The Gatekeepers’ Peace

Watch the Oscar-nominated documentary “The Gatekeepers”. The director, Dror Moreh, interviews all five former heads of Israel’s CIA-like security force, Shin Bet.

These men are warriors. They have spent their lives defending their country. Their words come from 30 years of fighting terrorism. Here is some of what they say.

… In the army you see the enemy as a target. In the Shin Bet, even when you are interrogating someone, you see the enemy as people. And with people you have to talk.

… We say we have to kill everyone who is trying to kill us. But you cannot kill ideas. The only way to defeat an ideology is to present a better ideology.

… It was a huge mistake not to recognize Palestine as a member of the UN. I don’t know why America and Canada opposed it. As an Israeli it is much easier to negotiate the route of a border with an entity if it is a state.

… When liberation becomes occupation, the liberators become conquerors. Then you are not promoting democracy, you are stifling it. Both theirs and yours.

That last quote can apply equally to the US occupation of Iraq, or the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, or any number of colonial enterprises.

If you listen harder, you can hear their rebuke of the kind of ‘target politics’ too many politicians love to practice—theirs and ours. Targeting people as ‘the enemy’ wounds democracy. It is a self-inflicted wound.

This is an interesting idea, that the occupier wounds not only the occupied but himself. Derek Walcott, the St Lucian poet, says much the same thing in Omeros the epic poem that assured his stature as a Nobel laureate. Philoctete a black fishermen suffers from a wound to the ankle that does not heal—a legacy of the Middle Passage that delivered slaves to the New World. And Major Plunkett, a remnant of the British Empire in the Caribbean suffers from a old head wound received in some colonial adventure past. The colonized and the colonial—the conquered and the conqueror—are both wounded by occupation.

The five Gatekeepers are wise warriors. They fear that the Israel their parents and grandparents sought will disappear in the occupation. They rebuff their own government’s current policies. They tell us the path to peace in the holy land—land that is holy to all three Abrahamic faiths—is not a military march. It will not be achieved with more rockets or bigger settlements or longer walls. The path must be walked by people, and with people you have to talk.

 © David McLaren Easter 2013

 Links

• Q&A: The Shin Bet’s Interviewer - The Jewish Week
• Dror Moreh talks about ‘The Gatekeepers’ - Washington Post
• The Fog of Occupation: An interview with Dror Moreh, director of ‘The Gatekeepers’ - Mondoweiss
• A former Israeli security chief’s plan for peace - The Globe & Mail
• The censorship minister – Haaretz
  

This second essay is by my good friend Hanns Skoutajan, a Minister of the United Church and stalwart Neighbour of Nawash during the dark days of 1995. His posts appear each week online at True North Perspective.

Rest and Light at Jouney’s End

Requiem aeternam donna eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Eternal rest give to them O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.

So the words of the Introit to a Requiem. A requiem is of course a mass for the dead in the Catholic liturgy and there have been many musical settings to these Latin words. The composition by Maurice Durufle (1902-1986 ) is but one of the most recent settings of this mass.

It was performed appropriately on the evening of Good Friday in the beautiful sanctuary of Southminster United Church in Ottawa to a large audience. The performers were the expanded choir of Southminster church with Katarzyna Sadel, mezzo soprano, Joseph Chi baritone, and Carol Tsai cello, as well as trumpets, tympani and Matthew Larkin on the Casavant organ of the church. This masterpiece was conducted by Roland Graham, organist and choirmaster of the church—an enormous and enormously successful undertaking proving to be a milestone in the history of music of that church.

From a religious point of view one should never approach the joyful Easter celebration without having passed through the “valley of the shadow.” I fear that we are only too willing to hop over the negatives, too quick to celebrate victory without having walked the “Via Dolorosa.”

Some years ago when I visited Jerusalem for the first time. I entered the Old City through the Damascus Gate. I immediately found myself in a bustling market. The smell of delicious food and the shouts of the vendors filled the square.

I proceeded along the ancient city’s narrow cobbled streets. Presently I arrived at an intersection where a number of people were gathered before a memorial. I decided to follow them, pausing as they did before other similar plaques commemorating the road that Jesus had taken carrying his cross. The group, and I in tow, soon arrived at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the burial place of Jesus.

There was something that was bothering me as I followed the crowd through the alleys and then the question presented itself, “Can this be the Via Dolorosa? Had I not been on the road of sorrows the previous day?”

A day earlier I and four other Canadians had been to Gaza. The crowds and traffic, the enormous potholes, the dirt, the stench and a sense of hopelessness in this incarcerated city is overwhelming. It is the most densely populated area in the world. It leads me to affirm that this is a modern day Via Dolorosa, a place of suffering.

Certainly there are many other places of suffering and hopelessness in our world. The Via Dolorosa in the Old City of Jerusalem needs to remind us of places such as Aleppo and Homs in Syria that have become war zones that its residents have sought to flee.

But we don’t have to move beyond our own borders to find our aboriginal people living under desperate conditions. A group of Cree youths arrived only a few days ago after having walked 1600 km from the shores of Hudson Bay. That too must have been a kind of Via Dolorosa. Just inquire about the state of their feet as they arrived on Parliament Hill.

This was an historic trek that must be recorded in the annals of Canadian history.

All along their journey they were welcomed and indeed joined by others. Thousands gathered on Parliament Hill to meet them but not our Prime Minister. He was preoccupied on the tarmac of LesterPearsonMemorialAirport in Toronto welcoming two giant Pandas, a gift from China. Doubtless this was a very important occasion, but could not the Governor General have ventured out of Rideau Hall to be present at this milestone? Members of the opposition parties were certainly there. One can only surmise that the powers that be wanted as much as possible to silence those who are no longer content to be silent.

As I sat in the pews in the gallery of Southminster United Church enthralled by the music of Durufle, the words of the ancient mass played in my ears and mind: “Give them rest,” the Cree youths and all the many other wanderers seeking a safe rest, in refugee camps wherever there is turmoil.

“Let perpetual light shine upon them,” those who dwell in the valley of the shadow in far too many places on our Earth while others bask in shameful opulence.

Good Friday is past and Easter is upon us. I have already shared with you my colourful Easter Eggs. I bought them 45 years ago from a cheerful woman on Prague’s Old Town Square. It was the famous Prague Spring which unfortunately did not last very long. These eggs are a symbol of hope, of new life, so needed in our time.

The beautiful and haunting music of Durufle pursues me. “Requiem aeternam donna eis Domine.” Light and rest hopefully come at the end of the hard and doleful journey. Therefore move on with hope. Do not despair. The Spirit moves with you.

© Hanns F Skoutajan, Easter 2013.

With words like these, Larry Miller, (Con, Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound) criticized a new Aboriginal commercial fishing agreement signed between Ontario and the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) and released March 12^th.

That Agreement is the third since 2000 and it sets the terms by which the two First Nations on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario will practices their aboriginal and treaty rights to fish commercially.

Saugeen Ojibway Nations commercial fishery (Fishing Agreement)

The Agreement has local sportsmen’s clubs steamed because, unlike the two previous Agreements, it provides no guarantees Native fishermen won’t set their nets deep inside Colpoy’s Bay at Wiarton and Owen Sound Bay. That’s where the clubs do most of their stocking of Chinook salmon and trout.

On an Owen Sound phone-in radio show on March 13^th, Mr Miller said, “It’s common knowledge that the Natives don’t want any stocking done. Cuttin’ one finger at a time, except this time they cut off maybe a hand.”

