Learning

When we encounter something we see is wrong, we automatically want to fix it - which hardly ever works. Right now we are dealing with the pre-eminent failures of our country and the wider world to address the two issues of our day - systematic racism and climate emergency. How we got here requires much study and reflection - but also the worldview we have inherited that put us where we are. I am working hard to understand the latter but for today I’ll look at what struck me most profoundly I didn’t know about the Indian Act from Bob Joseph’s excellent short book. It’s almost all of it. I was pleased to see an interview with him in the Globe and Mail this morning.

For a more global view of systemic racism the UN statement here is a good place to start.

These are the things among Joseph’s 21 that are most damaging

• First nations had systems of government based on heredity that worked for them. We imposed an elected system that did not meet their needs and competed with their own. The traditional leadership often continued with different responsibilities allocated to the two systems, creating the same kind of disputes and confusion that we already live with between federal and provincial areas of jurisdiction.

• Women had no status from 1869 to 1985. If a woman married a non status person, she lost her own status and had to leave the reserve. If a male married a person without status, that person was granted status on the reserve. Since women played a significant role in traditional leadership - and often succession was from a matrilinial line, this was a further outrage.

• People were placed on reserves from 1876 until today. This meant that people were moved from the land they used with care and viability to places where they more often than not had little ability to flourish. Even then the government reserved the right to take reserve land away for public works.

• They took away their names and gave them European ones. As the last of my branch of a family that can list its ancestors back several centuries, I can only imagine the effect of this.

• They needed a permit to sell produce from farms - because their produce would compete with that those on the lands that were taken from them.

• They could not buy guns, alcohol or go to pool halls.

• Worship ceremonies were illegal. (They had to go underground - and they did.)

• They couldn’t even leave the reserve without the permission of an Indian Agent.

That is enough outrage for one day. We will have to continue with more of it - and reckon with what is still in force.

A shameful history

All countries like to celebrate their achievements. So do people on social media these days, who seem to assume that their meals, children’s graduations, hair styles and the like merit interest and praise from the rest of us. I am surprised that some people I know do this so often. We’re much less apt to cite our failures - as individuals or as nations. That would reveal how vulnerable we really are behind these facades of achievement.

But is time to come to terms with reality. As Canadians we thought that people who had been here fourteen thousand years earlier needed to be taught how to live, how to dress, what language to speak and how to worship their creator. We took young children from their parents and placed them in residential schools where we abused them physically and sexually, transmitted our diseases. starved them and buried them in unmarked graves. We left a legacy to the generations that followed them. many who are still among us.

In answer to all the “Buts” and “What Abouts” of Canadian history, the best response is to pause and look at the current realities - as both individuals and institutions where we have connections. What have we to learn from a suffering people? What do they have to teach us now?

The recommendation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are here. It’s time for temperature taking and further action. Suffering takes time to heal. But denying the changes that need to happen doesn’t even allow healing to start. Not all actions are our personal responsibility - but both as individuals and institutions, some clearly are.

Place

In another essay written by Wendell Berry, he talks about returning from New York to the small community in Kentucky where he grew up - and previous generations of his family had lived. One of his New York colleagues at the University where he was teaching, tried to dissuade him by quoting, “You can’t go home again”. Berry disagreed. In the sense that the metaphor stands for change, there is some truth - but indeed you can stay in the same community and have a sense of place. I’ve now lived continuously in the same city since 1978 - with only a brief period of months away from it.

Living in the same community makes us aware of both change and stability within it. It allows one to interact with it and take some responsibility for the changes. Flying off to other countries as I have done, allows me to have a taste of them - but not to have any sense of their continuity. Visiting New York City after a span of about 35 years was revealing. The avenue and street numbers were the same as the Chelsea I lived in earlier in the 60s, with its Puerto Ricans who had escaped from Spanish Harlem for a new life, side-by-side the affluent young who were mortgaging their lives to buy and renovate crumbling brownstones. Even then the blocks below West 20th street were being razed for new development. More recently the old brownstone where we lived in a fifth floor walk up had stone facing added- and a doorman.

Stability was one of the monastic virtues - dashing around the world wasn’t in a time when travel was by foot or cart. Our ease of travel and relocation can take away our sense of place. Living in the same place makes us aware of land, soil, water, air. If we think of these things only as an environment to be glanced at on our travels, we lose all sense that we are part of them. Even city living - in contrast to Wendel Berry’s farm community allows for some of that.

