Infancy of Relations in the New World - Peace & Friendship, Alliance & Trade - Chapter 5

The transcending motives for voyages to the New World during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not much different for the respective Crowns of Europe. Although the pretense of their missions was to take Christian teachings to the heathen, there remains little question that their piousness was a sham. It was not the Holy Spirit that filled the hearts and minds of monarchs and explorers in the sixteenth century but, rather, a cancerous lust for gold and other valuable resources that could be easily extracted from the land and ferried across the ocean to make monarchs and investors rich. For the Spanish, in particular, the driving ambition was not to conquer and possess new lands but, rather, to find and extract gold. Jack Weatherford has estimated that between 180 to 200 tons, with a contemporary value of $2.8 billion, was ferried from the New World to Europe from the beginning of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth centuries. The treasures of precious metals the likes of gold and silver increased ten-fold in Europe by the beginning of the seventeenth century, expanded Europe into an international market system, and provided the catalyst for the birth of a capitalist world economy.

Following Columbus's 'Arrival' in the New World the Spanish Crown sought to legitimize their claims to territories in the Americas vis-a-vis the other Crowns in Europe (ie: French, English, Dutch and Portuguese) through the support of the Papacy in Rome. Premising their actions with an intention to spread Christian teachings to the Aboriginal inhabitants, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella convinced the Pope to validate their territorial discoveries through a Papal Bull, the Inter Catera of 1493. This Bull was law within Christendom and was ratified by Spain and Portugal through the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. But Bulls and Treaties were not considered as being legally binding on third parties, and "...each nation had to make good its own claim." One such method for doing so under the Law of Nations was the doctrine of Discovery. Since this doctrine proved to be suspect even in its own day, monarchs had to conceive of additional rationalizations to defend the usurpation of territories in the New World. To do so they employed the doctrine of Conquest. The validation of a claim based on Conquest would require the defeat or surrender of a given peoples to the Crown in question as a consequence of warfare or the threat of warfare. Under the Law of Nations a formal declaration of surrender and evidence of occupation would transfer sovereignty from the vanquished to the victors and the acquisition of territories would be legitimized, at least until the next invading army happened along.

Synonymous with the maxim, 'might is right', this doctrine could, in theory, provide validation for the extinguishment of Aboriginal title, if, and only if, it could be established that the Aboriginal peoples in the Americas were 'conquered.' From the research collected for this work it would seem clear that Spanish title to lands in Central and South America could be defended within the Law of Nations during the sixteenth century if the other states of Europe had been willing to acknowledge and accept as a customary rule Spanish territorial acquisitions in New Florida and Peru by the swords and muskets of the Conquistadors. But, while the historical evidence supports the premise of conquest in relationship to battles with the peoples of the Aztec Empire and within the Mississippian cultures routed by Hernando de Soto in the Eastern Woodlands, it is also clear that the other monarchs within Christendom poured scorn on these claims. Even the Papacy discredited the Spanish claims and tried to defend the rights of Aboriginal peoples.

In A.D. 1537 Pope Paul III produced the Bull, Sublimis deus sic dilexit, in which he declared that the Aboriginal peoples of the Americas were not to be treated like "...dumb brutes created for our service...[but] as true men..." and tried to dictate that they not be deprived of their liberty or lawful possession of their property. Pope Urban VIII would try a century later to threaten excommunication for those who deprived Aboriginal peoples of their liberty or property, but the Spanish Crown exerted its influence on the Papacy to ensure that the Bulls did not take affect within the territories they had claimed. The legality and morality of their actions had already been refuted within Christendom and, consequently, within the Law of Nations of their age. When the Reformation witnessed the division of Christendom into Catholic and Protestant denominations by the middle of the century any measure of acceptance for these territorial titles vanished. Following the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 it became more difficult for Spain to make good its claims and parted the waves for England and France to journey the high seas on their own mercantile adventures. The fact that Protestant monarchs, "...could not be expected to acquiesce.." to the claims of Catholic monarchs essentially invalidates the premise of a 'customary rule' accepted by all states in Europe under the Law of Nations. This, in turn, invalidates the doctrine of Conquest as a legitimization for the acquisition of territorial title in the Americas, at least as far as the Spanish Crown is concerned.

As noted previously, the New World comprised a massive region of the globes inhabitable land mass and a multiplicity of societies and cultures across its length and breadth. When European explorers reached its coast-lines at different points during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries their arrival, and their sphere of initial influence, was somewhat analogous to a mosquito landing on the back of an elephant. Undoubtedly their coming was noticed by the Aboriginal peoples of the age and many stories within the mythology of Aboriginal societies across North America make reference to the strange white beings with hairy faces that had come upon the land. It is pure conjecture on my part, but I suspect that the "moccasin telegraph" spread word-of-mouth accounts about these peoples almost as quickly in the sixteenth century as news about the score of a given hockey or football game can travel across the continent from one coffee house to the next in the twenty-first century. As an example of this communications network, Alan McMillan has noted that when the French explorer, Jacques Cartier sailed into Chaleur Bay on his first voyage to the northern regions of the continent in 1534 his ship was met by the Mi'kmaq peoples who, "...loudly hailed the ship and waved furs on sticks to signal their eagerness to trade - suggesting such relationships had been established for some time."  Clearly, claiming sovereignty over such vast territories and diversity of peoples was grandiose rhetoric intended for strategic posturing in the Old World against competing commercial enterprises and had absolutely no correlation to the reality of power in the New World. In fact, it has been noted that, although Jean-Fracois de La Roque (Roberval) was originally commissioned by Francois I, "...to find and subdue the immensely rich Kingdom of Saguenay...", it has also been acknowledged that the French learned very early in their experiences with Aboriginal peoples in the seventeenth century that they, "...would accept neither European claims to land ownership and sovereignty nor French laws and taxes."

Following the hiatus of exploration between La Roque's unsuccessful mission in 1542 and Samuel de Champlain's ventures into the New World in 1603 the engine for French mercantile initiatives was clearly driven by economic considerations relative to the trade in beaver pelts and other furs and had little to do with claims of territorial title. As Margaret Conrad has noted, the French recognized that for the fur trade to be successful they would require the alliance and assistance of the Aboriginal peoples and that they would be forced by diplomatic considerations to abandon any goals of exercising direct sovereignty over the indigenous population. According to Historian, Thomas B. Costain, "...it was clear from the start that the experiment in colonization would be carried out in the face of bitter opposition from the natives." Consequently, the French were, "...obliged to recognize the original inhabitants as "free and independent people" with title to their ancestral lands", and did so through such instruments as the Treaty of Montreal in A.D. 1700, when they, "...recognized the Iroquois as an independent nation." Indeed, both the French and the British would rely upon alliances with the Aboriginal peoples of the New World in order to repudiate and challenge the claims of territorial title made by the representatives of other Christian Princes. In doing so they not only disavowed the claims of their European contemporaries, but they also were compelled by the realities of power in the Americas to acknowledge and tacitly conform to the sovereignty of the nations of Aboriginal peoples they encountered and interacted with.

Under such conditions it would be farcical to profess a legal entitlement based on either the doctrine of Discovery or Conquest. There were as many as fifty million people in the Americas in A.D. 1500. Although several writers have made reference to a dramatic decline between A.D. 1500-1650 in the Aboriginal population to a mere 10% of their numbers at time of first contact - as a consequence of diseases brought to the New World and intensified warfare brought about by ambitions within both New World and Old World power politics to control the terms of trade and achieve territorial supremacy - it should also be noted that by A.D. 1627 the European population of Canada had only reached 107 people. European explorers and imperial representatives ferried back and forth across the Atlantic for a series of mercantile expeditions throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but made very limited penetration into the lands that they claimed title over. In point of fact, it was not until A.D. 1778 that Captain James Cook made his way as far as the North West Coast to establish trade with the Nuu-chah-nulth in Nootka Sound; as late as the A.D. 1858 'gold rush' on the Fraser River before Aboriginal peoples in the Interior Plateau would have anything but transient contact with traders and explorers; the middle of the eighteenth century before traders began to expand their efforts through the establishment of forts on the northern Plains; and the late-nineteenth century before the Inuit of the Arctic had anything but fleeting contact with 'pale-face' peoples. It should be noted that in all such encounters the primary European motive was the establishment of trade, and not the conquest of territories. The monarchs did not send invading armies first but, rather, merchant ships, and the companies they commissioned, although possessing grandiose pronouncements of territorial grants could not have and would not have survived in the New World had they approached Aboriginal peoples in any other fashion than with a measure of respect for their independence and for their evident control and sovereignty over the lands on which they lived.

Captain Martin Frobisher made the first foray into the New World on behalf of the English Monarchy in A.D. 1578, but it was not until after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in A.D. 1588 that England was able to increase its participation in the plunder of the North American continent. Even then, it would be three-quarters of the way into the eighteenth century before they could assert any claim as the predominant European Crown in the New World. In the early years of colonization, with the establishment of Jamestown in A.D. 1607 and the Pilgrims arrival at Massachusetts Bay in A.D. 1620, it is a stretch of the imagination to assert that any measure of sovereignty under the Law of Nations was achieved over the new lands by either Discovery or Conquest. As well, though the intolerance practiced on the Puritans in Europe became manifest within the treatment they in turn practiced against the Aboriginal peoples they encountered in North America, there were contemporary voices the likes of Roger Williams in their midst who, in A.D. 1643, "...advocated religious tolerance and Indian land rights." When, in A.D. 1644, the English defeated the Dutch, the Covenant Chain between the Dutch and the Mohawks became a political alliance between the English and the Iroquois and stands as affirmation and recognition of the independence and nationhood of the Iroquois Confederacy. Indeed, both the French and the British believed that the Iroquois Confederacy was powerful enough to topple any ambitions of empire building by either Crown and both paid homage to the balance of power they possessed through the practice of diplomatic negotiations and the presentation of gifts in order to curry their favor and support.

