In 2008 Mount Royal College Professor Frances Widdowson and her husband Albert Howard published Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry-The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation, an excellent and, given the politically correct times in which we live, very brave book. Disrobing, in unanswerable fashion, exposed the intellectual frauds underpinning the quasi-apartheid status quo maintained and promulgated by what she calls “the Aboriginal Industry.”
Professor Widdowson has now published a very good follow up book, Separate But Unequal-How Parallelist Ideology Conceals Indigenous Dependency, (University of Ottawa Press, 2019), in which she expands on the themes of Disrobing. She fully describes and strongly criticizes academic, social, economic, historical and cultural “parallelist ideology”, the idea of “Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities “travelling side by side” in these spheres, “coexisting but not getting in each other’s way”- a purportedly positive variation of the negative and oppressive (toward-Blacks) “separate but equal” social and economic reality extant for decades in America- which ideology she clearly demonstrates only leads to more “Indigenous dependency” and “uneven and combined development” (the latter concept she adopts from, of all discredited people, Leon Trotsky!) She convincingly describes and criticizes what she calls “neotribal rentierism, a process whereby lawyers and consultants working for Indigenous groups, (“neotribes”), use legal arguments to extract transfers from government.” The Haida Nation case is the most spectacularly successful and devastating (to the Canadian economy) example of this, wherein the Supreme Court invented out of legal thin air the duty to “consult and accommodate” any and all Indigenous groups who assert claims that their hunting and fishing rights are even remotely affected by any planned resource project in Canada. In my view this has created a shakedown industry resulting in de facto bribery payments having to be made by governments and project proponents, (which I characterize as “danegeld” in my book There Is No Difference.) Professor Widdowson rather too-dryly calls these civically-unhealthy, circumstantially-compelled provisions of cash and/or other benefits to Indigenous groups “government transfers.” But they’re more than that. Haida Nation has forced millions of dollars of such coerced “transfers” to be made by the private sector to Indigenous groups as well.
Professor Widdowson’s research is deep and her references extensive and invaluable. For these reasons alone her book is essential and worthwhile reading. Separate But Unequal has the same basic outlook and themes as my book, There Is No Difference, and covers much and more of the same general subject matter, and in much more weighty, professional and traditionally academic fashion. In fact so academic that it seems clear that her intended audience was not the general public, but rather other academics and policy makers. This is unfortunate because it is the general public, including “rank and file” Indigenous Canadians, that would benefit from reading this book far more than members of these other already-insider specialized groups, some members of which are part of the very Aboriginal Industry she decries.
Also unfortunately, while she accurately describes the destructive irrationality and intellectual fraud permeating the entire status quo in this crucial area of Canadian life, she suggests no real, practical solutions for remedying the tragic and dysfunctional situation of our Indigenous peoples, other than the lunchbag-letdown solution of “research that openly and honestly investigates the causes of Indigenous dependency and social dysfunction.” And making the “developmental leap” to bridge the gap between hunter-gatherer Indigenous culture and non-Indigenous high technology culture she asserts “will require “careful thought and a great deal of sensitivity; it is even possible that the process will take a number of generations.”
But her book is a masterwork of research! I say enough “research!” Her book says it all! Our Indigenous peoples do not need more kick-the-ball-down-the-road “research” and/or “careful thought.” They need concrete, foundational reforms- now. And Canadians, especially Indigenous Canadians, can’t wait “a number of generations”! Indigenous children, while we read this, are killing themselves in ever-increasing numbers and neglected babies are crying in the night! Writer Octavio Paz wrote that “an infinitely remote end is just a perpetual prison for the present.” Our Indigenous peoples need to get out of their “parallelist” prisons, which Professor Widdowson so well describes, comprised of the reserves, the Indian Act, the Indian Industry and all the rest of our quasi-apartheid status quo. They need a cure now from what writer Gordon Gibson described as “the sickness” of those reserves. But sadly for the vast majority of powerless, marginalized, desperate, and endangered Indigenous Canadians, the brilliant, very well-intentioned but too-cautious, too detached Professor Widdowson fails to offer one.
Peter Best, December 5th, 2019
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9. Book Review of Harold R. Johnson’s Peace and Good Order- The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada
Peace and Good Order-The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, (McLelland & Stewart, 2019) by Cree author Harold R. Johnson, is another example of a talented, accomplished and fully integrated Indigenous writer, with close and personal experience of the ongoing tragic social failure and dysfunction happening on Indian reserves- and with close and personal experience, because of his background as a criminal lawyer, of the inability of Canada’s justice system to cope with it- of refusing or neglecting to state the obvious root cause of this failure, dysfunction and inability-the existence of the reserves themselves. Instead, he solely blames non-Indigenous Canadians, past and present, for it. Despite the book’s impressive recitation of the well-known and dismal facts and statistics regarding this failure and dysfunction and our courts’ inability to deal with it, the book boils down at the end to useless, largely unjustified and backward-looking finger-pointing, (with a disturbing amount of “anti-white” racist rhetoric being used-see below), at the “settler” peoples and institutions (that made the author’s own life a success such that he could write this and other books) and the advocating of a solution that is fundamentally flawed, impractical and unworkable-utopian even- the transfer of all aspects of criminal law jurisdiction over Indigenous peoples to the Aboriginal “nations”. This would include writing the laws, enforcing them by Indigenous police, prosecutors and courts right through to sentencing, and post-sentencing supervision and control, with funding provided for all of this by non-Indigenous Canadian taxpayers.
Instead of advocating the phasing out of the reserves, and generally, ending the “separate but equal” quasi-apartheid status quo we are burdened with in Canada, the root cause of Indigenous social failure and dysfunction- the root cause of Indigenous over-representation in the justice and penal system- and the only honest, competent and workable remedy for the tragic ills besetting our Indigenous peoples , Mr. Johnson proposes a merely “Titanic deck chairs” solution. He proposes that we create a separate criminal justice system run by Aboriginals and for Aboriginals only.
Mr. Johnson claims that the wording of Treaty 6, the treaty whereby his Cree ancestors, as well as the Saulteaux, Assiniboine and Chippewayan tribes, “ceded and surrendered” to Canada all their “rights, titles and privileges” to their lands, (comprising the bulk of present-day Saskatchewan and Alberta)- in particular, wording that says that the Indians “will maintain peace and good order” amongst themselves and “between themselves and others of Her Majesty’s subjects, whether Indians or whites”- only means that they promised to obey their own laws in existence at the time, or made in the future by the Indian treaty-signers. He asserts that this treaty wording means that Indians, because the treaty was allegedly about “sharing” the land, not surrendering it, (a novel, Indian Industry argument du jour- given legitimacy by the Ontario Restoule decision, as described in my book There Is No Difference), retained criminal law jurisdiction over themselves, and following this, that jurisdiction over the criminal law as it pertains to Indigenous persons be returned, as of alleged right, to the descendants of the Treaty 6 signers.
It’s a really specious argument. And it’s no solution to the tragic on-reserve problems he so well describes. It’s only something that, even if were practically possible, (which it is not), would be the equivalent of putting the proverbial lipstick on the proverbial pig.
It ignores almost 150 years of history, where no one has ever interpreted the treaty this way-until he does now. How people behave in relation to agreements is good evidence of what they think the agreement in question means. Treaty 6 Indians have never argued that they were not bound by Her Majesty’s laws and legal procedures, until Mr. Johnson comes up with this argument in this book.
They have always submitted, without objection, to Canada’s criminal laws and procedures, indeed, just as Treaty 6 clearly specifies.
The “peace and good order” wording, boiled down, as it has always been understood, clearly just means that the Indian treaty signers were promising to Canada to legally behave themselves-to follow Canada’s laws in the sense that all subjects of any government must follow and obey that government’s laws.
Mr. Johnson ignores the unambiguous promise by the Indian Treaty 6 signers, located in the treaty before the “peace and good order” wording, “to conduct and behave themselves as good and loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.”
He ignores their promise “that they will in all respects obey and abide by the law,” (clearly referring to the law of Canada.)
He ignores their promise that “they will aid and assist the officers of Her Majesty in bringing to justice and punishment any Indian offending against the stipulations of this treaty, or infringing the laws in force in the country so ceded.” This is a patent declaration of general submission to Canada’s laws and legal procedures.
On a practical level, the viability of the solution Mr. Johnson proposes is completely belied by his own facts.
He argues that an Indigenous justice system would concentrate on the “redemption” of the Indigenous offender, by him acknowledging his wrongdoing, returning to his community (rather than being incarcerated, which he falsely states, along with deterrence, are the main focusses of the “white man’s” justice system), and then somehow being “healed” by all this and then successfully becoming re-integrated into his community, a better man or woman for the whole experience.
But return to what kind of community? How could these reserve communities possibly perform the healing functions Mr. Johnson imagines, when they are, as he himself says, “traumatized”? Clearly they can’t. The cause of the trauma, can’t be the cure of it.
The first three-quarters of Mr. Johnson’s book is a harrowing and depressing description of the terrible physical, social and psychological conditions of the typical reserve where these over-represented (in the justice system) Indigenous offenders come from.
He describes the “clan justice” system typical of many reserves, where clan and family ties and the risk of clan and family retribution influence the reporting of crime, law enforcement and legal outcomes.
He describes the reserve RCMP themselves, developing mental health issues because of what they see happening on their reserves, which they are essentially helpless to control or prevent.
His descriptions of the constant and excessive consumption of alcohol, horrific sexual assaults, (many against children and many related to alcohol), drugs, “extreme violence” and child neglect, (also closely related to alcohol), school dropout rates, sense of hopelessness, PTSD and other severe mental health issues existing on the reserves, is searing and heartbreaking. Indeed, in a previous book written by him, Firewater, Mr. Johnson states that the death of about half of all Treaty Six residents is due to alcohol! (See The Untold Story of Indigenous Child Neglect and Alcohol Abuse- The Firewater Complex, by former Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Brian Giesbrecht, (who personally witnessed during his career much of what he writes about), under Commentary, on this website.
He describes the populations of these reserves, as stated above, as “traumatized.”
So how could returning Indigenous offenders to these seriously damaged, “traumatized” communities ever reasonably expect to result in “redemption” or “forgiveness” or “healing”?
Even Mr. Johnson admits that “When we have a traumatized and inflated police force interacting with a traumatized population we should not expect good results.” Further, he writes: “Justice has nothing to offer such a community.”
As I said, his “solution” is completely inconsistent with these horrible and immutable facts and conclusions he lays out as the basis of his argument.
There are many other reasons why his “solution” is impractical and unworkable. Treaty 6 would have to be re-negotiated and reworded. The Canadian Constitution itself would likely have to be changed. The Criminal Code would have to be drastically amended. There would be federal-provincial issues to deal with. Legal issues involving Indigenous persons committing offences off the reserve would be numerous and virtually unsolvable. The jurisdictional wrangling between the two criminal law jurisdictions would be endless and costly. Only the lawyers would benefit. It’s not ever going to happen.
As a bit of an aside, I have a bone to pick with Mr. Johnson, a former lawyer, regarding his casual use of language seemingly approving the possibility of vigilante-style, Indigenous violence against “whites” if the current situation isn’t remedied to his satisfaction. He describes, seemingly approvingly, Indigenous street gangs in Saskatchewan who were, after the Colton Boushie verdict, “armed and prepared to start shooting. All they needed was someone to give them the okay. Our leadership told them to stand down.” (!) Even if that were true, which I’m sure it’s not, it’s reckless, irresponsible and violence-approving language, completely inappropriate for any responsible person, especially a lawyer-an officer of the Court- to engage in. (Mr. Johnson may be a retired lawyer, but once a lawyer always a lawyer.)
He writes that “Saskatchewan is prepared to go to war with its Indigenous peoples.” What a crock!
He threatens, at the end of the book: “We will start taking out our frustrations on the colonizer. At some point we will stop killing ourselves and our relatives and begin killing the oppressor.” (!) How breathtakingly reckless, dangerous, irresponsible and juvenile! This sounds like Donald Trump suggesting violence against Hilary Clinton!
And the final irony of this so-called “righteously angry” book, which speaks in such “clear and present danger” terms in regards to the tragic and wrongful situation of Indigenous persons in our criminal justice system, and in life generally, and despite his main recommendation that Indigenous people have their own justice system, he pivots from this and offers another secondary, more practical solution. He recommends more research and study of the situation! Like a fireman, standing in front of a raging house fire with people inside the house, deciding not to immediately put a hose to the fire and rescue them, but rather to go back to the fire station and read up on the principles of heat combustion. He recommends analyzing the recidivism rates of probation officers’ clients, the recidivism outcomes of individual prosecutors, defence counsel and judges, whether some jails and parole boards have better outcomes than others. “Once we have the information and analyzed it, we would have a better idea what works and what doesn’t. If we revised laws and changed policies based upon measured outcomes, we might improve those outcomes.”
So which is it, a separate Indigenous justice system or more endless “kick the ball down the road” studies, surveys and “analysis”? Mr. Johnson doesn’t seem to be able to decide. In any event, whichever option he chooses, poor, vulnerable, lost, marginalized, powerless Indigenous persons will, while all this endless Indian Industry job-creating “analysis” is going on in the big cities, continue to suffer. As I wrote in There Is No Difference and in the Widdowson book review above, quoting Octavio Paz, asking suffering people to wait for the happening of an infinitely remote end is to condemn them to the perpetual prison of the present. Our suffering Indigenous peoples desperately need foundational reforms and change now!
The only solution to better this situation, the only way for Indigenous peoples to escape the “perpetual prison of the present”, for the reasons I argue in my book, There Is No Difference, is to eliminate the laws supporting our Indigenous quasi-apartheid status quo, then phase out the reserves, and by that means help Indigenous peoples complete the already-started process of integrating into general Canadian, urban-oriented society on the basis of everybody being equal under the law.
Peter Best- December 15, 2019
In 2008 Mount Royal College Professor Frances Widdowson and her husband Albert Howard published Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry-The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation, an excellent and, given the politically correct times in which we live, very brave book. Disrobing, in unanswerable fashion, exposed the intellectual frauds underpinning the quasi-apartheid status quo maintained and promulgated by what she calls “the Aboriginal Industry.”
Professor Widdowson has now published a very good follow up book, Separate But Unequal-How Parallelist Ideology Conceals Indigenous Dependency, (University of Ottawa Press, 2019), in which she expands on the themes of Disrobing. She fully describes and strongly criticizes academic, social, economic, historical and cultural “parallelist ideology”, the idea of “Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities “travelling side by side” in these spheres, “coexisting but not getting in each other’s way”- a purportedly positive variation of the negative and oppressive (toward-Blacks) “separate but equal” social and economic reality extant for decades in America- which ideology she clearly demonstrates only leads to more “Indigenous dependency” and “uneven and combined development” (the latter concept she adopts from, of all discredited people, Leon Trotsky!) She convincingly describes and criticizes what she calls “neotribal rentierism, a process whereby lawyers and consultants working for Indigenous groups, (“neotribes”), use legal arguments to extract transfers from government.” The Haida Nation case is the most spectacularly successful and devastating (to the Canadian economy) example of this, wherein the Supreme Court invented out of legal thin air the duty to “consult and accommodate” any and all Indigenous groups who assert claims that their hunting and fishing rights are even remotely affected by any planned resource project in Canada. In my view this has created a shakedown industry resulting in de facto bribery payments having to be made by governments and project proponents, (which I characterize as “danegeld” in my book There Is No Difference.) Professor Widdowson rather too-dryly calls these civically-unhealthy, circumstantially-compelled provisions of cash and/or other benefits to Indigenous groups “government transfers.” But they’re more than that. Haida Nation has forced millions of dollars of such coerced “transfers” to be made by the private sector to Indigenous groups as well.
Professor Widdowson’s research is deep and her references extensive and invaluable. For these reasons alone her book is essential and worthwhile reading. Separate But Unequal has the same basic outlook and themes as my book, There Is No Difference, and covers much and more of the same general subject matter, and in much more weighty, professional and traditionally academic fashion. In fact so academic that it seems clear that her intended audience was not the general public, but rather other academics and policy makers. This is unfortunate because it is the general public, including “rank and file” Indigenous Canadians, that would benefit from reading this book far more than members of these other already-insider specialized groups, some members of which are part of the very Aboriginal Industry she decries.
Also unfortunately, while she accurately describes the destructive irrationality and intellectual fraud permeating the entire status quo in this crucial area of Canadian life, she suggests no real, practical solutions for remedying the tragic and dysfunctional situation of our Indigenous peoples, other than the lunchbag-letdown solution of “research that openly and honestly investigates the causes of Indigenous dependency and social dysfunction.” And making the “developmental leap” to bridge the gap between hunter-gatherer Indigenous culture and non-Indigenous high technology culture she asserts “will require “careful thought and a great deal of sensitivity; it is even possible that the process will take a number of generations.”
