The political economy of aboriginal dependency: A critique of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples

The continuing dependency of Canada's aboriginal population has resulted in widespread impoverishment and deplorable living conditions for Natives in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. This has prompted a number of initiatives to study the problem so that it can be understood and addressed. The most significant was the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which produced a substantial Final Report analyzing the problem and providing numerous recommendations for its resolution. This report maintained that the solution to aboriginal dependency did not lie in encouraging aboriginal peoples to become integrated into the wider Canadian society, but in a strategy of revitalizing parallel aboriginal economies, political systems and cultures. Such advocacy of "parallelism", however, was based on a flawed approach to the study of history. Because of its preoccupation with symbolically recognizing the claims of aboriginal organizations, the Royal Commission failed to consider the differences in productivity, scale and complexity between aboriginal groups and the European nation-states that shaped aboriginal and non-aboriginal relations in Canada's historical development. This gap in development impacted the aboriginal population differently depending upon the evolving requirements of capitalism during Canada's history. In the early mercantilist phase of Canadian development, aboriginal peoples became integral participants because their hunting and gathering practices could be easily incorporated into the emerging economic system. Farming and industrialization, however, required much more productive, disciplined and organized forms of labour, necessitating a radical transformation of aboriginal cultures. And because the industrial revolution occurred relatively late in Canada, it was more profitable to import surplus skilled European labour than to actively facilitate native development. It was more cost effective to subsidize reserves than to devote the resources necessary to incorporate hunting and gathering/horticultural cultures into a more complex economy and society. This political economy of aboriginal dependency provides a serious challenge to the Royal Commission's recommendations for addressing the problem. It shows that the Royal Commission's strategy of building economies in isolated areas and restoring cultural traditions cannot be the solution for aboriginal dependency since it will impede native participation in the more productive and complex Canadian economy and society.