The Terms of Our Surrender

Part Two: The Royal Proclamation and questions of trust over Canadian indigenous land Chapter 6: Historical background

Chapter 7: The personal fiduciary duty

Chapter 8: Bending the law to the needs of settlement Chapter 9: The honour of the Crown, the duty to consult and the United Nations Declaration on the

Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Part Three: The modern treaties and Canada’s Comprehensive Land Claims Policy

Chapter 10: The James Bay project: ‘The Plot to Drown the Northern Woods

Chapter 11: The Malouf judgment — Chief Robert Kanatewat et al. v La Société de développement de la Baie James et al. et La Commission hydro-électrique de Québec [1974] RP 38

Chapter 12: Negotiating the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement

Chapter 13: The aftermath of signing the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement

Chapter 14: The Comprehensive Land Claims Policy

Part Four: The Innu experience of the Comprehensive Land Claims process

Chapter 15: ‘All that is left to us is the terms of our surrender’: negotiations to recover lost Innu lands

Chapter 16: The New Dawn Agreement Chapter 17: The position of the Innu who live in Quebec

Chapter 18: Construction and protest at Muskrat Falls

Part Five: ‘Citizens Plus’ or parallel paths?

Chapter 19: Academic solutions 291 Chapter 20: Indigenous solutions 305 Chapter 21: ‘Citizens Plus’ or parallel paths? 322 Appendix A Text of the Royal Proclamation 331 Appendix B The United Nations Declaration on the

Rights of Indigenous Peoples 333 Bibliography 345

Index 352

Acknowledgements

I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to the Innu people of Matimekush Lac John, Maliotenam and Uashat who trusted me with their history and shared with me their wisdom, their beliefs and their warm hospitality. In particular my thanks are due to Chief Réal McKenzie who invited me to Matimekush Lac John and to Chief Negotiator Lucien McKenzie whose proposal it was that I should undertake an oral history of his community and their struggle to retain their land rights. Innu lawyer and activist Armand Mackenzie proved an excellent guide and shared his knowledge and experience of Innu culture and politics as well as providing insightful interpretations of the interviews. Thanks are also due to Mike Cluney, who also acted as interpreter, for his growing interest in his people’s history and culture so that elders were keen to pass on their knowledge to him and thus to me.

Danielle Descent has been a mentor, guide, an excellent host with her husband Sylvain Vollant, and a true friend. Yvette Mackenzie and Bruno Ouellet lent me their house in Matimekush where I could work in peace and comfort. On my third visit they were at home and welcomed me, providing great hospitality and valuable insights. Mani Aster and Jean-Marie Mackenzie took me into their family and I gained much from Mani’s wisdom and Jean- Marie’s non-judgmental approach to life on reserve. Rita McKenzie and Adrian Cluney also gave me great encouragement, helpful suggestions and introductions and many cups of coffee.

My introduction to the Innu way of life came in 2008 at the 4ème Seminaire Nordique at Mushua Nipi, Northern Quebec. Elizabeth Ashini, Serge Ashini- Goupil, Philippe Messier and Anne-Marie Andre organised a multicultural, multidisciplinary conference which enabled wide-ranging discussion of the issues which affect the life of the Innu today. They took time to answer my many questions and to explain complex aspects of resource extraction from Innu lands. I am truly grateful for their encouragement and friendship. But above all, I am indebted to those who agreed to speak to me, who were, like all Indigenous people, meticulous in their need to give a full and truthful account of their people’s history so that this could be recorded in order that future generations should know how they fought to prevent the extinguishment of their rights.

x THE TERMS OF OUR SURRENDER

In Sheshatshiu, my thanks are due for the guidance of Anthony Jenkinson and Marcel Ashini and for my continued contact with Napes Ashini who, with Marcel and Tony, maintains his fight for the rights of Innu hunters despite the ratification of the New Dawn Agreement in Principle.

Professor Colin Samson has provided immense help and support throughout my years of study. This work has benefitted greatly from his suggestions and constructive criticism and his generosity in sharing sources and contacts and, most of all, his own experience. Through him, I joined a group of doctoral students who have formed close bonds and offer mutual support and encouragement: Pierrot Ross-Tremblay, Suzanne Robinson, Katya Brooks, Carlos Gigoux and Rebecca Fan.

