land and a

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The Rediscovered Self

circumscribed traditional fishery, and they began to look for more effective ways to address their concerns than simply engaging in a dialogue with unreceptive government officials. In 1901 they began sending written appeals to King Edward VII, and in 1906 they sent a delegation of three chiefs to London to meet with the King, on which occasion, according to a local newspaper report, they were to “declare fealty to the sovereign, and ask for restoration of ancient privileges.”19 Their petition was rebuffed on the grounds that their grievances were matters of concern for the Government of Canada.20 Although the petition of the Cowichan chiefs was not immediately successful and did not involve the creation of wider alliances with non-Salish groups, its principal significance, which connects it to later developments in the indigenous peoples’ movement, lies in the Cowichan’s use of public relations, principally through newspaper coverage, targeting both native and non-native audiences, as a source of political leverage.21 As one historian of this event observes, “Early forms of Cowichan resistance to colonial settlement had now given way to more sophisticated methods of political protest in which white politicians would be pressured using tactics such as petitioning governments and sending official delegations to meet with provincial, federal and Royal representatives.”22 A further elaboration of this strategy was soon to involve appeals to the institutions of global governance. With the development in the twentieth century of new regimes of international governance, beginning with the League of Nations in 1918 (which lacked, however, the formal membership of the United States) and culminating in the more inclusive, wide-ranging institutions of the United Nations after the Second World War, the strategy of petitioning to a higher power than one’s immediate oppressor could be applied in response to the unjust actions of nation-states. An effort in 1923 by Chief Levi General Deskaheh to seek a hearing at the League of Nations can be seen as a significant precursory event in the development of the indigenous peoples’ movement.23 Deskaheh travelled to Geneva, accompanied by a delegation of Six Nations representatives and a lawyer, in an effort to draw attention to the Government of Canada’s efforts to unilaterally restructure the political organization of the Six Nations. In the early 1920s Canada was promoting a system of elected chiefs and councils, in opposition to the informally recognized body of hereditary leaders, of which Deskaheh was a leading representative. The central point of contention

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25

that Deskaheh hoped to bring to the attention of the world community was, in broad outline, similar to the more contemporary concerns of indigenous peoples: the traditional leadership of the Six Nations wished to exercise sovereignty on its own terms, in opposition to the state’s drive towards constitutional uniformity, realized through usurpation of the Six Nations’ land and reduction of its political control over a diminished territory. In response to Canada’s denial of the legitimacy of the Six Nations’ hereditary leadership, Deskaheh made an offer to participate in the League of Nations, not as a powerless minority or tribe but as a representative of a nation, of equal standing with other members of the League. When the League did not take this suggestion seriously, Deskaheh made use of his public appeal as an Indian in Europe, frequently appearing with his delegation dressed in buckskin and an eagle-feather bonnet, finding his way into newspapers and newsreel footage, conforming in some ways with the popular image of the “Red Indian.” England and Canada then took steps to oppose Deskaheh’s efforts to get a hearing at the League and, ultimately, succeeded in getting his hearing pulled from the Council’s agenda by arguing that this was a matter that belonged to the British Empire and that was, in particular, a domestic concern of Canada, not to be interfered in by other states. Even though the Canadian and British governments were successful in obstructing Deskaheh’s efforts to get a hearing before the Council, he did manage to persuade the mayor of Geneva to convene a meeting of sympathetic states at the City Hall, where he was finally able to give his prepared address. His words to this impromptu forum, however, had little effect on the adversarial relationship between the leadership of the Six Nations and the Government of Canada; nor did he succeed in altering Canada’s designs to impose a new system of elected tribal government. Not long after his City Hall address, Deskaheh was informed by an official letter from Canada that the hereditary body he represented had been replaced by a newly elected tribal council. He left Geneva in 1924 in low spirits and failing health and died in Six Nations territory in the United States a few months after his return. Deskaheh’s effort to make a formal appeal to the League of Nations, though ultimately unsuccessful, indicates that the readiness of aboriginal leaders to pursue their grievances through legal processes has been more historically constant than might be initially supposed. The main reason for the relative infrequency of such

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The Rediscovered Self

efforts and for their relative lack of success has more to do with the lack of receptiveness of colonial and international regimes of governance and law than with the legal abilities or political sophistication of peoples on the margins of states, empires, or systems of international governance. This can be seen particularly clearly in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which brought the Mandate system into being by calling for its members to accept as a “sacred trust of civilization” the duty to promote the well-being and development of the “peoples not yet able to stand by themselves” under their control, adding that to give this goal practical effect, “The tutelage of such peoples should be entrusted to advanced nations.” 24 The juxtaposition of the terms “civilization” and “peoples not yet able to stand by themselves” assumed a relationship of domination and dependency in which stateless populations were considered to be diminished in their capacities and unable to pursue their autonomy. This lack of institutional receptiveness to the political integrity of those who later came to be called “indigenous populations,” however, was to change with the development of human rights and the global movement towards decolonization in the latter half of the twentieth century. Alongside, or perhaps overtaking, the institutional and legal reforms that took shape during this period have been the new dynamics of activism, new ways of imagining, communicating, and acting on social membership and common histories of injustice.

the origins of indigenism What are the more general background conditions that have made it possible for many marginalized societies to take up the ponderous word “indigenous” as a source of identity and then to shape it into the legal category that is now the focus of numerous human rights, health, and development initiatives in the un system? First, the terminology of global governance in the areas of decolonization, development, and nation building was taken hold of by its subjects as a source of potential liberation. It was appropriated as an act of resistance and source of identity by those who were once meant only to be described by it and, perhaps, to understand and conform to it but certainly not to alter its meaning and, by extension, to alter international law by broadening the principles of development into self-determination and the law of peoples.

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27

The use of the term “indigenous” in reference to a distinct human group or community with rights of self-determination is, in fact, fairly recent. From its earliest use in the seventeenth century to about the mid-twentieth century the term did not even normally apply to people but, rather, was almost exclusively used to refer to plants and livestock native to a particular region. Only beginning in the midtwentieth century was it more commonly used to refer to human society, first in verb form as part of the vocabulary of a hoped-for culturally sensitive approach to colonization (as in the indigenization of native school curricula or approaches to theology), then as an adjective referring to human groups, and, ultimately, as a legal category of peoples with distinct ways of life on the margins of states. The term made one of its earliest legal appearances in the 1953 report of the International Labour Organization, Indigenous Peoples: Living and Working Conditions of Aboriginal Populations in Independent Countries.25 From that point onward it developed a global currency closely connected to emerging human rights standards. This human rights effort began modestly, without direct consultation with the people concerned, with the 1957 International Labour Organization Convention (No. 107) Concerning the Protection and Integration of Indigenous and Other Tribal and Semi-Tribal Populations in Independent Countries. The reference to indigenous peoples in the human rights literature eventually received concrete affirmation – in the form of self-identifying indigenous leaders – in two international meetings: the 1977 International ngo Conference on Discrimination against Indigenous Populations in the Americas and the 1981 International ngo Conference on Indigenous Peoples and the Land. In 1982 the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations was formed by the Commission on Human Rights, beginning with relatively small meetings of thirty or forty participants and eventually bringing together hundreds of indigenous spokespeople from around the world in annual two-week gatherings in the Palais des Nations in Geneva. These particular events represent a wider transition towards pluralism from within the human rights movement. The term “peoples” from the “we the peoples” of the un Charter (occupying a multiethnic banner on the un’s Internet home page) had from its inception created a barrier between the included, high-prestige nations and the rest of the world’s political communities – a barrier that opened struggles for membership and invited realignments of political

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identity. Through a series of legal and institutional reforms within the un system, the term “indigenous,” once used to designate those living without the advantages of civilization, acquired subjects who used it to designate themselves, providing a common collective rubric for a significant number of people from many parts of the world who saw it as descriptive of themselves and their communities. This legal concretization of the term “indigenous” has continued up to the first decade of the twenty-first century. The Working Group was supplemented and eventually replaced with the creation in 2002 of the Permanent un Forum for Indigenous Issues, with annual meetings at un headquarters in New York dedicated to gathering information on conditions relevant to human rights in indigenous communities, led by a panel jointly represented by indigenous peoples and nation-states.26 And, as I mentioned above, the formal recognition of indigenous peoples as a distinct human rights concern took its most recent step in September 2007 with the adoption by the un General Assembly of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Such comparatively little known developments, which in the manner of all un initiatives might appear prosaic and routine, belie a remarkable shift in the politics of resistance and collective selfassertion among those peoples and communities at the margins of nation-states. Political action by the dispossessed and powerless no longer has to take the form of mostly ineffective passive resistance, nor does it necessarily incline towards racially motivated genocide or clandestine terrorism. Rather, it reflects the long-standing history of petitioning within the available legal mechanisms of dominant states and empires. The mainstream of the indigenous peoples’ movement wields the symbolic weapons of bureaucratic procedure, law, lobbying, and the politics of indignation.

the decline of policy-driven assimilation The progress of the indigenous peoples’ movement towards regular representation in human rights forums has both grown out of and effectively hastened a worldwide decline in the legitimacy of statesponsored policies of assimilation – policies that were directed towards, for example, prohibiting or restricting language use, removing children from their home environments to be raised by “national”

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families, or separating them institutionally in boarding schools. Such practices were aimed ultimately at eliminating unwanted minority or “uncivilized” societies by shifting the attachments of children from suspect, “unwholesome” families and communities towards a progressive, “civilized” life, driven by personal ambition and selfreliance; and, for this reason, they are sometimes referred to in indigenous discourse as programs of ethnocide or, more emotively, cultural genocide.27 The goal of assimilation was pursued with perhaps the most rigour, and with the most self-defeating emotional barrenness and cruelty, in the infamous residential, or boarding, schools of Canada, the United States, Australia, India, and elsewhere – schools that removed children from family and community, supposedly to be properly and professionally “improved,” but in a way that more often conveyed a legacy of bitterness, loneliness, and a pointed sense of grievance. The states and churches that actively engaged in education programs oriented towards cultural erasure became caught in a stark contradiction between the ideals that stimulate assimilation efforts (e.g., a global community of peace, brotherhood and sisterhood, love, progress) and the approach used to hasten the achievement of these ideals (e.g., intolerance, institutional regimentation, brutality). Programs of instilling “civilization” were combined with racial stereotyping and exclusion. Among those who were to be “uplifted,” these programs cultivated a sense of belonging nowhere, of having no place of social refuge, no source of culturally inscribed guidance in life, and no source of trusted values. The absence of family from children’s lives was often interpreted by these children to mean that their family did not want them; and this, coupled with the experience of abuse and punishment, was often interpreted to mean that they were at fault, not through any particular blameful act, but in the essence of their being. “I must have done something really wrong for the priest to hit me like that,” a Cree elder once told me, with a tone of sarcasm. It is easy to see how the same words in the thoughts of a child could once have been understood literally and sincerely – to be punished is supposed to mean that one has done wrong; but to be punished for no apparent reason means that one is wrong, that one is blameworthy simply for being who one is. Although assimilation policies inevitably failed in their mission to eliminate unwanted communities – based as they often were on the self-defeating premises of teaching self-reliance through unquestioning

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obedience and promoting the inclusion of a visibly different minority in a context of uncontested racism – they did, in the course of things, provide skills and opportunities to a small number of motivated, talented youths, many of whom went on to create their own avenues to leadership as intermediaries between their natal communities and the governments of dominant societies and who eventually found ways to network and to navigate the institutions of human rights and global governance. Residential education programs gave leaders of targeted communities the academic tools to pursue a legal dimension to cultural reawakening, while often diminishing their loyalties to dominant societies. A new cadre of leaders from among those communities once considered backward and in need of benevolent dissolution came forward in international forums to claim for their people a new collective status – that of peoples with inherent rights of self-determination, oppressed and neglected nations within nationstates, nations that have deeper cultural and territorial attachments than the societies that dominate them.

the new politics of culture The international movement of indigenous peoples is part of a transformation in the politics of culture, sometimes discussed in the context of globalization theory, in which the ability of the nation-state to be the principal object of cultural attachments and the sole custodian of constitutional rights and duties is being brought into question, in which the integrity of states is being cross-cut by dynamic transnational loyalties and, at the same time, by the deeper symbolic and affective attachments of newly reconstituted (and in some cases reconstitutionalized) distinct cultural communities. The indigenous peoples’ movement is probably the clearest example of this transformation because it formally represents ways of life at the furthest possible remove from legal and bureaucratic formality. It has turned to transnational activism and, in varying degrees, has supplemented local custom with law and bureaucracy in efforts to preserve the comforts and intuitive wisdom of simple, unhurried, earth-connected ways of life. Few things occur without historical precedent, and, as we have seen, this global transformation is not without antecedents that go back to the immediate post-Second World War experience, above all the process of decolonization, or to the formation of the earliest

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ngos in the nineteenth century, or even further back to the earliest petitions submitted to colonial governments. But the past decade or two has seen a marked intensification of the conditions that have led to new dynamics in the indigenous politics of identity. The recent ngo boom, for example, assisted enormously by the availability of the Internet as a resource for information, publicity, and communication, has in the past several decades included the establishment of several thousand new ngos concerned with the promotion of indigenous rights, including many indigenous peoples organizations (ipos). An early benchmark for this development occurred when the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom created an international space and a new socio-political reality for indigenous peoples by organizing the 1977 International ngo Conference on Discrimination against Indigenous Populations in the Americas. The rapid development of indigenous representation has been more recently reflected in the exponential increase in numbers of ngos representing indigenous peoples or organizations that have achieved consultative status with the un’s Economic and Social Council. In 1985 there were eight indigenous ngos possessing such consultative status; by 1995 this number had grown to fourteen, while in 2005 it had jumped to forty-two.28 These are only the most active and visible of thousands of ngos representing indigenous peoples and/or their interests. The prevalence at international human rights meetings of ngos that not only represent particular causes but also distinct peoples lends a unique flavour to the interactions between ipos, states, and international agencies. Other ngos have agendas that involve international legal reform – banishing land mines, abolishing exploitive child labour, resisting the transnational sex trade, and so on – but what makes the goals of indigenous peoples’ organizations different is their emphasis on the claims of culture and rights to self-determination. The international movement of indigenous peoples is a form of cultural and political reawakening that astutely (though probably unintentionally) combines the strivings of territorially inscribed political rights with the global reach, mobility, and interconnectedness of a transnational movement. This global community of indigenous peoples has introduced a new “speech genre,” a new language of collective self-awareness and strivings towards freedom, to the discourse of human rights. Indigenous representatives’ very expressions of disappointment about the limited progress of the Decade, some of which we can consult

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on the Internet, are excellent examples of very recent transformations that have taken place in the uses of the language of cultural identity as a tool of liberation. The language of indigenous identity is based on attachments to oral iteration; the authority of elders; and informal, consensus-oriented systems of justice and politics; but, at the same time, it invokes international law, the development of legal standards, the formal language of negotiation, and cultural claims in the arenas of global governance. The active participation of indigenous representatives and organizations in the ngo boom involves collaborative dynamics in the expression of indigenous distinctiveness, in which the world’s extant cultures are more commonly defending and defining themselves through a sympathetic public. While leaders of indigenous movements gain some stature through their ability to navigate the workings of international organizations and organize themselves through ngos, much of their wider support comes from representing the concept of “community,” by “demonstrating the power of the local,”29 and, we can add, by demonstrating the importance of indigenous locality for civilizational improvement. As we can see from the strategies and limits of an African indigenous caucus, the indigenous peoples’ movement derives much of its energy and cultural creativity from those admirers who do not belong by birth to an indigenous community, and who do not pursue a subsistencebased way of life, but who nevertheless feel a deep sympathy for the values embodied by these communities and lifestyles, and a sense of indignation at their disruption.

african indigenism Each region of the world has evolved its own threats to the survival of marginalized peoples, its own political dynamics between indigenous peoples and states, and its own uses of lobbying and transnational networking in defence of cultural difference. The participation in international meetings of indigenous delegates from Africa is of particular interest mainly because of the almost spontaneous way that their claims to represent indigenous peoples emerged, with little prior cultivation of an aboriginal or native identity and with few prior claims to being “original inhabitants” of a distinct territory. For those whose ancestors have long tended their herds in the desert or savanna or hunted and gathered in the forests, on the

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other hand, the claims of states to their territory and the efforts of states to control their movements lack historical depth and legitimacy. For pastoral peoples, comparisons are too easily made between states and their erstwhile colonial oppressors. The interests, powers, and political perspectives of indigenous peoples and states thus stand in starker opposition in Africa than perhaps anywhere else in the world. The African indigenous peoples’ movement therefore has much to tell us about the ways that laws, institutions, and organizational strategies are rearticulating the local and transnational political activities and identities of those who see themselves as distinct and in need of protection from those who have power over them. Many of the qualities that set Africa apart from the indigenous peoples of the “North” centre upon the right of distinct peoples to self-determination and political autonomy. Claims to self-determination by those who are politically and economically marginalized are the principal source of the controversy that might be called “the Africa Question” (parallel to a similar controversy surrounding the inclusion of peoples from Asia in the international movement of indigenous peoples, which provoked “the Asia Question”). Histories of political and economic domination embedded in colonialism are closely related to the fact that almost all African peoples, with the exception of some settler minorities of European origin, can reasonably claim indigenous status as peoples with distinct ways of life and rights to territories that they have occupied since “time immemorial.” Given this fact, who in Africa is indigenous and who is not? How can those recently liberated from colonialism claim a need to be liberated once more? How can peoples who have already been freed from overseas oppression make a follow-up claim to liberation from the political body – nation-states – through which they have been liberated? In Africa the process of decolonization-once-removed pursued by indigenous peoples would occur within states that have already been decolonized. The most salient substantive quality of indigenous peoples in Africa is the fact that their leaders have set themselves the task of defending subsistence-based ways of life that are being undermined by the economic and political ambitions of other potential claimants of indigenous status, but who happen to be dominant, who have more secure control of the powers and infrastructures of states, extractive industries, and industrially oriented development agencies.

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From the point of view of African state governments, there are crucial implications that follow from the emergence of peoples within their borders asserting indigenous status or any other form of ethnically based legal distinctiveness. Fully recognized rights of indigenous self-determination in any nation-state would mean new forms of autonomy within the state, the erection of new intrastate constitutional structures, and a shift towards formalized criteria and administration of citizenship within indigenous polities. But in Africa, if one people makes a claim of distinct rights, then so might others – and this issue arises in what is often an unstable context of cultivated hatreds. If there are contests and obscurities surrounding claims to territories that follow from conquests, expulsions, migrations, and the fallibilities of collective memory, these apply to almost all African peoples, including those who actively assert indigenous status. This at least partly explains the practice by some African governments of official non-recognition of ethnic identities, expressed, for example, in the national slogan of the Republic of Mali: Un Peuple, Un But, Une Foi (one people, one goal, one faith). As we will see, this slogan is inseparable from a history of Malian government policies oriented towards the settlement of wide-ranging nomads, the promotion of agriculture, and the securing of national borders. Pursuing just such an agenda of constitutional uniformity, the Government of Morocco set the tone for African state response to those claiming indigenous status within their borders (in this case, the nomadic Berbers) in a 1985 statement to the Working Group on Indigenous Populations several years before indigenous African delegates had begun attending such meetings: “The problem of the rights of indigenous populations does not arise in Morocco since all citizens, whether living in the town or the country, enjoy the same rights and are subject to the same obligations.”30 Many African states have struggled to achieve national unity among peoples with different faiths and traditions, some with more success than others, and some with readier recourse to violence than others. Given the tenuous nature of national solidarities in many African states, the recognition of indigenous peoples is sometimes perceived as more than an inconvenience: it is a threat to the basic ambitions of stable statehood. What, then, are the foundations of the claims to indigenous status made by growing numbers of leaders from marginalized societies in Africa? The Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee invokes two qualities of indigenous peoples in Africa that are widely

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shared across the continent and that provide the impetus for solidarity with indigenous peoples from other continents: (1) “de facto discrimination based often on the dominance of agricultural peoples in the State system (e.g. lack of access to education and health care by hunters and herders)”; and (2) “particularities of culture, identity, economy and territoriality that link hunting and herding peoples to their home environments in deserts and forests (e.g. nomadism, diet, [and] knowledge systems).”31 The central concerns of African indigenous peoples therefore centre upon exclusions from the services of the state and obstacles to their subsistence pursuits in territories long under their control. These have long been the concerns of African indigenous peoples, having been expressed by Moringe Parkipuny, representing the Haxza and Maasai peoples of Tanzania, in the 1989 meeting of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, the first such meeting to include indigenous delegates from Africa: The most fundamental rights to maintain our specific cultural identity and the land that constitutes the foundation of our existence as a people are not respected by the state and fellow citizens who belong to the mainstream population. In our societies the land and natural resources are the means of livelihood, the media of cultural and spiritual integrity for the entire community as opposed to individual appropriation. The process of alienation of our land and its resources was launched by European colonial authorities at the beginning of this century and has been carried on, to date, after the attainment of national independence.32 The contests between indigenous peoples and states in Africa thus stand out in sharp relief. Elsewhere in the world there are longer histories of state-sponsored legal domination and assimilation efforts and of aboriginal liberation movements, all of which lend complexity and a certain amount of give-and-take to indigenous/state relations; but in Africa, with nation-states only a few decades old, and with many striving to free themselves from the crippling effects of tribal hatreds – or strategically using and inflaming these hatreds – as they struggle to secure state power, there is little tolerance towards those who want to promote their distinctiveness, to claim their full share of historical suffering, and to oppose centralized designs for development and prosperity.

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As a consequence of such opposed interests, there have, almost predictably, been violent state-sponsored repressions, such as the one-sided “civil war” targeting the Tuaregs of Mali and Niger in the early 1990s and forced removals in many parts of Africa that garner less international attention than do overtly ethnocidal campaigns. The ever-present possibility of state-sponsored repression in many regions of sub-Saharan Africa raises a question that points to the most important qualities of the politics of indigenism: what is it about the indigenous peoples’ movement that makes it possible and worthwhile to press for distinct collective rights, even in opposition to the interests of dominant peoples in control of the powers of the state? The most significant “Africa Question” that follows from claims of indigenous rights is not “should” such claims be made but “how” are they being (even somewhat) successfully asserted. One reason for the success of these claims has to do with the international legitimacy of human rights, or, more to the point, with the fact that this legitimacy is closely connected to the international regimes of economic aid and development and ngos upon which many African states depend. The Mugabe way of international isolation and domestic repression is a dangerous path to follow. Most African governments are committed to making the best use they can of international loans, aid contributions from the “North,” and a steady influx of mostly well-intentioned non-governmental development or aid organizations, which, if nothing else, contribute to the local and state economies by spending money. And to do this effectively there are limits, established in part by human rights norms and standards, to the extent to which governments can be seen as arbitrary in their use of power, unwilling to maintain stability, and ultimately dangerous to their own citizens. Another aspect of this question has to do with new conditions that enhance the ability of indigenous peoples to establish and maintain their global visibility. The indigenous peoples’ movement depends largely on communicating peoples’ grievances and their living conditions to a sympathetic public. Their claims to distinct protection are simultaneously put forth to cultural consumers through more positive self-representation, which emphasizes the human worth of indigenous environmental ethics and spirituality. But under authoritarian regimes that control the media it is difficult, at least at a national level, to pursue a political strategy based on influencing public opinion. This means that the public to which indigenous

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peoples from Africa are appealing is mainly supranational. African indigenous peoples therefore depend more than do indigenous peoples elsewhere upon conditions that support transnational relationships of organizational and cultural collaboration. The actual, effective points of intersection between African indigenous representatives and their communities of supporters are surprisingly few and far between. ngos usually promote the development of websites that facilitate information sharing and organizational networking. And meetings sponsored by the United Nations and its satellite agencies are venues in which there is a concentration of media outlets and a greater willingness on the part of the press to develop news stories around the prestige of international gatherings and the distant suffering that prompts delegates to attend. The African indigenous movement lends some credence to the idea that the current dynamics of globalization occur largely in the realm of virtual reality – in this case, the abstract representations of both information and communication technologies and of international meetings – with the everyday lives of people living on the margins of nation-states left largely untouched. The “virtuality” of global change in the cultural and political realms does not exclude the possibility that this change is far-reaching and is influencing local goals and strategies of autonomy. Whereas trade imbalances and uneven prosperity have left the “South,” and Africa in particular, in the shadow of the formal economies of the “North,” the same does not fully apply to political and cultural transnationalism, which, though having to overcome the practical constraints of repressed economies and repressive governments, has proceeded with the most significant implications in the world’s most marginalized societies. This can be illustrated by the way the Tuaregs of West Africa have asserted their claims as an indigenous people. Like other indigenous peoples, the Tuareg invoke a prehistoric connection to their territory and a post-historic marginalization and domination by illegitimate states. In particular, they assert, in common with other desert nomads, attachments to an economic system and cultural heritage that predates agriculture, reliant on long migrations with their animals to exploit the scarce and widely scattered resources of the Sahara. The Tuaregs have long resisted efforts by modern states to control their movements, to fit them within the geographical, cultural, and constitutional paradigm of loyal citizenship. They resisted the imposition

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by the French colonial government of “laissez passer” identity papers intended to control their movements, and that have gone to war with several postcolonial governments over programs (or, more enthusiastically, campaigns) of imposed sedentarization. The most recent period of open conflict occurred in the early 1990s when the governments of Mali and Niger attempted to control the Tuaregs through state-sponsored violence and civil warfare. (Subsequent peace agreements and power-sharing arrangements negotiated through un intercession appear to be holding.) The Tuareg’s ongoing attachment to long-range desert transhumance and their troubled histories with colonial and postcolonial governments combine to explain the fact that the Tuareg members of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee indicate “West Africa” as their place of origin rather than affiliating themselves through citizenship with any particular state. The most recent threat to Tuareg mobility and cultural integrity has followed directly from the G.W. Bush government’s response to terrorism. Beginning in November 2003, the United States conducted a political and military campaign in the Sahara intended to prevent or root out the Al Qaeda terrorist training allegedly taking place in remote regions of several Saharan states, following up on an initial assessment and mapping of the West African Sahel, from Mauritania, across Mali, southern Algeria, Niger, and into northern Nigeria, as a “terrorist corridor.”33 The Pan Sahel Initiative (psi) is a $100 million project involving a us military presence and financial and logistical support to West African states that do not normally cooperate with the nato alliance in areas of intelligence-sharing and border control. The Tuaregs and other desert nomads have resisted this initiative, arguing in online news coverage that it does not fulfill its objectives of rooting out terrorism (in fact, it creates conditions favourable to it by provoking anti-American resentment) and only serves to reinforce state powers and behaviours that are inimical to the survival of nomadic peoples. One report posted on the Internet argues that the us-sponsored psi initiative “is endangering the lives of Saharan indigenous peoples by heightening conflict, increasing the militarisation of this area, and pumping resources into corrupt and self-interested regimes that exclude nomads from policy making.”34 The us presence in the Sahara, the article goes on to argue, is not strictly related to combating terrorism but is, like the war in Iraq, better explained by strategic oil interests: “The

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us has used its political, military and economic influence, under the guise of fighting terrorism, to push its oil agenda forward in Africa without consideration for human rights, peace and the survival of indigenous peoples.”35 There can be no doubt that the Pan Sahel Initiative is a cause for deep concern on the part of those interested in defending the subsistence economies and human rights of desert nomads in West Africa. As an illustration of the politics of indigenism, however, the controversy provoked by the us presence in the Sahara goes further than this. It demonstrates the fact that, in the realm of transnational activism, indigenous peoples have come to represent much more than the rights of indigenous peoples. They have, intentionally or not, affiliated themselves with issues that bring together organizational coalitions of diverse interest groups. This has not only involved the development of regional blocs of indigenous organizations but also virtual global alliances of broad-spectrum resistance. Other examples of state-sponsored initiatives in which indigenous peoples worldwide involved themselves in such resistance include global climate change, construction of large-scale hydroelectric facilities, and the “biopiracy” of human genome research. Awareness of issues that are of specific concern to particular peoples is often expanded through multi-interest transnational organizational networking and information sharing. In keeping with this trend, Tuareg concerns about the Pan Sahel Initiative are both specific to the West African region from whence they originate and, at the same time, have widely ramifying connections to people and organizations dedicated to resisting what they see as us adventurism and to rebuilding the legitimacy of a rule-based international society. The criteria for leadership and community survival in indigenous societies are very different under these circumstances than they were during the time, not so very long ago, when the centres of state power were more remote from indigenous territories and when states did not have the possibility of imposing full control over their hinterlands – and when, in response to state efforts to extend their reach, there were few other possibilities for resistance than flight or armed conflict. New processes of human rights lobbying have axiomatically changed this dynamic of oppression and resistance in indigenous/state relations. An indigenous political culture that is steeped in literacy, bureaucracy, information technology, media relations, and law is gaining in importance over longer established forms

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of leadership based on oral knowledge, environmental experience, and the politics of traditional authority.

the formalization of belonging As the rapid emergence of African indigenism illustrates, the past several decades have seen the development of increasingly sophisticated transcultural and transnational dynamics of resistance and political assertion, through which indigenous peoples are increasingly recognized as the collective subjects of distinct rights. This does not at all mean that indigenous societies are quietly disappearing into a uniform cosmopolitan modernity. The qualities of culture and politics that are most rapidly becoming universalized are the strategies by which people maintain their collective distinctiveness. Indigenous peoples have become, in Ricoeur’s terms, capable collective subjects who are identified as legitimate beneficiaries of distinct rights and distinct forms of political mediation.36 The legal aspects of indigenous claims of distinctiveness have significant implications. The requirements of identifying the collective legal subjects of rights include clarity of definition, an unambiguous answer to the question, “who is the subject of rights?” Indigenous peoples have therefore drawn new cultural boundaries, redefined themselves as nations, and, by implication, redefined the foundation of belonging for their individual members not only as kinship or shared culture but also as distinct citizenship, as belonging to a distinct regime of rights, entitlements, and obligations. Formalization of citizenship, the construction of official boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, is a consequence of legal activism. Legal positivism attaches questions of rights to specifically defined subjects to whom specific rights and duties have been allocated. Collective rights and claims are consequently inextricably connected to the processes of ethnic formalization. There is in distinct societies a direct connection between the pursuit of collective rights and the process of formalization through constitutional acts of citizenship. Media representation of a culture, often an adjunct to legal lobbying, calls for the most essential qualities of that culture to be defined and displayed. There can be no question that the indigenous peoples’ movement is associated with social and political processes that add salience to cultural identifications and political boundaries. Establishing one’s own criteria for exclusion and then enforcing them

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is a vexed process for all boundary-erecting societies, especially for those “traditional” peoples whose most cherished political ideals are based on open decision-making processes and the achievement of consensus in matters of importance. Seeking recognition as a distinct community of rights holders paradoxically entails taking up strategies that are globally uniform and, in some ways, corrosive of distinctiveness. Even though distinct, small-scale societies have long been under pressure from expanding civilizations and have always been open to cultural exchange and adaptation to domination, there is something in the current era of global cultural politics that seems to lend itself to cultural boundary enhancement. As territories are invaded by a variety of new global forces, the basis of community formation undergoes transformation, from territorially inscribed ways of life to claims of self-determination; from initiation into kinship groups to the more abstract rights and duties of citizenship; from the autonomous pursuit of distinct forms of subsistence to marginalization in formal economies; and from the personal interventions of spiritual experts to the impersonal, public defence of community-defining belief. Global indigenism is associated with a shift towards reduction of the reach of the nation-state in favour of transnational associations of community identities, based largely upon a globally defined and shared ethos of nature spirituality and environmental responsibility. Awareness of these global developments brings us to a more complete understanding of the rhetoric of disillusionment with which many indigenous spokespeople have greeted un initiatives. Recognition of indigenous peoples as the subjects of rights has far outpaced practical action upon those rights. Through sophisticated use of the mechanisms of transnational lobbying, indigenous leaders have made a clear case that the people they represent are genuine collective legal subjects, but this has not consistently been met with the corresponding elaboration of new regimes of economic and political self-governance, with reforms and policies that meet the expectations of indigenous leaders or that have positive effects on the lives of their constituents. There is a gap between the “normal” glacial pace of international legal and institutional reform and the rapid growth of indigenous peoples’ networks, the solidification of indigenous political consciousness, and the broad base of rising expectations that accompany new powers of collective selfrepresentation. The sense of collective injury and injustice is only

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made more poignant by limited political recognition and reform in the context of ongoing oppression. It is not the achievement of self-determination that should be the focus of our concern as much as the frustrated struggle for it, in competition with perceived enemies. Reasserted communities emerge most stridently through their denial. A proven way to mobilize movements of self-determination is to forcefully assert that a community does not or cannot define itself. Among the disenfranchised and dispossessed, the search for a secure homeland and sense of place can readily take the form of a strident “We.” It can involve strategies of resistance that, in giving new life to the collective self, not only build walls against the hostile overtures of the world economy but also simultaneously construct new perceptions of outside enemies and internal fifth columns, a process that Castells aptly calls “the exclusion of the excluders by the excluded.”37 The political strivings of micro-nations with sharpened cultural boundaries can create new conditions for exclusivity, political polarization, and the growth of racism. Are the peoples that constitute the indigenous peoples’ movement somehow immune from the pathologies of rediscovered nationhood? Are people without aspirations towards statehood somehow less likely to become embroiled in the wounded pride, hatreds, and experience of racial injustice characteristic of other ethnic minorities? In addressing these difficult questions I stress the contradictions inherent in cultural lobbying, above all our simultaneous demand for both suffering and moral elevation in those who call upon our sympathy, indignation, and intervention. No group of people that has been racially categorized and humiliated, excluded, impoverished, and then, most significantly, only partially liberated is entirely immune from outward displays of grievance, self-directed cultural romanticism, and desperation – the primary ingredients of politically oriented exclusivism. Fortunately, not everything is riding on the standard-setting projects of global governance. The frustrations expressed by indigenous leaders and intellectuals in response to the slow pace of legal reform, which remains in contrast with the meteoric rise in the number of research and development programs on behalf of indigenous peoples in ngos and international institutions, should prompt us to consider more closely these alternative tools of recognition, rights, and political leverage. What are the secondary strategies of

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indigenous activism? If the pace of international legal reform is inconsistent with the perceived urgency of indigenous causes, what pathways are there outside the institutions of global governance towards the articulation and redress of collective grievances? Let us consider some possibilities.

3 Digital Identity

the geography of identity Inventions have their greatest impact when they go beyond their possible practical applications and act upon the imagination. When Martin Behaim invented the first globe in 1490, a functionally useless object consisting mostly of terra incognita, he was widely ridiculed; but somehow the ideas that his globe represented stuck, and within a few decades the basic validity of his construction was confirmed by the voyages of Columbus, Cabot, Vasco de Gama, Magellan, and others. Today, with efforts to situate the rapid growth of information and communication technologies (icts), especially the Internet, in the context of globalization, there is a similar division between those who dismiss it as being of no importance and those who see in it a looming (for good or ill) global revolution. But, as with Behaim’s globe, the imaginary possibilities of these innovations are important in determining how and to what extent human existence is to be transformed by them. The potential of the Internet to globally reshape the politics of identity is partly concealed by the fact that it is an amalgam of innovations that have long been with us. The first revolution of instant messaging, for example, came through the invention of the telegraph. Households first became connected to a global network of instant communication through the widespread use of the telephone. And, in another repackaging of earlier transformations, the introduction of Internet access to politically isolated communities seems to have an effect similar to that of literacy, only more quickly paced, including raising the status of those who have the skills to

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use it, providing them with an ability to communicate (and hence establish political connections) over great distances and, at the most skilled level, providing access to legal knowledge that confers an advantage in dealing with state administrations. While acknowledging such familiar dynamics, we should not avoid the possibility that the Internet is mapping a new geography of identity formation. In this medium, the only limits to the construction and presentation of culture – even cultures that embody the primal values of technological simplicity and self-sufficiency – are access (directly or through intermediaries) to computer hardware, a telephone infrastructure, and a modicum of sophistication in their use. The global cognitive/political revolution following from the spread of alphabetic literacy to previously oral societies has therefore recently magnified its effects through icts. And along with these technologies, a new stratum of computer literati is reshaping the status hierarchies, resistance strategies, and conceptions of collective self of many so-called traditional societies. My first task here is to situate the Internet’s expressions of indigenous distinctiveness in the context of a more general understanding of identity construction, which places particular emphasis on the dynamics of cooperation across cultural boundaries, the importance of which has been accentuated by new possibilities of communication and self-expression. I then consider the content, cultural dynamics, and implications of indigenous peoples’ Internet activism, with attention to both the global expansion of indigenous identity and its reinforcement of local cultural attachments, boundaries, and claims of autonomy.

memory and truth A few years ago, while living in an aboriginal community in northern Manitoba, I was told about a website under construction that was to present the community to the world as “Pimicikamak Cree Nation,” representing the rebirth of what had once been Cross Lake First Nation. This new presentation of self seemed to grow out of a lingering dispute with the governments of Canada, Manitoba, and Manitoba Hydro over a stalled compensation package that was to have followed a late 1970s hydroelectric megaproject. Deflecting responsibility for the breech of compensation promises, spokespeople for Manitoba Hydro had earlier argued that Cross Lake did not

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suffer significant ill effects from the hydroelectric installation fourteen kilometres upstream on the Nelson River, that fish and animal populations were stable (the beavers, for example, had learned to make multi-story lodges and to move their kits up and down in response to water fluctuations) and that the hunting and fishing economy was healthy. Instead, they pointed to the community’s history of compulsory residential school education from 1919 to the early 1970s – schools that separated children from their families in conditions of deprivation and abuse – as an explanation for its spiralling rates of addictions, crime, and suicide. The website seemed to be an affirmation of collective self that reacted against this dominant, rival interpretation of community experience. The website did not directly address the issue of “social pathology”; instead, it focused on human rights and on the environmental impact of the Hydro project and its consequences for the traditional Cree lifestyle, apparently in an effort to reach the environmental lobby on both sides of the us/Canada border. I had been told about this site while it was still under development and knew it to be a cooperative venture between a technically inclined college activist, a lawyer, and several computer-literate employees of Cross Lake’s Band Office. Given the backgrounds of the site’s authors, one of its pages struck me as especially noteworthy because it presented a statement of their essential values that, without a trace of intentional irony, included the words: “We are an oral people. We listen, and we speak. Our culture is our language. Our ancestors and elders speak to us the wisdom of thousands of generations.”1 Such a representation of a community’s innermost being – an electronically inscribed claim of oral essentialism – might well raise a conundrum: is it an intentional fabrication, inseparable from politically inspired efforts to enhance the value of cultural distinctiveness? Or is it intended sincerely, as a hopeful view of one’s heritage (or the heritage of others), an effort to conjure new conditions of life, and a will towards cultural self-improvement? A third possibility should also be considered: that it may be both at the same time, an earnest falsehood, a self-convincing effort to reveal only the best of oneself while attempting to persuade others of the intrinsic value of one’s distinct heritage. It is now widely recognized that the effort to fix collective memory (and memory of collectivities) in history is engaged in with greater intensity as the connection with the past becomes uncertain, divided

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by the dislocations and discontinuities of trauma, or when memory, and hence the sense of self, is denied, contested, and repressed by cultural rivals. Under these circumstances collective memory, in Antze and Lambek’s apt characterization, “becomes a ‘site,’ a monument visited, rather than a context, a landscape inhabited.”2 To address the consequences of displacement and denial, to have a stabilizing effect on selfhood, memory is expressed in the form of the publicly exhibited artefact. It is therefore possible to consider the Internet’s expressions of self as contemporary artefacts, as truths in themselves, without undue concern with their possible corruptions of the science of history (discussed further in chapter 7). The historical artefacts, or “memories,” most implicated with new possibilities for fabrication are, at the same time, the best evidence we have of the longings and constructed virtualities of collective selfhood.

permissiveness A striking feature of the artefacts of identity displayed on the Internet is their relative freedom from the imposition of editorial censorship. There are, of course, some states, China most prominent among them, that try to restrict the scope, and hence political impact, of Internet activity. But outside of such constraints there seems to be almost no limit to the way the past can be constructed, the present contested or justified, and the future imagined. The permissiveness of the Internet is clearest in the message boards (and, less publicly, Facebook networks) constructed around ideas and practices that are not accepted in any wider society. Much of the attention to this phenomenon has been focused on sexuality and sexual identity, and, more recently, separate attention has turned to the proliferation of Internet propaganda and message boards put out by Jihadist organizations; however, it is important not to lose sight of the much wider range of phenomena reinforced by Web communication and their common qualities. White supremacists, for example, can anonymously share thoughts about the need for Aryan spiritual awakening and spin out uncensored conspiracy theories about Jews: “The low birth rate of whites is directly proportional to the amount of florides [sic] and chlorides that the Jews have put into the drinking water supply.”3 Those suffering from anorexia/ bulimia or, in the other extreme, gross obesity, reinforce one another’s

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pathologies. Then there are less widely recognized obsessions that coalesce into virtual communities, as in the Internet forum for obsessive “ice chewers”4 or that for paranoiacs who are obsessed with mind control from sub-humans referred to as “perps”: “I don’t know if any of you are familiar with doing this, but I’ve discovered that air compression can identify subliminal transmissions.”5 Phenomena that once would probably never have gone further than being isolated habits receive collective approbation and encouragement. Through such forums, the Internet blunts the effect of social censure by creating communities of recognition and acceptance. Life choices and political ideas that would be otherwise marginalized and possibly rejected are affirmed in solidarity with like-minded others. The Internet creates public space for secret lives.

activist networking The same quality of permissiveness has encouraged the formation of communities around the issues and identities of justice. Sufferers of disease or disabilities have formed Web-based communities around medical conditions that were (and sometimes continue to be) socially stigmatized, most prominent among them breast cancer and hiv/ aids. Animal rescue and animal liberation organizations seem to have multiplied exponentially over the past several decades, extending conceptions and expectations of justice to other species. But how might this basic condition of permissiveness extend to the creation of political communities and minority identities? The Internet’s encouragement of relatively uncensored ideas makes it easier to see, and for audiences to accept, some of the primary thoughts behind the forging of new identities, even while such licence also encourages falsehoods. More precisely, the Internet’s displays of collective being can be seen as free-flowing manifestations of a new stratagem of release from political domination, one that emphasizes the virtues of a repressed heritage and public expression of strivings towards renewal, self-expression, and self-determination. A general quality of indigenous identity that stands out in Internet communication is the high degree of cooperation involved in the production of its cultural and legal “artefacts.” This applies not just to those cultural products accessible on the Internet but also to a wide range of ideas and images associated with indigenous peoples. It has become increasingly common, especially since the rise of the human rights movement in the post-Second World War era, for

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professional relationships and their conceptual apparatuses to cross social and cultural boundaries with the goals of envisioning and realizing collective liberation; and this has facilitated (and been facilitated by) a kind of social transference that is in some ways analogous to the interpersonal dynamics of psychoanalysis – the collective manifestation of affect, self-examination, and modification of self-image that can occur in the context of a close relationship between a relatively powerless ethnic minority and a dominant group or organization, a relationship premised upon the goal of the minority’s liberation from oppression.6 Cooperative relationships are an important part of the indigenous peoples’ movement, however, not only because of the affect involved in collective strivings towards liberation but also because of the complexity of the legal ideas underpinning self-determination and the difficulty one faces in bringing claims of distinct rights to a potentially sympathetic audience. Indigenous identity is part of a growing trend towards the use of lobbying – influencing political decisions through organized media campaigns – as a strategy of cultural survival. Cultural activism directed towards global audiences of cultural spectators and activists relies upon the guidance of experts, lobbyists, and other intermediaries. When we consider the influence of international legal opinion and the cultural mediation of experts and advocates on indigenous identity at the local and global levels, a schema of the dynamics of indigenism can be sketched, as in figure 3.1:

Spatial/conceptual locus Global Out-group Representation Affiliative locus

Indigenous peoples as a legal entity (a)

In-group Representation

Boundaried (e) (f)

(b)

Indigenous peoples as a source of selfhood

The culture of experts Protective advocacy (c)

(g) (h)

(d)

Reinvigorated/ Reinvented “ethnicity”

Figure 3.1 Dynamics of cultural transference in the indigenous peoples’ movement

This is perhaps simply another way of saying that memory is a cooperative venture. We should be attuned to the fact that there is more going on than just technical cooperation in the intercultural

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dynamics of the Internet’s presentations of selfhood. The collective sense of self, above all the senses of injustice, indignation, and suffering based upon past wrongs, is not arrived at in isolation from behind closed cultural boundaries but, rather, is inspired by and negotiated with others in personal, often professional, relationships and adjusted to the tastes of a universal public. The essential features of a community’s history and culture are now more than ever an outcome of global collaboration.

virtual indigenism There is seemingly an infinite variety of websites dedicated directly or indirectly to the topic of indigenous peoples. The information contained on these sites includes the human rights of indigenous peoples and communities worldwide; the specific grievances of particular communities, framed in the conceptual apparatus of a global cause; records and documents relating to international meetings of indigenous peoples; historical narratives of peoples or regions; links to other indigenous websites; travel narratives by European hobbyists; and even international news from online radio broadcasts that present the concerns and points of view of indigenous communities. Despite the plethora and diversity of these sites, there are still a number of uniform features of indigenous Internet identity that stand out. First, the English language predominates in the promotion of indigenous information and viewpoints on the Internet. Although tallies of Web pages are notoriously changeable and unreliable, the English language results for the term “indigenous peoples” on just about any search engine will outnumber the closest rival in a European language, the Spanish term pueblos indígenas, by a ratio of about 4:1, followed by the French term peuples autochtones (11:1), the Spanish pueblos originarios (16:1), the German Ureinwohner (“original inhabitant”) (16:1), the French peuples indigènes (24:1), and the German term indigene Völker (8,000:1).7 The German-language websites bring out another prevailing trend in indigenous digital identity: they tend, far more commonly than their equivalents in English, Spanish, or French, to be dedicated to an admiration or even veneration of the virtues of the Indian way of life. The terms indigene Völker and Ureinwohner recall subject matter that is geographically diverse, with observations of Native

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Americans supplemented by information on the original inhabitants of the Amazon, Taiwan, Malaysia, Africa, and (especially commonly) on tours of Australia, where the Aborigines feature as part of the exotic travel experience. But German-language Web pages also tend to evoke cultural romanticism, the idea of original peoples living in balance with the earth, whose teachings are a heritage of humanity, whose sources of spiritual energy are in some ways accessible, possibly encountered and included as part of one’s life experience. This kind of Internet Sehnsucht cannot be adequately explained as simply a product of a Germanic New Age consciousness or as a mere holdover from Herder’s influential romance of cultural primitiveness. The relative absence of legal content associated with the terms indigene Völker and Ureinwohner is more likely traceable to the fact that the German-speaking nations of Europe do not include minority peoples or populations that consider and represent themselves as indigenous. (The Romansh speakers of the Grison region in eastern Switzerland might qualify as having pursued a distinct way of life from time immemorial, but their minority status has been successfully constitutionalized and they do not appear internationally as claimants of distinct identity.) It could also be due to the fact that German is not a language of international diplomacy but that, instead, English, French, and Spanish comprise the central language apparatus of international law and governance. The use of English above all as the newest “lingua franca” of international law is inseparable from its function as a global vehicle for expressing indigenous identity. The themes of New Age cultural idealism and self-improvement through the eclectic adoption of spiritual concepts do not entirely disappear from the indigenous Web literature built around the term “indigenous peoples,” but they are put completely in the shadow of sites dedicated to legal and political goals. Again keeping in mind the fluctuating nature of web-page tallies, an overview of the main subject matter of the first ten pages of search-engine listings reveals that some 54 percent provide legal resources, while a look at the sites’ origins shows that 34 percent are sponsored by non-governmental organizations.8 Occasionally, the romance of cultural difference finds its way into legal resources, as in the un’s web page on indigenous peoples in its Cyber School Bus (an initiative directed towards human rights education), which invites readers to celebrate the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, not only providing links to concrete, plain language information on indigenous rights and culture

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Figure 3.2 A United Nations cyber school bus web page (detail), http://cyberschoolbus.un.org/indigenous/index.asp, viewed 2 November 2006.

but also using the appeal of “hooks” that combine a visual representation of an indigenous musician (of unidentified origin) and an excerpt from a speech by Chief Seattle. This adds another layer of collaboration to the un’s representation of indigenous culture because of the historical complexity and obscurity behind the composition of Chief Seattle’s speeches. They were originally given in Lushootseed, translated into the vocabulary-poor trade language known as “Chinook Jargon,” then into English. The result that has been handed down to posterity combines authentic-seeming reflections of Indian experience with obvious embellishments that reflect the attitudes of mid-nineteenth-century American settler society.9 The global nature of the indigenous peoples’ movement can be gleaned from a sample of the websites’ main titles: the Arctic Council

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Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat, the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, the Native American Rights Fund, Indigenous Peoples in Latin America, the College of Australian Indigenous Peoples, Te Karere Ipurangi – Maori News Online, and the Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment. The titles reveal another noteworthy quality of digital indigenism: almost every use of the word “indigenous” on the Internet is ultimately associated with a collective claim (or network of claims) of self-determination, understood in its starkest expression as a form of decolonization from the nation-state. As one would expect with an identity oriented towards selfdetermination, there is evidence on the Internet of a fairly direct connection between the work of legal scholarship and understandings of selfhood. Consider, for example, the definition (in an Internet posting) of indigenous peoples arrived at in 1993 by the Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact: We Asian indigenous peoples know who we are. We are the descendants of the original inhabitants of territories which have been conquered; and we consider ourselves distinct from the rest of the prevailing society. We have our own languages, religions, customs and world view and we are determined to transmit these to future generations. We do not have centralized political institutions but are organized instead at the level of the community and have highly developed methods for arriving at decisions by consensus.10 This regional conceptualization of self contains distinct echoes of José Martínez Cobo’s formal definition of indigenous peoples in his 1987 Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations, written at the behest of the Commission on Human Rights: Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing in those territories, or parts of them. They form at present nondominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral

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territories and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continual existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems.11 One can see such adoption of formal concepts as a selection and exhibition of ideas that somehow match efforts towards selfdetermination. A common way to conceptualize the common denominator that brings together the world’s indigenous peoples is to emphasize the global patterns by which they have been oppressed. The Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact provides an example of this form of definition in the same Declaration on the Rights of Asian Indigenous Tribal Peoples cited above: “We are being pushed to extinction not only through invasion planned population transfers and transmigration of other peoples to our territories but also through the efforts of dominant Asians to assimilate us, to impose languages, religions and political concepts which are alien to us.”12 Here it is possible to find a close correspondence between the indigenous representatives’ sense of self and the statements made by un officials – statements such as that made by Louise Frechette, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, in an address to the first session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues held on 13 May 2002: Indigenous people have been killed, tortured and enslaved. They have been deprived of their political rights, such as the right to vote. Their lands have been taken over by conquest and colonization, or decreed to be terra nullius and claimed for “national” development. Even today, their children too often grow up in poverty, and die from malnutrition and disease. In some countries, indigenous people are still not allowed to study their own languages in schools. Their sacred objects have been stolen and displayed, in violation of their beliefs. They face discrimination and exploitation. And all too often, governments have resisted the use of the word “peoples” with an “s”. Instead they have preferred the singular, so as to avoid recognizing collective rights.13 Frechette’s understanding of the common patterns of victimization that unify indigenous peoples suggests that indigenous spokespeople are in some ways able to influence the official interpretation of their

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common experience, and vice versa. Whether we see this (following the analogy with psychoanalysis) as an example of cultural transference or counter-transference, the correspondence of ideas between indigenous representatives and un officials suggests that the concept of indigenous peoples has been collaboratively developed. The content of many websites dedicated to the interests of indigenous peoples reflects the close connection between legal concepts and indigenous identity and, in particular, elements of conceptual exchange between un officials and indigenous representatives. Even if the United Nations has shown reluctance to further the status of indigenous peoples as “peoples,” it is at the same time the primary source of ideas from which a conceptualization of indigenous peoples as a global form of society and expression of identity developed. The conceptual apparatus of international law is on many points shared by international officials and indigenous representatives. Human rights are seen, from their different points of view, as a potential source of indigenous peoples’ empowerment, political reform, social justice, and liberation. It has been taken up with alacrity by those from the world’s most oppressed, marginalized, and disenfranchised communities and adopted, with a focus on the category “indigenous peoples,” as a source of personal knowledge and collective identity. It has been disseminated through a kind of legalistic, uncharismatic messianism. And it is this conceptual apparatus that has been the starting point for the expression of universal indigenous rights and selfhood through electronic media. The tools of global shrinking – initially the high-speed travel and telephone infrastructure used to organize the first international meetings of indigenous peoples and later the (more or less) worldwide infrastructure of computer networking – certainly seem to have facilitated this connection. But does the Internet have any effect on indigenous identity that we can point to as unique, as contributing to an altogether new way of imagining and representing the collective “We”? If such a distinct quality of the Internet’s powers of representation is to be found anywhere it is in the way it has enabled the concept of indigenous peoples to rapidly expand its politico/geographical base, from an original conception that included the Americas, Northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, to apply more broadly to peoples who did not initially fall within the un’s implicit definitional jurisdiction. The first step in this direction

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occurred in the 1990s with the participation in international meetings of many representatives from Asia and Africa. Some un officials and state representatives objected to the extension of representation by indigenous peoples to recently decolonized regions, mainly because of its introduction of added complexity to already confused patchworks of legally inscribed identities, with the potential, they argued, to spark ethnic unrest in politically unstable nation-states. In response to these objections, indigenous representatives campaigned vigorously, pressing for affirmation of the claims of indigenous peoples from Africa and Asia, mainly through practical demonstrations – in meetings and Internet postings – of the effectively established global distribution of peoples with legitimate claims to status as “indigenous.” Although some nation-states, the more powerful among them being India and China, still object to the recognition of indigenous peoples within their borders, the globalization of the indigenous peoples’ movement has in practical terms now been realized. And use of the Internet’s powers of virtual identity was one of the principal ways that the claims of indigenous peoples from Africa and Asia were given substance. More recently, minority peoples in Europe have for the first time been represented as “indigenous” in Internet postings. The Basques of southern France and Spain, and Friesians who occupy a northern province of The Netherlands, are recent inductees, at least in the permissive language of the Internet. There has also been more discussion than ever before of the Welsh as an original people, including Web forums and discussions in Celtic revival sites that followed a bbc News world edition broadcast entitled “English and Welsh Are Races Apart.”14 Insecurity in the Middle East has made this the newest region to become the source of indigenous claims and grievances in un forums. Warfare and the militancy accompanying shifting ethnic and religious boundaries have given rise to a number of organizations from Iran and Iraq making appearances at meetings of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations. Among them are representatives of the Iraqi Turkmen Human Rights Research Foundation, drawing attention to the plight of some 3 million Turkmen being dominated in the Kurdish region of Iraq, and the Ahwaz Human Rights Organization, representing some 5 million people living in Southwestern Iran who claim to be an indigenous Arab community marginalized and discriminated against by successive Persian-controlled governments in Iran.15

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Another more recent extension of the indigenous peoples’ concept makes the Internet’s powers of representation stand out more clearly. During the last few years a surprising amount of interest has been built around the idea of including the Palestinians as an indigenous people. Among the many thousands of web pages (actually, surpassing a million in my most recent search) that combine the words “indigenous peoples” and “Palestinian,” browsers can find a site entitled “Indigenous Peoples and the Law,” which includes information on Palestinian peoples “right to return” under international law;16 a site with the heading “Indigenous Peoples’ Rights” that sponsors the “Café Intifada,” a group that organizes events in Los Angeles to “raise funds for cultural programs in Palestine, highlighting the current plight of the Palestinian People”;17 and a “Palestinian Development Portal” that includes among its selected “global topics” links to a wide range of sites under the categories “Indigenous Knowledge,” “Indigenous Peoples,” and “Indigenous Rights.”18 There are also signs of solidarity moving in the other direction, such as a Web posting oriented towards forging a “movement of solidarity between immigrant/refugee communities and the Kahniankehaka aka Mohawk community in the Occupied Territories of Montreal.”19 The connection between indigenous identity and Palestinian nationalism is not something that would have arisen naturally through face-to-face dialogue or through the epiphany of encounter at international meetings. High-ranking Palestinians and indigenous representatives simply do not move in the same circles. For one thing, the Palestine Liberation Organization (plo) makes use of international diplomacy rather than human rights venues in its pursuit of political goals. Even if the latter were the case, it is noteworthy that, as a matter of policy, meetings under the aegis of the un’s Economic and Social Council (and, within its jurisdiction, the Commission on Human Rights) do not admit representatives of peoples or organizations that advocate or directly sponsor violence. Palestinian organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad have never appeared at annual meetings of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations or the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (although Bedouin of Palestinian origin represented through the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality were in attendance at the Working Group meeting of 2006).20 The inclusion of the Palestinians within the indigenous peoples’ movement is mostly abstract, and the principal venue for its expression is the Internet.

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The Internet, then, is able to give shape and substance to political relationships that might otherwise be only fleeting, and even, in the case of the inclusion of Palestinians in the working definition of indigenous peoples, to define alliances that exist only as ideas rather than as personally negotiated realms of common experience and interest. This point can be taken further: cultural boundaries are blurred in the unrepressed Web literature by the absence of limits on representation. Uncensored cultural representation makes possible the presentation of community ideals that originate in no recognizable community. More than ever before, it has become possible to express nostalgia for times that one has never experienced and pride towards peoples among whom one has never belonged.

(re)bounded identities But at the same time the Internet performs a counter-miracle, an antidote to globalized abstraction: it acts as a tool for the solidification and preservation of local cultural boundaries. The reinvigoration of local identities through the Internet does not place as much direct emphasis on the legal pathways towards self-determination as on the promotion of indigenous language as a starting point for solidifying attachments to lore, land, and lifestyle. Such local promotion of distinct culture is of course inseparable from the transnational politics of identity. Indigenism does not stand alone but, rather, derives its energy from community-level dissent and the forging of local identities. Indigenous representatives originate from places and peoples to which they are personally, and often professionally, deeply attached. Indigenism is therefore inseparable from a global pattern of localism, from sharpened boundaries of community identity and intensified pursuits of autonomy. Consequently, websites built around the term “indigenous peoples,” in any of its linguistic variations, commonly make claims of representing living peoples, of being expressions of their histories, cultures, and collective aspirations. The James Bay Crees, for example, have developed a program of cultural preservation on the Internet. In responding to the challenge of competing with the dominant English and French languages of Quebec, the Cree Regional Authority, the administrative umbrella of nine communities in northern Quebec, has since the late 1990s been developing a Cree Cultural Institute (referred to in Cree as the

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Figure 3.3 Cree computing resources download page (detail), http://www.creeculture.ca/e/language/fonts_kbds.html, viewed 17 June 2008.

Aanischaaukamikw, the “bridge,” or a bridge between generations), the main functions of which are language preservation and assertion of cultural connections to Cree territory.21 Among the Cree Cultural Institute’s initiatives has been the development of Cree computing resources, including downloadable software – “CreeKeys” – that

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facilitates computing using the Cree syllabic alphabet. CreeKeys automatically translates the Roman alphabet into Cree syllabics, a literal and figurative symbolic modification of the languages of dominant societies. It is now possible to conduct e-mail correspondence and Internet searches in Cree syllabics; and, while the Cree language content on the Internet may still be limited (I was able to find only a scattering of material by doing a search of the word acimowin, “story”), the tool itself may eventually provide a stimulus to the development of Web-based Cree literature. The resource section of the Cree Culture site combines a wide range of academic research with an almost palpable sense of cultural pride. A section on Cree stories is an extension of work done by the Cree School Board to represent Cree mythology in book format accessible to school children. Two sections that include historical photographs and images of museum pieces, respectively, are quite literally sources of access to Web-based cultural artefacts. Most significant, however, is a section under development that maps place names in the Cree language. This is a product of collaboration between elders who remember the Cree names of landmarks and geographers at McGill University who travel with them in Cree territory equipped with global positioning technology. This initiative has rather direct political implications because replacing the place names imposed on maps by alien powers with one’s own is a way of formally inscribing occupation of a territory “from time immemorial” and, thus, solidifying claims not only to a distinct culture but also to distinct subsistence practices and territory – two qualities of distinct peoples with strong resonance in international law. It is too soon to tell whether a significant number of other indigenous peoples worldwide will make such creative use of electronic media, but if the Cree initiatives are anything to go by, indications are that those whose identities are based on closed kinship networks and the simplest subsistence technologies can at the same time be at the forefront of community-based cyberculture.

the digital divide The concept of the digital divide, the separation of those with access to information and communications technology and those without, can be applied to two contexts, local and global. First, it can be seen to occur at the community level, widening the distance between those

Figure 3.4 Cree cultural resources page (detail), http://www.creeculture.ca/e/resources/index.html, viewed 17 June 2008.

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with attachments to the intergenerational oral transmission of values and life skills and those who see important possibilities in reshaping and defending tradition through the tools of modernity. The computer literati are endowed with a unique ability to culturally represent their people and, in the process, to redefine their people’s values, opportunities, and even their criteria for group membership. The tools and strategies needed to lobby effectively for the protection of indigenous societies can, at the same time, be instruments of the displacement of indigenous peoples’ traditional authority. The digital divide is more commonly recognized as having important implications for the communicative effectiveness of dissident peoples and communities, leaving those who are electronically disadvantaged in a condition of isolated powerlessness. The cultural survival of marginalized peoples may soon depend (if it doesn’t already) on an ability and willingness among the otherwise defenceless to plug into – literally and figuratively – transnational lobby networks. The simplest way to understand this condition is to look from a global perspective at the difference in technological resources between those peoples and communities most active in Internet lobbying and those who are notably absent. The United Nations Human Development Report for 2001, dedicated to the application of new technologies to human development, includes information that suggests a wide disparity in use of information and communication technology among the many countries from which indigenous representatives originate. The number of Internet hosts per 1,000 people in the year 2000, for example, varied from 200.2 in Finland; 193.6 in Norway; 179.1 in the United States; and 108.0 in Canada – a sample drawn from the industrialized, temperate countries – to 1.9 for Panama; 0.7 in Peru; 0.4 in Nicaragua; 0.2 in Kenya; and 0.2 in Indonesia, representing those countries categorized in the un report as “marginalized.” Only a few countries, such as Mexico (with 9.2 hosts per 1,000 people) and the Russian Federation (with 3.5), fall somewhere in the middle (albeit at the low end) of these extremes. 22 A striking North-South (or, if one prefers, temperate-tropical) difference in terms of access to information technology is reflected in these figures. This means that, if Internet communication has become or is becoming a significant way to express identity – and at times to defend it – then those who have only limited or no access to the

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necessary hardware, infrastructure, or knowledge will experience their culture differently from those who do. They will not have the same tools of literacy development, self-instruction in rights and legal resources, language instruction, cultural boundary definition, and, most significantly, transnational networking as those with greater access to technology. More to the point, if Internet lobbying is a key strategy for defence against unwanted megaprojects, forced resettlement, environmental degradation, or policies of linguistic and cultural assimilation, then those who exist on the margins of technology will also have marginal hopes for cultural survival. The dynamics of cultural activism through international lobbying could well become one of the few outlets for the expression of identity across cultural boundaries. Some effects of electronic activism seem to work in a direction of global cultural convergence, opposite to the reassertion of cultural boundaries exemplified by the Crees. The digital divide is in the process of becoming part of a wider phenomenon in which cases for protection of distinct societies can only be presented through globally uniform avenues; in other words, in which distinct societies are made essentially similar through their strategies of defence.

conclusion At first glance there might seem to be a close connection between the development of a borderless, instant-access medium of information storage and retrieval and the growth in popularity of a global concept – “indigenous peoples” – that reinforces primary attachments to land, language, and lifestyle. Benedict Anderson’s perception of the close relationship between the progress of print-as-commodity and the congealing of national consciousness would appear in this case to be confirmed on a broader scale: a vast, borderless, relatively uncensored store of ideas, information, and images has now made it easier to imagine global communities or cosmopolitan federations of peoples, basically alike in their expressions of grievance, collective pride, and hope.23 At the same time, the very freedom that makes borderless thinking increasingly possible also contributes to the reimagination and reinvigoration of micro-nations, local epistemologies, and languages of limited distribution. Commercial censorship no longer restricts the availability of print and visual media to large popular audiences

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communicating in homogenized languages of mass consumption. Among its many functions, the Internet is a bulletin board for smallscale collective self-perceptions and aspirations. There is an element of unbridled cultural democracy (or perhaps anarchy) at work in the relationship between the Internet and identity attachments. The Internet has created conditions in which identity can be freely contested and reformulated, while reflecting (and accentuating) the growing importance of border-transcending knowledge. In particular, the knowledge and professional authority associated with international law and global governance have become primary resources for collective affirmation and emancipation. In this dynamic, the Internet has become something like a hypnotist’s pocket watch, providing a focal point for an odd combination of both guidance and liberated self-expression. The significant features of this self-expression stand out most clearly when we shift our focus from the global and regional identities and regimes of rights built around the term “indigenous peoples” to the sites that represent cultural artefacts and aspirations of particular peoples – the Cree, Sami, Innu, Ainu, Mapuche, Guarani, Tuareg, Amazigh, Hopi, Pequot, Tarahumara, Maya, Maori, to name but a few. Through these artefacts, they claim historical continuity from pre-invasion and precolonial societies, arguing that they and their ancestors occupied their territories “from time immemorial”; they point out that they possess collective attachments to their distinctive languages, means of subsistence, institutions, and legal systems; they express determination to transmit their distinctive ways of life to future generations; and they lament that they are dominated by others who often threaten their continued existence as distinct peoples. These are peoples who, for many, embody the virtues of slowness, patience, technological simplicity, and self-reliance. Yet some of them, in an apparent paradox of modernity, have found a way to advance these virtues through the sophisticated use of computer technology. What are the wider implications of this use of information and communication technology? Computer literacy seems to confer something more than just the advantages of high-speed communication. It has at the same time simplified and solidified the connection between dissent and identity. The Internet, in particular, is a tool of both liberation and of liberative imaginings of the self. It is a window to the world that can simultaneously describe a condition of

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oppression and show deliverance as an accomplished fact. More than any other innovation in the technology of communication, the Internet facilitates the construction of memory and selfhood; it invites its users to reflect on their historical essence before presenting it to a global audience. Because of its multi-media potential, it encourages the display of historical and cultural artefacts, digital exhibitions in which the most impressive, representative relics of collective being are selected for display, while jumbles of imperfect, ignoble artefacts are locked away from public view. Ideas that appeal across the widest spectrum are those most likely to be received as expressing the essence of a peoples’ innermost being. Despite these new opportunities for collective self-representation, it is difficult to find a social or cultural effect that is clearly exclusive to the Internet that cannot also be attributed one way or another to the consequences of writing. But the mere fact that it sharpens and broadens the impact of writing endows it with the same revolutionary potential as the printing press. Following from the widely recognized historical connections between commercial publishing and the rise of nationalism, we should be attuned to the potential for the Internet to be a vehicle for new forms of selfhood. With this in mind, I have demonstrated that the Internet has already made it more possible to express abstract identity attachments at both ends of a spectrum: as a source of global identification between peoples who see themselves as suffering from the same levelling powers of state governments, international agencies, and private organizations; and as a local source of cultural reawakening and boundary reinforcement, a community-based answer to the effects of cultural disembedding and dissolution.

4 Culture and the Judiciary

an unstable concept as a source of rights? Many ideas that carry dark histories and hidden agendas appear on first sight simple, straightforward, and readily acceptable. When, in particular, sociological or anthropological concepts make a transition into law, they are susceptible to being imbued with orthodoxy, receiving as they do the imprimatur of judicial legitimation. When the judiciary makes use of sociological concepts, critical attention requires a leap across a divide that can perhaps best be described as a transdisciplinary abyss, one that inhibits the back and forth traffic required of analysis, tending to leave pivotal, historically laden concepts unexamined. A 1996 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada affirms, in just such a seemingly innocuous way, that aboriginal peoples have constitutionally entrenched cultural rights: “Aboriginal rights,” the Court states in R. v. Van der Peet, “arise from the prior occupation of the land, but they also arise from the prior social organization and distinctive cultures of aboriginal peoples on that land.”1 This might appear to be something progressive, something to be unconditionally welcomed. With this statement and the orientation to aboriginal rights that goes with it, culture has found an open place in the legal realm, no longer having to approach the courts under disguise or enter through side avenues. A concept popularly associated with anthropologists has entered the realm of law and developed into a source of distinct rights.

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A central irony associated with judicial use of the culture concept is the fact that it corresponds with the emergence of a widely accepted approach to culture in anthropology that dismisses its value as a category of “thing,” as a noun that can be identified, described, compared with others, displayed in museums, presented at conferences, and, by extension, decided upon in courts. For James Clifford, one of the earlier proponents of the unstable approach to culture, the inexplicit nature of the concept of culture was revealed by the ambiguities and intellectual dissonances of a 1976 trial in which the pivotal issue was to determine whether or not the group calling itself the Mashpee Tribe should in fact be accorded recognition as a tribe by the us government (as a preliminary step in settling land claims). “The culture concept,” Clifford concludes, “accommodates internal diversity and an ‘organic’ division of roles but not sharp contradictions, mutations, or emergences … It sees tribal ‘traditionalists’ and ‘moderns’ as representing aspects of a linear development, one looking back, the other forward. It cannot see them as contending or alternating futures.”2 The outcome of the Mashpee trial – the Court’s denial of the distinctive status of a community that seemed nevertheless to embody many of the complexities and ambiguities of distinct culture – serves to highlight the difficulty of translating sociological abstractions into the kind of formal conceptual clarity privileged by the judiciary. Another seminal work on self-conscious cultural innovation and political mobilization edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, discusses the use of symbols and ceremonies by colonial powers to create histories and traditions where none had previously existed.3 Culture, in this set of examples, is a near miraculous ideological raw material used to shore up regimes on the brink of illegitimacy. Such a mobile approach to the idea of culture has been further developed by Arjun Appadurai, who argues that Culture should be looked at as an adjective rather than as a noun, as a process rather than as a thing, as an integral part of identity formation rather than as a paradoxical object of fixed history. For Appadurai, culture, or rather the cultural, describes a peoples’ connection to “those differences that either express, or set the groundwork for, the mobilization of group identities.”4 Thus, the ambiguities of culture as inseparable from identity formation are now commonly recognized as an integral part of the anthropological and historical points of view. Cultures are now widely considered

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collective inventions, with varying degrees of self-conscious manipulation built into the attachments people have to “timeless” ways of life. They are “isms,” the products of national awakening, created and defended by those who are erecting new political boundaries. If there is an emerging consensus that culture is inherently unstable and subjective, how can the Court make decisions with any confidence that affirm or deny cultural rights? It is true that there is no stability in any of the important concepts regularly wielded by courts or legislative bodies. The United Nations, for example, functions perfectly well without a formal definition of the State, and courts everywhere do their work without defining “law.” But concepts like “culture,” “tradition,” or “way of life” somehow seem especially insecure. Today they are associated with identity, with the allimportant question “who are we?” And this, it should be immediately evident, is difficult to pin down by those, no matter how anthropologically or legally competent, who do not personally share the question’s self-defining answer(s). In order to reach this summit of instability, the concept has gone though several mutations or “paradigm shifts” within a short period of time – short even by the measure of intellectual history – since its emergence in the nineteenth century, making it even more evident that it is not something that can be relied upon, least of all as a source of legally entrenched rights. The Canadian courts’ recent forays into aboriginal cultural rights are a change of direction, and the existing body of case law, largely tied to legislation, treaties, and other agreements, does not provide sure guidance through the complexities and abstractions of cultural attachments. The distinct qualities of aboriginal cultures occupy an oral realm, difficult to grasp in terms of legal regularity and certainty. Establishing the possibility that the Court has elaborated – and based judgments on – a largely tacit conceptualization of culture raises more than just immediate critical concerns; it raises a more basic, enduring question concerning the sources of this judicial sociology. How do the courts seek knowledge about aboriginal practices and customs that may be unfamiliar to those required to make rulings? More generally, how does the judiciary arrive at the anthropological/sociological ideas upon which some of their decisions are based? If judges are, in sociological matters, very much like specially informed laypersons, how do they acquire their information? To the extent that decisions rely not only on “facts” but also on sociological

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ideas, where do these ideas come from and how are they developed? The central issue I have raised here can realistically only be fully addressed through a broad application of cultural theory and legal analysis, scholarly pursuits that tend naturally to separate and that, when brought together, are not easily condensed. By way of initiating such an effort in this chapter, however, I examine these questions with a focus on the concept of aboriginal culture.

culture according to the judiciary There are three basic starting points taken by the Court in recent decisions concerning aboriginal rights, each with its own degree of emphasis on aboriginal cultures. A summary of these approaches reveals a recent willingness by the courts to recognize and affirm the rights of aboriginal peoples to their own culture, albeit in ways that to some degree limit the scope of accepted cultural practice. One approach, focusing on treaty rights (taken, for example, in R. v. Marshall), attempts to restrict the scope of contemporary rights to the contractual content of treaties between aboriginal peoples and the Crown. Like cultural rights, the interpretation of treaties has undergone modification with the view, confirmed in R. v. Marshall, that treaty arrangements “must be interpreted in a manner which gives meaning and substance to the oral promises made by the Crown during the treaty negotiations” and that the Court should be open to “the extrinsic evidence of the historical and cultural context of a treaty” in interpreting its meaning and hence the rights it confers.5 A common feature of recent court decisions, therefore, is the use of ideas or perceptions of traditional, precontact aboriginal culture in order to determine the scope of contemporary aboriginal rights. Cases involving claims of aboriginal land rights (as elaborated, for example, in Delgamuukw v. British Columbia) call for more careful consideration of aboriginal tradition. Aboriginal title encompasses the right to exclusive use and occupation of land and is “not restricted to the right to engage in activities which are aspects of aboriginal practices, customs and traditions integral to the claimant group’s distinctive aboriginal culture.”6 But determining the extent of those lands has involved delving in significant detail into such things as patterns of subsistence, patterns of mobility and occupancy of lands, social organization, and self-government. Such information is not likely to be reliably recorded in written historical records, and

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the process of determining aboriginal peoples’ uses of and attachments to their traditional lands has involved a wide range of expert testimony from ethnohistorians, anthropologists, archaeologists, geographers, linguists, and aboriginal elders. The focus of such testimony is on the patterns of use and occupancy of land that give rise to aboriginal title. Delgamuukw v. British Columbia separates culture from aboriginal land rights by setting the principle that there is no requirement to demonstrate continued attachment to distinct practices in order to establish aboriginal rights to land. Although cultural patterns are significant in establishing aboriginal land claims, and although Delgamuukw sets out new standards for the recognition of aboriginal testimony, the courts do not approach land claims as a means of protecting distinct aboriginal cultures.7 The cultural rights approach (taken, for example, in R. v. Van der Peet), by contrast, is almost exclusively based on consideration of the concept of culture, attempting to discern the scope of contemporary rights by elucidating the significant, distinctive practices of an aboriginal individual’s (or community’s) precontact ancestors. “Aboriginal rights arise from the prior occupation of the land,” the Court states in R. v. Van der Peet, “but they also arise from the prior social organization and distinctive cultures of aboriginal peoples on that land.”8 The Court’s basis for understanding precontact cultural practices underwent change in the Delgamuukw decision, which allowed the “recollection of aboriginal life” from personal and family history to be a source of testimony. In R. v. Van der Peet this reference point is taken further, and “aboriginal life” becomes in itself a source of distinct rights. The influence of anthropological ideas in judicial decision making goes back as far as the comparative study of human societies in the nineteenth century and its continued influence in the twentieth. For nineteenth-century socio-evolutionists, the culture concept answered a need to fit all human societies into a unilinear hierarchy of complexity, sophistication, development, and virtue, above all in comparison with (or, more precisely, in contrast to) the pinnacle of human achievement, “civilization.” Culture was an extremely broad, “catchall” concept – covering the entire range of human institutions, values, customs, and practices – that allowed theorists, sometimes called “comparative ethnologists,” to situate human societies on a scale of development, with positive value placed on those aspects of culture that accorded well with European society: technological sophistication,

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monogamous marriage, legal codes that protect individuals (including private property), and monotheistic religion. Not surprisingly, evolutionist approaches to human difference are evident in the earliest rulings in English law that express a legal theory of culture.9 In re Southern Rhodesia, a 1919 decision by the Committee of the Privy Council to determine property rights after the conquest of an African kingdom by the British South African Company, is a clear example of an evolutionist approach to culture in a judicial decision. The finding of the Privy Council in this case pertained specifically to the ability of an indigenous African kingdom to assert rights and interests after conquest. But it determined these interests through general cultural principles: The estimation of the rights of aboriginal tribes is always inherently difficult. Some tribes are so low in the scale of social organization that their usages and conceptions of rights and duties are not to be reconciled with the institutions or legal ideas of civilized society. Such a gulf cannot be bridged. It would be idle to impute to such people some shadow of the rights known to our law and then to transmute it into the substance of transferable rights of property as we know them … On the other hand, there are indigenous peoples whose legal conceptions, though differently developed, are hardly less precise than our own. When once they have been studied and understood they are no less enforceable than rights arising under English law. Between the two there is a wide tract of much ethnological interest, but the position of the native of Southern Rhodesia within it is very uncertain; clearly they approximate rather to the lower than to the higher limit.10 Aboriginal tribes, according to this judgment, can be situated at particular points on a scale of social organization. Those who organize themselves in ways that can be easily reconciled with co-called civilized society have rights that survive histories of colonial domination. Those who are lower in the scale, those who act more according to instinct and necessity than precise rights and duties, do not have rights under English law. Michael Asch has argued that the evolutionist model set out in In re Southern Rhodesia finds its way into the more contemporary Canadian Supreme Court decisions, above all in the requirement set

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down in Justice Mahoney’s 1979 judgment in Baker Lake that those seeking legal recognition of their aboriginal title must demonstrate “that they and their ancestors were members of an organized society”11 at the time of English sovereignty. Asch sees this as meaning more than the reasonable requirement that a group must be more than an arbitrary collection of individuals before it can claim rights; rather, it means that, according to the Court, some aboriginal people at the time of contact did not have any form of organization whatever, at least not a form of organization that would allow their descendants to claim aboriginal title. Some aboriginal societies were rudimentary, the behaviour of their members based on instinct and necessity rather than reason and order.12 Thus, in Baker Lake, Justice Mahoney finds that Inuit society did not have “very elaborate institutions but … a society organized to exploit the resources available on the barrens and essential to sustain human life there. That was about all they could do: hunt and fish and survive.”13 In other words, the precontact social organization of the Inuit was on the lower end of the scale of human development, making them evolutionarily disadvantaged in making claims of aboriginal rights and title.14 It is now widely recognized that narrow evolutionist thinking was a central ideological component of policies of assimilation, such as the program of residential education that was pursued with especially disastrous results in Canada. Such policies are a direct outcome of evolutionist paradigms, especially when combined with the goals and ideas of Christian evangelism. If, according to this viewpoint, some people are lower on the scale of human development, suffering from want of religious enlightenment, ingenuity, technology, and appreciation of the value of labour, it then becomes a moral duty to instruct, improve, and uplift them. The sense of moral superiority that accompanied such thinking was translated into political action. One of the means of choice for disseminating the fruits of civilization, the Indian residential school, was a form of total institution built upon a self-defeating approach of collective individualization that attempted to shape autonomous citizens through regimented obedience. The widespread realization that such thinking and policies have resulted in institutional abuse, multigenerational suffering, and human rights violations has led to political reform and a growing awareness that assimilation policies (at least in their most blatant, institutionally implemented forms) are futile and destructive. This change in approach is reflected in the Government of Canada’s 1998

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Statement of Reconciliation and the implementation of a consultative approach to aboriginal policy entitled Gathering Strength. The Canadian government’s change of approach to aboriginal policy has also found its way into contemporary judicial decision making. The central criterion by which aboriginal societies are deemed qualified (or not) for the recognition and exercise of distinct rights is no longer their ability to show some level of sophistication as an organized society at the time before contact. This criterion has been almost entirely replaced by the requirement to show cultural “distinctiveness” at the time before the arrival of Europeans. Justice Lamer outlines such an approach in the majority decision of Van der Peet: “To recognize and affirm the prior occupation of Canada by distinctive aboriginal societies it is to what makes these societies distinctive that the Court must look in identifying aboriginal rights. The Court cannot look at those aspects of the aboriginal society that are true to every human society.”15 Rather than (in the tradition of In re Southern Rhodesia and Baker Lake) requiring aboriginal societies to demonstrate “advancement” in the precontact period, resulting in the institutional wherewithal to effectively integrate with the legal formalism and institutions of the dominant society, they are now required to demonstrate the opposite: simple subsistence economies, comparatively simple technologies, rudimentary social organization – in other words, those qualities that make them “distinct” from the dominant society, defined principally as the absence of technological and institutional similarity to the dominant society. According to recent Supreme Court decisions, it is to be expected that defining cultural rights might involve recognition of a “modern form” of an archaic way of life, that the techniques and attitudes that form the most important parts of subsistence pursuits can be adapted to new circumstances, yet still form a significant part of a distinct society. Few would demand that aboriginal hunters use the very same technology and observe the same spirituality of their precontact ancestors in order to exercise their subsistence rights. Aboriginal hunters are therefore not required to study the fine art of flint knapping in order to exercise their hunting rights. Technology can change without altering the basic importance of hunting, fishing, or gathering. Beliefs and spiritual attitudes can be modified without altering the fundamental cultural significance of subsistence activities. Certainly there is wide acceptance, evident even in court decisions, of the idea that culture cannot be completely unchanged or unchanging:16 not only

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can significant practices leap across gaps of time, to be revived among those who once had let them go, but they are also subject to at least some revision and rethinking, adaptation to altered circumstances, above all adjustments to the imposed conditions of modernity. Traditional practices (according to the majority decision in R. v. Van der Peet) can be lost or abandoned but taken up again later: “It does not require an unbroken chain between current practices, customs and traditions and those existing prior to contact.”17 The Court, however, does not recognize innovation as an aspect of tradition so much as the sputtering and reigniting of practices that remain fixed within the limits of claims characterized as “modern forms” of centrally significant precontact traditions. Innovations that took place after the arrival of settlers are not seen as being integral to tradition. A “frozen in time” approach to culture is thus avoided only in the sense that practices can survive some discontinuity, not in a sense that affirms the importance of adaptation, creativity, and innovation. The judicial approach to culture is thus “frozen in time” in the truest sense of the term: it sets limits on change, even in response to challenges to the prosperity and survival of distinct cultures as a whole.18 An important issue therefore centres upon the extent to which aboriginal peoples are able to alter their technologies, techniques, attitudes, and beliefs without losing their legal rights to cultural protection. At what point do changes to a distinct way of life make it cease to be distinct? Are some aboriginal peoples no longer recognizable as distinct societies and hence no longer justified in claiming rights beyond those that apply to all Canadians? More specifically, how far must hunting, fishing, and gathering practices stay within social and technological limits in order to be legally protected? Is there an assimilationist cut-off point to cultural rights? In several decisions, Canada’s Supreme Court has required aboriginal peoples to demonstrate much more than mere possession of a general right to fish, hunt, or gather. They have been obliged to prove such rights on a species-by-species basis, to demonstrate that their harvesting activities are integral to their “tradition, custom, practice or law” dating from before the time of contact between their ancestors and Europeans. Justice Lamer C.J., for example, takes this position in R. v. Van der Peet, a case involving salmon fishing rights: “Participation in the salmon fishery is an aboriginal right because it is an ‘integral part’ of the ‘distinctive culture’ of the Musqueam. This suggestion

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is consistent with the position just adopted; identifying those practices, customs and traditions that are integral to distinctive aboriginal cultures will serve to identify the crucial elements of the distinctive aboriginal societies that occupied North America prior to the arrival of Europeans.”19 The Supreme Court also applied this test in R. v. Gladstone in connection with the Heiltsuk practice of harvesting herring spawn on kelp: “the appellants in this case must demonstrate that their attempt to sell herring spawn on kelp was an element of a practice, custom, or tradition integral to the distinctive culture of the Heiltsuk Band.”20 But what if the Musqueam did not fish salmon at the time before contact with Europeans? What if the Heiltsuk harvest of herring spawn on kelp was a postcontact innovation? Suppose these practices were borrowed from neighbouring aboriginal peoples, or even from Europeans, thus becoming part of “distinctive aboriginal societies” some time after contact. Would this rule out salmon fishing or gathering herring spawn as part of legitimate aboriginal livelihoods and ways of life? Apparently it would. The approach taken by the Court in R. v. van der Peet implies that, if an aboriginal people did not fish salmon at the time before contact with Europeans, or at the very least at the time of the assertion of sovereignty by Britain, then these same people would have no aboriginal right to fish salmon. This would apply even if they were fishing other species at an earlier period in history and took on salmon harvesting as a meaningful extension of their long-standing subsistence practices. It would also apply to innovative responses to dire necessity brought about by the dwindling of their resource base as a result of European encroachment. Judicial resistance to cultural change in aboriginal societies appears to be a result of limitations on the exercise of economic and political sovereignty. The Court, for example, is not at all friendly towards aboriginal management and control of their subsistence activities. Harvesting rights have been separated out from aboriginal economies and ways of life as meriting protection within the limits of federal regulation. In R. v. Marshall, for example, “The Mi’kmaq treaty right to participate in the largely unregulated commercial fishery of 1760 has evolved into a treaty right to participate in the largely regulated commercial fishery of the 1990s”;21 and “[R]esponsibility [for conservation of resources and other ‘compelling and substantial public objectives’] is placed squarely on the Minister and not on the aboriginal or non-aboriginal users of the resource.”22 Subsistence

