Topic: Uncategorized

By Lloyd Dohla

The ten war medals of Canada’s most decorated aboriginal war hero Sergeant Thomas George Prince, a veteran of WWII and the Korean War, returned to the Prince family after being lost for over 30 years. Thomas Prince

“I was out in Halifax for the AFN meeting when I got the call that the medals were coming up for auction. We re-organized our committee and began to write letters for a fundraising media campaign and I did some radio talk shows,” said Jim Bear, nephew to the late Thomas Prince.

Money and pledges poured in from across the country. Bear, a prominent member of the Winnipeg aboriginal community has been after the medals since 1995, when the medals first re-surfaced after eighteen years after the death of Tommy Prince in November 1977. The medals were auctioned off by a Winnipeg coin dealer for $17,500 in 1997.

The ten medals were bought by the Prince family at a London, Ontario auction for $75,000 on the third bid.

The medals from WWII includes the King George Military Medal and the US Silver Star, which was presented to Prince at Buckingham Palace by King George VI, for his five years of outstanding service as a member of the First Special Service Force, a combined Canadian-US elite airborne unit that came to be known as the famed “Devil’s Brigade”.

The wartime experience of Sergeant Tommy Prince is the stuff of legend. He was a quiet ordinary man who had greatness thrust upon him by the force of one of the greatest conflicts in the history of Western civilization. It’s as if he was born and bred for one great task and then cast aside by the very society he fought for. He was a true son of his people and a great warrior.

His life story is told in the publication Manitobans in Profile: Thomas George Prince, 1981, Penguin Publishers Ltd., Winnipeg, Manitoba. It’s a fascinating piece of Canadianna.

The early years
Thomas George Prince was the great-great-grandson of the famous Chief Peguis, the Salteaux chief who led his people to the southwestern shore of Lake Winnipeg in the late 1790’s from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. One of eleven children, Tommy Prince was born in a canvas tent on a cold October day in 1915.

When he was five, the family moved to the Brokenhead reserve just outside of Scanterbury, some 80 kilometers north of Winnipeg, where he learned his father’s skills as a hunter and trapper.

As a teenager, Prince joined the Army cadets and perfected his skill with a rifle until he could put five bullets through a target the size of a playing card at 100 metres.

World War II
When war broke out in Europe in 1939, Prince volunteered at 24, and was accepted as a sapper in the Royal Canadian Engineers, which he served with for two years. In June 1940, he volunteered for paratrooper service. The training was hard and very few successfully completed. Prince was one of nine out of a hundred to win his wings from the parachute school at Ringway, near Manchester, England.

It wasn’t his ability to “jump” that made him a good paratrooper. Prince had a natural instinct for “ground”. He would land, creep forward on his belly with the speed and agility of a snake and take advantage of small depressions in an otherwise flat field to conceal himself from view. He was a crack shot with a rifle and crafty as a wolf in the field.
-page 19, Manitobans in Profile

Prince was promoted to Lance Corporal as a result of his impressive skills and in September, 1942, flew back to Canada to train with the first Canadian Parachute Battalion and was soon promoted to sergeant. It merged with the United States Special Force, the airborne unit known as the “Green Berets.”

The First Special Service Force was an experiment in unity that was composed of 1600 of the “toughest men to be found in Canada and the United States.”

All the men were qualifies paratroopers and received training in unarmed combat, demolition, mountain fighting and as ski troops. They were described as “the best small force of fighting men ever assembled on the North American continent” and the “best god-damned fighters in the world and a terror to their enemies.”.

This combined elite force was first called into action in January 1943, when the Japanese occupied Kiska, an island in the Aleutian chain of islands near Alaska in the Pacific but the Japanese had already withdrew.

They went to the Mediterranean, followed by the Sicily landing. By a daring maneuver, it captured strategic Monte la Difensa, an extremely difficult piece of ground. Fighting side by side with the US Fifth Army, it maintained an aggressive offensive throughout the Italian campaign. The liberation of Rome was the culmination of its daring exploits.

A natural hunter, Prince’s fieldcraft was unequalled and in recognition of unique abilities, he was made reconnaissance sergeant. At night, Prince would crawl toward the enemy lines, mostly alone, to listen to the Germans, estimate their numbers and report back to his battalion commander.

