Rauna Kuokkanen, “Savage Backlash”, November 9, 2008 http://rauna.wordpress.com/2008/11/09/savage-backlash/
As many of us know now, it started a couple of months ago with Dick Pound, a member of the Vancouver
Olympics organizing committee and McGill University chancellor, stating that four hundred years ago what
we today know as Canada was a land of savages “with scarcely 10,000 inhabitants of European descent.”
He was making a comparison to China and later, after criticism by First Nations organizations, argued that
his words were taken out of context. The AFN demanded an apology, others called for his resignation.
British Columbia‟s Premier Gordon Campbell called his remarks „disgraceful.‟ Then on Saturday October
25, the Globe published Margaret Wente‟s inflammatory column in which she argues that while stupid,
Pound‟s remark was correct. She backs her argument up with sweeping statements picked up from a
single book that sounds like sloppiest scholarship on Aboriginal people in recent years. The problem is
that this kind of haphazard, ignorant and arrogant writing (and scholarship) seems to be gaining ground.
Tom Flanagan‟s rather poorly argued book First Nations? Second Thoughts (2000) was reprinted this year
with a new afterword and National Post and its readers are enthusing about another, forthcoming book
belonging to the same genre (F. Widdowson and A. Howard: Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry). This fall
I‟m teaching Aboriginal Law and Politics in Canada (at UofT), a third-year introductory course to trace the
development of Aboriginal/Canadian relations from a legal and political standpoint and outline the
evolution of Aboriginal issues and rights.
Just our readings for the class make a very different case on issues Wente, Flanagan and Widdowson seem
to be on a warpath about. And although the class is an Aboriginal Studies course, we are not reading just
some articles by Aboriginal or Indigenous scholars who are deemed biased and lacking scientific rigour by
certain circles. For the most part, we are reading well-recognized white legal and other scholars whose
arguments are carefully constructed and backed up with historical and legal facts – facts that I‟m
absolutely certain that most Canadians have never heard of, and if they would‟ve, they might have a bit
better appreciation of the issues and events that evolve in front of their eyes today.
According to Wente, Widdowson and Howard‟s forthcoming book „knocks the stuffing out of the prevailing
mythology that surrounds the history of first peoples. That mythology holds that aboriginal culture was
equal or superior to European culture. At the time of contact, North America was occupied by a race of
gentle pastoralists with their own science, their own medicine and their own oral history that was every bit
as rich as Europe‟s. The truth is different. North American native peoples had a neolithic culture based on
subsistence living and small kinship groups. They had not developed broader laws or institutions, a
written language, evidence-based science, mathematics or advanced technologies. The kinship groups in
which they lived were very small, simply organized and not very productive. Other kinship groups were
regarded as enemies, and the homicide rate was probably rather high.‟ Wente then quotes Widdowson
saying, „Never in history has the cultural gap between two peoples coming into contact with each other
been wider.‟
Reading this stuff almost blew my socks off. In one paragraph, Wente dismisses several decades of
evidence-based research from disciplines ranging from gene and other biology, archaeology to linguistics,
literature, history and anthropology to make sweep statements about Aboriginal histories, practices and
philosophies by relying her sole authority Widdowson and her forthcoming book. I wanted to leave this
stuff alone – it‟s just too much to take it very seriously (though I do realize the impact of such a backlash
on general public who like Wente, hasn‟t bothered to do their homework and familiarized themselves with
even a fraction of the scholarship that has been published in the past twenty years). And as I learn from
my colleagues, responding doesn‟t make one bit difference in these writers.
But in its outrageousness, it doesn‟t leave me alone and I have to at least point out the factual errors if not
engage in their racist, eurocentric rhetoric that eerily resonates with social Darwinism, a theory according
to which human societies are characterized by social evolution, „survival of the fittest‟ and competition
among all individuals, groups, nations or ideas. Many historians, philosophers and social scientists have
argued that Nazi ideology was strongly influenced by social Darwinist ideas. Hannah Arendt, for example,
has examined how scientific Darwinism developed, via social Darwinist ethics, to a racist ideology serving
certain political and economic interests. In the U.S. and also elsewhere, social Darwinism helped to create
a legion of doctrines and ideologies such as Manifest Destiny to justify conquest and expropriation of
land.
But let‟s check the facts:
1.
„At the time of contact, North America was occupied by a race of gentle pastoralists.‟
This is the first part of what Wente and Widdowson call the prevailing mythology they want to dismantle.
I‟d be interested in knowing where they picked this up, as the story (or the „mythology‟) is at this day and
age much more complex, elaborate and specific than that. „A race of gentle pastoralists‟? Did anybody
ever actually say this in their research? Because Widdowson is talking about scholarship and evidencebased research, not just what people might say on the street. I‟d like to see her references for this one.
