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From a dream
to a success in one year
By David Wiwchar
Raven's Eye Writer
PORT ALBERNI
It was less than a year ago when Port Alberni RCMP Constable
Ken Stevens first had the idea to take Nuu-chah-nulth youth on
a tour of Vancouver's east end in an effort to scare them away
from paths that inevitably lead towards self-destruction.
Since then, with the help of fellow Constable Al Stenger, and
Vancouver Native Liaison Officer Morris Bates, Stevens has made
it possible for more than 150 youth to witness the horrors of
life at the bottom of the societal barrel.
Kids who are starting to dabble in drugs, alcohol and crime get
a rare opportunity to see, meet, and talk to drug-addicted pimps,
pushers and prostitutes. They soon learn the people of skid row
were once just like them - wide-eyed youth dreaming of successful
futures. But then something happened. They smoked their first
joint at 14, started injecting heroin at 15, and within a few
years found themselves living a hellish nightmare of a life in
the forgotten bowels of Vancouver.
"It has a real impact on these kids," said Stevens.
"Especially the girls. They didn't realize how bad it was
as far as prostitution, drugs and alcohol."
Tseshaht, Huu-ay-aht, Uchucklesaht and Hupacasath youth have
made the trip to meet Morris Bates and have him talk to them
and take them on a tour of the area where he works.
"In one alley, we've seen 10 or 12 people injecting themselves
with drugs at the same time," said Stevens. "We saw
this one lady laying on the ground while a guy was injecting
a needle in her neck. That was pretty scary. There were some
tense moments there."
The program, initiated by Bates, has taken off since CBC-TV featured
a group of Tseshaht kids going through the program.
Parents have congratulated Constables Stevens and Stenger for
teaching their children the dangers of drugs, alcohol and crime,
and First Nations from all around the province have been calling
to find out how to get their kids involved.
"It's a great program, especially if you're from an isolated
town," said Stevens. "You see what reality is in a
place like that where you have nowhere to go. You can't help
but step back and realize how much you have and how you take
things for granted."
Recently, Stevens presented Bates with much-needed TVs and VCRs
for the program, as well as $500. The money and items were donated
by First Nation governments who recognize the benefits of continuing
the Scared Straight program.
Over the next two months, four more groups of Nuu-chah-nulth
youth will be taking the tour. Ten groups have already taken
the trip.
"We don't know how long this program is going to continue
for," said Stevens. "It's certainly made an impact
on all the people who've seen it."
For more information on the program, contact Constable Ken Stevens
at (250) 723-2424.
"War, not
murder."
Chiefs honored by Tsilhqot'in national holiday
By Arthur Topham
Raven's Eye Writer
QUESNEL
The people of the Tsilhqot'in Nation gathered on the banks
of the Fraser River on Oct. 26 to honor chiefs who were hanged
in Quesnel on the same day 135 years before.
Quesnel Mayor Steven Wallace also attended the ceremony.
Photo Credit: Arthur Topham
Many visitors arrived in Carrier territory at the invitation
of Red Bluff elected chief, Frank Boucher, Jr., to remember those
war chiefs who had been entrapped by the colonial government
and then, in the absence of any military code of honor, hanged
as common criminals for the killing of some white land developers
who were planning to destroy the Tsilhqot'in people and steal
their lands.
Government and Native leaders who spoke during the ceremony agreed
that the Tsilhqot'in chiefs of yesteryear died defending their
homeland against the onslaught of European traders and settlers
who had been brutal in their methods of dealing with the Indigenous
peoples.
It was in defense of their culture and way of life and their
survival as a people that the five chiefs of the Tsilhqot'in
Nation decided to fight back. It is with this historical context
in mind then that we must view the words of the great Chief Lhatsas'in
who, in his final words before the noose was placed around his
neck, said, "We meant war, not murder."
Since that morning 135 years ago, the Tsilhqot'in have continued
their fight to retain their territory and their way of life.
Their Aboriginal title to the land was never extinguished and
that is what still unites them today.