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rights have therefore been fractured; the act of harvesting “in a traditional manner” has been separated from social responsibility for the harvest as a whole. The Court’s curtailment of aboriginal rights of harvest regulation is consistent with the notion of incompatibility with Crown sovereignty, expressed with particular clarity in M.N.R. v. Mitchell. Ruling on the right of the Mohawks of Akwesasne to bring goods into Canada from the United States for trading purposes without paying duty, the Court argued that to be afforded legal protection as an aboriginal right, distinct traditions cannot be incompatible with the Crown’s sovereignty: “important as they may have been to the Mohawk identity as a people, [for example,] it could not be said that pre-contact warrior activities gave rise under successor regimes to a legal right under s. 35(1) [of Canada’s Constitution] to engage in military adventures on Canadian territory.”23 Precontact aboriginal practices are therefore subject to the criterion of compatibility with the Crown’s sovereignty as a central prerequisite of cultural rights. Recent majority decisions of the Supreme Court thus take a selective, “frozen rights” approach to culture. The way this is qualified – for example in R. v. Van der Peet, by citing the concept of continuity and the fact that a practice can be resumed after an interruption – does not significantly alter the Court’s “frozen approach” to cultural change. This approach minimizes, overlooks, or excludes the fact that all human societies innovate and adapt practices from others (including dominant societies), while retaining their essential distinctiveness. Making rights conditional upon basic continuity with precontact practices is an onerous requirement inconsistent with the rapid pace of change experienced today by all human societies. These general observations have significant implications for the Supreme Court’s approach to aboriginal rights. The decision at any point in the history of an aboriginal people about what species of fish to harvest or what natural resource to exploit is based on circumstances that existed at that time; and the choice to fish one species and not another at any given point in the history of an aboriginal people should not affect aboriginal rights today.24 Yet the “speciesby-species” approach to aboriginal resource rights involving an onerous test of cultural purity has been clearly established by the Supreme Court of Canada and will likely influence the outcome of other cases heard by Canadian courts.25

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A consideration of how the Court defines culture with the clarity demanded of judicial decision making is the key to understanding how recent decisions concerning aboriginal rights have been arrived at and what their implications are for aboriginal peoples. The judges who make use of the concept of culture in their decisions do not take it upon themselves to develop or elaborate new theoretical paradigms. Their task is much more straightforward. They are required, as they see it, to resolve disputes by acquiring information and applying the law. Their concern is more with facts than ideas. In cases that involve aboriginal rights, their orientation is more in the direction of the specific circumstances in which those rights were acquired or recognized by England or Canada than towards the theoretical frameworks of anthropology or history. Even when the Court is required to consider issues that relate, in international human rights parlance, to “the right, in community with other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture,”26 the first order of business, as the judges tend to see it, is to “find the facts.” If judges have sometimes rendered decisions that relate to cultural rights, where does their concept of culture come from? Given that they did not develop this concept themselves, the most obvious answer would be that they acquired their particular usage from the experts who did, from the anthropologists and historians who, in their respective disciplines, have developed sophisticated, debated, and ever-changing approaches to group identity and human differences. But when we examine the judicial approach to culture more closely, we come to realize that it does not fit perfectly with any anthropological or historical approach. The judicial approach to aboriginal cultures in Canada has its own unique qualities, some clearly derived from its concern with “facts,” with information from academic experts, and with human rights standards in international law; others likely based upon popular notions (or prejudices) concerning aboriginal culture and aboriginal rights.

the culture of experts To arrive at decisions about aboriginal cultures that are not merely reflections of public prejudices and private interests, courts frequently make use of expert witnesses, those professional anthropologists, historians, and others who possess specialized knowledge about aboriginal ways of life within their respective disciplines. How (if at

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all) are the approaches taken by those scholars who elaborated the concept of culture reflected in judicial decisions concerning aboriginal rights? And in what ways do the courts ignore or fail to take into account the perspectives developed by scholars specializing in the history, geography, languages, and customs of aboriginal peoples? The courts draw upon a wide array of scholarly expertise in their efforts to acquire a greater understanding of aboriginal cultures and thus to be able to rule fairly in particular cases. In reaching some judgments, they are supported by the work of researchers whose orientation towards culture continues to emphasize the rigorous study of particular cultures and distinct culture areas. Historians are usually able to provide some background to the contexts in which treaties were negotiated; and those working within the subdiscipline of ethnohistory can present a picture of an aboriginal society as it existed several centuries ago – how people survived, the values they held, and the motives behind their interactions with Europeans; anthropologists specializing in ethnography can portray current practices and beliefs in a detailed and systematic way (some would say too detailed and systematic, resulting in “objectification” and creation of an alien “Other,” but this is not a debate taken up by the courts); and linguists can provide insight into a people’s past migrations through lexical reconstruction. Willing or not, courts can easily become immersed in a considerable and occasionally imposing mass of information relating to particular aboriginal societies or even particular practices of one recognized society. A problem that applies particularly to testimony from ethnohistorians arises from the fact that it is often equivocal and uncertain, qualities that stem from gaps in historical records and the unreliability of written sources or the biases of “informants”; and even where the material is relatively complete and trustworthy, indeterminate testimony can result from the complexity of the flux and reflux in daily life, especially in interactions between natives and Europeans, and from the many strands that go into extraordinary events, such as the negotiation of a treaty or the establishment of a permanent settlement. This is not to say that Canada’s courts always accept or even take into consideration the knowledge and guidance of such experts. In a ruling subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court in Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, for example, Justice McEachern at the British Columbia Supreme Court heard 374 days of evidence

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and argument, much of it from experts in genealogy, linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, and geography, aimed mainly at assessing the claims of the Gitskan to historical use and “ownership” of traditional territories.27 Justice McEachern rejected much of this expert testimony as biased in favour of the aboriginal claimants, prompting the Supreme Court, in its appeal ruling, to elaborate new standards for the inclusion and assessment of aboriginal expert testimony.28 Professional historians have in turn been critical of the courts for not taking into consideration many of the cultural and historical nuances they wish to communicate. A barrage of articles by Canadian ethnohistorians subjected court decisions to careful scrutiny and found a tendency in judicial decisions concerning aboriginal rights to overlook the contextual nuances of key documents and the frailties of their sources.29 The courts have stirred up the disapproval, and occasionally the resentment, of specialist scholars by flouting the rules of academic engagement. Judicial decisions have seemingly ignored social and historical complexity, and occasionally offended those who wish to convey it. Whereas the courts prefer information that is as close as possible to “yes” or “no” and “black” and “white,” scholars providing testimony tend to offer “but,” “maybe,” and shades of grey. The courts have shied away from such uncertainty, and, as a result, the courts’ perceptions of aboriginal culture are shaped by an inadequate understanding of anthropological approaches to culture and of the expert witnesses’ own limitations in understanding the people they study. An expert well versed in a particular way of life might be able to tell if his or her research subjects fished salmon around the time of contact; but they are unable to say with much certainty whether or not the practice is culturally relevant today. Cultural values are by their very nature subjective. The Supreme Court has argued in response to criticism from scholars that it does not have the time to delve into specialized testimony and material with the kind of thoroughness necessary to resolve disagreements among the experts: “The reality, of course, is that the courts are handed disputes that require for their resolution the finding of certain historical facts. The litigating parties cannot await the possibility of a stable academic consensus. The judicial process must do the best it can.”30 The kind of testimony the courts are looking for is that which provides a clear picture of the context in which a controversy is situated, information that does not get ahead of the courts in passing judgment

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by presenting slanted views or carefully selected information but, rather, that prepares the ground for the courts by turning over new information – “facts.” Without the focal point provided by treaty documents, however, expert testimony concerning aboriginal culture tends to be particularly equivocal. There is a contradiction inherent in making cultural rights contingent upon specificity and the comfortable support of “facts.” Over-reliance upon expert witnesses in cases involving cultural rights can easily lead to an unwarranted emphasis on particulars – the kind of technology used by a peoples’ ancestors, the species they fished and hunted, the avenues through which they traded, and so on – details that limit the scope of innovation and adaptation allowed by the courts. Questions of broad applicability, such as the importance of cultural change in the context of European settlement and expansion, the attachments to hunting and gathering that continue through the process of adaptation, and the importance of a secure identity for a people’s social and economic well-being – these are not the kind of issues upon which the courts have tended to ask experts to elaborate. Instead, they have been asked to provide what they are good at providing: specific information concerning details of a people’s life in the past, such as whether or not they fished salmon or gathered herring spawn from kelp. The obvious way for the courts to address such problems is to go directly to the source, to solicit the knowledge and opinions of nonprofessional “experts” of aboriginal origin, the people most experienced with, and affected by, the issues being considered. Those who profess attachments to such things as subsistence practices or rituals can themselves best provide evidence of their cultural significance. Courts have thus also occasionally sought the expert opinions of aboriginal people themselves, those selected to represent their societies and express, in what is for some a formal and alien court setting, their core beliefs, values, and practices. Cultural rights thus increase the salience of expert testimony from those aboriginal people affected by the issues being considered by the courts. At the same time, it increases the potential for such testimony to be awkwardly solicited, misunderstood, ignored, scorned, or rejected. In the 1972 “James Bay Trial,” for example, in which Cree and Inuit plaintiffs sought an injunction in Quebec Superior Court to halt construction on the La Grande hydroelectric project, the degree of specificity sought by the Court was clearly at odds with

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the kind of testimony that the Cree hunters and fishers were able to offer. James O’Reilly, representing the Cree and Inuit, complained that “the cross-examiners were wanting the Indian witnesses to be like computers, to produce all sorts of figures and documents that should more properly be sought elsewhere.”31 The judicial search for “facts” sometimes has an uncomfortable relationship with the personal experience of elders, many of whom grew up in an oral society. More recently, however, the courts seem to be fine-tuning their ability to sensitively acquire and make use of testimony from aboriginal experts. In the 2001 decision M.N.R. v. Mitchell, for example, the Court observed that the oral history provided by elders was “confirmed by archaeological and historical evidence, was useful and the trial judge did not err in finding the respondent’s evidence to be credible and reliable.”32

cultural rights in international law International law has long been a source of domestic law reform in Canada and, therefore, a potential source of ideas about the legal standing of indigenous cultures. James Anaya, in Indigenous Peoples in International Law, approaches international law as a source of judicial, political, and social reform, a way to influence domestic law and alleviate the injustice and adversity indigenous peoples commonly experience at the hands of nation-states: “International law, although once an instrument of colonialism, has developed and continues to develop, however grudgingly or imperfectly, to support indigenous peoples’ demands.”33 If the Supreme Court of Canada is misguided in its approach to culture, does international law provide an alternative approach through existing or emerging human rights standards? At the very least, it appears that the process of formulating such an approach is well under way. The kind of issues referred to by Canada’s Supreme Court as “elements of a practice, custom or tradition integral to the aboriginal community’s distinctive culture”34 are most commonly dealt with in international law as the rights of peoples to their own subsistence and the rights of peoples to self-determination. These rights are elaborated in a number of instruments devoted specifically to indigenous peoples, such as the ilo Convention (No. 169) concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, the draft Inter-American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and

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the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The most direct source of guidance in international law concerning cultural rights, however, has come from the Human Rights Committee, which has handled several cases (directly analogous to those in which Canada has defined its approach to aboriginal culture) under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (iccpr). This procedure excludes collective grievances, and aboriginal peoples and organizations have therefore not been able to use it to further their pursuit of self-determination; however, individuals have nevertheless been able to use the Optional Protocol to defend themselves against what they see as violations of their cultural interests. Complaints of this kind are based upon Article 27 of the iccpr: “In those States in which the ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons [i.e., individuals] belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, or to use their own language.”35 Although the Human Rights Committee’s interpretation of Article 27 does not directly address the ambiguities of the culture concept, it does go some distance towards reconciling distinct peoples’ attachments to their own subsistence with the need of all societies to change in response to unforeseen opportunities and obstacles. Article 27 of the iccpr was first invoked by the Human Rights Committee in 1984 as a remedy against unwanted development in Ominayak v. Canada, a case involving aboriginal land rights and cultural rights in northern Alberta. In his original submission to the Human Rights Committee, Chief Bernard Ominayak of the Lubicon Lake Band argued that his community’s rights of self-determination (under Article 1, paragraphs 1 to 3 of the iccpr) were violated when the Canadian government allowed the provincial government of Alberta to expropriate the ancestral territory of the Lubicon Lake Crees for the benefit of private corporate interests (in the form of leases for oil and gas exploration and timber cutting). The Committee did not accept the complaint as it stood. It reasoned that an individual could not claim a right of self-determination and therefore could not argue that this right had been violated.36 The Committee found, however, that many of the issues surrounding the negative consequences for the Lubicon Cree of oil and gas extraction and timber cutting fell within the purview of Article 27 and concluded that the Government of Canada had failed to rectify the historical inequities

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that continued to threaten the way of life and culture of the Lubicon Lake Band. In making this decision, the Committee did not deal with the question of what constitutes a distinct culture, probably because the communications by Chief Ominayak made it patently clear that the Lubicon Cree were a society that “continues to maintain its traditional culture, religion, political structure and subsistence economy” in ways highly dependent upon continued use of tradition lands, and this point was not disputed by the Government of Canada. Ominayak v. Canada therefore establishes the applicability of Article 27 to aboriginal individuals whose communities experience the deleterious effects of unwanted development, but it does not address the issue of cultural adaptation and change, of what constitutes a distinct way of life in the context of encroaching modernity.37 The Human Rights Committee responded more directly to the “frozen in time” approach to cultural rights in Ilmari Länsman et al. v. Finland. In this communication, the Samis of northern Finland complained that stone quarrying by the Arctic Stone Company and the road construction associated with the enterprise were interfering with reindeer herding and desecrating a sacred place at the site of the quarry on mount Etelä-Riutusvaara. The Committee found that the extent of the development did not prevent the Samis from practising their livelihood or religion. At the same time, however, it rejected the Government of Finland’s approach to culture. It pointed out that a culture, in order to be afforded protection, does not have to be narrowly construed as “traditional.” “The right to enjoy one’s culture,” the Committee states, “cannot be determined in abstracto but has to be placed in context. In this connection, the Committee observes that article 27 does not only protect traditional means of livelihood of national minorities … Therefore, that the [Samis] may have adapted their methods of reindeer herding over the years and practice it with the help of modern technology does not prevent them from invoking article 27 of the Covenant.”38 Environmental destruction by state-sponsored extractive industries beyond the limits in which reindeer herding could continue as a culturally significant activity would constitute a violation of the Samis’ rights under the Optional Protocol of the iccpr, regardless of whether or not the distinctive qualities of the Sami way of life could be seen as having a link with ancestral practices. The Canadian judiciary’s species-by-species approach to aboriginal rights of subsistence can therefore be seen as eroding a variety of

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human rights and ultimately compromising the ability of aboriginal communities to be self-sustaining. Martin Scheinin (a former member of the Human Rights Committee) links cultural rights (expressed principally in Article 27 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights) to the right to self-determination, rights of participation, property rights, and the right to private life. He finds that the notion of culture in Article 27, as expressed by the Human Rights Committee, “is not frozen but that the provision may be invoked as support for an indigenous way of life that has a historical link to the traditional life style but has, nevertheless, undergone transformations over decades and centuries.”39 Scheinin expresses concern that the “freezing” approach to aboriginal rights in Canada “may become fatal in a situation in which the sustainability of traditional naturebased economic activities has been destroyed and the members of an indigenous community are living on unemployment or welfare benefits. The ultimate outcome of affording protection only to economic activities that were practiced ‘at the time of contact’ will, in many cases, be the extinction of the culture.”40

popular will There can be little doubt that judges are influenced in their decisions by what is loosely termed the “popular will” – ideas, including stereotypes and prejudices, that reflect widely held convictions, or “common sense” ideas that often (mis)inform judicial decisions and motivate political action. Such popular will ideas include those articulated by interest groups competing with aboriginal peoples and communities over resources. To these groups, aboriginal culture is commonly seen as defunct, a thing of the past, trucked out in an effort to gain the upper hand in resource competition. But there are also representatives of popular will with more generous views of aboriginal culture, those who see it as one of the last remaining hopes of cultural diversity and ancient ecological wisdom. This is an approach to aboriginal culture that is pervasive in much the same way that evolutionism was pervasive in the nineteenth century. A variety of (often contradictory) popular ideas about aboriginal peoples can be seen as influencing the way judges think about cultural rights. Both the unfriendly prejudices of those who see themselves as being in competition over resources with aboriginal peoples and the cultural romanticism and preservationism of others who

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more often support aboriginal interests as part of a wider agenda of environmental and cultural stewardship have coalesced into nongovernmental organizations that attempt to influence public perceptions, government policies, and judicial decision making. As a significant part of civil society, organizations promoting ideas about aboriginal culture have an influence on the perspectives adopted by many members of the public. By broadly affecting the way people think about aboriginal societies, they in all likelihood have an oblique influence on the approach to aboriginal culture taken by the courts. The two examples of popular orientations to aboriginal culture that follow are in some respects at opposite ends of a spectrum of opinion. Aboriginal Peoples as Environmental Sages Ironically, one of the impediments to aboriginal control over natural resources could well be the prevalence of the idea that aboriginal peoples are living representatives of environmental wisdom, that at the very least they have the potential to put into practice a form of subsistence and a form of life based upon intimacy with and respect for the natural world. The forest-based subsistence native peoples once practised, and today possess remnants of, is a source of knowledge and spiritual understanding from which all can benefit. Paleolithic knowledge, or what we can today understand of it, stands as an alternative to the project of modernity, industrial exploitation, destruction, and “improvement” of entire forest ecosystems. The basic goal of cultural preservationists is to improve their own lives and to provide a model for wider social and spiritual reform by looking to the past for the uncorrupted essence of humanity. But the kind of wisdom that contemporary indigenous peoples are able to offer depends upon their own ability and willingness to maintain the Paleolithic lifestyle and to share it with others. This is by no means a sure thing. Too often, according to this approach, native people share in the degradation, rootlessness, and alienation of modernity. Paleolithic wisdom only occasionally survives in the form of cultural artefacts or in the form of aboriginal cultures as living collective artefacts. A corollary of this attitude towards aboriginal cultures is suspicion, rejection, or misjudgment of their adaptation to conditions of modernity. It emphasizes the ways that aboriginal peoples differ from

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industrial, bureaucratic society and suggests that these differences have the potential to instruct and improve others. On this view, new hunting technologies, means of transportation, electronic communication, village settlement, and bureaucratic organization threaten to upset the delicate balance between humans and the natural world, erode the simple material foundations of forest spirituality, and change hunting and gathering from a way of life to a way of making a living. There is a small step from this approach to cultural change in aboriginal societies to the view that cultural rights should not apply to practices and traditions that are extrinsic to these societies, especially not those borrowed or adapted from the technologies and values of industrial society. There is an interesting and puzzling consistency between the approaches to aboriginal culture of those whom we might call “preservationist cultural counterrevolutionaries” and the Supreme Court judgment in R. v. Van der Peet. Both see the essence of aboriginal culture as deriving from the Paleolithic way of life of the precontact period. Both to some degree reject aboriginal cultural borrowings from industrial North Atlantic societies. And both are consistent with the premise that those aboriginal societies that stray too far from the path of Paleolithic values and technology are unworthy of the rights and respect due to distinct societies. It would probably be going too far to say that the Supreme Court justices therefore share the values of romantic cultural preservationists; rather, each, in different ways and for very different reasons, is suspicious of (and at times rejects) those forms of aboriginal culture that do not correspond with an ideal of untainted, original lore and life. Cultural preservationists have censured aboriginal communities for spiritual and ritual secrecy, for unwillingness to share with others the attitudes and methods of harmony with nature. The wisdom of the elders is seen as universal in application, and the unwillingness of some to share it openly with others is condemned as misguided pride or, more generously, as an unfortunately broad application of ritual secrecy. Aboriginal societies that refuse to share cultural knowledge with an eager non-aboriginal audience cut themselves off from the opportunity to make their special understanding of the natural world part of a wider human heritage of Paleolithic wisdom. Worse than the refusal to share is the willingness of aboriginal societies to dilute the purity of their ancestral knowledge with borrowings from non-Native culture. Westernization is a corruption of

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essential truths that can and should be made part of everyone’s life or that should at least be available to those that seek spiritual improvement. These truths then become not just inconveniently withheld but permanently inaccessible, lost to humanity, diminishing forever the variety of human possibilities. Not only are the courts and the cultural preservationists essentially similar in their preference for selected qualities of precontact societies as the model for contemporary expressions of “tradition,” but the outcome of their cultural censorship is virtually the same. Aboriginal peoples are not “authentic” if they do not in some essential ways faithfully represent a sanitized Paleolithic ideal. When they stray too far from this traditional model, they can no longer command sympathy or protection. The main difference between the two approaches is in the features of ancestral aboriginal society seen to be worthy of attention. The cultural preservationists stress the importance of spiritual values attached to a simple lifestyle, whereas the courts look most carefully at the sovereignty implications of particular practices that have become the foci of disputes with the State. Aboriginal Destructiveness and Popular Prejudice Other non-scholarly ideas act in opposition to cultural romanticism. These are ideas that begin with the premises that aboriginal peoples have never been environmental sages and that the only thing keeping them from perpetrating the wholesale destruction of their forests and rivers is their relative lack of power. This view, expressed, for example, by New Brunswick’s non-aboriginal fishers, who are in competition with the native community of Burnt Church over the lobster fishery, sees the federal government’s reluctance to join in the fray over a lucrative resource not as a passive recognition of treaty promises but, rather, as capitulation to unreasonable demands. If aboriginals are to fish, “it has to be under the same regulations and conditions as the rest of us.”41 Aboriginal peoples should therefore be prevented from exercising control over natural resources if Canadians as a whole are to enjoy the benefits of effective, centrally administered environmental management. How can aboriginals be trusted to manage the large areas they claim as ancestral territory? Rather than let the “Indians” bring in lobster traps or bulldozers beyond the reach of public accountability, let sophisticated government agencies or environmentally

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sensitive corporations take charge of regulating fish and game or conquering and taming the North. Opponents of aboriginal resource control occasionally invoke a relatively new popular prejudice – which represents aboriginal peoples as environmentally rapacious – in an effort to call their motives and integrity into question. This dimension of the popular will has implications for judicial recognition (or limitation) of aboriginal rights and can be seen as a possible source of influence behind the “frozen rights” approach to aboriginal rights of subsistence. In R. v. Van der Peet, as we have seen, the Court holds that an activity does not have to precisely mirror the precontact past but may comprise “an exercise in modern form of … pre-contact practice,” to be protected as an aboriginal right.42 Given this approach, could a native community legally put into practice (in modern form of course) a hunting regime that brought back the importance of reincarnation beliefs and that put into practice periodic intensive killing of game animals? No, because aboriginal practice must also be reconciled with the sovereignty of the Crown, which, according to the explanatory amendment to R. v. Marshall, is the legitimate task of the federal minister responsible, not of aboriginal peoples. The same limitation would arise whenever aboriginal peoples or communities put into practice any other form of autonomous hunting regulation and game control. Cultural rights include some subsistence practices but do not extend to the right to manage that subsistence. A basic difficulty in the Supreme Court’s approach to aboriginal culture, therefore, arises from the separation of “modern forms” of subsistence practice from subsistence regulation or management. These are inseparable components of all economic systems, but in the approach to aboriginal culture expressed in R. v. Marshall they do not as a whole form part of what aboriginal peoples can claim as a component of their distinct rights. R. v. Marshall does not so much reconcile aboriginal rights with the sovereignty of the Crown as it imposes the will of the Crown upon distinctive aboriginal activities. Subsistence activities thereby lose the quality of being protected as distinct rights; they become privileges to be granted and taken away by the minister at will. What the Court manages to achieve with its regime of cultural rights, whether intentionally or not, is a remarkable accommodation and synthesis of popular prejudices. Those who wish to see unadulterated Paleolithic wisdom in the way contemporary aboriginal

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hunters and fishers practise their harvest could well be gratified that the Court looks back to the supposedly simple, unhurried, environmentally balanced hunting and gathering ways of life of prehistoric peoples for examples of the rights to be enjoyed by their descendants. For those who, on the contrary, see aboriginal peoples as environmental cardsharpers, restricted only in their control over resources, there is comfort to be taken in the Court’s tight focus on specific rights to particular species handed down from an explicitly defined time in the past or derived from unambiguous treaty provisions.

difference-blindness versus aboriginal rights The inconsistencies between various notions of aboriginal culture reflect a central ambiguity in the Court’s use of social theory. As Canada’s history of assimilation policy illustrates, there can be a strong tendency in liberal societies to assert, sometimes in misguided and destructive ways, the equal dignity and rights of all citizens, with strong legal and political emphasis on non-discrimination and the prohibition of any differences in life opportunity based on collective differences: race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, age, and so on. The struggle for such individual rights of equal dignity remains in some ways incomplete, but the fact of this incompleteness at the same time sharpens the effort to advance the state’s blindness to differences. The courts can be seen as participants in the project of universalizing a form of liberal individualism that seeks to eliminate social differences grounded in distinct rights. But the courts are, at the same time, faced with collective claims that lead to recognition of cultural distinctiveness and distinct rights, played out in what Charles Taylor calls the “politics of difference,” an approach to collective rights in which “what we are asked to recognize is the unique identity of this individual or group, their distinctiveness from everyone else.”43 Taylor suggests that this orientation to rights is a direct outcome of the liberal emphasis on equality, the main difference being that the politics of difference stresses collective dignity, the infusion of non-discrimination with a new emphasis on group identity in which distinctions are made on the basis of differential regimes of rights. Aboriginal rights sit squarely in the middle of this tension. In questions concerning treaty-supported resource use, land claims, and

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cultural rights, knowledge about the aboriginal society in question at the time before contact with Europeans becomes a source of guidance for decisions that are often essentially about the allowable limits of self-determination. Treaties are clearly a form of legal recognition of collective difference that affirms and formalizes rights not enjoyed by other Canadians. Aboriginal land rights are a form of “ownership” attached to distinct rights to resources and rights of selfgovernment. And aboriginal cultural rights involve legal protections of distinct ways of life as well as the more implicit recognition that such protections are necessary for the health and survival of aboriginal peoples. These regimes of aboriginal rights, some of which predate Canadian Confederation, cannot be reconciled with a narrow approach to equal dignity and non-discrimination. In every case involving aboriginal rights, therefore, the Court faces a delicate task of balancing the honour of the Crown with a form of liberalism inhospitable to differentiated rights. It is possible to see this tension expressed in the way the Court has elaborated its definition or “test” of aboriginal cultural rights. In this test, culture is separated from collective agency. Recognition of distinct cultural practices is tightly focused, eked out in a pattern of species-by-species rulings. And, above all, cultural rights are separated from aboriginal rights of self-determination. As far as possible, the Court has contained the collective dimensions of aboriginal rights within the close confines of liberal individualism. The majority opinion of the Supreme Court in R. v. Van der Peet, for example, reveals the main features of the Court’s current approach to aboriginal culture, the highlights of which are as follows: at the time of contact between aboriginal peoples and the British Crown, the aboriginals “lived on the land in distinctive societies, with their own practices, customs and traditions.” To be protected by an emerging regime of rights in Canadian law today, these practices, customs, and traditions must be “of central significance to the society in question,” they must, in other words, be “integral to the distinctive culture of the aboriginal group,” “a defining characteristic of their culture,” and must be shown to be “an exercise in modern form of a pre-contact practice. Custom or tradition” which has “continuity with [those practices] that existed prior to contact with European society.”44 Such continuity is not necessarily the result of an unbroken history that reaches from the near present back to precontact societies. An integral, distinct, traditional practice is subject to flux

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and reflux; it can be left aside and picked up again later, resumed after an interruption. The main thing is that there must be an essential similarity between precontact times and the present. There are important political implications that follow from this approach to culture. If evolutionism leads to a distorted philanthropic impulse to “uplift” and “civilize” the “backward” societies to the point where they can live as happy individuals integrated in the nation, the Court’s current emphasis on distinctivism can lead to an equally distorted preservationist impulse to control the pace of change, to “protect” those original people living close to nature, to recognize distinct rights only to the extent that they are far removed from economic and political development. It is not entirely accurate to say that there can be no significant innovations applied to (or imposed upon) aboriginal practices that do not diminish the continuity between a precontact tradition and its present form. The Court does allow unilateral government regulation of fishing, hunting, and gathering activities, but it has not viewed this as a significant divergence from a precontact tradition, as a compromise of the central significance of a practice or custom, or as a form of discontinuity with practices that existed prior to contact with European society. This approach effectively removes from aboriginal control the authority they held in precontact times (and in most postcontact times, despite a number of ineffectively imposed regimes of government management) to regulate the very activities that are central to aboriginal practice. It is, as far as significant legal events go, a change of fundamental importance, which goes to the very heart of that way of life based upon hunting, fishing, and gathering, yet it is not discussed in legal decisions as a source of divergence from precontact aboriginal cultures. Canada’s courts are sometimes required to deal with a tension between popular ideas that can be characterized as “rigid liberalism” – based upon the idea of equality as a legal absolute – and the protection of aboriginal peoples through regimes of distinct rights. Liberal states, including their judiciaries, have tended to act upon indigenous rights only to the extent that they do not cross over into affirmations of sovereignty, beyond the familiar and comfortable territory of individual rights and the equal dignity of citizens. Without special regimes of rights, however, aboriginal societies have little defence against a process of cultural assimilation that, in the past, has proven to be more destructive than emancipatory.

5 The Secrets of Exposure

self-representation and distant witnessing There are two basic avenues for asserting claims of collective social justice that follow from the possibilities inherent in media representation. One is to take control of mediatized depictions of social suffering, to actively invite rather than be subject to representation of suffering, to appropriate the appropriations of the injuries of injustice, adversity, and despair by participating in a media-sanctioned acknowledgment of collective pain. Collective claims can then be more clearly seen – or shown – to follow from humanitarian injustice, the abuse of power, and the suffering of the innocent. This, of course, still leaves sufferers open to what Kleinman, Das, and Lock refer to as the distortions of social experience through the very act of picturing;1 and it must find an answer to what Arthur and Joan Kleinman refer to as “the dismay of images” of suffering, which, cumulatively, “produce moral fatigue, exhaustion of empathy, and political despair.”2 Such pleas for sympathy are in competition with other humanitarian disasters for a finite pool of public interest and commitment. The “sound byte society” is, most media observers agree, becoming increasingly desensitized to depictions of suffering, and it has become correspondingly difficult to capture public attention and motivate action. The search for ever more dramatic images of war, Susan Sontag writes, “is part of the normality of a culture in which shock has become a leading stimulus of consumption and source of value.”3 And given this nature of things it is of course much more difficult to seek intervention and redress

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when blood is not fresh on the ground – or when there is not enough of it. Even in obvious humanitarian crises resulting from the most violent kind of hate politics, such as the genocides of Bosnia and Rwanda and the so-called “humanitarian crisis” of Darfur, the social awareness and commitment needed to impel the world to action was slow to coalesce. There is one possible (and inevitably partial) solution to this last limitation: The spectacle of distant suffering must somehow be such that it stands out among other situations of crisis and provokes empathy, indignation, and urgency of action. Suffering must somehow be made urgent and immediate. A certain threshold must be reached in which the voyeuristic urge to consume images of agony and death can be satisfied. But claims based primarily on cultural difference and the need for legal action on rights of self-determination, in which humanitarian crisis is perhaps only a legacy of graves and scarred memories, have little chance of garnering support without more active, concerted campaigns of consciousness-raising. Fortunately, a second possible way to raise public consciousness is through more positive assertions of cultural distinctiveness and integrity. But if cultural causes have to be commoditized, the appeal of the product is all important. Actions normally taken to represent selflessness and solidarity are far easier to motivate when personal interests are at stake. There has to be a strong source of attraction attached to those making claims of culture, preferably something that, usually metaphorically speaking, can change hands in a relationship of mutual benefit. In the absence of catastrophe, the consumers of difference want to know what the claimants of cultural survival have to offer. This is, in part, why the cultivation of sympathy in the context of cultural self-representation is also oriented towards positive perceptions of difference – not just differences in relative conditions of well-being or suffering between witness and distant subject but, in particular, in those ways of feeling, knowing, and being that are broadly appealing but in some ways impossible for the witness to achieve, capable, perhaps, of being fleetingly or vicariously experienced but alluringly out of reach as a permanent aspect of the outside sympathizer’s life. Combining these two strategies of media representation of distinct communities produces a human impossibility: victims of devastating injustice and social injury who are at the same time spiritually

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elevated models of political and environmental responsibility. The growing prominence of public visibility as a precondition for avoiding forced displacement and encouraging responsible governance has resulted in distorted, unattainable standards of dignity and heroism among those who are subject to, and attempting to change, conditions of political abuse. Related to this point, there is a schizophrenic quality to philanthropy directed towards distinct human groups. Those who are the subjects of distant judgment are at times viewed as morally elevated and at other times as incompetent or depraved. Part of the background to this inconsistency is the fact that their suffering is mediated by journalism and social activism. Those who are suffering must, as a precondition to being a subject of interest to far away witnesses, have a story to tell and, preferably, provide some glimpse into a compelling, inspiring way of life. Heroism, Adam Smith tells us in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, is inspired by perils and misfortunes, which are, “the only proper theatre which can exhibit [heroism’s] virtue to advantage, and draw upon it the full applause of the world.”4 And if the attitudes that Smith describes are still part of the way heroism is understood, then to garner public approbation those who suffer must in some way overcome their suffering by showing themselves to be made better by it and to conform to a Stoical ideal of virtue. They must at the very least keep enough of themselves intact to have something left to give in return, some example of heroism through the struggle against adversity or the wisdom of life made simple and spiritually elevated through conditions of deprivation. Because of this demand for moral reciprocity there is less room for compassion towards those who seem fully and irredeemably diminished or broken, who have found solace in addictions, who have no example to offer other than the abuses they have experienced, or who, through a depressive disconnection with life, have simply lost the ability to care for themselves, for others, or for their environment. These are clearly difficult conditions to navigate for those intending to assert the claims of culture. And as the success of ethnic and indigenous politics is increasingly determined by publicity campaigns and mobilization of grassroots organizations oriented towards the politics of indignation, we can expect to find a widening distance in terms of political effectiveness between those distinct peoples and communities that are able to take advantage of new media technologies

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and strategic opportunities and those that are not. If there is no one present to hear a cultural community, can it (or will it) really be said to exist? The very perception of a distinct human community often takes the form of mediated recognition, resulting either from press coverage of humanitarian disaster or from a more controlled, strategic assertion of positive difference.

the james bay cree campaign strategy The way that I now intend to add substance to these preliminary observations is through a comparison of the lobbying activities of two Cree peoples in northern Canada. The Crees of the eastern James Bay and the Crees of northern Manitoba are similar in almost every respect, including the forms of imposed extractive industry imposed on them (hydroelectric megaprojects), their negotiation of “modernday” treaties, and, especially striking, their campaigns to resist new projects through emphasizing environmental protection and assertions of indigenous rights of self-determination. Because of this cluster of basic similarities, it is the ways that they differ that have the potential to be especially instructive, starting with the fact that the James Bay Crees have been far more successful than have the Crees of northern Manitoba in enhancing their political influence through the strategic use of cultural lobbying. In the early 1970s, the then premier of Quebec, Robert Bourassa, could almost proudly regard the boreal forest region of the province’s north as a wasteland, as “a forbidding and barren land, only sparsely populated by the Inuit and Cree,” and proceed with plans for largescale dams, dykes, and water diversions as though nobody inhabited the region.5 Since then, however, the James Bay Crees have succeeded in building a political system that brings together the leadership of nine widely scattered communities and have indisputably established their presence in Quebec as a de facto self-determining people and a political force to be reckoned with.6 In the early 1990s, for example, the Grand Council of the Crees broadly communicated the concerns of the James Bay Crees regarding a second phase of hydroelectric development, not only in Quebec but also in the northeastern United States, to which dams in the James Bay II project were to export power. Their lobbying efforts included speeches and pubic meetings in church basements, environmental rallies, “teach-ins” at college campuses, the support of efforts

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to divest college and state pension funds of investments in HydroQuébec, and the presentation of their case to the International Water Tribunal in Amsterdam. In the week leading up to the Water Tribunal judgment in Amsterdam, the Crees also brought their case to the public, paddling a hybrid Cree/Inuit canoe, called an odayek (a combination of the Cree word uut and the Inuit qayak), along the city’s picturesque canals and using the crowds and press coverage attracted to this spectacle as yet another opportunity to provide information on the likely environmental consequences of an imposed hydroelectric project. As a cumulative result of such efforts, HydroQuébec was put on the defensive, and, in 1995, with key contracts in the United States cancelled, the project was shelved. When the Quebec government again intended to proceed with hydroelectric development in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the political climate had changed, the Government of Quebec more clearly needed Cree cooperation in efforts to proceed with the large-scale resource extraction necessary to build the Quebec economy, the Crees were consulted at every phase of planning, and the New Relationship Agreement, more popularly known as the Paix des Braves, was eventually (though not without controversy and continuing dissatisfaction among many in the Cree villages) voted on in community referenda and ratified in 2002. This new agreement included provisions for environmental assessment and a regime of royalties likely to be worth $3.6 billion over fifty years. The Crees of Cross Lake, Manitoba, on the other hand, although explicitly modelling their own campaign on the strategies successfully used by their “cousins” across James Bay, did not succeed in raising the profile of their cause to nearly the same degree, certainly not to the point at which their political ambitions were consistently acted upon through the democratic possibilities of public recognition. And from this initial observation we can ask why one people succeeded where another did not (or not to the same degree). At what points did the template of James Bay Cree lobbying strategy not fit within another, apparently similar, context? What, then, are the most important determinants of successful cultural representation and pursuit of justice following from claims of difference? And what might be the implications of collective incapacity in the qualities essential for effective self-representation? The answers to these questions can be found through a closer look at the Pimicikamak Cree Nation’s lobbying campaign from 1998 to 2000, based largely on the James Bay

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Cree model, directed towards compensation and mitigation of the effects of a large-scale hydroelectric project.

defiance and outreach The Churchill-Nelson River hydroelectric project was constructed in the early 1970s, without completion of environmental impact studies and, most significantly, without prior consultation with the Cree communities occupying the affected region. In 1974, when the project was completed and the impacts of an altered water regime began to be widely felt, five Cree Communities (Cross Lake, Split Lake, Norway House, York Landing, and Nelson House) formed the Northern Flood Committee and negotiated the Northern Flood Agreement (nfa) with Canada, Manitoba, and the Crown corporation Manitoba Hydro. The nfa was signed on 16 December 1977, promising five Cree signatory communities four acres of replacement land for every acre lost to the Churchill and Nelson River hydroelectric project; compensation for injury, loss of life, and/or damage to equipment on waterways made hazardous by the project; and funding for economic development and remedial programs to secure eroding shorelines, remove debris, and protect burial sites. More ambitiously and less precisely, it makes a commitment to bring about “the eradication of mass unemployment and mass poverty” (Schedule E) in the signatory villages.7 The people of Cross Lake developed a clear understanding of their rights under the nfa, above all the promise of an end to their conditions of unemployment and poverty, and the commitment enshrined in the nfa to a relationship, intended to go beyond other treaty relationships, that was to last for the “lifetime of the project” (Article 25). In other words, in a reversal of the usual treaty language, the agreement was to endure as long as the rivers did not run, at least in the way they once did. But the Agreement withered on the vine. For the first eight years after nfa ratification, the federal government budgeted no funds for its implementation. In 1985 Canada, Manitoba, and Manitoba Hydro made an offer to the Northern Flood Committee (nfc) to settle all resource-related claims resulting from the hydroelectric project in exchange for a lump-sum payment of $30 million. The nfc rejected this offer. The three levels of government then proposed “global” settlement offers in 1988 and 1990, respectively, in

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a process that resembled a long-term negotiating process, resulting in the Proposed Basis of Settlement of Outstanding Claims and Obligations, in which $242 million in cash and bonds were offered the nfa signatories in exchange for the resolution of some 150 outstanding claims and the elimination of most of the government’s nfa obligations.8 Although the offer seemed generous enough, the nfc rejected it, mainly because of concerns that the Proposed Basis of Settlement terminated rights and obligations in the nfa that were intended to last “in perpetuity.” Then the federal and provincial governments and Manitoba Hydro approached the nfa signatory communities individually with socalled master implementation agreements (mias) or comprehensive implementation agreements (cias), beginning with the smallest community, Split Lake, in 1992, and proceeding in succession to the next largest, Nelson House, then York Landing, and, finally, Norway House in 1997. Cross Lake, by far the largest of the nfa signatory communities with some 5,500 members (approximately 3,500 “on reserve,” and 2,000 “off reserve”), was in the process of negotiating a cia with the governments when the referenda needed to implement Norway House’s agreement took place; and the divisive effects of the ratification procedure in this neighbouring community contributed significantly to Cross Lake’s rejection of its own agreement. In Norway House a referendum on the implementation agreement failed to pass by a margin of five votes. But the Government of Canada then sponsored a second referendum several months later with a lower threshold of approval. What is more, the residents of Norway House were promised a sum of $1,000 each upon approval of the agreement. This was presented by the agreement’s sponsors as a benefit, merely one of the provisions of the cia, but many of the people of Cross Lake viewed it more sceptically as “vote buying.”9 When the fifth and final cia was drafted and introduced to Cross Lake in 1996 it was met with careful scrutiny. “Circle groups” were formed that disentangled the legal language of the cia and interpreted it in terms of the future impact on their lives. Elders familiar with the enduring promises and relationships of Treaty 5 combed through a version of the settlement offer that had been translated into Cree syllabics and were then instrumental in lobbying for its rejection. A petition signed by over half the community’s eligible voters indicated their refusal to accept the agreement and to actively pursue nfa implementation.10 But how was this to be done when

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the governments and the Crown corporation Manitoba Hydro were seemingly unwilling to cooperate? On 18 March 1997 the people of Cross Lake expressed their sense of grievance and frustration towards Manitoba Hydro the only way they knew how: by setting up a roadblock at a river crossing several kilometres from the community, blocking access to Manitoba Hydro work sites. This spontaneous, uncoordinated act of defiance was difficult for the utility to challenge. For one thing, the situation had certain elements of legal complexity since the river crossing in question was on Cross Lake’s reserve land. Soon there were reporters and camera crews on the scene. In an act of solidarity, Ted Moses, then the Grand Council of the Crees ambassador to the United Nations, drew more attention to the blockade in a meeting of the un Commission on Human Rights, stating that “it is shocking that in a country like Canada, indigenous peoples still have to resort to blockades to vindicate their fundamental human rights.”11 At the same time, despite emotions running high, the protesters exercised consistent self-restraint, not allowing the roadblock to be enforced by violence and not offering a justification for their forced removal by police. Even when the Crees parked a backhoe on top of a dyke that held back the waters of the Jenpeg Dam’s forebay, the potentially inflammatory situation was closely observed (as evident from overhead helicopters), but it did not spill over into destruction or violence; no arrests were made and the protesters eventually moved away quietly on their own. The Cross Lake Crees were ultimately placated by a written promise from Manitoba Hydro to work with them towards the implementation of their rights and entitlements under the nfa. In response, the roadblock was taken down and the cable ferry was started up and began shuttling the pickup trucks and vans packed with protesters returning Cross Lake; the offending Manitoba Hydro trucks were also ferried across and allowed to continue on the gravel road to the remote northern villages, and the reporters and photographers packed away their equipment and took the same road in the opposite direction back to Winnipeg. But once the dust settled the strategic question remained: what do we do now? How were the people of Cross Lake to keep up their momentum and fully convince Manitoba Hydro and the governments of Canada and Manitoba that the nfa constituted a treaty that had to be acted on in good faith? How were they to get the three parties to honour their

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agreement and convert those negotiated rights into better living conditions and a more promising future? The challenge that the people of Cross Lake then set themselves was to translate their history and the current circumstances of their lives into political capital through the politics of indignation. The situation called for the Crees and their sympathizers to interpret their history and experience of suffering and to define the essential qualities of a culture under threat. The people of Cross Lake thus became more explicitly seen as the victims of injustice, imposed megaproject development, and imposed conditions of poverty, even as they were still expected to uphold ideal standards of spiritual wisdom and the ethics of political and environmental responsibility.

