I am completely unoriginal. My ideas about the Indigenous situation in Canada come from books and personal experiences arising from a lucky middle class Canadian upbringing.
Part of that luck was growing up in the 1950’s, when the arc of social progress bent towards equality under the law for all, which later proved me immune to the illiberal lies and fantasies surrounding identity politics and race-based populism, born in the late 1960’s, a main Canadian feature of which is the present Indigenous separatist movement.
The fact that this separatist movement is supported by our governments, courts, universities, major corporations and mainstream media outlets does not persuade me of its legitimacy or its social worth.
It’s harmful and unworkable for our country. Period.
Great literary and historical works help us deal with the foolishness and illiberal nature of identity politics and populism.
They timelessly deal with the great themes of human life as all humans have always lived it. They inform, guide and comfort us. They make us think more critically, and so cause us to make better judgements on what we erroneously think are only local, temporal issues, but which are in fact timeless, universally encountered issues.
Historian and geopolitical theorist Robert Kaplan’s latest book is about the universal – and divisive – effects of modernism, The Loom of Time – Between Empire and Anarchy, From the Mediterranean to China.
It helps one to understand the causes of the Canadian Indigenous separatist movement.
Kaplan writes that the cultural shock caused by modernism and globalism– by the annihilation of traditional tribal/village ways of life caused by them – has resulted in those affected, as an emotionally compensating reaction, to “reinvent their primordial selves in more abstract and extreme forms in order to cope with impersonal settings.”
He writes that the anonymity and the loss of pride and cultural identity on the part of tribal societies resulting from urbanization and other globalist influences leads to the psychological need for a compensating, “emotional grounding”, which manifests itself in intense, albeit entirely fictionally based, assertions of political, ethnic, religious or racial exceptionalism.
It further results in strident demands based on that fictional exceptionalism for favored treatment by the state.
The most extreme example of favored treatment demanded is the right of race or ethnic based, “national” self-government, but within the protective, 100% financially supportive envelope of the very State which is the subject of the extreme demand.
Ironically, the more modern, urban and globally integrated the tribal/village becomes, the greater its “primordial” tribal and racial sentiments become and the more insistent become its claims to be so favored by the State.
This is what has happened in Canada with respect to our Indigenous peoples.
Modernity, urbanization and globalism have destroyed pre-contact Indigenous cultures and, as an ironic, counter-intuitive consequence, have led to abstract and entirelyilliberal, fantasy-based claims of Indigenous cultural authenticity, “difference” and race-based rights, including the right to State-financed “national” self-government, all of which claims and rights, Indigenous leaders assert, constitute legal obligations of the State.
The crucial fact that these racial, ethnic, religious and sectarian groups are tiny and have no state-building or state-maintaining capacity is of no consequence to them, such is the bubble of unreality they inhabit.
The Loom of Time builds on Robert Kaplan’s 2022 book, Adriatic – A Concert of Civilizations at The End of The Modern Age.
In Adriatic Kaplan describes a reflective journey he took around the Adriatic Sea, through Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania and Greece, all countries riven by ethnic and religious conflict. In addition to making the reader want so desperately to go those places, Adriatic is a profound meditation on how history, literature, art, architecture and current events all meld together to shape and give us understanding of our troubled, divisive present and our uncertain future.
Adriatic raises many important issues that are relevant to Canada. I deal with five of them here.
Firstly, as Kaplan writes:
“The future, I have learned, is often prepared by what cannot be mentioned or admitted to in fine company. The future lies inside the silences.”
Kaplan is referring here to suppressed truths- elephants in the room that everybody sees but is afraid to mention. In fact, the social pressure to not mention them is so great that it can amount to a deliberate suppression of free speech. In Canada, with respect to our Indigenous situation, some of such truths, all illustrated in articles on the writer’s website, thereisnodifference.ca, are:
-The existence of reserves is the prime cause of Indigenous social failure in Canada, but Indigenous elites refuse to admit this and refuse to agree to give them up.
-South Africa patterned its apartheid system on the Canada’s Indian Act and reserve system.
