Parliament teepee fuels uneasiness — as it should
The teepee that went up to reoccupy Parliament Hill this week is against the rules, but so is Parliament. Both of them ought to stay a while. Finding a collective noun for the people who erected the teepee just inside the gates off Wellington Street, just below East Block, isn’t easy. The people with the teepee had an hours-long standoff with police, like protesters. Their action looks like a protest to outsiders. They do not wish to be called protesters. Their teepee is a place to hold ceremonies, not a protest camp, they say.
Thursday morning I talked to Paul, who says he’s from New Brunswick and was part of the group that began at the Human Rights Monument outside city hall on Wednesday but eventually made its way up to the Hill with the teepee components. What, I asked, was the point?
Parliament Hill is covered with tents, he said, and adding one more did not seem like a big deal. But Canada reminds everyone that “white is right” and anything indigenous is illegitimate and easily discarded.
The tents that are all over Parliament Hill are part of the celebration for Canada Day. This is the most security-minded version of the event ever held, in view of the symbolism of the country’s 150th anniversary and recent terrorist attacks on concerts and ordinary people in Europe. As a protest statement, the teepee would need a permit. As a ceremonial addition to the Canada Day program, it would, well, have to be part of the Canada Day program. The tents that are already up are official tents, right?
“Well,” he said, “What makes Canada official?” Good question.
Under the law, the police had a responsibility to keep the pole-bearers off the Hill and have every right to dismantle the teepee now it’s up. But let’s take a longer view.
Parliament is on land never acquired via any formal transaction with the Algonquins. Various governments have been negotiating compensation for a land claim that covers much of eastern Ontario for years. Nobody seriously asks that Ottawa be returned to Algonquin control, but nobody seriously challenges the claim’s premise.
We settlers are squatting. The fact that we who are alive today didn’t start it, that we’re used to doing it, that many of our lives and livelihoods rely on our continuing to do it, doesn’t make it any less the case. Our very existence on this part of the country requires other people’s forbearance and compromise, which we take for granted. When they clear their throats about it, we point to the rules we created afterward and invite them to shut up.
Reconciling indigenous and non-indigenous people’s views of our relationship will take more of that forbearance, from both sides.
The Mounties and Hill security officers held the teepee bearers to a spot inside the gates of Parliament Hill but have otherwise backed away. The police even guided the occupants to a news conference inside Centre Block Thursday morning.
That news conference didn’t go smoothly, erupting into a confrontation between one of the speakers and the CBC’s Julie Van Dusen, who asked a very ordinary Parliament-Hill-type question about comparing Justin Trudeau’s record on indigenous issues to Stephen Harper’s and got yelled at to leave. Apparently the question added to 524 years of “holistic genocide.”
Indigenous people have been bearing with us for a good long time already, it’s true, but explaining what’s wrong with a straightforward question asked in good faith seems like it would get us farther than trying to evict the person who asked it.
This will not be the last time that reconciliation makes the settler side feel uncomfortable. If this is as bad as it gets, we’ll be getting off easy.