OPINION: Progressive Conservatives cut the line on reconciliation

By Catherine Murton Stoehr

Doug Ford promised that in his cabinet, the Minister of Agriculture would be a farmer.  He did not make a similar promise about the Minister of Indigenous affairs.

On June 29, it was announced that Greg Rickford would be the Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines, and Indigenous Affairs. Watching these portfolios be rolled in together is like watching an intruder cut the phone line in a movie.  You know something bad is going to happen, and when it does the homeowner will be all alone.

Whatever else that the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation is or has been since its inception as the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs in 2007, it served as a communication mechanism between the sitting Ontario government and Great Lakes Area First Nations.  That communication is vital because without it, the government does not know what has and is happening at the First Nation level. For 250 years, that kind of ignorance has weaponized settlers and our governments against Indigenous people.

The Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs was created in 2007 in response to the murder of Dudley George.

When Ontario Premier Mike Harris shouted, “Get the f*****g Indians out of the park”, on the day before the shooting, he was angry that the park was being occupied by Stoney Point citizens. The reason may have been because he really hated them, or it may have been that he didn’t know how hard they had tried to NOT be in that position.

That the Stoney point citizens had absolutely, unequivocally refused to lease their land to the Department of Defence in 1942.

That when the war was over, the Department of National Defence arbitrarily decided not to return the land.

That when the government finally came to the table in 1973, the community had spent seven years hammering out a deal to return the land which was approved by the federal government in 1981, then didn’t happen because the deal did not specify a date.

Only an extreme level of ignorance could have made the Stoney Point citizens’ occupation of the park after 50 years of unfathomable restraint, patience, and persistence appear radical.

Not knowing this story made it possible for the Premier to imagine himself, Ontario Parks, and his settler constituents, as victims of aggression carried out by the Stoney Point First Nation.

Far from seeing the Stoney Point citizens’ actions as measured and reasonable given the extreme circumstances, the Premier of Ontario perceived them to be ungrateful, explaining to the OPP commanding officer at the scene that the Ontario government had “tried to pacify and pander to these people far too long” and urging the use of “swift and affirmative action.”

That’s why the Ipperwash Inquiry that examined how Dudley George, an unarmed man, came to be shot and killed by an OPP sniper one day after the Premier yelled his obscene injunction, gave as its number one recommendation the creation of a Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and why it is so outrageous that today that department was sidelined.

There are thousands of these stories of injustice and struggle.  Someone in the provincial government needs to keep track of these things.  First Nations people cannot be responsible for telling every single story to every single government official they speak to every single time.

It’s not like no one saw this coming.  The treaties weren’t forgotten by accident. They were forgotten because the British, and later the Canadians, made the decision not to have annual council fires with the First Nations. They chose not to listen to First Nations People’s reports of their experiences living with the settlers.

When the Great Lakes Chiefs gave the British permission to have some settlers in their territories, it was only because William Johnson promised them that they would always have a direct line to the settler government should anything go wrong.

Reading Johnsons’ journal for the month-long treaty negotiation at Niagara in 1764, it’s almost comical the number of ways the different Chiefs forced him to promise that the colonial government wouldn’t ignore problems that they knew full well the settlers would cause.

At one point, he said, “Keep your Eyes upon me, & I shall be always ready to hear your Complaints, procure you Justice, or rectify any mistaken Prejudices…”

On another day, he promised, “If you hear bad rumours cast your Eyes to the Eastward, where you will find me ready to clear up mistakes, and do you Justice.”

According to Johnson, all of these reports would not be mere telling of woes. The British government would act decisively to “bring to justice any persons who commit Robberies or Murders on them.”

Given the rhetoric of the Ontario campaign, from jumping on bulldozers to start production in the Ring of Fire to a specific, and the nearly impossible, promise to cut hydro rates by 12%, there will be incredible pressure on the new Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines, and Indigenous Affairs to work some very complicated miracles very quickly.

It is not plausible that he will hustle and scheme to get himself and his staff invited to every meeting the new government takes that affects First Nations-Ontario relations to tell the stories that his position obliges him to relate.

It is not credible that he will devote the lion’s share of his staff’s research time to ensuring that he is briefed on up-to-the-minute developments in the concerns of the 126 First Nations in Ontario and best practices in Indigenous/government relations, especially with respect to resource revenue sharing, in settler states around the world.

It is unlikely that the First Nations of Ontario will find Greg Rickford, and by extension, the Government of Ontario “ready to clear up mistakes and do [them] justice.”

It has been said that, “Privilege is not knowing that you’re hurting others and not listening when they tell you.”

We hear a lot about the rise of white supremacy these days, the Nazi kind taken up by hateful broken men, but there is a greater assertion of supremacy still and it is simply this: arranging things so you can avoid hearing the complaints of those who appeal to you for justice.

Not knowing things and getting away with it.