In A.D. 1670 the English King, Charles II, established the "Honourable Company of Adventurers of England Trading in Hudson's Bay" (the Hudson's Bay Company). Although there was a Crown grant of territories in the New World to this company, it must be observed from both the name of the company and from the goals it was established to achieve that there was nothing but grand-standing behind the jurisdictional allocation. As Jack Weatherford has noted, the purpose of this company was, "...to extract something for trade or profit." To assert that the Hudson's Bay Company achieved sovereignty over lands in what was to become British North America by the consequence of this grant would be tantamount to concluding that regional sales territories defined by company directors in the board rooms of  I.B.M. or Federal Express could also achieve a sovereign title over lands. Aside from the fact that in International Law only a state, and not a corporation, can be recognized as possessing the attributes of a sovereign, it is just plain lunacy to suggest that any measure of 'control' or 'rule' over an area of 3,695,000 square miles of territory inhabited by a plethora of distinct and powerful Aboriginal nations was achieved. As late as A.D. 1772, more than a century later, the traders for the Hudson's Bay Company had still not been able to penetrate into the territories on the northwestern Plains controlled by the Blackfoot Confederacy, and it would not be until David Thompson visited with the Peigan in A.D. 1787 that, "...the Hudson's Bay Company gained the favor of the largest of the Blackfoot tribes." Even then, there was no acknowledgement by the Blackfoot of any subordinate relationship relative to the Hudson's Bay Company or the British Crown as well as no capacity for making good on such a claim by either of the latter mentioned parties. Any pompous orations of such claims would undoubtedly have placed the traders within a circle of unrelenting ridicule, if not imminent demise. Domination over the lives of this proud warrior society would not come about until the collapse of the Bison herds, plagues, and the devastation cast by the European practice of 'Spirit Water' for trade payments on hides and pemmican had devastated their numbers to such a degree that it became possible for settlers within the region to take advantage of their weakness. Until at least A.D. 1839 the balance of power was in their hands on the northwestern Plains, and their independence was well acknowledged by the 'Red Coats' and the 'Long Knives', as well as the Cree, the Assiniboine, and the Kutenai.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century France's interests, under the leadership of King Louis the XIV, had shifted back to the Old World. Determined to place his nephew on the throne in Spain, the War of Spanish Succession in A.D. 1702 served to alter the colonial agendas of the European monarchies. Through the Treaty of Utrecht that ended the war in A.D. 1713 the French Crown agreed to throw its colonial claims into the balance for the peace process and conceded within the treaty that the British Crown was to be acknowledged as possessing sovereignty over the Iroquois in the regions previously claimed as New France. This assertion of sovereignty was rejected out-right by the Iroquois and the British Crown had insufficient resources to make good its claim. Far from being able to achieve supreme rule, this ostentatious presumption of sovereignty went unrecognized and was unenforceable in Iroquois country, and the English knew it. As a consequence, they continued to recognize an allied relationship and maintained the customs of diplomacy and gift giving for services rendered as allies against the French. In addition to an unbroken practice of treating the Aboriginal peoples as independent nations of allies, the British Crown also began the process of formal treaty-making with the Maliseet peoples in the Treaty of Portsmouth of A.D. 1713.

With the first of what are referred to as the "Peace and Friendship" treaties, it is important to note the choice of instrument used to negotiate an end to hostilities between settlers and the Aboriginal peoples. A "treaty", as defined in Webster's Dictionary, is "...a formal agreement between two or more states with reference to peace, alliance, commerce, or other international relations"(italics added). While this definition is taken from a dictionary in the twenty-first century, there is little doubt that the terminology was understood in the same context within the eighteenth century. These were not benevolent grants from 'the Great White Father' who, seeking to be generous and good to his 'subjects', decided to show some kindness toward them through a formal domestic legal instrument, as some might like to suggest. Had that been the case the protections put in place by the treaty would have been recorded instead within a Statute of the British Parliament. Rather, it was an international political compromise under conditions of inter-societal conflict and negotiations that the British Crown undertook in order to prevent the complete destruction of the gains that had been made in the New World. Within this treaty, as well as the A.D. 1725 Treaty of Boston signed between the Mi'kmaq peoples and the British, the Crown in England censured British subjects from the molestation and disruption of Aboriginal peoples in their territories. The British required the cooperation of the Maliseet and Mi'kmaq peoples in order to help achieve the mercantile objectives of the fur trade, and the encroachment of European settlers into 'Indian Territory' seriously threatened that economic cooperation, along with the military alliances required to check the competition of imperial initiatives in New France.

As Chief Justice John Marshall noted in the nineteenth century in respect to the words 'nation' and 'treaty', words the likes of 'peace', 'friendship', 'unmolested', and 'undisturbed' have clearly defined meanings within the English language and their adoption into the political dynamics of the early eighteenth century were intended to serve specific diplomatic purposes; they were utilized in negotiations with the Maliseet and Mi'kmaq peoples and incorporated within formal declarations in order to placate pissed-off allies and prevent them from exercising further wrath against the colonies.

The period between A.D. 1700 and at least A.D. 1814 has been termed the period of the "Middle Ground"; when the dependence on the cooperation and assistance of Aboriginal peoples in the fur trade, the alliance of Aboriginal nations against the French and the emerging threat of warfare in the thirteen colonies of the Americas ensured that the indigenous peoples would be treated with formal recognition of their independence and rights to dominium by all of the immigrants from Europe.

In A.D. 1760 the United Province of Canada was established under assumed British sovereignty following the Articles of Capitulation in Montreal. In Section 40 of the Capitulation the French sought to protect the interests of their Aboriginal allies by asserting that they were to be recognized as independent nations, and the British Crown conceded to these terms. When, in A.D. 1763, the English emerged from the Seven Years War (A.D. 1756-1763) as the dominant European Crown in the New World they still had to face the prospect of a challenge to their universal authority over the lives of the immigrants in the Thirteen Colonies of America. Also, they were facing the threat of Pontiac's Rebellion (1763), which was undermining their control over colonial holdings and threatening the entire mercantile enterprise. Again, rather than through some sense of benevolence, the British Crown was compromised by the pragmatics of politics to concede to the demands for independence and dominium that Aboriginal peoples continued to maintain a strong attachment toward, and was obliged to issue the Royal Proclamation of 1763 in order to censure British subjects from interfering with First Nations allies in their own territories.

This legislative instrument has been considered as part of the domestic law of Britain and carries the weight of a Statute in the English Law tradition. As such, it has been dubbed the 'Indian Charter' and is purported to provide domestic law statutory authority for the claim that Aboriginal peoples maintain the right to be left "...unmolested and undisturbed..." in "...Indian Territory"; since the right acknowledged by King George III has never been repealed or extinguished in the 250 plus years since it was 'granted' by the British Crown. Presuming that one accepts the premise that the British Crown had established effective sovereignty over British North America by this point in history, it is through reference to this Proclamation that Aboriginal rights to self-government and self-determination within Canada are to be legally defended under English Law. As the argument runs, the British Crown, and by extension the Canadian Crown, is legally bound by their own legislative instruments and judicial precedents to acknowledge and defend the right of Aboriginal peoples to self-government and self-determination, since the case of Campbell vs. Hall in A.D. 1774 established that, "...capitulations in general were binding upon the King in Council...", and the "aboriginal right was conceded under both the capitulation and the proclamation." Further, since these rights have never been repealed, they are now "...recognized and affirmed..." as a consequence of their inclusion within the "...existing Aboriginal and treaty rights..." that are protected by Section 35.(1) in the Constitution Act, 1981.

I argue that this Proclamation does serve to define the acceptable legal behavior of colonial subjects toward the Aboriginal allies of the Crown vis-à-vis English Law, and does stand in defence of an Aboriginal right to self-government and self-determination within Canada's Constitution. But, or perhaps I should say 'in addition', I would also argue that the Proclamation does not serve as an acknowledgement of unfettered British sovereignty in British North America, or by extension a subordinate legal stature for Aboriginal peoples which would make whatever rights they are able to garner from the Crown dependent upon it's will and pleasure.

It is my view that, in keeping with the customary rules of politics during the late eighteenth century, this royal prerogative was intended to articulate within domestic laws the 'Protectorate' association that the British Crown had established with its First Nations allies. Subsequent to the pronouncements of this Proclamation, the Crown continued to respect and acknowledge through formal international proceedings the allied relationship of First Nations' peoples vis-à-vis the British Crown, and in so doing gave unequivocal credence to their status as 'Protectorate states' under the Law of Nations. In A.D. 1832 the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that, "...the Indian nations of North America had been protectorates of the British Crown:...", in the case of Worcester vs. Georgia, and Justice C.J. Marshall made reference to the, "...settled doctrine of the law of nations...that a weaker power does not surrender its independence, its right to self-government, by associating with a stronger, and taking its protection." As Maureen Davies has observed, the relationship of "protection" is, "...an ancient principle of the law of nations." She goes on to affirm that "...a sovereign state may exercise its power to create for itself a voluntary state of dependence...," and that, "...[t]he effect of limited association would be to unite two states under one Crown but not under one law."

In A.D. 1928 the United Nations ruled in the Island of Palmas case that, "sovereignty over territory means "the right to exercise therein, to the exclusion of any other state, the functions of a state," but elaborated on this principle by noting that said sovereignty, "...is not necessarily unlimited. Other states may, by treaty or local custom, acquire minor rights over the territory,...". From this brief critique of the status of sovereign title within British North America it is argued that the Crown's sovereignty in these territories was, and continues to be, fettered by the sovereign interest that First Nations' societies maintain in the lands on which they have lived since time immemorial, and that the creation of their 'voluntary state of dependence' through treaties signed during the nineteenth century does not, in any way, preclude them from re-asserting their independence and internationally recognized right to self-government and self-determination vis-à-vis the Canadian Crown under the constructs of the Law of Nations or International Law.

