Crossing Borders Symposium, April 1998

Roundtable on Parties and Elections, July 1998

In the Spring of 1996 U.C. Berkeley was one of a select number of U.S. institutions chosen by the Ford Foundation's Education, Media, Arts, and Culture Program to participate in a major initiative, “Crossing Borders: Revitalizing Area Studies.” The Canadian Studies program, under the leadership of Co-Chair Tom Barnes, has been active in this project from the first. The project is being coordinated by Berkeley's Institute of International Studies, under the overall direction of Professor of Geography and Director of IIS, Michael Watts. Other participants, in addition to Canadian Studies, include the Centers for Latin American Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, and Western European Studies.

For its part in this undertaking, the Canadian Studies Program during Spring and Summer 1998 was pleased to host an April 3 symposium and a July 17th roundtable discussion. We will be pursuing these issues in future, and welcome input and participation from all interested faculty, visitors, and graduate students. For further information please contact Dr. Rita Ross, (510) 642-0531 or canada@uclink.berkeley.edu.

"Crossing Borders" Symposium, Friday, April 3, 1998

Schedule and participants (with links to statements):

10:00 AM - PANEL: Federalism & Sovereignty

THOMAS G. BARNES (History & Law; Co-Chair, Canadian Studies, UCB); MICHAEL HAWES (Political Studies, Queen’s University); DIAN MILLION (Ethnic Studies, UCB); HARRY SCHEIBER (Jurisprudence and Social Policy, Boalt School of Law, UCB)

Moderator: ALAIN NÖEL (Political Science, University of Montreal)

12:00 Noon - LUNCH

1:00 PM - PANEL: Quebec - What’s New, What’s Next? (or, Federalism & Sovereignty, Part 2)

PIERRE AUBÉRY (Emeritus Professor of French Literature and Civilization, SUNY Buffalo); STEPHEN LONGSTAFF (Sociology, York University); ALAIN NÖEL (Political Science, University of Montreal)

Moderator: MICHAEL HAWES (Political Studies, Queen’s University)

3:00 PM - ROUNDTABLE: Indigenous Peoples: Cross-Border Connections

ROBIN DE LUGAN (Anthropology); ARTHUR MASON (Anthropology); BEVERLY ORTIZ (Anthropology); PAMELA STERN (Anthropology)

Moderator: NELSON GRABURN (Anthropology; Co-Chair of Canadian Studies, UCB)

STATEMENTS FROM 10:00 AM PANEL: FEDERALISM & SOVEREIGNTY

Panelists: THOMAS G. BARNES (History & Law; Co-Chair, Canadian Studies, UCB); MICHAEL HAWES (Political Studies, Queen’s University); DIAN MILLION (Ethnic Studies, UCB); HARRY SCHEIBER (Jurisprudence and Social Policy, Boalt School of Law, UCB)

Moderator: ALAIN NÖEL (Political Science, University of Montreal)

THOMAS G. BARNES (History & Law; Co-Chair, Canadian Studies, UCB)

For fifteen years the Canadian Studies Program has pursued issues of federalism in Canada and the United States--and latterly in Mexico--beginning with Victor Jones's project supported by American Donner. Free-trade, sub-national relationships across borders, and environmental and defense matters have all been scrutinized in the three great federal polities of North America. Occasionally, though only fitfully, the impact on these polities of international arrangements has been seen as touching national sovereignty. What has not been considered, even tangentially, is sovereignty within those polities, and how a federal system of shared sovereignty might best respond to those international arrangements which affect national sovereignty. If nationalism since World War II has become increasingly ethnic in its complexion, producing nations which sometimes literally are nothing more than "tribes with flags," old nations with relatively sophisticated economies and polities are joining to commonly beneficial ends into groupings which see shared sovereignty. Sovereignty is not merely, like English real property, a "bundle of rights": at some critical point sufficient surrender of sovereignty leaves the state without the integrity requisite to assure its autonomy. The three federal systems in North America have long dealt with such concerns, and each with more or less satisfactory results has enabled shared sovereignty to fulfill the required devolution of powers while preserving the integrity of the state. The systems demonstrate great variations. The constitution of Los Estados Unidos de Mexico has proven the most resistant to change and the least challengeable, perhaps because it made the least inroads on the sovereignty of the national state. The United States instrument of 1789, the most architectonic as well as the most ambitious, came with a user-friendly handbook to how it would work: The Federalist, especially Hamilton's No.27, in advancing the affection principle, by which the citizens of the states would increasingly esteem the federal government because it would provide better government, proved prophetic, but in the process confirmed the adage of a sixteenth century Portuguese bishop that God writes straight with crooked lines. The evolution the U.S. Constitution saw an almost diametric shift in the loci of sovereignty--but sovereignty survived. Canada's case was different. Canada's first constitutional instrument of 1867 was a laundry list (sections 91 and 92 separated the color and the white washables) not intended as an organic instrument and therefore not meant to grow or change. It survived until too much was asked of it. It was superseded in 1982 by a much more elaborate instrument of which too much was expected. If 1867 was silent on the issue of sovereignty because it was not a pragmatic concern, 1982 was silent because to have discussed it would have been fatal. If we are going to study federalism "Cross Borders" and Within Borders, we must go back and study the fundamental substance of federalism, which is the division and disposal of sovereignty.