Before every attack, he was sent out to reconnoiter enemy positions and landscape formations that could provide cover for an attacking platoon.

Prince’s most daring exploit was on the Anzio beach-head where the Special Service Force had fought for ninety days without relief on the frontlines.

Voluntary assignment
On February 8, 1944, Sergeant Prince went out alone on a voluntary assignment to run a radio wire 1500 metres into enemy territory to an abandoned farmhouse where he established an observation post.

From his post, Prince could observe enemy troop movements unseen by the Allied artillery and radio back their exact locations. Armed with this knowledge, the Allied artillery could lay down an accurate barrage and successfully destroyed four enemy positions.

When the communications were abruptly cut off, Prince knew what had happened. Shellfire from the opposing armies had cut the line.

Without concern for his own safety, Prince stripped off his uniform and dressed in farmer’s clothes left behind. At that time, many Italian farmers persisted in remaining on their farms despite the war that raged around them.

Acting as an angry farmer, Prince went out into the field shaking his fists and shouting at the German-Italian line and then to the Allied line. Taking a hoe out into the field, he pretended to work the field in plain view of the enemy line while he secretly followed the radio line to where the break had occurred.

Pretending to tie his shoe, he secretly sliced the line together and continued to work the field before retiring back to the farmhouse where he continued to relay enemy positions. With the positions of the enemy revealed to the Allied artillery, the enemy soon withdrew.

Only then did Prince return to his CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Gilday who recommended Prince for the Military Medal for “exceptional bravery in the field.”

Devil’s Brigade
It was at Anzio that the Force earned the name “Devil’s Brigade.” In the diary of a dead German soldier was a passage that read, “The black devils are all around us every time we come into the line.”

The passage was a reference to the Force’s tactic of smearing their faces with black and sneaking past Axis lines under the cover of darkness and slitting the throats of enemy soldiers.

Following the capture of Italy, the Devil’s Brigade took part in the seizure of coastal islands during the invasion of southern France. The Force gained the mainland and proceeded up the Riviara until they reached mountainous defenses held by German forces.

To break the impasse, the Force would have to launch a surprise attack, destroy the enemy defensive line and quickly capture the reserve battalions before they could be brought up as reinforcements.

To accomplish this daring move, the Force needed to know the exact location of enemy reserves and details of roads and bridges.

With only a private, Prince breached the enemy line and located the reserve encampment.. On the way back to report, Prince ands the private came upon a battle between some Germans and a squad of French partisans. From a rear position, the pair began to pick off the Germans until they withdrew as a result of high casualties.

When Prince made contact with the French leader, the Frenchman asked “Where is the rest of your company?” Pointing to the private, Prince said “Here.”

“Mon Dieu. I thought there were at least fifty of you!” said the astonished Frenchman.

The French commander recommended Prince for the Croix de Guerre, but the courier was killed en route and the message never reached the French Commander-in-Chief, Charles de Gaulle.

Returning to his own line, Prince was again sent out to the action on the frontline, despite his fatigue. Then, the enemy line was breached and an attack was launched on the German encampment reported by Prince.

When the battle had ended, Prince had been without food or sleep for 72 hours, fought two battles and covered over 70 km on foot. For his role, the Americans awarded Prince the Silver Star.

The Prince meets the King
One of his proudest moments and most cherished memories was when King George VI pinned on the Military Medal and the Silver Star, on behalf of President Roosevelt, and chatted with Prince about his wartime experiences.

Sergeant Thomas Prince was one of 59 Canadians awarded the US Silver Star and one of three who were awarded the King George Military Medal.

In December 1944, the Devil’s Brigade was disbanded. The war in Europe ended while Prince was in England. He returned to Canada and was honourably discharged on June 15, 1945.

Prince returned to civilian life on the Brokenhead reserve and found that few things had changed. He worked in a pulpwood camps and was a heavy drinker on weekends. In 1946, at a dance a woman attacked him with a broken beer bottle and badly cut his right cheek requiring 64 stitches.

It was a major turning point for Prince. He resolved to leave the reserve and get a job in Winnipeg.

With the assistance from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, he established his own cleaning service with a half-ton panel truck and cleaning supplies and, for a time, prospered.

At the time, the Manitoba Indian Association had been seeking an influential spokesperson and on December 1, 1946 elected him as chairman. The federal government had recently announced the formation of a Special Parlimentary Committee to revise the Indian Act.

