Waiser: After Trudeau, Canada can do better for First Nations

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In early spring 2016, several months after the election of the Justin Trudeau Liberals, I visited the site of the Cree encampment at the Treaty Six meeting near Fort Carlton, Sask.

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My host and guide that day was the late Rick Gamble, chief of the Beardy-Okemasis band, a former Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman, and a friend. Even though the treaty meeting had taken place almost a century and a half earlier, teepee rings and stone fire pits could still be found at the site.

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Chief Gamble made a direct link between the persistence of the First Nations presence and the 1876 treaty agreement. The Cree weren’t going anywhere, Gamble proudly acknowledged, and Canada had work to do to be a better treaty partner.

Gamble talked freely about his experience as a chief as we drove through “Indian country” (his words).  When I asked whether the new Trudeau government and its reconciliation agenda made a difference, Gamble scoffed. He would wait and see, but added that it didn’t really matter who was in power in Ottawa.

I then asked how Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations could be repaired. The response came easy to him: action not empty promises. Gamble spoke about current challenges and how past wrongs continued to take a toll on his people.

What was needed, the clear-eyed Gamble said, was meaningful change at the end of the day. That wouldn’t happen, Gamble observed, by taking down statues or changing names. Canadians might want to do something, but those actions didn’t make a difference in the daily lives of First Nations people.

What’s often forgotten, Gamble added, is that treaty bands have been a governed people for decades.  Successive governments have acted as if they, and they alone, knew what is best for Indigenous people. He said, with a note of resignation, that Ottawa had not genuinely listened or tried to understand First Nations people.

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I’ve often thought about my conversation with Chief Gamble in the cab of his truck. It’s more pertinent than ever today with the pending resignation of Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader and prime minister. Next year will also be 150th anniversary of Treaty Six.

Has the “reconciliation” Trudeau government made a difference over the past nine years?

There’s been the Canadian adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) —a move applauded by First Nations leaders as fundamental to a new framework of collaboration and change.

But Ottawa still needs to develop legislation that will bring Canadian law into alignment with UNDRIP. Some provinces, meanwhile, have expressed concern that UNDRIP comes with too many uncertainties.

Justin Trudeau also committed to fulfilling all 94 Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission final report. It was a bold declaration, in keeping with the heady days of the Liberal 2015 election victory, but the glacial implementation of the recommendations even jaundiced the late commission chair and senator Murray Sinclair.

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Some will point to how over the past few years non-Indigenous Canadians have finally confronted some hard truths about Canada’s colonial past, especially the inter-generational trauma caused by residential schools. There can be no reconciliation without first recognizing what happened in the past.

Yet how does laying the blame for all the wrongdoing at the foot of one prime minister and decrying Canada as a genocidal nation meet Gamble’s litmus test of meaningful change?

Right now, the Liberal government spends more on Indigenous priorities than on national defence. That too could be heralded as progress, but not when targets are not being met.

Substandard water treatment facilities in First Nations communities is a good example. The Liberal Party had promised during the 2015 general election to end all long-term boil water advisories in First Nations communities. But the promise was broken when the deadline passed.

It was yet another disappointment in a long list of failed First Nations policies. Where was the national outrage? Why is it acceptable that one part of Canada’s population is denied what the United Nations has called a basic human right?

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It’s too easy to conclude that federal funding is being wasted and should be reduced in any future round of budget cuts by a new government. Better, more positive outcomes might be realized if First Nations were vitally involved in the development and application of policies that involve them.

For decades, Indian Affairs told First Nations what they should do — and look where we are today. It’s certainly not how the treaty relationship was supposed to work.

At the Treaty Six negotiations, the Indian commissioner, speaking on behalf of Queen Victoria, and by extension the Canadian government, had assured the Cree that treaty promises would be carried out with a “watchful eye and sympathetic hand.”

The Cree regarded the agreement as the beginning of a long-term beneficial relationship with the Crown.

Safe drinking water would certainly help address Gamble’s call for change in First Nation lives at the end of the day. But the list of other challenges is seemingly endless.

Indeed, the day-to-day reality for many First Nations people remains bleak: poor housing, poverty and homelessness; shorter life expectancy; low literacy and graduation achievement; chronic underemployment; substance abuse and suicide; high incarceration rates. Add to that the racism that is faced on a daily basis.

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So, what can a new government do?

Ottawa needs to meaningfully engage with its First Nation partners and work constructively and co-operatively on a way forward. That means a renewed and robust relationship in keeping with the spirit and intent of the treaties.

Indeed, it’s long past time for government to look to First Nations to lead the way — to take control of their lives and their future and secure some much-needed respect and dignity.

Chief Gamble would have called it a start.

Historian Bill Waiser is a two-time Governor General’s Award winner.

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