Which scholar suggests that the different peoples who were living in North America prior to European
settlement were a race? The various peoples living in what is today Canada were racialized for the
purposes of colonial administration, that is, lumped under misnomers - first „Indians‟ and then
„Aboriginals.‟ As long as First Peoples were defining themselves, „Indian‟ or „Aboriginal‟ was not a racial
category. Not to mention that all those peoples certainly didn‟t get their livelihoods from a single
livelihood, gentle pastoralism (whatever that means).
2.
They had „their own science, their own medicine and their own oral history that was every bit as rich
as Europe‟s.‟
On science: Do I need to cite all the scholarly books and refereed articles that have been published on
these topics in the past fourty years? That would make a boring reading so I cite a website instead:
“Fiction: Europeans “discovered” scientific knowledge, but American Indians “stumbled upon” it – they
didn‟t know what they were doing. Fact: All scientific knowledge comes from a process of trial and error –
a messy guessing game that involves many false starts and much stumbling. Scientists first make an
educated guess based on their observations. Then they test it and carefully observe the results to see if
the guess was correct. If it wasn‟t, they guess again. The haphazardness of this process led Albert Einstein
to say, “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”‟
[http://www.kporterfield.com/aicttw/articles/lies.html]
On medicine: Upon contact, how advanced was European medicine? What is their evidence? Are Wente and
Widdowson suggesting that people in North America just left their sick people dying? Or that
contemporary scholars and scientists in fields such as ethnomedicine, etnhopharmacy and medical
anthropology are all misguided and that their research and work is just a load of hogwash? Maybe they
should read a couple of issues of Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, for example; it‟s an open
access, peer-reviewed online journal that covers topics such as: ethnobotany, ethnomycology,
ethnopharmacy, ethnomedicine, ethnoveterinary, traditional medicines and traditional healthcare. (Or
perhaps Wente and Widdowson are suggesting that traditional medicine existed in other parts of the world
but not in North America, the land of savages?)
On oral history: What makes oral history „rich‟? The contents, style, structure, mode of narration and who
decides? It doesn‟t take a genius to figure out that all peoples have oral histories of various kinds. One of
first readings for this fall‟s class was Wendy Wickwire‟s “To See Ourselves as the Other‟s Other:
Nlka‟pamux Contact Narratives” (1994). Wickwire, a historian at University of Victoria, BC, has done a
careful comparative analysis of the accounts of the first meetings between Nlaka‟pamux and European
explorers in the Fraser River canyon in June 1808. Simon Fraser, the leader of the North West Company
crew, was the first non-Native to explore the area. Anthropologist James Teit recorded Nlaka‟pamux oral
stories of these encounters in the late 1800s. These accounts of the Nlaka‟pamux initial encounters with
whites are an important and reliable historical record and according to Wickwire, there is a remarkable
consistency with Fraser‟s account. In effect, there is at times more detail in oral accounts than in Fraser‟s
written account. Wickwire concludes that Nlaka‟pamux historiography is also qualitatively different from
the written history. It draws on vastly larger tapestry of people that spans several generations (i.e.,
collective memory) rather than being limited to observations of a single male explorer. If Fraser‟s account
is „factual,‟ Nlaka‟pamux account „contextual,‟ resulting in a wider, deeper history.
http://rauna.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/savage-backlash-ii/
This continues my previous post of checking Wente‟s facts, followed by some considerations with little
more detail to nuances and specificity:
3.
„North American native peoples had a neolithic culture based on subsistence living and small kinship
groups.‟
„Borrowing technology and ideas from the Midwest, the nomadic peoples of New England transformed
their societies. By the end of the first millennium A.D., agricultural revolution was spreading rapidly and
the region was becoming an unusual patchwork of communities… Each village had its own distinct mix of
farming and foraging.‟ (Charles C. Mann, author and correspondent for Science and Atlantic Monthly)
And BTW: „The Neolithic Revolution is the invention of farming, an event whose significance can hardly be
overstated. „The human career,‟ wrote the historian Ronald Wright, „divides in two: everything before the
Neolithic Revolution and everything after it.‟ It began in the Middle East about eleven thousand years ago.
… Researchers have long known that a second, independent Neolithic Revolution occurred in
Mesoamerica. The exact timing is uncertain – archaeologists keep pushing back the date – but it is now
thought to have occurred about ten thousand years ago, not long after the Middle East‟s Neolithic
Revolution.‟ (Ibid.)
4.
„They had not developed broader laws or institutions, a written language, evidence-based science,
mathematics or advanced technologies.‟
„It is not easy to trace the history of the political organization of pre-Columbian societies. Generally, the
first European observers either took John Locke‟s approach, and therefore doubted that there was any
genuine political organization in pre-colonial Aboriginal societies, or described Indigenous customs in an
ethnocentric manner that was more suited to their „civilizing‟ goals than an accurate assessment of reality‟
(Ghislain Otis, Professor of Law, Laval University).
Professor of History J. R. Miller suggests that a major reason for the Europeans‟ initial ignorance of the
state of Aboriginal political organization was that both the mechanics and the spirit of indigenous
government were dramatically different from their counterpart in European societies. A widespread
custom of governance that Europeans didn‟t understand and certainly didn‟t practise was the use of
consensus in decision-making. A striking example of the desire for consultation and compromise was
found in Iroquois Confederacy: decisions had to be unanimous. Another example, the Mi‟kmaq
governance, however, looked strikingly like federalism: they had local systems of government in the
villages and women held prominent political roles. The Potlatch system in the West Coast didn‟t some
ways look like governance at all yet it effectively regulated status relationships between families or
villages.
Has anything changed for some folks since the first European observers? For some, it sounds like Locke‟s
approach combined with their „civilizing‟ mission is alive and kicking. So much for progress, eh?
5.
„The kinship groups in which they lived were very small, simply organized and not very productive.‟
„Anyone who traveled up the Mississippi in 1100 A.D. would have seen it looking in the distance: a fourlevel earthen mound bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza. Around it like echoes were as may as 120
smaller mounds, some topped by tall wooden palisades, which were in turn ringed by a network of
irrigation and transportation canals; carefully located fields of maize, and hundreds of red-and-whiteplastered wood homes with high-peaked, deeply thatched roofs like those on traditional Japanese farms.
Located near the confluence of the Missouri, Illinois, and Mississippi Rivers, the Indian city of Cahokia was
a busy port.‟ (Charles Mann)
6.
„Other kinship groups were regarded as enemies, and the homicide rate was probably rather high.‟
Have these folks (are they scholars or what?) done any reading and research at all? Everybody knows at
least the Great Law of Peace if they haven‟t heard about other Confederacies in pre-colonial North America
(such as the Blackfoot and Mi‟kmaq to name few). And „the homicide rate was probably rather high‟?
Probably? Is this kind of guessing game acceptable or appropriate for scholars (or even for journalists)?
7.
„Never in history has the cultural gap between two peoples coming into contact with each other been
wider.‟
This is a great little story: „British fishing vessels may have reached Newfoundland as early as the 1480s
and areas to the south soon after. In 1501, just nine years after Columbus‟s first voyage, the Portuguese
adventurer Gaspar Corte-Real abducted fifty-odd Indians from Maine. Examining the captives, Corte-Real
found to his astonishment that two were wearing items from Venice: a broken sword and two silver rings.
… The earliest written description of the People of the First Light was by Giovanni da Verrazzano, an
Italian mariner-for-hire commissioned by the king of France in 1523 to discover whether one could reach
Asia by rounding the Americas to the north. Sailing north from the Carolines, he observed that the
coastline everywhere was „densely populated,‟ smoky with Indian bonfires; he could sometimes smell the
burning hundreds of miles away.
The ship anchored in wide Narragansett Bay, near what is now Providence, Rhode Island. Verrazzano was
one of the first Europeans the natives had seen, perhaps even the first, but the Narragansett were not
intimidated. Almost instantly, twenty long canoes surrounded the visitors. Cocksure and graceful, the
Narragansett sachem leapt aboard: a tall, long-haired man of about forty with multicolored jewelry
dangling about his neck and ears, „as beautiful of stature and build as I can possibly describe,‟ Verrazzano
wrote. His reaction was common. Time and time again Europeans described the People of the First Light as
strikingly healthy specimens. Eating an incredibly nutritious diet, working hard but not broken by toil, the
people of New England were taller and more robust than those who wanted to move in – „as proper men
and women for feature and limbes as can be founde,‟ in the words of the rebellious Pilgrim Thomas
Morton.‟ (Charles Mann). There are so many other stories like that, and there are not too difficult to find.
Many of them account the awe of European travellers and settlers of what they saw when they landed in
the Americas (of course there are stories of negative reactions too).
