A question of sovereignty

With summer now here, the hot humid weather is acting as a natural tranquilizer on my cerebral processes. The lazy days of summer are meant to be spent in the garden, with a cool, tall lemonade, watching the tomato vines grow, reading the newspaper or a good book, and just taking each hour as it comes. Here in New York City, unless you're wealthy enough to afford a house in the Hamptons or a chalet in the Catskills or Berkshires, your garden is Central Park. I prefer the confines of my keyboard to the freak show on unashamed public display there -- I'll keep my freak show to myself.

This past week, thanks to the magic of satellite radio, I've been following with some concern a growing insurrection among the Mohawks in Akwesasne. The barricades and lawlessness, and the heightened rhetoric from Mohawk leaders, foretell of the attempt to establish a small sovereign land sandwiched between Canada and the United States.

On the one hand, I see the Akwesasne situation as somewhat parallel to the FLQ crisis in 1970. A small band of men and women, brought together in common cause, fighting for something they believe in. I suppose that with native Canadians, the situation is much more complicated. They have been the most oppressed, ignored, abused and forgotten people throughout this country's history. They have been made promises in bad faith again and again. We have left them at the mercy of missionaries and churches who abused them, and provided them limited recourse opportunities and the necessary tools to get back on their feet. The scars run very, very deep and, whether we like it or not, native Canadians are the only true inhabitants of this land who have not benefited from it in the last 400 years.

On the other hand, I see it the situation in very much the same way Trudeau saw the Front de Libération du Québec -- as a terrorist group that challenged the tenets of Canadian democracy and the will of a greater majority through violence.

We no longer live in 1709, and there are mechanisms by which voices can be heard and changes made in a non-violent way. Ignorance of those mechanisms is not an excuse to turn to armed insurrection, intimidation and extortion, flouting the law or making demands at gunpoint. This is intolerable and there is no room to set such a dangerous precedent. Admittedly, the problem is compounded by the fact that the Canadian government has, for such a long time, ignored the importance of providing greater access to democratic institutions for natives, opting instead to acknowledge the special status of "nations" of people within Canada without providing the necessary education of the responsibility that accompanies "nationhood." Any distinct recognition of nations must only take place under the purview of the Canadian constitution but not to the detriment, exclusion, or weakening of all other Canadians or their rights and freedoms.

We cannot undo history. We cannot go back to the way things were, or reverse the ravages or encumbrances of history. Europeans colonized and conquered this continent and were disingenuous in their words and actions with natives. There is no doubt about that.

What our generation must do, immediately, is put a stop to that history. We must communicate and negotiate in good faith. We must give natives the tools they need to at once protect their culture, protect their ways, protect their heritage and end the dysfunctional relationship that defines our interaction. If necessary, we should develop a language that allows both parties to articulate their ideas and concepts towards finding a common solution. While that language may well have been guns and violence at a point in history, that point has come and gone.

Indigenous North Americans have a very strong tradition of collective government, of communal decision-making, and of federations and alliances amongst tribes. The destiny of native people in Canada must be returned to them, as best as possible, and in full recognition of the wrongdoings of the past by all parties. Aboriginals were never passive participants in their destiny. Now, more than ever, they must act responsibly in the context of the day and age and should expect the same in return. We owe that to them, at the very least.