Control Comics - The Empire and the Indian

Title: The Empire and the Indian

The cover redesign I did with the Green Lantern/Green Arrow comic explores the topic of the infamous “White Paper.” Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien, then minister of indian affairs, proposed a document that would eliminate the term “Indian” as a distinct legal status and henceforth regard Indigenous peoples simply as citizens with the same rights as other canadians. It was met with extreme opposition by many First Nations in this country.

Its main fault was that it failed to address concerns Indigenous peoples had brought to the table. There were no provisions to recognize Indigenous peoples’ historical relationship and right to the land and nothing in the document dealing with historical grievances and future Indigenous participation in policy making. It also stank of the assimilation policies of the past that had done such harm to Indigenous communities.

Many Indigenous leaders were in opposition to the White Paper. One of the better known of these leaders was Harold Cardinal, a young Cree man who called the White Paper “a thinly disguised programme of extermination through assimilation.” What the White Paper actually did was create a new period of political organization amongst the Indigenous communities in canada. The communities doubled down on the ideas that the canadian government now more than ever needed to address: Indigenous peoples’ concerns about land, ownership, governance, historical atrocities, and a future canada that saw Indigenous sovereignty as important.