Strong language such as this is bound to stir up hard feelings left over from the horrific events of 1995 (see ‘Some History’ below). The two bays are within the SON fishing territory and their Band members have every right to set nets there, as they did before they were pushed out a couple of generations ago.

Mr Miller: “The announcement they were going to fish in the bays was the insult. Now, to pay taxpayers money on top of it, it’s like puttin’ a man down and puttin’ the boots to him.”

The money he is referring to is $850,000 Ontario will stream to SON over 5 years to pay for monitoring and enforcement. That works out to roughly $85,000 a year for each reserve to pay a biologist, data collection, communications, and equipping boats and trucks.

Mr Miller: “When they get done with this five-year Agreement, you think the fish count is down now, it’ll be a lot worse. … It’s not about fairness. What it is, is reverse racism.”

In fact, this is the third such Agreement. SON has been fishing commercially in Georgian Bay and Lake Huron (see map) for nearly 20 years—ever since 1993, when an Ontario court recognized their Constitutionally protected aboriginal and treaty rights to do so. There is no evidence fish stocks have declined because of the Native fishery. However, there are other, more worrying factors: climate change, degrading habitat, shoreline development, and declining food biomass.

Mr Miller: “This won’t hurt just the city of Owen Sound it affects everybody around, whether your business is in Owen Sound or Meaford or Leith or Lion’s Head. It’s all about tourism.”

Local sportsmen’s clubs hold several fishing derbies over the summer culminating in the Salmon Spectacular at the end of August. Last year, they had one of their best years, with salmon caught bigger and heavier than ever.

Mr Miller: “There’s a double standard out there. Nobody is anti-Native. What they’re anti is double standard. Everybody needs to be equal.”

To treat everyone “the same” would mean denying First Nations the protection section 35 of the Constitution affords their rights to fish, hunt and gather. The 1993 Jones-Nadjiwon decision ruled the Ministry of Natural Resources’ management regime had discriminated against the two First Nations and was therefore of no effect. That meant negotiating another arrangement—hence the first Agreement in 2000.

Mr Miller: “This is a deliberate antagonism from the Natives. They know or should have known what the reaction would be.”

He has no evidence of this. However, to be fair, Mr Miller had tried to get hold of Chief Kahgee and Chief Lee before going on the phone-in show. Neither Chief called him back and no one from Nawash or Saugeen has responded to repeated requests from the media for comment.

Nevertheless, the kind of statements Mr Miller has been making, without first talking to the First Nations (or, it seems, the MNR), only serve to open old wounds, first inflicted in the ‘fishing wars’ in the Bruce in the 1990s.

Words that inflame can lead to actions that injure, as Justice Linden pointed out in his Report of the Ipperwash Inquiry. In that confrontation, similar comments from elected officials served to ramp up tensions until things turned violent.

While one can understand the frustration of not being told of the Agreement beforehand, never mind not being consulted during its negotiation, everyone should take a step back and remember that Native nets have been in the waters of Georgian Bay and Lake Huron for 20 years without damaging either the sports or the commercial fishery.

Those points were made by more responsible observers than Mr Miller—Josh Choronzey in a column in the Sun Times, March 14 and Phil McNichol in his column March 16.

As for Mr Miller, his words are a local reflection of how his party handles things that displease them. First demonize your opponent, as the Harper government did Linda Keen, the former chair of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and Richard Colvin, the diplomat who blew the whistle on the Afghan detainee affair and, most recently, Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer when he dared to ask about the impact of  the government’s budget cuts. Then, scare your constituency, as the government did by saying (over and over again) that environmental groups launder money from the US and are prone to terrorist acts.

It’s bad enough when a government plays bully politics with groups and individuals who have the means to protect themselves, but when an MP does it to his own constituents, and disadvantaged ones at that, it is a parody of leadership.

© David McLaren March 2013

Disclosure Note

I was the staff lead for communications for Nawash in the 1990s. I no longer work for either Nawash or Saugeen. However, I see similarities between the rhetoric of the early 1990s and the unhelpful discourse this time around.

Some History

The Saugeen Ojibway Nation, worried about encroachment on their fishing grounds obtained a Royal proclamation from Queen Victoria 1847 asserting their fishing territory.

Notwithstanding the Royal document, their fishing areas (primarily around the islands) were leased to non-Native fishermen by the government; first with permission, then without either consultation or permission.

The sturgeon was gone by 1900—fished for their eggs. Non-Native fishermen piled their carcasses on the FishingIsland in Lake Huron and burned them.

The lake trout were gone by the 1950s, decimated by aggressive fishing and the lamprey eel (an invasive species).

SON fishermen were squeezed into a postage size area north of Nawash.

Nawash fishermen were charged and convicted repeatedly for fishing over an imposed quota until the Jones-Nadjiwon decision of 1993. That decision:

• Recognized SON’s right to fish commercially.
• Judge      Fairgrieve also found that the Crown had not consulted the First Nations      on its regulatory regime and, in any event, had discriminated against Native fishermen. He ruled MNR’s management regime had no force against the FNs.
• Opened the doors from a return (after some 150 years) to fishing for trade and      commerce anywhere in their traditional fishing waters—including Colpoy’s Bay and Owen Sound Bay.

In spite of the court ruling violence broke out in Owen   Sound and in the Bays in 1995—the same summer that Dudley George was killed by the OPP at Ipperwash. During that summer:

Nawash fishing tug burns in summer of 1995 (screen shot from 5th Estate episode)

• SON tugs were vandalized.
• A Nawash woman selling fish at the Owen Sound farmers’ market was accosted by a group of sportsmen protesting Native fishing
• A Native man was murdered, possibly over a dispute about the Ipperwash stand- off
• Over 20 km of Native nets were stolen or cut adrift
• Four youth were beaten, two stabbed after being attacked by about 20 non-Native youths.
• Francis Nadjiwan’s tug was burned to the hull at the government in Oliphant.

In 1999, MNR enforcement officers were still harassing SON fishermen by taking up their nets and arbitrarily closing sections of their fishery. During one such closure, the husband of the woman who had been harassed at the Farmers’ market in 1995 went out on a choppy Georgian Bay to retrieve his nets before the MNR could lift them. He fell out of his open motor boat and drowned. It was revealed later, during a judicial review, that the closure order was invalid.

Notwithstanding the clear ruling and the violence, it took the Harris government 7 years from the date of the Jones-Nadjiwon decision to come to the table. SON and MNR signed the first Fishing Agreement in 2000 and the second in 2005. Third party interests, such as sportsmen’s clubs, were (and are) supposed to be represented by the Crown during negotiations.

A description of these events is on the Ipperwash Inquiry website, accessible at:
http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/inquiries/ipperwash/policy_part/projects/pdf/under_siege.pdf

Angling at Colpoy`s Bay

And yet … Hugo Chavez gave people free education while others indenture their citizens. He put in place the most robust electoral system in the south while we struggle with voter suppression and robocalls. He narrowed the gap between rich and poor even while the gap grows wider in the north. Poverty, infant mortality, public debt—all cut by half.

His will, shall I read you his will? It is simple. To the people of Venezuela he gives them their own country’s resources, and the money earned from their extraction.

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar had Marc Antony to rehabilitate his reputation. His Richard III had no one. Shakespeare says the King was a murderer, a usurper, and a twisted tyrant. And Shakespeare was honourable man.

And yet … Richard reduced poverty and unemployment in the north of England. He opened the courts for the poor to air their grievances. He instituted bail for those accused of crimes.

Nevertheless, Tudor generals dumped Richard under a Leicester parking lot and Tudor historians heaped upon the King’s corpse the kind of half-truths that pepper Shakespeare’s play.

