We were all created by Gitchi Manitou. That means we are all related to each other. We were all made of the same stuff. We are all part of the same family. Humans. The Four-Leggeds, or the animals, and the trees, the Standing-Ones. Everything you see around you is part of your family, the people, plants, the trees, and even the rocks. We need all these things to live, and they need us. We are all related. We are all part of the cycle of life. What you see around you must be treated with respect. So that means that we honour the animals when we go out hunting. We thank them for the life that they give us. For giving us their flesh so that we can live. And it means that you are good to your brother when you are looking after him. You do not hit him. You are not rude to him. You treat him like you want to be treated yourself. That's what it is to follow the Red Road.Edmund Metatawabin, former Chief of the Fort Albany First Nation, has written a memoir which, with the recent release of the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, couldn't be more timely. In the 1950s, Metatawabin was sent to the St. Anne's Residential School (now considered the worst of the worst of these abusive institutions), where he was routinely starved, whipped, sexually abused and humiliated, electrocuted with a homemade electric chair, forced to eat his own vomit – all perpetrated by sadistic Catholic nuns, priests and brothers.
Not only does Metatawabin share these early horrors, but he paints a sorry picture of everyday life on his northern reserve: with people in debt to the Hudson's Bay Company (and trappers captive to the ever-changing prices they can get for furs); a dozen people living in a two room house (and a seven year wait for government housing); residents not allowed to fell a tree or build themselves a solid home on “their own land” without government approval; and the Catholic Church having undue influence.
I used to joke with my friends about reserve life when I was at Trenton University. Clayton, Simone and me hanging around at the Commoner bar, laughing about the crowded little houses and the lengthy welfare line. We had ridiculed the Indian Agents and the Indian Act. We japed the so-called Treaty Days, a government-enforced celebration, where the RCMP officers used to come to town to remind us that they'd ripped us off – sorry, to remind us of a historic agreement that no sooner was signed than ignored, like the rest of the broken promises. Each year, my parents lined up with the others, along the hallways of St. Anne's, to get their Treaty Day money. Four dollars per person, as stipulated by the treaties. Same as it ever was. Given to us in the places where we were whipped.Although Metatawabin was able to find love, get married, and pursue higher education, he suffered PTSD from his years at St. Anne's and fell into a self-destructive cycle of alcohol abuse and remorse. He was eventually saved by a Native-run Healing Circle approach to rehab, and as corny as it may sound, I was in tears as Metatawabin made his breakthrough:
The heat was so intense that I could not breathe. It pulled me into a sadness that had been there for as long as I could remember. Tears mixed with the steam that drenched my face. I cried until I was nothing but dry heat. I lay down on the floor, where it was cooler, and my chest sank into the damp earth. George began to sing, and one by one, the others joined in. Their voices resonated deep within my flesh. I listened as my skin danced with their melodies. Until their last notes had faded into the heat. Then I tried to get up, but I felt a heavy weight, like a dog, on my chest. The weight began to fill my chest, pulling me into a darkness deeper than night. I let go and began to fall. The thick black air pulled me downwards, into the ground. I felt the soil beneath my fingers. I was on the floor, weak and part of the dirt. I was the Great Mother Earth. I was Gitchi Manitou and his Creation.Finally freed from alcoholism, Metatawabin returned to Fort Albany, was elected Chief, and has spent the last years using traditional Cree knowledge to heal the up-and-coming generations, has been a Native activist – successfully leading a lawsuit against his abusers (although true justice would have seen more people punished, and more severely) and compelling government agents to allow his band to gain some economic autonomy – while writing and lecturing on his experiences. In every way, this man is a hero.
Usually when I read a book like this, I'm left wringing my hands, wondering, “As awful as it is, what can I do about this?” And most compellingly, Metatawabin has a list of suggestions: Abolish the Indian Act, support Native sovereignty, advocate for political change (better representation in Parliament), help youth in education, target youth suicide, and support Native artists. What Metatawabin is asking for isn't more money or some fantasy return to precontact Native life, and what he is asking for is totally reasonable, and I would hope, doable; a walk together along the Red Road.
As a book, Up Ghost River isn't terribly well-written – as the excerpts might suggest – despite Metatawabin using an award-winning journalist as a cowriter, but the material it contains is too important for me to give it any less than five stars. This is a book that every Canadian should read – not because we settlers need to be made to feel guilty about the actions of our ancestors, but because those actions have consequences that we can address today.
Finalists – 2015 Trillium Book Award
Margaret Atwood : Stone Mattress
Dionne Brand : Love Enough
Kate Cayley : How You Were Born
James King : Old Masters
Thomas King : The Back of the Turtle
Edmund Metatawabin : Up Ghost River
Of these, my favourite read was Up Ghost River, but congrats to Kate Cayley for the win.
*****
Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report came out, I've been following the debate about whether or not "cultural genocide" is an appropriate phrase, and for the most part, I've been on the side against its use. "Genocide" as a term means something specific, and although even one child dying in a Residential School was too many, the Canadian government's goal was never to kill off our Native population, in contrast to what happened south of us. The loudest spokesperson against the use of "cultural genocide" has been Conrad Black, and yesterday he had this to say:
With regret I respond, briefly, to the urgings of many readers who have asked me to return to the vexed subject of the treatment of the native peoples. In general, that treatment has been shabby, though increasingly well-intentioned and well-funded. There is much to apologize for and I believe in the value of confession, repentance and trying to make amends. But conditions are aggravated and not ameliorated by exaggeration and by putting on the airs, on behalf of Canada, of a criminal nationality that has been guilty of crimes against humanity.
