The Plan

It’s hard to narrow down a topic like First Nations politics.  It’s like trying to summarize thousands of years of history down into three months.

I want to look at the effects of Canadian governmental policy on First Nations people, but I also don’t want to discount the years of history that came before colonization or before the Canadian government began its active effort to assimilate First Nations people into mainstream European/Canadian society. This leaves me in a bit of a personal predicament because I know that I can’t look at every aspect of First Nations life and how it relates to the present and to the media, but at the same time I feel that to explore the topic properly, I have to know as much as I can.

This leaves me thinking that I need a plan on how best to tackle some of the realities of First Nations life in the Southern Interior. I’m making a list of things that I would like to do in the next few months to get a better understanding of First Nations’ history.

1.    Visit the old Kamloops Residential School
2.    Connect with the TRU Gathering Place
3.    Go to the First Nations school, Sk’elep
4.    Connect with at least one First Nations social worker
5.    Talk to as many First Nations people as I can on and off reserve
6.    Talk to some band leaders and elders

I know that this will give me just a snap-shot into what First Nations life is like in the Southern Interior, but it’s a start.

Sometimes without a plan, there can be so much information that I’m not even sure where to begin. This list is just my first step and I’m more than open to suggestions on where or what I should be doing to better get context into the First Nations experience in British Columbia so if you know something that I’ve missed —please let me know. The more I know how things work, the better I can explain it to someone else and share that knowledge.

The Power of Stories

Storytelling as a teaching tool is something that many cultures use. In my own childhood, I read the stories of the Brothers Grimm and saw the hidden lessons of not to look where I was told not to and to listen to my parents. The truth is I didn’t learn those lessons from the stories, but rather from my parent’s direct teachings. This is why it’s so interesting to me to think about the idea of an oral culture. It stands in juxtaposition to my own experiences as someone who was raised in a written, literate culture.

I’ve been reading a book called Shuswap Journey. It’s a book of cultural stories but it’s obvious when reading them that the stories are filled with teachings. One story gave instructions on building a pit house through detailed descriptions of the building built into the story. Another talked about the process of getting married and what the ceremony was like. In reading this book, I find myself feeling like this is a written version of oral stories that stretch back into the past to record history and dictated practice and tradition. 

The value of oral stories can be discounted by written cultures because they don’t have the same physical staying power as a story that has been written down. This has resulted in a continuation of power imbalances. First Nations people have fought and are fighting for the right to have their oral stories considered as evidence of land ownership. During the process of colonization, oral stories have been discounted as just stories and not seen as a record of history, but this is changing. 

The importance of stories was shown in the case of Delgamuukw v. British Columbia. According to the Gitxsan website, this case was about the Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en peoples trying to get “recognition of ownership, jurisdiction and self-government of their traditional territories from the governments of Canada and B.C.” The case was dismissed by a trail judge in 1991, but appealed and ultimately taken to the Supreme Court of Canada. At the Supreme Court of Canada, the judges accepted many of the arguments presented by the bands and in 1997, it ruled that the province of B.C. could not wipe out aboriginal rights to land. This case is a landmark in terms of acknowledgement of the value of oral culture by a written culture. 

In reading the Secwepemc stories, I can see the value that these stories bring to the people who read them. They are filled with cultural practices and give snapshot into what the past was like in some places. It’s sad to me that stories have been discounted in the past but I’m pleased to see cases like Delgamuukw recognizing the value of traditional stories on western terms. There is still a long way to go in terms of acknowledging the value that First Nations culture brings to Canada, but I do believe that on some level people are becoming more open to other viewpoints and that makes me believe that we may someday bridge the gap between First Nations and non-First Nations cultures.

Copyright and Reconciliation

Tomorrow was supposed to be my first in-person interview as part of this blog, but he’s had to reschedule due to scheduling conflicts. But in talking with my interviewee yesterday, he mentioned and interesting issue – the issue of who would own the copyright of the information he told me. Copyright is a challenging subject because many people can believe that they hold rights over the same information as someone else. It’s important to note that copyright applies not to ideas but to the exact wording of how the ideas are explained. As a journalist, I understand his concern because my work raises a few issues in that I am using his direct quotes in with my own original content. I would argue that the interviewee has the rights to what he or she has said but that I hold the copyright to the piece in entirety.  It was interesting to hear my interviewee raise these concerns. I found out through conversation that the reason for this concern stemmed from a past experiences where a band member was interviewed by an anthropologist as a source and then the anthropologist took that information, formalized it into research and then owned the copyright over the research. This left the band wondering if it still owned the stories that it had been telling for generation and had been shared with the anthropologist.

