VOL. 47, No. 2 HEAD OFFICE: MONTREAL, FEBRUARY 1966

Canada’s Native People

CANADA IS THE HOMELAND of the Indians and Eski-mos. They had no communication with the greatcentres of developing civilization abroad. They lookedno farther than the land in which they lived for ful-filment of all their needs. Everything they possessedcame as the result of their own labour and the inge-nuity of their own devices.

These are real people, not fruits of the imaginationof strip artists, movie writers and book authors. Theyare not men and women in chorus-girl costumes whosedestiny it is to entertain us, but people seeking whatpeople everywhere seek- home, health and happi-ness.

The task of adjusting their Stone Age civilization toconfrontation by the twentieth century has moved soslowly as to be called a "national disgrace" by anational association devoted to native welfare.

After a set-back due to the introduction of diseasesfrom Europe, the Indian population of about 205,000is now increasing at roughly twice the rate of thegeneral population. There are about 12,000 Eskimosin the Northwest Territories and Northern Quebec. Atthe present rate of increase the Eskimo populationwill double within twenty years.

The majority of these native people stand neitherin one world nor the other. They are enmeshed in theold culture while trying to take advantage of the newway of life introduced from abroad. They are freedom-loving people, resenting dependency. Their economicproblems are as serious as those facing the newlyemerging nations in Africa.

The facts about the need of our native people havebeen brought out by the Indian-Eskimo Associationof Canada. This is a citizens’ organization which cameinto being in 1958 as a Commission of the CanadianAssociation for Adult Education. It was incorporatedin 1960 with the declared purpose of ensuring thatIndians and Eskimos, and the descendants of aunion between the Indian people and Europeans,be given opportunity for progress and fulfilmentequal to that afforded other Canadians. It believesthat the native people should be able to move into the

mainstream of Canadian economic, social and po-litical life with dignity and without loss of identity.

Aboriginal way of life

We must not depreciate the knowledge and tech-niques made use of by Canada’s first people. Stonetools were at the foundation of their native economiclife, and, said Diamond Jenness in his book TheIndians of Canada (National Museum of Canada,Queen’s Printer, Ottawa, 1960): "Some of their arrow-heads, knife-blades, and animal figures rival the bestwork of the pre-historic Egyptians."

The Iroquoian natives used a system of currency ofwampum, manufactured by New England coastaltribes from shells. Trees were hardly dented by stoneaxes, so clearing of land for agriculture was done byfire. The sod was turned over with digging sticks fittedwith blades of shell, and the crop was gathered byhand and transported in baskets. Clock time, by whichtoday’s urban life is regulated and largely dominated,was unknown to these native people, whose only clockwas the sun, their only calendar the seasons.

Such was the material state of Canadian peoplewhen the first settlers from across the ocean arrived.But they had graces amid their hardships. Every tribewas founded on groups of families closely united byties of kinship; their religion included the belief inprotecting spirits who assisted them in life’s crises;neither rank nor wealth gave title to arrogance; theirchiefs dressed in the same way as commoners, exceptat ceremonies, and ate the same food as the ordinarypeople.

The Canadian Indians

If life in an Indian community seems to be dull anduninspiring it is not because the Indians are dullor uninspired. It is because the newcomers have takenaway the Indian’s satisfying way of life without replac-ing it.

The Indians were not pagans. The Ven. ArchdeaconS.H. Middleton, who died in 1964 after half a century

of service to the Indians in Southern Alberta, wrote inhis book Indian Chiefs Ancient and Modern (Herald,Lethbridge, 1953): "In the long ago the Indian centredeverything upon his religion and religious observances.His religion entered into every phase of his life:planting, harvesting, feasting, recreation, hunting, war-fare; in short, all his interests were intimately boundup with religion."

William Wuttunee, the National Indian Council’sfirst chief, said: "We believed in what is known asGitchi-Manitou, the Great Spirit. God was in the sun,in the moon, in mother earth, in the rain that madethe grass grow. Manitou was a loving and mercifulgod to us. I learned about our Heaven, known as the’happy hunting ground’ where everyone goes whetheryou are good or bad. There is no such thing as Helland this concept was alien to the Indian mind."