Pre-Contact History of the Americas - A Diversity of Societies Wax & Wane - Chapter 4

In the twenty-first century advancements in science and technology have enabled humanity to uncover a wealth of new knowledge about our planet, the galaxy in which it is housed, and the multitude of galaxies that make up the universe beyond the Milky Way. We have come to witness the magnificence and enormity of that vast and open space above our heads and to reduce the mystery of what lies beyond our skyward gaze. It is an age of endless possibilities and extraordinary new insights to be gleaned from adventurous explorations into the stars. Undoubtedly, the sparkle in the eyes of contemporary astronauts is little different than it would have been for pilots who hoisted anchor and set sail with merchant ships for the New World in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Landing on the shorelines of the American continents, men the likes of Christopher Columbus, Giovanni de Verrazano, Hernando de Soto, Jacques Cartier, and Martin Frobisher, would likely have had little conception of how vast a discovery of land mass they planted their feet upon. Fully eight times the size of the European continent from whence they came, this foreboding wilderness would take centuries more to cross. The 'Age of Discovery' is in actuality a misnomer and should perhaps be titled the 'Age of Arrival' since the word discovery implies an attribute of awareness and knowledge about the New World that did not exist. As Jack Weatherford has observed in his book, Indian Givers- How the Indians of the Americas Transformed The World, "Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, but [the Americas have] yet to be discovered...The history and culture of [the Americas] remains a mystery, still terra incognita after five hundred years."

The original legal doctrine from the Law of Nations used to support European imperial claims to acquisition of territories in the Americas was the doctrine of Discovery. According to the dictates of this doctrine, title to terra nullius (unoccupied) lands could be acquired and sovereignty established by symbolic acts such as erecting a coat-of-arms on a pole or burying coins in the soil. However, title to the lands was only considered to be valid if said lands were not already in the possession of a Christian Prince. Also, at the end of the fifteenth century and throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Europe was still operating intellectually within the framework of Natural Law, which acknowledged the right of 'infidels' to dominium. Therefore, it had to be established within a claim to territories that were already occupied by non-Christian peoples that they were in fact not human at all, but rather a sub-human species. This would nullify their rights under Natural Law and make it valid for representatives of a European monarch to claim sovereignty over their lands under Canon Law. It was through incorporation of this rationale that Spanish explorers asserted sovereignty over the territories they arrived at in the Americas; claiming title on behalf of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella through reference to the 1493 Papal Bull, Inter Catera, while also suppressing and exterminating the indigenous peoples they encountered.

Who were those beings that Hernando de Soto and Francisco Pizzaro encountered in Mexico and Peru, that Jacques Cartier met on the St. Lawrence River, and Captain James Cook traded with along the North West Coast? Were they really a sub-human species incapable of political organization, outside the protection of Natural Law and devoid of property rights? The revolutionary advances in science and technology during the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have not only served to open a gateway to the heavens, but have also aided significantly in unlocking some of the hidden stories of ancient civilizations on the Earth. A window into the antiquity of the Americas has started to reveal glimpses of the land's history through the efforts of archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists, and ethnohistorians in the latter part of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth. Of particular utility to archaeologists was the development of Radio Carbon Dating (Carbon 14 Dating) techniques in the 1960s. Through this procedure for testing of organic matter unearthed in dig sites it became possible to calculate the age of their finds with an enhanced degree of accuracy.

The renaissance of indigenous cutural identities in the Americas over the past quarter century has also stimulated an unearthing of volumes of hitherto forgotten and ignored documentation of inter-relations and formal agreements reached between Aboriginal peoples and European imperial representatives since the time of first contact. As knowledge about the Pre-Contact and Historic eras of the Americas has accumulated it has exposed a host of erroneous assumptions that hitherto have shaped perceptions and attitudes about the peoples who inhabited these lands before immigrants from Europe settled in their midst.

The findings of these studies thus far indicate that human beings have been inhabiting the length and breadth of the American continents for at least the past 11,000 years. Archaeological sites have produced Radio-Carbon datings of 13,000-15,000 B.P.(Before Present) in Monte Verde, southern Chile; 10,500 B.P. in Charlie Lake Cave, British Columbia; 9,000 B.P. from a Longhouse unearthed in Mission, British Columbia, and from the Fletcher (Bison kill) Site in southern Alberta; 10,600 B.P. in Debert, Nova Scotia; and 3,000 B.P. on the Red Deer River in central Alberta.

It is still a matter of conjecture as to how the continents became populated but the generally accepted view is that during the last Ice Age a landbridge of snow and ice 1000 kilometers wide formed across the Bering Strait (also known as Beringia), thus connecting Siberia to the North American continent. As the theory goes, Paleo-Indians in pursuit of Mammoths simply walked across Beringia and in time migrated south and spread out across the Plains, into the Woodlands, and beyond. Knut Fladmark, a Canadian archaeologist, holds the hypothesis of a coastal migration route. Since the west coast was unglaciated anywhere from 60,000 to 25,000 years ago this is also a viable theory, though a lack of any archaeological evidence to support the argument leaves it open to challenge. Last, but not at all the least, is the suggestion made by Alan McMillan that the arrival at various times of separate populations with very different cultural adaptations would help to explain the diversity of distinct peoples and cultures that comprise the indigenous population of the Americas.

Although the true origin of Aboriginal peoples in the New World remains contentious, what is clear is that,  "[f]or a thousand generations, the American continents have been home to Indian people. From forager to farmer, tribe to nation, the native American civilizations waxed and waned. They developed sophisticated forms of art, elaborate political and social structures, intricate intellectual patterns, mathematics, handicrafts, agriculture, writing, complex religious and belief systems, imaginative architecture - indeed a whole panoply of human endeavors that rivaled the cultures developing in the Middle East, Europe, and China." Several excellent books have been published in recent years which provide extensive descriptions of a host of diverse cultures and societies in the Pre-Contact era and it is well beyond the scope of this article to repeat that recording and analysis. A brief synthesis is necessary, however, to stand as evidence for both the antiquity of civilization in the Americas and to refute any assertion of a 'sub-human' characterization for these peoples.

The oldest archaeological discoveries to date identify a foraging peoples that have come to be known by the name, Clovis. Dig sites have produced Radio-Carbon dates between 9,500 and 9,000 B.P., though not much is known about these peoples beyond their identification as Homo Sapiens and the design of the spear points that they used in hunting for their survival. The other cultures and societies that have been discovered can be divided into three distinct periods: the Archaic Period (6000 B.C. - 1000 B.C.); the Initial Woodland Period (1000 B.C. - A.D. 900); and the Terminal Woodland Period (A.D. 900 to the historic era).

From the Archaic Period (6000 B.C.-1000 B.C.) we have as an example of the age the Olmec, who achieved political domination and military authority over a vast area of settled agricultural villages along the Mexican Gulf Coast from 1500 B.C. thru 600 B.C.. It has been hypothesized that the Olmec was not actually a specific culture, but rather a pan-Middle American religion that preceded the birth of the first pan-European religion (Christendom) by 1500 years. The symbolic icon of the Olmec religion was the Rain God; an ogre with human and jaguar aspects. The example of these peoples serves to demonstrate a sophisticated construct of spirituality and counters the premise later utilized to diminish the rights of Aboriginal peoples to dominium under Natural Law; namely that the indigenous population were a dumb and brutish species incapable of political community. The stone edifices that have been discovered also provide evidence of a capacity for intricate craftsmanship and a flare for expression of world views that parallels anything produced in Greece and Rome during the same era.

Also within the Archaic Period is evidence of the Laurentian culture in the region of what is now referred to as southern Ontario and Quebec. Archaeologists have also identified these peoples as belonging to the categorization of foragers. Through examination of burial sites, evidence has been uncovered that provides insight into complex ceremonialism, the practice of warfare, and the existence of extensive trade networks. In contemporary appraisals indicators of ritual in burial practices infers a 'civilized' attribute, while the ability to organize for warfare and trade stand as benchmarks for a people's right to recognition of statehood and demonstrates the capacity for political community and a sovereign will to possess the benefits of a defined territory.

The Initial Woodland Period (1000 B.C. - A.D. 900) is marked by the cultures and societies of the Zapotec (500 B.C. - A.D. 700) in the valley of Oaxaca, Mexico; the carefully planned city construction, field irrigation system, and pyramid-building of the Teotihuacan (150 B.C. - A.D. 750); the agricultural practices, Longhouse government tradition and communal organization of the Owasco (A.D. 100 - A.D. 1300) - ancestors of the Iroquois - in upper New York State; the Mayan Empire (A.D. 300 - A.D. 900), with its hieroglyphic language recorded on walls of stone that parallels the complexity of the Egyptian hieroglyphic tradition; the continuous presence of nomadic and communal Bison hunters on the Plains from early in the Archaic Period, and the system of community policing they employed to regulate the competing interests of group vs. individual rights; and the hierarchical and patriarchal political communities of the North West Coast whose ancestors are now referred to as the Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit, Kwakiutl, Nuu-chah-nulth, Nuxalk and Gitksan.

