Sam and Ryan talk Pipelines, Protests, Indigenous People, Guns and the West
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
4
sentences flagged
Hate speech
46
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode, I speak with Ryan Belrose, a hereditary chief from the Paddle Prairie Métis settlement in Alberta, Canada. We talk about what it means to be a "Métis" in Canada, the history of the word "mixed-race" and the issues surrounding the pipeline protests.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hi there, I'm Sam Ashkenazi and I'm sitting here with Ryan Belrose, Indigenous rights activist.
00:00:10.000
And thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.
00:00:14.000
For sure. So I wanted to discuss with you a couple of things.
00:00:17.000
There's obviously a lot going on in Canada right now with the pipeline protests.
00:00:21.000
And I thought it would be a good idea for people to just hear, you know,
00:00:25.000
sort of the other perspective about what's going on with the protests.
00:00:27.000
What does some of these words mean that they're hearing a lot of news?
00:00:31.000
You know, what is it like for Stations communities in Canada?
00:00:37.000
But first, why don't you tell us a bit about yourself?
00:00:42.000
I grew up on Paddle Prairie Métis settlement, which is in the far north in Alberta.
00:00:48.000
There are several Métis settlements in Alberta, but that's not actually where we're from.
00:00:53.000
Actual Métis people are from the Red River in Manitoba.
00:00:56.000
But we were forced to go west, and when we actually negotiated with the government,
00:01:01.000
the land that they gave us was technically not somebody else's ancestral land,
00:01:06.000
but they gave us that land in order to secure a land base for the Métis people.
00:01:11.000
So what's the difference between Métis and First Nations, Indigenous?
00:01:16.000
Okay, so the easiest way to explain it is actually to use Indian Act terminology.
00:01:21.000
That's not maybe the best way to do it, but it's the easiest way to understand it.
00:01:27.000
Now, a status Indian is somebody who's covered under treaty.
00:01:30.000
They come from a van that signed treaty with the government,
00:01:34.000
so they are protected under the Indian Act as status Indians.
00:01:38.000
So the way we were always taught was Bill C-31.
00:01:41.000
So a Bill C-31 status Indian is somebody who's fully protected and covered under treaty.
0.77
00:01:46.000
Non-status Indians included anybody that wasn't.
0.84
00:01:49.000
So say you were a native woman and you married a white man.
00:01:56.000
Now, under the Indian Act, right up until I believe the late 60s, the woman would lose her native status as well.
1.00
00:02:02.000
So then even if she divorced the man that she married, she would not be able to be native anymore.
00:02:14.000
So a lot of times what happened is those women had children and they were divorced and they had nowhere to go.
00:02:19.000
So a lot of times Métis communities would take them in, even though they're not technically Métis.
00:02:25.000
You know, the truth was we understood what it was like to be, you know, have nowhere to go.
00:02:30.000
And after the after the Red River Rebellion, a lot of us lived with our native relatives.
00:02:34.000
So like a lot of Métis people actually moved with the Cree and they lived among, you know, Pound Makers Band, Big Bears Band.
00:02:41.000
Like so that that's why we, you know, we don't generally tend to look at that the same way that non-native people do.
1.00
00:02:47.000
Now, the issue is for Métis people, the government says that anybody who is of mixed blood is Métis.
00:02:55.000
So if you have native blood of any sort mixed with European blood, according to the government, you can claim that you're Métis.
00:03:02.000
Now, the reason we find that to be insulting is because we believe that indigeneity is site specific.
1.00
00:03:12.000
So that means that every indigenous person in the world, every indigenous tribe, every indigenous people has ties to a specific place, to a specific land.
00:03:20.000
Now, if we are going to be consistent, that means that as native, as Métis people, we have to have the same standards, the same consistent standards.
00:03:30.000
So we believe that our people come from the Red River.
00:03:34.000
So if somebody says, you know, I'm half Blackfoot and French, that means I'm Métis.
0.71
00:03:44.000
Now, if you have ties and connections to an ancestral Métis homeland and a family, then we would say absolutely you are.
00:03:52.000
But if you don't, then you would just be Blackfoot.
0.97
00:03:55.000
Like you're part Blackfoot and part European.
0.99
00:04:01.000
Now, the problem is that the government has pushed this narrative and now you have groups of people who are not Métis in any way, shape or form.
00:04:10.000
They don't have connections to our ancestral land.
00:04:12.000
They don't have any blood connections, but they claim that they're Métis in order to get hunting rights or fishing rights.
00:04:18.000
And unfortunately, a lot of times they make arguments that are damaging to other native people because they're not really concerned about that.
00:04:27.000
And especially in the last couple of years, there's been this movement that we call the Pretendian movement.
0.81
00:04:33.000
And it's people that claim to be native in order to gain some nebulous benefit that quite often doesn't even really exist.
00:04:41.000
So it's as a native person, as a First Nations person.
00:04:46.000
And we're seeing it a lot right now with this pipeline stuff.
00:04:49.000
You know, the truth of the matter is, like, sorry, I don't want to digress too much.
00:04:55.000
The truth of the matter is, there's status and non-status Indians.
1.00
00:04:58.000
So non-status Indians, that used to just include everybody that wasn't a treaty Indian.
00:05:04.000
Now, non-status Indians, they've changed that recently with the Delgamook legal case.
0.95
00:05:12.000
There's also other cases where we took the government to task about trying to tell us who we are.
00:05:19.000
One of the problems is, Sam, that for indigenous people, the only people who should get to determine who is a member of an indigenous people are those people.
00:05:32.000
I would never, ever, ever try to tell you how you should identify Jewish people.
00:05:43.000
The only people who should be determining who's a Jew are Jews, right?