But her book is a masterwork of research! I say enough “research!” Her book says it all! Our Indigenous peoples do not need more kick-the-ball-down-the-road “research” and/or “careful thought.” They need concrete, foundational reforms- now. And Canadians, especially Indigenous Canadians, can’t wait “a number of generations”! Indigenous children, while we read this, are killing themselves in ever-increasing numbers and neglected babies are crying in the night! Writer Octavio Paz wrote that “an infinitely remote end is just a perpetual prison for the present.” Our Indigenous peoples need to get out of their “parallelist” prisons, which Professor Widdowson so well describes, comprised of the reserves, the Indian Act, the Indian Industry and all the rest of our quasi-apartheid status quo. They need a cure now from what writer Gordon Gibson described as “the sickness” of those reserves. But sadly for the vast majority of powerless, marginalized, desperate, and endangered Indigenous Canadians, the brilliant, very well-intentioned but too-cautious, too detached Professor Widdowson fails to offer one.
Peter Best, December 5th, 2019
———————————————————————————————————————-
9. Book Review of Harold R. Johnson’s Peace and Good Order- The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada
Peace and Good Order-The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, (McLelland & Stewart, 2019) by Cree author Harold R. Johnson, is another example of a talented, accomplished and fully integrated Indigenous writer, with close and personal experience of the ongoing tragic social failure and dysfunction happening on Indian reserves- and with close and personal experience, because of his background as a criminal lawyer, of the inability of Canada’s justice system to cope with it- of refusing or neglecting to state the obvious root cause of this failure, dysfunction and inability-the existence of the reserves themselves. Instead, he solely blames non-Indigenous Canadians, past and present, for it. Despite the book’s impressive recitation of the well-known and dismal facts and statistics regarding this failure and dysfunction and our courts’ inability to deal with it, the book boils down at the end to useless, largely unjustified and backward-looking finger-pointing, (with a disturbing amount of “anti-white” racist rhetoric being used-see below), at the “settler” peoples and institutions (that made the author’s own life a success such that he could write this and other books) and the advocating of a solution that is fundamentally flawed, impractical and unworkable-utopian even- the transfer of all aspects of criminal law jurisdiction over Indigenous peoples to the Aboriginal “nations”. This would include writing the laws, enforcing them by Indigenous police, prosecutors and courts right through to sentencing, and post-sentencing supervision and control, with funding provided for all of this by non-Indigenous Canadian taxpayers.
Instead of advocating the phasing out of the reserves, and generally, ending the “separate but equal” quasi-apartheid status quo we are burdened with in Canada, the root cause of Indigenous social failure and dysfunction- the root cause of Indigenous over-representation in the justice and penal system- and the only honest, competent and workable remedy for the tragic ills besetting our Indigenous peoples , Mr. Johnson proposes a merely “Titanic deck chairs” solution. He proposes that we create a separate criminal justice system run by Aboriginals and for Aboriginals only.
Mr. Johnson claims that the wording of Treaty 6, the treaty whereby his Cree ancestors, as well as the Saulteaux, Assiniboine and Chippewayan tribes, “ceded and surrendered” to Canada all their “rights, titles and privileges” to their lands, (comprising the bulk of present-day Saskatchewan and Alberta)- in particular, wording that says that the Indians “will maintain peace and good order” amongst themselves and “between themselves and others of Her Majesty’s subjects, whether Indians or whites”- only means that they promised to obey their own laws in existence at the time, or made in the future by the Indian treaty-signers. He asserts that this treaty wording means that Indians, because the treaty was allegedly about “sharing” the land, not surrendering it, (a novel, Indian Industry argument du jour- given legitimacy by the Ontario Restoule decision, as described in my book There Is No Difference), retained criminal law jurisdiction over themselves, and following this, that jurisdiction over the criminal law as it pertains to Indigenous persons be returned, as of alleged right, to the descendants of the Treaty 6 signers.
It’s a really specious argument. And it’s no solution to the tragic on-reserve problems he so well describes. It’s only something that, even if were practically possible, (which it is not), would be the equivalent of putting the proverbial lipstick on the proverbial pig.
It ignores almost 150 years of history, where no one has ever interpreted the treaty this way-until he does now. How people behave in relation to agreements is good evidence of what they think the agreement in question means. Treaty 6 Indians have never argued that they were not bound by Her Majesty’s laws and legal procedures, until Mr. Johnson comes up with this argument in this book.
They have always submitted, without objection, to Canada’s criminal laws and procedures, indeed, just as Treaty 6 clearly specifies.
The “peace and good order” wording, boiled down, as it has always been understood, clearly just means that the Indian treaty signers were promising to Canada to legally behave themselves-to follow Canada’s laws in the sense that all subjects of any government must follow and obey that government’s laws.
Mr. Johnson ignores the unambiguous promise by the Indian Treaty 6 signers, located in the treaty before the “peace and good order” wording, “to conduct and behave themselves as good and loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.”
He ignores their promise “that they will in all respects obey and abide by the law,” (clearly referring to the law of Canada.)
He ignores their promise that “they will aid and assist the officers of Her Majesty in bringing to justice and punishment any Indian offending against the stipulations of this treaty, or infringing the laws in force in the country so ceded.” This is a patent declaration of general submission to Canada’s laws and legal procedures.
On a practical level, the viability of the solution Mr. Johnson proposes is completely belied by his own facts.
He argues that an Indigenous justice system would concentrate on the “redemption” of the Indigenous offender, by him acknowledging his wrongdoing, returning to his community (rather than being incarcerated, which he falsely states, along with deterrence, are the main focusses of the “white man’s” justice system), and then somehow being “healed” by all this and then successfully becoming re-integrated into his community, a better man or woman for the whole experience.
But return to what kind of community? How could these reserve communities possibly perform the healing functions Mr. Johnson imagines, when they are, as he himself says, “traumatized”? Clearly they can’t. The cause of the trauma, can’t be the cure of it.
The first three-quarters of Mr. Johnson’s book is a harrowing and depressing description of the terrible physical, social and psychological conditions of the typical reserve where these over-represented (in the justice system) Indigenous offenders come from.
He describes the “clan justice” system typical of many reserves, where clan and family ties and the risk of clan and family retribution influence the reporting of crime, law enforcement and legal outcomes.
He describes the reserve RCMP themselves, developing mental health issues because of what they see happening on their reserves, which they are essentially helpless to control or prevent.
His descriptions of the constant and excessive consumption of alcohol, horrific sexual assaults, (many against children and many related to alcohol), drugs, “extreme violence” and child neglect, (also closely related to alcohol), school dropout rates, sense of hopelessness, PTSD and other severe mental health issues existing on the reserves, is searing and heartbreaking. Indeed, in a previous book written by him, Firewater, Mr. Johnson states that the death of about half of all Treaty Six residents is due to alcohol! (See The Untold Story of Indigenous Child Neglect and Alcohol Abuse- The Firewater Complex, by former Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Brian Giesbrecht, (who personally witnessed during his career much of what he writes about), under Commentary, on this website.
He describes the populations of these reserves, as stated above, as “traumatized.”
So how could returning Indigenous offenders to these seriously damaged, “traumatized” communities ever reasonably expect to result in “redemption” or “forgiveness” or “healing”?
Even Mr. Johnson admits that “When we have a traumatized and inflated police force interacting with a traumatized population we should not expect good results.” Further, he writes: “Justice has nothing to offer such a community.”
As I said, his “solution” is completely inconsistent with these horrible and immutable facts and conclusions he lays out as the basis of his argument.
There are many other reasons why his “solution” is impractical and unworkable. Treaty 6 would have to be re-negotiated and reworded. The Canadian Constitution itself would likely have to be changed. The Criminal Code would have to be drastically amended. There would be federal-provincial issues to deal with. Legal issues involving Indigenous persons committing offences off the reserve would be numerous and virtually unsolvable. The jurisdictional wrangling between the two criminal law jurisdictions would be endless and costly. Only the lawyers would benefit. It’s not ever going to happen.
As a bit of an aside, I have a bone to pick with Mr. Johnson, a former lawyer, regarding his casual use of language seemingly approving the possibility of vigilante-style, Indigenous violence against “whites” if the current situation isn’t remedied to his satisfaction. He describes, seemingly approvingly, Indigenous street gangs in Saskatchewan who were, after the Colton Boushie verdict, “armed and prepared to start shooting. All they needed was someone to give them the okay. Our leadership told them to stand down.” (!) Even if that were true, which I’m sure it’s not, it’s reckless, irresponsible and violence-approving language, completely inappropriate for any responsible person, especially a lawyer-an officer of the Court- to engage in. (Mr. Johnson may be a retired lawyer, but once a lawyer always a lawyer.)
He writes that “Saskatchewan is prepared to go to war with its Indigenous peoples.” What a crock!
He threatens, at the end of the book: “We will start taking out our frustrations on the colonizer. At some point we will stop killing ourselves and our relatives and begin killing the oppressor.” (!) How breathtakingly reckless, dangerous, irresponsible and juvenile! This sounds like Donald Trump suggesting violence against Hilary Clinton!
And the final irony of this so-called “righteously angry” book, which speaks in such “clear and present danger” terms in regards to the tragic and wrongful situation of Indigenous persons in our criminal justice system, and in life generally, and despite his main recommendation that Indigenous people have their own justice system, he pivots from this and offers another secondary, more practical solution. He recommends more research and study of the situation! Like a fireman, standing in front of a raging house fire with people inside the house, deciding not to immediately put a hose to the fire and rescue them, but rather to go back to the fire station and read up on the principles of heat combustion. He recommends analyzing the recidivism rates of probation officers’ clients, the recidivism outcomes of individual prosecutors, defence counsel and judges, whether some jails and parole boards have better outcomes than others. “Once we have the information and analyzed it, we would have a better idea what works and what doesn’t. If we revised laws and changed policies based upon measured outcomes, we might improve those outcomes.”
So which is it, a separate Indigenous justice system or more endless “kick the ball down the road” studies, surveys and “analysis”? Mr. Johnson doesn’t seem to be able to decide. In any event, whichever option he chooses, poor, vulnerable, lost, marginalized, powerless Indigenous persons will, while all this endless Indian Industry job-creating “analysis” is going on in the big cities, continue to suffer. As I wrote in There Is No Difference and in the Widdowson book review above, quoting Octavio Paz, asking suffering people to wait for the happening of an infinitely remote end is to condemn them to the perpetual prison of the present. Our suffering Indigenous peoples desperately need foundational reforms and change now!
The only solution to better this situation, the only way for Indigenous peoples to escape the “perpetual prison of the present”, for the reasons I argue in my book, There Is No Difference, is to eliminate the laws supporting our Indigenous quasi-apartheid status quo, then phase out the reserves, and by that means help Indigenous peoples complete the already-started process of integrating into general Canadian, urban-oriented society on the basis of everybody being equal under the law.
Peter Best- December 15, 2019
In 2008 Mount Royal College Professor Frances Widdowson and her husband Albert Howard published Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry-The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation, an excellent and, given the politically correct times in which we live, very brave book. Disrobing, in unanswerable fashion, exposed the intellectual frauds underpinning the quasi-apartheid status quo maintained and promulgated by what she calls “the Aboriginal Industry.”
Professor Widdowson has now published a very good follow up book, Separate But Unequal-How Parallelist Ideology Conceals Indigenous Dependency, (University of Ottawa Press, 2019), in which she expands on the themes of Disrobing. She fully describes and strongly criticizes academic, social, economic, historical and cultural “parallelist ideology”, the idea of “Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities “travelling side by side” in these spheres, “coexisting but not getting in each other’s way”- a purportedly positive variation of the negative and oppressive (toward-Blacks) “separate but equal” social and economic reality extant for decades in America- which ideology she clearly demonstrates only leads to more “Indigenous dependency” and “uneven and combined development” (the latter concept she adopts from, of all discredited people, Leon Trotsky!) She convincingly describes and criticizes what she calls “neotribal rentierism, a process whereby lawyers and consultants working for Indigenous groups, (“neotribes”), use legal arguments to extract transfers from government.” The Haida Nation case is the most spectacularly successful and devastating (to the Canadian economy) example of this, wherein the Supreme Court invented out of legal thin air the duty to “consult and accommodate” any and all Indigenous groups who assert claims that their hunting and fishing rights are even remotely affected by any planned resource project in Canada. In my view this has created a shakedown industry resulting in de facto bribery payments having to be made by governments and project proponents, (which I characterize as “danegeld” in my book There Is No Difference.) Professor Widdowson rather too-dryly calls these civically-unhealthy, circumstantially-compelled provisions of cash and/or other benefits to Indigenous groups “government transfers.” But they’re more than that. Haida Nation has forced millions of dollars of such coerced “transfers” to be made by the private sector to Indigenous groups as well.
Professor Widdowson’s research is deep and her references extensive and invaluable. For these reasons alone her book is essential and worthwhile reading. Separate But Unequal has the same basic outlook and themes as my book, There Is No Difference, and covers much and more of the same general subject matter, and in much more weighty, professional and traditionally academic fashion. In fact so academic that it seems clear that her intended audience was not the general public, but rather other academics and policy makers. This is unfortunate because it is the general public, including “rank and file” Indigenous Canadians, that would benefit from reading this book far more than members of these other already-insider specialized groups, some members of which are part of the very Aboriginal Industry she decries.
Also unfortunately, while she accurately describes the destructive irrationality and intellectual fraud permeating the entire status quo in this crucial area of Canadian life, she suggests no real, practical solutions for remedying the tragic and dysfunctional situation of our Indigenous peoples, other than the lunchbag-letdown solution of “research that openly and honestly investigates the causes of Indigenous dependency and social dysfunction.” And making the “developmental leap” to bridge the gap between hunter-gatherer Indigenous culture and non-Indigenous high technology culture she asserts “will require “careful thought and a great deal of sensitivity; it is even possible that the process will take a number of generations.”
But her book is a masterwork of research! I say enough “research!” Her book says it all! Our Indigenous peoples do not need more kick-the-ball-down-the-road “research” and/or “careful thought.” They need concrete, foundational reforms- now. And Canadians, especially Indigenous Canadians, can’t wait “a number of generations”! Indigenous children, while we read this, are killing themselves in ever-increasing numbers and neglected babies are crying in the night! Writer Octavio Paz wrote that “an infinitely remote end is just a perpetual prison for the present.” Our Indigenous peoples need to get out of their “parallelist” prisons, which Professor Widdowson so well describes, comprised of the reserves, the Indian Act, the Indian Industry and all the rest of our quasi-apartheid status quo. They need a cure now from what writer Gordon Gibson described as “the sickness” of those reserves. But sadly for the vast majority of powerless, marginalized, desperate, and endangered Indigenous Canadians, the brilliant, very well-intentioned but too-cautious, too detached Professor Widdowson fails to offer one.
Peter Best, December 5th, 2019
———————————————————————————————————————-
9. Book Review of Harold R. Johnson’s Peace and Good Order- The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada
Peace and Good Order-The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, (McLelland & Stewart, 2019) by Cree author Harold R. Johnson, is another example of a talented, accomplished and fully integrated Indigenous writer, with close and personal experience of the ongoing tragic social failure and dysfunction happening on Indian reserves- and with close and personal experience, because of his background as a criminal lawyer, of the inability of Canada’s justice system to cope with it- of refusing or neglecting to state the obvious root cause of this failure, dysfunction and inability-the existence of the reserves themselves. Instead, he solely blames non-Indigenous Canadians, past and present, for it. Despite the book’s impressive recitation of the well-known and dismal facts and statistics regarding this failure and dysfunction and our courts’ inability to deal with it, the book boils down at the end to useless, largely unjustified and backward-looking finger-pointing, (with a disturbing amount of “anti-white” racist rhetoric being used-see below), at the “settler” peoples and institutions (that made the author’s own life a success such that he could write this and other books) and the advocating of a solution that is fundamentally flawed, impractical and unworkable-utopian even- the transfer of all aspects of criminal law jurisdiction over Indigenous peoples to the Aboriginal “nations”. This would include writing the laws, enforcing them by Indigenous police, prosecutors and courts right through to sentencing, and post-sentencing supervision and control, with funding provided for all of this by non-Indigenous Canadian taxpayers.
Instead of advocating the phasing out of the reserves, and generally, ending the “separate but equal” quasi-apartheid status quo we are burdened with in Canada, the root cause of Indigenous social failure and dysfunction- the root cause of Indigenous over-representation in the justice and penal system- and the only honest, competent and workable remedy for the tragic ills besetting our Indigenous peoples , Mr. Johnson proposes a merely “Titanic deck chairs” solution. He proposes that we create a separate criminal justice system run by Aboriginals and for Aboriginals only.
Mr. Johnson claims that the wording of Treaty 6, the treaty whereby his Cree ancestors, as well as the Saulteaux, Assiniboine and Chippewayan tribes, “ceded and surrendered” to Canada all their “rights, titles and privileges” to their lands, (comprising the bulk of present-day Saskatchewan and Alberta)- in particular, wording that says that the Indians “will maintain peace and good order” amongst themselves and “between themselves and others of Her Majesty’s subjects, whether Indians or whites”- only means that they promised to obey their own laws in existence at the time, or made in the future by the Indian treaty-signers. He asserts that this treaty wording means that Indians, because the treaty was allegedly about “sharing” the land, not surrendering it, (a novel, Indian Industry argument du jour- given legitimacy by the Ontario Restoule decision, as described in my book There Is No Difference), retained criminal law jurisdiction over themselves, and following this, that jurisdiction over the criminal law as it pertains to Indigenous persons be returned, as of alleged right, to the descendants of the Treaty 6 signers.
It’s a really specious argument. And it’s no solution to the tragic on-reserve problems he so well describes. It’s only something that, even if were practically possible, (which it is not), would be the equivalent of putting the proverbial lipstick on the proverbial pig.
