THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER ‘er the apathy, lack of sspect and absence of y in ethnic identity and Mural heritage, so frequent “, Canadian imos who heave been educated in our ‘beautiful, modern school njildings in such towns as Yellowknife and Inuvik. In- deed, we learned of numer- wus instances of the kind of “assertion and personal “ {amide one expects of people - lho have experienced equal- ‘ity of treatment and equality peeornnity: TIVE POLICE st winter, for example, workmen who en- ed in a drunken brawl in barracks had to be quel- by the police in the capital n of Godthab. When they sted arrest by a group of enlandic policemen, the ers didn’t hesitate to use methods of persua- sion which police everywhere employ. No one so much as _ |paised an eyebrow at the fact “that this was an instance of Mative people using force against Danes. It might be added that these Greenlandic police were fully qualified olice officers, not “native ‘assistants’ hired mainly to -jact as go-betweens, a phenom- enon by no means unknown ‘jin Canadian Indian and Eski- mo communities. | The relations between | e) Greenlanders and Danes are, in fact, far more equalitarian than those between white Canadians and Eskimos. Mar- riages of Eskimo men to Dan- ish women, as well as vice- versa, are not infreauent on various social levels. In some Greenlandic households Dan- ish domestic help are employ- ed. Places of amusement and accommodation, such as beer halls and hotels in the larger towns, are equally open to all. Remarks indicative ot racial prejudice are rarely heard, GREENLAND BEAUTY ® over the prior treaties N gave the Indians the unrestricted right to hunt and on their reserves. The In- ns claim that the govern- , therefore, has reneged Contract with the Indians ut consulting or nego- with them. The Indi- raw attention to the et that “even in expropria- yeh cases where there is a seat public need to possess n glad property, it is / e without negotia- on compensation, It is is double standard that has bittered the Indian people. € consequence of this case earently is that only white © are entitled to consi- on and consultation .. . restoration of our treaty nts would generate .. . a W sense of confidence in the ~ahadian. government whic , 8° vital to the efforts to poverty. — concluded with int and fish for food at on reserve property NATIVE INDIANS The Union of Ontario In- dians had asked the Ontario Labour Committee for Hu- man Rights to help them re- gain their treaty rights. In line with its activity in the Kenora Indian demonstration, the Committee’s policy is to assist disadvantaged minority groups to fight for them- selves. Accordingly, it helped the Indians to draft the brief and organize the delegation. A representative group of non-Indians organized by La- bour Committee Director, Al Borovoy, endorsed the brief and travelled to Ottawa to support the Indians in their presentation to the Minister of Indian Affairs. The following were some of the non-Indian groups pres- ent: The Canadian Labour Con- gress, Canadian Welfare Council, Young Women’s Christian Association, the Co- operative Union of Canada, various church groups, Jew- ish Labour Committee of Canada, United Steelworkers, United Auto Workers. Sac and then only by uneducated, temporary personnel from Denmark. Although the recently pub- lished Carrothers Report on government in the Northwest Territories recommends an increased measure of self- government, even its recom- mendations do not approxi- mate the situation in Green- land. There, a 15-member elected Council plays a major role in the affairs of the is- land, recommending legisla- tion to the Danish _Parlia- ment which is seldom refused. At present, 14 of the 15 mem- bers are Greenlanders. More- over, Greenland elects: two M.P.s who represent her in- terests in Parliament in Co- penhagen. The proceedings of the Greenland Council are carried on bilingually with on-the-spot translation, and are published in both Danish and Greenlandic. ARTS BOARD The arts are stimulated and encouraged through the Dan- ish Arts and Crafts Board; Greenlandic music has been carried to major centres of Europe and America via the tours by Mik, the Greenlandic song troupe. y experience in Green- land provided a very vivid demonstration that through an enlightened, liberal, imag- inative programme of plan- ning and development, Arctic regions can move into the modern world, without the massive destruction of native heritage and self-respect so _ prevalent in the Canadian North. Little Denmark, with only one-fifth of Canada’s population and far more lim- ited resources, has shown a way that’s proving successful. Why don’t we follow? “THE OPPRESSION OF OUR INDIANS GOES ON AND ON" By BILL CAMPBELL The terms “Race Discrimi- nation”, “White Backlash” and “Segregation” are rarely applied to the Canadian scene. We do not even have a home-grown insult-word like “Nigger” or “Wog” for our Native Indian people. And, Heaven knows, this omission is something. Yet, although the words are missing, the oppression of Canadian Indians goes on and on, as.it has for every one of the hundred years of our centenary. Like many other evil things in our country our ‘race prob- lem’ does show some signs of a beginning to a solution. In B.C., for example, all credit must go to the organized workers in the two main in- dustries where Indians chiefly find employment: fishing and logging. The recent Hazelton Sawmills story, carried in this newspaper, with reference to joint work between the IWA and the Kispiox Band Coun- cil and Native Brotherhood is just one instance of the re- wards to be gained from right thinking and right action, by both parties, on the race question. RAW TRUTH Nevertheless, without in any way minimizing the value of such ‘beginnings’, the raw truth is that’ most of the quarter million Canadian In- dians, including the forty-odd thousand in B.C., live in bleak social conditions that are enough to make the very stones weep. Indian Acts and Indian Af- fairs Departments with all their legal trappings far from being what they pretend, i.e. a protection for a minority people, are and always have been ‘the machine’ itself! The deliberate, planned purpose and end result of these gentle- men’s activities has always been the same—land stealing. And if any reader thinks this is too harsh a description let him ponder over two things. First, that in British Co- lumbia, out of a total of 192 Indian Bands, only 16 of these have land Treaties. This means, in the words of the NO MEANING FOR HIM eminent B.C. anthropologist Professor Wilson Duff. . . “the other 176 Bands are still without Treaties ... that the Native Title of these lands is still alive, unsurrendered and in effect’. : The other thing to be aware of is that this quite illegal plundering of Indian land, (that is, of the little they have been “allowed” to keep in the form of Reserves), is still go- ing on by the same class of people who have done it from the start. :, MORE REFINED No longer is the job done with a musket in one hand and a Bible in the other—and a bottle of gut-rot whiskey in the back pocket. Today it is much more refined with all the apparent majesty of the law on its side. One way is for a city or town municipal- ity to ‘offer’ to extend its boundaries to include a Re- serve. Promises are _made about a modern water supply and sewerage: even tax re- turns. A general softening-up process is carried out. ‘Cor- dial’ joint meetings are held between the Band and the City Fathers with just the right mixture of Big Brother and Big Wheel. Some leading Band member will be given a White business club award, another ‘permitted’ to dance with the Mayor’s wife at some function. “ A final point is, of course, again, the question of cheap labour. That the IWA has a | proud record of pressing for parity is common knowledge. But not all mills and bush operations are, alas, organ- ized yet. And side by side with this essential organizing job it seems very necessary for every trade unionist to take an active interest in dealing with one of the chief causes of cheap labour which, whatever the apologists for the millionaires may say, is still spelt ‘poverty’. Add to this, in large doses and in a hundred different ways, the denial of human dignity and you have a situation all around us which we can only ignore at our peril. , 1S He san Bir of Rice i ie eget ae 8 demure haces nce wet