Building a better community
The Manitoba Indian Association were concerned about the slow encroachment on their hunting and trapping rights. They wanted better housing, roads and educational opportunities for their children and financial assistance to start up businesses.

Prince arranged for friends to run his small, but profitable business. As chairman, he consulted extensively with aboriginal communities across Manitoba. He developed clear, well-documented arguments that made clear the Manitoba Association’s concerns in a brief presented to the committee on June 5, 1947.

Prince was overcome and frustrated by the legalese government officials threw out to counter his arguments. The committee hearings dragged on for two months, Prince became increasingly frustrated.

He tried to persuade other aboriginal representatives to travel to London and appeal to King George VI whom he had met.

While some changes were made the Indian Act, life for Canada’s Indians remained unchanged. Prince came to realize from the committee hearings that Indian people lacked prestige in the eyes of post-war Canadian society, who generally looked down on Indian people. To change this widely-held view became somewhat of an obsession with him.

He returned to Winnipeg with the intention of building up his business but instead found that his “friends” had wrecked his truck in an accident and was sold for scrap metal. With no recourse, Prince returned to the lumber camps a and worked at a local concrete factory in the summers.

Then, at the age of 34, one week after the Canadian government announced its involvement in Korea, Tommy Prince again volunteered.

As part of its UN commitments, the Canadian government formed and trained the 2nd Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (2PPCLI), which Prince joined as a seasoned veteran. He and other veterans were re-instated at their former ranks, in charge of training fresh recruits.

Tom Prince exalted in the military tradition of the 2PPCLI, where he was the hard-boiled sergeant whose legendary exploits were held in awe by the fresh recruits.

Following basic training at Wainwright, Alberta, the 2PPCLI sailed across the Pacific on December 7, 1950 and was the first Canadian unit to land and to become part of 27th Commonwealth Brigade in Korea.

Prince’s service on the Korean frontline was intense, but brief. Second in command of a rifle platoon, the 2PPCLI were part of a commonwealth effort to push back the North Korean forces from hill and mountain strongholds.

In February, 1951, Prince led a “snatch patrol” of eight men into enemy territory and captured two guarded machine gun posts as part of a demoralization effort. The tactic was repeated successfully many times with Prince in charge. But his commanding officers felt that Prince took too many chances with the men’s lives and eventually assigned him fewer patrols.

Prince was with the 2PPCLI when, together with the 3rd Royal Australian Regiment, were awarded the United States’ Presidential Unit Citation for distinguished service in the Kapyong valley on April 24 and 25, during one of the toughest actions of the war.

The Patricias were to hold a defensive position on Hill 677 so that a South Korean division could withdraw during an attack by Chinese and North Korean forces. Although at one point the battalion was surrounded and re-supply of ammunition and emergency rations could only be accomplished by air, the Patricias held their ground. The enemy withdrew. Ten 2PPCLI men were killed and twenty-three were wounded during the battle.

His knees were subject to painful swelling as a result of the constant climbing of the steep Korean country side. Following a medical examination in May 1951, he was hospitalized and then assigned administrative duties. In August, he returned to Canada.

Prince remained in active service as an administrative sergeant at Camp Bordon in Ontario.

His knees responded to the added rest and in March 1952, Prince volunteered for a second tour of duty and sailed for Korea in October with the 3rd Battalion PPCLI.

In November, the training of the 3PPCLI was interrupted by fighting on “the Hook”, a key position of the Sami-chon River that overlooked much of the rear areas of the UN forces.

When a Chinese battalion gained a foothold on the forward positions of another UN unit on November 18, the 3rd PPCLI was ordered in to help defend the sector. By dawn, of the following day, with the assistance of the 3rd Patricias, the UN unit recaptured the post. Five Patricias were killed and nine wounded, one of whom was Sergeant Prince.

He recovered from his injury, but began to have continual difficulties with his arthritic knees He spent several weeks in the hospital between January and April. In July, 1953, the Korea Armistice was signed and Prince returned to Canada. He remained in the army until September 1954, when he was discharged with a small pension because of his bad knees.

Unskilled and unable to fit into the post-war boom, Prince retained only menial jobs and was the subject of scorn from white workers ignorant of his wartime gallantry. His skills as a hunter that made him one of the best soldiers had no value in the urban centre of Winnipeg in the early 1950’s.

