Topic: 2000

Exactly six years ago, on September 6, 1995, Dudley George was shot and killed for defending his land at Ipperwash Park in Ontario. That action by government officials was called enforcement of the law. The courts later ruled that Dudley George was a victim if an official homicide, that he was killed by an officer of the state in violation of the law. The government of Canada lied and told the United Nations that Dudley George was killed in response to “armed natives firing on the police”. Canada refused to officiallyinform the United Nations of the legal judgement that Dudley George was unarmed when he was shot and killed illegally by a law enforcement officer. This great bug wealthy country is afraid – perhaps ashamed – of telling the truth about First Nations Peoples’ rights and the police killing of Dudley George.

Three weeks ago in Burnt Church I called upon the Government of Canada to respect its own laws, to call off the troops, and to enter into a relationship with our First Nations Peoples that is fair, equitable, and just.

The terrible, violent, repressive, and disrespectful behaviour towards our people that Canada has shown, in its disregard for our people’s lives over the past few weeks, demonstrates that Canada has not heard our voices or understood our determination.

Today I want to discuss with you what we have to tell Canadians in order to be better understood. But first I want to thank you for your patience and your good will. I want to thank you for maintaining reason and right in the face of violence and repression. You have waited patiently for 150 years to have your rights respected – all the while with Canada denying that you have any rights – and now the time has come to live our lives and have what is ours. We will not back down.

We will not back down in the face of government violence and repression. We will not give up our rights which we practiced and excercised long before there was any thought about the existence of Canada. We will not be beaten into submission.

First Nations Peoples are waiting and watching patiently all over this land. They see the behaviour and brutal attitudes of Canada. And they are asking a question: Can we finally have what is ours? Can we have a fair and equitable part of the great wealth that is in this land? Or will we continue to be made the poorest of the poor while all around us people use and exploit our resources to enrich themselves at our expense?

This is not solely about fish. This is not solely about lobsters or snow crabs. This is about life, and the land and resources that support our existence and well being. This is about Canada’s persistent policy of dispossession of our lands and resources. This is about a repressive government that finally showed its true face to the world in the past few weeks.

This is Canada’s hidden character. Our peoples’ patience is tested when they see their brothers and sisters under attack. How easy it is for a government to attack one First Nation while the other First Nations keep the peace and hold themselves in restraint. Our peoples display great patience in the face of such irresponsibility and provocation by federal authorities.

We have something to tell Canadians. No, enforcement is never “pretty”. What a sick and sorry excuse to say a thing like that. Canada was not enforcing the law. No, Minister Dhaliwal, you are not respecting the rule of law. You were continuing Canada’s policy of dispossession and denial of our fundamental human rights.

Mr. Dhaliwal you are responsible for attempts to harm, or perhaps even murder our people. Thank God that no one was killed. Your officials tried. That is clear for everyone to see. Nothing could be more obvious – running over our boats. Attacking people in the water. Sinking boats. What a wanton and sickening disregard for life your troops have shown.

Was that the rule of law? We waited 150 years for the Supreme Court to affirm rights that we have always had. Where was your enforcement when our boats were being burned? How did you protect us when our houses were set afire?

The old excuse that you did not want to provoke a confrontation – you show no such restraint when you officials decide it is worth risking killing our people to demonstrate the supremacy of your authority.

For 150 years you denied our right to fish, and you said that was the law. Donald Marshall Junior did not go to the Supreme Court of Canada of his own free will. You dragged Donald Marshall through every court in this land all the way to the Supreme Court over what? – a few eels. You said you were enforcing the law, but the Supreme Court said you were wrong. You should have been ashamed to put Mr. Marshall through another ordeal of law. He had already suffered enough from Canada’s so-called law. Where was Canada’s judgement and reason?

Canada was not prepared to lose the Marshall Case. That is the simple answer. Canada fought against the recognition of our ancestral and treaty rights for 150 years. the government expected to win in its own courts, and was not prepared to recognize our rights even when we won in court.

Canada made no preparations to respect First Nations Peoples’ rights that it has always denied and repudiated. Canada – as usual when First Nations Peoples’ are concerned – took a one-side view of the Marshall Case. It was not prepared to advocate for Donald Marshall. Not a single person in the whole Government of Canada was prepared to be an advocate of the rights of First Nations Peoples to pursue their livelihood. Such thinking, it turns out, is inimical to Canada’s whole approach to our rights.

I have already said – I want Canada to respect its own laws. I want Canada to respect its Constitution, which it says is the highest law in the land. Instead, what we have is the selective misuse of the law to deny the rights of First Nations. Canada picks and chooses the laws it wants to enforce, and those it wants to ignore or repudiate. For 150 years Canada said that we did not have the right to the fisheries resource. That was the law.

Mr. Minister, read the Marshall Decision. It does not give you the right to run over and sink our boats. It does not give your officials the right to attempt to kill our people. it does not allow you to continue to deny our right to fish and to continue to say “that is the law”. It does not give you the right to regulate our continued poverty and dependence.

The selective application of the law, and the denial of our aboriginal and constitutional rights has filled the prisons of Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba with First Nations victims of the Canadian justice system. The wanton disregard of our rights in law enable the clear-cutting of our forests, the flooding of our lands, the desecration of our burial sites, and the continued dispossession of our land and natural resources.

Canada has a strange and distorted view of the law when it comes to First Nations. It is afraid of any recognition of our rights. It punishes us now for every assertion of our rights. Even when we seek legal redress through the courts it attempts to punish us for using its own courts. When we act to excercise our rights, it uses force and violence against our people without restraint or reason.

The world can now see this, and I commend the people of Burnt Church for having the courage to make the picture clear for all to see. Canada has acted irresponsibly and dangerously. Canada has not respected the Marshall Decision and other Supreme Court rulings such as Delgamuukw, Sparrow and Gladstone. It has not respected its own laws. It has chosen the arbitrary and capricious use of force to assert a jurisdiction that it does not have under law.

Canada is continuing after the Marshall Decision the same denial of our rights that it asserted for 150 years before the Marshall Decision. Canada still refuses to excercise its constitutional duty to give paramountey to our treaty rights. It prefers to fight us, rather than respect its fiduciary duty to defend and promote our rights.

Canadians are not being told the truth. They are told that our rights are race based. Canada fears to tell its citizens what is in its own Constitution. We have to tell the Canadian public; We have rights because we were nations here before there ever was a Canada. Our rights pre-date Canada. Our rights exist because we are nations and peoples. Our rights are based on original ownership of lands and resources. In simple terms – we were here first.

We never gave up these rights. And here is why Canada put up such a fight against Donald Marshall; the maritime treaties contain no surrender or extinguishment provisions. Canada fears treaties that are made nation-to-nation between equals. It insists on a relationship based upon its own supremacy and dominance. That is why it insists on extinguishment, even though the United Nations has condemned Canada’s use of extinguishment against aboriginal peoples as a violation of Canada’s obligations under international law of human rights.

Canada can not rely on extinguishment; instead it has chosen to rely on force. Canada can not pass the buck to the provinces as it likes to do, and say that the provinces has resource jurisdication, because these are clearly federal responsibilities – treaty rights of First Nations and federal fisheries.

So Canada has turned to the excuse of conversation. Canadians need to understand just how dishonest their government has been on the subject of conversation. Canada intnetionally and falsely told Canadians that the First Nations are destroying the lobster fishery.

Conservation is an embarrassment for Canada. The DFO is famous world over for its failure to protect the cod fishery until it was too late. It is also famous for political interference standing in place of legal responsibility. Canada is a very poor and incompetent guardian of the environment and its natural resources. We need only look at the sad conditionof Canadian forests and rivers to find out about conservation. Who is the government trying to fool?

The fact is that there are about 3 million DFO officially sancitioned lobster traps in the water in the Atlantic Fishery. The real number may be as high as 4 million traps, because the DFO has only a small budget for its very lax enforcement against non-natives. Against this reality we have to consider the actual number of First Nations traps in the water – maybe 100. Even if First Nations put in 5000 traps or more, this would represent. a miniscule proportion of the millions of traps on the coast – a tiny fraction of on percent, certainly no conversation threat.

