Daniel R. Meister
Within the first a part of an article I revealed with Energetic Historical past in February 2024, I contested the authenticity of a quote continuously attributed to Pierre Elliott Trudeau. The quote in query: “We’ll preserve them within the ghetto so long as they need” with regard to First Nations in Canada. Nonetheless, whereas in quest of a unique quote lately, I unintentionally stumbled upon proof of its existence. This text is meant to appropriate the file and gives the context through which the unique quote appeared, in addition to the sourcing.
On 24 February 1970, Trudeau traveled to Carleton College to seem on the campus confrontation tv present “Below Assault.” The primary questions have been posed by the moderator, tv character Fred Davis, earlier than a panel of scholars took over. Throughout his reply to Davis’s remaining query, concerning the current White Paper on Taxation, Trudeau mentioned how he most popular to introduce white papers as an alternative of legislative payments, with the intention to enable for extra dialogue – “some individuals name it participation” – even by these opposed. Davis, in flip, remarked that equivalent to strategy additionally gave opposition events a problem to work with. To this, Trudeau responded:
Effectively, they’ve had different points earlier than. We now have different white papers. We had the coverage paper on Indian coverage which was a problem I suppose. That is one other factor which had been demanded of us at election time. You realize: ‘When are you going to do one thing concerning the Indian; when are you going to make him equal to the white man; what are you going to do about these legal guidelines that put him in a ghetto or on a reservation or one thing?’ So, we’ve provide you with a coverage paper.[1]
Though two White Papers have been talked about within the introductory phase, many of the questions that adopted involved the financial system, together with some associated questions concerning the sale of arms to america within the context of the conflict in Vietnam. It was solely on the finish of this system {that a} query was posed concerning the different white paper:
Q. Mr. Trudeau, I wish to ask you about your Indian coverage. Why do you insist on integrating the Indian into Canadian society when he doesn’t wish to be built-in? Even you, your self, have advised that we reside in an unjust society, there’s poverty, air pollution, slums. Why do you wish to make them like that?
A. We’re not likely forcing them to combine. We’re not forcing anybody do something. That’s the reason we revealed a coverage paper, you can name it a white paper on Indians. What we did, and when you learn it, you’ll see that that is truthful, it’s a very brief paper, what we are saying basically is that this: Canada is at a crossroads; the Canadian Indian has to decide on and the white Canadian has to decide on too. For 100 years and extra, they haven’t been built-in; they’ve been dwelling aside, they’ve been underneath particular legal guidelines, they didn’t come underneath provincial jurisdiction, they got here underneath particular remedy by a particular division of the federal authorities. They lived on reserves; they didn’t have the suitable to promote their land; they weren’t equals in our society. And what we’re saying basically is that this: if you wish to stay this fashion, fantastic; if you wish to keep in reserves, if you wish to not combine — to make use of your phrase — if you wish to stay aside as a race inside Canada, as a nation inside a nation, we received’t power you. However we’re telling you[,] it’s important to make the selection now. And we’re telling you that the way in which we see the historical past of Canada and of the western nations creating, no small group of individuals can lengthy stay outdoors of the mainstream of training, know-how, city dwelling, and all this stuff (a few of which have produced fairly terrible outcomes, I agree). You can’t do that with out paying a really heavy penalty when it comes to the well being of kids, the training of minds, the liberty to maneuver, the suitable to build up property and the suitable to be handled as an equal underneath the regulation. We’re simply saying to the Indians, you’ve obtained a alternative now and we’re placing this place to you, we’re telling you – and I believe it was the sensation of the Canadian individuals usually till we got here forth with this coverage paper. I keep in mind this very kind of viewers throughout an election marketing campaign saying, when are we going to cast off this particular remedy for Indians, when are we going to make them one in every of us, equal to us so that they have a proper to combine into our society? Effectively, we mentioned, right here’s a coverage which might allow you to do it. It’s going to be powerful and it’s going to take lengthy, however we’ll assist you to if you need. And it’ll solely work if the white individuals in Canada, the opposite individuals, agree that will help you do that. However when you individuals don’t need—these of you who should not Indians—when you don’t need it to occur and if the Indian individuals don’t need it to occur, it received’t occur. The Indians will proceed dwelling on land which is held in belief by the federal authorities; they’ll proceed coming underneath the jurisdiction of a specific division; they received’t be equal residents to the opposite residents. And that is the selection and we’re not forcing it on anyone. However earlier than rejecting it, you need to ask yourselves concerning the options. There’s loads of emotionalism on this too. It’s simple to reject the defects in our society and say they are going to are available with us and they are going to be poor and so forth. However they’re poor now.
Q. They’re afraid although that integration will result in assimilation – cultural genocide they name it. Do you agree with that?
