A Mile in our Moccasins
A Course Outline on Canada’s
Indian Residential School Experience
Introduction:
It has been said that the most profound is often hidden in the simplest things. Using this truism as a basis, Canadian artist, musician, activist, author and educator Dennis Lakusta has developed a unique approach to better understanding Canada’s Indian Residential School tragedy and this country’s oftentimes abusive treatment of its Aboriginal citizens. Over the past twenty-five years Dennis has crisscrossed the width and breadth of this vast country speaking to tens of thousands of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students, from elementary through to university post graduate levels. His subjects include; the Indian Act, Aboriginal youth suicide, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Constitution Act of 1982, the Royal Proclamation of 1763, Aboriginal self-government and self-determination as well as the history of the Indian schools themselves and their affect on his family. Now in his late-seventies, Dennis felt it was the right time to condense and refine his many experiences as a traveler and educator into one simple but hard-hitting document on these current and hot-button issues.
After guest lecturing at Simon Fraser University (in Vancouver, BC) for the past nine years Dennis originally intended the ten-day course to be an extension of talks given at SFU but considering the immediacy of these issues and the electrically-charged atmosphere surrounding Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal relations (both in Canada and around the globe) the document’s scope has now been widened to include conferences, symposiums, forums and essentially any gatherings focused on indigenous reconciliation and healing. The course consists of ten independent parts or sessions which can be presented (1) singularly, (2) grouped with other sessions or (3) delivered in its entirety. Flexibility is key and each session can be customized to fit a two to three hour format depending on time constraints and the student’s engagement in the material. The success of the program is largely dependent on engagement….these are not lectures per se. After Dennis’ initial delivery of the main theme of each session, students are heartily encouraged to engage and participate in an open and frank discussion of the issues presented.
‘A Mile in Our Moccasins’ is designed to be solutions-oriented…ample time is provided during each session for Dennis and the students to explore solutions that can help re-ignite the flame of cultural pride and self-esteem in Canada’s Aboriginal youth. (That delicate flame has been abused, assaulted and trampled upon by uncaring governments, Churches and the mainstream for most of the past one-hundred and fifty years). There is a direct link between broken children and broken adults so exploring solutions must include the extended community as well.
These sessions are not dull. Dennis is known far and wide for his patented brand of earthy humour, his exquisite and topical songwriting and his amazing artwork, all of which are incorporated into this unique and exciting program.
Aesop was a master at using fables (e.g. the tortoise and the hare, the fox and the grapes) as simple teaching models to explain profound and universal truths/principles usually relating to the complexities and nuances inherent within the human condition. Other visionaries throughout history have used similar devices (parables, songs, theatre, mythology, allegories, legends, etc.) to express their own ideas and insights. Following in the footsteps of this illustrious lineage, Dennis Lakusta will also use the simplest of models – drawn mainly from the realm of literature, the arts, personal experience as well as excerpts from his own books and essays – to deliver a heart-felt and sometimes brutally-honest portrayal of the Indian Residential School experience. The following ten-part course provides Canadians from all walks of life (not just students) with the opportunity to better understand the Residential School tragedy from an Indigenous perspective….by ‘walking a mile in our moccasins’.
(Note: The following course overview is written in long form as opposed to point form or summary for two reasons. First, to provide teaching staff and administrators with a more accurate and comprehensive portrayal of the actual contents and language used in each session. Secondly, taking into consideration Dennis’ advanced age, ongoing health issues and inability to travel, the ten-day course can be adapted and presented by other younger educators who would most certainly benefit from Dennis’ original and unexpurgated version).
PS: The deeper, more implicit intent that underpins ‘A Mile in Our Moccasins’ is to address (and find solutions to) the epidemic of Aboriginal youth suicide in Canada. All ten sessions will have some tie-in with this most pressing issue.