It ignores almost 150 years of history, where no one has ever interpreted the treaty this way-until he does now. How people behave in relation to agreements is good evidence of what they think the agreement in question means. Treaty 6 Indians have never argued that they were not bound by Her Majesty’s laws and legal procedures, until Mr. Johnson comes up with this argument in this book.
They have always submitted, without objection, to Canada’s criminal laws and procedures, indeed, just as Treaty 6 clearly specifies.
The “peace and good order” wording, boiled down, as it has always been understood, clearly just means that the Indian treaty signers were promising to Canada to legally behave themselves-to follow Canada’s laws in the sense that all subjects of any government must follow and obey that government’s laws.
Mr. Johnson ignores the unambiguous promise by the Indian Treaty 6 signers, located in the treaty before the “peace and good order” wording, “to conduct and behave themselves as good and loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.”
He ignores their promise “that they will in all respects obey and abide by the law,” (clearly referring to the law of Canada.)
He ignores their promise that “they will aid and assist the officers of Her Majesty in bringing to justice and punishment any Indian offending against the stipulations of this treaty, or infringing the laws in force in the country so ceded.” This is a patent declaration of general submission to Canada’s laws and legal procedures.
On a practical level, the viability of the solution Mr. Johnson proposes is completely belied by his own facts.
He argues that an Indigenous justice system would concentrate on the “redemption” of the Indigenous offender, by him acknowledging his wrongdoing, returning to his community (rather than being incarcerated, which he falsely states, along with deterrence, are the main focusses of the “white man’s” justice system), and then somehow being “healed” by all this and then successfully becoming re-integrated into his community, a better man or woman for the whole experience.
But return to what kind of community? How could these reserve communities possibly perform the healing functions Mr. Johnson imagines, when they are, as he himself says, “traumatized”? Clearly they can’t. The cause of the trauma, can’t be the cure of it.
The first three-quarters of Mr. Johnson’s book is a harrowing and depressing description of the terrible physical, social and psychological conditions of the typical reserve where these over-represented (in the justice system) Indigenous offenders come from.
He describes the “clan justice” system typical of many reserves, where clan and family ties and the risk of clan and family retribution influence the reporting of crime, law enforcement and legal outcomes.
He describes the reserve RCMP themselves, developing mental health issues because of what they see happening on their reserves, which they are essentially helpless to control or prevent.
His descriptions of the constant and excessive consumption of alcohol, horrific sexual assaults, (many against children and many related to alcohol), drugs, “extreme violence” and child neglect, (also closely related to alcohol), school dropout rates, sense of hopelessness, PTSD and other severe mental health issues existing on the reserves, is searing and heartbreaking. Indeed, in a previous book written by him, Firewater, Mr. Johnson states that the death of about half of all Treaty Six residents is due to alcohol! (See The Untold Story of Indigenous Child Neglect and Alcohol Abuse- The Firewater Complex, by former Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Brian Giesbrecht, (who personally witnessed during his career much of what he writes about), under Commentary, on this website.
He describes the populations of these reserves, as stated above, as “traumatized.”
So how could returning Indigenous offenders to these seriously damaged, “traumatized” communities ever reasonably expect to result in “redemption” or “forgiveness” or “healing”?
Even Mr. Johnson admits that “When we have a traumatized and inflated police force interacting with a traumatized population we should not expect good results.” Further, he writes: “Justice has nothing to offer such a community.”
As I said, his “solution” is completely inconsistent with these horrible and immutable facts and conclusions he lays out as the basis of his argument.
There are many other reasons why his “solution” is impractical and unworkable. Treaty 6 would have to be re-negotiated and reworded. The Canadian Constitution itself would likely have to be changed. The Criminal Code would have to be drastically amended. There would be federal-provincial issues to deal with. Legal issues involving Indigenous persons committing offences off the reserve would be numerous and virtually unsolvable. The jurisdictional wrangling between the two criminal law jurisdictions would be endless and costly. Only the lawyers would benefit. It’s not ever going to happen.
As a bit of an aside, I have a bone to pick with Mr. Johnson, a former lawyer, regarding his casual use of language seemingly approving the possibility of vigilante-style, Indigenous violence against “whites” if the current situation isn’t remedied to his satisfaction. He describes, seemingly approvingly, Indigenous street gangs in Saskatchewan who were, after the Colton Boushie verdict, “armed and prepared to start shooting. All they needed was someone to give them the okay. Our leadership told them to stand down.” (!) Even if that were true, which I’m sure it’s not, it’s reckless, irresponsible and violence-approving language, completely inappropriate for any responsible person, especially a lawyer-an officer of the Court- to engage in. (Mr. Johnson may be a retired lawyer, but once a lawyer always a lawyer.)
He writes that “Saskatchewan is prepared to go to war with its Indigenous peoples.” What a crock!
He threatens, at the end of the book: “We will start taking out our frustrations on the colonizer. At some point we will stop killing ourselves and our relatives and begin killing the oppressor.” (!) How breathtakingly reckless, dangerous, irresponsible and juvenile! This sounds like Donald Trump suggesting violence against Hilary Clinton!
And the final irony of this so-called “righteously angry” book, which speaks in such “clear and present danger” terms in regards to the tragic and wrongful situation of Indigenous persons in our criminal justice system, and in life generally, and despite his main recommendation that Indigenous people have their own justice system, he pivots from this and offers another secondary, more practical solution. He recommends more research and study of the situation! Like a fireman, standing in front of a raging house fire with people inside the house, deciding not to immediately put a hose to the fire and rescue them, but rather to go back to the fire station and read up on the principles of heat combustion. He recommends analyzing the recidivism rates of probation officers’ clients, the recidivism outcomes of individual prosecutors, defence counsel and judges, whether some jails and parole boards have better outcomes than others. “Once we have the information and analyzed it, we would have a better idea what works and what doesn’t. If we revised laws and changed policies based upon measured outcomes, we might improve those outcomes.”
So which is it, a separate Indigenous justice system or more endless “kick the ball down the road” studies, surveys and “analysis”? Mr. Johnson doesn’t seem to be able to decide. In any event, whichever option he chooses, poor, vulnerable, lost, marginalized, powerless Indigenous persons will, while all this endless Indian Industry job-creating “analysis” is going on in the big cities, continue to suffer. As I wrote in There Is No Difference and in the Widdowson book review above, quoting Octavio Paz, asking suffering people to wait for the happening of an infinitely remote end is to condemn them to the perpetual prison of the present. Our suffering Indigenous peoples desperately need foundational reforms and change now!
The only solution to better this situation, the only way for Indigenous peoples to escape the “perpetual prison of the present”, for the reasons I argue in my book, There Is No Difference, is to eliminate the laws supporting our Indigenous quasi-apartheid status quo, then phase out the reserves, and by that means help Indigenous peoples complete the already-started process of integrating into general Canadian, urban-oriented society on the basis of everybody being equal under the law.
Peter Best- December 15, 2019
In 2008 Mount Royal College Professor Frances Widdowson and her husband Albert Howard published Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry-The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation, an excellent and, given the politically correct times in which we live, very brave book. Disrobing, in unanswerable fashion, exposed the intellectual frauds underpinning the quasi-apartheid status quo maintained and promulgated by what she calls “the Aboriginal Industry.”
Professor Widdowson has now published a very good follow up book, Separate But Unequal-How Parallelist Ideology Conceals Indigenous Dependency, (University of Ottawa Press, 2019), in which she expands on the themes of Disrobing. She fully describes and strongly criticizes academic, social, economic, historical and cultural “parallelist ideology”, the idea of “Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities “travelling side by side” in these spheres, “coexisting but not getting in each other’s way”- a purportedly positive variation of the negative and oppressive (toward-Blacks) “separate but equal” social and economic reality extant for decades in America- which ideology she clearly demonstrates only leads to more “Indigenous dependency” and “uneven and combined development” (the latter concept she adopts from, of all discredited people, Leon Trotsky!) She convincingly describes and criticizes what she calls “neotribal rentierism, a process whereby lawyers and consultants working for Indigenous groups, (“neotribes”), use legal arguments to extract transfers from government.” The Haida Nation case is the most spectacularly successful and devastating (to the Canadian economy) example of this, wherein the Supreme Court invented out of legal thin air the duty to “consult and accommodate” any and all Indigenous groups who assert claims that their hunting and fishing rights are even remotely affected by any planned resource project in Canada. In my view this has created a shakedown industry resulting in de facto bribery payments having to be made by governments and project proponents, (which I characterize as “danegeld” in my book There Is No Difference.) Professor Widdowson rather too-dryly calls these civically-unhealthy, circumstantially-compelled provisions of cash and/or other benefits to Indigenous groups “government transfers.” But they’re more than that. Haida Nation has forced millions of dollars of such coerced “transfers” to be made by the private sector to Indigenous groups as well.
Professor Widdowson’s research is deep and her references extensive and invaluable. For these reasons alone her book is essential and worthwhile reading. Separate But Unequal has the same basic outlook and themes as my book, There Is No Difference, and covers much and more of the same general subject matter, and in much more weighty, professional and traditionally academic fashion. In fact so academic that it seems clear that her intended audience was not the general public, but rather other academics and policy makers. This is unfortunate because it is the general public, including “rank and file” Indigenous Canadians, that would benefit from reading this book far more than members of these other already-insider specialized groups, some members of which are part of the very Aboriginal Industry she decries.
Also unfortunately, while she accurately describes the destructive irrationality and intellectual fraud permeating the entire status quo in this crucial area of Canadian life, she suggests no real, practical solutions for remedying the tragic and dysfunctional situation of our Indigenous peoples, other than the lunchbag-letdown solution of “research that openly and honestly investigates the causes of Indigenous dependency and social dysfunction.” And making the “developmental leap” to bridge the gap between hunter-gatherer Indigenous culture and non-Indigenous high technology culture she asserts “will require “careful thought and a great deal of sensitivity; it is even possible that the process will take a number of generations.”
But her book is a masterwork of research! I say enough “research!” Her book says it all! Our Indigenous peoples do not need more kick-the-ball-down-the-road “research” and/or “careful thought.” They need concrete, foundational reforms- now. And Canadians, especially Indigenous Canadians, can’t wait “a number of generations”! Indigenous children, while we read this, are killing themselves in ever-increasing numbers and neglected babies are crying in the night! Writer Octavio Paz wrote that “an infinitely remote end is just a perpetual prison for the present.” Our Indigenous peoples need to get out of their “parallelist” prisons, which Professor Widdowson so well describes, comprised of the reserves, the Indian Act, the Indian Industry and all the rest of our quasi-apartheid status quo. They need a cure now from what writer Gordon Gibson described as “the sickness” of those reserves. But sadly for the vast majority of powerless, marginalized, desperate, and endangered Indigenous Canadians, the brilliant, very well-intentioned but too-cautious, too detached Professor Widdowson fails to offer one.
Peter Best, December 5th, 2019
———————————————————————————————————————-
9. Book Review of Harold R. Johnson’s Peace and Good Order- The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada
Peace and Good Order-The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, (McLelland & Stewart, 2019) by Cree author Harold R. Johnson, is another example of a talented, accomplished and fully integrated Indigenous writer, with close and personal experience of the ongoing tragic social failure and dysfunction happening on Indian reserves- and with close and personal experience, because of his background as a criminal lawyer, of the inability of Canada’s justice system to cope with it- of refusing or neglecting to state the obvious root cause of this failure, dysfunction and inability-the existence of the reserves themselves. Instead, he solely blames non-Indigenous Canadians, past and present, for it. Despite the book’s impressive recitation of the well-known and dismal facts and statistics regarding this failure and dysfunction and our courts’ inability to deal with it, the book boils down at the end to useless, largely unjustified and backward-looking finger-pointing, (with a disturbing amount of “anti-white” racist rhetoric being used-see below), at the “settler” peoples and institutions (that made the author’s own life a success such that he could write this and other books) and the advocating of a solution that is fundamentally flawed, impractical and unworkable-utopian even- the transfer of all aspects of criminal law jurisdiction over Indigenous peoples to the Aboriginal “nations”. This would include writing the laws, enforcing them by Indigenous police, prosecutors and courts right through to sentencing, and post-sentencing supervision and control, with funding provided for all of this by non-Indigenous Canadian taxpayers.
Instead of advocating the phasing out of the reserves, and generally, ending the “separate but equal” quasi-apartheid status quo we are burdened with in Canada, the root cause of Indigenous social failure and dysfunction- the root cause of Indigenous over-representation in the justice and penal system- and the only honest, competent and workable remedy for the tragic ills besetting our Indigenous peoples , Mr. Johnson proposes a merely “Titanic deck chairs” solution. He proposes that we create a separate criminal justice system run by Aboriginals and for Aboriginals only.
Mr. Johnson claims that the wording of Treaty 6, the treaty whereby his Cree ancestors, as well as the Saulteaux, Assiniboine and Chippewayan tribes, “ceded and surrendered” to Canada all their “rights, titles and privileges” to their lands, (comprising the bulk of present-day Saskatchewan and Alberta)- in particular, wording that says that the Indians “will maintain peace and good order” amongst themselves and “between themselves and others of Her Majesty’s subjects, whether Indians or whites”- only means that they promised to obey their own laws in existence at the time, or made in the future by the Indian treaty-signers. He asserts that this treaty wording means that Indians, because the treaty was allegedly about “sharing” the land, not surrendering it, (a novel, Indian Industry argument du jour- given legitimacy by the Ontario Restoule decision, as described in my book There Is No Difference), retained criminal law jurisdiction over themselves, and following this, that jurisdiction over the criminal law as it pertains to Indigenous persons be returned, as of alleged right, to the descendants of the Treaty 6 signers.
It’s a really specious argument. And it’s no solution to the tragic on-reserve problems he so well describes. It’s only something that, even if were practically possible, (which it is not), would be the equivalent of putting the proverbial lipstick on the proverbial pig.
It ignores almost 150 years of history, where no one has ever interpreted the treaty this way-until he does now. How people behave in relation to agreements is good evidence of what they think the agreement in question means. Treaty 6 Indians have never argued that they were not bound by Her Majesty’s laws and legal procedures, until Mr. Johnson comes up with this argument in this book.
They have always submitted, without objection, to Canada’s criminal laws and procedures, indeed, just as Treaty 6 clearly specifies.
The “peace and good order” wording, boiled down, as it has always been understood, clearly just means that the Indian treaty signers were promising to Canada to legally behave themselves-to follow Canada’s laws in the sense that all subjects of any government must follow and obey that government’s laws.
Mr. Johnson ignores the unambiguous promise by the Indian Treaty 6 signers, located in the treaty before the “peace and good order” wording, “to conduct and behave themselves as good and loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.”
He ignores their promise “that they will in all respects obey and abide by the law,” (clearly referring to the law of Canada.)
He ignores their promise that “they will aid and assist the officers of Her Majesty in bringing to justice and punishment any Indian offending against the stipulations of this treaty, or infringing the laws in force in the country so ceded.” This is a patent declaration of general submission to Canada’s laws and legal procedures.
On a practical level, the viability of the solution Mr. Johnson proposes is completely belied by his own facts.
He argues that an Indigenous justice system would concentrate on the “redemption” of the Indigenous offender, by him acknowledging his wrongdoing, returning to his community (rather than being incarcerated, which he falsely states, along with deterrence, are the main focusses of the “white man’s” justice system), and then somehow being “healed” by all this and then successfully becoming re-integrated into his community, a better man or woman for the whole experience.
But return to what kind of community? How could these reserve communities possibly perform the healing functions Mr. Johnson imagines, when they are, as he himself says, “traumatized”? Clearly they can’t. The cause of the trauma, can’t be the cure of it.
The first three-quarters of Mr. Johnson’s book is a harrowing and depressing description of the terrible physical, social and psychological conditions of the typical reserve where these over-represented (in the justice system) Indigenous offenders come from.
He describes the “clan justice” system typical of many reserves, where clan and family ties and the risk of clan and family retribution influence the reporting of crime, law enforcement and legal outcomes.
He describes the reserve RCMP themselves, developing mental health issues because of what they see happening on their reserves, which they are essentially helpless to control or prevent.
His descriptions of the constant and excessive consumption of alcohol, horrific sexual assaults, (many against children and many related to alcohol), drugs, “extreme violence” and child neglect, (also closely related to alcohol), school dropout rates, sense of hopelessness, PTSD and other severe mental health issues existing on the reserves, is searing and heartbreaking. Indeed, in a previous book written by him, Firewater, Mr. Johnson states that the death of about half of all Treaty Six residents is due to alcohol! (See The Untold Story of Indigenous Child Neglect and Alcohol Abuse- The Firewater Complex, by former Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Brian Giesbrecht, (who personally witnessed during his career much of what he writes about), under Commentary, on this website.
He describes the populations of these reserves, as stated above, as “traumatized.”
So how could returning Indigenous offenders to these seriously damaged, “traumatized” communities ever reasonably expect to result in “redemption” or “forgiveness” or “healing”?
Even Mr. Johnson admits that “When we have a traumatized and inflated police force interacting with a traumatized population we should not expect good results.” Further, he writes: “Justice has nothing to offer such a community.”
