Raise the Hammer

Mennonites are perhaps the best example I could come up with of a paralell group within "settler" society. And because they haven't been held back by laws like the Indian Act (which made business development illegal for most of its history) many Mennonites are doing very well today. I drive around St. Jacobs all the time, and it sure looks a lot nicer than most reserves I've been to.

Ironically, the Mennonite rejection of modern technologies in areas like farming or carpentry has now put them at the cutting edge of those fields - simply because they didn't throw away their traditional skills for low-quality petrochemical substitutes.

This issue comes up a lot more than you'd think outside First Nations, and is usually dealt with by quiet assimilationist prejudices and media bias than anything else. Think about Quebec. Or attempts to establish Shari a law within Muslim communities (very little of which has to do with head-scarves). The difference with First Nations is that they have treaty rights to it - something our government has never forgiven them for. Despite this, whichever issue you look at, whether it's crime, addiction, abuse or poverty, studies always show that culturally relevant ones which let Natives heal in a Native context almost always achieve better results than bland government programs.

What would it look like? Most likely aspects like a game reserve, a return to traditional Iroquois crops and growing techniques, and upgraded, self-sustainable buildings. The lack of infrastructure on Six Nations and other reserves, as well as their low rates of consumption make a transition to "green" systems much easier than here. I am a bit wary, though, of imposing any set of eco-village standards designed by white people, but I don't doubt something similar could come from natives themselves. A speech was recently posted on my website by Winona LaDuke which illustrates these things well. Her dirt-poor Ojibwe reserve (a nation which spans much of Ontario, too) managed to set up wind power as a means of gaining energy independence.

The most important issue, though, is self-determination. No more meddling federal departments, corporations or federally managed puppet governments (Band Councils). They've all done far too much harm. And as many scholars pointed out, the amount of money we all spend managing native people would be more than sufficient to solve all these poverty, education and infrastructure issues. The only real lasting solution, though, will be a return to autonomy as nations and cultures.

This whole issue raises a lot of important questions about the nature of Confederation (and where do you think we got that term?). Must a community be subject to centralized Federal authority to be a member. And if white (or immigrant) communities wish a similar autonomy - like Mennonites, or an entire city like Hamilton - how does that fit? Among the Five/Six Nations Confederacy, not to mention the Ojibwe ("Three Fires"), Huron (Wendat) and others, there was never any such centralized control - just organization and coordination. The Great Law of Peace (the Six Nations "constitution", alleged to have influenced the Founding Fathers) exists to this day, and the Confederacy Council still meets.