Session #1
The Pied Piper of Hamlin: As Allegory
In the folk tale ‘The Pied Piper of Hamlin’ the town was overrun by rats. The mayor, on behalf of the townsfolk, offered a reward to anyone who could get rid of them. A travelling piper accepted the challenge and proceeded to saunter through the town while playing a tune on his pipe. The rats, being somehow entranced by the music, scurried out of their holes and followed the piper. He then led the rats out of town, and they (the rats) were never seen again. When the piper returned to collect his reward the mayor and townsfolk reneged on the agreement. The angry piper once again sauntered through the town playing the same tune on his pipe, only this time it was all the children who followed him out of town, never to be seen again. The pied piper had inflicted upon the townsfolk the ultimate punishment by taking from them what they held most dear and precious…their children.
The forced removal of 160,000 Aboriginal children from their families, communities, language, music, spirituality and traditional ways literally tore the heart out of the native culture. Most of the trauma and dysfunction that exists in Canada’s Indigenous communities today can be traced back to this one senseless act of cultural barbarism committed by the Church and State.
(Excerpt from “The Honour Song Trilogy – Part Two”)
The tie-in between the above folk tale and Canada’s Indian Residential School system is unmistakable. The tale was written over four hundred years ago by the Brothers Grimm and even today has not lost its relevance or its meaning. The central meaning being the value and importance of children to a family, village, community or culture.
To Kill the Indian in the Child
During this first session the students are asked (figuratively) to remove their shoes so they can walk for a ways in someone else’s shoes, or in this case, in someone else’s moccasins. They will then be taken on a difficult journey deep, deep within themselves to a place that many will not be familiar with and where hopefully the students, their future children and their grandchildren will never have to go. It is that hidden place deep within the pit of the stomach where people really, really ‘hurt’. Not the hurt that one feels when we stub our toe or bump our head but the deep hurt children feel when their humanity, dignity or ‘personhood’ have been violated by a coercive force outside themselves which is both impossible to understand and impossible to control. It is the hurt children feel when they have been sexually, physically or psychologically abused by a system that is intent on destroying their cultural identities.
Dennis will be the guide on this journey because he has been to this hurtful place many times in his life…he knows the layout of the land and he also knows how to get back. Periodically the students attending this session will be asked to express their feelings about what they have heard thus far.
The next part of the journey switches tracks a bit and transports the students into a scenario in which a typical Aboriginal family is enjoying an evening meal in their home. (The students are encouraged to use their imagination by placing themselves directly into this scenario and imagining – even for a few moments – that these unfolding events are actually happening to them and their families).
A loud knock on the door interrupts the peace of the family gathering and in walks two white men in police uniforms who present a document signed by the Canadian government authorizing them to seize – by force if necessary – all the children between the ages of five and seventeen and place them in a vehicle waiting outside. The children will not be allowed to take anything with them except a warm coat for traveling. The frightened children will then be driven to the nearest train station where they are tagged, registered and then transported, sometimes hundreds of miles away, to a prison-like institution which the government calls an Indian Residential School. At this point in the session the students are invited to express their feelings about what the children – and the family – are going through as these events unfold…how would the students themselves feel if this happened to their families…how would their parents and grandparents feel if this actually happened to them.
Next, Dennis will provide a gut-wrenching account of day-to-day life for many of the 160,000 aboriginal children (over a one-hundred and twenty year period) after being forcibly removed from their families and placed in the Residential schools. Upon arrival the children were ordered to disrobe, their clothes were burned, their hair was cut short and they were issued institutional uniforms. Often boys were separated from the girls (and brothers from sisters) and this only added to their trauma. There were strict rules that were enforced by the priests and nuns who ran the institutions. Rules like prohibiting the native children from ever again speaking their own language or practicing their own spirituality or singing their own songs. The children were subsequently forced to learn a new and foreign language, practice a new and foreign religion, learn a new and foreign education and eat new and foreign foods. If the children broke any of these rules they were punished, sometimes severely…corporal punishment, intimidation, shaming and forced confinement were accepted methods of punishment administered by the priests and nuns.
Many children became sick and many died from allergies as a result of eating the white man’s food brought over from Europe. Many more died from over-crowding (combined with exposure to communicable diseases), lack of proper nutrition and lack of heat in the winter months. To make up the shortfall due to inadequate government funding for the schools, many children were hired out for half a day and forced to work as farm labourers (for the boys) and domestic help (for the girls)…they were never paid. Many died from exposure after running away from the institutions. Many died from suicide. Even after leaving the Residential schools many former students died (as adults) as a direct result of the psychological, physical and emotional abuses suffered while attending the Indian schools as children. The estimated death-toll from the 120-year history of the schools ranges from thousands to tens of thousands…low estimates only account for children who died while actually registered and residing at the schools. The higher estimates include the many thousands of former students who died from suicide, family violence, morbid obesity and diabetes (due to the white man’s diet) and alcohol/drug-related deaths after leaving the institutions.