The commemorative gathering was not merely to honor those who
had fought and died for a just cause. It was also an opportunity
for the Tsilhqot'in chiefs of today to express their current
thoughts and feelings on this seemingly incessant struggle with
the settler's governments, bureaucracy and lawyers.
The ceremony began with the Tsilhqot'in and Carrier chiefs drumming
and singing the Tsilhqot'in War Song.
For some it was an opportunity to remind the hundreds of participants
that the Tsilhqot'in way of life is still strong. Chief Roger
William of the Nemiah Nation expressed these sentiments as he
spoke of this special occasion.
"This is an important day for Tsilhqot'in people. We are
still here and still speaking the language of our forefathers
and I am able still to wear the buckskin jacket that my mother
made for me," he said.
Hereditary Tsilhqot'in Chief Patrick Charleyboy from Alexis Creek
spoke of Aboriginal title and the manner in which Native people
have been treated over the years by both the federal and provincial
governments. He said residential schools were one of the big
problems that the Tsilhqot'ins faced and are still dealing with.
That, coupled with the enormous alcohol problem, laid the groundwork
for the schemes of the federal government to replace the traditional
hereditary chief system with the federally recognized band councils
which basically turned over the legitimate powers of the people
to the colonial system of jurisprudence. Charleyboy said the
hereditary chiefs were opposed to attempts to supply their people
with alcohol and as a result his father was singled out by the
government for harassment. When the federal government realized
that they couldn't control the hereditary chiefs, they imposed
the Indian Act upon the reserves in 1959 and have been controlling
the agenda of Tsilhqot'in peoples ever since, he said.
With the Delgamuukw decision recognizing the right of First Nations
to gain economic benefit from their traditional territories,
there is now a glimmer of hope that the Tsilhqot'in people will
once again become masters of their own destiny.
"We are now taking control of our lands and our resources.
For years our youth have had nothing. The local lumber mills
made empty promises of jobs but in the end it was our white brothers
who got all the jobs," said Charleyboy. "Today I am
making a statement to the governments and to the logging industry
that is taking our forests away. I am giving you a warning that
all logging must stop in the Tsilhqot'in territory until the
question of Aboriginal land claims has been settled. We have
been forced to go to the courts to settle this matter and until
such time as a decision is reached then all logging of our resources
must halt. I am saying here today that the loggers must remove
their equipment from the land or it will be seized and held as
collateral in order to offset court costs."
He then summarized his remarks by telling the crowd of listeners
how, when he and some others were out logging on their lands
16 years ago, six RCMP constables came out and severely beat
him up. He could thus relate to the trials and tribulations that
the original five Tsilhqot'in Chiefs had suffered back in 1864,
he said.
Others were more conciliatory towards the many federal and provincial
government officials who were present for this commemorative
event, but all the chiefs were in synch regarding their efforts
to resolve the land claims issue.
Provincial Minister of Forests, Cariboo South MLA David Zirnhelt,
was also present and was quick, upon taking up the grass covered
podium, to say, "I recognize that it was 'War, not murder'
and that today we will be talking about justice and working together."
Referring to the provincial government, he went on to say that,
"We as chiefs of the non-Aboriginal peoples have to build
on what's taken place today. I am thankful that you have invited
me to speak and I would just like to say that I am happy to have
been a part of this process leading up to the commemorative ceremony
here today. It was myself who gave the nod to the provincial
government that we buy into the statement that's on the plaque
and that we recognize and accept responsibility for the wrongs
of the past."
Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Dale Lovick spoke as well and
spoke of the need for continuing the perceived "passion"
that he was witnessing amongst the various speakers. He said
that non-Native people have, for too long, been willfully blind
to the problems faced by Native peoples. Referring both to the
chiefs of 1864 and to those of today, the minister told the audience
that the chiefs should be proud of their efforts to defend their
territory and not to be ashamed of their actions.
"I believe there are solutions available and we have to
recognize the need to sit down together and work at finding them,"
he said.
