Happy June 21st and June 24th

Tomorrow, June 21st, is Canada's annual "National Aboriginal Day." In the United States, June 21st has been set as the National Prayer Day for Native Sacred Places (see Indian Country Today).

June 24th marks "el dia del Indio" (Indian Day) in Andean nations such as Peru.

Ottawa to Appeal Expansion of Indigenous "Status"

As expected, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper plans to appeal a recent Canadian provincial high court ruling that struck down a long-standing restriction on legal recognition of indigenous identity.

For more on this see Bill Curry's "Appeal of native ruling likely, Ottawa says," The Globe and Mail, Tuesday, June 19, 2007.

Canada: New Developments in Indigenous Status

The past week in Canada has seen the promise of some major new transformations in the current position of Aboriginal peoples. For those readers not too familiar with the Canadian situation, it is important to note that there are two basic "classes" of Aboriginals: (1) those officially registered as "status Indians" who have legal rights to residence on reserves, with individual reserves referred to as "First Nations"--the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) is tied to this backdrop; and, (2) people who self-identify as Aboriginal, but who are "non-status" because they had a mother or grandmother who married a non-native--the Congress of Aboriginal People, which rarely receives anywhere as much media attention as the AFN, is tied to this population.

In Canada, the law had descent reckoned through the paternal line, even when this went against particular aboriginal societies' custom of reckoning descent through the maternal line. As a result, a vast number of Aboriginals lost the right to reside on reserves, and most ended up in cities. In the meantime, Aboriginal men were entitled to marry non-native women, and those women obtained the right to reside on reserve, so that some persons with "status" may not even be Aboriginal. This double-pronged erosion of reserve-based nations may be coming to a final end. (The Indian Missions of Trinidad were regulated by an even more severe version of this system--where all "mixed race" offspring were officially de-Indianized and lost rights to collective lands that had been granted to their parents and grandparents. Both Trinidad and Canada were governed by the British for a period of time.)

On Saturday, June 16, 2007, Bill Curry writing in The Globe and Mail ("Indian status can be traced through mother, court rules"), tells us the following:

The B.C. [British Columbia] Supreme Court has wiped out one of the most contentious aspects of the federal Indian Act, striking down part of Ottawa's definition of a status Indian and opening the door to hundreds of thousands of new applications for native services.

The court rejected part of the existing legal definition on the grounds that it discriminates against Canadians who trace their aboriginal roots through their female relatives rather than their father or grandfather.

The ruling alters the federal law that has long created two classes of aboriginals in Canada: the 767,000 who fit the definition of status Indian and the several hundred thousand more who don't.

The 2001 census found 976,000 Canadians who self-identified as aboriginal and more than 1.3 million who said they had aboriginal ancestry.

Many aboriginals who failed in their requests for status will now have a much better chance of success, said Beverley Jacobs, the president of the Native Women's Association of Canada.

"This opens the floodgates," she said. "I don't think we could have asked for a better judgment."

Aboriginals with status qualify for prescription drug coverage and can apply for postsecondary assistance.

The Federal Government of Canada disingenuously claimed that it previously addressed the issue of patriarchal discrimination in the Indian Act by passing Bill C-31 in 1985. What was the "major change" of that Bill? It simply pushed the cut-off line to second generation offspring of unions between natives and others, and still reckoned descent along paternal lines. That minor change did however return status to 175,000 individuals. This latest court ruling has the effect of nullifying Section 6 of the Indian Act, that section which pertains to who can claim to be an "Indian" (the subject of an upcoming seminar in Montreal).

In the same week, the Federal Government committed itself to setting up, in conjunction with the Assembly of First Nations, an impartial tribunal for resolving the more than 800 land claim cases that remain unresolved in Canada, that on average have been the subject to legal disputes lasting 20 years, with some much longer than that (see The Globe and Mail, June 13, 2007, "New land-claims process in works"). This would mean that the Federal Government could no longer act as defendant, judge, and jury all at the same time. While there is no way of predicting future rulings on so many cases, if one were to assume that there will be much more land added to the current land base of First Nations reserves, but also many more persons with status as outlined above, the net effect might be bigger numbers on all fronts, but not necessarily more land per person. If, on the other hand, the current size of the reserve land base were to remain roughly the same, but the numbers of persons with status vastly increased, it could serve to effectively crush reserves under their own weight. The situation where a boon becomes bane is not all that uncommon in Canada, as in the case of select reserves suffering from high rates of alcoholism and substance abuse suddenly finding themselves awash in cash from settled claims or other compensation packages, precisely at the time that those particular Aboriginals can least handle the new resources, and where the temptation to squander is higher than it might otherwise be.

Post-Mortem: Caribs and Arawaks

I attended the UTT/Peter Harris presentation of Caribs and Arawaks: An Indigenous Story, at the National Library here in Port of Spain last night. Although last night, according to the Power Point slide-show the title changed to: Caribs and Arawaks: An Indigenous Story?... and I hope one can appreciate the difference.