cross lake’s appeal to justice When, following the roadblock and rejection of the implementation agreement, the Pimicikamak Crees of Cross Lake set about to achieve their aspirations of justice, economic development, and health care reform, the people of the village decided in an open meeting that, as a basic strategic principle, they would rely first and foremost on a truthful depiction of their situation. They hoped that, by doing this, everything they wanted to achieve would naturally fall into place. Who, after all, could deny the reality of their suffering? Who could deny the plain fact that the governments of Canada, Manitoba, and Manitoba Hydro, in forcing an environmentally destructive hydroelectric project on them and then not living up to promises of compensation and development, had treated them unjustly? The strategy of implementing the 1977 nfa through petty claims of compensation for broken boat propellers caused by floating debris or snowmobiles lost or damaged in weakened ice conditions was clearly not meeting anyone’s aspirations for employment and community development. A lawyer, an advisor, and a lobbyist, each of whom had been involved in the James Bay Cree campaign, eventually came to work for the community of Cross Lake. And with these personnel came further changes in strategy, explained and approved in public meetings and conference calls with Chief and Council, which were seen to be in keeping with tried and true methods of indigenous activism. In a community meeting that brought several of the James Bay strategists to Cross Lake, one of the Christian elders had given his

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cause a slogan by telling his audience, “The truth will set you free.” This was also, as a lawyer for the Band Council explained to me, the principal reason for the community’s review of my curriculum vitae in a public meeting and their subsequent invitation to me and my family to live with them for two years, to witness and report on the conditions of their lives and on their campaign to change these conditions through defining new relationships with the governments and the Crown corporation, Manitoba Hydro. If the world had to be shown the truth about Cross Lake’s suffering and subjection to injustice, then who better to do this than an individual whose profession was to find and report on the facts – a researcher able to take the time necessary to develop an understanding of the community as a whole? Very early into my stay in Cross Lake, even before I had unpacked all my boxes, I received a request for assistance from William Osborne, one of seven elected band councillors. Would I please help him write a letter to the Queen of England? Still infused with the energy of new beginnings and curious to hear what he would want to say in such a letter, I agreed. The fruit of our collaboration was a summary of his main points of grievance expressed in a language that he hoped would be suitable for a petition of great importance: May it please Your Majesty, I am writing to you as an elected representative of the people of Cross Lake, Manitoba on a matter of the utmost importance for the future of my people’s relationship with the government of Canada. I feel that, as Canada’s head of state, you have a right to know what is being done in your name to many of the native people of northern Manitoba. Your Majesty, my people once lived in a land that was bountiful, that provided them with fish from clean water, with ducks and geese that flew in countless numbers during spring and fall migrations, with moose and woodland caribou that provided meat through the winter, with fur-bearing animals that fed us and also provided pelts that we could sell for what we needed. This life was for thousands of years the foundation of our prosperity, and it was protected by a treaty, Treaty No. 5, between Her Majesty the Queen and the Salteaux and Swampy

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Cree Tribes of Indians, signed in 1875. This treaty was to last for as long as the sun shines, the grass grows, and the rivers flow. Your Majesty, in the early 1970s the government of Canada, without consulting any of the people to be affected, broke this treaty by giving Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro permission to build generating stations on the Nelson River. This hydroelectric megaproject destroyed our ability to live on the land by killing off or driving away many of the fish and animals we relied upon for subsistence. It reduced most of my people to lives of poverty and dependency. Your Majesty, since that time the plight of my people has become progressively worse. In 1977 the governments of Canada and Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro signed the Northern Flood Agreement (nfa), a new treaty that was to mitigate some of the effects of the hydro project and compensate the native people who suffered most from its impact. After twenty-one years we are still waiting to see the nfa provisions fulfilled, especially its promise to “eradicate mass poverty and mass unemployment.” My people are suffering from 85% unemployment, and they can no longer live from the land. Meanwhile, instead of implementing the nfa, the government of Canada has tried, in your name, to negotiate a new treaty called a ‘Comprehensive Implementation Agreement’, which in reality terminates the nfa in exchange for much reduced compensation. Your Majesty, the sun still shines, the grass is still growing, and the rivers, while slowed by dams, still flow to the sea. By violating our treaty, by taking away my people’s ability to earn their own livelihood, and by trying to defraud us of our just compensation, the government of Canada is risking its reputation as a leader of human rights and is sullying the honour of the Crown and Commonwealth. I therefore invite you to look carefully into this matter, and will do whatever I can to provide you with the information you need for a full understanding of the plight of my people. Yours in peace and friendship, William Osborne, Councilor

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This letter was in fact fully consistent with a long tradition of formal petitions to the symbolic and political heads of imperial powers (discussed in chapter 2). If one suffers abuse from a tyrant, who better to remedy the situation than the person to whom all such tyrants are answerable? Under circumstances in which states or empires were attempting to alienate land and impose new forms of governance on indigenous populations, one of the only available strategies of redress for indigenous leaders was to submit a written petition to a level of authority above those with whom they had immediate dealings, to appeal to the head of government, however abstract and far away it might be, in efforts to receive a fair hearing, to correct an injustice, to restore local political agency, or to receive the aid necessary to ensure future prosperity. The most important outcome of such petitions was almost never a significant improvement in legal status but, rather, a written acknowledgment that, from the point of view of a distant power, one existed as a people worthy of respect. The Cross Lake councillor’s letter fit squarely within a long tradition of aboriginal assertions of rights and dignity. A petition to the Queen, however, was not consistent with the strategy that Cross Lake’s legal advisors had in mind. Such a petition, they argued in a subsequent strategy meeting, is a concession of Crown sovereignty and an admission of dependence upon an imposed system of governance. The Pimicikamak Cree Nation of Cross Lake has its own legal integrity and must take its grievance out of the realm of closed, private interaction with government representatives – including the Queen – who probably have no real interest in the Crees’ welfare. Their situation must instead be exposed to as wide an audience as possible. Governments must be embarrassed and made accountable. The public must be mobilized. Cross Lake’s story has such inherent persuasiveness that hearing it would lead good people to respond to their cause with sympathy and support, and this, in turn, would lead them to pressure their governments towards fairer dealings with the Pimicikamak Crees.

the campaign begins The letter to the Queen was never sent. In the agreed upon strategy, the template of the James Bay Cree strategy was superimposed on Cross Lake’s campaign with greater definition. The Cross Lake Crees had already hired a bus to travel to Minneapolis, where they staged

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Figure 5.1 Cross Lake protesters listening to speeches at the Plaza of Northern States Power, Minneapolis, 22 June 1998.

a protest at the headquarters of Northern States Power, bearing placards with slogans like “Our Water Is Our Flow of Life,” “Numerous Deaths! Stop the Death Toll!” and “Loss of Life, Loss of Livelihood, Losses Not Replaceable,” together with white crosses signifying those from the community – eighteen in total, according to the Crees’ interpretation of the death record – who had died in the unsafe travel conditions caused by debris and ice conditions over the twenty-five years since construction of the Jenpeg Dam.12 In his speech (transmitted through an environmentally friendly solar-powered microphone and sound system) to those who gathered in the plaza of Northern States Power, Cross Lake chief Roland Robinson added substance to these symbols by invoking his peoples’ suffering as a result of imposed environmental change: “That was our garden. Now it is poisoned … It fills us with sorrow”;13 and then vice-chief John Miswagon followed with a similar theme: “We now live and die in a devastated, poisoned environment … an environment and an eco-system that has been turned into ruins. We now live and die in a world in which the voices of nature and of the people whose lives have been devastated have been silenced for too long.”14 Marie Hiller of the Minnesota-based ngo Clean Water Action, added another perspective, focusing on the point that sustainable

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energy was being defined too narrowly by industry, that the concept needs to include the impact of energy production on people, cultures, and the land. “If we are to ever hope for a truly sustainable future,” she said, “[the Crees] are the people we need to look to for answers … We need to look to our brothers and sisters who are the closest to the sun, the wind and the water … Let’s respect and learn from the Cross Lake Crees. Not displace them. Not destroy them.”15 This protest was directly inspired by the James Bay Cree campaign of the early 1990s in opposition to the James Bay II project, which concentrated its efforts on the importers of power in the United States. If the consumers of Manitoba Hydro’s power could be led to understand that this electricity was not environmentally clean, that the project had caused the deaths of people travelling on water and ice in unsafe conditions, and that, as one Cross Lake councillor put it, “the Manitoba hydro-electric energy you buy is stained with our blood” and that every time you turn on the lights you are also turning on the suffering and dying of the Crees in the north, then they might call upon their utility to rethink the possibility of bringing in more exports. And this, in turn, might cause Manitoba Hydro to act upon its neglected obligations to the Crees. Not everyone in Cross Lake agreed with this transnational engagement with the politics of embarrassment. An anonymous letter addressed to the Chief and Council of Cross Lake argued that the process of consultation had been inadequate and that consensus had not been achieved on the decision to pursue the lobbying strategy: “Not everyone was in agreement with the trip to Minnesota to rally and accuse them of murdering people of Cross Lake, as the picket signs carried indicated … If people want to achieve status and prestige by displaying rallies, road blocks, etc., they should do it without compromising the people of Cross Lake and our [chances] of receiving compensation.”16 It is impossible to say with precision how widely such views were held. Certainly the 1999 elections for Chief and Council revealed broad support for the nfa implementation strategy, as reflected in significant voter support for two leading candidates running on a similar platform of lobbying for nfa implementation; but the letter of grievance nevertheless seems to have represented the views of a significant subcommunity, which harboured a sense of exclusion and disagreement with the strategic self-representation of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation to the purchasers of electricity in the South.

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Such community-based dissent was not, however, to prove a significant obstacle to the lobbying campaign. Of more immediate concern to Cross Lake’s strategists was how they were to put together the financial resources necessary for a sustained and potentially expensive effort of public outreach. The James Bay Crees had benefited from the (in this respect) comparatively generous provisions of the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement of 1975, which financed many of the initiatives of the Grand Council of the Crees. The operational budget of this organization has enabled the James Bay Crees to creatively define and defend their interests, allowing them to pay legal expenses, with litigation as an option possibly to be used in tandem with the public politics of shame. Cross Lake, by contrast, had no financial wherewithal. It had, in fact, been threatened by the Department of Indian Affairs with receivership and loss of control of its budget to a federal auditor, a threat that Cross Lake’s leadership viewed in poignant contrast to the resources owed to them by the federal government under the provisions of the nfa. This was not just Cross Lake’s dilemma; rather, it can be seen as a common condition in which self-representation through electronic media has become a precondition for the pursuit of social justice across the boundaries of ethnic and constitutional difference. There is sad irony in the fact that significant financial resources have become necessary for effective protest against the injustices and indignities of imposed conditions of poverty. The solution to the need to fund the campaign was found in the fact that Cross Lake’s households were paying electricity bills to a utility that was in default of its obligations under the nfa. In response to this, Cross Lake’s lawyers assisted community leaders, consisting of representatives from a women’s council, an elders’ council, a youth council, and the Chief and Council, to draft a law in accordance with the Pimicikamak Cree Nation’s unextinguished powers of inherent legal jurisdiction. This law was designed to allow the community to recoup the money owed by Manitoba Hydro by offering the utility’s customers in the community the option of paying their bills into a trust fund administered by a body of locally elected trustees and by Canada Trust. The Hydro Payment Law was passed on 30 October 1999 (because of its proximity to Halloween, the occasion was dubbed “Trick or Treaty Day”), and within a year of its ratification the Pimicikamak Okinawin Trust had recouped just over $1 million from Cross Lake’s hydro bills.

Figure 5.2 Ratification ceremony of the Hydro Payment Law, Cross Lake, 30 October 1998.

Figure 5.3 Spectators at the ratification ceremony of the Hydro Payment Law, Cross Lake, 30 October 1998.

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The Hydro Payment Law called for management of the trust fund by five trustees, one to be appointed by the Council of Elders and four others to be elected by “citizens of the Nation as provided by this Law.”17 This brought into sharper focus the problem of determining citizenship, which under normal circumstances was mediated by the federal government through the Indian Act. What good was a system of inherent jurisdictional law-making if the electorate was determined by an imposed system of governance? The Pimicikamak Cree Nation and its lawyers addressed this problem through the Citizenship Law, ratified on 2 July 1999. This law-making exercise was ultimately more than just a strategic manoeuvre; it was an expression of the legal principle actively promoted in the international movement of indigenous peoples – that “the Nation has a right of self-determination” and hence that “this right includes the right to determine its own identity according to its own laws.”18 The outcome of this act of legal mediation was (among many community members) an infusion of enthusiasm regarding the adoption of Pimicikamak Cree Nation identity, which took on wider meaning and independent momentum as a focus for the resurgence of nationalist sentiments and symbolism. In The Origins of Indigenism, I describe the shift in identity from “Cross Lake First Nation,” a name associated with formal affiliation with Indian Act governance through the federal government, to Pimicikamak Cree Nation, the new political entity with a name derived from the shape of the land, the Cree word pimicikamak (pronounced “pi-mi-chi-ka-mak”), describing the Nelson River’s unusual transverse entry into Cross Lake. Through the passage of the Citizenship Law, the Pimicikamak Cree Nation took control over its inherent right to formally define its own membership and to establish a formal process of establishing “citizenship,” the accomplishment of which was to be preceded by an oath (“I, [name], do solemnly undertake to uphold the constitution and Laws of the Nation and to faithfully discharge my responsibilities as a citizen and elector of the Nation”) and acknowledged by a certificate and a name in the band registry.19 Although the community’s lawyers wanted to keep the Pimicikamak Cree Nation and Cross Lake First Nation and their corresponding jurisdictions distinct and to use them as the occasion demanded, the Crees could not be discouraged from a more spontaneous, fervent collective reconfiguration: The name “Cross Lake First Nation” fell into disfavor, seen by many as a holdover from an earlier, and misguided, regime,

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Pimicikamak Cree Nation’s certificate of citizenship.

while “Pimicikamak Cree Nation” was rapidly popularized. Trucks and vans of the band police were repainted with a new logo and the words “Pimicikamak Cree Nation Police.” Cross Lake Health Services became Pimicikamak Health Services, and Cross Lake Education Authority became Pimicikamak Cree Nation Education Authority. Despite the importance of separating inherent authority from existing ties with the federal Department of Indian Affairs, the dam could not be held against the politics of identity.20 The creation of a legal entity – the Pimicikamak Cree nation – intended, from the point of view of the community’s lawyers, mainly for strategic purposes, took on a life of its own, becoming a focal point of cultural awakening and the search for personal authenticity.

message discipline But of course the trust fund was not just a source of pride and a renewed sense of collective self; on a more practical level it made it possible for Cross Lake to ratchet up its media campaign. The

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foundational principle of the lobbying strategy was to reduce the distance between the people of Cross Lake and those purchasing power from Manitoba Hydro; and the most effective way to accomplish this, to reach the greatest number of potential sympathizers and to inspire them to action, was to bring the Cree people to audiences in the South, to virtually anyone who would give them a sympathetic hearing. Inspired by the success of the odayek used by the Crees and Inuit of Quebec, the Pimicikamak campaign purchased an eight-metre aluminum canoe from an outfitter in Alberta and a team was assembled to paddle a ten-kilometre stretch of the Red River to arrive at the site of the 1999 Pan American Games in Winnipeg. There, alongside other “friends of the games,” they positioned their canoe prominently next to a teepee/information booth and offered interviews to anyone willing to listen to their story. I watched as many spectators seemed initially attracted by the display, approached the aluminum canoe painted in a birch-bark pattern, rapped it with a knuckle to verify that it was made of metal, frowned disapprovingly, and continued on their way. They received more sympathetic hearings in several churches in Winnipeg, particularly from the Mennonites. According to a Mennonite Central Committee position paper, one reason for the Church’s support of Cross Lake’s struggle for nfa implementation derives from a sense that Cross Lake is resisting global trends in history, “refusing to let the corporate powers write history alone, and challenging the belief in ‘progress.’”21 But it is also possible to see church involvement as deriving from a more direct connection between its ideals of Christian faith and a willingness to intervene in the suffering of others. Sympathy, the strategists increasingly came to recognize, had to be carefully cultivated. The common form of public discourse in Cross Lake allowed speakers to hold forth in front of a microphone for as long as they wished, to say all that was on their mind without interruption, and to leave meetings open-ended, allowing time for all to speak who wished to do so. This was recognized by the strategists as a practice that would not work well in presentations to audiences in the South. In meetings intended to prepare for an intensified campaign in Minnesota, Cree participants were coached by their lawyers and by those Cree leaders responsible for the nfa portfolio on how to

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present themselves to their audiences: to keep their talks brief (to within five or ten minutes), to be attentive to teammates assigned to keep them within time limits, to make eye contact with their listeners, to avoid reading from notes, to stop every once in a while to get a reaction from the audience, and, if they wished, to express emotion. The messages they were to bring to their audiences were also carefully prepared. They were to describe their homeland and the pristine bounty it once had when it sustained the Cree people from a time before memory; they were to invoke their ongoing spiritual relationship with the Land and All of Creation. They were to talk about the changes that came to their territory with the construction of the hydroelectric megaproject in the 1970s, which devastated the environment and left the Cree people in poverty. Most important, they were to point out that this ruined environment and these destroyed lives were on the other end of a transmission line that brought power from northern Manitoba to Minnesota. There were also topics to be avoided. The Cree delegates travelling to Minnesota were advised not to talk about a number of things to which they very likely had a deep commitment, above all their distinct rights as expressed in Treaty 5 and the nfa, their aspirations for self-determination, and their hopes for Cross Lake’s control of future development. They were to avoid the subject of the cias and their problematic ratification process, the diminished government obligations of compensation and community development, and the Crees’ own diminished hopes of prosperity through a new relationship with government. For the sake of wide appeal and persuasiveness, the script that the Cross Lake Crees took south of the border had many of the more complex, multifaceted, politically vexed lines edited out.

common cause Even with the campaign funds made available by the Hydro Payment Law’s trust fund, and even with a team of community spokespeople willing to travel to places where they did not feel at home, listen to advisors, and make their best effort to present a cause to which they were deeply committed, the campaign of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation lacked an essential ingredient: it did not have a clear reference point with regard to its resistance to plans for future large-scale, environmentally destructive development. The case brought to

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Minnesota from Cross Lake was mostly concerned with encouraging a boycott based upon past abuses and injustices. Limited to this agenda, the Crees were unable to fully express their aspirations for a prosperous community. And, for their part, the environmental and human rights activists in the South did not, through the situation of destruction and misery brought before them, have ready access to a specific, compelling vision for halting a disaster and creating a better future. This situation changed with the announcement in April 1999 of a four-hundred-kilometre, 345 Kilovolt Duluth-to-Wausau transmission line, a joint venture of the Wisconsin Public Service Corporation of Green Bay and Minnesota Power of Duluth. This project was opposed by a variety of grassroots organizations, including the Wisconsin-based organization of landowners Save Our Unique Lands, the General Assembly to Stop the Power Lines, and Minnesota Witness for Environmental Justice. The transmission line project raised questions about possible impacts to health, the environment, property values (it would affect 4,500 acres of wetlands, residential property, and farmlands), and, above all, abuse of power following from the fact that the utilities can, as a last resort, condemn the land they need for the project. Opponents of the line also found common cause with the Crees of northern Manitoba, who pointed out that much of the energy to be carried in the Duluth to Wausau transmission line originated in northern Manitoba, where it was responsible for the suffering of the Crees. The Pimicikamak Crees thus found more speaking venues in the United States than ever before and were able to hire a full-time lobbyist (whose salary and expenses were paid for by the Hydro payment trust fund) to transmit their message as widely as possible. Ernest Monias, a country/gospel singer and former band councillor from Cross Lake (dubbed the “Elvis of the North” in his Winnipegbased record label websites), became the Pimicikamak Cree Nation’s information officer. The window of opportunity before decisions were made on the transmission line was relatively narrow, and opponents of the project had to begin their campaign quickly. Within several months of the campaign’s start, there were indications that its messages were already being widely conveyed. An organization calling itself the American Friends of pcn (Pimicikamak Cree Nation) set up a website (www.unplugmanitobahydro.com) that discussed the hydroelectric megaproject’s destruction of Cross

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Lake under the heading “Washing away a Way of Life.”22 Articles about Cross Lake appeared in such mainstream newspapers as the Wausau Daily Herald, the Minnesota Daily, and the Capitol Times (Madison); in environmental journals like The Sunflower: Green Politics and Culture in Minnesota; in the Utne Reader; and in several Native American journals such as Native Americas, The Circle, and News from Indian Country. One joint strategy pursued by the Pimicikamak Crees and environmental activists involved a week-long hiking and canoeing excursion from Duluth to Keshena, Wisconsin, given the title River Awareness Tour. It was billed as an opportunity to meet “our neighbors to the North” who will be “coming through our area to talk to us about how our use of power affects people far away.”23 In the course of this event, Cross Lake’s lobbyist provided concerned Americans with information on the hydroelectric project’s release of the methyl mercury locked in soils, the pollution of water and fish, the destruction of spawning habitat, and the fluctuating water levels that erode shorelines, washing trees into the reservoir, harming wildlife, and making travel difficult and dangerous. “You took a vibrant subsistence culture and destroyed it and are replacing it with handouts,” the Cree lobbyist reported.24 And Ernest Monias was quoted in a Wisconsin paper, The Defender, as saying: “Manitoba Hydro destroyed my livelihood of fishing, hunting and trapping … It’s destroyed our recreation, swimming, boating, waterskiing – that’s all shot to hell. The loss of our environment – that’s affected me; the wildlife is a part of me. It’s been devastating.”25 The message from Cross Lake resonated with the message from those from Wisconsin who opposed the transmission line, like State Representative Marty Reynolds, who told a gathering of some sixtyfive people on the banks of the Black River in the Taylor County city of Medford that he regretted not having been able to speak up earlier, when the Manitoba government and power company came for the Pimicikamak Cree’s land. And he vowed not to let the same thing happen to his constituents. “We’re at war,” he said, “Wisconsin is at risk, our wildlife is at risk, our waters are at risk.” “They can’t have our water, they can’t have our lands, and they can’t have our rights,” Reynolds charged, “Today we draw a line in the sand and we etch it in stone.”26 This campaign in the United States did not escape the notice of provincial government officials responsible for the nfa. Eric Robinson, Manitoba’s minister of aboriginal and northern affairs

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(himself an “off-reserve” member of the Cross Lake First Nation), countered the “blood in the power lines” angle of the story, stating to the Duluth News Tribune that the government of Manitoba had been misrepresented by environmental groups: “It is my hope that these groups are not trying to achieve their own ends by using the suffering and misery of the Indian people.”27 As it turned out, the campaign for nfa implementation, and by extension the Crees’ participation in resistance to the Duluth to Wausau transmission line, did not meet the expectations of many of those involved. In 2001, Manitoba Hydro filed suit against the Pimicikamak Cree Nation, seeking a dismantling of the Hydro Payment Law and reimbursement of a sum that had by then grown to more than $2 million from electricity bills that had been paid into the Pimicikamak Okimawin Trust. The fund was frozen pending an outcome of a complex legal battle, and Cross Lake’s campaign found itself largely without resources. Construction of the southern portion of the Duluth–Wausau transmission line proceeded. And on 16 April 2007 residents of Cross Lake once again staged a protest against Manitoba Hydro, this time setting up a camp at the Jenpeg generating station. Band official Mervin Garrick told reporters: “We’ve been very, very patient, but with 30 years of waiting and nothing really concrete happening, then people have to take action.”28

ecology interrupted To be a fully informed witness to the experience of the people of Cross Lake, Manitoba, and to understand their leadership’s campaign for treaty implementation and an end to poverty, I had to do more than live in the village and attend meetings. If, as was their hope, I was to talk and write in a meaningful way about how their lifestyle had been altered forever by the environmental degradation of an imposed hydroelectric project, it would be necessary for me to see the land for myself. Foremost on the minds of officials from the Band Office was the need for me to witness the changes to the environment with which they were forced to live. As soon as it could be arranged after my arrival, I was taken by powerboat to see tangled barriers of dead wood along the shorelines of the Jenpeg Dam’s reservoir. This posed a twofold obstacle to traditional subsistence: it was a danger to travel and an impediment to the shoreline access necessary for hunting. Later I was taken by float plane and helicopter to visit

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Figure 5.5 Floating debris near the spillway of Manitoba Hydro’s Jenpeg Dam, 1998.

places where fluctuating water levels had washed away gravesites and left the bones of ancestors protruding from riverbanks and scattered along shorelines.29 Once I had been witness to these prominent grievances there were other things to be considered. It was important for me to see not just the ways the environment had been changed and degraded but also the importance of the Crees’ ongoing connection with the natural world, to the extent that it was possible to reach a few places where hunting and fishing remained productive. I already knew that I would not likely find a healthy environmental ethic among those who kept exclusive attachments to village life. This, too, seemed to be a general condition in Canada’s northern villages. Hunters who showed great skill and self-sufficiency in the bush environment often became dependent on others when they lived in town, unnecessarily travelling short distances by vehicle and calling their band offices for trifling repairs on their homes. In the settled communities all the forces and temptations that cause misery and misunderstanding come to the fore, especially the disastrous combination of ready access to drugs and alcohol and the indolence of unemployment. I had seen that, in Cross Lake, the pathologies of a

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welfare-dominated economy were not only manifested in high rates of addiction, family violence, and suicide but also, and more visibly, in the absence of care for the village’s surroundings. From the first day of my arrival I was surprised at the casualness with which people tossed away whatever they didn’t want and at how all the detritus of consumer society found its way to the playgrounds, parking lots, and roadsides. There were a few unusual households with carefully tended gardens. And there were school cleanup projects and summer employment initiatives that made a difference to the community’s appearance, at least for a while. The natural world also did its best to restore order: crows, ravens, and village dogs foraged on whatever scraps they could find; and winter brought a temporary condition of purity, a debt that came due with the melting of spring. But overall the physical surroundings of Cross Lake always seemed to reflect the shallow roots of a people that had lost a sense of home. But what about life on the land? Was this the locus of a spiritual sense of belonging? Was this where I would find the exemplary ecology of a people with deep, intergenerational knowledge of the natural world? And was this environmental ethic something the Crees would be able to use as a positive source of influence in their lobbying campaign? It is true that almost as soon as a truck or power boat was on its way to a hunting or fishing destination, even for an afternoon or overnight trip, people’s demeanor changed. They were almost always more relaxed, in a way that can only be described through clichés: their senses awakened, they displayed a greater lightness of being, as though released from a burden. I brought my camera along almost everywhere I went, and, in the candid portraits I shot in campsites, it was easier to find people in attitudes of calm, even in the midst of activity: sitting in a boat closely examining an engine part or pausing before a campfire while a pot came to a boil. Activity itself – purposeful, social, and apolitical – seemed to create a tranquility that was absent in the dust, tensions, and addictions of village life. But, as I was eventually to learn, the emotionally healing qualities of forest life have little to do with an environmental ethic of balance and conservation. I remember being with a hunter who expertly drove a Ford F-150 on a gravel road with a boat, camping gear, and a week’s supply of gasoline and food in tow, going at a speed I would not have imagined possible. Looking ahead, I spotted a peregrine

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falcon perched on a limb of a dead tree. When I called his attention to it, he leaned forward on the steering wheel, peering under a crack in the windshield, and finally caught a glimpse of it through the side window as we drove by. “Oh, one of those,” he said, obviously unimpressed. “I shot two of those last weekend. They were scaring away the ducks.”30 This was not the only example of the disjuncture between ideal ethic and practice that I was to encounter. I was with fishers who strung a sturgeon net across the mouth of a river, not far from an official sign declaring a moratorium because of declining numbers. (Not surprisingly, they failed to catch anything.) And a hunter once talked to me about how it seemed to be getting harder to find moose, then in the same conversation described a currently popular nighttime hunting method that involved using a powerful lamp (such as an airplane landing light) hooked up to car batteries and shone from a boat to make the reflection of the moose’s eyes stand out in the dark, “like two shiny eggs,” leaving the animal transfixed in the glare long enough to take a shot. One does not have to look far to find an explanation for this kind of departure from the stereotypical ideal of indigenous integration and balance with the natural world. The past fifty years of Cross Lake’s history reveal all the change and disjuncture one could possibly expect in setting out to establish an understanding of unsustainable hunting and fishing practices in an aboriginal community. Compulsory residential education removed children from their families and removed families from life on the land. An imposed hydroelectric megaproject contributed to making the environment in the surroundings of Cross Lake unproductive. With the village centralized and with few families living on the land, the reliance on power boats, trucks, and four-wheelers to reach productive areas was established. But due to the cost of equipment and gasoline, only those with employment in the formal economy could participate in forest-based subsistence, hunting and fishing only on a part-time basis, on weekends and holidays. And the expense of gasoline had to be offset by high-yield harvesting. High levels of unemployment and welfare dependency in the community also put the onus on hunters to be productive, to raise their self-esteem and social status by returning with food that they could then distribute through their extended kin networks. Physical removal from the land and the need

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for concentrated productivity combined to create a dominant hunting ethic far removed from the reincarnation beliefs and ritual respect of earlier generations. More difficult and important questions actually follow from the ease with which one can understand the unsustainable dimension of Cross Lake Cree hunting practices. Given that there are many other communities like Cross Lake – where the rapid pace of social change and lack of community control over much of it have led to an erosion of traditional hunting ethics, even as hunting remains integral to the way of life – why do expectations of a general indigenous ecological ethic of exemplary balance and wisdom persist? Why is there such a disjuncture between the social and cultural realities of injustice and the idealization of those who bear its burden? And what are the consequences of the blind spots in ecological romanticism for campaigns of cultural justice?

a vision of the future It did not take long after my arrival for me to realize that, for those whose responsibility it was to bring Cross Lake’s story to the public, there were features of the community that could not be expected to garner the kind of sympathy or support that might be politically useful. The main point of difficulty had nothing to do with the widely publicized corruption scandals or failures of democracy and accountability commonly directed towards Canada’s First Nations leadership. In this respect, Cross Lake’s leadership did quite well, making it onto the Accountability Coalition’s list of democratically responsible aboriginal governments. It had more to do with a vision of the future that was almost consensually shared in the village, even among schoolchildren, but that could not be expected to resonate positively with environmental lobbyists. Through the land replacement provisions of the nfa, Cross Lake had claim to a territory rich in minerals, above all a sizable titanium deposit. Among community members this was the most compelling, readily imagined solution to Cross Lake’s economic stagnation, the decline of forest subsistence, and its replacement with a welfare economy. Mining on land controlled by the community was to be an avenue to resource autonomy and, thus, to self-sufficiency and self-determination. Even though the land selection had not been finalized and transferred by the federal government, an entire wing

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of the Band Office was dedicated to planning the mining project, and guests of the Band Council were sometimes given a mini-tour that included displays of maps and ore samples. In response to questions that inevitably arose about the possible environmental impact of a mining site adjacent to the Nelson River just a few kilometres upstream from the village, the Band Office officials had a ready answer: if transnational mining industries are to be part of the world we live in, better that they should be answerable to an aboriginal community than simply left to act upon (or ignore) government standards as they please. With Cross Lake’s partnership, a higher standard of environmental protection would be possible than would be the case if companies were left to act more autonomously. With little communication with representatives of industry, and with little forward momentum on the titanium mine, the main purpose of this wing of the Band Office seemed to be to act as a focal point for hope, to give form and substance to a future life imagined as better in every way from the inadequacy and pathology of the present. There were more imaginations fired by the possibilities of the mine than just those of the Band Office administrators. The community radio station once aired a broadcast in which a young man described a vivid dream in which he saw himself with a metal lunch pail walking along a railroad track. He had a powerful, buoyant feeling that he had found work, and with a glance at his surroundings he realized that he was in the outskirts of Cross Lake, that the rail line was new, and that the mine had become a reality. The titanium deposit, it seems, had insinuated itself so deeply into the way the future was imagined that it appeared in traditional expressions of dream-seeking and prophecy. Yet, as potent and widely shared as this vision of the future was, and despite an overwhelming need for the youth of the community to have a way of imagining themselves as autonomous, productive, respected adults, the mine was not a source of hope that played well to audiences in the South. In spite of its centrality as one of Cross Lake’s possible sources of prosperity and autonomy, the mine was never included in prepared speeches and press releases vetted by lawyers. Whenever a band representative visited a church group or met with human rights or environmental lobbyists and was carried away by sympathetic responses to the narrative of Cross Lake’s troubled history to the point where he or she felt confident enough to change to a more forward-looking narrative of the community’s

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hopes for prosperity and the potential mine that lay at their doorstep, it was possible to tell from the feet shifting under the table and the uncomfortable silence that descended on the room that a faux pas had been committed. Cross Lake’s leadership was disadvantaged by the fact that expressing one of their most cherished and attainable hopes for their community’s economy was perceived as a breech of etiquette by those on whom they depended as cooperative partners in the effort to improve their relationship with the state. The potential titanium mine was excluded from Cross Lake’s repertoire of self-representation to environmental lobbyists and audiences in the South; instead, the Cross Lake people were asked to position themselves outside of modernity, as close to the natural world and as far from the industrial economy as possible. The campaign was based on unrealistic expectations and cultural disingenuousness, and this could only be a hindrance to its success. Given the well-known realities of indigenous communities, which face almost insurmountable obstacles to prosperity, establishing a political community on the foundation of strictly interpreted premodern ecological nobility would result in either institutionalized hypocrisy or paralysis, and very likely both at once. The ideal of a world that has returned to a Paleolithic balance is founded on misleading, irrational understandings of the present circumstances, propensities, and possibilities of human societies, and it makes it all the more difficult to arrive at convincing, durable alternatives to conditions of environmental and political abuse.

the limits of the politics of indignation Among the unmentionable topics in Cross Lake’s lobbying campaign were many of the political dimensions of the community’s sense of grievance. Adding to the poignancy of this injunction is the fact that the political background to a widely shared sense of injustice can be seen, logically and directly, as contributing to the community’s condition of political incapacity. The Crees’ sense of injustice followed mainly from what they perceived as the federal government’s efforts to dismantle the nfa through a restrictive and politically divisive approach to its implementation. It was in the spirit of looking for answers to such

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questions early on in the campaign that Cross Lake’s leadership turned to the Grand Council of the Crees with a request for assistance. In response Ted Moses, then the Grand Council’s un ambassador, made a fact-finding visit to Cross Lake.31 What he discovered and what he reported publicly was that Cross Lake and the other communities affected by the Churchill/Nelson River hydroelectric project had once faced very similar challenges and opportunities to those faced by the James Bay Crees – and at almost the same point in time. The hydroelectric megaprojects that changed both Cree peoples’ lives forever were both constructed in the 1970s. Both were the beneficiaries of “modern day treaties” intended to offset the worst social consequences of the projects and to establish new foundations for aboriginal-government relations: the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement, ratified in 1975, and, in Manitoba, the nfa, concluded in 1977. But here the similarity ended because the Crees of Manitoba lagged far behind those on the other side of James Bay in terms of the compensation and regional development intended to follow upon project construction. Why? Participants in the James Bay Cree fact-finding mission were surprised to learn that the Northern Flood Committee, which once represented the interests of aboriginal and Métis communities affected by hydroelectric development on the Churchill-Nelson River system, was no longer in existence. They found that, in the late 1980s, the governments caused the collapse of the Northern Flood Committee by refusing to fund it.32 The James Bay Crees who investigated the background of the nfa went further and argued that the implementation agreements “have actually resulted in the legal destruction of nfa treaty rights of the four First Nations that have entered into them. These agreements amount to once-only ‘buy-outs’ of the affected First Nations’ nfa treaty rights. These buy outs have been obtained by the governments and Manitoba Hydro for relatively small amounts of money, given the damage done to the Manitoba Crees’ way of life [and] their lands.”33 The situation in Cross Lake in 1998 was therefore not simply one in which a marginalized community with high unemployment was seeking to better its conditions through an appeal to others for sympathy and support; it was a political quagmire with competing interests positioned within a complex history of grief and grievance.

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The ultimate source of Cross Lake’s grievance was a complex process of political diminishment; yet the campaign that they pursued in the United States for restoration of their political rights was restricted by the limited interests of its audience. Environmental destruction is recognized as affecting everyone and can therefore be exported, but a political dispute is all too frequently seen as other people’s business. More important, the Cross Lake campaign began with a community that had already been politically weakened through the dismantling of the political alliance built into the Northern Flood Committee and the imposition of a divisive process involving community approval of the so-called implementation agreement. Here it was difficult to openly admit the problem. The Cross Lake Crees faced a dilemma in which the central source of their grievance was a diminution of the political capacity needed to pursue redress of their political incapacitation. Those whose claims to political and judicial intervention rest on conditions of boredom or mental anguish have few inroads into the mediatized cultivation of sympathy and the politics of indignation. The only strategic answer to public habituation to images of unnecessary death and misery is to raise the impact of one’s collective image, either to highlight the sense of the moral improvement to be gained from vanishing cultures or to convey suffering more clearly and emotively. Activists have a higher purpose that can sometimes only be achieved by presenting a version of reality intended to make a better, more compelling story, one that will move people to vote or speak or spend money in ways that might support their cause and, ultimately, influence the behaviour of industry, major institutions, or governments. But what might be the wider consequences of the need to lobby, to garner public sympathy, to present a prepared and edited version of social and cultural reality for the consumption of potential sympathizers as preconditions for the successful pursuit of justice or redress of grievances? It is instructive to see the basic sources of grief and grievance brought forward by the Crees of Cross Lake, with a view to matching them with the available sources of outside sympathy and organized support. One of the most prominent was the representation of a community in crisis, suffering high levels of poor health, addictions, family violence, poverty, and unemployment – all seen to result

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from the imposed conditions of megaproject development. But (as I discuss further in chapter 6) encouraging media representation of crisis risked feeding into pre-existing stereotypes of aboriginal social pathology and behavioural irresponsibility, simultaneously inspiring compassion and condemnation. From a strategic point of view, the cultivation of pity carries with it the long-term risk of durable (self-)stigmatization. Another message carried across borders involved the representation of the Crees as the natural stewards of the land, as those whose condition of balance with the natural world had been violated by the imposition of an environmentally destructive project, and as those whose traditional commitments to an ethic of harmony and sustainable balance with the natural world led them to contest all other forms of environmental rapine and disrespect, above all those that followed from the very harm they had suffered. Adam Kuper’s summation of the ideals of prehistoric society expressed by anthropologists also applies to those who receive and act upon indigenous environmental lobbying: “primitive society as they imagined it inverted the characteristics of modern society as they saw it.”34 The popular perception of the Crees as the natural stewards of the land was at odds with the Crees’ own hopes for prosperity and engagement with modernity. In Cross Lake’s campaign, the topics of self-determination and treaty rights were considered too politically charged and complicated to be publicly invoked; and aspirations towards full employment through community-based control of resource extraction were not at all an attractive prospect (least of all to some environmental activists). Such limits to the public acceptability of collective aspirations produce an unacknowledged barrier between the claimants and consumers of cultural difference. What seems at first sight to be an ideal point of communication and collaboration between environmentalists and political reformers is in fact strewn with misrepresentations and misperceptions that ultimately limit possibilities for a people’s realization of their own aspirations. An excess of cultural contradictions follows from the combined effects of knowledge-insulating distance and the growing possibilities of selective self-representation. While it is true that cultural expression can never be entirely free from the constraints of law and the need to accommodate the expectations of outsiders, there are consequential limitations and distortions that arise from the very nature

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of cultural lobbying. All such lobbying calls for the selection and cultivation of those qualities of collective self likely to find the most favourable responses in audiences of potential sympathizers. The consumers of culture often see only their own ideal of a corrected, improved, healthy, and harmonious world, and through this vision they impose unachievable standards of perfection on those who face conditions of poverty, powerlessness, and assaulted dignity.

6 The Politics of Suicide

cluster suicide My original purpose in living in Cross Lake had been to assist in and to understand the complex, shifting political dynamics brought about by a new strategy of legal pressure and public lobbying. But by the time three suicide-related deaths and a spate of suicide attempts occurred in close succession, my attention and involvement in events went in quite another direction. Some of what I learned about the social causes and consequences of aboriginal youth suicide through the crisis in Cross Lake first came to me through intangibles, small things that would probably never be noticed by someone who was not making a conscious effort to understand what was happening. A small stand of trees and shrubs alongside one of the few paved roads in the village was cut down, cleared to the ground from one day to the next. Why? To make room for a new house? But the lot was too small and not in a good location, right next to the road. As it happened this was where a suicide had just taken place. A young man had disappeared for three days before his body was found in a dense stand of black spruce a few yards from his home. There seemed to be an element of futility in clearing the place of his death. It could not be preventive in a place situated in a seemingly endless expanse of boreal forest. Perhaps there was an emotional meaning in the stumps and freshly turned earth, an effort towards purification, restoration of normality, perhaps an attempt at banishing spirits, ridding the place of any unseen force that might whisper into the thoughts of the living.

