The Comeback Quotes

“Politics is the force that channels social, cultural, and economic powers and makes them imminent in our lives. Abstaining from politics is like turning your back on a beast when it is angry and intent on ripping your guts out.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“Power is certainly important, particularly in dictatorships, in places where constitutions, laws, unwritten rules, traditions and understandings don’t count. But in a healthy democracy, power is a surprisingly limited element. And the unwritten conventions, understandings, forms of respect for how things are done, for how citizens relate to government and to each other, are surprisingly important. Why? Because if democracy is only power, then what we are left with is a system of deep distrust. Why? Because if only power matters – even if it is the result of an election – then the government feels that it has a mandate to do whatever it wants; that the law is there principally to serve power. If democracy is only about winning power and using it, then it has been deformed into a denial of society and of the idea of responsible citizenship.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“Why, for almost forty years now, have Aboriginal peoples won virtually every time they go to the Supreme Court? Because our history and the law, if fairly interpreted, cannot help but re-establish our long-standing – long betrayed – agreements. If I look for the leading constitutional voice of historical accuracy and ethical understanding in Canada over the last few decades, the sound is clear. It comes from the indigenous community and the Supreme Court’s rulings on Aboriginal issues. Some people protest that this is judicial interference in the political sphere. They are missing the point. It is happening because the political class and the civil service are not only not doing their job, they are acting badly. The indigenous community, on the other hand, is paying attention to our history and to our legal history. The Supreme Court is responding intelligently to this reality.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“This reality of the Honour of the Crown is an important Aboriginal contribution to justice for all Canadians. In fact, I believe that non-Aboriginals could use it in many government-related cases. Chief Delbert Guerin, who led this long and difficult fight, died in May 2014. He was one of the great figures of contemporary Canada. By formally reintroducing ethics into the core of public administration, he changed the way we must think of ourselves. We owe him a great deal.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“the Honour of the Crown, a concept given its Canadian form in such historic Supreme Court decisions as Guerin in 1984, Sparrow in 1990 and, most recently, the Manitoba Métis case in 2013. The Guerin case is one of those Aboriginal victories at the highest court that have shaped Canada over the last forty years. What is the Honour of the Crown? It is the obligation of the state to act ethically in its dealings with the people. Not just legally or legalistically. Not merely administratively or efficiently. But ethically. The Honour of the Crown is the obligation of the state to act with respect for the citizen.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“European nightmare – the delusional myth of one blood, one race, one people. And”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“Isn’t there a risk, you wonder, of indigenous leaders being corrupted by the big corporations? No doubt. But aren’t we already living with the problem of government officials, politicians, civil servants, political parties and mayors being corrupted by these companies or – to put it in gentler terms – agreeing to act in a compliant manner? They”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“The only other option we have is for the government to hand control of the land to a dozen directors of a corporation sitting in Toronto or New York with no long-term interest. They simply want to extract the minerals or timber, extract the wealth from the land, and move on. That is the business they are in. You”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“To be precise, you and I pay government lawyers to fight as hard as they can to get as much Aboriginal land as possible and to give as little as possible in return. They act like rapacious divorce lawyers. Why? We must ask ourselves why they are doing this for us. First, our governments seem to be arguing that these negotiations are all about saving the taxpayer money. This is lunacy. You don’t save money by dragging out complex legal negotiations for twenty-five years. Protracted legal battles are the equivalent of throwing taxpayers’ money away. And you force Canadian citizens – Aboriginals – to waste their own money and their lives on unnecessary battles. Second, our governments more or less argue that a few thousand or a few hundred Aboriginals shouldn’t have control over land that might have great timber or mineral or energy value. They argue as if it were all about the interests of a few thousand Aboriginals versus that of millions of Canadians. As if the Aboriginals were invaders come to steal our land. The question we should be asking is quite different. If there is value in these territories, don’t you want it controlled by Canadians who feel strongly that this is their land? By people who want to live there and want their children and grandchildren to live there? Surely they are the people most likely to do a good long-term job at managing the land. And why shouldn’t they profit from it? Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Is there any reason why Canadians living in the interior and in the north should profit less than urban Canadians do in the south? And if those Canadians are Aboriginal, is there some reason why they should profit less than non-Aboriginals?”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“our government is still breaking our treaty obligations. If you coolly strip away the endless administrative rhetoric about budgets and governance, the endless studies and the endemic lack of broad policies coming from the Department of Indian Affairs, you begin to realize that we are still caught up in the racist assimilation policies of a century ago. Let me take a broader example. We all know that the treaties involved a massive loss of land for First Nations. What most of us pretend we don’t know is that this remarkable generosity was tied to permanent obligations taken on by colonial officials, then by the Government of Canada; that is, by the Crown; that is, by you and me. So we got the use of land – and therefore the possibility of creating Canada – in return for a relationship in which we have permanent obligations. We have kept the land. We have repeatedly used ruses to get more of their land. And we have not fulfilled our side of the agreement. We pretend that we do not have partnership obligations. It’s pretty straightforward. We criticize. We insult. We complain. We weasel. Surely, we say, these handouts have gone on long enough. But the most important handout was to us. Bob Rae put it this way at the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Treaty Conference in June 2014: “It’s ridiculous to think people would say: ‘I have all this land, millions and millions and millions of acres of land, I’m giving it to you for a piece of land that is five miles by five miles and a few dollars a year.’ To put it in terms of a real estate transaction, it’s preposterous. It doesn’t make any sense.” So the generosity was from First Nations to newcomers. And we are keeping that handout – the land – offered in good faith by friends and allies.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“the Canadian government – the power of each of us as citizens – has been and still is breaking the law. Breaking it by misusing it – by resorting to avoidance, by pretending to be doing what it isn’t, by legalistic and administrative manipulation, by malingering. These are standard tricks far beneath the dignity of the Crown. For”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“Remember, we non-Aboriginals were signatories. As a non-Aboriginal, I say we. And through Canada’s signatures we committed ourselves to the permanency of our relationship with the words that these treaties would stand “as long as the sun shines, the grass grows and the river flows.” These were and remain binding legal documents. Perhaps more important, with our signatures we committed our government to act always with the Honour of the Crown.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“as the years go by, the circle of the Ojibway gets bigger and bigger. Canadians of all colours and religion are entering that circle. You might feel that you have roots somewhere else, but in reality, you are right here with us. I do not know if you feel the throbbing of the land in your chest, and if you feel the bear is your brother with a spirit purer and stronger than yours, or if the elk is on a higher level of life than is man. You may not share the spiritual anguish as I see the earth ravaged by the stranger, but you can no longer escape my fate as the soil turns barren and the rivers poison. Much against my will, and probably yours, time and circumstance have put us together in the same circle. And so I come not to plead with you to save me from the monstrous stranger of capitalist greed and technology. I come to inform you that my danger is your danger too. My genocide is your genocide.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“The fundamental issues are treaties, power and capital. Are we able to be honest enough with ourselves to accept this? Do we want a settlement or not? The shape and direction of the country depends on how we act. This must become a political issue.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“The obligations of citizens is to make it clear that Aboriginal issues are central to our public concerns, that we want them dealt with in a fully democratic context of openness and justice, that we will vote accordingly.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“At some point the Indian Act system will go. But that will be the result of a broad conversation involving Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals over how to settle the outstanding treaty, land and other issues. This won’t necessarily require a protracted debate. What it will require is that Canadians engage in the conversation instead of sitting back as if it doesn’t concern them. We have to be involved because what is needed is a serious transfer of responsibility and money, the exact opposite of dragging out treaty negotiations one by one. We need to do more than empower our governments to act. We need to push them. We need to make this a make-or-break issue. We need to elect or defeat them with these indigenous issues in mind.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“Canada is now the oldest continuous democratic federation in the world, in good part because most of our leaders, and certainly the best ones, have respected most of these written and unwritten rules. Other countries – almost all our allies and friends – have suffered civil wars, coups, dictatorships, sharp breaks, because they could not maintain the flexibility and respect for the Other that these rules, in particular the unwritten rules, create.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“Power is certainly important, particularly in dictatorships, in places where constitutions, laws, unwritten rules, traditions and understandings don’t count. But in a healthy democracy, power is a surprisingly limited element. And the unwritten conventions, understandings, forms of respect for how things are done, for how citizens relate to government and to each other, are surprisingly important. Why? Because if democracy is only power, then what we are left with is a system of deep distrust. Why? Because if only power matters – even if it is the result of an election – then the government feels that it has a mandate to do whatever it wants; that the law is there principally to serve power. If democracy is only about winning power and using it, then it has been deformed into a denial of society and of the idea of responsible citizenship. And that is the increasingly common characteristic of government, even in democracies. Only power matters. This is partly the outcome of government being de-intellectualized.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“In the Tsilhqot’in statement made after the ruling, I noticed these words describing the governmental approach: “[An] impoverished view of title.” And those of Grand Chief Phillip of the Union of British Columbia’s Indian Chiefs: “The Supreme Court of Canada completely repudiated the greatly impoverished and highly prejudicial position of the B.C. and Federal governments.” Impoverished! I don’t want to be part of an ethically, intellectually, culturally impoverished policy. An impoverishment of the Honour of the Crown.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“And now, at last, the Supreme Court has made it perfectly clear that the Manitoba Métis had been cheated out of their land by the Government of Canada. That is, by you and me. That the Government of Canada betrayed the Honour of the Crown. And we are the Crown. You and I.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“The government and its representatives repeatedly constructed Canada by using the language and meaning of Aboriginal peoples – the language of long-term commitments in the most complete sense. As the strength of indigenous peoples returns, the courts are holding our governments to the language they used in order to gain power. That is good for all of us, and”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“He committed the state to a permanent reciprocal relationship. It hardly matters what the legal papers say because in an oral relationship the legal relationship is oral. That is why the Supreme Court so often decides for the Aboriginal side.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“Alexander Morris, lieutenant governor of Manitoba in the 1870s and chief treaty negotiator: “[I wish] to take the Ojibwa by the hand and never let go your hand.” We”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“Many of our leaders are themselves addicted to the Euro-U.S. Westphalian model. They desperately attempt to fabricate simplistic myths – peopled by royal families, military triumphs, heroes, Canadian values or Quebec values – that turn out to be lifted directly from Britain or France or the United States. You might say these are simple, old-fashioned concepts of patriotism. But in this case old-fashioned refers to a model that has never worked here, a model that leads to the kind of patriotic misery experienced in Europe and the United States when races are ranked, languages forbidden, cultures excluded, one religion set in place as the official faith, or all religions marginalized so that the state’s monolithic mythology can become the state religion. This is disingenuously called a secular state. And all of this is done in the name of a safe, aggressively simplified and centralized mythology. But if that is so, you ask, what”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“Canada is a test case for a grand notion – the notion that dissimilar peoples can share land, resources, power and dreams while respecting and sustaining their differences.” So”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“The core of this ideology is the marginalization of the public good in favour of Hobbesian self-interest: fear”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“And so the indigenous languages of this place do belong to the people through whom they emerged. But they also carry within them an understanding of where we are and what is required of us all. Each time one of these languages disappears, even if you have never heard it, a great steel door closes forever on an understanding of this place. The”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“Stop thinking about living in the north and in isolated communities as an unfortunate accident or a punishment or a failure; stop thinking about it in southern urban terms. Start thinking about it as a purpose in and of itself, a necessary and happy purpose covering two-thirds of Canada, with its own reality.”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“a reigning logic of efficiency insists that money spent on the public good is somehow a form of indulgence. There”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence

“It isn’t fashionable to say this these days, but a willingness to go into the streets shows a commitment to democracy. And Canadian democracy, like so many others, was born in good part on the streets in the middle of the nineteenth century. It could be argued that the general”
― John Ralston Saul, The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence