Assembly of First Nations National Chief
Matthew Coon Come's Speech to
the Canadian Bar Association;
Toronto, Ontario, Canada; October 1, 2001

Wachiya, good evening. [Remarks in Cree.]

Chair, CBA members, guests: Thank you for inviting me to speak to the Ontario Bar Association this evening. I am particularly grateful that in spite of recent events, everyone here made the effort to come to this event.

I am still struggling to come terms with the murder in New York of over 6,000 innocent people in a crime of hate and terror. I am sure that many of you in this room are also feeling outraged, disoriented, and sad.

It will be many months before we begin to grasp the full meaning of what has happened to our world. Nevertheless, the immediate mobilization of hundreds of thousands of people around the world to lend support to the people of New York City, and to the families and friends of those who died, is a testament to the truly good side of human nature.

Over 50 Mohawk steel workers from Kahnawake were among the first contingent of rescue workers at Ground Zero. First Nations organizations and communities right across Canada have made financial and other contributions to relief efforts.

On September 17, the Toronto Star published an editorial titled “The Quiet Tragedy”. The Star’s editors wrote, and I quote:

“Tragedy comes in many forms. There are cataclysmic events such as last week's terrorist onslaught in the United States and the slow grinding down of the human spirit through poverty and neglect. Horrific disasters bring out the best in people. Their willingness to help is boundless and uplifting. Chronic suffering is too often overlooked or minimized.”

As an example of chronic suffering that has been overlooked in Canada, the Star went on to note that in this country, which is one of the richest nations in the world and which has enjoyed six years of uninterrupted economic growth, one out of every five children lives in poverty. It indicated that this tragedy is suffered disproportionately by aboriginal children -- six out of every ten aboriginal pre-schoolers in Canada live in dire poverty.

The conditions endured by aboriginal peoples in Canada reached tragic proportions long ago. The situation of our people has been described year after year by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, royal commissions and United Nations human rights bodies, as “the most pressing human rights issue facing Canadians” and as a problem “of persistent and widespread human suffering”.

It is often difficult for non-aboriginal Canadians who have not spent time on a remote reserve, or with urban aboriginal people, to grasp how serious our situation is. This is not only so for ordinary Canadians and their media, but also for judges in lower and appeal courts, who must adjudicate claims concerning our rights. They often do so without understanding that immediately behind legalistic debates about theories of rights, the denial of these rights causes landlessness, lack of access to resources, mass unemployment and the deprival of our means of subsistence.

The unemployment rate in Canada for the past year has been approximately 7%. Unemployment in many of our First Nations communities is as high as 90%. Can you imagine if 25%, never mind 90%, of the population of any other group in Canada were out of work? It would be a national emergency.

Aboriginal peoples in Canada are dying of poverty-related diseases such as tuberculosis and diabetes at rates far higher than Canadians overall. We have much shorter life expectancies. Our babies are more than twice as likely to die at birth.

Most of our reserve communities - federal towns -- have few of the basic amenities that are taken for granted elsewhere in Canada. Our roads are mostly unlit, not paved and have no sidewalks. Few of our communities have libraries. Many lack adequate sanitation, clean drinking water, and proper recreational facilities.

Perhaps worst of all, because of grinding poverty, hopelessness and despair, our aboriginal youth are killing themselves in epidemic numbers. As the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples stated so clearly, this number of suicides sends a “blunt and shocking message to Canada that a significant number of aboriginal people in this country believe that they have more reasons to die than to live.”

In a recent ruling on Canada’s human rights record, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - which is a human rights body that monitors state party compliance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - noted (and I quote) “the gross disparity between Aboriginal people and the majority of Canadians”.

In this ruling the Committee went on to conclude, (and again I quote):

“There has been little or no progress in the alleviation of social and economic deprivation among Aboriginal people. In particular, the Committee is deeply concerned at the shortage of adequate housing, the endemic mass unemployment and the high rate of suicide, especially among youth in the Aboriginal communities”.

The Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights condemned Canada’s human rights record with respect to aboriginal peoples after carefully considering the submissions not only of the indigenous peoples, but also of the Department of Indian Affairs, the Privy Council Office, Justice Canada and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

In 1996, the federal Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples gave an extreme warning to Canadians. I will quote in full this concluding passage from the Royal Commission’s report.

“Aboriginal peoples need much more territory to become economically, culturally and politically self-sufficient. If they cannot obtain a greater share of the lands and resources in this country, their institutions of self-government will fail. Without adequate lands and resources, Aboriginal nations will be unable to build their communities and structure the employment opportunities necessary to achieve self-sufficiency. Currently on the margins of Canadian society, they will be pushed to the edge of economic, cultural and political extinction. The government must act forcefully, generously and swiftly to assure the economic, cultural and political survival of Aboriginal nations”.

