1385 Royal Commission DOA

Sharing the Land, Sharing a Future: The Legacy of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples
by Katherine A.H. Graham and David Newhouse (editors)

Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2021
$31.95  /  9780887558689

Reviewed by Jim Miller

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Harry Swain, the deputy minister of Indian and Northern Affairs when the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples [RCAP] was created in 1991, remarked that RCAP’s 1996 final report was “dead on arrival.”[1] The Commission had been appointed by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney partly as a response to the 1990 Oka Crisis and increasing Indigenous assertiveness. After much study, public consultations, and commissioned research RCAP reported to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, but its timing was inopportune. In 1996 the federal government was still preoccupied with a Quebec referendum that had almost given a sovereigntist Quebec government a mandate to negotiate with Canada for separation, while Canadians were also worried about rising government deficits and debts.

Many of those who had been deeply involved with RCAP in the 1990s believed as the twentieth anniversary of the Commission neared that a conference was needed to evaluate the progress that had been made on RCAP’s proposals. Marlene Brant Castellano (Emerita, Native Studies, Trent) and Frederic Wien (Emeritus, Social Work, Dalhousie), who had been, respectively co-director of research and deputy director of research at RCAP, co-chaired a conference in 2016 that led in due course to the present published collection. Their judgment is that, although the recommendations of the Commission for the most part “had been ignored” (p. x), the “impact of the commission has been more profound than is commonly recognized” (p. xi). A selection of papers from the 2016 conference and an additional group of papers commissioned by the co-editors of this volume constitute the text of Sharing the Land.

The 2016 “Sharing the Land, Sharing a Future Conference” featured a number of addresses by leaders of RCAP and of national Indigenous political organizations. The statements by RCAP co-chairs, Georges Erasmus and René Dussault, make clear that they think RCAP’s legacy is slight. Dussault told the 2016 conference “To put it bluntly, that [transformative change we aimed for] hasn’t happened as we imagined” (p. 80). Erasmus, who did not attend the conference but supplied a video address, said the problem was that politicians and the electorate really didn’t care about the issues RCAP raised, though paradoxically he suggested that to change things it would be necessary to mobilize “the support of Canadians” (pp. 83-4). Perry Bellegarde of the Assembly of First Nations [AFN], claimed, “We can’t be excluded anymore” (p. 93). Natan Obed of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami raised a tantalizing difference between his organization’s position on relations with government and that of the AFN. Whereas the national organization of ‘status Indians’ has long favoured a “nation to nation” relationship, Obed specified that his group’s preference was for an “Inuit-to-Crown relationship which is different [from] the nation-to-nation [relationship” (p. 98). Unfortunately, nowhere in his address or anywhere else in the volume is the distinction explained. Clem Chartier of the Metis Nation of Canada said that his followers had been “ignored,” not “forgotten” (p. 103). Robert Bertrand of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples explained why housing was his organization’s principal issue, and Francyne Joe of the Native Women’s Association of Canada said that they were underfunded and ignored by government. This first section of Sharing the Land closes with a speech by the then Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, Carolyn Bennett, who observed that forty percent of the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s [TRC] 2015 final report overlapped with the recommendations of RCAP almost twenty years earlier (p. 124). This duplication was evidence of the ineffectiveness of RCAP in its own times, but not an explanation for it. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the federal minister claimed that the Trudeau government was making good progress on implementing the TRC’s Calls to Action (p. 126).

RCAP had proposed that governance be based on the “Aboriginal nation,” by which it meant “a sizeable body of Aboriginal people with a shared sense of national identity that constitutes the predominant population in a certain territory or group of territories. Currently there are between 60 and 80 historically based nations in Canada, compared with a thousand or so local Aboriginal communities” (RCAP, vol. 2, part 2, 1032). These nations would send representatives to “an Aboriginal parliament whose main function is to provide advice to the House of Commons and the Senate on legislation and constitutional matters relating to Aboriginal peoples” (RCAP, vol. 2, part 2, 1050). Frances Abele (Public Policy, Carleton) and her research group noted that one-eighth (54/440) of RCAP’s recommendations dealt with Indigenous governance and listed a number of advances in the area of self-government, but her research group did not tackle the question of why RCAP’s ambitious recommendations on self-determination and self-government were not adopted. Indeed, a number of other essays in Sharing the Land comment on the lack of progress on implementing RCAP’s proposals, though none of them provide a credible explanation of the failure to make RCAP recommendations reality.