In the Terminal Woodland Period (A.D. 900 to the historic era) the Americas were home to the Mississippian cultures (A.D. 750 - A.D. 1539) of the Eastern Woodlands region - ancestors of the Creeks, Chickasaws, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Cherokees - whose burial mounds and ceremonies demonstrated an elaborate cornucopia of religious customs and spiritual beliefs; the Anazazi (A.D. 900 - A.D. 1150) of the Colorado Plateau - ancestors of the Pueblo Indians and builders of what has come to be known as the Chaco Phenomenon; the Ontario Iroquois Tradition of the Huron, Petun and Neutral cultures as well as the St. Lawrence Iroquoian cultures of the Stadaconans and Hochelagans; The Innu (Montagnais-Naskapi) of northern Quebec and Labrador; the Algonkian of northeastern North America - ancestors of the Cree and Ojibwa; the Thule peoples (A.D. 1000 - A.D. 1600) of the Arctic - ancestors of the Inuit; the 'dog days' of nomadic life for the Blackfoot Confederacy and the Gros Ventre; and the floating city of the Aztec Empire (A.D. 1325 - A.D. 1520) in Peru.

This cursory synthesis undoubtedly captures only a fragment of the historical complexities and cultural identities of the Americas during the Pre-Contact ages but should provide sufficient evidence to undermine any pretense of a natural inferiority as a defining characteristic of Aboriginal peoples. These people were no less susceptible to the currents of social and political change that are so much a part of all societies throughout the histories of every region on the globe. Like Europeans, Africans and Asians, the record of their histories demonstrates the same capacity for adaptation and utilization of the Earth and its resources for survival, a common affinity toward political community, family and group allegiance, territorial attachments, inter-societal trade arrangements, and warfare. They have demonstrated their intelligence through a host of cultural achievements, spiritual philosophies, language formulations, agricultural developments and pharmacology discoveries.

The inherent humanity of these peoples, it is important to note, was not denied by the first European explorers to arrive on the American continent either. Before their greed for gold consumed the last vestiges of their morality and consciences, explorers acknowledged and validated the identity of Aboriginal peoples with attributes equal to or greater than their own. Jacques Cartier referred to the Indians he encountered on his first voyage by noting that, "...there can be no doubt that they are a superior race." Francisco Pizzaro and his mates were awe-struck by the spectacular Aztec engineering feat of building a floating city on top of a lake and one of them considered it as more magnificent than anything he had ever seen in Europe. Indeed, it was not until the discovery of treasures in Mexico and Peru that the 'Noble Savage' made a transformation of identity within the minds of European explorers into the 'Savage Beast.'

Support for the assertion that a customary rule validating territorial claims based on Discovery within the Law of Nations did not, in fact, achieve coalescence into a mutually recognized right acceptable to all states, even in Europe, comes from several observations. First, as noted earlier in this work, Spain was criticized throughout much of the sixteenth century "...for cruelty of human to human" and the contemporary revulsion with the immorality of their actions has been enshrined for historical reference within La Leyenda Negra. Secondly, the arguments of Spanish Dominican, Las Casas, as presented to the Spanish Crown exposed the detestable activities of the Conquistadors in the New World, defended Aboriginal rights to dominium under Natural Law, and attacked the Aristotelian notion of an inherent 'servile' character within perceptions of the indigenous population of the New World. As a result of his arguments, the Spanish Crown accepted an Aboriginal title to the land, at least in the abstract, and encouraged its representatives in the New World to complete treaties with the Aboriginal peoples for their lands.

Last, but not least, prominent scholarly opinion also denounced the claim. Francisco de Vitoria (A.D. 1480? - A.D. 1552), Dominican and Primary Professor of Sacred Theology at the University of Salamanca, has been recognized as "...one of the most important thinkers of this period," and "[h]is work had a tangible influence on the policies and attitudes of the powers of the day..."  In A.D. 1532 his work, "De Indis Et De Jure Belli" was published, which"...outlined basic concepts of the rights of indigenous peoples." According to Vitoria's argument, there was "...no ground for making war and seizing the property of barbarians", "aborigines are true owners from both the public and private point of view", and "...claims based on 'discovery' are discounted." As Maureen Davies has observed, "Vitoria's concept of the Law of Nations recognized that certain rights inhere in men as men and that state equality was applicable to all states, not merely to those that were Christian or European."

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Law of Nations that arose out of the political dynamics of Europe during the sixteenth century was to provide the catalyst for the evolution of international customary rules for judging the validity of territorial claims under International Law. The legal validity of claims based on the doctrine of Discovery has not changed in four hundred years. As was the view of Innocent IV, Las Casas and Vitoria in the sixteenth century under the Law of Nations, so too under International Law it has been invalidated by Judge Ammoun of The United Nations International Court of Justice. In the Western Sahara Case of 1975 Ammoun ruled that, "[i]n short, the concept of terra nullius, employed at all periods, to the brink of the twentieth century, to justify conquest and colonization, stands condemned."

Pre-Contact Europe and Precursors to First Contact in the Americas - Chapter 3

Between the fifth and the tenth centuries Europe was in chaos and disorder. Invading armies from Scandinavia, North Africa, and central Asia swept across the continent, "...gutting cities and effacing any semblance of government" in their wake. As a means for seeking security and protection, people turned to local land owners and offered their labors in exchange for safety. This system of obligations, known as Feudalism, became established throughout most of France, England, Germany and northern Italy by the end of the eleventh century. Local land owners and the armies of mercenary soldiers they employed ruled the lives of all who lived under their domain. Law, in the sense of a unified body of accepted legal principles designed to regulate political relations between regions and interpersonal affairs within communities, did not exist at the beginning of the twelfth century. Instead, norms of acceptable behavior and the sanctions meted out for misconduct were established and enforced by the lords of the estates under which people lived and owed their servitude, and the law across Europe was a 'labyrinth' as a consequence.

Nation-states, within which the people of the twenty-first century find their identity and security, did not exist at that time and would not begin to take shape until the rise of Absolute Monarchy in the sixteenth century. Rather, supra-regional authority over the lives of the masses in Europe was housed within the over-arching influence of the Christian religion and the institutions of spiritual and temporal power that guided it; the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire. The vacuum of universal standards for assessing the rights and obligations of mankind within Europe was filled by ecclesiastical decrees, the cumulative body of which is referred to as the Canon Law. With the codification of these decrees in the early twelfth century, Canon Law provided a more coherent body of moral and legal principles under which people should live their lives than any other source of law in Europe at the time, and its influence increased throughout the century.

It would be difficult to over-state the power of religious beliefs during the Middle Ages. The world-view in Europe during this period, and well into the Modern Era, divided humanity into Christian and non-Christian realms. Invasions by the Jews and Moslems into Christian-claimed territories in the Holy Land had prompted the Church in Rome to call upon Christian princes to undertake Crusades of liberation, "...in the name of Christ", against the 'infidels' of the non-Christian kingdoms in the Near East throughout the twelfth century. Many of the land owners that financed the mercenary armies in the feudal system were also members of the clergy within the Church, and owed their primary allegiance to the papacy in Rome. The cumulative effect of these circumstances served not only to assure the military resources to fulfill the calls to Crusade, but also resulted in an increased centralization of power in both spiritual and temporal matters within the hands of the Pope, who sat at the apex of the Church's hierarchy. This would embolden Pope Innocent III to claim what he called the "...God-given, universal sovereignty of the papacy" when he came to office in 1198. No longer confined to the realm of spiritual leadership, he asserted plenitudo potestatis (the fullness of power) in both spiritual and temporal domains.

The assertion of papal authority over temporal matters did not go without challenge within Christendom and the early thirteenth century witnessed an ongoing feud and struggle for power between Pope Gregory IX and the Holy Roman Emperor, Fredrick II. The effect of this struggle was to gradually diminish the power of both and to open the door for other secular monarchs in Europe to assert sovereign title to the territorial regions controlled by their armies against the papal claim of 'universal sovereignty'.

Another effect of the struggle was to see the re-introduction into Europe of Roman Law scholarship. Fredrick II had come into possession of this body of legal principles from the ancient Roman society through contacts in the Arab world of the Near East during the years of his Crusade efforts. With their emphasis on civic responsibility and the good of the state, these principles served to challenge the system of personal obligation owed within the feudal order, both undermining and gradually replacing these relationships. Natural Law, as the ancient legal principles of Rome came to be called, also placed a new sense of priority on questions about the inherent rights of mankind in relation to this world, and subordinated the Canon Law tenets that had hitherto placed the examination of mankind's' rights solely in relation to the after-life and the Kingdom of Heaven.

The claims to universal papal sovereignty, the conflict between Pope Gregory IX and Fredrick II, the Crusades into the Near East, and the influence of Natural Law principles combined to set the stage for the emergence of a debate within ecclesiastical scholarship over the question of the legitimate exercise of power outside the Church and the rights of non-Christians. "Did non-Christians - all those who were extra-ecclesiam (outside the church) - possess natural rights to property? Did their rulers exercise legitimate authority? In short, did unbelievers possess dominium (lawful possession of property and political power)" within Canon Law?

Initial support for the legitimacy of non-Christian rights to dominium came from the arguments of Innocent IV (pope, 1243-1254). Adhering to the generally accepted view in Europe at the time, "...that the entire globe was the property of God and, as such, distributable by the Pope as His delegate on earth," and despite the ideal of universalism that directed political ambitions within Christendom, Innocent "...defended the right of non-Christians to exercise power,..." "On the question of the legitimacy of secular power outside of the church, Innocent IV held that all rational creatures, Christian and non-Christian, had the right under natural law to own property and to exercise political authority in their own lands."

This view was to be challenged by one of Innocent's pupils, Henrico de Segusio (d.1271, generally known as Hostiensis), who was cardinal of Ostia and a leading member of the Sacred College. Although Hostiensis was willing to concede that non-Christians could exercise dominium as a matter of fact, he was not about to recognize that such exercise of power could ever be justified in Canon Law. It was his view that, "...infidels, neither recognizing nor obeying the power and authority of the Roman Church, are not worthy to have kingdoms, government, jurisdiction nor dominium."