I am grateful to the staff in the libraries I used, especially to Caroline Checkley, law librarian at the University of Essex, and Annalise D’Orsi at the Tshakapesh Institute in Uashat. Thanks are also due to the library staff at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London, the Bibliothéque Nationale in Montreal, and Université Laval, Quebec City, in particular to their film archivist.

Damien Short, Robert Davies and the team at the University of London Press have provided strong and very helpful guidance, especially Juliet Chalk, whose careful editing illuminated my prose.

My family, David Cassell, Miranda and Mark Andras and Beth and Holly Andras, have supported my work with encouragement and forbearance, putting up with long absences, reading my drafts, correcting my spelling and grammar and providing love and laughter.

Any inaccuracies are all my own.

Terminology

The indigenous peoples

The Innu who live in Quebec refer to themselves simply as Innu (the ‘people’), a name which includes their relatives who live across the border in Labrador. Sometimes they call themselves Montagnais, the name given to them by Jesuit missionaries, indicating those who live in the south of the Ungava Peninsula. Those who lived in the North, and who had not converted to Christianity, were referred to by the missionaries as Naskapi. Frank Speck made no distinction between Innu and Naskapi and, in his seminal work, named them all Naskapi. In its policy of divide and rule, the Canadian federal government named the Mushuau Innu who settled in Lac John Naskapi and, under this name, they became signatories of the North Eastern Quebec Agreement. Where the context permits, I have referred to the indigenous peoples under their chosen name.

Nation is a Canadian concept, used to identify 633 individual groups of indigenous people. Similarly, Band Council is a Canadian term for the governing body of each reserve equivalent to a town council. Reserve is the Canadian name for the villages in which indigenous peoples were sedentarised. Although these terms are used to identify individual groups of people and their settlements, and sometimes for convenience, these are not indigenous terms or constructs. Where possible I have used the term village to describe a people's settled habitation.

The Innu with whom I worked referred to indigenous peoples by the term Indiens or autochtones, which translates into English as ‘natives. They rarely used the term ‘First Nations’, another Canadian term which the Innu consider meaningless as long as Canadians deny them their rights to ancestral lands. I have used the terms native, indigenous and aboriginal interchangeably, according to context, but have avoided where possible the term First Nations.

Matimekush Lac John and Schefferville

Matimekush and Lac John are now two separate reserves served by the same Band Council. The Innu who live in these two villages settled together when the new town of Schefferville was created in 1950 to house the Iron Ore Company’s offices and employees. This is the municipality to which, in xii THE TERMS OF OUR SURRENDER

Canadian terms, Matimekush and Lac John belong. The Innu inhabitants who settled originally spent their summers in Uashat and Maliotenam (Innu name Mani-utenam) on the North Shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence near Sept-Iles. Around 1956, they were joined by Mushuau Innu from Fort Chimo (now Kuujjuaq) who were moved there by the Canadian government. Two separate Innu villages were created when the Indian Agent tried to move those Innu and Naskapi living in Lac John onto a new reserve outside Schefferville. Some Innu campaigned successfully to remain in Lac John, where they had provided housing for themselves. On the closure of the Iron Ore Company mine in 1982, the Naskapi received land on which to build a new village, Kawawachikamach and, after a successful negotiation, the Innu moved into vacated housing in Schefferville, although some chose to stay on the old reserve and in Lac John. Since the move into the town, Schefferville has been used by the Innu who live there interchangeably with Matimekush. The Innu from Matimekush Lac John are part of the negotiating table with Uashat and Maliotenam, together first as members of the Conseil Attikamekw-Montagnais, then as the Ashuanipi Corporation (named after a lake shared by all Innu and other indigenous peoples but now ceded to the Crown under the New Dawn Agreement) and now as the Strategic Alliance.

Note: Where I have quoted from French-language texts, for ease of reading I have translated the quotation into English.