Wente‟s stupendous analysis allows her to conclude: „Today, however, it is simply not permissible to say
that aboriginal culture was less evolved than European culture or Chinese culture - even though it‟s true.‟
Based on all the burgeoning research that is available today (and I‟ve referred to a very minuscule fraction
of it, based on the readings I‟ve done for the class I‟m teaching), it seems that a much more accurate
reason not to say that Aboriginal cultures were less evolved than European culture or Chinese culture is
simple: it‟s not true! Wente doesn‟t provide any evidence or refer to any research to back her arguments
(besides Widdowson‟s words). Nobody is telling you it‟s not permissible to say such stupid things – you
are free to say whatever you like, but say it on your own risk and by doing it, shout your ignorance to the
world.
I mean, can scholarship get any more simplistic than this: „Ms. Widdowson argues that the most important
explanation for aboriginal problems today is not Western colonialism but the vast gulf between a relatively
simple neolithic kinship-based culture and a vastly complex late-industrial capitalist culture.‟ I really don‟t
know what she‟s referring to with „a relatively simple neolithic kinship-based culture‟? Which Aboriginal
culture is she talking about? Arguments this vague based on such gross stereotypes and generalizations
would get a failing mark at any university level, including my third year undergrad class.
Some of the things we have read in my class this fall include some historical facts from J. R. Miller: By the
end of the 19th century, Canada had fashioned an extended system of regulations to interfere with
Aboriginal management of their own political affairs. The Indian Act was passed in 1876, but even before
that, there were laws passed to interfere with Aboriginal societies. The Gradual Civilization Act was passed
in 1857 and it dictated how an „Indian‟ could cease to be an „Indian‟ or to become enfranchised. The
Gradual Enfranchisement Act was passed in 1869. This act added a blood quantum to the definition of
„Indian‟ and marked one of first steps to interfere with Aboriginal governance.
In 1885, the recently established Department of Indian Affairs implemented pass system the Prairies which
required Indians who wished to leave their reserve to obtain prior approval from the agent. „The 1927
Indian Act forbade First Nations people from forming political organizations. Hence, it was common for a
First Nation leaders to be jailed by the RCMP for trying to organize any form of political group. This
apartheid law prohibited traditional First Nation government systems from existing in the native
communities and in its place established the present day “band council” system‟ (Miller). These are just a
few examples. Not surprisingly, Professor of Law John Borrows suggests that Canada doesn‟t have an
„even experience of justice‟ and that Canada is „built on a foundation of sand so long as the rule of law not
applied to Aboriginal peoples.‟
With her conclusion and reference to Widdowson‟s words, I am not quite sure what, at the end, Wente is
suggesting. More assimilation policies (with a new euphemism)? If anything, there is a widespread general
agreement that Canadian Indian policy of assimilation and integration has been a monumental failure, as
pointed out for example by Tim Schouls, John Olthuis, et al. in 1992. It doesn‟t work and it has been
extremely expensive, resulting only in welfare dependency, increasing tensions, worsening statistics and
deadlock in politics, policy, justice system and so on.
The basic dilemma, as Schouls and Olthuis argue is not about „equal opportunity‟ but a right to live by a
different set of values. To effectively do this, Aboriginal peoples need to be in charge of their own affairs.
The Canadian courts have recognized the pre-existing sovereignty of Aboriginal peoples and the Supreme
Court of Canada has stated that the reconciliation has to take place in the context of the pre-existing
Aboriginal sovereignty and the assumed sovereignty of the Crown (Haida Nation v. British Columbia,
2004).
Besides reading books and articles, we were honoured to have a guest in our class in late September.
Satsan or Herb George, the President of the National Centre for First Nations Governance was visiting the
University of Toronto with his team and exploring the possibility to start a partnership between the two
institutions. In one his public talks, he referred to Justice Ian Binnie‟s response to another Globe and Mail
redneck journalist Gordon Gibson, who was complaining that the courts have given already too much to
the Indians. Justice Binnie‟s response was that the courts have only given Aboriginal people what has
already been theirs, adding that Canada has entered into a new era of reconciliation and folks like Gibson
should realize that. Now it‟s time for Wente and Widdowson - and their acolytes - get with the program.
Sources:
Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
2005.
Otis, Ghislain. “Elections, Traditional Aboriginal Governance and the Charter.” Aboriginality and
Governance. A Multidisciplinary Perspective. Ed. Gordon Christie. Penticton, B.C.: Theytus, 2006. 217-38.
Miller, J. R. Lethal Legacy: Current Native Controversies in Canada. 2004.
Schouls, Tim, and John Olthuis. “The Basic Dilemma: Sovereignty or Assimilation.” Nation to Nation.
Aboriginal Sovereignty and the Future of Canada. Ed. John Bird. Concord, ON: Anansi Press, 1992. 12-27.
Borrows, John. Recovering Canada. The Resurgence of Indigenous Law. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2002.