Both men attracted contemporary ecclesiastics to their respective points of view. While the majority of canonists came to agreement that "...legitimate authority did exist in societies other than Christian, and that their princes were entitled to rule...", popular belief coalesced in favor of Hostiensis's rights formulation as the intellectual debate moved from the ecclesiastical to the secular intelligentsia. As regional monarchs increasingly challenged the universal authority of the Papacy over the spread of Christianity, "[i]t was the less tolerant of the two traditions which came to prevail in practice: the accepted rule of action was that Christians had a duty to convert the heathen, and if persuasion did not succeed, then force should be used."

It should be noted at this point that the formulations of both schools of thought with respect to this debate occurred at a point in history when Europe and the philosophers and legal scholars of the age had absolutely no knowledge of the existence of the American continents. All of their ideas and attitudes were stimulated through the perceptual lenses of a physical environment that was brutish and insecure against the backdrop of perpetual aggressions exchanged between Europeans and peoples from societies to the Near East. It is quite striking to consider that such a difference of philosophy over human rights should even come to fruition within Canon Law and Christendom during an era when the climate of inter-societal relations was so intensely confrontational.

It is instructive also to consider the large measure of attention that the debate received within the scholarship of the late pre-contact era and the legal consensus that was achieved within the Church's intellectual elite in spite of such conditions. One is left to wonder whether Hostiensis would have drawn the same conclusions were he to have had the benefit of the 'European Enlightment' which was sparked, at least in part, by the intellectual imagery of the 'Noble Savage...living in the state of nature' and served to influence later scholars like John Locke and Sir Thomas More toward visions of democratic and utopian societies.

Hypothetical conjecturing aside, it must be remembered that Hostiensis's views were framed within the confines of Canon Law scholarship. To juxtapose his views on 'infidel' rights to dominium within Canon Law into an analysis of International Law rights, as they have emerged through the Positive Law tradition, suggests the likelihood of manipulation and subjective interpretation. Hostiensis acknowledged the right as a matter of fact (ie: under Natural Law), but denied the right as a matter of law within Christendom. He was not arguing rights within a world where independent nation states, rather than the universal authority of the papacy, dictated the division of power.

It is also a fallacious assumption that the debate was concluded prior to the discovery of the Americas; thus serving to define a custom that had coalesced into an accepted law recognized by all states in Europe as legitimate for defending claims to the acquisition of new territories. A consensus was in fact achieved within Canon Law which gave credence to the right of Aboriginal peoples to possess dominium but, as with many other occasions in humanity's history, when the recognized law stood in contradiction to the ambitions of the powerful and wealthy it was simply subverted and ignored.

The philosophical mood of Europe immediately preceding the Age of Discovery was also shaped by events and circumstances that were independent from ecclesiastical scholarship, and proved to challenge the previously accepted intelligence of societies across that continent. Five distinct elements of fifteenth century European history, when fused together, help to demonstrate how conditions became ripe for the voyages of exploration that began at the end of that century. When considered holistically with the ecclesiastical debate over the rights of non-Christians, they help to shed light on the moral and legal assumptions Christendom (remember, that's Christendom and not the international community) was operating under when the Old World and New World collided.

First, there was the phenomenon of the Italian Renaissance. The resurgence of classical Greek and Roman scholarship that took place on the Italian peninsula at the beginning of the 1400's may be regarded as a period of unprecedented enrichment in knowledge for the societies of Europe during that age. It may also be regarded as the initial stimulant to five hundred years of suffering for the First Nations' societies across the Americas. Of particular significance was the translation in 1406 of a book titled, Geography, originally written in the second century by Claudius Ptolemaeus (also known as Ptolemy). "His text, summarizing the understanding of the earth at the height of the Roman Empire, contained a gazetteer of known places. In an important innovation, it also described a system of references based on a globe divided into a grid of two sets of circles marked off into degrees, the now-familiar coordinates of latitude and longitude. A map of the world as Ptolemy knew it accompanied the text." The importance of these ideas to navigation cannot be overstated. Previously all vessels of the seas had only natural landmarks to guide their navigations by, and this reliance on visual checks assured that ships would seldom stray far from the coastlines of the known world. However, by adopting Ptolemy's system,  "...potential explorers not only saw the rest of the world as accessible but also had a model against which they could compare their discoveries." Without the contribution of ideas incorporated from Ptolemy's work, it is quite possible that the Americas might well have remained undiscovered, at least at that point in Europe's history anyway.

The second major influence from the Renaissance period was the incorporation of Aristotle's doctrine of natural servitude ("that some men are by nature free and others servile") into the ongoing debate over the rights of non-Christians to the legitimate exercise of dominium. It would provide the 'out', so to speak, from the accepted principle that infidels did possess such a right within Canon Law by enabling explorers and monarchs of Europe to later claim that the people they came into contact with in the Americas were actually a sub-human species whose barbaric nature placed them outside the protection of Natural Law. That being the case, they could not possibly possess a right to dominium within Canon Law and their lands could be seized from them with impunity. This argument did not achieve unanimous support, and several influential thinkers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would present challenges to its moral tenets. The lack of its validity as accepted custom can also be recognized from the reaction in Europe to the brutality of the Spanish explorers, which resulted in La Leyenda Negra (The Black Legend). I will return to examine these counter-arguments as their significance to claims of sovereignty in the New World and their impact on the Law of Nations became pronounced. It is of import at present merely to identify the birthplace of an idea that was to provide later monarchs and explorers with a paradigm that could serve to rationalize the suppression and extermination of Aboriginal peoples when the day came that they encountered one another.

Secondly, it should be recalled that the Law of Nations within a Natural Law paradigm, and not International Law as understood from within the Positive Law paradigm that emerged gradually through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was the frame of intellectual reference.

The third, fourth and fifth elements are intertwined. During the fifteenth century Europe experienced a population increase. There was also an increased appetite for luxury items, particularly in spices provided to Europe through Constantinople, and the Asian trade networks of the Byzantine Empire. When, during the closing years of the century, the Byzantine Empire collapsed under the strength and expansionism of the Ottoman Empire, Europe found its luxury markets and trade routes threatened. The Ottomans, "...who were fierce proponents of Islam, ...and virulently anti-Christian..." now firmly controlled "[t]he old channels of trade that passed from Asia to the Middle East and the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea..." With the Ottoman Empire now in control of the terms of trade, it was essential for Europe to increase its efforts to find a western passage by sea that would give them direct access to the markets of the Orient. Had the 1,000-year-old Byzantine Empire not collapsed, it is very questionable whether Christopher Columbus would have persuaded King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to finance his explorations. It is much more likely that he would have been rebuffed, as he was by King Afonso V of Portugal during the eight years he spent endeavoring to convince the Portuguese monarchy to back his outlandish scheme, from 1476 to 1484.

Speculation aside, the fact is that he did make those journeys of exploration for which he has become so famous, and with him came the motivations and mentality of a European society that was in transition to new legal paradigms for the definition and utilization of guiding tenets for both life and the law of their Age. Far from achieving any measure of consensus on legal customs for regulating inter-regional territorial claims, local self-interest ruled the day. It was an era when the rules of politics were determined by the adage, 'might is right', and when the acquisition of new territories, the development of new trade routes, and the accumulation of new sources of wealth became the cornerstone of ambitions toward self-government and self-determination for monarchical communities vis-a-vis the centralized authority of the Roman Catholic Church and the Papacy.

My Vision Quest - Chapter 2

"How do you eat an Elephant?" About two decades ago now my Mom posed that question to me in an email. She was responding to a note I had sent to her earlier in the day, in which I had expressed my troubled thoughts over the daunting task that lay ahead of me; writing my Master's Thesis. For some time, despite a massive volume of collected research to draw upon, I had been like a man standing paralyzed on a high diving board, with toes gripping tightly to the very edge. I knew I was not going to turn around and climb back down the ladder, but the longer I stood there the harder it seemed to be to take the plunge. Her answer, "one bite at a time!", not only made me laugh, but also reminded me of another piece of profound wisdom; "the first step in solving any problem is to begin." Keeping both of those lessons in mind, the time has come to spring forward. It has been nineteen years since I put my Thesis draft in a box and withdrew from the M.A. program, but it is time now to resurrect the words I wrote back then in a series of articles for my blog, because it is a voice and an argument that is every bit as important to be heard today as it was back in 1996.

Finding a meaningful voice in the dialogue relating to First Nations' aspirations for self-government and self-determination within Canada's assumed territories has required a rather lengthy vision quest. Born into a family of Christian Missionaries, the earliest experiences of my life were from the 'Dark Continent', where my Grandfather was serving as a Doctor in Angola, and my Father was serving as a Minister with the United Church of Zambia at the time of my birth in 1963. Throughout my childhood I was raised to believe in and to respect the dignity and worth of all peoples within the family of humanity, as well as to support and defend the rights of all peoples to equality and freedom from persecution and oppression. The associations and friendships my parents shared were with people from a diversity of racial identities, and I grew up in those early years as comfortable in the companionship of a 'black' child as with a 'brown' or 'white.' It was a world in which I had been one of the 'minority', but also one in which, at least as far as I can recall, race played no part in the friendships I made or shared.

