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.
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