Making Indigenous Culture the Foundation of Indigenous Governance Today: The Mi’kmaq Rights Initiative of Nova Scotia, Canada

Abstract

Making Indigenous Culture the Foundation of Indigenous Governance Today: The Mi’kmaq Rights Initiative of Nova Scotia, Canada Maura Hanrahan (bio) We need to rebel against what they want us to become, start remembering the qualities of our ancestors and act on those remembrances. This is the kind of spiritual revolution that will ensure our survival. —GERALD TAIAIAKE ALFRED, WASÁSE: INDIGENOUS PATHWAYS OF ACTION AND FREEDOM Indigenousness in the Colonial Past and Present Fully aware of their disadvantaged political position, Indigenous leaders continue to engage in Canadian political processes. As Indigenous scholar Dale Turner notes, Canada is one of the world’s constitutional democracies that has, through its legal and political relationships, created political spaces, such as land claims policy, that facilitate the rights of Indigenous peoples.1 But these spaces are limited and, from an Indigenous perspective, inadequate and hugely flawed. The consent of the state is required for virtually any significant political change for Indigenous people, which indicates the ongoing lopsided power relationship between Canadian Indigenous people and the state. These processes are rooted in European and North American settler notions of Indigenous people, communities, and nations and are part of the ongoing colonial project. It is clear that the Mi’kmaq Chiefs of Nova Scotia recognize the necessity of working within the parameters set by colonial superstructures. But they also see the value in trying to strive for forms of sovereignty outside these parameters and in accordance with Mi’kmaq culture. The result of this is the tripartite Mi’kmaq Rights Initiative (MRI), aimed at just treaty implementation and governance and shared social and economic development in Nova Scotia. The MRI is unique in Canada and is not part of any existing Canadian political processes. Calls to reclaim the values that once made Indigenous governance effective are part of an ongoing pattern in which Indigenous ways of seeing, being, and living are seen and utilized as resistance strategies. As Creek/Cherokee scholar Craig [End Page 75] Womack explains, Indigenous cultures, as understood through oral tradition, are inherently political and are marked by flexibility and adaptability. Indigenous cultures allow Indigenous leaders to attempt to “reopen discussion of full national status rather than working within the current limiting legal definitions as if they are set in stone.”2 This is just what the MRI tries to do. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Map of Nova Scotia, Canada. Indigenous governance structures as they exist today are the outcomes of an ongoing colonial process that began with European incursion into North America some four to five centuries ago in the case of the Mi’kmaq. The erosion of Indigenous governance and all that has happened in concert with it has deeply affected Indigenous people in what is now Canada. Indigenous people remain marginalized by political processes and structures in Canada and even from the national political conversation and public discourse. As the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) asserts, “The current relationship between First Nations and Parliament has been characterized by a long history of interference and mistrust, [an] outdated legislative framework inhibiting progress and growth . . . and education used as a tool of oppression.”3 Colonial policy destroyed Indigenous governments as well as governance practices with a combination of stealth and blunt instruments of political [End Page 76] oppression. In 1927, for instance, the Indian Act, which governs every aspect of the lives of status Indians, forbade First Nations people to form political organizations. Latterly, First Nations leaders were excluded from constitutional talks in Canada until the First Ministers Conference on Aboriginal Rights from 1983 to 1987. Referencing the desperate economic and social conditions of many First Nations reserves, especially in the North, the AFN refers to Canada’s system of “apartheid.”4 For these reasons, members of Namgis First Nation, British Columbia, performed a once-outlawed copper-cutting shaming ceremony on Parliament Hill in Ottawa in July 28, 2014.5 In this context come calls to return to the Indigenous values which long shaped and underpinned Indigenous governance. These calls are often heard in Indigenous community meetings, for instance, and they also come from such Indigenous scholars as Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Angela R. Riley, Robert Porter...