Let the People Speak
Oppression in a Time of Reconciliation
This book says what needs to be said—that Treaty annuity payments remaining frozen at $5 after almost 150 years is clearly an unconscionable absurdity.
—Right Honourable Edward Schreyer, former Governor General of Canada
The central message here is simple. The Canadians that our racist Constitution calls ‘Indians’ are voiceless and powerless, and the long-promised ‘reconciliation’ will not happen without empowering individuals and families. This book offers an innovative way to make that happen.
—Gordon Gibson, policy analyst and author of A New Look at Canadian Indian Policy: Respect the Collective; Promote the Individual
By Sheilla Jones
Foreword by Sheilla North
Since Indigenous Affairs (IA) became a stand-alone Canadian government department in 1966, it has mushroomed into a federal department unlike any other. IA has jurisdictional reach over 90 percent of Canada’s land mass, authorities that reach into every single federal government department and agency, with a budget (including its 33 federal co-delivery partners) of some $20 billion annually. Indigenous Affairs Plus (IA+) is effectively a “super-province.” Yet not a single person overseeing this new super-power within Confederation has been elected by Indigenous people to represent their interests. Not only do ordinary Indigenous people have no voice in federal policy decisions that can affect nearly every aspect of their lives, they have no power to hold IA+ accountable to them. Ordinary Indigenous people are among the most politically voiceless and powerless people in Canada.
In Let the People Speak: Oppression in a Time of Reconciliation, award-winning Canadian journalist Sheilla Jones poses a crucial question: are the well-documented social inequities in Indigenous communities—high levels of poverty, suicide, incarceration, children in care, family violence—the symptoms of this institutionalized powerlessness? The solution to powerlessness is empowerment, and the means for that empowerment already exists—treaty annuities linked to the increasing value of ceded lands and paid directly to every First Nations Treaty man, woman and child. Modernizing annuities was validated by Parliament in 1879 and affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1895. It is a telling measure of the powerlessness of ordinary First Nations people that annuities have remained unchanged for 150 years. Only when ordinary Indigenous people are empowered to speak for themselves can all Canadians—Indigenous and non-Indigenous—begin a meaningful conversation about reconciliation.
Publisher: J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing Inc., Winnipeg
ISBN 9781927922569
Book launch, 2019
CTV host interviews Sheila Jones and Sheila North ahead of Winnipeg book launch.
Elder Glenn Cochrane gives a blessing to begin launch at McNally Robinson Books in Winnipeg, September 19, 2019.
Sheila North and Sheilla Jones sign copies after lively book launch discussion.
Reviews
“[Let the People Speak] goes through the history of how we got here, it’s concise and it empowers people–not just individuals but as a nation.” — APTN National News
“[Let the People Speak] aims to revolutionize how Canadians think about reconciliation.” — Winnipeg Free Press
“[Let the People Speak] is a very heavy but important and very relevant topic to our lives these days… If Canada is really wanting to reconcile with its Indigenous people then we have to respect the sovereignty, we have to respect the people that come from this land, and start treating them as people not as subjects to the government.” — Global News the Morning Show Winnipeg
“A modern annuity is now, more than ever, a powerful response to the TRC Calls to Action, and to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Calls to Justice. It is a practical and realistic means for settlers to share the prosperity of the land with the first people.” — The Toronto Star