This raises an interesting issue of who holds the power in First Nations and non-First Nations’ relations. Because First Nations people are working within the framework of the European settlers who took over Canada during colonization, First Nations are always working with the challenge of having two sets of rules and cultural practices that affect the way they function in society. The issue of copyright is just one example of where ideas have been shared only in some cases to be misappropriated. It is not my goal to take anything from people but rather to gain experience and context into the First Nations experience. 

It’s challenging as a non-First Nations person to just think about going into First Nations communities and asking them to share personal experiences like the cultural genocide of the residential schools and to talk about the poverty, abuse and addiction that some First Nations people live with constantly. The issue is how do I build trust with communities who have repetitively had trust broken with other non-Native people and groups who have come before me. I feel that it would have been some much easier to look into an issue that is situated within my own cultural terms because I would not have to risk being another non-First Nations person to come in with my own desires and needs and be seen as exploiting the First Nations people who I speak with. That is, of course, not my goal but it is a fear of mine. I am trying to wrap my head around the cultural context and history of what’s happened to First Nations in British Columbia but at the same time not do more damage in my exploration. 

I’m not sure what this process will look like as I ask First Nation people from around Kamloops to give me their time and their stories, but I hope that it will go well and I will have the context and compassion to start to build some small statement of reconciliation with the First Nations people I talk to. As I start to realize the potential implications of my actions on the individuals that I interview, I am realizing that this process might be emotionally and mentally challenging. It should be a powerful learning experience for me, but I hope that in my learning, I don’t continue a legacy of power imbalance and best intentions gone wrong. 

Abuse

I’ve been struggling with my emotions this week. My attempts to understand how years of sexual abuse could go unchecked in residential schools and then later in foster homes, how people could bring that abuse back to their communities and then subject loved ones and community members to the same abuse they experienced has me baffled and disturbed.

I’ve long known about the abuse that happened within the residential school system but didn’t realize until recently the physical and sexual abuse that many First Nations children experienced during the Sixties Scoop and that it went into the present. I feel so sad that so many people have had their experience of sexuality affected by systemic abuse.

I’ve had by many accounts an ideal childhood. I grew up white, middle-class with a family that’s educated and never abused me in any way that I can figure. I’ve been given the best chance of success that society can offer and I’ve done well under the current system. In reading about some of the physical and sexual abuse that some First Nations people suffered, I try to imagine what I would have been like if I had experienced a childhood other than mine. I would be different and likely would have met with much less societal success. It seems to me that even First Nations children who come from good homes have to work harder to achieve the goals that I seem to have achieved so easily because of the historical mistreatment of First Nations people and ongoing racism (to say the least). 

I was talking with a teacher that I know about how going through puberty was hard enough but to throw in the confusion of years of sexual abuse would have been nearly impossible to deal with on an emotional level.  When I look at how a culture of sexual abuse was passed on from generation to generation in some First Nations communities, it makes perfect sense to see those communities self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. I would too. But then that self-medication leads to a whole host of other social ills – unemployment, children with FASD and high crime rates so that numbing is not for the best.

There have been success stories about communities that have worked to tackle their issues with alcohol and in turn sexual abuse. Starting in the ‘70s, the community of Alkali Lake in the Cariboo has worked to go from a population where most people abused alcohol to now where 95 per cent of the community is sober. I had a chance to talk to the chief of Alkali Lake a few years ago and was inspired by how much positive change came from people making the choice to be better for themselves and their youth. It is with examples like that I can start to see how people might deal with some of the abuse and begin to move past it to become people connected with their culture and their selves.

I know that reading about abuse doesn’t mean that I truly understand it, but reading people’s personal accounts of how abuse affected them and their lives has been moving from me and I feel that I will now approach interviewing First Nations people about abuse with more sensitivity, time and compassion.

Stolen From Our Embrace

I’m reading Stolen From Our Embrace, a book written by journalist, Suzanne Fournier, and Sto:lo First Nations leader, Ernie Crey. The book is an investigation into the impacts of residential schools, the Sixties Scoop (this was where many First Nations children were taken from their families and adopted into white homes largely because First Nations parents were not seen as fit or in the case of Crey, were not able to access the same services as white families) Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, abuse and the lived effects of policies that have discriminated against First Nations people for generations. 

In the book, Crey talks about his own experience growing up in foster homes and looks at the negative effects of similar experiences on his other siblings. He describes how one of his sisters “now spends most of her time on Vancouver’s meanest streets, on a methadone-maintenance program but receiving no psychiatric care or counselling to help her cope with the immense losses in her life” (p. 43). The book was first published in 1997. I think it’s telling that about seven years later, Crey got confirmation that the DNA of his sister, Dawn, was found on the farm of now-convicted serial killer, Robert Pickton. The names of Crey’s siblings were changed in the book so that I can’t say for sure that this sister is Dawn, but I feel that it is and it’s heartbreaking to read. 

