The Martlet

Adam Gaudry is Métis and a PhD candidate in indigenous governance.

As the government of Canada meets with First Nations leaders, this will be an important part of the “moving forward” rhetoric. While there has long been a “moral imperative” argument to renew Indigenous-Canada relations, the idea that there is an economic imperative to “fix” this relationship is a relatively new one, emerging after a series of Canadian court cases in the 1990s obligated government and industry to “consult” Indigenous communities before extracting resources from their territories.

Economic development is seen as the future of Indigenous communities by many, both Indigenous and not. But when we unpack this term and examine how government and industry use it, we can see it merely as another colonial-style “development” program, which ultimately undermines the long-term sustainability of local Indigenous economies.

I am not talking about all types of economic development, or the type of small-scale community economic development that most Indigenous communities want, but a very specific kind of capitalism based on large-scale resource extraction. This usually involves some sort of community-corporate partnership that is supposed to create jobs through industry employment, as well as provide some trickle-down for local contractors to supply industry. The idea is that the presence of big business will also create demand for small business.

However, can capitalist economics “fix” the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada? No, I argue, because this logic is based on a misunderstanding of the issues facing Indigenous communities. The government’s logic goes like this: Indigenous communities are in need of economic development, and big business needs the resources on Indigenous lands. So a mutually beneficial partnership can be created — one side has resources, the other cash and jobs. Supposedly everybody wins.

Yet, the central concern for many Indigenous peoples remains; how can we protect our ways of life from colonialism, government interference, and environmental degradation? If these are indeed the goals for our communities, the solutions being offered to us — large-scale projects like dams, mines, and pipelines — do not get at the heart of the matter. Rather they propose the most destructive, shortsighted, and risky projects imaginable that will undermine the long-term viability of land-based cultural practices, the very thing communities are trying to protect and revive.

Furthermore, capitalist economic development does not address the colonial power imbalance that has created the poverty, educational disparities, and the struggles for cultural survival that typify colonialism in this country. In fact, the primary motivation for the theft of our lands, and the criminalization of Indigenous governance, was capitalist development in the first place. Capitalist development has created the greatest disparity between rich and poor the world has ever seen, because it’s premised on some people getting rich at the expense of others.

While we can argue the merits of capitalist economic development in Indigenous communities, the idea that this is the basis for greater unity doesn’t really hold up to any scrutiny. In fact most Indigenous-Government conflict is over capitalist economic development anyway: The Oka crisis was about a golf-course on a burial ground, Grassy Narrows was about a pulp mill polluting water, Caledonia was about a housing development on reserve lands, and the Atlantic lobster fishery felt threatened by Burnt Church setting a small amount of lobster traps. Now, 61 First Nations have voiced collective opposition to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline in B.C., which has led to tension with the federal government.

Can capitalism be the driving force for better Indigenous-Canadian relations? No. This relationship tends to be “good” when Indigenous peoples are saying “yes” to government-backed corporate projects, but strained when Indigenous people want to follow their own path, and reject large-scale capitalist economic development. This kind of relationship is neither healthy nor functional — it is based on Indigenous communities toeing the line.

Real understanding is not facilitated by economics; it is a social and political process: social in the sense that we need to have better interpersonal relations, and embody these in expressing respect for one another in everyday ways; and political in the sense that the original view of Indigenous-Canadian relations was not a unified state, but a treaty relationship between separate polities that respected the independence of one another. This is what a “fixed” relationship should look like — two political communities engaging in respectful dialogue.