Letter to PM Harper re Attawapiskat

AN OPEN LETTER ON ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS TO

PRIME MINISTER HARPER

January 1, 2013

Right Honourable Steven Harper
Prime Minster of Canada

What greater legacy could a Prime Minister of Canada leave than to have held that position at the time that solutions are found to reverse the tragic conditions of so many First Nations communities like Attawapiskat on James Bay?

There is a window of opportunity for the Prime Minister of Canada to begin a truly historic intervention in the lives of Canada’s First Nations People, and at the same time the initiation of a new and wholesome relationship between aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples of this land. The Prime Minister must meet with Chief Spence. It will not diminish his stature. On the contrary ....

ATTAWAPISKAT

The utter lack of progress in this sad history was driven home to me a few nights ago during a TV news report on Attawapiskat. The topic was a young boy’s decision to quit school in Grade 8. Someone said that his dropping out would create a place for another child who could not go to school because there was no space available to him in the school.

This condition shocked many people, I am sure, but it hit me with extra force. In 1968 when I was appointed District School Superintendent for Northeastern Ontario (Department of Indian and Northern Affairs), I visited Attawapiskat and found many children up to nine years of age who had never spent a day in school. Why? It was because there was no room in the little one room school for them.

Here we are 44 years later and the very same, totally unacceptable condition exists in that community. Where else in Canada, or in the developed world, would people tolerate the denial of education to children because there was no room for them in the existing school system? When a child is born, we have several years to plan for that child’s accommodation in a school setting. That kind of planning is done routinely all across Canada. Why is it not being done in places like Attawapiskat?

In 1968, I requested funds to build immediately a temporary classroom beside the old overcrowded Attawapiskat school, and also that Ottawa immediately find the funds to plan and build a new permanent school in that community. There were no funds in the Ontario Region for those projects. My boss in the Toronto Region took my demands to Ottawa the very next day, and both requests were agreed to.

By the way, I found exactly the same conditions in Kashechewan which is just a few miles south of Attawapiskat near the coast of James Bay.

I moved on to a different job the following year, but understood that the temporary classrooms were built and that eventually new permanent schools were built in both communities.

I learned later that it was one comment that I made to my boss that pressed him and the director in Ottawa into action. I said that I hoped that a reporter from the Toronto papers did not go to Attawapiskat on a school day and see dozens of children up to nine years of age wandering around, denied an education. My boss said that neither he nor his assistant were able to sleep that night from thinking about that reporter. I would have been more impressed had they been sleepless because of the children.

The “new” schools that were built back then, now need replacement again, but as usual, the planning is lagging behind the need.

OTHER DISCOVERIES IN THE JAMES BAY REGION IN 1968-69

Boy With Epilepsy

A fourteen year-old boy attending the school in Moose Factory (south tip of James Bay) is taking twelve or more seizures a day. He has to wear an old type football helmet to protect his head when he falls. My staff had taken him to the federal hospital which is almost next door to the school, but they refused to admit him or to treat him. Few readers will believe the reason. Epilepsy, according to the federal Department of Health and Welfare who ran the hospital, is a mental state rather than a physical state, which makes this boy’s condition a provincial matter.

That hospital at that time had entire wards that were fully equipped and staffed with no patients, full range of medical staff and all kinds of fiscal resources, all unavailable to this young man.

Boy with Severe Behavioural Problems

This 13 year old boy was in the care of the Fort Albany Residential School on James Bay. He had the worst kind of home history: abandoned by the father in the care of a seriously demented mother, who had taken an axe to all of the boats and canoes belonging to the residents of their community. The child had serious anger problems, throwing chairs at people, threatening teachers with knives, and a new interest in setting fires inside the institution.

Staff referred the child to the Moose Factory hospital, but service was denied for the same reason as above.

The problem was the boy’s mental state which makes his case a provincial matter.

I managed to get these boys transferred to the seriously overcrowded provincial hospital in North Bay, but it took many days of negotiation. Their medical people were sympathetic, but resented the attitude of the federal health people who should have had a much better understanding of the environmental issues as well as the medical and social aspects of the situations.

A Teacher Goes Manic

One of the teachers in one of the James Bay area schools who was new to life in the north was overcome, we thought, by culture shock. He began running around the community, ranting, and threatening to injure himself and others. Two RCMP officers were dispatched up there from Moose Factory. They chased the person in a jeep, caught the person and with help managed to get him into a retraining jacket, and seated him in the jeep. The person managed to put his feet through the windscreen of the vehicle. The officers accompanied the person back to Moose Factory, took him to the Department of Health hospital where he was refused admission or treatment, because, why else, his illness was a provincial matter. (We later learned that this individual was prone to episodes like this when living in Toronto, but that medical history was not available when he was hired.)

THE ELLIOTT LAKE PROJECT

It is interesting to note that this project, The Elliott Lake Relocation Project, launched by the Government of Canada in 1967, has disappeared from the annals of Canadian, Ontario and even Elliott Lake history.

The rationale for this project has never been clearly recorded in any public document. Here is my attempt to reconstruct the genesis in as objective a manner as possible.

Elliott Lake as a community was founded on the basis of a discovery of uranium in the area. A town was built by the mining company resulting in a flourishing community of modern, well-built homes. As the bottom fell out of the uranium market, the population dropped overnight, leaving street after street of vacant houses.