I can’t help but feel that society must bear responsibility for the adults produced by systems that have not always valued First Nations culture and have historically worked to systematically remove “Indianness” from First Nation people. This is not to say that all people who went through the foster care or residential school systems have turned out poorly nor that all the people who managed and ran those system did so with ill-intent, but some people did and there are many first-person accounts that speak to that.  I feel as I read this book that there needs to be more education about the effects of years of abuse and belittlement had on some First Nations people. Perhaps if more people understood that this story is not over and that racist policy still exists, there would be less people saying, “get over it.” It is nearly impossible to get over something that is still ongoing but I don’t think that most Canadians see the First Nations experience in those terms. I would love to see a media that works to educate itself more about the historical happenings that make for important, newsworthy stories like that of Ernie Crey and his sister, Dawn. 

Though this entry has been a bit bleak so far, there is some good news in the future. I am looking forward to interviewing a First Nations elder in the next few weeks. Harold Eustache is fluent in the Secwepemc language and has published a book, Shuswap Journey, which catalogues the accounts of his people. At 73 years old, he has years of experience and context and I’m hoping he’ll share those along with the effects that he’s seen government policy have on his community.

Looking with non-First Nations eyes

As a non-First Nations person, this blog presents a bit of a challenge to me personally. I want to discuss issues that affect First Nations people and look at what that means to the wider population including the media, but I do not want to frame this as a First Nations vs. non-First Nations discussion. It should ideally be a collaborative conversation between all the people involved. But given this desire, I realize that a history of colonization doesn’t make this easy. Years of privilege or persecution can make for different perspectives and often lead people to have a lack of overall understanding for the other side.

To give some personal context to my relationship with B.C., my own family immigrated to Canada in my grandparent’s generation on my dad’s side and my parent’s generation on my mom’s. Even given my family’s relative newness to the Canada, I feel a responsibility for the cultural thinking that came along with European immigration. Residential schools, biological genocide and racist political policies have put First Nations people across Canada at a disadvantage compared to European settlers and their families. I want to explore some of these challenges in this blog, but I intend this exploration to be personal and not to dictate my views on any other people.

I believe like author, John Ralson Saul, that Canada’s identity as a largely compassionate and sharing country is formed not in spite of First Nations people, but because of them.  In Saul’s book, A Fair Country, he explores the idea that Canada is a Métis nation where ideas like universal health care are the product of this blending of European and First Nations ideals. I feel that as a Canadian, it has been to my benefit to know and hear about the different ways that different cultures deal with different issues. At the root of Canadian multiculturalism is the relationship between First Nations people and immigrants and that’s why a better knowledge of First Nations people, history and politics is so key to understanding what it means to be Canadian.

The history of interactions with First Nations people has a deep and storied past in B.C. It seems that much of the politics that First Nations people are dealing with now are caused by external systems being imposed on communities, in many cases through law and force. This is made more interesting by the fact that unlike most of the rest of Canada, many of the First Nations in B.C. did not sign treaties as the province was being settled. Though this blog, I want to look at some of that history because I feel that to truly be a British Columbian, I need to understand the history upon which this province is built. I want to look at both the horrors and the successes because context comes from understanding a spectrum of experience. 

As a journalist, I see that First Nations stories are often covered superficially by mainstream media. This is not to say that there aren’t journalists attempting to give good context, but that with limited space or airtime, this is not always accomplished. I believe that part of the reason that First Nations issues are not, in my experience, covered in much depth is the lack of education at a both secondary and post-secondary level. Students should be learning more about the realities of things like the Indian Act, the Sixties Scoop, ongoing treaty negotiations, federal funding, and self-governance. In my experience, I didn’t get this knowledge until I sought the information out. I'm not looking for an overnight change in attitudes, but this blog is my attempt to educate myself through reading and through conversations and interviews with First Nations people. Through doing this, I hope to become a better journalist and help more people better understand First Nations issues in B.C.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my blog on First Nations politics in British Columbia.

My name is Jenifer Norwell and I’m a freelance journalist working in print and broadcast in the Southern Interior of B.C. I’m in my final term of a journalism degree at Thompson River University in Kamloops, B.C. and work casually with CBC radio. 

I got interested in First Nations issues through my upbringing in northern B.C. and because of my time working with the CBC morning show out of Prince George, which broadcasts to the north of the province. In covering stories about First Nations people, I realized how important historical context is in accurately reporting stories. This blog is an attempt to explore some of the politics and background behind First Nations issues in B.C. — to look at why things happen and what happens next. I hope to look at issues like treaties, band politics, self-governance and the education system and how I relate to them. 

I want to create a dialogue between First Nations people and the journalists who cover them. Even with years of research, it can be hard for people living outside First Nations communities to fully understand First Nations politics and issues. I hope this blog can be a place where people can comment and converse in a respectful and insightful way on current realities and past histories that face First Nations people and the rest of the province.