A. Effectively, there are two methods of disappearing. One is to lock your self up in a ghetto behind partitions and form of stand quick, protected by these partitions of the regulation or of your ghetto or of your reservation, and when you do that you danger some likelihood that the caravan of humanity is not going to assault you in your fortress however they are going to stroll on to the plains of time and they are going to be on someplace sooner or later …
There are lots of minorities in Canada which have chosen to combine into our society. It doesn’t imply they misplaced all their values; it doesn’t imply that they’ll’t protect a sure variety of issues. However they’ve a alternative. In a way, to a really completely different diploma, that is the selection we’ve in Quebec and because of this I’m for integration into the Canadian federation — as a result of there’s a means of separating Quebec and of claiming we might be extra protected if we don’t need to work with others and if we exist entre nous and when you depart us alone. It’s a view which is an appropriate view, nevertheless it’s not mine. And I don’t suppose that it’s the long-run view and the enlightened view of the Indians and the white individuals in Canada. But when that is what they need, it’s fantastic. We are going to preserve the Indians in ghettos so long as they need.[2]
On the time, the quote “preserve the Indians in ghettos” went largely unremarked upon, as did a subsequent query about stories that Indigenous farmers in northern Saskatchewan have been ravenous and Trudeau’s subsequent denial. As a substitute, many of the press reception of the occasion was optimistic, even fawning, partly due to anticipated hostility from the gathered college students. The Toronto Star’s TV critic Pat Scott referred to as it “A virtuoso efficiency … His alternative of Below Assault as a podium was a calculated danger … However … Trudeau made it the best single podium he has discovered on tv.” Certainly, just one information article made point out of Trudeau’s dialogue of the White Paper. Robert Hull, writing within the Windsor Star, reported: “[Trudeau] denied Indians have been being pressured to combine into society, however mentioned they have been merely being given the liberty to take action in the event that they wished, including that the proposals within the white paper weren’t but regulation and wouldn’t be if the whites and the Indians didn’t need integration.”[3]
The soundbite that did emerge from the interview associated to Trudeau’s abandonment of the concept of the Simply Society. As he put it, “I don’t simply the time period any extra as a result of it has develop into a type of slogan and I don’t like slogans.”[4] The later soundbite, “preserve the Indians within the ghetto so long as they need,” whereas constantly mischaracterized, factors to simply one of many ways in which the Simply Society did not materialize for all peoples. However the purpose that the citation was little mentioned on the time is because of the truth that Trudeau’s full reply was not aired: within the transcript of the interview, between the ultimate two paragraphs of the quote above, a line reads: “…(Station break, finish of taped TV program)…”
The context issues – what did he imply by it? As his solutions reveal, Trudeau strongly believed that each Quebec and Indigenous peoples’ issues have been the results of their failure to being absolutely built-in into – and really feel at residence in – the Canadian nation. This perception stemmed from his small-l liberal political philosophy, with its conception of equality as sameness. That’s, discrimination may very well be “optimistic” or “adverse”: adverse discrimination concerned the withholding of rights, for instance, whereas optimistic discrimination consisted of any completely different or particular remedy. For Trudeau, the trail to equality lay by means of the elimination of all “particular remedy” for Indigenous peoples, which is what the White Paper had proposed: no extra standing, no extra Treaty Rights, nothing.
The comment was due to this fact not the risk it has been made out to be. Reasonably, it was a flippant – even boastful – expression of this perception and of frustration that Indigenous leaders didn’t share it. He sincerely, although wrongly, believed that his try to assimilate Indigenous peoples was truly the one path to serving to them, to “rescuing” them from the “ghetto,” as pesky voters demanded. However since his strategy, expressed within the White Paper, had been refused, he would “preserve them within the ghetto” by means of inaction, by means of not enacting extra assimilatory measures.
I beforehand concluded that Trudeau’s place on “Aboriginal Rights” was advanced and advanced over time, and I argued that this historical past can’t be captured in a single quote. This stays true. However that individual quote is correct, and as my colleague Meredith Batt has lately and bravely written, it is crucial for historians to confess once we get it flawed and to appropriate the file. They have been proper. Mea culpa.
Daniel R. Meister is an Adjunct Analysis Professor within the Division of Historical past at St. Thomas College who’s researching the historical past of Canada’s coverage of multiculturalism. He’s a Common Contributor to Energetic Historical past.
[1] “Transcript of Query and Reply Interval for Programme ‘Below Assault’ Recorded at Carleton College, Ottawa, 24 February 1970,” p. 9, file “Speeches/Discours – 24 February 1970 – ‘Below Assault’ – Ottawa, Ont. 1970,” Vol. 42, MG26 013, Library and Archives Canada (LAC).
[2] “Transcript of Query and Reply Interval,” 24–26. This excerpt can be present in Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Conversations with Canadians [ed. Ivan Head] (Toronto: College of Toronto Press, [1972]), 13–15, which is the place I first discovered the quote.
[3] Robert Hull, “‘Simply Society’ Label Buried by PM,” Windsor Star (25 February 1970), 33.
[4] See Canadian Press, “‘Simply Society’ Only a Slogan,” which ran in quite a few sources, together with the Toronto Star (25 February 1970), 1; see additionally Robert Hull, “‘Simply Society’ Label Buried by PM,” Windsor Star (25 February 1970), 33. The PMO will need to have deemed extra vital his remarks on sharing pure assets with the USA, as this was the portion of the speech that was excerpted. See “Excerpt – Prime Minister on ‘Below Assault,’ February 24, 1970,” file “Interviews/Entrevous – 24 February 1970 – ‘Below Assault’,” Vol. 13, MG26 O13, LAC.
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