|
March 6, 2004
CONSENSUS, NOT MAJORITY
Six Nations Mothers' objection to Red Hill deal shows Iroquois democracy at work
By T'hohahoken
The Hamilton Spectator, Forum
Most of the Canadian and U.S. students who I teach generally have little awareness of indigenous peoples. To these students, the lengthy practice of treaties and colonization seems like science fiction episodes from Star Trek. Therefore, I oblige them with appropriate examples.
To demonstrate colonization, I use Star Trek's Borg credo. "We shall add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own," say the Borg, a creature that is part machine and part human. "Your culture will be made to serve our culture ... resistance is futile."
Colonizers do that to the colonized, as we the colonized know all too well.
To describe treaties, I offer the fictional United Federation of Planets' "prime directive" of non-interference. The "prime directive" copies international mutual aid-mutual defence treaty principles, such as those found in the Two Row Wampum Treaty: "You stay in your boat. We'll stay in our canoe."
My students generally get the metaphor, although I have been dismayed by the lack of enthusiasm to learn what went on in the Americas. Unfortunately, explaining how Iroquois people govern their affairs has no easy metaphor. The Star Trek world accepts top-down leadership, from higher ranks to the lower ranks. Diversity is stratified.
I wasn't surprised by the bewilderment of one of my Law and Security students early in the semester regarding the Red Hill Creek Expressway debate.
"Why can't your people agree on anything?" she asked. "You either want the deal or don't want the deal. What's the problem?"
As usual, I said to my student "That's a good question ... what did you have in mind?"
The answer from this young woman, so steeped in democracy based on majority rule, was plain enough. "Why don't you just vote on it or something?"
Like my vexed student, Hamilton's politicians used the Red Hill Creek Expressway project to engage in a dialogue Iroquois democracy by immersing themselves in Six Nations' politics.
One Hamilton councillor described Six Nations' politics "as internal to their process." This seemingly small point made during Hamilton's Feb. 24 city council meeting recognizes the underwater volcano of Iroquois democracy.
The media reported the City of Hamilton and the Iroquois people had 10 agreements that cleared the way for the Red Hill Creek Expressway. The agreements contain compromises that give give the city the right to build the expressway in exchange for supply and service contracts for Six Nations agencies.
Both non-native architects of the deal, lawyer Paul Williams and expressway project director Chris Murray, were adamant the deal was not a treaty. However, both agents represented the deal as one which "resolved issues" pertaining to burial grounds, culturally sensitive sites, environmental protection, cultural education and hunting and fishing rights.
One critical issue they carefully failed to mention was that the agreements could be used in court as evidence the c ity consulted the Iroquois. The "consultation," they hope, helps the city "justify" its gross infringement of the Nanfan Treaty of 1701 in the Crown's courts.
Murray and Williams negotiated a field-of-dreams agreement between one faction from Six Nations and the city. As has happened many times before in Canada's dealings with "Indians", Crown change agents would coerce, threaten, and swarm the colonized -- offering seductive promises while using rushed and exclusive processes. Once approved, the deal would be done.
When city council was told that four agreeable Six Nations people approved the agreements in January 2004, it seemed any future resistance would be futile.
However during the Feb. 24 meeting, Six Nations' Mothers issued a cease and desist order that stops any agreement between the city and the Six Nations.
The effect of the Mothers' intervention should not be lost on careful observers of indigenous process. In areas of authority, indigenous mothers have, (among others things) pre-emptive rights concerning land. In this case, the Mothers agree with the peoples' objections to the expressway, an objection that followed the August 2003 claim to the valley by Six Nations' delegates to the Red Hill dispute.
Now, add the Six Nations band council to the disagreement after they backed up the Iroquois People last August. Everyone knows Canada overthrew the Iroquois government in 1924 and replaced it with the band council. Currently, band council monitors the municipality's negotiations with the local native people, a customary role for Canada's Indian Agents. Strangely, this means that the city is negotiating with a group Canada itself deemed illegal in 1924.
The careless observer sees Six Nations' disagreement as confusion and discord. In reality, the dramatic intervention by the Mothers in agreement with the People demonstrates that Iroquois democracy is working.
Thus, the Red Hill agreements have not been ratified by the three necessary areas of consent-- the chiefs, the Mothers, and the People. Fortunately, what seems to be disagreement and discord actually demonstrates the health and vitality of the Iroquois nation.
Iroquois democracy, based on consensus building and not majority rule, demonstrates this vital principle that liberal democracies should find useful -- democracy at work is a process, not an end.
T'hohahoken lives in Ohsweken. He teaches indigenous studies at Mohwk College and elsewhere in in Canada and the U.S. and has a Ph.D. from Cornell University. His views are his own.
|