No, here once again conversation is being presented to Canadians as justification for repression of First Nations peoples’ rights. Once the Canadian public knows these hidden facts about the size of the industry, the issue will be understood for what it is – Canada’s refusal to accept a Supreme Court decision that it doesn’t like.

Canada does not want First Nations Peoples to know that the United Nations has recognized that our right of self-determination and our right to benefit from the resources of our lands is protected by international law. Canada has failed to inform Canadians, the Courts, and First Nations Peoples of the UN’S decision – as it is stipulated to the UN it would do – meanwhile enforcing the denial of our resource rights in the forest, on the water, and in the courts.

The UN has told Canada that First Mations Peoples must be permitted to share the wealth of the land. That, we must explain to Canadians, is what this all about. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 5 year, $58 million Report confirmed this as the answer. The UN has told Canada to implement the RCAP, urgently. Canada does not want to implement the RCAP, and continues to mis-characterize it as unrealistic and impossible to do.

This government is dead set, from all we can see, against the recognition of our economic rights. The Canadian Atlantic lobster fishery is worth close to half a billion dollars a year. Billions of dollars worth of trees are taken from our lands each year. Our rivers produce billions of hydro-electricity dollars. Our lands are mined and flooded, but little of anything is returned to our people – and what little there is, is always characterized to the Canadian public as something we are being given, something that is not ours by right.

This tells us about the work we have to do. We have to explain to Canadians and to the world that our participation in the larger economy is a reasonable and desirable outcome of the recognition of our rights. Canada wants to avoid or postpone our emergence as economic and political paricipants. It continues to pursue policies of denial, repression, and actual violence against our First Nations citizens.

Canada takes an enormous risk in continuing with this policy. Its refusal to implement the decisions of its own courts or the recommendations of its own Royal Commission set the stage for other means to be used. Its refusal to respect its own international rights commitments, or to give credence to UN decisions and recommendations force us to consider all of our possible recourses. Canada is clearly moving away from respect for the rule of the law into arbitrary and capricious acts that engender disrespect for all authority.

Canada opposed Donald Marshall. It lost. It is now time to do the necessary work – the economic studies, the community consultations, the fisheries studies – to fully implement that decision. In the meanwhile there must be no arbitrary enforcement of a supposed Marshall Decision made up by the Minister and fisheries officials. No, our rights stand.

We will excercise our rights to fish in the interim. This will be an encouragement for Canada to act forthwith and with deliberate speed. Canada’s enforcement responsibilities are to assure respect for our rights. When we reach an equitable arrangement that fully implement our resource rights, we will have a solution.

Any solution which perpetuates the old denials and injustices will not stand no matter how many people insist upon it, or how many enforcement officers are brought down on our people. It simply will not stand.

Our people know that our survival as First Nations depends upon our access to lands and resources. Any threats against us that government authorities can devise look hollow and foolish indeed, against our needs to survive as peoples and nations.

I admonish the government of Canada once again – on the fifth anniversary of the unlawful shooting by the state of Dudley George, and as DFO boats are violently confronting our people on the waters off Burnt Church – to fully and equitably respect its own laws.

We First Nations Peoples are here to stay. We will do what we have to do to bring about respect of our fundamental human rights.

Three years ago, when Phil Fontaine strode confidently in to the Assembly of First Nations’ national conference as a contender for the position of national chief, his rival, then-chief Ovide Mercredi, was everything he was not: Filled with bluster and aggression, Mr. Mercredi had bullied his way on the national agenda, routinely blasting the federal government for various affronts to his people.

But Mr. Mercredi’s tactics – blockades and publicity stunts meant to draw attention to his causes – had become a concern for the chiefs with voting power. While Mr. Mercredi could grab headlines, he had provided little in the way of results – and along the way of results – and along the way, had soured his relationship with Ron Irwin, then the minister of Indian affairs, who eventually refused to meet with him. What the assembly needed, the voters reasoned, was someone who could mend fences with Ottawa.

They found their man in Phil Fontaine. Within 24 hours of his victory over Mr. Mercredi, Jane Stewart, the newly minted minister of Indian affairs, offered Mr. Fontaine her personal congratulations. A new era of native politics in Canada began. But just as his diplomatic grace won him favour in 1997, so too did it prove his undoing yesterday.

While Mr. Fontaine worked as the consummate negotiator, building stronger services for native people and presiding over increased budgets, some natives came to see him as part of the bureaucratic machine, rather than their representatives inside it.

“For some of the First Nations, that kind of talk got them wary, because you’re talking to the oppressor,” said Meo Litman, a professor at the University of Alberta who specializes in native affairs and government.

Alex Roslin, editor of The Nation, a national First Nations affairs magazine, said there were no clear moments in Mr. Fontaine’s career when he could have scored points with his constituents as a hard-liner, through his voice could have been heard more clearly on a host of recent disputes, including last year’s conflict over native rights to lobster fishing in the Maritimes, or when natives in British Columbia argued over logging rights.

Growing fears that the new Canadian Alliance party might have an interest in rolling back native self-government rights were met by Mr. Fontaine not with a public attack, but rather a private meeting between he and then-leader Preston Manning. It came down to a question of style, Mr. Roslin said – the same style that had served as so successful a foil to Mr. Mercredi’s hostility three years before.

“Phil’s argument has been that, because he’s close to the Liberal government, he has access to power and he’s able to negotiate a better situation, but others argue that that’s not the case,” says Mr. Roslin.

“Some people say that the AFN is too focused on administering services to First Nations, or it’s too focused on work related to the governing of First Nations, rather than standing up for First Nations’ rights.”

That ability to stand up for rights became a key element in the victory of his rival, Matthew Coon Come. While Mr. Fontaine built a reputation as a diplomat, Mr. Coon Come became known, Mr. Litman said, “as someone who’s been willing to take on the big boys,” referring to his successful campaign to derail a $7-billion Hydro-Quebec project for Cree ancestral lands in Northern Quebec in 1994.

Mr. Coon Come, a former grand chief of the Quebec Cree, has also taken the plight of Native Canadians outside the realm of national politics, to the United Nations. Mr. Coon Come’s victory appears to have been brewing for some time. Dan Le Moal, who writes for The First Perspective, a national aboriginal newspaper based in Winnipeg, recalls a recent debate between the candidates in the northern Manitoba town of Thompson, where, he says “you could really see the tide shifting.” Mr. Fontaine delivered an eloquent speech that touched on his priorities – of building bridges, of maintaining the momentum in Ottawa.

But it was Mr. Coon Come who stirred the crowd. “Before, it would have been easy to think that Phil had a lock on [the election], but when we heard the debate in Thompson, that kind of changed things. Chiefs were really applauding Matthew, and you could tell that people were really dissatisfied with Phil.

“In the end, he not going to try to upset the system so much as work with it, and some people saw that as a problem.”

A decade later, the 82-year-old woman hasn’t forgotten the clamour of a hot, angry summer afternoon. It sounded like a big thunder roll, she remembered, the sound of rocks striking the cars in a convoy of Mohawk elders, children and woman trying to leave the nastiest crisis between natives and whites in modern Canada.

“I can hear it still,” the woman said. Sometimes, when I’m laying down and I can’t sleep, I think about it.”

Sitting in her kitchen in the Mohawk reserve of Kahnawake, just outside Montreal, Mary D’Ailleboust recalled the day she and her daughter and Mona, 47, granddaughter Monica, 23 – who was seven months pregnant – and Monica’s three children, aged 7, 5 and 2, packed themselves into their Chevy.

It was during the 1990 Oka crisis and a convoy of children, elderly and weak residents were leaving Kahnawake. They didn’t know a mob of whites outside the reserve would bombard their cars with rocks, a hideous low moment in the country’s relations with its aboriginal people.

“People should not forget what happened,” Mrs. D’Ailleboust defiantly said. “They’re more savage than we are. Remember that we are a people. We owned this land.”

It was 10 years ago July 11 that the most acute aboriginal crisis in modern times in Canada began. The 78-day Oka crisis left lingering bitterness between Mohawks and their neighbours. But at the same time, Oka would become a turning point, hauling into a broader consciousness native grievances that had long simmered away from public attention.

“I look at Oka as a victory, a victory for native rights,” said Kenneth Deer, editor of the Mohawk newspaper The Eastern Door. “In the end, the governments had to listen to us.”

