The issues involving Quebec's relation to the rest of Canada are tangled,
but it is worth pointing out that native rights *are* closely involved in
both practical and ideological ways. Most Canadians will recall last year's
events in which (a) the proposed constitutional changes governing the terms
of Quebec's status within Canada (as a "distinct society") were blocked, due
in large measure to principled resistance by Elijah Harper, a native member
of the Manitoba legislature and (b) the siege at Oka (Quebec) in which Mohawk
people were violently arrested and/or driven off the site of disputed land in
order to make way for a golf course. The latter incident began with an attack
on Mohawk barricades by Quebec provincial police (Surete Quebec), costing the
life of one of the police officers and embittering relations between native
people and the Quebec government. Canadian Forces (= army) concluded the job
the SQ started, to the outrage of many Canadians across the country.
In all of this it seems clear that Quebec nationalism has seen itself pitted
against any recognition of native agendas (as the Great Whale project amply
demonstrates). While various difficulties surrounding the "distinct society"
clause in proposed constitutional changes arise, what has always upset native
people has been the readiness of Ottawa power-brokers to accord such status
to Quebec (as one of "Two Founding Nations") while stonewalling on historic
and legal claims to native self-determination and, in the context of present
constitutional changes, the refusal to recognize aboriginal rights to land.
Quebec has shown *no* readiness whatever to move to support native rights,
arguing instead that Quebec's priorities come first, and native issues can
only be discussed after Quebec is satisfied. When Elijah Harper blocked the
approval of the constitutional accords involving Quebec, then, it is hardly
to be wondered: the principle is that First People's issues should not be
settled last.
Anyone watching the events unfolding at Oka last year will not have failed to
notice the institutionalized hostility to native concerns manifested by the
government of Quebec, nor will it be easy to forget the viciously racist
responses of Quebecois in Chateau Gai (across the river from Montreal) when
local Mohawk people closed the Mercier Bridge (running through Mohawk land)
in protest of the tactics adopted by the Quebec (and later federal) govern-
ment. And the suspicion will not be quieted that Quebec nationalism --
which has already begun to talk in terms of cultural and ethnic "purity" and
hint that immigrant minorities had best watch their step -- is acting as a
cover for state-sponsored racism which is now legitimized by the romantic
aura of the Quebecois finding their place in the sun and righting the wrongs
of centuries of oppression at the hands of Anglo-Canada. In fact, many (and
this includes large sectors of native Canadians) are convinced that the ugly
and humiliating events at Oka were a way for Quebec and the Mulroney govern-
ment to punish native people for speaking up and getting in the way.
When native people and others oppose the Great Whale project there is indeed
a sense in which this must, even if inadvertantly, be at odds with Quebec's
new nationalism, since the Great Whale is meant to help finance the province's
independence from Ottawa. And when native people say (as has Ovid Mercredi of
the Assembly of First Nations) that they endorse self-determination and the
principle of sovereignty for Quebecois, *but only when Quebec and the rest of
Canada are willing to support these very aims for native people,* Quebec
nationalists see nothing more than another obstacle in their way.
In all of this it is hard to give credence to fears that somehow native people
are involved in a conspiracy to frustrate Quebecois aspirations, but there is
a frightening readiness at official and unofficial levels to see native people
as villains, making it that much easier to justify a continuation and intensi-
fication of the *real* oppression that has always been with us.
Dan Jorgensen jorgensen@vaxr.sscl.uwo.ca