In many ways, Tom’s problems were typical of a certain type of returning soldier. These men had been unskilled workers prior to joining the army. From being in low socio-economic position, they suddenly became respected and honoured men who wore a uniform and commanded attention. Men like Prince were promoted to the rank of non-commissioned officers and had authority over others. When they were demobilized from the army, all the power and respect which their uniforms generated suddenly disappeared.
-p.44, Manitobans in Profile

Family life
Nevertheless, Prince met and married Verna Sinclair shortly after and had five children together. By the early 1960’s, nothing had really changed for Indian people. Prince still suffered from discrimination at the jobs he could get. Often he simply quit.

His arthritic knees got worse so he drank more. All of this led to money problems and he and Verna separated in 1964. His five children had to be placed in foster homes by the Children’s Aid Society.

Prince tried to keep in touch with his children but they were often moved to other foster homes. Only his daughter, Beryl, who remained in one foster home for seven years could he keep in touch with and he visited monthly and never gave trying to keep in touch with his other children.

In the years before his death, Prince “was a truly forgotten man.” It was during these years that he pawned his prized medals.

Tommy Prince died at Winnipeg’s Deer Hospital on November 1977, at the age of 62. At his funeral, a delegation of Princess Patricias served as pallbearers and draped a Canadian flag over his coffin for the memorial service attended by active soldiers, veterans and representatives from France, Italy and United States, friends and family.

As the coffin was lowered onto the ground, Beryl and Beverly Prince, Tommy’s daughters, shed tears. When the officer in charge presented Beverly with the Canadian flag which had been draped over the coffin the flow of tears increased. Who were all these strangers, both military and civilian, honouring her father with apparent sadness and great respect? Where had they been these past years when her father, crippled from machine- gun wounds, was forced to do menial jobs to keep alive? Were the honour and respect given only after his death? Did these people really care or was this just a colourful pageant performed by white people for entertainment?
– p. 6 Manitobans in Profile

The ten medals of Sergeant Thomas Prince have been verified as the originals by the War Museum in Ottawa and will be held in trust for the Prince family at the Museum of Man and Nature in Winnipeg.

Richard Wagamese

At a recent conference on indigenous knowledge I heard speaker after speaker refer to the tremendous spiritual heritage from which aboriginal people spring. While, as an Ojibway, such sentiments raised feelings of pride, esteem and self-worth, I was left troubled. Bothered not so much by the more aboriginally evangelical of the speakers, or by what was said, but rather by a sense of the value of the unspoken.

As aboriginal people, we are taught by our elders, academics, and each other, that our pre-settlement lives were guided by a profound sense of the sacred. I have no argument with this, and in fact, would defend it rigorously. However, we have become somewhat spiritually self-righteous through the years and often overlook the fact that pre-colonial Canada was not all sweet grass, sweat lodges and sunsets. Life was hard. Difficulty brings its accompanying ills. So that no matter how much we espouse the view of ourselves as staunch spiritual tribes and critics it could not have been possible.

Or, at least, contrary to what we tell ourselves – a perpetual condition.

In any human group there are always those less traditional, tribal or true. Our circles at that time – just as now – included thieves, liars, back-sliders, murderers, the immoral and the disbelieving. There were territorial conflicts, wars, civil disputes, arguments and resentment. There had to be. The day in day out life among a kinetic group of people virtually predicates the presence of minor or major inter-personal strife of some kind.

That is not to disrespect the traditional values on which our cultures thrive today. Nor is it to denigrate the incredibly empowering teachings tribal elders and wisdom keepers continue to pass on to new generations. And it is certainly not an attempt to down play the role of ceremony, ritual and spirituality in our homes and communities. Rather it’s an effort to redirect the way in which aboriginal people regard themselves and their histories. Because denial is a degenerative disease that in the end results in a distorted reality, a false perspective, and a less than spiritually enhancing condition.

For us to continue to romanticize our past is to create grave dangers for the generations to follow. As long as we continue to perpetuate the belief that we were perfect spiritual nations until the invasion of North America we continue to inculcate the belief amongst ourselves that we need to be perfectly spiritual today. Such idealism has provided us with a foundation for the establishment of powerful healing circles, centers, practices and organizations but it has also created a potentially harmful cultural mythology. A mythology that states that anything less than purely traditional is not traditional at all.