MICHAEL HAWES (Political Studies, Queen’s University) Rethinking Regionalism and Revitalizing Area Studies

Let me begin by stating straight away that my principal interests have to do with the larger questions that animate this initiative and bedevil area studies as we head into the next millennium. Generally speaking, I am interested in theoretical and conceptual issues. Among other things, I think that we should be addressing or rethinking some of the key concepts. These include, inter alia, the concepts of area, region, community, state, society, comparative regionalism and regional community.

Specifically, in the context of this symposium, and in hopes of setting a broad agenda for the proposed project, I am interested in the potential evolution of a North American community. How, if at all, will it take shape? What effects will it have on existing federal structures? Are there incentives for sub-national, trans-national or newly nationalized claimants? Will the economic initiatives (NAFTA) generate new political structures and/or new societal realities?

Given the time constraints of the symposium, and the interests of the Canadian Studies Program, let me take this opportunity to identify what I think are four key research questions in this area.

First, to what extent has the creation of a regional trading arrangement (CUFTA, NAFTA and beyond) moved us in the direction of a regional integration arrangement (RIA) or pluralistic community? Answering this question would involve a systematic assessment of trans-governmental and trans-national association in a wide range of issue areas. Sectoral case studies would be one way to go at this issue. I, personally, am interested in three specific areas: the early economic effects of RTAs, the pressures for institution building, and the emergence of various cultural, non-state forces.

Second, is there a theoretical distinction between the regionalism of the late 1950s and 1960s and the so-called new regionalism of the 1980s and 1990s? In other words, where is the "area" in area studies at the end of the century? For me, it is critical to understand the profound differences in these two episodes of regionalism. The first, mired in the cold war world and old geographies was both state-centered and state-centric. It was closed, highly structured, institutional and derived from a specific political mandate (namely, the creation of a working peace system in Europe and beyond). The latter, or new regionalism, reflects the realities of a post cold war world. It is open (with a very modest commitment to formal structures), soft (driven by a general commitment to the market as opposed to a specific political agenda), market driven (as opposed to state-led), and uncertain. This new regionalism appears to be characterized by a north-south dimension, a wide variety in the type and level of institutionalization, a multidimensional character, and a resurgence in feelings of identity and community.

Third, does this phenomenon encourage the systematic harmonization of policies (economic, social, cultural and political) between the three North American governments and, eventually, their hemispheric partners? Moreover, will these efforts at harmonization (or the inability of governments and citizens' groups to prevent them) lead to a more formal community? There has been a good deal of interesting work on tax policy, trade policy, competition policy, health policy and environmental policy. However, there is much work to do here still.

Fourth, to what extent does the pressure for economic integration encourage a backlash at the national, subnational, or local level? Does convergence in some areas give rise to greater divergence in others? To use the language of the neo-functionalists, where there are spillover effects to regional integration will there also be "backwash effects"? My suspicion is that there will be "reactions", both from below (in Quebec and Chiapas for instance) and from above (in terms of globalization and the internationalization of markets and production.