Let me repeat this last sentence:

“Currently on the margins of Canadian society, [Aboriginal peoples] will be pushed to the edge of economic, cultural and political extinction. The government must act forcefully, generously and swiftly to assure the economic, cultural and political survival of Aboriginal nations”.

When I said recently at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban that the gravity of our situation is extreme and is a question of our survival as peoples, I was not using my own words. These words are the words of a federal Royal Commission which included a judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, Bertha Wilson, and a judge of the Quebec Court of Appeal, René Dussault. The Royal Commission was an extensive, $50 million, five year study, established to examine the situation of Aboriginal peoples in Canada and to identify solutions.

The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples is the most authoritative and comprehensive study ever undertaken into the conditions we face in Canada. Its findings have never been discredited. Never impeached. Never refuted.

It has, however, been buried and ignored by the government of Canada -- and, sadly, by the people of Canada. For over five years now, we have heard nothing but silence from the government of Canada with respect to the RCAP’s most fundamental recommendations.

Nevertheless, in January 2001, I was encouraged by the federal Liberal government’s Speech from the Throne, which after consideration of all of the issues facing Canadians, officially committed the government to addressing the social and economic conditions of aboriginal peoples, as a matter of the highest priority. In her Speech from the Throne, the Governor General stated (and again I quote):

“Nowhere is the creation and sharing of opportunity more important than for Aboriginal people. Too many continue to live in poverty, without the tools they need to build a better future for themselves or their communities. As a country, we must be direct about the magnitude of the challenge and ambitious in our commitment to tackle the most pressing problems facing Aboriginal people”. The Governor General promised that “this commitment will be reflected in all the Government’s priorities.”

It is essential to the dignity and honour of Canada as a leading nation in the area of human rights that the government of Canada finally carry through on this promise. Yet I am very concerned by reports last week that once again, Aboriginal peoples are again in danger of being dropped off the priority list. In the wake of the tragedy in New York City, the government stated last week that it may be suspending its Throne Speech agenda and that "Everything now is on hold”.

Addressing the appalling social and economic conditions of Aboriginal peoples cannot be discretionary. The perpetuation of our chronic suffering - which threatens our viability as peoples - cannot be justified by the government of Canada on any currently foreseeable grounds. We cannot yet again be asked to remain patiently at the back of the Canadian bus.

I returned recently from the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, which was held in Durban, South Africa in the first ten days of September.

I attended the World Conference in order to discuss exactly what I have been discussing with you this evening -- using exactly the same words - namely the disparities faced by Aboriginal peoples in this highly developed country.

The response by the government of Canada and some media across the country to my submissions at the World Conference Against Racism was immediate and extreme. In Durban I made what should have been accepted as non-controversial statements. I stated that there was structural racism against Aboriginal peoples in Canada. I read from the 1998 and 1999 rulings of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Human Rights Committee. I read from the 1996 final Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, including the passages regarding Canadian state policies which could push aboriginal peoples to economic, cultural and political extinction.

In response, I was severely criticized by the government of Canada and in the press for being inflammatory, extreme, “unacceptable” and “not helpful”. Robert Nault, the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, went so far as to demand an apology from me -- for disseminating the findings of a Royal Commission and United Nations human rights bodies, at an international conference called to discuss all forms of racism.

It is interesting and sad that Minister Nault did not recognize the words for which he was demanding an apology as being from official reports with which he should be very familiar. And the message I took to Durban continues to be stigmatized and dismissed. Two days ago in the Globe and Mail, Jeffrey Simpson wrote that during the racism Conference in South Africa “Canadians were treated to the typically incendiary rhetoric of Matthew Coon Come.” I wonder if Mr Simpson has even read what I said in Durban.

An editorial commentator in Halifax wrote subsequently on the outcry against me in the press and from Minister Nault. He wrote, and I quote:

“In the unwritten rules of Canadian decorum, it is forbidden to assert that racism might have anything to do with the disgraceful living conditions faced by many aboriginal Canadians. To make such an assertion in an international forum, where it might lower the world community's otherwise positive impression of Canada, constitutes an intolerable violation of the rules -- ... In the unwritten rules, it is axiomatic that Canadians are not racist and Canada is not a racist country. The causes of rampant poverty, unemployment, school dropout rates, disease, malnutrition, drug and alcohol abuse, imprisonment, reduced life expectancy, and youthful suicide prevailing on many reserves are complex and multifactorial. Racial attitudes are certainly not among the factors.”