When I arrived in Canada in 1970 my family settled in Medicine Hat, Alberta, for a period of about six years, and it was during this time that I received my first exposure to the images of the 'Noble Savages' of North America. Despite my egalitarian upbringing, like every boy (and some girls) I knew at the time, we played 'Cowboys and Indians', watched the Westerns on T.V., and spent the early evening hours before moms called us off to bed pretending we were settling the 'Wild West' in days of old. The racial composition of my environment had changed dramatically with the move to a 'New World', but my exposure to 'real Indians' was quite limited. There were the occasional despairing souls who came to the door of the Manse we lived in seeking food stamps and lodging arrangements, but I was perhaps too young at the time to appreciate the gravity of their predicaments or to make the correlation between their indigenous character and the socioeconomic conditions they faced. Aboriginal peoples dressed in buckskins and headdresses, mounted on horses, and riding in the annual Medicine Hat Rodeo Parade or Calgary Stampede provided the surreal identity for those "dusky" foe that lurked around the corners of Mr. Gardner's garage or the bushes in the Daniel's front yard. Geronimo was taken down by my steady aim on many a night. I did not perceive myself as a racist at the time, and I do not recall feelings of hatred either. It just seemed like pretending to kill Indians was what kids in Canada did for fun. Years later I would look back on those 'games' with both regret for my ignorance over the indoctrination that such boyhood imaginations were perpetuating, and my naiveté over the implications of 'playing' out genocide against the 'Red Skins' of the Prairies on which I was living.

In 1976 Dad's career required a move to Edmonton, where for the first year we settled into the Strathcona community. My first friend in the neighborhood was Ravin Eagle-Spirit (not his real name), an Aboriginal boy my age who lived a few houses east and across the back alley. Ravin and I spent every day out-and-about; riding our bikes in Mill Creek Ravine, skateboarding along White Avenue, playing street hockey in Kinsmen Park, and smoking cigarettes while hiding in the garage attic with girlie magazines. His indigenous heritage was of no significance to me then, except perhaps in providing a personal affirmation of the authentic humanity within a peer's 'Indian' identity. We were not peer's in every respect though, and it was from my friendship with Ravin and access to his home environment that I was first exposed to at least three aspects of family life that all-too-frequently serve to define reality for a vast majority of Canada's Aboriginal peoples today; abject poverty, spousal violence, and intoxicated requital.

Our time of companionship on the road of life only lasted for about a year before my family moved to the west side of the city and we lost touch. As the years passed though, like many other Canadians, I followed the resurgence of the First Nations' political agenda leading up to the Patriation of the Constitution in 1981. My prior friendship with Ravin provided an intimate frame of reference in which I was able to identify with some of the consequences attributed to divestiture, which it has been proven that the Canadian government has practiced against the First Nations' peoples throughout the state. The 'games' I had played around the neighborhood in Medicine Hat and the movies I'd watched with friends at Saturday Matinees flashed back to provide mental images of the type of treatment that Aboriginal peoples faced during the formative years of our nation's history, and still continue to struggle against. Images of dire poverty and social decay in reserve communities, reports of abhorrent levels of unemployment, and evidence of disproportionate hardship through incarceration statistics captured the media spotlight and were graphically portrayed with increasing regularity on National and local news broadcasts throughout the 1980s. As I passed from youth, through adolescence, and toward adulthood I was quickly becoming a 'less-proud' Canadian, and the road was being paved for the years of intellectual inquiry that were to follow during the course of my endeavors in post-secondary education.

I became more intensely interested in the plight of Canada's Aboriginal peoples as the Constitutional Conference mandated by S.37 of the Constitution Act, 1981, and the three subsequent Conferences, proceeded to capture center-stage on the national political and media agendas during the period from 1983 through 1987. Then, in 1987, while I was studying toward a Diploma in Law Enforcement at Lethbridge Community College (L.C.C.), in Lethbridge, Alberta, a more localized set of circumstances became the focus of my attention. For a couple of years thereafter the 'coffee-house agenda' in Lethbridge periodically centered around discussions over a number of deaths of Kainaiwa Nation (Blood) peoples in Lethbridge and on the reservation that stretches south from Fort Macleod to the town of Cardston, in southern Alberta. Being privy to some of those conversations as a consequence of over-hearing them while performing part-time Server functions in the Restaurant Industry, I became disillusioned by the assumptions of inferiority and worthlessness I repeatedly heard used to define Aboriginal identity. The Constitutional Conference process failed to reach consensus on the establishment of understanding in relation to the 'rights' of First Nations' peoples to self-government and self-determination, and the climate in Lethbridge provided me with ample evidence of unresolved intolerance from 'white' people toward 'Indians'. An attachment to the principle of a 'cultural mosaic' as the defining characteristic of Canada's identity and my altruism both served to motivate me into searching out an argument that could provide the moral and legal authority to convince fellow Canadians that the premise of an inherent right to self-government and self-determination for Aboriginal communities throughout the nation was one that they must acknowledge and give credence to.

In 1988, Chief Roy Fox sent letters to the Premier of Alberta that expressed his community's concerns over what was perceived as a pattern of  increasing incidents of deaths and murders of Kainaiwa Nation members under peculiar and mysterious circumstances. Those letters, and others sent by concerned parties, also expressed dissatisfaction with the police investigations into those deaths, and suggested that the authorities had been either unwilling or unable to solve the tragedies to the satisfaction of the community. A Public Inquiry was established under the direction of Commissioner C.H. Rolf in 1989, and shortly thereafter hearings began in Lethbridge and Cardston. Coinciding with the climate of intercultural tensions in southern Alberta at the time, in 1988 I had graduated from L.C.C. and had decided to move across the Coulee to the University of Lethbridge (U. of L.), to begin a four-year term of study toward a Bachelor of Arts Degree, majoring in Political Science. Throughout my years of study at L.C.C., and during the years that would follow at the U. of L., I became increasingly disturbed by the allegations of racism and genocide that members of the Kainaiwa Nation claimed were motivating the treatment they received at the hands of the authority figures responsible for justice administration within their community. Hitherto I had not given much thought to the colonial regime that provided the foundation of our nation's historical evolution, nor had I understood how many comparisons were possible with the Apartheid regime in South Africa and the colonial administrations that had emerged to exploit and oppress the indigenous peoples across Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Driven by the influences of my early life in Africa; by the experiences of thirteen years living in southern Alberta and the exposure I had to some racist attitudes; by my belief in the concept of a 'just' society, fairly and impartially governed by the 'rule of law'; and by my passion for investigating, rooting out, and exposing injustice, the appeal to learn more about the historical and legal arrangements between the Crown and Aboriginal peoples magnified.

The cumulative impact of all of these experiences stimulated my interest in pursuing graduate studies, and in 1993 I began course work at the University of Alberta, Department of Political Science, toward the Master of Arts Degree that this, my Thesis draft paper was prepared for. By that point I had already been influenced by reading the reports and findings of the Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall, Jr., Prosecution in Nova Scotia, the Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba, the Report of the Task Force on the Criminal Justice System and its Impact on the Indian and Metis People of Alberta, the failed Meech Lake Accord process, the Oka Crisis in Quebec, and the Lone Fighters Society attempted blockade of the Old Man River Dam project in Southern Alberta. The evidence available to stand in support of the dismal treatment Aboriginal peoples have experienced during their centuries of association with the Imperial and Canadian Crown is abundant, and yet the political and legal will in Canada has been quite resistant to the acceptance of an inherent right to self-government and self-determination for First Nations' peoples. For at least the past thirty years Canadians have been struggling to articulate exactly what is meant by the sentence, "existing aboriginal and treaty rights are hereby recognized and affirmed," as it reads in Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1981.

Without question, the greatest source of dissension has arisen out of the correlation between inherent rights and sovereign rights. Instructed by Brian Slattery's observation that, "issues of sovereignty are implicated in many current disputes between native Americans and governmental authorities over such matters as land claims, treaty rights, the application of customary law, and powers of self-government," I arrived at a similar conclusion to the one that he reached in a 1991 article, "Aboriginal Sovereignty and Imperial Claims," (published in the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Vol.29, No.4, at p.322). Slattery noted that, "[u]ntil some understanding on this matter is reached, it seems unlikely that the disputes will be resolved or fade away."

The argument presented in this and subsequent articles on this blog is primarily addressed toward reaching resolution of these disputes. In an effort to bring closure to the debate over the scope and content of Aboriginal rights, therefore, I intend to focus the analysis within these articles on the following question:

Is the right to self-government and self-determination an inherent right possessed by Aboriginal peoples as a consequence of being the original occupants of the lands now claimed by the Canadian state, or is it a contingent right, based on the benevolent 'grant' of powers and jurisdiction from the Federal and provincial governments?

Further on the examination of this point, I want to consider the underlying question that inevitably flows from a consideration of the dichotomy between these opposing schools of thought toward the rights of First Nations' peoples in territories claimed as being a part of the sovereign domain of the Canadian state:

In International Law, does Canada possess an unfettered sovereign title to the territories it has assumed control over; based on Imperial Crown transfer of land title, Post-Confederation Treaties with First Nations' peoples, and/or premised on a 'Settlement Thesis' legitimating acquisition of title to lands over which no treaty was signed? Or, conversely, regardless of Treaties and the settlement of Canada by peoples of European heritage, do First Nations' peoples still possess a sovereign title to the lands that their ancestors have inhabited since time immemorial that can serve to fetter Canadian sovereignty over British North America?

During the course of the past three decades I have traveled a trail through eight centuries of convoluted legal and historical scholarship with the aim of discovering a conclusive appraisal of those seemingly elusive 'existing aboriginal and treaty rights'. As a consequence of the research I have completed, I defend the argument that the historical archives and my research supports:

First Nations' peoples in Canada possess an inherent right to self-government and self-determination. Further, and coincident with this right, there must be an acknowledgment by the Government of Canada, the provincial legislatures, and the people of Canada that First Nations' peoples continue to enjoy a sovereign title over the lands on which they live and have a right to establish whatever processes and institutions they deem necessary and desirable for the good and orderly governance of their communities - including the right to make laws and to establish independent justice systems for dispute and conflict resolution functions within First Nations' territories.

Undoubtedly, there are those who will shudder at the potential for jurisdictional chaos within such a hypothesis, not to mention the possible threat that such a conclusion could hold for the very complex of the existing Confederation. Those who hold and manipulate the strings of power and authority under the current 'quasi-federal' system will most certainly resist, as they have for well over a century, any infringement on the 'rights' and 'titles' that they have come to believe they inherited from the forefathers who reached terms of agreement for the formation of Canada, and from the imperial Crown that preceded them. Those prone to 'doom and gloom' imaginations of such a complication of legal entitlement over Canada's assumed territories will hesitate in giving any credence to such an argument, regardless of its merit, for fear of the change that it will bring to the identity of the state that they have found a sense of security within and an allegiance toward. In response to such resistance and defensiveness, I intend to suggest that, far from tearing apart the very fabric of our society, there is the potential within such an acknowledgment for a positive and dynamic reconstruction of the ties that bind us together. As a means to articulate this vision, I propose that in fact:

Syncretism of 'distinct societies' within 'the Village' (Canada) can be achieved through the paradox of pluralism in governing bodies and institutions, by adopting and promoting a new 'Longhouse' paradigm of cohabitation.

As the above synthesis of my vision quest infers, this work is the product of many contributions. If the evidence and insights I share herein serve to improve the lives of First Nations' peoples and help to strengthen 'the Village' in the twenty-first century, the credit goes to those people who I have met and been influenced by along the journey to now. I thank them for their teaching and guidance, for their support and encouragement, and for the wisdom I was able to glean from their thoughts. If this endeavor does not prove to contribute to those aims, the burden for failing to do so is mine alone. That said, I believe my conscience will be clear, for all that I am attempting to do is share with you 'the truth as I have come to know it.' Beyond that, no person can go.

Truth & Reconciliation - Toward a New Path - Chapter 1

Crescent Falls, a few minutes drive west of Nordegg, Alberta, is a deep gorge and waterfall in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Standing on the rocks above and watching the water rush over the ledge to the canyon floor, it is hard to think of anything but the magnificence of nature. A glance up-stream to the towering mountain range in the distance binds the imagination to pondering over the millions of years it took to shape such splendor. Mesmerized by the roar of waves dancing head-long into the stream below, the anxieties of daily life and the polemics of humanities relations seem transient and trivial against the back-drop of nature's apparent antiquity and immortality. Undaunted by the affairs of mankind, these waters have continued to flow along their course, day-after-day, since continental ice sheets contracted to expose an ice-free corridor from the Yukon to Montana some 12,000 years ago.

The perpetuity of this stream running through the wilderness is analogous to the sustained fluidity of transition that characterizes the history of civilization. During the same epoch that the waters at Crescent Falls have been pouring across the rocks, the ancient societies of Babylon, Rome, Greece, Prussia, the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of the Kongo, the Mayas, and the Aztec Empire all rose to prominence and then fell to impotence. Their individual eras are little more than fleeting moments in the life of a tributary, and they are only a small number of the societies and cultures that have come and gone.

The year is now 2017 A.D., and across the globe currents of change persist in their assaults on the complexion and organization of many other political communities. In our preceding twentieth century alone a host of distinct societies and political orders proved incapable of stemming the tides that threatened to erode their foundations. The once powerful British Empire succumbed to the demands of self-government asserted by colonial societies throughout the regions of its realm and transformed into the Commonwealth of Nations; a loose alliance of independent nation-states. German society was divided by a brick wall and barbed-wire fences after the defeat of Adolph Hitler's Third Reich in the Second World War, only to be reunited by the collapse of Communism and the crumbling of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. South Africa emerged from decades of Africana-minority rule under the Apartheid system of government to see the day when Nelson Mandela, one of the founders of the indigenous liberation movement, was elected as the first black President. In the 'Americas' a renaissance of indigenous cultural identities, suppressed by the ancestors and institutions of European imperial powers over the course of the past few centuries, underscores intensified quests for self-government and self-determination in First Nations' communities across both 'New World' continents.

The focus of this article, and subsequent ones to be posted on this blog, is the broad subject of claims to rights of self-government and self-determination by Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The challenge to the hegemony of Canada has become located within the articulation of legal rights that the Constitution Act, 1981 claims to protect for First Nations' peoples living within its borders. In Part II of the Act, Rights of the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada, Section 35.(1) states that, "[t]he existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed." The Act did not, however, define just exactly what rights it was referring to in the context of "...existing aboriginal and treaty rights..." Instead of defining those rights, the Act established a process of Constitutional Conference(s) in Part IV, Section 37., that were intended as a means to arrive at "...the identification and definition of the rights of those peoples to be included in the Constitution of Canada,..."  Somewhat ass-backward, the idea was that the Constitution Act, 1981 would provide constitutional recognition for whatever rights it was that the Constitutional Conference(s) agreed upon; through the participation of the Prime Minister, the First Ministers of the provinces, and whatever "...representatives of those [Aboriginal] peoples..." the Prime Minister chose to invite participation from in the course of the discussions.

In approaching this field of study it is my intention to center my analysis around two specific ongoing debates. First, I will examine the debate between 'inherent' and 'contingent' rights approaches to the acceptance of an Aboriginal right to self-government and self-determination in Canada. Secondly, I will address the common perception that the Government of Canada possesses exclusive sovereign title over the territories that it has assumed, and the corresponding challenge being presented by Aboriginal peoples against this claim to unfettered title over lands that their ancestors have lived on since time immemorial. Drawing upon references from legal and historical scholarship dating back to as early as the thirteenth century and following right through to the twenty-first century, I conclude from my analysis of these two debates and the body of research behind them that Aboriginal people in Canada do possess an "inherent" right to self-government and self-determination; that such an inherent right encompasses an existing right to sovereign authority over their lands and peoples; and that the Government of Canada's sovereignty is not exclusive within the Canadian confederation of regions. I further assert that, coincident with the recognition of these rights, Aboriginal peoples in Canada and the governments of their making possess the right to establish whatever processes and institutions they deem necessary and desirable for the good and orderly governance of their communities - including the right to make laws and to establish independent justice systems for dispute and conflict resolution functions within First Nations' territories.

To the vast majority of Canada's population an argument made by a citizen of this country that brings into question the legitimacy of Canadian sovereignty might be perceived as tantamount to treason. On November 11th of each year, Remembrance Day, millions of people across this country gather at cenotaphs and/or wear red poppies to pay their respects to those men and women who have fought and died for the protection of the rights and freedoms of Canada's citizenry. To assert that the country these people died to protect may have been founded on a debasement and bastardization of International Law principles, and to suggest that other 'nations' may have equally legal and moral claims to this territorial region, is likely to be taken as a great insult by many war veterans.

My Grandfather and Father, as well as many other members of our family tree, served in the defence of Canada, and our family has roots in British North America that date back five generations. Many lives were lost so that I and the other children of my age could live in a future where ideas and arguments are expressed freely, and to live in a world where notions of peace, freedom, and respect for rights to life and liberty shape the idealism in international political pronouncements. Any who believe that I am somehow less committed to respecting and serving that legacy are sadly mistaken. However, there is a rapidly growing body of historical and legal literature emerging that stands in support of an existing Aboriginal right to sovereign title over the lands on which they live and on which their ancestral heritage is located, and 'justice' dictates that it cannot simply be ignored. There are also many Aboriginal families who lost the companionship of sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, as well as mothers and fathers to the battlefields of Europe during the 1940s, and it seems self-evident that their ancestors have an equal claim to ensure that articulations of Canada's historical evolution take into account the communal rights of First Nations' peoples.
Rather than presenting a threat to the hegemony of the Canadian state, as many might first be inclined to believe, I would assert that recognition and statutory articulation of such rights within our nation could have dynamic consequences that would serve to remind all in our society that, "...as Canadians we take our life from the fruitful collision and interpretation of many inheritances and thus, we grow."

Toward defence of this premise, in future articles on this blog I will support the argument that syncretism of 'distinct societies' within 'the Village' (Canada) can be achieved through the paradox of pluralism in governing bodies and institutions, by adopting and promoting a new 'Longhouse' paradigm of cohabitation.

There are a few points to make for clarification in reading of future articles on this blog. First, I have used italics, perhaps more frequently than readers my be acustomed to, in order to emphasize the specific legal paradigm that the reader should be considering while reflecting on the accompanying text. For example, at several points the reader may encounter the terms Canon Law, Natural Law, Positive Law, Roman Law, English Law, the Law of Nations and/or International Law within the same paragraph/page. Each of these titles refers to a specific legal paradigm or tradition and the transition from one body of legal theory to the next might be confusing unless emphasis is utilized to draw attention to the specific paradigm/tradition under consideration. I should also note that I do not pretend to be providing in these articles a comprehensive overview of these bodies of law. If the reader is not versed in these legal traditions it will be necessary to seek elsewhere for a detailed account of their constructs.

Secondly, throughout this work readers will find the terms indigenous, Aboriginal, and First Nations' peoples used interchangeably to identify those peoples whose societies and cultures possess an ancestral heritage on the American continents which precedes the arrival of European explorers, colonial representatives, and immigrant settlers from the 'Old World'.

Lastly, while I hope that this work will be easy enough for a reader of general interest to understand and appreciate, I do not present these articles as an introduction to the issues of First Nations' politics in Canada. This is a multi-article argument addressing a critique of historical and legal interpretations that have served to disadvantage First Nations' peoples in Canada, and its intended audience is most specifically those scholars and public policy formulators who, in my opinion, need to reconsider and reflect on the inaccuracies and injustices within the paradigms of legal rights and entitlements that they have hitherto been relying upon to guide their thoughts and actions.