I cannot allow to pass without comment the accusation against me by the former head of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Bernie Farber, of a “dastardly minimizing of Canada’s genocidal history.” While he cites his own tragic family history in the attempted extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis and their collaborators, I do not believe anyone ever has or could question my credentials as a philosemite, and Farber’s acute awareness of what a real genocide is makes more odious and irresponsible his assimilation of murdering six-million Jews (and six-million non-Jews) in death camps with the tawdry, often shameful and inexcusable, treatment of the native people of Canada, by the French and British colonists and frequently by Canada as an autonomous country. The distinction between satanic crime and reprehensible misgovernment must not be blurred, and the failure to make that distinction assassinates historic truth, trivializes the Nazi Holocaust and mass murders of non-Jews, mortally abuses the language, all Western languages, and wilfully assaults the moral basis from which Canada must address and do justice to the profound problem of the native people. The massacre inventors are just as odious as the Holocaust deniers.
I have been defamed by more substantial figures than Bernie Farber (and there are few people I would rather share that distinction with than Jeffrey Simpson, as in this case). But in his mindless zeal, Farber dishonours the Jews and the Canadians, and does no favours for the native people. All Canadians have a right to be in Canada. North America’s original inhabitants (that is, when the Europeans arrived in the 15th century and afterwards) did not own or occupy this continent; their population was too sparse for that and they had no right to object to the arrival of the Europeans, though they certainly have every right to object to much that has happened since.
What is distressing is the ant-like inroads made on the national consciousness by what is an undisguised effort by Farber, and only a thinly disguised attempt by more substantial commentators, to place this country squarely in the same moral position as Nazi Germany, a country that premeditatedly murdered 12-million innocent people, and unleashed war on almost all of Europe and northeast Africa in which more than 25-million citizens of other countries died violently, and which led to the occupation of every square millimetre of Germany by powers it has attacked. Those powers, after reasonable due process, sentenced the surviving German leaders to death or lengthy imprisonment, in reasonable compliance with international law. I am skeptical of the practice of trying former enemies and disapprove of the death penalty, but the post-war trials of Nazi leaders were serious attempts to provide due process for the surviving authors of the greatest crimes in history. The comparison of Goering, Kaltenbrunner, later Eichmann and other Nazi criminals (most of the prominent leaders committed suicide before they could be tried and executed), with John A. Macdonald, is unspeakable.
I truly do find that to be a compelling argument, while agreeing with Edmund Metatawabin that much work is left to do. I didn't want to put any criticisms in the body of my review, but there are two facts that are nagging at me: First of all, unlike the bush planes flying in and scooping up children from unwilling families as Richard Wagamese wrote about in Indian Horse, Metatawabin was sent to St. Anne's at his mother's request. When he tried to complain to her once about getting whipped at school, she shrugged and said it was the same for her when she attended -- so is it cultural genocide when attendance (in this case) wasn't imposed by the government? Also, when Metatawabin met his wife in the 1970s, she was a teacher at St. Anne's and was appalled by his stories. I keep reading that the last Residential School was closed in 1996, and I assumed that they were horrifying cesspools right up until the end, but if that's not quite true, then that should be made clear (and it might be in the T & R report, but I fear it's not an impartial document if it uses the term "cultural genocide"...)
A couple more thoughts: The other day there was this article about the French woman who killed eight of her babies because she says they were a result of incest with her own father. The leading comment following the article was:
Recently a woman jumped a red light in a truck in saskatoon killed two teens. Claimed her parents were messed up from residential school abused her. Her lack of parenting skills led to death of her son and in grief she turned to drink. Banned multiple times from driving she still did and killed two precious teens ruined countless lives. Did not get a custodial sentance due to mitigating circumstances. How is this woman any different ? She needs help not jail . Horrific what people can do
I 100% believe in the Canadian government stepping up and making amends for the abuses these people had to suffer, but I am not very sympathetic to this story -- a woman's whose parents were "messed up from residential school" didn't get a custodial sentence after the vehicular homicide of two teens? I appreciate that the healing Metatawabin discovered isn't available to everyone, but his story highlights what can be achieved; before tragedy strikes.
And to be fair, even after nodding along with Conrad Black's conclusions, I found this comment following his article to be powerfully persuasive:
So strapping a 5 year old (years later turns out to be my dad) kid to a bed for 8 months until he learned to speak proper English at Mohawk Indian Residential is not cultural genocide.
Placing First Nations children into an electric chair until they spoke proper English at St Anne's Indian Residential school is also not cultural genocide.
Expropriation of First Nations lands and resources under the Oliver Act to steal first nations lands and resources legally under Canadian Law isn't an act of cultural genocide?
Involuntary sterilization and mandatory attendance of Indian Residential Schools under Canada's Apartheid laws of the Indian Act is not Cultural Genocide??
I guess just like what Steve Harper said about the Arabs calling dead Palestinian women and children "Human Shields", I guess the dead Jews during world war 2 and First Nations children at Church run Indian Residential Schools were just a whole lot of Human Shields.
That's an angry man, and he has every right to be angry. How do we get onto the Red Road together? I'm still confused, and that's why I think every Canadian should read Up Ghost River and join the conversation.