To deny the fact that our pre-settlement lives were often less than perfect creates the illusion that in order to truly be aboriginal today we need to assume the same emotional, intellectual, physical and spiritual personas.

Such is not the case.

You do not need to wear braids to qualify as aboriginal. You do not need to be able to dance pow wow, drum, sing or make a dream catcher to qualify. You do not need to own a traditional name. In fact, because of history and its effects, you do not even need to be able to speak your language, know your tribal lineage, or have been to a sweat lodge, sundance or pipe ceremony to count either. More importantly, you do not need to completely understand the traditional underpinnings of your particular culture to be an aboriginal person. All you need is the belief. Being Indian, like being Sikh, Maori, Serb or Canadian is an inside truth you carry with you always.

When we insist that our tribal lives were models of purity, morality, dignity and the profound we place incredible pressure on our contemporary lives. We create a deep sense of cultural guilt. To fail short of the ideal, to make mistakes, to not know certain things, to not know how to do certain things, raises feelings of unworthiness, defensiveness, anger and guilt. Behaviors arise that are less than culturally positive.

We create disillusioned youth. We create ambivalent communities. We create politicians motivated more on proving their aboriginality than the political agendas they are elected to carry out. We create a professional elite more intent on networking and displaying themselves aboriginally than effecting change in their neighborhoods and communities. We create culturally embarrassed individuals who display culture and spirituality more than actually practicing them. We create academics that would rather spend their lives studying their people than finding themselves. We create organizations whose board members spend more time squabbling over who knows more about traditional matters and approaches than performing the functions they were designed for. We create fractured rather than cohesive communities.

What we need to know and to understand is that it’s okay to admit to a less than utopian history. It’s okay to know that our pre-colonial societies had failings. Okay to make the admission of humanity that included all of humanity’s foibles and peccadilloes. Okay to say to each other privately and publicly that somewhere along our family line a member erred and was punished. Permissible to acknowledge that presence of unalterable wrongs in our clan structures and societies. When we do that we allow ourselves the freedom to be less than perfect.

Because despite the inherent failings it has been our spiritual way that has allowed us to survive. It has been our spiritual way that spared us the indignity of assimilation. Our various cultural ceremonies and rituals have provided the foundation upon which we have built our present vitality and on which we will move into a brighter future. It is the sweet grass way, the drum, and the way of the pipe that sustains us. That will always remain true.

But to be able to admit to each other first and Canadians later that we have remained strong and vital despite the shortcomings we recognize in our histories, shows a people confident, esteemed and capable of governing themselves and blazing the path towards their own future. Honesty breeds strength. Denial fosters failure. Our spiritual heritage will always remain the root of who we are but we need to practice it in the light of the truth our own histories. Histories less romanticized than realized. The image of the bronzed countenances of the native man and woman will only become true fixtures of the Canadian consciousness when aboriginal people themselves admit to the true nature of their pre-settlement lives.

The words we speak when we speak of our spiritual heritage will bear more weight and relevance when they come from the recognition of our unspoken truths. The truth of our humanity. As aboriginal people we have only ever been human – and that’s not likely to change in the very near future. We need only learn to say it.

Singer, songwriter, and actress, Mishi Donovan is a Chippewa Cree whose ancestors are renegades from the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota.

Mishi grew up as an orphan without knowledge of her past, her culture, or traditions. She has survived childhood abuses, violent relationships and many other tragedies.

In 1991, with the help of others, Mishi began her journey of healing. The songs she wrote helped her cry and feel again. Mishi’s story and music is an inspiration to all women, men and families, and her CD, The Spirit Within, is a reflection of the heart and soul of her people.

In the spring of 1993, Sunshine Records held an international contest titled The Great Canadian Talent Search. It was this contest that Mishi Donovan, an Aboriginal singer/songwriter from Alberta, entered in hopes of winning a few hours of free recording time. Upon receiving Mishi’s rough home recording demo, President Ness Michael immediately called Mishi with the offer of a recording contract.

Agreeing, Mishi ventured to Winnipeg and completed her debut album with producer Brandon Friesen. Mishi’s album titled Spirit in Flight has gained international recognition. Since its release, her single Chosen One has received heavy rotation on a number of second market radio stations. It was also used as the theme soundtrack for a CBC documentary about HIV and AIDS, directed by Ken Ward.