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It was clear that locally staffed institutions, the Pimicikamak Cree Nation Health Services and the Awasis Child and Family Agency, were already overwhelmed by the extent of their responsibilities (having inherited a clientele that had a high frequency of addictions, mental illness, and family crises) and were wholly unprepared for the occurrence of several suicides and numerous suicide attempts in close succession. A hastily prepared application by the Health Authority to the federal government for funding of an intervention program was categorically rejected, without any offer of assistance to clarify the application format and procedures. It took several months for the health authority to submit a new application, for the proposal to be negotiated with federal officials, and for an intervention program (reduced in scope to a telephone crisis line) to be implemented. Meanwhile, the nursing station, on the front line of response to the crisis, faced even greater constraints, with staff shortages so severe that, during several weeks in 1999, it became necessary to close the building and to accept only emergency cases, with a hand-lettered sign on the inside window of the locked main entrance calling for patients to self-triage in accordance with very basic criteria: “Life or death situations, eg. heart attack; uncontrolled bleeding; choking.” (The nursing shortage was precipitated by the simultaneous departure of four nurses on “stress leave.” At the time, staffing levels in some twenty northern nursing stations became critical when job insecurity, social isolation, and high workloads began taking their toll on the well-being of health professionals.) Community leaders, faced with what they regarded as an unresponsive government, were forced to accept a situation in which to garner the resources they needed they would have to reveal the extent of the crisis to a wider public in an appeal to justice, opening their situation of suffering and incapacity to distant sympathizers, and, through that sympathy, exerting pressure on public officials to act responsibly. It was under these circumstances that my attention turned more urgently to aboriginal youth suicide.1 During the two years that I lived in Cross Lake, Manitoba, there were altogether nine deaths from suicide, most of them occurring in a six-month period from 1999 to 2000 – this in a community of a little more than 3,500 on-reserve residents. As the high frequency of suicide attempts gradually diminished through the following year, intervention workers still sensed that the community was “fragile” and were fearful of a re-escalation. And even though a comparably

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high suicide rate did not occur in following years, this intuition of a lingering fragility was confirmed by the activity of a twenty-fourhour suicide crisis line established in September 1999, which logged 18,688 calls in its first three years, a rate of approximately one call every eighty-four minutes.2 This impression of deep-seated suicidality was reinforced by considering the records and recollections about suicide in Cross Lake. Some ten years earlier, in 1986 and 1987, the same thing had happened, the same pattern of deaths, attempts, rescues, and frantic efforts to intervene by volunteer counsellors who, before long, had worked themselves to the point of “burnout.” It seems to have started within a specific youth group. One member of this group, who had been an example of outward calm and a source of protection from abusive, alcoholic parents, was the first to commit suicide in 1986, dying in a way that was simultaneously both solitary and public: “They heard the shot [from a .22 caliber rifle] in the house, but as soon as he shot himself he picked up a guitar and started to sing. They thought they were just hearing things. I guess while he was singing, he kind of fell over, and that was it. He died from internal bleeding. When I saw him in the nursing station, there was just a little trickle of blood.”3 A spate of self-inflicted deaths and attempts at suicide followed this event. Two weeks later another of the same group shot himself in the chest with a shotgun at a crowded house party and died in the nursing station after struggling against efforts by the nurses to save him. Another of the friends survived a self-inflicted gunshot wound from a 303 British rifle: “After that there just seemed to be lots and lots of suicides. It wasn’t too long after that [that] my [cousin], she hung herself. [And another of our friends] shot himself a couple of months after that too. They tried to stop him. The only thing he said was, ‘Hey, I’ll say hi to all those guys for you,’ and pulled the trigger.”4 The impact of the suicides and attempted suicides that began within this close-knit circle of friends and family soon had ramifications throughout Cross Lake. In a six-month period between 1986 and 1987, there were approximately sixty police and nursing station interventions in suicide attempts and seven suicides.5 One of the members of this group, who himself attempted suicide three times, recalled that, at this time, suicidal behaviour “was becoming like a norm, where you hear about it and you go ‘ha!’ and people would laugh and joke about it. Kind of like a normal thing.”6

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In 1999, former counsellors from this earlier crisis were among the first to recognize that the pattern of self-destruction was repeating itself. For them, the only essential difference was that the second crisis tended to involve people in their late twenties or early thirties, whereas the crisis a decade earlier most commonly involved those in their late teens and early twenties. In other words, selfdestruction in Cross Lake followed a pattern almost like that of an age-grade or cohort, with a particular group often engaging in acts of self-destruction. In purely statistical terms, there have been worse situations of this kind in Canada and elsewhere, with the widely publicized crisis among the Innu of Davis Inlet of the late 1990s being among the most prominent; but this second spate of self-destruction in Cross Lake had effects that cannot be seen or understood by media coverage or comparative statistics. As the crisis deepened, public meetings were organized in an effort to share what people knew and experienced and to put together suggestions and formulate a response. Soon the suicides became a story covered by newspaper and television media outlets, eventually becoming a national story reported by Global Television and in a mini-documentary on cbc’s national news program 24 Hours. There was even a sense in which the crisis had become audible in the coming and going of faster, more expensive air evacuations, which were eventually made available to the local medical staff. When a small jet flew in and out of the dangerously short gravel runway, everyone heard it. The roar of a jet engine meant that someone was badly injured, most likely from an act of self-harm, and needed to get to the hospital in Thompson or Winnipeg within minutes. The sound that rose and faded in the distance left questions in its wake: “Who was injured from an attempt to die? How had they tried? Would they live? Would they be permanently disabled? How was their family coping?” Words would swirl around the community until the truth, or a version of it, was known. Then there were those unanswerable questions that lingered longer without finding a place to settle: “Why did they do it? Is there a dark secret in their family, some kind of abuse that made them want to die? Will others try to do the same thing?” And, finally, there was the one question that cast the biggest shadow: “Why are so many young people suddenly trying to kill themselves?” This last question stood out from all others in part because “survivals” from attempted suicide were far more common than

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deaths by suicide. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported to the press that, in Cross Lake in 1999, there were 144 requests for assistance involving threats or attempts of suicide, and the local nursing station acted on many other cases of self-harm in which the police had not been called.7 These ranged from such incidents as “calls for help” involving mild overdoses of over-the-counter medication to more serious events that immediately found their way into networks of words and emotion. Word spread quickly (to those, like me, who were not direct witnesses) when a teenage girl wandered out on dangerously thin ice on the Nelson River to a place that was visible from houses and public buildings on both shores. She was coaxed back to safety by volunteer firefighters, using ladders to distribute their weight and crawl out to where she could be spoken to quietly and convinced not to end her life. There were also several miraculous, timely survivals from hanging. In a standing-room-only public meeting held in the elementary school gymnasium a twelveyear-old girl was given a microphone and asked to talk about her part in one such rescue. She slouched forward with her hair hanging into her face and spoke almost inaudibly, between sobs, about finding a friend who had hung himself in the bathroom. She and her friends had cut him down and applied cpr techniques they had seen on television while someone else went to find a neighbour who had a functioning telephone. When she finished telling her story, she and her friends were praised by a series of local politicians and school leaders for having saved a life. Each event of this kind became part of the community’s network of news, sorrow, and anxiety. And each act of self-harm and selfdestruction left friends and families in a state of confusion. No one seemed to understand what was happening, and almost everyone felt powerless to deal with it, as though overwhelmed by a natural disaster, except without a hurricane, tornado, or tsunami to account for loved ones hurt or lost, only an emotional rubble of regret, guilt, and, above all, apprehension about who might be next to act on a willingness to die. With so many similar events happening so close together in time and space it is possible to see the outlines of a crisis that extends further than individual life histories and expressions of mental illness. Even though suicide is often dealt with as an outcome of an individual act, this was a crisis that can only be understood by considering the wider social context in which it occurred.

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In self-destructive behaviour collective influences can be found in such phenomena as the contagion effect, in which higher rates of suicide can occur among those who see media coverage of completed suicides. But my sense is that the suicide crisis in Cross Lake was more than this. It closely matches the phenomenon known as a suicide cluster, in which a pattern of concentrated self-destruction occurs within relatively closed communities, such as school campuses, prisons, barracks, or aboriginal villages. The way the term “suicide cluster” is used seems to be similar to the use of the epidemiological concept of an “outbreak,” in which a high number of deaths occur in close temporal and geographic proximity.8 This evokes the discomforting idea that self-destructive behaviour can somehow be transmitted or “caught” like a disease, with one selfinflicted death seemingly connected by emotional disturbance and imitation to other suicidal acts, apparently resulting in (and from) dramatic increases in depression and anxiety disorders among surviving community members. Cluster suicides seem to involve a central paradox that follows from the fact that those who commit or attempt suicide are often driven by a deep-seated sense of social isolation, a feeling of being unimportant and invisible, while, at the same time, this condition of loneliness becomes directly or indirectly shared with others living in similar circumstances. A cluster seems to involve an unusual form of social behaviour that directly or indirectly connects people, in which self-destruction in circumstances of profound loneliness becomes a basis for linkage between individuals, a source of group behaviour that goes beyond more widely accepted social norms.9 When we consider the cultural context of aboriginal youth suicide more deeply, we are confronted with the possibility that, in some circumstances, identity attachments can form around suffering, self-negation, and self-destruction. Suicidal behaviour seems to occur in its greatest concentration where the idea of purposefully ending one’s existence has become part of a shared outlook on life.10 This is particularly evident among youth groups whose members lack positive experiences of socialization and have few outlets or opportunities for either play or productive activity. A youth leader captured the essence of this phenomenon when he said: “[Young people in Cross Lake] have nothing to do. They’ll fight each other. Even as adults … There’s a gang here and there’s a gang over there. And yet they’re related … Its breaking up families and splitting up the community. I wonder in the future, when we all grow, I wonder

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what its going to be like. Will it continue to be this way?”11 These groups often initially form around binge drinking and substance abuse, moving to progressively more dangerous self-imposed risks and more severe degrees of self-harm, sometimes to the point where the imminent possibility of self-inflicted death becomes a focus of belonging. Cluster suicides occur when risk, suffering, and death become avenues towards social acceptance, belonging, and becoming memorable. In some communities, the disengagement between generations and the absence of almost any channel for productivity or creativity can contribute to a distinct form of identity that begins with the normalization of physical and emotional pain and that goes on to give positive sanction to self-harm and self-destruction. In saying this, I should stress that community-wide crises of selfdestruction of the kind that occurred in Cross Lake are unusual. Many people, swayed by the compelling nature of the worst, most publicized cases, assume that aboriginal villages are almost all forsaken and their residents almost all depressed and suicidal, but the actual distribution of suicide in Canada’s aboriginal population is in fact very uneven. Comparison of national statistics with those of aboriginal communities in crisis dispels the idea that cluster suicides are the norm for the aboriginal population as a whole. The national suicide rate for aboriginal people is confused by the restrictive definition of “status Indian” used in census research, but it is safe to say in general terms that the high suicide rate for aboriginal people – approximately 29:100,000 compared to 13:100,000 for Canada as a whole – is actually a consequence of very high frequencies in particular aboriginal communities or regions. Chandler and Lalonde make the important observation that, during an eight-year period between 1993 and 2000, approximately 90 percent of aboriginal suicides in British Columbia occurred in 12 percent of the bands, while more than half the communities suffered no suicides at all.12 This pattern of wide variability in suicide rates among aboriginal communities is confirmed by considering the statistical impact of suicide clusters. The Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority, responsible for fifteen reserve communities in northern Ontario that have experienced suicide clusters, reports that, during the past ten years, there have been some 270 self-inflicted deaths within a population of 15,000 in the region, comprising a remarkably high suicide rate of approximately 180:100,000, or nearly fourteen times the national average.13 Clearly, if this were the norm for native

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communities nationwide, the suicide statistics for Canada’s aboriginal population would be much higher than it is. This means that, in some places, the rate of suicide is extremely high while elsewhere it is invisible and unknowable, low enough not to register in the statistics of small populations. Suicide rates are therefore not at all evenly shared by all aboriginal communities but, rather, tend to be sharply elevated in some and substantially lower in others. The reason for this disparity, it seems, is that those communities with very high frequencies of suicide relative to others usually have groups of youth within them that possess a strong suicidal tendency and that stand out from their immediate environment. The most challenging set of questions for those researchers who want to further our understanding of aboriginal youth suicide is the same as it was for those people most affected by it: “Why are so many young people suddenly wanting to die? Why here? Why now?” The one thing that suicide researchers seem to have learned with absolute certainty is that there is no single, simple way to respond to these questions. There are, however, several approaches to the social study of suicide that I now want to discuss, focusing in turn on explanations based on history, politics, and the influence of ideas. Each seems to have a kernel of plausibility, while ultimately falling back on an element of conjecture. No single approach is able to stand on its own, but my sense is that all of them combined take us closer than we have been to understanding the social manifestation of suicide among aboriginal youth.

historical etiology The relatively sudden occurrence of a suicide crisis in Cross Lake had implications for the Northern Flood Agreement implementation campaign that I discussed in the previous chapter. The first and most noticeable of these was that it diminished the capacity of the leadership to engage in activities that were part of the strategic political plan for treaty implementation and community development. It became difficult to think about trips to Winnipeg, Ottawa, Minneapolis, Duluth, or anywhere else that had become part of an outreach network with grassroots organizations, when there was one suiciderelated death after another in the community, with wakes and funerals to attend, and efforts to be made to console those connected to the deceased through widely ramifying networks of kinship and friendship,

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not to mention the new challenge of dealing with the crisis itself, formulating and arranging a community-based strategy of suicide intervention, and – perhaps the greatest challenge of all – soliciting the government funding needed to make these plans possible. In yet another sad Catch-22, the community was limited in its capacity to extricate itself from conditions of widespread emotional suffering, in part, because of the very manifestation of that suffering. For those among Cross Lake’s advisors whose goal was implementation of the Northern Flood Agreement there seemed to be, initially at least, an opportunity here to use the suicide crisis as a media “hook” to bring attention to unrecognized treaty arrangements, particularly the never-kept promise of “eradicating mass poverty and mass unemployment.”14 From a cynically strategic point of view, the more self-inflicted or accidental deaths that occurred, which might be connected in some way to conditions of poverty and uncompensated environmental change, the more government negotiators would be under pressure to avoid embarrassment and hence be more willing to make funds available, break deadlocks, and reach compromise. In a strategy-oriented meeting, one idea that was briefly discussed involved building a monument or shrine dedicated to the suicide victims, something that could be a focus of media attention and public sympathy, something that could break down the barriers of remoteness to make it possible for others to feel the community’s sense of despair. After some discussion the idea was rejected. Does one really want to be responsible for a worsening of the crisis through a high-profile campaign? Making suicide visible to the public in the form of memorials or as part of a media-based strategy of consciousness (or conscience)-raising almost always reinforces the images and ideas of self-destruction both inside and outside the community. One must confront the possibility that an effective campaign that portrays the youth as self-destructive and without hope would indirectly reinforce just that kind of self-stereotyping. Beyond the ethical concern with encouraging conditions in which suicidal ideas are likely to become more current and possibly more readily acted upon, there was a less apparent obstacle to making the suicide crisis part of a campaign for treaty implementation: the difficulty of directly connecting the high incidence of suicide in the community to the imposed hydroelectric project and the subsequent failures of nfa implementation. What exactly is the connection between the displacements that followed from changes in the land

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and the high incidence of suicide and suicidal behaviour? Is there an incontrovertible way to show that the transitions from an informal hunting economy to a marginal position in a formal wage economy have an effect on an entire community’s sense of well-being? How, for example, does one disentangle the social consequences of broken treaties or imposed resource extraction from the traumas of residential schools? Or even from the dislocations that followed from the introduction of socially transforming technologies like the airplane or television? Above all, how does one make this connection with the clarity needed to sway the public in the face of counter-propaganda put out by the spokespeople for Industry? To be effective, the story of distant suffering has to be unambiguous, supported by evidence, secured by science. There is some support in the aboriginal mental health literature for making a connection between historical trauma and current conditions of social suffering. In a report to Canada’s Aboriginal Healing Foundation, Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux and Magdalena Smolewski go furthest in this direction, looking to the shock of early contact with Europeans in the New World (especially the devastating impact of diseases, which was felt for more than a century after the earliest encounters) as the source of a complex, endemic, intergenerational manifestation of post-traumatic stress that continues among aboriginal people to this day.15 But one does not have to go so far back in time, or agree on the particulars of the historical record or on the extent to which events or policies might have contributed to lasting collective trauma, to see that the experiences shared by many aboriginal peoples in Canada – shared, for that matter, by indigenous peoples in many parts of the world – have brought about extraordinary challenges to the viability of families and communities. On a nearly global scale, there is an apparent correlation between the common historical experiences that define indigenous peoples – which boil down to forced removal from territory and removal from the intergenerational transmission of knowledge – and the contemporary experiences of mental health crises. The main problem with a generalized approach to historical trauma, however, is quite simply that it is inconsistent with the major trends in suicide statistics. While it is true that the national suicide rate for aboriginal people is more than double that of the overall population, this simple disparity does not take into account the uneven distribution of suicide rates among aboriginal communities.

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As I pointed out earlier, the very high incidence of suicide in some communities is offset by a lower than average frequency in others. If all these communities share basically the same catastrophic colonial history, why would historical trauma manifest itself in some communities and not in others? How is the difference to be explained? One way to address this question is to take a regionally or community-specific approach to historical trauma. I once made a preliminary effort to address such questions by using data from the social service files of the Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay. The most suggestive result was a comparison of social service interventions in Chisasibi, a community that had been relocated to make way for a hydroelectric megaproject, with those in Mistassini, a community of similar size that had not been relocated. The displacement of those now living in Chisasibi seemed to be connected to social instability, reflected in high frequencies of addictions, neglect of children, and juvenile crime.16 While a comparison based on such a small sample can only be suggestive, there was an unambiguous connection between relocation and sorrow when people I interviewed talked about how the change affected them. One hunter who lost his trapline to the creation of a reservoir on the La Grande River told me that there was not a single day that he did not feel sad about the change that had been imposed on him: “One reason why I feel so bad is knowing that my land is flooded forever, that I will never see it come back [to] what it was like before they flooded it. I am sure of that, and I am sure that I won’t be able to show my grandchildren what my land was like when I was living off [it] hunting. That’s the biggest change I ever saw in my life.”17 It might also be possible to correlate the impacts of particularly abusive residential schools with high incidents of mental illness, including suicide, in specific communities. The mental health life profiles of aboriginal survivors of the residential school system points to the lasting intergenerational effects of widespread institutional abuse. Residential schools were “total institutions” used to implement policies of aboriginal assimilation through a dangerous combination of institutionalized racism and complete control over a politically marginalized population of children. Sexual abuse is a theme that commonly finds its way into testimony on residential school experience in reports of priests, nuns, and school supervisors sexually abusing children, with sexual aggression, in turn, becoming normalized as part of institutional behaviour among children. There

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is strong evidence of the lasting consequences of such experience. A study commissioned by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation reports that, in 2003, some 85 percent of the aboriginal clientele of drug and alcohol abuse treatment programs had been in residential schools.18 Although what some clinicians refer to as “residential school syndrome” is not an official entry in the dsm-IV diagnosis manual, Brasfield describes this pattern of disorder, which has become common to those with a personal history of incarceration in residential schools: Recurrent intrusive memories, nightmares, occasional flashbacks, and quite striking avoidance of anything that might be reminiscent of the Indian residential school experience. At the same time there is often a significant detachment from others, and relationship difficulties are common. There is often diminished interest and participation in aboriginal cultural activities and markedly deficient knowledge of traditional culture and skills. Often there is markedly increased arousal including sleep difficulties, anger management difficulties, and impaired concentration. As might be the case for anyone attending a boarding school with inadequate parenting, parenting skills are often deficient. Strikingly, there is a persistent tendency to abuse alcohol or sedative medication drugs, often at a very young age.19 A central problem in the study of aboriginal suicide is the uncertain connection between widespread experience of this kind and the frequencies and distribution of suicide. Very often in colonial history it is not just one event that can be seen as exceeding the limits of people and communities to adapt but, rather, several significant dislocations that seem to plausibly account for the later occurrence of widespread mental illness. This means that the main difficulty we encounter when we try to connect the specific historical traumas of indigenous people with later manifestations of suicide is not that the impact of imposed change is indeterminate or negligible but, rather, that it is multidimensional. Why doesn’t every historical ordeal of domination and disjuncture leave a similar legacy of social crisis? If the high suicide rates of particular communities seem to be explained by the cumulative impact of grief following, at least in part, from the events of historical trauma, why doesn’t the same pattern occur uniformly in every village with a similar legacy of disrupted social

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networks or a similar history of political marginalization and economic dependency? With the long unfolding of colonial relationships, state-sponsored programs of removal and assimilation, and the newer obstacles posed by marginalization and dependency, virtually every aboriginal community can invoke a troubled historical legacy as a seemingly plausible explanation for a present crisis. Yet the way that self-destruction actually manifests itself in suicide clusters is uneven. As in the case of Cross Lake, there are often successions of losses and social disconnections – each event diminishing people’s capacity to deal with the dislocating impact of the next – that cumulatively seem to lie behind a community’s inability to transmit knowledge, values, and well-being to new generations.20 The main difficulty in accounting for suicide clusters is, once again, expressed in the simple pair of questions that seems to be on everyone’s minds in the midst of a crisis: “Why here”? “Why now”? In other words, historical trauma has more explanatory than predictive value. This means that a “historical autopsy” of a suicide cluster in an aboriginal community will almost always be able to isolate intergenerational traumas of forced assimilation and dispossession but that even the lasting impact of such traumas cannot tell us with any certainty when and where a suicide cluster is about to occur. To deepen our insight it is therefore useful to change time frames, to consider present circumstances, and to turn more directly to the more immediate obstacles facing young people as they try to imagine themselves in the future.

politico-economic etiology In a pair of articles spaced a decade apart (1998 and 2008), Chandler and Lalonde highlight the importance of what they refer to as “cultural continuity” as a protective factor for aboriginal youth.21 The institutions and policies that they associate with cultural continuity – the pursuit of land claims; regimes of self-government that include local control of education services, police services, and health services; the development of aboriginal cultural facilities; and the active participation of women in the positions of chief or band councillor – are shown by Chandler and Lalonde to protect the personal identities of youth and, therefore, to act cumulatively as a hedge against suicide and self-destructive behaviour. There is, however, a significant and suggestive inconsistency between the term “cultural continuity” and the actual conditions

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that Chandler and Lalonde’s studies correlate with infrequent suicide. Aboriginal institutions in all their contemporary forms are, in fact, profoundly discontinuous from social organizations and processes that existed fifty or a hundred years ago. Formal administrations in particular cannot normally be characterized as culturally continuous in aboriginal societies, whether as part of a negotiated agreement of regional autonomy or not; yet the opportunities they can create appear to be vital to the well-being of communities and individuals. The social conditions that seem to significantly influence personal vulnerability or resilience are not characterized by anchorage to a primordial past or even a more flexible conception of cultural continuity but, rather, have more to do with the degree to which all members of society are included in the processes of shaping and making use of new institutions. Taking the perspective that emphasizes collective resiliency, I would argue that political accountability, accessibility, and responsibility are the most significant qualities of collective life that promote resilience among youth and act as a hedge against self-destruction. Suicide can have a politico-economic dimension to the extent that the failure or success of public policies and institutions will have a profound influence on younger peoples’ senses of belonging, possibility, and hope. This would at least partly account for the uneven distribution of aboriginal youth suicide. The great variation among aboriginal communities in terms of treaty regimes, quality of leadership, resources, and opportunity could well be reflected in social patterns of mental illness and well-being, particularly among youth who have the most to gain from imaginative regimes of public policy and the most to lose from conditions of political neglect and abuse. Cluster suicides appear to occur in circumstances in which all avenues for political action in a particular sector of society are blocked. The most vulnerable are those who experience illegitimate powerlessness in nearly every aspect of their lives, including the all-important processes of healing, emotional recovery, and construction of individuality. At greatest risk are those described by a Cross Lake man in his early twenties as those who “just live their life day by day, sitting there. Without work. No place to go.”22 With no prospects in life, they begin to doubt themselves and their future. [They] ask, what’s going to happen when the welfare’s gone? What am I going to do? And a lot of people start feeling – they

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lose hope in themselves. In their self-worth. And it leads to suicide. Somebody feels they’re not worth anything and then [they ask themselves], why am I here? Why am I on earth? They start to think that. Sometimes friends come up to me and talk to me about that, [about] taking their own lives … You never know when you’re going to lose a friend.23 The politico-economic etiology of aboriginal suicide rarely seems to be explicitly recognized and is even less frequently acted upon in suicide prevention programs. One of the few places I have seen it invoked as a contributing factor to cluster suicide is in a report by Alberta provincial court judge John Reilly on the causes of the suicide of a seventeen-year-old youth on the Stoney reserve in 1998, a suicide that prompted an inquest mainly because this was one of four selfinflicted deaths in a small reserve community in a period of less than eight weeks. Judge Reilly’s report lays the blame for the deaths on the political choices of corrupt community leaders and on misguided federal bureaucrats who sponsored and supported chronic conditions of political neglect. The report summarizes testimony from reserve residents pointing specifically to blocked healing, education, and economic programs, leading the judge to the more general finding that the reserve suffered from a combination of greed, ignorance, and abuse of power that eroded the culture and made success impossible. These combined conditions were ultimately responsible for the pervasive despair among youth, creating a social world that, for the seventeen-year-old suicide victim, “was a place of helplessness and hopelessness that he was unable to leave because of a history of dependence that was imposed on his people.”24 At first glance, however, the crisis in Cross Lake would not seem to be explicable in these terms, at least not in terms of local abuses of power. If anything, the local political scene was one of dynamic innovation, pursued with an eye to accountability, accomplished in ways that were seen to be contiguous with local political culture. In chapter 4, I discussed the popularly sanctioned pursuit of nfa implementation and the evident pride with which community members reshaped their identities through administration of local education, health, and police services. A similar assertion of autonomy took place in the political process. During the election for Chief and Council in 1999, a community-approved election law allocated the same amount of media time to each candidate in locally broadcast

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statements and debates. Especially noteworthy was a publicly scrutinized recount for one closely contested position of councillor, in which the local-access television station broadcast the handling of each recounted ballot, beginning with close-ups of the marks on the ballots themselves, allowing viewers to compare them against the progression of the vote tally. This was an event, I was told, that kept many families up watching all night. If anything, the period leading up to the suicide crisis in Cross Lake was unusual in the degree to which the political process had become participatory, fair, and accountable. The suicide crisis took place within a year of this election. What does this mean for the plausibility of the idea that conditions of diminished political agency are somehow significantly related to the occurrence of suicide? But the politico-economic situation in Cross Lake was not limited to the electoral process. More broadly considered, it is evident that conditions leading up to the suicides in 1999 were highly volatile, with groundswells of popular protest, social mobilization, and political reform ultimately thwarted when it came to bringing about meaningful improvements in the circumstances of peoples’ lives. This does not mean that no progress towards community development was being made but, rather, that the pace of it did not meet heightened expectations.25 Meetings with federal and provincial government officials seemed to bring few results other than the promise of more meetings. “The governments just want to rattle your chain,” a young man told me several months before the suicide crisis began: “Just like a dog … [They’ll hold out] a piece of food [and then] take it away from you.”26 A perception of the ultimate sterility of community-based activism accentuated young peoples’ sense of powerlessness and hopelessness. This condition of frustration is probably more significant in explaining the suicide crisis than are the main features in the landscape of local politics and bureaucracy, considered outside the context of wider expectations. The aftermath of disappointed hope is always more poignantly felt than is a state of routine misery. In Cross Lake there was another, more direct sense in which the suicide cluster had a political origin: the community lacked the resources for an adequate response to the crisis. Institutional deprivation was evident at the level of emergency medical services, policing, emergency counselling, and longer-term, locally developed prevention programs. Most psychiatric services were provided out

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of Winnipeg, usually after patients had been air-ambulanced there following a suicide attempt. At the same time, efforts to bring psychiatric services directly to the community seemed inconsistent with the community’s strivings towards autonomy. When professional therapists did visit the community, there was a reluctant response from potential clients, as evidenced by the many empty spaces in their schedules. The institutions of psychiatry and social services usually mobilized in response to suicide crises have shallow histories in aboriginal communities and are often associated with statesponsored transmission of the behavioural norms of sobriety, personal growth, and ambition – norms that, in the context of imposed institution-building and collective grievance, have a limited potential to inspire the young. This meant that the community faced (and recognized) a broad spectrum of political neglect, which could only have worsened the pervasiveness of despair and increased the difficulty of recovery. But more than this, community leaders, faced with an unresponsive state government, were forced to accept a situation in which to garner the resources they needed, they would have to allow access to the media in order to reveal the extent of the community’s despair and lack of resources to a wider public – appealing to justice, opening their situation of suffering and incapacity to distant sympathizers, and, through that sympathy, exerting pressure on public officials to act responsibly. This, I argue in the section that follows, opened the way for a deepening of the crisis through the entrenchment of a collective self-image based on hopelessness and self-destruction.

publicized suffering Public representations of suicide have been recognized as contributing to the currency and, among the most vulnerable, acceptability or appeal of the idea of suicide. The “routes of exposure,” the channels by which ideas associated with suicide become normalized and more readily acted upon, are seen by some researchers as a significant part of suicidal behaviour.27 Recognizing the importance of ideas about suicide for the frequency of suicidal behaviour should lead us to extend our attention to the important implications for media-based strategies of representation and the untidy politics of embarrassment. The problem here is not limited to the reinforcement of negative stereotypes of Indian insobriety and self-destruction; it also applies

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more broadly to the cultivation of distant sympathy towards those who are seen to suffer. Luc Boltanski, in Distant Suffering, makes the important observation that the politics of pity readily creates exemplary models of sufferers, going beyond the focus on a single unfortunate or a particular situation to somehow capture a common plurality, “to constitute a kind of procession or imaginary demonstration of unfortunates brought together on the basis of both their singularity and what they have in common.”28 Even media images that depict victimization from warfare, forced removal, and the imposition of starvation have a tendency to remain long past an immediate crisis, to publicly define the essence of a people. Not only prejudice but compassion too thrives on a tendency to generalize, to implicitly extend the feelings provoked by a single compelling instance to a wider category – a people, a nation, a gender, or a race. The significance of this point for suicide research becomes apparent when we consider the important influence of ideas on frequencies of suicide. In remote communities, bringing suicide into the realm of mediatized public discourse is sometimes one of the only ways to bring in intervention resources. Whether or not press coverage is knowingly integrated in a suicide prevention and intervention strategy, it can become part of the process by which the community is compelled to deal with a crisis. This has important implications for the construction of collective identity and the frequency of suicide. Campaigns that allow or make use of media and public outreach – involving efforts to widen the network of concern, engagement, and pressure on governments to open their coffers – can have adverse impacts on rates of suicide. Images and depictions of self-harm and self-destruction readily become associated with collective identity and, ultimately, influence the very possibility of success in intervention and prevention efforts. The politics of indignation calls for representations of suffering that stand for a collective state of being that can ultimately become implicated in self-image, self-understanding, and socially sanctioned repertoires of behaviour. The news media, responding to a crisis, can secondarily, and usually in unintended ways, add clarity to collective uncertainty about the question “who are we?” Images and interviews represent an essence of victimhood and inescapable pain that can ultimately find expression in self-injury and selfinflicted death. The harm wrought by the dismay of images is not only that it reinforces a widely accepted stereotype – the addicted,

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self-destructive Indian – but, more particularly, that it essentializes and entrenches depression and self-destruction where they have already become a source of crisis. This means that, once a community opens its crises to public representation, the task of collective healing becomes all the more complicated. Images and narratives of suffering and self-inflicted death become part of the essence of a people. Popular explanations of suicide – the intellectual resolution of media coverage – that connect it to forced relocation, state-sponsored assimilation, or other historical (or current) injustices, can make grievances more poignant by an extension and increased intensity of remembrance. When suicide becomes a reference point for public sympathy and community mobilization, then all the ideas and emotions associated with it can, among vulnerable individuals, become a reference point for the emerging self. This being said, in the community itself media exposure is probably less significant in conveying ideas associated with suicide than are more direct forms of communication through words and behaviour. In the very acts of self-destruction or self-destructiveness there is a sense in which suffering and the expectation of compassion are conveyed through harm to the body. Once the idea of suicide is acted on, the choice of act can itself become a way that the idea of selfdestruction is communicated to others. One of the striking things to emerge from the suicide crisis in Cross Lake is the very public nature of self-inflicted death. In a village surrounded by wilderness, those who took their lives did not do so remotely and quietly but, rather, died in ways that were sure to strongly affect others. The most direct way to communicate the idea of suicide was through one’s choice with regard to the act of suicide. Suicides that occurred in crowded reserve housing, especially in the context of house parties, gave the widest possible exposure to the fait accompli of self-destruction. Nor was the nursing station a setting that offered privacy during a situation of crisis; rather, it offered self-destruction to public view in crowded facilities, in which a significant number of spectators of the violent consequences of suicidal acts were almost certain to be friends or relatives of the victim. If one of our principle concerns is to understand how the idea of suicide can become deeply embedded in the repertoire of ideas, then one prominent feature of aboriginal cultural life that we should consider is the collective expression of grief. In any aboriginal

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community, in which the social network of every individual has broad ramifications, there is a far-reaching effect of public mourning that follows from a self-inflicted death. And if one adds to this the many, sometimes highly traumatic, events of suicide attempts, an entire community can arrive at what seems to be a self-reinforcing cycle of emotional injury and self harm. Colin Samson, reflecting on an apparently socially connected series of suicides among the Innu of Davis Inlet, remarks that “suicide is a communal tragedy. Almost every Innu in Sheshatshiu and Utshimassits attends the long and emotional funerals. Because members of the community are closely related to each other by blood and marriage, funerals are reminders of the collective trauma of the Innu as a people.”29 Prominent, emotional burials can constitute displays of affection after death that were often absent in life, unintentionally and indirectly reinforcing the idea that self-destruction is a way to resolve a deeply felt absence of love and recognition. The same can apply to public mobilization with regard to intervention efforts. Large school assemblies and public announcements about the latest incident in a crisis can memorialize suicide and unintentionally contribute to its currency and appeal.30 Communitybased healing programs can proclaim in public forums that suicide is a call to action, a “wake-up call,” and can thereby transmit the secondary idea that premature death brings to life a collective sense of purpose that was previously lacking. All forms of broadly based public attention to suicide risk transmitting the idea to individuals living in conditions of seemingly inescapable loneliness and emotional pain that one might have greater value through death than one could ever hope to achieve through a lifetime of struggle for other forms of recognition. But there is also a positive lesson to be found in the influence of ideas on the frequency of suicide. Life-negating ideas can be counteracted with affirmation. If thoughts, images, and reflections are directly and indirectly a significant part of the background to suicide crisis, then projects of healing can influence the currency of ideas that restore value to life. Preventing suicide is something like engaging in a debate in which one does not want to remain silent, thus allowing the voice of despair to carry the floor. At the same time, one must somehow circumvent the dilemma that speaking and acting too publicly against suicide can unintentionally add to its ideological currency. How is this to be done?

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the therapeutic uses of culture While the temptation is always there to focus attention on shocking occurrences of socially concentrated self-destruction, the stark unevenness in the distribution of suicide in aboriginal communities actually makes it easier to find a way to respond to cluster suicide, in particular by including communities in which suicide is infrequent in the frame of discussion.31 This “paradigm shift” in suicide research makes it possible to develop more effective strategies of suicide prevention by inquiring specifically into the relative absence of selfdestruction in some places. Directing more research towards social contexts in which suicide is infrequent or absent is one way of understanding how and why some communities are able to successfully navigate the worst effects of imposed social change. Where attachments to language, land, and subsistence have been expunged by state-sponsored campaigns of cultural assimilation, one of the preferred emotional healing strategies involves the rediscovery and reconstitution of those beliefs, values, and practices that have the greatest cultural significance. In interviews I have conducted for several aboriginal social service agencies, many people from northern Cree and Nishnawbe (Ojibwa) communities in Quebec and Ontario spoke to me about their connection to the land, telling me how it not only contained natural medicines but was also a source of healing in and of itself, how life “in the bush” was a way to recover themselves, to find calm and consolation. I was once told by a Cree elder in Mistassini, Quebec, that, in the 1940s, Isaac Shacapio, the first formally elected chief of the village, would “counsel” couples having marriage difficulty by sending them out to live together in the bush for six months or more, arranging for them to travel by canoe to a remote camp with only enough provisions to get them started. One of these couples was still together in the 1990s. The success of this unusual counselling method was never explained. Perhaps the need to cooperate in the struggle for life brought them together. Perhaps there was something more, an emotional or spiritual connection with the land that had a secondary influence on conjugal love. Being in the forest, I was often told by Cree social service workers, clients, and the elders with whom they worked, continues to be a possible solution to the ills of village and city life. Narratives of personal crisis and recovery often involved turning to forest life as an escape from confusion and a more meaningful

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alternative to formal counselling. Life “out there” was time and again described to me as peaceful, physically and mentally challenging, possessing a force that brings families together, that reunites and heals. Knowledge of the natural world, a Cree elder and former residential school student once told me, is a source of knowledge of the self. “This is where I get my education from,” he said, “By listening to this rapid I get my feeling of relief. By listening to the geese that fly over going South … that tells another message. Everything connects with our everyday life.”32 In the context of communities with legacies of state-sponsored programs of cultural erasure and assimilation, the recovery and reinvigoration of once-excoriated traditions are now sometimes seen as having significant potential to provide the young with feelings of accomplishment and possibility. In some northern communities, including Cross Lake, healers trained in leading sweat lodge ceremonies and vision quests are returning to their communities to provide “alternative” healing, especially for those seeking to overcome addictions. Among the Nishnawbe, ethno-pharmacological knowledge and ritual practice through the Midewiwin secret society have a similar potential, occasionally put into practice, to be channelled into healing programs directed at mental health crises (although there is some concern about the potential simultaneous revival of sorcery). Shamanic healers once dismissed by missionaries as fraudulent “conjurers” can today become the vehicles by which spirit beings are believed to communicate directly to those who are taking the initial steps to change their lives. Participation in reconstituted ceremonies can have an effect upon the person that is inspiring, even life-changing. Even in the absence of research on the effectiveness of traditionoriented healing with regard to suicide prevention, it is interesting to speculate on its potential impact. Under circumstances in which indigenous communities have recognized a compelling need for selfdetermination in every dimension of their relationships with dominant societies, locally conceived, developed, and implemented prevention programs are likely to have a much higher degree of legitimacy and local participation than are those requiring cultural translation and imposed institution-building. A variety of aboriginal healing programs oriented towards recovery of tradition and community involvement have a key common denominator: the involvement of aboriginal people themselves as agents in their own healing.33

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The significance of restored traditions for suicide prevention seems to be related to aboriginal peoples’ widely felt need for collective and individual agency and esteem-building, furthering the project of demonstrating one’s worth as an individual through promoting the worth of one’s people. In complex societies (including many aboriginal reserve communities), however, there are risks that follow from political endorsement of specific, exclusive campaigns of reform and rediscovery. The healing and empowerment of some can be accompanied by the exclusion and further isolation of others. Complications in the process of developing prevention and intervention programs arise from the fact that aboriginal communities vary greatly in terms of language, lifestyle, values, and spirituality – not just from one community to another but within communities. The constitutional patchwork caused by treaties and regimes of regional autonomy, the varying histories of assimilation policy and social impacts of large-scale resource extraction, histories of Christian evangelism and the presence of multiple active congregations in particular villages, and long established differences in cultural practice and collective identity – all contribute to cultural, political, and institutional variability from one community or neighbourhood to the next, even between and among those who share the same language. In this context, the traditional spirituality promoted by health administrations cannot be expected to reach or appeal to everyone or even most of those who might benefit from some form of suicide prevention program. My sense is that, even with the general acceptance of cultural programs as a promising direction in suicide prevention, the range of possibilities for research and reform remains incomplete. In particular, much more can be done by following up on the political dimension of suicide prevention. Political agency among youth seems to describe the condition that most consistently acts as a hedge against suicide. Those features that appear to strengthen communities – such as the pursuit of land claims; local control of education, police, and health services; the development of aboriginal cultural facilities; and a broad base of community involvement, including the active participation of women in the positions of leadership – are all primarily political, and each in its own way involves innovation. Even the underpinnings of cultural rediscovery and renewed spirituality can be seen as potentially political in nature, with many

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spiritual groups or movements cultivating strategic connections to lobbying and resistance efforts, while offering to participants a sense of valued distinctiveness and personal empowerment. To the extent that creating senses of possibility and self-worth among the young is a political goal, there is an important and largely neglected political dimension to self-destruction and resilience.