0.99
00:05:47.000
The only people that should be determining who's Métis are Métis people.
0.99
00:05:50.000
The only people that should determine who's Blackfoot should be Blackfoot people.
1.00
00:05:54.000
But the problem is that now with everybody getting involved in these things, everybody feels like they're an expert, especially on social media.
00:06:05.000
So, I started to talk a little bit about pipelines.
00:06:08.000
So, the truth of the matter is Native people are not monolithic in any way, shape, or form.
00:06:15.000
So, in the case of the pipelines, you only see the activist people, right?
00:06:21.000
So, you see the people that are loud and are pushing their point of view.
00:06:26.000
So, that means with Native people, nine times out of ten, you'll see very environmentally, you know, like they act like the environment's the only thing that matters, those kinds of people.
1.00
00:06:36.000
Where in reality, in Indian country, it's a lot more diverse.
00:06:40.000
So, you do have people that support the pipelines.
00:06:42.000
You have people that work and they have jobs and they've worked in the oil field and forestry and all those different industries.
00:06:57.000
He transitioned more into doing cleanups and stuff like that.
00:07:00.000
But the truth of the matter is like we worked in pipelines.
00:07:03.000
We worked in the lease building, you know, forestry.
00:07:09.000
So, you know, like it's not as cut and dry as people think.
00:07:14.000
And what's really, really sad is that it's become so divisive because like if somebody like me steps up and says, you know, I'm not going to condemn my uncle for working in the oil field because that's what he does to feed his family, right?
00:07:28.000
People will say stuff to me like, well, you're a government agent or you're an Uncle Tom.
00:07:33.000
And I'm like, no, I'm literally just stating the truth.
00:07:38.000
I sold my car because I felt strongly enough that I could use public transportation.
00:07:42.000
You know, there's other ways that I could lower my carbon footprint.
00:07:45.000
But I'm not going to judge somebody else if they're not willing to do the same thing.
00:07:51.000
I mean, I still had to fly and come to Toronto.
00:07:56.000
You know, so this is why this is such a divisive subject.
00:08:01.000
I mean, I have family that are on the other side of the pipeline thing where they call it, you know, the black snake.
00:08:07.000
You know, but a lot of these people sometimes they don't even really know what's going on.
00:08:11.000
Like we have people right now that are weighing in on the pipeline that didn't know that it's a natural gas pipeline.
00:08:19.000
I think there's a perception that it sounds to the oil sands and people like to call it the tar sands.
00:08:26.000
We were actually looking up that liquid white natural gas has to be at minus 216 degrees Celsius to stay as liquid.
00:08:32.000
And so if there's a leak, it's not, you know, it's a bit different than just a horsepower.
00:08:37.000
So, I mean, and look, me personally, like my personal politics, people bring this up a lot.
00:08:43.000
So I might as well just be open with everybody.
00:08:48.000
I still strongly believe in a lot of the things that that organization or that movement started.
00:08:57.000
I mean, the two of the women that founded it are people that I profoundly respect because they were looking ahead.
00:09:03.000
And they didn't just make it about the environment.
00:09:05.000
Like Jessica Gordon, she was very clear that this is about Native rights.
00:09:09.000
This is about everything that we think is important.
00:09:15.000
It's about us being part of Canada, like a productive part of Canada that's treated like equals rather than the way we're treated right now.
00:09:23.000
Now, the issue is that we're not treated that way and that it's not an equal relationship.
00:09:32.000
And here's my, I'll tell you my personal thing with the whole pipeline stuff.
00:09:36.000
It started out with some people that were very upset and felt like they didn't have a voice, which is understandable.
00:09:43.000
What happened though was that it transitioned from that into becoming this basically monolithic nonsense about the climate, right?
00:09:53.000
So it went from being Native people saying, hey, you didn't even listen to us.
00:09:56.000
You know, like we have some concerns and you didn't consult and you didn't listen to, well, we don't care, no pipeline, no pipeline, right?
00:10:05.000
That's a very different argument if you think about it.
00:10:09.000
And then, okay, you asked me a little bit about this hereditary chief stuff.
00:10:13.000
Yeah, so yeah, who are these hereditary chiefs?
00:10:14.000
You said people are not listening to the complaints.
00:10:16.000
That's one of the people, you know, the groups that Canadians are probably familiar with.
00:10:21.000
The easiest way to explain it is to explain most chiefs and councils are, like a long time ago I came up with the term Indian Act chiefs, right?
00:10:32.000
Because everyone would say, oh, it's an Indian chief.
00:10:34.000
And I would say, no, no, no, they're an Indian Act chief.
00:10:37.000
Because you have to remember that in traditional Native societies, and not all of them, like in various nations, various customs,
00:10:45.000
but for the most part it's a truism to say Native leaders led.
00:10:52.000
Now we're used to looking at things to a very European, like a very colonialist kind of lens where leaders rule.
00:10:59.000
The leader tells you what to do when you do it.
00:11:02.000
That's a very European method of leadership, right?
00:11:12.000
Whoever's in charge tells you what to do when you do it.
00:11:14.000
Where the Native method of leadership was always much more organic.
00:11:18.000
It was much more the leaders led, but they didn't rule.
00:11:23.000
So if a leader wasn't doing a good job, the leader would be good, right?
00:11:31.000
Now, so we're trying to look at this now through two paradigms, right?
00:11:37.000
The Native view is that in most traditional Native societies, the chief didn't just rule
00:11:42.000
and tell everybody what to do, but the chief would be in charge of doing certain things,
00:11:47.000
So most of the time, chiefs would be in charge of anything external, anything to do with
00:11:51.000
other tribes, you know, war, negotiations, hunting, anything to do outside the village,
00:11:59.000
Then in most societies, they had matriarchs or clan heads, and those were the people that
0.99
00:12:05.000
looked after internal things, you know, determining who's going to get married to who, making sure
00:12:10.000
that on a day-to-day basis that the nation ran Cuba easily, right?