These persons, practising living in a hard environ-ment, essentially rural, accustomed to informal livingin close-knit families and helping-hand communities,find it difficult to cross the bridge to the cold, imper-sonal, time-measured, and essentially selfish industrialway of life. The economic base of their natural livinghabits has disintegrated. Reserves no longer providesufficient game, and the people are restricted so thatthey cannot move to more productive areas as theydid centuries ago.

The crisis did not arise in the sixteenth or seven-teenth centuries. It did not become evident until latein the nineteenth century. It has become intolerablein the twentieth century.

When Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrencein 1535 he found Indians cultivating the land on thepresent site of Montreal. The settlers came in smallnumbers to a vast country, depending upon the good-will of the natives for security. Life was simple, andthe differences between the pioneers and the Indianswere only superficial. The Indians taught the settlerswoodcraft and acted as guides and canoe-men, whilethe settlers introduced new tools of agriculture andhunting.

Whose responsibility ?

It is generally accepted in the ethics of our societythat the strong are obligated to help the weak. We,the descendants of immigrants from far-off lands, arethe stronger in this scientific and industrialized age,and we are largely to blame for the problems of thenative people. It is we who have intruded upon anaboriginal way of life and made it impossible; it is wewho have broken up the hunting grounds into ar-tificial provinces and counties and homesteads, allfenced in, and have relegated the original owners toreserves.

"The North American Indians," said Arnold J.Toynbee in A Study of History (Oxford UniversityPress 1946), "were almost continuously ’on the run’from the moment of the arrival of the first English

settlers down to the crushing of the last Indian attemptat armed resistance in the Sioux War of 1890, twohundred and eighty years later."

When the battles ended, we introduced a new socialorder which broke down the systems of law, govern-ment, customs and religion on which the Indiansociety had rested.

Long before that, in the reign of Charles II, instruc-tions were given to the governors of the colonies thatIndians who desired to place themselves under Britishprotection should be well received. In 1755 an officewas established devoted solely to the administrationof Indian affairs. From that time on, a continuingadministrative organization has been maintained forthe protection and advancement of the Indian inter-ests. Until 1860 the Imperial Government was re-sponsible, but in that year the Province of Canadaassumed the charge. By special provision in the BritishNorth America Act of 1867 the new Government ofCanada took jurisdiction.

There has been, then, a continuous record since1670 of governmental obligation, acknowledged in ourown times by the Indian Act. Under it the primaryfunction of the government is to administer the affairsof the Indians in a manner that will enable them tobecome increasingly self-supporting and independentmembers of the community.

This duty of protection and care is not dischargedfully by paternalistic measures. The Duke of Edin-burgh’s Study Conference in 1962 reported: "Thereis a danger, already evident in certain areas, that thesocial isolation of the reservations and the supervisionby Indian agents may inhibit the resourcefulness,initiative, and individuality of the Indian people, andthat, however well intended, it could perpetuate thevery situation which it is intended to alleviate."

Some suggestions

A brief of the Ontario Division of the Indian-EskimoAssociation said in 1964: "Most of the one hundredthousand Indians of this province are living in direpoverty. A high percentage are unemployed and areeducationally and socially unequipped to obtain andhold a job. Little real effort has been made to help theIndians develop new industries to replace the declin-ing industry of hunting and trapping. It has been easierto give relief than to develop industries." Only sixper cent of the federal government’s expenditure onIndian work is development-oriented.

The Indians are acting to help themselves. Ten bandssent delegates to the Western Indian Leadership Insti-tute at Petrolia, Ontario, in 1965 to examine andpractise skills and acquire the knowledge needed forhandling band affairs. Frank A. Calder, who was thefirst Indian to sit in any Canadian Parliament, advo-cates either the elimination of the reserve system or thegiving to Indians of opportunity to administer theirown local affairs.

The Indian-Eskimo Association has made somesuggestions. It asks for establishment of an EconomicDevelopment Agency, charged with administering afund of $25 million, and the establishment of anEconomic Advisory Council composed largely ofIndian representatives. It wrote to the Prime Ministerin April 1965 recommending that the Indian AffairsBranch be constituted a full department. It suggeststhat technical, professional and management person-nel be supplied in the early phases of approved newbusiness enterprises, and that training programmes beprovided to prepare Indians to take over these dutieswhen qualified; that companies be encouraged tolocate, with the agreement of Indian band councils,new industrial plants in or near reserve communitiesto provide employment opportunities to Indians; thatthe Economic Development Fund provide assistanceto on-job training programmes in these plants, andthat plans be expanded for the employment of Indianswho do not live on reserves.

In January 1966 the Government of Ontario an-nounced its plan for raising the living standards ofIndians within its jurisdiction. By agreement with theFederal Government, which is constitutionally ac-countable for Indian affairs, it seeks to take over re-sponsibility for education, housing, employment, lawenforcement, health, recreation, and economic devel-opment. Other provinces are expected to follow thislead.

Eskimos: the forgotten people

The Eskimos are a hardy, resourceful people, cheer-ful even in the extreme adversity that has dogged theirlives. They called themselves "Inuit" -- the only strongand true men. No other race, having so little to workwith, has accomplished so much.

People who lived in the Arctic before the invasionof highly-gadgeted outsiders had to do everything forthemselves. They needed detailed knowledge of theirenvironment, its animals, plants, and other naturalproducts, its dangers and its potentialities.

But they were not savages. William S. Carlson,President of the State University of New York, spenta winter of his youth with an Eskimo family of five.He found their honesty, sincerity, and coolness in theface of danger noteworthy. They had "a refinement ofbody, manners and mind. They loved one another ina helpful, tender, but not sentimental way. I learnedthat it is the civilized man who could emulate theso-called savage to advantage." And VilhjalmurStefansson, Canadian-born explorer, said: "On thebasis of my years with the Stone Age Eskimos I feelthat the chief factor in their happiness was that theywere living according to the Golden Rule."

The country of the Eskimos is "underdeveloped"today, with problems somewhat like those of under-developed countries abroad, but it has a significantdifference: it is an integral part of an affluent andcomfortably-living nation. There are no insurmount-

able barriers of land, climate, or culture to excuse ournot helping the Eskimo to adjust to the new world weare making.

Farley Mowat calls upon Canadians in his bookThe Desperate People (Little, Brown & Co., Toronto,1959) to "resolutely set ourselves to expunge a damn-ing reflection upon our own pretensions to humanity,and.., commit ourselves unequivocally to makeamends".

Canada was quick to throw the paraphernalia oflaw over the Arctic; her voice has often been raised tochampion the cause of underprivileged people inother lands; she has subsidized exploration forArctic minerals; but the reality of her own north-land native people has remained obscure until recentyears.

It was in 1954 that the Minister of Northern Affairsand National Resources told the press: "Canada isnow turning in earnest to the development of itsnorthland."

Today’s plans

What is being done to bring our 12,000 Eskimosinto the twentieth century?

The Government of Canada, reports Canada YearBook, is helping the Eskimo people through theadjustment period by providing education, familywelfare services and technical training: the sameservices as those available to people in the rest ofCanada.

Many of the older generation of Eskimos will neverbe able to fit into the structure of wage employment,but the younger people take readily to the mechanicalarts. For government departments they work at avariety of occupations, and as employees in defenceestablishments and private companies. A growingnumber are being trained and are working as teachers’aides. Women work as interpreters, waitresses, nursingassistants, clerks and airline stewardesses. But three-quarters of the Eskimo population live in the harshland outside the main centres of economic and govern-ment activity.

Planning is needed not only to develop the richmaterial resources of the north, but also to providethe maximum development of the native people, wher-ever they may be.

The Manchester Guardian paid tribute to the federalgovernment’s loan fund designed to help Eskimos toestablish co-operatives dealing in fishing, boat building,lumbering, and arts and crafts. In October 1965 theMinister of the Department of Northern Affairsannounced a programme to build 1,600 houses,extending throughout the Arctic in the next fewyears, to be rented by Eskimos according to theirability to pay, or purchased with the assistance ofcapital grants. A start has been made in creatingsmall local industries in some sections of the north,befitting the talents of the people and the materials at

hand, thus associating the Eskimos with their ownadvancement.

