When I was an angry young man I asked a Native veteran who I was close to (I consider him to be like an Uncle), why he fought for a country that had treated our family and our people so shabbily, a country that considered us traitours for fighting back against imperial oppression. he said something that took me a while to understand, as a matter of fact I didnt really understand it until I spoke to Jess Gordon about a year ago when we discussed treaty and its importance to native people. Uncle Charlie said There was a dream that was Canada, a dream about a partnership where an indian like me had as many opportunities as a white man where indians didnt have to live hiding in the bush. I wasnt over there fighting for a country that doesnt even consider me to be a citizen, I was over there fighting for that dream. I was defending the treaties and our people. Now I was a pretty smart guy even as an angry young man, but I remember thinking, why the hell would anyone fight to defend a bunch of papers that basically say here take all our land? I have always viewed the treaties as surrender documents, a bunch of agreements where indians gave up everything and got nothing, but I was seeing them through a white mans eyes. When you look at treaties through native eyes you see something far different, because Native people record history orally, and because the first native chiefs who signed the treaties neither wrote nor spoke english they were going by what they were told, and what they were told was not what was written. They signed a partnership agreement, they signed it in good faith and they held to their word. Even when the government broke its word, when they were starved and forced onto reservations. They signed no surrender agreements, they signed documents that provided for the future of their people, they agreed to stand on guard for the country that was to be built TOGETHER. Last year when talking about treaties with jess, it all clicked, I finally understood what Charlie had been saying, that Canada is a dream worth fighting for, but it has got to be a partnership, it needs to be what those men who signed the treaties believed it was, a country where everyone has equal opportunities, where native and non native canadians can live together in peace and prosperity. Many of our people have fought and died for the dream and I will honour them by fighting for it too. Lest we forget.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 04:32:40 +0000
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