00:12:19.000
If you're going to, like, break it down into a kind of how we see the world.
00:12:34.000
Now, these clan heads, somehow this got turned into people claiming that they're hereditary
00:12:40.000
There's some dispute about that, how it started.
00:12:44.000
I mean, I've been told by people in Wet'suwet'en that it was because of one particular interview
00:12:48.000
where the person was trying to explain how clan heads work, and they said, it's kind
00:12:59.000
But the truth of the matter is, very few Native nations had hereditary leaders.
00:13:03.000
Because how do you have a hereditary leader when most of our leadership was meritocracy?
00:13:13.000
Which doesn't lend itself towards, oh, I was chief, so my kid will be chief.
00:13:19.000
So when we're talking about clan heads, so these clans, in many cases they were matriarchal,
00:13:26.000
They were the women of the tribe that were the clan heads.
0.98
00:13:30.000
But these clans, they're separate little groups within the nation.
00:13:35.000
Now, what people don't know about Wet'suwet'en is that several of the clan heads, or what they're
00:13:39.000
calling in the media hereditary chiefs, were actually pro pipeline.
00:13:46.000
Because you have the Indian Act, which says that you're governed by your chief and council,
00:13:52.000
So, the government is now forcing anyone to, this is who we're going to listen to.
00:13:58.000
The government shows who they're going to listen to, because the government signs the checks.
00:14:01.000
This is, so when I say the Indian Act chief, I agree that you mean that.
00:14:12.000
He's pretty much, you know, the government signs the checks.
00:14:15.000
So, it would be like me saying, hey, I'm autonomous, and I lead these people.
00:14:20.000
But, you know, if you don't do what we say, I just won't pay you.
00:14:23.000
And if you're the guy writing the checks, well then, who do I work for?
00:14:27.000
You know, I work for the guy that signs the checks.
00:14:30.000
So, meanwhile, these clan heads, who are more of a traditional leadership model, but they're
00:14:37.000
So, they wouldn't be somebody that would negotiate with the government.
00:14:41.000
They're the ones that are saying, hey, you know what, there's enough of us here, we think,
00:14:44.000
that are against this, that we should speak up.
00:14:46.000
But then there's a large group that are pro-pipelines.
00:14:49.000
So, now you, even within this tribe, you have this schism.
00:14:53.000
Now, this whole thing is becoming super divisive, because nobody can just disagree anymore.
00:14:59.000
So, it's no longer, you know what, you think that we should have a pipeline.
00:15:05.000
Okay, well, you give me your reasons, and I'll give you mine, and, you know, maybe we'll
00:15:10.000
Now, it's become, you're pro-pipeline, you're evil.
00:15:17.000
You're a government agent, you know, like, lateral violence, you know, now you're attacking
00:15:23.000
Like, it's turned into these ridiculous arguments that really have nothing to do with the original
00:15:32.000
So, now you say that the, the government has pretty much imposed this rubric of who is
00:15:38.000
And there's been a lot of reports in the media about people who are no, absolutely no connection
00:15:43.000
to the, to the West Wet n people, but are now suddenly being held up as representatives,
00:15:48.000
or, or some of the other protests, the real protests.
00:15:50.000
Do you know, is this something that is, is common?
00:15:54.000
So, like, I, I, it's a, this is a very, how do I say this nicely?
00:16:03.000
Because you saw it with almost every major native rights movement, uh, within weeks it
00:16:11.000
So, like with, with Idle No More at the first little bit, it was the four ladies that started
00:16:19.000
Within a month we had, you know, like people like Teresa Spence.
00:16:23.000
Suddenly she's telling people, I'm, I'm having a hunger strike on behalf of Idle No More.
00:16:27.000
And the truth was, she had nothing to do with us.
00:16:30.000
She, she called us and said, I'm going to use your name during my hunger strike.
00:16:33.000
And some of us were like, no, we didn't, you know, we don't want chiefs involved.
00:16:38.000
Because it was supposed to be a grassroots movement of the people.
00:16:41.000
But, you know, we, we, we obviously weren't the ones that came out on top of that argument.
00:16:45.000
So what you end up with is you end up with these people that sometimes are not, not only are
00:16:50.000
they not native, but they don't have native's best interests at heart in any way, shape,
00:16:56.000
So right now in Wet'suwet'en, there are people in Wet'suwet'en, and I'm probably going to
00:16:59.000
take flack for even saying this, but you can do the research.
00:17:02.000
There, there's a group called Tides Foundation.
00:17:05.000
And they are, I don't want to say radical, but I will say they're a fairly extreme environmental
00:17:12.000
group that has involved themselves in several different native movements.
00:17:17.000
And when they do, they slowly kind of change the messaging from native sovereignty and
00:17:21.000
what's good for native people into environments at all costs.
00:17:26.000
So they don't care whether natives are starving or not.
0.70
00:17:29.000
It means nothing to them as long as we don't damage the environment.
00:17:32.000
So isn't that, on one hand, a colonialist kind of imposition again, trying to force native
00:17:39.000
people that the environment, that's your number one thing.
00:17:41.000
That's the only thing that you guys can ever talk about?
00:17:44.000
Like I, so, I actually wrote an article a long time ago about this where I said, look,
00:17:48.000
they're colonizing the struggle against colonization.
00:17:54.000
Like I made a, you'll get a kick out of this as a quick little aside because it speaks
00:17:58.000
When I was with Idle Memore, I created a bunch of different Facebook pages.
00:18:02.000
And it was, Facebook was fairly new, social media was new.