Beware the Ides of March. Beware the lies of March.

© David McLaren, 15 March 2013

Watch. You Are There during the military coup on Hugo Chavez’s government, 2002:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Id–ZFtjR5c

Nation of Change 13 Marcy 2013

The Lords of the Ring are some 30 exploration companies, such as KWG and Noront, who have staked over 31,000 claims. Cliffs Natural Resources from Ohio is the principle mining company. They’re after chromium, a vital ingredient in stainless steel. But others are coming in, including the Chinese state-owned Sinocan Resources Corp.

The Crown, in this realm, has two heads—Stephen Harper and Kathleen Wynne. Ottawa has responsibility for some environmental oversight through the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and Ontario collects royalties, or will, after the 10-year tax holiday it gives remote mines.

In fact, Ontario’s mining tax regime is so generous, compared to other provinces, it amounts to a subsidy. (Throw in the oil sands and the Crown gives more money to mining companies than it spends on First Nations’ health, education and housing.) The federal government’s recent omnibus bills have so severely crippled the Crown’s environmental regulatory muscle that you might as well hang a sign on the north that says “(Ring of) Fire Sale”.

World Production of Chromium is taking off

For the Crown, the Ring is Ontario’s oil sands. Schedules are set to begin the first open pit mine in 2015. The urge is to do everything yesterday—punch in roads and railways to mine sites, dam the Attiwapiskat and the AlbanyRivers for hydroelectricity, build a smelter that will require over 300 megawatts of power. MountDoom, full steam ahead.

With all the hurry, the risk is not just environmental. It is that we will sell the Ring short—extracting the ore at a high cost, and selling the minerals at a lower price than we could get a decade from now.

The Ring straddles several major rivers in the north, and not one is protected by the new Navigable Waters Act. As the folks at FortChipewyan will tell you, if you’re downstream of a major extraction, you should worry.

The last line of common sense seems to be some 20 First Nations whose territories will be impacted one way or another.

They’re not opposed to the mines. As Chief Wesley of Constance Lake FN says, “We want development, but we also want to make sure that our lands, waters, wildlife, and our way of life are not destroyed in the process.”

The courts say so too, most explicitly in the Supreme Court’s 2004 decision in Haida-Taku. There it laid down the law—the Crown has a legal duty to consult First Nations on any proposal that might impact their rights and claims. And it must do so when it first becomes aware of plans for such projects. A flurry of court decisions after Haida-Taku has made the process pretty clear.

It’s not rocket science. If section 35 of the Constitution (which recognizes aboriginal and treaty rights) is to mean anything, those rights must not be diminished by projects, no matter how vital the Crown thinks they are to the nation.

Most treaties, either in their negotiation or in their wording, recognize the right of First Nations to hunt, fish and gather in their surrendered territories and Treaty 9 in north Ontario is no exception: “And His Majesty the King hereby agrees with the said Indians that they shall have the right to pursue their usual vocations of hunting, trapping and fishing throughout the tract surrendered.”

Of course there is this caveat: “…subject to such regulations as may from time to time be made by the government of the country, acting under the authority of His Majesty, and saving and excepting such tracts as may be required or taken up from time to time for settlement, mining, lumbering, trading or other purposes.”

But that does not negate Treaty 9 First Nations’ aboriginal and treaty rights “to pursue their usual vocations.” And how can those Constitutional rights be protected if the land is so polluted as to render them meaningless?

So, full consultation is required. But according to news reports and my own phone conversations, the Crown is shirking its duty. As Chief Eli Moonias (Marten Falls) puts it, “Visits from junior ministerial representatives telling us what is happening instead of asking us how we want to participate is not consultation or accommodation.”

If you’ve ever watched a wind farm or a gravel pit set up half a kilometre from your backyard, you’ll appreciate his frustration.

If I were a mining company, I wouldn’t wait around for the Crown to figure out what it’s supposed to be doing or where its allegiances lie. In my experience, a wise corporation will sit down early with First Nations, help them retain the independent expertise they need to fully evaluate the impact of the project, and hammer out an environmental agreement in which the Bands have a real say in how the project unfolds.

That’s not the end of it, of course. Some sort of benefits agreement must follow, just as Ottawa must negotiate benefits for Canadians when buying say, a fighter plane (perhaps that’s a bad example), or allowing US and Chinese companies to play in the oil sands (hmm).

In any event, benefits must be more than just the jobs that will disappear when the mine is closes.

There are some success stories. Agreements with First Nations have been negotiated and accommodations made. But these are mostly with exploration companies who come into an area, drill a few holes and then leave. The rubber meets the road when mining corporations come knocking.

So far, it doesn’t look promising. The Matawa First Nations have launched a judicial review of the federal government’s refusal to hold a full panel review of the environmental impacts of so many mining projects in the Ring. And the Neskantaga FN has vowed to thwart any attempt to build a road across the AttawapiskatRiver.

*Chromium, especially in its hexavalent form (also known as chromium VI), is a highly toxic and carcinogenic substance. The US environmental Protection Agency has found that even a small amount in drinking water can cause cancer. There is clear evidence for this assertion in a study by the National Toxicology Program on the effects of chromium VI on mice and rats. It is water-soluble and frequently found as a by-product of mining—in leach-water, mine tailings, slag piles and the dry grinding and smelting of chromite ore.

The Canadian and Ontario limits for chromium in waste leachate is 5000 µg/L—the same as the US, but lower than other jurisdictions. It seems as though the chemical industry has been able to delay new guidelines in the US by somehow getting certain to cast doubt on the research the EPA has. Some of these scientists include those who testified chromium VI is not toxic in the suits against the company PG&E brought to court by Erin Brockovich.

© David McLaren, February 2013

Ring of Fire site (Mining Watch)

Mining Claims in Ring of Fire (Ontario Nature 2012)

In 2007, Mr Harper gave the Kashechewan First Nation a choice. Either stay where they were put in 1957, or move to Timmins—stay in a place where you might get sick again from E-coli or lose your land and move to town. To become what? Beggars? Assimilated? The people suggested a third way and asked Mr Harper to move them upstream, to their original home. He refused.

During the pomp and ceremony of Mr Harper’s apology to Aboriginal Canada for the Indian Residential School System, a Native commentator on the CBC radio said “at least it was well written.” (I think it was Mary Simon, but I can’t find the clip on the CBC website and queries have gone unanswered). It was her way of wondering if the apology was sincere and would ever lead to reconciliation.

Perhaps she had seen this sort of thing before. Such apologies are cheaply made and dearly bought. They give only the appearance of reconciliation, because only equals can be reconciled. An apology is insincere if made to people abused, for they are in no position to refuse it. But refuse it they must lest the apologizer take his apology as licence for some fresh offence.

Indeed, the ink was hardly dry on the apology when the federal government cancelled a scheduled increase in funding aimed at rescuing First Nations’ languages fading from decades in residential schools.

In 2011, Attawapiskat declared a housing emergency. Mr Harper’s first response was to blame the Band. He even appointed a third party manager (at $1300 a day), which the courts determined was neither warranted nor needed. What remains from that crisis (and you can see it in comments posted on stories about Chief Spence’s fast) is the public perception that First Nations’ governments are corrupt.

They are not. Even the recently leaked audit of Attawapiskat’s financial management makes no allegations of fraud or theft. It does however, point out some serious lapses in accounting practices and its recommendations are aimed as much at the government as they are the First Nation.

