Canada’s National Security Practices Part of Genocide Against First Nations - International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

Water Defenders lead a march against Bill C-51 in Toronto. Credit: Kevin Konnyu.

By Pamela Palmater

Throughout Canada’s relatively short history as a state, governments of all political stripes, together with the military, and various law enforcement and intelligence agencies, have treated First Nations as enemies – as threats to national security.¹ From early colonial depictions of “Indians” as dangerous savages² to modern-day intelligence assessments of First Nations as extremists,³ Canada’s national security policies have changed little in either purpose or impact. Far from protecting the safety and security of Canadians, national security laws have been designed to “secure” the state’s assertion of sovereignty and control over First Nation lands, resources and peoples. In other words, national security laws and policies are about protecting Canada’s economic interests in First Nations’ lands by any means, including sustained violent acts of genocide.⁴ Canada’s national security policy can only truly be understood in the context of its ongoing genocide against First Nations and the related economic interests.⁵

While historical acts of genocide included deaths from scalping bounties,⁶ starvation policies,⁷ forced sterilizations,⁸ and Indian residential schools,⁹ the genocide continues today under different names: ongoing forced and coerced sterilizations and abortions;¹⁰ discriminatory underfunding of food, water and housing;¹¹ the foster care system;¹² overincarceration;¹³ forced assimilation¹⁴ under the Indian Act,¹⁵ deaths caused by racism in healthcare¹⁶ and police killings of First Nations people.¹⁷ These acts were, and are, all part of a comprehensive strategy to weaken First Nations, which includes laws and policies designed to destroy them socially, culturally, politically and legally, in order to “secure permanent access to Indigenous lands and resources for the settler population.”¹⁸ To this end, Canada has engaged in a “slow-moving”¹⁹ genocide which “has taken place insidiously and over centuries,”²⁰ facilitated by a sustained “low-intensity warfare”²¹ against First Nations that continues into the present. National security laws, policies and practices over the years helped to keep track of both individuals and potential “hot spots”²² of collective resistance which might threaten Canada’s war efforts against First Nations.²³

The finding by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (National Inquiry) of ongoing genocide was met with both shock and outright denial by some commentators.²⁴ They simply could not reconcile the political rhetoric with the lived realities of First Nations. Since genocide requires intent, it sounds incredulous when contrasted with Canada’s promises of reconciliation with First Nations, based on a nation-to-nation relationship that respects their inherent, Aboriginal and treaty rights. On the surface, it also seems to be in conflict with Canada’s vast array of human rights protections at the provincial, national and international levels. However, it is precisely this chasm between stated political objectives and actual state law, policy and practice that betray Canada’s ulterior motives. The National Inquiry found that:

Canada has displayed a continuous policy, with shifting expressed motives but an ultimately steady intention, to destroy Indigenous peoples physically, biologically, and as social units, thereby fulfilling the required specific intent element.²⁵

The actions of the state’s national security apparatus must be understood in light of this policy. Knowing that the state’s objective is to secure its economic interests and political power over First Nation lands helps us to understand how and why First Nations have been constructed as a threat.²⁶ We can also better understand how other laws targeting, controlling, removing and criminalizing First Nations people, work hand in hand with national security laws. The Indian Act has a registration formula which guarantees the legislative extinction of ‘Indians’ (First Nations) over time – effectively removing them from their lands. Hunting, fishing, and timber laws and regulations severely limit First Nations rights to sustain themselves on their lands. We have literally had to “skulk around the forest like criminals” in order to survive.²⁷ From scalping bounties on our heads to outlawing our cultural practices, the only way to survive centuries of genocide was to be “criminally Indigenous.”²⁸

The Criminal Code directly criminalizes various First Nation economic practices, including the tobacco trade and gaming on reserve as contraband, illicit and illegal.²⁹ If you add to this the anti-First Nation racism built into law enforcement, especially the RCMP, then it should be no surprise that First Nations people are disproportionately targeted,³⁰ brutalized, sexually assaulted,³¹ arrested, convicted and incarcerated³² by police forces at crisis levels.³³ Despite Supreme Court of Canada cases, commissions, inquiries and reports calling out the crisis of racism against First Nations at every level of the justice system, it has been allowed to continue, and even to get worse.³⁴ This is how the First Nation terror threat is manufactured and sustained by the state and its enforcement agencies: by criminalizing what it means to be a First Nations person, whether or not the individual actually poses any safety threat to society. The more arrests, charges, and convictions racked up by the state against First Nations people, the more they become “justified” targets of even more invasive state surveillance, monitoring, and control. Shooting First Nation suspects, incarcerating them, labelling them as dangerous offenders and/or placing them on permanent probation – all of these policies work hand in hand with national security laws.

