Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, An Indian Shooting the Indian Act.

Photo from TRIBE INC.
http://www.tribeinc.org/exhibitions/lawrence-paul-yuxweluptun-an-indian-shooting-the-indian-act/

Introduction

Passed in 1876, the Indian Act is a racist, sexist piece of Canadian legislation that amalgamated older colonial legislations to construct the modern legal category of “Indian status.” Status Indians under the provisions of the Indian Act are entitled to certain federal benefits secured by treaties (treaties are ongoing nation-to-nation agreements signed between the Crown and First Nations peoples). Canada signed treaties with First Nations people to have access to the latter’s land; in return, Canada was bound by law to provide for First Nations people. Legally, treaties were supposed to guarantee First Nations peoples the right to Indian band membership, band voting rights, certain tax exemptions, the right to live on Indian reserves, the right to fair and equitable education and health, the right to vocational training, the right to hunt and fish, and many more significant rights not granted to settler Canadians.[1] Canada, however, through the ever-restricting clauses of the Indian Act, nefariously governed, legislated, and controlled, as well as tried to assimilate large segments of First Nations into mainstream Canada by attacking Indigenous identity—hit particularly hard were First Nations women.[2]

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Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada’s Lost Promise and One Girl’s Dream  is a book written by elected member of parliament Charlie Angus, a new democrat for the riding of Timmins-James Bay, that looks at the education and treaty history of the James Bay Lowlands through the life of one courageous Cree girl, Shannan Koostachin.  Shannan was a teenaged girl of fifteen who stood up against the Canadian government, and its century of indifference towards Native education in the north. She did this by dreaming of an adequate school for her isolated reserve community of Attawapiskat, Ontario. Unfortunately Shannan died in a motor vehicle accident in 2010 before she could realize her dream, but her vision gave rise to a youth social movement called “Shannon’s Dream” that continues today to fight for equality for First Nations kids.

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Intergenerational trauma has been described by those impacted by it as “Russian dolls” of inherited historic trauma locked within one’s psyche. 

Defining Intergenerational Trauma

The broader impacts of settler-colonialism has caused intergenerational trauma within Indigenous populations across Turtle Island (North America).[1] The “root” source of intergenerational trauma is found in Indigenous peoples’ dislocation from their traditional lands, hunting grounds, and food subsistence strategies; loss of Indigenous languages, traditions, culture, and world views; destruction of Indigenous kin networks, communities, and family supports; and loss of forms of Indigenous education, Elder knowledge, and traditional stories.[2] Symptoms of intergenerational trauma, according to Peter Menzies, constitute “anxiety disorders, mental health issues, alcohol and substance abuse, depression, suicide, low self-esteem, criminal activity, sexual abuse, loss of identity and culture, homelessness, child abandonment, misogyny” as well as several other very serious social dysfunctions “that are significantly higher in [Indigenous] communities than that of the general population of Canada.”[3]

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(Photo: “Sunset over the Arctic circle” I. Curtis – University of Alberta)

The Land and Deep History

The Canadian North is an immense tract of land that stretches from the northern tip of the Ungava peninsula of Quebec and Labrador in the east, across Hudson Bay proper, through the Northwest Territories, over to the Yukon, and up into Nunavut to the Arctic Circle.[1] Despite southern misconceptions, the North is a diverse collection of environments that consist of marshes and muskeg, boreal forest, tundra, and lower and high arctic terrains.[2] The North, however, can be separated into two main ecosystems which are divided by the treeline (where trees stop growing)—subarctic boreal forest and arctic tundra.[3] The treeline marks a rough territorial line between the Indigenous peoples who call the North home: the Dene traditionally south of the treeline, while the Inuit reside north of it.[4] The Dene live mainly in the boreal forest and their diet consists of berries, fresh water fish, ducks, ptarmigan, beaver, muskrat, muskox, moose, and caribou.[5] Dene will seasonally hunt caribou on the open tundra but will travel back and live below the treeline yearly.[6] The Inuit diet also consists of tundra muskox and caribou but it relies more heavily on the northern arctic marine staples of fish (arctic cod and char, and capelin), seaweed, coastal bird eggs, walrus, seal (ringed and bearded seals), and whale (mainly beluga and bowhead whales).[7] Typically, the higher in the arctic an Inuit community lives the more reliant they are on marine subsistence. Recently a shift away from traditional foods has occurred in both the Dene and Inuit communities to a more southern store-bought diet of imported processed foods, beef, chicken, and dairy products due to climate change and colonization.[8]

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(Pond Inlet, Nunavut – Photo Credit: Jeeteeta Merkosak)

When Tanya Tagaq posted on Facebook on February 11, 2016, “Pond Inlet… My ancestral homeland previous to the government’s relocation of our families to Resolute Bay,” she was referring to a project Canada initiated in 1953 and 1956 that saw Inuit from Inukjuak, northern Quebec—her family among them—forcefully moved to Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay in the High Arctic.[1] The logic Canada used to justify the 1500 km-move north was that the Quebec Inuit had become impoverished to the Hudson Bay Company which left them in a constant state of welfare dependency to the government of Canada.[2] In reality, however, assert historians Tester and Kulchyski, Canada used Quebec Inuit as “human flagpoles”[3] in an effort to assert its sovereignty over the North in the face of competing arctic claims from the US, Norway, Denmark, and Russia during the 1950s.[4]  Furthermore, Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay had far different ecosystems than Inukjuak in northern Quebec. The former two were High Arctic landscapes, without large terrestrial game or sunlight through the winter months; while the latter was a tundra ecosystem where Inuit had hunted caribou for millennia.[5] What is more, Canada had promised Inuit families that their community would remain intact once they moved north, but upon arrival in Grise Fiord the core community was divided—some stayed behind in Grise Fiord, while the others were shipped further north to Resolute Bay.[6] The first winter in the High Arctic was extremely tough for the relocated Quebec Inuit as they spent it in thin tents without enough food or supplies.[7] Lastly, beginning in the mid-1950s RCMP began slaughtering Inuit sleigh dogs believing they were a financial drain and security risk for RCMP and Canadian soldiers stationed at various arctic postings, Resolute Bay among them.[8] The loss of their dogs was devastating for the Inuit, and represented a further loss in traditional hunting and livelihood, which again impacted their dire situation in the High Arctic.[9]  

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