Over the past 40-50 years the Aboriginal community has been painfully aware of many unmarked and mass grave sites situated on Residential school property. Who were these children…how did they die…why were there no grave markers erected…why were the children’s bodies never returned to their communities…why were the parents and extended families never informed about the death of their children? The Canadian government and the churches (especially the Catholic Church) have turned a blind eye to this explosive issue.
When Sir John A MacDonald and his cabal of industrialists first designed the Indian Residential school system, its main objective was to ‘assimilate’ Canada’s Aboriginal culture ‘out of existence’. They realized that the most effective way to achieve this objective was through the children.
Session #1 concludes with an open forum on the above accounts and Dennis encourages an unrestricted, ‘no-holds-barred’ discussion about, not only the history of the Indian schools themselves, but the racist attitudes and mentality that created and administered them. Students attending these sessions will no doubt find Dennis’ approach to these issues to be passionate, confronting, blunt and sometimes even brutal. This is by design. Dennis feels that students (and other Canadians) need to be ‘shocked’ into an awareness of what actually happened in Canada’s Indian Residential schools.
This humanitarian tragedy was clearly the darkest chapter in Canadian history…sometimes referred to as ‘Canada’s dirty little secret’. Genocide – as defined by the United Nation’s 1948 charter – was committed right here, upon our soil and in our recent times. The Indian Residential school system was a crime against humanity and the Canadian government and the Catholic Church have tried their level best to cover it up…to sweep the tragedy under the carpet and to white-wash the Indian schools and the Aboriginal experience out of our history books. If we as a country are ever going to address the racist foundation that Canada was built upon (and that still exists today), if we as a country are ever going to heal the wounds inflicted upon our First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, if we as a country are ever going to accept, embrace and ‘own’ the misdeeds and injustices of our past then it is Dennis’ deeply held conviction that a confronting and brutally honest accounting of that past is essential….and this accounting must begin in the Canadian education system.
Session #2
Nine Percent: The Sandy Bay/Stanley Mission Dichotomy
Nine percent…it’s hard to get your head around a suicide rate of nine percent, especially when the statistic applies to the youth of your community. It essentially means that nine out of every one hundred children will not see their twentieth birthday. A sobering thought no doubt. I first heard about Sandy Bay – a remote Woodlands Cree village situated in northeastern Saskatchewan – from a CBC documentary back in the late 1990’s and my immediate reaction (besides being completely stunned) was to somehow find a way to travel there and experience this community for myself. Five years after viewing the CBC documentary I was on a tour of Saskatchewan high schools and I made sure Sandy Bay was added to the schedule. The tour also included another native community called Stanley Mission, situated just north of Prince Albert and, as I would find out when I arrived there, this community had a youth suicide rate near zero percent. These two contrasting percentage rates – nine and nearly zero – formed the basis for an investigation into the root causes of youth suicide in Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Métis cultures.
Session #2 will examine the unique conditions existing in each of the two communities which account for their respective youth suicide rates. These conditions include the following.
Sandy Bay.
The community’s education system is a good place to start when trying to comprehend a nine-percent youth suicide rate. The teachers were mostly, if not all, non-aboriginal and the curriculum was essentially the ‘white man’s’ education model similar to that taught in mainstream Canadian schools. On both visits to Sandy Bay (my second visit occurred two years after the first) I was free to walk through the corridors of the school and recall angry white teachers yelling at and berating young native students for not paying attention or not learning the lessons or not sitting still, etc. It reminded me of some of the Catholic institutions I attended when I was a kid.
