Canada’s Minister of Indigenous Affairs, Jean Chrétien, was at Queen’s University on this date in 1971 to deliver a public lecture about the government of Pierre Trudeau’s White Paper on Canadian Indigenous policy. Chrétien’s lecture was entitled “Canada’s Indians: Their Place in the Just Society.”
It is interesting to note that Chrétien had been preceded by five Indigenous leaders who had offered criticisms of federal policies governing their peoples’ relations with Ottawa at Queen’s only a week before. Those leaders were Isaac Beaulieu, Donna Tyndall, Herbert Strong Eagle, Arthur Manuel and Walter Currie.
On the Queen’s University website today the discussion by Indigenous leaders is described as follows: “Each emphasized that any place for Indigenous groups in the Just Society depended upon full recognition, both in daily life and within the federal government, of Indigenous rights. They criticized the federal government’s attitude, especially the controversial White Paper of 1969, and outlined its ongoing influence on government policy.”
You can listen to the panel discussion at this link: https://www.queensu.ca/dunning-trust/isaac-beaulieu-donna-tyndall-herbert-strong-eagle-arthur-manuel-walter-currie-1970-1971
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.