-The declared Indigenous “nation to nation” relationship is impossible for Canada to maintain with the over 600 separate Indigenous “nations” each claiming it. It’s impossible to maintain such a relationship with even one such Indigenous “nation”. Indigenous “nations” in Canada have no state building or state maintaining capacity.
-UNDRIP and the “consult and accommodate” law are forms of race-based welfare capitalism, are divisive, and are disastrous for Canada’s economy.
-There’s no such thing today as authentic Indigenous culture. It was subsumed by Western culture and died 150 years ago. Except for the unique and harmful cultural effects of the Indian Act and the reserve system, iPhone-wielding Indigenous peoples are almost totally integrated and assimilated with non-Indigenous Canadian peoples.
-Indigenous peoples have neither more nor less of a “special relationship with the land” than all other Canadians.
-There’s no such thing as “Indigenous laws” or “Indigenous legal traditions”.
-Integration and assimilation are timeless, normal, healthy, social processes.
-Residential schools were necessary and mainly positive. They did not constitute any kind of “genocide” or cause “intergenerational trauma”.
-There are no “missing and murdered children” from residential schools.
-There are missing and/or murdered Indigenous women and girls, but the actions of Indigenous men are the likeliest cause of this.
-Duncan Campbell Scott was and remains a distinguished Canadian who mainly did the right things for Indigenous peoples.
-Section 35 of the Constitution and the Indian Act should both be repealed, and then the reserves phased out.
The fact that these truths are suppressed indicates how real and important they are. In the conscious or unconscious minds of those Indigenous and non-Indigenous elites who benefit from the suppression of these truths, they will not permit these ideas to be discussed because to do so would threaten a status quo which they personally benefit from.
A positive and united Canadian future depends upon these suppressed truths being allowed to be aired and debated in the public forum. Once that happens, changes that are now regarded as “impossible” will go through various stages of public discussion and acceptance until they become regarded as necessary and then inevitable. The risk of keeping these truths artificially suppressed is that race-based tensions and frustrations can build up and may “explode” in some illiberal and otherwise harmful manner.
This “exploding”phenomenon partially explains the recent election of Donald Trump as President of the United States.
Secondly, Kaplan writes that “comparison is the basis of all serious scholarship.”
As both The Loom of Time and Adriatic show, responsible, competent, illuminating and thus constructive critical thinking about contemporary political and social issues is impossible without knowing history and literature and being able to compare the issue at hand with the infinite number of similar situations that history and literature reveal.
In Canada the present level of historical and literary awareness is abysmally low.
Indigenous leaders make accusations against their fellow Canadians relating to their peoples allegedly being victims of such phenomena as migration, conquest, colonialism, cultural appropriation and assimilation. They make accusations of being allegedly victimized because they were afforded the ability to go to school so that they could survive in and contribute to their society as adults, (sometimes a residential school because often that was all that was available).
All these accusations are made in a bubble of self-interest, ignorance and denial of the fact that such forces and events are universal and have operated in history and human affairs on every society that has ever existed and on every single person who has ever lived.
Indigenous and non-Indigenous elites who make or support these accusations fail the Canadian people by allowing their historical and cultural illiteracy to so badly skew their judgement on the past, present and future situation of Indigenous peoples in Canada.
A liberal democracy cannot survive such ignorance.
Thirdly, Kaplan writes of the historical “necessary empire” as often being the only form of political organization that has been able to keep mutually antagonistic tribes and ethnic groups from always being at each others’ throats.
The necessary empire has over the past 400 years been gradually replaced by the necessary State, which performs the same crucial order-keeping functions for its citizens.
To achieve their separatist goals Canadian Indigenous separatists plan to “decolonize” and significantly dismantle the Canadian State and its institutions.
This would create a situation of great civic danger for all Canadians, especially individual Indigenous Canadians, for whom the Canadian State can be their only ultimate protector.
Historian Timothy Snyder warns that:
“When States are absent, rights- by any definition- are impossible to sustain. States are not structures to be taken for granted, exploited or discarded, but are the fruits of long and quiet effort. It is tempting but dangerous to fragment the State.”