The Sandy Bay school ‘felt’ unhealthy, dysfunctional and broken. The high school kids attending my presentations were generally distracted, disinterested and disrespectful. It was clear that many of them were suffering from some level of psychological damage which was probably due, in part, to some form of substance abuse. I spoke to the principle and some of the support staff about this and they acknowledged that drugs and alcohol were rampant in the community and that drug-awareness programs, healing circles and counselling were available to the students. The adults fared no better. During both visits to Sandy Bay I was billeted in guest housing on the reserve and had the opportunity to walk through the rows of cheap pre-fab dwellings, many of which had curtains drawn with the ubiquitous blue glow of televisions emanating out into the cold winter’s night. The adult community’s dysfunction was palpable…no where was there even a hint of spirit, celebration or cultural pride.
Stanley Mission.
Stanley Mission high school was the complete reverse…I was delighted to hear Cree being spoken in the hallways and the classrooms. Most, if not all, of the teachers were Aboriginal who had completed their post-secondary education and had returned to the Stanley Mission school. I seem to remember that the only non-aboriginal staff member at that time was the principle. There was definitely an air of positivity filling the class rooms, school corridors and the extended community as well. The corridor walls were plastered with vibrant arts and crafts depicting native culture and native spirituality, and the front lobby of the school resembled a large circular tepee with an open fire pit in the centre with a seating area that was laid out in concentric circles to accommodate large gatherings. Again, what really caught my attention was the lively, animated exchanges between the students and the teachers…in Cree!!! Unlike Sandy Bay, the students who attended my sessions in Stanley Mission were attentive, respectful and engaged. I was escorted through the community during lunch breaks and the same sense of positivity was felt as much outside the school as within it. I remember thinking to myself…what a healthy community this is.
“Aboriginal people must be allowed to be Aboriginal people”
Stanley Mission is the light at the end of the Indian Residential school tunnel. A beacon of hope in the midst of a national tragedy. Much thought, much compassion and much wisdom went into creating and re-designing a community so that it could heal itself from within. And the Stanley Mission high school’s philosophy is indicative of the right balance that needs to be struck between the Canadian mainstream’s education model and the traditional ways of the Woodland and Chipewyan Cree. Yes, the natives now live in a colonized world with some ostensibly benefits from reading, writing and arithmetic but the core of their communities and the core of their culture (which includes education) must remain true to Aboriginal traditions and Aboriginal sensibilities. In essence, Aboriginal people must be allowed to be Aboriginal people…while in the midst of the Euro-Canadian mainstream.
Dennis feels strongly that this is the only way to solve, or at least mitigate the Aboriginal youth suicide crisis in Canada. The mainstream education system has failed Aboriginal youth…the paternalistic, suffocating, wardship approach, which has been in place since the early days of the Indian Act is fundamentally flawed in that its original intent and design was to assimilate Canada’s Indigenous cultures out of existence. A new native-friendly education paradigm (similar to Stanley Mission) needs to be developed and implemented in Aboriginal communities and it needs to include those elements which can re-ignite the flame of cultural pride and self-esteem in our youngsters…elements which provide our youth with every opportunity to celebrate who they are as Aboriginal Peoples.
Those elements include; regional dialects, native spirituality, connection to the land, music, dancing, art, story telling and the wisdom of the elders. (Traditionally, native education included moral and ethical teaching…how to live in harmony with the Earth…how to respect women as equals and honour the elders, the LGBTQ community, etc.). This does not mean we do away with the mainstream education system…it simply means we create a workable balance between the two systems that incorporates the ancient wisdom and Earth-reverent values of Canada’s First Peoples. And lastly, this new native-friendly education paradigm must be considered as only one part of a much broader transformation and cultural renaissance that needs to happen at the community level. It is not only the children who need to have the flame of cultural pride and self-esteem ignited in their hearts and minds… it is the whole community.
After recounting his personal experiences while visiting these two remote northern Saskatchewan communities, Dennis and the students will discuss Aboriginal youth suicide, especially the psychological/social conditions and the broken native education system that drives so many young children to take their own lives. What level of hopelessness and despondency would lead to such an horrendous waste of human life? What are the religious and cultural attitudes (especially the attitudes of superiority, domination and subjugation), that would, over a relatively short span of Canadian history, create an atmosphere that has been – and continues to be – conducive to mass suicide amongst our youth? What does a nine percent youth suicide rate actually mean? What would happen if nine out of every one hundred children from a mainstream, Euro-Canadian community (like Calgary or Ottawa or Vancouver or Halifax) committed suicide? The Indian Residential schools have been closed now for decades…why are so many of our children still killing themselves? Dennis will pepper the students with questions and insights (during this open forum) that are mainly drawn from ‘The Psychology of Cultural Trauma’ which is Pt One of his most recent book titled ‘The Honour Song Trilogy’, a link to which is provided below.