As I said, his “solution” is completely inconsistent with these horrible and immutable facts and conclusions he lays out as the basis of his argument.
There are many other reasons why his “solution” is impractical and unworkable. Treaty 6 would have to be re-negotiated and reworded. The Canadian Constitution itself would likely have to be changed. The Criminal Code would have to be drastically amended. There would be federal-provincial issues to deal with. Legal issues involving Indigenous persons committing offences off the reserve would be numerous and virtually unsolvable. The jurisdictional wrangling between the two criminal law jurisdictions would be endless and costly. Only the lawyers would benefit. It’s not ever going to happen.
As a bit of an aside, I have a bone to pick with Mr. Johnson, a former lawyer, regarding his casual use of language seemingly approving the possibility of vigilante-style, Indigenous violence against “whites” if the current situation isn’t remedied to his satisfaction. He describes, seemingly approvingly, Indigenous street gangs in Saskatchewan who were, after the Colton Boushie verdict, “armed and prepared to start shooting. All they needed was someone to give them the okay. Our leadership told them to stand down.” (!) Even if that were true, which I’m sure it’s not, it’s reckless, irresponsible and violence-approving language, completely inappropriate for any responsible person, especially a lawyer-an officer of the Court- to engage in. (Mr. Johnson may be a retired lawyer, but once a lawyer always a lawyer.)
He writes that “Saskatchewan is prepared to go to war with its Indigenous peoples.” What a crock!
He threatens, at the end of the book: “We will start taking out our frustrations on the colonizer. At some point we will stop killing ourselves and our relatives and begin killing the oppressor.” (!) How breathtakingly reckless, dangerous, irresponsible and juvenile! This sounds like Donald Trump suggesting violence against Hilary Clinton!
And the final irony of this so-called “righteously angry” book, which speaks in such “clear and present danger” terms in regards to the tragic and wrongful situation of Indigenous persons in our criminal justice system, and in life generally, and despite his main recommendation that Indigenous people have their own justice system, he pivots from this and offers another secondary, more practical solution. He recommends more research and study of the situation! Like a fireman, standing in front of a raging house fire with people inside the house, deciding not to immediately put a hose to the fire and rescue them, but rather to go back to the fire station and read up on the principles of heat combustion. He recommends analyzing the recidivism rates of probation officers’ clients, the recidivism outcomes of individual prosecutors, defence counsel and judges, whether some jails and parole boards have better outcomes than others. “Once we have the information and analyzed it, we would have a better idea what works and what doesn’t. If we revised laws and changed policies based upon measured outcomes, we might improve those outcomes.”
So which is it, a separate Indigenous justice system or more endless “kick the ball down the road” studies, surveys and “analysis”? Mr. Johnson doesn’t seem to be able to decide. In any event, whichever option he chooses, poor, vulnerable, lost, marginalized, powerless Indigenous persons will, while all this endless Indian Industry job-creating “analysis” is going on in the big cities, continue to suffer. As I wrote in There Is No Difference and in the Widdowson book review above, quoting Octavio Paz, asking suffering people to wait for the happening of an infinitely remote end is to condemn them to the perpetual prison of the present. Our suffering Indigenous peoples desperately need foundational reforms and change now!
The only solution to better this situation, the only way for Indigenous peoples to escape the “perpetual prison of the present”, for the reasons I argue in my book, There Is No Difference, is to eliminate the laws supporting our Indigenous quasi-apartheid status quo, then phase out the reserves, and by that means help Indigenous peoples complete the already-started process of integrating into general Canadian, urban-oriented society on the basis of everybody being equal under the law.
Peter Best- December 15, 2019
In 2008 Mount Royal College Professor Frances Widdowson and her husband Albert Howard published Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry-The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation, an excellent and, given the politically correct times in which we live, very brave book. Disrobing, in unanswerable fashion, exposed the intellectual frauds underpinning the quasi-apartheid status quo maintained and promulgated by what she calls “the Aboriginal Industry.”
Professor Widdowson has now published a very good follow up book, Separate But Unequal-How Parallelist Ideology Conceals Indigenous Dependency, (University of Ottawa Press, 2019), in which she expands on the themes of Disrobing. She fully describes and strongly criticizes academic, social, economic, historical and cultural “parallelist ideology”, the idea of “Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities “travelling side by side” in these spheres, “coexisting but not getting in each other’s way”- a purportedly positive variation of the negative and oppressive (toward-Blacks) “separate but equal” social and economic reality extant for decades in America- which ideology she clearly demonstrates only leads to more “Indigenous dependency” and “uneven and combined development” (the latter concept she adopts from, of all discredited people, Leon Trotsky!) She convincingly describes and criticizes what she calls “neotribal rentierism, a process whereby lawyers and consultants working for Indigenous groups, (“neotribes”), use legal arguments to extract transfers from government.” The Haida Nation case is the most spectacularly successful and devastating (to the Canadian economy) example of this, wherein the Supreme Court invented out of legal thin air the duty to “consult and accommodate” any and all Indigenous groups who assert claims that their hunting and fishing rights are even remotely affected by any planned resource project in Canada. In my view this has created a shakedown industry resulting in de facto bribery payments having to be made by governments and project proponents, (which I characterize as “danegeld” in my book There Is No Difference.) Professor Widdowson rather too-dryly calls these civically-unhealthy, circumstantially-compelled provisions of cash and/or other benefits to Indigenous groups “government transfers.” But they’re more than that. Haida Nation has forced millions of dollars of such coerced “transfers” to be made by the private sector to Indigenous groups as well.
Professor Widdowson’s research is deep and her references extensive and invaluable. For these reasons alone her book is essential and worthwhile reading. Separate But Unequal has the same basic outlook and themes as my book, There Is No Difference, and covers much and more of the same general subject matter, and in much more weighty, professional and traditionally academic fashion. In fact so academic that it seems clear that her intended audience was not the general public, but rather other academics and policy makers. This is unfortunate because it is the general public, including “rank and file” Indigenous Canadians, that would benefit from reading this book far more than members of these other already-insider specialized groups, some members of which are part of the very Aboriginal Industry she decries.
Also unfortunately, while she accurately describes the destructive irrationality and intellectual fraud permeating the entire status quo in this crucial area of Canadian life, she suggests no real, practical solutions for remedying the tragic and dysfunctional situation of our Indigenous peoples, other than the lunchbag-letdown solution of “research that openly and honestly investigates the causes of Indigenous dependency and social dysfunction.” And making the “developmental leap” to bridge the gap between hunter-gatherer Indigenous culture and non-Indigenous high technology culture she asserts “will require “careful thought and a great deal of sensitivity; it is even possible that the process will take a number of generations.”
But her book is a masterwork of research! I say enough “research!” Her book says it all! Our Indigenous peoples do not need more kick-the-ball-down-the-road “research” and/or “careful thought.” They need concrete, foundational reforms- now. And Canadians, especially Indigenous Canadians, can’t wait “a number of generations”! Indigenous children, while we read this, are killing themselves in ever-increasing numbers and neglected babies are crying in the night! Writer Octavio Paz wrote that “an infinitely remote end is just a perpetual prison for the present.” Our Indigenous peoples need to get out of their “parallelist” prisons, which Professor Widdowson so well describes, comprised of the reserves, the Indian Act, the Indian Industry and all the rest of our quasi-apartheid status quo. They need a cure now from what writer Gordon Gibson described as “the sickness” of those reserves. But sadly for the vast majority of powerless, marginalized, desperate, and endangered Indigenous Canadians, the brilliant, very well-intentioned but too-cautious, too detached Professor Widdowson fails to offer one.
Peter Best, December 5th, 2019
———————————————————————————————————————-
9. Book Review of Harold R. Johnson’s Peace and Good Order- The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada
Peace and Good Order-The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, (McLelland & Stewart, 2019) by Cree author Harold R. Johnson, is another example of a talented, accomplished and fully integrated Indigenous writer, with close and personal experience of the ongoing tragic social failure and dysfunction happening on Indian reserves- and with close and personal experience, because of his background as a criminal lawyer, of the inability of Canada’s justice system to cope with it- of refusing or neglecting to state the obvious root cause of this failure, dysfunction and inability-the existence of the reserves themselves. Instead, he solely blames non-Indigenous Canadians, past and present, for it. Despite the book’s impressive recitation of the well-known and dismal facts and statistics regarding this failure and dysfunction and our courts’ inability to deal with it, the book boils down at the end to useless, largely unjustified and backward-looking finger-pointing, (with a disturbing amount of “anti-white” racist rhetoric being used-see below), at the “settler” peoples and institutions (that made the author’s own life a success such that he could write this and other books) and the advocating of a solution that is fundamentally flawed, impractical and unworkable-utopian even- the transfer of all aspects of criminal law jurisdiction over Indigenous peoples to the Aboriginal “nations”. This would include writing the laws, enforcing them by Indigenous police, prosecutors and courts right through to sentencing, and post-sentencing supervision and control, with funding provided for all of this by non-Indigenous Canadian taxpayers.
Instead of advocating the phasing out of the reserves, and generally, ending the “separate but equal” quasi-apartheid status quo we are burdened with in Canada, the root cause of Indigenous social failure and dysfunction- the root cause of Indigenous over-representation in the justice and penal system- and the only honest, competent and workable remedy for the tragic ills besetting our Indigenous peoples , Mr. Johnson proposes a merely “Titanic deck chairs” solution. He proposes that we create a separate criminal justice system run by Aboriginals and for Aboriginals only.
Mr. Johnson claims that the wording of Treaty 6, the treaty whereby his Cree ancestors, as well as the Saulteaux, Assiniboine and Chippewayan tribes, “ceded and surrendered” to Canada all their “rights, titles and privileges” to their lands, (comprising the bulk of present-day Saskatchewan and Alberta)- in particular, wording that says that the Indians “will maintain peace and good order” amongst themselves and “between themselves and others of Her Majesty’s subjects, whether Indians or whites”- only means that they promised to obey their own laws in existence at the time, or made in the future by the Indian treaty-signers. He asserts that this treaty wording means that Indians, because the treaty was allegedly about “sharing” the land, not surrendering it, (a novel, Indian Industry argument du jour- given legitimacy by the Ontario Restoule decision, as described in my book There Is No Difference), retained criminal law jurisdiction over themselves, and following this, that jurisdiction over the criminal law as it pertains to Indigenous persons be returned, as of alleged right, to the descendants of the Treaty 6 signers.
It’s a really specious argument. And it’s no solution to the tragic on-reserve problems he so well describes. It’s only something that, even if were practically possible, (which it is not), would be the equivalent of putting the proverbial lipstick on the proverbial pig.
It ignores almost 150 years of history, where no one has ever interpreted the treaty this way-until he does now. How people behave in relation to agreements is good evidence of what they think the agreement in question means. Treaty 6 Indians have never argued that they were not bound by Her Majesty’s laws and legal procedures, until Mr. Johnson comes up with this argument in this book.
They have always submitted, without objection, to Canada’s criminal laws and procedures, indeed, just as Treaty 6 clearly specifies.
The “peace and good order” wording, boiled down, as it has always been understood, clearly just means that the Indian treaty signers were promising to Canada to legally behave themselves-to follow Canada’s laws in the sense that all subjects of any government must follow and obey that government’s laws.
Mr. Johnson ignores the unambiguous promise by the Indian Treaty 6 signers, located in the treaty before the “peace and good order” wording, “to conduct and behave themselves as good and loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.”
He ignores their promise “that they will in all respects obey and abide by the law,” (clearly referring to the law of Canada.)
He ignores their promise that “they will aid and assist the officers of Her Majesty in bringing to justice and punishment any Indian offending against the stipulations of this treaty, or infringing the laws in force in the country so ceded.” This is a patent declaration of general submission to Canada’s laws and legal procedures.
On a practical level, the viability of the solution Mr. Johnson proposes is completely belied by his own facts.
He argues that an Indigenous justice system would concentrate on the “redemption” of the Indigenous offender, by him acknowledging his wrongdoing, returning to his community (rather than being incarcerated, which he falsely states, along with deterrence, are the main focusses of the “white man’s” justice system), and then somehow being “healed” by all this and then successfully becoming re-integrated into his community, a better man or woman for the whole experience.
But return to what kind of community? How could these reserve communities possibly perform the healing functions Mr. Johnson imagines, when they are, as he himself says, “traumatized”? Clearly they can’t. The cause of the trauma, can’t be the cure of it.
The first three-quarters of Mr. Johnson’s book is a harrowing and depressing description of the terrible physical, social and psychological conditions of the typical reserve where these over-represented (in the justice system) Indigenous offenders come from.
He describes the “clan justice” system typical of many reserves, where clan and family ties and the risk of clan and family retribution influence the reporting of crime, law enforcement and legal outcomes.
He describes the reserve RCMP themselves, developing mental health issues because of what they see happening on their reserves, which they are essentially helpless to control or prevent.
His descriptions of the constant and excessive consumption of alcohol, horrific sexual assaults, (many against children and many related to alcohol), drugs, “extreme violence” and child neglect, (also closely related to alcohol), school dropout rates, sense of hopelessness, PTSD and other severe mental health issues existing on the reserves, is searing and heartbreaking. Indeed, in a previous book written by him, Firewater, Mr. Johnson states that the death of about half of all Treaty Six residents is due to alcohol! (See The Untold Story of Indigenous Child Neglect and Alcohol Abuse- The Firewater Complex, by former Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Brian Giesbrecht, (who personally witnessed during his career much of what he writes about), under Commentary, on this website.
He describes the populations of these reserves, as stated above, as “traumatized.”
So how could returning Indigenous offenders to these seriously damaged, “traumatized” communities ever reasonably expect to result in “redemption” or “forgiveness” or “healing”?
Even Mr. Johnson admits that “When we have a traumatized and inflated police force interacting with a traumatized population we should not expect good results.” Further, he writes: “Justice has nothing to offer such a community.”
As I said, his “solution” is completely inconsistent with these horrible and immutable facts and conclusions he lays out as the basis of his argument.
There are many other reasons why his “solution” is impractical and unworkable. Treaty 6 would have to be re-negotiated and reworded. The Canadian Constitution itself would likely have to be changed. The Criminal Code would have to be drastically amended. There would be federal-provincial issues to deal with. Legal issues involving Indigenous persons committing offences off the reserve would be numerous and virtually unsolvable. The jurisdictional wrangling between the two criminal law jurisdictions would be endless and costly. Only the lawyers would benefit. It’s not ever going to happen.
As a bit of an aside, I have a bone to pick with Mr. Johnson, a former lawyer, regarding his casual use of language seemingly approving the possibility of vigilante-style, Indigenous violence against “whites” if the current situation isn’t remedied to his satisfaction. He describes, seemingly approvingly, Indigenous street gangs in Saskatchewan who were, after the Colton Boushie verdict, “armed and prepared to start shooting. All they needed was someone to give them the okay. Our leadership told them to stand down.” (!) Even if that were true, which I’m sure it’s not, it’s reckless, irresponsible and violence-approving language, completely inappropriate for any responsible person, especially a lawyer-an officer of the Court- to engage in. (Mr. Johnson may be a retired lawyer, but once a lawyer always a lawyer.)
He writes that “Saskatchewan is prepared to go to war with its Indigenous peoples.” What a crock!
He threatens, at the end of the book: “We will start taking out our frustrations on the colonizer. At some point we will stop killing ourselves and our relatives and begin killing the oppressor.” (!) How breathtakingly reckless, dangerous, irresponsible and juvenile! This sounds like Donald Trump suggesting violence against Hilary Clinton!
And the final irony of this so-called “righteously angry” book, which speaks in such “clear and present danger” terms in regards to the tragic and wrongful situation of Indigenous persons in our criminal justice system, and in life generally, and despite his main recommendation that Indigenous people have their own justice system, he pivots from this and offers another secondary, more practical solution. He recommends more research and study of the situation! Like a fireman, standing in front of a raging house fire with people inside the house, deciding not to immediately put a hose to the fire and rescue them, but rather to go back to the fire station and read up on the principles of heat combustion. He recommends analyzing the recidivism rates of probation officers’ clients, the recidivism outcomes of individual prosecutors, defence counsel and judges, whether some jails and parole boards have better outcomes than others. “Once we have the information and analyzed it, we would have a better idea what works and what doesn’t. If we revised laws and changed policies based upon measured outcomes, we might improve those outcomes.”
So which is it, a separate Indigenous justice system or more endless “kick the ball down the road” studies, surveys and “analysis”? Mr. Johnson doesn’t seem to be able to decide. In any event, whichever option he chooses, poor, vulnerable, lost, marginalized, powerless Indigenous persons will, while all this endless Indian Industry job-creating “analysis” is going on in the big cities, continue to suffer. As I wrote in There Is No Difference and in the Widdowson book review above, quoting Octavio Paz, asking suffering people to wait for the happening of an infinitely remote end is to condemn them to the perpetual prison of the present. Our suffering Indigenous peoples desperately need foundational reforms and change now!
The only solution to better this situation, the only way for Indigenous peoples to escape the “perpetual prison of the present”, for the reasons I argue in my book, There Is No Difference, is to eliminate the laws supporting our Indigenous quasi-apartheid status quo, then phase out the reserves, and by that means help Indigenous peoples complete the already-started process of integrating into general Canadian, urban-oriented society on the basis of everybody being equal under the law.
