tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22822580466700265502024-03-13T11:00:27.547-07:00DancingWithGhostsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282258046670026550.post-58323390007308035882013-01-11T14:15:00.003-08:002013-01-18T17:38:25.183-08:00Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education <br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><b></b></i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b>Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education </b></i></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Copyright: J.M. Bridgeman</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">©</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> J.M. Bridgeman</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b>Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education </b></i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">EPIGRAPH</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“ <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">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.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">. . .</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">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."</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">– Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1986.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Preface</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education</span></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> 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. </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"> Dancing With Ghosts </span></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">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. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> 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 <span style="color: black;">schools. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-weight: normal;">The cause of all the pain and suffering was not individuals committing physical, sexual, or psychological abuse. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">The cause of all the pain and suffering was and is White racism. And what</span> is being done about that? </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"> Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education</span></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> 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 </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">they will differ from those of other witnesses. </span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">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. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Dedication: To all the people for whom this land is sacred.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Table of Contents</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Epigraph</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Preface </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Acknowledgements</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Dedication </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">One - Oak River (how what we know starts with what we experience, at home, at school, in community)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">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</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Two - Nelson River (how immersion in another culture helps us know ourselves)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Hot Dogs - Moving North - Staff Party - Classroom-Lesson One - Non-Denominational - Othered - Career Day - Eldertalk - No White Culture - White Culture</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Three - The River Shannon (how the struggles of strangers helps us recognize what we could not see at home)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">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</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Four - Kettle River (how our beloved nation is a community of communities, of nations within a nation, the same but different)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">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</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Five - Oak River (how home, when we go back there, is a different place from the one we left because we have changed)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Oak River Indian Reserve</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The Rights of Indigenous People </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Beyond Faith</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Bibliography</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Dancing With Ghosts: A Cross-Cultural Education </span></i></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282258046670026550.post-87516233980612306502013-01-11T14:14:00.000-08:002013-01-12T14:54:54.487-08:00Part One - Oak River<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><em>DANCING WITH GHOSTS: </em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><em>A CROSS-CULTURAL EDUCATION</em></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Part One – OAK RIVER</span><br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">DANCING</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">My grandfather Harry was a silent man. After he retired from farming and moved into town, he used to wander down to Main Street in the mornings and stand in line with the other old men in the sunshine, along the front wall of the blacksmith shop, their back to the black of the cavernous workshed. Everyone knew. You didn't look in, you could not watch, as the light from the forge or the welder's torch would blind you. The blacksmith wore a heavy metal hood like an old diving helmet, with a glass window at eye-level that he could raise and lower, to see, to breathe. The men congregated outside to visit, to keep an eye on the traffic driving by on the street, the trains on the Canadian Pacific (CPR) branch line, the grain elevators across the track, to nod to the shoppers on the sidewalk, the farmers dropping off eggs at the egg-grading station, to comment to the office workers heading into Moon's for the morning coffee break. </span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Most likely it was the fire more than the socializing which attracted Harry. The fire and the ringing pound of hammer on anvil which made him feel at home, homesick even, for his own smithy, in his own big barn, where he forged the iron shoes for his own draught horses. For outside the blacksmith shop on Main Street, Harry was known as the mum one, the man who never spoke. He was a watcher, and a listener. Born "under Victoria," in the last decade of her long reign, at home, near Bradwardine, Manitoba, he died some five miles to the north, eighty-two years later. But before he died, he is reported to have murmured: "I saw Indians dance on the streets of Bradwardine." </span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Bradwardine was a town where Harry's father had settled, where my father had attended school, a town to which Harry and the other local farmers drove their grain in wagons to the elevators along the tracks of the Great North West Central Railway, later absorbed as another branch line of the CPR. The town is included today on a list of Ghost Towns of Manitoba. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Bradwardine, the name, which alludes to the Jacobite Baron Bradwardine and his daughter Rose, characters in Sir Walter Scott's first novel, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Waverley, </span></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">was chosen for the town in1884 by an outsider, a nameless official working for the Post Office Department in Ottawa</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">. </span></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Possibly an immigrant himself, like the prime minister of that era, or someone from Ontario with a Scottish heritage, he had never seen the post office, or the townsite, or the prairie, or an Indian dance. Bradwardine became the post office for Harry's father, my Great-grandfather Bridgeman, when he arrived with a Royal Navy pension in 1891 having responded to the advertising campaigns in Europe promoting</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> the federal government's offer of homestead land. </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> The Indians Harry remembered would have been Indians from the Oak River Reserve, twenty miles to the south, where the Oak River, when it does flow, mainly in spring, enters the Assiniboine River. The Oak River Reserve Indians are Sioux, but I only learned this later, after </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">they re-named the reserve Sioux Valley. They have since added to that French name another by which they know themselves, the Dakota. They are relatives (but not descendants) of the Sioux people who crossed the Medicine Line with Chief Sitting Bull after the Battle of the Little Bighorn and before the Battle of Wounded Knee. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The dancing which Harry watched was not street dancing or square dancing or line dancing but rather some form of what we think of as powwow dancing today. Men, women, and children attired in picturesque regalia, <span style="color: black;">leather </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">vests, shirts,</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> skirts, leggings, and moccasins, decorated with feathers, glass beads, dyed porcupine quills. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The men wearing colourful ribbon shirts; the women clutching</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> fringed</span> blanket shawls. They would have danced to the beat of a drum and had probably been invited to put on their best cultural kit and to come to participate, perhaps someone even used the word “perform,” in a local community celebration such as Victoria Day or Dominion Day. For Harry to have witnessed this dance as a child, it would have been in the early 1900s.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> However, by the time I was growing up, less than fifty years later, I never heard tell of Dakota or Sioux. There were no Indians in our home town, Oak River, some twenty-five miles upstream from the Oak River Reserve. There were no Indian children in our school. Aside from the Lone Ranger's sidekick, Tonto, the only Indians we ever saw were the reserve team who played in the senior men's hockey league, where the games were always fast and rough and violence was expected. I knew nothing about any of the people who lived on the Oak River Indian Reserve, or on any other reserve. Within a twenty-mile radius, there was Birdtail Reserve at Birtle, where there was a residential school, and a reserve at Elphinstone were Dad knew one of the fathers who managed the baseball team, a veteran like himself. Were these reserves also Sioux? I had no idea who they were, what they did, where they came from, what they used to do, what they wanted to do. Unlike my grandfather, I had never seen an Indian dance. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It was years and years before I recognized that the plain White nature of our classrooms, our school, our town, was anything but natural. That the cultural makeup of our prairie community was a form of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>de facto </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">apar</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">theid which resulted in my total ignorance of First Nations people. It was as if they had been “disappeared.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> My ignorance of my neighbours on the reserve was, I believe, fairly typical of my generation. There were just no opportunities for any cross-cultural interactions. What is not typical is the way, in later years, I have been able to fill in some gaps in my knowledge, to acquire an education which includes an awareness of those “disappeared” residents and an understanding of what was behind the failed attempt to separate them from our lives and erase them from our consciousness. A cross-cultural education almost like a dance in which the most difficult step of all is not “know thine enemy” but rather “know thyself.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ESL</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">It is not really true that when we started school there were only White kids in the classroom. When I entered Grade One, in the early 1950s, Moon's son had just arrived in Canada. Moon ran one of the two cafes in our town, Oak River. For the first five years that I remember him, he worked alone and lived in the back of his restaurant. However, when he had saved up enough money, or the Communist government in China permitted it, or the federal government in Ottawa approved it, his wife and young son were able to join him in Canada. Mrs. Moon was a formidable woman who wielded the cleaver in the kitchen. Their son Pond was sixteen and spoke no English. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> As ESL (English as a Second Language) had yet to be invented in Manitoba, the school principal did the logical thing with Pond. The janitor moved a larger desk in from the high school and the teacher sat Pond at the back of the Grade One and Two classroom for language immersion. He was very good to us six year olds, and we looked up to him as we did to all the big kids. Not to mention his connection to the man downtown who doled out ice cream and chocolate bars. Boys used to bring in turtles that they caught in the river and give them to Pond, believing that his family would want them to make soup. In schoolwork, of course, Pond progressed rapidly, moving from ours and through the other classrooms at high speed as his English grew more and more fluent. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Because he was already sixteen and could leave school, Pond made his way soon to Brandon, the big city, where he worked in one of the popular Chinese restaurants. Every time we drove the hour to shop in Brandon, we went there as a family, to the United Cafe, to have our lunch. Every time, after he had finished his fish and chips and before he paid the bill, my Dad would ask if “Tommy” were on shift. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Whenever </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">he was there</span>, Tommy (Pond's chosen English name) always came out to speak to us, to shake Dad's hand, to send greetings back to his father, Moon.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> My Dad was like that. He spoke to everyone. He was a veteran and he prided himself on the fact that he had volunteered to fight, to help the people of Europe stand up against a bully. He always defended the underdogs, the marginalized, those in need of a hand. I remember him making the drive more frequently than we realized, down to Brandon, to “the North Hill,” as we called it euphemistically, the mental hospital where so many of his veteran and Legion friends were sent, for mysterious treatments of their mysterious symptoms, not then labelled post-traumatic stress. Maybe Dad identified with the men himself. He had been wounded in Italy and thought he would die. And his heavy use of alcohol in those early years must have been, besides habit and culture, a form of self-medication, most likely also linked to his physical symptoms, bleeding ulcers. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Unlike his own father, my Dad liked to talk. I always admired his social ease with people, the way he could engage anyone, the sound of his laughter. The way, as an avid poker player, he taught us: “Trust everyone, but always cut the cards.” The way he linked the playing of games with the art of living, with “Cheaters never win.” He also expected us to communicate in certain ways. No "lip" (meaning no talking back), no smart-aleck remarks, no mimicking or making fun of others, even no talking about other people in a public setting. These ways that we were taught to "show respect" indicated one of his values: Everyone deserves respect. A person's behaviour may cause him or her to "lose respect" but everyone has it, no one has to earn it. It was only later that I realized how this attitude is not universal, how some people wait, withhold respect, usually until the other does or says something which matches the "withholder's" actions or opinions. Then he or she will say: "That's very White of you." </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Although Dad has been dead for more than twenty-five years, just last month while I was visiting after a memorial service, a man who knew him in his younger days described a scene from seventy years ago. In a local pub, Dad's drinking companion, back braced against the lobby wall, slowly slid to the floor as his “legless” knees buckled. Dad turned and, glowering at the buddy down on the linoleum, began to sing at him: “Stand up, stand up for Jesus! Ye soldier of the cross.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I suppose I inherited his literalness, and I too admired his irreverence, and the way he made his own decisions, based on his own values. Voting for people he thought would best represent “the little guys,” those whose voices would otherwise not be heard. The way he recognized Moon's isolation as the only Chinese person in town, and befriended him. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The lessons we learn about living in community are lessons first introduced at home. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">BATH</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">When I think of lessons learned, I also think of Mrs. H, one of my elementary school teachers. When faced with the question on her Health Test about the frequency and necessity of bathing, I routinely answered with our family's standard “Once a Week.” Saturday night, before going into town, was bath night. Each time I gave this answer, this teacher gently corrected me by inserting the phrase “at least.” When I failed to pick up on her subtle hint, she called me up to her desk and pointed out her edit. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">“ 'At least' means,” she said, “that bathing once a week is a minimum, that some people bathe more often than once a week, that some people bathe once or even twice </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">a day</span></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">”</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><b></b></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> Really</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">? I had no idea. (In my own defense, this was in another century, on a farm in a rural setting, before electricity and hot</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> running water were everywhere, and we did have other ways of cleansing ourselves besides total immersion.) In spite of my embarrassment, or perhaps because of it, this lesson was eye-opening, life-changing. For it wasn't just a simple answer to a Health Quiz that she was pointing out to me. She was making me realize for the first time that the way our family did things was not necessarily the way that </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">all</span></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> families did things, that there is variety, even with basic health rituals. And furthermore, that I was in error, leaving myself open to correction, if I continued to assume that our way was the only way. Or worse. That our way was the correct way. That other ways, that others, were wrong.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> This inadvertent error on an elementary health quiz I consider to be my first formal lesson in cultural education. By pointing out cultural differences, this teacher opened my eyes to the risk of racism. For racism to me includes the idea that some people think that their way is the correct way. That their ways are superior to the ways of other people. And that by extension, they themselves are “superior.” And by definition, that other people are “inferior.” Those who believe in racism, in the superiority of some, of one group with shared beliefs or rituals, over others are racists. Racists insist that the inferior groups should correct themselves by accepting (or being forced to accept) “our superior ways.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Mrs. H never told me that our family routine was wrong. She never sent a note home to my parents saying our family had to change. She never called me a savage; nor did she imply that our home was somehow “uncivilized” because of our bath routine. (One common “tell” for racism is some form of that word “civilization” and/or its antonym, “savagery.”) She was just “cluing me in.” She was opening my eyes, helping me learn to see. She was opening my mind, helping me learn to think. She was pointing out to me that cultural appropriateness can vary even within one culture. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It only struck me recently, when I was visiting a friend in an extended care ward, that if Mrs. H were to end her years in our health care system today, the staff would be assuring her that resources only permit that each resident receive a bath once a week. She was also an English teacher. At least, she would get the irony.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In the middle of the blizzard, the travelling salesman knocks at the farmhouse door and asks for shelter from the storm. “Could you spare a stranded traveller, sir, a bed for the night?”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The farmer scratches his head and then nods, agrees. “Sure. 'Tis not a night to be on the road. But I must warn you. I ain't got no daughter.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Thank you, sir. Thank you for the offer of hospitality. And for the tip. Can you tell me, sir, how far down the road is the next farmhouse?”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I grew up on a farm, and I'm sorry to say, I took the ubiquitous farmer's daughter jokes pretty personally. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">For “the farmer's daughter” is the butt of all the travelling salesman jokes, the innocent, youthful, female, rural, non-affluent, the subjugated, the dismissed, the disempowered, who are ridiculed and marginalized in mainstream society, by the representatives of aggressive capitalism, if you really want to push it. Farmer's daughter jokes are almost always about cross-cultural miscommunication. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">And before I got from that classroom of health quizzes, from that farm, to living and working <span style="color: black;">on </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">an Indian</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> reserve</span>, I met a few travelling salesmen of my own.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>FOUL PLAY</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>For my summer holiday, I went to the city. My twin best friends, Lynn and Lee, had moved to Brandon and invited me to visit. 1066 12</i></span><sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>th</i></span></sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Street, near the railroad tracks, the fairgrounds, the swimming pool behind the Tyndall wall.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> In Brandon, the Town Fathers do not allow women to wear shorts in public places. We dressed up to go downtown. We wore gloves and matching pumps; we carried our vinyl purses like the Queen. We experimented with nail polish for fingers and toes, backcombed and peroxided our hair. We tried cherry-flavoured gloss and siren red at Woolworth's cosmetics counter, popping and blotting our lips in the mirrors. We fingered the satin and lace in the lingerie department, longing for boyfriends and breasts. We crowded into one curtained booth and pouted for the camera—four mugshots for a quarter. We bought two-piece bathing suits and suntanned on the dry summer grass. We played games with our shadows—imagining what we would look like with curves. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> We used our nickels to call boys from the payphone beside the bus stop. The twins' father would not allow us to date. We made secret plans to meet Mike and Danny and Little Joe at the show downtown. </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Psycho</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> was Restricted. We went to see a comedy—</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Some Like It Hot—</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>about a sweet blond girl-singer and two cons on the run from gangsters and police, hiding out in her all-girl band. On the beach, Tony Curtis pretended to be an oil tycoon and, when asked for details, he held up a scallop Shell. Tony and Jack Lemmon walking in heels. They shared a railway coach dressing room with the girls and often appeared to be in pain. The men in the audience laughed. We observed carefully how Marilyn made herself up in the mirror. We marvelled at her beauty, at her breasts, at her sequined gown more see-through than seen. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> The next matinée we met the boys at the bus stop and rode downtown with them. The movie was </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The Village of the Damned</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>. Every woman of childbearing age was visited by some alien force. Nine months later the village was blessed with fatherless blond-haired children, strangely distant, with uncanny abilities to tap into the brains of mortals and to communicate telepathically amongst themselves. In order to protect the town, the civilization, Hayley Mills' father built a brick wall across his mind and entered the aliens' classroom with a bomb-fixed briefcase. A kamikaze mission to rid the world of the threatening cuckoos before the wall crumbled and they detected the plot. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> When the bomb exploded, Little Joe got scared and grabbed for Lee's arm in the darkness. She got the giggles and ran to the washroom; she waited for us in the popcorn lobby as we made our way back to the sunlight. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Saturday night, we met the boys again to go for a walk. Itching for adventure, we reached over a stone wall and hawked some crabapples from a stranger's tree. But a police car cruised by and the boys vanished. We three walked on slowly, not laughing, trying to look innocent. The police did not stop.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> In the aching heat of August, sleep was impossible. We took our transistors to the front steps and sat listening in the darkness. The streetlights filtered through the canopy of American elm and masked the stars of the night. We searched for the loudest rock station, the farthest away—CKY, Chicago, Cincinnati, San Francisco. Darkness was fading out when the newscaster's voice interrupted: </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The nude body of Marilyn Monroe—movie star, sex goddess, comedienne,</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">actress—was found this morning at her home in Los Angeles where she </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">lived alone. An empty vial of sleeping pills was found near her bedside. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The telephone was off the hook. She was thirty-six years old. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Marilyn was last seen in </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><em>The Misfits</em></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, co-starring the late Clark Gable, </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">and written for her by her estranged husband, Arthur Miller. She had recently</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">been fired from the set of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><em>Something's Got To Give</em>. </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The police do not suspect foul play. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">NOBODY'S PERFECT</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Some Like It Hot</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, the final scene, Jack Lemmon, still in drag, drives away in the back seat of a limo with the old old man who has become infatuated with him, who has just proposed marriage. Jack confesses his little secret and the suitor doesn't miss a beat. “Nobody's perfect,” he says with a Jimmy Durante accent and a lecherous grin.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> A perfect ending. A punch line. And so hilarious not only because of the sexual innuendo but also because such tolerance, such acceptance of the unexpected, of the unfamiliar, of the “imperfections” of another person, seems so rare as to be possible only in a comedy. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Usually, often, the gap between cultures, in this case male and female cultures, is like a crevasse in a glacier, often invisible until you step right into it, and then, fatal. Back then, we never worried that our female role models were an American, Marilyn Monroe, and a Brit, Queen Elizabeth, and that both our “culture,” at least, the entertainment part of it, and the technology which delivered it, were imported. That crack between our local culture, who <span style="color: black;">we </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">really</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> were,</span> and how we saw ourselves portrayed was a canyon without a bridge. It was a cleft as wide as the gap between races, between Canadians and the invisible indigenous peoples of <span style="color: black;">Canada. </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Both a Canadian presence and a First Nations presence were absent from popular culture. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">UNIVERSITY</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In spite of hardship, the farmer did it. Maybe he sold a cow or butchered a pig. Somehow he scraped together enough money to send his only daughter to university. The daughter comes home to the farm for a weekend. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Pa. Pa. I got something to tell you! I ain't a virgin any more!”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The farmer is taken aback. “Daughter,” he says. “Daughter, we've struggled and scraped to send you to university and you still say 'ain't'!?”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I always liked that one, even though no one in our family ever said “ain't.” And no one really had to scrape and sacrifice to send me to university. Yes, Dad did have to expose his private financial matters to another government agency, in order to prove need, and to ask for a Student Loan to match what he felt he could pay, to cover the cost of university tuition and my expenses, to move to and live in the city. It is more difficult for students from a rural area; they have double the costs of urban students, along with the stresses of moving, learning to navigate new territory, and making new friends.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I wasn't the first in our extended family to go. Of my eight older cousins, one was a teacher and one had a degree in something related to agriculture. But none of our aunts or uncles had gone to university, and girls were not expected, way back then, to prepare to support themselves. Dad's six sisters all became wives and mothers. Of their eight brothers, four tried farming at one time or another, while others worked in the air force, the police force, as a mechanic, an electrician, on heavy equipment, in construction, and in food services. Education and career expectations spring from a combination of generational and economic factors. But schooling was a relatively touchy subject for my Dad. His father achieved Grade Four. Dad had Grade Eight. He had liked school, was good at it, still enjoyed reading, but because he was #3 of fourteen living children raised on a quarter section (small) farm, he had not been able to go further, to pay to board in another town and go to high school. Poverty impacts both personal and cultural opportunities. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Dad had not had the option of high school because, after finishing the highest grade offered in Bradwardine, he left home permanently at age fourteen and was working until he signed up to join the army in World War II. Having Grade Eight limited the positions which were open to him in the military. What was worse, after the war, not having high school meant that he did not qualify for the opportunity offered other veterans to go to university. He did, however, qualify under the Veterans Land Act to get assistance to buy a farm. Which is how I ended up as a farmer's daughter. Luckily for me, I was the daughter of a farmer who resented not having more years of schooling, and was willing to help his children, regardless of their gender, to get it. I did not realize until many years later just what an advantage that was, to have the support of a parent who longed for, rather than felt threatened by, higher education. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">GRADUATION</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Back then, finishing Grade Twelve involved two celebrations. In the spring, before writing the final provincial examinations, the school graduating class was feted with an awards ceremony, a banquet, and a dance. Later, after the marks had been tabulated, high achievements awarded, and post-secondary plans finalized, indeed after those of us at university had been there for a good month already, the school division held its own commencement exercises. Mine was held fifty miles from the farm and Oak River, in the town, Minnedosa, where the school division was headquartered. For this event, where I received the award for highest mark in the division in Grade Twelve history, I attended with my best friend Leo, stayed at her place for the weekend, and went with her to a dance in her community.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> At that dance, I met a young man from Brandon. He must have been at least sixteen because he would have had to drive the thirty miles to get there. I was seventeen, in first year at university. I had probably actually just dropped out of my first chosen faculty, Interior Design, and had picked up two new Arts courses three weeks into the first semester. (Interior Design had allowed me to enroll in Winnipeg, two hundred miles from home, rather that in Brandon which was closer, about fifty miles, in those pre-metric years.) I remember dancing with this guy in Minnedosa, and exchanging names and addresses. No big deal. The first weeks of university in Winnipeg had been a whirl of meeting many many new people. There were more people in the building I lived in than in all of Oak River. The Guess Who played at our Freshie Dance. There were five hundred men right next door in Tache Hall; we shared the dining hall and the auditorium. I thought nothing of meeting another new guy. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Surprisingly, I received a letter from this boy from the dance. We may have written back and forth once or twice. Then he said he was coming into the city so let's do something. The Friday he mentioned, I said I was already committed to babysitting for a family from home who had just moved in to a suburb near the university. “Maybe I could just drop by,” he suggested, and me, being the farmer's daughter, with almost no babysitting experience, said “I guess so.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> He dropped in. We watched TV. Television was a big deal because I didn't have one in my room on campus. There were no snuggles; we were just acquaintances. He went to the bathroom. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> One child woke up, came out to the living room, said: “He's in my parent's room.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Oh, no,” I said. “He's just looking for the bathroom.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> He left before the parents returned. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I blanked this incident out for thirty years. I do know that the child's mother phoned me to inform me that jewelery was missing from her home. I could not believe it. She knew I had had a visitor and asked for details. I know I went from the phone to my room and brought back the letter and gave her the name and the Brandon address of the young man. I don't remember whether I apologized to her. Possibly not, as I was so stunned. Shocked. As if I too had been victimized. Punched in the gut. Betrayed into betraying others. Making me lose people's respect. I do not remember for sure whether the police talked to me. I may have written down my recollections of the evening and handed the paper to an officer downstairs at the desk on the main floor. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I was horrified. Someone who had trusted me had been ripped off because I was too naïve, too innocent, too stupid, to suspect the motives or actions of another. I had failed to cut the cards. Had this stranger targetted me? Did I have a big M on my forehead? Mark?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I was ashamed, aghast, at the way my stupidity must have embarrassed my parents, for the victims were from home, and everyone would have heard. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I would like to say that I became a little more skeptical, whenever I met a new “traveller” but I'm not really sure if that is true. I think the trauma was so great that I blocked the memory out completely. I know I never once discussed it with either of my parents. I never mentioned it to anyone.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> But how is this teen trauma related to a cross-cultural education, to solidarity with First Nations? Certainly the con man was not a Native. It's something to do with me. About me. The innocent who assumes that everyone else is as honest as she, who fails to suspect negative or questionable motives in others, is betrayed and victimized. Raised in a home where respect was demanded, and the marginalized, the underdogs, were defended, where minorities were included, yet I played a role, unintentionally, in victimizing others, of helping, inadvertently, to cause harm to others. Guilty, even though I was unaware of the crime until later, after the damage had been done. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I was an unwitting accomplice. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">DEMOCRACY</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">University was for me years of reading and writing in a place of luxury and indulgence. Meals prepared, maid service, my own office, a room with a view of one of the bends in the Red River. Walking everywhere on the University of Manitoba Fort Garry Campus. Film clubs. Social life. The river bank. Visiting artists and speakers—Leonard Cohen, Rene Levesque. With the exception of one compulsory science credit, I could satisfy my own curiosity, study only subjects which interested me. A double major in English and history, with a focus on Canadian studies. History of Art. Political Science. Psychology. French. Linguistics. And Geology, a life-long secret passion. Now, forty-some years later, I can still remember the name of almost every professor (except psychology, which changed every month), even those professors who taught hundreds of first-year students at one time in large lecture theatres. But the one I remember most was one whose class I dropped. Canadian history with Lovell Clark. It was a third year course; I was in second year and felt out of my depth. When the professor got sick, I feared I would not be able to catch up, so I dropped it. But I bought his book. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Manitoba Schools Question: Majority Rule or Minority Rights. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Before Lovell Clark, history was “who, what, where, and when” or “historical significance.” In Clark's class I learned to ask “why” something <span style="color: black;">happened, </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-style: normal;">what the impact had been,</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black;"> and</span> whether what happened was “right or wrong.” It w</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">as in that class that I first heard that Louis Riel may have been more than a traitor hanged for treason, for leading two rebellions against the government. That the Metis had had their reasons. In 1869 they had presented their points as a Bill of Rights and the <span style="color: black;">rights </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">they articulated</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> were incorporated into the Manitoba Act of 1870 by which Manitoba entered Confederation as a province, as opposed to entering as a colony, as Ottawa and London had intended. At least in a province, democratic systems offered citizens some control over local affairs. However, by 1885, as development had followed the Metis into the Northwest Territory where they had re-settled along the Saskatchewan River, the same abuses and the <span style="color: black;">same protests were again ignored by Ottawa. The Metis were forced to stand up and defend their position, with tragic consequences. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Shots were fired; lives were lost.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Leaders were imprisoned, hanged, or exiled. The Northwest Territory remained governed from Ottawa as a colony for another twenty years.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The Metis in Manitoba had originally achieved some successes in their attempt to maintain some control over their own affairs. The Indians were not as effective in their negotiations. The treaties they were signing with the Canadian government in the 1870s acknowledged nation status and aboriginal title and prepared for "mutual occupation." By signing treaty, First Nations permitted access and settlement in their traditional territory. In return, they negotiated something of equal value--national assistance to re-establish themselves, to replace the lifestyle they had given up, that had been disrupted, with something of equal or greater value. It was not a battle, one nation conquering other nations. It was a negotiation, an exchange. As one party to the negotiations, the First Nations would expect, based on a <span style="color: black;">sense of natural justice if nothing else, that they would be better off, certainly no worse off, than they had been before signing treaty. </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Unfortunately, the other party to the negotiations saw things differently. The Canadian government saw the First Nations as an impediment to expansion and development. If the First Nations could be wooed into signing treaty, the impediments would be removed. Think of it as a courtship. Canada and the Crown are the suitors. The First Nations are the rich heiresses. "I love you; I respect you; I want you," the government negotiators whisper. But what they fail to disclose is that once you agree, once you sign that paper (according to the laws I made without your input) you become subject. What is yours becomes mine (property); nothing that is mine will be yours. I will provide food and shelter. And I will look after the <span style="color: black;">children who, as the law says, are my responsibility. </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> After treaties were signed, the government unilaterally asserted authority upon its new subjects, drafting and passing the laws to assert the necessary control. This law, the Indian Act of 1876, resulted in the end of life as they had known it, of dignity and self-determination in ancestral territories the First Nations had inhabited for millennia. Indians who signed treaties and accepted reserves were reduced by the Indian Act to a status equivalent to a colony, confined to small tracts of land, with every aspect of their lives controlled from elsewhere without their input. Dependent. Subject.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> The same attitudes of disrespect, of obliviousness to the rights of</span> minorities, of "winner takes all" also allowed provincial legislators to renege on the cultural guarantees in the Manitoba Act. (Before our union, I said this, but now, I've changed my mind.) Dominated by the new majority of Canadians from Ontario, the legislature repealed the rights of French-language speakers and Roman Catholics to educate their children in their first language, the way they wanted, in separate schools, as the Manitoba Act had promised twenty-five years earlier. The province of Manitoba which had been created as “officially bi-lingual” became uni-lingual when the right to use French in the legislature, the legal system, and the schools was repealed. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> What made democracy a justification for trampling on the rights of certain groups? Why should numbers (of votes) trump rights? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In Lovell Clark's history class, more than a dozen years before the Charter of Rights and Freedoms made this the law in Canada, I first learned that democracy was a separate idea from majority rule. Well, it may have been mentioned in first year political science, but here we could see the actual impact, in the very desks and classrooms with which we were all <span style="color: black;">familiar. Just because the majority says something, votes for something, </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">or votes to take something away, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">does</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> not make it right. Hitler had been</span> elected, we were reminded, in a democratic nation, starting with a minority government and then taking over.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> If I learned one lesson in a university classroom, it was this one: Majority rule must not be used to deny the human rights of others.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">After the hostilities in the Northwest in 1885, after he had been found guilty and sentenced to three years in Stony Mountain Penitentiary, Chief Big Bear was sent by train to Winnipeg. It is said that officials wished to impress him with the sheer numbers of White people, to underline that any thought of continuing to stand up to the government would be useless, that his Cree would have to sign a treaty, to abandon their freedom to wander, to accept a reserve. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> A city of White people climbing all over each other, scurrying to make a living, like a hill of ants. It was the numbers argument. We outnumber you. We will overrun you. Resistance is futile. Majority rules. Might is right. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Big Bear had resisted accepting a reserve because </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>he had detected the plot</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">. He tried camping out in Montana. He and his people wintered at Fort Walsh in Saskatchewan's Cypress Hills. They wandered. For he could already see that negotiations were a sham, that what the Indians said made no difference, that the promises made in existing treaties were not being lived up to. That what the negotiators said did not match what the government did. That the government was not bargaining in good faith. That it was all a “bait and switch” and the Indians were being rooked. That First Nations were already being betrayed. Even though evidence proved that he had counselled his people against taking up arms, Big Bear was convicted and imprisoned in Stony Mountain. He caught tuberculosis and was released early to avoid the embarrassment of having a proud old man like him die in jail. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> When majority rule is used to dominate, to impose the will of one group upon another, to deny the human rights of the other, to deny the right to self-determination, to take away the power of self-government which up to then the First Nations had always exercised, it is not democracy, it is racism.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">PREJUDICE and DISCRIMINATION</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Before I had the opportunity to immerse myself in another culture, before I went up north to teach, I taught high school English and history in southern communities. I always included a unit on First Nations in my English courses. We would talk about the difference between prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice is a belief; discrimination is an action. The class would be asked to share personal experiences. One day, the School Inspector was visiting and he chose to participate by sharing an example he had witnessed. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It had been a Sunday morning, at a small community church, where every family has a designated pew. Members of the congregation know their “assigned seats” intuitively, unless they are new and haven't had a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>faux pas </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">pointed out to them. On this one morning, an Indian woman, not a regular member of the congregation but one known to most of the townspeople, chose to attend this service. She walked up the centre aisle and chose a seat in a pew on the right hand side, near the front. Every other person who entered the church, noticed her, recognized that their usual seating arrangements had been disrupted, and took different pews. By the time the service started, the woman sat alone on the right hand side of the church and the rest of the congregation sat jumbled together in the left-hand-side pews.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> After this story, two boys raised their hands. They were best friends, both from town, one blond, one brunet, a Metis boy. They told how they had lucked into a job the summer before and how, on payday, the blond boy was paid a minimum wage rate and the Metis boy was paid $1 per hour, for all the hours they had worked together doing the same jobs. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “What's this?” they had both asked. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “$1 an hour is Indian pay,” the employer had explained. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Although they both needed the money, they both quit, one in anger, one in solidarity. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">MATH DREAMS</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Doesn't everyone have Math Dreams? Grade Twelve Mathematics? That old recurring nightmare? A letter arrives in the mail. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Dear Ms B. We regret to inform you that new calculations have been made. We have found out that you actually failed your final Grade Twelve departmental mathematics examination and thus were ineligible to be admitted to university. Consequently, all your diplomas and degrees have been withdrawn. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Diplomas. Certificates. Degrees. House. All gone? </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> No? Not everyone? Maybe not the Engineers, but surely, everyone else? And the lesson is more than that general feeling of being a fraud. The lesson is really the same one, perhaps the only one I remember, from Grade Twelve Math. Sorry Mr. G. The lesson that says: If you make an error in copying the equation, in writing down the problem, everything which follows, everything, will also be wrong. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> That's how I feel, how I felt, after reading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Interim Report </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>They Came For the Children</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">. Before any residential school was even envisioned, there was an error in the equation, in the concept itself. Consequently, everything which followed was also wrong; everything thereafter simply compounded the original error. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The error, of course, was that the residential schools concept was based upon a racist assumption—that White culture was superior and that the children, the First Nations, and Canada as a whole would all be improved, would all benefit from helping the First Nations become “civilized,” by forcing them to assimilate into Western Civilization. And that the best way to assimilate was by total immersion, erasing the old ways and starting afresh with the new. And that the most efficient way to do this would be to start with the children.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">MISSING THE POINT</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Going back to the original problem. When you begin with an error, everything which follows will also be wrong. This simple truth motivates me to write, to add to the discussion. Because there has been so much laudable coverage of the residential schools question, of the terrible abuses encountered by some individuals, of the pain of separation, of the children who never returned, of the government's apology, of compensation, of the devastating and on-going effects of the system on individuals, families, communities, races. Yet still, everyone is missing the most important point. What started all this heartache? The racist belief which engendered the plan to “civilize” the Indians. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> What is being done to identify that prime cause, racism, to acknowledge its destructive power, to exterminate that beast? To stop racism from continuing to destroy? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Do we really want First Nations peoples linked indelibly in our minds as “victims”? To focus on their victimization, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">and how they can and must overcome that? This too misses the point. Yes, certainly, victims need support and help to heal. However, it is not their fault, and they are not the ones who need to change. It is not them; it is us. Abuse is not the issue. Racism is the issue. The perpetrators of racism must be identified, held accountable, forced to accept responsibility, and to demonstrate an understanding of how what we did was</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> wrong. If not, racists will continue to dominate and abuses of the rights of others will happen over and over again. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Hughes and Kallen, in </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Anatomy of Racism: Canadian Dimensions</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, cite Webster: “Racism is the assumption that psycho-cultural traits and capacities are determined by biological race and that races differ decisively from one another; usually coupled with a belief in the inherent superiority of a particular race and its right to domination over others.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In cross-cultural interactions, those “assumptions” and the belief in the “right to domination” trip us, plunge us into the abyss. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">CROSS-CULTURAL EDUCATION</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Before moving up north to teach, I took a couple of refresher courses including Cross-Cultural Education which was designed to prepare teachers from the south for some of the unexpected challenges they might encounter when moving north to work in Indian and Metis communities. Isolation. Language and second language issues, as many students do not learn English before starting school. Interpreting results of “standardized tests,” designed for urban America and used without adjustment, in rural and northern Canadian schools. Adapting the provincial curriculum to local conditions. Schools and local politics. Schools and local culture, including historic attitudes toward compulsory education. Useful information which made more sense later. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It was in this course that I first heard the term “ethnocentrism.” The Story of the Bath, about the form and frequency of bathing, could technically be an example of ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is the belief that </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">one's culture, the way we do things, the way we live and grow together, is the correct way, the superior way. Ethnoce</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ntrism may simply be the result of inexperience, of living in a closed society, of never having been exposed to, or not being aware of any other ways. “This is the way we do things.” Sometimes, ethnocentrism stems from the racist belief, taught and learned, that “superior” actions are the result of superior intelligence, inherited through the blood, the genes. That superior actions (achievements) come from superior blood has been taught by many cultures for generations. What “our group” does, and what we believe, are superior. The belief that “Our way is the best way” is characteristic of ethnocentrism, as is the exclusion or rejection of alternate ways, the “he or </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">she's not one of us” syndrome, or the “if you're not the same as me, you're not OK”</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> syndrome. Ethnocentrism is really a failure to educate, to open eyes to differences, to teach tolerance and acceptance. Sometimes too ethnocentrism stems from an inability to empathize, to imagine one's self in the shoes of another, or an inability to identify another as a human being like one's self. Or an inability to love. “Love thy neighbour as thy self.” We do, and that's the problem. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Awareness of ethnocentrism makes us realize that different cultures may have different ways of doing things, of achieving the same or similar goals, and that even though something may be different, it can still be culturally appropriate. Especially in the field of education, ethnocentrism leads some teachers to believe, mistakenly, that people who are illiterate are less intelligent, or that people who developed systems of writing were and are superior to people who devised complicated systems of oral communication and oral literature. The error lies in seeing the self as “the norm” and in judging others according to that false norm. The mantra that “you have to speak English to succeed in the modern world” is another oft-repeated example of ethnocentric self-aggrandizing. As is the belief that people who developed specific kinds of technology, most commonly “the wheel,” were superior to people who developed other non-mechanical methods of transportation, of telling time, of making things. Ethnocentrism accounts for the mistaken association of “civilization” as some form of more “highly developed” technology. For the way some European immigrants assume that <span style="color: black;">houses</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> and other </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">buildings</span> constructed of stone (the old norm) are superior to buildings made of locally available resources such as wood. For the way Euro-centric people believe that their superior “Western Civilization” arose after humans developed agriculture, settled down, began to live in villages which grew into cities. The way people in cities often feel superior to people from rural areas. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Ethnocentrism acts as a kind of cultural blinkers, blinding us to other possibilities, making us think that the limited vision of what we can see is all that there is to see. Ethnocentrism is the opposite of cultural relativism, the belief that it is disrespectful and can be dangerous to judge an aspect of one culture by the values and expectations of another culture. Ethnocentrism, prejudice, discrimination, paternalism, abuse, bullying, imperialism, colonialism, sexism, ageism, classism are all spawns of racism, the belief in the superiority of one race, or one culture, or one group, or one individual over others. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In that cross-cultural education class, ethnocentrism was discussed, but racism was never mentioned. Although we may have discussed alternative ways for First Nations to relate to Canada, of separation versus integration versus assimilation, there was no mention of the possibility that forced assimilation might be a form of genocide, another term that was never mentioned. “Education is the new buffalo,” the chiefs negotiating treaties in the 1870s believed, and they had negotiated for schools on reserves which would help their people prepare for a new way of life, after the buffalo were gone. Nor did I ever hear it hinted that the disappearance of First Nations people from our communities, that exclusion of First Nations people or First Nations points of view in history books, in the curriculum, in the media, might be indicative of racism. Nor the suggestion that ignoring the pleas, the requests, turning a blind eye, a deaf ear, might also be forms of racism. Nor did anyone ever say that some people might resent you because you are White. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Because I'm White? Wouldn't that be racist? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The DISAPPEARANCE OF 'RACISM'</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Academics debate definitions still, which is probably why the word “racism” seems to have disappeared. Because using the word “racism” results in an argument about definition rather than a look at actions and their motivations and consequences. The word “racism” does seem to have become taboo. No one says it anymore. It's one of those pointing words--one finger points at someone else, and three point back at you. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Making the word “racism” a taboo only serves to help avoid the issue and to help society continue to deny that racism is a problem. We seem to feel more comfortable pretending that racism doesn't exist in Canada. We hide in the definition of racism as Skinheads and White Supremacists who talk about blood and commit violence against victims who are visibly not White. So unless we're bashing or stomping or murdering others we perceive as different and thus inferior, we evade the racist label. Of course, White Supremacists are racists. But they're a fringe kind of racist. Young White males who would otherwise find acceptance as gangsters or goons or pimps or bikers, anywhere their anger and anti-social tendencies could be put to use. Charlie Chaplin said it so well: “Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural.” This violent fringe group of haters are not people with whom most of us identify. They do, however, provide a convenient escape for us. I am not like that; therefore, I cannot be a racist.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> Wrong. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> If we think that we are right and that the ways other people do things are wrong, we, for all intents and purposes, are racists. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> If we think that the way we do things is superior, and the way other people do things is thus inferior, we are racist.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> And racism is wrong.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Perhaps another reason that the word “racism” seems to have disappeared is that our understanding of and attitudes towards “race” have changed. Today we profess that races do not exist. Influenced by sociologists and psychologists, we are slowly becoming used to the proposition that there is only one race, the HUMAN RACE. Instead of the seemingly outdated ideas of racism, anti-racism, or race rights, we have learned to refer instead to HUMAN RIGHTS. Human rights counter racism and ethnocentrism. Human rights is an umbrella term which includes aliases such as civil rights, women's rights, feminism, labour rights, minority rights, equal rights, anti-bullying, or the rights of indigenous peoples. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The Preamble to the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world . . .“ Then it lists thirty “rights.” Yes, but, you may say. Yes, but, human rights did not exist until 1948 (a very good year) and are a result of the Holocaust. Certainly the move to formalize, to write down, was a reaction to the horror of concentration death camps. But the belief in fundamental justice, and the the desire to codify and record, to document orally or literally, are characteristics of our race. And having the rights written down does make it easier to see, to hear the voices of the disappeared and the dispossessed as they call for help. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> All groups marginalized by historic injustice, exploited or ignored, help us see both the need for and the benefits of being mutually supportive, moving in solidarity with others, standing up and speaking out for rights and respect. For is it not our common goal, to figure out how we can best live together, as neighbours, as allies, as fellow human beings, in this land, on this planet? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> Yet racist attitudes thrive. Maybe some people will have an issue equating “feelings of superiority” with racism. We can accept that racism means that individuals of one race or group feel superior to people of another group. The contrary is less universally accepted—that those who feel superior are by definition racist. Think of it as a mathematical equation. An equation can be read backwards and forwards. Racism = Feeling Superior. Therefore, Feeling Superior = Racism. I offer this as metaphor. To try to argue it as logic would be an unfortunate ethnocentric reading, a cross-cultural misinterpretation.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Or perhaps we could equate racism with righteousness, as in self-righteousness. The belief that our way is right, that “we” are right. That other ways are inferior. A word like “snobbery” makes self-righteousness seem somewhat less threatening, an individual quirk rather than a cultural characteristic. But is it not still the same thing, whether it is on the personal level, on the cultural level, or on the national level? A snob is self-righteous. Self-righteousness is feeling superior. Feeling superior is racism, however we may try to evade the truth.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Racism is both a personal and a cultural flaw. The belief that anyone else, any individual or group, has the right to tell another person, other people, what to do and how to live their lives is a racist tenet. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">It fails to respect the right of the individual to self-determination and dignity. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It fails to RESPECT.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Think of the implications for individuals, for groups, for nations. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It's not you; it's me.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">CANLIT</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">My teen years had been bolstered by all the national pride and promotions surrounding Canada's centennial in 1967. Indeed, at fifteen, I had been awarded a summer trip, as part of an escorted group of Manitoba high school students, Centennial Travellers, to Montreal where I was billetted with a French-speaking family in Longueuil. I tasted my first slice of pizza (instant addiction) and ate my first Spaghetti Bolognese supper. Madame S taught me the proper etiquette--”Do not cut the strands. Hold your spoon in your left hand; use it as a brace and with your right hand, twist the spaghetti around your fork.” We drove to Sorel to visit Madame's relatives in a traditional farmhouse on a long lot fronting the Richelieu River, exactly matching the history book descriptions of the New France surveys. We attended smoky coffee houses with a stool, a mic, and a folk singer spotlighted on stage. We toured Old Montreal, the nave of Notre Dame de Bon Secours in the harbour and the gilded Notre Dame Cathedral, the botanical garden, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Le Musee des Beaux-Arts,</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> St. Joseph's Oratory. We visited the aquarium, the Plains of Abraham, and a nunnery displaying Montcalm's skull in Quebec City, the Parliament Buildings and National Art Gallery in Ottawa, the old building, where Tom Thomson's </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>West Wind</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> took your breath away at the door. I memorized the words to “Mon Pays” in French--”</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Mon pays ce n'est pas un pays c'est l'hiver.”</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> And I had returned, for Expo '67. It was a celebration of Canada, with an all-inclusive slogan: “Unity in diversity.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> But it had taken a few years for the nationalism, a bit of the pride and self-confidence, to trickle up to the university. I took my first Canadian Literature class when poet Dorothy Livesay offered a special summer course in 1972. She had personal knowledge of many of the poets and novelists, having lived in Winnipeg when her father worked for the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Free Press</span></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, as well as in eastern Canada and on the West Coast. We studied Isabella Valancy Crawford's “The Canoe“ and Pauline Johnson's “The Song My Paddle Sings.” We read Margaret Laurence short stories set in Neepawa and Riding Mountain National Park, fifty miles from home. And Frederick Philip Grove, who had taught in Rapid City, twenty miles from Oak River, where we had regularly visited one of Dad's veteran friends. Grove's daughter is buried there. Although the story of his true identity, as a fugitive German, was just coming out, his stories spoke to us of our place, of snow and prairie roads and farm workers, of cultures familiar to us. In that class, the setting of Grove's novel </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Master of the Mill </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">was identified as Keewatin, Ontario, a previously unknown fact. We also read Layton and Klein and Cohen. Because I was in love with Montreal and with Cohen since his concert on campus my first year, I wrote my paper on “Suzanne” with its references to “Our Lady of the Harbour” and ”she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China.” I could just as easily have chosen “Dance Me To the End of Love” or “Sisters of Mercy”; his “Democracy” and “Anthem” (“There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”) and “Hallelujah” came later.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Dorothy Livesay was living CanLit, the embodiment of literature as the art of seeing your self set in your environment, your culture, a connection which had been impossible previously for Canadian students to make. In the past, literature, the curriculum, the canon, was determined in England or America and taught by outsiders who believed that everything good happened somewhere else and, if you just imported it, you could be enlightened in its reflected glory. Literature was seen as product, not process. Before CanLit, Canadian novels never made it to the "approved texts" list; reading was about strange people from unfamiliar places. The fact that none of these people were Canadian was an unvoiced insult. If Canadians did exist, they did not matter. They were invisible, lesser than, inferior. The colonized mind was as much a problem in literature as it was and is in politics. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> After the Centennial, after Livesay, I began to understand literature as the study of the mastery of language as a way to explore what it means to be fully human here and now.<span style="color: black;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In CanLit, finally, we could see Canada and Canadians. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Through the pleasures of narrative, we can learn how other</span> human beings cope with different kinds of challenges in their own lives and cultures. Later I would see the impact on the </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">students</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> when</span> they got hooked on Farley Mowat's </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Lost In the Barrens</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">. Although they knew how some Northerners referred to Mowat as “hardly know-it” because of his imaginative liberties, they loved reading a story with Cree characters set in a landscape which they recognized, about familiar activities such as trapping and hunting, and with conflicts, man versus nature, White versus Indigenous, Indian versus Eskimo, with which they could all identify. CanLit untwists the educational misstep, breaks down the dance moves into a manageable one-two-three, and helps students learn that the purpose of literature, oral or written, is, by creating characters we recognize and plots with which we can identify, to entertain and to teach at the same time. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I never thought of it then, how being invisible, being excluded, ignored, by the media, in the curriculum, is also a form of racism. Out of sight, out of mind; if I cannot see you, you do not <span style="color: black;">exist. </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Invisibility sends the racist message</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">: You're not good enough; you do not matter. Nor did I fully</span> appreciate that helping students learn academically, watching them mature socially and emotionally, prompting them to integrate what they learn from books and from the discussion of literature depends upon how well you understand child development (physical, intellectual, social, spiritual), how well you know yourself, and how familiar you are with those all-important connections between place, culture, and identity. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> But this is getting ahead of myself. I'm not there yet. Suffice it to say that, in cross-cultural education, it is also the teacher who learns. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282258046670026550.post-4188178927750626432013-01-11T14:12:00.002-08:002013-01-12T14:56:22.832-08:00Part Two - Nelson River<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">DANCING WITH GHOSTS: A CROSS-CULTURAL EDUCATION</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Part Two – NELSON RIVER </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">HOT DOGS</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Nowadays, two generations later, I often feel homesick for the reserve, if I flick across reruns of old </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>North of 60</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> shows, or homesick for the North, watching Adam Beach on </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Arctic Air</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">. In winter I miss the smell of woodsmoke, or of the tanned moosehide mittens and mukluks sold by the crafters. Snowshoes and snowmobiles give me flashbacks. If I'm in the right place, in the summer, I may slip in to one or two of the big powwows held in or near Winnipeg, or anywhere on the Great Plains, from Texas to Yellowknife, or anywhere to which plains people have moved. Now I know that an Indian dance is not a performance. That in the past, dances brought people from far away together for political, economic, social, and spiritual reasons to one pre-arranged place, at one time. And that modern powwows, although each individual has his or her own agenda, are like giant sports days, except that, instead of baseball or track, the competitions are for different types of dances—circle, hoop, round, traditional, fancy shawl, jingle dress, grass, inter-tribal. Ribbon shirts, bristle roaches, eagle feathers on headdresses, fans, and bustles abound. The drum is “the heartbeat of Mother Earth”; the drum groups take turns singing and keeping time. There's always an emcee who loves the mic, calling out the schedule of dances, the names of prizewinners, of Elders leading the prayers, gathering everyone for the Grand Entry, the Veterans Honour Dance, the Final Procession, keeping the audience entertained with his own stand-up routine. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It was at a powwow that I first heard this story, the First Nations equivalent of a Canadian Newfie joke or the “farmer's daughter” jokes which I collect. Jokes which used to be about making fun of the “other” but are recycled today as affectionate and self-deprecating. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">These two Indians, “bush Indians,” as the term goes, someone somewhat less sophisticated, less experienced, less widely travelled, these two guys from ____ (insert name of rival town) are coming to a big powwow in the city, to what would in the past have been “enemy territory.” They are excited to see all the people, all the regalia, to hear the drums beating, the emcee insulting his friends. To see the long row of tents set up as the food court, their banners competing: Real Indian Bannock. Fry Bread. Indian Candy. Fishburgers. Buffalo Burgers. Hot Dogs.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Hot Dogs? So it's true then? These people actually do eat dogs? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The two buddies rush up to the hot dog stand. “Two hot dogs!” they order, shaking their heads and wrinkling their noses at the proffered raw onions and green pickles. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Hot dog,” they say, almost in unison, and manipulate the long bun to best insert it into their drooling mouths. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> One of them, taking a little longer to bite, finally satisfies his curiosity. He opens the bun and takes a peek. His eyebrows go up, his eyes go big. He turns to his buddy who is already swallowing, and asks suspiciously, “What part did you get?”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">MOVING NORTH </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Moving from Winnipeg north to a fly-in reserve in those years in the 1970s was a bit of a physical challenge. For one thing, there was no road. There were roads on the reserve but they didn't link to anything. Cargo went by boat up the 800-km length of Lake Winnipeg, past Warren's Landing, up the Nelson River, Playgreen Lake, to one of the docks in Norway House, either at the Fort or the government dock near Church Point in the Rossville townsite. People had to fly on scheduled flights, usually in a Queen Air, from Winnipeg. The landing strip was gravel, and there was a sign, on the road between the airfield and the river, that said “Watch for low-flying planes.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Flying in for the pre-screening interview was the first time I had ever been on a reserve and the first time I had ever been in an airplane. Over the years, I had to get used to the flying. Once, returning to the reserve alone, as I was the only passenger heading north, the pilot invited me to sit up front, in the co-pilot's seat in the cockpit. He gave me an impromptu lesson in VFR, visual flight rules, how to navigate without instruments from Winnipeg to Norway House. (This is many long years before the invention of GPS.) Follow the highway north to the lake at Hecla Island. North west along the lakeshore. When you can see George Island, head for it, north east, to fly across the lake. North to the mouth of the Nelson River where it begins its journey to Hudson Bay. Follow the river to the airport. With hands on the control yoke and feet on the rudder pedals, I manipulated the small plane, climbing, descending, turning. Bank. Flaps. Pitch. Yaw. Altitude. Attitude. Speed. But it wasn't enough; I never caught the flying bug. However, the experience at the controls did help reduce my anxiety. I recognized that my fear stemmed partly from ignorance of just how these machines got up into the air and what kept them there. There was <span style="color: black;">also </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> element</span> of fear of dying. So I was able to shrug. Whatever. We all die sometime. Just let it be quick. But I love the earth, this land, too much, to want to leave it for any frivolous reason. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Once you were up there, on reserve, getting out of town could be just as much of an adventure. One time we sat on stools in the cavernous belly of an old World War II cargo plane, a DC-3, after heat had been pumped in at the airport from a giant Herman Nelson portable gasoline-fired heater. Then the large flexible hose from the heater was whipped <span style="color: black;">out </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">and</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> the</span> plane door slammed quickly, with a prayer, to keep the temperature up until touchdown in Winnipeg. One time the plane went the wrong way, north instead of south to Winnipeg, and we ended up waiting in Thompson Airport for the better part of a day. It was Academy Awards night and we were missing the broadcast. Then, when a flight finally became available, it went even farther north, to Churchill, to pick up other stranded fliers. The snow was so deep at the Churchill Airport that the only thing that was visible out our porthole window was one porch light above a drift-buried door. After new passengers were loaded, the secondhand smoke in the passenger cabin was so strong that everyone was flying high. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> People flew in to the reserve and waited for freeze-up. After the ice froze to at least a thickness of eighteen centimetres, winter ice roads were constructed across the northern end of Lake Winnipeg to connect to the Thompson Highway, north or south. When the snow had been ploughed and evergreen trees stuck into snowbanks to aid with visibility, cars and trucks could be driven in and out. One time we drove past a semi-trailer truck flipped on its side, jackknifed, along the edge of the ice road. “The driver was going too fast,” rumour had it; “he drove over his own wave and cracked the ice, and that's what caused him to jackknife and flip.” I shake my head. It is “another country,” and “there are more things in this heaven and earth” than Horatio dreamed of in his philosophy.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> So, it was all adventure--getting there, getting to know a boreal forest landscape of rock, lakes, and trees, totally foreign to me, and getting to know the people and the culture which the land sustained. “Muskeg” is the Cree word for the swampy land; “Muskego” are the people of the swampland, the Swampy Cree; “Moniyas” are the Whites, referred to as “transients.” For the Whites come from outside and leave. No one expected you to stay; you had to “learn fast.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>STAFF PARTY </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>From the darkness of the porch as I am knocking the snow off my boots, I can hear the guys cheering. Go! Go! Go! They are pumping, egging someone on. Not me, obviously. But as I slither into the kitchen, all I can see are their backs, the whole lot of them, all turned away from the bottle-laden ta</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">ble, encircling one guy, his</span></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> blond hair haloed in the low-ceilinged kitchen by the pot light over the sink. The boss's arm is draped over the guy's shoulders, above the pumping buttocks, the slack-seated jeans. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> At the touch of the frozen fresh air from my entrance, the blond turns out of the embrace, around, something large and meaty in his grip, showering his buddies in the chorus line, a drunken smirk on his face. Seeing it is just me, his busy hands unable to salute, he gives a slight nod of the head and turns back to his business, targetting the yellow stream in the general direction of the stainless steel kitchen basins. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Like one of the cringing yard dogs, I slink kitty-corner to the door leading to the living room where the “girls” have flocked--the wives and dates and hopefuls lingering outside the circle, hovering close to the free booze, waiting for later, for an anonymous fumble before some poor bugger nods off or passes out. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> “Get yourself a drink,” one of the women yells, and I smile, hold up my own bottle secreted under my parka, motion for the church-key, chug-a-lug. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> “I'm not going back in there, I don't care how much you pay me!” I try to joke to the abandoned wives and girlfriends. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> “Who's the new guy?” I ask, by way of an ice-breaker. Identification. Always start with a description. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> “The blond? Friend of the boss's.”</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> “Cousin, I heard.”</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> “New recruit.” </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> “Her boyfriend,” someone nods towards a girl new to the group. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> “My fiancé,” she offers, which makes me think, Knocked up but still hopeful.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> It would be deluding myself not to notice how he has been welcomed. How he fits right in. How he has something I don't have. That cockiness that is always interpreted as confidence. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> The next time someone yells out “Are we having fun yet?” the new blond guy yells back, “Over here. Over here.” His buddies call him by their new pet name, Dipstick or Hoser, and pat him on the back, a welcome addition to the workplace. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">CLASSROOM – LESSON ONE</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">As an outsider moving to a northern reserve to teach, my first interactions are with other staff members. But soon, the doors open, school commences, classes begin. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The thing I love about teaching English is the opportunity to choose the content to use to focus on developing their skill levels in reading, writing, and thinking. Literature is my favourite medium to address both the academic and the personal development of high school students. The challenge is to identify topics that will interest them, to lure them into the subject, so they don't even realize that they are learning or that what they are doing is “work.” The classroom is like a gym, a place to develop and exercise intellectual muscles, critical thinking skills. I hang a little hand-stitched sampler of my motto: </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">“Teach them how to think, not what to think.” Challenge them. Engage them. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">“Is that an opinion or a fact?” is one of my favourite questions. Well, this is the romantic approach. Teaching style has to match the teacher's personal strengths. The classic conservative motto would be more like: here's the book, here's the curriculum; here's the exam; memorize; read and weep. I exaggerate somewhat--hyperbole. As a teacher alone in the classroom, you have to stand up, to believe in yourself, your years of university, your teacher training, your permanent professional teaching certificate, your previous teaching experience, your knowledge of the variety of individual learning styles (visual, auditory, tactile), your love of your subject, and your love of teaching. For, as everyone knows, no one teaches a subject. We all teach students. I loved my subject, and I loved teaching students. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> At the same time you watch them develop, mature, climb Maslow's pyramid as they learn to master, to manage their needs, from the basic necessities of air, food, and water, through safety and security, love and belonging, self-esteem and confidence, to become creative, contributing, respectful human beings capable of reaching beyond. The ability to witness this growth must surely be the teacher's greatest joy. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Yet, what I remember most about teaching on the reserve are the things my students taught me. I may have started out as a farmer's daughter, living in a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>de facto</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> apartheid world, a Southerner who had chosen to work in the North as a kind of travel adventure. Sure, I loved Canada, but how much did I really know about it? Or about this community I was flying into? Those days were also a learning experience for me. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I don't remember the exact topic of the English lesson. Maybe I tried to explain how living in new parts of Canada is interesting, exciting to me, how I hope to learn more about this homeland I love so much. I remember, two generations later, the exact first words the first student to speak ever said to me: “I'm not a Canadian; I'm Cree.” Matt was the first. (I'm going to make up names, to prevent any unintended embarrassment to the actual students.) Matt was the first First Nations person I met who rejected the idea of Canada and Canadian citizenship and identified only with his Cree nation. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In my shock, I failed to probe him. Although I did not recognize it at the time, Matt's rejection of Canadian citizenship was a form of payback. For almost the first one hundred years of the Cree nation's relationship with the nation of Canada, from 1867 to 1956, Canada did not extend citizenship to Crees or any other Indians. If an individual wished to attain all the benefits of Canadian citizenship, he or she had to sign away their rights, their “treaty status,” their “racial identity” as registered Indians, in order to be “enfranchised,” to gain “rights” most of us never think twice about—the right to vote, to work for the government, to live where we choose, to purchase and consume alcohol if we choose, to marry whomever we choose without the threat of loss of rights, to pay taxes, to own property, to make a will, to hire a lawyer. The rejection of a new concept of “dual citizenship” is an understandable kind of reaction on Matt's part. “You didn't want us; now, we don't want you! </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Awas!</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Matt and most of his classmates spoke Cree at home and had been speaking solely English at school for close to a dozen years. Not everyone in the class felt the same way he did about Canada, but all were in varying degrees equally proud to be Cree or part Cree, to be part of an ancient and on-going Cree civilization. It was from Matt that I first began to get a glimmer of understanding about what the term First Nations means. The Cree were a nation before Canada ever existed, with their own language and their own culture. They were and still are a nation, and proud of it. And furthermore, that the Cree nation, every First Nation, is composed of individuals who each have their own opinions. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">NON-DENOMINATIONAL</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">At that school on the reserve, I worked within a provincial curriculum, guided over the years by administrators in the nearest city, Thompson, who were in turn guided from the provincial capital, Winnipeg, through the local principal. (Over the years, I served under at least three different principals, one of them, ironically, from Bradwardine, Manitoba.) A parent advisory committee offered the principals advice, although the committee never met with teachers. It was so many years ago that every school day, we were compelled to open with “The Lord's Prayer.” At school I hesitantly spoke up to suggest that, for me, and perhaps too for some of my Cree students, I felt “The Lord's Prayer,” compulsory, was an imposition on my right to freedom of religion.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “What the hell are you talking about?” the principal retorted. “ 'The Lord's Prayer' is non-denominational!” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Oh my God, am I here all alone? I was in my Bob Dylan “Desolation Row” stage. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “ 'The Lord's Prayer' is Christian,” I replied meekly, leaving him to wonder, or not, whether I was telling him I was Jewish or atheist or Buddhist. He didn't give a damn, and he didn't see my point. One of his minions spoke up, pounding the nail in farther: “And furthermore, it is the law!” I think he, being from a more easterly province, had just read the Manitoba Schools Act.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">A casual conversation a few days later with one of the parents on the advisory committee met with similar indifference. “Being forced to pray doesn't hurt the children,” she assured me. Okay. She was not the parent who lead resistance to the powwow-dancing group in town, on the grounds that it reflected a pagan past that was better left buried. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It was years later before a high school student in the South, not yet burdened with student debt or the necessity to mollify principals or employers, led the battle to oppose compulsory prayer and the discrimination against individual students <span style="color: black;">who </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">objected. They were banished from the classroom, forced to stand outside in the hallway where they could contemplate the Christian assumption that if you aren't Christian, it would be better for you and for your society if you were.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">My unsuccessful stand to remove compulsory prayer and Christianity from the public school classroom did have one long-term result. For the first time in my life, I was able to say out loud, in public, “I am not a Christian.” I had no idea how liberating that stance would be, regardless of the negative career impact. I had been “raised” an Anglican, had been baptized as an infant and confirmed as a teen. I could still recite the Apostle's Creed. However, I knew that the words were in my head, memorized, but that they were not in my heart. I lived camouflaged within a Christian-dominated culture, my values mostly consistent with my Anglican heritage, but there was a line between culture and faith, a division separating my heritage and my personal commitment. I did not attend church except for weddings and funerals, I probably had not taken communion since I was confirmed. I have never attended a Bible study group, although I do confess to having read the Bible as literature. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> My personal sins of omission also speak volumes about the way culture grows out of faith, but that the two are not synonymous, at least for some people. Culture can exist without religion. Or, as I heard it phrased on the radio the other day, there can be “good without God.” Although it is difficult to disentangle all the religious tendrils clinging to laws and by-laws, and choking social expectations, the liberation which resulted from “I am not a Christian” was surprising. Without a faith which tells you what to believe and how to behave, you are forced to make choices. Private choices, which deal with the body, or with personal relationships. Concepts like masturbation, fornication, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">adultery, orgasm, birth control, abortion, sacrament, marriage, monogamy, polygamy, divorce, profit-making, tithing, or charity become personal</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> rather than proscribed, personal rather than public, personal rather than legal choices. Morality becomes a constant reaffirmation, actions based upon ethical beliefs about who has the right to choose, what they may choose, under what circumstances and situations, and who has the right to know. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In teacher training we learned to recognize the different types of reasons we use when making decisions about morality—obeying orders or expectations, fearing punishment, assessing self-interest, desiring to conform and to be accepted, respecting authority by obeying the law and keeping the peace, doing what is best for society, and following higher ethical principles such as justice and respect. [Kohlberg] The pressure to conform and the desire to be accepted by their peers, to belong, are strong in most students of high school age. Literature can open doors for discussion about options and alternatives. Situational ethics perhaps, for it is more difficult to think for yourself, to make your own decisions, than to try to live by society's dictates. Making your own decisions is more like driving without traffic lights or road signs. You have to focus on your destination, your goals and purpose. At every intersection, you have to make the assessment. Which route will take me there most directly, most quickly, most safely? You have to decide for yourself based on your own values, and act accordingly, over and over again. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Even years later, after I left the classroom, when the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was being discussed in Canada, some Canadians were having trouble distinguishing between “freedom of religion” and “freedom from religion,” the idea that a Canadian can not be assumed to believe or forced to believe in a monotheistic supreme being and a rewards-and-punishments afterlife. However, at the time, the monotheists had the most votes and God sneaked into the Preamble: “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">To testify to not being Christian also led me to change some of my actions. I try not to ask students for their “Christian” names. I try to avoid using religious terms, especially the word “Christmas.” Save Christmas for the true Christians, I feel, although I insist on celebrating the yule season, the solstice, with evergreens as the pagan symbol of life amidst death which they always were, before Christianity appropriated them. Pagan and Proud, as the t-shirt says. I select greeting cards which stress the season, or ones which feature doves and emphasize Peace. I light candles and string lights as symbols of hope, of life, in the dead of winter, as they have always been. We can retain the rituals, the gift-giving, games and gatherings, threshold ceremonies, festive dances, flowers for weddings and funerals, all the little joys which celebrate our connections, to each other, to the greater Mystery. Nature and the elements, the environment, the cycle of seasons, the land itself, can bring us all together because they are shared experiences which connect us, which welcome all without imposing any one belief, while rejecting the idea that any one individual or group is superior. As Canadian artist Douglas Coupland puts it, speaking of identity, “This wonderful collective bond of landscape.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I did not know until many years after the fact that I probably would not have been hired to teach on that reserve if I hadn't answered an interview question with “I was raised as an Anglican.” I did not mean to be deceptive. Nor did I realize that when the churches withdrew from teaching in the residential schools, they did so only after deals had been made guaranteeing a sort of equal representation on the public school teaching staffs for teachers from the different faiths. Thus, although it seems as if it should be illegal, the religion of an applicant determined whether or not there was a position available. That was why, in the community, a nun was principal of one of the three schools and teachers were slotted on the roster according to their Catholic or non-Catholic status, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>de facto</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> if not </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>de jure. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Years later, when I was being interviewed for possible employment with the Correctional Service of Canada, the interviewer asked about religion. I believe he was trying to sniff out religious fanatics motivated to work in prisons to rescue society's rejects and save sinners. But by that time, I had a practiced answer: “I'm not religious, but I do consider myself to be spiritual.” I keep the "Pagan and Proud" to myself.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">OTHERED</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">As part of a reading and critical thinking exercise for an English lesson, I clipped an article from a Winnipeg paper which reported upon the success of the local Cree-language radio station on the reserve. Broadcasting from the community, the modern technology was being used by trappers to keep in touch with home, by families to send messages from town to those who were “on the land.” As a by-product, the use of Cree in telecommunications was helping to maintain the numbers of people who continued to be fluent in the mother tongue. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> But the reaction of the students reading the article surprised me. “Who is this 'they'? Do they think we are all trappers and live in wigwams or trapper cabins?” I read the article as a news report, informing the Southerners and city dwellers of innovations in the North. The students read it as “othering,” evidence that outsiders saw them as somehow different, maybe backwards, living in almost the same way the Cree lived when the first Hudson's Bay Company traders arrived three hundred years before. “Don't people know that we also speak English, that we live in houses with telephones, drive snowmobiles, trucks, and cars, that some of us have jobs in schools and hospitals, or as commercial fishermen, whatever?”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I sensed a certain tension in the class. Students were asserting that “We're not that different.” At the same time, there was ambivalence. They wanted to be the same. Or they wanted to be seen at least as equal to the modern people elsewhere, especially in the South.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I also realized that living as they did in the largest reserve community in the province, going to school with their siblings and relatives, people they had known all their life, sprinkled sparsely with the fairer heads of students whose parents were teachers or doctors or police officers, these students rarely experienced any form of prejudice or discrimination by other races. They certainly did not experience the antagonism expressed against First Nations people in the cities, although one boy, sent south for medical treatment, reported that his landlady had asked him not to sit on the front porch, to avoid being centred out by her neighbours. Indeed, most of the children of White families on the reserve were sent out to school, or the parents transferred out when the children reached school age, because, they said, they feared for the development of their children's English language skills. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> How were these local reserve and off-reserve (Metis) students going to cope when they did go out, for further education or seeking employment, especially when they do encounter discrimination?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Along with ensuring that they master the same curriculum as the southern students, along with encouraging them to read, one of my goals was always to encourage students to feel good about themselves. About their backgrounds. About their bi-lingualism. “Never be afraid to speak up, to express your opinion.” “Accents are in,” although most of the students did not really have accents. “There is something the matter with people who feel that they are superior and that you are inferior.” I wanted to make sure that they knew, the way we try to bully-proof all students, that “It's not you, it's them.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> That there's something wrong with them, the people who bully and hate. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Don't be intimidated. Stand tall. Stand together. Solidarity.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Celebrate the fact that we are all the same but different.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">CAREER DAY</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Another day in class, a member from the local RCMP detachment, in uniform, the yellow stripe down his pant leg, came to speak about careers in the RCMP. At that time he was speaking mainly to the males, although the class was fairly evenly balanced by gender. Also, at that time, he was happy to tell them about the newly-devised program for Native policing. The force was looking to recruit First Nations men to fill Special Constable positions on reserves.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Why would these students choose to apply as Special Constables rather that apply through the same channels as everyone else in Canada?” As I asked the question, I did wonder whether there was some racism involved. Were the RCMP assuming that Native students could not compete with all the other high school graduates who wanted to become Mounties? Or worse, did the RCMP assume that Native students did not have the basic academic qualifications to apply through the usual channels? This classroom should have been proof that times were changing. Native students were graduating from high schools in their home communities. Or, worse yet, did the RCMP, like so many others, including Whites in the North, believe that, by definition, the education received in northern, rural, or Native high schools was inferior to that received elsewhere? I notice only now that I failed to stress the equal opportunities for females who may have been interested in a law enforcement career, as the RCMP had already begun hiring females.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The officer spokesperson did have an answer to my question about why a special program for Native policemen. It seemed that the proposed Native constables were seen as a sort of liaison officer position between police and community. The reason they were designated as “different” was because, for regular RCMP officers, there was a rule against policing in your home community, where you might be more likely to encounter personal or familial conflicts of interest. The Native constables would be expected to police their home communities, where they could be valuable two-way conduits of communication and relationship, like the Metis guides of old. The speaker even suggested that this idea was a reaction to feedback the force got about why Natives did not apply. Because they did not want to leave their home communities for the purposes of training or seeking employment. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It was true, and is still true, that family ties are strong in Native communities. Employment within a capitalist system demands the willingness to sever family ties, or at least to downplay the value of familial connection and responsibilities, in order to pursue personal career and financial goals. It's part of White culture, the strong work ethic,<span style="color: black;"> and </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the belief</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> that work comes before play. Employment contracts specify an allotted number of days each year an employee may be absent from work to attend to family responsibilities, often specifically, to attend funerals. Everyone working in a reserve school knows that family and community events take priority over school attendance. And family and community ties play a big role in student career choices. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In the ensuing forty-odd years, the Native constable program has been fazed out and Native applicants enter the RCMP the same way as everyone else. I would feel this were a good thing, if it were not for the class-action lawsuits being filed by female officers, finally standing up, in solidarity, to protest the personal and systemic discrimination they faced in a force that was supposedly “integrated.” Every legal response from the force reported in the media seems to be an attack upon the victims, questioning the credibility of the defendants, making the force sound like a macho domain of men who feel entitled and superior. Of course, this is a by-product of the adversarial positions proscribed by our legal system. A winners </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>versus</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> losers attitude which, I fear, appeals to sexists, to all those who feel themselves superior. Who are also likely to feel superior toward different groups, to discriminate against others for more reasons than gender. Because the truth about abuse is that it is not about the victims. It is about what is wrong with the abusers. And with the systems which attract and protect them.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> What do statistics say about the careers of First Nations recruits in the RCMP over the last forty years? Because news reports suggest that the discrimination behind that thin red para-military line is not limited to sexual harassment. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ELDERTALK</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Before moving up north to teach, I had listened to a few Native speakers and educators talk about their experiences to our “cross-cultural education” class. Then, in the school, in the community, one of those same Native educators came to present an in-service. Thinking about those mysterious Sioux on the reserve once sharing a name with Oak River, my home town, I tried to ask a question about the sundance. The Elder's young assistant, with two long braids resting on his chest, shot me down instantly. Nothing to do with the Cree in whose territory we were sitting. And my question indicated I didn't have a clue what I was talking about—dancing, sun, pain, sacrifice. Pan-Indianism, I learned, is a common mistake among those of us who know nothing. Indians are not all the same. The languages are different. The cultures are different. The rituals are different. Sioux rituals have nothing to do with Cree rituals. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Okay.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> After the session broke up, I went up to introduce myself to the Elder, to remind him that I had met him a few weeks earlier at the training session in Winnipeg. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “I'm sorry,” he smiled at me. “All White teachers look alike to me.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I believe he was smiling. I know he was teaching. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Contrary to some definitions, I do not believe that Whites have a monopoly on racism and ethnocentrism. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I did understand the respect for Elders. Didn't my own Elders attempt to instruct me all the time? Didn't my BC grandmother counsel me “to dress for the weather, not the climate,” and didn't she share a story with me about the importance of passing high school mathematics? How she had failed mathematics in her senior year and thus had been denied admission to Oxford? I certainly needed to hear that one when I did.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> And didn't my other grandmother from Bradwardine stress the familiar scripts. “Do unto others the way you would want them to do unto you.” “Play nice; don't hurt.” “Two wrongs don't make a right.” “If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.” "Mind your manners." As children, we may argue, “That's not fair!” or we may think secretly, “That is hypocritical.” But as adults we realize that these are simple rules which help us live together. We must learn not to confuse our opinions with facts. We must learn that, although it is all right to think for yourself, it is not necessary to share all negative and destructive thoughts. That to do so implies that you think your feelings are more important than the feelings of others your words will hurt. We pretend that our values come from the Bible, from religion, from church, but the conduit is almost always through our Elders in one way or another. In the way my BC grandmother, who attended an Anglican church service three times every Sunday, wrote in my autograph book “May the Peace of Allah abide with thee.” In the way my Manitoba grandmother said she could only think of one verse, “Don't worry, Dear. An oak tree was once a nut too.” It made her laugh, but she refused to write it down. We compromised. “Love many; trust few; always paddle your own canoe.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Books Are Our Elders Speaking” was one slogan I used to attempt to make a connection between “school and book learning” and the teaching methods usually associated with oral traditions. Each time we re-read something we read previously when we were younger, we see different things in it, in exactly the same way that different listeners hear different things in the same Elder's story, or listeners hear different things when they hear the same story told at different times. I wish I had thought to introduce treaty documents as appropriate tools to explore text and subtext, point of view, verbatim versus concept-based note-taking, the gaps between what was intended, what was said, what was understood, and what was written down. And between what was agreed and what was lived up to. The ethics of written documents signed by people in good faith who could not read them. The weight of oral history and alternate methods of remembering and recording. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">During my years in classrooms in reserve schools, many Elders came to speak to students. Some of them were there to instruct in the Cree language. Pee Pay Po Paw, and the syllabic shapes which captured the sounds. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Peyak Neso Neyo Niyanan One Two Three Four </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Atik Caribou </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Atim Dog </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Chaschako Pelican </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Chi pay Ghost</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Iskew Woman</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Iskoches Spark</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Kakako Raven </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Kinosew Fish </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Kiwetin North Wind </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Kona Snow </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Masko Bear </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Nichimos Sweetheart </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Niska Goose </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Nohkom Grandmother </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Okimaw Chief </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Even to present such a list is a distortion, in roman orthography, informed by the tendency of the English language to begin with nouns, with the naming of things. Students have difficulties with articles (a, an, the) because Cree does not use them; they have trouble with gender because it is communicated in a different way in the Cree language. Cree divides objects into animate and inanimate. Assina, rock, is animate. The earth is alive. For an English-speaker, it's a whole new way of looking at things. An animate universe, imbued with spirit. A world view preserved in a language. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Astum. Come here. A PeSees. A little bit. Awas. Get lost. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> A teacher's primer. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Some Elders came to class to speak of their years in residential schools. They remembered the big signs at the front door—“No Indian spoken here”—and how they were punished if they forgot, if they ran up to a sibling at recess and spoke in Cree. They remembered feeling hungry, and joked constantly about “meatless Fridays.” Some complained about the half-day system, a half day in classroom and a half day working to produce the food, bring in the wood, etc. This meant that a person could attend school for eight years but achieve a Grade Four equivalent. Some expressed gratitude for the English they were taught, and some, for the instruction in Christianity which they received in residential school. Some of them spoke of children who were hidden away, protected, not only because their parents could not bear to give them up but also because they had been recognized as gifted and their parents could not accept that they be sent to places designed to erase the Cree culture from their brains.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Although I have never personally heard an Elder disclose being abused, I have no trouble accepting the truth of the painful stories which are finally being shared. We have already listened to and paid money to children similarly abused in church-run orphanages elsewhere in Canada and in Ireland. When children are vulnerable, pedophiles and sadists will take advantage. Some Elders remembered the homesickness, missing their families, and the difficulties of adjusting when they finally did get home. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The actual building which housed the K-12 community school we were in had been a residential school at one time but the children who had been removed from their parents and home community to attend came from smaller reserves farther inland such as Cross Lake. Other local children attended as day students. Even if not all the families remembered the school as a residential school, the building was old and had been there for some time. Once, during a Grade Twelve discussion on irony, I asked if students could come up with examples from their own lives. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “How's this?” one guy asked. “This classroom that we sit in for Grade Twelve is the same room I sat in for Kindergarten.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> He got it.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">NO WHITE CULTURE</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Did you hear about the farmer's daughter, tap dancing, who slipped, and fell into the sink?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Back in the classroom, it was the students making the jokes, challenging the status quo. “White people don't got no culture” was another early lesson offered to me. The context must have been some sort of English literature discussion. Perhaps a Duncan Campbell Scott poem? “The Forsaken,” a two-part story of an Indian woman, shows her as a young mother, sacrificing herself, fishing to feed her starving male child, and as an old woman, left behind to die. Start with the text, the facts of the story: What happens? Who are the characters? Who made what decisions? What was that person's motivation, his or her moral reasoning? Who is the "persona" telling the tale? What is the setting? How do you know? As a reader, do you believe it? What themes do you think the poet is trying to convey? What makes you think that? What literary devices does he use to get his points across? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Beyond the story: Historically, did the Chippewa do this to the elderly? Do you detect any anachronisms in the poem? Any culturally inappropriate details? What do you know about Duncan Campbell Scott? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Opinion: What values are reflected by the persona telling the story? What makes you think so? Note the link between diction (vocabulary) and ethnocentrism. What attitudes are expressed in the poem, towards females, towards death, towards Indians, towards religion? How do you know, what evidence supports your opinion? Is this a story about elder abuse? What might be the attitude of a policeman or an Indian agent if they came upon this scene? Would their attitude be different from Scott's? From the old woman's? From the chief's? How and why? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Themes: What is meant by the term “noble savage”? Cultural appropriation? Is it possible for Scott to tell a true story about another culture? What is ethnocentrism? What is racism? What about this poem makes you suspect that the writer may have been a racist? What is the difference between fact, fiction, opinion, and truth? What might be the relationship between truth and beauty? Between Chippewa culture and Scott's culture? Is this poem an example of cross-cultural miscommunication? What if the old woman volunteered to stay behind because that was best for the rest of the group? What if her action was a kind of sacrifice, the way soldiers sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the nation? Which is trump? The survival of one individual or the survival of the group? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">White people don't got no culture.” I sensed that the boy who offered the challenge needed more information. He seemed to be having difficulty making comparisons between his Cree culture, the contrasting culture in the poem, and what he knew of White culture. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Although he spoke English and most likely went to church and had been taught by White teachers for twelve years, what he knew of White culture was probably somewhat limited. Television was just arriving; the radio station broadcast in Cree. Most people did some shopping in Thompson, farther north, where they often complained about being followed around stores by floor-walkers. One Native teacher told me how her credit card was refused at one store, on the suspicion that it had been stolen. Most students knew someone, older siblings or parents, who had been sent “outside” to high school. The Whites the student had most exposure to, the transient Whites in his community, were working at the hospital, working at the police station, working at the hotel, the Bay store, the other store, the airport, working (with one exception) at the five or six churches in the community, and working at all the schools. (There were two elementary schools feeding the high school. It was and probably still is the largest reserve in the North.) </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The way these familiar Whites lived seemed to vary very little from the way everyone else lived there in the North. Those Whites who lived on the reserve felt entitled; we ordered in alcohol by mail, refusing to accept that the Band regulation making the reserve dry (an alcohol-free zone) applied to us. (After all, we had no vote on the reserve.) More of the Whites had vehicles, but that's because we had jobs, disposable income. The Whites had flush toilets and hot running water, but that's because the employers supplied housing. Locals used outhouses, and water was heated on the stoves, or with electric immersion heaters stuck into buckets of river water. Some transients voiced their feelings that this technological backwardness was outrageous and proof of the community's inferiority. I felt that what you do with your shit, especially communal shit, or how you construct and finance infrastructure, has more to do with economics than with culture or intelligence. I was somewhat defensive about outhouses since I used one at home until I left for university. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> Defensive is a good word. When this student threw down the gauntlet of “White culture,” my first reaction was defensive.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Yah, but . . .” I blubbered, the first and ALWAYS giveaway of a childish response. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">WHITE CULTURE</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Let's go back to the text, use this poem as document. White culture is: the English language, poetry, story, narrative, literature; history and economics, Forts, traps; religion, God with a capital G; social roles, women as nurturer, self-sacrifice; gender roles, her son the chief, the values you've already identified. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> White culture is: Christmas, I suggested, reaching, grasping first for ritual and religion. (They celebrated Christmas gift-giving at home, and twelve years of Christmas concerts at school.) It would have been more honest to say White culture is Christianity. The poem's title is a Biblical Christian allusion, as is the repetition of "three days," making the old woman a dying god, a Christ-figure. What are the implications of presenting a story of Chippewa culture through the looking-glass of Christian imagery?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> White culture is: English (or French) language. One of the teachers was constantly snapping at students to “Speak White!” More than one or two teachers had first languages other than English or Cree, but all classrooms functioned in English. Does Scott incorporate any Chippewa words? Why or why not? Does such an inclusion change the poem in any way? For whom do you think he wrote this poem? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> White culture is: O Canada; it is parliament in Ottawa, the legislature in Winnipeg, the Band Office in town--a democratic system of representative government, with elected prime minister, premier, and chief.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> White culture is a nuclear family (father, mother, two point five kids) living in a house, a single-family dwelling. Does the poem suggest a rejection of extended or multi-generational family? An end of a nomadic way of life? The dying of a culture, of a race?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> White culture is: ancestral heritage (most often, at that time, British, or at least European) and the rituals and regalia which come with that heritage. In my case, English royalty, crowns, royal weddings, kings and queens wearing ermine-trimmed velvet robes, princes and princesses, castles, navy, army, and mounted police ancestors, farming, hunting, gardening, etc. Cree ancestral heritage includes chiefs, elders, shamans, medicine men, wigwams, shaking tents, story-telling, hunting, snaring, trapping, trading, moosehide clothing, drums, powwows, dancing. (I was not too clear about the differences between Swampy Cree and Plains Cree.)</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> White culture is: medicare, a health care system symbolic of the belief that together we help each other, that no one suffers just because they are too poor to pay for medical treatment; welfare, old folks homes, day care, and schools. If these had been available to the Chippewa woman in the poem, would the story have had a different ending? So what really is dying? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> White culture is: European (or Euro-centric, which includes American) art and literature; radio, television, and movies; and classical or folk, country and western, or rock and roll music. Freddy Fender was big on the local radio station at that time, “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights“ and “Before the Next Teardrop Falls,” and the local boys playing for school dances, proudly calling themselves Cree Nation, were a great rock and roll band. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> White culture is: the work ethic, working for pay, technology, and industrialization. Although most Whites owned canoes or motor boats, the only logical means of transportation in muskeg (other than snowshoes when land and water are frozen), it was frequently heard in staff rooms that “These people never even invented the wheel.” Wheels and the cogs they expanded into seemed to represent the superiority of an industrialized people and, by extension, evidence of inferiority of “Stone Age” people. I was so ignorant that I did not recognize how this was an example of judging one world by the standards of another. Or how the theory of the evolution of cultures--Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Industrial Age--was a self-serving example of European ethnocentrism, the belief that the way Europe did things is the superior way, that the way Whites see and interpret things is the right way. The very definition of racism. The Euro-centric viewpoint has tended to be applied to all other groups on the globe by the expansionist and dominating Europeans who still argue and publish books showing that because they did dominate, that is proof of their superiority. Obviously they were inferior in their ethical treatment of other human beings. And in their compartmentalizing, separating economic from environmental and spiritual concerns. And in their romanticizing, distancing "others" by placing them high upon pedestals or far away, into the forests and wilderness.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Ethnocentrism permeates the public education system. When geology teaches that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” we use false logic to apply the mantra to human cultures, to tell ourselves that everything develops along the same pattern, from simple to complex. That complex is the best. That even when we are totally ignorant of the complexities of another culture, we assume ours is more complex and thus better. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Do patterns recur, or do we just choose to see patterns because it makes it easier to process information? Does history repeat itself, or do we merely perceive cycles after the fact, as a way of organizing too much information? I hadn't heard Mark Twain's take on cycles: “History may not repeat itself but it certainly rhymes.” Nor had I yet learned to challenge “the myth of progress,” the corruption of the theory of evolution. The corruption implies that everything later is an improvement upon what went before it. Not necessarily true. Natural selection simply means adaptation; adaptations are only ways of responding to specific circumstances, specific environments; they are not, by definition, an improvement, a better way, superior to all others. Are kangaroos superior? No. They are just different.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Ethnocentrism was definitely a problem for me; I was having difficulty not judging others by my own values or by patterns I had been taught to see, in my colonized Euro-centric university-educated Canadian culture. And, I was having difficulty identifying the values of others, the invisible values which are learned assumptions seldom spoken or shared outside the group. What if the survival of the group was more important than extending the life of one individual? Who would be brave enough to say that, to risk being labelled as an “elder abuser” the way Duncan Campbell Scott's poem seems to accuse the Chippewa? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> But at the time, I was on a roll. White culture is Food! Ice cream. Chocolate bars. Potato chips. Pop. All big sellers at the Bay. White people eat meat and potato-based meals with fresh vegetables, dessert, and tea or coffee. Brilliant, I thought, thinking of the White co-op which existed on reserve in the early years, Whites pooling their resources and volunteering their time to order and fly in and sort and distribute fresh vegetables for which there was no local demand at the Bay. Once, on a school trip down to Winnipeg, one of the parent escorts was famous for her reaction when the group dined out at the Old Spaghetti Factory. When the waiter placed a heaping bowl of green lettuce salad in front of her, she proclaimed loudly in Cree to the amusement of all the students: “What? Does he think that I am a cow?” Once, as a treat for a St. Patrick's Day supper, a White friend had special-ordered in from Thompson a frozen rabbit to make Irish stew. The local girl clerking at the Bay checkout doubled over with laughter. These crazy White people paying good money for something any boy with a loop of wire could have brought to their door, still warm and fur-covered. Whites grow wheat and grind it into flour to make their bread and desserts. White culture is plain white bread and soda biscuits. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “What?” The student who instigated the challenge cried. “Now you're even taking our bannock away from us!” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Well,” I asked, “what did your people use for flour? Wasn't bannock brought by the Scots fur traders and introduced to the First Nations?”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> What this debate led me to suspect is that, with the sole exception of their Cree language, these people lived a virtually White culture. That they were practically already assimilated. Of course, I was mistaking surfaces for depths. The really important things I could not see. And even if I had been able to identify the strengths of Cree culture, the students and their families would have been, from previous bad experience, suspicious. “Everything the missionaries learn about us, they tell us is wrong and take it away.” For public schools in the twentieth century, the goal was “to teach the skills for the new modern world.” The students could and did spout what they were hearing at home. “The past is the past; it is not the school's job to go there.” And the people at home divided into congregations on Sundays, attending the five or six different Christian churches which serviced the community. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Teach them how to think, not what to think,” I kept telling myself. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> What did the students take from this cultural challenge? I cannot say for sure. The boy who instigated the debate certainly never lost his pride. I suspect that he interpreted “culture” as the “traditions” which make people seem different. Like the ethnic costumes at Folklorama. Whereas I saw culture as including everything, the way we live and grow together. He probably realized that my list of White culture contained externals only, outward and visible signs. That I knew nothing of the invisible, the world view, the ethical and spiritual, of the way his people still thought and felt, of what truly made them Cree. Of what they accepted and what they rejected about the dominant culture which had surrounded them. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> What are you doing here? I should have asked myself.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> When students did ask me the same question, my answer was: I'm here to help prepare you to take over this job, and all the other jobs filled here by us transients, I implied.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Not realizing that that itself was a cultural shift. From "living" to "making a living." That jobs, ways of “making a living,” are inextricable parts of capitalism. Not realizing that I was offering these students, saying it another way: To prepare you to assimilate further into the mainstream Christian Canadian democratic constitutional monarchic capitalist system. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Again, I was an unwitting accomplice.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282258046670026550.post-33151553853427553542013-01-11T14:11:00.002-08:002013-01-12T22:46:41.423-08:00Part Three - The River Shannon<br />
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">DANCING WITH GHOSTS: A CROSS-CULTURAL EDUCATION</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Part Three – The RIVER SHANNON </span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">WHITE CULTURE – IRELAND</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The Lone Ranger and Tonto walk into a crowded bar on the reserve. “Looks like we're surrounded, Tonto,” the Lone Ranger says to his loyal sidekick. “What do you think we should do?” And Tonto answers: “What do you mean 'we,' Kemo Sabe?“</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">So the class had challenged me about White culture and I had to come up with a better answer. I had to learn. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> You know that expression? When the student is ready, the teacher appears. It was almost like that. As a student of cultures, I was ready to learn, and the opportunity to do so appeared. Or perhaps it was just Fate, finding another <span style="color: black;">way </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">to tap me on my shoulder, to get me up and moving,</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> to</span> teach me a lesson. Through contacts living and working on the reserve, I had the opportunity to fly to Ireland for the Christmas holiday. It is a long story, and the details of how I got there are less important than the details of what I learned there. Forget the heightened security, the hand frisks and pat downs, the long slow line-ups transferring from Air Canada to </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Aer Lingus</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, the snowstorm which closed Heathrow on the return trip. Sleeping with ten thousand other stranded travellers on the airport's marble floor. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Flying into Dun Laoghaire, to Dublin Airport. Dun is a fort (as in Lon DUN), Laoghaire sounds like "leery." DUB means black in Gaelic. LIN is a waterfall, or a pool into which water falls. The drive out, to Clara, County Offaly, through towns with names like songs or poems. Mul LIN gar. Tul la more. Lough something. Lough everywhere. Lough sounds like “loch” and means "lake," I am told. It does NOT rhyme with "slough," it does NOT sound like "Loo." That means something else. Although moving to the reserve, the smell of woodsmoke, had evoked comfortable memories of my own childhood, arriving in Ireland felt literally as if I had returned. Many people there, out of habit, greet strangers with “Welcome home!” Although I had never before been off the North American continent, I definitely experienced </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>deja vu </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">in Ireland. And everywhere I went it seemed that people told me “St. Bridget slept here!” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “WHO?” I kept asking. “WHO?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Bridget had been my childhood nickname, a corruption of our family name, but I had never before met a woman named Bridget. I had heard of Bridget Bardot, who was famous, but I had never heard of the celebrated St. Bridget, one of the three patron saints of Ireland, along with Patrick and Columba.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The children were learning Gaelic at school; giant posters, next to the ones reading </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Guinness in Good For You!</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> proclaimed </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>OUR Language: It's part of who we are!</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The elders spoke with a musical lilt, and sang at the drop of a hat. Indeed, I had been warned to have a tune ready, as visitors are expected to “give us your song” almost as the price of admission to the pub. People cooked on an “aga” fueled by peat which had been dug with square shovels from the bog and delivered to the back door in sacks. It had its own smoke smell, not unlike but not the same as woodsmoke. It was Christmas so we ate Brussels sprouts, broccoli (which I actually saw growing in a garden, the first time ever), cabbage, potatoes with butter and parsley, bangers and mash, rashers of bacon, ham, colcannon, bubble and squeak. We peeled shrimp, and I got so hooked on Bailey's Irish Cream that upon my return to Winnipeg I pestered the Manitoba Liquor Control Commission to import it. Finally, after repeated requests, they informed me that they would be getting it in as soon as the manufacturers had devised a way to stabilize the cream for export. Yes! St. Bridget would have been proud of me, she of the magic cauldron, of the community pasture and the milk cows, of the church at Kildare, the Church of the Oak, or, more specifically, the Oak Door. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> So I was fascinated by the outward and visible signs of culture in Ireland, but I also learned how woefully inadequate was my knowledge of Irish history. How my quest in the pastures and watchtowers was for stereotypes, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Darby O'Gill and the Little People</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, played by that handsome Scots devil, Sean Connery. How blind I was to the invisible strengths, the underlying values and beliefs of a proud Celtic people. Celtic was the word. Wherever I went I was snapping photos of Celtic crosses. I know there are a lot of Celtic crosses in Canada, but I hadn't been aware of them at the time. It is a regular cross with a circle centred where the horizontal and vertical axises intersect. Some say it is a Christian <span style="color: black;">cross </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">representing</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> the Tree of Life, enlightened by the pagan Sun. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The Celts I learned were one of the ancient peoples of Europe who had come from the east and had lived in Portugal, Spain, and France, and on all of the “British” islands, including Ireland, which was no longer a “British” island. Driven back they were, history tells us, by marauding Angles, Saxon, Jutes, Vikings, to the western regions—Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, and northern Scotland. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> This is where I began to recognize the inadequacy of “my accursed human education,” including years studying history at university. I did not realize the differences between the peoples united as “British.” I did not know that a Scot was neither an Englishman nor an Irishman, and that to refer to Ireland as “British” was a great error, more than fifty years out of date even then, and an insult to boot, although even the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>National Geographic</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> magazine made that mistake in that decade, the 1970s. The Celts had been in Ireland for a millennia when the Vikings began to intrude. The Vikings are the reasons some Irish have red hair, and the reason why the tinker children I saw begging outside the mall were blond and red-headed. The Viking invaders were followed by the Normans, and the English dominance was consolidated under the Tudors, the Henrys VII and VIII, and Elizabeth I. Resistance never ceased and was always strongest when England was engaged elsewhere, during the English Civil War and the French Revolution and World War I. Cromwell's repression of Catholic Ireland in the 1600s was especially brutal. English courtiers had been rewarded with title to Irish lands. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> That's why the landowners, the English, were blamed for the Irish potato famine in the 1800s, for they had money and food and refused to share with the suffering peasants who were given the choice to die or emigrate. The Irish and their Catholic faith were <span style="color: black;">considered inferior, </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">as Dr. Swift had made so obvious in his satirical "Modest Proposal" as early as 1729.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> The fate</span> of the Irish did not matter to their “superiors”; there was no sense of a shared humanity. Well, some of this I picked up later from reading Nuala O'Faolain, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>My Dream of You</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, so there may be a bit of bias here. But that sense of being victims, victimized by the beliefs and actions of others, and the anger that engenders, was evident. They had been invaded and conquered and colonized by people who considered themselves to be superior. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> We listened to a traditional Irish band called the Wolfe Tones, named for a rebel hero from centuries before. And when a car backfired on a side street in Dublin, I watched the shopkeeper cringe and duck. She apologized; “It's the Troubles,” she said. There was trouble in England related to the on-going Troubles in the North, citizens split between those wanting independence and those who wanted to remain a part of the United Kingdom. In the North, they say, there are two religions. Anti-Catholic and Anti-Protestant. Postcards arrived in Winnipeg from “bomby” Belfast. So the cringing woman in the shop felt she had to explain. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “People don't know the difference,” she complained. “Dublin has nothing to do with the Troubles in the North, but when people don't know the difference, who knows what they may do? We fear retaliation.” And although it was true that Eire had nothing to do with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, it was also true that in Ireland, the Garda, heavily armed police carrying automatic rifles and machine guns, driving around in armoured police vehicles, were everywhere, not just at the airport. And a rash of robberies in the banks in small towns in the South were rumoured to be organized by supporters sending money to those fighting in the North. Rebel politics is “just a place for criminals to congregate,” the men in the pub suggested, the way we explain “gangs” in Canada. But that could have been just their party line, not wanting to scare the tourists. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> You know that old movie </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Ryan's Daughter</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> starring Robert Mitchum and Sarah Miles and John Mills? Beautiful. Beautiful country. Even at Christmas, everything was green. Grass. Ivy. Furze. Gardens. But </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Ryan's Daughter</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> is about a British soldier suffering from “shellshock” posted to Ireland during World War I, to give him a bit of peace and time to recover from the horrors of the trenches. One of the subplots concerns gun-running, the Irish in America supporting the Irish in Ireland supporting the Germans in Germany, on the theory that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” I missed the nuances of power and politics at first. I didn't realize that the reason America took so long to enter World War I was because it couldn't make up its mind, it could have gone either way, siding with the Germans or with the British. Siding with the British would mean the loss of many Irish-American votes. But I was oblivious, being more interested then in other themes, the personal rather than the political, the weight of tradition and the social pressures of community on the daughter, the younger generation. The love story. The wounded hero. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> There are things you miss, especially the first time. My first trip to Ireland, I never once thought about Sean O'Casey or William Butler Yeats, both writers I had studied, or even George Bernard Shaw. I must have walked along the River Liffey in Dublin on my way to the Guinness factory, but I never even thought about James Joyce or Leopold Bloom or Bloomsday. When I bought stamps or exchanged money at the main post office, I never thought about the strikers who had occupied the building during the battle for Home Rule. Probably not until I read Roddy Doyle's </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>A Star Called Henry.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Nor was I even aware that my own grandmother's grandfather was posted in Dublin at the time of his death in the 1880s, although he died aboard his ship somewhere in the West Indies. So many connections; so many missed opportunities. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> For these are all parts of White culture. Ancestors. Ancestral homelands. Ancestral employment and residences. Values and rivalries and motivations. Literature and stories in film, and writers. History and politics. Faith and religion. Legend and mythology. Customs and rituals. Laws, by-laws, and police. Role models. Outward and visible signs. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Every night at six o'clock, the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Angelus</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> came on the television, and everyone was supposed to stop and pray. I missed Christmas Eve's Midnight Mass in the big church at the centre of the town because, with seating being limited and baby-sitters unavailable and me not being a true believer, I was nominated to stay at the house with the sleeping children. There was no Boxing Day. December 26 was called St. Stephen's Day. Mummers dressed in Halloween-like costumes and masks came to the door. I think they were given money. A light was always left on near the front door at night, “to aid lost souls trying to find their way home.” Ruined buildings were left in a tumble of fallen rock and rubble. If you used old stones in a new building, a special ceremony was required, speaking to the spirits of the ruins, asking them to stay, or inviting them to the new location. A Black Day was not a day when the shops are closed but rather a day when the pubs do not open. Twice a year, I believe, on Christmas Day and Good Friday. Perhaps it was just that our host was such a silver-tongued storyteller, had literally kissed the Blarney Stone, that I missed the twinkle in his eye as he answered all my questions. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> We attended a medieval banquet in a stone castle, stabbing our capons with daggers, eating syllabub milk pudding with carved wooden spoons. Evidently forks are post-medieval. We visited Clonmacnoise Monastery on the River Shannon, where it is possible, fifteen hundred years ago, St. Bridget propositioned St. Patrick, on that long-ago first Leap Year proposal. He of course declined, being more interested in snakes himself. St. Patrick's legend is more familiar on this side of the Atlantic, but every kitchen in Ireland sports a St. Bridget's Cross, woven by her nuns from reeds from the river, and sold as a way to support the nunnery. Mine still hangs above the buffet, although I think tradition says it should be tacked to the ceiling, above you as you work at the kitchen sink, like a star. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">So what does a trip to Ireland have to do with solidarity with First Nations people? Well, a trip to Ireland, a voyage into another culture, helped me see things I hadn't noticed or been aware of in Canada. In Ireland I saw and felt the connection between colonialism and racism. Ireland through history had been colonized, yet it still existed, proud, a role model of cultural survival. Irish history suggests that when pain goes unacknowledged and abuses and grievances go unaddressed, violence may be the only voice to which the colonial oppressor listens. Violence directed at the self or violence towards others. The Irish attempted to address their oppression through political channels and through literature, but in the end only armed insurrection succeeded, challenging the external authority of a conquering nation, fighting for the return of independence and self-determination. The Irish proclaimed that things which had been done in the past were wrong, and that those actions, those wrongs, were wrong because they were based on racist assumptions which denied the humanity and the dignity of the colonized people. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> As Oprah always used to say, When we know better, we can do better.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> So Ireland was a turning point in my cross-cultural education. In Ireland, Irish rebels and rebel songs proclaimed that racism is wrong, and that it is right, even expected, to fight against colonialism, to stand in solidarity against oppression, and with other oppressed peoples desiring respect for their rights as equal human beings.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">WHITE CULTURE</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Like a medium in which things grow in a laboratory, culture is the way we live and grow together. Of course, there is no “White Culture” because there are many White cultures. It's just that, in former British colonies, a lot of the customs and rituals of the dominant English have been established as the cultural norm. Or old French culture in Quebec, from before the French Revolution, when most of the Quebecois families emigrated to New France. It was true even in my own family. I really was not aware of my own personal and ancestral culture. Although both my grandmothers were English, born in England, I did not realize that my Bridgeman ancestors came from Cornwall, a Celtic region of Britain, where the last native-speaker of the Cornish language died in the 1790s. I did not realize that the way my father served pancakes, under a mountain of whipped cream, sprinkled with brown sugar or fruit, is called “Cornish pancakes” in Britain. I didn't even know I had Celtic blood, before I flew into Ireland, before I walked in the footsteps, slept in the places where Bridget slept. Our Celtic heritage had been whitewashed, overpainted, obliterated beneath the “English” mean.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> So, instead of White Culture, let's just call it culture. What constitutes culture? What are its categories, the things all cultures have? Because certainly by now we've all slept in so many different beds that there is no one “</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>pure laine</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">” culture left, unadulterated, original. If such a thing ever did exist. The details, the emanations, for individuals and for groups, will differ, but underlying structures will be the same or similar. Start from the individual and work outward, rather than from outside, looking in. We are all the same but different. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> We each enter this world as an individual infant, surrounded by birth rituals, a parent, parents, or family, with child-rearing practices, traditional ways of educating and acculturating the children, using some variation of observation, instruction, immersion, story, legend, and mythology. Children pick up attitudes, ethical tenets, philosophy, perhaps religion, spiritual practice, along with superstitions. Routine, ritual, ceremony make the child feel accepted and help develop the skills to anticipate and manage his or her needs. Every group has a type of shelter, clothing, and food preferences—getting, preparing, serving—related to the environment in which it lives. We learn a language and other methods of communication, ways to work, tools to work with, ways to socialize through play and games, ways to organize group interactions, initiation rites, courtship, marriage, and death rituals. And an attitude towards what happens afterward, physically and spiritually. What else is there? Is it not true that every culture, every people on Earth have these? We grow up immersed in the details of our family culture. We may or may not be aware that the family cultures of other people may or may not differ from our own. When we see alternate ways of doing things, when different bathing rituals are pointed out to us, we may choose to adapt or to adopt or to ignore. When we are aware of differences, we will be less likely to assume that any one way is superior. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Is it safe to assume that each individual and each culture feels, thinks, believes that he/she/it has a right to refuse, a right not to be forced to accept the culture of another group? And what is the connection between culture and place, now that we know groups of humans have roamed, moved, migrated over the continents for as long as people have been on Earth? They say that even the Celts may have started out somewhere near India. At least, some of the clues in the ancient languages suggest this. Perhaps computers reading genes will add to our understanding of the facts of the human story. However, the important truths lie elsewhere. In the crimes of racism and colonization, in the resistance of colonized nations, and in the assertion of their rights to determine their own future.