Session #3
The Conquest, Colonization and Christianization of the Americas
“Those who forget their past…are condemned to repeat it”.
(George Santayana, American Philosopher)
Session #3 will provide students with a ‘thumbnail’ sketch of recent world history – the last one thousand years or so – and examines the conditions and realities that existed both before and after the European colonization of the Americas began. The following historical facts have a direct and causal linkage to Canada’s Indian Residential schools and are mainly drawn from Dennis’ books, essays and other course outlines. At the end of each session there will be an open forum where the students will have a chance to ask questions and express their feelings about the session’s contents.
On the Need for Historical Context
“They came to our land…like night comes to the day.”
(A Sioux Lakota elder who died at the Pine Ridge Massacre in South Dakota)
The five-hundred years preceding Columbus witnessed a virtual blood-bath in western and eastern Europe. As a matter of fact there was never a single moment in that entire time frame where one kingdom wasn’t at war with another kingdom and so on and so forth. As anyone knows, war was an expensive undertaking that quickly drained the coffers of the various European kingdoms and principalities. These were the general conditions that existed (circa 1492) when Columbus first set sail on his infamous westward voyage to find a shorter trade route to India…and inadvertently tripped over, what would come to be known as, ‘the Americas’. Let’s be clear on one thing…the European conquest and colonization of the Americas was not about high adventure on the open seas or other romantic fairy tales portrayed by Hollywood…it was about big money, pure and simple. Big money, along with natural resources, gold and precious gems, land, timber, slaves and anything else that could be plundered and used to replenish the war-ravaged and exhausted royal coffers back in Europe.
The two standards flown atop European ships back then carried the insignias of both the State and the Church. The Catholic Church played a vital role in global conquest and colonization by issuing a series of ‘Papal Bulls’ in the mid to late fifteenth century which essentially gave ‘Gods’ blessing to the ensuing genocide that would be visited upon the New World’s Indigenous mosaic over the next five hundred years. The concept of ‘Manifest Destiny’ was the subject of one such Papal Bull which was used to legitimize the plundering of Indigenous lands and the removal (by force and violence if necessary) of the land’s rightful occupants.
(Note: It should be noted that one of those Papal Bulls also gave King Philip of Portugal the Vatican’s official blessing to begin abducting African citizens to be used as slaves. And thus began another unconscionable crime against humanity – perpetrated by the European state and the Catholic Church – which eventually saw twelve million African nationals captured and sold into slavery. Most of those unfortunates were shipped west to the New World to do all the dirty work that the now powerful USA was founded upon).
It must be remembered that Europe of the fourteen and fifteenth century was a filthy, disease-ridden cesspool of a place, mainly caused by over-population, lack of adequate sanitation and the practice of raising and keeping livestock in densely populated areas. These factors created the ideal breeding ground for disease and in 1347 the Bubonic plague struck and decimated western Europe, wiping out an estimated 50-100 million citizens in a matter of four years (1347-1351). These were the same poisonous conditions that infected Europe in the late fifteenth century as the conquest, Christianization and colonization of the planet got under way.
It is hard to fathom the magnitude of death and destruction, the extent of human suffering and man’s inhumanity to man that was triggered by the events of 1492. From that point forward the conquistadors, the Church and the autonomous European states boarded their sailing ships and began fanning out to the far reaches of the planet and – wittingly or unwittingly – they transported their filth and disease, their bugs and viruses with them to every region of the globe. Of course the Indigenous tribes and societies spread throughout the world had no resistance or immunity to the new bugs and germs infesting the ships and thus began – what some consider to be – the most unconscionable, senseless and criminal act ever perpetrated in human history, far eclipsing the scale and severity of the Jewish Holocaust. (Strong words but historically irrefutable).