In a multi-media age of fifteen second sound-bites it is frequently possible, and in some cases preferable, to make rapid judgments based on scant information. Many television news broadcasts now feature summaries of the top stories of the day within the first few minutes and the last few minutes of an hour-long broadcast; just in case members of their audience do not have the time or patience to stick around long enough to hear the whole story. I would implore my audience to discard such haste in drawing conclusions with respect to the 'existing aboriginal and treaty rights' of First Nations' peoples in Canada as they are presented in this and subsequent articles on this blog. Two points should be kept in mind. First, by acknowledging and articulating Aboriginal rights to self-government and self-determination in Canada's assumed territory it is not necessary to view the relationship as a dichotomy of rights or a zero-sum argument. Secondly, it is also not possible to achieve a thorough understanding of the merit within a call for their recognition by reading the Introduction and Conclusion. I ask that the reader suspend popularized understandings of Canadian history and hitherto common perceptions as to the legal rights of First Nations' peoples within it while absorbing the argument that is to be laid before you. Instructed by the maxim, "...it's easy enough to have a clear conscience - all it takes is a fuzzy memory," I propose that by doing so the experience will be made richer through the clarity that insight and objectivity can produce. I would also ask that the reader reflect on the words of Carl Schurz:

"Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right, when wrong, to be put right."

Turtle Island - Our Home in First Nations' lands - Preface

The Mithraic and early Christian association of the turtle with 'internal forces' is a reality in Canadian historical and contemporary society and culture. It is an apt description for these lands we all share and consider as, "...the true North, strong and free". "Our home and native land..." has indeed been governed for generations by the use of power and violence on people who were already living in these territories when the forefathers of European immigrants claimed 'dominion' over them and established governing laws and institutions to facilitate their assimilationist and genocidal intents. It is an abhorrent legacy for any 'Village' to acknowledge, but We own it no less.

The rights and freedoms of the First Nations' peoples housed within the shell of Turtle Island has been the subject of public discourse for as many centuries as immigrants from European nations have lived amongst them. Debates employing Canon Law, Natural Law, the Law of Nations, International Law, along with English and Canadian Law have all been exhausted for and against the inalienable First Nations' inherent right to be respected in law and in fact as equal in their humanity and in their capacity to own title to these lands preceding the arrival of European colonizers, to justify today an inherent right to self-government and self-determination in these lands. The Federal government has acknowledged these rights, and even enshrined them as "hereby recognized and affirmed" in Canada's Constitution Act, 1981, and still more than a quarter century later our society is grappling with what that means and how best to make it a reality. The Chief Justice of The Supreme Court of Canada recently acknowledged this pathetic record, but until the Government of Canada starts living the spirit and intent of the words it has agreed to in both national and international treaties, covenants and pronouncements that pace of progress will continue in keeping with the speed of a tortoise.

Through the decades of debate First Nations' women continue to go missing at alarming rates, alcohol, drug abuse and violence rip apart families and communities, that themselves suffer the added challenge of insufficient opportunities for employment, a lack of adequate schools and resources, and poor or non-existent infrastructure in terms of fresh drinking water and the systems for dispensing it, along with inadequate housing and challenges with respect to the costs and delivery mechanisms of food supplies rage on. These challenges are endemic and glaring examples of the incapacity of the Government of Canada to live up to its fiduciary responsibilities toward "Indians and lands reserved for the Indians" as specifically recognized and affirmed in the British North America Act of 1867. Since the invention of television and the advent of the nightly news you will undoubtedly find news stories about the third world living conditions, abject poverty and high rates of substance abuse and crime in many of Canada's First Nations' communities. In contemporary times gang and drug turf challenges increase the complexity of needed solutions.

It is long past time that Canadians demanded that the Federal and Provincial governments work together with First Nations' peoples to make significant strides in achieving an enhanced quality of life and improved communal and economic conditions for Canada's First Nations peoples. If Canadians valued the humanity and historical legacy of First Nations' peoples we share as much as they valued "black gold" you can be certain they would all be living in Utopias by now. The fact is that there have been enough pronouncements from enough politicians and representatives of the judiciary. We do not need as a society any more guilt and shaming exercises and speeches. What we do need is for the Federal government to live up to its fiduciary responsibilities honourably, and to commit with priority in manpower and resources to the obligations it has, as long as the sun rises and the rivers flow, to serve ALL of its citizens with equality and justice before and under the law of this nation. To do any less is to bastardize the integrity of The Government of Canada and prove it disingenuous in its sacred commitment and obligation to the service of our collective well being as its nation's citizens. That must no longer be tolerated.

The record is clear, it is no longer uncertain, and it is not at all pretty. It is time to do something about that in the now. The next Government and political party I vote for will commit to doing exactly that or they will not be getting my vote. I urge all Canadians to take an equal stand. Canada and all that makes it wonderful and unique began and is at its core identifed with its First Nations' peoples. It is past time ALL Canadians benefit equally and are able to be rightly proud of the reality that is our cultural mosaic. It is past time that We treated all of Our peoples with the honour, dignity and respect that they deserve as Our brothers and sisters in humanity and as Our fellow citizens in Our home and their native lands.

Perplexed by the way things are done sometimes? Me too!

I admit it, I am a political junkie. It's hard not to be, since political community is an ever-present part of what it means to live in society with fellow human beings. I'm also a proud Canadian, but I must confess from the outset that I am not a fan of the Conservative party in charge of the government on behalf of our citizenry. I, like many Canadians, have lost faith in and respect for the leadership we are receiving, and have become disenchanted at least, and enraged at worst, with the judgement being employed and the decisions that are being made and not made on our behalf.

This week I have been reading John Ralston Saul's impressive work, "A Fair Country - Telling Truths about Canada". I strongly recommend it to all Canadians as a very worthy read. Some of John's observations relate to language and the utilization of words in languages, as well as in regions of the world and Canada, and their influence on culture as well as on one another within a shared culture. I have also been following a fair amount of news recently referencing the, "Stephen Harper Government". It struck a chord with me this evening that personality politics in Canada is damaging our democracy severly and needs to be altered promptly. 

Stephen Harper, as leader of the Conservative Party, was appointed as Prime Minister of Canada, on behalf of Her Majesty, Queen Elizebeth II. It is not and never has been "Stephen Harper's Government" or even the "Conservative's Government" and we need to stop allowing these individuals and the media to refer to them as such. It is the "Prime Minister's Government", and the "Government of Canada". It does not belong to Stephen Harper or the Conservative party for the duration of their majority mandate and its formal identity should never be attached to individuals or their political identities. 

These individuals were elected to represent Canadians in OUR federal government public offices and have been entrusted to serve OUR Government of Canada while they are holding those public office's in good standing, regardless of their political stripes. The only time we should be experiencing the partisan nature of Canada's political system is during the election phase. At all other times, the political stripes of the individuals and groups should be subordinated/eliminated from public discourse in respect to the actions and initiatives of the governments that are there to serve us all, regardless of partisan values and priorities. 

A mandate to govern is not the same thing as a mandate to proseltize and Canadians do not need the perpetual focus on the divisiveness inherent within the partisan nature of the current environment and practice of Canadian politics. Outside of the election phase, all Canadians want their governments focused on good judgement and management of their collective best interests. The privilege to govern is not a license to enter a perpetual sparing match with the other representatives of the People appointed to govern on behalf of the People. All MPs, MLAs and Councillors, once elected, are there to work collaboratively and cooperatively with their peers to achieve the best interests of the citizenry as a whole. Failing to keep their focus on that quest, or allowing it to be distracted by partisan politics, should be grounds for recall and/or banishment. 

We also need to take the personalities out of all references to Federal, Provincial and Municipal publicly elected officials. When the Minister of Health speaks on a podium at a luncheon, or releases a media press release on a new law, regulation or initiative, we should not be attaching an individual personality or political party identity to the vessel fulfilling a function on behalf of all Canadians. Rona Ambrose's personality, and that of all other public servants, needs to be subordinated to the Office that she, and they, are charged to hold by not being utilized at all, period. It is my view that this can help to significantly reduce the egos that emerge and run rampant when celebrity-like status inflates an individual's or a group's persona above that of the people's Office held.    

I know, about now you are looking for something better to do because you thing I have gone wing-nuts, but please, let's play these thoughts out together. 

First off, by eliminating any individual or political personas from the Offices of our governments, we minimize the likelihood and ability of individual ego's being able to expand exponentially to put their own personalites, priorities and values ahead of the Public's best interests as a whole and the Mandate they were elected collectively to serve. 

Secondly, it would also reduce the ability of the media to turn what should be the reporting of news into a perpetual ideological struggle rampant with speculation, and at times even fabrication, being passed off as 'news'. Simply put, it will help to make reporting of the work of the government(s) that serve us more about the actual actions and inititiatives of OUR governments, and much less about the nature and political persuasions of the characters in the suits and dresses standing at the podiums explaining them. If it serves to reduce the constant competitiveness and ideological conflicts between elections that is often times created and fueled by the media, that would be a positive outcome for the on-going dialogue about the influence and impact of governments in our daily lives. 

Thirdly, it would also allow all of those elected officials to spend much less time worrying about their personal safety or about what they will read about themselves in the morning paper or find said about them in social media, and will allow them to focus instead within their relative anonymity and diminished stature with increased emphasis on their servitude to the duties they have been elected to fulfill.  

There are a plethora of changes that need to be made within the systems and processes of governance in Canada to counter the current capacity of individuals and political parties, who represent only a portion of the Canadian populace, to hijack and/or distort the Mandate they have been given the sacred privilege of fulfilling on behalf of the People they serve. An increase in individual obscurity in favour of increased prominance for the Office and its ownership by the People would be a start in a positive countering of the propensity for some to forget that they are there to serve US and are entitled to no more or less than that.