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> There are ways that we are all the same, and ways that we differ. And differing is all right. Sometimes, it seems, it's only the differences which set us apart, give us our identity. “Did you bring this snow with you?” they asked this Canadian in Ireland.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">WHOSE RIGHTS?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Ireland at Midwinter was green and open, what the Celts call a “thin place” where the separation between this world and other worlds is a thin veil. I felt this especially at the old monastery, Clonmacnoise on the River Shannon, where some of the buildings, the stones that construct them, were stacked in the fifth century CE and where the high Celtic cross, which dates from the eighth century, is decorated with cartwheels identical to those in our barnyard at home. I had dreams after I visited the monastery. An earthquake. The world falling apart. Three white-robed priests standing along the long axis of a crooked Celtic cross. Pilgrims on our knees approaching them. When I get there, a hand waving over my head, fingers raised, an arm directing me to one side: “You're saved,” a voice says, “because your eyes are the colour of the Birr marble.” It was, or might as well have been, all Gaelic to me, but I asked our host. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Birr marble? Why, yes. 'Tis a stone mined near the town of Birr, just down the road from Clonmacnoise. The Birr marble is green, with flecks of rust and red.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Okay. I'll go a bit lighter on the Guinness. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> But sometimes, there is one memory which makes me shiver. At the airport. Being patted down, my carry-on and purse being hand-frisked. The security guard noticing my month's supply of birth control. She looks up, looks me in the eyes, and says: ”Have a good time in Ireland.” I did not know then that birth control was illegal in Ireland, that it was against the law to have it, and to bring it in. What if she had told me that? What if she had confiscated my supply? What could I have done? How would my life have changed? Was I exempt, as a non-citizen? Or would I have been a victim of that old democratic system, where the larger number, the louder voices, outvoted me, imposed upon me their opinions, and forced me to exist according to their laws? Considered me inferior and without rights? Without the ability or the right to determine my own fate?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Now some of you may be thinking, Was she married? Because some of you, dear readers, may believe, consciously or subconsciously, that a woman has to be married to have sex. And/or to access birth control, which used to be the law in Canada. And that society has to approve, to permit it, before a woman surrenders her virginity. And even, that society has a right to approve whether, when, and with whom a woman has sex. And that the simple answer to carrying protection is that if you abstain, you do not need birth control. Right. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> One of my friends on the reserve wore a t-shirt emblazoned with “I am a virgin.* ” And when you followed the asterisk, the star, down to the frayed hemline, the footnote said “This is a very old t-shirt.” I liked her attitude. And the way she used humour to poke fun at insulting gossip, at how some people seem to feel that they have a right to intrude into private decisions and individual beliefs, and to pass judgement upon them. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> If the security guard at the London check-in counter for </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Aer Lingus</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> had confiscated my birth control, had informed me of the law and applied it to me personally, I would have been angry. I would have lost my respect for the authority of the lawmakers. I would have rejected the imposition of their law upon me. I would have turned to the underground, to a Black Market. I would for sure have counselled my daughters not to be duped, to stand up for themselves. F the church. F parliament. F men in general. But always use protection. Make every child a wanted child. Make every woman a human being with rights.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> But that's my culture. Personal. Let me not assume that what I believe should be forced on others. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Let me not, sweet St. Bridget, let </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">me never use th</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">e word </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>should.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">MY LAST CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">We finally got home to Winnipeg and to the North, after the blizzard in Europe, the accusations of taxi drivers and other stranded travellers: “Did you bring this snow with you from Canada?” I hand wrote an account of my holiday for my English classes. I was consciously attempting to make that connection between personal experience, communication, handwriting, and writing. And possibly, of travel as adventure. And, although it took more processing time, of travel as another way to learn to see and know yourself. Because travel helps us notice differences, ways we and our lives compare and contrast with the lives of others elsewhere. With different cultures, even amongst and between people of the same “colour” or “race.” For what I was still seeking was some way to respond to that first student's first challenge, “You White people don't got no culture.” </span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> What I was seeking was some sort of answer to the question: In what ways are these students in high school on the reserve any different from my previous students in other high schools elsewhere? Is the student's Cree culture already the same as mine, my whitewashed Celtic culture? Are there really no cultural differences? I was curious to know what Cree culture was, but I understood that it was not my role to say. It would be up to Matt, to identify what made him “Cree and proud.” My role would be only to help him develop the skills to communicate as much or as little as he chose with whomever he chose to share. It would be my job to document my culture, my growth, the way cross-cultural challenges helped me become more aware of my culture. How I got beyond being neither British nor American and emerged a proud citizen of a supposedly kinder gentler but colder country. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>UP RIVER</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The Gunisao is a river, a tributary of the Nelson, one of those rushing northern rivers, cascading ever down over worn tiers of bedrock, tracing the line of least resistance, onward, into the arms of the Bay and beyond, to the Arctic or Atlantic oceans. The Gunisao's cold waters never rest, tumbling white and frothy over and around granite outcrops, undertowing deep blue beneath a placid veneer, or lying flat and steaming in the eerie calm of dawn. The records of its ever-changing water levels are inscribed in indelible lines like petrographs on the shore.</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> In the North, the landscape, rivers like the Gunisao, are teachers. As it has been for millennia, rivers get you where you want to go. The Gunisao can get you away from headlights and traffic lights, from streetlights, airport beacons, the flashers on ambulances, school buses, police cars. The Gunisao takes you inland, far from civilization. InLand, into the Bush. For some people, the bush is where they make their living, trapping, or where they go to hunt for food. For others, the bush is where you go to get away, to camp. Not right into the bush, obviously, where you can see nothing but trees, and can find no direction indicators other than the sun and stars. You camp on the edge of the bush, between the known and the unknown, between the river and the trees. And the river takes you there.</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Fishermen set their long nets where the Gunisao joins the Nelson. They never venture upriver to fish, nor to camp. The Gunisao only lets you go so far in a large motor boat. Those who are serious about camping, about getting out into the bush, travel in a canoe. Because a canoe, even the modern Grumman we were in, seamless aluminum, almost impervious to the ruinous caress of floating logs or submerged boulders, rides over top of many unseen dangers. Or a canoe can be led, like a dog on a leash, by laden paddlers walking it through white water. Or, in the worst cases, a canoe can be carried, its yoke resting on the shoulders of one man or two. Canoes this river allows through, one way or the other.</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> The last time I went camping, up the Gunisao, the Grumman had a small outboard motor on the stern. A canoe with a motor doesn't go much faster than good paddlers can paddle, but it makes the trip, although somewhat noisier, a little less exhausting. The motor takes you a little farther perhaps, than you would go on manpower alone. Of course, canoeists always carry paddles as well, for back-up, or for poling or steering, or sneaking quietly up on wild creatures drinking or fishing down at the shore. </i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> But the river still tells you to stop before dark, to choose a good campsite, with flat open space to pitch the tent, and soft sand or boughs for the sleeping bags. Because you need light in order to gather deadfall for firewood, to cook and eat and wash dishes, and to stash the cache away from the tent and out of bearclaw reach. And then, in this land of almost-midnight sun, you wait for night to fall, sitting calmly, breathing in the river, the spruce, the quiet. A sacred silence. Watching the world transform, or swapping raucous stories to scare away the unseen twitching ears, curious eyes peering out. Instead of whistling, you start to sing. “I'm Hen-ery the eighth I am.” Or “Frere a Jacque a. Frere a Jacque a.” Or:</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Land of the silver birch</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Home of the beaver</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Where still the mighty moose </i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Wanders at will.</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Blue lake and rocky shore. </i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> I will return once more. </i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Drum ditty drum drum </i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Drum ditty drum drum</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Drum ditty drum drum</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Drum . . . . </i></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em> <span style="font-size: small;">Darkness wraps you and your campsite in the comforting circle of the fire's light. Sparks, smoke, coil ever upward, above the leaning trees, gyring home to the stars.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></em></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em><span style="font-size: small;"> The last time I went up the Gunisao, in the Grumman with the little outboard motor, the propeller smashed on a hidden rock and snapped a shear pin. I had never heard of a shear pin. "They should make those things stronger," I declared indignantly, grudgingly reaching for my paddle and beginning the easier pull, with the current, towards the confluence, and town. We were past the worst white water, and the rapids too were behind us. So the river chose to teach a gentle lesson. </span></em></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em><span style="font-size: small;"> I learned later that a shear pin is made to break, so that no serious damage is done to the motor, and that experienced canoeists carry extra. Plural. And know how to fix them.</span></em></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%;">
<em><span style="font-family: Arial;"> <span style="font-size: small;">So it was an easy examination, set by this northern river. Always travel, never leave home, without paddles and an extra pin. And a companion who knows what to do with it. And a schedule that can accommodate the unexpected. And a mind open to suggestion, ears attuned to listen, eyes eager to see into the darkness. And a belief that darkness is good. And a desire to go there, to get back to it, again and again.</span></span></em></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i> Day is done. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i> Gone the sun. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i> From the lake. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i> From the hills. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i> From the sky.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i> All is well. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i> Safely rest. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i> God is nigh.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">BABY SHOWER</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The year after the blond guy from the kitchen sink party took over my job, I spent a lot of time at home, trying to fit into a domestic stereotype. (Yes, the blond guy from the kitchen sink had a job, but he wanted mine, and he got it.) Yes, we are too defined by our work, our identity is too entwined with what we do and what we can do. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> That year I made my first attempt ever to bake bread. Without actual bread tins, I improvised, using a set of small glass casserole dishes. I bundled up one of the loaves and walked across the frozen Nelson to a neighbour lady's house with my proud creation. I saw my hostess smile as I handed her the mini-loaf gift, but I didn't realize it was because of its size, smaller than a cinnamon bun. It was perfect, I thought, a perfect shape, this offering. It made a hollow sound when you knocked on it. She was kind enough to save her laughter until after I left. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> As we were having tea, she told me a story about her Women's Auxiliary group at the church. Every meeting ends with tea and entertainment, she explained, and sometimes the entertainment involves opening a giant box of mystery goods collected from the affluent city homes of believers in the South and packaged up as “mission boxes” to be shipped to northern churches. The box sits there like a giant Christmas present and business is rushed through to get to “the offering.” This time, she reported, when they opened the box, it was full of women's shoes. A whole giant box of women's shoes. They started digging in and discovered that the shoes were all for the right foot. The right foot only. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Can you imagine,” she said, laughing still, “what they must think of us? To send us something like that?”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> At home in my domesticity, what I did do was crochet. I had found a simple pattern that I liked, and that winter I crocheted, with woven inserts and knotted fringe, six afghans. Two full sized, one for my soon to be ex-husband. One for my newly re-married brother. And four baby blankets—for my other brother's firstborn, my best friend's firstborn, my academic advisor's second, and the firstborn of a colleague and her partner who worked in the school. This latter blanket I wrapped and took as a gift to a baby shower on the reserve.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Before I lived there, I never thought about whether baby showers happened on reserves. Certainly they were a regular part of our culture in southern and rural Manitoba, almost always held after the birth of the baby to avoid bad luck and to assist with colour choices. And most lavish for firstborns because everyone understood that clothing and bedding once outgrown would be shared with neighbours and siblings. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> So this shower ritual was relatively familiar, although the mother was from Winnipeg and her partner was from town, from the reserve. We sat in a circle around the living room. Someone sat on either side of the mother who had the baby with her. The youngest person present was awarded the honour of fetching the gifts, one at a time, from the table by the door. One assistant folded the wrapping paper and collected the ribbons; the second assistant wrote down the names of the givers and the nature of the gifts, for the thank-you list. Then each unwrapped present was passed around the circle for “oooh's and aaah's.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Two things that happened before the tea surprised me that evening. The first was that after the final gift was unwrapped and passed around, the mother stood up and introduced the baby to the circle. She kissed his or her forehead (I cannot remember which this was) then passed the bundle to her right and he/she went from one to the next guest, around the circle, with each woman kissing him/her on the forehead with a smile or a gesture of words which implied “Welcome to this world!” The baby was the final gift.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The second thing which surprised me was that when the assistant had unwrapped my baby afghan, a winter white background with a plaid pattern of non-pastel non-stereotypical chocolate and tangerine stripes, with white, brown, and orange tassels, she shook the blanket out, folded it diagonally, flipped it over her shoulders like a shawl, and began to stepdance, a standing-in-place jig, with fringed edge swinging. </span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Now I had seen an Indian dance. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">PARTY GAME</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Before I left, I attended one final party on the reserve. Everyone was sitting around, eating, drinking, talking, when the host came in with a b</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ag of tricks and said “Let's play a game!” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Sure. Why not? What have you got in mind? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> He held up a brown paper lunch bag which appeared to have been blown into, like a balloon, making it puff out. “Grip this here, and don't let any air escape,” he directed. Then, “The goal is to see who can come up with the best insult,” he explained. “Pretend that this bag of wind represents your worst enemy, the person you feel the most negative about in your whole life. Has everyone got a picture of that person in your mind's eye? Yes? Okay, go ahead. Pass it around. Give it your best shot. The winner will be chosen by a round of applause at the end of the circle.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> So, gamely, we played along. It wasn't hard for me to pick a face to abuse, a fellow staff member I really felt bullied me and others. I called up my best insults and epithets. Go for it. Go all out. When everyone had<span style="color: black;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">taken his or her</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> turn, the roomful of vented emotions seeming lighter already,</span> laughter everywhere, one winner was picked, based upon his descriptive expletive-deleteds and colourful threats. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Okay, you win,” the host said. Then, “Here. Here is your enemy. Open the bag very carefully, and take a peek.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The host handed the winner the brown paper bag we had all verbally abused and we watched him open it. He peered in. He jumped back. He shook his head. He swore. He laughed. Then he re-inflated the bag, sealed it with shaking fingers, and passed it to the person beside him to have his own glimpse. By the time that the last person had sneaked his or her own peek, we all knew. The paper bag contained a shard of mirror; our worst enemies were ourselves. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> For every finger you point outwards, three point back at you.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">We don't always realize how much our perceived enemies, the staff bully, the “other” who is not me, may be projections of the things we do not admit or things we do not like about ourselves. Mirrors, possibly distorted, but mirrors nevertheless. In the same way, we don't always realize how much our own backgrounds, which affect our expectations and personal choices for ourselves, also affect our expectations and the alternatives we see as available to others, our students, our families, our fellow citizens. I had escaped rural poverty (although we were never poor) through university; I believed my students, who certainly had the ability if they wanted to direct it that way, should also have the opportunity to choose that route. Hadn't the authorities been telling First Nations since Big Bear's time that “Education is the new buffalo”? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Where higher education was concerned, students on the reserve faced extra challenges. Most of their parents had attended White-run schools, some of them residential schools, against their own and their parents wishes. At least, the parents would have preferred that the government-sponsored education agreed to in the treaties could have been provided without removing the children from their families and communities. Parents who had been to residential schools were seldom really enthusiastic about promoting higher education if it would require the children to leave home. Those from the community who had left to attend university or post-secondary training usually did not return. They too disappeared, absorbed into the mainstream of employment and urban living. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Education then could be seen as continuing to drive a wedge between parents and children, or at the very least, as causing conflict, especially between a parent with Grade Four and a student in Grade Twelve. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “You think you're smarter than us?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “You think you're better than us?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “You want to be White?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Messages were received, whether they had been verbalized or not. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Although schools on reserves were assisted by parent committees, the curriculum was the provincial curriculum, designed elsewhere, to meet the needs of institutions of higher education and of employers, both located elsewhere, far away. Although we tried our best to adapt it to meet the individual needs of individual students in each classroom, what really were those needs? And how would we know? What will the future be like? How does anyone prepare for the unknown? And what would a Cree curriculum have looked like anyway? Besides language education? Outdoor education? Trapping? Nobody wanted to talk about the old days, the old ways. Everyone was ostensibly Christian, and had been for over one hundred years. What was there of Cree culture to insert, to augment the standard curriculum, to help Cree students retain a pride in their identity, aware of ways that they were the same but different, equally human with a unique cultural heritage?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Cultural differences surfaced obliquely. Anxieties were revealed in questions like “How can anyone want to live alone?” They were thinking of dorm rooms and apartments, when they had only experienced full multi-generational houses. They were imagining leaving, one or two per year, alone, to go into unfamiliar cities. Didn't even the names of services available elsewhere, Indian and Metis Friendship Centres, imply lives of loneliness and isolation, frantically seeking others like themselves, alone without their families? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> What in their Cree culture would help them venture out? I remember asking a parent once, when I had overheard stories of the Cree trickster, “Who is this character Waysackayjack? Would you want your children to be like him, to behave as he does?” I remember how that parent laughed, as if there were some sort of secret I didn't get. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Of course they would want their children to be like Waysackayjack, the parent tried to explain. He has all sorts of adventures, he gets attracted to things, he misinterprets what he sees, he rushes in without thinking, he sometimes tries to take advantage of others, but it always works out in the end. He makes a fool of himself and, by doing so, he gets people to laugh at him, and thus at themselves. When he's around, you know that nothing is going to be taken too seriously. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Shape-shifting as a coping mechanism, a survival skill. I didn't understand. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I remember a different parent flashing me a snapshot. I took it, twisted it around, not sure which way was up. Water. A rock wall. Red ochre like paint on the wall. A scene of creatures in a canoe. It was the closest I ever came to the local petrographs which reportedly mark one of the “thin” places, a portal, through which human beings can access the other world, the world of the Maymaykwaysa, the Little People who live in the rocks. There were myths and legends and sacred places that the people still knew about and shared with pride, but these cultural artifacts never made it into the <span style="color: black;">curriculum. </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Like the powwow dances, they aroused ambiguous feelings about a superstitious past best left behind, relics to be relegated to a bygone era. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The many children who did love to draw inked and pencilled sketches of the life they saw around them. Dancers. The rock group Kiss. Fish. Pineao (Spruce Grouse). Boats. Hockey games. Snowmobiles. Snowmobiles, one boy assured me, were anticipated for generations, he said, before the first Ski-doo actually arrived in the North. Predicted? Yes, the Elders knew. Someone had a vision, years and years ago, about a running chair. Riding on a running chair. So when the machines finally arrived, it was like the Elders said: What took you so long? So he drew running chairs, and shared the legend. But he was the exception. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Waysackayjack didn't come to school, although I believe he is still hiding out on the reserves. In that way too, reserves are preserves of remnants of culture more easily lost or hidden in the towns and cities, unbeknownst to the larger culture except for anthropologists, ethnologists, and students of literature. The parents of high school students weren't thinking of Waysackayjack when they encouraged students to “Stay in school. Get a good education. Go to university. Become a teacher, a doctor, a policeman, a pilot.” When these things were said, they were said with a heavy heart which knew the implications, “and leave us.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Just remember to come home and visit.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I didn't envy the students the tension, the palpable tension between individual and community needs, the ties which bind. Relocating the schools to the reserve community just meant that the students could attend school while living at home. But those schools were still agents of assimilation. And if the students or their parents wanted them to integrate, to be able to manage to succeed within “mainstream” capitalist Canadian society while retaining their Cree identity, they would still have to leave home to do that. To leave home for training or for employment, the dilemma faced by all rural students. Even the ones who chose to go on knew that leaving would be like jumping out of an airplane, from relative security into the great dangerous unknown. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Would they or would they not know what to do with the cord? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">CHURCH POINT</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">We are sitting outside at a picnic table. It is my final month in the North. The grass and the trees are a summery green. A half-ton pickup truck is parked nearby, with its tailgate down. But this is no tailgate party. Other people come and sit at the picnic table too. People from the reserve townsite. A man who works at the school, and his kids. The church is full. There is no room to sit inside. We are here but not here.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> We are sitting on the exact spot where the first missionary built the first church. Hence the name, Church Point. This may even be the original church, or its next generation. Simple straightforward frame architecture, four walls, one door, a steeple, a bell. In the 1840s, it was a Methodist Church. Today it is a United Church. This is, after all, Canada. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> James Evans, first missionary to the Cree, loved this point. A peninsula of mainland jutting into the water overlooking the spot where Little Playgreen Lake disappears into the Nelson River. When he was here, this place was abuzz. A church. A house. A school. A workshop. For he was a preacher who had the mind of an inventor. He hammered down the tin tea boxes from the Bay and soldered them together to form the first tin canoe. An old Indigenous design, translated into a new material. A technological shape-shifting. It saved him no end of down time making repairs to birchbark on his summer travels, upriver, inland, as far north and west as Fort Chip, thousands of miles of spreading the Word. He was gone for months on end, but when he returned, the people would stand on this point and point, the way the Cree do, with their chins, at the sparkling point of light, at sunbeams dancing on water. From the sun bouncing back off his tin canoe, signalling his approach, they gave the missionary the nickname which translates from the Cree as “He Who Brings the Light.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I love that story. The literalness. The irony. Of a time when Evans' life was good. And the story about the fur press. A fur press is a large machine built of wood. At first glance it can give you the impression of a giant corkscrew, or perhaps of the superstructure of a wishing well—two uprights around a turned twisted centre, with a handle at the side. But instead of a bucket on a rope, the handle turns a large carved wooden screw which raises and lowers a flat board. Piles of stretched tanned animal pelts are placed under the weighted board, the handle is turned, the screw presses down, flattening the piled fur, reducing the space required to store the cargo below deck, reducing the cost of shipping the traded fur back to London, where they would be transformed into fashionable top hats. James Evans looked at the fur press at the Fort and a lightbulb went off in his inventor's brain. (Of course, at that time, it would have been a candlewick flame, beginning to flicker.) Instead of a tool of the fur trade, instead of a fairy-tale wishing well, Evans saw another kind of press. He wangled an old machine, perhaps from the disapproving Factor, perhaps from the skilled-carver hands of one of his workers, and transformed it into a printing press. He carved wooden moulds of each of the syllabic forms needed to capture the Cree sounds. He melted down lead shot, poured it into the moulds, to form movable type. Pee Pay Po Paw. He set the type and printed the hymns in Cree on pages of birchbark. He bound them and placed them in the church for the congregation, after teaching them to read and write their own language. When they still referred to him with pride as “the man who taught the birchbark to speak.“ </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Evans loved it here on this point, in this community. But that's the rub. Love. And it's different meanings. The impossibility of translation. The dangers of mis-communication. Of getting lost. Of offering too much. Of misconstrued nuances. Please Explain, came the message from the Methodist Conference, and he had to go. All the way back to England, where he died before he could return. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Evidence suggests a conspiracy. That those men at the Fort, and their superiors in London headquarters, objected so strongly to the changes Evans brought that they had to collude in some way to get rid of him. Of his questioning of the authority of the Company monopoly, proudly HBC (Here Before Christ). Of his school, which kept the men and their families in town. Of his church, which instigated the Lord's Day protests, paddlers and York boat oarsmen refusing to work on Sundays. Trappers newly literate and numerate double-checking their accounts. In every way a man can think of, Evans and his ideas were bad for business. In the power struggle, the culture clash, between the capitalists who had been there since 1670 and the late-coming Christian missionary, the Hudson's Bay Company men had won.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Mr. and Mrs. Evans went south with the brigades, to Fort Garry, Fort William, Montreal, and boarded a ship to London. It is said that his eloquence convinced the church hierarchy and the large congregations who came to hear his tales of adventure, of his good intentions, of his successes, teaching and saving of souls. But he died before he could come back, in his forty-sixth year. Rumour has it that some of his ashes have been returned. That they're buried in that little rock cairn over there. With the metal plaque, with writing in English and Cree. Some ashes. Not his body. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The body inside that church today, the body the pick-up truck is waiting to transport to the new graveyard, is that of a boy, a young man. And his is one of four funerals this year. Teenage boys. All in high school. Dead by hanging, self-inflicted gunshot wound, a drunken fall from a half-built bridge, a suspicious unexplained drowning. Why? Alcohol? Drugs? Three of them from “broken homes,” boys without male mentors. Fostered, locally, but with siblings and relatives nearby. Trying to understand, to deduct some logic, is crazy-making. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Don't think. Don't feel. Don't cry.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The grief just presses down.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">GRIEF</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">That was a long time ago. The past, as “they” say, is another country, and besides, they're all still dead. And I would stop remembering, their faces, their names--Alex, Kenny, Fred, Jeff--if I believed that that was the end of it. If someone could tell me, honestly, that kids are not still dying.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The line from the funeral in Linden MacIntyre's </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Bishop's Man</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> brings it all back. “I'm told he wrote 'There is no future.' Think of that. . . . Think of where we have arrived as a society when those who shape the circumstances of our lives and our communities can leave our young, the very embodiment of our collective fate, in such a state. There is </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>no</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> future?” [p.193] </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> When I first went to the reserve, had been there barely weeks, six young people drowned in one car which rolled into a water-filled ditch. And that Christmas, the fathers of two students died in a house fire, one trying to rescue the other. The hospital doled out pills to the grieving--sleeping pills, tranquilizers, anti-depressants--and kids started selling them at school. “What colour?” you could hear them whisper, negotiating a buy. “What colour?”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> And on Parents' Day, when the mother of one girl explained to me, through her translator, how happy they were to have a school, a high school, in their town, because when their kids had to attend high school outside, in a larger mainly White community, she said, “When they have to leave to go to school, they die.” I thought she meant spiritually, or symbolically. “Our children are lost to us again.” But she also meant literally. As her eldest daughter had been murdered about five years before. Gang raped by four White guys, stabbed multiple times with a screwdriver, and no one in all that time had ever been charged with her death. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Even today, in another century, some five decades later, I cannot look at those styrofoam coolers you buy at Canadian Tire for transporting beer or fish. Coffins for babies, the kids on the reserve call them. </span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> But I was lucky. A Cree friend recognized my grief, and saved my life. Pulled me out of the water by the scruff of my neck, like rescuing a kitten which had been tossed into the river.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Some years later, talking to a co-worker who was also a psychologist, questioning myself, he assured me: It would be unprofessional </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">not to care.</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">MISSIONARY</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">A man was being interviewed, on the radio or on television, about his experiences as a Protestant missionary to a group of First Nations somewhere in northern Quebec or Ontario. He told the story of how one of his parishioners, a trapper, self-supporting, a family man, had lost a child, and had came to the mission for comfort, for words from the preacher which would help him cope with the sadness of his loss. “The man's grief was so profound,” the missionary stated, “that I realized, in that instant, that there was nothing I could offer this man, there was nothing I could teach him, there is nothing I could teach these people about being human </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>that they do not already know.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">" </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Yes, I thought. Perfect. They had cried together. And the missionary had abandoned his work of proselytizing, and had returned South, a wiser man. One who had peeked into the brown paper bag and recognized the face of racism in the shard of mirror. One who acted to change that face, to face the truth.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">JUXTAPOSITIONS</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Dancing is like taking a shower; one wrong turn and you're in hot water.