Can Native Sovereignty Coexist with Canadian Sovereignty: YES

The Case for Native Sovereignty

John A. Olthuis and Roger Townshead

What this article is supposed to try to persuade us to think about is the case for Native Sovereignty. Before I read the article I agreed with there being Native Sovereignty, but I still needed somebody else to tell me why the Natives need the right to self-governing. After reading the article I was still looking for somebody to tell me because this article sure didn’t give me any answers. The article was more of a research paper than a persuasive essay. The authors cite different glitches in Native/Canadian relations such as the Oka crisis the White Paper and the Charlottetown Accord but they never really mentioned why these cases should lead to Native Sovereignty. They also talk about the settlement years and how Natives were treated as subjects not as humans and how when an aboriginal graduates from University he/she is no longer considered an “Indian” in the eyes of the federal government. Sure these points that Olthuis and Townshead bring up do show how the natives have been oppressed, but they didn’t really prove in any way that the natives need sovereignty.

When it came to the tutorial itself I couldn’t really ask questions from the article but the questions I asked were inspired by it. The only solid point that came out of the article, I feel, was the point made about how Canada doesn’t legally own Canada since the natives didn’t “legally” give it up. This led to some questions about the Natives just claiming the land as theirs or taking this issue to an international court, of course those questions were asked they were met with a whole bunch of “whatever’s.” The general feel from my group was that they felt that Natives should have the right to self govern, but like me they just needed someone else to give them the points, and this article obviously wasn’t going to give us them.

Most of the points that were made in this article are nothing newer than what we learn in Grade 8 History, they are still valid just not for a persuasive essay. The points about the Oka crisis could have been the centrepiece of their argument but they did not use it to their advantage, explaining how Native Sovereignty could have prevented this crisis from happening would have turned the essay around 180 degrees.

I am coming out of this tutorial knowing pretty much the exact same things as I did before I read the article. I have nothing against the natives self governing, but I still haven’t gotten that somebody to tell me why natives should be sovereign.

Waseem