DIAN MILLION (Ethnic Studies, UCB)

“Sovereignty” today represents the nexus of some rather different discussion points. On one level, sovereignty represents a four-hundred year old discourse of legitimacy that has held in place certain political/ economic/ territorial constructions that we know at this point as nation-states. Nation-states did not appear out of the blue nor will they disappear any time in the near future. On another level, there is the discourse that came to fruition after World War II in that process we recognize as decolonization. Decolonization has offered a stiff set of problems to the notion of sovereignty, simply expressed as those of recognition and economic integration, with subsets of race, class and gender. Older nation-states did not readily recognize or grant the sovereignty of former colonies. Newly decolonized entities did not naturally have viable economies that could support their sovereignty or compete with former colonizers-a condition that has been called neo-colonialism. Today, the discourse around globalization has problematized all notions of sovereignty as autonomy. The rise of ethnic movements worldwide exacerbates these older issues as globally integrated economies recreate demographies. Nation-states, such as the United States and Canada are faced with recognizing increased diversity and can no longer ignore the inherent tensions that are created as a result. Indigenous sovereignty as a case in point represents fissures in all previous discourses. First Nations and American Indian/Alaskan Native peoples seek to disrupt those discourses that hold nation-state sovereignties blameless as colonizers. Individually, Native nations have complex histories and are not united or unproblematically involved in seeking to be nation-states. Also, individually they do not all have viable economies. In conversation and action with other peoples with similarly situated histories, most First Nation and American Indian groups are bound within the discourse of Indigenism. Indigenism is a complex of human rights and sovereignty rights issues whose subject is those peoples who are original or ancient tenants of land now inhabited by a plethora of nation-states. Indigenism and the economic struggle for the welfare of Native peoples have proved to be a thorny and irresolute challenge, not only to regional governments, but also to the notion of “sovereignty” as a concept.

STATEMENTS FROM 1:00 PM PANEL: QUEBEC - WHAT’S NEW, WHAT’S NEXT? (OR, FEDERALISM & SOVEREIGNTY, PART 2)

Panelists: PIERRE AUBÉRY (Emeritus Professor of French Literature and Civilization, SUNY Buffalo); STEPHEN LONGSTAFF (Sociology, York University); ALAIN NÖEL (Political Science, University of Montreal)

Moderator: MICHAEL HAWES (Political Studies, Queen’s University)

PIERRE AUBÉRY (Emeritus Professor of French Literature and Civilization, SUNY Buffalo) What’s Next for Quebec: A View from France

The history of the French in North America is, by and large, an unhappy one, rife with defeats and ambiguities. Left to fend for themselves by France when the treaty of Paris brought an end to the Seven Years' War in 1763, the habitants, as they called themselves, survived uneasily under the British régime. However they developed a reluctant admiration for the liberalism of their conquerors and for their institutions. The only sizable and concentrated French-speaking population left in North America, they wished, from these early days, to adopt the most positive characteristics of their conquerors, but at the same time to retain their own language, their religion, and the original culture they had developed upon contact with a new land and its native inhabitants. Although the British rulers of Canada were politically astute and socially liberal, the Anglo settlers were too often arrogant and contemptuous of the pea-soups. This attitude confined the French - with the exception of a tiny elite - to a kind of ghetto, and fed the nationalist movement that never gave up hope of wiping out the consequences of the British military victory and regaining the full independence for the small remnant of New France that survived in Quebec.

This is not the place to detail the battles and defeats of the nationalists during the nineteenth century and the major part of the twentieth. Although the movement lay dormant for many years, it returned to the forefront of the Canadian political scene with the “Quiet Revolution” of the early sixties and the emergence of the Parti Québécois in the seventies, under the charismatic leadership of René Lévesque. Pierre Trudeau, then Prime Minister of Canada, and Jean Chrétien, a Quebec-born lawyer who established his practice in Toronto, now at the helm in Ottawa, led the assault against the 1980 referendum on the option sovereignty-association that René Lévesque had organized. The defeat of the sovereigntists appeared to seal the fate of the organized independent opposition to the status quo, and augur its prompt demise. In order to secure his tactical advantage, Pierre Trudeau undertook to sever the last connections of Canada with its colonial past, by gradually removing the constitutional powers still resting with the British crown. A home-grown Canadian Constitution was approved in 1982 by all the provinces of Canada with the exception of Quebec. This Constitution superseded the provisions of the British Quebec Act of 1774 and of the constitutional law of 1867 establishing the Canadian Federation. That Federation had acknowledged the existence of two founding peoples, and two distinct societies, of which the two languages had equal legal status, and the provinces were accorded the right to veto any constitutional change voted in parliament. In the Canadian Constitutional landscape, as remodeled by Trudeau, the Constitution could be amended by the parliament with the approval of the majority of the provinces. In this new constitutional structure, Quebec could no longer legislate, unimpeded by Federal constraints, in areas vital for its autonomous survival, such as language, education, culture, immigration and economy. The only choice left to Québec was to submit to the will of the majority, or to dissent and get ready to go its own way.