He mentioned recent native gains such as the unprecedented powers provided in the Nisga’a treaty or creation of the northern territory of Nunavut. “Look at Nunavut, there wouldn’t be a Nunavut, without Oka. We had to suffer for other people’s gains.”
Oka inspired aboriginal people all over Canada.

“It made me feel better to be native. I felt stronger,” said Barney McLeod, an Ojibwa sculptor living in Vancouver, who quit his construction job in Toronto during the crisis and drove all night to deliver canned food to Kahnawake. “A lot of people felt sorry for themselves for being native. But after Oka, native people became prouder and stronger.”

The crisis began in the scenic town of Oka, 60 kilometres west of Montreal, in a dispute over a planned condominium expansion to golf complex. The housing was to be built on land claimed by the neighbouring Mohawk community of Kanesatake and would have encircled the native cemetery.

Mohawk protesters set up barricades in the pine forest at the heart of the dispute. At 5:30 am on July 11, a Surete du Quebec (provincial police) tactical squad arrived in Oka and officers positioned themselves around the pines. Within an hour of the SQ’s arrival, in support of their fellow natives in Oka, hard-line Mohawks at Kahnawake south of Montreal blocked the Mercier bridge, a major thoroughfare used daily by 70,000 suburban commuters.

Caught between two hot spots, the provincial police rushed the Oka barricades at 8:45 am. A gunfight erupted, killing police officer Corporal Marcel Lemay. A surreal, angry summer had begun. For 78 days, armed natives would be in a standoff against thousands of police officers and soldiers.

It was a summer of anger because non-Mohawk residents in Chateauguay, the bedroom suburb that was cut off by the bridge blockade, became incensed that natives defying their police were blocking their commute to work.

During those torrid nights in the summer of 1990, mobs enraged vigilantes roamed the outskirts of the reserve, waving baseball bats. They roughed up anyone who looked native, they roughed up white people who tried to drive through their road blocks, they roughed up reporters. And then they turned their ire on the police, who tear-gassed them during several nights of wild rioting.

It could have been avoided, and not just because, as coroner Guy Gilbert’s inquest later established, the federal government failed to quickly settle the Oka land dispute or because the SQ launched its assault so hastily.

In the months before the conflict, Mohawk communities had been in turmoil, torn between supporters if the elected band councils, non-violent traditionalists, and so-called Warriors, armed, militant hard-liners.

The emergence of the contraband tobacco trade and gambling halls was pitting Mohawks against Mohawks, degenerating sometimes into furious gun battles. Kahnawake radio host Joe Delaronde, an outspoken critic of the Warriors, recalled getting death threats and finding a skinned cat on his lawn. So when the tactical squad arrived in Oka, it faced a volatile environment, full of short-fused, bellicose gunmen. “We were ready for them, but people in the pines were not fighting over casinos or cigarettes,” Mr. Deer said.

That’s because the stakes in the conflict were also numbingly familiar to all native communities, pitting aboriginal territorial claims against the business concerns of their non-native neighbours. Their land hemmed in, with little industrial or agricultural base, the Mohawks had for generations struggled economically. Generations of Mohawk men expatriated themselves to become iron-workers on the construction sites of the northeastern United States. More recently, they tried to cash in on their tax-exemption status by selling tax-free goods or opening gambling halls.

“In hindsight, you can see how all that fueled the social crisis among the Mohawks,” Montreal anthropologist Pierre Trudel said.

A month before the July 11 gunfight, Mr. Trudel had visited Kanesatake just after a police raid against the local Mohawk bingo.

The Mohawks that Mr. Trudel noted bitterly that the SQ no longer dared enter their sister community of Kahnawake because of the emergence of the Warrior Society there. The lesson was clear to Mohawks: Having guns was the best deterrent to what they saw as police meddling on their land.

Peaceful channels failed that summer and so “the machos won the day and got to shoot each other,” Mr. Trudel said.

After the barricades came down, anarchy reigned in Kanesatake for years. The new elected chief was weak, and lawlessness descended on the community. It is only recently that progress has been made in policing area. The golf course was never expanded but land talks with Ottawa are still ongoing and the Mohawk community remains deeply divided.

For months, Mohawks in Kahnawake did not want to go to Chateauguay. “Our economy was in shambles and Chateauguay also suffered because we stopped buying there,” Mr. Deer said. “You wondered if the person serving you was someone who had rioted or burnt us in effigy.”

Today, a decade later, the two communities are slowly emerging from the shadows of the crisis. Little-league baseball and pee-wee hockey teams from Chateauguay have even come back to play against Mohawk teams.

In Kahnawake, the Mohawks have more autonomy. Mohawk Peacekeepers are the sole patrollers on the reserve, after an agreement with Quebec. The province also held back from cracking down on past contentious areas such as gambling, extreme-fighting tournaments or liquor licensing, leaving them to Mohawk-run institutions.

It falls short of self-determination but, for now, “we’ll assert what we can get,” Mr. Deer said.

“There’s certainly some deep wounds,” Mr. Delaronde said. “But we have to realize that it’s not the entire non-native population that was against us. Nineteen ninety was going to happen somewhere. It just happened here.”

David Roberts

In legal parlance it is known as the Queen v. Pangman et al: the joint federal-provincial prosecution of 35 alleged members of the Manitoba Warriors gang – the first major test of Canada’s 1997 gang law. To critics what has transpired over the past 20 months in an ultrasecure Winnipeg court house amounts to a gross abuse of human rights.

The accused, 32 aboriginal men and one aboriginal woman, one Caucasian man and one black man – all alleged members of the Manitoba Warriors gang – were rounded up in October of 1998 and charged jointly by direct indictment under 1997 federal gang legislation designed to cripple organized crime.

For months, the accused have been transported from downtown jail to the specially built court-house, where armour-clad guards stand vigil over video cameras and the accused sit chained to the floor in plastic cages. The facility was constructed inside an old feed warehouse in an industrial neighbourhood of south Winnipeg. The actual trial – which could ultimately cost as much as $20-million to prosecute – is still waiting to proceed. Most of the accused have languished in detention, having been denied bail on charges their lawyers say would have netted most offenders a maximum six to nine months in custody.

Thirteen of the original 35 continue to await trial. Their case, if it doesn’t end in a negotiated settlement this week, could continue for at least another year. After spending about $7-million to date, the Crown has so far secured 20 convictions and has offered two stays in exchange for testimony.

Those who pleaded guilty were jailed for periods of six months to six years, although not all were convicted under the gang law. Most of the remaining accused would have been out of jail by now if they had just pleaded guilty, their lawyers say.

Phil Fontaine, former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, complains that the landmark case is discriminatory because the accused face reverse onus to qualify for bail, and since the majority of them are impoverished they cannot post a surety. He has suggested that he will make a human-rights argument to Amnesty International and the United Nations.

“They [the province] have constructed this super courthouse, there’s super security, the accused are shackled to the floor and in my view, it’s all completely unnecessary,” Mr. Fontaine said. “Where has this been done to anyone before? We have to take this beyond Manitoba.”

He plans to enlist the aid of civil rights heavyweights Rubin (Hurricane Carter) and Rev. Jesse Jackson to draw attention to the case.

Winnipeg lawyer David Phillips, whose office is defending five of the accused, said the Crown and defence are engaged in delicate negotiations over questions of the court’s jurisdiction. Depending on those talks, the case is set to resume – with just eight accused – tomorrow.

There is a chance a deal of some sort may result in the matter being concluded this week. If not, jury selection won’t take place until autumn and jurors should be prepared to strap themselves into their seats for nine to 18 months – taking the case through to 2001 or 2002.

“This case will never get to verdict,” Mr. Phillip said.

“The Crown can barely justify this, given the expense. The allegations are that the Manitoba Warriors were trafficking in cocaine at the street level in various hotels in Winnipeg, at the one-quarter-gram or $20 level. It’s not alleged they were importing or trafficking in kilos.”

At one time, there were a dozen prosecutors and more than 30 defence lawyers appearing before the trial judge, Madam Justice Ruth Krindle of the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench.