00:18:05.000
So I, but I knew this would be a good way to motivate people and gather people.
00:18:10.000
And as the creator of the Facebook group, this is, I'm the guy that created the group.
00:18:15.000
I got banned from the group because a white liberal wrote a post about GMO potatoes and
00:18:21.000
McDonald's and why this is such a horrible thing.
00:18:24.000
And no Indians should eat at McDonald's because they use GMO potatoes.
1.00
00:18:28.000
So all I wrote was, I don't know if you know this, but most Indians can't afford to eat
1.00
00:18:37.000
Like if you're, if you're going to tell me I can get cheaper potatoes to feed my family.
00:18:43.000
You know, like if I can't afford a regular potato, you're damn right.
00:18:48.000
He's now telling you, and I was thinking Whole Foods is a great place, but guy who shops
00:18:52.000
at Whole Foods is now telling people who are, who might be stuck on a reserve with no water,
00:19:00.000
He's telling you, you can't, sorry, you can't eat potatoes.
00:19:05.000
A lot of people don't understand how, why that's so ridiculous.
00:19:11.000
The administrator of the page, who knew that I'm the person that created the page.
00:19:15.000
Said, I can't believe that you're pro-GMO foods.
00:19:19.000
And I said, on what planet does that come off as pro-GMO foods?
00:19:23.000
All I said was, if they have a cheaper potato and I can't afford a regular potato, I'm going
00:19:30.000
Yeah, so you're going to starve to eat some GMO potato.
00:19:36.000
And it just speaks to how colonized this whole struggle has become now.
00:19:39.000
Because like you just said, some dude that shops at Whole Foods is lecturing me about
00:19:43.000
not even being able to buy a cheap GMO potato, you know.
00:19:49.000
And now you have people from the Rockefeller Foundation and their own Wet'suwet'en.
0.66
00:19:52.000
And they're telling Indians, oh yeah, you guys got to fight this pipeline at all costs.
00:19:58.000
And I mean, you have a few Native people out there, some of them who have never probably
00:20:03.000
And like, I don't want to buy into that Uncle Tom kind of, but I am going to say this.
00:20:10.000
I've seen the difference between Native people who work and Native people who struggle on
00:20:15.000
a day-to-day basis, but they fight and struggle so they can feed their families.
00:20:22.000
And then I've also seen Natives who give up and who decide, you know what, I'll live
1.00
00:20:28.000
on, like okay, so I'll use some Native terminology, some of these people will recognize it.
00:20:32.000
People who live on dog-dink hot dogs, that's what we call them, you know, those red hot dogs?
0.99
00:20:38.000
So, people who live on dog-dink hot dogs and macaroni, right?
0.90
00:20:44.000
Like, they are living in what I would consider to be worse than Third World.
1.00
00:20:49.000
And yet, they think they're doing okay because they get $250, $300 a month from the government,
00:20:54.000
they can afford to buy their hot dogs that God only knows what goes in them, you know,
00:20:59.000
and they literally live on hot dogs and macaroni.
00:21:01.000
And I just, I don't understand why when we as Native people start speaking up and saying,
00:21:08.000
You know, like, yeah, I grew up with no power and no running water.
00:21:12.000
Does that mean I want to stay living with no power and no running water?
00:21:20.000
And, you know, we're talking about this pipeline as if it's the only issue and they've made
00:21:26.000
And for Idle No More, it became, you know, the omnibus bills.
00:21:30.000
And the omnibus bills were all about, you know, and, you know, I will criticize the
00:21:36.000
They were conflating 40 or 50 different little issues into one bundle and then saying, okay,
00:21:43.000
So you couldn't really pick one thing out of those things and say, no, no, I like all
00:21:48.000
It makes it hard to reject if 39 of the 40 are good, it makes it hard to reject the bill,
00:21:51.000
even though you may have a serious problem with the one.
00:21:54.000
And that was where the issue was coming because they were sneaking little shots at water protection
00:21:59.000
Like they were, they basically took away protection for water and land for native people.
00:22:04.000
But meanwhile, some of the other stuff was good stuff.
00:22:06.000
Now this, this pipeline thing is a very different issue where it's a singular issue.
00:22:10.000
And the misinformation that was put out there about it, but I mean, half the people that
00:22:14.000
I know tell me that, no, it's not, it's not a natural gas pipeline, you idiot.
00:22:21.000
And then they'll tell me, oh no, it's bitumen for the tar sands.
00:22:24.000
And I'm like, you don't know what you're talking about.
00:22:26.000
Like you're, you're here with your son and you're freaking out and you're telling me that
00:22:30.000
You don't even know that it's liquid natural gas.
00:22:38.000
Native people don't want you to build pipelines through our watersheds where we get our drinking
00:22:44.000
We don't want pipelines going through graveyards.
00:22:50.000
Like you ever watch Pet Sematary or The Exorcist?
00:22:54.000
You don't want, you don't want to go through an Indian graveyard.
1.00
00:22:57.000
But at the same time, most of us are like, look, we acknowledge the fact that we, we live
00:23:06.000
And until we come up with some better ways to do things, this is the world we live in.
00:23:10.000
And a lot of us are like, we're not happy about it.
00:23:13.000
And we'd like to try and wean ourselves off of that stuff.
00:23:18.000
At the same time, we get these environmentalist people that lecture us and come and say, well,
00:23:22.000
if you acknowledge the fact that, you know, we need fossil fuels right now, that you're
00:23:27.000
an Uncle Tom, or you're a government agent, or you work for the big oil companies, right?
00:23:34.000
And it's really, it's destructive, because somebody like me who's dedicated their life
00:23:39.000
to Indigenous rights has people sometimes saying shit like that to me.