In 2012, the Harper government passed two omnibus bills which somehow implemented the budget by weakening environmental laws that “corrupt” First Nations leaders use to protect their traditional territories.

As environmental lawyer Dianne Saxe puts it, “The cumulative effect of the government’s changes to the Fisheries Act, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and the Navigable Waters Act is to dramatically reduce the protection to fish and waterways. This must be of concern to First Nations, indeed to all of us.”

Now there is a suite of nine or ten separate legislative initiatives that will directly affect First Nations governance.

There’s Bill C-27, the First Nations Financial Transparency Act. About time you say? Overkill, Sheila Fraser would say. Would that Indian Affairs was held to the same standards, and she said as much in her 2006 and 2011 reports.

Bill S-8, the Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act doesn’t actually provide safe drinking water to reserves. What it does, is dump a bunch more regulations and reporting obligations on First Nations without the funds to actually, you know, deliver safe drinking water.

The First Nations Private Property Ownership Act is still a twinkle in Tom Flanagan’s eye, but when it hits the floor of the House of Commons it will, like the Dawes Act in the US, do the dirty work of separating First Nations’ people from their land.

Consultation (and its obverse, accommodation) is, according to the Supreme Court of Canada, the best path to reconciliation. It is the only way to peacefully resolve the tangle of federal, provincial, First Nation and corporate jurisdictions, rights, claims and obligations. Besides, like it or not, it’s the law.

Apparently the Harper government doesn’t like it. If it consults at all, its consultation has all the substance and nourishment of a Cheeto. There was no consultation on the legislative changes described here and insufficient consultation (let alone accommodation) regarding the impact of the oil sands in Alberta or the large mining projects coming to the Ring of Fire in Ontario.

To make matters worse, the Harper government is slashing the budgets of Treaty Organizations by some by 50-70%. These organizations provide expertise to their member First Nations in a number of areas, including financial reporting and assistance in consultations with government and industry.

Meanwhile, provincial and federal governments are spending more money on tax-breaks and subsidies to oil and gas and mining companies than they spend on First Nations health, education and housing.

And that, in case you’re wondering, is why young First Nations people are idle no more.

© David McLaren January 2012

NOTE:
A version of this article (not the final and badly edited) appeared in the Forum section of Sunmedia papers on January 12, 2013 under the heading (not mine) “Native Rights, Government Wrongs.”

A Bit More …

The Olthuis Kleer Townshend Law Firm website has a 2-page summary of the legislative changes referred to above: http://www.oktlaw.com/blog/a-legislative-road-map-as-idle-no-more-revs-up/

Very briefly, the changes to environmental legislation in omnibus Bills C-38 and C-45 can be summarized as follows (follow the links for more information) …
The revamped Fisheries Act begs the question (which will surely be put to the courts): What, for the purposes of the Act, is an “Aboriginal fishery?” The new Canadian Environmental Assessment Act removed a number of projects from the list of those requiring an Environmental Assessment, including the transportation of nuclear waste and restricts who can participate in EAs. The Navigable Waters Protection Act reduced the number of lakes and rivers that fall under the Act from several millions to 62 rivers and 97 lakes (including twelve in Minister Clement’s riding—call it the Goldie Hawn Vacation Get-away Protection Act). The Kemptville Creek is protected but the mighty AttawapiskatRiver is not on the list.

For comment on blaming Attawapiskat at Slaw, Canada’s online law magazine: http://www.slaw.ca/2011/12/02/dunkin%E2%80%99-the-victim-a-note-on-legal-political-background-of-the-current-attawapiskat-campaign/.

For the law (and the benefit) of consultation and accommodation go to Haida vs BC at:
http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2004/2004scc73/2004scc73.html

For Alanis Obomsawin’s documentary on the housing crisis at Attwapiskat: http://www.nfb.ca/film/people_of_kattawapiskak_river/.

For a good deconstruction of “The Free Housing for Natives Myth” (and other stereotypes): http://apihtawikosisan.com/page/6/.

Wab Kinew deals with stereotypes in under 2 minutes at Strombo’s Soap Box: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlkuRCXdu5A

For a revealing look at Treaty 9 (which covers Attawapiskat and several other FNs and which clearly recognizes their right to harvest in the surrendered territories) see George MacMartin’s Big Canoe Trip, CBC Ideas, January 10/13: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2013/01/10/george-macmartins-big-canoe-trip-2/.
Treaty 9 at the Ontario Arcives: http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/en/explore/online/james_bay_treaty/relationship.aspx.

And even more ...

John Borrows is a Nawash Band member, who, as a law professor and scholor is frequently quoted by the Supreme Court of Canada in its rulings. He is currently the Robina Professor in Law, Public Policy and Society, University of Minnesota Law School.

John sent me his repsonses to some questions the CBC posed to him regarding Idle No More. With his permission, I reprint them here.

1. Mr. Atleo has described the Idle No More protests as a “tipping point” in the relationship between Aboriginal Peoples and the rest of Canada? Do you agree, and if so, how would you characterize the current state of that relationship on the eve of the January 11 summit?

Aboriginal peoples’ lives are drastically shorter than other Canadians and marked by more suffering as measured by considerably higher rates of poverty, injury, and incarceration, and significantly lower levels of education, income and health. This did not occur in an instant; we have long passed the “tipping point” in the relationship between Aboriginal peoples and others. We are in crisis mode, and there is no politically-driven prospect of salvaging the relationship; it is already broken and lies in ruins all around us.

2. There appears to be a radicalization or a movement to action that is reminiscent of the Oka crisis of 1990? Would you agree? If so, what are the factors that have led to this national re awakening of Aboriginal activism?

Aboriginal peoples are living through a period of profound, extended, multi-generational trauma, and this issue only comes to the attention of most Canadians every few years. At the same time, Aboriginal activism is ever-pervasive and is always present within and outside of Aboriginal communities; in this respect ‘Idle No More’ is really nothing new. Though Aboriginal activism does not often rise to the level of national ‘news’, Aboriginal peoples have long taken daily and longer-term steps of resistance to protect their lands, languages and resources, even while others within their midst ‘silently’ succumb to the despair spawned by the overwhelming challenge of finding success in these endeavors.

3. The government‘s omnibus bill was a trigger for the Idle No More protests, and the flashpoint legislation involves management of reserve lands and access to and protection of ancestral lands and resources on it. These are essentially unresolved treaty issues and incredibly complex. Some Canadians feel that aboriginal demands about ancestral lands are completely unrealistic. Others feel differently. How does the Canadian government move forward in future generations in addressing this issue?

Within current structures, the Canadian government cannot and will not be able to effectively address Aboriginal issues, either through legislation, litigation, education or economic development. Throughout history they have tried – and failed – again, again, and again. While there are some small-scale exceptions, experience from Canada and other parts of the world where Aboriginal issues are present demonstrates the same thing. No political party or philosophy will solve these issues. It is a moral, cultural, structural, and spiritual problem of the deepest order – it rests on intangibles which cannot be manufactured through policy or solved with money. Solutions will never arise unless we cultivate practical goodwill in our own and other’s hearts and minds. Governments (Indian Act, federal and provincial) have never been effective moral agents in this field. There is no evident reason to expect anything different from any governmental entity in the coming months.

4. Another big issue is the Indian Act. It is one Canada’s oldest pieces of legislation and out of date. And yet to remove it would produce a legislative vacuum. How do you suggest this problem be tackled in future years?

