28 - Sunday, Apri! 18, 1993 — North Shore News

Status was

THERE ARE so darn’
many things on my plate to
share with you | find myself
thinking of the advantages
of bulletin boards.

Eleanor
Godley

THE VINTAGE YEARS

What if 1 just told you, ‘‘Hey,
these people at this number will
- help. you figure what benefits are
available to you from this
bunch”; or “This is where you

“Tntroducing i

ask for the loan of a pair of crut-
ches.””

Just the facts, ma*am, and cut
the palaver.

Well, Pd hate it. This is our
chance for a visit, ch?

We can hunker down together
over this column and show each
other what we've got in our
pockets.

Right at this moment mine’s
chock full of all kinds of interest-
ing stuff, some of it helpful, sure,
but some of it out of the lifetimes

only you and I can recall and ~

ponder.

Forgive me, though, if the se-
quence
whack.

You can see, here, that Easter
hopped along and interrupted the
aboriginais, but that siory
shouldn’t be shoved out of sight
again.

That’s what we've been doing
with it for a long time now.
Because it’s full of pain.

Most of that pain derived from
the paternalism of the invaders,
the British especially, who took
the high ground with their in-
sistence on assimilation.

It turned out what they meant
was destruction, rather.

There was apparentiy no one

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is sometimes out of,

among them who could under-
stand the natives’ total indif-
ference to white ways of gov-
erning and living.

These Brits were so sublimely
sure that the culture they came
steeped in was enviable, that they
couldn’t wait to start moulding
the poor beleaguered savages in
the patterns of their so obvious
superiority.

What a gift!

The Indian Act. It would wrap
all natives in the same blanket;
they would be ‘‘taken care of by
the government of Canada.”’ ~

That meant their ancient
spiritual expression would be
banned, to be replaced by the ter-
rifying concept of Hell, for onc.

They would be offered cheap
alcohol as barter.

Ten thousand of their five-
year-old children would be taken
from their families and sentenced
to alienation until they were 18.

The potlach was banned.

This ceremonial celebration had
to be erased because it was a sin-
gularly native expression of. suc-
cess and brotherhood, therefore

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reinforcing tribal self-respect, and
it also was historically a unique
form of registry.

All these manifestations of
native culture interfered with the
government’s plans for the erasure
of the tribes, all of them.

They racked up 30 different
ways in which an aboriginal would
become a= ‘‘non-Indian,’’ and
therefore status-less.

Going to university was one of
them. Marrying a white person
got the same penalty.

Anything was snatched at in
their eagerness to break the identi-
ty of these people and thus be
able to render them less of a
burden to the Crown!

That’s how it was phrased. |

So now we are the reapers of
the consequences of those resiric-
tive, narrow-minded, calculating,
terrible years, and the first marvel
is that the spirit is not broken.

Major damage has. been done,
which will cost us incalculably,
but the old deep teachings haven’t
disappeared, nor has the sense of
belonging to the iand.

And there are enough who

aken away from aboriginal people

know the true and essential stages
of life to set the healing in mo-
tion.

We who were the occupying
force know more about Chinese
or Czech culture than we know of
the Indian, simply because those
were invited to live next door and
share our schools and Set up
businesses.

To this day we fail to make eye
contact with native people on our
Streets, to our shame. ,

As of nine years ago, native
people are now allowed to raise
their own children. ;

A lot of them, though, don’t
know how, having themselves had
no family experience, and so
there’s an appalling detritus of the
wounded for which we must be
responsible.

Their suicide rate is the highest -
in. the world,
largest percentage of jail inmates,

‘and there aré thousands simply

adrift.

There’s one line in the Indian’:
Act that says ‘‘any existing vights ,
cannot be taken away.”* ”

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