First a bit of background: when the UTT advertised the Senior Research Fellow and Research Fellow positions in the field of First Peoples study a few months ago, I was interviewed but in the end the positions went to Peter Harris and Patricia Elie respectively. I wasn't terribly bothered as I was more interested in finding out what their approach would be than in leaving the exciting world of publishing. But I digress ...

The packed little room at the National Library heaved a collective sigh of dissatisfaction and there were more than a few dazed or quizzical looks as people slowly filed out of the room last night when Mr Harris completed his nearly two hour presentation.

Mr Harris served up a regurgitation of the work of Arie Boomert and Linda Newson - so much so that a member of the audience said at the end: I am glad you've said thanks to Boomert and Newson as I am wondering what, if anything new, are you bringing to the discourse? (Those may not have been his exact words.) Mr Harris replied without answering the question. In fact, I don't think Mr Harris answered any of the questions posed to him last night.

Mr Harris, an archaeologist, confessed last night that he felt more like an ethnographer than an archaeologist. Mr Harris confessed that he had skimmed a lot of the existing literature on the subject but he worked very closely with Arie Boomert. Mr Harris served up a lot of half-baked assertions.

Mr Harris questioned the assertion of: the Dominican elite of 1640? the chiefs? the Spanish? (I'm not quite sure.) that the Caribs were fierce and the Arawaks were peaceful.

If anything can be culled from his presentation it was that: Arawaks were fierce, Arawaks and Caribs fought over women incessantly, that there is no real record of the Carib in archaeology - we don't know where they came from he offered ernestly - "We have no evidence of how we have all these Kalina. It is a phenomenon that has not been explained."

He suggests: Arawaks settled in Trinidad's South East, Nepuyos settled in the North East, Shebaio settled in the South West and South, Yaio in the South West and West, Carinepagos in the North West and Chaguanes in the West and Central.
He references a lot of Raleigh.

Mr Harris says the Arawak assisted Hierreyma and the Dutch in razing St Joseph. That the plan is nearly thwarted by a turncoat rebel who happens to be Arawak.

The Shebaio disappear in 1700. The Yaio disappear in 1700. The Kalina disappear.

The conclusions of Mr Harris: Three people flee early 1600 - 1620, 1498 - 1640 was a time of ethnic fluidity and the new arrivals arrived say from 1740s.

Other gems include: the Missionaries rescued the Warao in setting up the Siparia mission; Salibia is the Kalinago word for Trinidad; Urupaina is what Tobago was called and translates to big snail in the Kalina language; it is difficult for a person of indigenous descent to know who they are descended from.

What we can look forward to in three years from Mr Harris, Ms Elie and the UTT is all this and more in book and dvd form. I can hardly wait.

Speaking of political power ...

Trinidad's Prime Minister Patrick Manning has said he has the election date in his back pocket but he seems no closer to announcing it. The lack of a date has set the country's other political parties off the mark though and there is much posing, speechifying and promising on the hustings.

PLUS, it is at times like these the indigenous people are often fondly called to mind and at least one political party has found it prudent to stage an evening of recognition, where my great aunt - Carib Queen Valentina Medina is called out to be presented with a bouquet of flowers.
Talk about photo op!

The election race is well and truly on.

Caribs and Arawaks: An Indigenous Story

The University of Trinidad and Tobago is hosting a presentation with this title on June 14th at the National Library in Port of Spain.

Newly appointed Senior Research Fellow of UTT's First Peoples Project, Peter Harris is the main speaker.

The advertising for the presentation reads:

We all know the schoolbook story of the warlike Carib who conquered the peaceful Arawak, ate the men, and married the women. It came from a single source, the political elite of Dominica in the 1640s. How true is this story? It is not good research to base history on a single source. Still worse to use information from a political elite. We all know a political elite is less concerned with historical accuracy than with staying in power. Research shows a more complicated situation. Six indigenous peoples from three language families are recorded in Tobago in 1758. Before this date the ethnic situation in Tobago is unclear, as two groups are called the same name by both the indigenous peoples and the Spanish. History records inflows of four more ethnic groups in the 18-19C. First I discuss a widespread mental framework of indigenous geography. Then I report some highlights for each indigenous people, as it passes through different phases of its history: eg European contact, Limited settlement, Control through missionaries, Marginalization, and Cultural rebirth. The old ethnic groups are more or less relevant today. But there are numerous "People of Indigenous Descent" in the Caribbean. And they want recognition of their cultural identity.

Harris' development as an archeologist has been largely local. In 1970 he made a sample excavation at the Banwari site and the following year he joined the International Association for Caribbean Archaeology. He has worked closely with Arie Boomert.

The University of Trinidad and Tobago is part of the PNM government's 20/20 Vision. The main campus is meant to be situated at Wallerfield but is some way from completion. The University's focus seems to lean more on the side of industry, namely fuel technologies but Harris is part of the Research Academy at UTT for Arts, Letters, Culture and Public Affairs.