The global anthropology community has pegged the death toll in the Americas alone (over the past five-hundred years) to be in the range of 70-80 million. That’s 70-80 million Indigenous human beings. This astronomical death toll was partly due to disease and partly due to genocide. The world-wide death toll caused by European conquest, colonization and Christianization during that same time frame, is estimated to be in excess of 250 million human beings. And for what??? To satisfy the European’s lust for wealth, gold, resources, land, slaves, etc., all of which were used to finance their ongoing wars.
Besides rats, germs, Smallpox and other vermin, the European death ships carried another kind of poison on board that was equally as lethal. That poison was in the form of an attitude….the attitude of superiority. Which, by the way, constitutes the central foundation block upon which racism would propagate and flourish over the next 500 years. With the recent mapping of the human genome, we now know conclusively that there are no such things as ‘races’ or subspecies within the humanoid strain. And that all humans are in fact equal members of one close-knit genetic family who began migrating out of Africa at the start of the great human diaspora some 70,000 years ago. Depending upon where those ancient ancestors migrated to, they slowly adapted to the unique environmental conditions they found themselves in. (Session #4 titled ‘Genetics and Culture’ will expand on this).
The Europeans of the late fifteenth century (as a culture) were an aggressive, war-mongering and somewhat barbaric lot who, due to the previous five centuries of constant warfare, had built up a powerful war machine with the latest in modern weaponry and firepower. Their military might and prowess at sea were unrivalled. And these factors, combined with Europe’s insatiable lust for gold and other forms of material wealth (plus a superiority complex that bordered on psychopathic) spelled bad news for the world-wide matrix of Indigenous cultures and societies that lay in the path of European conquest and colonization.
To be fair, the six primary European states who participated in Europe’s campaign to conquer and colonize the New World each utilized their own unique approach and methodology. One might suppose, rightly so, that Canada’s native cultures should consider themselves lucky that they were not colonized by Spain…many Spanish nationals today are thoroughly embarrassed by Hernand Cortez’s brutal conquest and subjugation (out-right, premeditated genocide) of the Aztec civilization of current-day Mexico. For lack of a better term, the French and British employed a ‘kinder, gentler’ approach to conquest and subjugation which, around the time of Confederation, came to be known as cultural ‘assimilation’, a bureaucratic term that went on to serve as a pretext for the creation of the Indian Act, Indian reservations and the Indian Residential school system.
All of the events recounted above are subject to the unerring and unforgiving laws of consequence and causality. Events occurring around the planet today are all the latest links in this historical ‘unfolding’ including the epidemic of youth suicide plaguing Canada’s Aboriginal communities. When the first French ships began arriving on our eastern shores, they too carried the poisonous attitudes of cultural and religious superiority. And although the relationship between the local natives and the settlers flooding in over the next couple hundred years was at times cordial and workable, it was the attitude of superiority (and the lust for land and resources) that would justify the racist policies of Sir John A MacDonald’s conservatives and the Catholic Church which would in turn lay the groundwork for the Indian Act, the Residential schools and the current youth suicide epidemic.
The final word on this subject has to do with the question of ethics…yes, colonization happened…we can’t change that. But was it right…was it ethical. Session #3 will end with an open forum on these very questions.
Session #4
The Genetics of Culture
(Note: A central tenet of natural law is biodiversity…this is how nature ‘works’…this is how the biosphere ‘works’. The simple rose plant, for example, has something like seventy-five different variations spread throughout the world. Each and every variations of this plant is a member of a close, genetically integrated family whose seeds had been scattered far and wide over tens of millions of years, thereby causing each variation to adapt and change according to the unique environmental conditions each plant found itself in. Although the genetic essence of the plant sub-species (the rose) is deep and familial, the variations are superficial and inconsequential to the overall genus. This natural process – the scattering of seeds – applies to, and affects the Homo sapien sub-species as well… in precisely the same way. In Session #4 Dennis will dissect just one of many superficial variations that all humans share, which is skin colour. Superficial variations are oftentimes the targets of racism, and ignorance of the science behind these variations can fuel and perpetuate racist psychoses).