7 Therapeutic History

a place in history A renewed sense of one’s place in the history of a people can be a form of belief every bit as potent as a religious reawakening, providing the consolations of a life-shaping orthodoxy. Such conviction can readily be seen in expressions of knowledge that refer to the origins and essence of the nation, people, or community to which the researcher or narrator has a sense of belonging. This form of historical and cultural reawakening has gone beyond the familiar state-sponsored cultivation of the spirit of a people, having been taken up confidently by peoples and communities on the margins of states. Cumulatively, this can be seen in the broad acceptance of the idea that all those who were once (or continue to be) dominated by illegitimate colonial and national regimes should be encouraged and empowered to shed not only the residues of political domination but also the more persistent scholarly abuses associated with what are perceived to be the scientific pretences and intellectual paternalism of Western civilization. An outcome of postcolonial self-rediscovery is an intellectual movement led, in part, by those who assert the virtues of nationhood out of a history (and, at times, ongoing reality) of racism and dispossession. It emphasizes the process of cultural self-discovery as an essential aspect of recovery from the lingering traumas of cultural genocide, a proven strategy of healing, a source of esteem-building in the face of prejudice, and a moral anchorage to the collective self in the face of rapid change. The process of collective self-definition that I call therapeutic history involves the appropriation or sponsorship of narratives about

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the past as a way to define the moral essence of a people (to which the historical narrator usually sees himself or herself as belonging) and as a way (whether explicitly recognized or not) to recover from a lingering collective experience of rejection, dispossession, assimilation, and economic and political marginalization at the hands of a dominant society. Its main criterion for determining the truth is the subjective experience of group affirmation, the way it makes people feel about themselves. It thus emphasizes those aspects of the past that are emotionally positive, such as social peace, egalitarianism, spiritual enlightenment, and harmony with nature, while excoriating anything that is inconsistent with today’s widely accepted standards of environmental and political responsibility.1 From the point of view of those struggling to define themselves in the context of ongoing dispossession and poverty, the development of a therapeutic approach to the past follows from the idea that representations of the accomplishments of one’s ancestors are a vital, healing inheritance. The qualities and feats of one’s forbears can be artistically and educationally cultivated in a process of common remembering that can improve one’s potential to act and to develop a sense of personal ability and worth. It can also provide one with a sense of the importance of the future. In the previous chapter I discussed the potential of cultural rediscovery and reconnection to overcome depression, addictions, and suicide in some sectors of aboriginal societies. Stories from the past comprise an essence of one’s collective being that can be nurtured and drawn from in times of need. Under conditions of rapid change and intergenerational rupture, to live without this connection, this source of pride and strength, is very nearly unthinkable. But the therapeutic uses of history also have a dark side that comes out most clearly when we consider the connection between history and state power, especially in those modern states that have emerged from conditions of illegitimate domination. Let us briefly consider two examples – those of the African Renaissance and the Japanese celebration of Jomon heritage – before broadening the concept of therapeutic history to include the identity constructions of peoples and groups within states. The ideas of the African Renaissance that emerged in post-Apartheid South Africa offered hope that Africa could turn to its own intellectual and community resources to transcend its history of affliction, to work towards a reinvigorated, healthy African society that uses

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its history of suffering as a source of strength for the future. This inclusive approach to African pride was already reflected in a speech by (then vice-president) Thabo Mbeki at the 1996 adoption of the South African Constitution, when he declaimed: “I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape – they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen … I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me … In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence.”2 At the same time, the attitudes of African self-knowledge and self-reliance led the Mbeki government towards a disastrous aids policy in the late 1990s, a policy that, at a critical time, supported the misguided views that hiv does not cause aids and that aids does not exist as a specific medical condition. In support of this position, the government relied on the misguided critical stance of “aids dissidents” and on a misplaced hope in the positive contributions of indigenous knowledge, setting aside fifteen years of scientific research on aids in order to support research pursued according to terms of pride and resistance to the ills of medical corporatism. Catherine Campbell, conducting aids research in a South African mining town during this period, found that, because of a state-sponsored ideology of denial and a lack of political responsibility, South Africa had become “one of the aids capitals of the continent.”3 Another example of postcolonial nationalist history (and, in this case, prehistory) can be seen in a phenomenon described by Fumiko Ikawa-Smith as a common bias in East Asian archaeology, which seeks to, as she puts it, “enhance understanding of a nation’s past, by increasing its temporal depth.” The “national units” of research in East Asia are contemporary sovereign states, and the object of archaeology is to represent the state’s “glorious past for internal and external consumption, promoting the sense of national pride and asserting its legitimacy as a political entity.”4 Celebration of a proto-Japanese Jomon culture, for example, has involved the ideological erasure of minority groups, including the distinct Ainu and Okinawans, who, as David Howell argues, “have been simultaneously tamed and exoticized, so that they function alternately as simple regional variants of more universal Japanese patterns and as ahistorical artifacts so thoroughly compartmentalized as not to

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challenge the homogeneous insularity of Japanese ethnicity.”5 Simply put, the existence of cultural or ethnic minorities, both in the present and in Japanese prehistory, was erased from Japan’s conscience.6 A link between cultural research and national self-stereotyping can be seen especially clearly in the state-sponsored Japanese archaeology that developed during the late 1960s and early 1970s. A resurgent public interest in the past (known as the Nihonjinron phenomenon) was connected to a national ideology that sought to define an essential Japanese identity, apparently in response to the century-long influence of Western ideas and material culture, above all the struggles of postwar reconstruction. To this end, archaeological sites were presented as national monuments, in a way that stressed notions of Japan’s cultural uniqueness and homogeneity. The site of an early imperial palatial complex, Asuka, dating back to the sixth-century introduction of Buddhism into Japan, was a particular focus of exoticism, described to the public in ways that emphasized ancient Japan’s stress on tradition, harmony, and “groupness,” with pamphlets proclaiming the value of being able to touch the ancient palaces and burial mounds, and being able to “truly feel ancient Japanese history.”7 A central point I want to establish in this chapter is that the consolations of knowing one’s inner essence (or of knowing that it is immediately knowable), and of membership in a bounded nation derived through the construction of one’s history and prehistory, are not just the privilege of the powerful but are also increasingly being taken up by smaller social units, minority peoples, and communities, or “micro-nations.” The legal processes of ethnic formalization and liberation that define distinct peoples call for a corresponding historical self-definition, for a process of intellectual reform to bring the past of a people in line with their present claims and acts of self-determination. The central advantage of therapeutic history that facilitates this process of self-definition is its ability to shift from the general to the specific (and back), from the select universalism of nature spirituality to primordial attachments to land, to the specific virtues of a community defined by distinct language and tradition, to the individual senses of security and completeness that follow from personal identification with, or inclusion in, a community of the elect. Possession of an ethos that has salvific potential for humanity, that represents the innermost essence of a nation or community – and, ultimately,

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the individual self – can be a life-shaping source of esteem. True to its peculiar combination of words, therapeutic history is not just nationalist or indigenist propaganda but can also be part of a personal and collective movement towards wellness. From the perspective of some who share a deepened knowledge of their collective being, liberation should entail both the reconstitution of one’s community and, in the longer term, the application of one’s own virtues to a correction of the lingering errors of the West. This can be seen in Georges Sioui’s rejection of the European historical ethic of cultural and moral superiority in favour of an Amerindian mode of thinking, shared between groups through a “deep-rooted cultural kinship,” that seeks solutions to problems between humans “by cleansing the psyche of negative emotions such as guilt, fear, rancour, and hatred.”8 The idea that collective selfdiscovery can produce a movement into wellness can therefore also apply more broadly to civilizational reform, improvement, and well-being. This does not occur through internalizing the virtues of the West but, on the contrary, through the West’s reform or dismantling, through the dilution of its cultural hubris into the collective genius of the mass of distinct peoples that it has attempted to subjugate. The therapeutic value of the rediscovered self therefore goes beyond the symbolic strivings of communities and the global pursuit of distinct rights; it also encompasses a critique of the West’s cultural imperialism and promotes the hope that can be found in a recovery of indigenous virtues. Therapeutic history is often oriented towards the nation-defining erasure of the injuries of colonial occupation: removal from territory, cultural assimilation, and economic dependency. It isolates and preferably brings to life, through images, artefacts, and ceremonies, a time when one’s people were stronger, healthier, more autonomous, and, above all, more respected. It presents this as a model with possibilities for emulation, from which to draw inspiration not simply as a representation of a good society but also as a source of selfdiscovery, of access to one’s innermost being. Therapeutic history often tells us that, but for a single simple absent quality – technological superiority or resistance to disease or the maintenance of a powerful alliance – that once-glorious world would still exist, in conditions in which a people would no doubt have evolved but would still enjoy power, autonomy, and respect. Despite the traumatic episodes of domination, and with it the loss of much historical memory,

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an original founding culture can return as a source of moral guidance and spiritual strength. Therapeutic history therefore sets itself apart by advocating in favour of historical and cultural rediscovery. In doing so, its autohistorians and auto-ethnologists usually depict the story of their people as being imbued with sacred intransience, specificity, and concreteness, emphasizing the idea that conditions of life may change but that the essence of a people has permanence, provides security and guidance, and cannot be invented out of nothing. The main criterion of acceptable knowledge in therapeutic history is ultimately its contribution to the intellectual comforts of selfvalidation. Knowledge is defended not because it can be shown to be the result of painstaking and critically honest research but because it is imbued with the moral imperatives and consolations of collective representation. Obversely, knowledge is invalidated by discomfort, inconvenience, the introduction of doubt, and the disconfirmation of self-image. In spite of the fact that therapeutic history often turns to myth as a moral compass of collective rediscovery, myth has axiomatically changed with regard to its use as the founding story of a people or the original source of moral difference. The reference point of myth is no longer a time before time but, rather, a time before invasion and marginalization. The founding ancestors are not the tricksters and heroes of an unshaped world of infinite possibility but, rather, those heroic figures who lived before the worst indignities and losses of colonial domination. Therapeutic history is above all auto-history, with or without the assistance or cooperation of outside sympathizers. Often the question of who belongs and who does not is shifting and contextual, with belonging sometimes limited, even within a specific society, to a particular age or peer group, gender, social rank, and level of education. However, even with the ambiguities surrounding the nature of “internal” boundaries there is broad recognition of the injunction that valid knowledge has its origins in cultural membership and memory. Researchers can be recruited or accepted from outside the social boundaries of membership just as long as it is understood that the task of research is to facilitate the process of self-discovery. Ethnohistory is now often concerned with the rediscovery and revival of histories and traditions, to be breathed back into life and to provide a source of guidance for living communities. Research is therefore an enabling process of cultural survival and self-knowledge.

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Therapeutic history ultimately originates in the efforts and imaginations of those who seek to add concreteness, specificity, and depth to a sense of belonging, who share in the essence of what it means to collectively be and become a distinct people or a nation. Its liberating potential derives from a personal connection between the primary sources of knowledge – the inherited recollections of elders, early historical records or prehistoric artefacts – and the original pre-invasion, pre-diaspora, precolonial community. Therapeutic history is the source of a largely unrecognized dilemma facing both academic communities and those attempting in practical ways to promote the emotional recovery of the dispossessed and excluded. It introduces a question imbued with ethical and methodological challenges to those committed to historical and ethnological scholarship: to what extent should one promote, ignore, or critically engage with the collective self-knowledge of marginalized peoples that dispenses with widely recognized academic procedures (some would say responsibilities) of critical assessment and selfcorrection, while instead asserting the interests of collective pride and emotional affirmation? This problem can be seen in an array of historical and scientific controversies, a few of which I now turn to in brief accounts of conflicting approaches to indigenous knowledge. Each of the controversies I describe has attracted its share of attention, some much more than others. But there is an overriding theme that brings them together: a tension or open contest between, on the one hand, the perceived need to overcome the intellectual tutelage and paternalism of a dominant society while rediscovering and ennobling indigenous self-knowledge and, on the other hand, the professional demand for rigour and critical scrutiny in the production of knowledge and, occasionally, the political action that follows from it. Through the illustrations that follow, I hope to bring out a central dilemma that often faces social researchers who maintain simultaneous commitments to the intellectual self-determination of emerging peoples and to the Western rationalist tradition of critical discussion, testing assertions, discovering and uprooting prejudices, and being open to learning from others.

the syllabic writing controversy The historical origin of the syllabic writing system, sometimes referred to as unified Canadian aboriginal syllabics, has become the

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subject of a minor historical controversy that illustrates some of the main features of therapeutic history I have just outlined. This controversy would not have come to my attention without my having first heard what turns out to have been a reasonably coherent version of the history of the syllabic alphabet from an elder in Norway House, Manitoba. This woman was proud of her fluent literacy in Cree syllabics and was knowledgeable about the history of the writing system. In its essentials, her version was in agreement with the most widely available information in academic publications, museums, and the Internet. According to these various sources, the syllabic writing system was devised by the Wesleyan missionary James Evans during his tenure in Norway House, where he was posted in 1840. Having failed in a previous missionary assignment to develop a viable writing system for Ojibwa out of the Roman alphabet, he turned to the system of Pitman shorthand (invented a few years earlier in 1837) as a foundation for his writing system. The alphabet he eventually devised has an elegant simplicity and adaptability, based upon symbols for core consonants, with the direction of the symbol indicating the vowel that follows it and with dots indicating emphasis. Almost as soon as it took form, the Crees took to the writing system with alacrity, not only in reading translations of the Bible but also in writing messages on birch bark parchment that were used to post signs in hunting territories. The writing system’s independent popularity is also attested to by a prophetic movement that arose in the James Bay region from 1842 to 1843, in which syllabic writing was essential for the communication of core beliefs.9 The contested versions of the origin of the syllabic writing system are more difficult to pin down, appearing on the Web in the form of unattributed stories or legends. According to one account, the writing system was given to an eastern and a western elder simultaneously as a gift from the Great Spirit.10 Another tale has it that a Blackfoot family developed it long ago and was consequently shunned by their community due to distrust of their powers of literacy.11 A version that superficially seems more plausible attributes essential features of “artistry” to the Crees and “logic” to Jesuit missionaries (the stereotypical Jesuit of course being more “logical” than any Wesleyan), with the syllabic writing system emerging as an ideal product of collaboration, combining the essential strengths of the Crees and the Europeans.12 A more strident version of this story

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claims that “Jesuit colonizers … stole our written language and tried to claim credit for it.”13 One of the interesting phenomena associated with the permissiveness of expressions of collective selfhood on the Internet is the subtle transmutation of almost any idea – no matter how imprecise and unsubstantiated – into evidence. There is a tendency in popular media to present any two conflicting ideas as a “debate,” without taking the additional step of inquiring into their logical or factual merits. Thus we find the following under the heading “Syllabic fonts” in a unesco information and communication website: “The Syllabaries used by several Aboriginal languages in Canada were invented by either the missionary James Evans, or by the Native Peoples themselves who upon meeting Evans explained the orthography to him.”14 The most obvious consequence of historical invention and its resolution into one side of a “debate” is the distortion and clouding of community-based knowledge, in this case through distant intervention. This intellectual permissiveness resulted in a challenge to local history and identity. The missionary history of Norway House is simultaneously widely disseminated and, with a few unsupported views, cast into doubt, positioned in the context of an either/or pair of equal possibilities. Although this is a minor controversy, it illustrates a problem with much wider implications. When communities lose their powers of representation in favour of remote, abstract assertions of difference, identities become more easily constructed around imagined tangibility and stereotypes.

kennewick man The words “Kennewick Man” have become shorthand for one of the most significant controversies in the history of archaeology.15 It began on 28 July 1996 when two college students, wading along the shore of the Columbia River, stumbled across what at first looked like a “rock with teeth” but, on closer examination, turned out to be a human skull. They brought the skull to the notice of the Kennewick police, who, in turn, referred the find to the Beton County Coroner’s office. Coroner Floyd Johnson and Deputy Coroner James C. Chatters returned to the site and eventually recovered a nearly complete skeleton from bones collected along a twenty-metre stretch of shoreline. Chatters, assigned the task of reconstruction and

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analysis, made an initial determination that the remains were those of a somewhat gracile forty- to fifty-year-old male, measuring between five-feet-nine-inches (1.75 metres) and five-feet-ten inches (1.76 metres), who had subsisted mainly on soft foods and meat. Most significantly, the morphological features of the skull indicated that the individual was “Caucasoid.” The discovery of historical artefacts in the recovery site, including a metal knife, led to speculation that the remains may have been those of a trapper, which would have been consistent with the settlement of Europeans in the region following the 1805 Lewis and Clark expedition. But closer examination of the remains brought out an entirely different story. A piece of stone embedded in the right ilium of the pelvis was revealed under a cat scan to be the tip of a stone spear point of a kind common to the region some 4500 to 9000 years ago. The metal artefacts uncovered in the find site therefore had no connection to the skeleton. This surprise was soon followed by the result of radiocarbon dating of a bone sample, which attributed an age to the skeleton of between 9200 and 9600 years before present (yr bp), making this one of a small number of skeletons older than 8000 yr bp in the Americas. At the same time, the identification of the remains as “Caucasoid” persisted. The age of the skeleton combined with the attribution of Caucasoid features made the Kennewick find an instant press sensation, leading to coverage in a wide range of magazine, newspaper, and television outlets. James Chatters contributed to the attention by identifying Patrick Stewart, widely known as Captain Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation, as someone whose facial features closely resembled those of Kennewick Man.16 Part of the appeal of this story seemed to be that Kennewick Man represented a European version of North American primordial origins, the idea of a longstanding relationship with the land, ecological wisdom, and a secure sense of place. The “media frenzy” seemed to follow from a popular readiness to rewrite the prehistory of the Americas, using one skeleton as grounds for giving “Europeans” a primary place in the continents’ earliest settlement. The story was kept alive by a dispute over ownership and control of the remains that soon followed. The us Army Corps of Engineers, which officially controls the Columbia River shoreline where Kennewick Man was discovered, announced its intention to return the remains to a coalition of five Native American tribes in the area:

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the Colville and Nez Perce tribes, the Wanapum Band, the Yakima Nation, and the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The Corps of Engineers (coe) was acting on the “inadvertent discoveries” provision (104 Stat. 3051d) of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, basing its decision on the oral traditions and geographical proximity of the five tribes. This decision set in motion a high-profile dispute when a group of seven scientists specializing in Paleoindian archaeology and biology intervened in the coe’s repatriation plans, filing an injunction in federal court to stop the repatriation process, which they saw as illegal, arguing that the evidence for assigning a cultural affiliation to Kennewick Man was lacking and more could only be known by subjecting the remains to scientific analysis. After almost a year of court arguments, federal magistrate John Jelderks issued a ruling that criticized the coe’s decision to repatriate the Kennewick remains to the Native American coalition without reliable evidence of cultural affiliation. He later ordered relocation of the remains to the University of Washington’s Burke Museum, to be followed by implementation of a study plan laid out by the Department of the Interior. Joseph Powell, a member of the study team that subsequently took on the task of assigning a cultural affiliation to the Kennewick skeleton, reports on the team’s findings. The team confirmed the radiocarbon dating and agreed with the observation of pathological features made by James Chatters, indicating that Kennewick Man had had a difficult and painful life, but it did not agree with the racial categorization of the remains as “Caucasoid” – or as Native American, for that matter: “Our statistical analyses found a greater probability that the skeleton was most similar to East Asian populations, especially those … sometimes referred to as Eurasians.” And further, “The Kennewick Man’s teeth and skull were not like any Native American sample for which we had cranial or dental data. In fact, like most other ancient skeletons from North and South America, the ‘Ancient One’ looked nothing like someone from a prehistoric, historic or living Native American population.”17 Powell concludes from this that racial correspondence between prehistoric and contemporary populations is largely futile and misleading, relying as it does on an assumption of the immutability of dominant skeletal features in human populations. Such systematic, peer reviewed analysis was pitted against the truth claims of those who saw Kennewick Man as an ancestor and a

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connection to a harmonious prehistoric way of life. Armand Minthorn, representing the Umatilla Indian Reservation as chair of the tribe’s Cultural Resources Commission, reported in an Internet publication: “We knew in our heart that this one is an ancestor.”18 And, elsewhere, he rejected the scientific project of furthering knowledge both for the global human community and for those who sense a more personal connection to the remains: “Some scientists say that if this individual is not studied further, we, as Indians, will be destroying evidence of our own history. We already know our history. It is passed on to us through our elders and through our religious practices.”19 The Kennewick saga was further complicated by the fact that personal attachment to the remains was claimed by another group, the Asatru Folk Assembly, a neo-Pagan religious organization from California that sought unfettered access to the Kennewick discovery site to perform ceremonies and to worship the northern European god Odin.20 Their feeling of affiliation with the remains seemed to be driven by the description of the Kennewick remains as Caucasoid and by a dating result that would situate Kennewick Man in a time that they saw as the Golden Age of Pagan Europe. The archaeological justification for analytically grounding interpretations of the past in the material record and the methods of science ultimately comes down to the universal value of knowledge for human benefit and the Enlightenment-inspired tradition of emphasizing a tendency towards error inherent in all forms of personal conviction. Paleoarchaeology, in particular, has difficulty accepting people’s beliefs about themselves and their origins as evidence because the material they work with is widely separated in time from living populations; and it therefore cannot, as Crawford recommends, grant “Native peoples the semiotic sovereignty to speak for themselves, as subjects and not objects: to provide their own equally valued notion of history, time, space, and ancestry.”21 Even though archaeologists might often want to accommodate indigenous knowledge claims, the discipline gives priority to maintaining unfettered access to its data and refuses to jeopardize the authority of expertise and professionalism that ensures that access.22 James Chatters was one of those who adhered to this universal ideal; and he defended the scientific approach to analyzing the Kennewick remains against native claims of primordial identity with characteristic bluntness: “The revisionism is shocking … The real history is being replaced by fiat, the we’vealways-been-here-so-go-away political position. The richness is

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draining away.”23 But he also unintentionally revealed a certain slippage between science and identity by adding: “We are in a real sense protecting our culture … We have a culture too.”24

the ecological native There is a wide range of ideas that converge on the central moral and spiritual significance of an indigenous ecology, derived from centuries of life lived close to the land, which contrasts with the shallow, profit-oriented ethic of Euro-Americans. The foundational premise of the idea of an indigenous environmental ethic of spiritual, sustainable balance is derived from a very basic understanding of what it means to be indigenous. Those who have followed their ancestors in living in one territory and one habitat for uncounted generations would self-evidently acquire a deep knowledge of and respect for the plant and animal life on which their subsistence depends. This starting point is expressed by Winona La Duke, for whom traditional ecological knowledge is “founded on spiritualcultural instructions from ‘time immemorial’ and on generations of careful observation within an ecosystem of continuous residence.”25 Each of the world’s original people, by the very conditions of their existence, developed an economic system that was based on balance with the natural world rather than on the unsustainable accumulation of wealth and material goods. Much the same idea is expressed by Taiaiake Alfred in an outline of an essential indigenous philosophy: The land was created by a power outside of human beings, and a just relationship to that power must respect the fact that human beings did not have a hand in making the earth; therefore, they have no right to dispose of it as they see fit. Land is created by another power’s order; therefore possession by man is unnatural and unjust. The partnership principle, reflecting a spiritual connection with the land established by the Creator, gives human beings special responsibilities within the areas they occupy, linking them in a natural and sacred way to their territories.26 Ecological values have the potential to be, in Alfred’s words, “the North American Indian’s contribution to the reconstruction of a just

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and harmonious world.”27 At the same time, the indigenous environmental ethic is, for Alfred, indissolubly linked to rights of selfdetermination, for if indigenous peoples indeed did (and do) possess a natural, spiritual relationship with their lands, and if they have survived against all odds to become the most important sources of environmental wisdom and still have the potential to act as stewards of the planet, then it becomes all the more important to recognize their rights to traditional territory and to act upon them justly. Under these conditions, their claims should be given priority and their connection to the land restored. The drawback of too close an association between indigenous peoples and rights, however, is the possibility of disjuncture between indigenous spiritual cosmologies and the rationality of the legal systems in which indigenous rights are being asserted and defended. Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s solution to this dilemma is to self-consciously separate the strategic essentialism of indigenous peoples in the pursuit of human rights and indigenous rights from an authentic essence that can be seen in indigenous approaches to spirituality. The language and lobbying of rights does not reflect the true value of indigenous approaches to the Earth and the spirit world. An authentic indigenous spirituality can be seen more clearly as part of a dualism in which approaches to spirituality are “the clearest contrast and mark of difference between indigenous peoples and the West.”28 Beyond the distinctiveness of the various elements of any particular indigenous spiritual system, there are qualities that they collectively hold in common. “In these views,” she writes, “the essence of a person has a genealogy which can be traced back to an earth parent, usually glossed as an Earth Mother. A human person does not stand alone, but shares with other animate and, in the Western sense, ‘inanimate’ beings, a relationship based on a shared ‘essence’ of life.”29 Descriptions of the indigenous environmental ethic almost always include, as a point of contrast, an implicit or explicit account of the waste, destructiveness, and inhumanity of the West. Luther Standing Bear, an Oglala Sioux who was educated in the infamous Carlisle school in its early years at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, left a literary legacy of autobiography and self-discovery that includes impassioned statements about the original native environmental ethic and its contrast with the alienation of settler society. In Touch the Earth, for example, he writes,

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We [the Oglala] do not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth, as “wild.” Only to the white man was nature a wilderness, and only to him was the land “infested” with “wild” animals and “savage” people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. Not until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and the families we loved was it “wild” for us.30 Elsewhere Luther Standing Bear makes a more explicit contrast: “The man from Europe is still a foreigner and an alien … But in the Indian the spirit of the land is still vested; it will be until other men are able to divine and meet its rhythm. Man must be born and reborn to belong. Their bodies must be formed of the dust of their forefather’s bones.”31 A 1978 Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) statement entitled “A Basic Call to Consciousness” provides a good example of a more strident version of this idea, beginning with the premise that Western civilization is on a “death path,” which holds in store “unimaginable future suffering and destruction” for which it has no answers. Hope lies only in the fact that “the traditional Native people hold the key to the reversal of the processes of Western Civilization … Spiritualism is the highest form of political consciousness. Our culture is among the world’s surviving proprietors of that kind of consciousness. Our culture is among the most ancient continuously existing cultures in the world. We are the spiritual guardians of this place.”32 In contrast to this indigenous ecological ethic, there is a view shared by some ethnographers and historians of indigenous societies that stresses that the popular images of Indians as “keepers of the land” who “walk in a sacred manner” with Mother Earth are largely products of Western ecological self-criticism, fantasies spun in support of very contemporary ideas about how humans should live in the natural world. In the 1990s, popular indigenous ecology first came under sustained attack from anthropologists taking a critical approach to ethno-ecology. Michael Alvard, for example, directly questioned a phenomenon that, in the title to his article, he refers to as “‘The Ecologically Noble Savage’ Hypothesis.” His study of the hunting patterns and preferences of the Piro of Amazonian Peru indicates that they do not exercise restraint in hunting species that do not reproduce quickly and that are therefore vulnerable to over-

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hunting and extinction. He concludes that, “while there is ample evidence that native peoples have a truly deep and intimate knowledge of their environment, it does not follow, and has not been empirically demonstrated, that they use this knowledge to maintain any sort of equilibrium with their environment or to conserve the resources they use.”33 According to this critical approach, those who lived in North America before European contact were not ecologically self-conscious, at least not in the ways propounded by environmentalists, but, rather, held strikingly different ideas about their place in the world and their relationship with animals. Their ecologies, according to Shepard Krech, were premised upon belief in animal reincarnation, on theories of animal behaviour and animal population dynamics that are alien to the approach of scientific conservation. Above all, the ideas of reincarnation widely held by native hunters, Krech argues, did not discourage waste and overkill: “Animal populations declined from lack of respect, not over hunting”; and Native peoples only later embraced the systematic regulation of game “as alternative ways of explaining [and responding to] the decline of deer, beaver, and other animals as a result of western commodification.”34 A complementary approach to this issue stresses the overriding importance of avoiding strategically motivated distortions of knowledge. For example, in an influential article, “Endangered Forest, Endangered People,” Peter Brosius describes a campaign that began in the 1980s to put a stop to timber harvesting in the interior uplands of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, arguing that this effort at consciousness-raising and commitment to protect the Malaysian rainforest was at the same time an abundant source of misguided ecological romance. The campaign began largely through the activities of the Malaysian environmental organization Sahabat Alam Malaysia (sam Friends of the Earth Malaysia) and of Swiss artist Bruno Manser, who encouraged the normally retiring Eastern Penan hunter gatherers of this region to resist territorial encroachment, while attracting the international attention of reporters, filmmakers, and environmental activists. They were successful far beyond their expectations. The Penan subsequently became a focus of attention from environmental non-governmental organizations originating in the United States, Canada, Japan, Belgium, The Netherlands, Australia, England, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, and elsewhere. These transnational activists commonly attributed to the Penan heightened

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qualities of environmentally oriented spirituality. To the Penan, one such narrative claims, the experience of the forest is psychologically and cosmologically heightened, producing in them a sensibility in which the “forest is alive, pulsing, responsive in a thousand ways to their physical needs and their spiritual readiness.”35 It projects on to the Penan the idea that “to walk in God’s forest is to tread through an earthly paradise where there is no separation between the sacred and the profane, the material and the immaterial, the natural and the supernatural.”36 Brosius, informed by his own ethnobotanical research among the Penan, is concerned about the distortions that occur as ethnographic texts are transformed into instruments for activism, producing a “form of ecological etherialism that is derived entirely from the Western romantic tradition and has little relation to any set of ideas that would be recognizable to Penan.”37 He isolates for attention the environmentalists’ attribution to the Penan of sophisticated knowledge of medicinal plants, reporting to the contrary that, in three years of research among the Western Penan in the 1980s, he rarely heard mention of medicinal plants. The few medicinal plants that they used were applied generically to a very wide range of illnesses. “What struck me about Western Penan in the 1980s,” he recalls, “is that they showed so little interest in medicinal plants.”38 The Eastern Penan, however, following from the influence of environmental activists, became much more concerned with the value of the forest’s healing resources. Brosius surmises that the difference between the Western Penan and the Eastern Penan was the product of an “ethnographic hall of mirrors,” in which ethnologist/environmentalists brought knowledge and assumptions to the Penan from the Amazonian context; the Penan were then able to repeat this knowledge back to other environmentalists, who interpreted it as an indication of the depth of indigenous knowledge.39 The Penan, in other words, took note of the Western gaze on medicinal plants and obligingly turned it back to environmentalists.40 Despite the emergence of such critical viewpoints, there are abiding moral pressures on anthropologists to be strategically selective in their ethnographic reporting. Sponsel, following up on Brosius’s article, warns anthropologists of the possible consequences of “carelessness in providing material which could be used to undermine the land, resource and other rights of indigenes” and calls for “more care in assessing the arguments, evidence and practical implications”

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of information that might jeopardize struggles for self-determination and cultural survival.41 And Bodley similarly argues that “disposing of the ‘myth’ of wilderness can open the way for even more rapacious industrial exploitation.”42 This makes it easier to understand the mobilization of positive public sentiment, involving scholarly communities in the creation of strategic distortions aimed at the ultimate goals of restorative justice and environmental responsibility. The most commonly articulated reply to this challenge involves pointing to the inherently self-defeating nature of efforts to protect cultural distinctiveness through the use of stereotypes. Presenting the knowledge of distinct peoples as forms of indigenous wisdom is, in Brosius’s words, to impose “a falsely universalized quality on a range of peoples and thereby collapsing precisely the diversity that defines them.”43 Along the same lines, Shepard Krech argues that the idea of “the Noble Indian/Ecological Indian distorts culture. It masks cultural diversity. It occludes its actual connection to the behavior it purports to explain.”44 The idea of an inherent, uninterrupted indigenous ecology, in other words, tends to turn all the cats grey. It merges and makes generic the very ecologically particular systems of knowledge that it seeks to ennoble and protect.45 In part, academic collusion with activist cultural/environmental campaigns is an outcome of postmodern and postcolonial doubt following from ideas emphasizing the positional uses and manipulations of social research. If all ethnography inevitably reflects the perspectives and biases of researchers who cannot fully escape from their positional superiority as representatives of a dominant society, then why not simply depict a social world that one can live with, that stands the best possible chance of evoking sympathy and, out of that sympathy, the additional benefits of validation and empowerment for those otherwise faced with displacement and extinction? This basic point can be expressed more generally: even if knowledge of indigenous societies is distorted, far better that the securities of rediscovered belonging revolve around environmental sagacity, responsible leadership, human rights, and the law of peoples – those core values associated with the indigenous peoples movement – rather than merely reflexive, lawless responses to insecurity and selfreinforcing cycles of cultivated hatred. But the activist approach to ethnography and history overlooks some of the wider critical insights that emerged from Europe’s own struggles with epistemologies of belonging, with the founding myths

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of nationalism. To what extent might these apply to the selfrepresentation of marginalized peoples? Should histories of suffering and dispossession be the grounds for an alternative approach to knowledge?

subjectivity and method These questions cannot be addressed in an informed way until we consider the implications of the differences between the therapeutic and critical approaches to history and identity for epistemology. Considered from their starting points in basic premises about the foundations of knowledge, we can better understand the reasons for their incommensurability, for the occurrence of knowledge-based, rhetorically intense stalemates that can only be resolved, if at all, through legal intervention. In therapeutic history, the impulse towards cultural rediscovery is encouraged by the foundational premise of postcolonial theory, which finds that the research agendas of Western scholarly traditions are inevitably associated with power and imperial interests, even in the absence of narrowly defined colonial occupations. It has long been remarked that colonial domination is not simply a form of political control or of economic exploitation but, rather, that it carries with it more insidious forms of cultural estrangement. “Colonialism,” writes Frantz Fanon, drawing upon his experience with the French occupation of Algeria, “is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it.”46 If the control and distortion of a subject people’s history and identity are a central feature of colonial domination, who is to say that this intellectual violence is decommissioned and demobilized at the time of national liberation? Can there not be a residue or even resurgence of cultural hegemony that survives the political and material dismantling of overseas empires? Therapeutic history can be seen to provide answers to such questions, even if it does not always directly engage the debates of postcolonial theory. It does so through an approach to knowledge that gives the appearance of similarity to the rigours of the professional historian or ethnologist and that, in some circumstances, makes use of critical method but that ultimately rests on entirely

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different premises. The therapeutic approach to history dispenses with the premise that knowledge is based on a consensus on fundamental facts and on refinement or revision of that consensus through systematic, thorough, and critical presentation of evidence. It tacitly rejects the idea that evidence might compel those who share a reasoned approach to knowledge to accept incontrovertible features of the historical record that present a moral challenge, which raise questions about shared ideas and values or that call for social reform in response to the lessons of history. The most important quality of therapeutic history is, rather, its potential to change for the better the way members of an intellectual community feel about themselves. This improvement is not, strictly speaking, a question of ameliorating one’s health in the biomedical sense of correcting a condition of illness but, rather, of improving or recovering from a pathological state of being or knowing. Knowledge of one’s inner collective self is associated with a movement towards wellness. Though presented as truth about the past and the essence of one’s being, the selfrepresentations of therapeutic history are actually part of a creative process of becoming. The nature of the divide that separates therapeutic from critical scholarship is clarified by Bruno Latour’s study of the process by which scientific and (following from his rejection of the logic of disciplinary boundaries) historical knowledge is produced.47 Latour characterizes the essence of the West’s production of knowledge as a social process. The source of the conviction that a theory or idea is true or worthy of recognition does not lie so much in its inherent logic or the critical, innovative use of reason as in the process by which controversies are resolved: through forms of technical specialization that draw on a wide network of specialists, making scientific production a uniquely intense social activity. As Latour explains, “The distinction between the technical literature and the rest is not a natural boundary; it is a border created by the disproportionate amount of linkages, resources and allies locally available. This literature is so hard to read and analyze not because it escapes from all social links, but because it is more social than so-called normal social ties.”48 This has important implications for the process by which ideas are challenged. It becomes extremely difficult for anyone outside the immediate circle of intellectual exchange surrounding an idea or discovery to interrupt with a different perspective or point of

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departure. Dissidents are “driven into isolation because of the number of elements the authors of scientific articles mustered on their side. Although it sounds counter-intuitive at first, the more technical and specialized a literature is, the more ‘social’ it becomes, since the number of associations necessary to drive readers out and force them into accepting a claim as a fact increase.”49 Facts are an outcome of the collective stabilization of controversies. Potential objectors are managed or controlled through the manner of presentation of ideas, not through the logical force of ideas. They are faced with and discouraged by the mass of accumulated technical support behind an idea. The result is a form of consensus that makes potential dissenters feel alone and that, in practical terms, limits their potential to develop rival, alternative ideas. Dissenters in Latour’s world become isolated and lonely, threatened with rejection, ostracism, and even incarceration. But Latour’s model takes us only so far because what we are witnessing in the literatures of cultural affliction and affirmation is not a dissident individual trying to challenge a dominant intellectual paradigm but, rather, an increasingly influential community or communities of dissent that are erecting alternative approaches to scholarship. The critical-historians are not confronted with an individual, trying against all odds to introduce an innovative idea, but with a dissident community that rejects the authority of the critical process. This is a community that not only makes rival factual claims but one that also possesses a morally resonant claim to an alternative foundation for the arbitration of the truth.

critiques of self-discovery From another perspective, therapeutic history can readily become a form of knowledge that Karl Popper attributed in part to the natural tendency to divide humanity into friend and foe, “into those who belong to our tribe, to our emotional community, and those who stand outside it.”50 It is commonly associated with an emphasis on “the person of the thinker instead of his [or her] thought. It must produce the belief that ‘we think with our blood,’ or ‘with our national heritage,’ or ‘with our class.’”51 It consequently rejects any form of scholarly or political equalitarianism and refuses to judge a thought on its merits. Applying this perspective to the contemporary extended reach of therapeutic history would mean that postcolonial

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self-affirmation is consistent with the more prominent intellectual and political abuses that have occurred in the representation of nationalist agendas. This aspect of the critical-historical perspective helps to explain the incommensurability of the critical process and of therapeutic history. There are few ethnologists or historians of so-called folk societies working today who are unaware of the notion that cultural identities and the histories that support them are creations, objectified constructs, or stories.52 A critical approach to history begins with the premise that the study of the past is, in essence, a process of selection and conservation. That which appears to patriotic actors as an inner essence is understood by the interpreters of human society to be the product of creative imagination – adaptable, pliable, and invented. Those historians whose goal has been to pursue historical science, to construct critical, truthful narratives of the birth of nations, have long viewed the artefacts of identity with suspicion. Not only are memories unreliable and even official documentation open to almost routine error and distortion, there are also intrusions of collective hope in the constructions of events and eras that historians rely upon for their information. Marc Bloch, the great historian whose execution by the Vichy regime left his work on historical method unfinished, reflected on this problem in a way that was unusually forthright: “The periods most attached to tradition have also been those that have taken the most liberties with their exact heritage. As though … by venerating the past one was naturally led to invent it.”53 Sardonically, Bloch pointed out that the material through which entire historical eras are presented to us may be “a vast symphony of frauds” from which it is impossible to extract anything approaching a harmonious truth. More than this, some who write about the politics of culture assign responsibility for the development of nationalist sentiment to other ethnologists and historians, to those visionary authors who at times have supported nationalist visions as “natural,” as expressions of distinctive, bounded social entities. Jean-Loup Amselle proposes the term “ethnological reason” for the misrepresentations and ethnic formalizations that occur through the selection of decontextualized cultural traits, which create a false impression of permanence and representation of the Other as a source of contrast. “Every anthropologist with genuine field experience,” Amselle writes, “knows that the culture he observes dissolves into a series or a reservoir of

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conflictual or peaceful practices used by its actors to continually renegotiate their identity. To set these practices in stone amounts to an essentialist vision of culture, which is ultimately a modern form of racism.”54 Cultures are in a permanent state of instability, interpenetration, and adaptation, a view that Tom Flanagan applies to North American aboriginal history as an antidote to essentialist visions of permanent indigenous occupation: “The historical record clearly shows that, while aboriginal peoples exercised a kind of collective control over their territories, the boundaries were neither long-lasting nor well defined and communities must have been repeatedly formed, dissolved, and reconstituted with different identities.”55 French historical theory, consistent with the critical method laid down by Bloch, has promoted an approach to collective memory that emphasizes the uses of history in constructions of national identity,56 directly or indirectly challenging the coherence of the historical social conscience by showing that the material with which historians work to depict and define historical eras comprises a web of politically interested falsehoods. The portrayal of history as a source of invention that offers itself for the convenience of national identity includes a darker view, expressed succinctly in the title of a recent book by Tzvetan Todorov, Les abus de la mémoire (the abuses of memory).57 In this and in other works Todorov constructs a critique of the limits imposed on historical expression, evident most clearly in the selective obliterations of memory undertaken by totalitarian states but evident also in a wide range of revisionist historical triumphs over remembering. Regimes that construct and follow pure, politically inspired ideals often end by committing themselves to catastrophic ventures. Through the pursuit of heroic virtue, the tools of memory become sources of moral corruption. “Monuments obey the conventions of their genre,” Todorov writes, “they do not speak the truth.”58 And there are other significant regimes of limited knowledge or forms of recollection that Todorov denounces, notably those that stress a collective history of victimhood, that use history to make claims of recognition and recompense without looking beyond the memory of oppression, without looking towards those who are suffering oppression in the present. As nearly everyone who has studied the history of Europe’s cultural reawakening and its consequences is aware, there are limits to the viability of collective self-discovery, even if it encourages the comfort of belonging in individuals. The critical approach to

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collective identity stresses culture’s and history’s contingency, adaptability, porousness, and, through such plastic qualities, its political uses and abuses as a means of boundary enhancement, domination, and exclusion. Emphasizing only the exercise of agency and selfaffirmation that follows from resistance to conditions of oppression makes it far more difficult to see the violent realities or potentialities of political struggle, the dangers of counter-hatred, and the risks of too sharply and narrowly defining the boundary of inclusion and exclusion. When one focuses narrowly on the necessity of cultural recovery, the wider social and political consequences of exclusivist self-discovery can readily be overlooked. The quest for autonomy in these conditions carries with it the risk of instilling a people with a form of well-being built upon intolerance, which not only objectifies the essential attributes of the collective self but that includes its perceived enemies in the same process of cultural recovery. This is not to say that the symbolic reconstructions of nationhood do not have any kind of recompense. There can be little doubt that strident nationalism is in some ways a source of personal comfort and consolation. People are less inclined to feel the effects of self-loathing and doubt when they allow themselves to act on the self-sustaining certainty of hating others. Following from this argument, national rediscovery has become inseparable from the simplification of historical and cultural knowledge, in which catechisms of solidarity have become a foundation of belonging and in which critical scrutiny is repressed. The best use to which history can be put, therefore, is not to construct identities or “cults of memory,” least of all those based on past suffering, but, rather, to apply the memory of human acts of evil towards interventions in similar events in the present and towards avoidance of conditions in which they have the potential to recur. This implies that the strengths of a political community are not to be found in the comforts of historical and cultural invention. All responsible governments are founded on some form of critical self-examination, and this amounts not only to a tolerance for uncomfortable truths but also, and above all, to an acceptance of processes of acknowledgment and reform in response to those truths. If we follow the basic lines of argument laid out in these critical approaches to culture and history, we are led to the conclusion that the extremes of therapeutic history lead first and foremost to distortions of knowledge and possibly then to exclusivism and political

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intolerance. The struggle to end political discrimination against distinct peoples has contributed to a form of knowledge in which historical truth claims have become indissociable from strivings towards social justice and political autonomy. But if the sympathy and curiosity of cultural outsiders is rejected and only a recognized member of the intended research community (directly or through the mouthpiece of community-approved research collaboration with professional others) is able to comment or report with authority on a people’s past and on their essential qualities in the present, then the principal criterion of legitimate knowledge becomes collective recognition of an idea’s moral consolation. And if that recognition passes most easily to those who articulate a people’s ingenuity, moral superiority, courage in the face of adversity, and other qualities that build social self-esteem, then these will comprise the most broadly accepted story of a people’s past. The therapeutic criterion of accepted knowledge limits the possibilities for historical self-criticism, for open, honest encounter with uncomfortable events, attitudes, and attributes. It enables historical distortion or amnesia through an exaggerated process of selection and elimination of facts and artefacts, with the ultimate goal of uncovering the essence of a people. Ordinary human frailties, liabilities, omissions, and weaknesses disappear in an effort to recover a past that is to be a source of pride and emulable virtue. From the (broadly interpreted) therapeutic point of view, the main problem with this is that the veneration of indigenous cultural wisdom can replace realistic opportunities for change with impossible-to-meet standards of existence. Given the well-known realities of indigenous communities that face almost insurmountable obstacles to prosperity, establishing a political community on the foundation of strictly interpreted premodern nobility would result in either institutionalized hypocrisy or paralysis, and very likely both at once. The ideal of a world that has returned to Paleolithic balance is founded on misleading, irrational understandings of the present circumstances, propensities, and possibilities of human societies, making it all the more difficult to arrive at convincing, durable alternatives to conditions of environmental and political abuse. It would seem to follow from this that the auto-historical approach to knowledge has unleashed a plethora of untruthful and largely uncontested political imaginings. The political dynamics of resistance to domination, shaped by new possibilities for the creation of loyalty and exclusion, have tended to encourage the multiplication and

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increased salience of cultural/political boundaries. Taken to the extreme of intellectual exclusivity, efforts towards historical healing have the potential to build false pictures of human nature, create cosmologies of exclusion, and undermine efforts to achieve reconciliation between those who stand on opposite sides of a colonial historical divide. For critical historians, the narratives of history are enmeshed in processes of social fabrication, enabled by the pliable nature of the historical imagination, with as much potential to create conditions of servitude as of liberation. But for therapeutic historians they are a necessary aspect or outcome of a process of recovery from the traumas and cultural effacements of colonial domination. This process of recovery takes precedence over the pursuit of truth and the wider consequences of politically bounded knowledge. Therapeutic history is therefore at odds with one of the central premises of modern history: that in the process of liberating a people one runs a heightened risk of discriminating against others. The abuses of history are of more concern when used to underpin abuses of power. When states assert too vigorously the will to control knowledge and shape all levels of cultural expression, there is less room for the alternative histories of marginalized communities. The falsehoods produced by states can only be potentially resisted by reasoned discourse and persuasive accumulations of evidence. But if this is the case, one of therapeutic history’s central faults might be that it indirectly reinforces the abuses of knowledge committed by dominant powers. It adds to the legitimacy of state-sponsored discourse by offering only parallel, equally flawed alternatives to it, lending support to the premises of history-as-faith, truth-as-comfort, and agreement with dominant paradigms of knowledge as a central criterion of belonging. Many researchers maintain an overriding commitment to the pursuit of ideologically undistorted knowledge, the social value of criticism, and the ferment of debated opinion. In studying the cultural constructions of those who claim a history of oppression and suffering, how far does one go towards questioning the validity of a worldview, evidently cultivated and cherished and possibly comforting, which flies in the face of evidence or in which the evidence is selected with such painstaking bias as to leave aside what would appear to be the most salient facts? Can one intellectually engage with those whose central criteria of the truth appear to be averse to

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engagement, for whom legitimate knowledge is limited to collective affirmation and ideological consolation? Adding to the moral complexity of reconstituting historical and cultural knowledge is the fact that it is not always easy to distinguish between those who inherit for themselves a mantle of victimhood and those who experience ongoing injury from xenophobia, exclusion, and racism in the present. Do those who are identifiably the living subjects for whom the lessons of history should apply not also have legitimate recourse to memory, to an understanding of how they, as a people, came to be afflicted? Those historians and ethnologists who emphasize the inventions of tradition, particularly those with commitments to communities that connect self-discovery to claims of self-determination, face a predicament – and out of this predicament they have made different choices. There are some who sense a violation of authenticity and obstruction of cultural continuity in the romantic visions and interferences of cultural lobbyists, abuses that should be exposed to view, even if it means introducing a discordant tone to well intentioned campaigns of cultural and ecological preservation. But other social researchers continue to recognize the strong element of sincerity in many ordinary people’s expressions of a need for community or ethnic belonging. Despite the ambiguities and contingencies of identity, it remains true that many feel their subjectivity objectively, and this appeals to those with a keen sense of the importance of place in a changing world and the injustice inherent in state-sponsored interference in the articulations and assertions of distinct communities.