Union of BC Indian Chiefs President, Stewart Phillip, told the
audience it was a special day for him for two reasons. He was
pleased that the Tsilhqot'in Nation was declaring Oct. 26 as
a national holiday in recognition of the five chiefs but he also
said it was an opportunity to revisit his home territory. Phillip
was born and raised in Carrier territory and went to school in
Quesnel. He left his adoptive family in the area about 25 years
ago to return to his home territory where he is now chief. Phillip
said governments have to recognize the reality of the Delgamuukw
decision and have to deal with the issues by discussing ways
of co-managing the resources in Aboriginal territories. He remarked
as well how amazed he was at the numbers of Aboriginal people
who had taken the time to travel from their territory up to Quesnel
to attend the ceremony.
"The Tsilhqot'in people have shown us that the colonial
notion of extinguishment is obviously not working," he said.
"We do have the legal rights to protest and to demand that
Aboriginal land claims be justly settled."
Neskonlith Chief and Interior Alliance spokesperson Arthur Manuel
said the most important issue for him was the current controversy
over the First Nations decision to commence logging on their
traditional lands. He said freedom is still something that the
Aboriginal people are trying to achieve and part of regaining
that freedom was the Alliance's decision to proceed with logging.
"We've gone out logging on what the provincial government
calls 'crown land.' Now the bands are in court challenging the
stop work order that the province has issued," Manuel said.
"The reason we're challenging it is because it doesn't mention
Aboriginal title anywhere in that order. It's a procedural challenge.
If the province has its way we could be tied up in court for
the next 12 years.
"Indian people have to stand up because we're dealing with
a system that is inherently racist from an economic standpoint.
We must take a stand because Aboriginal title isn't something
that only belongs to the chiefs - it belongs to the people."
Chief Antoine Archie of the Canim Lake Band and member of the
Cariboo Tribal Council spoke next.
"We come here today to witness and honor the chiefs who
were hung for defending their land and their people," he
said. "This ceremony is a big step. It's a step in the healing
process. I agree with the earlier speakers on the question of
land claims. We have a proprietary right to the land and we must
exercise that right."
When the speakers had finished, the ceremony of smudging the
chiefs' grave site and offering prayers to their spirits commenced.
Gilbert Solomon of the Nemiah Band did the smudging with sage
and Bella Alphonse read out the words written on the plaque in
the Tsilhqot'in language which in part said that it, ".
. . has been raised to honor those who lost their lives in defense
of the territory and the traditional way of life. . . ."
Redstone Chief Ervin Charleyboy thanked all those who attended
the memorial holiday. A touch of levity was added to his words
when he touched upon the Canadian legal system.
"If there are any lawyers here I want to tell them that
I don't like lawyers. I don't like Section 35 of the Canadian
Constitution. The government and their lawyers don't seem to
be able to understand their own language when it comes to the
Delgamuukw decision which gives Aboriginal people their inherent
rights and title to the land." Then, in a scathing rebuke
of the provincial Liberals and the Reform Party of British Columbia,
Chief Charleyboy went on to say, "There's going to be hell
to pay if the Liberals ever get into power in this province."
As the ceremony drew to a close Chief Charleyboy declared October
26 "Klatsassine Memorial Day", the official Tsilhqot'in
National holiday.
On the Western
Edge of Indian Country
By Keith Matthew
Raven's Eye Columnist
I will never understand why our warriors fought during the
world wars. I am too young to know what it meant to our grandfathers,
fathers, uncles, brothers and cousins who gave their lives for
a country that didn't recognize us as a people and looked at
us as wards of the government.
I do know that the veterans who were fortunate enough to return
from the wars, came home fiercely proud of the effort they made
in protecting their people from the tyrants who would take this
country from us by force. They also came home with some nasty
side effects in the form of scars from bullet wounds and shrapnel
that they wore as proudly as the medals on their chests. Some
came home with incredibly deep psychological scars which weren't
readily apparent on the outside but were painfully evident to
close family members who came to see the nastiness of the post
traumatic stress disorders in a very up-close-and-personal way.