In Durban I did not state that individual Canadians are racist. In fact I clearly stated many times my genuine belief that Canadians overall are broad minded and fair and seek justice. I also stated at every opportunity that in many respects Canada has an enviable human rights record. However, it seems that I broke the rules by saying in South Africa that structural racism against aboriginal peoples persists in Canada. What do I mean by “structural racism” ?

I am a Cree from Eeyou Istchee, which is our word in Cree for Our Home, Our Lands on the eastern shore of James Bay and Hudson’s Bay. In the 1970s the governments of Canada and Quebec and the Crown Corporation Hydro Quebec, imposed the largest hydro-electric development project in the world on our lands and people. We were not consulted in advance. In fact, I learned about the proposed project when I read about it in the newspaper as a young student in Montreal. The project went ahead without our consent, against our wishes and without any prior environmental or social impact assessment.

As the bulldozers were razing my people’s land, and as huge rivers in our territory were being made to flow backwards, the James Bay Cree Nation entered into a treaty with the government parties called the James Bay Northern Quebec Agreement. Our leaders did so under terrible duress, or to use the words of Joe Clark at the time, “with a gun to their heads”.

The 1975 Treaty was an out-of-court settlement that was clearly intended to assist us economically, socially and culturally in coping with the devastation and flooding of our lands. With the Constitution Act, 1982, the rights and promises of the Treaty became constitutional obligations on the part of the government parties.

Yet today, the Cree people are completely shut out of the vibrant economic zone of the eastern James Bay region of northern Quebec. Many billion dollars of revenue are extracted by governments and multinationals each year in the hydro-electric, forestry and mining sectors. The government of Canada alone earns more from GST (goods and services tax) on hydro-electricity sales than it spends on all of our James Bay Cree social and municipal needs.

However -- even though we Crees represent the majority of the population in our traditional territory -- we have fewer than 3% of the jobs. Of the over 1800 jobs in the forestry sector, Crees have only 3%. Of the 1400 mining jobs, 8% are Cree jobs. In Hydro-Quebec, we have just 7 positions, or 1% of the jobs. In the middle of this economic well-being, mass unemployment, and the poverty, ill health and hopelessness it causes, are endemic among my people.

This is not evidence of racism on the part of individual Canadians. On the contrary, this is evidence of persistent systemic racism, on a broad scale. The situation of the Crees is but one example of structural racism against aboriginal peoples across this country, here in Ontario, in Manitoba and in British Columbia.

The social and economic indicators of poverty and ill-health which I mentioned earlier are de facto evidence of structural racism in Canada. Put simply, the facts speak for themselves.

The solution to this problem is actually straightforward. This is not a complex sovereignty problem. It is not a complex political problem. It is a developmental problem which has been studied extensively and for which a blueprint for change is already in place. Canada is a G7 economy. It has the fiscal and technical capacity. Sadly, this capacity and know-how is being systematically withheld.

Let me read for you another passage from the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples that I read a number of times in Durban:

“Aboriginal people have tried for more than a century to maintain their own land base and derive a decent living from the natural resources and revenues on their traditional territories, but these aspirations have been frustrated. Reserves and community lands have shrunk drastically in size over the past century and have been stripped of their most valuable resources. Moreover, as governments allocated resources and economic opportunities on traditional territories, Aboriginal peoples found themselves either excluded or positioned at the back of the line.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the Royal Commission continues:

“It is not difficult to identify the solution. ... Aboriginal people have limited resources. Their land and resources were taken from them by settler society and became the basis for the high standard of living enjoyed by other Canadians over the years. Only a small proportion of Canada’s resource income has come back to Aboriginal people, most in the form of transfer payments such as social assistance. This has never been, and is not now, the choice of Aboriginal people. They want to free themselves from the destructive burden of welfare and dependency. But to do this they need to have some of what was taken away. They need land and they need resources. … ”.

The respected Royal Commissioners concluded unanimously that “it is not difficult to identify the solution”. They are not alone.

In 1998 and 1999 the United Nation’s two highest treaty compliance bodies endorsed these Royal Commission findings. In the 1999 review of Canada’s civil and political human rights record by the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the Committee expressed “particular” concern that Canada had not yet implemented the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and, recommended that (quote):

“decisive and urgent action be taken towards the full implementation of the RCAP recommendations on land and resource allocation”.