Glossary fee simple Innu-Aimun Innu-Aitun

Innu Nation

Nitassinan nutshimit

Strategic Alliance sui generis terra nullius time immemorial

Tshash Petapen Turtle Island usufruct

Absolute title to land

The Innu language

Innu culture — their way of life; their world view; their ideas, beliefs and values, handed down from generation to generation; their skills; their artefacts — everything which gives them their identity

Until 2011, this name was used to indicate all Innu resident in the two government villages, Sheshatshiu and Natuashish, Labrador. The ‘Nation’ will come into being as a government-sponsored body when the New Dawn Final Agreement is ratified. After the ratification of the Agreement in Principle, however, the Innu resident in Central Quebec also adopted this name, to which they were equally entitled but as a separate negotiation organisation

The Innu homeland

The open country including all aspects of Innu life lived out on the land

Negotiating body formed in 2009 to represent the villages of Uashat, Maliotenam, Matimekush and Lac John following the breakdown of negotiations for the recovery of their James Bay lands

Unique, in a class of its own

Vacant land with no true owner, free for the taking

‘The common law date from which absolute title to land is measured — in the case of indigenous land from before the time of contact

The indigenous name for North America

The right to gather the fruits of land; a right which does not amount to ownership of the land

Abbreviations

AFN

AIP

CAM CF(L)Co CLCP CCP/CLCP DIAND

FPIC

HBC

IBA

ICEM

IRS

JBA, JBNQA

LIL LISA Nalcor

NEQA

RCAP TK, TEK

UCRA UNDRIP

Assembly of First Nations

Agreement in Principle

Conseil Attikamekw-Montagnais

Churchill Falls (Labrador) Company

Comprehensive Land Claims Policy

Comprehensive Land Claims Process

Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, subsequently AANDC, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, then INAC, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada. The Department is now divided into two bodies: CIRNAC, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, and ISC, Indigenous Services Canada

Free, prior and informed consent

Hudson’s Bay Company

Impacts and Benefits Agreement

Indian Residential Schools

James Bay Agreement, James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (full title)

Labrador Innu Lands

Labrador Innu Settlement Area

The Newfoundland Labrador Corporation

North Eastern Quebec Agreement (the agreement signed by the Naskapi)

Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples

Traditional knowledge, traditional environmental knowledge

Upper Churchill Redress Agreement

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Maps

Map 1 Territory of the Innu Nation. Reproduced by kind permission of

Map 2

Map 3

Serge Ashini Goupil and the Indigenous Leadership Initiative.

Quebec-Labrador Peninsula showing the land acquired

as Crown lands under the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, the North Eastern Quebec Agreement, the Labrador Inuit Settlement Agreement and the Tshash Petapen (New Dawn) Agreement in Principle on which there is as yet no Final Agreement. Only 10 per cent of

the land remains indigenous land in fee simple after

the signing of these agreements, which purport to

‘grant’ land to the peoples.

Frank Speck’s map of the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula showing the distribution of the land under Innu (both Montagnais and Naskapi) ownership and control.

Reproduced by kind permission of the American Philosophical Society.

Preface

Based on the experience of the Innu resident in Quebec and Labrador, this book is intended to be a work of advocacy for the full extent of the rights of indigenous peoples whose landholdings have been devastated in the Canadian land claims process. As things stand at present, the Innu who are resident in government villages in Quebec have lost their rights to all their land and this makes them almost unique among indigenous groups in Canada. Those peoples who, unlike the Innu, have signed land deals purporting to grant them rights over their own land have, in effect, lost 90 per cent of their ancestral land. Using the experience of the Innu as a template, I shall question Canadian sovereignty over indigenous lands which have been taken without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned. More important, my aim is to demonstrate the disconnect between the negotiation process and the reality of human suffering which loss of land entails for the Innu of the Ungava Peninsula and other indigenous peoples.