Education is crucial. The Eskimos are moving froma stone age culture to the machine age in a generation.Schools are being established for them in key centresfrom Fort Smith, on the Alberta border,to Grise Fiord,800 miles from the North Pole on Ellesmere Island,and travelling libraries carry books into some of theout-of-the-way places where they live. Residences atFort Simpson and Yellowknife accommodate Eskimochildren who are continuing their studies in highergrades. Courses in carpentry, building construction,electronics, automobile and diesel mechanics, andother occupations, are offered at some central points.

While other native people in the Americas havebeen swept out of their ritualistic tribal arts intoproduction for the tourist trade, the geographicalremoteness of the Eskimo has protected him, andtoday his art in native stone and ivory is of world-wide renown.

Market research across southern Canada and in theUnited States has revealed a substantial outlet forEskimo crafts, and though the carving industry cannever of itself solve the economic problems of theArctic, it has provided an interim answer for a lot ofpeople. Moreover, it has brought home to otherCanadians the existence and the capabilities of theirArctic fellow-citizens.

Among other products of the Eskimos are seal-skinprints, slippers fashioned from tanned muskrat andArctic hare (one pair won second prize at an interna-tional shoe show in New York), and graphics whichhave been given display in the permanent collectionsof the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum ofModern Art in New York.

The co-operatives

Stefansson brought back this lesson from the Arc-tic: "Perhaps we could live as happily in a metropolisas in a fishing village if only we could substitute theideals of co-operation for those of competition." Intheir co-operatives the Eskimos carry forward theirtraditional custom of pooled labour and shared har-vests.

More than 500 Eskimos- nearly one out of everyfive Eskimo families --are members of co-operatives.During 1963 nineteen co-operatives were active, witha total business turnover of close to a million dollars.Of this amount, more than $250,000 was derived fromthe sale of sculpture, prints and handicrafts. Thebalance came from char and salmon fisheries, theoperation of retail stores and tourist camps, logging,boat building and marketing furs.

The best known in the Northwest Territories is theWest Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, at Cape Dorset.From a modest start in 1959 and considerable help inthe early stages from the Northern Affairs Departmentthe men and women of this gifted community, within

Authorized as second class mail by the Post OfficeDepartment, Ottawa, and for payment for postage in cash.

two years, were producing graphic art, sculpture andfine crafts to a value exceeding $200,000. In the east,co-operatives started with credits from the EskimoLoan Fund are now owned by the local people. In1963 the first conference of Arctic co-operativesbrought together Eskimos from as far west as Aklavikand as far north as Grise Fiord.

Into tomorrow

It is not unreasonable, in view of their background,that Indians and Eskimos should be convinced thatin changing over to new ways they are giving upsomething valuable.

But when offered reasonable opportunity, kindlyadvice, understanding tolerance, and practical help,all our native people have shown their willingness anddesire and ability to make the change.

The issue for tomorrow is this: we newcomers tookthe land of the native people. Whether it was a goodthing or not; whether it was inevitable in the marchof history or not: these are irrelevant. We took theirland, disrupted their way of life, ruined their way oflivelihood, and undermined their culture. We arechallenged to discharge our obligation to them.

What is needed is not primarily entreaty, urging, orexhortation, but understanding help. Over and overagain in the course of the world’s history, says Jen-ness in his book, great social and economic advanceshave been made when two peoples who had marchedon separate roads came together. The anniversary ofconfederation offers an opportunity to enlarge andintensify and hasten our effort to raise the level of lifeof Canada’s native people to that of the generalCanadian standard.

The guiding principle in dealing with both Eskimosand Indians is expressed perceptively by Irene Bairdin her poem "Keep Your Own Things", addressed tothe Eskimos. It was published in North, a magazineof the Department of Northern Affairs and NationalResources, in the March-April issue 1964. These arethe opening lines:

InuitYou who call yourselves The PeopleKeep your own things!Use our things if you willUse them as you mustBut only justAs they serve endsBetween friendsWe face you and you usOver a deep gulf of timeOver arctic spaces moon-lonelyWe are like strangers meeting afterA hard journeyWith everything to learnFrom one anotherIf only how to live and dieA little better

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