The Good Systemic Racism in Canada

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Nov 2017

RE: Challenging the ‘marry out, move out’ rules.

When social justice warriors complain about evil systemic racism in Canada, they never mean the Indian Act and the special provisions in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that establish allowances for Indigenous rights over and above the rights of ordinary Canadians.  By exclusion, SWJ’s must believe that these are good forms of systemic racism.

There are sound reasons for the existence and preservation of systemic racism in Canada as it pertains to Indigenous peoples.  The settlement treaties of the 19^th and 20^th centuries placed Canada under the burden of upholding certain financial responsibilities in respect of certain kinds of people, and a legal definition of what a person needed to be in order to qualify as one of those special kinds of people to which Canada owed a financial responsibility, is necessary  For example, exemption from taxation and financial support were due Indigenous peoples under treaty and other laws, and who - exactly - benefits requires a legal definition, especially since who is Indigenous is not as clear-cut nowadays as it was in the 19^th century.  Since aboriginal is distinguished as a matter of race and descent, systemic racism is necessary as a matter of law in Canada.

The ‘marry-out, move out’ rule on aboriginal reserves follows naturally from the idea that being Indigenous means being of a certain race and even tribe.  If you aren’t of that tribe, then you don’t belong in that special place reserved for that tribe.  To think otherwise means that the city of Montreal or some other tribe could informally establish a suburb on the reserve and push out the tribe or take over the reserve that it was set aside for.  Of course such rules are discriminatory, but one can logically expect nothing else.

What the plaintiffs in the case at issue are running into are contradictions in the law on account of principles of equality and yet a special status for Indigenous.  The band council and the pure Mohawk tribal membership (the Defendants) seek racial purity on the reserve lest they lose control of Mohawk identity– to an overpopulation of Metis peoples.  The means of enforcing racial purity on the reserve are unpleasant harassment.

Ultimately, the principle of tribal and racial identity must prevail over other rights if the principles of tribal and racial identity are to be preserved at all.  If it is not, then there is nothing in law to stop the overrunning of Indigenous reserves, not by non-Indigenous, but by other Indigenous not of the tribe, such as, in this case, Metis (which are classified as a category of Indigenous.)

Canadian law must maintain a systemic racism and even tribalism in respect of Indigenous peoples.  The unfortunate consequence of this is that the principle of equality must take second place, and that even differences in tribe must be allowed for in disputes between Indigenous disputants.

The only other solution is to abolish the concept of special Indigenous identity, which was proposed in 1970 by Pierre Trudeau and was rejected soundly by the Indigenous people themselves.

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