Traditional French Perception Of Canada:

- the French public opinion & government make a considerable investment in Canada for historical, sentimental and practical reasons [a Canada above suspicion much more so than Switzerland, which is appreciated because it appears as a brave and self-reliant David before the U.S. Goliath]

- that attitude spawned various mutual misunderstandings that go far back., for example during and after the French and Indian Wars and during the Treaty of Paris negotiations before 1763

- the French had a choice: give up either New France or the sugar islands of the Caribbean. They didn't hesitate to leave behind under British occupation more than sixty thousand Canadians.

- most of the educated urban elites returned to France

- Quebec remained French speaking but developed a cultural identity different from that of France

- De Gaulle's extemporaneous 1967 speech at Quebec city hall was of doubtful political value both for Quebec and for France

- now the French government is extremely cautious in its pronouncements regarding Quebec. Usually they do not go beyond diplomatic recognition and support of the initiatives of the Quebec government

A New Look At Canada by the French Political Class:

-in the January 1998 issue of Le Monde Diplomatique, Edgard Pisani, a former cabinet minister under many administrations since De Gaulle returned to power in 1958, and still an influential member of the French political class, gave a private assessment of the issue we are exploring here today. . . inspired in part by the August 1997 Ottawa colloquium on "tomorrow's federalism" and the necessary reforms. Given the background of the author, it can be taken as a kind of position paper that could have been prepared for the socialist French government. Pisani identifies several major problems:

Canada’s major problems: - no head of state: Canada does not have a head of state who could speak for the country as a whole, and who may, when necessary, break deadlocks in matters of politics , economics or society, as well as assure, beyond the transitory nature of daily politics, the continuity of the nation.

- no strong national institution: Canada is a federation, drifting towards a confederation that has governments, but does not have a state in the European sense of a recognized and effective cement of its unity. Pisani suggests that what comes closest to a national institution in Canada is the business council on national issues that goes often well beyond advising the federal government.

- no compromise in sight to solve constitutional issues: Canada does not have a constitution, recognized by all its parts and with a clearly defined procedure for its revision The secession of Quebec would highlight the lack of cohesion and the particularism of the remaining provinces. Moreover, even if a clear cut separation of Quebec, constituting, in English speaking North America, a significant French speaking country, is possible, it is far from certain. Pisani stresses the obvious fact that the population of Quebec is divided in many ways on the issue of sovereignty. On the other hand the other provinces are far from agreeing on what Canada ought to be.

- the vision of Canada as a federation resulting of the meeting of two founding peoples is incompatible with a country federating ten equal and identical provinces.

Uncertainty As To What Quebec And The Roc Want:

- Questions to the sovereigntists:

a) do they want to convince their federalist partners that the system can accommodate a distinct society ?

b) or, have they made up their minds that what they want is a separate nation-state?

c) what an independent Quebec would be supposed to achieve: a different political system, or the unhampered development of an original culture?

- Questions to the federalists:

a) when they insist on the equality of all the provinces do they intend to negate the Quebec difference?

b) do they expect Quebec to shape up or ship out ?

Three suggestions to unravel the constitutional imbroglio:

The difficulty of Canada in becoming a nation-state illustrates the major problem that Europe and most of rest of the world face : how to organize, in a functional whole, the diversity of historical perspectives, languages, cultures, political systems, economic status, religions, that seem to fragment and weaken modern societies ? how to maintain the unity and cohesion of a state where people are citizens of the same country but speak different languages and have different cultural values ? Pisani sees three scenarios: Canada archipelago, Canada reinvented, and Canadas separated.

- Canada archipelago: contractual mode of organization. autonomy of the constitutive communities of the country that may overlap. Common interest projects would be negotiated on a contractual basis.

- Canada reinvented: devising a new swearing-in of a renewed social compact between the founding peoples of the nation. The autonomy of the contracting parties being assured and the jurisdiction of each one clearly defined, a new federalism could be established, under the control of the supreme council of the pact and of the revamped constitution.

- Canadas separated: failure to ratify the new compact and the constitution designed to implement it would lead to the creation of one or several separate states which function as distinct entities in all areas.

Edgard Pisani noted at one point that the federalists in Canada never publish scenarios that envisage what might happen after secession by Quebec. Though strategic reasons for such an attitude are obvious, Pisani concludes that Canada ought to remain one. Therefore the only viable solution to the present dilemmas is a renewed federalism compatible with institutional and cultural diversity. But this is precisely the problem that Canada has tackled unsuccessfully since the beginning of the Quiet Revolution.

I would like to close my remarks with a quote from a recent speech of Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard before a joint session of the Maine senate and legislature [March 17, 1998:]

Now, I'm sure you are aware of the political differences that seem to crop up every week between Québec and Canada, on almost every political issue. But the great paradox here is that, as the political gap seems to be widening, our economic relationship is, not only sound, but strong and strengthening. When Québec leaders, whatever their political affiliation, meet with their Canadian counterparts to discuss social policy, education, culture or constitution, they almost always fail to find common ground. But when they meet to discuss the economy, trade, energy or jobs, they almost always agree.

I feel there must be a way to keep what works - the economic relationship, the commercial and monetary union - and do away with what clearly does not - the political arrangement. But that is an issue for Quebecers to sort out, at the ballot box.

As a foreign observer, I sense that the population of Québec would prefer some sort of Sovereignty-Association, but more qualified observers than I claim that the rest of Canada would have none of it and would force Québec to secede and claim complete independence. If the Yes lose at the forthcoming referendum that will not be the end of Québec irredentism, but if they win, the political configuration north of the border will certainly evolve in unpredictable directions.

STEPHEN A. LONGSTAFF (Sociology, York University) What's New? What's Next?

“Crossing Borders” is certainly an apt title for our deliberations on April 3; but for someone who (figuratively speaking) hails from north of the 49th parallel, recasting or even rethinking borders might be even more suitable--especially when the borders in question include boundaries of culture and identity. That the English-speaking parts of Canada are ill-prepared for the "re-mapping" of political arrangements and national identity that lies ahead is by now a well-worn theme, but one which nevertheless needs constant updating. Hence my concern to point to a number of tensions, mostly specific to emergent differences between Ontario and Atlantic Canada, on the one hand, and the populist, Reform-dominated provinces of the West, on the other, that are likely to produce a less than optimal response to Quebec's sovereignty aspirations.

So, what's new? In my remarks, I was at pains to suggest--in contrast to other voices in the room--that some sort of constitutional closure is at hand, even if the outcome turns out to be less advantageous, for both Quebec and the rest of Canada (ROC), than the present unsatisfactory arrangements. After a series of unsuccessful initiatives--including three failed referendums--to reconstitute ourselves as a bi-national federal state, a kind of surly impatience has set in, more notably in Anglophone Canada. One sees it in the hardball "Plan B" scenarios of the Chrétien government in Ottawa (especially in its referral of the sovereignty question to the Canadian Supreme Court). It is also evident in intensified efforts to "unite the right" in the federal sphere. By swallowing the old Tory party of Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark, this Reform-led campaign would isolate conservative voices who still want to accommodate Quebec, chiefly by extending its "special status" within Canadian federalism.

Preston Manning's harping on the interminability of our constitutional impasse has clearly left its imprint, even if his Reform forces didn't win any seats in Ontario or Atlantic Canada in the 1997 election. But it is more than mere exhaustion with the sovereignty/association/dis-association debate that is pushing us towards some sort of end game. Structural factors are also in play, particularly those connected with the global economy.

Canada once made sense as a Keynesian welfare state, with economic exchange flowing on an east-west axis, and with significant federal transfer payments to the have-not regions (including Quebec). It makes much less sense now that the transfer payments have been chopped. And now that NAFTA has re-routed so much of our trade, and we are doing our utmost to reorient economically to the Pacific Rim. Canada, it turns out, has done rather better than expected in all this. But our export successes have also weakened the bonds of political community. Thus if resource-rich Westerners are determined to push a constitutional agenda of senate reform--a change that, among other things, would forever block Ottawa from limiting their oil and gas exports--then it matters little that such a change is anathema to Quebec. Quebec, after all, buys so very little of what they produce. I

n fact, in few places in the developed world have the incursions of the integrated world economy been as far-reaching as in Anglophone Canada. Canada, I hasten to add, was slow to awaken to the punitive and divisive scope of those incursions. We are now paying a price in the form of a drastic scaling back of public services (everything from CBC news coverage to kindergarten classes)--a price all the more painful inasmuch, in our penitent's zeal to embrace fiscal rectitude, we are losing a sense of ourselves as a compassionate community.