Democracy and Climate

When we make The UK Guardian with news that one of Canada’s political parties refuses to state that climate change is real, we might like to shrink with embarrassment. When the Supreme Count rules that the federal government does have oversight of climate change - part of the continuing conversation about whether provinces or national government takes the lead, we might feel better - even if the decision is not unanimous. Decisions need clarity in a democracy.

The second book I read recently was Jonathan Manthorpe’s Restoring Democracy in an Age of Populists and Pestilence. It reflects his more than 40 years of work as a journalist and is an excellent review of what has happened in a wide range of countries. He notes that Francis Fukuyama’s original optimistic view that the only things that could affect western liberal democracy would be religion and nationalism and that wouldn’t happen - except that it has. By now, both know that and Manthorpe worries about its impact on his grandchildren and their world to come. Authoritarianism is much more popular and dangerous now in the West and Brexit and Trumpism bear that out. Before dealing with them in some detail he reconstructs the last two decades in the former Russian empire and the rise of China in a face paced and entertaining read.

He’s less worried about Canada than Europe or the United States but he doesn’t let us off the hook entirely. Compared to other countries we may look calm. While the first half of the last century was influenced by our British heritage - and my own life reflects that - the last half drew us closer to America. Now we feel somewhat estranged from both. The Huawei involvement has created new problems with China. Our isolation from traditional partners may require us to seek new ones. Manthorpe is not happy about our political administrative government systems imported from Britain, especially because of the differences in our geography, where huge areas create regions with different stresses and aspirations. Federal and Provincial conflicts are a way of life - but more interesting to the politicians than ordinary citizens. Getting things settled by the courts doesn’t necessarily help.

Our media, like those of our neighbour to the south, focus on news as entertainment and opinion often swamps actual news reporting more often than we realize. The lack of local press makes this even worse. Regional grievances are rampant. We have too many governing bodies with endless subcommittees that operate as silos; only a crisis like a pandemic lays these bare. Politics has taken a focus on leaders as folk heroes or villains making politics a matter of celebrities and influencers, rather than a matter of policies. Partisanship is not as virulent in Canada as it is in the US, but it is there - and a central consensus is becoming harder to find. Our reliance on oil and gas is going to be a force to be reckoned with. We require restructuring and retraining even more since the emergency of the pandemic.

Votes and voting will matter. So will a civil service that is competent and respected by all political parties. As we move into the new pressures brought on by climate change, engagement and trust of ordinary citizens will matter even more.

Good reading

I’ve finished two books in the last ten days. The first was an audio version read by its author Rachel Maddow entitled Blowout. It’s a history of the fossil fuel industry.

She is not someone I watch regularly on TV - but what I have seen suggests that she comes with strong views, a focus on facts and a wry wit. These are all borne out in the recent book - which I first heard about at the end of 2019 at an environmental seminar.

Her view is hardly unbiased and starts from the premise that the point of the industry is to make money come hell or high water and basically do as it pleases. No government anywhere has ever come close to controlling it.

She alternates between its development in Russia and in the United States and focuses on the fact of industry greed without having any idea of the consequences of its actions. Part of its success relates to its size and reach across the entire planet.

A blowout happens when the pressure of an oil or gas well builds up beyond the limits of its control system and backs up in an explosion. In the process blowouts have affected water systems and have caused earthquakes though the development of horizontal drilling. Never mind killing pets and making countless people sick who reside close to wells.

The book ties together a number of fascinating stories ranging from incompetent Russian spies, to a multimillion dollar playboy from Equatorial Guinea who enjoys giving his girlfriends $80,000 for shopping trips in Malibu, while three quarters of the citizens of his country starve. We move through entrepreneurs in Oklahoma, Texans who want to secede. Always lurking behind the scenes is Vladimir Putin who will do whatever he can to stir the pot. From Standard Oil to the present, one of the inevitable results is all countries depending on industry support for the election of its officials - who then use government money to return the favour in the form of government subsidies to the most profitable industry on earth.

Changing this will be an enormous challenge everywhere. What will count, Maddow says, is paying attention and asking questions. Our futures will undoubtedly depend upon that.