BOOK CLUB

The Inconvenient IndianBy Thomas King

NOVEMBER2015DISCUSSION GUIDE

2015 READERS’CHOICE

BOOK CLUB

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 2 BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GUIDE: NOVEMBER 2015

More than 370 million people across 70 countries worldwide identify as Indigenous. They belong to more than 5,000 distinct nations, and speak more than 4,000 languages. They have different customs and cultures, but they do share some harsh realities: removal of their lands, denial of their culture, physical attacks and being treated as second-class citizens.

Indigenous peoples often share a key value – the close association between their identity, their way of life and their land. They act as guardians or custodians of the land for the next generation. Losing it means a loss of identity.

Thomas King’s book, The Inconvenient Indian, is a sharp account of Indigenous peoples in North America and the impact of colonization, colonial policies and attitudes on their cultures, identities and lands. Through storytelling, humour and reality-checks, King dares us to realize that our heroes are misrepresented, our legends are wrong, and injustices against Indigenous peoples continue today.

In keeping with our focus on Indigenous peoples’ rights, this month’s action exposes history repeating itself once again. You will learn about The Peace River Valley, and the proposed $8 billion plus Site C hydroelectric dam that would flood more than 80 km of this important area. Once again, in the name of progress, the rights of the Indigenous community have been swept aside.

Visit page 9 to learn how to take action and stop the Site C Dam.

Thank you for being part of the Amnesty International Book Club. If you have any questions, suggestions or comments, we’d love to hear from you. Just send us an email at bookclub@amnesty.ca.

—The Book Club Team

About Amnesty InternationalAmnesty International is a global movement of more than three million supporters, members and activists in over 150 countries and territories who campaign to end grave abuses of human rights.

Our vision is for all people to enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.

We are independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion, and are funded mainly by our membership.

Until everyone can enjoy all of their rights, we will continue our efforts. We will not stop until everyone can live in dignity; until every person’s voice can be heard; until no one is tortured or executed.

Our members are the cornerstone of these efforts. They take up human rights issues through letter-writing, online and off line campaigning, demonstrations, vigils and direct lobbying of those with power and influence.

Locally, nationally and globally, we join together to mobilize public pressure and show international solidarity.

Together, we make a difference.

For more information about Amnesty International visit www.amnesty.ca or write to us at: Amnesty International, 312 Laurier Ave. E., Ottawa, ON K1N 1H9.

Reality check

COMING SOONKwe: Standing With Our Sisters Kwe: Standing With Our Sisters is a 100-page anthology edited by acclaimed author Joseph Boyden, featuring new writing and original artwork from more than fifty contributors including Margaret Atwood, Michael Crummey, and Yann Martel. Kwe was conceived by Boyden as a way to raise awareness of the crisis facing Indigenous women in Canada. Joseph Boyden has chosen to donate the proceeds to Amnesty International’s ongoing work, No More Stolen Sisters.

Look for details in the Amnesty International Book Club e-newsletter.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 3 BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GUIDE: NOVEMBER 2015

Thomas King is one of Canada’s premier public intellectuals. King was the first Indigenous person to deliver the prestigious Massey Lectures, and is also the bestselling, award-winning author of six novels, two collections of short stories and two nonfiction books. He won the 2014 Governor General’s Award for Literature for his most recent novel, The Back of the Turtle. His non-fiction tour de force, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America won the BC National Award for Canadian Non Fiction and the RBC Taylor Prize, as well as being a finalist for 2015 CBC Canada Reads. He is a recipient of the Order of Canada. He lives in Guelph, ON.

This month’s Reader’s Choice selection was made possible by you, our book club members. The Inconvenient Indian received nearly twice as many votes than any other title listed, and it’s also our first non-fiction selection. Thanks to your involvement, the book club has opened a new door to possible future books! Read on to learn more about your Amnesty International Book Club.

Since the book club launch in January 2014, we have featured seventeen books by Canadian authors (how many are on your bookshelf now?), and shared 17 cases of human right injustices. We are partnered with over 49 libraries and bookstores across Canada. In 2015 and 2016 we are partnering with the International Festival of Authors to capture more conversation around good books and human rights. So far, we’ve also hosted four webcasts, where you can ask questions, with plans to make this a regular event for our book club members in 2016. Provinces with the largest book club memberships include Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Alberta.

NOVEMBER 2015 BOOK: The Inconvenient Indian

About this month’s author

Thomas King

2015 READERS’CHOICE

BOOK CLUB

• Seventeen books by Canadian authors

• Seventeen human rights cases

• Over 49 libraries and bookstores across Canada are partners

• In 2015 and 2016 partnering with the International Festival of Authors

• Four webcasts for book club members hosted to date

• Webcasts to be a regular event in 2016

• Over 3,000 members Canada-wide

As we head into 2016 the Book Club continues to grow. By the numbers:

THE AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL BOOK CLUB IS GROWING!Follow us online:

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Join our discussion group on Goodreads.com

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 4 BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GUIDE: NOVEMBER 2015

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FROM THE BOOK

1. King discusses the futility of writing a history on several occasions. “One of the difficulties with trying to contain any account of Indians in North America in a volume as modest as this is that it can’t be done” (xiv). He states his preference for fiction over fact, and that as an author he makes no attempt to subdue owns his biases.