The same committee ruled -- and this is something that more than two years later, few lawyers are aware of -- that federal policies of the extinguishment of inherent aboriginal rights, by any name, are not consistent with Canada’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Only aboriginal peoples are singled out in Canada for termination and extinguishment of their constitutional rights. I can only ask you, as legal experts: why is this violation of human rights not being addressed? Similarly, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights called upon Canada to, [quote] “act urgently with respect to the recommendations of the RCAP” and to “take concrete and urgent steps to ensure respect for Aboriginal economic land and resource base rights adequate to achieve sustainable Aboriginal economies and cultures”.

These are imperatives which must be followed urgently, not only for the benefit of aboriginal peoples in Canada, but for the economic, social, cultural and moral integrity of Canada as whole. Both aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike will benefit if First Nations are enabled to become active participants in the Canadian economy and society.

When the Royal Commission Report was released in 1996, some commentators claimed that land and resource reforms proposed by the RCAP would be too expensive, and that Canada could not afford it. In its 1996 Annual Report, however, the Canadian Human Rights Commission responded that:

“The real question is whether Canada can afford the alternative. Fifty-six percent of Aboriginal Canadians are under the age of 25, and the current population is expected to grow by close to one-third in the next two decades. Given these realities, the cost of an inadequate response today will almost certainly be increased frustration, more lost opportunities, and yet another generation of native Canadians consigned to second-class existence. The social, let alone the economic cost of inaction on that scale is manifestly unacceptable”.

A year later, in 1997, the Royal Bank’s Chief Economist stated that: “If one asks whether [the] RCAP proposal is affordable, the answer must be “yes”.

Increased and adequate access to the lands and resources and to the economic activity which takes place right on our front doorsteps is not unaffordable. It is affordable, and will pay dividends. It is not complicated. It is just a question of political will.

I am sure many of you have seen, repeated over and over in the press, that the government of Canada “gives” aboriginal peoples 7 billion dollars a year.

What kind of a “gift” is a welfare check that can’t properly feed a northern family - where prices of the most basic commodities such as milk and bread are sky high? How can that welfare check be a “gift” at all when the check is needed because families and communities have been deprived of their traditional subsistence activities and are locked out of the economic activities taking place in their own backyards, whether it be in forestry, a factory, a hydroelectric mega-project, a mine, or the fishery as at Burnt Church.

What kind of a “gift” are social services such as substandard health care, unsafe water and sanitation, and roads which aren’t even paved? These conditions would not be tolerated by Canadians overall. What kind of gift is a federal Indian Affairs machinery that continues to regulate every aspect of First Nations peoples’ lives, and that consumes (in Hull, Quebec and in regional offices in every region of the country) the lion’s share of the $7 billion?

What kind of a gift is it to be told over and over that our people are a $7 billion, tax-free burden on this country? Are the people of the Maritimes not also a burden on Canada? Or the non-native people in the poorer districts of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver? Or the 500 top earners in Canada who pay little or no tax? Or the major corporations that pay no tax? Or the family trusts that leave the country and pay no tax? This all goes to show that it is equally absurd to term any part of Canada’s population a “burden”. So-called burdens occur as a matter of history and government policy and they can be remedied.

I was also criticized for stating in South Africa that non-native mobs had set on our people, as recently as days before.

In the last few weeks in Burnt Church, we have seen a non-aboriginal mob in over 50 fishing boats attack native boats and lobster traps, even though the resource rights of the Mi’kmaq fishermen have been affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada. As happened last year -- and in past years when non-native mobs have beaten or stoned aboriginal people, or burnt their boats as at Burnt Church or Nawash - DFO, RCMP and other officials stood by and watched or joined in.

Pandering to official and non-official individuals and mobs who are unwilling to share the bounty of this country is an excuse for preserving an unjust and unsustainable status quo. In the United States civil rights era in the South, the federal government deployed troops to uphold Supreme Court judgments against mob rule. Not so in Canada.

In 1990 the governments of Quebec and Canada sent in police, and then tanks and 4,000 troops, to confront a small group of native land rights defenders at Oka in Québec. At Ipperwash in 1995, the government of Ontario used hundreds of tactical and riot police against a handful of unarmed demonstrators. Three people were shot, and one died. If Dudley George had been non-native, would there have been a speedy public inquiry? Would the shootings have occurred in the first place?

Lorraine Weinrib, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Toronto, recently stated in the Canadian Bar Review that “We live in an era of rights.” Prof. Weinrib was right, except with respect to aboriginal peoples. Each time I meet with a federal Cabinet Minister, I am lectured that the federal government “has no taste for a rights agenda.” The Minister of Indian Affairs has so little taste for a rights agenda that he recently slashed the budget of the Assembly of First Nations by 33%. I can only regard this as a punitive move, a response to my articulation, in Canada and in Durban, of a rights agenda for our people at Burnt Church, at Ipperwash, and right across this land.

