Sociology of Canada: essays on cultural assimilation, healthcare, and oil and gas industries.

Essays from a Sociology of Canada course. 1. In this short essay I will define the term “pacification” as a reaction to Indigenous refusal and resistance and explain how it is used in the context of settler-colonialism in Canada. I will use Tia Dafnos' definition of the term and refer to the documentary “Is the Crown at war with us?” to consider the term's long-term consequences.

In her article, Tia Dafnos defines the term “pacification” as “the production of social relations and institutions in place of existing forms of social organization [and, m]ore specifically ... the fabrication of a “new” society through the destruction of an existing one” (Dafnos., 59). In cases where pacification is used in relation to Indigenous peoples and their land, it is done with the objective of land expansion for the purposes of capitalist accumulation. Legal strategies such as “the expropriation of land and resources, the displacement and confinement of Indigenous peoples, the criminalization of means of subsistence outside of waged labour, and assimilationist mechanisms such as residential schools and the outlawing of cultural practices” (ibid., 59) are used to “disrupt and destroy Indigenous identities and social, political and economic relations while establishing an order facilitating capitalist accumulation” (ibid., 59).

In the context of Canada's Indigenous peoples' resistance, pacification can be understood as a response to it, since it is “on-going and constantly shifting” (ibid., 59) to adapt to the different forms of Indigenous resistance and refusal. Since the resistance is itself a response to Canada's White-settler colonialist practices, which have had vast detrimental effects on Indigenous culture and heritage, pacification can be understood as a continuous means of suppressing Canada's Indigenous communities.

Pacification is further legitimized in Canada by the claim that it is a response to the “risk” that Indigenous peoples pose against the settler state. Though, as Dafnos points out, “the vast majority of protests by Indigenous peoples having been characterized by little to no violence, there is a persistent perception and representation of such events as risky and threatening” (ibid., 65), and surveillance, policing, and pacification of them is thus considered necessary and legitimate. Promoting such biased views of Indigenous peoples' actions and only recognizing their rights as long as they do not disrupt the more highly valued political-economic relations of the settler-state perpetuates the long-lasting legacy of Canada's colonialism.

The long-term consequence of pacification in Canada is a certain perception of Indigenous peoples that vilifies and others them. They are to this day perceived as uncivilized and in need of surveillance and policing and do not receive the rights promised to them because of this. The documentary “Is the Crown at war with us?” makes this point abundantly clear as it outlines the events of the aggression toward the Mi'kmaq fishermen of Burnt Church, New Brunswick by the federal fisheries and the RCMP in the summer. As per their Treaty rights, the Mi'kmaq fishermen were allowed to fish out of season but the non-Indigenous fishermen were angered by this, which resulted in a standoff in which both parties did damage to each other's property and people.

Even though the Mi'kmaq fishermen were within their rights to fish, their actions were interpreted as dangerous by the RCMP, which assumed that the fishing would lead to a depletion of resources. This, then, led to them policing the Indigenous fishermen, having labelled the policing as justified. The documentary shows the long-lasting effects of pacification of Indigenous peoples in Canada – there is a cultivated social perception of them as uncivilized, dangerous, and in need of surveillance and policing. 2. In this short essay I will argue that settler-state Canada was built under the premises of land theft and assimilationist policies towards First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people by analyzing assimilationist tactics such as Residential Schools in which Indigenous peoples were forcibly made to renounce their cultures, the 60s Scoop, which separated many Indigenous children from their parents and cultures, and the Foster Care System, which in many ways replaced the Residential School System. I will support this argument by points outlined by Harris and MacDonald and Hudson.

It is important to note that prior to the colonizers' arrival the Indigenous peoples who occupied Canada had no need for any guidance – they had well-established communities with rich cultures and plenty of resources, both of which were deeply connected to the land they lived on. The concept of terra nulius, a Latin expression meaning “nobody's land”, was used to excuse the colonization, as the “[w]hite immigrants and settlers in British Columbia in the 1860s took it for granted that the land awaited them” (Harris, 2). This concept is fuelled by white-settler ideology, entailing that the land did not belong to Indigenous peoples, but was “unsettled and unused”, and its proper use would involve development, which provided the colonizers with economic and social attraction to it. Indigenous peoples' uses of it such as for settlement sites and burial sites, their dependence on the land for resources, and their spiritual connections to it were seen as illegitimate, since only “progressive” expansion was given any value.

Stemming from the same White-supremacy fuelled ideals, the colonizers used assimilationist tactics such as the Residential School System formerly known as the IRS, the 60s Scoop, and the Foster Care System. MacDonald and Hudson explain that the colonizers attempted to “forcibly assimilate indigenous people, ... obliging them to attend [residential] schools, ... forbidding ... students to speak their own Aboriginal languages and practice their traditional beliefs and religious customs” (MacDonald and Hudson, 429). They note that the IRS enforced separation of children from their families and entailed mistreatment such as “verbal, physical and sexual abuse” (ibid., 430) with the ultimate goal of “forced assimilation and cultural destruction” (ibid., 430). From this it is clear that the IRS was a highly cruel way of systemically getting rid of Indigenous culture to assimilate Indigenous populations into the ways of life of the settlers.

