Boreal

Shooting the Messenger

Till Death Do Us Part

Extinction

The employee who provided me with an alternate usage for the expression “Walking Eagle” was a Chinese Canadian, first generation. He would do an “Uncle Hugh” and hire an unqualified person as programmer because he was more deserving; in this instance, race and history rather than familial ties were the deciding factor. It was his way of getting back, he admitted, at the white man who had discriminated against his ancestors, who had built the most difficult and deadly part of the Canadian Pacific Railway. That is where his history started! That he would feel that way, Boom-Boom Singh of The Fractured Nation Interviews has an explanation.

ACNA, in the following excerpt, refers to the fictional Asian Commonwealth of North America.

When your white children first came into this country, they did not come shouting the war cry and seeking to wrest this land from us. They told us they came as friends to smoke the pipe of peace; they sought our friendship, we became brothers. Their enemies were ours. At the time we were strong and powerful, while they were few and weak. But did we oppress them or wrong them? No! Time wore on and you have become a great people, whilst we have melted away like snow beneath an April sun; our strength is wasted our warriors dead.

Shinguacouse, Ojibwa chief

…

Boom-Boom: It was the teaching of Canadian history out of context. As explained previously, the teaching of history in the decades preceding The Fracture dwelt more and more on the real and imagined injustices done to the ancestors of new Canadians, the ancestral history of the new Canadians and less on the contributions to the building of Canada by the earlier settlers. It was also a history that maintained that the greatest contribution to the building of Canada, not that it was not substantial, was made by immigrants coming to Canada after Mulroney opened the floodgates to cheap labour.

Johnny: It was a biased history that Canadian politicians actively encouraged for their own ends, wasn’t it? I remember reading a book by that great Canadian philosopher Saul, whom his countrymen never fully appreciated – but then again, that was also so typically Canadian – called Reflections of a Siamese Twin in which he writes about the 1995 referendum that almost led to an early fracture; about how politicians talked about Canada as if it had no history before 1985.

Canada would fracture along linguistic, religious and ethnic fault lines. Boom-Boom Sing’s role in The Interviews is to present the argument that it was multiculturalism run amok, unbridled immigration, and the teaching of history where the role of the French and the English in making Canada a reality is not only diminished but denounced in favour of that of the newcomers, leaving the First Nations, after The Fracture, in a no man’s land facing extinction in large parts of the former Canada because those with whom they share a common history are no longer in a position to honour their obligations under that shared history.

Boom-Boom: The obligations of the British Crown were assumed by the government of Canada, at Confederation I believe. It may have been later. But all this is irrelevant today. Ten years ago this week, the country of Canada disappeared and with it, any treaty obligations.

Johnny: Perhaps the treaties were no longer enforceable, with no central authority to enforce them, but wasn’t there a moral obligation?

Boom-Boom: What moral obligation? The money and land that was granted under those treaties was in large part, as far as most ACNA members are concerned – especially the money – guilt payments, white Anglo-Saxon guilt payments for stealing the land and mistreating the Native population. The citizens of the Asian Commonwealth of North America were not here, at least not in any great number when this robbery of Native lands took place. Not only are they responsible for what happened to them then, but they are also responsible for what is happening to them now.

Johnny: How’s that? I mean, why are they responsible for what’s happening to Natives now?

Boom-Boom: Who created the system that led to The Fracture in the first place? It was the white Anglo-Saxon and French majority in the Canadian Parliament. Let them, let the white Anglo-Saxon and French-Canadians continue their guilt payments and look after them – the Natives.

Johnny: You know that is not possible. What remains of the Canadian Confederation, what you call the white Anglo-Saxon communities, are deeply divided, their attention is now taken up with dealing with the Asian Commonwealth of North America, the Holy Alliance of Muslim Municipalities, the North American African-Caribbean League, not to mention the country of Quebec—and their economy is in such a bad shape that its…

Boom-Boom: And whose fault is that? Look it’s not that I am not sympathetic to the plight of Canada’s first inhabitants but, you must understand, we don’t have a past.

Johnny: What do you mean?

Boom-Boom: There is no substantive shared history between Canada’s first inhabitants and the Japanese, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Sikhs and Tamils, therefore, convincing members of my Commonwealth to provide more help than you would a stranger in distress is very difficult, if not impossible. Also, it is no secret that before The Fracture, many of the minorities that are now under the ACNA umbrella considered the first inhabitants a pampered minority—that lack of shared history, again—that should not have had any more rights than any other minority and definitely not the billions of dollars that were given to them every year under the now obsolete treaties. This is a view that is still shared by a majority of the citizens of ACNA.

Johnny: To be fair, it’s not only members of ACNA but of H.A.M.M. and NAACL that feel no moral or fiduciary responsibilities to Canada’s first inhabitants. After The Fracture, the new country of Québec is not exactly respectful of those treaty rights either, forcing their native populations to become part of the Quebec mainstream.

Boom-Boom: I feel a tremendous sadness for Canada’s first inhabitants; sadness for the tribes that are no longer with us; sadness because they lost their country, not once but twice; sadness that they now find themselves in a no man’s land, in disputed territories of the new alliances that don’t recognized their ancestral claims; sadness for the many that are being killed in scenes reminiscent of the hunting of the Beothuks; sadness for those who are slowing starving to death. To me, it would be like if my ancestral lands became the property of my enemy. I really feel for them, but they lost their country and it was not because of anything we did. They mostly did it to themselves with a little help from their friends.

Johnny: What do you think of the words spoken by chief Shinguacouse of the Ojibwa almost two hundred years ago, which I quoted at the beginning of tonight’s show?

Boom-Boom: To me, it’s a warning to choose your friends very carefully.

Johnny: That’s all?

Boom-Boom: Their fate was sealed when they welcomed the Europeans, and for what? To trade, believing that they—the Europeans—had attractive stuff to exchange and would be fair free-traders. In exchange for a few trinkets and baubles, they gave up a continent.

Johnny: It’s interesting how the fate of alleged primitive cultures and the fate of more advanced nations like Canada is decided by economics or more specifically, the value some economic systems place on acquisition, trade and greed. Both, you could say, were the victims of bad trade deals and unchecked immigration.

In The Fractured Nation Interviews, I did not anticipate the impact of social media on the mainstream media. Apart from that, and a few other details, much of what they contain is as valid today, if not more so, as it was then. Might be worth a read?