Or of any sort of community at all, I almost found myself saying. Lacking a robust sense of national distinctiveness, English-speaking Canadians have generally looked to the activities and institutions of their federal government (including our Armed Forces) to define their Canadianness. With the responsibilities of federal institutions now shrinking, the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the rights-oriented "identity politics" that it encourages are likely to bulk even larger on the political landscape. By setting limits to the ways provincial governments can treat their citizens, the Charter has helped to counter the decentralizing forces described above. But insofar as the Charter has served to call Quebec's language and educational policies into question (and to confirm Anglophones in their new, rights-conscious piety), it too has been a barrier to unity--perhaps the greatest barrier.

So what can we expect? Especially given all these factors of mood and structure, of constitutional burnout and electoral and juridical impasse? In Quebec there are signs of burnout too--or at any rate reluctance on the part of voters to hold another referendum anytime soon. Yet, while Quebec appears to be suffering, in terms of jobs and investment, from political uncertainty, there is still a kind of zest for the constitutional game. Or as Quebec's political class is inclined to put it--for devising a new partenariat.

In fact, a new set of arrangements for salvaging and even strengthening the economic space that is shared by Quebec and ROC does make sense. (Some form of asymmetrical federalism which does justice both to ROC's highly regionalized political community and to Quebec's sense of its own specificity would seem to make the most sense.) Unfortunately, as the saying goes: we can't get there from here. There are too many constituencies and interests that stand in the way. (Consider the communal empowerment of native peoples in Canada and the grip they now have on the constitutional process.)

Sooner or later--and I believe sooner--a "yes" on sovereignty-association will be registered. ROC will have to respond. But even deciding who should negotiate will be contentious. So preoccupied will we be with rethinking and arguing about our own shrunken constitutional estate--our new borders, if you will--that our reaction to a partenariat offer is likely to be rigid and minimal.

Inevitably, Washington will feel compelled to arbitrate the terms of succession, especially when we bog down over essentials (NAFTA membership, the federal debt, currency, treatment of minorities, etc.). And, after things are finally sorted out, it will be through the instruments of international law and custom that we shall chiefly deal with each other.

It remains to link the above observations to an area studies perspective. Failing a new constitutional deal, Canada will be the first state with a fully developed and globally integrated market economy to break up. We will all be sailing into uncharted waters--and by we I very definitely include the United States, whose involvement, as the principal arbitrator of the process, has already been mentioned. That Quebec's transmission to sovereignty be achieved peacefully does not mean that it will be smooth and predictable in other respects. Even the political integrity of ROC itself cannot be taken for granted. So how Washington plays its hand--how it tilts or is perceived to tilt--on various issues matters enormously to both the outcome of the bargaining process, and to the healing logical and necessary to it.

All of this, I venture to say, is generally understood in Ottawa and Quebec, and even in some scattered academic precincts in the United States. But in the Congress, in the U.S. quality press, and in various sectors of U.S. commerce and industry, Canada and Quebec are still taken for granted in ways that may well imperil U.S. interests. That in itself is a strong argument for revitalizing area studies in North America.

STATEMENTS FROM 3:00 PM ROUNDTABLE: INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, CROSS-BORDER CONNECTIONS

Panelists: ROBIN DE LUGAN (Anthropology); ARTHUR MASON (Anthropology); BEVERLY ORTIZ (Anthropology); PAMELA STERN (Anthropology) Moderator: NELSON GRABURN (Anthropology; Co-Chair of Canadian Studies, UCB)

Statements:

ROBIN DE LUGAN (Anthropology): Native American Futures: Nation-State Interests and Regional Influences

To understand the contexts and conditions in which contemporary Native American culture survives requires examining spheres of influence that extend beyond local Native American communities. My ongoing research in El Salvador, Central America studies why and how a new positive valuation of local Native American culture is being promoted at the state and national levels. My findings suggest that it is in the context of political and economic interdependence of nation-states that the Salvadoran government’s new stance towards its indigenous ethnic minority may best be explained. By sketching key links between nation-state interests and the positive valuation of Native American culture, I will present a particular approach to area studies by exploring how the futures of Native American communities are dependent upon nation-state interests—interests that are influenced by regional political and economic ties.

