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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, First Nations ﻿&amp;﻿ The Building of Solidarity - Article﻿</title>﻿

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﻿<b﻿>﻿First Nations ﻿&amp;﻿ The Building of Solidarity 

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by Deb Simmons ﻿<br﻿>﻿

﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, July - August 1997﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

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It is crucial to be active within a community in order to achieve perspective and clarity on the issues at stake for socialists. It doesn't matter how many stacks of books one has read, only the work of building communities of resistance makes it possible for the socialist to get out of the old trap of speaking at people in monologue, with abstract and sterile truths. The rooted socialist is imbedded in the process of give and take that is part of working with others, and she is charged with that experience; speaking from such a standpoint is an engagement in dialogue, even if the audience is composed of people from a variety of domains of struggle.

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It was exciting for me, having been relatively isolated for almost a year, to see evidence of the immense progress that the New Socialist Group (NSG) has made in building links with other activists, and learning from the experience of struggle. I have been able to gain some perspective and clarity on the issue of First Nations Communities of Resistance. For what it's worth, I'd like to briefly sketch out this perspective my hope is that some discussion will be generated on the challenge of achieving what we've called "genuine inclusivity" with 

respect to the politics of aboriginal self-determination. Unfortunately, our organization as a whole cannot speak from the standpoint of direct or ongoing involvement in a First Nations struggle. There are two principle reasons for this: First, aboriginal activists tend to harbour a deep lack of trust that expressions of solidarity by non-aboriginal individuals and organizations are genuine. This perception does not come out of nowhere; it is the outcome of a long history of opportunist adventures and betrayals by supposed supporters of self-determination. Second, outside of occasional eruptions of open resistance, there exists a general pessimism about the efficacy of organizing independently of the official leaderships. The "new native militancy" about which I wrote in the first issue of New Socialist is not a phenomenon which is generalizing to a higher level of struggle. (For example, the wave of militancy in BC during the summer of 1995 failed to translate into another wave last summer, despite signs that the NDP was rapidly backtracking on its commitment to land claims negotiations.) Rather, the unevenness and volatility which we've observed in the labour movement also characterizes the movements for aboriginal self-determination.

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Never has the question of aboriginal self-determination been more central to the project for social change in Canada. This is evident in the eruptions of militant resistance that have occurred through the nineties, and in the high profile of the issue of aboriginal self-government in the debates over the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords. It was recognized in the foregrounding of the struggle for aboriginal rights (and particularly, the struggle of the Stoney Point people in southern Ontario) during the Metro Days of Action in Toronto.

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The struggle for land rights continues to be the specific basis for the aspirations of aboriginal peoples to self-determination, as it has been since the 18th century when agricultural settlement by European immigrants began to pose a threat to their traditional land base. 

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Unfortunately, land rights struggles are difficult for us to relate to in any sustained way, since they often take place in rural areas far from the cities in which we are based. But a dynamic has emerged in the 1990s which creates new opportunities for socialists to build organic links with aboriginal activists: the cities have become crucial sites of aboriginal struggle.

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Granted, the Red Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s did originate for the most part in the cities. However, the extreme alienation and oppression experienced by aboriginal migrants to the cities made it difficult to get beyond the day to day struggle for survival. So the young militants of that period found it necessary to migrate to the reserves to find both the cultural space in which they could build their sense of identity and confidence, and the political space where the aspiration to self-determination could be expressed through resistance. The magnetic pull of the reserve was reinforced by the Maoist politics which influenced Red Power militants at the time, with its emphasis on the strategy of making revolution from the countryside. 

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But now, twenty years later, the largest aboriginal communities in Canada are in the cities. The cities are the sites of a virtual renaissance of aboriginal culture from the huge powwows to the domains of theatre, literature, visual arts, film, music, and even the internet. 

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If Toronto is "Canada's biggest reserve," it is not only because of the rapidly growing size of the aboriginal population in the city, but also because of the cultural and social basis which exists for the crystallization of an urban aboriginal community. In fact, a recent survey has discovered that a remarkably small percentage of urban aboriginal people feel that they lose their sense of cultural identity in living off-reserve. Yet they do lose the special treaty rights negotiated by their forefathers the moment they cross the border of the reserve. This contradiction intensifies the sense of anger and frustration among people who often were forced to migrate to the cities to escape the desperate economic and social conditions of reserve life. 

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The emergence of rooted urban aboriginal communities does not undermine the importance of the struggle for land; on the contrary, the imaginative link with reserve communities and their aspirations can be reinforced by the pressures of systematic racism and poverty which face most urban aboriginal people on a daily basis. The urban and rural communities are also linked by a constant flow of migration; many people migrate annually to the cities, staying only long enough to make some cash so that they can somewhat raise their standard of living on the reserve. 

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Urban activists have begun to mobilize to defend aboriginal rights to health care, education, and freedom from taxation. They have been able to draw busloads of people from reserves for militant demonstrations of unprecedented size and representative breadth. 

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And they have played important roles in building solidarity for reserve communities in their struggles for land rights. 

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Making links with urban aboriginal communities will not be easy, given the persistent legacy of mistrust. Nevertheless, the rising confidence of these communities creates real openings in which to begin to break down some of the historic barriers to solidarity. We can do this by developing an understanding of aboriginal oppression and resistance; by ensuring that means are found to concretely highlight the issue of aboriginal self-determination in anti- racist and anti-cuts organizations; by making every effort to include aboriginal activists in leading roles in these organizations; and by doing systematic outreach in aboriginal communities.﻿ This process of inclusion will help to build solidarity with aboriginal communities; it will also have a transformative effect on our politics. 

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