The philosophy underlying the Indian Act is the policy proposal most frequently vetted in Parliament and in national news editorials, on-line comments and letters to the editor. This approach is characterized by ideas which advocate liquidating reserves, dismantling distinctive Indigenous-run governments, and educating “Indians” to participate in the broader society. This is as true today, as in 1876 when the Indian Act was passed. No government has seriously proposed any other approach to dealing with Aboriginal issues, even in the present-day. This policy has failed miserably but in the coming months it will likely be dressed up in new clothes and once again advanced as the solution to Aboriginal issues.

At the same time it is important to add that the Indian Act’s removal would not create a legislative vacuum. All law does not arise from Parliament or the courts; our constitution and traditions clearly recognize this fact. Thus, if the Indian Act were repudiated without replacement, law – including laws made by Indigenous peoples themselves – would continue to govern this situation. Yet, while law would still be with us, I wonder whether love, humility, honesty, kindness, bravery, respect and truth would continue to be absent from its application, even within an Aboriginal context. While these values are definitely practiced within and across Aboriginal and Canadian societies more generally, we have yet not found an effective way to have them animate our broader political and legal relationships.

5. As we look forward to the Jan 11 meeting, what‘s the single most important action the government can take to improve the relationship with Aboriginal peoples in Canada? 

The Canadian government can do very little, at present, to improve relationships with Aboriginal peoples. It could admit this fact, and hold a mirror up to our collective psyche, thus demonstrating the profoundly deep divisions lying at the heart of our divergent aspirations. However, since no government will likely undertake an ambitious exercise of this nature – thus gazing into the ailing heart of our failing constitutional relations – governments will not take the single most important step to address these issues.

6. What is the moral reason to fix the relationship? What is the economic one? 

Treaties between the Crown and First Nations often saw the parties pledge to live together in peace, friendship and respect. While we have not often lived in accordance with treaty promises, such values and principles could form the moral and economic foundation of parties’ relationships. Building lives together in this spirit could create the basis for a strong economic relationship which included each other’s ideas and aspirations. However, most current commentators are too ‘cynical, pragmatic or realistic’ to think genuine peace, mutual friendship and deep respect could be achieved, or form the basis of our real relationships today. Treaties are often called old-fashioned, anachronistic, or out-of-date, thus dismissing deeper values of consultation, consent and mutuality which could lie at the heart of Canada’s moral and economic relationships.

7. Some have argued that Prime Minister Stephen Harper‘s government has made efforts to improve the relationship, with the Apology, and the Crown-First Nations meetings, others feel that the efforts do not adequately deal with the depth of the problems. Under Paul Martin’s government, there was the Kelowna Accord, which envisioned broad funding for education and social welfare policies. What is your assessment of the current government’s efforts to improve the “relationship”?

There has been very little to praise or celebrate under any political party’s approach to Aboriginal issues. While less culpable, the same can be said for how most Indian Act bands and organizations have also approached the relationship. This is why people are marching in the streets. We are in deep trouble as a nation because of our collective failure through many generations.

8. How do the Aboriginal communities in Canada begin to strategize about the future when the goals and perspectives are so diverse and varying?

Every society’s goals and perspectives are diverse and varied; Aboriginal peoples are no different. Canada has majority and minority parties in Parliament and within each legislature. Judicial opinions contain majority and dissenting opinions. Media outlets and networks cater to conservative, liberal, social democratic and independent voter opinions of different stripes. Churches, unions, businesses and other social organizations also include people of oft-divergent views.

Aboriginal peoples should be recognized as holding the same degree of human diversity as is present within Canada more generally. 

Thus, Aboriginal peoples’ best strategy in developing towards future goals is to build an acceptance and recognition of Aboriginal dissent and difference within, across and beyond their societies. Aboriginal peoples should not be constrained by conceptions which falsify or misrepresent the level of consensus needed within Aboriginal society to move forward, especially when this is not expected of other political communities within Canada. In fact, we might even say that Canada’s ability to incorporate disagreement through democratic means is one of its pillars of strength. Recognition of this fact could extend to Aboriginal peoples these same privileges.

9. The Aboriginal young population which is growing looks set to change the conversation with the rest of Canada, using social media and other forms of protest. What can we expect from this generation in the years ahead?

The messages spread through social media and other forms of protest are very similar to the messages circulated through older forms of communication. Aboriginal messages were rejected when they took older forms; I cannot see any reasons they are more likely to be accepted in their ‘newer’ forms, at least under current circumstances. The divide is deep and the relationships are too frayed to expect much change, without the kind of moral and constitutional recalibration suggested earlier in these comments.

We need an infusion of some very non-political values to guide our future paths – love, humility, honesty, kindness, bravery, respect and truth. These are the seven grandfather teachings of the Chippewa/Ojibwe people, and they have resonance in many other traditions, yet they are not broadly practiced by any party in our dominant political forums. Practical political progress will elude us until we begin relating to one another in a different way.

 Click here for the CBC article, with others’ comments too.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,
For auld lang syne.

And we’ll take a right good-will drink for the sake of old times, my friend.

Robby Burns knew a thing or two about New Years. More than the fact his song became a favourite of Hogmanay—the Scots word for the last day of the year, the one that starts tonight and runs right through to tomorrow morning.

But it’s getting harder and harder to find good-will in the world these days. Nevertheless, hope sneaks in at the New Year.

For Jews, the New Year, after 7 cycles of 7 years each, is the Jubilee—a time when all debts are forgiven. It’s a kind of societal re-boot. The Occupy movement has started something called the Rolling Jubilee. They raise funds to buy people’s debt. But instead of collecting it, they forgive it.

For Muslims, the first day of the month of Muharram is the New Year. To fight in that month is a great sin. Palestinians and Israelis have joined hands in The Parents Circle — a grassroots organization of people from both sides who have lost family to the hostilities. Together, they promote peace and reconciliation in the Holy Land.

Let us dare to hope tonight. And may the cup of kindness you share with friends be a ‘right gude-willy waught’ for peace and equality, for all time’s sake.

© David McLaren December  2012

This was originally written for broadcast on the Bayshore group of stations (including CFOS in Owen Sound). I did not sing.

We were one of 9 nations who voted against the UN motion; 138 voted for it. Mr Baird denounced the vote as unilateral and an impediment to peace. Sorry, I’m not sure how a 138-to-9 vote is unilateral, and I always thought the more people talking around the same table was an encouragement to peace. The Palestinian Authority is not Hamas.

I know that the Harper Government likes to to refer to its “principled” policy in the Middle East but just how principled is it to favour one combatant over another in an area that’s like a telephone booth packed with dynamite.

As for scolding the European Union, well, one of their members just poached our chief banker. Now what, Mr Flaherty?

The rest of this post deals with the Harper Government’s ‘leaked’ policy to pursue economic ties with other nations, particularly the third world and China at any cost. And the cost, to Canadians and our thrid world partners will be high. Here are three mini-essays to explain why …

A Flip of the Finger for this FIPA

Of the 16 trade disputes we launched under NAFTA, we’ve lost every one. US companies, on the other hand, have won most of theirs and they’ve taken home $170 million of our money in compensation.

So when I look at the deal our PM signed with China in September, I worry. And you should too.

If China doesn’t like something we do to protect our environment or our health, it will sue us … not in open court, but in secret arbitration.

An example is needed.

Let’s say a Chinese company wants to set up a huge wind farm in Grey and BruceCounties and they meet all our governments’ existing criteria.

Let’s say you and your municipality don’t like where the windmills are going, or their numbers, or how the company does business. (China, by the way, is a major manufacturer of wind turbines now, and under this agreement, it has no obligation to use turbines we build, or to hire locally.)