The 60s Scoop began in the 1930s and 1940s and entailed thousands of Indigenous children being “taken from their parents and sent for adoption or to foster homes, the majority sent to non-Aboriginal homes” (ibid., 445) without their parents' consent. This action in itself involved assimilation in two ways; the separation of children from their families implied that the parents were incapable of providing a good upbringing for them, since state workers considered their housing situations to be poor and lacking proper care and the pairing of Indigenous children with non-Indigenous hosts discontinued their ability to be raised within their culture, and replaced it instead with that of the settlers.

The Foster Care System can be understood as the new IRS, since it upholds its values of forcibly removing Indigenous children from their parents and subsequently their culture to impose that of the colonizers'. This notion is supported by the fact that in the 1970s, one third of all children in foster care were Indigenous, which shows the disproportionate representation of them in the system and 70% of all parents were non-Indigenous, from which follows that the Indigenous children were rarely paired with hosts who understood their cultures and could uphold them. This interrupted cultural transmission and assimilated Indigenous children into the White-settler society. Not only did the Foster Care System prevent Indigenous children from staying within their cultures and communities, it caused long-lasting effects on cultural transmission and inter-generational trauma, since children lost their parents, the parents lost their roles as parents and grandparents, and cultural transmission was thus interrupted across generations.

From considering the assimilationist nature of the IRS, the 60s Scoop, and the Foster Care System, and their detrimental effects on Indigenous culture transmission to forcibly make way for White-settler values, it can be concluded that Settler-State Canada was built under the premises of land theft and assimilationist policies towards Indigenous peoples. 3. In this short essay I will argue that the universal health care system adds the values of equality and unity to the Canadian national identity, since it is accessible to all Canadians regardless of wealth, province of residence, or any other factors. I will be using examples from Marchildon's article to examine Douglas' healthcare model and to support my ideas.

Firstly it is important to note the ways in which Douglas' model differs from that of Manning, since both were being considered in the mid-1950s. In essence, the men's models differed in that Douglas' was built on the notion of free access, while Manning's was built on the notion of individual responsibility.

“Douglas’s ultimate objective was to transform medically necessary health care “from a commodity that was bought and sold into a basic human right, available to anyone on the basis of need rather than ability to pay”” (137). He strongly believed that an “inability to pay should never be a factor in preventing people from getting all the health care needed” (137), and thus proposed a healthcare system based on free access to all Canadian citizens across the entire nation. He made the system further accessible by ensuring that “everyone had a right of access to hospital services on the same terms and conditions” (135), and could thus not be denied it or discriminated against based on factors such as wealth or race. Additionally, instead of financing healthcare with individuals' own funds, Douglas' system's “[f]unding was through taxation and low but compulsory premiums (poll taxes) on households” (135), which promoted a “standard of public morality” (136). By ensuring a standardized payment for healthcare services, Douglas ensured that the wealthier society members could not get better treatment than the poor ones simply because they could afford to, thus ensuring accessibility.

This differs from Manning's proposed system, which emphasized individual responsibility over free access. Manning “strongly believed that those who were capable of paying for coverage should do so of their own volition ... and that the state should only subsidize the purchase of health insurance for those who could not afford to pay. In his mind, the primary responsibility to ensure coverage should remain with the individual, not the collective, and a compulsory universal plan was damaging to public morality because it removed this individual responsibility” (136). He believed that this was an optimal system since he found human beings to be evil in nature and possessing “inherent tendencies toward evil” (138), and thus likely to take advantage of free services if offered them. Manning's approach thus differed from Douglas' in terms of accessibility.

Ultimately, Douglas' system was chosen and has added values of equality and unity to the Canadian national identity. It has added equality because of all Canadian citizens being allowed access to it regardless of any factors such as wealth and race, and it has added unity because the accessibility rule works for all provinces in the same way and thus creates a sense of a national standard. Douglas “believed strongly in the concept of national direction through standard setting by the federal government ... [and] rejected labels such a centralist or decentralist” (140), suggesting a model which included all Canadians equally, creating a sense of unity across the entire nation. 4. In this essay I will argue that in the issue of oil and gas industries and climate change, the central problem is that Indigenous communities are disproportionately affected by the environmental damage that is being done. I will show that the disproportionate way in which Indigenous communities are affected is due to Indigenous peoples often living in poor areas, as well as to a cultivated social perception of them, and, since both of those issues are systemic, this means that Canada's settler-colonialism has a lasting legacy. I will support my ideas with points from Davidson's article The Effort Factor: An Adjustment to our Understanding of Social-Ecological Metabolism in the Era of Peak Oil, the Alton Gas project, and the documentaries The Caretakers and Is the Crown at was with us?.

