Indigenous Solidarity An (Un)Settler's Place

Gord Hill: Indigenous Anti-Colonialism

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For those not familiar with the AFN, could you provide more detail about your analysis and critique of the organization?

The AFN is comprised of all the Indian Act band council chiefs across the country, so it’s a national organization representing those chiefs. The Indian Act was imposed by the federal government in 1876 as a way of controlling indigenous people in Canada. It has three main components: the reserve system, where natives are to be concentrated; Indian status, which determines who is or is not “native”; and the band council system, which provides a local governing structure to implement the Act. It is through these three structures that Canada has historically imposed control over indigenous people, and it is how they have maintained control to this day. The band council system works as an arm of the federal government, which funds it. Its mandate is to implement the policies of the federal government at the local reserve community level. This is why we oppose the AFN: it’s working in the interests of the government and big business.

Are the Native Friendship Centres co-opted like the AFN?

In the early 1970s, when the indigenous movement was emerging and was on the upswing, people were self-organizing and setting up their own groups, and one of the things they did was set up social centres like the Friendship Centres. Consequently, the government came along and started funding all these different groups and agencies in order to co-opt them. They started pumping all this money in as a form of pacification and now Friendship Centres are a state-run institution and basically serve the same function as the AFN. They are generally very conservative, very hostile to activism, and always try to claim that they’re apolitical, even though they’re really a very politicized institution that’s government-funded and delivering government programs.

However, Friendship Centres do serve a purpose and meet real needs in the community. But they meet those needs because people have been so controlled that they’re unable to self-organize. And now people don’t think of organizing things like Friendship Centres because they’re already being funded by the government. They present a facade of being almost like grassroots institutions. It’s the same with a lot of different organizations: most social spaces like Friendship Centres, youth drop-in centres, and sports activities are controlled by different government agencies or through band councils. One of the reasons that they do this is to contain and limit the grassroots movement. If they don’t, grassroots organizers are going to step in, which is why they originally started funding these organizations back in the early 1970s.

How would you suggest non-native allies relate to native movements if there isn’t a national radical anti-colonial indigenous network for people to connect with?

A lot of the struggles that occur are local and based on what’s happening in specific communities. So when a struggle is coming from grassroots community people, I think this is where you should lend support. It doesn’t need to involve linking up with a national organization; one doesn’t exist and is not organizing or coordinating these actions. Non-natives can support whatever local struggle is going on in their area because it’s the grassroots people who are doing the work. In terms of the AFN and the Day of Action, you could see that a lot of well-intentioned but naïve non-native people wanted to help out and responded to the call for a Day of Action. They assumed that the AFN was a legitimate representative of native people and they wanted to rush out and support the call. But they don’t understand the history of Canadian colonialism and the way it created the band council system and the Assembly of First Nations. Non-natives should support local struggles that are going on in their area and educate themselves about the history of the system and how it’s organized. Then we wouldn’t have people running around and going out to support those who are actually a major obstacle to us organizing and having self-determination.

Are there specific groups in non-native society that can act as reliable allies in native struggles?

Within non-native society, we certainly have always had a level of support from diverse social sectors, but I wouldn’t identify any one of them as the main source of support. Certainly, within Canadian society in general, there are specific elements that do a lot of work around indigenous sovereignty, and you could say that overall there is a high level of underlying support for native peoples’ struggles, as you can see in opinion polls. A lot of people supported the call for a Day of Action even if they didn’t understand what the AFN was.

A lot of people sympathize with and understand the plight of indigenous peoples. Even if it’s not always expressed, there’s certainly underlying support for indigenous people and a lot of potential to mobilize for indigenous resistance and other kinds of broader social resistance. Here in Vancouver, we’ve been organizing against the 2010 Olympics and, at this point, have found the
anti-poverty activists to be most helpful. But one of the things about Canada and a lot of colonial systems is that the apartheid system creates two separate worlds. The one world is really ignorant and oblivious to the condition of the other, and that’s a big problem. But again, that comes back to education and becoming more knowledgeable about the world and the country that we live in.

What do you think about Howard Adams’ attempt to adapt a Marxist analysis to native struggles or Ward Churchill’s talk of anarcho-indigenism? Does this seem useful or are they bringing in political traditions that don’t connect to native people?

I think it’s useful. In order to change the present society you have to have an understanding of it. These are tools that we can use to do that because Marxism and anarchism as movements developed very strongly in resistance to the rise of capitalism. One of the main problems we’re dealing with today is the capitalist system. So using analyses that came from those movements can be very helpful. We cannot adequately resist or liberate territory for people just by organizing with our traditional means because those means can’t answer questions about the capitalist society we now live in. We need to understand how the system functions and operates, and that’s one thing Marxism and anarchism can help us with.

Because we’re living in a modern industrialized nation, Marxism and anarchism can help unite native and non-native people. They help us understand we have a common enemy at some point down the road: the capitalist ruling class.