Health of Canada tied directly to Indigenous rights

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/12/2020 (1770 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As you read this, the Canadian military will (hopefully) have been deployed to Shamattawa First Nation, where nearly one in five citizens has tested positive for COVID-19.

This should have happened weeks ago — when the remote northeastern Manitoba community originally asked (while also dealing with a tuberculosis outbreak). Let’s hope our northern relatives can get things under control.

That’s right, I said relatives.

As I predicted two weeks ago — after military support was deployed to Opaskwayak Cree Nation to address coronavirus outbreaks in that community near The Pas — all that’s left to help First Nations in the fight against the coronavirus is the Armed Forces.

This is what the end of resources looks like: it’s all hands on deck now.

The virus knows no race, gender or class and thrives where poverty, overcrowded housing, and a lack of infrastructure and health resources exist. As long as these conditions exist in society, we are all threatened by this disease, regardless where you live: Norway House, Charleswood or Selkirk.

Because of policies such as the residential school system, the Indian Act, and mismanagement by Indigenous Affairs, there is an overwhelming spread of the disease on First Nations. The responsibility lays firmly at Canada’s feet.

Soon, it will come back to cities, unless we collectively do something.

Canada created this problem and now the problem is threatening Canada itself.

It is why Indigenous communities must be near the top of the list for COVID-19 vaccine allocation.

It is why Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister’s comments last week — suggesting the distribution of vaccines to First Nations “puts Manitobans at the back of the line” and “hurts” the province — is ignorant, divisive, and frankly, racist.

There’s no time left to play the blame game now though — lives are threatened.

We all need to do our part and wear face masks, sanitize, and make decisions in the interests of all regardless of gender, race, class, and lifestyle.

We will beat this sickness if we commit to one another more than we ever have before.

We will beat it if we see each other as family, not friends; how treaties intended us to be.

We will beat it if we reject past divisions and operate from a sense of love, responsibility and unity.

A solution emerged last week in the darkness. While Shamattawa was calling for military support, the federal Liberal government fulfilled an election promise to bring Canadian law in line with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

If passed, Bill C-15 will require the federal government to finally identify what constitutes Indigenous individual and collective rights, while ensuring the law’s consistency with the declaration’s 46 articles.

These include the Indigenous right to be “free and equal to all other peoples and individuals and have the right to be free from any kind of discrimination” (Article 2), “the right to self-determination” and “autonomy” (Article 3 and 4), “rights to live in freedom, peace and security” and “not be subjected to any act of genocide” (Article 7), and “participate in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights” (Article 18).

These may be aspirational, but are far better than nothing — which is what we have now.

Bill C-15 would also force Canadian law to rectify a long-standing problem: Indigenous and treaty rights are “recognized” in the Constitution but undefined and vague until there is some march to the Supreme Court and judges are forced to determine what they are.

The result: endless conflict, little change, and billions of dollars of wasted time.

Bill C-15 would require the federal government “to take all measures necessary to ensure that the laws of Canada are consistent with the rights of Indigenous peoples set out in the declaration,” table a three-year action plan, and report on progress annually to Parliament.

It’s no coincidence, as Canada wakes up to the reality that the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples threatens its own future, the country realizes Indigenous rights are necessary for it.

The adoption of Indigenous rights will ensure full and fair partnership surrounding the development of the country, and likely less conflict.

It will give Indigenous Peoples a central role in enacting solutions that plague many Indigenous communities.

It will also empower communities to create healthy, strong communities built on self-determined infrastructures of success — and, with this, healthy, strong cultures and lives.

It’s no coincidence, as Canada entered its darkest phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, a light emerged toward a path to the future.

It’s all hands on deck now, my relatives. We all have to do our part.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca