While all societies struggle with achieving an acceptable system of governance--grappling with tensions between inclusion/exclusion, participation/authorization, individual/collective rights etc.--decolonizing peoples have particular needs for their government to embody their cultural identity in a pure and ideal way. This demand for what I am calling cultural legitimacy constrains the local leadership to such an extent that they often cannot act at all, or are extremely limited in the actions they can take on behalf of the community, resulting in a stalemate that is frustrating to all concerned.
I will briefly present some pertinent history to the Kahnawake case, then review the interview, focus group, and questionnaire data from which my hypothesis comes, and finally describe how we are trying to utilize our new insights in an interactive problem-solving workshop.
There were two policies under the Canadian Indian Act which have particularly impacted the current state of aboriginal self-government: band council government and residential schooling. The band council system of government replaced aboriginal systems of decision making around the turn of the century. Designed by nonaboriginal Canadians, this elected system was not really designed for community decision making, but rather to administer the policies of the larger state. Over time, however, these elected bodies have gained considerable internal jurisdiction.
Residential schooling took aboriginal children away from their families at a very young age, restricted their access to their homes and communities, and severely punished any cultural expression. Aboriginal people speak of those people who grew up in residential schools as the Lost Generation, the people who lost their culture. Although Canadian policy has now changed from one of assimilation to one of accommodation and support for cultural identity, reviving aboriginal cultures and securing aboriginal identities is very difficult. An historical event which was particularly important to the Mohawk community of Kahnawake was the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway through the center of town. In building the seaway, a considerable amount of reserve land was expropriated, and the main street and beach area, which were the focus of the social life of the community, were destroyed. Huge freighters now pass within 30 yards of some homes, reminding community members of the injustice from the Canadian government, and the suspicion that their elected leadership sold them out. People credit the seaway with "waking them up" to the importance of returning to their traditions and protecting themselves from the Canadian government.
Ever since 1979 when the community gave a mandate to "return to traditional government," the elected chief has been saying "my job is to get rid of my job." However, attempts to bring the various factions together under one system of government have failed and the band council system remains in place. They have tried citizen's advisory committees, mediated conflict resolution sessions, and even attempted a coupe. Meanwhile, only 15-20 percent of the potential voters in the community currently vote, and attendance at community meetings is low and declining. In our questionnaire, 89 percent of respondents said agreement on one form of government was very important, and 82 percent said the current governmental system needed to be changed. The participatory action research project we carried out in Kahnawake was designed to increase our understanding of why change in government, which basically all political leadership in the community say they want, has not taken place.
There are two main distinctions between participatory action research, as carried out here, and standard research. First, research decisions are made by consensus; and second, the research is action-oriented. In my case, consensus decision making meant that in order to make each major research decision, I consulted with one or more members of each faction, identified the consensus that emerged, and then checked back to make sure the decision was acceptable. Our research design evolved through several steps: interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, and finally, an interactive problem-solving workshop.Initially, the research participants from each faction framed the problem as structural. They felt that research could help to clarify the structure and process of government that the various factions want. There was a feeling that if they knew what the various factions wanted, and found considerable overlap, then they would be able to implement the agreed-upon form of government. So we designed an interview schedule to find out what people wanted and did not want in the structure and process of their government. Results were provided to people for discussion in focus groups.
From the interviews, it was clear that Mohawk complaints and visions of governance fit into the broader trend of declining citizen participation and growing distrust of government in Canada and the U.S. In the last 30 years, distrust and antagonism between elected officials and the public has increased substantially. The Mohawk people, as citizens elsewhere, criticize their elected leaders for being secretive and unresponsive, and their elected leaders criticize the public for being apathetic and uninformed. As one elected official put it, "being elected to public office is like becoming an instant s.o.b."
Mohawk thoughts about governance also supported findings in social psychology on procedural justice. These findings, in the literature and in Kahnawake, suggest that satisfaction with leadership and support for governmental decision making are related to the extent to which people feel their opinion is heard and respectfully considered, that there is no favoritism, that all relevant information is openly communicated, and that decisions can be revisited in light of new information. In the Mohawk case, people also stressed the need to feel that the decision-making process was congruent with their customs and culture. This is the key point about cultural legitimacy that I would like to examine more fully with you.
Most research exploring the causes of dissatisfaction with government considers the experience of distributive and procedural justice. This research tradition generally finds that people tend to support and be satisfied with their government to the extent that they experience distributive justice, i.e., that they receive a fair portion of collective resources, and to the extent that they experience procedural justice, i.e., that they are treated fairly by decision makers. I used many of the usual questions in designing a questionnaire, and found that in Kahnawake there was very little difference between factions on their experiences of procedural or distributive justice. I was even handed a proposal for a new system of government, which had been circulating in the community for years, that members of all factions told me was, at least on paper, acceptable. So if procedural and distributive issues were not in dispute, and there was an acceptable alternative, what was preventing the implementation of this alternative?
There was what appeared to be a concern for the cultural legitimacy of the system of governance, far surpassing procedural or distributive concerns. Traditionalists were particularly vocal about the need for cultural legitimacy, but similar concerns were expressed by people from across the political spectrum. Many times people said things like, "I agree with everything the elected council is doing, but don't do it in an illegitimate way. Do it in a right and proper fashion, not as part of the Indian Act." Despite a positive evaluation of the elected leadership, many people felt they were unable to support the elected council, and in fact often went out of their way to disrupt its activities.
Working from interview responses, I constructed two regression models. In one regression I included the usual four predictor variables, absolute and relative distributive and procedural justice. The other regression model had an additional cultural legitimacy composite. In predicting institutional satisfaction with the first model, the variance accounted for was .184, in line with findings from other studies. With the addition of the cultural legitimacy composite, the proportion of variance accounted for increased to .614. The difference between the F-values of these two models was significant at the .005 level, a suggestive but still tentative finding given the small sample size of 36.
The need for cultural legitimacy is the need for a decision-making system that reflects and supports their cultural identity. "What we are doing right now is the government way, the white way...So we said, forget about that and start back as Indians." One way to maintain and support their cultural identity is to see the manifestation of their culture in the institutions of society. Demonstrating their culture has political as well as psychological significance. Cultural distinctiveness is the basis on which the Mohawk can exert pressure on the Canadian government to acknowledge their inherent sovereignty and abide by treaty agreements. Thus security and identity needs are linked. There is a sense that they will be safe from the outside when they feel traditional and see traditional behavior in their leadership and entrenched in their institutions.
However, many feel unable to turn to the traditional leadership, whose behavior is often considered to violate the traditional ideals. In explaining their distrust of the traditional leadership, people often cited the Crisis of 1990, during which attendees of the traditional Longhouse barricaded a major highway into Montreal to protest the building of a golf course on sacred land. As a result of the barricades, the community was surrounded by the Canadian police and army for 56 days, which led to long-term trauma for community residents and damaged relations with surrounding communities. Although espoused Longhouse ideals are for community participation and consensus decision making, the highway was blocked "without consulting the people." Through this and other activities, such as contraband cigarette smuggling, the integrity of the traditional process is perceived to have been violated. "We just want to be Longhouse people. We don't want to be associated with cigarettes or other things that are not right."
Thus there is the following dilemma. The traditional Longhouse system, at least in theory, is considered legitimate and representative of Mohawk culture, and therefore fulfills an identity need for the people. However, the leadership in that system is perceived to behave in unacceptable ways and so are illegitimate and distrusted. The reverse is found for the elected council. The elected leadership is admired for its contributions to the community and is therefore in some way legitimate and trusted, and fulfills the security needs of the community. However, the band council system is inherently illegitimate and threatening to Mohawk culture because of its association with the Canadian government.
| System | Leadership Behavior | |
|---|---|---|
| Elected Council | illegitimate | respected security needs met |
| Traditional Longhouse |
respected identity needs met |
illegitimate |
This inability to institutionalize a system that both gratifies their existential identity needs and elicits a sense of trust and security seems to be particularly upsetting for Mohawks, since in the traditional Longhouse system there is no separation or distinction between the spiritual and political functioning of leadership, between church and state.
Culture and its expression are unclear and much effort is expended in creating, discussing, and enforcing, a distinct Mohawk identity. Since culture is used as a legitimizing tool, competing groups within the community vie with each other over whose interpretation of the culture will prevail and be followed by the others. Abstract values such as respect and voice are invoked to capture the culture. However, without agreement on how these Mohawk values are operationalized or a system authorized to make these judgements, the invocation of culture seems to paralyse rather than facilitate discussion toward self-government.
Take for example this quote from the Eastern Door, a community newspaper:
"The difference between a traditionalist and a nontraditionalist is confusing to them (non-Natives), and differences among traditionalist are even more confusing (even to Mohawks). These divisions are creating the impression that we are not capable of controlling our own lives. The question can be raised that (if) we cannot agree among ourselves on how we should be governed, why should our right to self-determination be recognized?...Certainly such impressions play into the hands of our enemies. In tradition it is said that one should never show two faces to the enemy. The enemy should only see one face, one mind, one people...Not showing division is a discipline. And self-discipline is highly valued in tradition."
In this quote, the editor of the community newspaper illustrates three key dynamics in the silencing of community discussion toward self-government. (1) Difference is conceived of as a threat to the safety of the community and should therefore be suppressed. (2) Tradition is invoked as a self-evident, unquestioned, and unquestionable moral authority. (3) Anyone who violates the writer's conception of tradition is in some way illustrating the weakness of their own cultural identity. Since most people feel insecure in their cultural identity, they will not speak publicly about their traditions for fear of revealing the deficits in their knowledge and being attacked for it.
The debate about culture paralyzes discussion about more acceptable systems. For some traditionalists, association with the Indian Act makes any band council process unacceptable, no matter how inclusive or beneficial for the community. They feel it is their responsibility to disrupt public meetings and any other initiatives by the elected council. Most community members do not make this kind of challenge a first priority, but there is sufficient agreement that association with the Indian Act is unacceptable, that challenges to the authority of the elected council are supported.
In order to meet one need, another is violated. Longhouse critics ignore the needs met by the elected council, and blame the public for associating with it. The elected council ignores its perceived lack of legitimacy and blames the public for not participating. The public is trapped out of participation by both sides.
Since this was participatory action research, I would like to briefly describe the actions we have taken, as a result of these findings, to assist in the development of self-government. In a series of focus groups, participants suggested facilitated dialogue between central faction members which we pursued through a series of interactive problem-solving workshops. Problem-solving workshops are designed to assist parties involved in protracted conflict to explore new ideas, break down old stereotypes, and understand the roots as well as the symptoms of their conflict. Social scientists, trained in the nature of conflict processes, attempt to create a constructive and safe context for discussion. Participants are encouraged to analyze their hopes, fears, and needs as well as those of other parties to the conflict, as possible factors contributing to the perpetuation of the conflict, and to think of the conflict as a joint problem to be solved collaboratively.
Concerns for cultural identity and legitimacy emerged repeatedly during the six problem-solving workshop meetings held between October 1993 and June 1994. Let me give you an example. Attendance was voluntary, but I approached people who had been suggested as appropriate participants by other members of their group. Despite being recommended, potential participants were fearful that their involvement might be attacked as illegitimate. "I can't be seen to be representing anyone, any group." For almost every participant this was a central concern, which needed considerable assuaging, both verbally and in writing. Even though we wrote up a contract before the workshop that stated that no participant was representing any group, in their introductory remarks at the first workshop meeting, several participants still felt it necessary to re-emphasize this point.
Concern about the legitimacy of authorities emerged again when I followed up on recommendations of aboriginal people who might co-facilitate the workshop with me. Four highly experienced aboriginal facilitators from the Montreal area expressed great reservations and some fear about taking this kind of leadership role in Kahnawake. They said Kahnawake is highly contentious in the Montreal area and known for the way leaders get "shot down." I raised these observations with the workshop participants who recognized their pattern of "shooting down" their leadership and offered several examples.