Mishi has performed at a number of festivals and conferences, including the Dream Speakers Festival, the White Berade 24th Anniversary and the Native Arts Festival in Edmonton, the Sagaw Theatre Presentation and the Health and Wellness Conference in Calgary. She also prepared to do a number of screen tests, after being approached by a few directors and agents who wanted her for their motion picture projects.

In the spring and summer months of 1995 and 1996, Mishi found time between her studies and performing to try her take in acting. Mishi played a support role in the Calgary syndicated TV series Lonesome Dove. These experiences have spawned other acting opportunities on ITV Edmonton as well as in live theatre dramas.

In 1997, Sunshine Records released Mishi’s second full length album: The Spirit Within. This recording has received nothing less than the best reviews and has provided a number of strong singles with heavy radio support.

On March 22, 1998, Mishi’s album The Spirit Within achieved the Canadian Music Industries highest acknowledgement, a Juno Award in the Best Music of Aboriginal Canada Recording.

Mishi will continue to tour and perform in support of her album The Spirit Within and her message of healing. The material for her third record has been written and will be recorded with Winnipeg Producer Brandon Friesen in the fall of 1998, and Mishi will work with director Cam Tjolbulton from ITV in Edmonton, on her next video for Letting Go (A Prayer Song).

Maurice Switzer

Beyond the borders of his beloved Six Nations territory, Jake Thomas’ death didn’t make any headlines.

When he died August 17th at the age of 76, he had been Cayuga chief for over half a century, a living archive for the Iroquois people. Chief Jacob Ezra Thomas was one of the first aboriginal people to obtain tenure as a university professor in Canada on the basis of his great wealth of traditional knowledge, and for 14 years he taught languages, culture, and history in Trent University’s Native Studies department.

He was the last man alive capable of reciting from memory the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy, which has served as the constitution for the people of the longhouse since before Europeans set foot on Turtle Island. In early summer, 1994, over a 12 day period, Chief Thomas gave a public recital of the Great Law, an event that was recorded on videotape and archived by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

“That peace is supposed to work,” he told an RCAP hearing. “It’s the power of the words of the Creator where they came from, of unity, being of one mind, a good mind. That’s what makes power.”

The Great Law is the type of oral Aboriginal history that is scoffed at these days by the journalistic and academic elite, the same bigots who rail against modern-day Indian milestones like the Delgamuukw decision or Nisga’a Treaty signing that uphold Aboriginal title and inherent rights. It was also the democratic model used by founding fathers like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in the framing of the United States Constitution.

Jake Thomas was a custodian of this precious gift, one of many shared by Amerindian people with European newcomers. Typically, neither the gifts nor their givers receive much credit from the beneficiaries.

Ironically, the most attention ever accorded Jake Thomas by mainstream society came during the last year of his life, when he agreed to participate in a recording by rock star Robbie Robertson that celebrated his Mohawk heritage. The Cayuga chief gave his blessing to Robertson’s Musical return to his roots, understanding better than most people the ability modern art forms to help ancient cultures survive.

I spotted the soft-spoken Elder standing by himself at a noisy reception following this year’s Aboriginal Achievement Award ceremonies, where he had chanted and played a turtle rattle to provide the native context for Robertson’s contemporary lyrics. In the middle of a forest of tuxedoes and glitzy evening gowns, this simple but profound man taught me how he honoured the handle of his turtle rattle with tobacco each time he used it.

Jake Thomas lived his culture, whether teaching Six Nations youngsters about nature in his sugar bush, or carving hickory condolence canes, traditionally used in the longhouse at the installation of a new chief, upon the death of his predecessor. His teaching will not end as long as visitors tour the Jake Thomas Learning Centre at Six Nations, or Trent University continues to incorporate into its annual convocation ceremonies the condolence cane he presented to the Native Studies program on the occasion of its 25th anniversary.

If Jake Thomas was a cultural icon for his people, the same cannot be said for the names on which the media focussed during the week of his passing. The attention they received — and Jake Thomas didn’t — speaks volumes about the priorities of “civilized” society. It was the usual cast of media celebrities — politicians doing about-faces on their principles, millionaire athletes using performance-enhancing drugs, a mobster gunned down in the driveway of his respectable suburban neighbourhood.

A lot of ink and air time that week was dedicated to a mounting scandal in Alberta, where senior officers of a provincially-owned bank were being accused of accepting huge bribes in return for approving multi-million dollar loans to prominent businessmen. The bank would also be writing off almost half a billion dollars in taxpayers money used to fund the business operations of Peter Pocklington, former meatpacking and hockey team tycoon.

What was so incongruous about this scandal is that it has been years in the making, escaping the scrutiny of Alberta politicians and journalists, who had been too busy focussing on the alleged financial difficulties of one Indian band which had run up a $3-million operating deficit.
Maurice Switzer

Chief Jacob Thomas is in a better place today, but only after dedicating his life to making this place a better one for all his people.

“We release you for we know it is no longer possible for you to walk together with us on earth.” (Wampum, The Great Law)

Maurice Switzer is a member of the Mississaugas of Rice Lake First Nation at Alderville,Ont. and director of communications for the Assembly of First Nations in Ottawa.

Buffy Sainte-Marie received her Ph.D. in Fine Arts from the University of Massachusetts, and also holds degrees in Philosophy and in teaching. These combined interests are clearly evident in her music, her visual art works, her writing, and her life.

She won an Academy Award for writing the song, Up Where We Belong (from An Officer and a Gentleman), but has also scored movies, ducked bullets, raised a son, and spent five years on Sesame Street teaching little kids and their caretakers that, “Indians still exist.”

Her electronic paintings on her Macintosh computer have been exhibited in both museums and galleries as well as online. In March she was inducted into the Canadian music industry’s Juno Hall of Fame. The versatility in all this work is a reflection of her own life and is best described as extremely varied, both universal and unique.

As a college student in the early sixties, Buffy Sainte-Marie became known as a writer of protest and love songs. Her songs have been performed by hundreds of artists including Elvis Presley, Indigo girls, Barbara Streisand, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Chet Atkins, Bobby Darin, Donovan, Glen Campbell, The Highwaymen, Roberta Flack, Neil Diamond, the Boston Pops Orchestra, and Janis Joplin.

The folk-scene in those Greenwich Village days was a mixture of preservationists and originals. Buffy was of the latter group, and a loner. Having written Universal Soldier, which became an anthem for the sixties’ peace movement, she still was absent from the mass protest marches in favour of shedding her unique light on Indian rights and environmental issues, which she continues to do today, “…because nobody’s covering those bases.”

Her musicianship was and is a reflection of her curiosity about sound. Even in the beginning, she strung and tuned her guitar in all sorts of unusual ways and played a mouth bow, which relies on harmonics and a remarkable ear. But what Buffy Sainte-Marie is best known for is song writing. From her first record to the present time, her songs have been meaningful to other artists and to audiences as well, making sense to both the head and the heart. She is a real original.

The songs she wrote were varied. Some music lovers might think of her as a writer of country songs of protest songs, but her big financial successes (which allowed her to remain an artist instead of having to work in some other field) were her love songs; particularly Until It’s Time for You to Go and Up Where We Belong. She had a string of country hits as well, including The Piney Wood Hills, I’m Gonna Be a Country Girl Again, and He’s an Indian Cowboy in the Rodeo. The protest songs she’s written are scathing and pointed. There is no counter argument that holds up against Universal Soldier, Now That the Buffalos’ Gone, of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Buffy went from Greenwich Village to Europe, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, and Japan, and had a unique career outside of the U.S. She scored movies, wrote essays, worked with early computers, presented a colloquium to Europe’s philosophers, established a scholarship foundation to fund native studies painted huge pictures, spent time with indigenous people in far away countries, received a medal from Queen Elizabeth II, and won an Academy Award. In 1976, when her son was born, she quit professional recording to become a mother and an artist. For the next five years, was a cast member of Sesame Street and she continued to be a student of experimental music for the next sixteen years.

In 1966, Buffy had made the first ever electronic quadraphonic vocal album, and she has continued to cut across musical stereotypes, scoring movies and blazing a personal trail through digital music, while never straying far from the heart of intimate song writing. Whereas in the seventies she used a Boucla synthesizer, and later a Serge, creating electronic soundtracks for songs and movies, during the same period she made rare appearances at huge European music festivals, using the early Roland MIDI guitar. In the later seventies and early eighties, she worked at home with a Fairlight and a Synclavier. When the Macintosh computer came out in 1984, Buffy was at the head of the line.