“There is a huge qualitative difference between a street gang and an organized-crime syndicate,” Mr. Phillips contended. “The alleged president of the gang was driving a 1982 Chevy Malibu, for heaven’s sake. Of the 35 arrested, no one had more than $100 on them. There is no application to seize the proceeds of crime. Some of these guys are charged with welfare fraud. If you weren’t a Manitoba Warrior you’d looking at six to nine months on these charges.”

Under the 1997 law, an offender is sentenced both for the crime and for participating in organized-crime activity. The sentences are served consecutively. The law applies to “any or all of the members of which engage in or have, within the preceding five years, engaged in the commission of a series of such offences.”

An accused found guilty of participating in a criminal organization could receive a maximum of 14 years in prison. Participation in a criminal organization would involve the commission of or conspiracy to commit any offence “for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a criminal organization, for which the maximum punishment is imprisonment for five years or more.”

Some of those who have pleaded guilty have received sentences of as little as six months. Others have been jailed for as long as six years (most were sentenced to between 18 months and four years).

“One guy was in four days [after pleading guilty and languishing 19 months in remand],” Mr. Phillips said. “A lot of people who pleaded guilty earlier and got sentences of four to six years are out now. The denial of bail creates an unequal bargaining position. Three of those denied bail had no criminal record whatsoever, and they were denied bail on the basis of a couple of street-level sales. When you charge a bunch of guys with Grade 8 education and who are living on welfare under this legislation, it’s very unfair.”

Spokesmen for the prosecution refused to be interviewed last week noting that the trial judge has warned the lawyers to curtail public comments about the case. And lawyers for the accused, including those for William Pangman, the 24-year-old alleged president of the Manitoba Warriors, said their clients could not be interviewed, given the “delicate” state of the present negotiations.

Earlier this month, Judge Krindle dismissed a defence motion that alleged that police conducted illegal searches and unlawfully questioned the accused during their lengthy undercover investigation.

But the judge has also ruled that a jury could not reasonably handle a trial of 13, and forced the Crown to break the group into two smaller trials.

“This whole prosecution happened for political reasons,” Mr. Phillips suggested. “There was an election coming and the previous government wanted to appear tough on gangs, gangs were perceived to be a problem in the city, and so the decision was made to prosecute.”

While the number of those being prosecuted has dwindle, and while the 35 were off the street, Winnipeg gangs continued to flourish. The New Democratic Party, when it was in Opposition, said 1,800 people in Winnipeg and another 500 in other parts of Manitoba belong to gangs. Last summer, police estimated that Winnipeg street gangs had 1,375 members.

Are you always late for appointments? Have you ever been on time to pick someone up? And are you always the last one to show up for your procrastination Anonymous meetings? … Do what I do, I tell ’em I’m running on “Indian Time”!

So why do native people have this trait? I blame it on our lazy laid back ancestors. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree! They didn’t have to cope with a five o’clock dead line. As long as it was done by sometime in the fall, that was okay with Chief Runs With Deer. They didn’t have some big boss with bad breath hollering at them … “Do this, do that!” No, not our ancestors! Their Chiefs didn’t rant and rave or put on the pressure. If they didn’t, there’d soon be a newer easier going Chief. Today we clip coupons, search ads for bargains all this and more just to make a living. But not Runs with Deer and his merry gang. They turned survival into what we today call hobbies and sport. They didn’t scramble around for groceries… they lazily “gardened” in the sun picking berries and such. They didn’t cheat. lie and steal to track down the best deal. They had themselves a “Hunting Party!”

Can you imagine living like that? It’s no wonder they were so laid back. To them “time,” was the passing seasons. You wouldn’t catch ol’ Runs with Deer checking out the sun on the horizon and exclaiming “Holy beaver pelt, it’s almost quarter to winter!” No, not these lazy laid back easy going people. Why should they stress themselves over a changing season. Before the movie Gone with the Wind made it a famous line, “For tomorrow is another day,” it was a native’s motto.

Some of you may be mad at me for calling our ancestors “lazy,” but I don’t mean it in a bad way. They lived life like it was one long, long Sunday morning. You know how good that feels … “lazy.” And who wouldn’t want to live like that. “No more rat race, no more Mondays!” Just peaceful Sunday’s forever and ever. A clock, what’s that? So it’s no wonder that natives of today are sometimes late (according to the invention of the clock). There in part is why we do the “9-5.” It would be bliss to live like our ancestors… a full tummy, a warm Wig Wom at night with Little Beaver. But have you checked out the prices of Wig Wom’s lately? Food? And now, Little Beaver wants a new car! It’s never ending … Bills!Bills!Bills! … Bills for everything from apples to zippers. I’m sure Runs with Deer would laugh his tail feathers off, at the idea of one of his descendants paying a “light” bill. He would probably say, something like … “You’em want’em light’em? Wake’em up’em early’em and’em go’em to ’em bed’em late’em!” Ha’em, Ha’em, Ha’em. Two hundred years ago, he never would’ve dreamt of the invention of the light bulb. Hell when I was growing up, I never would’ve thought that one day they’d be selling “water!” You have to ask yourself where does it end … canned air? It’s all about inventions the clock, the light bulb everything right down to the flush of the toilet … ahh! Yes great, great, great, great Granddad, we have to pay to do what the bear does in the woods for free! We should live more like Mr. Deer, but the idea of sharing a washroom with a bear doesn’t appeal to this little brown bottomed boy. Like it or not we live in a fast paced society. We all depend on someone else to do their job, so we can flush that can. We’re all part of one big tribe, everyone doing their part.

I just wish we didn’t have to be slaves to the tick, tick, tick of the clock. With our (native) ancestry we should be allowed a grace period, a half hours time should do it. If the rest of the world understood us and accepted our “Late Trait,” we would never be late again. People (non native) could look at their watches and say … “wasn’t he supposed to be here at four o’clock? Oh, he’s native … four thirty!” All a native would have to do is show his or her Status card and just like that they would be forgiven for their tardiness. Wouldn’t that be great? Even if the world came to an end at midnight eastern standard time, three o’clock on the coast … three thirty “Indian time!”

Give me a 1,2,3,A,B,C! Let’s hear it for “Education” Rah! Rah! Rah! If I may, I’d like to quote a brilliant insight by B.H. Bates – “Hopefully this is the generation that finally gets it … Never bring bows and arrows to Smart Pillsa gun fight!” Referring to the important roll education plays in the native struggle. After all, if the native that sold Manhattan had had a realtor’s license … Well!

We’ve all heard of people who’ve made it “Big,” without the benefit of an education. If you take these people, pull down their pants and bend them over, you should see a horse shoe protruding! Because “luck” probably had a lot to do with their success. Have you ever heard of Mr. Many Feathers? Chances are you haven’t. How about Geronimo? Of course, everybody has heard of Geronimo. I’ve used use these names to make a point, “that for every Geronimo there’s a lot of feathers that don’t make it!”

I’d like to get serious for a paragraph or so, of you don’t mind. I have to be an “Honest Injun,” I only have a grade eight education myself. Actually I think I dropped out long before then. I couldn’t read, let alone write (some still think so). I tried to read, I wanted to read, but I just didn’t get it. And when I didn’t get it, it made me feel stupid. Feeling stupid lead to frustration, frustration lead to acting up. When the teachers put a stop to that, I learned how to get around reading. I’d fake it, I’d cheat, anything to hide the truth. At the time, even I didn’t know the truth. To me reading was like a trick, a trick everyone got, except me.

For years and years I was a prisoner. An impostor, dreading the day when I’d be discovered. Everyone at some point in their life has read a Birthday card, aloud, right? … Not me! I kept trying though, I’d always pick up a newspaper, to read on transit to work. I’d sometimes have to read a paragraph three or four times before I’d get the jest. Then one day my sunglasses broke, so I picked up a cheap pair of amber colored shades. I sat down and read my horoscope … “HOLY S___!” I exclaimed to myself, when I realized how fast I had read it! And more importantly I understood it! I finally “Got it!” I almost screamed out loud “I CAN READ!” … It felt like an orgasm and thanks to these cheap sunglasses, I “read” my brains out.

