Thrust onto centre stage by circumstance

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THE URBANE INDIAN

On July 12, an official Ontario inquiry into the death of Native protester Dudley George opened. Dudley was an unassuming Ojibway man who was better with a joke than with a political manifesto. From what I understand, he was not the type of man who made a regular habit of upsetting the status quo or rocking the political boat. He was more interested in visiting with his family than having guns pointed at him. That's easy to understand. But as the old adage goes, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. And it killed him.

It was nearly nine years ago when the unarmed Kettle and Stony Point First Nations resident came face to face with the Ontario Provincial Police at Ipperwash, a small park on the shores of Lake Huron. The end result being one less living Native protester to annoy the authorities. He had been there in support of his community's attempt to convince the authorities to return land appropriated by the government during the Second World War. The demonstration was peaceful. Dudley was peaceful. The morning everything happened was peaceful. A few days later, his funeral was peaceful.

As the long anticipated inquiry approached, I couldn't help pondering this man's brief existence. I never met the man. Never met the family. Never even been to Kettle and Stony Point. But there was something achingly familiar about the whole situation. The scenario had a familiar ring of sadness about it, something about a man who became more famous in death than in life. This was a person who, if not for the accuracy of a trained police sniper, probably would have been more than content to live in relative obscurity. That's how I thought of Anne Frank.

On one hand, they are strikingly dissimilar-age, race, geography and cause of death. Yet, it occurred to me, they are sacred kin. People in far away places had decided their fates without having met them. And, it could be said they died because of their race.

If Anne Frank had not perished at the hands of the Nazis, would she still be a household name today? Hard to say, but unlikely. A good friend of mine praised the quality of the writing in her diary, but had she lived would the diary be recommended reading in school? Or was it her death that made it so memorable? She was a very ordinary girl with ordinary problems thrust onto centre stage by events beyond her understanding. In fact, it was her ability to remain a typical young girl in an atypical situation that cemented her fame.

Same with Dudley. In reading One Dead Indian by Peter Edwards, I get the impression Dudley George was not meant for greatness. I do not say this to be malicious or cruel. Dudley seemed to be just one of the thousands upon thousands of guys that were born on the reserve and were content spending their lives being good sons, brothers, husbands and fathers.

Instead Dudley George's name has become a rallying cry for bus-loads of social and political advocates, and a royal pain in the back end for Mike Harris, the former Ontario premier, on whose watch Dudley's days were ended. Many claim the blood from the policeman's bullet splashed onto Harris' hands, and so the inquiry.

Dudley George and Anne Frank, two names you don't normally expect to see linked together. Yet they have joined the prestigious ranks of ordinary people who's very deaths have vaulted them into the larger mainstream consciousness. Dudley George's and Anne Frank's commitment to history came not from how they lived, but how they died. In many ways, both died because of what they were, their names becoming synonymous with tradegy and injustice. It's ironic that both their deaths, more than 50 years apart, have their roots in government policy from the Second World War.

Who knows what's going to happen with this official inquiry? Cynicism about inquiries in general and a serious scepticism in government's commitment to dealing with Native issues have made me a little jaded over the yers. We can only hope Dudley George didn't die in vain. I think it's safe to say Anne Frank didn't.