Today, her digital home studio is as personal and hands-on for her as a guitar was in the sixties. Her come-back CD, Coincidence and Likely Stories, was made at home in 1991. Using her Macintosh as a recording instrument, she played most of the parts herself. When it was just the way she wanted it, she dialed the number of her co-producer in London, England, and sent the music down the phone lines via modem, bounced it off the satellite, and it went onto tape in London.

Upon the release of that album, France named her Best International Artist and presented her with the Grand Prix Charles de Gaulle Award. In Ottawa, newspapers reviewed her performance with the 85-piece electronic band for 20,000 people last summer at Big Sky in Alberta, as well as for tiny Reserves and fly-in communities across Canada.

Today Buffy teaches at colleges, and lectures in a variety of fields including digital art, philosophy, film scoring, electronic music, song writing, Indian issues and the Native genius for governments. Most importantly, Buffy teaches to remain positive amidst tough human realities. Her digital paintings vary in style as do her songs, speeches, classes and essays, each reflecting her lifelong wish to empower creative people’s multifaceted individual potentials “…because we need fresh alternative ideas from every direction…students, artist, women, and indigenous people.”

Her latest single and video Darling Don’t Cry is a “Pow-Wow love song.” It was released in 1996 followed by another CD, Up Where We Belong. The album features fifteen recordings including some of Buffy’s most beloved classics: Universal Soldier, Until It’s Time for You to Go, The Piney Wood Hills, Soldier Blue, God is Alive, Eagle Man, and Indian Cowboy, as well as her own version of Up Where We Belong. Chris Birkett, who co-produced Coincidence and Likely Stories is once again her co-producer for Up Where We Belong

R. Stewart

The Beecher Bay Band will gamble in court that it has the right to build a casino on reserve land between Metchosin and East Sooke.

Band lawyer Rory Morahan recently said that bylaws covering gaming were submitted to the minister of Indian affairs in 1995. Under Indian Act
provisions, unless the minister specifically rejects bylaws submitted to him within 40 days, they go into force, Morahan said.

That means the band has had the right to govern gaming on its reserve since 1995 and the province’s rejection last week of a band application for
a gaming license was irrelevant, Morahan suggested. He’ll take that argument to either the Federal Court or the B.C. Supreme Court within a month.

“I estimate we’ll be filing within a month to six weeks and we could see a decision within about six to eight months…A lot of this is affidavit evidence — this is a document case — and those kind of cases can proceed fairly quickly.”

Band representative Pat Chipps said all the documentation is ready to go. “This is plan A for us, not plan B — this is the way we intended to go
originally, so the research has already been done,” Chipps said. “We think we have been very politically correct in this by trying to work cooperatively with the province. But this is economically very important to us, so we are going ahead.”

Morahan said he plans to introduce evidence that gambling is a long-held cultural tradition among the Coast Salish.

Linda VanderBerg, a cultural anthropologist who works extensively on behalf of First Nations in B.C., said the tradition of gambling goes back
thousands of years and that artifacts of s’lahal — or bone games — are often found in archeological digs.

“Blankets, copper, any number of things considered valuable would change hands,” she said. “There was even one Clallum chief (from Washington State) who lost his wife in one of the bones games, so the stakes could get pretty high.”

Band chief Burt Charles displayed his modern bone-game implements, made from wood and deer horn. Bands would gamble for blankets made from
mountain-sheep wool or other goods, though now cash changes hands, he said. Traditional tokens would have been made from whale bones, VanderBerg said.

Morahan stressed that the major goal of the casino proposal was to provide jobs and economic benefits for the Beecher Bay Band. But the economic spin-off would also benefit neighboring communities, he said.

“Portions of the revenue from the gaming would be set aside to pay for things like improving the infrastructure and the roads and so on,” he
said. And with 200 to 1,000 jobs expected as the project builds to completion, there would also be work for people outside the band, which has
fewer than 200 members, he said.

Chipps said the band would meet today with other First Nations to try to arrange joint funding for the court process. But Morahan said the legal gambit would continue even without support of other First Nations.