After
attending last night’s INM gathering last night (From Idle No More to the
Indigenous Nationhood Movement) I think I need a Children of White Settler
support group. It was intense. After only a couple of hours listening to
personal stories, the emotional rollercoaster that moved me from sadness and
guilt, to a sense of relief, and back again and all around left me exhausted.
I didn’t know
that a trench 30 ft wide and 80 ft deep known as the St. Lawrence Seaway was
built on top of Taiaiake Alfred’s family homes, forcing thousands of years of
ancestral history to suddenly take a radical turn. Taiaiake (a Kahnawake Mohawk
and Professor of Indigenous Governance at UVic) reminded us how important it is
to protect the wilderness now, before it’s too late.
Most people
know that indigenous cultures the world over are resplendent with songs and
ceremony, last night we were reminded that we don’t really know how significantly
intertwined ceremony is woven into the culture until we experience it
personally. Taiaiake told us a story about his experience near Bella
Coola, where he watched a native man communicate with a grizzly bear that had
wandered a little too close to their gathering. The man used his drum and
his voice to calm the bear, which turned and retreated into the forest.
It was clear this experience affected him deeply, one small example of the ways
indigenous people were truly connected to the land and all that surrounded
them, something he was deprived because of the way the colonialists chose to
interact with his people. It’s these experiences, he said, that inspire
people to fight with all their heart to stop any further destruction.
Toghestiy
(Hereditary Chief of the Likhts’amisyu Clan, Wet’suwet’en) and Freda Huson (Wet’suwet’en,
and spokesperson for the Unis’tot’en Action Camp) travelled 12+ hours just to
get to this gathering and share their stories. They had both lived “successful”
integrated lives, studying and working and earning and being part of the
mainstream consumer culture. And they had both found the experience
lacking. Freda spoke of an emptiness that she didn’t understand.
There she was with a good job, a house, no debt, but she was not happy.
Then she began walking in the woods, feeling the spirit of her ancestors,
finding water that’s still so clean you can drink it directly from the river,
and now she’s willing to go to jail to prevent destruction of the magnificent
northern wilderness of her homeland. Sitting across the table and trying
to negotiate just doesn’t work, she said. They’ve tried it. Their
ancestors have tried it. Treaties are written, and then broken, over and
over again. The only way to stop them is to stand in their way, that’s
all they listen to.
I didn’t
realize that roads in Saanich pass over former village sites. I often
give thought to what this land must have looked like pre-contact, what a
paradise it must have been with its plentiful and clean running water, camas
fields, and salmon filled oceans and streams, but I’d never thought
specifically about riding over peoples’ village sites. One of the Saanich
elders spoke about it after the formal presentations. Another spoke about
his mother who was removed from her family and sent to school on Cooper’s
Island. Nowadays she sits in her rocking chair watching television.
When he asks her about his grandmother she always says “oh, she was a wonderful
woman.” That’s all she says. Eventually the man realized that’s all
she says because she never knew her mother. The colonialists took her
before she was old enough to form any significant memories (and then, probably,
tortured her mind with memories of abuse).
It’s
difficult, challenging, to begin to comprehend all of the horrible things that
have happened, that continue to happen, in an effort to eliminate these people
and their cultural heritage. It’s horrible to realize that, even though
my own life has been difficult, a lot of doors have opened merely because of
the colour of my skin. I sometimes have to put up with sexist bullshit,
but I’m not subject to racist comments like Dawn Smith’s (Nuu-chah-nulth, LE,NONET/UVic Education) young
female relative who recently asked - where’s Idle No More when racist
comments are thrown at her?
A couple of
weeks ago I went door knocking with the Social Coast crew, in an effort to
raise awareness about some of the street names in Victoria and perhaps reclaim
traditional native place names instead. Trutch was a land commissioner
who freed up land for settlers by significantly reducing the size of BC
reserves. Sutlej was the name of a ship sent to destroy villages near
Tofino. And Begbie is well known as the “Hanging Judge,” ending the lives
of many natives who refused to get with the program of colonization. We
knocked on a few doors along Trutch street, to mixed reactions. Those who
get it, they really get it. We should absolutely refuse to recognize
these barbaric acts with place names. Others, well they just baffle me.
One young woman, who lives in the renovated Trutch mansion, said it’s not up to
her to judge history.
Really?
We don’t judge Hitler, or have an opinion on the witch burnings? This was
an attempt at genocide, shouldn't we make an effort to judge that?
If people
really knew this history, I’m pretty sure they’d form some kind of opinion.
But, thanks to the corporate and state media who are everyday responsible for
the vast majority of education the masses receive, we will instead be
programmed to think of Toghestiy and Freda, and everyone else willing to stand
the front lines in this war for the remaining earth’s wilderness, as trouble
makers. Terrorists.
In addition to
the challenge I personally feel processing all of the aforementioned, and finding
my place in the struggle (are my urban attempts at alternative media enough or
should I join the camp and put my body on the front line?) my very strong vegan
sensibilities kept nagging at me. There’s no doubt in my mind that the
way forward, if we are to survive as a human species, is through reconciliation
with the past and a clear understanding of the native relationship with the
earth. They realized a special balance with nature. They honoured the
spirits of the animals whose lives they took, and they didn’t do it for profit.
But there are now 7 billion people on this planet, and we can’t all live off
the land like they do at the Unis’tot’en camp.
Last night I
heard a very powerful call to protect the earth for future generations, to
preserve the traditional ways so the children’s children will know the
languages and the significance of the ceremonies. I couldn’t help but
think … what about protecting the earth for the earth’s sake? Why not
preserve the wilderness for the grizzly bears, and the wolves, and the owls,
and the millions of tiny creatures that comprise the mysterious biodiversity of
the ancient forest? I suppose that message was contained within the INM
call for nationhood, but I didn’t hear it.
I guess I won’t
be leaving for the camp anytime soon. I’ll continue to struggle with my
own feelings of inadequacy and do my best to support them from here, from the
low-carbon life I live in this urban environment that has been constructed on
their homelands. And if I can continue to inspire my friends and family
to reduce their environmental footprints, to shift to plant-based diets and
thereby refuse to participate in the continued torture and murder of innocent
creatures, perhaps that’s enough for a pale-skin born of working class settler
parents who only wanted to build a better world for their children.
Hy'ch'qa Si:yam (thank you)
