The Ogoki River Guides: Emergent Leadership among the Northern Ojibwa

The Ogoki River Guides

Emergent Leadership Among

     the Northern Ojibwa

Edward J. Hedican

Emergent Leadership

Among the

Northern

Ojibwa

Edward ]. Hedican

Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Canadian Cataloguing

in Publication Data

Hedican, Edward J.

     The Ogoki River Guides

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-88920-199-4

1. Ogoki River Guides Ltd. 2. Indians of North

America — Ontario — Collins (Post office) —

Business enterprises. 3. Métis — Ontario — Collins

(Post office) — Business enterprises.* 4. Ojibwa

Indians — Government relations.* 5. Métis —

Ontario — Collins (Post office) — Government relations.*

6. Indians of North America — Canada —

Government relations. 7. Collins (Ont. : Post

office) — Commerce. I. Title.

E99.C6H431986            971.3’12            C86-094970-2

Copyright © 1986

WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5

Cover design by Polygon Design Limited

Printed in Canada

No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system, translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher.

For Mary-Ann, Shaun, Tarn,

and my parents

Contents

List of Maps and Figures

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Preface

1. Introduction

The Research Problem

Ethnography and Theory

Conditions of Field Work

Informants

Local Records

Observation and Participation

The Exchange Approach

Recent Developments

Scope of the Study

2. Collins: A Non-Reserve Indian Community

Historical Background

The Village Today

The Village Population

Household Membership

Households in the Bush

Band Membership

Marriage

Power and Authority

3. Economic Incorporation and Exchange

Ceremonial Exchange

Commodity Exchange

Non-Reciprocal Exchange

Concepts of Labour Mobilization

The Collins Labour Force

Geographical Mobility

Income Distribution

Consumption and Expenditure

Household Budgets

Subsistence Resources

Conclusion

4. Emergent Leadership and Economic Opportunity

The Emergence of Community Leadership

The Formation of Ogoki River Guides Ltd

Collins Leaders

Characteristics of Leadership Elite

ORG and the CNR

Business Opportunity and Political Strategy

Maintaining Group Boundaries

ORG Development Strategy

Conclusion

5. ORG and the Whitewater Project

Leadership and the Supervision of Work

The Ambivalence of Leadership

Restructuring Lines of Authority

Consolidating the Work Force

Work Force Turnover

Discussion

Conclusion

6. Conclusion

Emergent Leadership and Exchange

Leadership and Community Development

Development by Government Financing

Collins as a Competent Community

ORG: A Model for Native Community Development?