I didn’t know how or why they helped my read, until I watched a documentary on T.V., it dealt with the reading disorder Dyslexia (Dyslexia – “Flips” letters and sometimes whole words are seen backwards). It went on to explain that in some cases, simply reading through certain colored lens, tricks the dyslexic mind into seeing the letters in their proper positions. Until I put on those sunglasses, I had to concentrate on every letter of every word, memorize that word then move on to the next. (Indulge me if you will in a mini experiment. Read the following “sentences.” But as you do, concentrate on each letter for one full second, memorize that word, do this until you can recite all three sentences). “Pretty tough way to read, wouldn’t you say? Can you imagine living most of your life like that? That’s why I take education very seriously!”

Who knows what could have been … I could’ve been a contender, I could’ve been a somebody! (For the uneducated, I’m back to acting up). Speaking of “Acting up,” my sincerest apologies, to all my past teachers. As I reflect back on all the crap that I put them through and all they wanted to do was help me. Talk about biting the hand that feeds. If I were “Chief of the World” … Teachers would be paid like professional athletes and vice versa. Athletes are always saying how they’d do it for the love of the game anyways. Teachers would be more famous than any wrestler … Hell, what am I talking about … If I were heap big Chief, I’d condemn TV wrestling to the Isle of Idiots, along with the criminally insane and give them nothing but bread, water and pointy sticks. “Yeah!… It’s good to be the Chief!”

An Elder once told me, “You can use your back or you can use your head!” He also told me about the old Indian and the “Smart Pill” … Many, many moons ago a European from a big city, came to hunt the mighty beasts of the new country. He hired the wisest native tracker in the village to help him on his quest. But the city man was loud and clumsy. He crashed through the forest and scared away all the animals. Then he cursed the old Indian when he didn’t get to shoot anything. On the way back to camp the city slicker said, … “All day I’ve noticed these little piles of brown pellets on the ground … ‘vas is it, Mr. Indian man?” The old Indian smiled and said … “They’re a gift from nature, they’re smart pills!” The fool quickly popped a “pill” in his mouth and just as quickly he spit it out … He hollered at the old Indian, “You let me eat deer shit, just because I was mean to you!” The old Indian replied, “They worked didn’t they, see how smart you are!”

The legend of Splapp is an old Indian story, that is told to native children on the night of the spirits. Better known today as Halloween!

SplappThe first thing I want to know is that our ancestors didn’t tell their children scary stories. They only told them the truth… and the truth is good children with good spirits don’t have to worry about the dark. Good children can walk into a dark room without any fear. Because the spirit they call Splapp lives in the darkness, and he doesn’t care about good kids. They can come and go as they please, he wants nothing to do with them. He only wants one kind of kid. He wants a bad kid, a mean spirited kid, a child that shows no respect to elders. That’s the kind of kid Splapp wants! He wants to grab them and trade spirits with them, so his spirit can be a little child again. And the spirit of the bad kid has to go and live in the darkness forever and ever and a day …

Splapp is not a monster or a beast with claws. Splapp is the angry spirit of an old Indian. Splapp is a native word that literally means “Dirty Bum!”… You must understand that native language doesn’t have swear words. Back in the olden days the worst insult you could tell another native, was to say that they were “Unclean!” You see back in the days of bows and arrows, it was not a good thing for a hunter to have a strong body odor, that the animals could smell. That’s why the North American Native looked for campsites close to clean water. They discovered the healthy hot springs, and they even built sweat lodges. One elder even told me how she would perfume her body with the juice from the Juniper berry before she went to hunt for a husband. So never let anyone ever tell you that your ancestors were dirty savages.

As the legend goes one dark Halloween night many moons ago, a bad child threw a rock at an elders home. “BANG!” … The loud sound scared the poor old Indian to death ,,, But just as he was about to change from his human form into his spirit form, he heard the bad child call him a “SPLAPP.” This name angered him and his spirit. So when he got to the Happy Hunting Grounds, the Creator stopped him and told him angry spirits weren’t welcome there. He told him he could only live in the dark shadows of old abandon houses. So that’s why that every reservation since then, has at least one old abandon house. A house the good children don’t go into. Splapp’s house!

An elder told me about one bad little boy who went into Splapp’s house. And Splapp grabbed him! …. But people say that’s not true at all. They say that the truth is Little Billy went into that abandon house, on a dare. He tripped and fell, the sound woke up some animal, it jumped out of the shadows and it bushed against Billy as it ran away.

But Billy thought it was Splapp trying to get him. And that scared him silly. He was so scared he made peanut butter in his pants. That’s what people say really happened.

Billy said it really was Splapp. He said Splapp jumped out of the shadows and grabbed him. He said Splapp tried to steal his spirit. But Billy said he put a thumb in each ear and finger in each nose hole. He then closed his eyes real tight. Then he prayed really loud to the Great Spirit. He promised to be a good little boy forever and ever and a day … Then just like magic Splapp was gone.

Little Billy grew up to be a good man. Bill grew old and became the elder called William. And it was William that told me … Splapp would have stolen his spirit that night, if it wasn’t for the promise he made to the Great Spirit.

It was the Great Spirit that saved his splapp!

By B.H. Bates

“Aging!”… It’s as sure as the wind blows and the water flows. Every single moment of your life, every “tic” of the clock. Even as you read this, you got older and older. I don’t know about you, but I find that very depressing. Sooo, seeing how I’m a humourist and a native … let’s take a look at the lighter side of being a “Native Elder.”

EldersWhen they first coined the phrase “Been there, done that!” there had already been an old native there … Honest! I’m not kidding … they found arrowheads and everything. So just what makes an Elder, an Elder? Well let me think, all the elders I’ve known, have all “Known better!” This fact, was usually accompanied by a finger being shaken in my face. Another thing I’ve noticed is that all their stories begin the same way … “Remember when!” Again, accompanied by the shaking of the finger. Hmm, what else sets an Elder apart? Apart from the usual signs, such as snow on the roof, a flock of crows feet and of course the inevitable shrinkage. Yep, some Elders I know have shrank by as much as fifty percent. Even the “finger” gets smaller and bonier, with each passing moon!

So what have we got so far … a person that can remember back to the days when they didn’t know any better … a person with white hair and a face that looks like an aerial view of a cowpie … Oh, yeah, all this while they shake the “Bony Finger” at the world! Does that sound like anyone you know?

Now, before you go and get a “Bee in your Bonnet” … at me for poking a little fun at the Elders. I would like you to know, I’ve got nothing but total undying respect for those who’ve earned the title “Elder!” That said, let’s get back to roasting the old farts! “Wisdom, Wise, Wily, Foxy, Clever, All knowing!” These are only a few words attributed to the “youthfully challenged.” So, if you’re (ELDER) is so smart, why may I ask were your good old days so tough? I’m sure we’ve all had an older person say … “I remember when I was your age, I didn’t have this or that and I had to do it in four foot snow drift, during one of the hottest summers in history. Bla, Bla, Bla.” Then in the next breath, they look skyward, smile knowingly and say … “Tickety boo, Cats pajamas, those were the days wipper snapper!” (or something like that, they talked funny back in the olden days). So tell us O’wise ones, inform the mass’, let all be known. Pray tell us the answer to the age old question … “What the hell is a cat doing with pajamas anyways?”

I would like to end with a wise old Injun proverb and a poem. First about the poem, it’s about a young man who had access to wisdom. But sadly he didn’t realize his good fortune, until he had already spent his youth.

OLD INJUN PROVERB:
“IF YOU SEEK THE TRUTH .. LISTEN TO OLD FARTS. THEY’LL HONESTLY LET YOU KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS!”

One hundred twenty miles south of the Arctic Ocean and eighty miles north of the Arctic Circle, the Yukon village of Old Crow straggles along a bluff above the Porcupine River. The 200-plus people who live there are mainly Loucheaux Indians of the Vuntut Gwich’in tribe – the “People of the Lakes.” For the past 38 years, the story of their doings has been told by Edith Josie in a regular column in the Whitehorse Star.

Miss Josie’s unique style (English words, but Loucheaux tensing and phrasing) has won her fans and fame around the world. She is this year’s recipient of a National Aboriginal Achievement Award in the Heritage and Spirituality category. In Vancouver last month to accept her prize, she displayed her trademark spunk and spirit when she joined the after-Awards dancing. Just a’stompin’ and a’jumpin’ and a’jiggin’.

HERE ARE THE NEWS OLD CROW.