There is no sign of this ending any time soon. Governments, law enforcement, military, intelligence organizations, and now, even private corporations involved in the extractive industry work together to surveil, control and suppress the rights of First Nations peoples to their lands and resources.³⁵ There are countless examples of this. The Trans Mountain Corporation hired retired RCMP officers and security operatives while also working directly with the RCMP’s Community-Industry Response Group.³⁶ The RCMP spied on First Nations opposed to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline using unnamed “industry reports”.³⁷ Sharing intelligence on First Nations is a common practice between the RCMP and energy companies.³⁸

There is a similar problematic relationship between Coastal GasLink officials and the RCMP working together against First Nations. The RCMP effectively acts like publicly funded, private security for pipeline companies³⁹ – even authorizing the use of “lethal overwatch” to shoot peaceful, Indigenous land defenders.⁴⁰ Despite pleas from the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to remove the RCMP and their weapons from First Nation territories, and halt all major projects until First Nations consent, all the projects continue.⁴¹ National security methods now include collusion with private corporations extracting the wealth from First Nation lands.

In case anyone is still asking why, the fact that the RCMP pension is invested in TC Energy – the parent company of Coastal GasLink – should help answer that question.⁴² In fact, Canada’s largest public pension plans are heavily invested in the extractive industry and specifically in fossil fuels.⁴³ The Canadian state and indeed its law enforcement and spy agencies have a vested interest in the ongoing suppression of First Nations peoples, control of their lands and extraction of their resources – all under the guise of national security. If ever there is to be an end to genocide in Canada, it will require a massive overhaul of national security policy, starting with challenging the vested economic and political interests of the policymakers themselves.

Dr. Pamela Palmater is a Mi’kmaw lawyer, professor, and human rights expert from Eel River Bar First Nation.