Peter Best- December 15, 2019
In 2008 Mount Royal College Professor Frances Widdowson and her husband Albert Howard published Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry-The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation, an excellent and, given the politically correct times in which we live, very brave book. Disrobing, in unanswerable fashion, exposed the intellectual frauds underpinning the quasi-apartheid status quo maintained and promulgated by what she calls “the Aboriginal Industry.”
Professor Widdowson has now published a very good follow up book, Separate But Unequal-How Parallelist Ideology Conceals Indigenous Dependency, (University of Ottawa Press, 2019), in which she expands on the themes of Disrobing. She fully describes and strongly criticizes academic, social, economic, historical and cultural “parallelist ideology”, the idea of “Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities “travelling side by side” in these spheres, “coexisting but not getting in each other’s way”- a purportedly positive variation of the negative and oppressive (toward-Blacks) “separate but equal” social and economic reality extant for decades in America- which ideology she clearly demonstrates only leads to more “Indigenous dependency” and “uneven and combined development” (the latter concept she adopts from, of all discredited people, Leon Trotsky!) She convincingly describes and criticizes what she calls “neotribal rentierism, a process whereby lawyers and consultants working for Indigenous groups, (“neotribes”), use legal arguments to extract transfers from government.” The Haida Nation case is the most spectacularly successful and devastating (to the Canadian economy) example of this, wherein the Supreme Court invented out of legal thin air the duty to “consult and accommodate” any and all Indigenous groups who assert claims that their hunting and fishing rights are even remotely affected by any planned resource project in Canada. In my view this has created a shakedown industry resulting in de facto bribery payments having to be made by governments and project proponents, (which I characterize as “danegeld” in my book There Is No Difference.) Professor Widdowson rather too-dryly calls these civically-unhealthy, circumstantially-compelled provisions of cash and/or other benefits to Indigenous groups “government transfers.” But they’re more than that. Haida Nation has forced millions of dollars of such coerced “transfers” to be made by the private sector to Indigenous groups as well.
Professor Widdowson’s research is deep and her references extensive and invaluable. For these reasons alone her book is essential and worthwhile reading. Separate But Unequal has the same basic outlook and themes as my book, There Is No Difference, and covers much and more of the same general subject matter, and in much more weighty, professional and traditionally academic fashion. In fact so academic that it seems clear that her intended audience was not the general public, but rather other academics and policy makers. This is unfortunate because it is the general public, including “rank and file” Indigenous Canadians, that would benefit from reading this book far more than members of these other already-insider specialized groups, some members of which are part of the very Aboriginal Industry she decries.
Also unfortunately, while she accurately describes the destructive irrationality and intellectual fraud permeating the entire status quo in this crucial area of Canadian life, she suggests no real, practical solutions for remedying the tragic and dysfunctional situation of our Indigenous peoples, other than the lunchbag-letdown solution of “research that openly and honestly investigates the causes of Indigenous dependency and social dysfunction.” And making the “developmental leap” to bridge the gap between hunter-gatherer Indigenous culture and non-Indigenous high technology culture she asserts “will require “careful thought and a great deal of sensitivity; it is even possible that the process will take a number of generations.”
But her book is a masterwork of research! I say enough “research!” Her book says it all! Our Indigenous peoples do not need more kick-the-ball-down-the-road “research” and/or “careful thought.” They need concrete, foundational reforms- now. And Canadians, especially Indigenous Canadians, can’t wait “a number of generations”! Indigenous children, while we read this, are killing themselves in ever-increasing numbers and neglected babies are crying in the night! Writer Octavio Paz wrote that “an infinitely remote end is just a perpetual prison for the present.” Our Indigenous peoples need to get out of their “parallelist” prisons, which Professor Widdowson so well describes, comprised of the reserves, the Indian Act, the Indian Industry and all the rest of our quasi-apartheid status quo. They need a cure now from what writer Gordon Gibson described as “the sickness” of those reserves. But sadly for the vast majority of powerless, marginalized, desperate, and endangered Indigenous Canadians, the brilliant, very well-intentioned but too-cautious, too detached Professor Widdowson fails to offer one.
Peter Best, December 5th, 2019
———————————————————————————————————————-
9. Book Review of Harold R. Johnson’s Peace and Good Order- The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada
Peace and Good Order-The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, (McLelland & Stewart, 2019) by Cree author Harold R. Johnson, is another example of a talented, accomplished and fully integrated Indigenous writer, with close and personal experience of the ongoing tragic social failure and dysfunction happening on Indian reserves- and with close and personal experience, because of his background as a criminal lawyer, of the inability of Canada’s justice system to cope with it- of refusing or neglecting to state the obvious root cause of this failure, dysfunction and inability-the existence of the reserves themselves. Instead, he solely blames non-Indigenous Canadians, past and present, for it. Despite the book’s impressive recitation of the well-known and dismal facts and statistics regarding this failure and dysfunction and our courts’ inability to deal with it, the book boils down at the end to useless, largely unjustified and backward-looking finger-pointing, (with a disturbing amount of “anti-white” racist rhetoric being used-see below), at the “settler” peoples and institutions (that made the author’s own life a success such that he could write this and other books) and the advocating of a solution that is fundamentally flawed, impractical and unworkable-utopian even- the transfer of all aspects of criminal law jurisdiction over Indigenous peoples to the Aboriginal “nations”. This would include writing the laws, enforcing them by Indigenous police, prosecutors and courts right through to sentencing, and post-sentencing supervision and control, with funding provided for all of this by non-Indigenous Canadian taxpayers.
Instead of advocating the phasing out of the reserves, and generally, ending the “separate but equal” quasi-apartheid status quo we are burdened with in Canada, the root cause of Indigenous social failure and dysfunction- the root cause of Indigenous over-representation in the justice and penal system- and the only honest, competent and workable remedy for the tragic ills besetting our Indigenous peoples , Mr. Johnson proposes a merely “Titanic deck chairs” solution. He proposes that we create a separate criminal justice system run by Aboriginals and for Aboriginals only.
Mr. Johnson claims that the wording of Treaty 6, the treaty whereby his Cree ancestors, as well as the Saulteaux, Assiniboine and Chippewayan tribes, “ceded and surrendered” to Canada all their “rights, titles and privileges” to their lands, (comprising the bulk of present-day Saskatchewan and Alberta)- in particular, wording that says that the Indians “will maintain peace and good order” amongst themselves and “between themselves and others of Her Majesty’s subjects, whether Indians or whites”- only means that they promised to obey their own laws in existence at the time, or made in the future by the Indian treaty-signers. He asserts that this treaty wording means that Indians, because the treaty was allegedly about “sharing” the land, not surrendering it, (a novel, Indian Industry argument du jour- given legitimacy by the Ontario Restoule decision, as described in my book There Is No Difference), retained criminal law jurisdiction over themselves, and following this, that jurisdiction over the criminal law as it pertains to Indigenous persons be returned, as of alleged right, to the descendants of the Treaty 6 signers.
It’s a really specious argument. And it’s no solution to the tragic on-reserve problems he so well describes. It’s only something that, even if were practically possible, (which it is not), would be the equivalent of putting the proverbial lipstick on the proverbial pig.
It ignores almost 150 years of history, where no one has ever interpreted the treaty this way-until he does now. How people behave in relation to agreements is good evidence of what they think the agreement in question means. Treaty 6 Indians have never argued that they were not bound by Her Majesty’s laws and legal procedures, until Mr. Johnson comes up with this argument in this book.
They have always submitted, without objection, to Canada’s criminal laws and procedures, indeed, just as Treaty 6 clearly specifies.
The “peace and good order” wording, boiled down, as it has always been understood, clearly just means that the Indian treaty signers were promising to Canada to legally behave themselves-to follow Canada’s laws in the sense that all subjects of any government must follow and obey that government’s laws.
Mr. Johnson ignores the unambiguous promise by the Indian Treaty 6 signers, located in the treaty before the “peace and good order” wording, “to conduct and behave themselves as good and loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.”
He ignores their promise “that they will in all respects obey and abide by the law,” (clearly referring to the law of Canada.)
He ignores their promise that “they will aid and assist the officers of Her Majesty in bringing to justice and punishment any Indian offending against the stipulations of this treaty, or infringing the laws in force in the country so ceded.” This is a patent declaration of general submission to Canada’s laws and legal procedures.
On a practical level, the viability of the solution Mr. Johnson proposes is completely belied by his own facts.
He argues that an Indigenous justice system would concentrate on the “redemption” of the Indigenous offender, by him acknowledging his wrongdoing, returning to his community (rather than being incarcerated, which he falsely states, along with deterrence, are the main focusses of the “white man’s” justice system), and then somehow being “healed” by all this and then successfully becoming re-integrated into his community, a better man or woman for the whole experience.
But return to what kind of community? How could these reserve communities possibly perform the healing functions Mr. Johnson imagines, when they are, as he himself says, “traumatized”? Clearly they can’t. The cause of the trauma, can’t be the cure of it.
The first three-quarters of Mr. Johnson’s book is a harrowing and depressing description of the terrible physical, social and psychological conditions of the typical reserve where these over-represented (in the justice system) Indigenous offenders come from.
He describes the “clan justice” system typical of many reserves, where clan and family ties and the risk of clan and family retribution influence the reporting of crime, law enforcement and legal outcomes.
He describes the reserve RCMP themselves, developing mental health issues because of what they see happening on their reserves, which they are essentially helpless to control or prevent.
His descriptions of the constant and excessive consumption of alcohol, horrific sexual assaults, (many against children and many related to alcohol), drugs, “extreme violence” and child neglect, (also closely related to alcohol), school dropout rates, sense of hopelessness, PTSD and other severe mental health issues existing on the reserves, is searing and heartbreaking. Indeed, in a previous book written by him, Firewater, Mr. Johnson states that the death of about half of all Treaty Six residents is due to alcohol! (See The Untold Story of Indigenous Child Neglect and Alcohol Abuse- The Firewater Complex, by former Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Brian Giesbrecht, (who personally witnessed during his career much of what he writes about), under Commentary, on this website.
He describes the populations of these reserves, as stated above, as “traumatized.”
So how could returning Indigenous offenders to these seriously damaged, “traumatized” communities ever reasonably expect to result in “redemption” or “forgiveness” or “healing”?
Even Mr. Johnson admits that “When we have a traumatized and inflated police force interacting with a traumatized population we should not expect good results.” Further, he writes: “Justice has nothing to offer such a community.”
As I said, his “solution” is completely inconsistent with these horrible and immutable facts and conclusions he lays out as the basis of his argument.
There are many other reasons why his “solution” is impractical and unworkable. Treaty 6 would have to be re-negotiated and reworded. The Canadian Constitution itself would likely have to be changed. The Criminal Code would have to be drastically amended. There would be federal-provincial issues to deal with. Legal issues involving Indigenous persons committing offences off the reserve would be numerous and virtually unsolvable. The jurisdictional wrangling between the two criminal law jurisdictions would be endless and costly. Only the lawyers would benefit. It’s not ever going to happen.
As a bit of an aside, I have a bone to pick with Mr. Johnson, a former lawyer, regarding his casual use of language seemingly approving the possibility of vigilante-style, Indigenous violence against “whites” if the current situation isn’t remedied to his satisfaction. He describes, seemingly approvingly, Indigenous street gangs in Saskatchewan who were, after the Colton Boushie verdict, “armed and prepared to start shooting. All they needed was someone to give them the okay. Our leadership told them to stand down.” (!) Even if that were true, which I’m sure it’s not, it’s reckless, irresponsible and violence-approving language, completely inappropriate for any responsible person, especially a lawyer-an officer of the Court- to engage in. (Mr. Johnson may be a retired lawyer, but once a lawyer always a lawyer.)
He writes that “Saskatchewan is prepared to go to war with its Indigenous peoples.” What a crock!
He threatens, at the end of the book: “We will start taking out our frustrations on the colonizer. At some point we will stop killing ourselves and our relatives and begin killing the oppressor.” (!) How breathtakingly reckless, dangerous, irresponsible and juvenile! This sounds like Donald Trump suggesting violence against Hilary Clinton!
And the final irony of this so-called “righteously angry” book, which speaks in such “clear and present danger” terms in regards to the tragic and wrongful situation of Indigenous persons in our criminal justice system, and in life generally, and despite his main recommendation that Indigenous people have their own justice system, he pivots from this and offers another secondary, more practical solution. He recommends more research and study of the situation! Like a fireman, standing in front of a raging house fire with people inside the house, deciding not to immediately put a hose to the fire and rescue them, but rather to go back to the fire station and read up on the principles of heat combustion. He recommends analyzing the recidivism rates of probation officers’ clients, the recidivism outcomes of individual prosecutors, defence counsel and judges, whether some jails and parole boards have better outcomes than others. “Once we have the information and analyzed it, we would have a better idea what works and what doesn’t. If we revised laws and changed policies based upon measured outcomes, we might improve those outcomes.”
So which is it, a separate Indigenous justice system or more endless “kick the ball down the road” studies, surveys and “analysis”? Mr. Johnson doesn’t seem to be able to decide. In any event, whichever option he chooses, poor, vulnerable, lost, marginalized, powerless Indigenous persons will, while all this endless Indian Industry job-creating “analysis” is going on in the big cities, continue to suffer. As I wrote in There Is No Difference and in the Widdowson book review above, quoting Octavio Paz, asking suffering people to wait for the happening of an infinitely remote end is to condemn them to the perpetual prison of the present. Our suffering Indigenous peoples desperately need foundational reforms and change now!
The only solution to better this situation, the only way for Indigenous peoples to escape the “perpetual prison of the present”, for the reasons I argue in my book, There Is No Difference, is to eliminate the laws supporting our Indigenous quasi-apartheid status quo, then phase out the reserves, and by that means help Indigenous peoples complete the already-started process of integrating into general Canadian, urban-oriented society on the basis of everybody being equal under the law.
Peter Best- December 15, 2019
In 2008 Mount Royal College Professor Frances Widdowson and her husband Albert Howard published Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry-The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation, an excellent and, given the politically correct times in which we live, very brave book. Disrobing, in unanswerable fashion, exposed the intellectual frauds underpinning the quasi-apartheid status quo maintained and promulgated by what she calls “the Aboriginal Industry.”
Professor Widdowson has now published a very good follow up book, Separate But Unequal-How Parallelist Ideology Conceals Indigenous Dependency, (University of Ottawa Press, 2019), in which she expands on the themes of Disrobing. She fully describes and strongly criticizes academic, social, economic, historical and cultural “parallelist ideology”, the idea of “Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities “travelling side by side” in these spheres, “coexisting but not getting in each other’s way”- a purportedly positive variation of the negative and oppressive (toward-Blacks) “separate but equal” social and economic reality extant for decades in America- which ideology she clearly demonstrates only leads to more “Indigenous dependency” and “uneven and combined development” (the latter concept she adopts from, of all discredited people, Leon Trotsky!) She convincingly describes and criticizes what she calls “neotribal rentierism, a process whereby lawyers and consultants working for Indigenous groups, (“neotribes”), use legal arguments to extract transfers from government.” The Haida Nation case is the most spectacularly successful and devastating (to the Canadian economy) example of this, wherein the Supreme Court invented out of legal thin air the duty to “consult and accommodate” any and all Indigenous groups who assert claims that their hunting and fishing rights are even remotely affected by any planned resource project in Canada. In my view this has created a shakedown industry resulting in de facto bribery payments having to be made by governments and project proponents, (which I characterize as “danegeld” in my book There Is No Difference.) Professor Widdowson rather too-dryly calls these civically-unhealthy, circumstantially-compelled provisions of cash and/or other benefits to Indigenous groups “government transfers.” But they’re more than that. Haida Nation has forced millions of dollars of such coerced “transfers” to be made by the private sector to Indigenous groups as well.
Professor Widdowson’s research is deep and her references extensive and invaluable. For these reasons alone her book is essential and worthwhile reading. Separate But Unequal has the same basic outlook and themes as my book, There Is No Difference, and covers much and more of the same general subject matter, and in much more weighty, professional and traditionally academic fashion. In fact so academic that it seems clear that her intended audience was not the general public, but rather other academics and policy makers. This is unfortunate because it is the general public, including “rank and file” Indigenous Canadians, that would benefit from reading this book far more than members of these other already-insider specialized groups, some members of which are part of the very Aboriginal Industry she decries.
Also unfortunately, while she accurately describes the destructive irrationality and intellectual fraud permeating the entire status quo in this crucial area of Canadian life, she suggests no real, practical solutions for remedying the tragic and dysfunctional situation of our Indigenous peoples, other than the lunchbag-letdown solution of “research that openly and honestly investigates the causes of Indigenous dependency and social dysfunction.” And making the “developmental leap” to bridge the gap between hunter-gatherer Indigenous culture and non-Indigenous high technology culture she asserts “will require “careful thought and a great deal of sensitivity; it is even possible that the process will take a number of generations.”
