The New Trail of Tears. Naomi Schaefer Riley
for bands to improve their situation economically. The best advice he can give his children and the children of others in his band is to get an education and leave, and so his band spends more than most on education. They not only pay for primary and secondary education but also spend almost $300,000 a year to help pay for postsecondary education. A number of times, I hear from leaders of First Nations that education is “the one thing the government can’t take away from you.”
The entire Whispering Pines band – today about 56 members – moved to Whispering Pines only in 1972. Their traditional lands are farther north, but when the government started developing hydroelectric power there, a transmission system was built right through the band’s land. The Ministry of Indian Affairs “is never proactive,” says Lebourdais, but once it recognized the land was “unlivable,” the ministry gave Whispering Pines a new reserve.
As I drive to Whispering Pines from Kamloops, it’s very easy to see the borders between band land and privately owned land, even without crossing the Thompson Rivers. The farmland that seems to speed by my window goes from lush green to brown and then back again.
That’s because, for one thing, band members couldn’t get a bank loan for an irrigation system. “We don’t have a balance sheet,” Lebourdais explains. “We have an expense statement, but we don’t have a balance sheet. So you’re going to spend $15,000 or $18,000 a year on electricity for property that doesn’t exist on paper. It exists in real life – you can touch it, feel it – but it doesn’t mean anything to a banker unless you can describe it legally.” And the entire system makes no sense to a banker because you’re trying to irrigate land you don’t actually own. Which is why, says Lebourdais, “everything is cash on the reserve.”
The fact that the land is held in trust by the Canadian government restricts the economy on the reserve to cash or barter, forcing the Whispering Pines band to live in a kind of preindustrial society.
To illustrate this point, Ed Lebourdais, Mike’s brother, describes a meeting he had recently with the minister of Indian affairs (known officially now as the minister of Aboriginal affairs and northern development). “We’re all equals,” the minister told him. To which Ed said:
“No, we’re not.”
He said, “We’re all Canadians.”
I said, “No. No. Your house is worth something. Mine’s not. And if you don’t believe me, let’s trade houses.” You could hear a pin drop in that office, because nobody wanted to say anything. I smiled at him and he smiled back, and I said, “Exactly. So don’t sit there and tell me we’re equals.” When he holds all the cards, has all the finances, has all the money, all the jurisdiction, all the authority, and none of the accountability.
Indian property isn’t easily transferable to other Indians either. The Indian Act makes it very difficult for Indians to will their homes to their children. And so, more often than not, after the death of its owner, a home is simply auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Take the situation of Deana Crawford. About 15 years ago, Deana, who is not Indian, married a member of the Whispering Pines band. She and her husband had two children and then he left her. Every month, she pays rent on the home, which is located on land owned by the band. But no matter how much she pays, she’s no closer to owning the home. Even though her children are members of the band, she isn’t allowed to own band land. She can never get a mortgage for the land. And she can’t leave it to her children.
Lebourdais has encouraged his small band to be as entrepreneurial as possible given the circumstances. Within the band, a group of firefighters contract with the provincial government to combat forest fires in other parts of British Columbia and other parts of Canada as well. It’s a business that doesn’t require any land, so it’s more feasible than many other enterprises, though it did require the purchase of some equipment.
Lebourdais is disdainful of the dependence on government that many bands seem to have developed. The government sends Lebourdais money each month for what’s called Social Assistance. But Lebourdais says he refuses to sign those checks over to members of his band unless they can prove that they’re physically incapable of working. “I’ll probably get in trouble for this, but I don’t care,” he tells me.
Lebourdais is adamant: “There is no reason for an 18-year-old person to be on welfare. No good reason, anyway. You’ve got both arms, both legs, you got a dog with you for your eyesight. We’ll get you a job, whether it’s washing cars or washing dishes. If you think you’re worth more than that, go apply yourself, because I’m not going to cut you a check.” Lebourdais says people are better off this way – “you have better self-esteem, better values, better thoughts, when you have a real paycheck.”
Lebourdais sees the alternative everywhere he looks. In the Kamloops band, he says, “there are families that think, ‘The government owes me a house, so I’m not paying for this one.’” They don’t pay their mortgages or take care of their homes because they think that’s the band’s responsibility. Lebourdais doesn’t want that to happen to Whispering Pines.
Keith Matthew, former chief of the Simpcw band, which, like Kamloops, is part of the Shuswap Nation, recalls that when he was growing up “there wasn’t really much of an economy at all” on his reserve. “We still had an Indian agent,” he tells me, referring to the person sent by the Ministry of Indian Affairs to oversee all the activities of the reserve. In 1975, Matthew’s father was one of the band members who occupied the Indian agent’s office. “We were kicking the Indian agent out of our lives on an everyday basis,” Matthew says of the occupation, after which money began to flow from the federal government directly to the band. “That was an important turning point in our history.”
That was also the time at which the residential school was closed down. Matthew went to a local school nearby. Today, he says proudly, “My community is one of the highest educated ones in Canada per capita. We have our first medical doctor. We have people training to be lawyers. We have lots of teachers.” Unfortunately, says Matthew, because of the constraints of the Indian Act, “it’s tough to build an economy on the reserve . . . and two-thirds of the Simpcw live off reserve.” But like the Kamloops band, their neighbors 50 miles to the south, the Simpcw are trying to build up the infrastructure so that once they’re given more economic and political autonomy they’ll be poised to take control.
Because the Simpcw live in a very rural area, there’s a limit to how much they’ll be able to collect in property taxes, but they’ve started a group of band-owned companies in order to supplement their reserves. There’s a power line construction company and an environmental consulting company, for instance.
And ten years ago, the Simpcw launched a partnership with a heli-skiing company. For $1,500, thrill-seekers can go to the top of a mountain in a helicopter and then ski down. “It’s a very high-end clientele,” says Matthew. But the deal almost didn’t happen, because the band had difficulty coming up with its portion of the start-up money. “We found out in a hurry that we’re a bad risk.” They had no collateral to put down. But in 2003, there was a huge fire in the valley near their reserve. They bid on a job to remove all the salvage wood. They sold the wood and then used that money to invest in the heli-skiing venture.
There are many such opportunities for bands to make money from tourism, if only they can find the start-up capital. I meet Felix Arnouse, chief of the Little Shuswap band, at the Quaaout Lodge at Talking Rock Golf Course. Interest in building a resort on this lake began in the 1970s after the local Indian Affairs office was shut down. But the hotel wasn’t actually opened until 1990, Arnouse recalls.
Although financing the project was the biggest hurdle, many band members were opposed to getting involved in any kind of business venture, believing that they’d inevitably get the short end of the stick from non-Indian partners. And many, says Arnouse, “still think it’s a bad idea.” Like Indian casinos in the United States, the Quaaout Lodge manages to provide jobs for band members who want them, but there’s still not much in the way of private enterprise here.
Some band members still live in poverty, and many struggle