00:23:42.000
And I have people flat out tell me, you know, I can't believe that you said that the people
00:23:55.000
But the people that I know, they can't even agree.
00:24:05.000
So we moved from pipelines and the original sort of discussion about what, you know, the pros
00:24:10.000
and the cons should it be, who's getting listened to, who's not.
00:24:13.000
Now we're at a stage where people are blockading railroads, they're trying to shut down infrastructure,
00:24:18.000
there's a hashtag shutdown Canada, and the government, I think, has been rightly criticized
00:24:22.000
for being a little inactive, showing a lack of leadership on this.
00:24:26.000
Where do you think the government could go, and how would you rate the Trudeau government's
00:24:32.000
So, their response to the situation is somewhere between abject moronic and pathetic.
00:24:42.000
So, they could have easily just bypassed all of this nonsense with one simple thing.
00:24:50.000
And it would have put the onus on the people in Wet'suwet'en.
0.92
00:24:53.000
It would have avoided all the blockades and all the solidarity movements.
00:24:56.000
All they had to do is say, okay, you know what?
00:25:00.000
We're going to sit down with the elected chief and council because that is, according to the
00:25:04.000
Indian Act and according to Canadian law, those are your representatives.
00:25:08.000
As to whether or not they're actually representing the will of the people, that could be argued.
00:25:20.000
Sorry, I should use the term that everyone's using.
00:25:22.000
So, with the hereditary chiefs, they could be in the meeting as well.
00:25:30.000
None of this secret behind closed doors nonsense.
00:25:34.000
You have a band meeting where you invite everybody in the community and you say, okay, tell us your concerns.
00:25:42.000
And, at the end of the meeting, after everybody has the full information where you tell them, not bitumen, not tar sands.
00:25:49.000
Yes, we are amenable to avoiding going through watersheds.
00:25:56.000
If they would have done that, all of this would have been avoided.
00:26:03.000
They thought, oh, you know, it's just a bunch of white liberal hippies and a couple Indians and they're hanging out in the middle of nowhere where nobody goes anyway.
00:26:18.000
That's the typical liberal government benign neglect.
00:26:22.000
That's been the liberal government's policy towards Indians since John A. MacDonald.
00:26:29.000
If we just ignore the problem, eventually it will go away on its own.
00:26:38.000
More and more native people are using the pipeline and the Wet'suwet'en stuff to actually advocate for their stuff that's going on.
00:26:52.000
Still a First Nations indigenous issue, but not about the pipelines now.
00:27:04.000
It's across the country, but they've had a lot of issues, that community with the government.
00:27:11.000
So, they took a good opportunity, and they said, okay, well, in solidarity with these
00:27:19.000
Now, hopefully, and this goes to one of your other points, hopefully what they're doing,
00:27:23.000
though, is hopefully they have some prepared asks.
00:27:27.000
If you don't have an ask, there's no point in having a protest.
00:27:31.000
I guess people don't know what it is that you...
00:27:34.000
It would be like me saying, I protest against murder and racism.
00:27:47.000
It's like, okay, but how specifically are we gonna deal with this issue?
00:27:52.000
I mean, it's really easy to say, I don't like murder and racism.
00:27:55.000
It's not so easy to come up with a way to prevent murders and racism.
00:27:59.000
So, I'm hoping that they're smart enough to put together some cohesive plans, some actual
00:28:07.000
But so far, I haven't really seen much of that.
00:28:08.000
And that's part of the issue, too, because we see these people on TV talking about native
00:28:13.000
concerns, and then when they're asked a specific question about it, like, okay, well, what
00:28:22.000
And people are shocked when the average Canadian is looking at the TV watching this and saying,
00:28:27.000
well, how the hell do I support these people when they're not actually asking me for anything?
00:28:35.000
Like, I think at this point, everybody in Canada realizes that the way we were treated
00:28:41.000
I mean, I don't think anybody is gonna argue against that.
00:28:47.000
And so, like, I made a joke on Twitter about, I call it reconciliation.
00:28:59.000
So they say sorry enough to get us to be like everybody else.
00:29:03.000
But the truth is that if you want real reconciliation, instead of saying sorry all the time, which
00:29:09.000
Yeah, you know, like doing the, yeah, the whole, you know, look at my fancy socks, but
00:29:12.000
now I'm gonna cry a tear for the indigenous people.
1.00
00:29:17.000
What would convince us is saying, you know what, we're really sorry about the crappy way
00:29:21.000
And now, in order to show you, instead of just tell you that we're sorry, we're gonna
00:29:26.000
come up with some actual ways to help your community.
00:29:30.000
Like, how many years have they been talking about clean drinking water?
00:29:34.000
Something I've been personally involved in with you, actually.
00:29:37.000
So, there's a big difference between Sam Eskenazi saying, hey, you know what, this is
00:29:43.000
These people don't have clean drinking water, so I'm gonna do something about it.
00:29:48.000
The government's saying, oh, it's horrible, they don't have any clean drinking water, and
00:29:54.000
Or whatever they're doing is extremely ineffective.
00:29:55.000
Where you saw a problem, and you've dealt with it the way most people do.
00:29:59.000
You see a problem, you try to come up with a viable solution.
00:30:05.000
So, this is another issue that we have, like, as Native Canadians, is that a lot of times,
00:30:10.000
our advocates don't really even understand what we're advocating for.
00:30:14.000
And then we have people that aren't really Native, and that hurts.
00:30:18.000
Like, because then they're not even really Native, and you see some white liberal hippie
00:30:21.000
guy on TV, and he comes over with his peace brother and all that nonsense, and then the
00:30:25.000
next words out of his mouth are, and we're gonna blockade this bridge until you do what
00:30:31.000
And it's like, okay, but okay, then what do you want us to do?