ARTHUR MASON (Anthropology): Eski-Mex Pie: Mexican migrants discover Alaska Native cultural revival

My multi-sited doctoral research investigates the impact Alaska Native cultural revival, and U.S. multiculturalism in general, is having on recent Mexican transmigrants to Alaska. My dissertation will explore how these migrant laborers are influenced by Alaska Native assertions of ethnic and cultural identity as they reconstruct their own identities and subjectivities while negotiating complex relationships to two nation-states, their families, the Church, and global capitalism.

Since the 1960s, Alaska Natives have argued for “subsistence rights” and have actively taken part in “cultural revival” in order to assert their indigenous identity from an ever encroaching wave of settlers and migrant workers. Over the past three decades, Alaska Natives’ assertions of “Native rights” have spawned a unique type of “last frontier” multiculturalism which received nationwide recognition with the Congressional passage of the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act in 1971. Rather than reclaiming certain rights, as was the case in the land claims movement, the current focus of Alaska Natives’ “cultural revival” movement has been strengthening the spiritual connection with one’s heritage and sense of identity.

In my previous fieldwork among Mexican migrants working in the fishing industry on Kodiak Island (located 180 miles south of Anchorage), I learned that these migrants are impressed by Alaska Native cultural revival. They recognize Alaska Natives as a distinct “culture” through a number of channels related to Native “cultural revival”: Native dance performances, archaeological excavations, museum exhibitions, and even a triannually aired National Geographic special. For Kodiak Island’s Mexican migrant cannery workers, “imagining” other minority groups in the U.S., like the Alaska Natives, as having the “liberty” to maintain customs outside of mainstream U.S. culture contributes to their expressed disinterest in conforming to cultural norms in their “host” societies.

This work is part of a larger project to consider the impact “multiculturalism” in the U.S. is having on recent migrant laborers’ conceptions of themselves and on the ways they challenge cultural norms in the U.S.. It also opens up space for discussion about contemporary conversations going on across minorities group boundaries, not simply between minority groups and dominant groups.

BEVERLY ORTIZ (Anthropology): California Indian Basketmakers: Continuity, Change, Identity and Transnational Links

Basketry, once a necessity in Native California, now largely serves as a potent marker of identity. Today’s basketmakers include those who learned in an unbroken tradition from elder relatives as children; those who revived the skill decades after the last weaver in their tribe had passed away; and those who learned through classes taken in their 60s and 70s, when they had decreased family and/or work responsibilities. Some concentrate on weaving in old-time styles with old-time materials gathered within their tribal homeland; others practice the skill utilizing a range of innovations. Some weave often; others infrequently. Many have joined the California Indian Basketweavers Association (CIBA), through which they advocate for the preservation of basketry materials gathering sites, easier access to those materials, and the discontinuation of herbicide spraying in gathering locales. Through CIBA, expanded opportunities exist for basketmakers to learn basketry techniques from outside their tribal area(s), but still within the borders of California. Basketmakers have also begun to develop support networks and dialogue about issues of mutual concern with basketmakers in Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, and other regions of the United States, including the Pacific Northwest, Maine, and the Southwest. In this translocal, transregional, and transnational context, there are many theoretical issues of interest, such as:

1. Identity. How basketmakers construct notions of identity within tribally specific, pan-tribal and transnational frameworks. 2. Borders. How the historic imposition of state, national, and international borders across tribal boundaries has impacted the continuance of basketry within different tribes and regions, and affected contemporary notions of identity among basketmakers. 3. Tradition and change. How varied ideas among basketmakers about what constitutes a “traditional” basket impacts basketry’s contemporary practice. 4. Cultural survival. The future of basketry given such contemporary impediments to its practice as impaired access to basketry materials, lack of time to gather materials and weave, and a range of safety issues which face basketmakers when gathering their materials. How increasing concerns among basketmakers about the skill’s future influence their interest in creating translocal, transregional, and transnational support networks.

PAMELA STERN (Anthropology):Watching the Nightly News on CBC-North

Satellite Television service arrived in the Canadian Arctic in the late 1970s and early 1980s. To say that it had a mesmerizing effect on previously isolated Canadian Inuit is a gross understatement. Televisions, which were nearly always turned throughout the entire 14-hour broadcast day, provided the first "democratic" access to knowledge about The South. I had occasion to watch television news with Inuit in Holman for 6 months during 1982 (one year after the advent of television service there), and was often called on to explain the seemingly incomprehensible events portrayed. Among the global events I was asked to interpret were the Falkland’s War and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon—both conflicts related to ethnicity and land rights. Interestingly, this period coincided with serious efforts at land claims negotiations between Inuit and the Canadian government. While I make no claims that global events aided the land claims process in any way, I would like to suggest that television news with its portrayals of ethnic strife helped provide a framework for the understanding and interpretation of the stakes involved in land claims and self-determination.

