(Photo by Protect the Inlet via Flickr/Public Domain)
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Note: Parts of the interview included have been edited for clarity and brevity.
The 1960s are often seen as one of the most important periods in North American political history. This period saw the peak of the Civil Rights Movement, anti-war protests, and many other social justice movements. While movements in the United States (U.S.) saw the most attention, those in Canada picked up steam as well. The Indigenous rights movement was among them. Amid heightened political sentiments and after centuries of injustice, Indigenous activists began organizing against the Canadian government’s repressive policies.
While these movements are largely respected today, many ignore the government’s efforts to silence them. Police violence was a given at protests; however, an even more insidious plan was also taking place.
Some readers may know about COINTELPRO, the FBI program created to monitor and destroy social justice movements across the U.S. It is most notorious for spying on, harassing, imprisoning, and murdering hundreds of Black liberation leaders. But most do not know that the Canadian government took similar action against Indigenous activists. This is the story of the Native Extremism Plan (NEP), the Canadian COINTELPRO.
The Politics of Late 1960s Canada
Canadians likely know about some of the history of genocide against Indigenous People by European settlers. It was not the misdeeds of a few bad apples, but a government-mandated policy of settler-colonial violence against an “uncivilized” group of people. Indigenous resistance against settler colonialism has been a consistent part of Canadian history. However, their resistance tactics changed in the late 1960s and 1970s, as radical politics condemning capitalism and colonialism became prevalent.
Non-violent organizing was the most popular form of resistance at the time, commonly associated with Martin Luther King Jr. However, the Black Panthers and American Indian Movement (AIM) showed that some marginalised people were willing to take radical action. Fearing an uprising, the U.S. and Canadian governments planned how best to monitor these groups.
As early as 1968, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) was spying on Black and Indigenous activists. The RCMP started a “racial intelligence” section in its files. It used the excuses of foreign influence and the “radical ferment of the late 1960s” to justify this racist surveillance.
(Photo by The Alliance Times-Herald via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
Their tactics became much more aggressive following the 1970 October Crisis, when the militant group Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnapped two government officials. They were British trade commissioner James Cross and Immigration and Labour Minister Pierre Laporte. The FLQ killed Laporte, and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau enforced the War Measures Act to quell the chaos.
The Canadian government witnessed the 71-day armed occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, by AIM in February 1973. That August, Indigenous activists non-violently occupied the Department of Indian Affairs in Ottawa. These events made it clear that Canadian Indigenous activists were willing to take direct action against the government. So, they prepared for it. The Canadian government began collaborating with the FBI to share intelligence regarding AIM’s movements.
What the NEP’s Repression Looked Like
Over the next few months, the government disrupted several Indigenous-led protests. These disruptions led to a clash between the RCMP and Indigenous and communist organizers during the Native People’s Caravan in Ottawa. Despite the protesters saying the RCMP initiated the clash, the Communist Party of Canada was blamed.
This clash was an intentional effort to disrupt the relationship between communist and Indigenous activists. Greg Savicky, a member of the RCMP’s Security Service, confirmed their knowledge of this budding coalition: “At that time the Marxist-Leninists and Trotskyists were quite big in Ontario and the Communist Party of Canada were quite big, and they were trying to get in with the Natives.”
Despite there being thousands of pages of government files on Indigenous groups and leaders, there was little consequence. The McDonald Commission was formed in 1977 to investigate the illegal activities of the Security Service. However, there were fewer than three pages dedicated to the Native Extremism Plan in the over 1,000-page report.
While disappointing to see no justice for the activists whose rights were violated, it is not a surprise. The rights of Indigenous People in Canada have long been, at best, ignored by our government. That is not just the analysis of this writer, but the lived experience of Indigenous rights leaders who are still alive today.
A Conversation with Tony Belcourt
I was lucky enough to have a conversation with 83-year-old Tony Belcourt, a lifelong Indigenous rights activist. He founded the Native Council of Canada (now called Congress of Aboriginal Peoples) in 1971 and Métis Nation of Ontario in 1993.
Belcourt, who is Métis, recounts how he grew up in a community where members shared in their socioeconomic struggles. These struggles led him to join the Métis Association of Alberta. He initially focused on housing, education, and unemployment within his community, but gradually grew the scale of his work to a national level. Belcourt was so instrumental to the Indigenous rights movement that he was surveilled under the NEP starting in 1972.
Indigenous rights groups and land defenders have claimed for years that the Canadian government was spying on them. I asked Belcourt if he knew he was under surveillance, especially in the wake of the information we have now. “I didn’t have any evidence of it, but I just assumed that I was,” he recalled. “That was what was going on in those days. We were active, and we were hammering at the government all the time.”
Belcourt said they did as much work as they could underground, but accepted that some actions needed to be public. Whether it was protesting, writing briefs, or holding press conferences, Belcourt and his comrades tried everything to raise public awareness and exert political pressure on the Canadian government.
Dedication to the Métis People
He also described the limitations of the time period, explaining that the Métis were not all in Ottawa. Despite their small numbers, direct action against the government was sometimes necessary to bring justice for the community. Belcourt described to me the living conditions of the Métis people as “destitute.” Their homes were falling apart, and yet they received no support from the government. With no other option, they took direct action against the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
They were initially dismissed by the CMHC despite their pressing issues. “There was a big snowstorm the day we were having a meeting with the President, and he was in Montreal. So he sort of conveniently said, ‘Well sorry, you’ll just have to come back’ I mean, what the hell?” Belcourt recalled with a laugh.
They refused to leave and “sat in his boardroom and waited for hours.”
The President was eventually ready to make a decision, but said he needed to meet with his executives. When Belcourt confirmed all the executives were present, he kicked them out of their own boardroom to meet elsewhere, as they refused to leave the space until their needs were met. When they came back, Belcourt and the other activists secured $1 million in emergency repair money for the Métis.
Encounters with Paid Informants and Agitators
Their work was not without challenges, though. Belcourt says that the government paid people to infiltrate their groups. He recounted how one of the groups based in Saskatchewan constantly tried to sow division within their national organization. They would nominate people for leadership positions and threaten to leave the organization whenever they lost.
When I asked Belcourt about the Canadian government’s goal, he said: “It wasn’t, in my opinion, the government’s intention to keep us in poverty. But strictly to keep us down. From having power, [from] having authority.”
His words come from his experience as an organizer in the ‘60s and ‘70s, yet they remain relevant today. Whether by policy or force, Canada continues to deny Indigenous People’s right to autonomy and stewardship over their land.
The RCMP’s Repression in the 2020s
In September 2021, land defenders occupied the drill pad site for the Coastal GasLink (CGL) pipeline. This was done in protest of the pipeline’s construction on Wet’suwet’en land without the Hereditary Chiefs’ consent. Amnesty International said that the construction of the pipeline in this community violated their right to self-determination.
In response, the B.C. Minister of Public Safety allowed the RCMP to arrest and remove the protestors from Coyote Camp, a reoccupation camp aimed at disrupting construction of the CGL. More than 30 protestors were arrested during the 2021 raid and released more than 300 kilometres away from the camp.
RCMP officers also kept organizers under constant surveillance using drones. According to leaked documents, the RCMP told officers to use “lethal force” against the unarmed land defenders. They had spent tens of millions of dollars defending the pipeline’s construction. This includes support for the C-IRG, a militarised RCMP force dedicated to policing activism against industrial projects. After raiding Coyote Cabin, these officers were caught on audio making racist remarks about the Indigenous women they arrested.
(Photo via Wikimedia Commons/CC0 1.0 DEED)
On the legal side, the B.C. Supreme Court issued an injunction against the disruption of the pipeline. This order allowed for protestors to be arrested and charged.
The similarities between the repression of the CGL protests and the NEP are striking. Five decades after Belcourt’s dossier was opened, the same RCMP tactics of repression were being used on modern-day activists.
Settler Colonialism is the Cause of Repression
The repression of the CGL protests and the creation of the NEP both prove that the Canadian government has never cared about the rights of Indigenous People. From the moment settlers arrived in Canada, they saw themselves as superior to the Indigenous People. It is this belief, rooted in white supremacy, that justified their settler-colonial violence. The Canadian government’s continuous attacks on Indigenous communities have been to serve its economic interests.
Land itself is a resource, and controlling it means securing the wealth of its resources. European settlers recognized they could not plunder the land’s resources without resistance from the Indigenous People. And so, they used surveillance as one tactic to suppress Indigenous resistance.
This is a time-honoured practice by European settlers. Fur traders kept detailed records of Indigenous People who were in debt to them. These records even went as far as including information on their relatives. Surveillance on Indigenous People never stopped in Canada, but instead evolved into an integral tool of the state.
What is the Path Forward?
Reconciliation is not an easy path, but it is necessary to achieve true justice. A deeper inquiry must be taken into the NEP and what other violations were committed. After a full comprehensive report is made, restitution must be awarded to all the activists who were spied on. Finally, the actors in this operation must be held responsible.
There are deeper wounds to heal, and Belcourt explains it better than I ever could when asked about reconciliation: “We are negotiating self-governing agreements, but land isn’t on the table. Land is everything, and the government has successfully kept land off the table, and we fell for it …. Not just words, but action that results in the return of land to our people.”
For there to be true reconciliation, Canada must reckon with its status as a settler colony. It must return the land it stole back to its rightful stewards. Until landback is achieved, there will be no justice for Indigenous People in so-called Canada.
Edited by Ayah Mohammad