00:30:35.000
It's like, well, shouldn't you have that prepared before you blockade the bridge?
00:30:42.000
So, the last kind of thing I wanted to ask is, how does this interplay with sort of the
00:30:47.000
Because there's a lot of Western anger, and I think rightfully so, about economic conditions
0.92
00:30:53.000
or stopping Alberta, for example, from exporting some natural resources that its economy depends
00:31:00.000
So, how is this kind of affecting the East-West divide?
00:31:06.000
Okay, so that's an even tougher one, because a lot of people out West really do feel like
00:31:11.000
the East not only takes us for granted, but it's more of like, when you send that much
00:31:18.000
money over the course of three or four decades, and somebody like me goes to university, and
00:31:24.000
I find out from a friend of mine on my football team that he paid not even a tenth of what
00:31:32.000
You find out that his girlfriend, who had a kid, got free daycare while she was in university.
00:31:36.000
Meanwhile, my friends with kids, when they were in university, had to pay.
00:31:39.000
And then, sorry, there's a different university.
00:31:42.000
So, we're talking University of Alberta versus Concordia or Bishops.
00:31:47.000
So, I found out that this teammate of mine that went to Bishops, he paid as much for his
00:31:54.000
So, you know, when you find stuff like that out, then you realize that a lot of that was
00:32:00.000
Like, and once you actually do a little bit of digging, you realize how much money was
00:32:06.000
And you gotta remember, I grew up in the middle of nowhere, right?
00:32:09.000
So, when I did a job, my part-time job when I was a kid was working outside most of the
00:32:26.000
And then you find out that some other dude was, you know, basically parking cars in Montreal.
00:32:32.000
And he got the same amount that I was getting care of.
00:32:43.000
And meanwhile, this guy had paid like a tenth of what I paid for tuition and all these
00:32:46.000
different benefits and you start thinking to yourself, why?
00:32:51.000
And now with this pipeline stuff and people out east are like, you know, it's funny because
00:32:55.000
a lot of people out east are super anti-pipeline without even knowing what's going on.
00:32:59.000
And it's like, okay, but you realize that most of what you have in this economy came
00:33:05.000
The fact that Canada was one of the few countries that didn't have a huge depression a couple
00:33:09.000
of years ago came strictly because of our energy sector.
00:33:15.000
And so it's like, you have all these things that you don't even real, you take it totally
00:33:21.000
So a lot of people out west are fed up with that.
00:33:22.000
And this whole thing with this last election, you know, like, we came right out and said,
00:33:32.000
And I can remember friends of mine out east, like, even more east than we are right now.
00:33:42.000
But, you know, to us, the east east is even more so like Newfoundland.
00:33:49.000
And saying, that must really piss you off that before the election's even halfway over,
00:33:56.000
So basically mocking you saying, no, I don't know, because of the time zones.
00:34:02.000
And, like, luckily I'm not one of those people that's like, you know, oh my God, it's
00:34:09.000
And I said, look, you know what does bother me is that you contribute nothing monetarily
00:34:17.000
And yet you feel comfortable mocking me because I'm telling you this guy is bad for the economy
00:34:25.000
And then, you know, the gun stuff, don't want to get you started on that.
00:34:30.000
So, just sort of think of us, you know, being someone from, I was born and raised in Toronto.
00:34:36.000
You know, why does anyone care about guns so much out of us?
00:34:40.000
So, where I grew up in northern Alberta, every house has a gun.
00:34:52.000
So, for, to tell somebody like me that, you know, we're going to take your guns away,
00:34:59.000
And the funny thing is a lot of police officers in Alberta, because they know the situation,
00:35:03.000
they're like, yeah, we would, we're not going to do it.
00:35:09.000
A lot of them said, point blank, we're not confiscating people's guns.
00:35:14.000
But, a lot of people out here, I mean, you call a police officer here.
00:35:27.000
It sounds like it's a, let's say, it's a Toronto bear.
00:35:33.000
But no, he comes in your backyard and he's standing right there.
00:35:36.000
Um, you can call police, animal control, someone's going to be here within 15 minutes.
00:35:44.000
If we call a police officer in Battle Prairie, sometimes it takes up to an hour and a half.
00:35:54.000
So, if my kids are playing outside and a bear comes walking in the yard, I don't have an
00:36:00.000
I take my rifle and I go outside and I kill a bear.
00:36:09.000
You know, for someone to say they're going to take away what we consider to be our safety.
00:36:15.000
And the other thing about the East and West that's a huge divide is that, you know,
00:36:23.000
And yet, roads in Alberta are sometimes really in poor condition.
00:36:27.000
And those are the roads that transported all the stuff so that we could send money for
00:36:35.000
We feel like we, there's no rail line between Edmonton and Calgary.
00:36:41.000
There should have been a passenger rail line and a, you know, a domestic transport line.
00:36:51.000
But they always put it off and they always said, no, no, that's going to be billions
00:36:53.000
We need to send money East to make sure everybody...
1.00
00:36:57.000
I mean, I would just assume two very large cities would have some, you know, some serious
00:37:06.000
And when you go to, when you go to Calgary, you realize that, you know, our, they built
00:37:10.000
Self Health Campus, which is a really nice hospital.
00:37:13.000
That's the only new hospital they built recently.
00:37:17.000
So we have four hospitals, I think, which is not enough for two million people.
00:37:21.000
I mean, these are the kinds of things that, that a lot of people from Alberta are really
00:37:33.000
There were, there were articles in newspapers where people are like, oh, shut up, Alberta.
00:37:40.000
Is that really the way you talk to somebody that, that, is that how you would talk to
00:37:42.000
Because we kind of feel like we're the dad in the situation.