8 Conclusion

the conceptual origins of identity In the face of a flourishing literature that emphasizes the difficultto-grasp paradoxes of tradition as a reference point for social life, I would claim that some of the primary sources of the reinvigorated dynamics of collective identity formation are actually quite easy to identify. There is, for one thing, a very simple social logic behind assertions of enduring tradition in conditions of rapid change: the more human groups are displaced, removed from familiar relationships and strategies of power-accumulation and peacemaking, the more they will attach themselves to leaders, organizations, and social movements that offer stability and self-esteem through the reinvention of their past, often making social belonging more exclusive and sharply defined.1 There is an equally simple reason for the suitability of law as a primary source of reinvigorated identities: ideas of collective rights and social justice act to define social categories of belonging because they presuppose social categories to which justice can apply.2 In legal history, the idea of a community with shared experience can in itself bring into existence a new regime of rights, a new form of public reasonableness in political discourse, an autonomous conception of belonging, and a new basis for local and transnational citizenship. Law is almost everywhere increasing in importance as a medium for the expression and defence of difference; and dissident actors are regularly making use of legal engagements with formal organizations and state structures, even in circumstances of political disillusionment. This often involves the primary step of identifying (and, if

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necessary, reifying), as a concrete category, those to whom sympathy and social justice are to apply. The combination of these basic circumstances, along with the widely varying conditions in which they are relevant, has encouraged the identification of a central problem in legal anthropology, which examines the processes by which legal discourse and institutionbuilding facilitate collective identity formation. The study of legal discourse as a primary resource for identity formation considers, as Richland succinctly puts it, “a basic vision of language used as medium not only for reference to, but fundamentally for construction of, social realities and orders.”3 One of the central arguments of this book is that the universal values of political liberty and the relatively unrepressed growth and exchange of information – the very processes that some say are heralding the arrival of a cosmopolitan society – are themselves important sources of social defence and enclosure. The global convergences that make cosmopolitanism seem more possible are also sources of cultural boundary enhancement. New national and international legal opportunities call for clarity of socio-political membership and constitutions; new information technologies facilitate local self-representation; and new infrastructures of travel and communication add a cooperative dimension to perceptions and portrayals of local being. The same qualities of supranational liberation that make a cosmopolitan society seem within reach also bring into being the sharpened boundaries of purposeful belonging. The usual way to understand the relationship between identity and social justice is to consider the social categories of the marginalized and dispossessed as natural and only then to consider the ways that they might be better represented, their grievances addressed, and their marginality mainstreamed. But, as I have discussed at various points throughout this book, something quite different is actually at work in the legal formation of collective selves: reformulated identity usually begins with the recognition of a situation of injustice and from this starting point grows and coalesces into a self-referential category of the oppressed. The pursuit of justice does not simply respond to conditions of oppression: it can, at the same time, bring the oppressed into being. This point seems to defy the logic of identity, which naturalizes conditions of distinctiveness and portrays the boundary of inclusion and exclusion as a historically transcendent fact. Above all, it runs

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counter to the most widely accepted view of collective agency. The sufferers of injustice, it is commonly supposed, were once absent from public consciousness simply because of the silence that followed from conditions of repression; but they themselves struggled to find their way onto the political stage and now their voices can be heard. This book describes an alternative pathway to identity construction that begins with conceptual categories of belonging, as illustrated by the emergence and popular acceptance of the international movement of indigenous peoples. From a construct of international governance representing in the abstract a category of people assumed to be in need of development and inclusion-by-assimilation in the project of the nation-state, the term “indigenous” was subsequently re-engineered to represent the aspirations of a wide array of peoples marginalized by states. It has clearly undergone a significant extension of usage from a legal category to a source of identity. It has acquired a “we.” It effectively changed hands and was modified with hopes and expectations of self-determination. Legal sociology, in other words, can be taken hold of by its subjects as a source of liberation and collective self-definition. The strategies pursued by participants in the indigenous peoples’ movement clearly illustrate a collaborative, legally sophisticated pathway towards the formation of distinct identity. Its leaders have attached the claims of distinct cultures to a legal concept – “indigenous peoples” – with global reach. They have defended societies based on oral iteration and the authority of elders through Internet lobbying and legal processes. They have navigated bureaucracies and erected their own formal institutions in efforts to protect subsistence pursuits based on hunting, nomadism, or simple agriculture. All the same, there are distinct consequences that follow from the very nature of the processes for securing social attachments. New boundaries of belonging can in some circumstances limit the individual’s range of choice to that of inclusion or exclusion, belief or apostasy. The insecurities and opportunities of an emerging, communication-rich world order create the raw material for (under different circumstances) both the enhancement of cultural knowledge and for (self-)stereotyping and exclusivism.

the politics of public indignation When a distinct people have as their most pressing issue the protection of their distinctiveness and their will towards agency and self-

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determination, how are they to assert their claims? In these circumstances, injustice alone is not a compelling source of motivation. To garner public attention, sympathy is sometimes connected to an increasingly intense condition of suffering. The destruction or removal of a people’s subsistence and imposition of conditions of boredom and lassitude, as consequential as these things are for a people’s well-being, do not make as compelling a story as bombs, beheadings, and the burning of villages. There are definite consequences that follow from the intensification of the rhetoric necessary to be heard above the din of other desperate voices. The dilution of the meaning and significance of the concept of genocide, for example, follows from its broad use by those seeking to raise the profile of their particular cause. Every over-extension of the terminology of suffering devalues its currency. Every personally invested misuse of the idea of crimes against humanity results in a form of rhetorical inflation that just might fleetingly capture the attention of an audience but that, over the long term, does not accomplish very much in the way of recognition or redress of grievances. When too many people in public forums claim to be calling attention to a situation of crisis that follows from the worst conceivable crimes and injustices, then all representatives of the oppressed become treated with the same polite disdain reserved for street corner prophets. How does one make one’s case heard past the roaring of the world’s worst horrors and in competition with the widening, confusing cacophony of other neglected and victimized peoples seeking recognition and redress of grievances? As public media become oversaturated with crises, how does one overcome the reluctance, among those who have no immediate stake in the matter at hand, to commit to a cause among many other causes? In chapter 4 I consider this issue in an account of a public awareness campaign undertaken by the Pimicikamak Cree Nation of Cross Lake, Manitoba. In this context, it was consensually agreed by the Cree community that the only way to effect change in its situation of injustice was to make the origins and consequences of that situation known to as wide a base of citizens as possible. But how does one achieve this? It requires communication with those who might offer support, a diffuse source of influence described only in opinion polls and given the vague appellation “the public” or, in legal terminology, “the popular will.” It requires cultivating a demonstrable ability to communicate with this base of potential support, to make one’s case heard, and, above all, to change the attitudes of a significant

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portion of the public, at least to the extent that one is able to indicate a change of public behaviour, as evidenced in such things as a rise in demands for policy change, donations of aid to particular organizations, a growth in campus activism – all the tangibles that might make those in decision-making positions realize that political and material interests are at stake and that counter-lobbying and/or negotiation and compromise are needed to avoid significant loss of voter or customer support. For those who represent a distinct people struggling to preserve their autonomy, one possible solution to compassion fatigue is to have something positive to offer, which, in the case of indigenous peoples, is often selected qualities of the very culture they are seeking to protect. Even if one cannot represent a humanitarian cause, one can still represent something of value for humanity. There is still a great deal of persuasive power to be had by invoking the enduring power of knowledge that antedates modern projects of domination. The broad acceptance of indigenous peoples as a distinct form of human society has taken the term “indigenous peoples” far beyond its legal foundations and made it into a vessel for ideas about cultural survival and human aspirations. Cultural primordialism has now become an essential (perhaps the most essential) public aspect of what it means to be indigenous. Indigenous peoples are those whose beliefs and practices connect them with the ways of living and being of distant ancestors. In their unique beliefs and practices it is possible to find not only their source of distinctiveness but also, beyond this, a more general human heritage. Traditions of indigenous peoples are more than a source of their claims of difference; they are also a source of their claim to represent an alternative to industrial, bureaucratic modernity. Thus, distant suffering involves the creation of abstract categories of those who can be identified as victims, as deserving of compassion, heightened by claims of inherent cultural virtue, whose obstacles to well-being are so great they can only be surmounted by the collective intervention of those who “feel for them” at a distance. A precondition of compassionate indignation is credibility. Integrity, truthfulness, and authenticity are demanded of those at the origins of appeals to sympathy. This means that the strategic goal of garnering public attention is often in tension with the need to cultivate sympathy, if necessary to use the distortions and artifices necessary to make one’s claim competitive. Standing out in the tacit

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rivalry for sympathy, increasing one’s ability to capture the attention of strangers and, perhaps, their moral conviction and will to action, calls for greater demonstrable suffering, more egregious injustice, and heightened cultural virtue than is communicated by rival claimants. An oppressed people must be simultaneously newsworthy and praiseworthy. This means that the autonomy necessary to pursue the ways of life that provide models of counter-modernity is implicitly conditional; self-determination is informed and constrained by stereotypes and utopian aspirations in a way that is unparalleled in any other liberation movement. Kurds and Bosnians might have invoked humanitarian sympathy in response to the horrors of genocidal campaigns (conditional, of course, upon the degree to which they were able to refrain from the moral corruption of reprisal), but indigenous peoples have come to invoke quite another kind of sympathy: it is not just that their liberation is sought through new political relationships, reconciliations, dispensations, and compensations; there is also a sense in which their fate is clearly seen to have universal significance, to be connected to hopes of civilizational improvement. Their survival as a distinct but fragile form of human life keeps alive the hope that life more generally can be improved. Indigenous peoples might not, by their mere existence, complete the search for a new kind of Paleolithic enlightenment; but they make that search possible. Through the term “indigenous peoples,” world history has taken those who were once the subjects of contemptuous efforts at salvation and elimination and imbued them with hopes for a world made new.

suffering and collective selfhood This brings us to the dilemmas of public suffering. Conditions of suffering are one of the themes commonly invoked in social justice activism. But here the feedback loop of representation and identity can have dubious consequences. Strategies for bringing about greater institutional resources and commitments from government, even for such basic services as suicide prevention and intervention (as I discuss in chapter 6), can introduce a dilemma common to the pursuit of claims of social justice: exercising the political pressure needed to obtain urgently needed resources from the state calls for the kinds of lobbying and self-representation that tend to reinforce

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stereotypes, that stigmatize communities and make it more difficult to move beyond collective self-perceptions based on victimization and misery. An element of fatalism cannot be excluded from our understanding of these conditions. In circumstances in which the choices available to young people have been shrunk to next to nothing, in which they experience illegitimate powerlessness in nearly every aspect of their lives, self-destruction can become a way to belong and to see oneself in the future. Political and institutional failure can increase the salience of youth suicide, at least as an idea, merely by reducing the range of possibilities by which emerging, autonomous selves can be imagined and acted upon. It is particularly in conditions of historical trauma that the success or failure of public policies and institutions become most important, perhaps having an influence on younger peoples’ senses of belonging, possibility, and hope. The remaining expressions of personal agency that we find in the context of the failure of institutions and the absence of intergenerational transmission of values are not always oriented towards the inversions, irony, and play of an intensively and extensively communicating world. Media can readily provide the inspiration for collective self-image and attachments premised on despair, the impossibility of love and recognition through publicly sanctioned channels, and an alternative pathway to belonging through risk-taking, selfharm, and self-inflicted death. Media coverage that portrays the youth of a particular community or wider category of people as self-destructive and without hope can indirectly reinforce self-stereotyping in that direction. The scripts for possible lives can directly and indirectly include the purposeful end of one’s life. Representations of a community in crisis, suffering not only from the immediate effects of suicide but also, in the simplest explanation conveyed to the public consumers of suffering, committing suicide in response to high levels of poor health, addictions, family violence, poverty, and unemployment, can indirectly add force to ideas about how one is expected to suffer and act upon a condition of suffering. In other words, the idea of suicide, like an immunological disorder, is able to infiltrate the processes by which people try to make themselves well. Public depictions and discourse intended to prevent suicide can unintentionally cumulatively build a model of self-understanding based on the idea of suicide that becomes available to those already in conditions of collective insecurity.

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Popular depictions and explanations of suicide risk reinforcing preexisting stereotypes of aboriginal social pathology and behavioural irresponsibility, solidifying the place of self-destruction in the feedback loop of personal identity. Ultimately, for those still shaping their identity, public intervention can add currency to the idea of self-inflicted death and make it more readily available as an item in the repertoire of possible selves. Recognizing self-destructiveness as a potential focus of solidarity takes us away from a perspective that focuses narrowly on conditions of social disintegration and historical discontinuity, in which societies are seen to have an inherent tendency to produce high rates of suicide when they are in some way out of balance. In other words, under some circumstances, collective life itself can be shaped by a heightened attention to the act of self-inflicted death. Political abuse is not a particularly effective source of social improvement. What is more, no compelling story could ever be plotted around a community of people without fault. To deny a people their frailty is to take away their humanity. Yet there seems to be a common belief that those who have experienced dispossession and marginalization will still somehow possess a special kind of moral authority, as though dignified by their suffering and disadvantages. This expectation masks the actual and almost inevitable consequences of illegitimate domination. Those on the margins of nationstates and formal economies do not often suffer in ways that can easily captivate the audiences of media representation. It is rare that boredom, hopelessness, depression, or even suicide can find their way into the accepted repertoire of actionable circumstances of collective misery. And if one’s claim to victimhood does not readily invoke emotional empathy and indignation towards conditions of injustice, it can instead encourage stigmatization or an ambiguous judgment that might recognize a condition of disadvantage while expecting from sufferers more of their own efforts towards selfhealing and self-improvement. The most significant determinant of empowerment is not to be found in the law itself but in access to the law. And this precondition for prosperity and, at times, survival is probably the most significant weakness of the human rights movement and of so-called soft law generally. If collective human rights are mediated by politically engaged publics, then left without remedy will be those who have no compelling cause, no attention-getting catastrophe with which they

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are immediately associated, no condition of oppression that in itself invokes sympathy and indignation; who are afflicted only with the slow accretions of state-sanctioned assimilation and subsistence loss; whose marginalization is not tangible and readily communicable but manifests itself mainly in addictions and self-destruction; and, above all, who have no (or limited) access to the knowledge and networks necessary to press through the throng of the suffering to become publicly visible and important. This means that the widely shared international values of cultural survival are unintentionally promoting a narrowly circumscribed form of difference oriented towards the preferences and prejudices of public consumers of collective justice; but those whose qualities of collective life do not correspond with publicly sanctioned values of development and rights will, by virtue of their differences, fare less well in the increasingly significant, publicly sanctioned mechanisms of autonomy and prosperity. Intergenerational suffering is not a convincing foundation for publicly mediated rights and recognition. The emotional pain of broken or abusive families – with older generations living under the weight of trauma, secrets, and misplaced guilt and anger, and with the young living in a state of disconnection from transmitted knowledge and purpose – is not easily represented to the consumers of suffering. Indignation calls for imagery and tangibility, for more immediate representations of the sorrows of the innocent. Those whose ways of life are on the margins of a formal economy in conditions of seemingly inextricable dependency and hopelessness cannot be expected to provide examples of superior cultural virtue. The suicide crisis in Cross Lake, Manitoba, more realistically portrays the results of political and economic failure in the context of heightened expectations of community development and opportunity. Where the repertoire of life choices is sharply reduced and hope of change is diminished, suffering and suicide can become primary reference points of group belonging. Where there is deep-seated cultural confusion, some degree of certainty and clarity can be found in those thoughts and feelings of self-doubt that daily come into prominence. In circumstances of intractable despair and the absence of life-affirming examples of security, prosperity, and hope, group identities can form around the affirmation of suffering and the negation of life. Broadly considered, the actual consequences of social suffering and absence of effective recourse are in fact quite predictable (or at

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least expectable). Under such circumstances people can be expected to more often nourish hatreds, or their ability to tolerate the conditions of their lives diminishes and they disappear into the anesthetics of addictions or suicide. Conditions of collective despair and hopelessness do not, with any regularity, result in cultural heroism or the cultivation of an ethic of social, political, and environmental responsibility. It is of course possible to overcome conditions of domination and marginalization, even to learn from and be made stronger by them, but normal human frailties are such that only a few will succeed in overcoming conditions of suffering imposed by identifiable others.

epistemologies of postcolonial recovery I have shown that the increased salience of (re)discovered collective identity also has implications for the production of knowledge. The process of collective self-assertion as a people or a nation is associated with what I call the therapeutic value of culture and history. This is a version of the foundational postcolonialist argument that the best way to avoid the residues of colonial domination is to reject the production of knowledge that accompanies and outlasts the visible manifestations of that domination. Ultimately, the value of therapeutic history derives from its ability to develop feelings of belonging and self-worth in members of a historical community, however broadly or narrowly defined. The central criterion of truth becomes the contribution of an idea, image, or artefact to collective esteem. Knowledge becomes most readily accepted as legitimate if it meets the central criterion of affirming the founding myths of a people or nation. Given the fact that therapeutic history is oriented towards the identities and aspirations of particular peoples, how does it achieve recognition far beyond the limits imposed by cultural self-definition? How does it accomplish the miracle of legitimacy in the face of contrariety to critical and scientific approaches to the truth? Clearly, the process of cultural and historical self-discovery is shared far beyond the confines of the rediscovered self. Historical or cultural attributes of a distinct people gain currency through an informal process of validation or rejection. Authenticity follows from public approval, from a sufficiently broad acceptance and acknowledgment

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of a fit between idea and ideal. Ultimately, there is a utopian dimension to therapeutic history that carries the appeal of renewed identities into widely shared hopes of a better world. The more uncertainty people feel about their pathways to success and the viability of the community to which they belong, the more they will be inclined to imagine a world transformed, free of all conflict, affliction, and loneliness. These imaginings are finding receptive audiences outside their communities or intellectual circles of origin. The cumulative development and exchange of hopes for the rediscovery of particular collective selves is part of the background to the revival of wider expectations of a new age of peace, global prosperity, and balance with the natural world. The transnational dynamics of assertions of distinct identity make the contradictions of culture sharper and more uncomfortable than ever before. We are witnessing an increasingly rapid turnover from the legal invention of social categories to the adoption of these categories as sources of identity. The apparent paradox of an imaginaire réel4 in the depiction of historical viewpoints is not really paradoxical at all but, rather, expresses a disjuncture between interpreting a historical cosmology and possessing one. This often involves a shift in the meaning of social categories in which the metaphorical quality of metaphors is forgotten, while tradition, history, and the language of rights are used to hard fire categories of inclusion and exclusion. Seeking the protections of a community often involves asserting a primordial essence that is constructed, an individuality derived largely from the expectations and ideas of others, and engagement with the boundary-enhancing proclivities of transnational networking. This situation is not just a social challenge: it is also adding instability to our conceptual constructions. Nouns that gather people into distinct social categories are unable to convey the porousness, change, and contestations of collective life; and words that convey a sense of cultural immutability mask a reality in which the only real security to be found is through continuous and creative adaptation to conditions of uncertainty.

Notes

chapter one 1 E. Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 11. 2 E. Said, “American University of Beirut, Professor Edward W. Said Commencement Speech” , viewed 24 February 2007. It is possible to see in Said’s body of work a tension between the ideal discomforts of exile and the politically tangible consolations of nationalism. This was manifested in Said’s own engagement in the struggle for Palestinian freedom, in which he emphasized only the self-affirmation that emerges from oppression, while overlooking the violent realities of their political struggle. His loyalty to this cause is evident, for example, in the dubious assertion that “Arab nationalism was historically open and secular, never sectarian or confessional.” 3 J.X. Inda and R. Rosaldo, eds., The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader, 2nd ed. (Malden, ma: Blackwell, 2008), 28. 4 A clear statement of the idea of an emerging cosmopolitan society can be found in Ulrich Beck’s Cosmopolitan Vision. For Beck, “cosmopolitanism has ceased to be merely a controversial rational idea; in however distorted a form, it has left the realm of philosophical castles in the air and has entered reality. Indeed, it has become the defining feature of a new era, the era of reflexive modernity, in which national borders and differences are dissolving and must be renegotiated in accordance with the logic of a ‘politics of politics.’” See U. Beck, Cosmopolitan Vision (London: Polity, 2006), 2.

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5 S. Lukes, Liberals and Cannibals: The Implications of Diversity (London: Verso, 2003), 3. 6 G. Tarde, On Communication and Social Influence, trans. and ed. T. Clark (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 300 and 304. See also G. Tarde, L’Opinion et la Foule (Paris: Éditions du Sandre, 2007 [1901]). 7 M. Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development (New Brunswick, nj, and London: Transaction, 1999), 10. 8 In the preceding passage I have drawn on an argument made by Paul Ricoeur in The Just (2000), to the effect that the question “who?” posed in a legal context calls for identification of a capable subject worthy of esteem and respect, which can then become the subject of moral, juridical, and political rights. See P. Ricoeur, The Just, trans. D. Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), chap. 1. 9 A. Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 2005), 14. 10 Similarly, in the new Europe, those minorities with an approach to culture that stresses a modern understanding of the need for constant change and adaptability and the necessity or inevitability of emphasizing differences among their members have little or no chance of achieving minority protections. See R. Toivanen, “Das Paradox der Minderheitenrechte in Europa,” SWS -Rundschau 45, 2 (2005): 185–207. 11 A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 65.

chapter two 1 United Nations, Agenda 21: United Nations Sustainable Development, United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 3–14 June 1992, chap. 26.1. 2 Resolution on Action Required Internationally to Provide Effective Protection for Indigenous Peoples, European Parliament, doc. pv 58(II) (1994). 3 Resolution on the Situation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, European Parliament, 1995, , viewed 12 June 2008.

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4 unesco, “Tapping into the World’s Wisdom,” Sources 25, 11 July– 16 August 2000, , 11, viewed 17 December 2007. 5 Ibid., 12. 6 Statement made at the International Forum on Indigenous Issues, Side Event on the Potential Role for a United Nations University Traditional Knowledge Institute, New York, 22 April 2008. One solution to concerns about research abuses proposed by unesco is to extend intellectual property rights to collective subjects. To some extent, this has already been acted upon in the development of legal instruments: The “knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities” are the subject of Article 8 of the 1992 Convention on Biodiversity. 7 G.H. Brundtland, “International Consultation on the Health of Indigenous Peoples,” World Health Organization, Geneva, paper presented 23 November 1999, available at , viewed 20 July 20 2003. 8 Ibid. Here she is citing the words of Wally N’Dow, secretary-general of the 1996 United Nations Conference on Human Settlements. 9 T. Moses, “Statement by the Grand Council of the Crees, Agenda Item 7: International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples,” Working Group on Indigenous Populations, 15th session, Geneva, 28 July – 1 August 1997, p. 1. 10 T. Alfred and J. Corntassel, “A Decade of Rhetoric for Indigenous Peoples,” available at , viewed 15 April 2005. 11 Ibid. 12 Cited in C.G. Toensing, “2007 Victory: Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Adopted,” Indian Country Today, available at , posted 21 December 2007, viewed 6 August 2008. 13 A parallel to the disputes mediated by the Crown can be found in formal processes of registering grievances by Indian leaders in the post-independence United States, including series of eloquent petitions by the Seneca leader Cornplanter to President George Washington during the winter of 1790–91, oriented towards securing landholding and developing the intensity of agriculture: “The Game which the Great Spirit sent into our Country for us to eat is going from among us. We thought that he intended that we should till the ground with

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Notes to page 23

the Plow, as the White People do, and we talked to one another about it.” Cited in A.F.C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Vintage, 1969), 203. Cornplanter’s petitions to George Washington indicate in detail the equipment and training necessary for this economic transition and suggest a readiness to discard customs if they were to impede the future well-being of his people. See Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 204. A. Den Ouden, Beyond Conquest: Native Peoples and the Struggle for History in New England (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 1. Ibid., 146. The Mohegan petitions of eighteenth-century Connecticut are also discussed in C. Calloway and N. Salisbury, Reinterpreting New England Indians and the Colonial Experience (Boston: The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2003). Petitions to the Crown also occurred in the pre-Confederation period in Canada, but with the Office of the Governor General of Canada (the Crown’s representative) usually acting as intermediary. For example, between 1843 and 1850 the Montagnais (today the Innu) of northern Quebec, supported by missionaries, businesspeople, and politicians from the region, sent numerous petitions to the governor general to protest a new regime of land title with the Hudson’s Bay Company, which threatened to bring more outsiders to their territory and more pressure on fishing and hunting activities. These “squatters,” as the Montagnais were called, did not, however, succeed in capturing the attention of the authorities. See J. Frenette, “La pétition montagnaise du 1er février 1843: Chasse, pêche et agriculture à la baie des Escoumins,” Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec 33, 1 (2003): 105–14. Other aboriginal petitions to the Crown from the pre-Confederation period in Canada are discussed in L. Johnson, “À l’origine de la réserve Viger, une requête malécite de 1826, Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec 26, 2 (1996): 77–81; and C. Gélinas, “La première revendication territoriale des autochtones de la Haute-Mauricie? Quelques commentaires sur une petition de 1814– 1815,” Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec 26, 2 (1996): 73–6. B. Attwood and A. Markus, eds., The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History (Crows Nest, nsw: Allen and Unwin, 1999), 38–9. B. Attwood offers a volume of further documentation and discussion of the Australian Aborigines’ struggle for their rights in Rights for Aborigines (Crows Nest, nsw: Allen and Unwin, 2003).

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19 D. Marshall, Those Who Fell from the Sky: A History of the Cowichan Peoples (Duncan, bc: Cultural and Education Centre, Cowichan Tribes, 1999), 148. 20 P. Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics: The Indian Land Question in British Columbia, 1849–1989 (Vancouver: ubc Press, 1990), 85. 21 R.M. Galois, “The Indian Rights Association, Native Protest Activity and the ‘Land Question’ in British Columbia, 1903–1916,” Native Studies Review 8, 2 (1992): 1–34, at 7. 22 Marshall, Those Who Fell from the Sky, 146. 23 The following account of Deskaheh’s campaign to get a hearing at the League of Nations summarizes material that is presented more fully in R. Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 31–6. See also J. Rostkowski, “Deskaheh’s Shadow: Indians on the International Scene,” Native American Studies 9, 2 (1995): 1–4. 24 The Covenant of the League of Nations (Including Amendments adopted to December, 1924), the Avalon Project at Yale Law School, available at , viewed 12 June 2008. See also E-I. Daes, “Working Paper by the Chairperson-Rapporteur, Mrs. Erica-Irene A. Daes, on the concept of ‘indigenous people,’” United Nations Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, un doc. e/cn.5/Sub.2/ ac.4/1996/2, 1996, p. 6. 25 International Labour Organization, Indigenous Peoples: Living and Working Conditions of Aboriginal Populations in Independent Countries (Studies and Reports, no. 35. Geneva: International Labour Office, 1953). 26 I detail more fully the connections between the concept of indigenous peoples and the legal and institutional development of human rights in The Origins of Indigenism. 27 The footprints of a controversy engendered by the terms “ethnocide” and “cultural genocide” can be seen in a comparison of the 1994 Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the final Declaration approved in 2007. Article 7 of the Draft Declaration reads, “Indigenous peoples have the collective and individual right not to be subjected to ethnocide and cultural genocide,” while the approved Declaration omits the offending terminology and stresses a more consensually recognized protection against genocide: “Indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom, peace

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and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence.” Article 8.1 of the Declaration takes up the issue of ethnocide but expresses it through alternative wording: “Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture.” 28 The organizations with consultative status with ecosoc as of 2005 were as follows: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission; the Aleut International Association; American Indian Law Alliance; Asian Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Network; Assembly of First Nations – National Indian Brotherhood; Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia, and Far East of the Russian Federation (raipon); Centre d’accompagnement des autochtones pygmees et minoritaires vulnerables; Cherokee Nation of New Jersey; Congress of Aboriginal Peoples; Coordinating Body of the Indigenous Organizations in the Amazon Basin; Cultural Survival; Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action Aboriginal Corporation; Foundation for the American Indian; Four Directions Council; Grand Council of the Crees–Eeyou Istchee; Indian Committee of Youth Organizations; Indian Movement “Tupaj Amaru”; Indian Council of South America; Indian Law Resource Centre; Indigenous and Peasant Coordinator of Communal Agroforestry; Indigenous Peoples Survival Foundation; Indigenous Tourism Rights International; Indigenous World Association; Innu Council of Nitassinan (Innu Nation); International Indian Treaty Council; International Organization of Indigenous Resource Development; International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs; Inuit Circumpolar Conference; Métis National Council; Métis National Council of Women, Inc.; National Aboriginal and Islander Legal Services Secretariat; National Aboriginal Forestry Association; National Congress of American Indians; The National Indian Youth Council; Native American Rights Fund; Native Women’s Association of Canada; Netherlands Centre for Indigenous Peoples; Partnership for Indigenous Peoples Environment; Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation; Saami Council; Turtle Island Restoration Network; Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs; World Council of Indigenous Peoples. The complete list of ngos with ecosoc consultative status, including the year in which the status was approved, can be found at: , viewed 12 December 2006.

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29 F. Cooper and R. Packard, “The History and Politics of Development Knowledge,” in The Anthropology of Development and Globalization, ed. M. Edelman and A. Haugerud (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 136. 30 Morocco, Statement before the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, un doc. e/cn4/Sub.2/ac.4/1985/wp.1/Add.1, 1985. 31 Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee, “Who Are the Indigenous Peoples of Africa?” available at , viewed 2 May 2006. 32 M. Parkipuny, “The Human Rights Situation of Indigenous Peoples in Africa,” Remarks to the Sixth Session of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, Geneva, 1989, available at , viewed 2 May 2006. 33 See J. Bachman, “The Danger of ‘Ungoverned’ Spaces: The ‘War on Terror’ and Its Effects on the Sahel Region,” in The Social Life of Anti-Terrorism Laws: The War on Terror and the Classifications of the “Dangerous Other,” ed. Julia Eckert, 131–61 (Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag, 2008). 34 Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee, “us Military and Oil Interests Affect the Human Rights of Saharan Indigenous People,” 2004, available at , viewed 7 May 2006. 35 Ibid. 36 P. Ricoeur, The Just, trans. David Pellauer, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1. 37 M. Castells, The Power of Identity, vol. 2, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Malden, ma: Blackwell, 1997), 9.

chapter three 1 The site from which this material was taken has since been dismantled. It is cited in R. Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 175. 2 P. Antze and M. Lambek, eds., Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory (New York: Routledge, 1996), xiii. 3 Available at , viewed 2 November 2006.

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4 Available at , viewed 2 November 2006. 5 Available at , viewed 2 November 2006. 6 My understanding of transference relies on Freud’s 1912 essay, “On the Dynamics of Transference” (Zur Dynamik der Übertragung [1999]) and, to a lesser extent, on the 1915 essay, “Remarks on Love Transference” (Bemerkungen über die Übertragungsliebe). Transference was, according to Freud, an expression of heightened affect in the patients’ interactions with the psychoanalyst, which could take the negative form of rejection and hostility or which could be expressed as erotic attraction or romantic infatuation. Analysts themselves were not immune from its effects and could very easily fall into the trap of reverse transference (Gegenübertragung), a hatred of or infatuation with their patients driven by psychic conflict, from which, if it ever happened, it was very important for them to extricate themselves. Besides its hostile and erotic manifestations, Freud noted another form, which seems to relate more directly to identity construction: a steady, fruitful willingness to engage with the therapist in common cause against the sources of neurosis. This was occasionally expressed by the eagerness of the patient to assimilate the conceptual apparatus of psychoanalysis, even to absorb the particular slant or preferences of their own analyst, and to reproduce them fluently in their sessions, sometimes going so far as to obstruct therapy by smothering the possible insights of free-flowing self-presentation with premature, unprofessional interpretation. Such enthusiasts occasionally went on to receive training in psychoanalysis and to open their own practices. Freud was careful to note that the dynamics of transference were not restricted to psychoanalysis but could be found in other relationships in which individuals sought out professional authority to meet a perceived need for self-improvement. Although I did not invoke Freud with the intention of offering a critique of psychoanalysis, a dogmatic quality of his approach to transference does stand out. By connecting transference with resistance, in the form of both hostility and obstructionist enthusiasm, Freud was able to make psychoanalysis impervious to criticism and misuse (both dismissible as manifestations of resistance) and to elevate its therapeutic promise by providing a ready explanation for the postponement of results. 7 Although still outnumbered by English-language Web postings, the sites in other major languages have increased dramatically in recent

Notes to pages 51–6

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years. When I first conducted a multi-language survey of indigenous Web postings in 2002, the ratio of English to other languages was roughly 40:1. The presence of other major languages has increased roughly tenfold in four years, much of it deriving from a surging interest in indigenous issues in Latin America. This estimate is from a search conducted on 17 March 2007. See A. Furtwangler, Answering Chief Seattle (Seattle, wa: University of Washington Press, 1997). Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact, Declaration on the Rights of Asian Indigenous Tribal Peoples, Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact General Assembly meeting, Chiangmai, Thailand, 18–23 May 1993, available at , viewed 19 July 2003. This is an almost verbatim quotation of a 1989 report by the Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact, Indigenous Peoples in Asia: Towards SelfDetermination, Report of the Peoples Forum, Chiang Mai, Thailand, August 1988, cited in D. McCaskill and K. Kampe, eds., Development or Domestication: Indigenous Peoples of Southeast Asia (Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books, 1997), 5. I have cited the 1993 document because of its use of “we,” making it a more direct expression of selfhood. J. Martínez Cobo, Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations, vol. 5, un doc.e/cn.4/Sub.2/1986/7/Add.4, 1987, p. 48. Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact, Declaration on the Rights of Asian Indigenous Tribal Peoples. L. Frechette, Address to the First Session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, New York, 13 May 2002, available at , viewed 20 July 2003. Available at , viewed 25 July 2006. Iraqi Turkmen Human Rights Research Foundation, “Indigenous Peoples and Current Human Rights Situation in Iraq, United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, July – August 2006, Indigenous Peoples’ Center for Documentation, Research and Information (doCip), available at , viewed 19 March 2007; Joint statement submitted by Ahwaz Human Rights Organization, Indigenous Ahwazi Arabs for Democracy in Iran, Ahwaz Education and Human Rights Foundation, and the Democratic Solidarity Party of Ahwaz, United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, July – August 2006,

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Notes to pages 57–70

Indigenous Peoples’ Center for Documentation, Research and Information (doCip), available at , viewed 19 March 2007. “Indigenous Peoples and the Law,” available at , updated 30 July 2003, viewed 4 August 2003. “Indigenous Peoples’ Rights,” available at , viewed 4 August 2003. “Palestinian Development Portal, available at , viewed 4 August 2003. H. Walia, Resisting Displacement, North and South Indigenous and Immigrant Struggles, by Harsha Walia, 12 August 2003, available at , viewed 19 March 2007. Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality, “Utilization of Bedouin Lands in the Negev for Military Purposes,” un Working Group on Indigenous Populations, July – August 2006, available at , viewed 19 March 2007. The concept and ambitions of Aanischaaukamikw are explained on the website , viewed 7 August 2003. United Nations, Human Development Report 2001: Making New Technologies Work for Human Development (New York and Oxford: United Nations Development Progamme, 2001), 49–50. See B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).

chapter four 1 R. v. Van der Peet, [1996] 2 S.C.R. 507 at para. 3. 2 J. Clifford, The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1988), 338. 3 E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). 4 A. Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 13. 5 R. v. Marshall (No. 2), [1999] 3 S.C.R. 533 at para. 2. 6 Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, [1997] 3 S.C.R. 1010 at para. 3. 7 Dara Culhane provides a detailed examination of the Delgamuukw case, with an emphasis on judicial process as a mechanism for the extinguishment of distinct aboriginal rights and title. See D. Culhane,

Notes to pages 70–5

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The Pleasure of the Crown: Anthropology, Law and First Nations (Burnaby, bc: Talon Books, 1998). Van der Peet, [1996] 2 S.C.R. 507 at para. 3. The following summary of the antecedents of the Canadian Supreme Court’s approach to culture owes a great deal to Michael Asch’s “The Judicial Conceptualization of Culture after Delgamuukw and Van der Peet,” Review of Constitutional Studies 5, 2 (2000): 119–37. In re: Southern Rhodesia, (1919) AC 210 (PC) note 4 at 233–34, cited in Asch, “The Judicial Conceptualization of Culture,” 121. Hamlet of Baker Lake v. Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development et al. [1980] 1 F.C. 518 at 557–58, cited in Asch, “The Judicial Conceptualization of Culture,” 122. Ibid. Ibid. at 559. Judicial thinking in the 1970s no longer shows attachment to universal laws or stages of development. But even though the nineteenth-century-style universal paradigm is not evident in Baker Lake, the judgment has a lingering attachment to “organization” and “elaborate institutions.” Van der Peet, [1996] 2 S.C.R. 507 at para. 56 [emphasis in original]. This point is especially clearly expressed in the dissenting opinion of Justice L’Heureux-Dubé in R. v. Van der Peet: “Aboriginal people’s occupation and use of North American territory was not static, nor, as a general principle, should be the aboriginal rights flowing from it. Natives migrated in response to events such as war, epidemic, famine, dwindling game reserves, etc. Aboriginal practices, traditions and customs also changed and evolved, including the utilization of the land, methods of hunting and fishing, trade of goods between tribes, and so on … Accordingly, the notion of aboriginal rights must be open to fluctuation, change and evolution, not only from one native group to another, but also over time.” See ibid. at para. 113. Van der Peet, [1996] 2 S.C.R. 507 at para. 65. Patrick Macklem makes a similar observation when he writes, “By protecting only practices, customs, and traditions integral to Aboriginal cultures, the Court treats Aboriginal cultural difference as the only aspect of indigenous difference that possesses constitutional significance.” See Patrick Macklem, Indigenous Difference and the Constitution of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 61. Van der Peet, [1996] 2 S.C.R. 507 at para. 45.

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Notes to pages 75–81

20 R. v. Gladstone, [1996] 2 S.C.R. 723 at para. 22. 21 Marshall (No. 2), [1999] 3 S.C.R. 533, Motion for Rehearing and Stay at para. 2. 22 Marshall (No. 2), [1999] 3 S.C.R. 533 at para. 40. 23 M.N.R. v. Mitchell, [2001] 1 S.C.R. 911 at para. 153. 24 I am grateful to Paul Joffe for bringing this “species-by-species” approach to aboriginal subsistence rights to my attention, thus providing a key stimulus for my research on this topic (pers. comm., 14 November 2000). 25 Prominent among these are the decisions yet to be made by the courts in the Atlantic provinces concerning lobster fishing by members of such communities as Burnt Church (New Brunswick) and Indian Brook (Nova Scotia). The ongoing contest in the Atlantic region between aboriginal peoples asserting their rights of subsistence and the organized interests of non-aboriginal commercial fishers also has important implications for the elaboration of aboriginal rights of selfdetermination in Canada, evident in the way the Supreme Court has recently sought to subsume aboriginal subsistence rights under the authority of the federal government. 26 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 19 December 1966, 999 U.N.T.S. 171, art. 27 [iccpr]. 27 See Robin Fisher, “Judging History: Reflections on the Reasons for Judgment in Delgamuukw v. B.C.” BC Studies 45 (1992): 43–54. 28 See Culhane, The Pleasure of the Crown, for a detailed account of this testimony and of Justice McEachern’s decision. 29 See, for example: Donald Bourgeois, “The Role of the Historian in the Litigation Process,” Canadian Historical Review 67, 2 (1986): 195–205; G.M. Dickason and R.D. Gidney, “History and Advocacy: Some Reflections on the Historian’s Role in Litigation,” Canadian Historical Review 68, 4 (1987): 576–85; Arthur Ray, “Creating the Image of the Savage in Defence of the Crown: The Ethnohistorian in Court,” Native Studies Review 6, 2 (1990): 13–29. 30 Marshall (No. 2), [1999] 3 S.C.R. 533 at para. 37. 31 Cited in Boyce Richardson, Strangers Devour the Land (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1991), 41. 32 M.N.R. v. Mitchell, [2001] 1 S.C.R. 91 at 2. 33 James Anaya, Indigenous Peoples in International Law, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 4. I discuss the connection between human rights and indigenous identity in The Origins of

Notes to pages 81–4

34 35 36

37

38

39

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Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003). M.N.R. v. Mitchell, [2001] 1 S.C.R. 91 at 3. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 19 December 1966, 999 U.N.T.S. 171, art. 27 [iccpr]. “[T]he Committee observed that the author [Chief Ominayak], as an individual, could not claim under the Optional Protocol to be a victim of a violation of the right of self determination … which deals with rights conferred upon peoples, as such.” See Views of the Human Rights Committee under Article 5, paragraph 4, of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights, un doc. ccpr/c/38/D/167/1984, at para. 13.3. Against the argument that this approach by the Committee renders Article 1 of the iccpr unenforceable since only individuals can submit complaints under the Optional Protocol, the Committee suggested that “there is no objection to a group of individuals, who claim to be similarly affected, collectively to submit a communication about alleged breaches of their rights [under Article 1].” See ibid. at para. 32.1. This still indicates a tension between the individual rights orientation of the Optional Protocol and the collective rights inscribed in Article 1 or the iccpr. Ibid. at para. 2.2. In this context, an appended submission by an individual member of the Committee, Mr Nisuke Anudo, is informative. His dissenting concern appears to be that the right to enjoy one’s own culture could be interpreted narrowly to exclude considerations of change. He argues that “outright refusal by a group in a given society to change its traditional way of life may hamper the economic development of the society as a whole.” This individual opinion thus legitimately points to issues of adaptation and change as important components of cultural rights, but it overlooks considerations of selfdetermination, leaving it possible to argue that forcing a people to change their way of life through unwanted extractive industrial activities is not a violation of their cultural rights. Views of the Human Rights Committee under Article 5, paragraph 4, of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, un doc. ccpr/c/52/D/511/1992, para. 9.3 [emphasis in original]. Martin Scheinin, “The Right to Enjoy a Distinct Culture: Indigenous and Competing Uses of Land” in Theodore Orlin, Allan Rosas &

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Notes to pages 84–98

Martin Scheinin, eds., The Jurisprudence of Human Rights Law: A Comparative Interpretative Approach (Turku/Åbo: Institute for Human Rights, Åbo Akademi University, 2000) 159 at 169. Ibid. at 197–98. Chris Morris, “Non-native fishermen in NB call for immediate end to Burnt Church fishery” Canadian Press (17 September 2001). R. v. Van der Peet, [1996] 2 S.C.R. 507, at para. 2. Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism, ed. by Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 38. This test of cultural distinctiveness is outlined under the heading, “The Aboriginal Right” in R. v. Van der Peet, [1996] 2 S.C.R. 507 at paras. 2–3.

chapter five 1 A. Kleinman, V. Das, and M. Lock, Social Suffering (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), xiii. 2 A. Kleinman and J. Kleinman, “The Appeal of Experience, the Dismay of Images: Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in Our Times,” in Social Suffering, ed. A. Kleinman, V. Daas, and M. Lock (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 9. 3 S. Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 23. 4 A. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L. MacFie (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1976 [1759]), 58. 5 R. Bourassa, Power from the North (Scarborough, on: Prentice-Hall Canada, 1985), 2. 6 I discuss the James Bay Cree campaigns and the origins of regional autonomy more fully in Defending the Land (2008a). 7 Northern Flood Agreement, an Agreement among Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Manitoba, the Manitoba Hydro-Electric Board, the Northern Flood Committee, and Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, 16 December 1977, Schedule E. 8 Northern Flood Committee, The Northern Flood Agreement: History of Negotiation and Implementation, and Recommendations for Improvement. Prepared for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, unpublished report, 1993, 56. 9 I am grateful to Galit Sarfaty, whose research for a senior thesis in anthropology at Harvard University was useful in disentangling the vexed history of nfa implementation. See G, Sarfaty, “Globalizing

Notes to pages 98–113

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21

22 23

24

25

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the Local and Localizing the Global: The Cross Lake Cree’s Campaign for Self-Government” (honours thesis, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, 2000),22. She illustrates the connection between Cross Lake’s protest movement and the international legal standards of indigenous peoples in “International Norm Diffusion in the Pimicikamak Cree Nation: A Model of Legal Mediation,” Harvard International Law Journal 48, 2 (2007): 441–82. Sarfaty, “Globalizing the Local and Localizing the Global,” 22. Winnipeg Free Press, “Blockade ‘Shocking,’ un Told: Governments under Fire for Forcing Cross Lake Siege,” 25 March 1998, A3. Speech at Northern States Power headquarters, Minneapolis, June 22 1998. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Anonymous, Letter to Cross Lake First Nation Chief and Council, n.d. The Pimicikamak Okimawin Trust and Hydro Payment Law, Cross Lake, Manitoba, 30 October 1998, para. 14. The Pimicikamak Citizenship Law, Cross Lake, Manitoba, 2 July 1999, preamble. Ibid., para. 50. R. Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 175. Mennonite Central Committee, “A Panoramic Perspective: The Northern Flood Agreement in Historical Context,” unpublished paper, 1998, 16. Cited in R. Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism, 175. River Awareness Tour Calls Attention to Powerline Impacts, 2000, available at , viewed 8 November 2005. S. Kuchera, “Rivers Awareness Tour: Foes Hope to Highlight Project’s Environmental Problems,” Duluth News Tribune, 24 July 2000, available at , viewed 3 January 2006. K. Reopelle, “Power Line Threatens Wisconsin’s Air and Water,” The Defender, available at , 2000, viewed 3 January 2006.