I had the honor of organizing a meeting for local veterans in
the Kamloops area about four or five years ago when then-Senator
Len Marchand was collecting information from Aboriginal veterans
to see if he could help them in Ottawa. Most of the veterans
involved in that meeting have since passed on, and they died
not really receiving much assistance from a federal government
that didn't really care or was incredibly insensitive to our
veterans' needs.
One of the veterans from the Kootenays said a few things that
bother me to this day. The first incident was regarding his treatment
on Remembrance Day after the war and how he was unfairly treated
along with other Native veterans and it occurred in 1946 or 1947.
"I came home. One day I was on a march. Our white comrades
told us 'Come on and march with us, you will get a glass of whiskey
at the other end.' Five of us we marched, before we were dismissed
the police got there, they took us out of the ranks, threw us
in jail until one minute after midnight and then turned us loose.
They didn't take us home, they said, "Now you can go home.
It's November 12, not November 11."
The other comment he made showed the deep emotional, mental and
spiritual scars that were inflicted upon him.
"I went through some . . . my wife won't even sleep with
me because I still have nightmares from this, what I went through.
Now what do I have to do to get out of this? Today I am talking
about it. Tonight I will probably get one of the worst nightmares
I have ever had. It seems every time I talk about what I went
through I get these awful nightmares. And I will tell you guys
it wasn't ever easy to eat, to sleep with dead people and the
odors that was there," he said.
Another veteran from the Okanagan felt very badly treated when
he got home. He was very upset that he didn't receive the same
financial benefits that non-Native veterans received upon returning
to Canada, especially since he was asked to perform some of the
more dangerous assignments while fighting during the war.
"We have been shortchanged. I don't give a damn what the
hell color we are. There is a fighting patrol or fighting, or
patrol at night time, my leader always came to me and says I
want you to come up. Never someone else. I was always on the
front line because of my ability to do night work. I know. You
guys probably went through the same thing. Native soldier is
always the guinea pig. They put you out there because your instincts
that leads the people, that leads the men, that saves them and
brings them back is what they want and they sure made use of
it.
"It is not there any more. It's like I say, I took my uniform
off, I'm just shit. That's exactly how I feel, I'm forgotten.
Like they say in the book or in the paper. They have write-ups
of the 'forgotten soldier' - that's him, that's him and that's
him (pointing at the Native veterans sitting around the table).
These poor buggers that are just as mad as any man that wears
the pants and walks like a man. I always say treat them well,"
he said.
My dad was a veteran. He was a sergeant in the infantry and commanded
his own 25-pound cannon. He never saw active duty and I have
a feeling that he regretted not going into war - although he
never said that to anyone that I know.
I remember going to the Remembrance Day parades to watch him
and the other veterans march through the streets proudly wearing
their colors and displaying their hard won medals. I remember
seeing those battle-hardened men crying for their friends and
sometimes family that they left buried over in Europe.
I am so proud of my dad for what he did to protect us and all
of the other Native veterans who fought in a war that they didn't
have to join. My Uncle Louis, Uncle Clarence, Uncle Eddy and
all of my other relatives who fought during the war also make
me proud.
My dad passed away in 1995, but I still go to the service to
honor his memory and all of my uncles who fought for us. I miss
you dad.
Putucw.
Racism: Federal
government policy
By Taiaike Alfred
Raven's Eye Columnist
VICTORIA
The recent confrontations over Mi'kmaq fishing in the east
and Native logging in British Columbia have shown just how strong
the prejudices against our people run among the immigrants to
our territories who call themselves Canadians. People show their
true nature in times like these, and right now it seems that
the heart of whiteness is a very cold and hard place. When it
comes to attitudes about Indigenous people, this is a country
with a pretty thin veneer of toleration hiding an ugly mass of
racism.
