"Surrender" or "Share" - What's the Difference? - Further comments -

Dear Lance:

Thank you for this comment on my blog post “Surrender” or “Share” – What’s the Difference?

As one follows the news reports and court findings re the treaties signed between the First Peoples in Canada and the representative of the Crown, later the Canadian government, one hears reference by the First Peoples to what they termed “peace and friendship” treaties, which refers to the same cultural understnding of what “sharing” of Mother Earth looked like. In fact, the traditional spiritual understanding of the First Peoples’ relationship to Mother Earth simply precluded the idea of “ownership”. One doesn’t “own” one’s mother – rather one shares one’s relationship with Mother Earth with other human beings who also wish to be sustained and nurtured by the bounty of Mother Earth.

That was not the understanding of the settler/immigrant peoples who came to Canada. Those people pursued relationships with the people they met in North America under what they understood to be the “Doctrine of Discovery”, and edict from the Roman Catholic pope which said that whenever Christian people went out into the wider world and found lands not inhabited by Christian people, it was quite okay to claim those lands for the Christian nations under whose flag they were travelling. And that European understandomg of relationship with the land meant that the people who “conquered” the land could put fences around it and say “it’s mine – you keep out”.

One of the things you hear First Peoples saying over and over again is: “We are NOT conquered peoples. We signed treaties as sovereign nations with the Crown, and in fact, treaties are only signed between sovereign peoples, so the fact that those treaties are in existence, and recognized by the Canadian courts of law, means that we are in fact sovereign nations.

So we can see what a really big disconnect was happening between the First Peoples and those who came from somewhere else.

Unfortunately, in the first place, my people have a hard time admitting they may have misunderstood – we are so used to being right and to knowing ourselves as being correct in all matters, so to this day, it is not easy for Canadians to grasp the point that the First Peoples are trying to make. And of course, in the second place, if we admit that we were wrong, we will have to re-assess our understanding of what it means to “share” Mother Earth with the First Peoples, rather than “owning” the land and grudgingly accepting that some other beings (known as “Indians”) have to live somewhere because we have not been able to get rid of them. Those First Peoples are still here in our midst. And it is recorded historically that the Canadian government’s policy towards the First Peoples has been to get rid of the Indian – through assimilation and other oppressive colonial measures.

This is what my “work” has been about for the past 40 years, and I still can’t say I have accomplished much, but I know the struggle will go on long after I have passed from this earth.

Thanks for asking, and thanks for listening, if you are still with me!

Blessings,

Jean.