But her book is a masterwork of research! I say enough “research!” Her book says it all! Our Indigenous peoples do not need more kick-the-ball-down-the-road “research” and/or “careful thought.” They need concrete, foundational reforms- now. And Canadians, especially Indigenous Canadians, can’t wait “a number of generations”! Indigenous children, while we read this, are killing themselves in ever-increasing numbers and neglected babies are crying in the night! Writer Octavio Paz wrote that “an infinitely remote end is just a perpetual prison for the present.” Our Indigenous peoples need to get out of their “parallelist” prisons, which Professor Widdowson so well describes, comprised of the reserves, the Indian Act, the Indian Industry and all the rest of our quasi-apartheid status quo. They need a cure now from what writer Gordon Gibson described as “the sickness” of those reserves. But sadly for the vast majority of powerless, marginalized, desperate, and endangered Indigenous Canadians, the brilliant, very well-intentioned but too-cautious, too detached Professor Widdowson fails to offer one.
Peter Best, December 5th, 2019
———————————————————————————————————————-
9. Book Review of Harold R. Johnson’s Peace and Good Order- The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada
Peace and Good Order-The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, (McLelland & Stewart, 2019) by Cree author Harold R. Johnson, is another example of a talented, accomplished and fully integrated Indigenous writer, with close and personal experience of the ongoing tragic social failure and dysfunction happening on Indian reserves- and with close and personal experience, because of his background as a criminal lawyer, of the inability of Canada’s justice system to cope with it- of refusing or neglecting to state the obvious root cause of this failure, dysfunction and inability-the existence of the reserves themselves. Instead, he solely blames non-Indigenous Canadians, past and present, for it. Despite the book’s impressive recitation of the well-known and dismal facts and statistics regarding this failure and dysfunction and our courts’ inability to deal with it, the book boils down at the end to useless, largely unjustified and backward-looking finger-pointing, (with a disturbing amount of “anti-white” racist rhetoric being used-see below), at the “settler” peoples and institutions (that made the author’s own life a success such that he could write this and other books) and the advocating of a solution that is fundamentally flawed, impractical and unworkable-utopian even- the transfer of all aspects of criminal law jurisdiction over Indigenous peoples to the Aboriginal “nations”. This would include writing the laws, enforcing them by Indigenous police, prosecutors and courts right through to sentencing, and post-sentencing supervision and control, with funding provided for all of this by non-Indigenous Canadian taxpayers.
Instead of advocating the phasing out of the reserves, and generally, ending the “separate but equal” quasi-apartheid status quo we are burdened with in Canada, the root cause of Indigenous social failure and dysfunction- the root cause of Indigenous over-representation in the justice and penal system- and the only honest, competent and workable remedy for the tragic ills besetting our Indigenous peoples , Mr. Johnson proposes a merely “Titanic deck chairs” solution. He proposes that we create a separate criminal justice system run by Aboriginals and for Aboriginals only.
Mr. Johnson claims that the wording of Treaty 6, the treaty whereby his Cree ancestors, as well as the Saulteaux, Assiniboine and Chippewayan tribes, “ceded and surrendered” to Canada all their “rights, titles and privileges” to their lands, (comprising the bulk of present-day Saskatchewan and Alberta)- in particular, wording that says that the Indians “will maintain peace and good order” amongst themselves and “between themselves and others of Her Majesty’s subjects, whether Indians or whites”- only means that they promised to obey their own laws in existence at the time, or made in the future by the Indian treaty-signers. He asserts that this treaty wording means that Indians, because the treaty was allegedly about “sharing” the land, not surrendering it, (a novel, Indian Industry argument du jour- given legitimacy by the Ontario Restoule decision, as described in my book There Is No Difference), retained criminal law jurisdiction over themselves, and following this, that jurisdiction over the criminal law as it pertains to Indigenous persons be returned, as of alleged right, to the descendants of the Treaty 6 signers.
It’s a really specious argument. And it’s no solution to the tragic on-reserve problems he so well describes. It’s only something that, even if were practically possible, (which it is not), would be the equivalent of putting the proverbial lipstick on the proverbial pig.
It ignores almost 150 years of history, where no one has ever interpreted the treaty this way-until he does now. How people behave in relation to agreements is good evidence of what they think the agreement in question means. Treaty 6 Indians have never argued that they were not bound by Her Majesty’s laws and legal procedures, until Mr. Johnson comes up with this argument in this book.
They have always submitted, without objection, to Canada’s criminal laws and procedures, indeed, just as Treaty 6 clearly specifies.
The “peace and good order” wording, boiled down, as it has always been understood, clearly just means that the Indian treaty signers were promising to Canada to legally behave themselves-to follow Canada’s laws in the sense that all subjects of any government must follow and obey that government’s laws.
Mr. Johnson ignores the unambiguous promise by the Indian Treaty 6 signers, located in the treaty before the “peace and good order” wording, “to conduct and behave themselves as good and loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.”
He ignores their promise “that they will in all respects obey and abide by the law,” (clearly referring to the law of Canada.)
He ignores their promise that “they will aid and assist the officers of Her Majesty in bringing to justice and punishment any Indian offending against the stipulations of this treaty, or infringing the laws in force in the country so ceded.” This is a patent declaration of general submission to Canada’s laws and legal procedures.
On a practical level, the viability of the solution Mr. Johnson proposes is completely belied by his own facts.
He argues that an Indigenous justice system would concentrate on the “redemption” of the Indigenous offender, by him acknowledging his wrongdoing, returning to his community (rather than being incarcerated, which he falsely states, along with deterrence, are the main focusses of the “white man’s” justice system), and then somehow being “healed” by all this and then successfully becoming re-integrated into his community, a better man or woman for the whole experience.
But return to what kind of community? How could these reserve communities possibly perform the healing functions Mr. Johnson imagines, when they are, as he himself says, “traumatized”? Clearly they can’t. The cause of the trauma, can’t be the cure of it.
The first three-quarters of Mr. Johnson’s book is a harrowing and depressing description of the terrible physical, social and psychological conditions of the typical reserve where these over-represented (in the justice system) Indigenous offenders come from.
He describes the “clan justice” system typical of many reserves, where clan and family ties and the risk of clan and family retribution influence the reporting of crime, law enforcement and legal outcomes.
He describes the reserve RCMP themselves, developing mental health issues because of what they see happening on their reserves, which they are essentially helpless to control or prevent.
His descriptions of the constant and excessive consumption of alcohol, horrific sexual assaults, (many against children and many related to alcohol), drugs, “extreme violence” and child neglect, (also closely related to alcohol), school dropout rates, sense of hopelessness, PTSD and other severe mental health issues existing on the reserves, is searing and heartbreaking. Indeed, in a previous book written by him, Firewater, Mr. Johnson states that the death of about half of all Treaty Six residents is due to alcohol! (See The Untold Story of Indigenous Child Neglect and Alcohol Abuse- The Firewater Complex, by former Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Brian Giesbrecht, (who personally witnessed during his career much of what he writes about), under Commentary, on this website.
He describes the populations of these reserves, as stated above, as “traumatized.”
So how could returning Indigenous offenders to these seriously damaged, “traumatized” communities ever reasonably expect to result in “redemption” or “forgiveness” or “healing”?
Even Mr. Johnson admits that “When we have a traumatized and inflated police force interacting with a traumatized population we should not expect good results.” Further, he writes: “Justice has nothing to offer such a community.”
As I said, his “solution” is completely inconsistent with these horrible and immutable facts and conclusions he lays out as the basis of his argument.
There are many other reasons why his “solution” is impractical and unworkable. Treaty 6 would have to be re-negotiated and reworded. The Canadian Constitution itself would likely have to be changed. The Criminal Code would have to be drastically amended. There would be federal-provincial issues to deal with. Legal issues involving Indigenous persons committing offences off the reserve would be numerous and virtually unsolvable. The jurisdictional wrangling between the two criminal law jurisdictions would be endless and costly. Only the lawyers would benefit. It’s not ever going to happen.
As a bit of an aside, I have a bone to pick with Mr. Johnson, a former lawyer, regarding his casual use of language seemingly approving the possibility of vigilante-style, Indigenous violence against “whites” if the current situation isn’t remedied to his satisfaction. He describes, seemingly approvingly, Indigenous street gangs in Saskatchewan who were, after the Colton Boushie verdict, “armed and prepared to start shooting. All they needed was someone to give them the okay. Our leadership told them to stand down.” (!) Even if that were true, which I’m sure it’s not, it’s reckless, irresponsible and violence-approving language, completely inappropriate for any responsible person, especially a lawyer-an officer of the Court- to engage in. (Mr. Johnson may be a retired lawyer, but once a lawyer always a lawyer.)
He writes that “Saskatchewan is prepared to go to war with its Indigenous peoples.” What a crock!
He threatens, at the end of the book: “We will start taking out our frustrations on the colonizer. At some point we will stop killing ourselves and our relatives and begin killing the oppressor.” (!) How breathtakingly reckless, dangerous, irresponsible and juvenile! This sounds like Donald Trump suggesting violence against Hilary Clinton!
And the final irony of this so-called “righteously angry” book, which speaks in such “clear and present danger” terms in regards to the tragic and wrongful situation of Indigenous persons in our criminal justice system, and in life generally, and despite his main recommendation that Indigenous people have their own justice system, he pivots from this and offers another secondary, more practical solution. He recommends more research and study of the situation! Like a fireman, standing in front of a raging house fire with people inside the house, deciding not to immediately put a hose to the fire and rescue them, but rather to go back to the fire station and read up on the principles of heat combustion. He recommends analyzing the recidivism rates of probation officers’ clients, the recidivism outcomes of individual prosecutors, defence counsel and judges, whether some jails and parole boards have better outcomes than others. “Once we have the information and analyzed it, we would have a better idea what works and what doesn’t. If we revised laws and changed policies based upon measured outcomes, we might improve those outcomes.”
So which is it, a separate Indigenous justice system or more endless “kick the ball down the road” studies, surveys and “analysis”? Mr. Johnson doesn’t seem to be able to decide. In any event, whichever option he chooses, poor, vulnerable, lost, marginalized, powerless Indigenous persons will, while all this endless Indian Industry job-creating “analysis” is going on in the big cities, continue to suffer. As I wrote in There Is No Difference and in the Widdowson book review above, quoting Octavio Paz, asking suffering people to wait for the happening of an infinitely remote end is to condemn them to the perpetual prison of the present. Our suffering Indigenous peoples desperately need foundational reforms and change now!
The only solution to better this situation, the only way for Indigenous peoples to escape the “perpetual prison of the present”, for the reasons I argue in my book, There Is No Difference, is to eliminate the laws supporting our Indigenous quasi-apartheid status quo, then phase out the reserves, and by that means help Indigenous peoples complete the already-started process of integrating into general Canadian, urban-oriented society on the basis of everybody being equal under the law.
Peter Best- December 15, 2019
In 2008 Mount Royal College Professor Frances Widdowson and her husband Albert Howard published Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry-The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation, an excellent and, given the politically correct times in which we live, very brave book. Disrobing, in unanswerable fashion, exposed the intellectual frauds underpinning the quasi-apartheid status quo maintained and promulgated by what she calls “the Aboriginal Industry.”
Professor Widdowson has now published a very good follow up book, Separate But Unequal-How Parallelist Ideology Conceals Indigenous Dependency, (University of Ottawa Press, 2019), in which she expands on the themes of Disrobing. She fully describes and strongly criticizes academic, social, economic, historical and cultural “parallelist ideology”, the idea of “Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities “travelling side by side” in these spheres, “coexisting but not getting in each other’s way”- a purportedly positive variation of the negative and oppressive (toward-Blacks) “separate but equal” social and economic reality extant for decades in America- which ideology she clearly demonstrates only leads to more “Indigenous dependency” and “uneven and combined development” (the latter concept she adopts from, of all discredited people, Leon Trotsky!) She convincingly describes and criticizes what she calls “neotribal rentierism, a process whereby lawyers and consultants working for Indigenous groups, (“neotribes”), use legal arguments to extract transfers from government.” The Haida Nation case is the most spectacularly successful and devastating (to the Canadian economy) example of this, wherein the Supreme Court invented out of legal thin air the duty to “consult and accommodate” any and all Indigenous groups who assert claims that their hunting and fishing rights are even remotely affected by any planned resource project in Canada. In my view this has created a shakedown industry resulting in de facto bribery payments having to be made by governments and project proponents, (which I characterize as “danegeld” in my book There Is No Difference.) Professor Widdowson rather too-dryly calls these civically-unhealthy, circumstantially-compelled provisions of cash and/or other benefits to Indigenous groups “government transfers.” But they’re more than that. Haida Nation has forced millions of dollars of such coerced “transfers” to be made by the private sector to Indigenous groups as well.
Professor Widdowson’s research is deep and her references extensive and invaluable. For these reasons alone her book is essential and worthwhile reading. Separate But Unequal has the same basic outlook and themes as my book, There Is No Difference, and covers much and more of the same general subject matter, and in much more weighty, professional and traditionally academic fashion. In fact so academic that it seems clear that her intended audience was not the general public, but rather other academics and policy makers. This is unfortunate because it is the general public, including “rank and file” Indigenous Canadians, that would benefit from reading this book far more than members of these other already-insider specialized groups, some members of which are part of the very Aboriginal Industry she decries.
Also unfortunately, while she accurately describes the destructive irrationality and intellectual fraud permeating the entire status quo in this crucial area of Canadian life, she suggests no real, practical solutions for remedying the tragic and dysfunctional situation of our Indigenous peoples, other than the lunchbag-letdown solution of “research that openly and honestly investigates the causes of Indigenous dependency and social dysfunction.” And making the “developmental leap” to bridge the gap between hunter-gatherer Indigenous culture and non-Indigenous high technology culture she asserts “will require “careful thought and a great deal of sensitivity; it is even possible that the process will take a number of generations.”
But her book is a masterwork of research! I say enough “research!” Her book says it all! Our Indigenous peoples do not need more kick-the-ball-down-the-road “research” and/or “careful thought.” They need concrete, foundational reforms- now. And Canadians, especially Indigenous Canadians, can’t wait “a number of generations”! Indigenous children, while we read this, are killing themselves in ever-increasing numbers and neglected babies are crying in the night! Writer Octavio Paz wrote that “an infinitely remote end is just a perpetual prison for the present.” Our Indigenous peoples need to get out of their “parallelist” prisons, which Professor Widdowson so well describes, comprised of the reserves, the Indian Act, the Indian Industry and all the rest of our quasi-apartheid status quo. They need a cure now from what writer Gordon Gibson described as “the sickness” of those reserves. But sadly for the vast majority of powerless, marginalized, desperate, and endangered Indigenous Canadians, the brilliant, very well-intentioned but too-cautious, too detached Professor Widdowson fails to offer one.
Peter Best, December 5th, 2019
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9. Book Review of Harold R. Johnson’s Peace and Good Order- The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada
Peace and Good Order-The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, (McLelland & Stewart, 2019) by Cree author Harold R. Johnson, is another example of a talented, accomplished and fully integrated Indigenous writer, with close and personal experience of the ongoing tragic social failure and dysfunction happening on Indian reserves- and with close and personal experience, because of his background as a criminal lawyer, of the inability of Canada’s justice system to cope with it- of refusing or neglecting to state the obvious root cause of this failure, dysfunction and inability-the existence of the reserves themselves. Instead, he solely blames non-Indigenous Canadians, past and present, for it. Despite the book’s impressive recitation of the well-known and dismal facts and statistics regarding this failure and dysfunction and our courts’ inability to deal with it, the book boils down at the end to useless, largely unjustified and backward-looking finger-pointing, (with a disturbing amount of “anti-white” racist rhetoric being used-see below), at the “settler” peoples and institutions (that made the author’s own life a success such that he could write this and other books) and the advocating of a solution that is fundamentally flawed, impractical and unworkable-utopian even- the transfer of all aspects of criminal law jurisdiction over Indigenous peoples to the Aboriginal “nations”. This would include writing the laws, enforcing them by Indigenous police, prosecutors and courts right through to sentencing, and post-sentencing supervision and control, with funding provided for all of this by non-Indigenous Canadian taxpayers.
Instead of advocating the phasing out of the reserves, and generally, ending the “separate but equal” quasi-apartheid status quo we are burdened with in Canada, the root cause of Indigenous social failure and dysfunction- the root cause of Indigenous over-representation in the justice and penal system- and the only honest, competent and workable remedy for the tragic ills besetting our Indigenous peoples , Mr. Johnson proposes a merely “Titanic deck chairs” solution. He proposes that we create a separate criminal justice system run by Aboriginals and for Aboriginals only.
Mr. Johnson claims that the wording of Treaty 6, the treaty whereby his Cree ancestors, as well as the Saulteaux, Assiniboine and Chippewayan tribes, “ceded and surrendered” to Canada all their “rights, titles and privileges” to their lands, (comprising the bulk of present-day Saskatchewan and Alberta)- in particular, wording that says that the Indians “will maintain peace and good order” amongst themselves and “between themselves and others of Her Majesty’s subjects, whether Indians or whites”- only means that they promised to obey their own laws in existence at the time, or made in the future by the Indian treaty-signers. He asserts that this treaty wording means that Indians, because the treaty was allegedly about “sharing” the land, not surrendering it, (a novel, Indian Industry argument du jour- given legitimacy by the Ontario Restoule decision, as described in my book There Is No Difference), retained criminal law jurisdiction over themselves, and following this, that jurisdiction over the criminal law as it pertains to Indigenous persons be returned, as of alleged right, to the descendants of the Treaty 6 signers.