In 2008, I was invited to observe the land claims negotiations of the Innu of what was then known as the Ashuanipi Corporation, which represented the Innu of Central Quebec who live in government-built villages at Uashat, Maliotenam and Matimekush Lac John. They had two negotiations in progress with the Canadian federal government and the provinces of Quebec and Labrador. The first was to recover land rights which had been extinguished over their heads under the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement of 1975. The second was to establish their rights to land which they have owned for millennia across the provincial border in Labrador. The name of the corporation was significant in that it is the name of a lake and has been a meeting place for all Innu and other indigenous peoples of the Ungava Peninsula for at least 4,000 years. Now it is to be ceded to the Crown under the terms of the Tshash Petapen (New Dawn) Agreement signed only by the Innu who are settled in two villages in Labrador. Thus, having chosen to negotiate with only two of the 11 Innu communities who formerly shared the land, the Crown will receive land for which it has no current use in relation to any of the ‘public interest’ purposes such as resource extraction and hydro-electricity which are permitted under the line of judicial decisions starting with R v Sparrow’ and expanded in Delgamuukw v British Columbia’ and subsequent cases (see Chapter 9).

In 1972, all 11 Innu communities on both sides of the Quebec—Labrador border walked away from the negotiation table for rights to the land taken for the James Bay hydro-electricity project. They held to their firm belief that land is not a commodity to be bought or sold, but something which is held in trust for six generations of ancestors and the six generations to come. Land is given to be shared by all and humanity has a duty to take care of it and to conserve it. Although these beliefs are also held by the Cree, in 1972 the Grand Council of the Cree joined with the Inuit, first to assert their land rights through the courts and then to negotiate a settlement which recognised their right to the land but at the same time extinguished the land rights of non-participating indigenous peoples, including the Innu.

In the negotiation process in both these instances, so far as the governments are concerned, the rights to the land of the Innu settled in Quebec have been conclusively extinguished by the parties to the James Bay agreements. The Ashuanipi Corporation and its predecessors spent more than 30 years negotiating for the recovery of the lost James Bay lands. The federal government insisted that any renegotiation must take place between the indigenous parties concerned, but when in 2009 there seemed to be a breakthrough in these negotiations the government closed them down on a pretext. By the time I returned to observe the negotiations, they had ended and the Innu, now reconstituted as the Strategic Alliance, had begun to pursue a court case.

When I returned in March 2009, my purpose was to work on an oral history, in an effort to try to understand the human consequences of such a loss, which would recount the effects of denial of land rights on a people whose identity is defined by land. This aim coincided with the Matimekush Lac John Band Council’s proposal that I record the efforts they had made to recover the James Bay lands so that their descendants would know that they had not willingly given up the territory which in the future should rightfully belong to them. I had also hoped to uncover new arguments in favour of Innu ownership of the land, but the research and documentation prepared by the Innu for the negotiation process presented a very comprehensive case for Innu ownership of the land both in Quebec and in Labrador. This evidence is set out in Chapter 16.

With the aid of interpreters and a recording engineer provided by the Band Council, I conducted interviews with 48 people from a population of approximately 800, who collectively were able to give voice to highly relevant factors which are never raised at the negotiation table — where much indigenous testimony is lost in Euro-centric processes involving lawyers and consultants

1 Rv Sparrow, [1991] 1 SCR 1075. 2 Delgamuukw v British Columbia, [1997] 3 SCR 1010.

who speak on behalf of the Innu. My work with the Innu shows that, to those I worked with in Matimekush Lac John, land is not a commodity that can be bought and sold. Their past and future are tied up with the love they have for the land and their duty to protect it. The land belongs to every culture but to no individual or group and should be available for all to use. They can define the difference between the Innu and non-Innu attitude. As one Innu explained, ‘Canadians cherish a country, not the land’. Non-natives treat land as a commodity, an investment. To the Innu, one said, the land is everything while to the settler it is only money. The land is the Innu life, their culture and their home. It is their nourishment in every sense of the word.

Theirs is a two-way relationship: not only do they own the land on the basis of being the first to occupy it and to continue that occupation, but they also belong to the land and have a duty to protect it from the environmental disasters that come in the wake of Canadian resource development. Without the need for ownership by individuals, the land is their wealth. It provides food, medication, clothing and shelter — but only if it is respected. Further, it has given them the transferable skills of close observation, patience, endurance and flexibility, which are stifled by an existence on welfare payments.