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Footnotes

1
APTN National News, “Valcourt attacks Confederacy of Nations, calls chiefs ‘rogue’ and threats to national security,” APTN, May 16, 2014: https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/valcourt-attacks-confederacy-nations-calls-chiefs-rogue-threats-national-securit/. Minister of Aboriginal Affairs Bernard Valcourt responded to Chiefs who opposed proposed education legislation and said in the House: “The members of the House will agree that we should, as members, condemn in the strongest terms the threat of those rogue chiefs who are threatening the security of Canadians, their families and tax-payers.”
2
Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, “Official report of the debates of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada, 9 May 1883,” pp. 1107-1108.
3
Brett Forester, “CSIS weighed whether rail blockades supporting Wet’suwet’en could be classed as terrorism,” CBC News, Oct. 27, 2022: https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/csis-rail-blockades-assess-terrorism-1.6628584. CSIS labelled First Nations engaged in protecting their lands as “ideologically motivated violent extremists” and national security threats.
4
National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Reclaiming Power and Place: the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Government of Canada, 2019, vols. 1a and 1b: https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/ [MMIWG Report]. See volume 1a, p. 50: “The violence the National Inquiry heard about amounts to a race-based genocide of Indigenous Peoples, including First Nations, Inuit and Métis, which especially targets women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people.” See also: National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, A Legal Analysis of Genocide: Supplementary Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Government of Canada, 2019: https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Supplementary-Report_Genocide.pdf [Genocide Report].
5
Dan Neu, Richard Therrien, Accounting for Genocide: Canada’s Bureaucratic Assault on Aboriginal People, Fernwood Publishing, 2003.
6
Daniel Paul, We Were Not the Savages, 4th ed., Fernwood Publishing, 2022.
7
James Daschuk, Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Indigenous Life, University of Toronto Press, 2019.
8
Karen Stote, An Act of Genocide: Colonialism and the Sterilization of Aboriginal Women, Fernwood Publishing, 2015; Tamara Starblanket, Suffer the Little Children: Genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State, Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2018; MMIWG Report, supra note 4.
9
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, TRCC, 2015: https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf.
10
Avery Zingel, “Indigenous women come forward with accounts of forced sterilization, says lawyer,” CBC News, April 18, 2019: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/forced-sterilization-lawsuit-could-expand-1.5102981.
11
MMIWG Report, supra note 4.
12
First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada et al v. Canada [2016] CHRT 2: https://fncaringsociety.com/sites/default/files/2016_chrt_2_access_0.pdf.
13
Office of Correctional Investigator, “Indigenous Peoples in Federal Custody Surpasses 30%,” OCI, 2020: https://www.oci-bec.gc.ca/cnt/comm/press/press20200121-eng.aspx.
14
Pamela Palmater, “Genocide, Indian Policy, and Legislated Elimination of Indians in Canada” (2014) 3:3 Aboriginal Policy Studies 27 [Genocide & Indian Policy]. See also: Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, “Make it Stop: Ending the remaining discrimination in Indian registration: Interim report,” Senate of Canada, 2022: https://sencanada.ca/content/sen/committee/441/APPA/reports/2022-06-27_APPA_S-3_Report_e_FINAL.pdf.
15
Indian Act (1985 R.S.C c. I-5) [Indian Act].
16
Mary-Ellen Turpel-Lafond, “In Plain Sight: Addressing Indigenous-specific Racism in Discrimination in B.C. Health Care,” Province of British Columbia, 2020: https://engage.gov.bc.ca/app/uploads/sites/613/2020/11/In-Plain-Sight-Summary-Report.pdf. Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, “Report, vols. 1-5,” RCAP, 1996 [RCAP].
17
Shivangi Misra, Ashley Major, Pamela Palmater, Shelagh Day, “The Toxic Culture of the RCMP: Misogyny, Racism, and Violence Against Women in Canada’s National Police Force,” Feminist Alliance for International Action, 2022: https://pampalmater.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/FAFIA_REPORT_MAY2022.pdf [Report on RCMP].
18
Genocide Report, p. 13; Pamela Palmater, “Clearing the Lands Has Always Been at the Heart of Canada’s Indian Policy” in Pamela Palmater, Warrior Life: Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence, Fernwood Publishing, 2020, pp. 202-204. Pamela Palmater, “Genocide, Indian Policy, and Legislated Elimination of Indians in Canada” (2014) 3:3 Aboriginal Policy Studies 27.
19
Genocide Report, supra note 4, pp. 9-10.
20
Ibid.
21
Samir, Shaheen-Hussain, “O Canada? Separating myth from reality” (2005) 17:4 Turning the Tide, p. 3.
22
Report on RCMP, supra note 17.
23
Andrew Crosby, Jeffrey Monaghan, Policing Indigenous Movements: Dissent and the Security State, Fernwood Publishing, 2018; Report on RCMP, supra note 17.