Two chapters in the volume that do provide partial answers are among the minority of contributions that stand out in quality. The large team of authors (lead author Jennifer S. Dockstator) assessing progress in community development provided a clear and informative summary of advances in that field, although they had little to say about RCAP. A quartet of researchers headed by Carrie Bourassa of the University of Saskatchewan similarly provided a good deal of information about improvements in the field of “Cultural Safety” before concluding, “Much has been done, yet it seems as if little has been accomplished” (p. 275). Lynne Davis (Indigenous Studies, Trent) and Chris Hiller (Social Development Studies, Renison College, Waterloo) tackled the challenging topic of “Engaging Citizens in Indigenous-Non-Indigenous Relations,” again serving up a useful survey of where ‘engagement’ stood in 2016, even though they, too, did not focus particularly on RCAP.

It fell to two political scientists and a public opinion surveyor to provide greater insight on the long-term fate of RCAP’s recommendations. Daniel Salée (Concordia) and Carole Lévesque (Institut national de la recherché scientifique) viewed governmental responses through the lens of public policy analysis and found a “command-and-control” approach and a reluctance to share political power with Indigenous organizations has predominated since RCAP reported (p. 436) They concluded that governments had proven willing to make symbolic gestures such as offering public apologies and setting up public inquiries, but they were reluctant to grapple with hard issues such as addressing historic injustices inflicted on Indigenous peoples or solving material problems.

If the fine analysis by Salée and Lévesque disappoints somewhat by not explaining why governmental policy responses have been, as they stressed, “ambivalent,” useful suggestions were provided by Michael Adams of the Environics Institute of Survey Research in the executive summary of a larger survey his firm conducted in 2016. Canadians, he said, now show greater awareness and often sympathy for Indigenous peoples and the problems their communities face. But, he explained, a minority of respondents tended to blame Indigenous people for at least part of the adverse conditions many of them experience. These Canadians also said they detected a sense of “entitlement” on the part of Indigenous individuals, and they were inclined to deny that non-Native Canadians have benefited from the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples (p. 455). Adams also underlined what is obvious to anyone who follows the news: the three prairie provinces are home to the least sympathetic non-Natives on Indigenous issues. Perhaps Environics research uncovered much of the reason for the “ambivalence” of governments in responding to Indigenous issues.

There were other factors at work that might help to explain why RCAP’s recommendations were mostly not implemented and had to be repeated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015. A centrepiece of RCAP’s program, which was reiterated by the TRC, was a call for adoption of a “new Royal Proclamation” that would enunciate a commitment to greater social, political, and economic justice for Indigenous peoples. If ever there was a proposal that was doomed to be “dead on arrival” it was such a new Royal Proclamation. Neither commission seems to have understood that the Royal Proclamation of 1763 was anathema to nationalists in Quebec who associate it with provisions – never implemented – that would have amounted to an attack on the language, religion, and culture of the Québécois.

In addition, governments in the 1990s, particularly those of a conservative stripe, favoured reducing the scope of government, or at least said they did. Given RCAP’s advocacy of the creation of sixty to eighty new nations and a new house of parliament, it was not surprising that RCAP’s recommendations did not resonate with the federal government. Closely associated with such small-government sentiment in 1996, when RCAP reported, was a determined push by the government of Jean Chrétien to slay the deficit dragon “come hell or high water,” as the finance minister of the time, Paul Martin, said. Implementation of RCAP’s recommendations would have boosted federal expenditure on Indigenous affairs substantially Most of the conditions that constituted a barrier to action on RCAP’s recommendations do not exist at the present time, but many of the attitudes that Michael Adams and Environics detected still do.

Unfortunately, there are still many obstacles to the full implementation of proposals of government action to address the injustices that Indigenous peoples face. It will not be surprising if another group of advocates for justice for Indigenous peoples see a need in twenty years for another conference to assess the partial success of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

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J.R. (Jim) Miller is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Saskatchewan and an Officer of the Order of Canada. He addressed the roles of both the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in his most recent book, Residential Schools and Reconciliation: Canada Confronts Its History (University of Toronto Press, 2017). His other books include Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Native-Newcomer Relations in Canada (1989; 4th edition, 2018);  Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (1996); and Compact, Contract, Covenant: Aboriginal Treaty-Making in Canada (2009). Editor’s note: Jim Miller has also reviewed books by Constance Backhouse, Cynthia E. Milton, Margaret Kovach, & Adele Perry (editors), Nancy Dyson & Dan Rubenstein, Arthur Manuel & Ronald Derrickson, and Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail for The British Columbia Review.

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The British Columbia Review

Publisher and Editor: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line journal service for in-depth coverage of BC books and writers. The Advisory Board consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Cole Harris, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster

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Endnotes:

[1] H. Swain, Oka: A Political Crisis and Its Legacy, Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2010, pp. 168-9