A member of parliament, name and riding unknown to me, arose in the House of Commons to propose a new program to make use of these houses and this under-used community. His proposal may have been similar to the following paraphrase:

“Mister Speaker, we have in Elliott Lake a community of vacant but well-appointed houses in a fully serviced community. At the same time, we have in the northern part of Ontario thousands of aboriginal families with no employment, no income save from welfare, limited job skills, and few prospects for ever breaking out of this cycle of poverty. I respectfully suggest to the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs the establishment of a pilot relocation program which would bring young aboriginal families down to Elliott Lake, they could live in these fine houses, receive practical job training to prepare the young husbands for jobs available in mainstream Canada, the wives could receive training in home-making skills, and the children could receive educational opportunities in the local schools.”

The Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs apparently took the suggestion to heart and ordered the Ontario Region office to set up this pilot program at once. The word “pilot” is very significant here. It suggested that the program was to serve as an experiment to test ideas for future policy considerations, an opportunity to learn whether this concept would really be beneficial to the participants in terms of livelihood and family living.

In the fall of  1966, a team of recruiters travelled to most if not all of the reserves across Northern Ontario to offer young families this unusual opportunity. Their goal was to garner 20 families who were prepared to commit themselves to this program.

I knew very little about this program until later, since I was working in the education branch of Indian Affairs and the Elliott Lake was in the Sudbury Agency branch. In 1968 I was appointed to the Superintendent of Education branch with an office in Sudbury. A few months later, I was made responsible for the Elliott Lake project.

I met with staff and requested all the documentation to help me understand the goals and objectives of the project as well as the operational aspects. The files in our Sudbury office provided nothing but invoices, payment vouchers, complaint letters, work orders for repairs of windows, doors, plumbing, TV sets, etc. – all administrivia, but no background documentation. The staff had never seen any documentation defining the goals and objectives of the project, although these matters had been implicit in some of the discussions.

I went to Toronto and asked the responsible officer for background documents such as the design of the pilot project, the goals, evaluation criteria. He said that he was not allowed to show these to me. I could not believe that they were making me to be responsible for a program with no background information. I badgered this person as only I can badger. He finally agreed to allow me to read some files in his office, but only on condition that I make no copies and record no notes.

The real shock was that there was no experimental design or objectives. This was a pilot project in name only. It was nothing more than a scheme to utilize the empty houses in Elliott Lake. There was a hint in the very suggestion of the project that the answer for aboriginal people is to be assimilated into mainstream Canadian society, but it was not blatantly stated.

I know of one family that benefited from the project and my wife and I are still in touch with some members of that family. There probably were others who gained something, but all families that I know of returned to living in their original community. I also knew of many terrible family breakdowns which resulted from insufficient selection criteria, and lack of support for the program. The program had one super counsellor who worked day and night to help the participants, but she could in no way make up for the lack of resources coming from the government which had never had any real interest in discovering meaningful ways to assist First Nation people to take control for their future.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO OUR DAUGHTER?

I attended a meeting with the people of the Ogoki Reserve in 1968. Ogoki is a very remote community on the Albany River, but it was noted for its highly entrepreneurial families who shared a large clientele of hunters and fishermen from Canada and the United States.

When the meeting concluded, a young couple whose daughter had been injured about a month earlier came to me asking me if I could get some information about the 14 year-old daughter. She had been chopping wood, when she accidently and completely severed one of her great toes. A message over the radio telephone brought a plane to take the child to hospital, but that was the last they had heard of the little girl. They did not know what hospital she had been taken to (Geraldton or Sioux Lookout), whether she had recovered or not, and when they might expect her return. They asked me to find the answers and get the message back to them.

 That evening I got to Geraldton about 9:00 p.m. and went directly to that hospital. The young patient was there. The nurse was shocked to learn that her parents had had no information about their daughter. She took me to the child’s room. She looked frightened wondering who this strange person might be, but when I told her that I had talked to her parents that day, I got a broad smile. The hospital had decided that she would be released in a very few days. We got word to the parents next day, and I am sure that they were relieved.

 The point of this story is the thoughtlessness of the bureaucracy in leaving these parents in limbo for all those weeks. While I am sure that there was no staff member with a clause in his/her job description to “notify parents of injured children” there could have been someone caring enough to perform that small but so important task.

CONCLUSION

These are just a small sample of the kinds of things taking place between the federal government and First Nations people some 40 years ago. They appear to be remarkably similar to what is happening today.

Many First Nations communities have avoided or have overcome these difficulties usually as a result of strong leadership within the community and usually with wise use of external support, government or otherwise.

I implore you to meet with Chief Spence immediately. Your offer of sending the Minister is an insult. I am sure he is a nice, well-intentioned gentleman, but he is not personally or symbolically the right person for this task.

One thing I learned from my work in that field is that each community is unique even thought we use the same terminology to identify them: First Nations, aboriginal, reserves, etc. Each community has a unique set of issues, resources, possibilities, and potentials. You need policies and high level goals at the government level, but on the ground you must have people who can work with the specific situation and with the people of that community to come up with comprehensive solutions that will work in that specific situation. They will learn from this, but the next community will be a whole new set of circumstances.

H. Brock Vodden B.A., B.Ed., M.Ed.