So your municipality passes a bylaw that blocks construction. The Chinese consider that to be an action disallowed by the Agreement. The company sues Canada under the Agreement’s dispute arbitration provisions.

You lose. Canada and maybe even your municipality are on the hook for millions of dollars in compensation and the company gets to go ahead and put up its turbines anyway.

The Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA for short) will be in effect before Christmas. Ask your MP about it. But don’t be conned; it’s a bad deal.

© David McLaren, Nov 2012

For more on the Canada-China FIPA go to:

http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/agr-acc/fipa-apie/china-text-chine.aspx?lang=en&view=d for the text of the Agreement.

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2012/10/29/canada-china-agreement-fipa/ for a balanced debate of what the Agreement means.

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/10/16/China-Investment-Treaty/ for crtique by Osgoode Law School prof Gus Van Harten.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2012/11/27/China-Green-Tech/ for a series of articles on the green industry in China (hint: the Chinese are far more committed to renewable industry than we are) and what it’s like doing green business in China.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11205-011-9896-4#page-1 for a Chinese study on how to do business in China (hint: you need to grease the wheels of local corruption–if that’s not an impediment to foreign investment, I don’t know what is).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LTIOMJT5ubg for Rick Mercer’s take on the China FIPA.

Selling Canada Short

CBC news has revealed the Harper government’s draft foreign policy. It sets out an aggressive agenda for hanging our foreign policy hat on one hook—economic opportunity.

But the outrage from the government about the leak is so muted, you have to wonder if it was less a leak than a plant … a chance for the government to gauge public reaction before formally adopting a course it’s already on.

We already know that our PM has been flying around the world signing economic agreements with anyone with a pulse. Nine so far, with countries like Columbia, Panama, Peru and Chile—to make it easier for our mining companies to operate, presumably. Neither those countries nor our mining companies have a sterling record on human rights and environmental protection.

And now China. Well, as the draft policy says, we must seek economic interests, “even where political interests or values may not align.”

Even so, John Baird’s office insists the government is pursuing “a principled foreign policy that is advancing Canadian interests and Canadian values.”

Eh?

Just how principled is it to sign a Foreign Investment Protection Agreement that gives tacit permission for Canadian companies to run roughshod over other people’s rights and environment?

Just how principled is it to sign a Foreign Investment Protection Agreement that gives a clear economic advantage to China and disadvantages our ability to protect our environment and our own energy sovereignty. What nation worthy of the name would do that for the sake of a fistful of dollars?

Beware the government whose only bottom line is the bottom line. And don’t be conned. This foreign policy is bad for Canada and bad for the world.

© David McLaren, November 2012

CIDA is short for Corporate Investment Development Agency

About a month ago, the Harper government dropped the first shoe of its new foreign policy—economic agreements with the 3^rd world and China. The latter will be at our expense but it looks as though our agreements with developing countries will be at theirs.

Canadian mining companies are implicated in dozens of cases of human rights and environmental abuses: Dorato Resources in Peru, Barrick Gold in Tanzania and New Guinea; Centerra in Kyrgyzstan; Excellon in Mexico; Hudbay Minerals in Guatemala. There are others.

If the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement we signed with China is any measure, the agreements we are signing in Africa and South America will allow Canadian mining companies to run roughshod over other peoples’ rights and their environment.

Now the other shoe has dropped. CIDA (the Canadian International Development Agency) will be funding non-government organizations like World Vision to work with Canadian businesses who want to set up shop in other countries.

The idea is to use the connections that NGOs have in those countries to help Canadian corporations hit the ground running. The theory is that NGOs will also teach them to behave.

If that’s the theory, it’s not working. Some $50 million has gone into this effort since the Conservatives came to power. And now citizens of the nations in which our mining companies operate are looking to the courts for help. The Q’eqchi’, a Mayan people from Guatemala, have even filed suits in Ontario courts for shootings and rapes at HudBay’s former mining project in El Estor.

Forced displacement, rape, murder, environmental degradation trail the industry like the chains on Marley’s ghost in A Christmas Carol. NGOs might have the knowledge to make Canadian companies better corporate citizens, but not the clout. Instead, they are being used to polish the tarnish growing on our international reputation.

© David McLaren, December 2012

If you look at the exit polls, the vote split along America’s fault lines: income gap, religion, and race. Mitt Romney won amongst white males (especially Protestants), but Obama won women voters, blacks and Hispanics. Race still matters in America.

It matters so much that Republican governments in several states tried to suppress the black and Hispanic vote by purging voter lists and by passing laws reducing early voting hours or requiring voter ID. And now, to their credit, some Republicans are admitting the intention of those laws was not to reduce voter fraud but to reduce votes for Democrats.

No matter how you look at it, Americans rebuked the GOP for its money politics, its race-based electoral tricks and its policies that favour the 1%. To their credit some Republicans have heard the messenger.

No so America’s 1%. About 80 corporate CEOs have formed a CEO Fiscal Leadership Council to advise the conservative “Campaign to Fix the Debt.”

Their advice? Cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, reduce corporate taxes (to zero preferably), and don’t touch George Bush’s tax cuts to the wealthy.

On the CEO Council are some of the guys who threw the world into financial chaos just a few years ago: Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Bruce Heyman from Goldman Sachs, and Bryan Moynihan from Bank of America—all of whom received billions of dollars of bailout money from the federal government.

Other companies rely on government contracts. Three—GE, Boeing and Honeywell—received $28 billion last year, mostly from the military. This year they are actively lobbying Congress to forestall cuts to military spending.

Incredibly, one of the CEOs’ arguments for cutting social services is to get people off their sense of entitlement. As Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein put it, it’s a matter of teaching people to expect less.

This coming from a guy who pulled in $16 million last year. To put that in some perspective, Mark Carney, Canada’s respected Governor of the Bank of Canada will get less than a million dollars to quarterback the British economy when he takes over the Bank of England next year.

Clearly the old paradigm is broken. A cavernous fiscal gap divides America, but its corporate leaders are stuck in their old ways. Their solutions will not address the kinds of deficits that lead to debt—deficits in health, education and income. They all erode equal opportunity—the bed-rock of the American Dream itself.

And in case you doubt that, check out the current series in the New York Times on the $80.4 billion corporations extract from states and municipalities every year. That’s $80.4 billion that could go to infrastructure, public health and (for goodness sake) teachers. It’s a shakedown and it being done by the same guys who want to Fix the Debt.

Some Americans are not waiting for capital to do the right thing. But you have to dig deep to find their experiments with another way of doing business. The Occupy movement was the fist to mobilize help for those stranded by Hurricane Sandy, simply by showing up with food and supplies. Wall Street Occupiers are now occupying homes and stopping sheriffs from evicting people whose homes are under foreclosure notice.

It’s grass-roots, church basement, hands-on people work. It’s hard work. It’s the kind of bottom-up work that the media ignores. It’s work that doesn’t wait for government handouts or corporate blessings. And it’s catching on.

© David McLaren 2012

Exit Polls Results (CNN & BBC)

My Dear Lord Raglan,

I am but a few leagues from you and your great house at Usk and travelling westward. However, I regret to say that I am storm-stayed in a small village on the border of Gloucestershire and here I must rest, for the coachman refuses to challenge the hurricane that howls about the public house in which we sought refuge late last night. I am entrusting this letter to one who must ride to Usk today in order that you might be apprised of my delay and to tell you of a most extraordinary encounter.

