News Notes
Periodical profile published 1983

Year Published:  1983
Resource Type:  Serial Publication (Periodical)
Cx Number:  CX2831

Abstract: 
The myths and dogmas that have historically determined white attitudes and behaviours in North America and Latin America as racist are outlined briefly in an article by Earl Cross (Nia Wen) of the Mohawk Nation of Kahnewake. These beliefs can be traced back to Aristotle. The Church is also serverely implicated; the teachings of medieval theologians have been passed down through the centuries, shaping the response of the Church of Native peoples in North America in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The results of a tour of Western Arctiv by Project North representatives are outlined in a second article. Canada's largest energy megaproject, the Beaufort Sea development has already had a major impacts on Native peoples there; yet there has been little awareness of and reaction to this in the South. The federal government has refused to ratify the 1978 Agreement-in-Principle it reached with the Committee for Original Peoples' Entitlement (COPE), leaving the Inuvialuit with no control over economic and resource development in their territory. yet as developments proceed, the chance of acheiving a favourable outcome grow more distant. COPE has called upon the churches to support them in the struggle. Church support is opposed by some non-Native residents of the North, who argue that it is disruptive, and that the church's role is not to interfere with the Beaufort development thus far has brought community and cultural dislocation, eoncomic dependence, and environmental problems.

As the author points out, the matter of resource development is often posed as a take-it-or-leave-it (all or nothing) proposition, However, Inuvialuit and Dene have expressed the view that there is a need of building a wage-based economy to compliment traditional economic purusits. In the current situation, the nature of that wage economy is being imposed on them, in a way that futhers the interests of oil companies and other outside interests of the expense of Native peoples.

Moves within the Anglican Church over the past decade to address Native concerns, the operaitons of the Native Friendship Centre of Montreal, and the opposition of the Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy to Hydro-Quebec's proposed Project Archipelago (construction of a dam in the Lachine Rapids area) are outlined in other articles within this issue of NEWS NOTES.