00:37:56.000
So we probably shouldn't give you any more money then, right?
00:37:59.000
And this is, you know, this is the situation we're in.
00:38:03.000
And Native people, how that plays in with us, this is a, this is another interesting thing,
00:38:06.000
is that there are a lot of Native people that are fed up with the government.
00:38:10.000
We don't feel like the government listens to us.
00:38:12.000
And some of us have actually said, what would it look like if we were Alberta and not the rest
00:38:29.000
Now, we're, technically we are supposed to be a constitutional monarchy.
00:38:35.000
We know that we're not really, there's not really much to do with the Queen here anymore.
00:38:39.000
But the treaties were between the Crown and the people.
00:38:47.000
The Indian Act is a very problematic piece of legislation.
00:38:51.000
It's, it's how Indians are governed in this country.
00:38:55.000
But the problem with the Indian Act is that it's, to be blunt, it's racist.
00:38:58.000
And it is not, it doesn't take into account our best interests.
00:39:02.000
So, you know, if there was a new government that was only Alberta, well then we would
00:39:07.000
no longer be governed under the Canadian Indian Act.
00:39:09.000
You know, so suddenly all those, that technique and that legislation, that governing legislation,
00:39:16.000
So then, then how, how would we protect treaty lands?
00:39:21.000
You know, like, those are, those are legitimate questions that a lot of Native people are asking.
00:39:25.000
But people don't realize, at least I don't think, they don't realize that a lot of times
00:39:29.000
the reason Native people are asking these questions is because we're strongly considering.
00:39:33.000
I mean, look at the, the number of Native people that don't vote.
00:39:37.000
If all of them decided at once to vote for, for a party, that would be a significant swing
00:39:45.000
But the problem is a lot of us don't vote and we stay disconnected from the system.
00:39:50.000
So, that's not the reason why the government doesn't really listen to us.
00:39:54.000
If not, not an active constituency in their, in their political calculations.
00:39:58.000
If they're not, if there's no upside for them, then why would they even take, because they
00:40:02.000
know they're going to alienate a certain number of the conservative base.
00:40:06.000
Because a lot of conservative people don't really want to do much with Indians.
00:40:10.000
So, they'll alienate any of those people and there's no upside because those, those
00:40:16.000
So, what do you think of the, sort of, background on that one's there?
00:40:18.000
So, you said, you know, that some of the base might not want to have anything to do or
00:40:23.000
Or do you think the cause for these things can easily move forward from it?
00:40:28.000
And I don't want people to think I'm conservative bashing because I'm not.
00:40:31.000
But there is a strong push from a lot of people that are on the conservative side of
00:40:35.000
the fence that they don't really want to do a whole lot to do with the Indians.
00:40:38.000
They think that the status quo is fine and that, you know, they never want to admit
00:40:41.000
that Canada's history is a little bit problematic.
00:40:44.000
They'll, you know, they're the people that white is right.
0.99
00:40:47.000
And I'm not even talking about white supremacy.
00:40:51.000
They're just a basic, you know, white, red, this is who I am.
00:40:57.000
Now, then on top of that, then you go far to the right and you have the actual racists
00:41:01.000
But then on the, on the liberal side of things, we have the, you know, the white knights.
00:41:06.000
They're going to save us and they're going to do everything for us.
00:41:09.000
But at the same time, those are the same people that created the residential school system.
00:41:13.000
You know, they're going to save us by making us more like white people.
1.00
00:41:16.000
They're going to save us by teaching us how to be white.
0.99
00:41:22.000
These people have legitimate culture and language.
00:41:26.000
And we should be helping them be more participatory in Canada.
00:41:33.000
So it's going to squeeze, I guess, from both sides.
00:41:36.000
And for us, it's hard because no government has ever been good for names.
00:41:42.000
The liberal government's the one that started the white paper.
00:41:51.000
But yeah, you know, like, Elder Trudeau ruled the white paper, which was basically telling
00:41:59.000
Which is, you know, to us, that's a, that's a, that's a flat out call to, I hate to say it
00:42:07.000
It's like saying, you don't deserve to be here as idiots.
00:42:10.000
Now, if you want to be more like white people, you just say it.
0.92
00:42:14.000
So it's like, it's definitely cultural, maybe, you know, physical, depending on how they're
00:42:20.000
And like, you know, with, with stuff like the residential schools, I've had this
0.79
00:42:23.000
I don't like to use the word genocide, but what happened to my people was a genocide.
00:42:29.000
Now we're, we're experiencing the echoes of that genocide.
00:42:33.000
So they're not actively, and look, anybody that says they are is one of those people
00:42:36.000
I don't even pay attention to, but they're not actively trying to kill us.
00:42:40.000
I mean, it's not like in Nicaragua where they murdered 19 Miagna activists, I think
00:42:54.000
It's more cultural, slowly remove their language, you know, take their kids and stick
1.00
00:43:03.000
Those are, those are echoes of genocidal policies.
00:43:10.000
Because if I, if I tell you, Sam, you're, you're, you're trying to commit a genocide
00:43:14.000
on my people and you're like, wait a minute, my people went through a genocide.
00:43:20.000
But it wasn't anything like what you're going through.
00:43:23.000
So are you more or less likely to be inclined towards feeling empathy to me?
00:43:31.000
So this is that sort of distinction between, you know, facts don't care about your feelings,
00:43:35.000
but we still have to take people's feelings into account because obviously we need to work
00:43:42.000
And like, so this is why I tell people like, like precision of language is so important
00:43:46.000
because I, I will come right up and say that our, our situation right now as, as natives
00:43:52.000
in Canada is worlds better than it's ever been.
00:43:56.000
That doesn't mean it's, it's where it needs to be.
00:44:03.000
I don't have to get permission to leave the reserve.