In learning the historical inaccuracies for events such as the Almo massacre or the story of Pocahontas, does this impact the way you may read historical accounts in the future? What does this tell you about how history is written and taught?

2. The cover of this book is from a promotional poster for a shipping company in the mid-1900s. What effect does today’s marketing of “Native” crafts, medicines and retreats have on Indigenous People and Indigenous history?

3. How has King’s use of humour impacted you as a reader, and does it make you consider things differently than had you read them in a traditional history text? Why might humor be an important tool in this account of Native people, and connecting with the reader? Did you as a reader feel it was effective?

4. King states “The need for race precedes race.” What does this signify?

5. King makes clear that history is not a thing of the past, instead clarifying that “history is the stories we tell about the past.” Discuss the effectiveness of King’s approach to history in the form of storytelling rather than a list of dates and statistics. How does the narrative become more meaningful in this form?

6. How has reading The Inconvenient Indian influenced your idea about progress in North America, and how things need to develop with Native and non-Native relations? In improving relations, respect for rights and conditions for life for Indigenous peoples in North America, what do you feel should be done?

Further discussion questions7. How was your perception challenged by King’s

discussion of Dead Indians, Live Indians and Legal Indians?

8. What can you identify in contemporary life and pop culture that plays upon the stereotypes of the Dead Indian? Having read The Inconvenient Indian, have your perceptions been challenged? Do you see what may have never before been noticed?

9. Why do you believe The Inconvenient Indian won the Amnesty International Book Club’s 2015 Reader’s Choice vote?

10. When King discusses the Indian removal legislation and the over 4000 lives lost on the Trail of Tears, he compares it to a Twin Towers moment. How does this comparison of a past tragedy to a more recent tragedy make the history become more real?

11. We as readers are confronted with story upon story of injustices towards Indigenous peoples. Having read The Inconvenient Indian, what part of this book has most remained with you?

12. King shares multiple occasions of treaties being abused, worked around and generally ignored. In this book, he shares the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which describes past circumstances where relocation was deemed necessary. “If their traditional lands contained natural resources—minerals to be exploited, forests to be cut, rivers to be dammed—they could be relocated ‘in the national interest’.”

Considering this month’s human rights action of Site C and Treaty 8, is history a pattern that will always repeat itself?

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 5 BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GUIDE: NOVEMBER 2015

The Inconvenient Indian opens a door of understanding to the long, troubled history of relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in North America. Thomas King helpfully unpacks some of the terminology used when referring to “First Nations”, “Indians”, “Aboriginals”, “reserves” and “Whites”. King adds some new terminology: “Dead Indian”, “Real Indian” and “Legal Indian”, which reflect White stereotypes and discriminatory practices. As he takes us on this journey through history in North America, we are told, “If you understand nothing else about the history of Indians in North America, you need to understand that the question that really matters is the question of land.”

Land rights in CanadaIn his book The Inconvenient Indian, Thomas King suggests that treaties “were not vehicles for protecting land or even sharing land. They were vehicles for acquiring land. Almost without fail, throughout the history of North America, every time Indians signed a treaty with Whites, Indians lost land. Treaties aren’t the problem.” The problem is keeping the promises made in the treaties.

Canada is a wealthy country with a well-defined system of legal protections for human rights. It should be unthinkable that Indigenous communities in Canada live in poverty or are denied legal recognition of their land rights. But the reality is that the rights of Indigenous communities are seldom respected.

The history of treaty-making in Canada, in fact, goes back much further. From the beginning, treaty-making has been a foundational part of the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in North America. In 1763 the British Crown issued a Royal

BACKGROUNDAm

nesty International India

Grassy land: Peace River Valley

Amnesty International Canada

Language and land

“Land. If you understand nothing else about the history of Indians in North America, you need to understand that the question that really matters is the question of land.”

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 6 BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GUIDE: NOVEMBER 2015

Proclamation stating that England’s North American colonies would only acquire further territory through negotiation and treaty-making with the “Nations or Tribes of Indians”. The Royal Proclamation, and the treaties that followed, provide clear examples of early legal recognition of a number of key principles of Indigenous rights In Canada.

• Indigenous peoples’ have political and legal rights that pre-date the arrival of Europeans and the creation of the Canadian state.

• The ‘Crown’ (historically England, but now the federal, provincial and territorial governments) does not have the right to arbitrarily or unilaterally alter or extinguish these rights.