When the Quebec—Labrador border was drawn, in 1927, it had no significance to the Innu, who had walked the entire peninsula together for generations and whose families live in both provinces. At the time they were not even told about the division of the peninsula. It only came to light nearly 50 years later during discussions with the governments and Hydro-Québec over the James Bay Agreement. As was pointed out by one Innu elder, the provincial border had no significance for the anthropologist Frank Speck either when, in 1935, he published his work on the Naskapi and the Montagnais.‘ He allocated the whole peninsula to bands of indigenous people. French priests named the Innu ‘Naskapi’ and ‘Montagnais’, depending on whether they were from the North — the Mushuau Innu, whom they called Naskapi; or from the South — the people of the mountains whom they called Montagnais. To themselves they are simply Innu — ‘the people’.

The Innu of Uashat, Maliotenam, Matimekush and Lac John are isolated, the other Innu reserves having signed agreements for the exploitation of resources on their land. While there have always been tensions between the Matimekush Lac John Innu and the Labrador game wardens, in 2008, when the signing of the New Dawn Agreement in Principle was imminent, Innu hunters were threatened that, if they did not get off their lands in Labrador, their hunting cabins would be burned down. This threat was quickly withdrawn but the Innu have been denied the peaceful enjoyment of their land.

3 Interview MD2, Sept. 2009. 4 Speck, F, Naskapi: The Savage Hunters of the Labrador Peninsula (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1935).

The Matimekush Lac John Innu live in the heart of the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula, right on the provincial border. This has enabled them to keep close to the earth and to all it means to them. They are constantly reminded of the stark difference between life in the interior and life on reserve. To sign a treaty extinguishing their rights is also to sign away their obligations to the land but, unless and until they do, they see the prospering all around them of communities who have signed extinguishment agreements and taken the benefits.

At the same time, in Matimekush Lac John the Innu are starved of resources and their children are failed by the standard of education provided in federal rather than provincial schools. They remain wards of the Crown, like children unable to control their own destiny, and deprived of the power to protect their environment. The chiefs and elders at the time of the James Bay Agreement were strong in their culture and, for them, agreement to extinguishment of their rights was impossible in the face of deeply held spiritual convictions. ‘The community was kept informed and consulted about the negotiations, and support for refusal to sign any such agreement was virtually unanimous.

Settler Canadians identify indigenous peoples by where they live on reserve but, historically, the Innu and many others lived out on the land in the interior, only coming to summer meeting places to trade and to escape the mosquitoes and blackfly which make life unendurable to hunters and caribou alike in the two summer months. This was the mindset I encountered on reserve in Matimekush Lac John. Most of the people I interviewed, including the school students, indicated that they were settled in the government villages against their will and that their identity depended on their connections with the land which, even in the face of all government attempts at assimilation, remain strong.

‘There is a firm basis for indigenous land claims in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 (reproduced in Appendix A), in which George III of the United Kingdom undertook to protect the land of the indigenous peoples of North America from the incursions of other empire-building nations and from waves of settlers from Europe. The Proclamation decreed that it was made for the protection of the indigenous people and that no indigenous land could be purchased or taken in any way other than through the British Crown.

This undertaking was never revoked and it was recorded both in the Treaty of Niagara of 1764 and in the wampum belts which were widely distributed and which embody the indigenous understanding of the terms of this Treaty — that settlers and indigenous peoples should live side by side, following parallel paths which preserve their respective cultures, joined in mutual respect, peace and friendship. Where the indigenous peoples believed the arrangement to be a treaty of peace and friendship, however, those who signed on behalf of the Crown described it as a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance. At the time, the Crown was dependent on its indigenous allies in its wars with the French, and subsequently with the independent states of America.

By the beginning of the 19th century, however, the British were firmly established in what was then British North America, north of the 49th parallel. They no longer had need of allies for war. They needed land for settlement and later for resource extraction. This book is an account of the ways in which the Crown in Right of Canada set out to circumvent the promises given in the Royal Proclamation.

The decisions taken by the Crown on behalf of the native peoples to whom it had offered protection took no account of the fiduciary duty it had assumed under the Royal Proclamation. Negotiators sent by the British North American authorities to bargain for land which belonged to the natives failed to observe the duties of utmost good faith assumed by the Crown under the Royal Proclamation. Negotiations took place according to settler custom under the common law. There were no words in indigenous languages for the terms which were eventually written down, under which the land was taken by the Crown in absolute ownership in exchange for a small annuity, supplies, education and medicine which in no way represented the value of the land which had been ceded. This is exactly the sort of situation which the law on fiduciary duties is intended to prevent. Here the Crown, as the dominant party, took advantage of its superior bargaining power and the special relationship which the Royal Proclamation created with the indigenous people.

