No, Randy, there was no consensus

Jeff Green | Feb 19, 2020

On Monday, Randy Hillier decided that it is his obligation, as an independent politician, to speak out by publishing a statement called “Ending the occupation, the Indian Act, and Hypocrisy”

In it, he said nothing about the Wet’suwet’en and the legal status of their claim, but instead talked about how their supporters across the country are responsible for tearing down free speech, distorting our education system, and denigrating the hard-working people who built this country by calling them settlers.

He said a lot of things in his statement. You can read it in full at Randyhillier.com. I disagree with the way he characterises people in it. Instead of engaging with people he disagrees with, he resorts to insults. But that is not why I am responding here.

I will limit this response to one line in his statement. This one:

“My ancestors and the history of Canada demonstrates beyond any doubt that consensus, not conquest, was the relationship between the European settlers and the native Canadians.” 

This is not only untrue, it is dangerous. It denies the reality of residential schools, the establishment of the reserve system, the Indian Act, and all of the genocidal policies of governments, churches and other institutions that persisted in this country for hundreds of years and are the reason why reconciliation is such an important concept in our times.

The idea that “consensus not conquest” characterises the relationship between settlers and Indigenous people in Canada is false. The only consensus was among the settlers, the first nations experienced something else entirely.

Reconciliation is a long-term enterprise. Contrary to what has been written in some newspapers, this national crisis over an isolated piece of land in Northern BC, and all that has happened because of it across the country in recent weeks, is not the end of reconciliation, it is but one moment in a process that cannot be bound by a timeline. It will be done when it is done, and no sooner. If anything, we are learning how hard and time consuming it is going to be.

Randy’s missive is also part of that process, I believe.

It puts a voice to what many people are thinking, and provides an opportunity for a vigorous response.