[Over to you]

A return to darkness

by Craig Hooper

MacLean's Magazine , April 29, 2002

When you drive into Prince George on a cold day, the pulp mill plumes hang poised over the city like malevolent cobras. On such a day last fall, I sat facing a panel of seven white members of the B.C. Liberal Party, the Select Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs. They didn't like what this middle-aged white man had to say about their proposed referendum on B.C.'s approach to treaty negotiations.

I was there because of my respect for the native elders I've come to know while researching aboriginal heritage trails in B.C.'s central Interior. I shared with the panel what I'd learned in 30 years working for the Ministry of Forests, where my job is to ensure loggers conserve cultural heritage resources. First Nations people have been occupying this land base for about 7,000 years. A little over 200 years ago, when the first European came down the river that flows a few miles from the hotel we were sitting in, you could still drink the water from the Fraser -- the Lhtakoh as the natives called it. Every creek, river and mountain had its First Nations name.

Like a parallel universe, the First Nations world has had another layer of concrete cities, highways, farms, and white place names transposed upon it. Both worlds are important. Travelling through this modern layer and through the forest, I keep bumping into evidence of that First Nations world: hundreds of archaeological sites along rivers and lakeshores, the telltale depressions of semi-underground winter lodges, thousands of pits used to store dried foods. When Alexander Mackenzie arrived in 1793, he found the natives living in organized societies, managing the land through a complex family and clan system. They guided and fed him, drew maps for him on hide and bark and led him to the Pacific Ocean.

Tourists visiting the restored Victorian cottage Point Ellice House in Victoria are probably not aware that in 1892 it was the home of Indian reserve commissioner Peter O'Reilly. He worked for Joseph Trutch, the B.C. government's point man on the "Indian Question," who felt the best course was to relieve the First Peoples of as much of their land as possible, by force if necessary. O'Reilly rode through the Interior speaking to chiefs through interpreters, "negotiating" reserves at each village. As his crew hacked axe blazes on trees, laying out the rectangular "boxes" of the reserves, their survey lines conferred a spurious legitimacy on what was, by definition, theft. The natives never ceded the land, the B.C. government had never declared a military conquest, and because of politicians like Trutch, no treaties were ever made.

As I did my historical research, a disturbing, if familiar, pattern emerged of collusion between governments, the church, and even corporations, to coerce and cheat aboriginal people. Why are these past injustices relevant now? It's because in this referendum I see a return to that darkness.

In 1955, in the small town where I live, a native woman took her son to confirmation ceremonies with the Catholic priest. The family and the white priest went to a restaurant for lunch. The owner would not serve Indians. The restaurant owner is still in town -- he's getting old -- but I'm sure he'll be voting in the referendum. Just two years ago, in the town shopping mall, this same woman -- an Order of Canada recipient who holds an honorary university degree -- was having a conversation with a friend, also in her 80s, in their native language. They were ejected by the security guard who, when asked why he did it, replied that he couldn't understand what they were saying, so he assumed they were drunk.

This intellectual giant will be voting in the referendum along with thousands of others who know little of aboriginal history or treaty issues and could care less -- people whose negative stereotypes of an entire race are formed by their observations of a few street drunks and whose closest contact with native lives or issues is driving through a reserve with their windows rolled up and their doors locked.

The woman that I spoke of is frail now, but she still has hope for her people. She'll never get to participate in treaty negotiations because B.C. has stalled and stalled -- and is stalling still. Most of the elders who lived close to the land are gone now, while the young are a ticking social time bomb.

The questions on the Liberals' mailed-out referendum, which must be returned by May 15, expose it for the political charade that it is -- a $9-million mistake that is redundant, unfair, divisive and totally counterproductive. I hope history judges them well.

Craig Hooper lives on the shores of Sinkut Lake, near Vanderhoof in central B.C.

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