00:44:05.000
I don't have to go to the Indian agent and beg him to let me go off reserve to go work.
00:44:12.000
That's something that my dad's generation had to do.
00:44:14.000
I, I can speak openly anywhere, anytime about native rights.
00:44:19.000
And I don't have to worry that I'm going to get thrown in jail or murdered.
00:44:24.000
That's, that's worlds different than how it is in other places.
00:44:26.000
But for some reason, people think that if we exaggerate and make, blow things up and
00:44:31.000
use words like genocide and, you know, like words that are very inflammatory, that's
00:44:36.000
And it doesn't because then the average Canadian is sitting there thinking, you know, like
00:44:44.000
You know, like, they're like, it doesn't look so bad there.
00:44:46.000
And they, they don't go to like the really bad reserves.
00:44:50.000
But, you know, a lot of natives have seen some of these more urban reserves, you know.
00:44:54.000
They see those and they're like, it doesn't look so bad.
00:44:57.000
So it's, it's sort of a mix between a lack of education on some people's part, not understanding
00:45:03.000
where some of the anger and frustration is coming from.
00:45:07.000
Like, suicide groups taking that anger and then deciding I'm going to use it for another
00:45:11.000
purpose that may not actually align with the First Nations community.
00:45:15.000
And then the First Nations community getting screwed once again because they lost their
00:45:19.000
voice a second time when they were just about to get it.
00:45:28.000
Everybody for about three or four months on social media was posting selfies with signs
00:45:45.000
25 of those people stayed for a little bit longer, got bailed, went home.
00:45:54.000
And then a friend of mine took a video of the campground where all those people were
00:46:04.000
And all the people that were there that were, to put it bluntly, white people that showed
00:46:09.000
up and provoked and talked all kinds of smack, well they all left.
00:46:18.000
But there's Indians that are still in jail because they don't have the money to pay bail
1.00
00:46:22.000
so they're going to stay for the full 90 days or whatever it is.
00:46:25.000
They're stuck in jail the whole time and meanwhile there's a huge ass mess on the reserve
00:46:29.000
that all these wonderful people that were standing in solidarity came and they left this big mess
00:46:36.000
So it's kind of like a protest tourism kind of, you know, you do it for kicks after university.
00:46:45.000
Because it's like, you know, they want to come and be all activist-y for a couple of days
00:46:49.000
And meanwhile, Native people, that's their life.
0.99
00:46:58.000
Any final thoughts about where you think or where you'd like to see the situation go?
00:47:04.000
So you and I talked about this and I talked about it with Amanda a while ago and I think
00:47:09.000
that the biggest thing is that I like that Native people are speaking up, right?
00:47:14.000
Because the problem is that, especially within Canada, Native people don't feel comfortable
00:47:20.000
to speak up unless everyone else is speaking up at the same time.
00:47:23.000
Which is why you're seeing all these different blockades pop up at the same time, right?
00:47:28.000
But what I would really like to see, I don't want to see people blockading highways or blockading
00:47:34.000
streets because the truth is that's going to alienate the very people that we're trying
00:47:39.000
I mean, if we're going to make changes in Canada, we need the average Canadian on side.
00:47:44.000
We need them to understand that what happened to us is wrong and that, you know, talking
00:47:48.000
about reconciliation and acting on reconciliation are very different.
00:47:53.000
That it's not just throw some money at the problem and hope it goes away.
00:47:59.000
But more importantly for Native people, I want people to understand that, look, those
00:48:18.000
And we want people to understand that, look, there are some situations in Canada that need
00:48:29.000
I'm not just going to point fingers and say that this is all about white Canada being
00:48:35.000
But are there issues still with systemic racism?
00:48:39.000
Are there issues still where Native people aren't comfortable speaking up?
00:48:44.000
Don't ever read the comments on any article that has anything to do with Native people
00:48:52.000
And the racism is so in your face in those comments that all of a sudden you realize,
00:48:57.000
wait a minute, it's not, we're not where we need to be.
00:49:00.000
So, you know, and I want you to keep doing what you're doing because, I mean, you do good
00:49:06.000
And a lot of these people that are out there just trying to say, hey, look, you know what,
00:49:09.000
let, instead of immediately jumping to judgment, let's, let's do some research.
00:49:16.000
Because, you know, like we're, we're in such a polarized world right now that like, you know,
00:49:20.000
with left and right and white and dark and nobody just says, oh, well, you know, maybe
00:49:26.000
we should just look at the facts and then make some judgments based on those, you know?
00:49:32.000
So I'm really hoping that, you know, the next couple of months, especially we can maybe
00:49:37.000
drag the conversation away from this, you know, all or nothing maximalism to being more
00:49:43.000
like normal people and say, hey, you know what?
00:49:46.000
Ryan doesn't believe 100% in the pipelines, but he's also not 100% anti pipeline.
00:49:51.000
Ryan thinks we should have pipelines, but don't run them through watersheds and graveyards
00:49:56.000
and actually talk to the people whose land you're going to go through before you do it.
00:50:00.000
Like, I don't think that that's too much to ask, but I also don't think that we should
00:50:13.000
You know, I think you've given people a lot of stuff to digest and think about.
00:50:17.000
I know, like I said, I, I, you know, being someone who was born and raised in Toronto,
00:50:20.000
a lot, a lot of stuff about out West that suddenly became more real for me after this conversation.
00:50:24.000
If someone wants to get all of you, you're on Twitter.
00:50:30.000
So if you would like to have a question of Ryan, or if you'd like to be trolled back by
00:50:35.000
Ryan after you make offensive comments, he's an excellent comeback artist.
00:50:42.000
Once again, this is Ryan Barlow's indigenous rights activist.