[Witness speaks in Cree]
Tansi. Thank you.
I'd like to acknowledge the Algonquin land. I bring greetings from my people in Pimicikamak.
My name is Catherine Merrick. I was elected by the Pimicikamak people to be the chief of the Pimicikamak Nation in accordance with Pimicikamak law. I do not come here as a chief of an Indian band in accordance with your system of law. It is not a customary law in accordance with the Indian Act. I have been invited to speak on a very sensitive issue, the issue of suicide, which stems from hopelessness and despair, an issue that stems from 150 years of oppression from your policy of cultural genocide. Suicide is one of the mitigating factors stemming from this policy.
As a primary spokesperson and the leader of the Pimicikamak Nation, I will summarize in a nutshell where I come from, who I am, and who I represent. For you to understand who we are, where we come from, and what we need to do to survive, we must jointly examine what our best and collective interest is to co-exist in the spirit of our treaty relationship.
First is the need to understand our Pimicikamak Okimawin government.
In Pimicikamak territory, the crown, including its crown agency, Manitoba Hydro, needs to understand the environment that it's creating for the Pimicikamak people and their experience. Its system continues to impose genocidal policies and inflict harm on the health of Pimicikamak traditional territory and people. This infliction has traumatized our people and the land the Pimicikamak are spiritually connected to.
Suicides are one of the effects of this trauma. The concept of trauma engages a holistic view that may aid in building a new relationship. An ongoing national trauma afflicts the Pimicikamak people. It began almost 140 years ago.
Entered into in good faith to protect the settlers, Treaty 5 was soon revealed to be a genocidal fraud. Like other indigenous peoples in Canada, the Pimicikamak have endured governmental policies that were designed to exterminate them as a people and to separate them from their territory. Plainly, this trauma did not begin with Manitoba Hydro.
The Pimicikamak have survived better than some of Canada's indigenous peoples. Thanks in part to the situation of its territory, some of the worst inflictions largely passed it by. Then, in the 1960s, Manitoba Hydro built the Kelsey dam. It's both a dam and generating station and began to ruin Sipiwesk, the ancient heartland of the Pimicikamak people. The Jenpeg hydro development project, located only miles upriver, permanently destroyed our lands, our hunting territories, our water system, our traditional foods, our traditional medicines, our ways of life, our culture. In essence, the project stripped us of our ability to preserve our identity and our way of life, the sources of our wellness for thousands of years.
As I've mentioned, the elders tell us that there were virtually no suicides prior to the arrival of Jenpeg hydro development project. We have lost 40 individuals to suicide, most of them young people who would have had a long life. From this development, a modern day treaty was made between Canada, Manitoba, and Manitoba Hydro to mitigate and compensate for the losses we sustained. This agreement has still not been honoured.
Pimicikamak is a self-governed indigenous nation. The word “Pimicikamak” means the place “where a lake lies across the river”. Okimawin is our government. Its predates the European settlement of Canada. Pimicikamak became part of Canada by its representative, Té-pas-té-nam, signing Treaty 5 at an historic ceremony in Norway House in 1875.
Suppressed by the federal policy of cultural genocide and federal laws for more than a century, the Pimicikamak Okimawin reawakened in the early 1990s. Pimicikamak Okimawin is a grassroots, people-driven government based on traditional Cree democracy.
Some may confuse Pimicikamak with the Cross Lake Band of Indians, the first nation, or even regard it as a new name for the band. In reality, the two are as fundamentally different in almost every way, as, say, Canada and Winnipeg are.
Some of the main constitutional and legal differences between them include the following.
In the last decade, the Pimicikamak's unwritten constitution and other customary laws have been updated to meet modern needs. The Pimicikamak laws are made by the people, in contrast with Canadian laws, which are made by the crown in Parliament in Ottawa. The authority of its people to make their own laws has always been and has never been surrendered or lost. The Pimicikamak Okimawin is a corporate and political body comprising the executive council, chief in council, the elders' council, women's council, the youth council, and the secretary to the councils.
The four councils meet as a single entity and determine national policy by consensus. The executive council, with its chief in council, is a modern innovation. It is responsible for the executive function of managing the day-to-day affairs of the nation. It is does so by consensus. Its decisions are governed by national policy. Through the executive council, national policy also applies to the Cross Lake band of Indians.
The Pimicikamak have been working hard to revise their traditional government and culture. This will enable any hope for survival. The current system imposed by Canada continues to threaten our survival. It's paternalistic and legalistic. Steps for our survival include the introduction of the 2003 national policy of finance administration and the 2016 transparency project. We are taking these steps to account for how our elected officials on council conduct our nation's business and how they manage its affairs and those of Cross Lake.
Since the Indian Act, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada has presided over third world conditions of poverty, corruption, and human despair. Their system has left us no option but to raise the bar of accountability. We need the ability to govern our own accountability to our people without legal terms compelling us to be beggars in our homeland at the feet of Indian Affairs. Our national policy will hold the crown to high standards of accountability for their conduct and actions.
Breaking free from this colonial system, the Pimicikamak Okimawin has accomplished most of the reforms that the Minister of Indian Affairs is hoping to set in motion in proposed federal legislation.
Historically, the Pimicikamak have been systematically suppressed by the Canadian policy of cultural genocide. The 150 years of systematic race-based standards are evident in the crown's track record in failing to honour the treaty relationship with indigenous tribes like the Pimicikamak. That treaty was regarded as a sacred covenant between Britain and the nation of tribes.
After entering into the treaty relationship in 1875 with the crown in right of Britain, the Pimicikamak and their ability to govern themselves were quickly suppressed by the creation of the state of Canada and the paternalistic Indian Act, which created Indian bands, band memberships, and chiefs and councils for those bands.
Where is Pimicikamak? Cree culture centred on our vast Pimicikamak traditional territory that enabled the ancestors of the Pimicikamak people to adapt to change and to survive since time immemorial. It is the only known indigenous nation on record whose territory was recognized the surveyor general of Canada in March 1877.
Cross Lake Band is the epicentre of this territory where most of our Pimicikamak people live. They are both citizens and band members. Nikikonakos is the name of our ancestral village, now referred to as Cross Lake, Manitoba. This community of 8,400 people lives on Pimicikamak territory.
The strategic objective of our Pimicikamak is to survive as a people, which is a serious challenge in the face of continuing federal efforts to extinguish the nation, and environmental and spiritual damage.
We have historically suffered from cultural genocide, the intentional destruction of a people as the people, distinguished by its not necessarily intending to kill individuals. Again, suicide is one of those key mitigating factors stemming from the cultural genocide. Many indigenous people are at the edge of the cliff of the mountain of oppression, and attempted suicides continue and hopelessness still thrives.
I have invited the Prime Minister to witness first hand the atrocities created by your Indian Act in the midst of our last suicide crisis. He has failed to respond to my invite. This is evidence of the failure of the crown and all its agents to honour this relationship. The current problem is that despite multiple government apologies, both the federal and provincial levels of government continue to actively pursue these policies while proclaiming their desire for a new and respectful relationship.
