The Rural Voice, 2019-03, Page 39complicity in the now widely-
publicized Indian Residential School
system with its many documented
attendant horrors.
Are non-Native farmers and
private landowners today, nearly 30
years after Slater’s initiative,
sufficiently cognizant and sensitive
to all that has historically befallen
Indigenous peoples? And if they are,
how motivated are they to reach out
to First Nations communities, like
Slater did, to enter into a dialogue
that might have some form of
consequence for the land to which
they hold legal title?
According to non-Native author
Kent Nerburn, North America’s non-
Indigenous population is and has
been, at some level, aware for many
decades of the historical injustices
meted out against the continent’s
Native population. In his book,
Neither Wolf Nor Dog, Nerburn
writes, “…I have never met an
honest and aware non-Indian person
in America who didn’t somewhere
deep inside struggle with guilt about
what we as a culture have done to the
people who inhabited this continent
before us.”
Nerburn continues: “A tragedy
has taken place on our land, and even
though it did not take place on our
watch, we are its inheritors, and the
earth remembers.”
Slater acknowledges that feelings
of guilt were in part the reason for
reaching out to CFN members. But it
was, he says, guilt mostly arising
from Canada’s lack of interest and
initiative to face up to and
meaningfully address past and
present wrongs committed against
Native peoples. He thinks fear may
be at the root of farmers’ and private
landowners’ reluctance to talk about
the situation.
But do they want their land
back? It’s questions like this
one, Slater thinks, that many
farmers may have uppermost in their
minds when they hear in the news
that Indigenous people are
demanding justice, including the
settlement of land claims.
The many disputes over access to
land seem to have their source in the
treaties negotiated between the
Crown and First Nations peoples
across Canada, and what either side
March 2019 35
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