Oil extraction is a continuous practice that has affected the environment and societies residing in it. As Davidson explains, “[o]il has made up the largest share of global energy consumption for at least 40 years” (Davidson, 70), and because of our continuous need for it, “we are approaching Peak Oil, that point at which global production rates of conventional oil plateau, before facing a rocky but inevitable downward slide. Remaining global reserves consist primarily of unconventional oil sources that require more complicated extraction technologies” (ibid., 70). Thus, the capitalist nature of oil extraction is an ongoing process that adapts to its demand, and will continue its detrimental impact onto ecosystems. Its extraction techniques “consist of drilling down as far as 10,000 feet, and then sending several lateral extensions out from the wellbore, also as far as 10,000 feet. Water, sand, and chemicals are injected into the well under extremely high pressure to fracture the substrate, releasing the oil or gas, which is then pumped to the surface. Much of the injected water comes back up too, in contaminated form, and since it is no longer useable, one common disposal method is to pump it back into the ground (ibid.,70). This shows how detrimental oil extraction's impact is onto the communities in or near which it is done.

Gas industries are also extremely detrimental to the environment and ecosystems in that storing gas often requires severe intervention into natural ecosystems, from which it is very difficult to recover.

For example, the proposed Alton Gas project entails creating salt caverns in Nova Scotia, in which natural gas may be stored. This would involve the daily dumping of 3,000 tons of salt into the Shubenacadie river, which is sacred to the Mi'kmaq people living near it. This would disrupt the river's ecosystems immensely and put the lives of the Indigenous peoples who use the river for resources at risk. As Dafnos writes, “Aboriginal communities downstream from ... oil sands have consistently expressed concern for the ecological impacts they are confronting and the lack of consultation they have received from industry” (ibid., 81), but “have yet to influence the pace of development” (ibid., 81). This means that Indigenous communities have expressed their lack of desire for oil and gas industries affecting their ecosystems, but have not been listened to.

It is now important to consider the ways in which Indigenous peoples are affected by oil and gas industries as well that differs from the way other communities are affected. Though the oil and gas industries' impact on the environment may in one way or another affect all Canadians, Indigenous communities are often disproportionately affected by them due to systemic racism. The reason for this occurrence is twofold – it is due to Indigenous peoples living in poor areas, and to the government having a cultivated social perception of them and acting on this perception.

Indigenous peoples tend to live in poor communities due to economic reasons which stem from colonialism. A long history of cultural eradication has left Indigenous communities at an immense disadvantage for acquiring and keeping jobs, and though they are allotted land, it is typically at a distance from other residential areas, which, to corporations, makes it a favourable place to extract oil or extend pipelines. In the documentary The Caretakers, the Kinder Morgan company instigates an extension of an oil pipeline through the Musqueam land of Burnaby mountain without the Indigenous peoples' consent. The documentary depicts them peacefully protesting this extension, since it would entail cutting down of trees and disruption the land's ecosystems. As one of the protesters in the documentary points out, the issue at hand is not just a climate change or an environmental one, but, rather, an Indigenous rights one (The Caretakers), since it is their land that the extension would impact. The documentary depicts police officers enforcing the Kinder Morgan pipeline extension by removing and arresting the peaceful protesters. Since corporations feel as though they can use Indigenous land for their own needs and are able to employ police force to enforce this notion, it is evident that colonialism left a legacy in Canada that is being perpetuated by its very government representatives.

The police officers policing Indigenous peoples for exercising their rights or utilizing what is rightfully theirs is further facilitated by a cultivated social perception of them as dangerous and needing surveillance and policing. This perception is made clear by the documentary Is the Crown at war with us?, which depicts the events that spanned between 1999 and 2001, and concerned the rights of Mi'kmaq people in New Brunswick to fish outside of the fishing season, which they were granted. Federal fisheries believed that this right would lead to a depletion of resources, and went head to head against the Indigenous fishermen, and were actually backed up by the RCMP. The Indigenous rights were entirely disregarded, and the Indigenous fishermen were forcefully policed. This shows that there is a social perception of Indigenous peoples in Canada as dangerous and requiring surveillance and policing, which stems from colonialism.

Since both of these reasons – Indigenous peoples often living in poor areas and the cultivated social perception of them – are a result of systemic racism stemming from Canada's history of White-settler colonialist practices, it can be concluded that this racism has an ongoing legacy in Canada. Indigenous peoples being disproportionately affected by the oil and gas industry and climate change due to the aforementioned reasons underlines this legacy. Davidson, D. J. (2017). The Effort Factor: An Adjustment to our Understanding of Social-Ecological Metabolism in the Era of Peak Oil. Social Problems, 66(1), 69-85. doi:10.1093/socpro/spx031

Goldberg, D. (2017). The Caretakers. Retrieved June 25, 2020, from https://vimeo.com/201256107

Obomsawin, A. (2008, February 21). Is the Crown at war with us? Retrieved June 25, 2020, from https://www.nfb.ca/film/is_the_crown_at_war_with_us/