The social, legal, and constitutional imperative of fundamental change to end these injustices against Aboriginal peoples in Canada have been characterized as “typically incendiary rhetoric” for too long.

While I was in South Africa, I met with Bishop Desmond Tutu. We discussed the situation facing indigenous peoples in Canada. Bishop Tutu did not challenge my assessment as “incendiary rhetoric”. I received an extremely sympathetic hearing, which I knew I would because the Bishop - unlike most Canadians who have been criticizing my outreach - has personally visited our Indian reserves and wept at what he saw. Bishop Tutu expressed his sadness and dismay that these things are continuing in Canada, and that our people are still -- as noted by a Royal Commission -- widely dispossessed.

As Christians, Bishop Tutu and I both believe that there must be reconciliation. But before there can be reconciliation, there must be truth, and this is a threshold that we in Canada have yet to cross. I will not be silent as long as there are gross systemic disparities facing my people right across Canada. And I cannot apologize for disseminating a message of the urgent need for change and the need to respect, protect and honour our aboriginal, treaty and other human rights. This is a message which is respectful, moderate, and in the national interest of Canada and of all Canadians.

Once again, I thank the O.B.A. for inviting me. In the shadow of the terrible events of the last few weeks, I also thank each of you for honouring me tonight, breaking bread with me, and hearing my message.

Miigwetch.

While we are here, I would also like to bring to your attention two letters which were recently published in The Ottawa Citizen(Monday November 12, 2001; page A15):

First Nations Abhor Violence, But Do Insist On Their Right To Protest

Re: Violent protest not terrorism, natives assert, Nov. 2

The Assembly of First Nations expressed serious human rights concerns about the proposed anti-terrorism bill to the Commons Justice and Human Rights Committee.

The Citizen article gave your readers a wrong impression of why the AFN fears that its members will likely be targeted by the legislation as presently proposed. First Nations men, women and children who may occupy a burial ground or stage a protest on a road about their mass poverty and landlessness are not terrorists. The AFN fears Bill C-36 will target them for asserting their constitutionally protected rights.

The article implied that we were seeking statutory authorization for the use of violence. I clearly indicated that the AFN believes fundamentally in peaceful relations, harmony and non-violence; strongly supports the effort of states like Canada to address the scourge of terrorism; and has always responded quickly to humanitarian crises in Canada and responded immediately on Sept. 11, such as volunteering highly skilled Mohawk steel workers at Ground Zero.

I clearly stated: "None of us has ever picked up arms. There is no justification for mass murders. There's no justification for picking up a gun and shooting someone."

Your coverage quoted an AFN representative: "Terrorism is an option...we haven't chosen it." Not quoted was our important statement that "Terrorism has always been an option for every people on this planet since history. Some have chosen it but the Assembly of First Nations hasn't. We've been around for over 400 years of contact with each other and we haven't chosen that option. We are not a terrorist people."

It is a worn stereotype that First Nations' people are prone to violence. First Nations have shown extraordinary restraint in the face of centuries of dispossession, forced relocation, residential school oppression and blatant discrimination. We have fought and died for this country, have voted against its dismemberment by separatists, and have protested non-violently and only as a last resort.

The record, however, shows that in response, First Nations' protests against gross injustice have far too often been responded to with state force and non-native citizen violence.

The anti-terrorism legislation raises serious concerns, not only for the rights of First Nations' peoples, but for the rights of all Canadians.

Matthew Coon Come
Ottawa, National Chief,
Assembly of First Nations.

Uncertainty Is A Strong Weapon Against Authoritarianism

Re: A postmodern holy war, Nov. 7

Waller R. Newell is misguided when he depicts postmodern thought as a dangerous intellectual force that destroys "inherited tradition and authority...through an act of will," and leaves us at the mercy of a "monolithic dictatorship of fanatics."

In fact, the attitude that deconstruction fosters is precisely what we need to oppose authoritarianism in any form. Theorists influenced by deconstruction teach that all texts and traditions are complicated social phenomena.

The moore one studies the historical factors and political motives behind the production of any document or dogma, the more nuance and ambiguity one sees.

If texts and traditions are understood to be rife with complexity and contradiction, they are not easily used to justify the extreme beliefs and actions that Mr.. Newell decries.

Deconstruction feeds us a healthy diet of uncertainty. By practicing it, we are encouraged to cultivate patience, tolerance and compassion because we learn that no authority can guarantee our actions to be absolutely right.

Naomi R. Goldenberg,
Ottawa, Professor of Religious
Studies, Dept. of Classics and
Religious Studies,
University of Ottawa.

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