It’s a really specious argument. And it’s no solution to the tragic on-reserve problems he so well describes. It’s only something that, even if were practically possible, (which it is not), would be the equivalent of putting the proverbial lipstick on the proverbial pig.
It ignores almost 150 years of history, where no one has ever interpreted the treaty this way-until he does now. How people behave in relation to agreements is good evidence of what they think the agreement in question means. Treaty 6 Indians have never argued that they were not bound by Her Majesty’s laws and legal procedures, until Mr. Johnson comes up with this argument in this book.
They have always submitted, without objection, to Canada’s criminal laws and procedures, indeed, just as Treaty 6 clearly specifies.
The “peace and good order” wording, boiled down, as it has always been understood, clearly just means that the Indian treaty signers were promising to Canada to legally behave themselves-to follow Canada’s laws in the sense that all subjects of any government must follow and obey that government’s laws.
Mr. Johnson ignores the unambiguous promise by the Indian Treaty 6 signers, located in the treaty before the “peace and good order” wording, “to conduct and behave themselves as good and loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.”
He ignores their promise “that they will in all respects obey and abide by the law,” (clearly referring to the law of Canada.)
He ignores their promise that “they will aid and assist the officers of Her Majesty in bringing to justice and punishment any Indian offending against the stipulations of this treaty, or infringing the laws in force in the country so ceded.” This is a patent declaration of general submission to Canada’s laws and legal procedures.
On a practical level, the viability of the solution Mr. Johnson proposes is completely belied by his own facts.
He argues that an Indigenous justice system would concentrate on the “redemption” of the Indigenous offender, by him acknowledging his wrongdoing, returning to his community (rather than being incarcerated, which he falsely states, along with deterrence, are the main focusses of the “white man’s” justice system), and then somehow being “healed” by all this and then successfully becoming re-integrated into his community, a better man or woman for the whole experience.
But return to what kind of community? How could these reserve communities possibly perform the healing functions Mr. Johnson imagines, when they are, as he himself says, “traumatized”? Clearly they can’t. The cause of the trauma, can’t be the cure of it.
The first three-quarters of Mr. Johnson’s book is a harrowing and depressing description of the terrible physical, social and psychological conditions of the typical reserve where these over-represented (in the justice system) Indigenous offenders come from.
He describes the “clan justice” system typical of many reserves, where clan and family ties and the risk of clan and family retribution influence the reporting of crime, law enforcement and legal outcomes.
He describes the reserve RCMP themselves, developing mental health issues because of what they see happening on their reserves, which they are essentially helpless to control or prevent.
His descriptions of the constant and excessive consumption of alcohol, horrific sexual assaults, (many against children and many related to alcohol), drugs, “extreme violence” and child neglect, (also closely related to alcohol), school dropout rates, sense of hopelessness, PTSD and other severe mental health issues existing on the reserves, is searing and heartbreaking. Indeed, in a previous book written by him, Firewater, Mr. Johnson states that the death of about half of all Treaty Six residents is due to alcohol! (See The Untold Story of Indigenous Child Neglect and Alcohol Abuse- The Firewater Complex, by former Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Brian Giesbrecht, (who personally witnessed during his career much of what he writes about), under Commentary, on this website.
He describes the populations of these reserves, as stated above, as “traumatized.”
So how could returning Indigenous offenders to these seriously damaged, “traumatized” communities ever reasonably expect to result in “redemption” or “forgiveness” or “healing”?
Even Mr. Johnson admits that “When we have a traumatized and inflated police force interacting with a traumatized population we should not expect good results.” Further, he writes: “Justice has nothing to offer such a community.”
As I said, his “solution” is completely inconsistent with these horrible and immutable facts and conclusions he lays out as the basis of his argument.
There are many other reasons why his “solution” is impractical and unworkable. Treaty 6 would have to be re-negotiated and reworded. The Canadian Constitution itself would likely have to be changed. The Criminal Code would have to be drastically amended. There would be federal-provincial issues to deal with. Legal issues involving Indigenous persons committing offences off the reserve would be numerous and virtually unsolvable. The jurisdictional wrangling between the two criminal law jurisdictions would be endless and costly. Only the lawyers would benefit. It’s not ever going to happen.
As a bit of an aside, I have a bone to pick with Mr. Johnson, a former lawyer, regarding his casual use of language seemingly approving the possibility of vigilante-style, Indigenous violence against “whites” if the current situation isn’t remedied to his satisfaction. He describes, seemingly approvingly, Indigenous street gangs in Saskatchewan who were, after the Colton Boushie verdict, “armed and prepared to start shooting. All they needed was someone to give them the okay. Our leadership told them to stand down.” (!) Even if that were true, which I’m sure it’s not, it’s reckless, irresponsible and violence-approving language, completely inappropriate for any responsible person, especially a lawyer-an officer of the Court- to engage in. (Mr. Johnson may be a retired lawyer, but once a lawyer always a lawyer.)
He writes that “Saskatchewan is prepared to go to war with its Indigenous peoples.” What a crock!
He threatens, at the end of the book: “We will start taking out our frustrations on the colonizer. At some point we will stop killing ourselves and our relatives and begin killing the oppressor.” (!) How breathtakingly reckless, dangerous, irresponsible and juvenile! This sounds like Donald Trump suggesting violence against Hilary Clinton!
And the final irony of this so-called “righteously angry” book, which speaks in such “clear and present danger” terms in regards to the tragic and wrongful situation of Indigenous persons in our criminal justice system, and in life generally, and despite his main recommendation that Indigenous people have their own justice system, he pivots from this and offers another secondary, more practical solution. He recommends more research and study of the situation! Like a fireman, standing in front of a raging house fire with people inside the house, deciding not to immediately put a hose to the fire and rescue them, but rather to go back to the fire station and read up on the principles of heat combustion. He recommends analyzing the recidivism rates of probation officers’ clients, the recidivism outcomes of individual prosecutors, defence counsel and judges, whether some jails and parole boards have better outcomes than others. “Once we have the information and analyzed it, we would have a better idea what works and what doesn’t. If we revised laws and changed policies based upon measured outcomes, we might improve those outcomes.”
So which is it, a separate Indigenous justice system or more endless “kick the ball down the road” studies, surveys and “analysis”? Mr. Johnson doesn’t seem to be able to decide. In any event, whichever option he chooses, poor, vulnerable, lost, marginalized, powerless Indigenous persons will, while all this endless Indian Industry job-creating “analysis” is going on in the big cities, continue to suffer. As I wrote in There Is No Difference and in the Widdowson book review above, quoting Octavio Paz, asking suffering people to wait for the happening of an infinitely remote end is to condemn them to the perpetual prison of the present. Our suffering Indigenous peoples desperately need foundational reforms and change now!
The only solution to better this situation, the only way for Indigenous peoples to escape the “perpetual prison of the present”, for the reasons I argue in my book, There Is No Difference, is to eliminate the laws supporting our Indigenous quasi-apartheid status quo, then phase out the reserves, and by that means help Indigenous peoples complete the already-started process of integrating into general Canadian, urban-oriented society on the basis of everybody being equal under the law.
Peter Best- December 15, 2019
In 2008 Mount Royal College Professor Frances Widdowson and her husband Albert Howard published Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry-The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation, an excellent and, given the politically correct times in which we live, very brave book. Disrobing, in unanswerable fashion, exposed the intellectual frauds underpinning the quasi-apartheid status quo maintained and promulgated by what she calls “the Aboriginal Industry.”
Professor Widdowson has now published a very good follow up book, Separate But Unequal-How Parallelist Ideology Conceals Indigenous Dependency, (University of Ottawa Press, 2019), in which she expands on the themes of Disrobing. She fully describes and strongly criticizes academic, social, economic, historical and cultural “parallelist ideology”, the idea of “Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities “travelling side by side” in these spheres, “coexisting but not getting in each other’s way”- a purportedly positive variation of the negative and oppressive (toward-Blacks) “separate but equal” social and economic reality extant for decades in America- which ideology she clearly demonstrates only leads to more “Indigenous dependency” and “uneven and combined development” (the latter concept she adopts from, of all discredited people, Leon Trotsky!) She convincingly describes and criticizes what she calls “neotribal rentierism, a process whereby lawyers and consultants working for Indigenous groups, (“neotribes”), use legal arguments to extract transfers from government.” The Haida Nation case is the most spectacularly successful and devastating (to the Canadian economy) example of this, wherein the Supreme Court invented out of legal thin air the duty to “consult and accommodate” any and all Indigenous groups who assert claims that their hunting and fishing rights are even remotely affected by any planned resource project in Canada. In my view this has created a shakedown industry resulting in de facto bribery payments having to be made by governments and project proponents, (which I characterize as “danegeld” in my book There Is No Difference.) Professor Widdowson rather too-dryly calls these civically-unhealthy, circumstantially-compelled provisions of cash and/or other benefits to Indigenous groups “government transfers.” But they’re more than that. Haida Nation has forced millions of dollars of such coerced “transfers” to be made by the private sector to Indigenous groups as well.
Professor Widdowson’s research is deep and her references extensive and invaluable. For these reasons alone her book is essential and worthwhile reading. Separate But Unequal has the same basic outlook and themes as my book, There Is No Difference, and covers much and more of the same general subject matter, and in much more weighty, professional and traditionally academic fashion. In fact so academic that it seems clear that her intended audience was not the general public, but rather other academics and policy makers. This is unfortunate because it is the general public, including “rank and file” Indigenous Canadians, that would benefit from reading this book far more than members of these other already-insider specialized groups, some members of which are part of the very Aboriginal Industry she decries.
Also unfortunately, while she accurately describes the destructive irrationality and intellectual fraud permeating the entire status quo in this crucial area of Canadian life, she suggests no real, practical solutions for remedying the tragic and dysfunctional situation of our Indigenous peoples, other than the lunchbag-letdown solution of “research that openly and honestly investigates the causes of Indigenous dependency and social dysfunction.” And making the “developmental leap” to bridge the gap between hunter-gatherer Indigenous culture and non-Indigenous high technology culture she asserts “will require “careful thought and a great deal of sensitivity; it is even possible that the process will take a number of generations.”
But her book is a masterwork of research! I say enough “research!” Her book says it all! Our Indigenous peoples do not need more kick-the-ball-down-the-road “research” and/or “careful thought.” They need concrete, foundational reforms- now. And Canadians, especially Indigenous Canadians, can’t wait “a number of generations”! Indigenous children, while we read this, are killing themselves in ever-increasing numbers and neglected babies are crying in the night! Writer Octavio Paz wrote that “an infinitely remote end is just a perpetual prison for the present.” Our Indigenous peoples need to get out of their “parallelist” prisons, which Professor Widdowson so well describes, comprised of the reserves, the Indian Act, the Indian Industry and all the rest of our quasi-apartheid status quo. They need a cure now from what writer Gordon Gibson described as “the sickness” of those reserves. But sadly for the vast majority of powerless, marginalized, desperate, and endangered Indigenous Canadians, the brilliant, very well-intentioned but too-cautious, too detached Professor Widdowson fails to offer one.
Peter Best, December 5th, 2019
———————————————————————————————————————-
9. Book Review of Harold R. Johnson’s Peace and Good Order- The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada
Peace and Good Order-The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, (McLelland & Stewart, 2019) by Cree author Harold R. Johnson, is another example of a talented, accomplished and fully integrated Indigenous writer, with close and personal experience of the ongoing tragic social failure and dysfunction happening on Indian reserves- and with close and personal experience, because of his background as a criminal lawyer, of the inability of Canada’s justice system to cope with it- of refusing or neglecting to state the obvious root cause of this failure, dysfunction and inability-the existence of the reserves themselves. Instead, he solely blames non-Indigenous Canadians, past and present, for it. Despite the book’s impressive recitation of the well-known and dismal facts and statistics regarding this failure and dysfunction and our courts’ inability to deal with it, the book boils down at the end to useless, largely unjustified and backward-looking finger-pointing, (with a disturbing amount of “anti-white” racist rhetoric being used-see below), at the “settler” peoples and institutions (that made the author’s own life a success such that he could write this and other books) and the advocating of a solution that is fundamentally flawed, impractical and unworkable-utopian even- the transfer of all aspects of criminal law jurisdiction over Indigenous peoples to the Aboriginal “nations”. This would include writing the laws, enforcing them by Indigenous police, prosecutors and courts right through to sentencing, and post-sentencing supervision and control, with funding provided for all of this by non-Indigenous Canadian taxpayers.
Instead of advocating the phasing out of the reserves, and generally, ending the “separate but equal” quasi-apartheid status quo we are burdened with in Canada, the root cause of Indigenous social failure and dysfunction- the root cause of Indigenous over-representation in the justice and penal system- and the only honest, competent and workable remedy for the tragic ills besetting our Indigenous peoples , Mr. Johnson proposes a merely “Titanic deck chairs” solution. He proposes that we create a separate criminal justice system run by Aboriginals and for Aboriginals only.
Mr. Johnson claims that the wording of Treaty 6, the treaty whereby his Cree ancestors, as well as the Saulteaux, Assiniboine and Chippewayan tribes, “ceded and surrendered” to Canada all their “rights, titles and privileges” to their lands, (comprising the bulk of present-day Saskatchewan and Alberta)- in particular, wording that says that the Indians “will maintain peace and good order” amongst themselves and “between themselves and others of Her Majesty’s subjects, whether Indians or whites”- only means that they promised to obey their own laws in existence at the time, or made in the future by the Indian treaty-signers. He asserts that this treaty wording means that Indians, because the treaty was allegedly about “sharing” the land, not surrendering it, (a novel, Indian Industry argument du jour- given legitimacy by the Ontario Restoule decision, as described in my book There Is No Difference), retained criminal law jurisdiction over themselves, and following this, that jurisdiction over the criminal law as it pertains to Indigenous persons be returned, as of alleged right, to the descendants of the Treaty 6 signers.
It’s a really specious argument. And it’s no solution to the tragic on-reserve problems he so well describes. It’s only something that, even if were practically possible, (which it is not), would be the equivalent of putting the proverbial lipstick on the proverbial pig.
It ignores almost 150 years of history, where no one has ever interpreted the treaty this way-until he does now. How people behave in relation to agreements is good evidence of what they think the agreement in question means. Treaty 6 Indians have never argued that they were not bound by Her Majesty’s laws and legal procedures, until Mr. Johnson comes up with this argument in this book.
They have always submitted, without objection, to Canada’s criminal laws and procedures, indeed, just as Treaty 6 clearly specifies.
The “peace and good order” wording, boiled down, as it has always been understood, clearly just means that the Indian treaty signers were promising to Canada to legally behave themselves-to follow Canada’s laws in the sense that all subjects of any government must follow and obey that government’s laws.
Mr. Johnson ignores the unambiguous promise by the Indian Treaty 6 signers, located in the treaty before the “peace and good order” wording, “to conduct and behave themselves as good and loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.”
He ignores their promise “that they will in all respects obey and abide by the law,” (clearly referring to the law of Canada.)
He ignores their promise that “they will aid and assist the officers of Her Majesty in bringing to justice and punishment any Indian offending against the stipulations of this treaty, or infringing the laws in force in the country so ceded.” This is a patent declaration of general submission to Canada’s laws and legal procedures.
On a practical level, the viability of the solution Mr. Johnson proposes is completely belied by his own facts.
He argues that an Indigenous justice system would concentrate on the “redemption” of the Indigenous offender, by him acknowledging his wrongdoing, returning to his community (rather than being incarcerated, which he falsely states, along with deterrence, are the main focusses of the “white man’s” justice system), and then somehow being “healed” by all this and then successfully becoming re-integrated into his community, a better man or woman for the whole experience.
But return to what kind of community? How could these reserve communities possibly perform the healing functions Mr. Johnson imagines, when they are, as he himself says, “traumatized”? Clearly they can’t. The cause of the trauma, can’t be the cure of it.
The first three-quarters of Mr. Johnson’s book is a harrowing and depressing description of the terrible physical, social and psychological conditions of the typical reserve where these over-represented (in the justice system) Indigenous offenders come from.
He describes the “clan justice” system typical of many reserves, where clan and family ties and the risk of clan and family retribution influence the reporting of crime, law enforcement and legal outcomes.
He describes the reserve RCMP themselves, developing mental health issues because of what they see happening on their reserves, which they are essentially helpless to control or prevent.
His descriptions of the constant and excessive consumption of alcohol, horrific sexual assaults, (many against children and many related to alcohol), drugs, “extreme violence” and child neglect, (also closely related to alcohol), school dropout rates, sense of hopelessness, PTSD and other severe mental health issues existing on the reserves, is searing and heartbreaking. Indeed, in a previous book written by him, Firewater, Mr. Johnson states that the death of about half of all Treaty Six residents is due to alcohol! (See The Untold Story of Indigenous Child Neglect and Alcohol Abuse- The Firewater Complex, by former Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Brian Giesbrecht, (who personally witnessed during his career much of what he writes about), under Commentary, on this website.
He describes the populations of these reserves, as stated above, as “traumatized.”
So how could returning Indigenous offenders to these seriously damaged, “traumatized” communities ever reasonably expect to result in “redemption” or “forgiveness” or “healing”?
Even Mr. Johnson admits that “When we have a traumatized and inflated police force interacting with a traumatized population we should not expect good results.” Further, he writes: “Justice has nothing to offer such a community.”
