Download Gerald Taiaiake Alfred Gerald Taiaiake Alfred is a

Gerald Taiaiake Alfred
Gerald Taiaiake Alfred is a Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) philosopher,
writer, and teacher. Taiaiake was born in Montreal in 1964 and raised on
the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory where he lived until 1996, except for
his service in the US Marine Corps during the 1980s. He presently lives
on Snaka Mountain in Wsanec Nation Territory in British Columbia
with his wife and sons. He studied history at Concordia University in
Montreal and holds a doctorate in Government from Cornell University.
Taiaiake began his teaching career at Concordia University and is
now Director and Professor of Indigenous Governance, a program he
founded, at the University of Victoria.
Taiaiake has lectured at many universities and colleges in Canada, the
United States, England, and Australia and has served as an advisor to
the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, to the Mohawk Council
of Kahnawake, and to many other Indigenous governments and
organizations.
Taiaiake has been awarded a Canada Research Chair, a National
Aboriginal Achievement Award in the field of education, and the Native
American Journalists Association award for best column writing. His
writing includes numerous scholarly articles and contributed essays in
newspapers, journals, and magazines as well as three books, Wasáse
(Broadview, 2005), a runner-up for the McNally Robinson Aboriginal
Book of the Year in 2005; the influential and best-selling Peace, Power,
Righteousness (Oxford University Press, 1999); and Heeding the Voices
of Our Ancestors (Oxford University Press, 1995).
179
Gerald Taiaiake Alfred
Restitution is the Real Pathway to Justice for
Indigenous Peoples
It is my contention that reconciliation must be intellectually and
politically deconstructed as the orienting goal of Indigenous peoples’
political and social struggles. I see reconciliation as an emasculating
concept, weak-kneed and easily accepting of half-hearted measures of
a notion of justice that does nothing to help Indigenous peoples regain
their dignity and strength. One of my concerns in any discussion of
reconciliation is finding ways to break its hold upon our consciousness
so that we can move towards a true and lasting foundation for justice
that will result in meaningful changes in the lives of Indigenous peoples
and in the return of their lands.
Without massive restitution made to Indigenous peoples, collectively and
as individuals, including land, transfers of federal and provincial funds,
and other forms of compensation for past harms and continuing injustices
committed against the land and Indigenous peoples, reconciliation will
permanently absolve colonial injustices and is itself a further injustice.
This much is clear in our Indigenous frame of understanding of the past
and present of our shared histories, even if Indigenous leaders are too
afraid of the political repercussions and unwilling to make the necessary
sacrifices to advance such an agenda.
Other people’s understandings of the nature of the problem we are
facing are a more complex issue. The complete ignorance of Canadian
society about the facts of their relationship with Indigenous peoples
and the wilful denial of historical reality by Canadians detracts from the
possibility of any meaningful discussion on true reconciliation. Limited
to a discussion of history that includes only the last five or ten years,
the corporate media and general public focus on the inefficiently spent
billions of dollars per year handed out through the Department of Indian
and Northern Affairs system. The complex story of what went on in the
past and the tangled complexities of the past’s impact on the present
and future of our relationships are reduced to questions of entitlements,
rights, and good governance within the already established institutions
of the state. Consider the effect of lengthening our view and extending
society’s view. When considering 100 or 300 years of interactions, it
181
Restitution is the Real Pathway to Justice for Indigenous Peoples
would become clear even to white people that the real problem facing
their country is that nations are fighting over questions of conquest and
survival, of empire or genocide, and of moral claims to be a just society.
Considering the long view and true facts, the Indian problem becomes a
question of right and wrong for justice at its most basic form.
Restitution is
purification.
Something was stolen, lies were told, and they have never been made
right. That is the crux of the problem. If we do not shift away from
the pacifying discourse of reconciliation and begin to reframe people’s
perceptions of the problem so that it is not a question of how to reconcile
with colonialism that faces us but instead how to use restitution as the
first step towards creating justice and a moral society, we will be advancing
colonialism, not decolonization. What was stolen must be given back,
and amends must be made for the crimes that were committed from
which all non-Indigenous Canadians, old families and recent immigrants
alike, have gained their existence as people on this land and citizens of
this country.
When I say to a settler, “Give it back,” am I talking about them giving
up the country and moving away? No. Irredentism has never been
in the vision of our peoples. When I say, “Give it back,” I am talking
about settlers demonstrating respect for what we share—the land and
its resources—and making things right by offering us the dignity and
freedom we are due and returning enough of our power and land for us
to be self-sufficient.