202

Notes to pages 113–26

26 River Awareness Tour, available at , viewed 10 October 2008. 27 Duluth News Tribune, “Foes hope to highlight project’s environmental problems,” 24 July 2000, available at viewed 26 January 2009. 28 cbc News, “Band Occupies Manitoba Hydro Station,” 16 April 2007, , viewed 6 August 2008. 29 The mere fact that photographic and ethnographic records of these deficiencies in Manitoba Hydro’s mitigation program were being established seems to have had an effect on the corporation’s behaviour. During the first year of my stay in Cross Lake a shoreline cleanup program was established using a team hired from the community, and increased resources were given to projects aimed at shoreline reinforcement around burial sites. 30 Interview in Cross Lake reserve territory, 26 September 1999. 31 The 1997–98 annual report of the Grand Council of the Crees presents some of the main features of Cross Lake’s recent history that seem to have stimulated a willingness to take up intertribal advocacy: “This is a story that Eenouch [Crees] can recognize, because it is very similar to how (at almost the same time as the Manitoba Crees) we entered into the jbnqa [James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement] with Canada, the province of Quebec and Hydro-Quebec.” See Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee), First Nations Relations: Cross Lake, Manitoba, and the Northern Flood Agreement of 1977 (1997–1998 Annual Report, Special Reprint), 46. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 A. Kuper, The Invention of Primitive Society: Transformations of an Illusion (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), 240.

chapter six 1 I am aware of an ethical dilemma that arises in community-based studies of suicide. Depictions of mental health crises can have a stigmatizing effect and can even contribute to the currency of ideas that are implicated in high frequencies of suicide. As I discuss elsewhere in this chapter, this is particularly true of depictions in popular

Notes to pages 127–31

2

3

4 5

6 7

8

9 10

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media. At the same time, without a more complete understanding of the causes and consequences of aboriginal youth suicide, communities like Cross Lake will be at a disadvantage when it comes to developing effective intervention strategies. Cross Lake’s leadership in the crisis of 1999–2000 opted to communicate the community’s plight to the public. They also requested, and were refused, a coroner’s inquest into one of the suicides. I have discussed Cross Lake’s crisis in the hope that this chapter can in some small way, consistent with the spirit of seeking a formal inquest, contribute to a deeper understanding of aboriginal youth suicide and, eventually, to more effective ways of preventing it. This statistic relating to crisis line activity was cited on the Cross Lake First Nation website: , viewed 26 September 2006. R. Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 62. Interview in Cross Lake, 31 March 1999. This included one notation of a suicide that was thinly disguised in the death record as originating from a “self-inflicted disease.” There is a further irregularity in the death record. It shows the seven suicides occurring over a seventeen-month period. This figure is inconsistent with the memories of those who were active in a volunteer association formed to deal with the crisis. They consistently assert that the crisis took place over a six-month period. The disparity is possibly the result of delays in formally reporting the causes of selfinflicted deaths and entering them in the death record. Interview in Cross Lake, 31 March 1999. One of these press articles, “Reserve on Death watch,” was published in the Winnipeg Free Press on 8 December 1999 (A1), when there had been over one hundred reported suicide attempts. Many more attempted suicides occurred over the subsequent holiday season. M. Gould, S. Wallenstein, and L. Davidson, “Suicide Clusters: A Critical Review,” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 19, 1 (1989): 17–29, at 17. L. Coleman, Suicide Clusters (London: Faber and Faber, 1987), 3. R. Niezen, “Suicide as a Way of Belonging: Causes and Consequences of Cluster Suicides in Aboriginal Communities,” in The Mental Health of Canadian Aboriginal Peoples: Transformations, Identity, and Community, ed. L. Kirmayer and G. Valaskakis, (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2009).

204

Notes to pages 131–40

11 Interview in Cross Lake, 6 January 1999. 12 M. Chandler and C. Lalonde, “Cultural Continuity as a Moderator of Suicide Risk among Canada’s First Nations,” in The Mental Health of Canadian Aboriginal Peoples: Transformations, Identity, and Community, ed. L. Kirmayer and G. Valaskakis, (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2009). 13 I am grateful to the late Arnold Devlin of the Dilco Ojibway Child and Family Services for this estimate of the rate of suicide in the Sioux Lookout Zone of northern Ontario. 14 Northern Flood Agreement, An Agreement among Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Manitoba, the Manitoba Hydro-Electric Board, the Northern Flood Committee, and her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, 16 December 1977, Schedule E. 15 C. Wesley-Esquimaux and M. Smolewski, Traumatisme historique et guérison autochtone (Ottawa: Fondation autochtone de guérison, 2004). 16 R. Niezen, “Power and Dignity: The Social Consequences of Hydroelectric Development for the James Bay Cree,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 30, 4 ()1993: 510–29. 17 Niezen, “Power and Dignity,” 517. 18 R. Corrado, I. Cohen, and Corrado Research and Evaluation Associates Inc., Mental Health Profiles for a Sample of British Columbia’s Aboriginal Survivors of the Canadian Residential School System (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2003), 12. 19 C. Brasfield, “Residential School Syndrome,” BC Medical Journal 43, 2 (2001): 57–112, at 79. 20 This was made particularly clear by the investigative efforts of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. An almost bewildering array of injustices and sorrows were laid at the feet of those who came to the villages to listen sympathetically, with the intention of assembling a public document based on what they heard. 21 M. Chandler and C. Lalonde, “Cultural Continuity as a Hedge against Suicide in Canada’s First Nations.” Transcultural Psychiatry 35, 2 (1998): 193–211; Chandler and Lalonde, “Cultural Continuity as a Moderator of Suicide Risk.” 22 Interview in Cross Lake, 6 January 1999. 23 Ibid. 24 Government of Alberta, Report to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Public Inquiry (Canmore, ab: Provincial Court of Alberta, 1999), 10.

Notes to pages 140–4

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25 Emile Durkheim, in his classic study of suicide, discusses the apparent paradox of higher rates of suicide occurring in periods of sudden prosperity. He describes anomic suicide as following from circumstances in which individuals are unmoored from social restraint and can more readily become disconnected from their attachment to life – conditions that occur during rapid economic expansion. “Overweening ambition,” he argues, “always exceeds the results obtained, great as they may be … Nothing gives satisfaction and all this agitation is uninterruptedly maintained without appeasement” (253). This, more than conditions of simple poverty, can lead to personal crisis ending in suicide: “The less limited one feels, the more intolerable all limitation appears.” See E. Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology, trans. John Spaulding and George Simpson (New York: The Free Press, 1951 [1897]), 254. Alexis de Tocqueville, in The Old Regime and the French Revolution, deals with an analogous paradox in his discussion of the social conditions that preceded the French Revolution. He makes the surprising observation that the French Revolution occurred in a context within which the conditions of the peasantry were improving through tax reform, weakening of class barriers, and new opportunities for the accumulation of wealth. He concludes from this that “it is not always when things are going from bad to worse that revolutions break out … [T]he social order overthrown by a revolution is almost always better than the one immediately preceding it, and experience teaches us that, generally speaking, the most perilous moment for a bad government is one when it seeks to mend its ways” (176–7). This famous example of the illogic of history, which has come to be known as the “Tocqueville effect,” is consistent with Durkheim’s theory of anomic suicide and might equally inform the political background of suicide clusters. See A. de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, trans. S. Gilbert, (New York: Doubleday, 1955 [1856]). 26 Interview in Cross Lake, 6 January 1999. 27 See, for example, M. Gould, S. Wallenstein, and L. Davidson, “Suicide Clusters: A Critical Review,” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 19, 1 (1989): 17–29; M. Kral, “Suicide as social logic,” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 24, 3 (1994): 245–55; and M. Kral, “Suicide and the Internalization of Culture: Three Questions,” Transcultural Psychiatry 35, 2 (1998): 221–33. 28 L. Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics, trans. G. Burchell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 12.

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Notes to pages 144–52

29 C. Samson, “The Historical, Political and Psychological Contests of Innu Mental Health Problems,” in The Mental Health of Canadian Aboriginal Peoples: Transformations, Identity, and Community, ed. L. Kirmayer and G. Valaskakis (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2009), 228. 30 Coleman, Suicide Clusters, 129–30. 31 See Chandler and Lalonde, “Cultural Continuity as a Hedge against Suicide”; and Chandler and Lalonde, “Cultural Continuity as a Moderator of Suicide Risk.” 32 Interview in Chisasibi, Quebec, 2 September 1992. 33 See, for example, R. McCormick’s summation of his extensive publications on this topic in “Aboriginal Approaches to Counselling,” in The Mental Health of Canadian Aboriginal Peoples: Transformations, Identity, and Community, ed. L. Kirmayer and G. Valaskakis, (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2009).

chapter seven 1 Charles Lindholm describes therapeutic history accurately (though he does not use the term) in Culture and Authenticity when he writes about the construction of a myth of the pure past that is “psychologically compelling to the excluded and marginalized even though it ignores or represses aspects of history that do not fit into the desired image of unity and harmony.” See C. Lindholm, Culture and Authenticity (Malden, ma: Blackwell, 2008), 130. 2 T. Mbeki, “Statement of Deputy President T.M. Mbeki on Behalf of the African National Congress, on the Occasion of the Adoption by the Constitutional Assembly of ‘The Republic of South Africa Constitution Bill 1996,’” 8 May 1996, available at , viewed 31 May 2008. 3 C. Campbell, “Letting them Die”: Why HIV / AIDS Prevention Programmes Fail (Oxford/Bloomington/Cape Town: James Currey/ Indiana University Press/Double Storey, 2003), 14. 4 F. Ikawa-Smith, “Construction of National Identity and Origins in East Asia: A Comparative Perspective,” Antiquity 73 (1999): 626–9, at 626. 5 D. Howell, “Ethnicity and Culture in Contemporary Japan,” Journal of Contemporary History 31, 1 (1996): 171–90, at 178.

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6 F. Ikawa-Smith, “L’idéologie de l’homogénéité culturelle dans l’archéologie préhistorique Japonaise,” Anthropologie et Sociétés 14, 3 (1990): 51–76, at 52. 7 C. Fawcett, “Archaeology and Japanese History,” in Multicultural Japan: Paleolithic to Postmodern, ed. D. Denoon, M. Hudson, G. McCormack, and T. Morris-Suzuki (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 69. 8 G. Sioui, For an Amerindian Autohistory: An Essay on the Foundations of a Social Ethic, trans. Sheila Fischman (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 99. 9 J. Brown, “The Track to Heaven: The Hudson Bay Cree Religious Movement of 1842–1843,” in The Native Imprint: The Contributions of First Peoples to Canada’s Character, vol. 2: From 1815, ed. O.P. Dickason (Athabaska, ab: Athabaska University Educational Enterprises, 1996). 10 Web Accessibility Technical Services, Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, available at , viewed 31 July 2006. 11 Ibid. 12 “Swampy Cree: History and Background,” available at , viewed 31 July 2006. 13 Untitled web page, available at , viewed 31 July 2006. 14 Available at , viewed 29 December 2006. A link to this information is provided by the website “Languagegeek” (), dedicated to the promotion of native North American languages. 15 J. Powell, in The First Americans: Race, Evolution, and the Origin of Native Americans (Cambridge, uk: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 6–12, presents one of the clearest, fact-filled descriptions of the Kennewick saga. Much of the material I present on this issue follows the summary contained in Powell’s The First Americans. 16 D. Preston, “The Lost Man,” New Yorker, 16 June 1997, 70–81, at 73. 17 Powell, The First Americans, 11. 18 Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, “Ancient One/Kennewick Man: Ancient One Determined to Be Culturally

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22 23 24 25

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27 28

29 30 31

32

33

Notes to pages 160–5

Affiliated with Five Tribes,” press statement, 25 September 2000, available at , viewed 22 January 2007. A. Minthorn, “Ancient One/Kennewick Man: Human Remains Should be Reburied,” Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, 1996, available at , viewed 22 January 2007. Powell, The First Americans, 9. Suzanne Crawford, “(Re)Constructing Bodies: Semiotic Sovereignty and the Debate over Kennewick Man,” in Repatriation Reader: Who Owns American Indian Remains? Ed. Devon Mihesuah (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 232–3. L. Smith, Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 31. Cited in E. Dewar, Bones: Discovering the First Americans (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2001), 160. Ibid., 180. Cited in P. Brosius, “Endangered Forest, Endangered People: Environmentalist Representations of Indigenous Knowledge,” Human Ecology 25, 1 (1997): 47–69, at 65. T. Alfred, “From Sovereignty to Freedom,” in A Will to Survive: Indigenous Essays in the Politics of Culture, Language and Identity, ed. Stephen Greymorning (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004), 122. Alfred, “From Sovereignty to Freedom,” 125. T. Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London/Dunedin: Zed Books/University of Otago Press, 1999), 74. Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 74. Cited in B. Devall, “The Deep Ecology Movement,” Natural Resources Journal 20 (1980): 299–322, at 306. Cited in A. Booth and H. Jacobs, “Ties That Bind: Native American Beliefs as a Foundation for Environmental Consciousness,” Environmental Ethics 12, 1 (1990): 27–43, at 35. Cited in D. Grinde and B. Johansen, Ecocide of Native America: Environmental Destruction of Indian Lands and Peoples, (Santa Fe, nm: Clear Light, 1995), 268–9. M. Alvard, “Testing the ‘Ecologically Noble Savage’ Hypothesis: Interspecific Prey Choice by Piro Hunters of Amazonian Peru,” Human Ecology 21, 4 (1993): 355–87, at 356.

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34 S. Krech, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: Norton, 1999), 213. 35 W. Davis and T. Henley, Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rainforest (Vancouver: Western Canada Wilderness Committee, 1990), 98. 36 Ibid., 107. 37 P. Brosius, “Endangered Forest, Endangered People: Environmentalist Representations of Indigenous Knowledge,” Human Ecology 25, 1 (1997): 47–69, at 59. 38 Ibid., 62. 39 Ibid., 63. 40 Following up on Brosius’s article, Dominique Legros observes that the bilateral kinship system of the Nunamiut Inuit of Alaska was not conducive to the peace and cooperation needed for large-scale caribou hunts, upon which the economy depended, and breakdown of relations between family groups was periodically responsible for the failure of the hunt and subsequent famine. This, Legros finds, “was a clear indication that foraging societies may also be plagued by institutional problems and that their cultures may not necessarily be in complete harmony with their environment.” See D. Legros, “Commentary,” Current Anthropology 38, 4 (1997): 616–18, at 617. Alice Ingerson, also following up on Brosius’s article, points out that, despite knowledge of such structural ecological disharmony, some anthropologists have manipulated or colluded with environmentalists by strategically promoting ethnological distortions. She reports that, in the past thirty years, anthropologists and environmentalists, especially those working in tropical rainforests, have crossed paths and cooperated with greater frequency than ever before. Most environmental activists in the cultural crossroads of development critique, some backed by impressive financial and institutional support, see themselves as defending or restoring a pristine landscape and an original balance between humans and the natural world. Under these circumstances, Ingerson points out, “many anthropologists have used ahistorical romanticism as a way of encouraging environmentalists to see forest peoples as ‘adapted to’ or ‘defenders of’ supposedly stable ecosystems.” See A. Ingerson, “Commentary,” Current Anthropology 38, 4 (1997): 615–16, at 615. 41 L. Sponsel, “Commentary,” Current Anthropology 38, 4 (1996): 619–22, at 621–2.

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Notes to pages 167–71

42 J. Bodley, “Commentary,” Current Anthropology 38, 4 (1997): 611–13, at 612. 43 Brosius, “Endangered Forest, Endangered People,” 65. 44 Krech, The Ecological Indian, 27. 45 A. Kalland summarizes another line of reasoning that follows from environmental veneration: the idea that “only by being ‘authentic’ – that is ‘uncontaminated’ by modern ways – are [indigenous peoples] noble and worth our consideration … The notion of the ecologically noble Other thus serves to lock them in an ‘ethnographic present’ of more idyllic premodern days.” So when environmental veneration of indigenous ecology is not collapsing diversity, it is artificially reinforcing it with a “frozen in time” approach to cultural difference, analogous to that of the Canadian judiciary discussed in chapter 5. See A. Kalland, “Environmentalism and Images of the Other,” in Nature across Cultures: Views of Nature and the Environment in Non-Western Cultures, ed. H. Selin (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer, 2003), 8. 46 F. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove, 1965), 210. 47 I am following Latour’s arguments, which point to the arbitrary nature of disciplinary boundaries. This allows me to extend his analysis of the social nature of scientific truth to the processes by which historical consensus is established. See B. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1993). 48 B. Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1987), 62. 49 Ibid. 50 K. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 2, The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath, (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1966), 235. 51 Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 236. 52 Todorov expresses this idea succinctly with the argument that memory is not at all opposed to forgetting but involves, of necessity, a process of choice, of selection, and, ultimately, an interaction between conservation and elimination. See T. Todorov, Les abus de la mémoire (Paris: Arléa, 2004), 14. 53 M. Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire ou Métier d’historien (Paris: Armand Colin, 1993 [1949]), 98. 54 J.-L. Amselle, Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and Elsewhere, trans. Claudia Royal, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 2.

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55 T. Flanagan, First Nations? Second Thoughts, (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 23–4. 56 This school of historiography has the benefit of a long pedigree, with a major turning point (or starting point) occurring through Maurice Halbwach’s association between historical memory and the collective conscience. See M. Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: Albin Michel, 1994 [1925]); and M. Halbwachs, La mémoire collective (Paris: Albin Michel, 1997 [1950]). 57 Todorov, Les abus de la mémoire. 58 T. Todorov, Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), 24.

chapter eight 1 The insecurity of identity in conditions of rapid communication and mechanization are recognized in the most influential study of identity in individuals and cultures, Erik Erikson’s Childhood and Society. Erikson presciently observes that “what inner equilibrium [culture] had to offer is now endangered on a gigantic scale,” introducing (as Freud had done in Civilization and its Discontents) issues of social change through conditions of modernity into the field of individual psychology. See E. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1993 [1946]), 413. 2 This problem is the subject of an essay, “Who Is the Subject of Rights?” by Paul Ricoeur, which argues that “nations, peoples, classes, communities of every sort [are] institutions that recognize themselves as well as others through narrative identity” in response to basic questions that identify them as subjects of rights: “The question ‘what?’ calls for a description, the question ‘why?’ for an explanation. As for the question ‘who?’ it calls for an identification.” See P. Ricoeur, The Just, trans. D. Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 7. 3 J. Richland, ‘‘What are you going to do with the village’s Knowledge?’ Talking Tradition, Talking Law in Hopi Tribal Court,” Law and Society Review 39, 2 (2005): 235–71, at 236. 4 The expression “imaginaire réel” comes from Jacques Le Goff in the context of a discussion concerning the place of media in bringing historical production into consumer society. Here I have used the term out of context to inform a transcultural dilemma. See J. Le Goff, Histoire et mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 351.

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Index

Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 134, 136 aboriginal peoples, and Canada, xiv, 29, 48, 69, 72, 80–87, 95, 131, 134, 155, 157, 190n aboriginal rights, 12, 24–6, 66, 68–79, 83, 88, 89, 91, 197n Accountability Coalition, 118 activism, 6–7, 9, 30, 39–40, 43, 45, 49, 63, 94, 100, 112, 122, 140, 164–6, 180–1. See also environmentalism Africa, 32–9, 51, 56; nomads, 35–9; terrorism, 38–9 “Africa Question,” 33, 36 African indigenous caucus, 32 African Renaissance, 150 Agenda 21, 18. See also United Nations Conference on Environment and Development Ahwaz Human Rights Organization, 56 aids, South African policy towards, 151 Ainu, 64, 151 Alfred, Taiaiake, 20, 161–2 Algeria, 38, 167 Al Qaeda, 38

Alvard, Michael, 163–4 Amazigh, 64 Amazon, 18, 51, 163–4 American Friends of pcn, 112. See also Pimicikamak Cree Nation Amselle, Jean-Loup, 170 Anaya, James, 81 Anderson, Benedict, 63 Anthropology, 67–8, 70, 77–9, 165, 170, 177, 209n Antze, Paul, 47 Appadurai, Arjan, 67 Archaeology: East Asian, 151–2; Kennewick Man, 157–61 Arctic Council, 52–3 Asatru Folk Assembly, and Kennewick Man, 160 Asch, Michael, 71–2 Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact, 53–4 “Asian Question,” 33 assimilation, cultural, xvi, 4, 9, 28–9, 35, 63, 89, 91, 137, 143, 145–7, 150, 153, 178, 184; cultural rights and 74; evangelism and, 72, 147; evolutionism and, 72; residential schools and, 46, 72 117, 134–5, 146

228

Index

Asuka, 152 Australia, 55, 190n; Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, 21; residential schools, 29 Awasis Child and Family Agency, 126 Baker Lake v. Minister of Indian Affairs, 72–3 Basques, 56 Beck, Ulrich, 187n Bedouin, 57 Behaim, Martin, 44 Berbers, 34 biopiracy, 19, 39 Bloch, Marc, 170–1 Bodley, John, 166 Boltanski, Luc, 142 Bosnia, 93, 181 Bourassa, Robert, 95 Brazil, 18 Britain: colonialism 23–5; internal colonialism 9 British Columbia, 69–70, 78, 131, 196n British South African Company, 71 Brosius, Peter, 164–5, 209n Bruntland, Gro Harlem, 19 Burke Museum, 159 Burnt Church, and aboriginal rights, 87, 198n Bush, G.W, and terrorism, 38 Cabot, John, 44 Campbell, Catherine, and aids research, 151 Canada: aboriginal people, and, xiv, 29, 48, 69, 72, 80–7, 95, 131, 134, 155, 157, 190n;

Department of Indian Affairs, 106; government of, 24–5, 72–3, 82, 87, 89, 90, 97–102, 106, 108, 118, 120–1, 126, 140, 198n; Indian Act, 108; judiciary, 68, 69, 80–2, 86; nursing stations, 126–7, 143; rcmp, 129; Statement of Reconciliation, 73; Supreme Court, 12, 66, 71–9, 81, 86, 88–90, 198n; Treaty 5, 111; United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, and, 21; United Nations Human Development Report, and 62 Castells, Manuel, 42 Celtic revival, 56 Chandler, Michael, 131, 137–8 Chatters, Deputy Coroner James C., and Kennewick Man, 157– 60 China: indigenous peoples’ movement and, 56; internet, 47 “Chinook Jargon,” 52 Chisasibi, 135 Churchill-Nelson River Hydroelectric Project, 97, 121 Clean Water Action, 104 Clifford, James, 67 Cobo, José Martínez, 53 College of Australian Indigenous Peoples, 53 colonialism, 14, 22–6, 31, 33, 35, 38, 54, 135–7, 149, 153–4, 157, 185; internal 8–9 Columbus, Christopher, 44 Colville Tribe, and Kennewick Man, 159 Commission on Human Rights, 27, 53, 57, 82–3, 99

Index Comprehensive Implementation Agreements, 98 Connecticut, 23 Corntassel, Jeff, 20 cosmopolitanism, 4, 16, 177, 187n Cowichan, 23–24 Crawford, Suzanne, 160 Cree, 29, 46, 64, 82, 95, 96, 121, 145–46; Grand Council of the Crees, xvii, 20, 95, 99, 106, 121; of James Bay, 58–60, 63, 80–1, 95–6, 100, 103, 105–6, 110, 121, 156; Lubicon Lake, 82–3; syllabic writing, 60, 98, 146–57. See also Cross Lake; Northern Flood Agreement; Pimicikamak Cree Nation Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay, 135 Cree Cultural Institute, 58–60 Cree Regional Authority, 58 Cree School Board, 60 Cross Lake, xiv, 45–6, 95, 98–143, 146, 179, 184; citizenship law, 108; Métis, 121. See also Northern Flood Agreement; Pimicikamak Cree Nation Culture: concept of, 67–87, 137–8, 147, 171, 185–6; cultural convergence, 63; distinctiveness, 9, 70, 78, 89, 166; dislocation, 15; enclosure, 4, 186; English law and, 71; genocide and, 29, 191n; imperialism, 153; politics of, 170–3; rediscovery of, xv, 147, 149–50, 154, 167, 176; rights and, 70, 75–7, 80, 82, 86, 88, 90; romanticism and, 51, 84, 86, 87, 118, 175

229

Darfur, 93 Das, Veena, 92 Davis Inlet, 128, 144 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), 21, 28, 82 decolonization, 8, 26, 30, 33, 53, 56 Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, 69–70, 78, 196n Deskaheh, Chief Levi General, 24–5 discrimination, 35, 54, 173 dispossession, xv, 137, 150, 155, 167, 183 Draft Inter-American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 81 Duluth-Wausau transmission line, 114 Durkheim, Emile, 204–5n “Ecological Indian,” 117–18, 123, 161–6, 173, 209–10n. See also environmentalism education: indigenous people and, 29–30, 46, 51, 58–60, 72, 117, 134, 137 environmental change: extractive industries and, 33, 95; indigenous people and, 46, 63, 96, 100, 105, 111–17, 119, 122 environmentalism, 189, 85–9, 94– 5, 100, 116–18, 120, 162, 164, 209n ethnicity: concept of, 34; ethnic formalization, xiii–xiv, 9–10, 40, 152, 170, 175 ethnobotony, 165 ethnocide, 29, 36, 191n ethnoecology, 163, 165

230

Index

ethnohistory, 78–9, 154 ethnology: comparative, 165–7, 170, 175; culture concept and 70; methodology, 170–1; research, 19, 78, 154–5, 176, 202n Europe, northern, 55 European Parliament, 18 evangelism, 71, 147 Evans, James, and syllabic writing, 156–7 evolutionism, 71–2, 84, 91 Fanon, Frantz, 167 Finders Island, 23 Finland, 62, 83 France: Basques and, 56; colonialism, 38 Frechette, Louise, 54 Friesians, 56 Gama, Vasco de, 44 Gathering Strength policy, Canada and, 73 General Assembly to Stop the Power Lines, 112 genocide, 93, 149–50, 179, 181, 191n Germany, indigenous peoples and, 50–1 Giddens, Anthony, 14 Gitskan, 79 global governance, 12, 17, 20, 22, 24, 26, 30, 42, 43, 64, 178 globalization, xiv–xv, 4, 15, 30, 37, 41, 44, 50, 54–6, 63, 177– 81, 186; localism and, 58; networking and, 12, 30, 37, 49, 63, 184; transnational collaboration and, 11, 13, 37, 39–41, 63, 186 Guarani, 64

Hamas, 57 Hamlet of Baker Lake v. Minister of Indian Affairs, 72–3 Haudenoseaunee (Iroquois), 163 Haxza, 35 healing, indigenous strategies for, 145–7, 153 health care, aboriginal 126–7, 143 Hechter, Michael, 9 Heiltsuk, 75 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 51 Hobsbawm, Eric, 57 Hopi, 64 Howell, David, 151 Human Development Report (2001), 62 Humanism, 3 human rights, xiii, 21, 26–30, 36, 39, 40, 55, 77, 81, 162, 166, 186, 199n; violations, 10, 72, 82–3, 178, 199n Human Rights Committee, 82–4, 199n hydro-electric projects, 45–6, 80, 95–7, 100, 102, 111–17, 121–3, 133–5; methyl mercury and, 113 Hydro Payment Law, 106, 108, 111, 114 Hydro-Québec, 96 identity, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 21, 26, 28–32, 42, 44, 49–51, 55–8, 62–4, 76, 93, 108, 150–3, 160– 2, 167–8, 170, 177, 184, 186; collective, xiv–xvi, 4–8, 11, 14, 21, 30–1, 34, 45–6, 50, 58, 65, 77, 141–4, 150, 153–7, 161, 170–2, 176–8, 182, 185–6; digital, 50, 53, 56, 58 (see also information technology);

Index formation of, xv–xvi, 3, 11–12, 32, 41–2, 45–50, 58, 64–7, 77, 94, 109, 131, 138, 142, 145, 149, 150–5, 157–8, 160–3, 166, 170–2, 175, 177–8, 180–6, 194n, 198n, 211n; rediscovery of, xv, 147, 150, 154, 167, 176; transnational, xiii, 9, 31, 33, 37, 41, 62, 176, 186 Ikawa-Smith, Fumiko, 151 Ilmari Lansman et al. v. Finland, 83 Inda, Jonathan Xavier, 4 India, 29, 56 indigene Völker, 50 indigenous peoples, xii, 8, 11–12, 14, 36, 39–41, 62 171, 178; Asian, 56; ecology and, 161–6, 210n; identity and, xii, xvi, 11– 15, 19–20, 26, 30, 35, 40–1, 48–50, 53–4, 62, 162, 198n; indigenous peoples’ movement, xii, 8–11, 17, 21–2, 26–35, 45, 49–51, 55–7, 60–5, 81, 84, 108, 120 123, 166, 173, 178, 180–1; knowledge, 155, 165–6; New Zealand, 21, 55; Northern Europe, 55; Pacific Islands, 55; Palestinian, 57–8, 187; religion, 27; spirituality, 162–3; virtual communities 50–8; westernization and, 86–7, 149. See also environmentalism; lobbying Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee, 34, 38 indignation, politics of, 7, 28, 32, 100, 105, 122, 141–2, 179–80, 183–4 Indonesia, 62 information technology, 12, 27, 32, 38–9, 44–5, 49–51, 55, 62–4,

231

94–5, 128, 139–40, 157, 160, 177–8. See also internet Ingersoll, Alice, 209n inherent jurisdiction, 106, 108 Innu, 64, 128, 144, 190n In re Southern Rhodesia, 71, 73 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (iccpr), 82–3; International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, 51 International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People, 20 International Labour Organization, 9, 27, 81 International Labour Organization Convention No. 107 Concerning the Protection and Integration of Indigenous and Other Tribal and Semi-Tribal Populations in Independent Countries, 27 International Labour Organization Convention No. 169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, 81 International ngo Conference on Discrimination against Indigenous Populations in the Americas, 27, 31 International ngo Conference on Indigenous Peoples and the Land, 27 International Water Tribunal, 96 internet, 12, 27, 32, 38, 44–65, 157, 160 Inuit, 72, 80–1, 95–6, 110 Iran, 56 Iraq, 38, 56 Islamic Jihad, 57

232

Index

James Bay ii hydroelectric project, 95, 105 James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement, 106, 121 Japan, 150–2 Jelderks, Federal Magistrate John, 159. See also Kennewick Man Jenpeg Dam, 99, 104, 114–15 Jesuit, 156, 187 Joffe, Paul, 198n Jomon, 152 judiciary, 66–79, 81, 83, 85, 122, 197n, 210n; Mi’kmaq and, 75; Mohawk, 76; Musqueam 74–5; Southern Rhodesia, 71 Kalland, A., 209–10n Kennewick Man, 157–61, 207n Kenya, 62 Kleinman, Arthur, 92 Krech, Shepard, 164, 166 Kuper, Adam, 123 Kurds, 181 La Duke, Winona, 161 La Grande River, 80, 135 Lalonde, Christopher, 131, 137–8 Lambek, Michael, 47 Lamer, C.J., 73–4. See also R. v. Van der Peet Latour, Bruno, 168–69, 210n law: access to, 182; citizenship, Cross Lake, 108; collective rights and, 13, 30, 33–4, 40, 49, 54, 89, 177; culture concept and, 66–8, 70–1, 84–91; distinct rights and, 66, 68–9, 82–3, 86, 89–90, 91, 178; election, Cross Lake, 139–40; English, 71, 77; human rights and, 21, 39;

inherent jurisdiction and, 106, 108; international, 12, 26, 43, 49, 51, 55, 60, 64, 77, 81–2; “soft,” 183. See also rights League of Nations, 24–6; Covenant of (Article 22), 26 Le Goff, Jacques, 211n Legros, Dominique, 209n lexical reconstruction, 78 Lindholm, Charles, 206n lobbying, cultural, 7, 9, 11–13, 25, 32, 36–7, 39–42, 46, 49, 62–3, 95–6, 104–6, 109, 112–13, 116, 118–24, 148, 162, 175, 178, 181 Lock, Margaret, 92 Lubicon Lake Band, 82–3 Lukes, Steven, 5 Lushootseed, and Chief Seattle, 52 Maasai, 35 Magellan, Ferdinand, 44 Malaysia, 51, 164 Mali, 34, 36, 38 Manitoba Hydro, 45, 46, 97–102, 105–6, 108, 113–14, 121, 202n Manitoba, Province of, 13, 45, 95– 6, 99, 100–2, 111–13, 121, 140 Manser, Bruno, 164 Maori, 64 Mapuche, 64 Mashpee, 67, 70 Master Implementation Agreements (mias) 98, 121–2. See also Northern Flood Agreement Mauritania, 38 Maya, 64 Mbeki, Thabo, 151 McEachern, Justice, 78–9. See also Delgamuukw v. British Columbia

Index media, 157–8, 182–4, 202n, 211n; suicide clusters and, 129–30 memory, collective, 46–9, 65, 153, 170–2, 210n Mennonite Central Committee, 110 methyl mercury, 113 Métis, 121 Mexico, and Human Development Report (2001), 62 Middle East, 56 Midewiwin, 146 Mi’kmaq, 75 Minnesota, 104–05, 110–12 Minnesota Power, 112 Minnesota Witness for Environmental Justice, 112 Mistassini, 135, 145 M.N.R. v. Mitchell, 78, 81 Mohawk, 57, 76 Mohegans, 23 Monias, Ernest, 112–13 Montagnais, 190n Morocco, 34 Moses, Ted, 20, 99, 121 Mugabe, Robert, 36 Musqueam, 74–5 myth, 154, 185, 206n nationalism, 65, 149, 152–3, 167, 170–2, 187n; identity, 171; micro-, 14, 152; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, 159 Native American Rights Fund, 53 Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality, 57 Nelson House, 97–8 Nelson River, 108, 119, 129 Neo-Paganism, and Kennewick Man, 150

233

Netherlands, 56 New Age movement, 51 New Brunswick, 87 New Relationship Agreement, 96 New Zealand, 21, 55 Nez Perce Tribe, 159 Nicaragua, Human Development Report (2001) and, 62 Niger, 36, 38 Nigeria, 38 Nihonjiron, 152 Nishnawbe, 145–6 nomadism, 35–9, 178 non–governmental organizations (ngos), xiii, 9–10, 31–2, 36–7, 42, 51, 85, 104, 164 “North/South” divide, 37, 62 Northern Flood Agreement (nfa), 97–100, 102, 105–6, 110–11, 113, 118, 120–2, 132–3, 139, 200n; Proposed Basis of Settlement of Outstanding Claims and Obligations, 98 Northern Flood Committee, 97–8, 121–2 Northern States Power, 104 Norway, 62 Norway House: nfa and, 97–98; syllabic writing, 156–7 nursing stations, 126–7, 143 odayek, 96, 110 Oglala, 162–3 Ojibwa, 145–6 Okinawans, 151 Ominayak, Chief Bernard, 82–3, 198n Ominayak v. Canada, 82–3 O’Reilly, James, 81 Owaneco, 23

234

Index

Pacific Islands, 55 Paix des Braves. See New Relationship Agreement Palestinians, 57–8, 187n Pan American Games, 110 Panama, and Human Development Report (2001), 62 Pan Sahel Initiative (psi), 38–9 Penan, 164–5 Pequot, 64 Peru: Human Development Report (2001), 62; Piro, 163–4 petitions, Crown, 23–24, 103, 190n peuples autochtones, 50 Pimicikamak Cree Nation (pcn), xvi, 45, 96, 100, 103–6, 108– 14, 126, 179. See also Cross Lake Pimicikamak Cree Nation Health Services, 126 Pimicikamak Okinawin Trust, 106, 108, 112, 114 Piro, 163 Pitman Shorthand, and syllabic writing, 156 Popper, Karl, 169 postcolonialism, xiv, 38, 149, 151, 158, 167, 169, 185 postmodernism, 166 Powell, Joseph, 159 psychiatry, 140–41 psychoanalysis, 49, 194n pueblos indígenas, 50 pueblos originarios, 50 Quebec, 58, 95, 96, 190; Superior Court, 80 racism, 30, 42, 135, 149, 166, 171– 5; residential schools and, 29 radiocarbon dating, 158

Ranger, Terrence, 67 Reilly, Judge John, 139 reindeer herding, rights to, 83 residential schools, 29–30, 46, 117, 134–5, 146; residential school syndrome, 136 resilience, 138, 148 restorative justice, 166 Reynolds, Marty, 113 Ricoeur, Paul, 40, 188n, 211n rights, 12, 20, 22–3, 30, 34–6, 39– 42, 54–5, 64, 67, 68, 74–6, 87– 100, 111, 121, 162, 176, 183, 188–9n, 191–2n, 198n, 211n; aboriginal, 12, 24–6, 66, 68–79, 83, 88, 89, 91, 197n; collective, 10–11, 13, 34, 36, 40–1, 54, 68, 171, 183, 191–2n; distinct, 17, 66, 68–9, 73, 82–83, 86, 89–90, 91, 153, 178; extinguishment of, 196n; land, 23, 25, 34–5, 37, 66, 69–70, 79, 89–90, 137, 147, 171, 190n, 197n; property, 71; self-determination, 10, 31; treaty, 69, 75, 80, 89, 95, 97–9, 101, 111, 114, 121, 132–4, 147 Romansh, 51 romanticism, 51, 84, 86, 118, 175 Royal Canadian Mounted Police (rcmp), 129 Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (raipon), 53 Russian Federation, and Human Development Report (2001), 62 Rwanda, 93 Sahabat Alam Malaysia (sam Friends of the Earth Malaysia), 164 Sahara, 38–39

Index Said, Edward, 187n Sami, xviii, 18, 64, 83 Samson, Colin, 144 Save Our Unique Lands, 112 Scheinin, Martin, 84 Seattle, Chief, 52 sedentarization, 34, 36, 38 self-determination, 9–10, 13, 26–7, 31, 33–4, 41–2, 48, 53–4, 58, 81–2, 90, 93, 95, 108, 111, 118, 146, 152, 155, 166, 174, 178–9, 181, 198–9n self-government, 69, 90, 137 self-representation, 96, 106, 123, 133, 143, 154, 164, 171–3, 178, 181–2 Seneca, 189n shamanism, 146 Sioui, Georges, 153 Sioux, 162–63 Sioux Lookout First Nation Health Authority, 131 Six Nations, 24–25 Smith, Adam, 94 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, 162 social justice, xii, 12, 16, 55, 92, 106, 173, 176–7, 181; campaigns, 7, 48, 93, 95–6, 103–6, 108–9, 111–12, 118, 122, 132– 3, 142, 166, 175, 179, 181 South Africa, 150 Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment, 53 Southern Rhodesia, 71 sovereignty, 75–6, 87–8, 91, 103, 160. See also self-determination Spain, 56 Split Lake, 97–8 Standing Bear, Luther, 162–3 Statement of Reconciliation, 73

235

states, 8, 9, 11, 13, 17, 20–22, 24–5, 27–8, 33–7, 39, 41, 45, 53, 56, 65, 67–8, 82, 87, 91, 103, 120, 137, 141–2, 145–6, 149–51, 171, 174, 178, 181, 183 stereotyping, 117, 123, 133, 141–3, 149, 152, 157, 161, 166, 178, 181–3 Stoney Reserve, 139 subalternism, 4 subsistence, 12, 33, 39, 41, 60, 73, 75–6, 81–3, 85, 88, 91, 114, 117, 134, 145, 161, 178–9, 198n suicide, 13, 125–6, 128–33, 136– 42, 141–8, 115, 125–45, 150, 181–5, 202–5n; cluster, 130, 137–8, 140, 205n sweat lodge, 146 Switzerland, 51 syllabics, Cree, 60, 98, 146–57 Taiwan, 51 Tanzania, 35 Tarahumara, 64 Tarde, Gabriel, 6 Tauli-Corpus, Victoria, 21 Taylor, Charles, xv, 89 Te Karere Ipurangi (Maori News Online), 53 terrorism, 38–9 therapeutic history, 14–15, 149–75, 185–6, 206n Tocqueville, Alexis de, 205n Todorov, Tzvetan, 171, 210n Traditional Ecological Knowledge (tek), 18–19 Traditional Indigenous Knowledge (tik), 18–19, 189n transhumance, 37–8. See also nomadism

236

Index

transnational corporations, 8, 11 trauma, 153, 174, 182; historical, 134–7, 182–3 treaties, 69, 75, 80, 89, 95, 97, 99, 101, 111, 114, 121, 132–4, 147; implementation, 132; modern, 121; Treaty 5, 98 Tsing, Anna, 12 Tuaregs, 36–39, 64 Turkmen Human Rights Research Foundation, 56

157, 189n; United States and, 21; University, 18, 189n; Working Group on Indigenous Populations, 27, 34–5, 56–7; World Health Organization, 19, 189n United States: 67–8, 159, 189n; Army Corps of Engineers, 158–9; policies in Africa, 38–9; United Nations and, 21, 62 Utopianism, 186

Umatilla Indian Reservation, 159, 160 United Nations, 17–32, 37–8, 41, 51–6, 68, 81–2, 189n; Commission on Human Rights, 27, 53, 57, 82–3, 99; Conference on Environment and Development, 18; cyber school bus, 51; Economic and Social Council (ecosoc) 31, 57; General Assembly, 28; Human Development Report (2001), 62; Interventional Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (Article 27), 84; Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, 17, 20–1, 28, 54, 57, 189n; Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations, 53; unesco, 19,

vision quests, 146 Wanapum Band, 159 Welsh, 56 Wesleyan Missionaries, 156 Wisconsin, 113 Wisconsin Public Service Corporation, 112 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 31 Working Group on Indigenous Populations, United Nations, 27, 34–5, 56–7 World Health Organization, 19, 189n Yakima Nation, 159 York Landing, 97–8 youth gangs, 130