As I said, his “solution” is completely inconsistent with these horrible and immutable facts and conclusions he lays out as the basis of his argument.
There are many other reasons why his “solution” is impractical and unworkable. Treaty 6 would have to be re-negotiated and reworded. The Canadian Constitution itself would likely have to be changed. The Criminal Code would have to be drastically amended. There would be federal-provincial issues to deal with. Legal issues involving Indigenous persons committing offences off the reserve would be numerous and virtually unsolvable. The jurisdictional wrangling between the two criminal law jurisdictions would be endless and costly. Only the lawyers would benefit. It’s not ever going to happen.
As a bit of an aside, I have a bone to pick with Mr. Johnson, a former lawyer, regarding his casual use of language seemingly approving the possibility of vigilante-style, Indigenous violence against “whites” if the current situation isn’t remedied to his satisfaction. He describes, seemingly approvingly, Indigenous street gangs in Saskatchewan who were, after the Colton Boushie verdict, “armed and prepared to start shooting. All they needed was someone to give them the okay. Our leadership told them to stand down.” (!) Even if that were true, which I’m sure it’s not, it’s reckless, irresponsible and violence-approving language, completely inappropriate for any responsible person, especially a lawyer-an officer of the Court- to engage in. (Mr. Johnson may be a retired lawyer, but once a lawyer always a lawyer.)
He writes that “Saskatchewan is prepared to go to war with its Indigenous peoples.” What a crock!
He threatens, at the end of the book: “We will start taking out our frustrations on the colonizer. At some point we will stop killing ourselves and our relatives and begin killing the oppressor.” (!) How breathtakingly reckless, dangerous, irresponsible and juvenile! This sounds like Donald Trump suggesting violence against Hilary Clinton!
And the final irony of this so-called “righteously angry” book, which speaks in such “clear and present danger” terms in regards to the tragic and wrongful situation of Indigenous persons in our criminal justice system, and in life generally, and despite his main recommendation that Indigenous people have their own justice system, he pivots from this and offers another secondary, more practical solution. He recommends more research and study of the situation! Like a fireman, standing in front of a raging house fire with people inside the house, deciding not to immediately put a hose to the fire and rescue them, but rather to go back to the fire station and read up on the principles of heat combustion. He recommends analyzing the recidivism rates of probation officers’ clients, the recidivism outcomes of individual prosecutors, defence counsel and judges, whether some jails and parole boards have better outcomes than others. “Once we have the information and analyzed it, we would have a better idea what works and what doesn’t. If we revised laws and changed policies based upon measured outcomes, we might improve those outcomes.”
So which is it, a separate Indigenous justice system or more endless “kick the ball down the road” studies, surveys and “analysis”? Mr. Johnson doesn’t seem to be able to decide. In any event, whichever option he chooses, poor, vulnerable, lost, marginalized, powerless Indigenous persons will, while all this endless Indian Industry job-creating “analysis” is going on in the big cities, continue to suffer. As I wrote in There Is No Difference and in the Widdowson book review above, quoting Octavio Paz, asking suffering people to wait for the happening of an infinitely remote end is to condemn them to the perpetual prison of the present. Our suffering Indigenous peoples desperately need foundational reforms and change now!
The only solution to better this situation, the only way for Indigenous peoples to escape the “perpetual prison of the present”, for the reasons I argue in my book, There Is No Difference, is to eliminate the laws supporting our Indigenous quasi-apartheid status quo, then phase out the reserves, and by that means help Indigenous peoples complete the already-started process of integrating into general Canadian, urban-oriented society on the basis of everybody being equal under the law.
Peter Best- December 15, 2019
In 2008 Mount Royal College Professor Frances Widdowson and her husband Albert Howard published Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry-The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation, an excellent and, given the politically correct times in which we live, very brave book. Disrobing, in unanswerable fashion, exposed the intellectual frauds underpinning the quasi-apartheid status quo maintained and promulgated by what she calls “the Aboriginal Industry.”
Professor Widdowson has now published a very good follow up book, Separate But Unequal-How Parallelist Ideology Conceals Indigenous Dependency, (University of Ottawa Press, 2019), in which she expands on the themes of Disrobing. She fully describes and strongly criticizes academic, social, economic, historical and cultural “parallelist ideology”, the idea of “Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities “travelling side by side” in these spheres, “coexisting but not getting in each other’s way”- a purportedly positive variation of the negative and oppressive (toward-Blacks) “separate but equal” social and economic reality extant for decades in America- which ideology she clearly demonstrates only leads to more “Indigenous dependency” and “uneven and combined development” (the latter concept she adopts from, of all discredited people, Leon Trotsky!) She convincingly describes and criticizes what she calls “neotribal rentierism, a process whereby lawyers and consultants working for Indigenous groups, (“neotribes”), use legal arguments to extract transfers from government.” The Haida Nation case is the most spectacularly successful and devastating (to the Canadian economy) example of this, wherein the Supreme Court invented out of legal thin air the duty to “consult and accommodate” any and all Indigenous groups who assert claims that their hunting and fishing rights are even remotely affected by any planned resource project in Canada. In my view this has created a shakedown industry resulting in de facto bribery payments having to be made by governments and project proponents, (which I characterize as “danegeld” in my book There Is No Difference.) Professor Widdowson rather too-dryly calls these civically-unhealthy, circumstantially-compelled provisions of cash and/or other benefits to Indigenous groups “government transfers.” But they’re more than that. Haida Nation has forced millions of dollars of such coerced “transfers” to be made by the private sector to Indigenous groups as well.
Professor Widdowson’s research is deep and her references extensive and invaluable. For these reasons alone her book is essential and worthwhile reading. Separate But Unequal has the same basic outlook and themes as my book, There Is No Difference, and covers much and more of the same general subject matter, and in much more weighty, professional and traditionally academic fashion. In fact so academic that it seems clear that her intended audience was not the general public, but rather other academics and policy makers. This is unfortunate because it is the general public, including “rank and file” Indigenous Canadians, that would benefit from reading this book far more than members of these other already-insider specialized groups, some members of which are part of the very Aboriginal Industry she decries.
Also unfortunately, while she accurately describes the destructive irrationality and intellectual fraud permeating the entire status quo in this crucial area of Canadian life, she suggests no real, practical solutions for remedying the tragic and dysfunctional situation of our Indigenous peoples, other than the lunchbag-letdown solution of “research that openly and honestly investigates the causes of Indigenous dependency and social dysfunction.” And making the “developmental leap” to bridge the gap between hunter-gatherer Indigenous culture and non-Indigenous high technology culture she asserts “will require “careful thought and a great deal of sensitivity; it is even possible that the process will take a number of generations.”
But her book is a masterwork of research! I say enough “research!” Her book says it all! Our Indigenous peoples do not need more kick-the-ball-down-the-road “research” and/or “careful thought.” They need concrete, foundational reforms- now. And Canadians, especially Indigenous Canadians, can’t wait “a number of generations”! Indigenous children, while we read this, are killing themselves in ever-increasing numbers and neglected babies are crying in the night! Writer Octavio Paz wrote that “an infinitely remote end is just a perpetual prison for the present.” Our Indigenous peoples need to get out of their “parallelist” prisons, which Professor Widdowson so well describes, comprised of the reserves, the Indian Act, the Indian Industry and all the rest of our quasi-apartheid status quo. They need a cure now from what writer Gordon Gibson described as “the sickness” of those reserves. But sadly for the vast majority of powerless, marginalized, desperate, and endangered Indigenous Canadians, the brilliant, very well-intentioned but too-cautious, too detached Professor Widdowson fails to offer one.
Peter Best, December 5th, 2019
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9. Book Review of Harold R. Johnson’s Peace and Good Order- The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada
Peace and Good Order-The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, (McLelland & Stewart, 2019) by Cree author Harold R. Johnson, is another example of a talented, accomplished and fully integrated Indigenous writer, with close and personal experience of the ongoing tragic social failure and dysfunction happening on Indian reserves- and with close and personal experience, because of his background as a criminal lawyer, of the inability of Canada’s justice system to cope with it- of refusing or neglecting to state the obvious root cause of this failure, dysfunction and inability-the existence of the reserves themselves. Instead, he solely blames non-Indigenous Canadians, past and present, for it. Despite the book’s impressive recitation of the well-known and dismal facts and statistics regarding this failure and dysfunction and our courts’ inability to deal with it, the book boils down at the end to useless, largely unjustified and backward-looking finger-pointing, (with a disturbing amount of “anti-white” racist rhetoric being used-see below), at the “settler” peoples and institutions (that made the author’s own life a success such that he could write this and other books) and the advocating of a solution that is fundamentally flawed, impractical and unworkable-utopian even- the transfer of all aspects of criminal law jurisdiction over Indigenous peoples to the Aboriginal “nations”. This would include writing the laws, enforcing them by Indigenous police, prosecutors and courts right through to sentencing, and post-sentencing supervision and control, with funding provided for all of this by non-Indigenous Canadian taxpayers.
Instead of advocating the phasing out of the reserves, and generally, ending the “separate but equal” quasi-apartheid status quo we are burdened with in Canada, the root cause of Indigenous social failure and dysfunction- the root cause of Indigenous over-representation in the justice and penal system- and the only honest, competent and workable remedy for the tragic ills besetting our Indigenous peoples , Mr. Johnson proposes a merely “Titanic deck chairs” solution. He proposes that we create a separate criminal justice system run by Aboriginals and for Aboriginals only.
Mr. Johnson claims that the wording of Treaty 6, the treaty whereby his Cree ancestors, as well as the Saulteaux, Assiniboine and Chippewayan tribes, “ceded and surrendered” to Canada all their “rights, titles and privileges” to their lands, (comprising the bulk of present-day Saskatchewan and Alberta)- in particular, wording that says that the Indians “will maintain peace and good order” amongst themselves and “between themselves and others of Her Majesty’s subjects, whether Indians or whites”- only means that they promised to obey their own laws in existence at the time, or made in the future by the Indian treaty-signers. He asserts that this treaty wording means that Indians, because the treaty was allegedly about “sharing” the land, not surrendering it, (a novel, Indian Industry argument du jour- given legitimacy by the Ontario Restoule decision, as described in my book There Is No Difference), retained criminal law jurisdiction over themselves, and following this, that jurisdiction over the criminal law as it pertains to Indigenous persons be returned, as of alleged right, to the descendants of the Treaty 6 signers.
It’s a really specious argument. And it’s no solution to the tragic on-reserve problems he so well describes. It’s only something that, even if were practically possible, (which it is not), would be the equivalent of putting the proverbial lipstick on the proverbial pig.
It ignores almost 150 years of history, where no one has ever interpreted the treaty this way-until he does now. How people behave in relation to agreements is good evidence of what they think the agreement in question means. Treaty 6 Indians have never argued that they were not bound by Her Majesty’s laws and legal procedures, until Mr. Johnson comes up with this argument in this book.
They have always submitted, without objection, to Canada’s criminal laws and procedures, indeed, just as Treaty 6 clearly specifies.
The “peace and good order” wording, boiled down, as it has always been understood, clearly just means that the Indian treaty signers were promising to Canada to legally behave themselves-to follow Canada’s laws in the sense that all subjects of any government must follow and obey that government’s laws.
Mr. Johnson ignores the unambiguous promise by the Indian Treaty 6 signers, located in the treaty before the “peace and good order” wording, “to conduct and behave themselves as good and loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.”
He ignores their promise “that they will in all respects obey and abide by the law,” (clearly referring to the law of Canada.)
He ignores their promise that “they will aid and assist the officers of Her Majesty in bringing to justice and punishment any Indian offending against the stipulations of this treaty, or infringing the laws in force in the country so ceded.” This is a patent declaration of general submission to Canada’s laws and legal procedures.
On a practical level, the viability of the solution Mr. Johnson proposes is completely belied by his own facts.
He argues that an Indigenous justice system would concentrate on the “redemption” of the Indigenous offender, by him acknowledging his wrongdoing, returning to his community (rather than being incarcerated, which he falsely states, along with deterrence, are the main focusses of the “white man’s” justice system), and then somehow being “healed” by all this and then successfully becoming re-integrated into his community, a better man or woman for the whole experience.
But return to what kind of community? How could these reserve communities possibly perform the healing functions Mr. Johnson imagines, when they are, as he himself says, “traumatized”? Clearly they can’t. The cause of the trauma, can’t be the cure of it.
The first three-quarters of Mr. Johnson’s book is a harrowing and depressing description of the terrible physical, social and psychological conditions of the typical reserve where these over-represented (in the justice system) Indigenous offenders come from.
He describes the “clan justice” system typical of many reserves, where clan and family ties and the risk of clan and family retribution influence the reporting of crime, law enforcement and legal outcomes.
He describes the reserve RCMP themselves, developing mental health issues because of what they see happening on their reserves, which they are essentially helpless to control or prevent.
His descriptions of the constant and excessive consumption of alcohol, horrific sexual assaults, (many against children and many related to alcohol), drugs, “extreme violence” and child neglect, (also closely related to alcohol), school dropout rates, sense of hopelessness, PTSD and other severe mental health issues existing on the reserves, is searing and heartbreaking. Indeed, in a previous book written by him, Firewater, Mr. Johnson states that the death of about half of all Treaty Six residents is due to alcohol! (See The Untold Story of Indigenous Child Neglect and Alcohol Abuse- The Firewater Complex, by former Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Brian Giesbrecht, (who personally witnessed during his career much of what he writes about), under Commentary, on this website.
He describes the populations of these reserves, as stated above, as “traumatized.”
So how could returning Indigenous offenders to these seriously damaged, “traumatized” communities ever reasonably expect to result in “redemption” or “forgiveness” or “healing”?
Even Mr. Johnson admits that “When we have a traumatized and inflated police force interacting with a traumatized population we should not expect good results.” Further, he writes: “Justice has nothing to offer such a community.”
As I said, his “solution” is completely inconsistent with these horrible and immutable facts and conclusions he lays out as the basis of his argument.
There are many other reasons why his “solution” is impractical and unworkable. Treaty 6 would have to be re-negotiated and reworded. The Canadian Constitution itself would likely have to be changed. The Criminal Code would have to be drastically amended. There would be federal-provincial issues to deal with. Legal issues involving Indigenous persons committing offences off the reserve would be numerous and virtually unsolvable. The jurisdictional wrangling between the two criminal law jurisdictions would be endless and costly. Only the lawyers would benefit. It’s not ever going to happen.
As a bit of an aside, I have a bone to pick with Mr. Johnson, a former lawyer, regarding his casual use of language seemingly approving the possibility of vigilante-style, Indigenous violence against “whites” if the current situation isn’t remedied to his satisfaction. He describes, seemingly approvingly, Indigenous street gangs in Saskatchewan who were, after the Colton Boushie verdict, “armed and prepared to start shooting. All they needed was someone to give them the okay. Our leadership told them to stand down.” (!) Even if that were true, which I’m sure it’s not, it’s reckless, irresponsible and violence-approving language, completely inappropriate for any responsible person, especially a lawyer-an officer of the Court- to engage in. (Mr. Johnson may be a retired lawyer, but once a lawyer always a lawyer.)
He writes that “Saskatchewan is prepared to go to war with its Indigenous peoples.” What a crock!
He threatens, at the end of the book: “We will start taking out our frustrations on the colonizer. At some point we will stop killing ourselves and our relatives and begin killing the oppressor.” (!) How breathtakingly reckless, dangerous, irresponsible and juvenile! This sounds like Donald Trump suggesting violence against Hilary Clinton!
And the final irony of this so-called “righteously angry” book, which speaks in such “clear and present danger” terms in regards to the tragic and wrongful situation of Indigenous persons in our criminal justice system, and in life generally, and despite his main recommendation that Indigenous people have their own justice system, he pivots from this and offers another secondary, more practical solution. He recommends more research and study of the situation! Like a fireman, standing in front of a raging house fire with people inside the house, deciding not to immediately put a hose to the fire and rescue them, but rather to go back to the fire station and read up on the principles of heat combustion. He recommends analyzing the recidivism rates of probation officers’ clients, the recidivism outcomes of individual prosecutors, defence counsel and judges, whether some jails and parole boards have better outcomes than others. “Once we have the information and analyzed it, we would have a better idea what works and what doesn’t. If we revised laws and changed policies based upon measured outcomes, we might improve those outcomes.”
So which is it, a separate Indigenous justice system or more endless “kick the ball down the road” studies, surveys and “analysis”? Mr. Johnson doesn’t seem to be able to decide. In any event, whichever option he chooses, poor, vulnerable, lost, marginalized, powerless Indigenous persons will, while all this endless Indian Industry job-creating “analysis” is going on in the big cities, continue to suffer. As I wrote in There Is No Difference and in the Widdowson book review above, quoting Octavio Paz, asking suffering people to wait for the happening of an infinitely remote end is to condemn them to the perpetual prison of the present. Our suffering Indigenous peoples desperately need foundational reforms and change now! The only solution to better this situation, the only way for Indigenous peoples to escape the “perpetual prison of the present”, for the reasons I argue in my book, There Is No Difference, is to eliminate the laws supporting our Indigenous quasi-apartheid status quo, then phase out the reserves, and by that means help Indigenous peoples complete the already-started process of integrating into general Canadian, urban-oriented society on the basis of everybody being equal under the law.
Peter Best- December 15, 2019
