Cory Morgan is well known to Western Standard readers. He is a passionate and outspoken advocate for the issues he believes in. But on no issue is he quite so passionate as in his belief that we must find a way to dismantle Canada’s indigenous apartheid system — namely the Indian Act and its soul-destroying reserve system. (Full disclosure: I completely agree with Morgan.)
Here are some of Morgan’s interviews, videos and articles on the subject.
Now, Morgan is in trouble with some Indian chiefs, because he made some candid videos about Indian reserves and concluded that the reserve system is a dead end, that it must be phased out. What these chiefs don’t understand is that the same people responsible for building and operating the apartheid system the chiefs insist on preserving in its current decrepit state wanted the reserve system to end too. The founders of the reserve system built it only as a temporary measure, and fully expected that it would end when its goal of helping the Indians transition to modern life had been achieved.
When they built the reserve system, Sir John A. Macdonald, Alexander Morris, and Duncan Campbell Scott thought they were providing temporary protection and sanctuary for a vulnerable and endangered people — a system that would no longer be needed when integration had taken place, and Indians had become self-supporting.
But that never happened, and reserves are still here.
But first to Morgan’s current troubles with the chiefs. As mentioned, Morgan recently made a couple of documentary videos depicting conditions on an Alberta Indian reserve. Morgan showed housing conditions, which included the boarded up homes, and rundown conditions typical of most reserves.
He also showed the almost complete absence of any of the businesses and productive activities that are common in the towns and cities close to reserves. Even the farming on this reserve land is done by Hutterites, and other non-indigenous farmers.
Morgan stayed on public roads when doing the filming, and avoided showing and interviewing residents, so as not to embarrass anyone. His commentary was frank but respectful, throughout.
His video is not professionally done, but manages to convey the hopelessness of life in what are essentially human warehouses that are kept functioning only by taxpayer funding. Apart from a few liquor and cannabis stores, there are virtually no businesses or factories on that reserve where people can be employed. Virtually everyone in the community is on welfare of some sort.
Those at the bottom end receive welfare checks, the few employed are paid by the taxpayer to look after the needs of the often addicted underclass, while those at the top — chiefs, councillors, administrators — receive sort of super-welfare checks, often amounting to hundreds of thousands of tax-free dollars.
Unlike the farms, towns and cities nearby, the reserve produces nothing of value. Tom Flanagan talks of “productive” and “extractive” communities. This reserve is purely “extractive.”
Except for oil revenue this reserve — like most — is almost completely taxpayer dependent. Most of the young people in those communities do not have a chance of competing in the modern world. Instead, most will live out their lives on the reserves, unskilled, chronically unemployed, and with all of the social dysfunction and addictions that come with such a dead end lifestyle. They will pass those lives on to their children.
Meanwhile, the oil revenue that is paid to the community doesn’t even come with jobs for the residents. Homes are not looked after because there isn’t the home ownership, and property taxes that keep normal municipalities functioning and healthy. I’m sure there are many good people on that reserve, but the young people who live there are not being well served. Simply put, they are being denied a decent future.
However, indigenous leaders were embarrassed to have the backwardness and squalor of their communities exposed, and notified Morgan of their displeasure. They subsequently served him with what purported to be trespass notices that threatened him with fines of $2,000.
Morgan responded, and advised the leaders in clear terms that he would not be paying the fines.
That’s where matters now stand. Considering the fact that Morgan stayed on public roads when recording, and didn’t even interview reserve residents, it is hard to understand what case the chiefs think they have. But it is clear that they didn’t want people to see the reality of life on that reserve.
There are some exceptions, but Morgan is right that Indian reserves have been a dismal failure and should have been abolished long ago. Because, as mentioned above, the entire Indian apartheid system was meant to be temporary.
Sir John A. Macdonald is seen as the chief architect of that system, and that is largely correct. But there were others before him who laid the groundwork.
It was the plight of the Plains Indians that was the main driver of the perceived need for special legislation, and special protections for Indians. The buffalo economy that came into being in the 16th century, when European-introduced horses, metal and guns transformed a subsistence hunting and gathering culture into a successful warrior horse culture.
But by 1867 it was clear that their buffalo hunting culture was coming to an end. The buffalo were rapidly disappearing as a result of overhunting by whites, Métis and Indians. The starvation, disease and internal war that followed threatened the very existence of the Plains Indians. It was leaders, like Sir John A. Macdonald, who literally saved the Plains Indians from extinction.
But it was the Bagot Report” and subsequent legislation, like the Gradual Civilization Act, that paved the way for the inclusion of “Indians” as a separate group under federal jurisdiction in Section 91(24) of the British North America Act (BNA) and the 1876 Indian Act. Indians were placed in “tutelage” while they learned to cope with the new living conditions. They were “wards” of the government — to be treated like children.
But Indians who didn’t want the special status didn’t have to accept it. They could “enfranchise” — a term that meant more than being able to vote. It meant accepting their share of Indian band proceeds, giving up the special protections Indian status gave them, and becoming full Canadian citizens in every way. In fact, Indians were automatically excluded from special Indian status if they, for example, had graduated from a university. Simply put, that graduation was proof that they no longer needed to be treated like children. Such Indians were enfranchised by operation of the law.
So, the intent of the founders was that being a “status Indian” wasn’t meant to be a badge of honour. It was a sign that the Indian must be temporarily treated like a child. Renouncing one’s status meant that one had “graduated” and was entitled to be treated — like every other Canadian grownup — as an adult.
That early legislation also makes the intentions of the treaty makers, chief among whom was Alexander Morris, perfectly clear. In his “Treaties of Canada” he describes in detail how the numbered treaties were negotiated. Indians selected reserves where they would live peacefully, while they learned how to support themselves in the new world that was being built all around them. Agriculture was the activity chosen for them to do that. Agricultural implements, seed and cattle would be given to them temporarily while they learned how to farm. It didn’t work out.
But the key word was “temporary”. The special protections of the Indian Act, the rations provided to the Indians provided by the federal government, as well as the farm implements and equipment donated under the treaties were all meant to be a temporary arrangement until Indians had learned to fend for themselves. Reserves would merge into existing rural municipalities, or if large enough would become municipalities on their own, as Indians integrated into the Canadian economy.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, rations continued for years after Indians should have adjusted, and Indians became yet more dependent.
Duncan Campbell Scott, who is now demonized for various crimes he didn’t commit, made a concerted effort to end this dependence by attempting to enfranchise all Indians. He felt that they were ready to cope on their own without special “Indian” protections and privileges. But the resulting 1920 amendments to the Indian Act fell far short of complete enfranchisement, because Indian chiefs refused to give up their special privileges. Scott’s efforts to end the apartheid system, with its reserves, failed.
Similarly, Pierre Elliott Trudeau tried, in 1969 with his infamous 'White Paper,' to do exactly what Scott had failed to do in 1920. He failed as well. The chiefs refused to give up their perks. And they refused to end reserves, which were the source of their power and privileges.
Since then, well-meaning judges and politicians have piled on special financial perks, and extra powers — like UNDRIP — thinking they were helping Indians. They weren’t. They have made the chiefs and their families rich, but created an entrenched, dependent underclass. They have also cemented reserves, and the Indian apartheid system firmly in place.
So we now have the absurdity of status Indians — a status originally meant to signify wardship status — being elected as MPs and sitting as senators and becoming literally wards governing their principals.
The “status” in status Indian has come to stand for extra money and privileges only given to one racial group. And reserves, that were meant to be temporary way stations, are now imagined to be full fledged “nations.” The end result is the sad, broken down, and pointless human warehouse shown in Morgan’s video.
If the reserve system had been phased out in 1920 or 1969, Cory Morgan would not have had to make his video. In fact, the chiefs who now preside over squalid, racially segregated communities might well be leaders of normal, well-functioning rural municipalities. The residents with indigenous heritage could celebrate their ethnicity in the same way that other Canadians are free to celebrate theirs. They would become real Canadians. More of their young people would be working now.
But that does not appear to be what the chiefs want. They are after even more apartheid and more “government money” — more of exactly what created those sad places Cory Morgan showed us.
Brian Giesbrecht is a retired judge, and a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.