ALBERT ABEL WENT UP RIVER SET TRAP AROUND DRIFT WOOD. HE CAME BACK. HE CAUGHT 9 MARTINS, 1 WEASEL. GEE, HE’S LUCKY MAN.

Old Crow is a village in transition these days but access is still only possible by air and, in summer, a riverboat named Brainstorm. At times, some of the men will leave the village to work in a mining camp but the life of the Loucheaux people has been much the same as it was a century or more ago. They pick berries. They hunt caribou for food, trap muskrats and martens and wolves for pelts to sell; in winter they put nets under the ice of the Porcupine River to catch the fish which feed the dogs which pull the sleds which take them to hunting and trapping grounds.

In summer, Old Crow is the hottest place in the Yukon, often reaching temperatures in the mid-30s C and infested with black fly. In winter the temperature can drop to -50 C before windchill. The sun does not rise at all for three weeks in winter; it does not set for two months in summer.

Edith began writing for the Star in late 1962, when Reverend James Simon and his wife came to town. His wife Sarah has been asked by Harry Boyle, then editor of the Star, to look for someone who would handle the job of “Old Crow correspondent.” Sarah Simon asked Edith Josie, because “most of the ladies had someone to look after them. Edith Josie didn’t have a husband to look after her, so I gave Edith the job.”

The editors of the Star, after a startled double-take at the items scrawled diary-style on white stationary, decided that to edit Edith Josie at all would be to destroy her journalistic charm. The column runs whenever an airplane brings it into Whitehorse from the hinterlands. Its appearance is highly dependent upon the weather in the territory.

One of her first newsletters reported on the arrival of an Anglican Bishop and his wife to hold Easter services in Old Crow. Edith writes just as she talks.

AT 1:30 THE SERVICE WAS ON AND SURE GLAD TO HEAR EVERYTHING ABOUT JESUS, WHAT THEY DID TO HIM ON GOOD FRIDAY.

Shortly thereafter she reported on the state of things at the “ratting” (muskrat trapping) grounds at Crow Flats, in muskeg country 50 miles upriver (south) form Old Crow.

JOHN JOE KAY AND HIS FAMILY AND DICK NUKON AND FAMILY CAME INTO TOWN FROM THEIR RATTING CAMP. THEY REPORTED NO RATS AROUND THERE BUT THEY SAY TOO MANY MOSQUITO. TOO BAD NO PRIZE ON MOSQUITO.

Edith lives in a two-room uninsulated log cabin at the east end of the village. The cabin is starkly furnished with a table, a couple of chairs and three beds pushed up against the rough wooden walls. It is heated by a wood stove that also is used for cooking, “and in winter it gets as cold inside as it does outside most of the time.”

Edith never married but she has raised three children. For many years she shared her cabin with her two sons and daughter, her blind mother Mrs. Elizabeth Josie, her brother and his wife and their two children.

Like the other women in the village, Edith butchers and cooks the meat brought home by the men, dries spring meat for the summer, gathers berries, and tans skins for sewing. She carries up water from the river and gathers willow branches for kindling. She is a faithful member of the Anglican Church and is active in the Women’s Auxiliary which plays an important role in the community. She writes her “News” at a huge plywood table.

But times can be tough. Sometimes there was neither food nor money enough to make ends meet.

AT 8:30PM I HAD BABY BOY AND HE’S 6LB. MISS EDITH JOSIE HAD BABY BOY AND I GIVE IT TO MRS. ELLEN ABEL TO HAVE HIM FOR HIS LITTLE BOY. SHE WAS VERY GLAD TO HAVE HIM CAUSE HE’S BOY. I WAS IN NURSE STATION AND MISS YOUNGS SURE TREAT ME VERY NICE. MYSELF AND BABY I REALLY THANKS HER VERY MUCH FOR HER GOOD KINDNESS TO ME.

HELICOPTER BEEN TO OLD CROW AND WENT DOWN RIVER TO CAMP.

SINCE LAST WEEK ALL THE LEAVES ARE GETTING YELLOW. THAT MEAN AUTUMN IS COMING. WHEN THE LEAVES GROW GREEN SURE NICE BUT AT FALL TIME IT’S TURN TO YELLOW – MORE BEAUTIFUL.

Eighteen months later, Edith was solvent enough to reclaim her baby son Kevin, from Mrs. Abel.

Edith’s English evokes the stark stuff of life in the Far North, and in her hands the chronicle of Old Crow becomes a sort of elemental soap opera, people with crises and characters as real as those next door – and twice as exciting.

MORNING AROUND 11 A.M. PETER BENJAMIN THE FIRE CATCH HIM ACROSS THE RIVER. THOSE POLICE THEY TIE THEIR DOGS OTHER SIDE OF RIVER AND THEY ALWAYS COOK DOGS FEED. SO IT IS RAIN ALL NIGHT AND THE WOOD IS WET SO PETER BENJAMIN PUT GAS ON WOOD AND HE LIGHT THE FIRE AND FIRE CATCHES HIS CLOTHES AND HE RUN TO RIVER AND HE JUST GOT INTO WATER AND FIRE IS OUT.

WHEN FIRST THING FIRE CATCH HIM HE WAS HALLER AND SOMEONE HEARD HIS VOICE AND FEW MOTOR BOAT WENT TO HIM. SO AFTER AROUND NOON THE DOCTOR CAME FROM INUVIK AND THEY TOOK HIM TO HOSPITAL.

Sometimes the villagers fly out to larger centres for medical treatment or to visit relatives. Or just for the fun of the trip. What often results is a mild form of culture shock.

ANOTHER AIRCRAFT CAME FROM DAWSON CREEK AND MR. REV. JAMES AND MRS. SIMON RETURNED. AS SOON AS SHE GETS OUT OF PLANE, MRS. SIMON TOLD THOSE WOMEN SHE REALLY HUNGRY FOR DRY MEAT OR EITHER CARIBOU MEAT. MUST BE SHE GOT LOST AWAY FROM DRY MEAT.

FROM ARCTIC RED RIVER I WENT TO FORT MCPHERSON AND SEE ALL MY RELATION THEY WERE HAPPY TO SEE. AND THEY ALL GIVE ME STRENGTH AND HAPPY.

I GOT TO MCPHERSON ON FRIDAY AND WENT BACK TO INUVIK SUNDAY AFTERNOON. WHEN I WAS THERE I WENT TO VISIT MY AUNTIE SARAH SIMON SHE WAS HAPPY TO SEE ME AND ALSO MYSELF TOO.

EVERYBODY ARE WORK TOGETHER AND FRIENDLY I JUST WISH THAT OLD CROW IS LIKE THAT.

MISS JOSIE REALLY HAD A NICE TRIP TO INUVIK. BEEN TO HOSPITAL, THE STORE AND ALSO GLAD TO MEET EVERYONE AT INUVIK. SURE NICE PEOPLE AT INUVIK AND EVERYONE ARE KIND.

MISS JOSIE SEE HAMSTER AT INUVIK. SURE LOOK BUG DIFFERENT, THAT SMALL MOUSE.

In the mid-60’s, Miss Josie travelled to Whitehorse to visit the newspaper.

AFTER THE DISHES ARE DONE AND STARTED OFF TOWARD WHITEHORSE STAR FOR THE CHECK. TO GET SOMETHING WHAT IS GOOD INTERESTED TO BUY. THEN MR. HAROLD TOOK US FOR RIDE TOWARD CARCROSS AND HALFWAY IS THE FARM AND THE CAR STOP FOR WHILE AND MRS. MARSH WANT ME TO TAKE PICTURE OF ME WITH THE COWS BUT I REALLY TO SCARE TO STAND BY THE COWS.

Punctuation, correct grammar and spelling be damned. Away with such frills and frippery. The story is the thing. The disarming honesty with which Miss Edith Josie writes about her friends and neighbours produces prose that is both poignant and amusing. Yet behind her tales of the tribulations and joys of daily life a second story is being told. Inadvertently, Edith reveals herself as a woman of warmth and compassion, she of the loving heart.