As I wrote to you last month from my office at the Times of London, I have with me a phonograph cylinder of Lord Tennyson reading his famous Charge of the Light Brigade, made just this year, and another, blank cylinder, on which I propose to record your thoughts concerning that engagement and indeed, the whole of the Battle of Balaclava—that most dreadful encounter with the army of Tsar Nicholas. My editors could not think of a more appropriate way to mark the 40^th anniversary of that fight than to interview the grandson of the commander of the British forces in the Crimea.

But to my extraordinary encounter. Last evening, by the glow of the publican’s fire, I was browsing through a yellowing copy of the Illustrated London News from 1855. It was a fortuitous discovery because the issue contained Roger Fenton’s famous photographs of the Crimean War. Although not of the editorial quality of The Times, I spent a most pleasant hour browsing through the pictures in that publication. Embraced by the warmth of the hearth and the whisky I had been served, my chin fell upon my chest and the paper slipped from my hands.

“Do thee want truth of that photograph there, guv’nor?”

Roger Fenton’s photos of the ‘Shadow of the Valley of Death’. His photographs of the Crimean War were the first of any war.

The man’s impertinence startled me awake. The Illustrated News slid to the stone hearth.

My interlocutor picked up the paper and handed it to me. He was ancient, I would hazard seventy, but a life lived out of doors—he could have been younger.

“I be the servant of one what took that picture and all others beside.”

He jabbed a bony finger at the now famous print entitled the Valley of the Shadow of Death. I am certain you know it—a desolate, treeless, God-forsaken place, the road strewn with cannonballs. It was among the first photographs taken of the Crimean War (or of any war for that matter), but it was the only one not of officers at their leisure or of landscapes as foreign to English eyes as the moon is to the earth.

“That bain’t how road was when we did come up on it. Them balls was all off to sides.”

The story rushed back at me. After the photo ran in the Illustrated London News, another emerged of the same barren stretch of road, empty of cannonballs. Roger Fenton had never spoken of the other photograph and wasn’t likely to, being long dead, nor did his assistant, Marcus Sparling who is likewise deceased.

The man touched his forehead. “Me name be William, sir,” he said.

I asked him if he had been Balaclava with Fenton and Sparling.

“I be there, but ‘twas many months beyond the Light Brigade and the thin red line. There was fighting still, mind, but we saw nor heroics like them that Lord Raglan ordered up that day 40 year ago. We did take a wagon-full of pictures of officers but naught of fighting nor dying. Mr Fenton said Prince Albert did not want nor of that business. But that be the business of war, bain’t it? And trade with the Russes was brisk when we did get there the winter after.

“By Christ ‘twas cold as hell be hot. The men was in a bad way. There be one with naught but stumps. He did lose two to the Russes’ canons and two to the winter’s blow. Thee could tell he wished for death but could do naught to attain it. But by time we left looking for the valley of the shadow of death there,” (he speared again the photograph of the road) “one of his mates did help him find it.”

William went quiet and nodded at a raggedy clutch of similarly ancient men at a table in the shadows. I could see the gleam of the fire on their faces, but they sat silent over their cups, watching us with empty eyes.

To break the woeful mood that had settled, I asked William, how it happened there were two photographs of the same stretch of road.

“When we came up on that place, we could move no further so strewn with rounds ’twas. Twenty-four pounders did litter the road from one side t’other and as far up it as we could see and more falling the while, bouncing off the hill  there,” again he attacked my newspaper, “and rolling down to road.

“By and by, cart emerged from round the turn ahead, pulled by ragged soldier and another behind who did tumble shot into the cart. Mr Sparling did say they was collecting balls round enough to send back to the Russes. T’other was so weak with the war and the wages of hunger that we could tell the task was getting the best of him. A bedraggled Sisyphus he were, lifting high them rounds to the lip of that cart only to see ‘em roll back onto the road.

“Mr Fenton and Mr Sparling did talk about taking a photograph of the cannonballs but they could not with the soldiers there. See you, the picture taking could brook no movement, no not a twitch.

“So, Mr Fenton did yell, ‘Hey you there! Tommy! Leave those cannonballs where they lie.’” William said this in such a gentlemanly accent that I had to look hard at him to make certain I wasn’t talking to an Oxford man. But he fell back into his natural speech.

“They gen ‘im a blanky look and did continue on with their work. I did go help Tommy lift them dead weights onto their cart and Mr Fenton did yell at me as well. But I did tell him, ‘There be plenty more to side of road’.

“The soldiers did pass us finally and Mr Fenton did photograph the empty road. Then he did order me to haul them balls that was in the ditch on to the road. And he did take that photograph.” William took another jab at the newspaper, and it nearly came out of my hands.

“When we was done and all packed up, Mr Fenton did scold, quiet like. ‘We are here to record, William, not to help. For if we become involved, we change the story.’” Again I was taken aback by William’s perfect speech. And again he returned immediately to his own dialect.

“I did say to Mr Fenton, ‘Begging your pardon guv’nor, but we do change the story just being here.’ Mr Fenton made a frown and nudged Mr Sparling to hi the horse. But Mr Sparling did turn and wink, because he had been to war before and it be his regiment that was in the Light Brigade what fought them Russes cannons as Mr Tennyson did write in his great poem that thee carry about.”

My hand went instinctively to my travel bag to feel for the reassuring lump of the wax cylinder that held Lord Tennyson’s voice. William spat into the fire and it sizzled. He again pointed at the photograph of the road.

“Yes, I tell thee, whatever truth there be in that picture, it bain’t the whole truth without them poor soldiers as was ordered to harvest food for hungry cannons. Thee see them men?” His bony finger lifted from my Mr Fenton’s photograph to the forlorn clump of men I had noticed earlier.

“There be Tommy Atkins, guv’nor. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” he said in perfect middle school Latin. He spat into the fire again, rose and said, “Say g’day to Lord Raglan from the last of the Light Brigade.”

I do not know how he discovered the purpose of my visit, or what I carried for, I assure you, I have been most discreet. In any event, William and his crew left the inn shortly after our conversation and I have not seen them since.

I can hear the wind dying now, my Lord. I hope to be with you on the morrow.

Your Servant,

John MacKay,
The Times

Some notes:

Both Errol Morris (in Believing is Seeing) and Susan Sontag (in On Photography)  muse on which of Fenton’s famous photographs, above, came first: the empty road or the road full of canonballs. Morris muses to the point of obsession but manages to demonstrate the empty road came first.

William’s accent is turn of the Century West Country English, as recorded by the Powys brothers’ novels (TF’s Mr Weston’s Good Wine and John C’s Wolf Solent).

Lord Raglan (Lord FitzRoy Somerset) was the commander of the English forces during the Crimean War. British troops suffered greatly in the winter of 1854 (the winter before Fenton arrived) from the cold and hunger. Raglan’s orders led the Light Brigade to their disastrous charge into the teeth of Russian canons at the Battle of Balaclava, waged during the Siege of Sevastopol.

Because the War was going badly, Prince Albert told Fenton, before he left for the Crimea, not to take photographs of soldiers’ suffering. As a result practically all his photos are of officers and landscapes.

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” helped rally the English public back to support for the War. For years it stood for the glory of war and manhood in the service of country … the proof of, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori—”It is sweet and proper to die for your country.” In 1890, Tennyson recorded his famous poem on a wax cylinder.

In 1890 Rudyard Kipling wrote a bitterly ironic riposte to Tennyson’s poem called “The Last of the Light Brigade.” That same year he also wrote a bitter anti-war poem called “Tommy,” a soldier’s lament that puts the lie to dulce et decorum. In the poem, Kipling coined the name “Tommy” which stands for all British soldiers. Tommy’s full name is Tommy Atkins which means “Little son of red earth”.