NELSON GRABURN (Professor of Anthropology and Co-Chair, Canadian Studies Program. UCB) Indigenous Peoples: Cross-Border Connections

The indigenous peoples of North and Central America are becoming more aware of each other and of social and cultural changes in the make up of the complex plural societies and supernational organizations, (e.g. NAFTA, OAS) within which they all now live. Of course, they have long been in touch with their neighbors and with more distant peoples through long distance travel and trade, however, since colonization, their mobility has been curtailed by the imposition of borders and regulations created by the new immigrant-based societies. To some indigenous peoples, these new borders and restrictions on movement cut right across their socio-cultural spaces and customary routes. They may have refused to recognize them or they may have negotiated special dispensations to cross them. With new forms of access to educational systems, print and broadcast media, and the ability to travel in the mid-late twentieth century, indigenous peoples have become much more aware of the huge numbers of other similarly colonized peoples both in the Americas and beyond the seas. They have taken some comfort in knowing that they are not alone and, with raised consciousness and more self-confidence, they have and are in various ways informing themselves of legal and civil remedies for their politico-economic predicaments. The "highest common denominator," i.e. maximum achievement of civil rights, lies in autonomy and self-determination, and any such cases within a recognized region may serve as a model for the aspirations of other groups. For instance, Greenlandic independence and self-rule since 1979 has served as a model for other indigenous peoples in the Circumpolar region. Some of the present cross-border connections have allowed indigenous peoples to know that "indigenousness" itself, far from being the disadvantage that it was in the past, may now carry with it legal, economic and symbolic advantages in some areas. However, alongside this knowledge lies the paradoxical fact that it is often the images and the material and spiritual traditional cultures which are valued and celebrated by the majority immigrant-based cultures, while the individual indigenous body or presence may still be excluded. One result of these new cross-border knowledges and institutional opportunities is that indigenous peoples may be empowered by their national societies in as much as they construct and inhabit new corporate institutions modeled on those prevalent in the nation states. For instance, Native economic entities may resemble profit-making companies or non-profit corporations, and their protective organizations may resemble civil rights groups. However, though educational and economic successes may look like instances of assimilationist dictum "If you can't lick 'em, join them," analyses of specific historical instances show that such paths were imposed in the dispossessed indigenous groups and taken up probably without awareness of the original institutional models. Further in-depth experience within today's indigenous peoples sometimes highlights great status differences not only between loci under different regimes, but also within any one group. Rather than taken for granted egalitarianism or traditional inherited and achieved levels of authority, the internal structure of some indigenous societies may reflect the vast differences in wealth, educational attainment and political power that characterize the surrounding societies. Those who benefit from this new found wealth, education and power, should in turn serve as "highest common denominators" for others amongst their own people, and should spearhead social movements within and between indigenous societies. Some have been involved in the organization of Fourth World peoples into groups, such as ITC, ICC, INI, which have been recognized by the United Nations, UNESCO, UNICEF and other NGOs. Indigenous and non-indigenous social scientists are studying these new phenomena which are constituting and reconstituting the bordered and borderless regions of the Americas in the minds of all the inhabitants.

Symposium organized by Dr. Rita Ross, Vice-Chair of Canadian Studies, as part of the Ford Foundation initiative, “Crossing Borders: Revitalizing Area Studies.”

Roundtable: "Changing North American Party and Electoral Systems" Friday, July 17, 1998

Participants :

On CANADA: RICHARD JOHNSTON (University of British Columbia)

On THE UNITED STATES: NELSON POLSBY (IGS and Political Science, UCB)

On MEXICO: RUTH COLLIER (Political Science, UCB) KENNETH GREENE (Graduate student, Political Science, UCB)

Moderator: HENRY BRADY (Political Science and SRC, UCB)

Report will be posted on this site shortly. These events are part of an ongoing project, and comments are welcome. Please contact canada@uclink.berkeley.edu.

More information on the Crossing Borders Project at U.C. Berkeley.can be found on the IIS Crossing Borders website (www.globetrotter.berkeley.edu/CrossingBorders)

Last updated 9/03/98:rr