Restitution is not a play on white guilt; that is what reconciliation processes
have become. Guilt is a monotheistic concept foreign to Indigenous
cultures; it does not brood under the threat of punishment over past
misdeeds to the point of moral and political paralysis. Restitution is
purification. It is a ritual of disclosure and confession in which there
is an acknowledgement and acceptance of one’s harmful actions and a
genuine demonstration of sorrow and regret, constituted in reality by
putting forward a promise to never again do harm and by redirecting
one’s actions to benefit the one who has been wronged. Even the act of
proposing a shift to this kind of discussion is a radical challenge to the
reconciling negotiations that try to fit us into the colonial legacy rather
than to confront and defeat it. When I speak of restitution, I am speaking
of restoring ourselves as peoples, our spiritual power, dignity, and the
182
Gerald Taiaiake Alfred
economic bases for our autonomy. Canadians understand implicitly that
reconciliation will not force them to question what they have done, but
it will allow them to congratulate themselves for their forbearance and
understanding once Indigenous peoples—or, to be precise, using the
language of the conciliatory paradigm, Aboriginal peoples—are reconciled
with imperialism. Reconciliation may be capable of moving us beyond
the unpalatable stench of overt racism in public and social interactions.
This would be an easy solution to the problem of colonialism for white
people, and no doubt most would be satisfied with this obfuscation of
colonial realities. But logically and morally, there is no escaping that the
real and deeper problems of colonialism are a direct result of the theft of
our lands, which cannot be addressed in any way other than through the
return of those lands to us.
There are at least two aspects of this large problem. The first is
comprehension of the economic dimension; the continuing effect upon
our communities of being illegally dispossessed of their lands. The
second is the social dimension; the political and legal denials of collective
Indigenous existences. Recasting the Onkwehonwe (original people)
struggle as one of seeking restitution as the precondition to reconciliation
is not extremist or irrational, as most Indigenous intellectual and
political leaders and certainly all white people will no doubt respond.
Restitution, as a broad goal, involves demanding the return of what
was stolen, accepting reparations (either land, material, or monetary
recompense) for what cannot be returned, and forging a new sociopolitical relationship based on Canadians’ admission of wrongdoing and
acceptance of the responsibility and obligation to engage Indigenous
peoples in a restitution-reconciliation peace-building process.
The other side of the problem is methodological; the lessons of Indigenous
people’s struggles for self-determination since the mid-twentieth century
are that restitution and reconciliation can only be achieved through
contention and the generation of constructive conflict with the state and
with the Canadian society through the resurgence and demonstration
of Indigenous power in the social and political spheres. From the Red
Power Movement through to the Oka Crisis and the new generation of
warrior societies, history has demonstrated that it is impossible either
to transform the colonial society from within colonial institutions or
to achieve justice and peaceful coexistence without fundamentally
183
Restitution is the Real Pathway to Justice for Indigenous Peoples
Put simply, the
imperial enterprise
called “Canada” that
is operating in the
guise of a liberal
democratic state is,
by design and culture,
incapable of just and
peaceful relations
with Indigenous
peoples.
transforming the institutions of the colonial society themselves. Put
simply, the imperial enterprise called “Canada” that is operating in the
guise of a liberal democratic state is, by design and culture, incapable
of just and peaceful relations with Indigenous peoples. The consistent
failure of negotiated solutions to achieve any meaningful change in
the lives of Indigenous peoples or to return control of the land over to
them proves this fact (agreeing to govern and use the land as would a
white man in return for recognition of your governing authority does
not count as liberation from colonialism). Real change will happen only
when settlers are forced into a reckoning of who they are, what they have
done, and what they have inherited; then they will be unable to function
as colonials and begin instead to engage other peoples as respectful
human beings.
There are serious constraints to the recognition of Indigenous rights
in this country because the imperative to assimilate all difference is,
in fact, an inherent feature of liberal democracy. Attempts to move
away from the racist paternalism so typical of all colonial countries are
handicapped by the framing of the entire decolonization project in the
legal and political context of a liberal democratic state. Detached from
the colonial mythology of the settler society through the application of
a disciplined logic of just principles, Indigenous-settler relations cannot
be obviously reconciled without deconstructing the institutions that
were built on racism and colonial exploitation. For justice to be achieved
out of a colonial situation, a radical rehabilitation of the state is required.
Without radical changes to the state itself, all proposed changes are
ultimately assimilative.
There are fundamental differences between Indigenous and Canadian
models of societal organization and governance. Indigenous cultures and
the governing structures that emerged from within them are founded
on relationships and obligations of kinship relations, on the economic
view that sustainability of relationships and perpetual reproduction of
material life are prime objectives, on the belief that organizations should
bind family units together with their land, and on a conception of
political freedom that balances a person’s autonomy with accountability
to one’s family. Contrast this to the liberal democratic state in which
the primary relationship is among rights-bearing citizens and the core
function of government is to integrate pre-existing social and political
184
Gerald Taiaiake Alfred
diversities into the singularity of a state, assimilating all cultures into a
single patriotic identity, and in which political freedom is mediated by
distant, supposedly representative structures in an inaccessible system
of public accountability that has long been corrupted by the influence of
corporations.