MR. PETER MOSES HAS BEEN DOING LOTS OF WORK WHEN HE ALIVE ON THIS EARTH. HE WAS HAPPY OLD MAN AND FRIENDLY WITH ANYBODY, EVEN WITH THE WHITE PEOPLE. SO I KNOW EVERYBODY WILL MISS HIM BUT HOPE HE WILL HAVE A GOOD REST. HE WAS VERY KIND TO THE KIDS MOST AND ALL THE KIDS LIKED HIM. WHEN HE SEES THE BOYS AND GIRLS, HE TALKS SILLY AND LAUGH. WHEN SOMEONE MAKE FEAST HE MAKE SPEECH EVERYONE LIKE BECAUSE HE MAKE EVERYONE LAUGH.

AND WHEN THE DANCE IS ON, HE ALWAYS MAKE JIG WITH HIS WIFE. HE ALWAYS MAKE DOUBLE JIG WITH THE GIRLS. HE WAS BORN ON THE AMERICAN SIDE (Alaska) AND THE YEAR HE WAS BORN IN 1882. I HEAR HE MARRIED IN 1901. HE CAME BACK FROM UPRIVER BECAUSE HE SPIT BLOOD BUT HE WAS VERY GOOD AND HE’S NOT SICK. SO NO ONE KNOW HE WAS GOING TO DIE. WHILE THAT HE PASS AWAY SURE EVERYBODY SURPRISE FOR HIM.

HOPE EVERYONE PRAYS FOR MRS. MOSES AND ROY MOSES. NOT TOO WORRIED TOO MUCH FOR OLD PETER MOSES. HE HAD A GOOD HOUSE AND HE HAD SIX DOGS AND THEY GIVE ONE OF HIS DOGS TO JOHN MOSES. SO HIS WIFE WILL HAVE FIVE OF HIS DOGS. HE HAD A GOOD THING AND ALSO HE HAD GOOD STOVE SO MRS. MYRA MOSES WILL HAVE EVERYTHING GOOD FOR A LITTLE WHILE. THEY WILL MAKE FEAST FOR HIM TOMORROW. EVERYONE GOING TO WORK HARD FOR HIM.

Edith Josie is as “down-to-earth” a person as one could wish for. Her feet are most definitely on the ground. In 1963 scientists from around the world mobbed Old Crow to observe an eclipse of the sun. Miss Josie put the event on its proper rung on the ladder of importance.

MR. REV. J. SIMON MAKING FEAST WITH ONE MOOSE. EVERYBODY HAD A NICE SUPPER. THEY BEEN COOKING FOR HIM AND LATER THAT THEY SET THE TABLE FOR WHITE PEOPLE AND THE INDIANS WERE EATING ON THE GROUND BY MISSION. SURE EVERYBODY ENJOY TO EAT OUT DOOR. WHILE THEY COOK FOR JAMES THE SUN IS ECLIPSE AROUND 11 A.M.

While Miss Josie and her people may share an enviable sense of community, a thing not found with frequency in larger urban environments – people are people are people. And Old Crow has not escaped the shadow side of the human psyche.

THIS LIQUOR IS OPEN AND EVERYONE ARE GLAD BUT WHEN TROUBLE AND FIGHT GOES ON IT DOESN’T LOOK VERY NICE. WHEN DRUNK MAN DON’T KNOW NOTHING AND GET MAD FOR LITTLE THING AND START FIGHT. AND AFTERWARDS THEIR COURT IS OPEN THEY SURE SCARE AND STAY OUT OF TOWN.

WE HAD A VERY SAD THING HAPPEN IN OUR VILLAGE ON THE EVENING OF 17TH THIS MONTH (October 1965) AT 8:30 P.M.

EVERYONE IN THE VILLAGE HEARD TWO GUN SHOT AND FEW MINUTES LATER ANOTHER TWO SHOT IS HEARD. THEN THE NEWS COME THROUGH THE VILLAGE THAT NORMAN MCDONALD IS SHOT.

HE LIVE ONLY 20 MINUTES AFTER HE IS SHOT. HIS BODY FLOWN OUT OCT. 20TH TO BE EXAMINE.

EVERYONE IN OLD CROW FELT VERY BAD AND SORRY FOR THE DEATH OF NORMAN MCDONALD. THE PEOPLE REALLY MUST NORMAN CAUSE HE IS NICE BOY AND REALLY FRIENDLY TO EVERYONE.

HE IS ALSO ENGAGE TO CHARLIE PETER DAUGHTER. HE EXPECT TO GET MARRIED AROUND CHRISTMAS. NOW HE IS GONE. HIS GIRL FRIEND AND HER PARENT REALLY FEEL SORRY FOR NORMAN. SO PLEASE I WISH EVERYONE PRAYER FOR THEM.

The Whitehorse Star of Monday, March 14, 1996: “Mr. Justice John Parker sentenced Ronald Linklater of Old Crow to ten years in the penitentiary, Friday morning.

The 19 year-old-youth was found guilty by a jury of the manslaughter of Norman McDonald.

Judge Parker said that the facts of the present case were fairly simple. “Ronald Linklater became very drunk. He was upset, cross and in a bad mood. Without thought, he turned and shot his friend and cousin twice, and killed them. It was as simple as that.”

EVERYBODY BUSY WORKING ALL DAY, MEN AND WOMEN BEFORE DEAD BODY OF NORMAN MCDONALD RETURN BACK TO OLD CROW. SO ALL MEN DIG GROUND AND WOMAN THEY COOK AT CHARLIE PETER’S HOUSE. EVERYBODY HAD A NICE SUPPER. ALL THE NATIVE AND WHITE PEOPLE EAT AND HAD A NICE MEAL. ALL THE PEOPLE COLLECT GRUB AND MEAT TO COOK. WHEN SOMEONE PASS AWAY AND EVERYONE DO THEIR BEST JUST TO MAKE ALL THE RELATIVES HAPPY AND ALSO SHOW THEIR KIND TO GOD AND DEAD PERSON. WE ALL PRAY FOR THOSE WHO WORK GOOD FOR US AND SHOW US HOW KIND THEY ARE TO THEIR NEIGHBOURS AND WE HOPE GOD WILL GIVE THEM GOOD STRENGTH AND KEEP THEM WELL. THIS IS WHAT GOD IS LOOKING TO PEOPLE ON EARTH.

Miss Josie’s people speak the Gwich’in language; many of them are not fluent in English. This can create both drawbacks and amusement for the villagers as they deal with the dominant culture.

NO CARIBOU IN OLD CROW BUT WHEN RIVER BREAK UP IF CARIBOU COME THEY SAID NOBODY SHOOT CARIBOU IN TOWN OR OUT OF TOWN. WELL HOW ABOUT IN CROW FLAT THEY SHOOT DUCKS, CARIBOU, MOOSE, AND HERE THEY GO AFTER PEOPLE IN TOWN. THE PEOPLE THEY HAVE GOOD CHANCE TO TALK FOR THEMSELF BUT THEY DON’T TALK ENGLISH VERY WELL AND HARD FOR THEM TO TALK WHEN POLICE TALK TO THEM.

DICK NUKON WENT UP TO MOUNTAIN TO HUNT. HE SHOT ONE CARIBOU AND HE SAID ONE CARIBOU GOT TWO HEAD. A BIG SURPRISE FOR THE PEOPLE. DICK NUKON HUNT ON MOUNTAIN AND HE SHOT ONE CARIBOU AND HE DON’T EVEN LOOK AT IT GOOD SO WHEN HE CAME INTO TOWN HE SAID HE SHOT ONE CARIBOU GOT TWO HEADS SO I PUT IT IN MY NEWS BECAUSE IT IS BIG IMPORTANT NEWS. SO MOUNTED POLICE GO UP TO SEE THE CARIBOU. HE SHOT ONE AND TWO CARIBOUS HORN STUCK TOGETHER. THESE IS WHAT HE MEAN. WHEN HE SAID THIS EVERYBODY SURE WANT TO SEE BUT HE SURE MAKE UP WORDS FOR NOTHING.

Born in 1921 in Eagle, Alaska, Miss Josie left school at age 14, having completed Grade 5. She was assisted in further learning and literacy by her older brother Suzi Paul. The family moved to Old Crow in 1940.

Her column was syndicated to papers in Toronto, Edmonton, Fairbanks and California. Many other papers clipped it without paying; she became known across the United States. In 1965 LIFE magazine did a four page feature on her, titled “Everyone Sure Glad.”

