POLITICS
COVER
Chief's
House Torched in Kanesatake
BIOGRAPHY
A
Christmas Story: Sharon Greyeyes' Original Bannock Shop
BOOKS
Carr's
Native Experience Reprinted
Telling
It Like It Is
BUSINESS
Diamond
Search Leads to Conflict-of-Interest Probe
ENVIRONMENT
Blueberry
River First Nations Launches $7.5 Million Lawsuit Against Gas Development
HUMOUR
Bee
in the Bonnet: Ten, Happy, New, Years
Bee
in the Bonnet: Point the Arrow
POLITICS
Wounded
Leaders, Wounded Nations
Ottawa
Announces New Fast Track for Residential School Survivors
The
2004 National Aboriginal Achievement Awards (NAAA)
Wounded Leaders, Wounded Nations cont'd
New president brings change
The American government changed its policy of eradicating native culture
after Theodore Roosevelt became president. Roosevelt was a close friend
of the American photographer Edward Curtis, who became one of the most
eloquent exponents of the virtues of traditional native culture.
More sympathy to Native American culture came about from the growth, even at the turn of the century, of the environmental movement. Many of the founders of the American environmental movement, such as the Canadian born Ernest Thompson Seton, had a profound reverence for the earth respecting cultures of Native Americans.
A Toronto born writer and artist, Seton learned to appreciate the earth from the examples of Native American leaders who defended their way of life. He was a close friend of the Lakota author Charles Eastman, who became an influential civil servant in the American Bureau of Indian Affairs. A medical doctor who treated native victims of the Wounded Knee massacre, Eastman effectively challenged America's past manias for assimilation.
Influential opinion makers were horrified at the reality of the environmental destruction, especially the extermination of species that took place after Euro-Americans seized control of lands from natives. Through the efforts of President Roosevelt, the Dawes Act, championed by Carlisle graduates such as Standing Bear, was eventually repealed, and much of the land returned to the control of native communities. Natives and environmentalists worked to save the buffalo from extinction, with a herd being reintroduced to the Crow and Lakota reservations as part of the New Deal policies of Roosevelt.
Unfortunately, in Canada a strong environmental movement did not develop until after the vote was extended to natives in 1962. This was partly caused by the fact that much of Canada, unlike the United States, remained largely wild forested environments, not subjected to industrial exploitation. At the time natives received the vote, this was still true for most of Canada's vast and more thinly populated land mass.
Humiliation techniques imitated
Some of the abuse of natives in residential schools was caused by the
harsh government mandates given the churches to wipe out native culture,
especially languages. More respectful church groups, notably the Jesuits,
did teach in native languages for a period, but this was outlawed by the
Canadian government.
Strange and cruel punishments were given to natives for speaking in their own language. Bruises from staff punishment were signs that students were still brave enough to speak their own language. Whipping and strapping were a common penalty for speaking in native tongues. A typical punishment would be to write down five hundred times that the student wouldn't "talk Indian" any more.
The first native residential school in Canada, the Mohawk Institute, helped to pioneer various humiliation techniques, which were used by imitators across the country. This was partly supported by the slave labour farming efforts of its students. The Principal would sell off its marketable produce, such as butter and eggs, for his personal profit. To avoid the poor fare served students, the school's higher staff and their families would eat in separate private facilities.
The only native government which attempted to challenge the residential school system before the franchise was extended to native peoples in 1962 was the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy. At the behest of two parents, the Confederacy in the autumn of 1913 embarked on a campaign against mismanagement at the Mohawk Institute. This was done on the basis of hair-shearing, whipping, inadequate food, and the denial of parental visits. The Confederacy, through hauling the principal into court, did win awards against the school for whipping and the imposition of a three day water diet.
The Canadian government disapproved of the actions taken by the traditional Iroquois Confederacy. It refused to authorize the release of funds the Confederacy had authorized for legal expenses. Ten years after the Confederacy took the Mohawk Institute to court the Canadian government occupied the council house with an RCMP force, and seized its sacred wampum. This situation, which resulted in the imposition of an elected band council contrary to the traditional Great Law of Peace, still has not been corrected by the Canadian government, although a federal court ruled in 1973 that the 1923 actions were illegal.
Wounded leaders, wounded nations
Canadian natives suffer from a crisis of leadership under the graduates
of the Residential school system, similar to that endured by natives south
of the border eighty years ago. Like Carlisle, which nurtured Standing
Bear's advocacy of land ownership, the Canadian residential schools produced
native leaders who became advocates of disrespecting traditional bonds
to the earth.
While native leaders do not advocate policies similar to the Dawes Act, so fervently advocated by the Carlisle alumni, what they do support, in a similar disregard for native bonds to the earth, is revenue sharing. This has been done through a denial of native traditions of trusteeship of the earth, in favour of European models of ownership taught in residential schools.
The wisdom of elders that natives do not "own" the land, but are its guardians for creation, is now disputed by graduates of the residential school system, such as former Assembly of First Nations Chief, Matthew Coon Come, and his colleagues, Ted Moses and Bill Namagoose. While deploring the abuse that took place in these institutions, they have only applause for the content of the curriculum, which helped shape their defense of plans for massive flooding of the waters of their Cree homeland. This formulated their innovative doctrines that caring for the land is a low status "janitor" occupation, unworthy of respect.
It is to be hoped that as in America, the leadership role played by the
alumni of residential schools will be a passing phase. Coon Come was recently
rejected as Assembly of First Nations Chief - as was Standing Bear by
the voters at Pine Ridge who retained their love for the earth.