Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education

Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education

Copyright: J.M. Bridgeman

© J.M. Bridgeman

Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education

EPIGRAPH

“ Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the centre of the universe.

. . .

And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices."

– Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1986.

Preface

Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education is about what we know and how we know it, about the process of learning life lessons related to identity, culture, ethnocentrism, and racism. This book focuses on some of the challenges of living together in shared territory, Canada, on planet Earth. Its intended audience is White mainstream non-First Nations Canadians who may not have had the benefit of similar cross-cultural experiences and interactions, who still live “apart” and know only what is mediated by others.

     Dancing With Ghosts began as a backlash. The Settlement Agreement has given Indian Residential Schools survivors money as compensation for their years away from home. The federal government has made a formal apology in parliament. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is listening to personal stories of abuse and is also mandated to educate the general public. Yet these progressive steps have given mainstream Canada a false impression that the past has been dealt with, wrongs have been righted, and that any dangling threads will soon to be tied and clipped. This is wishful thinking; Canadians are missing the point.

     The problem, the missed point, is that Canadians as a whole have yet to acknowledge “the issue.” Yes, the First Nations are dealing with past abuses; yes, there is much healing still to happen. But it is the White mainstream majority which has yet to accept responsibility for what was done in our name, to name it and claim it, and to demonstrate that we understand, and that we have changed. For the cause of all the pain and suffering was not residential schools. The cause of all the pain and suffering was not individuals committing physical, sexual, or psychological abuse. The cause of all the pain and suffering was and is White racism. And what is being done about that?

     Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education is not a memoir. It is creative non-fiction. Creative because liberties have been taken with the timeline for literary purposes. Non-fiction in the sense that scenes are prompted by events, stem from facts and actual occurrences. However, the opinions and interpretations, the anxieties and fears, are mine and they will differ from those of other witnesses.

Acknowledgements: I am grateful for the invaluable insight offered to me by my volunteer readers, Marilyn Meden, Nancy Dobson, my brother Harvey Bridgeman, and my old friend from long ago, Calvin Pompana.

Dedication: To all the people for whom this land is sacred.

Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education

Table of Contents

Epigraph

Preface

Acknowledgements

Dedication

One - Oak River (how what we know starts with what we experience, at home, at school, in community)

Dancing - ESL - Bath - The Farmer's Daughter - Foul Play - Nobody's Perfect - University - Graduation - Democracy - Prejudice and Discrimination - Math Dreams - Missing the Point - Cross-Cultural Education - The Disappearance of Racism - CanLit

Two - Nelson River (how immersion in another culture helps us know ourselves)

Hot Dogs - Moving North - Staff Party - Classroom-Lesson One - Non-Denominational - Othered - Career Day - Eldertalk - No White Culture - White Culture

Three - The River Shannon (how the struggles of strangers helps us recognize what we could not see at home)

White Culture-Ireland - White Culture - Whose Rights? - My Last Christmas Holiday - Up River - Baby Shower - Party Game - You Just Don't Understand - Church Point - Grief - Missionary - Juxtapositions

Four - Kettle River (how our beloved nation is a community of communities, of nations within a nation, the same but different)

Yearbook - Cross-Cultural Communication - After the Fall - The Bait and Switch - Conflict of Interest - Shower Time - Keeping Alive - Fraser River-Coast Salish - Skeena River-Gitxsan - Return to the River-The Kettle River - Fraser River-Protocol - Truth and Reconciliation

Five - Oak River (how home, when we go back there, is a different place from the one we left because we have changed)

Oak River Indian Reserve

The Rights of Indigenous People

Beyond Faith

Bibliography

Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education