24
Tristin Hopper, “Historians oppose statement saying Canada is guilty of genocide,” National Post, August 11, 2021: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/historians-oppose-statement-saying-canada-is-guilty-of-genocide. See also: The Globe and Mail, “Is Canada committing genocide? That doesn’t add up.” The Globe and Mail, June 6, 2019: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-is-canada-committing-genocide-that-doesnt-add-up/. MMIWG Report, supra note 4.
25
Genocide Report, supra note 4.
26
Craig Proulx, “Colonizing Surveillance: Canada Constructs an Indigenous Terror Threat” (2014) 56:1 Anthropologica, pp. 83-100.
27
R. v. Powley, [2001] 2 C.N.L.R. 291 at para 37, the trial judge writes: “If the Métis exercise their Aboriginal rights without the benefit of a licence, they are not only putting themselves at risk of legislative sanctions but they are forced to skulk through the forests like criminals as opposed to hunters exercising their constitutional rights.”
28
Pamela Palmater, “Social Conflict is Inevitable in the Decolonization Battle” in Pamela Palmater, Warrior Life: Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence, Fernwood Publishing, 2020, p. 261.
29
Public Safety Canada, “Report on The Status of The Contraband Tobacco Situation in Canada,” Public Safety Canada, 2009, 1: https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/archive-stts-cntrbnd-tbcc/ct-rpt-eng.pdf.
30
RCAP, supra note 16; The Hon. Justice Sidney B. Linden, “The Report of the Ipperwash Inquiry,” Government of Ontario, 2007: https://www.ontario.ca/page/ipperwash-inquiry-report.
31
Meghan Rhoad, “Those Who Take Us Away: Abusive Policing and Failures in Protection of Indigenous Women and Girls in Northern British Columbia, Canada,” Human Rights Watch, 2013: https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/02/13/those-who-take-us-away/abusive-policing-and-failures-protection-indigenous-women.
32
Senate of Canada, “Senators Go to Jail: When, why and what did they find?” Senate of Canada, 2022: https://sencanada.ca/media/lbcaty5i/220513_honkimpate_final2-med_res.pdf; Senator Kim Pate, “Injustices and Miscarriages of Justice Experienced by 12 Indigenous Women,” Senate of Canada, 2022: https://sencanada.ca/media/joph5la2/en_report_injustices-and-miscarriages-of-justice-experienced-by-12-indigenous-women_may-16-2022.pdf; Office of the Correctional Investigator, “Annual Reports 2000-2021”: https://www.oci-bec.gc.ca/cnt/rpt/index-eng.aspx [OCI Reports].
33
Report on RCMP, supra note 17.
34
RCAP, supra note 16; OCI Reports, supra note 32; R. v. Gladue, [1999] 1 SCR 688; R. v. Ipeelee, [2012] 1 SCR 433; MMIWG Report, supra note 4.
35
Sarah Cox, “UN committee rebukes Canada for failing to get Indigenous Peoples’ consent for industrial projects,” The Narwal, Jan. 15, 2021: https://thenarwhal.ca/un-rebukes-canada-industrial-projects/ [UN committee].
36
Brett Forester, “Stonewalled: Trans Mountain hides dealings with private security and spy firms,” CBC News, Nov. 28, 2022: https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/tmx-access-information-surveillance-1.6664572.
37
Martin Lukacs, Tim Groves, “RCMP Spied on B.C. natives protesting pipeline plan, documents show,” Toronto Star, May 9, 2012: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2012/05/09/rcmp_spied_on_bc_natives_protesting_pipeline_plan_documents_show.html.
38
Brennan Doherty, “Trans Mountain protesters warned they may already be under surveillance,” Toronto Star, June 29, 2019: https://www.thestar.com/calgary/2019/06/29/trans-mountain-protesters-warned-they-may-already-be-under-surveillance.html.
39
Chantelle Bellrichard, “RCMP spent more than $13M on policing Coastal GasLink conflict on Wet’suwet’en territory,” CBC News, Oct. 21, 2020: https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/rcmp-wetsuweten-pipeline-policing-costs-1.5769555; Brett Forester, “RCMP has spent nearly $50M on policing pipeline, logging standoffs in B.C.” CBC News, Jan. 6, 2023: https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/rcmp-cirg-spending-resource-extraction-1.6705076.
40
Jaskiran Dhillon, Will Parrish, “Canada police prepared to shoot Indigenous activists, documents show,” The Guardian, Dec. 20, 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/20/canada-indigenous-land-defenders-police-documents.
41
UN committee, supra note 35.
42
Cherise Seucharan, “RCMP Pensions are Invested in Controversial Gas Pipeline Owner,” Vice News, Feb. 26, 2020: https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5xwn4/rcmp-pensions-are-invested-in-controversial-gas-pipeline-owner.
43
Baneet Braich, “Canada’s biggest public pensions heavily investing in fossil fuels, new report suggests,” CBC News, Aug.13, 2021: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/pension-fund-investments-fossil-fuels-1.6138550. See the original report: Jessica Dempsey et al., “An Insecure Future: Canada’s biggest public pensions are still banking on fossil fuels,” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2021: https://policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/BC%20Office/2021/08/ccpa-bc_An-Insecure-Future_FINAL.pdf.

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