Unable to see any worth in the cultures of the indigenous peoples with whom they treated, the Crown assumed that they would soon be assimilated into settler society. In order to accelerate this process, native children were taken from their families and sent to residential boarding schools where they were deprived of their language and culture in the most brutal way, and most were so damaged by the experience that they were left with no future either in settler society or in their own families. Following Confederation in 1867, steps were taken to settle native peoples into villages owned by the government — which later became the model for concentration camps in the South African Boer War and subsequently in Germany.

Under this process, the Crown claimed that it was observing its fiduciary duty by making the ‘Indians’ wards of the Crown, i.e. treating them as minors, unable to make decisions for themselves. Indigenous destinies lay in the hands of an Indian Agent who had virtually unlimited power to decide who could leave the village, and who was to receive seeds and farming implements to allow them to lead a sedentary life. Far from being allowed to pursue their parallel existence in an atmosphere of respect, peace and friendship, the indigenous peoples of Canada were deprived of their land, language and culture and thus their identity. They had no control over their own destiny. This in no way represents the nature of the fiduciary duty imposed by the Royal Proclamation

— which is founded on an undertaking given nation-to-nation regarding land, and between parties of equal standing.

Through the lens of the common law and, in particular, the law of trusts and fiduciary duties this book examines the devices used by the Crown to deprive the indigenous peoples of their lands. It will demonstrate that there is no need to look to indigenous law to make a case that indigenous land to this day is owned outright by indigenous people. Under the terms of the Royal Proclamation, the British Crown had assumed responsibility for all dealings in indigenous land. This was the basis of the fiduciary duty. The party who assumes a fiduciary duty may never take advantage of that position and must act always in the best interests of the party to whom the duty is owed. This precludes all dealings in land and other assets and information obtained as a result of the relationship. Thus the Crown is prohibited from dealing in indigenous land for its own benefit without the free, prior and informed consent of its indigenous owners. Any interpretation of the Crown’s duty to the indigenous peoples which falls short of this is a stain on the honour of the Crown, a concept discussed at length in Chapter 8. Having observed such duties in my professional life and subsequently having impressed their fundamental importance on generations of law students, it became a personal imperative that I make an attempt to clarify this issue.

The indigenous rights decisions heard by the Supreme Court of Canada, while acknowledging the existence of such rights, would balance them against the general public interest of those who had settled in Canada. Similarly, the Canadian and provincial governments negotiate with individual indigenous peoples whom the governments have called ‘nations’ on a ‘take it or leave it basis, purporting to grant rights to rather than to receive rights from the indigenous people concerned. The Canadian legal system seems not to be able to conceive of solutions to these intractable problems of indigenous land rights from an alternative world viewpoint to its own. It appears to see no value in the indigenous system of landholding whereby land is shared by all.

Intent on acquiring the land for development, the governments and their commercial partners will pay sums of money which hold the promise of a better future for Innu youth. On closer examination, however, the payments are divisive and destructive of communities. The Innu I interviewed were fearful of the large sums of money which would be available in the village following the reopening of the mines. They knew that drugs and alcohol would threaten the relative stability which the community had enjoyed in recent years.

In the court cases from Delgamuukw onwards the land claims settlement process is said to be one of reconciliation — the reconciliation of indigenous rights with Canadian sovereignty. Yet a system under which the governments provide a set agenda on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis and take 90 per cent of aboriginal land on the pretext of granting rights to 10 per cent cannot work towards a long-term solution of the ‘Indian problem’.

PREFACE a

Across Canada, land settlement agreements are couched in remarkably similar terms. Any attempt to allow indigenous peoples to continue a life based on subsistence are firmly resisted. For governments, it is preferable to assume the huge cost of keeping indigenous people in idleness on reserve rather than to allow them to continue their hunting life, which is the antidote to the epidemics of drug misuse, alcoholism, diabetes and domestic violence that plague native communities. What the Canadian governments are seeking is not reconciliation but an updated version of assimilation.