Such exposure brought her world-wide recognition; her work has been translated into German, Italian, Spanish and Finnish. And her fan mail just keeps rolling in, from places as diverse as New Zealand, Texas, Florida and the Philippines.

POOR MISS JOSIE NEVER REST AND WORK FOR HIS HOUSE INSIDE AND OUTDOOR WORK BOTH. AND WRITE THE NEWS AND ANSWER ALL THE LETTER SHE GET. SHE LIKE TO WRITE SO SHE DON’T MIND TO WRITE. SURE NICE TO HAVE FRIEND AND WRITE LETTER TO WHO WE NEVER SEE BEFORE.

NOT VERY LONG TO CHRISTMAS AND WE KNOW OLD SANTA IS READY TO TRAVEL LONG WAY WHILE THE WEATHER IS COLD. I HOPE SANTA DON’T GET FREEZE WHEN HE TRAVEL TO THE NORTH.

Her prowess with the written word has won Miss Josie much honour. She received the Canadian Centennial Award in 1967, the Yukon Historical Museums Award in 1994, and the Order of Canada in 1995. In 1957 she was appointed Justice of the Peace for Old Crow and served for seven years.

I WRITE MY BIG NEWS. THAT’S HOW ALL OF THE PEOPLE KNOW WHERE IS OLD CROW. BEFORE THE NEWS GO OUT NOBODY KNOW WHERE IS OLD CROW. JUST WHEN I SEND MY NEWS PEOPLE KNOW WHERE IS OLD CROW.

JUST WHEN I PASS AWAY, THAT’S THE TIME MY NEWS WILL CUT OFF.

Margo Kane, Metis born but raised by an adoptive working-class white father and three different step-mothers, was brought up with a white value system and way of looking at the world. She was the only native child among seven.
Despite being an honour student, her cultural schizophrenia led to a suicidal teenage depression. An abusive and overly strict step-mother traumatized her badly. By the time she finished high school, Margo was totally alienated from her family. She ran away from home.
By the time Margo was 20, she was living on skid row, on welfare; she was dependent on drugs and alcohol; she was the mother of an illegitimate child that she had to give up for adoption.
Yet this despairing young woman saved herself with an 11th-hour reserve of spirit and an obstinate talent for dance she had refused to let die. It was, she says, “the only thing I knew I could do.”
And do it she did, literally dancing herself away from the demons of drugs and drink into an internationally acclaimed career as a storyteller, singer, animator, choreographer, video and installation artist, director, producer , writer and dancer.
In Grade Seven before her father told her she was Indian, she had already figured it out. When Indian students were bused into her school from a residential school, she recalled: “We just stared at each other like cows in the field. Just looking wide-eyed, wondering who was going to make the first move.”
“I had borne the brunt of enough prejudice as a young girl to really empathize with other native students I met in high school,” Kane said. “But it wasn’t until graduation from high school that I really had an inferiority complex.”
“I fell apart. I was suicidal. There was a mechanism in me that wanted to destroy myself.”
Although Kane was never in government foster care, her early years were pocked with great gaps in parenting.
“When I was a baby,” she said, “I was adopted by my aunt and her husband, a white man. We lived in Edmonton. About a year later, my aunt was killed in a car accident and my step-father married a Metis woman. After a while, he got married again, to a non-native. She had children and she died. She was in my life for nine years. Then, my step-father married again, to another woman with children. So, although I didn’t grow up in foster care, it felt like it. It has taken a long time to overcome my low self-esteem. All my life I’ve feared that I wouldn’t make it, that I wasn’t worthy enough to realize my dreams. I was always in the trauma mode… my step-father was a laborer and a heavy machine operator. I know he loved me; he was a good man, he just didn’t know what to do.”
With the help of some astute psychological counseling, Kane got off the booze, got off the drugs, got off the skids. She enrolled in Edmonton’s Grant McEwan College for Performing Arts. Here she excelled in dance, acting and singing. She won scholarships to the Banff School of Fine Arts and Circle in the Square theatre school in New York City.
Yet her journey towards self-worth was an uphill struggle over a shale-slide of self-doubt. Often she felt inadequate with only her Grade 12 diploma. “It’s been a continuing frustration to me that I’ve never taken creative writing or English literature courses, because I’m always working with people who have and they automatically assume I have, too,” she said. Kane qualifies this remark: “All the education in the world doesn’t mean you’ll be able to speak from the heart and that you’re really going to be able to move people. Ultimately, to me, that’s most important.

SEEKING SPIRIT
Dance. The core that Kane’s life revives around is dance.
“I’ve had some very profound dancing experiences. When I asked myself what in my life was really worth living for, the only answer I came up with was this incredible feeling I experienced when I danced. I was bound and determined to be happy, live well and figure out what I needed to figure out. If there are problems, I need to deal with them. I’m tenacious, I just don’t give up.”
Taking charge of her life has given Margo Kane focus and led her on a spiritual path. “I realized there was something beyond my life that I needed to understand and touch again, and my spiritual path came at the forefront of who I was. When I trained as a dancer, an image came to mind of what it was that I was seeking, to be a whole person, physically well and intellectually developed. Emotionally, I needed to be well and spiritually I wanted to be connected to that incredible power.”
The woman who is the dancer has succeeded in making that connection. 48-year-old Margo Kane is, indeed, a strikingly handsome woman. Yet, in performance, she exudes a spiritual strength and beauty that far outshines the mundane allure of merely structural good looks.
At certain points in performance, she will erupt with an uncanny, eerie cry/moan/singing noise that is another-dimensioned touch point. The timbre and resonance of her voice vibrate within the listener. One can sense an almost tangible presence of spirit around her and coming through her.
And this sound brings to mind the Irish Banshee, the female faerie whose wail is a harbringer of a death in the house. Or, as in the poem Kubla Khan by Coleridge, of a sudden the stage becomes:
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

ACTING AND TEACHING

Kane first came to national attention with George Ryga’s play, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, in which she performed at the Citadel Theatre in her native Edmonton in the late 70s and later, in 1982, on a national tour with Prairie Theatre Exchange. She has also appeared in films and on television. For much of the 1980s she was involved with community work with the National Native Role Model Program – going to prisons, recovery centres and group homes.
She has toured with a national youth caravan, bringing theatre to small native communities across the country. When she mentions the children in some of the northern Ontario reserves, her eyes fill with tears. “I hated to leave them there. But you hoped, somehow, you know that when they reached 18, maybe they’d think, they might remember our theatre caravan and remember Margo and the others and maybe see some way out, instead of becoming suicides.”
Kane (Cree-Saulteaux) was the first Native artistic director of Spirit Song Native Theatre School in the 1980s.
“After a while, I realized I was teaching performance, and I realized I wasn’t really practicing it as much as I’d like. This was what I was trained for, but I wasn’t doing it. I realized there weren’t a whole lot of roles for me out there – particularly since I was too old to be an ingenue and too young to be an interesting old lady,” she said.
“So I decided to create my own parts, and I used the experience I’ve had as a cultural worker in my performances. There were things I needed to share. I had to speak out and speak up. I found, as I went through a lot of the healing I had to go through in my own life, that I have a voice that wants to say something, and I have to honour that voice.”
Much of Kane’s work is autobiographical, and always about reconnecting herself to her native past.
Since 1992, Kane has been artistic director of her own company, Full Circle: First Nations Performance, which is an attempt to embody First Nations traditions in a way of working together, creatively and artistically. She strives to be a successful interdisciplinary artist. It has taken her years of research and training, and it reflects her desire to be a whole person and to express that to the world.
“I am integrating everything I know about becoming more available as a human being, freeing yourself up to create. Its thrilling to work with people who don’t believe themselves to be creative.”
The ensemble members are dancers, singers, actors, clowns, writers and musicians. Kane employs a collaborative approach through workshops and studio performances that become research and training projects for all involved. Integral to Full Circle’s mandate is networking and collaborating with performing artists and arts organizations within Canada and internationally.
Margo Kane would like to see more collaboration between native and non-native groups. “People are not aware of Canada’s complex history. I want to honour that history. We have many cultural streams running through our blood, we owe it to ourselves to tell stories. As artists, we have the opportunity to create inspiring works that celebrate diversity. Collaborations have always happened when people come together. It’s time to celebrate that.”