The political philosopher Edmund Burke warns us to exercise “infinite caution” in weakening the sovereignty of the State where it “has answered in any tolerable degree the common purposes of society”, which the Canadian State has, overall, done brilliantly for the past 150 years.
Canadian writer Ivor Tossel reminds us that “the State puts a wedge between us and instincts like tribalism and personal vengeance…it exists for a reason, and reason benefits from the State.”
The State is the foundation and fount of the rule of law. It’s the grantor and protector of citizens’ rights. It’s the root and guarantor of title to all real property owned by its citizens. It’s the guarantor of the proper workings of the marketplace, and thus the economy. The State, with a fulsome, secure and unchallenged tax revenue stream, is the provider of what we call the Welfare State- all the programs and services that decency towards our fellow citizens compels us all to provide to one another, especially those of us in need.
The Loom of Time and Adriatic both illustrate all these beneficial truths about the State, and provide a strong warning to Canadian Indigenous separatists that the situation of Indigenous peoples in Canada would be far worse than it is now under a weakened, fragmented and “decolonized” Canadian State. There would be anarchy for all.
Fourthly, Kaplan writes about the countries he travelled through in the Adriatic area as having been “abandoned by their elites”. This is a “post-modern”, “globalist” phenomenon one of the consequences of which is the rise of various forms of populism and identity politics. Again, the election of Donald Trump as American President is a manifestation of this.
When elites diminish the worth and importance of their nation state as an object of common identification and loyalty, people naturally gravitate to something else– or someone else – to fulfil their emotional need to commonly identify with something outside of and bigger than themselves.
With populism on the rise, this is exactly what has been happening in Canada since the passage of section 35 of the Constitution Act and since its ruinous, State-diminishing, racially divisive interpretation by the Supreme Court of Canada, and its equally ruinous State-diminishing and racially divisive implementation by our elected governments, especially the federal government.
Fifthly, Kaplan describes the challenge that all modern nations now face, which is to govern as a strong nation state in accordance with universal, liberal values – one such value being equality under the law– and yet at the same time be anchored to local cultures that people can identify with and feel emotional resonance with.
In meeting the challenges to national unity and well-being, Canada, as a nation, with its nation state-diminishing, race-based laws and policies, is going backwards in this regard. By allowing its sovereignty to be devolved to Indigenous bands and groups it is weakening itself and illiberally dividing the citizenry based on race.
This is threatening the ruin of Canada.
The late, great, unjustly neglected, Indigenous Canadian moral hero, William Wuttunee, in the Canadian context, had the right solution to Kaplan’s challenge.
Wuttunee believed that the Indian Act and Indian reserves were harmful to both Indigenous peoples and to Canada. His book Ruffled Feathers was a plea to support the aims of Pierre Trudeau’s 1969 White Paper, which recommended repealing the Indian Act, abolishing the reserves and making Indigenous Canadians equal under the law with non-Indigenous Canadians, like Nelson Mandela’s vision and goal for South Africa.
He believed that, without the negative influence of the Indian Act and reserves, Indigenous peoples, without losing any positive part of their Indigenous identity, could more meaningfully participate in modern Canadian life, and in fact, by doing so, would strengthen all Canadians’ emotional attachment to Canada.
As he wrote:
There is a great deal that Indians can give to the Western way of life. There is a sense of relaxation in their concept of time, and there is an appreciation of living close to nature without polluting one’s surroundings. Indians show a warmth for family life; they express a deep concern for their fellow members in the community; and they show a sense of humor even in dire circumstances. They can endure great pain without apparent emotion. Theirs is a culture which could emphasize peace and contentment.
William Wuttunee’s positive and reassuring vision of Canada moving forward as one strong and united nation, with universal legal equality for all, yet at the same time with its Indigenous peoples being securely anchored in all the positive aspects of their local cultures and traditions, and living integrated lives with non-Indigenous Canadians, and thus enhancing the latter’s lives, is the only vision and goal that, in the long term, is realistic, civically healthy, emotionally resonant, workable and that will restore the health and strength of the Canadian nation state.
Peter Best
November 8th, 2024