Workshop participants jointly articulated and discussed the following dilemmas:
"How can we support traditional government...(and) at the same time not be seen to support those people who act in unacceptable ways while defining themselves as traditional?"
"How can we support the constructive work of the elected council...(and) at the same time not be seen to support an unacceptable system which undermines traditional values?"
In the first workshop meeting, as in the research, there was an initial focus on concrete models of governance, to the exclusion of a psychological analysis of the conflict. Workshop participants generated six models, but as soon as these models were drawn up and their compatibility acknowledged, the concerns with cultural legitimacy were again raised. "We have to be careful not to come under a foreign system." Any cooperation with the traditional leaders raised fears of another betrayal and the insecurity that the Longhouse people did not really know how to carry out the traditional ideals.
From this initial structural focus we moved into an analysis of the painful issue of membership in the community. Given the importance and insecurity of identity in Kahnawake, it was not a surprise that they chose to focus on the issue of who is and who is not a Mohawk. The membership code is a complicated document, but the bottom line is that anyone with less than 50 percent Mohawk blood, by a complicated formula, is supposed to be evicted from the community. Initially, discussion in the workshop was very polarized, for and against this membership document, but by the second meeting they were discussing the need to balance inclusion with the need to maintain cultural distinctiveness. They explored ways to bring this discussion to the community.
I hope you now have a sense of the challenges to self-government posed by demands for cultural legitimacy, and why these demands may be characteristic of decolonizing societies emerging from foreign rule and assimilationist policies. This research suggests that factions can become locked into an internal debate about the right way to manifest their cultural identity in the institutions of government and the behavior of their leadership, a debate about cultural legitimacy, which prevents or impedes more fruitful discussion and change.
In the discussion that followed, several research design suggestions were made. First, in choosing communities to compare with Kahnawake, it will be important to include peoples that have experienced foreign domination without policies of assimilation, and perhaps even their opposite, extreme segregation or attempts to destroy the culture (e.g., Palestine, South Africa). Second, compare societies in which the colonizer still has considerable influence (e.g., economically) with societies where the colonizer is no longer an important force. Third, it will be important to tease out the extent to which the colonizing culture faces analogous political dilemmas, in order to determine whether this is simply a problem of democracy, or something unique to democracies that are decolonizing.
Fourth, it was suggested that the research should attempt to distinguish between real traditions versus recovered traditions versus pseudo-traditions. Chataway maintained that there is not an objective measure of cultural legitimacy that can be assessed apart from people's perceptions. What seems to be important is the extent to which people perceive a certain institution or behavior to represent their culture, not the values or judgements of the researcher. Chataway's hypothesis is that in decolonizing societies, those people who perceive the institution to be culturally legitimate will support it, and those who perceive it to be culturally illegitimate will not support it, despite other advantages and evaluative criteria.
The use of the word "foreign" was questioned because the Canadian government would never use this term to describe their relationship with aboriginal cultures. To the Canadian and American people, Euro-American society is not foreign colonialism as in French Algeria, but there is very little difference from the perspective of the aboriginal people.
The usefulness of more deeply psychological analyses was offered, for example that the Lost Generation may be experienced as a death. Perhaps aboriginal people are just starting to mourn their losses, as in Kubler-Ross' stages of mourning, and are still in the stage of anger. If they have not yet grieved the loss they can't move on. Another consideration is that anger is a form of intimacy. Do they recognize that although they can't be intimate in other ways, in that way they are? How much of this might be internalized oppression, and how much a cultural tradition? Chataway described the idealization of the culture, the pain people feel about their current factionalism because of the belief that aboriginal people never fought in the past and "if we were truly Mohawk we would not be fighting now." Not everyone recognizes the influence of the current situation on their coping strategies. For instance, the Canadian government has, until recently, only acknowledged or dealt with the elected council, ignoring the traditional leaders. This has greatly contributed to widening the divisions between the factions.