Where are the aboriginal people?

Hurting badly from globalization, indigenous people even get short shrift at People's Summit

By: Mel Watkins

  QUEBEC CITY, APRIL 19: There is, I'm sorry to have to report, limited aboriginal presence at the Peoples' Summit here in Quebec City. It's not clear whose fault that is.
  It's the sort of thing that just seems to happen to aboriginal people.
  When I was writing the first sentence above I almost put in "surprising" but I didn't because you would have thought me naive and ignorant of history.
  The Summit is structured around forums of one to two days in length. There's a range of topics: agriculture, environment, human rights, trade unions, etc. etc. Aboriginal issues can, and occasionally were, discussed in passing at these forums. But there was no forum focussed directly on indigenous peoples and their lands and their rights.
  I'm resolved not to feign surprise, but if you think about it, there are only two issues that define the Americas and are true of all 34 countries represented at the big boys' Summit. The first is that Washington runs all of these countries, albeit on behalf of the multinational corporations. Dissenters from every country know that. It's part of what unifies us.
 

Globalization is only the latest conquest for native peoples of the Americas

  It's the second issue that interests me here. Every country in the Americas sits on aboriginal lands. In most of them there remain some aboriginal peoples. They are typically the poorest of the poor. Yet somehow this never got focussed on, much less made into a unifying theme. Mainstream dissenters - forgive the oxymoron - are insufficiently seized of matters aboriginal.
  Incidentally, you put the two issues together and you get the intensifed assault on the lands of aboriginal peoples - even the little that remains to them as marginalized peoples - that is one of the hallmarks of this era of neoliberalism. First there was Columbus and his ilk; now there is the second invasion of the Americas.
 

A delegation of indigenous people from Mexico speak at a People's Summit news conference Thursday

  Matthew Coon-Come, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, came and spoke powerfully along these lines on an environmental panel that included David Suzuki. Conquest keeps coming, now by resource exploitation and environmental degradation.
  His appearance at the Peoples' Summit was good, but neither the AFN nor any other aboriginal organization had an institutional presence. To have a forum one had to have money and that either didn't exist or wasn't forthcoming from any source in the case of aboriginal peoples.
  Indigenous peoples' leaders from throughout the Americas came instead to a conference sponsored by the Canadian government in Ottawa in March. It was, however, hardly a substitute for this popular Summit, with the theme of the March conference being "Accessing opportunities in the new economy." There were, I'm told, lots of corporate suits there and some of the indigenous delegates from outside Canada went home in disgust.
 

Mike Little Moustache of the Blackfoot said he'd been here since Monday and had been hassled one way or another by the police every day he'd been here

  Finally, late afternoon on Thursday, there was a session on indigenous peoples. With the numbers of protesters building, particularly of young people, there was an overflow audience of at least 300 - which is surely a good sign of where the best of us are at. There were indigenous people present from Mexico, Brazil, Columbia and elsewhere.
  Mike Little Moustache of the Blackfoot asked how many aboriginal people there were, other than himself, from Western Canada. Three hands went up. He said he was saddened that so few of his people were there.
  But he also said he'd been here since Monday and had been hassled one way or another by the police every day he'd been here. Perhaps some stayed away because they already experienced enough of that where they were.
  Tony Hall, who teaches in Native Studies at the University of Lethbridge, put out the first call for an indigenous peoples' assembly at the Peoples' Summit on the e-mail. He was swamped with favourable responses. But, he told us, he also got visited at his campus office by the RCMP, though ever since the 60s that is supposed to be a no-no.
  He thought he'd arranged for a meeting at a Huron reserve near Quebec City but then the reserve got visited by the RCMP and people felt intimidated and the arrangement fell through.
  Not new. Not news. That's why you may not read about this anywhere but Straight Goods, but I'm willing to be surprised.
  On the trip back to the hotel, there were police everywhere. I wasn't hassled, but I did feel intimidated. And I understand the gates on the fence are already closed or are about to be. So I'll feel excluded from land I thought I was free to roam. I guess that's just more reason to feel solidarity with aboriginal peoples.

Mel Watkins is a political economist and a political activist who speaks and writes extensively on contemporary issues.

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Posted: April 20, 2001

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