How can anyone expect that these two totally different political cultures
are reconcilable? They are not. Colonial institutions and the dysfunctional
subcultures they have spawned within Indigenous communities are
the result of failed attempts to force Indigenous peoples into a liberal
democratic mould. Given the essential conflict of form and objectives
between Indigenous and liberal governance, one or the other must
be transformed in order for a reconciliation to occur. As majoritarian
tyrannies within colonial situations, liberal democratic societies always
operate on the assumption that Indigenous peoples will succumb and
submit to the overwhelming cultural and numerical force of the settler
society. Huge costs are involved, monetarily and socially, in the effort
to make Indigenous individuals assimilate to liberal democracy and
Judeo-Christian cultural values, with no justification other than those
weak arguments formed on ideological and cultural prejudices toward
the supposed superiority of Europe’s cultural and intellectual heritage.
This is why reconciliation, as it is commonly understood, is unjust; any
accommodation to liberal democracy is a surrender of the very essence
of any kind of an Indigenous existence.
Unprejudiced logics of decolonization point instead to the need to create
coexistence among autonomous political communities. Eventual peaceful
coexistence demands a decolonization process in which Onkwehonwe will
be extricated from, not further entrenched within, the values, cultures,
and practices of liberal democracy. If the goals of decolonization are
justice and peace, then the process to achieve these goals must reflect
a basic covenant on the part of both Indigenous peoples and settlers
to honour each other’s existence. This honouring cannot happen when
one partner in the relationship is asked to sacrifice their heritage and
identity in exchange for peace. This is why the only possibility of a just
relationship between Indigenous peoples and the settler society is the
conception of a nation-to-nation partnership between peoples, the kind
of relationship reflected in the original treaties of peace and friendship
consecrated between Indigenous peoples and the newcomers who started
185
Restitution is the Real Pathway to Justice for Indigenous Peoples
arriving in our territories. The only way to remove ourselves from the
injustice of the present relationship is to begin implementing a process
of resurgence-apology-restitution and seeking to restore the pre-colonial
relationship of sharing and cooperation among diverse peoples.
But aboriginal rights, this
really means saying “We were
here before you. You came
and took the land from us
and perhaps you cheated us
by giving us some worthless
things in return for vast
expanses of land and we want
to re-open this question. We
want you to preserve our
aboriginal rights and to restore
them to us.” And our answerit may not be the right one
and may not be the one that
is accepted but it will be up to
all of you people to make your
minds up and to choose for
or against it and to discuss it
with the Indians- our answer
is “no.”
Prime Minister Trudeau
From a speech on Indian,
Aboriginal, and treaty rights
Vancouver, British Columbia
8 August 1969
186
Canada rebukes attempts to reason logically through the problem in this
way. Mainstream arguments about restitution and reconciliation always
end up becoming conservative defences of obvious injustices against even
the most principled and fair arguments for restitution. It should no doubt
be commonly accepted that legitimizing injustices promotes further
injustices. Tolerating crimes encourages criminality. But the present
Canadian argument presumes that since the injustices are historical and
the passage of time has certainly led to changed circumstances for both
the alleged perpetrators and for the victims, the crime has been erased
and there is no obligation to pay for it. This is the sophisticated version
of the common settler sentiment: “The Indians may have had a rough
go of it, but it’s not my fault because I wasn’t around one hundred years
ago,” or, “I bought my ranch from the government, fair and square!” In
the wake of the Indian residential schools apology and the compensation
of the Settlement Agreement, it must be said that half-hearted and legally
constrained government apologies and small monetary payoffs of those
remaining individuals who endured abuse in residential schools do not
come close to true acknowledgement, much less moral, legal, or political
absolution for the much larger crime of dispossession of an entire land
mass.
The first argument—pro-restitution—is powerful in itself. It is precisely
the reluctance of the settler to investigate and indict his own actions and
those of his ancestors that allows the injustice to compound continuously
and to entrench itself within the dominant culture. Given the facts and
the reality that define Indigenous-settler relations, the counter-argument
of historicity points to the necessity of restitution. Placing the counterargument in an actual social and political context negates any power
that it may otherwise have in a theoretical or mythical context. The
key to this is in the assertion that the passage of time leads to changes
in circumstance. This is fundamentally untrue, especially when made
in relation to Indigenous peoples, Canadian society, and the injustice
of a colonial relationship. Between the beginning of this century and
the beginning of the last, people’s clothes may have changed and their
Gerald Taiaiake Alfred
names may be different, but the games they play are the same. Without
a substantial change in the circumstances of colonization, there is no
basis for considering the historical injustice. The crime of colonialism is
present today, as are its perpetrators, and there is yet no moral or logical
basis for Indigenous peoples to seek reconciliation with Canada.
This essay is adapted from the author’s discussion of reconciliation in Wasáse:
Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (Peterborough, ON: UTP/
Broadview Press, 2005).
187
Photographer: Jane Hubbard