A 2009 reading of the poem, in remembrance of wounded Afghan vets is on You Tube.
You Tube also has a reading of “The Last of the Light Brigade” with slides of some of Fenton’s photographs of the Crimean War.

The Last of the Light Brigade

By Rudyard Kipling, 1890 

There were thirty million English who talked of England’s might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, “Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites.”

They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant’s order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.

They strove to stand to attention, to straighten the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.

The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and “Beggin’ your pardon,” he said,
“You wrote o’ the Light Brigade, sir. Here’s all that isn’t dead.
An’ it’s all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin’ the mouth of hell;
For we’re all of us nigh to the workhouse, an’ we thought we’d call an’ tell.

“No, thank you, we don’t want food, sir; but couldn’t you take an’ write
A sort of ‘to be continued’ and ‘see next page’ o’ the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an’ couldn’t you tell ‘em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now.”

The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with “the scorn of scorn.”
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.

They sent a cheque to the felon that sprang from an Irish bog;
They healed the spavined cab-horse; they housed the homeless dog;
And they sent (you may call me a liar), when felon and beast were paid,
A cheque, for enough to live on, to the last of the Light Brigade.*

O thirty million English that babble of England’s might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children’s children are lisping to “honour the charge they made – “
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!

*this verse was present in the first collection but was removed from the later editions.

Tommy

By Rudyard Kipling, 1890

I went into a public-’ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but ‘adn’t none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-’alls,
But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.

Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll.

We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind.

You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!

My wife and I have been wandering around the Highlands of Scotland. Yes, I went looking for ancestors—it seems the clan McLaren is one of the oldest in Scotland and not a few of us ended up here, in the Bruce. But we found a lot more.

St Angus’ ‘thin place’ at Balquidder.

We found the thin places. It’s a phrase that St Angus used to describe Balquidder, which happens to be the seat of the McLarens in Perthshire. By it he meant a place where the usually opaque barrier between this time and that, between the realm of the spirits and our own becomes translucent.

And when you walk among the grave stones and beside the waterfall, you get the feeling that if you turn around quickly enough you might catch out a Little Person following you. The Scots sometimes called them the People of Peace, but don’t be fooled by that. Best to leave behind an oat cake or two if you value your life in this world.

We attended other thin places (I think “attend” is the proper word, for you must sit and be present in them). The old kirk at Nigg with its moss-covered markers and its Pictish cross stone. The ancient standing stones at Callanish on Lewis … Alban giants turned to stone by St Kieran because they refused to become Christians goes the legend. But they are much older than that. We stood them up beside the sea so we could track the moon and the sun and re-orient ourselves (as all churches do) to our proper place in Creation.

There are thin places all over the world of course. Cape Croker is one. But for some reason, I can see the Scottish ones a lot more clearly.

View from Creag an Tuirc, the ‘Boar’s Rock’ at Balquidder.

In Scotland the past is not yet history

The thing about Scotland is (to quote William Faulkner) the past is not history—it’s not even past. Of course we were there as tourists and we went looking for history. What we found was the present.

Culloden, just southeast of Inverness, is the site of the last battle fought on British soil, and the death of an independent Scotland. The cold, driving rain that swept the battlefield gave us some inkling of what it meant to charge across that soggy moor into the withering fire of English troops.

The Scots who fought for independence under the Jacobite flag were disarmed and those who escaped Culloden alive were hunted down as rebels and traitors. The McLarens (I’m proud to say) were deemed to be the most irredeemable of the Highland clans, thanks to a long history of opposing foreign rule that reached back, beyond Edward the 1^st.

The new rulers began clearing the land of people and replacing them with sheep. The tartan was outlawed, the Gaelic suppressed and the clans dispersed. That history has yet to pass.

For today, there are 8 million sheep in Scotland and 5 million people. Of those, only 750,000 are Highlanders. … On the Isle of Lewis we stayed with a lovely lady who still had her Gaelic and who told us stories of how she was beaten by her teachers for speaking it at school.

But in the 17- and 1800s, it was either starve or leave. Thousands set sail for the colonies, primarily Canada and Australia, where they were promised cheap land of their own—manna for a people whose generations were crofters. Trouble was, the land was someone else’s and our ancestors, dispossessed of land and culture, became complicit in doing to others what had been done to them. That history has not passed either.

The English line at Culloden on April 16, 1746. The battle was over in an hour. Bonnie Prince Charlie fled to France dressed as Flora MacDonald’s maid, his supporters were hunted down and the English began to dismantle Highland clan society.

There’s a decent 6-part video (9 minutes per part) from the BBC on You Tube on the role of Scots in battles from Culloden to Afghanistan.  ”Rory Bremner and the Fighting Scots” is a bit jingoistic but gives Scotland’s close history an interesting perspective. 
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktrCbEyM8DM&feature=related)

Re-Considering Wordsworth

I don’t much care for William Wordsworth’s romantic brand of poetry—all those babbling brooks and echoing rocks and gentle fields. This hills are alive with the sound of his muse.

Still, after visiting Scotland and re-visiting some of Wordsworth’s words, it sounds as though he is, in his own way, trying to push through the barriers of thin places or, by the force of his own vision and poetry, thin them enough to make them translucent.

He certainly recognizes the proximity of history, as he proves in his “Address to Kilchurn Castle, Upon Loch Awe,” although the conceit of addressing a pile of rocks, no matter how artfully put together, furrows the brow and makes me yearn for Robbie Burns’ ironic “Address to a Haggis.” In “Bothwell Castle,” Wordsworth invokes Bannockburn, the singular victory for the Scots over the English, and collapses seven Centuries into a day of roaming the ben and the glen around the ruins.

In any number of poems he “attends” to the places he writes about in a way that suggests he was fully present in them and looking for something just beyond his capacity to see it. But it is in his poems about decrepit men and marginalized women that he pushes hardest at the boundary between worlds. In “The Leech Gatherer” and in “The Cumberland Beggar” (for example) the poet sees these marginal men with one foot in this world and the other in the next.

In his sonnet to the Lucy of “She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways” Wordsworth laments the passing of one who lived apart from society and yet was a “light” (as Lucy’s name suggests) to the poet on another world. In “Gipsies” and in “To a Highland Girl” and “Beggars” and “She Was a Phantom of Delight” are more women on the edge of things.  For the poet, they point to things beyond his ken.

To say Wordsworth’s view of women and poverty (and women in poverty) is problematic is an understatement—but still. They and the old men, being barely on this side of society and life, draw Wordsworth and his readers into contemplation of the barrier between this world and that of the spirits. They are walking thin places, as it were

Intriguingly, they do the same for others—for society. The Cumberland beggar slows “the sauntering Horseman” in deference to the old man’s plodding progress along the road; and the woman minding the toll-gate “lifts the latch for him that he may pass.” True, the things the beggar elicits from people are small charities; but in the moment of giving, the barrier between us and the spirit thins a tiny bit.

© David McLaren, October 2012.

Pictish Standing Stone at Hilton. pagan symbols and bas relief on one side, Christian cross on the side facing east.

Along the Pictish Trail, north of Inverness.

Harbour at Stornoway, Isle of Lewis

Seals, whales, dolphins and mink transplanted from the New World.

The Callanish Stones on Lewis were erected 5,000 years ago.

Clach an Trushal ‘Stone of Compassion’ on Lewis.

A Black House (Taigh Dubh) on Lewis. Fueled by peat, the construction echoes 2000 year old Highland ‘brochs’. This one was occupied into the 1960s.