Postscript: Collins Ten Years After

References

Index

List of Maps and Figures

Maps

1. Northern Ontario Settlements and River Systems

2. Plan of the Village of Collins

3. Plan of the Whitewater Lake Summer Work Camps

Figures

1. Population Change for the Fort Hope Band, 1909-49

2. Collins Ojibwa Population Pyramid, 1974

3. Composition of Residential Units and Genealogical Relationships in Whitewater Lake Summer Camps

4. Changing Involvement of Ojibwa Work Force in Various Categories of Employment

5. Lorenz Curve Showing Distribution of Wage Income among Collins Workers, 1974

6. Workers Employed Per Month, 1974

7. Kinship Ties among Collins Leaders

List of Tables

1. Locations of Fort Hope Families Receiving Treaty Payments, 1941-45

2. Trapline Areas for Three Ojibwa Bands, 1954-55

3. Composition of Collins Households, 1974-75

4. Treaty Status and Band Membership, Collins 1974-75

5. The Collins Marriage Pattern

6. Wage Earner’s Age, Sex, and Income, Collins 1974

7. Sources of Cash Income, Collins 1974

8. Distribution of Cash Income per Household, Collins 1974

9. Average Monthly Sales by Collins Store, 1974

10. Household Food Consumption per Month, Collins 1974-75

11. Estimated Household Budget, Nipigon House Family of Seven Persons, 1974

12. Estimated Household Budget, Fort Hope Family of Eight Persons, 1974

13. Estimated Country Food Production, Collins 1974-75

14. Income and Fresh Meat Consumption

15. Recruitment Criteria, ORG and CNR Groups

16. Projects of Ogoki River Guides Ltd., 1971-75

17. Work Force Attrition Rate, Whitewater Lake, 1975

18. Collins’s New Buildings: Capital Funds

Acknowledgments

In the process of researching and writing this book, I have come to owe a great deal to many people. Here I would like to express my grateful acknowledgment for the assistance which I have received in carrying out this task. Almost everyone in the Collins community has helped me out at one time or another with food, travel, friendship, and information, among other things. It is not possible to mention them all individually, but to each I remain grateful for their time, assistance, and unselfish co-operation. Those who contributed the most to my well-being in the field and the data necessary for the successful completion of this project were Annie Basketwang, Samson Basketwang, Steve Goodwin, Josie Kwandibens, Peter Kwandibens, Canon John Long, Vaino (Montreal) Paavola, Donald Patience, Dorothy Patience, Elizabeth Patience, Hamish Patience, Peter Patience, Steve Quisses, Sogo Sabosons, Linda Staats, Tom Wastaken, and Sinclair Wynn.

In academic circles there are many people who have been particularly helpful in providing support and encouragement during the course of the research, or in providing comments on various drafts of the manuscript, in particular, Don Attwood, Ken Dawson, Ken Duncan, Carmen Lambert, Ken Menzies, Ed Rogers, Richard Salisbury, Philip Salzman, Frans Schryer, Peter Sindell, and Steve Strong. In addition, I am indebted to my brother Wil Hedican, a former school teacher at Collins, Weagamow (Round) Lake, Fort Hope, Fort Severn, and elsewhere, for providing numerous insights into northern village life over the years. I also owe an immeasurable debt to Mary-Ann Cheesequay, a childhood resident of Collins, for her continuing encouragement.

The field work on which this book is based was supported by a grant from the Centre for Northern Studies and Research, McGill University, Montreal. Further financial assistance was provided by the McGill Programme in the Anthropology of Development and the Canada Council, in the form of a Doctoral Fellowship. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. However none of these individuals or agencies should be held responsible for any deficiencies or opinions expressed in this study, which remain my responsibility alone. This work is dedicated to the memories of Raymond Wabasons, Harry Achnepeneeskum, and Elijah Yellowhead.

Preface

Collins is an Indian and Metis community of one hundred and fifty people situated in the spruce/pine forest belt of northern Ontario. It is not a town in the usual sense of the word. There is a large clearing between the store and the railway tracks where people occasionally congregate, but their houses are widely scattered in the surrounding bush. To visit someone you have to travel down sandy paths through stands of tall jack pine. Walking down these paths gives a sense of distance between people, as if this was not really a community at all, but a group of people accidently living in the same location. I have since come to regard such impressions with scepticism. There is a sense of community in Collins; it is just that Collins people do not like to live crammed together, or to adopt all the ways of the outside world. Most of all, it is not another so-called dying Indian community.

Since the early 1970s Collins people have tried to take charge of their own affairs. Led by three Metis, sons of the village’s former fur trader, the people have founded a locally operated tourist operation called Ogoki River Guides Ltd. The struggles of people in this organization to create a viable local economy has an important lesson for governmental policy in northern areas—people do not want their affairs controlled from the outside. They want to participate directly in the important decisions affecting their lives, and not as passive target populations. Changes in current government practices are needed, especially in areas of local inputs into policy and control issues, if community-based groups like the Ogoki River Guides are to flourish and if real local initiative in economic development has a chance of becoming a widespread pattern.

It is therefore suggested that studies such as the present one which focus on the economic development projects of the native community are necessary in order to help orient government policy and planning. The problem is that the literature in the area of native development programs is particularly sparce, thus hindering efforts aimed at making accurate comparisons and reaching informed conclusions. Jorgen-xv sen (1971), for example, studied how Shoshone and Ute Indians adapt to the stresses produced when they are denied access to crucial political, social, and economic resources, and reveals how American Indians in rural areas are pressed into states of underdevelopment by the multiple influences of metropolitan political economies. But is the political economy of the large urban centre to be seen as the sole source of difficulty for the native community? A study of a furniture factory project on the Cape Croker Reserve in Ontario suggests that both government and local people must share in the responsibility for failure (Duran and Duran 1973). In the Cape Croker case an attempt to establish a cedar furniture factory on the reserve ran into difficulty because local people lacked the managerial experience to compete in the highly competitive furniture industry. For the government’s part the Indian Affairs Branch was not properly equipped in terms of adequate resources and trained personnel to handle economic development projects in the native community. By contrast, development projects among the Menomini (Spindler and Spindler 1971) and Fox Indians (Gearing 1960) have been successful ventures because of the managerial and executive skills of the local population, in conjunction with effective outside aid. More studies such as these are needed if successful development activity in the native community is to be promoted.

Besides changes in government dealings with native communities, a second theme of this study centres around the fact that Collins is not a federal Indian reserve. Such non-reserves do not corne under the jurisdiction of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND), but are administered by provincial governments. This research on the Collins community is therefore seen as a unique opportunity to study local political and economic development outside the DIAND administrative framework. The situation of ineffectual leadership on DIAND-administered reserves is well documented, but what sort of leaders emerge in native communities not constrained by DIAND guidelines? What are non-reserve leaders’ goals, methods, and motivations? Questions such as these have led me to regard the non-reserve native community as an important category apart from federally-administered reserves because of fundamental differences between the two types of native community in terms of their relationships with the larger Canadian society. An ethnographic literature in which only reserve communities are studied is one-sided and incomplete.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

This study is about the evolution of economic and political behaviour in the non-reserve Indian community of Collins, Ontario. In particular, The Ogoki River Guides documents an unusual case in emergent Ojibwa leadership. Surrounded by settlements with chronic unemployment and welfare dependency, the Collins community has made a start in another direction. Collins people have embarked on a long-term plan to revitalize their community and to survive in a post-trapping world. To facilitate this goal, a village-wide corporation—Ogoki River Guides Ltd. (ORG)—was established to implement and direct an ambitious socio-economic program. Throughout the 1970s Collins leaders employed an effective strategy for generating outside financial aid, and are striving to build a million-dollar tourist industry upon which rests their collective hopes for future economic viability.

Collins is moreover significant because it is a non-reserve Indian settlement, which means that it is not supported financially or otherwise by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND) in Ottawa. Thus, this facet of the study allows us to examine local-level development outside the DIAND administrative framework. Given the dearth of literature on the subject of economic and political development in non-reserve communities in the North, we are led to ask about the nature of leadership in such settlements. Are leaders elected as they are on most reserves? Do leaders hold their positions by consensus, or perhaps by domination? Is their basis of community support a wide or narrow one? Since non-reserves are outside the DIAND aid program, does the provincial government fill the void in community services? Are non-reserves less or more successful at securing jobs for workers than reserves? These questions indicate that there is an important reason for considering non-reserves as a category apart from DIAND-administered reserves—there are fundamental differences between the two types of Indian community in terms of their relationship with the larger Canadian society.

The Research Problem

When European fur traders, missionaries, and soldiers made their initial contacts with the aboriginal people of North America they were impressed by the apparent lack of a recognizable authority structure in many Indian societies (Miller 1955). These early visitors saw a contradiction in the fact that Indians could organize large-scale collective efforts, as they did during buffalo drives on the plains or fishing on the west coast, without a strict hierarchy of leadership roles. Conversely, Indians had difficulty in understanding how someone could retain self-esteem, and much-valued individual autonomy, while at the same time accepting without question the directives or orders of many other people. If Indians saw European-style leadership as ruthless and demeaning, then Europeans tended to see Indian leaders, in general terms, as weak and ineffectual. It is evident that both Indians and Europeans had their own particular conceptions of leadership, power, and consent. One result of this situation is that whites in North America have not expended a great deal of effort in understanding the characteristics and processes of Indian leadership. It is not surprising then that whites have spent the last three centuries trying to change Indian leadership so that it would conform to the political norms and values characteristic of European cultural tradition.

Following the earlier efforts of their British and French predecessors, the Canadian government recognized the strategic importance of negotiating treaties with various native populations. In the northern regions alone some one-and-a-half million square miles of land has already been ceded to the government, and there are still vast areas, especially in the arctic and Northwest Territories, where treaties have never been negotiated. Indian land cessions allowed for more rapid settlement and development, and after a particular treaty was signed the government felt justified in attempts to convince Indians that they were now permanently under Canadian jurisdiction. In order to facilitate administrative control, special areas were set aside for Indian occupation and use and a system of elective local government was introduced. Via the Indian Act, the election of chiefs and councillors and their duties were specified.

The ethnographic literature documenting the effects of outside control over Indian communities tells us that if Indian leaders were weak in earlier times, then today they have lost even the last vestiges of local influence. We are told that the federal government imposed a political system that Indians have never understood, and therefore do not recognize (Landes 1937: 2-3). An Indian chief is called boss-like (okima-hka-n) among his own people—a surrogate for the real thing; and put-up job (Ellis 1960:1). The chief and council are the least developed law-enforcing agency in Indian communities (Lips 1947: 475). Today’s chief has even less power than was exercised by Indian leaders during the fur trade (Rogers 1965: 277). From available literature one conclusion predominates: in Indian communities political sovereignty is attenuated, if not controlled ultimately by the Indian Affairs administration (Dunning 1959a: 20). Similarly, Rogers (1965: 277) concludes that for Cree and Ojibwa leadership the government asserts that authority be vested in the chief whereby he can cany out his duties. But in the final analysis, the chief has lost his former powers and acquired no new ones. Rogers then goes on to indicate that the chief has lost his former powers because he no longer has the multiplicity of role attributes that bolstered his position in former times—missionaries have taken over religious power in the band, the chief is no longer the main distributor of goods to band members, and many communities are divided by factional disputes.

But why has the chief acquired no new powers? A partial answer is that because of his tenuous hold on office, the chief is apt to avoid raising issues which could jeopardize his election chances. A chief also has a diminished role to play in community affairs because individuals can often by-pass the chief and consult directly with outside authorities, thus circumventing the chief’s local basis of power and support. Another reason is that when a chief is in opposition to government policy he can be ignored by the officials attempting to implement these policies. In other words, the chief faces a steady erosion of power and influence from both inside and outside the community. As Brody (1975:196) relates, White officials expect the men to take prominent positions in local government institutions. But since these positions are seen to be devoid of power, the men who occupy them are criticized as ineffective.... Some men refuse to accept positions of ’authority’ for precisely that reason: to accept is to become a target for criticism and ridicule.

We could go on here and discuss additional commentary on Indian leadership, but the results would not differ significantly from that summarized above. It is not my purpose to question the validity of the above reports, because as descriptions of particular events or circumstances there is no reason to question their accuracy, but I remain uneasy about the generalizations conveyed in these studies. Are there no strong Indian leaders or political organizations at the local level in Canada? What is the evidence that Indian people themselves see the exercise of leadership as futile and demeaning activities? Is it not possible that weak leadership is not so much a general characteristic of Indian communities, but a characteristic of communities singled-out for intensive study, ones with particular ties to the outside society’that are not shared by other, less studied, communities?

Ethnography and Theory

The line of reasoning outlined by these questions led to my initial interest in the non-reserve (i.e., outside DIAND’s jurisdiction) Indian community as a meaningful unit of study. My first chance to visit such a community came in 1971 when a school teacher in Collins, my brother, thought that, because of my anthropological interests, I might wish to stay for a few days. Travel to Collins was not all that difficult— three hours over a bumpy gravel road to the rail line, then a twenty minute train ride to the village. This first visit lasted not for a few days as expected, but for six weeks. It was not until 1974 that I returned, this time staying for a year, but the early trip was a valuable experience in terms of making friends and otherwise laying the ground work for further study. Right from the beginning I was intrigued with the main leaders in Collins. They were the sons of a Scottish fur trader who had quit the Hudson’s Bay Company and started an independent store on the rail line. Many Indians, especially northerly ones dependent on the Hudson’s Bay Company, gravitated to such locations because the independents offered high fur prices and inexpensive trade goods. The trader’s three sons, after their father’s death, started a vigorous community organization called Ogoki River Guides Ltd. to find jobs for Collins people and expand local services. In addition, the brothers have important family connections on their mother’s side since her father was a chief still remembered as a negotiator of Treaty 9 in northern Ontario. Collins leaders were not the sort of passive, surrogate for the real thing people that might be expected. They had unusual qualities that made for effective local leadership. I wanted to find out why.

Collins leaders gained prominance quickly, and the organization they formed was a pivotal mechanism in uniting the people behind a common effort. Leaders used the organization to negotiate for government-funded work projects, and so were able to