I say "toleration" because smug and self-satisfied
white people often tout Canada as a tolerant country. I doubt
many of our Indigenous sisters and brothers (or any other non-white)
would agree with this statement on the surface. But even if it
were true, what does it mean that Canadians see themselves as
tolerant, anyway? To tolerate something means that you put up
with or endure it. It is a distant and arrogant attitude rooted
in a superiority complex; it tells us a great deal about the
way Canada sees non-white and especially Indigenous people. I
believe that in the hostility and violence that come our way
whenever we assert our rights and defend what is ours, we find
out what it means to be a tolerated people.
We often forget just how thin even the veneer is. It has only
been one generation since our people were forced to live with
a system of open and organized racist oppression in this country.
Until the 1960s, the kind of back-of-the-bus and separate washroom
apartheid made infamous in the United States' treatment of blacks
was commonplace in Canada toward Indians. Things have changed,
but have attitudes? Open racism is seen to be impolite and crude
these days, but that doesn't mean that mainstream Canadians are
not racist. It only means they don't show it. Am I overreacting?
Consider the fact that the Reform Party has a huge political
constituency, millions of supporters and great influence on the
government as the Official Opposition in Parliament. The same
Reform Party has an official policy of promoting the legal and
social assimilation of Indigenous peoples and a cancellation
of Canada's historic treaty obligations toward our peoples. This
is fancy wording for a simple idea: terminating Indians.
When the Mi'kmaq achieved a limited recognition of their treaty
rights in the recent Marshall decision, the Reform Party called
for a "stay" of the decision, meaning they called for
the government of Canada to ignore the Supreme Court. The fact
that there is no legal process or constitutional way to do such
a thing as "stay" a Supreme Court decision didn't seem
to matter.
Plainly, in the view of the Reform Party, Indigenous peoples
and Indigenous rights are not due the same constitutional protection
as other peoples affected by the Constitution of Canada. The
saddest thing is that the federal government agreed with the
Reform Party that the rule of law does not apply to Indians and
that a "stay" would indeed be possible if negotiations
failed to satisfy a group of angry white fishermen. It is one
thing when a party of ignorant racists calls for the termination
of Indigenous rights, but quite another and more serious matter
when the federal government begins to contemplate governing the
country to satisfy an ugly white backlash movement.
We should not forget that there have been other countries that
have suspended the rule of law for certain groups when their
rights conflicted with the interests and beliefs of the majority.
Jews in Nazi Germany suffered the same treatment as the Reform
Party is advocating for Indigenous peoples in Canada. If they
want to "stay" pro-Indian Supreme Court decisions,
how far can they be from advocating policies to achieve a Final
Solution to the entire Indian problem? Putting this all in a
historical perspective, the Reform Party's slogan of "one
law for all" begins to sound eerily familiar to the sounds
echoed from scary black-and-white films of jack-boot Nazi Germans
chanting their slogan of "one fatherland, one party, one
Fuhrer."
It's not only the Reform Party that represents prejudice in this
country. Canadians love tame Indians who perform on stage and
screen to satisfy the mythological image of the noble savage
conquered and nearly civilized by white people. But when Indigenous
people stand up for who they are and for justice, they are attacked
and put down by force with the support of those same tolerant
Canadians. So long as Indigenous people are satisfying Canadians'
self-created historical fantasy and living the identity Canadians
have created for us, we are safe. But if we act to preserve our
own identity and rights, we are a threat. In the so-called "1990
Oka Crisis" Mohawk people were attacked with armed force
by Quebec police and our communities laid siege by the armed
forces of Canada because we stood in defence of an ancient graveyard
(the rule of law was again suspended for Indians). And now, the
Mi'kmaq are being attacked violently for acting on a subsistence
right to fish, a right formally recognized by the Supreme Court.
When push comes to shove, the government of Canada doesn't care
whether an Indian is right, it always moves to set aside its
Constitution and defend with force the violent and illegal interests
of the white population - truth and justice count for little.
The legal processes Indigenous people have been encouraged to
trust to achieve justice are worthless when the government begins
to contemplate abandoning the rule of law whenever we are proven
to be right. The thin veneer of toleration has been pulled back
to expose the greed and selfishness that are the true core of
Canadian attitudes toward Indians, and the foundation of government
policy.
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Published November 14, 1999