These principals have been reaffirmed time and again, in the 1982 Canadian Constitution and through numerous court decisions. A key concept that has emerged through these court decisions is that of “honour of the crown.” In order to reconcile the pre-existing Indigenous sovereignty with the power that the federal, provincial and territorial governments now wield over the lives of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, governments must exercise great care to deal fairly or honourably with Indigenous peoples whenever their rights and interests are at stake.

One concrete example of the “honour of the Crown” is the duty of consultation and accommodation. In case after case, Canadian courts have found that whenever governments consider actions that might affect the rights and interests of Indigenous peoples there is a mandatory duty to carry out meaningful consultation with the intention of “substantially addressing” or accommodating their concerns. In those cases where there is potential for serious harm to Indigenous rights, courts have said

that accommodation may mean proceeding only with the consent of the affected peoples.

The federal, provincial, and territorial governments have only recently begun to develop policies on how to fulfill their duty of consultation with Indigenous peoples. In many jurisdictions, these policies remain at the draft stage. Across the board, there is a failure to enforce these policies in the decision-making process. Even worse, in every instance, the policies interpret government obligations very narrowly, treating the duty to accommodate Indigenous rights as an exceptional circumstance rather than the general rule.

The combination of international and domestic law, including the Constitutional affirmation of Aboriginal and treaty rights, should provide a powerful basis for protecting Indigenous peoples’ land rights in Canada. The reality, however, is that Indigenous peoples in Canada are faced with an unresolved legacy of centuries of dislocation and theft of their lands, along with a continued failure to adequately uphold their rights, especially in the face of resource development.

Land rights are a way to protect and restore Indigenous peoples’ distinct relationship to their lands and the natural resources of those territories. Land rights may take many diverse forms. Land rights may include rights to the exclusive ownership and control of a specific area of land. Lands rights may also include rights to access and use of ceremonial sites and hunting grounds even where Indigenous peoples don’t hold specific property rights or title. Effective protection of land rights must include fair and timely means to resolve disputes and to restore land rights that have been violated.

Peace River Valley, Autumn 2015

Amnesty International Canada

Amnesty International Canada

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 7 BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GUIDE: NOVEMBER 2015

The Peace River Valley in northeastern British Columbia is a unique ecosystem and one of the very few areas in the region that so far has been largely preserved from large-scale resource development. First Nations and Métis families and communities rely on the valley for hunting and fishing, gathering berries and sacred medicine, and holding ceremonies. Their ancestors are buried in this land.

The proposed $8 billion plus Site C hydroelectric dam would flood more than 80 km of the river valley, stretching west from Fort St. John. The severe impact on Indigenous peoples is beyond dispute. A joint federal-province environmental impact assessment concluded that the dam would “severely undermine” use of the land, would make fishing unsafe for at least a generation, and would submerge burial grounds and other crucial cultural and historical sites.

Construction of Site C would violate human rightsGovernment officials in British Columbia say that they have “consulted” with Indigenous peoples about Site C. But consultation is not supposed to be a hollow exercise:

its purpose is to protect the underlying rights set out in Treaties, the Canadian Constitution, and in international human rights law.

These rights have not been protected. In fact, they’ve been largely ignored.

BC Hydro has even stated in court that the key issue of whether or not the dam was compatible with Treaty obligations was never part of the decision-making process.

Amnesty International is not anti-development. We recognize that resource development can provide livelihoods and income necessary to ensuring a decent quality of life for everyone. But we have joined with First Nations and environmental groups to oppose the Site C dam because it’s clear that the human cost is much too high.

International human rights law -- and rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada -- have made it clear that decisions with the potential for serious harm to the rights of Indigenous peoples should only made with their mutual agreement, or free, prior and informed consent.

This is the standard that should be applied to the Site C dam.

Land Rights and the Site C Hydroelectric Dam in British Colombia

Amnesty International Canada

Walking by the water at the Peace River Valley

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 8 BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GUIDE: NOVEMBER 2015

Little Anuk Photography

Jason Dick and Dakota Kesick on the banks of the Peace River.

It’s a matter of basic justice for people who have already suffered from decades of displacement, impoverishment and other harms resulting from decisions imposed without their agreement.

Making First Nations pay for British Columbia’s electricityThe federal and provincial governments both gave their approval to the dam last year, despite the findings of the environmental assessment. In May of this year, the BC government announced that construction would begin in the summer of 2015, despite legal challenges launched by First Nations and non-Indigenous landowners.

What’s especially shocking is that neither government has provided a clear explanation of why they think the harm that would be caused by the dam can be justified. Furthermore, other sources of electricity generation that could potentially avoid such devastating harm were never explored.

Harry Swain, a former federal deputy minister of Indian Affairs who headed in the environmental impact assessment of Site C, has commented that the project should have been deferred, saying, “There’s a whole bunch of unanswered questions.”