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">It would be a mistake to misread my juxtapositions as my being anti-religion. I am not anti-religion. I believe religion and the fellowship faith offers is one of the long-standing ways human beings have devised to “help each other through” our time here on Earth. However, the belief, by any religion and/or all religions, that what they believe is superior to what anyone else believes is racist. And those racist assumptions are what has caused wars and human rights abuses from time immemorial, as well as personal shaming and guilt, and the depressions which arise when anger turns inward. The skeleton in the Canadian closet is racism, and it hangs with racks full of christening gowns, cassocks, and vestments. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The late Canadian literary critic and theologian Northrup Frye pointed out that the educated imagination is one which recognizes that what he/she believes is also only a possibility. In his own words: “In the imagination our own beliefs are also only possibilities, but we can also see the possibilities in the beliefs of others.” [p.32]</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Transposing my teaching motto, I put it this way: It is not </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>What </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">we believe which matters; it is </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>That</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> we believe. [Or not, if that is what you choose to believe.]</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Here I feel perhaps I need to confess. The only thing I find more off-putting than proselytizing is pontificating. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">So, I left the North believing that the best thing I could do would be to bow out. To leave the students, their parents, and their community to their own devices, to figure out for themselves how they best wanted their children educated, for the kind of lifestyle, the kind of future they envisioned. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I did feel guilty because I continued to fear that the men in charge of the schools, the men making all the decisions about who got hired, who taught what, what they taught, and how they taught it, still made decisions which seemed to imply that White ways were superior and that assimilation into White society was the answer to all “Indian” questions. Men who imposed their opinions, their gender, their culture. Men who were quick to remind everyone that everything on reserve was paid for by tax dollars from the South. That he who pays the piper calls the tune. (An old Celtic saying.) </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">So that nowadays, in the relationship between the Cree and Canada, between First Nations and the federal government, controlling the purse strings is the way racism is imposed, the way individuals and groups are oppressed, in that old equation of racism=superiority. Although of course, Cree culture, culture </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>per se</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, exists even when money is scarce or non-existent, as most writers can tell you. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> When I left, and remember, this was more than thirty years ago, there were plans to build a new high school that would focus on training mechanics and hairdressers. But the students who wanted to prepare for university were to be removed from the community and sent elsewhere for high school. A decision which I protested, for its insensitivity. It was as if these men had never heard about the negative impacts of “residential schooling” on students, families, and communities. I do hope this plan changed, but I do not know. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Recently I saw a news report on television which said that a student I had taught was now a principal and possibly is now an administrator. This, perhaps unreasonably, gives me a dribble of hope. As it did when I heard a First Nations leader (also cited in Regan, p.227) from a different region of Canada put it this way: “Yes, you can help us paddle, as long as you let us steer our own canoe.” </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282258046670026550.post-3208736131461409192013-01-11T14:07:00.000-08:002013-01-13T14:00:39.224-08:00Part Four - Kettle River<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">DANCING WITH GHOSTS: A CROSS-CULTURAL EDUCATION</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Part Four - KETTLE RIVER </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">YEARBOOK</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">George Bernard Shaw, the Irish writer who grew up as a Protestant in Dublin, said: “If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best take it out and teach it to dance.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">As part of our extra-curricular activities in that school on the Cree reserve, we put together yearbooks. Individual photographs, groups, and candids of kids hamming it up, at school or at school-related activities. I used to take the yearbooks out with me when I returned to the city and to family over the summer months. People would leaf through them slowly, scanning face after face, lingering over the activity pages. One university-educated friend, a parent herself, who had possibly never lived anywhere other than south of Winnipeg, looked up at me with confusion and shock on her face. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “What's wrong?” I asked, beginning to panic.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Nothing's wrong,” she said. “It's just the pictures. It's just that I've never seen Indians smiling before.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">So I began to suspect that maybe we still live “apart,” not knowing even our neighbours, let </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">alone our fellow citizens. And that perhaps I had some valuable experience, having travelled, flown in, lived and worked on a reserve, which I could share with others. Perhaps I could be a bridge. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I had already returned to the refuge of university and completed my Master of Arts in English, Canadian Literature, and a thesis </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Indian, the “Other,” In the Canadian Quest for Identity: Four Prairie Novels of the 1970s.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I looked at the way White writers incorporated First Nations and Metis characters into their stories as links, bridging us to the land, assisting the White protagonists and thence the readers to know who we are, to feel as if we belong. How they functioned as spirit guides, helping us forge a new Canadian identity through a sacred marriage to the place, the new home. "[T]he thesis suggests that some modern novelists see the necessity of learning from Indian characters both the shamanic metaphor--that man must learn to divine the mysteries of life and death--and the Metis metaphor--that we must learn to mix the ancestral presences we bring with us with those we find in the place--in order to re-establish contact with the spirit of the place. . . the sacred 'Wholly Other' within and without." [Abstract, Bridgeman, 1981] My preparation had included a look at “culture failure,” the failure of one generation to transmit its culture, its beliefs, to the next, and an attempt to define "identity." The focus was on White culture, how something seems to be missing. How counter-cultures and quests for gurus represent a frantic search for ideals to replace those which have been rejected, and for new lifestyles to match. How the only constant is change. How life skills involve the ability to sift the wheat from the chaff, to find the pony in the pile of horseshit, the sacred, the numinous, the holy buried beneath dogma and secularism. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Not what we believe but that we believe. </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> There are many roads leading to the same sacred centre. I never taught high school again. I proposed and assisted with the creation of a no-budget “talking heads” documentary called </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Mother Tongue</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> in which educators from three or four Manitoba First Nations spoke of the importance of first languages in the schools. I published profiles of prominent First Nations individuals including broadcaster Bernelda Wheeler and MLA Elijah Harper, before the Constitutional crisis. In the city, I organized and presented informal workshops for small groups and private agencies, Cross-Cultural Communication, based on my observations from encounters with Cree people. Here are some of the things they taught me. Here are some tips on how we might be able to improve our communication with volunteers and clients. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I found to my surprise that some White workers in the city were resistant. Especially a certain group of White women, of a certain age, as we say, with perhaps some training and experience within the helping professions. Women who considered themselves liberal. What seemed to upset them was the idea that First Nations people could be different. Could have different expectations. Could be responded to in a different way from White volunteers or White clients. These women wanted everyone to be equal and to be treated equally, by which they meant “the same.” These women seemed to believe that granting “the other” equality meant assuming they are the same as you, and assuming that you are the norm. It was as if they were giving "the other" a gift. “You're just as good as me; you are the same as me; therefore, I respect you. Imagine that!” I sensed some condescension. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I had trouble understanding the people who were challenged by an acceptance of differences. It felt as if “they were seeing what they wanted to see.” Or, as if, without firsthand experience, or clear communication, it was easy to project the self, their own values, on to others. It was as if they had never had the benefit of a Mrs. H, pointing out facts about bathing routines. Perhaps they had never had the opportunity to observe, or they lacked the willingness to listen; perhaps it was easy not to notice differences. Perhaps, as Howard Adams points out in his “Schooling the Redman” <span style="color: black;">chapter </span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">in</span> </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Prison of Grass</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">they</span> were used to being fed back what they wanted to hear. I guess it was the same way I felt challenged when that first student proclaimed: “I'm Cree; I am not Canadian.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> That must be it. In cities where most of us are immigrants, everyone comes here from elsewhere. Immigrants apply to come to Canada, to become Canadian citizens, because they respect and want to live by our values and laws, to swear allegiance to our Crown. But this is not necessarily true of First Nations. They are not immigrants to Canada. They have a prior relationship to the land. They have cultures and civilizations which pre-exist "discovery" or Confederation. Most have legal relationships with “the Crown.” Their nationhood, their territorial rights, their inalienable human rights, are recognized in (but not derived from) national and international laws, treaties, constitutions. The way they have been treated in Canada since Confederation would not pass any human rights tests, yet Canadians seem oblivious or indifferent to this fact. Is it that we prefer to deal with First Nations people as individuals, to ignore the group rights, their status as nations, the confusing possibility of nations within a nation, that their continuing existence implies? To see them as the same as, not different from, ourselves? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> First Nations individuals may have different opinions. They, and their opinions, whatever they may be, deserve respect. And part of respecting is not assuming. Perhaps I had picked up that phrase on the reserve. The one which says: When you ASSUME, you make an ASS out of U and ME. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">AFTER THE FALL</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Like these resistant liberal White women, I had grown up in a virtually “apartheid” society, where no Indians were present in my schools or my community. Knowing virtually nothing about Canadian First Nations, their history, their languages, their cultures, their desires. Nothing about the treaties. Which treaty covered Oak River, my home town? Did the town sit in territory previously occupied by Plains Cree? Assiniboine? Dakota Sioux? I had learned nothing about the Indian Act except that it imposed federal government control over Indians and reserves in the 1870s. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> However, living on the reserve, I had learned some facts. The Norway House Cree had signed Treaty Five in 1875. And the relationship between Indians and the Crown (Canada) was governed by federal law, the Indian Act of 1876. It took me a while to recognize the differences between and the significance of these two separate documents, the treaty and the act. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> In <i>His Majesty's Indian Allies</i>, Robert S. Allen puts it this way: "[T]he English acknowledged that the Indians had a 'natural title' to the land which sprang from the right of soil or prior occupancy. But since they were considered a wild and heathen people, 'that live up and downe in troupes like heards of Deere in a forrest,' the English rationalized moral and legal justification for dispossessing the Indians." [p.16] Thus, the treaties dealt with the "natural title" and in Canada, the Indian Act, like the Doctrine of Discovery which sprang from papal bulls, and the American notion of Manifest Destiny, reflect the rationalizations attempting to justify dispossession and colonization. In some cases you still hear people say that "We won the war" (a fact which does not apply in Canada) is the justification for dispossession, that the victor dictates the terms. The rationalizations, which usually involve some form of "divine right" coming down from God through popes, kings, and/or superior civilizations and systems, are racism in action, the colonizing group's belief in their own superiority, translated into self-made legislation. The racist rationalizations are used to justify colonialism--"the control of one nation by 'transplanted' people of another nation--often a geographically distant nation that has a different culture and dominant racial or ethnic group." [dictionary.com]</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In recognition of "natural title," treaty negotiations arranged for ceding, surrendering control of access to their land to the Crown, to enable the Crown to manage immigration and settlement. The negotiating Indians were not naive. They bargained for something of equal value in return. Treaties guarantee that the federal government will provide the First Nations commitments such as housing, medical treatment, education, and treaty money, which usually included a gratuity per person at the time of signing and an annuity, fixed at the 1870s level, about $5 per head, handed out each Treaty Day by red-serge coated RCMP officers. Was the treaty money annuity a token, or was it meant to be a living allowance, indexed? Some treaties included the promise to “grubstake” a new way of life, training and starter supplies to raise livestock and begin farming. In the minds of the treaty-signers, they were permitting access to their ancestral land in return for government help to find new ways, to continue to live in dignity, now that the buffalo were gone. For some, welfare came to be seen as a form of treaty right because no other promised way to be able to support themselves has been forthcoming. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In Big Bear's time, on the prairies in the 1880s, negotiations were pressured by fear of starvation. Supplies were withheld until treaties were signed, a passive-aggressive stance which was a kind of extortion, starving people into submission, a crime against humanity. Help was forthcoming only if the Indians agreed to surrender their freedom, go on to a reserve, stay there, and maintain the peace. Big Bear resisted because he could see that what the government representatives were agreeing to was not being lived up to after negotiations ended. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Did the Indians own the land? If so, did they sell it? Cede it? Were the negotiations fair? According to Dakota tradition, I am told, land cannot be bought or sold. And the original understanding of treaty negotiations was/is: with the sacred peace pipe, to negotiate peaceful occupation and mutual usage of the land from the beginning to the end of time. Treaties in Manitoba were signed before the Indian Act was enacted in 1876, and before the influx of new settlers. The relationship between First Nations and the federal government was one of equality and mutual respect. The Indians had agreed to move over, to share. The relationship between First Nations people and settlers was based on mutual respect and assistance, with the Indians assisting the settlers. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">THE BAIT AND SWITCH</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The nation to nation treaty negotiations recognized aboriginal title and prepared for "mutual occupation and usage." However, then, unilaterally, the Indian Act imposed colonial status on Indians and on reserves. From being recognized as nations negotiating with the Crown, nations within a nation, the Indians became, with the sweep of a pen in Ottawa, subject, wards of the state. The Indian Act is a racist document, based upon assumed White superiority, imposed upon Indians without their consent or consultation. In the Indian Act, White officials determined that Indians were "lesser than," and would be expected to "improve themselves," to assimilate into White society, and to do so according to White rules. The legislation was a reduction, making them less than they had been, taking away self-sufficiency, self-government, self-determination. Such changes had never been part of any negotiations. Under what conditions would a people agree to give up freedom? To sign away their human rights? There are words to describe the dealers who suggest such bargains. Pimps. Snakeheads. Slave traders. Extortionists. Criminals. Are we not in some ways in Canada "living off the avails" of a crime? Are we not all accomplices? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Living on the reserve had helped me become aware of certain aspects, consequences, of the Indian Act. The house assigned to the school principal had been built originally for the Indian agent, a government-appointed White official paid to administer all aspects of life on reserve. The agent granted passes giving reserve Indians permission to leave, to work for wages, to seek medical treatment. The agent allotted housing, enforced the alcohol interdiction. The agent was the symbol of government control of all aspects of Indian life. Symbolically, in that community, the agent had been replaced by the school principal.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Indians had originally been granted no rights of Canadian citizenship. Forget the nation-to-nation rhetoric which had preceded treaty negotiations. The goal of the Indian Act was to prepare Indians to assimilate, and as soon as they demonstrated that they had the skills to become part of the mainstream, they would no longer need special status. This was the bait and switch; this was not what First Nations had agreed to. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> <span style="color: black;"> In the early years, enfranchisement could be forced upon individuals. At first, there was no concept of "dual citizenship," Canadian and First Nations. As that first student's first claim emphasized, Indians were forced to choose between their Cree identity or Canadian citizenship. If they were enfranchised, the Indian Act said their Indian identity would be cancelled, replaced with rights of full citizenship. Before or until that happened, Indians</span> <span style="color: black;">did not even have the vote. This confusion of legal identity is one of the consequences of someone else, some external authority, determining who is and who is not an Indian. Partly in response to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Canadian citizenship was granted to Indians in1956 and the right to vote in federal elections was granted in amendments to the Indian Act in 1960.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Indian status, the Indian Act decreed, was to be determined according to the British tradition, through the male line. White women marrying in and their children became Indians. Indian women marrying out and their children lost Indian status. This imposed system would not be challenged until 1985, after the Charter had guaranteed equality and prohibited discrimination based upon race or gender. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> <span style="color: black;"> Reserve land belonged to the Crown which held it in trust for the group. There would be no freehold tenure, no private ownership of reserve land. As Native economist Howard Adams famously put it: the Indian Act imposed life without capital within a capitalist society. Some unilateral amendments to the </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>Act</b></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> in the early twentieth century had given the government the right to amend the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>treaties</b></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> by moving, leasing out, or selling reserve lands which were not being used. Unilateral amendment to a mutual agreement is a breach. However, if the other party refuses to hear your objection, what can you do? Attempt to appeal to a higher authority, the Crown (the King or Queen or their representative in Canada), or to an international forum.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Although some treaties had previously negotiated access to traditional territory for hunting, fishing, and trapping, for subsistence purposes, anyone who tried to “capitalize” on these rights, in other words, to make money from the available resources, was denied. That was why, on the reserve, Indians could fish with a "square hook," meaning with a net, but it was illegal for Whites to do so. That is also why it was illegal for Indians to sell any game they hunted, or to sell any fish they caught unless they were properly licensed commercial fisherman. That is also why the argument that treaties never signed away "mineral rights" suggests a way to return potential "capital" to the equation, to find an untapped source of income for the people who had "in good faith" agreed to "mutual occupation."</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Indeed, even employment opportunities were limited by the law, the Indian Act. Indians could not seek or accept work without the Indian Agent's permission. People who ignored this part of the law were charged, convicted, and imprisoned. The Indian Act also prohibited access to government employment unless Indian status was relinquished. (I learned this from the man who drove the ferry across the Nelson River, after the provincial road to the big hydro dam at Jenpeg was extended into the community.) Enfranchisement was required before employment was permitted, relinquishing your Indian status to become the same as all other Canadians, expected to pay taxes, given the right to vote, denied the right to live on reserve. This law forbidding employment impacted an entire group, the men and women who volunteered to fight in World War I and II. So many Indian soldiers could not stand up, stand out, be recognized, because accepting army pay meant that they would be enfranchised, their Indian status cancelled, and their families forced to move off reserve. It was a Canadian “don't ask, don't tell.” Except that after the war, Indian veterans were denied the assistance offered other veterans unless they were enfranchised. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Thousands of First Nations men and women had fought for a country which did not even allow them to vote. It was pressure from these veterans which forced the repeal in 1951 of those aspects of the Indian Act, the Potlatch Law of 1886, which had forbidden cultural gatherings and indigenous religious ceremonies. The ban on social and spiritual activities such as the potlatch, sundance, and powwow dances had been an effort to reduce cultural ties, to impose Christianity as another step towards assimilation. Individuals and family heads who sponsored potlatches had been arrested and imprisoned. Wearing traditional attire was criminalized; sacred regalia had been confiscated and burned. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Indians were forbidden to will or inherit property. Later amendments to the Indian Act forbade hiring lawyers, a direct attempt to prevent court challenges and land claims. The 1960 amendments to the act brought elected chief and band councils to reserves. Indian Agents were phased </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">out. Funding to manage the reserves still came from the federal government whose bureaucrats still oversaw band council finances. </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The Indian Act imposed external control on all social, political, economic, and spiritual aspects of the lives of First Nations individuals. Oppressive laws made by other people were an organized attempt to force the First Nations to change, to become someone other than who they were. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The Indian Act is a colonial manifesto, the opposite of a Magna Carta. The Indian Act is a law which makes Indians legally inferior, puts them into a child-like minority position as wards of the state where all the important points of their life are proscribed, controlled by outsiders according to British-Canadian cultural tenets. The Indian Act instituted a form of colonization upon the reserves. The Indian Act, written by Whites without consultation and imposed on Indian people, is a document spawned by racism, the unquestioned belief that the White way, Whites, were superior, that Indians were inferior, and that Indians and Whites would both be better off if the Indians were to become White, to assimilate into White society.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms signed by Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Trudeau in 1982 resulted in many challenges to the Indian Act, to the ways it did not conform to the human rights and aboriginal rights acknowledged in the Charter. Laws reflect the values of the people who make the laws. The Charter made It illegal to discriminate on the basis of race or gender, yet you can still hear some people argue that the Charter only protects citizens under federal jurisdiction. Or that the Charter does not apply to people living on reserves. Can you believe it? Arguing for the right to discriminate? Reacting, out of fear or self-interest or a belief in one's own superiority, rather than “buying into” a higher ideal, the respect for human dignity and all that that entails. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">My cross-cultural education had progressed. I had gathered crumbs of history through encounters with First Nations people on the reserve and in the city. I felt I had a better understanding about what the word racism meant, and how it impacted upon the laws of Canada and the lives of First Nations people. How racism was the foundation of the push for assimilation. How there must be other options, and how those options had to be optional, chosen by First Nations themselves. How the situation had to change, to improve. How there was still so much to be done.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> But what could I do about it? Other than feel that sense of solidarity? Try to be supportive? Politics and power grabs and government deception seemed to be problems. And they went unchecked because of a seeming general ignorance, of racism, of injustice. Or was it an on-going belief in White superiority? Did the majority of Canadians still believe that Whites were superior and that Indians should be forced to assimilate? And what if they did believe that? What could protect a minority group from the racist opinions of a majority? Were there any solutions? What government or government official or elected representative would ever risk relinquishing power, or the power to control resources, or money? Which voters would even suggest it? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">CONFLICT OF INTEREST</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Three years after leaving the North, I began a new job in the federal correctional service. Going through the standard screening with the preventive security officer at Stony Mountain, checking for possible conflicts of interest, checking for names of prisoners, the officer asked me to list criminals I knew personally. I could not think of many. A former student from the reserve whom I had visited in the Youth Detention Centre. Another I had visited in the Health Sciences Centre. No problem, he said, although he did make note of the names and suggested that there might be relatives in the prison population. A former member of the teaching staff of a southern school where I had taught more than ten years before, a man who had murdered his girlfriend. Check. He had been on this officer's caseload, and had transferred out west. An elder who did programming. Check. He was cleared for admission to present workshops. A member of the Citizens Advisory Committee who I knew had had a conviction many years before. Check. (He's a friend of the chief of police, I am told.) A writer who started his career while serving time for armed robbery in Kingston. Check. A couple of draft dodgers at university. Not a problem. He suggested a couple of possible names, but nothing rang a bell. I couldn't think of any more. Rumours of one or two former Oak River high school classmates, fraud and something else, but I doubted that they would have been federal offences. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Okay. If you think of any more, let me know. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Done. Selective amnesia. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>SHOWER TIME</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Pat (again, a name picked from the ether, to prevent any possible embarrassment) is a young guy, which on this tier in this penitentiary makes him somewhat vulnerable, even if he is six foot something and not weak. Youth makes him still impulsive, while he still feels invincible, immune to the risks of foreign substances inserted into his body through various orifices, including self-punctures through his brown skin. He is from Fort Chip in the Northwest Territories. “Skins,” he and his friends proudly identify themselves as, or “Bros,” short for brothers, a brotherhood. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Speaking to him through the barrier which separates my job from his living unit I notice his teeth. Not the way their whiteness stands out. Rather, the way they look a yellowish-grey, fuzzy, as if moss is growing around the gum line. Recognizing a teachable moment when one speaks to me, I broach the delicate subject of personal hygiene. Toothbrush? Shower time? </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>“Shower? You never see me in there, do you?“</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Not that I can say I have noticed, as the showers, screened with simple white modesty curtains, are open to workers like him, cleaners, who have the freedom of the range when everyone else is out at work. “You never shower?” I ask in disbelief. Why not? I think, but I don't really have to ask. Showers are a fearful place of exposure. “Don't bend over,” as the saying goes. Places of vulnerability, especially for the young who might be easy prey, subject to pressure for debts incurred in relation to those above-mentioned impulsive and self-destructive choices. But, how can you live with yourself? my surprise seems to say. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Pat just laughs. Everyone has his own wash basin and flush toilet in his own cell. “I take a whore's bath,” he says with pride. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Although I laugh in surprise, I know instantly what he means. My curiosity is more literal. “I'm afraid to ask where you learned that expression!” I fear the worst. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> “Dusters,” he explains. He is an avid reader of “dusters,” western </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>cowboys-and-Indians genre fiction. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Really? What would an Indian boy pick up from dusters, besides a colourful expression or two about “whore's baths”? Would he identify with the cowboys or the Indians? Or the whores? What are the Indian role models doing? Are his heroes always cowboys, Indian-hunters, or are they the enemies of cowboys and of the civilization for which those cowboys bushwhacked? Art and culture are mirrors; they help us see ourselves, aid in the process of identification. But what happens if the reflections are distorted, if the images we see are grey or fuzzy? </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> What if the only familiar faces we see are the mugshots on wanted posters? </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> What does a guy have to do to feel “wanted” around here? </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">KEEPING ALIVE</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">As my mother was alone and ill in British Columbia, I was able to transfer from the Prairie to the Pacific Region, and from multi-level to minimum security. I had to start learning all over again, policies and procedures, and cross-cultural communication. I had been forewarned. By my brother: “BC is three or four years behind Winnipeg, but after you've been here a while, you don't notice.” By others in the service: “They do things differently,” and ”They have different attitudes out there,” meaning institutional culture, regional differences. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> From senior staff I learned new catchphrases: “That was then; this is now.” And “Rules are made to be broken.” And from the inmates, especially old junkies battered from years in logging camps and winters on skid roads in the city. There the mantra was: “Places like this keep me alive.” He meant, without prison sentences, he would have been dead of an overdose ages ago. (Not to imply that he had no access to drugs inside, just that it was easier for him to choose to avoid them.) And it struck me how the same was also true for First Nations inmates, although there were fewer of them here in the Pacific Region population than had been so visible in the Prairie Region. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> But it was true. Places like Stony Mountain Institution kept First Nations spirituality alive. The new Charter had guaranteed the right to practice the religion of your choice, and policy meant that the service was obliged to provide suitable spiritual advisors and counsellors. Men who may never have seen a pipe at home, or attended a sweat, participated in cultural rituals during their incarcerations. You could actually see self-knowledge grow into self-acceptance and the very best kind of pride. I listened as one Elder responded to an inmate complaint that prison cut him off from nature. “Everything on the Earth is of the Earth,” the Elder said. “Touch your walls and you're connected to nature.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In the same way institutions like the prisons have honoured Native culture, the reserves themselves have preserved much that First Nations value. As long as the reserve is there, a First Nations person has a home or a home to go back to. “Why do people stay in those remote, impoverished places,” Southerners ask. “Why don't they just move to the cities and get jobs?” It is a question loaded with cultural assumptions. Maybe they wish to retain that connection to place, to the Earth which sustains them. Maybe, if they leave, they will have no way of getting home. Why do city people own cottages by lakes and rivers, paddle on long canoe trips, send their children to summer camps? Because there is something missing in urban life which requires an accommodation. Some connection which has to be renewed or, like a house plant we forget to water, it will shrivel and die. Maybe they want to remain close to their people, to family and friends, to the human relationships which sustain.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">FRASER RIVER - COAST SALISH</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Moving to British Columbia is a cultural adjustment for anyone. But where First Nations were concerned, differences from the Prairies stood out. First of all, apartheid is much less obvious in BC. First Nations reserves are right here, in the Lower Mainland, within what seems like town and city limits, in Hope, Chilliwack, Abbotsford, and Vancouver. First Nations people are much more visible. External symbols of First Nations cultures are different from those of plains culture—totem poles, dugout canoes, masks and carvings, button blankets, woven Salish blankets, woven baskets, dip nets, salmon drying racks, headbands and headdresses of cedar, feather, and mountain goat wool. These visuals stress the inextricable link between culture and landscape, culture and environment. Where prairie people lived off the buffalo, West Coast people gave thanks for cedar as their tree of life and for food which swam to their doors. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> At work, the first question I had to adjust was one I used in my introductory information gathering from new clients. “Are you Treaty?” Meaning, Have you got your Treaty Card, the registration from your Band which identifies you as an Indian in Canada? (One reason workers need to know this is because it determines who is responsible for health care costs.) </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Treaty? What's that?”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> There are virtually no treaties in British Columbia. Registered Indians carry Status Cards. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> No treaties? How can that be? How can we three million plus non-Indigenous British Columbians be squatters, here without permission, without an agreement for mutual occupation? That just does not seem right.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">At one work-related cultural event, an Elder asked me if I spoke Halkomelem? </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Halkomelem? (Spelling varies; Halq'emeylem) I could barely repeat the word. I had never heard it before. Halkomelem is the mother tongue of Hal's people, known as the Coast Salish, and living from the Fraser Canyon to the Fraser mouth in Georgia Strait, up the coast, down the coast around Puget Sound, and along the eastern edges of Vancouver Island. I had owned a Salish loom in Winnipeg but I thought it was Scandinavian. I left it in the back alley when I moved. I had been to Ireland; I could tell you the difference between “Red” Irish and “Black” Irish, but I had never heard of Hals or the Coast Salish people or the Halkomelem language. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I was lucky, through work and contacts, to continue to have the opportunity to attend more functions in local Big Houses where many more Elders were present. The Big House is what people on West Coast reserves call a building which looks like a longhouse but is really more like a large community arena, with a dirt floor where the ice would be, and wooden bench seating in tiers up three of the four walls. There is a large opening between the rafters with a raised roof above it, a space for smoke to escape, but covered to keep the rain out. There is a large fire in the centre of the dirt floor. The fire provides heat and additional light; as the evening, the days, progress, younger men carry in huge chunks of wood from the woodpile out back, four-foot lengths of cedar and fir which produce a pirouette of sparks seeking the sky every time a log is tossed on the firepit. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The purpose of all the gatherings in the Big House is for people to come together. The ones I attended were to introduce initiates. To watch them dance. To hear them sing. But other gatherings celebrate a life or the anniversary of a death or the installation of a grave post, or the transfer of a name to another member of the family. There is still a taboo about speaking about things that go on in the Big House, from the days when the dances were illegal and families who organized a potlatch were fined or jailed. And, I am lumping things together here which is another offense, Pan-Indianism. Because I attended these feasts in Coast Salish territory and in Gitxsan territory, lands and peoples separated by thousands of kilometres here in BC, and inhabited by people with different languages, different cultures, different histories, different goals and desires. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In the South, in Coast Salish territory, where the people speak the Halkomelem language, the phrase used by the emcee at the winter dance is “You are called to witness.” At a specified time during the dancing, before the tables are carried in and laden with food for the feasting, the drumming stops and the family that is giving the feast, the dance, takes the floor and calls out the names of individuals in the audience, repeating each time “You are called to witness.” The witnesses are invited to come down with the family, and each one is offered a gift (blankets, clothing, household goods). Family members file past the honourees and hand them coins from the rolls of quarters they have brought for the occasion, as a payment for the important work the visitor is doing, by attending, and witnessing the event that occasioned the dance. In a symbolic way, the witnesses are being paid to remember what happens at this event, to report it in the future. It is a form of oral documentation. On this day in this place you witnessed this person do this. It is oral history, but more than oral, because it involves actions as well as words. But I hesitate to say too much, to make a mistake. When the witness is called, named, honoured, he or she may be offered the opportunity to speak. The talking stick or the microphone or both are passed, and the congregation waits for Elder wisdom.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The most memorable one for me that I heard was an Elder who insisted: “We are here to help each other through.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Yes. I can buy that. Those are words to live by. Those Elders, and those celebrations in the Big Houses, legal again since the early 1950s and guaranteed in the Charter, let me see for myself Indians dancing again. Even once, the Skhway-Khwey dancers, special hereditary masks passed down matrilineally, inherited through the female side of the family, and brought out only for very special occasions. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> After one such winter dance, walking alone to my car in the parking lot, I climbed in and just sat there, gripping the steering wheel, sobbing. Sometimes Elders ask if people are all right because they know the power inside the Big House can be overwhelming. I could not articulate why I wept. Something about the sense of community, how those hundreds of people inside all belonged there, and knew that they belonged there. That the culture which has existed for at least ten thousand years still exists and is still strong. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Those words about helping each other through may have come from an Elder with whom I had subsequent encounters. En route to a gathering in a distant community, he riding shotgun, me driving the company van through dark tunnels, fumbling for the headlight switch, he nodded off somewhere past the first hour of the trip. After we got home safely, I teased him about his comfort level. He must have been confident in my driving if he was relaxed enough to fall asleep, eh? He responded with a smile: “Maybe I was praying.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">SKEENA RIVER - GITXSAN</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">One day in my office at work, in 1991, a First Nations inmate sat, silent, dejected; the provincial court judgment had just been released. Judge McEachern had ruled against the petitioners in the case Delgamuukw vs. Regina (the Crown). What was so depressing, what made First Nations people first so sad and then so angry, was the judge's insulting ruling that oral history does not count. That nothing the Gitxsan First Nation representatives had said, nothing they had presented to support their case, was worth anything compared to the paper, the documents presented in support of the Crown's case. It was as if the judge were proclaiming that nothing about your culture has any value; that your culture is inferior, White culture is superior, because I say so, because that's the way we do things here in Canada. It felt like an insult to all First Nations. As a White person, I felt ashamed. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I did not know at that moment that later I would have the opportunity to visit Gitxsan territory, communities like Hazelton and Kispiox, along the Skeena River and its tributaries like the Bulkley and the Kispiox rivers, in northern British Columbia. At one ceremony in the Feast Hall, I witnessed Elders being gifted red and black blankets with white buttons while crowds dressed like mummers in Halloween masks danced a conga line through the room. One of the elders walking around the hall was Delgamuukw, a young-looking man with white hair, wearing a black vest stitched with a green frog design. The frog represents the family crest of the Frog clan to which he belongs. This feast I attended was before Judge McEachern's ruling from the Supreme Court of British Columbia was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada which confirmed that BC First Nations who have never yet signed treaties do have aboriginal rights and that their own form of historic documentation, the oral history witnessed at feasts, the songs and recitations inherited, passed down from one generation to another, must be accorded respect equal to that of the written documents of the White settlers. Delgamuukw is hereditary chief of just one of the four main clans, the chief whose name is used in the short form to identify the court case. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> At that same feast in Gitxsan territory I met Antgulilibix, hereditary chief of another, the Fireweed clan. At the time, she was introduced as Mary and I did not know the role she had played in the McEachern decision. She was the Elder who attempted to testify by singing one of the ancestral songs into the record, as proof of the Gitxsan claim, as evidence that her culture exists, has existed for millennia, and has its own culturally-accepted methods for documenting and transmitting the history. Under ordinary circumstances, the song she sang in court would be sung at one of the gatherings in the Feast House, before witnesses, who would be expected to remember, and she would pass the song down, when she was ready, to a descendant identified as capable of fulfilling the responsibility. Antgulilibix' testifying in BC Supreme Court had happened in 1987, before I moved to BC, and I was not aware of her history until I saw a cartoon of the incident in an actual history text book. [Lutz, p.276] Evidently the judge had interrupted her song, had referred to it as “a performance” not appropriate for a court of law, and proclaimed that he himself had a “tin ear” oblivious to sound, meaning, or nuance. His comments were disrespectful, his ignorance seemingly deliberate. It was as if he was proud of himself for not being willing to listen or to learn.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In that courtroom, Delgamuukw had tried to explain. “My power is carried in my House's histories, songs, dances, and crests. It is recreated at the Feast when the histories are told, the songs and dances performed and the crests displayed. . . In this way, the law, the Chief, the territory and the Feast become one.” [Regan, p.163] I do not know whether Antgulilibix lived to hear her song, her self, her culture vindicated when the Supreme Court of Canada overruled Judge McEachern, in favour of Delgamuukw, in 2006. Fifteen years after the original racist decision. One hundred forty-five years after British Columbia joined the Canadian Confederation. One hundred fifty-eight years after prospectors from around the globe had rushed into the homeland of the Halkomelem-speakers, seeking Fraser River gold, without making any culturally-appropriate arrangements for "mutual occupation," as even British law required, with the nations into whose territory they flooded. Two hundred and thirteen years after Alexander Mackenzie reached the Pacific Ocean, “from Canada, by land.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">RETURN TO the RIVER</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">After my mother died, and prompted by my up-coming tenth anniversary, when I would have been “locked in” until retirement, I left the correctional service. I went and camped out for a year on the ranch where my mother had grown up, in British Columbia's Kettle Valley.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Kettle River</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The book had fallen off the shelf, face down, splayed open at the message: </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The old has died and the new cannot yet be born. Wait for the door to open</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>. She closed her office door and never went back. She moved to the ranch in Kettle Valley to wait.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> She tells herself she has moved to the valley because she feels empty and alone. Abandoned by a mother who died and left her, a mother she felt she really had never known, she had begun a quest to unearth her secrets, to try to get closer to her. To walk in her footsteps. Yearning to understand, to connect. Her sky-blue trailer sits beneath a canopy of Ponderosa Pine, practically underneath Ingram Bridge. The circle of her yard marks an O in the northeast quadrant of the X made by the river crossing beneath the trestle, in the V made by Bubar Road meeting the Crowsnest Highway. Parallel to the vanished tracks, the wavy blue line of the Kettle River flows past her door. If she crosses the yard, bending through the opening in the decrepit page wire fence, treks to the edge of the abandoned railbed, she can jump into the current below. If she walks downstream, under the rusty girders, where the bank flattens, the water laps gently at the grass, she can wade over to the island of snagged driftwood and alluvium nursing Red Osier Dogwood and young poplar, </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">in medias res.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> At night when the highway traffic is sporadic, the ker-chunks from the bridge deck low and slow, the hum from the river fills her warm rooms. With trickle trills where the water meets the rocks and splits, laughing, into strands around them. As if the stones themselves are singing to her, as they too bathe in moonlight.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> She finds, accommodating herself to the new space, scanning for the proper spot for her desk, that she has to turn her back to the river. Otherwise, she is mesmerized by its murmur of dreamful ease. The Kettle waters call her, subverting her resolve to work, to dig things up, and write them down.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> The Kettle rises far to the north, in the Monashee Mountains, west of Nakusp. Like a goddess twisting and turning, her many arms inscribe her line into the hills, through the soil, revealing the story of the land layer by layer to the bedrock. Like a tree, the Kettle has many twirling branches. The West Fork, the Main, and the North Fork which enters the Main at Grand Forks in the Sunshine Valley. Along her way, she picks up smaller streams—Rock Creek, Nicholson Creek, Bubar Creek, Ingram Creek, Boundary Creek—enticing them to join her, braiding them into her thicker strand. She meanders with proper disregard across and back over the 49</i></span><sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>th</i></span></sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> parallel and across again before she merges with the Columbia at Kettle Falls, Washington. The giant splash of the falls has been drowned behind the big dam that holds back the waters, releasing them slowly to the mother river, the Gorge, the blue Pacific. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> The people who live with the Kettle say: “In her summer mode, you have to lie down in her to get wet.” To lie down in her. Like the fish asleep at noon. Like the beavers who swim home through her. Deadwood floats past deep swimming holes, tube launches, canoe landings. Old bridge abutments mark what used to be the easiest fords. On calm days, her clear waters mirror the shining hills. If the cottonwoods shiver, she trembles. She repeats the whispers of the pines.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> The Kettle is named from the roiling cauldrons found in some of her arms, especially at the rapids up Deer Creek. Years, eons of cascading current have worn a hollow into the bedrock in which the white water appears to boil and bubble. The kettle in turn traps boulders that fall in, whirling them dizzily in the rush of the eddy. The gyrations of the granite fragment erode the inside of the kettle, rounding and deepening it. At the same time, the surging swirl tumbles the broken chunk of rock, smoothing its edges each time it crashes against the basin wall, toiling to sculpt it to an unnatural sphere. The rattle, the drumming of the boulder on the sides, on the bottom, of the kettle is drowned in the sound of the falls.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> The people who love this river collect these rock spheres, as big as bowling balls. The Indians used to cover them in leather and play games with them, they say. Uncle at the ranchhouse next door keeps his with the other artifacts he has found on walks over his family land or on horseback rides up into the rocky hills. He has stone tools used for hunting, tanning, cooking; griddle rocks and pestles; stone blades and scrapers; a jade adze, stone hammers, and a long polished rectangular slab ground to an angled edge at both ends. He has a seemingly endless collection of arrowheads, of every shape and size, from the whitest quartz all the way through blue, gray, charcoal-coloured flints and cherts, rust and blood-red jaspers, to black basalt. “Some of these,” he explains to her, “could have been here for 10,000 years. This, I found on the exact spot where I found my father, dead of a heart attack, when I was seven years old. This one was way up high, at the top of that ridge.”</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> She tries to divine from Uncle the secret of finding arrowheads. “There is no secret,” he insists. “The only secret is that I don't look for them; I keep my eyes open, especially after a rain or when the soil has been tilled, and they just appear. Other people can walk right by and never notice them, but I just seem to see.”</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Mum could do that too. When they used to wander together out into the prairie fields, the rich flat glacial till dotted with granite erratics, they picked stones to add to their collections. The white ones, the sparklers for making fire, and unusual colours, seduced her, the wink of mica, magpie trinkets whose shininess caught the eye. It was Mum who found the arrowheads, scrapers, spearblades, the stone hammers the Indians used for pounding or for tethers.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> As a girl, she never thought to ask her mother whether she had collected rocks as a child, what kind of things she had found when she scoured the fields at home in BC, what living on a ranch was like. When Uncle was seven years old, in September, 1937, Mum would have been eleven.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> "Tell us about Grandpa, Mum. What was your Dad like?"</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> "He died, when I was twelve years old."</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> That was all she ever said. But this ranch, this valley, this river, was her father's world. The picture of him driving the team through the ford would have been taken right along here. He died in that field. He is buried up there, in that graveyard on the hillside, where the lilacs bloom every spring. A granite stone marks the spot.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> This is my Father's world</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> And to my listening ears</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> All nature sings and round me rings</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> The music of the spheres. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> The rogue hymn had inserted itself by accident into the funeral service. She had not thought of the river or of the ranch at that time. She had waited, her eyes and ears alert, until the book had landed at her feet, until the door had opened.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> "Once you have dipped your feet in the Kettle," they say, "you always return."</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Return when empty. It is a life skill. In her frantic twirling and spinning, she had forgotten. But that is what she is doing now, by intuition. Breathing in, bathing in the numinous, in a landscape alive with the dead, shivering, whispering, drumming, singing to her. The river rocking her to sleep. The water lulling her to dream.</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> The arms of her mother's chair cradle her as she sits working at her desk. Divining the secrets of the stones. Keeping her windows and doors open. </i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">FRASER RIVER - PROTOCOL</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The Indians in the Kettle Valley moved to the reservation at Colville, Washington, after the boundary was surveyed in the 1850s. But there are still many First Nations in British Columbia. At another southern gathering I attended, in a hotel, not a Big House, a federal Indian politician, Chief of the Assembly of First Nations at that time, himself a Cree from northern Manitoba, made a little speech. He started out by commenting on the ceremonial opening, the singing of O Canada, “our home </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">on</span></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b> </b></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">native land.” Then he made another little joke after being gifted with his blanket and handed his symbolic two-bit coins. Teasing and one-upsmanship are such a part of the multiple First Nations cultures. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> "Thank you," he said respectfully. "Thank you for inviting me into your territory. Thank you for blanketing me. Thank you for the quarters. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> But hey, haven't you guys out here ever heard of loonies?"</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">He can still joke. We can still joke. We have to be able to laugh. First Nations culture insinuates itself in many subtle ways. Every time I see a t-shirt walking towards me, or earrings, or a garden ornament, featuring Kokopeli, the Southwestern Trickster, I give a little snicker. They think of him as a musician, a flutist, but do they know that the hump on the Trickster's back is a large engorged penis he is burdened to lug around with him? That that's why he is associated with gardens, with seeds?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It's a life skill, this ability to laugh, at ourselves, our imperfections, at our human condition. To believe in and respect each other, willing and able to learn, to work and live together. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">TRUTH and RECONCILIATION</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">As part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established to provide a forum for former students to speak and to educate the general public about what happened. Their mandate is clearly stated on their website, trc.ca. In February, 2012, the TRC released its Interim Report, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>They Came For the Children. </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Even as a former teacher, a former reserve resident, as a student of history, and as someone who had sub-contracted to work on part of the residential schools settlement, there are facts in this report which are news to me. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I had been aware that, as part of the plan to assimilate the Indians, the government had set up the Indian Residential Schools System almost immediately, in place of the promised on-reserve schools. Indian children had been taken away from their families and communities to large industrial-style boarding schools where they were forbidden to speak their mother tongue. The schools were run by teachers and administrators employed under contracts negotiated with the churches. As the system was generally underfunded, relying on charity and missionary zeal, conditions were often abysmal. To make matters worse, some children were centred out for physical, sexual, or psychological abuse. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I believed that the idea of residential schools was based on the racist assumption--that White culture, Western Civilization, was superior to First Nations cultures and, furthermore, that First Nations children, their communities, and Canada as a whole would be improved if First Nations were assisted to assimilate as quickly as possible into “mainstream” White Canadian culture. I recognized that these are racist assumptions. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I assumed that these racist assumptions were probably held by the majority of White Canadians during the years the residential schools were in operation, from Confederation to 1996. Most Canadians also believe that education improves our opportunities in life. The more impoverished our beginnings, the greater the likelihood of improvement. And ever since treaties were signed in the 1800s, First Nations have been told “Education is the new buffalo.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I also believed that the First Nations had asked for schools to educate their children and that the federal government was obliged to provide them as part of the conditions signed in the nation-to-nation treaties by which the First Nations had agreed to "mutual occupation," to permit settlement in traditional territories and to accept permanent settlements for themselves on land reserved for Indians. This also, for the most part, is true.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I also knew that the Metis were not part of the treaty-making process and that the federal government did not assume any legal responsibility towards them or their education.<span style="color: black;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">A Supreme Court ruling in January, 2013, may change this old understanding of rights and responsibilities. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> As an educator, I knew a bit about the history of education. In Canada, public schools were locally initiated, generated and paid for by local parents and taxpayers who were usually one and the same. As a student of history, I knew that, by law, outlined in the British North America Act, now called the Constitution Act of 1867, education is a local matter and thus is a provincial jurisdiction, paid for by municipal and provincial <span style="color: black;">taxes. </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">That in theory, taxpayers paid for education because an educated population was a benefit to all, not just to the individuals involved. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">And that this model of education</span> supported by local taxes could not be applied to reserves for two reasons. First, the constitution clearly stated that all Indians, no matter where they lived in Canada, were the responsibility of the federal government. And second, because there was no tax base on <span style="color: black;">reserves, </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">as residents do not own and cannot sell the land. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">The funding for schools for First Nations</span> children comes solely from the federal government. Once the treaties were signed and the Indian Act passed, the federal government, as sole funder, assumed it alone would determine how and what the First Nations students were taught, by whom, and where. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Money as the means of control. Money talks, and in Canada, it only speaks English or French.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I also knew that in England, where most of the English-speaking Canadian ideals originated, children attended boarding schools and military schools from a very young age. They where separated from parents and sent to places where abuse, especially student on student abuse, was rampant. These old ways had lead to the values of a “stiff upper lip” and “what doesn't kill us makes us stronger” which we associate with Victorian child-rearing techniques. I also knew, as a teacher who has worked with many students for whom English is a second language, that “immersion” is believed to be the fastest and most effective way for students to learn a second language in a school setting. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I also knew, from my years of teaching both on reserve and off, that many if not most teachers go into teaching believing that they are doing good, helping children develop, making it possible for them to reach their full potential, to become healthy, happy, contributing members of Canadian society. Teachers did not and do not intend to harm children. The instances where individual harm arises, cases of physical, psychological, or sexual abuse, are personal, crimes against the person, not systemic, and not, never condoned. I suppose, as a former teacher, I identify with other teachers, and I hate to see everyone tarred with the brush of abuser and criminal just because they volunteered to work within a system. I know there were and are good teachers, and that many residential school students developed respectful loving supportive relationships with the staff members who cared for them. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Before reading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Interim Report, I had heard the phrase “getting rid of the Indian in the children.” I took this to mean that the schools were given the mandate to train the children in the new ways, to prepare them to assimilate, to become a part of Canadian society. Although the phrasing certainly implies that “the Indian” part of the child constituted an undesirable element, I chose to read it as a focus on the future rather than on the past. I understood how taking the children away, “scooping” them, and placing them in schools far away, where visits were almost impossible and even returning home was difficult, was an emotional hardship for everyone involved. The children were fearful, the parents sorrowful, and the results of the separation succeeded in driving an even greater wedge between generations than we see in other families. For the message, sometimes voiced, sometimes unvoiced, was that your families and your homes represent the old ways and that you must abandon the old ways to prepare for the future. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I did not fully appreciate the racist implications, the assumption that White culture is better. I never thought about possible ways to be or to become a strong culturally-based person able to function outside that mainstream culture, to integrate into a larger society without becoming subsumed by it, without assimilating and disappearing. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> But this is what I did not know.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> That the goal of separating the children from families and communities was not merely to educate them to enter Canadian society. The goal was, literally, by destroying First Nations culture, by assimilating First Nations people into mainstream Canada, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">to reduce government costs</span></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> by eliminating the people to whom Canada was indebted. Once Indian children were assimilated, the government and bureaucratic thinking went, that chunk of the Canadian federal budget set aside for the education of First Nations children and the maintenance of people on reserves would no longer be needed. Taxpayer money would be saved by eliminating one drain on the federal budget, this fiduciary responsibility to Indians. First Nations would be enfranchised tax-paying citizens, no different from anyone else. In effect, the plan was to undermine the promise of the treaties by “disappearing” the people with whom the treaties had been signed. There would be no “Indian problem” because there would no longer be any Indians. This was a betrayal, a deliberate reneging on the letter and the spirit of the treaties signed with First Nations. This made the residential schools system an attempted genocide, an attempt to destroy a people by destroying their culture. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282258046670026550.post-79485123644739849852013-01-11T14:04:00.000-08:002013-01-12T22:57:22.503-08:00Part Five - Oak River<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">DANCING WITH GHOSTS: A CROSS-CULTURAL EDUCATION</span><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">PART FIVE - OAK RIVER</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">OAK RIVER INDIAN RESERVE</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Driving from Manitoba to British Columbia, if you exit #1, the Trans-Canada Highway, at Maple Creek near the Saskatchewan/Alberta border, and head south and west, provincial road #271 takes you to historic Fort Walsh in the Cypress Hills. After Manitoba had entered Confederation as a province. After the Boundary Commission had surveyed the 49</span><sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> parallel. After the trans-continental railroad had been promised to BC. After the mounted police had been created to drive the American whiskey-traders out, Inspector (later Superintendent) James Morrow Walsh established Fort Walsh, for the North-West Mounted Police, in 1875. In1876-77, after defeating General Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull and five thousand Lakota Sioux followers, pursued by vengeful US cavalry, sought refuge across the Medicine Line under the protection of Queen Victoria. James Walsh became famous as the “Mountie” who, with half a dozen men, rode out to meet the frightful Sioux. The fort was also a gathering place for Big Bear and his people during the starving winters, the years they were wandering, refusing to accept a reserve, because the chief could see that the spirit of the treaties, the promises made to bands who had accepted reserves were already being ignored. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Near the entrance to Fort Walsh there is a bronze statue. Two men on two horses. One of them seems to be in police uniform and pillbox hat and the other is an Indian. The most striking aspect of the statue at Fort Walsh is the obvious sense of equality between the two subjects, each in perfect control of a fine horse, each looking the other in the eye, each raising a hand in greeting almost as if they are going to give each other a high five. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> This statue exemplifies that moment in Canadian history when the Whites represented by the police force and the First Nations represented by the anonymous rider evocative of the Sioux leader met as equals, as Whites and First Nations also did at the treaty-making negotiations.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Representatives of the two cultures identified grievances, exchanged proposals, reached respectful agreements concerning access to land, mutual occupation, lands reserved for Indians, for assistance in adjusting to the loss of the buffalo and to the anticipated railroad, the apprehended immigration, to a new way of living in an ancestral homeland. They met as equals until they made those marks on the papers. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The statue reminds me again of my home town, Oak River, and the Oak River Indian Reserve, renamed Sioux Valley Dakota Reserve. Were these people at Sioux Valley the remnants of Sitting Bull's followers? No, it turns out; relatives but not descendants. Lakota and Dakota are slightly different dialects. Sitting Bull had stayed in Canada for only a few years, around Fort Walsh and then Wood Mountain in southeastern Saskatchewan. Walsh, who had met him at the border and had attempted to negotiate with him as an equal deserving of respect, had failed to deliver. The chief wanted to stay; the prime minister wanted him out. The two men, Walsh and Sitting Bull, developed a powerful friendship, but the Superintendent was unable to accomplish the orders he had received from Ottawa, to talk the chief and his Sioux followers into going home. And Sitting Bull was unable to convince Ottawa that he and his people were deserving refugees, former allies of the British since the War of 1812, fleeing a vengeful enemy, needing asylum. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In the end, Ottawa decided that Walsh was too friendly with the Sioux chief and transferred him to a different post. Sitting Bull and his people found themselves without allies and with no options, victims of the same passive aggressiveness used to pressure Big Bear and his Cree people. Ignore. Stall. Withhold assistance. Let them starve. Sitting Bull's Sioux would not be given a reserve in Canada. Eventually he returned to Dakota Territory, to Standing Rock Reservation. He worked for a short time in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. In 1890, he was murdered on the reservation by federal agents who feared he was about to lead his people to the Ghost Dance. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> James Morrow Walsh resigned from the Mounties and became a successful businessman in Winnipeg. He then founded the Dominion Coal Company, headquartered in Brandon, Manitoba, with contracts to supply coal to the railroad. He served a short term as Commissioner of Yukon Territory. When he retired to Ontario, he built himself a mansion named Indian Cliff in Brockville. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">So, if there is no connection to Sitting Bull, how was the Oak River Reserve in Manitoba a Sioux reserve? How could I be so ignorant of the history of my own home town, not to mention my province and my nation? I have since learned that the Dakota, who have about seven reserves in southern Manitoba, have never signed treaty with the Canadian government, and that their reserves, at least the first two, were established before Sitting Bull's arrival.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It is a question of identity, of how a people identify themselves, and of how they resist attempts by others to determine who they are, to limit their rights, to make them smaller than they really are, before they disappear altogether. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Sioux</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> is a French word, a name given to the Dakota by rivals or former enemies. Word origins [dictionary.com] suggest that the French shortened </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Nadouessioux</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> from the Ottawa Ojibwa Chippewa, an Algonquian dialect. Two meanings are ascribed to the term: "speakers of a foreign language" or, alternatively, "little snakes," as opposed to the Ojibwa name for the Iroquois, which translated as "big snakes." The name Dakota, to a Dakota speaker, means "the people who are relatives, friends, allies." The Dakota claim to have inhabited this territory on the great central plains, now part of Manitoba, “since time immemorial.” Place names in nearby Northern Ontario such as Sioux Lookout and Sioux Narrows confirm their presence long before Confederation. They were part of the western confederacy of First Nations allied with and armed by the British during the War of 1812, uniting to halt American western expansion the way the British were attempting to halt northern intrusions. The Sioux settled on land around the headwaters of the Mississippi River, in what is now Minnesota, but they occupied a territory determined by the migration routes of the far-ranging herds of buffalo upon which the plains lifestyle depended. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> However, in the eyes of the former Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba, Alexander Morris, the Sioux had no claim to territory nor any historic relationship as allies of the Crown which Canada was obliged to honour. Morris briefed the Governor General, the Right Honourable the Earl of Dufferin in 1880: “The Sioux in the Dominion are refugees from the United States, the first body having come over some fourteen years ago. [1864] A large influx of similar refugees have recently fled to the Dominion from the same country, as the issue of the recent war between the United States and the Sioux.” [1876] </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Refugees, and therefore, without rights. How convenient. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> A Dakota friend in Winnipeg tried to tell me this story twenty-five years ago--what happened, how the Sioux arrived and chose to stay in south and western Manitoba even before Confederation. It is a story of violence and massacres and mass hangings, but its significance never registered at the time. I never realized how it was connected to the Oak River Reserve or even to the history of Red River and the province of Manitoba. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> According to Canadian government officials, the Dakota, as refugees, as American Indians who had moved north of the 49</span><sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> parallel, were not considered entitled to land in Canada. They could have been recognized as indigenous, having hunted there since time immemorial. They could have been welcomed as thousands of refugees from American policies have been welcomed before and since, as United Empire Loyalists, as escaped slaves travelling the underground railroad, as resistors to the war in Vietnam, although none of these people were indigenous, HBE, here before Europeans. However, the Dakota/Sioux were considered dangerous and untrustworthy because of what had happened in Minnesota in 1862 and later because some of them supported Sitting Bull in his defensive war against the American cavalry in the 1870s. Furthermore, the Dakota were traditional enemies of other First Nations living within Canada, especially those in the Northwest Angle where three boundaries meet, at the Lake of the Woods. Policy towards the Dakota/Sioux in the treaty-making years of the 1870s was basically one of rejection based largely on fear of what Alexander Morris referred to as "this warlike race." </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Minnesota adjoins Manitoba. Before you cross the border at Emerson, you have to decide. Do I want to enter Minnesota or North Dakota? In 1818, Great Britain and the United States agreed that the boundary between the territories they each claimed would be the 49</span><sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> parallel, but the borderline was not surveyed until 1874. The 49</span><sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> parallel bisected the ancestral hunting grounds of the Dakota Sioux, but the Sioux were not the concern of the Boundary Commission. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In 1858, the Sioux signed treaties with the American government before Minnesota joined the United States as a state. In 1862, while the American government was pre-occupied with the Civil War, the assistance promised the Dakota in the treaty they had signed before statehood did not materialize; food was scarce; pleas were ignored. “Let them eat grass,” was the answer the chiefs received as they petitioned for help, for the contracts to be lived up to, for the other side of the agreement to be honoured. The Sioux were desperate, and angry, feeling rooked. If the terms of the treaty were not being lived up to, then the authority under which settlers entered was no longer valid and permission for them to move into Dakota ancestral territory was revoked. Homesteaders were targeted as the Sioux attempted to reclaim their territory. Although there is no mention of the Dakota War in either of my American history textbooks, sources suggest that possibly one thousand to twelve hundred settlers were killed. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> As a result of the attacks on settlers, at least sixteen hundred Dakota men, women, and children were rounded up by American forces and interned. Hundreds died in the internment camp. Three hundred Sioux men were tried, convicted of murder and rape, and sentenced to death. President Abraham Lincoln, who understood conflict of interest, commuted the sentences of all but thirty-eight men, asserting that he would not “trade hangings for votes.” On December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota, thirty-eight Sioux men were hanged. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> A mass hanging of men trying to feed their starving families. Men forced to retaliate by a government deaf to their concerns, negligent in its duties. The American government then annulled the treaties, abolished the reservations, and expelled the Dakota Sioux from Minnesota, forcibly transporting some to Nebraska and west to Dakota Territory. Some of those expelled from Minnesota made their way the short distance farther north, into territory which they had always hunted, as far as the Assiniboine River in what would become Manitoba. The original group of starving refugees stopped at Sturgeon Creek where it enters the Assiniboine River, six miles west of the Red River colony and the Forks. Through Hudson's Bay Company officials, they were offered emergency food supplies in 1863 and encouraged to move farther west, to the White Horse Plains, away from the White settlement. They were refugees, yet more than refugees. Refugees coming home, to territory now "claimed" by their former ally, the British Crown. Allies, yet viewed with suspicion, with fear. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> When the new Lieutenant-Governor, William McDougall, was sent by Ottawa to represent the Crown in the proposed new Canadian colony of Red River in 1869, he had to travel through Minnesota and Dakota Territory. He saw the devastation; he knew the fear. Then he was met by armed Metis at the border and refused entry because the residents of Red River did not recognize any authority of Ottawa over their homeland where, they insisted, they had rights.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> After the Red River Resistance, after the List of Rights demanded by local residents, presented by Louis Riel and his provisional government, was accepted in Ottawa and Manitoba entered Confederation in 1870 as a province, as opposed to a colony, with the rights of local people guaranteed, government officials continued to negotiate treaties and ponder what to do with the Sioux who had remained living and working along the Assiniboine River west of the Forks. A treaty with the Chippewa of the Northwest Angle cleared the way, as one of the terms those Indians agreed to was to live in peace, including peace with their former enemies, the Sioux, rivals who occupied territory in which both groups hunted.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> After Manitoba was created, the Sioux again petitioned for land and for help to establish themselves as farmers. Alexander Morris, the new Lieutenant-Governor, acknowledged that, after Manitoba joined Confederation: "the Sioux were found living quietly in tents, in the parishes of Poplar Point, High Bluff, and Portage la Prairie . . . Immigrants from Ontario had begun to settle in that section of the Province, and the settlement rapidly increased. The Sioux were found very useful, and were employed as labourers, cutting grain, making fence-rails, and ploughing for the settlers. They also endeavored to gain a subsistence, by killing game and fur-bearing animals, and by fishing." [Morris, "The Sioux In the North-West Territories," </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Treaties of Canada With the Indians</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Online] After he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor, Morris responded to the repeated requests from the Sioux for reserve land by assuring them that whatever help they would get would be “as a matter of grace and not of right.” Morris goes on to document: “The ancient feud [between the Chippewa and the Sioux] was buried. In 1874, two reserves were allotted the Sioux, one on the Assiniboine River, at Oak River, and another still further west, at Bird Tail Creek. These reserves were surveyed, the former containing eight thousand and the latter seven thousand acres.” He adds that the Church of England established a mission at the Oak River Reserve and the Presbyterian Church at Bird Tail Creek. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I do not mean to imply, by citing Morris as the source, that he, or the Government of Canada, or Whites in general had any more legitimate authority over the land in question than did the Dakota who had inhabited it for millennia. Nor do I mean to imply that a border agreed upon by two Euro-centric nations who had not consulted the Sioux should be allowed to determine who the Sioux were and to what territories they did or did not have rights. The centre of the Sioux homeland, around the headwaters of the Mississippi, is a short two hundred and twenty kilometres south of the 49th parallel. (Who knew that there is a Continental Divide in Minnesota, with the Red River, the western border of the state, flowing north to the Arctic, and the Mississippi flowing south to the Gulf of Mexico?) The indigenous people of Minnesota had always left their villages to move within the vast plains as the buffalo moved, before and after White traders arrived, before American colonists revolted, before “Louisiana Territory” was purchased from Napoleon, before Confederation created a new nation, before boundaries were surveyed. Indeed, First Nations in North America had been promised in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 that the White man's boundaries would not apply to them. But the Canadian government refused to acknowledge that this treaty signed by Great Britain applied to Indians in the West. The Canadian government attitude was one of assumed White superiority based on race. The Sioux, like many First Nations in British Columbia, have been negotiating with the British Crown and then the Canadian federal government since 1863. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Sarah Carter's article "Agriculture and Agitation on the Oak River Dakota Reserve,1875-1895," offers much relevant detail. The Dakota who settled at Oak River, she reports, were Santee people, a collection of four groups of the most easterly Dakota who, "in the mid-eighteenth century," were pushed westward from their original home west of Lake Superior where they had lived as "semi-sedentary agriculturalists" in villages. They had grown "corn, beans, squash and pumpkins, fished, gathered wild rice and made maple sugar." They had always hunted and, after moving "to live on the margin of plains culture," they began to participate in the buffalo hunt. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> After the Minnesota uprising which resulted in the mass hanging of Sioux men in 1862, approximately 1500 Dakota Sioux arrived in British territory around Fort Garry at the Forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers. Within the lifetime of some members, these Sioux had fought with the British during the War of 1812, including the battles for Machilimackinac and Detroit. They had some moral if not legal justification to expect assistance. However, they found themselves virtually abandoned by their former allies. The aboriginal rights and title they may have had seem to have been "extinguished" without consultation or compensation by the International Boundary Commission and later, by the British North America Act. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The Sioux moved west from Sturgeon Creek to the White Horse Plains and Portage la Prairie. Carter notes that one band of Dakota camped at Turtle Mountain and others, including the followers of White Eagle or Wambdiska, who were later to settle at Oak River, pursued buffalo to the west. The Turtle Mountain Dakota were granted a reserve at Oak Lake in 1877. The reserves at Oak River and at Bird Tail Creek were selected in 1875. "The Dakota reserves were allotted on the basis of eighty acres per family of five," less than one half of the number of acres per family granted to "Canadian" Indians for their reserves. "The Oak River reserve became the home of approximately one hundred families from the bands of White Eagle, the Crow, and Singer."</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> As soon as they received their reserve, the Oak River Dakota began to raise cattle, plant root crops, and break the land to grow wheat. They were producing grain for profit within three years. However, their success at establishing themselves as farmers within a grain economy was interrupted after the Indian Act imposed external controls and the Department sent Farm Instructors to teach them how to farm. New departmental policy dictated that Indian farmers would be subsistence farmers only, like European peasants, and would be allowed to farm only with hand tools. The policy ignored the successes the reserve had demonstrated and subverted any ability to compete with other farmers by forbidding the purchase of farm machinery, and by implementing a permit system which interfered with the ability to sell grain to grain buyers, assumed control of income, and skimmed some of the profits. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Again, Carter documents the attempts of some Dakota farmers to address their grievances, sending letters, petitions, and delegations to Ottawa, attempting to meet with the Minister of Indian Affairs. However, their complaints fell on deaf ears. Factions within the community were played against each other. The "whistle-blowers" were labelled as whiners, too lazy to work, too ignorant to run their own affairs. Carter never uses the terms "ethnocentrism" to describe the departmental attitudes and policies, nor "discrimination" to explain the apparent favouritism towards European settlers. Nor is the term "colonialism" used to describe the governmental efforts to dominate and control from a distance, to make decisions for people who were used to and had already demonstrated their ability to make such decisions, to make the necessary adaptations, for themselves. She never uses the term "racism" to describe the bureaucratic stonewalling. She does note that "It was reported that the Dakota got along well with their white neighbours. They were invited to participate in local agricultural fairs where they paraded in traditional dress to the annoyance of Department officials."</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The Dakota of the Oak River Indian Reserve, renamed Sioux Valley Dakota Reserve, descendants of the Minnesota Sioux, accepted this reserve in 1874, before Sitting Bull even arrived, but they have not signed treaties as they are here, in the eyes of White Canada, “as a matter of grace,” not as a right. However, with the passage of the Indian Act, they were subject to its racist impositions. "The Dakota people (Sioux) who settled in Oak River, Manitoba in 1875 were known to conduct 'Give Away Dances,' also known as the 'Grass Dance.' The dance ceremony involved the giving away and exchange of blankets and horses; thus it breached Section 114 of the Indian Act. As a result, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Wanduta</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, an elder of the Dakota community, was sentenced to four months of hard labour and imprisonment on January 26, 1903." ["Indian Act," </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Wikipedia</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">] For my Grandpa, Harry, to have witnessed Indians dancing on the streets of Bradwardine, it must have been before this date.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It is a story without any satisfactory denouement, although my old friend from long ago assures me: "We Dakota still hope to establish a 'new relationship' reflecting a more suitable arrangement with the government of Canada." He goes on to add: "Prayers will help us." He carries a pipe, a sacred symbol, and honours the teachings, the ancient rituals and ceremonies of his people. "Prayers will help us today and in the future, for our children and the next seven generations." As the Sioux holy man, Black Elk, put it: the pipe will "help bring peace upon the earth, not only among men, but within men and between the whole of creation," to all people who understand with both the head and the heart. [Brown, p.xx]</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Such an important part of the history of my hometown, my home land. How could I not have known this? How could I not have known how the Dakota survived by keeping a low profile, by acting as ghosts, as if they did not exist, as if they had disappeared, invisible to the newcomers they had helped, for whom they had worked, for whom they had danced?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">It seems to me that the moment of encounter represented in the statue at Fort Walsh is the point in time to which we must return, to begin again, back when First Nations and White Canadians met as equals and negotiated with respect contracts which were mutually beneficial and which both sides intended to live up to. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> One hundred and fifty years after the Dakota War of 1862, students at the University of Minnesota have begun a movement supporting "An Overdue Apology" to the native people of that state. An apology which will recognize the injustice and accept responsibility. An apology from the governments representing the settler descendants who were unwitting accomplices to racism and to crimes rationalized by racism. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> If the existing institutions in Canada--government, bureaucracy, judiciary--cannot be cleansed of racists and racist attitudes, ways around them must be found. Perhaps history teaches us that no politicians should be allowed to be involved in any form of negotiations—with nations, with First Nations, with refugees, with employees like doctors or teachers, as there is no way to balance the equation, to remove the conflict of interest from the government side with its weight of tax dollars and its need to curry votes. Perhaps an invitation to impartial international observers to come in and draft a template would be an option. A template which would include some reference to reserve lands, to Crown lands, to natural resources and mineral rights, to respect for Mother Earth, to a return to self-government, self-determination, and to education. Perhaps even to some form of authentic spiritual connection to place. Ways must be found to get back to that original point of contact, nation to nation, person to person, to copy the equation correctly, equal on each side, and begin to work it out from there. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Going back to the original equation and beginning again, in good faith, reminds me of one final lesson from Grade Twelve Math: “Never say never.” In the words of Van Morrison, a Celtic bard: “Got to go back, got to go back, got to go back, for the healing, go on with the dreaming.” (</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>No Guru, No Method, No Teacher</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">)</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People concludes: The provisions set forth in this Declaration shall be interpreted in accordance with the principles of justice, democracy, respect for human rights, equality, non-discrimination, good governance and good faith.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">BEYOND FAITH</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Although we may be living examples of “culture failure,” that the faith of our grandmothers has not accompanied us into our personal futures, artists like Van Morrison remind us that gurus and methods and teachers are not necessarily necessary. We learn our own lessons, experience our own mysteries, receive messages from the land and from our interactions with the natural and cultural environment. Enough to convince us to believe in the Little People or the Great Mystery, in something beyond the human which communicates with us. </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> For my apartment in Winnipeg, I went to the Winnipeg Art Gallery to find a suitable poster, the way we “decorators” do, composed of colours which we love which will draw every disparate element in the room together. I chose a landscape by an artist whose name I did not recognize, Deryk Houston. It seemed to be an updated “Group of Seven,” say a Northern Ontario scene after a wildfire, done in shades of sand, burgundy, pink, and grey. It hung over the fireplace in my apartment and then upstairs in my first house. Five years later, after moving to the Fraser Valley, after I relocated the poster to my new office in a forestry work camp, a colleague visiting from the valley looked at the picture and said “Oh, the Black Tusk.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I said, “How did you know? The title is 'Looking Across to the Black Tusk.' What's the Black Tusk?” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Here.” His fingers trace a looming charcoal peak. “The Black Tusk is a mountain,” he says, “on the road to Whistler. If you look out your office window, if you walk to the top of that ridge, you could probably see it from here.” </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> At the time, I shivered. Like the boy who drew the running chair which the Elder had predicted. The future is already written, and sometimes we are flashed glimpses, like the wink of a goddess's eye, taunting. And this was not the first time a painting had grabbed me, art had spoken to me, for some inexplicable reason. The Dakota </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">friend who told me the story of the Minnesota Massacres also told me how his mother was a midwife who worked in the nursing home where I was born, in Rivers, Manitoba. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">As if that wasn't enough, he stopped in to visit one day after I started working in corrections, after I returned from Kingston. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> When I joined the service, I was given the option of training in Kingston, Ontario or Mission, BC. I had very little experience of Ontario so I chose to go to Kingston. Our group was there for almost sixteen weeks and on weekends we from the West would rent a car and tour the backroads, go “antiquing” between Kingston, Trenton, and Ottawa. At a little town called Westport I found a large ( 40 x 60 cm ) framed print I could not resist. It is called “Daughter of the Summer Moon” and is a simple embossed sketch of a female in a flowing daisy-trimmed gown silhouetted by a moon, all gold and white on white. It is possible that it was the title which attracted me. My father had died almost one year before, and his birthday coincided with the summer solstice to which the print alluded. I had it wrapped and tied and I had to lug that awkward parcel around, fragile glass, from barracks to barracks, from small commuter plane to Toronto airport, to overhead compartments, to Winnipeg, and home to my apartment. When my Dakota friend visited, he said: “I see you have one of my cousin's paintings.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “What?” I asked in disbelief. “Who?” He was referring to my “Daughter of the Summer Moon.” “I just couldn't resist it,” I tried to explain. “I don't know who the artist is. It says </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Ioyan Mani </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">but I don't know what that means.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Ioyan Mani</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">. That's her Dakota name, Walking Beyond. She's Maxine Noel,” he from Oak River Reserve tried to explain. “She's my cousin, from Arrow River.” Thirty kilometres west of my home town, Oak River, both on Highway #24. Her family is from the Birdtail Dakota Sioux Reserve. So art speaks and tells me that there are things I haven't dreamed of in my philosophy, that there is Mystery in the world, powers at work in our lives, of which we mere humans remain ignorant. Sometimes they like to taunt us, these mysterious Earth Spirits, to remind us that they are here, even if we cannot see.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">And when I </span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">finally reached BC and settled into my retreat in a little mountain town called Hope, my neighbour, Mr. Weaver, who lived at the end of Silverhope Road the seventeen years I've been here, is the artist who designed the statue at Fort Walsh in the Cypress Hills. </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">And when I asked my brother what we should do about Mum's ashes, he looked at me as if I were losing it and said: “Don't you remember? I told you I dealt with them. I took them to the Kettle River. To Ingram Bridge.” </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> But this story is not about me. These stories are about one simple Canadian's learning process, about what racism is and about how racism affects our interactions with others. About our Canadian heritage of racism which made the treaty-making process a bait and switch. Which risks making on-going negotiations a sham. About the importance of learning and unlearning. About how it is our duty as Canadians to fix ourselves, to exterminate the beast of racism from our culture by exterminating it from our hearts. By substituting it, I want to say “with Love” but let's just leave it at “with Respect.”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> For the hardest thing for most of us Whites to do is just to “shut up,” to listen. To paddle, not to steer. To enable and support First Nations people to live the independent and self-determined lives of human dignity which they choose to live. </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Message via Facebook: “The Past, the Present, and the Future walk into a bar. It was tense.”</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2282258046670026550.post-87833527908258977792013-01-11T14:01:00.000-08:002013-01-11T14:01:14.188-08:00Bibliography<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">BIBLIOGRAPHY</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Works Cited: </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Adams, Howard</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>. Prison of Grass: Canada from the Native Point of View.</i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Toronto: New Press, 1975</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Allen, Robert S.</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> His Majesty's Indian Allies: British Indian Policy in the Defence of Canada, 1774-1815. </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Toronto & Oxford: Dundurn, 1992</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Bridgeman, J.M. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Indian, 'the Other,' in the Canadian Quest for Identity</i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> UofM MA Thesis Online</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Brown, Joseph Epes, Ed. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">New York: Penguin, 1971</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms</i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982. Government of Canada, Department of Justice, Laws of Canada Online</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Carter, Sarah. "Agriculture and Agitation on the Oak River Dakota Reserve, 1875-1895." </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Manitoba History</i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, Number 6, Fall 1983. Manitoba Historical Society website Online</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Coupland, Douglas. “Canada's Secret Handshake,” artinfo magazine Online</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Frye, Northrop. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Educated Imagination. </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Toronto: CBC, 1963</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Hughes, David R. and Evelyn Kallen. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Anatomy of Racism: Canadian Dimensions. </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Montreal: Harvest House, 1974</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">"Indian Act." Aboriginal Peoples In Canada Portal. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Wikipedia</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Lutz, John Sutton.</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Makuk: A New History of Aboriginal-White Relations. </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">MacIntyre, Linden. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Bishop's Man. </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Toronto: Vintage, 2010</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Morris, Alexander. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, Including the Negotiations on which They Were Based, and Other Information Relating Thereto </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Online</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Regan, Paulette.</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada. </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010</span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Scott, Duncan Campbell. “The Forsaken”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Sioux Valley Dakota Nation First Nation No. 290.” 2004-2005 First Nation Community Profiles – MB Region</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Truth and Reconciliation Commission Interim Report.</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> They Came for the Children </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Online</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">United Nations.</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Online</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">United Nations.</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Universal Declaration of Human Rights </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Online</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Wiesel, Elie. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Night. </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. “Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech”</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Bibliography: Related Reading on Dakota, Cree, Coast Salish, Gitxsan, Riel, and First Nations Spirituality and Politics (Search by Author and Title): </span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada website Online</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Allard, Jean et al. Americas.ca website Online. "Big Bear's Treaty." "Modernizing Treaty Annuities: Implications and Consequences." </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Ashwell, Reg. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Coast Salish: Their Art, Culture and Legends</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Blanshard Centennial History Committee. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>History of Blanshard Municipality, Volume II, 1884-1970</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Boyd, Cynthia. "U of M[innesota] students hope documentary prompts debate over apology to Native Americans." Minnpost Online</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Brody, Hugh. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Maps and Dreams</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Brown, Chester. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Cardinal, Gil. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Spirit Within. </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">National Film Board</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">"Cartier, George-Etienne." </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Dictionary of Canadian Biography</i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Online</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Clay, Charles. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Swampy Cree Legends</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">CPAC In Conversation with Maclean's.</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> First Nations in Canada: Is There a Way Forward?</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">"Dakota War of 1862."</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Wikipedia</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Dempsey, Hugh A. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Always an Adventure: An Autobiography</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Dempsey, Hugh A. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Big Bear: The End of Freedom</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Drysdale, Vera Louise. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Gift of the Sacred Pipe</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Francis, Daniel. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian In Canadian Culture</i></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Francis, Daniel. “ 'National Dream' Revisited.” The Tyee</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Francis, Marvin. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>City Treaty</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Gitxsan First Nation website</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Online</span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Goetzman, Amy. "War of 1862: Books, exhibit, discussions illuminate conflict" Minnpost Online</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Guillet, Edwin C. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>"You'll Never Die, John A!"</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>History of Racism in Canada </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">hopesite Online</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Hofstadter, Richard </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>et al. The United States: A History of the Republic</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"Indian Act." Mapleleafweb Online</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">LaRocque, Emma. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>When the Other Is Me</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Laurence, Margaret. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Diviners</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"Macdonald, Sir John Alexander." </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Dictionary of Canadian Biography</i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Online</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">MacEwan, Grant. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Sitting Bull: The Years in Canada</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Meland, Carter. U of Minnesota Student Project. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>An Overdue Apology</i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">. Video Documentary Online</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Alexander Morris.” Office of the Treaty Commissioner Online</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Neihardt, John G.</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Pollock, Sharon. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Walsh.</i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> (a play)</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Radin, Paul. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Robinson, Eden. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Sasquatch at Home</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Satzewich, Vic. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Racism in Canada</i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Saul, John Ralston. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Scofield, Gregory.</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Louis: The Heretic Poems</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Seesequasis, Paul. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Tobacco Wars</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Shipley, Nan. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The James Evans Story</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Shirritt-Beaumont, Raymond Morris. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Rossville Scandal, 1846: James Evans, the Cree, and a Mission on Trial. </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">UofM UofW MA Thesis Online</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Siggins, Maggie. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Riel: A Life of Revolution</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"The Sioux Valley Dakota Nation Comprehensive Agreement-in-Principle." Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada Online</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Tedlock, Dennis and Barbara Tedlock. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Teachings From the American Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Todd, Lewis Paul and Merle Curti. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Rise of the American Nation</i></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Udstrand, Paul. "Giving History Consequences: Apologizing to Minnesota's Indian People." Thoughtful Bastards blog, reprinted in Minnpost Blog Cabin Online</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">University of Manitoba Visionary Conversations: Exploring Human Rights. Hotel Vancouver. February 29, 2012</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Vaillant, John. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Walsh, James Morrow.” </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"Walsh, James Morrow." </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Wikipedia</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">"War of 1812."</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Wikipedia</i></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Weaver, John. “Sketch and notes, North West Mounted Police Monument and Fort Walsh,” Estate of John Barney Weaver.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Wiebe, Rudy. </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Temptations of Big Bear</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Wolfart, H. Christoph and Janet F. Carroll.</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i> Meet Cree: A Guide to the Cree Language</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Front Cover Image: the writer's dream cover image, </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><b>Earth Spirits</b></i></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">, by Dakota artist Maxine Noel, </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ioyan Mani</span></i></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">, Walking Beyond. A cover image with a "modern" look that suggests "Elder wisdom" without misleading readers into thinking the book is about history or "the past."</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Back Cover: Non-Fiction</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Back Cover: Who were the first people to live where you live today? Where are they now? How did that happen?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Back Cover BLURB</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Dancing With Ghosts</i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> is an excellent name for your new book. [The] Dakota survived “Canada's Apartheid” by acting as Ghosts who did not exist. [B]ut we as Dakotas keep our promise and commitment to the teachings of the Sacred “CANUPA” Peace Pipe and the Seven Sacred Rites, by WELCOMING these foreigners to our LAND and by HELPING them: to clear land for their/our crops, gardens, to utilize Mother Nature's gifts, to establish homesteads, farming villages, towns, etc. We as Dakotas still feel we will get a New Arrangement with Canada's Federal Government. – Calvin Pompana, Dakota Nation</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0