Ray,
I'm not really sure of where this is taking us. Much as we would like to,
we can't resuscitate history. The bacilli and viruses moved overwhelmingly
in one direction and not the other. What was destroyed can never be
recovered. While those viruses were doing their thing over here, my
ancestors were enmeshed in the famines, pestilence, migrations, persecutions
and wars of central Europe. They may have had a greater chance of survival
than American Indians, but not that much greater. They and many other poor
people of European did not arrive in the Americas until well after the
damage had been done. They were peasants trying to eke out a living, and
knew nothing about Beethoven, Plato or Goethe. They had never been to a
museum, let alone put the artifacts of other cultures into one. All they
knew was that they needed land to till. Initially, they had found it in
Russia, but that didn't work very well, so they came here. They didn't know
that the land they tilled on the Canadian prairies had belonged to others.
All they knew was that that is where the government, the lands agents and
the railroads put them.
In citing Canadian Indian claims policy, I did not mean to imply that it is
the best policy or even good policy. I just wanted to let you know how,
under our Constitution and system of laws, we have proceeded to compensate
aboriginal people for some of their grievances. And I do recognize that only
a few of these can be dealt with by negotiation, legislation or the courts,
and that there may be no satisfactory way of dealing with many others.
Something that has bothered me is that, though our debate has been very
interesting, it is difficult to see how it is related to the future of work
which, after all, is supposed to be the subject of this list. However, there
is a hook. Over the past twenty or thirty years, the Canadian aboriginal
claims process has created a wealth of work for lawyers, negotiators and
advisors. I personally benefitted from this at various times for several
years, as did many of my associates. In the case of the Yukon claim, with
which I am familiar, negotiations proved something of an economic godsend to
the native communities. Not only were lawyers and negotiators paid, but a
great many Indian people who traveled to Whitehorse to present the views of
their community were also compensated. As well, the Council for Yukon
Indians employed a range of administrative, secretarial and clerical staff.
But this is only the beginning. The claims final agreement created a wide
range of boards and tribunal dealing with subjects such as eligibility and
enrolment, financial compensation, reserves and lands set aside, tenure and
management of settlement lands, access to settlement lands, expropriation,
surface rights, settlement land amount, definition of boundaries, financial
compensation, special management areas, land use planning, development
assessment, heritage, water management, fish and wildlife management, forest
resources, taxation, and economic development measures. The implementation
of all such measures requires either occasional or full time personnel. And
coupled with these measures are initiatives which transfer administrative
responsibilities and funding from the Government of Canada to the Indian
communities to enable them to govern themselves.
A claims settlement provides a whole new layer of administration and will
inevitably complicate the management regime. Given that public institutions
of government will continue to exist, it may take years to fully define the
roles of the new claims related boards and tribunals, and it may take almost
as long for persons who have been placed on these boards and tribunals to
understand their roles. In the interim, considerable uncertainty about who
does what will exist, not only impacting on potential economic activity, but
creating plenty of work for lawyers.
I am not knocking the aboriginal claims or self-government processes. They
are absolutely necessary in a nation like Canada in which aboriginal title
or rights were never clearly or wholly dealt with. What I am saying,
however, is that these processes are extremely complex and cumbersome even
though they cover only a relatively small part of the spectrum of aboriginal
grievances. It will take decades to deal with the relatively few issues that
are being considered. Loading anything more onto them could lead to
complete stasis.
Ed Weick
>Did I get it right? I tried hard to make the echo >as accurate as possible.
This is my experience, not >reading. We say that reading can serve only to
>help one remember what they already know. What >did it feel like to be in
the reverse? Were you happy, >sad, angry, threatened? I have been all of
these. > >Is this policy really the end result of Bach's B minor mass,
>Verdi's Turandot, the Britton/Owen War Requiem, the >plays of Shakespeare,
the poetry of Robert Burns >and Dylan Thomas, of Goethe? Is this the end
result >of Judeo/Christian/Moslem thought? Of Lao Tzu of >Plato, Rumi? This
is no different than that cave >in France when the peaceful Albagensians
were slaughtered. >The soldiers did not think themselves evil, nor did they
>believe the Cathars innocent but they were. If we have >traveled such a
short distance in so long a time then >we are moral failures and all of that
story about culture, >truth and beauty is but an impotent dream. "Death
>shook his head and for a moment had dreamed that >life existed." I believe
that Greek, at least, understood.
> >REH > >