More than environmental impactsAmnesty International recently carried out the first of a series of fact-finding missions to northeastern BC to look at the social impacts of the massive scale of resource development, including oil and gas development, already being carried out in the region.

Intensive resource development in northeastern BC has created a lot of high wage jobs in the region. But the rapid pace of development and the necessity of bringing in thousands upon thousands of temporary and transient workers to fill these jobs has also created serious social problems that are not being properly dealt with. Problems like a severe housing shortage, a shortage of doctors, and a shortage of quality, affordable day care. Problems like an enormous gulf in wages between women and men. Problems like rampant drug and alcohol abuse. Problems like overstretched police forces and underfunded and overworked social service agencies.

Women’s organizations and other frontline service providers told us that the failure to address the social impacts of existing resource development in the region has created conditions that puts women at much greater risk of violence – and Indigenous women and girls even more so.

And this is another reason why a better decision-making process, and more rigorous protection of human rights, is needed.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 9 BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GUIDE: NOVEMBER 2015

Tell the BC government to stop ignoring the rights of Indigenous PeopleSite C Dam violates rights“We said no to the destruction of that valley. It’s the last chunk of valley that we have and it’s vitally important,” says Chief Roland Willson, West Moberly First Nation.

The construction of the dam, and the flooding of more than 80 kilometres of the Peace River Valley, would severely affect Indigenous families. Tell the British Columbia government it cannot ignore the human rights of Indigenous peoples.

IT’S THE LAST CHUNK

OF VALLEY WE HAVE

AND IT’S VITALLY IMPORTANT

—CHIEF ROLAND WILLSON

TAKE ACTION

Write BC Premier Christy ClarkTell Premier Clark how you feel about the fact that the BC government has issued construction permits for the dam while important concerns remain unresolved; including concerns that First Nations remain opposed to the project and important legal challenges are still before the courts.

Remind the premier that the environmental assessment of the Site C Dam concluded that flooding the Peace Valley would “severely undermine” rights of Indigenous peoples - rights that are protected by treaty, the Canadian Constitution and international human rights law.

Ask that the BC government not rush ahead with a project that will violate human rights and that the government withdraw all permits related to the construction of the Site C dam and publicly commit to ensuring that the rights of Indigenous peoples will be respected and upheld.

Address:

The Honourable Christy Clark Premier of British Columbia Box 9041, Station PROV GOVT Victoria, BC, Canada, V8W 9E1

Take action onlineClick here to tell the BC government to stop ignoring the rights of Indigenous peoples

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 10 BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GUIDE: NOVEMBER 2015

The month of December is one of Amnesty’s biggest letter writing events in which you, your friends, family and book clubs are all welcome to join. Write a letter, save a life. Join thousands upon thousands of others for our big event, Write for Rights.

On December 10th, Amnesty Canada will lead us in writing for a series of different human rights cases, many of which tie into the books the Amnesty International Book Club featured in 2015. From child brides in Burkina Faso, Indigenous Land rights with Site C, urging Mexico to stop torture and more – you have read the stories, you’ve seen the actions, now let’s pool our energy together for this day of change and letter writing.

Gather your book club together and make an event of it. Write and mail letters, share pictures of your writing party

online, and be sure to register beforehand to not miss any of the many different human rights campaigns that will be addressed on December 10th.

Register now at www.Writeathon.ca and you’ll stay up to date on our Write for Rights developments. Including sample letters, addresses, sponsor sheets and more.

COMING UP IN DECEMBER

• The Site C Dam: A crucial test of justice: www.amnesty.ca/blog/the-site-c-dam-a-crucial-test-of-justice

• Treaty 8 Tribal Association: www.treaty8.bc.ca/site-c/

• RAVEN - Respecting Aboriginal Values and Environmental Needs: www.raventrust.com/join-the-circle-no-site-c/

• The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-2003-cbc-massey-lectures-the-truth-about-stories-a-native-narrative-1.2946870

For further reading©

Sophie Garcia/Corbis for Amnesty International and W

riteathon.ca

WRITE FOR RIGHTSYou’ve read the books, now join us in our largest letter writing event of 2015

This coming December we are taking a short pause in our book club to focus on letter writing (see below). However, our Guest Reader selection for January will be announced in December, just in time for holiday reading. In the meanwhile, if you have questions or comments, please contact us at bookclub@amnesty.ca.

Our next book will be January 2016

FORCED TO MARRYAS YOUNG AS 11GIRLS FORCED INTO MARRIAGE BURKINA FASO

Girls like Maria (assumed name, not pictured), 13 years old, are forced to flee from forced marriages. Maria’s father forced her to marry a 70 year old man telling her “If you don’t go to join your husband I will kill you.” Her four sisters were also subjected to forced marriage.