Culture is a genetic phenomenon…it can take thousands, and even tens of thousands of years of genetic adaptation for a culture to evolve and acclimatize itself to varied and unique environmental conditions spread across the globe. The process of acclimatization takes a long, long time and involves ever-so-slight and ever-so-gradual changes to our genetic coding imprinted along each cell’s DNA. This slow adaptation occurs on different levels…from skin colour, body type, facial types and diet (on the outside) to psychological, spiritual, attitudinal and ethical (on the inside). Yes, culture goes that deep. The centuries and millennia following the great African Diaspora witnessed the dispersion of early advanced Homo sapiens throughout the various regions of the planet. Before the great migration began, all of our ancestors looked and acted pretty much the same, having millions of years to collectively adapt to similar environmental conditions existing on the African sub-continent. But after migrating to the vast and distant nether-regions of the planet – from present-day Norway to Australia and from eastern Asia to the Americas – unique and subtle differences began to appear which would eventually define each settled culture as distinct, and establish the global multicultural mosaic we see today.
Melanin and the Biology of Color
(Note: The following section on skin colour and melanin is a reprint from one of Dennis’ earlier course outlines titled ‘Racism – A Scientific Perspective’ a link to which is included at the end of this document)
As mentioned earlier, Dennis has had the opportunity to speak to tens of thousands of students across the country and when asked to define racism, the majority of students (approx. 70%) have indicated skin colour as the leading factor that distinguishes one culture from another. Ignorance and a lack of understanding about the science behind skin colour often provides the justification for some human beings to discriminate against other members of their own family. Therefore, this session will be entirely dedicated to examining the biological workings of human skin and especially the natural chemical known as melanin (the dark brown pigment responsible for skin colouration). This is an attempt to illustrate the fact that melanin is simply and purely Mother Nature’s sunscreen – a precious gift and not something to be used for the purpose of racial discrimination or prejudice.
A large blow-up of a detailed cross section of human skin will be displayed. Many of the older students may be familiar with this kind of illustration from biology class but they will be asked to focus on one particular cell structure known as melanocytes. ‘Cytes’ is Latin for cells…so melanocytes means cells that manufacture and distribute melanin. All human beings (with the exception of albinos) have this type of cell structure functioning less than a millimeter beneath the surface of their skin. The following section explains how these cells work.
Why is ‘Melanin’ so important?
Skin is the largest human organ and the busiest. Underneath a square inch of human skin is a virtual laboratory of chemical and biological processes that are essential to the human being’s welfare and existence. Folate (the source of Iron) and Vitamin D are two of the more important nutrients manufactured in this laboratory and without these nutrients the human being could not survive. Through the natural process of photosynthesis, plants capture and store the sun’s energy and heat in caloric form. (When humans consume plant or animal calories, they are in fact eating stored sunlight). Our skin also captures energy from the sun in the form UV-B (Ultraviolet B) which triggers the production of Vitamin D. Too much UV-B destroys Folates and may cause skin cancer, whereas too little causes a Vitamin D deficiency.
So, a balance must be struck between too much and too little UV-B rays and this is the role that melanin plays. Melanin is a dark brown chemical pigment (manufactured within the melanocyte cells) that regulates the amount of UV-B rays that penetrate the skin. When you go for a winter holiday to Mexico and are exposed to higher levels of UV-B, the brain sends a signal (via the body’s nervous system) to the melanocytes, causing these cells to produce more melanin and upload it to cells (keratinocytes) coating the extreme top layer of human skin. The result is that you develop a nice tan for the duration of your holiday and then upon arriving back home you begin to lose it. This is melanin at work. This is also human biology and Mother Nature at work.
Next, we will apply this understanding to the central issue being presented, which is racism.
Because the Earth’s axis is fairly perpendicular to the sun, the regions near the equator (variable within the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn) receive the most intense amounts of sunlight (UV-B). And, because of the curvature of the Earth’s surface, the further north or south one proceeds, the less intense the sunlight until you reach the poles where there is very little direct sunlight. Cultures that migrated to, and have existed for tens of thousands of years at certain latitudes have genetically adapted to the amount of sunlight available at those latitudes. The human body has regulated the amount of melanin necessary for UV-B protection thereby creating a variety of different skin tones throughout the world. (Important note: this biological process also applies to the eyes and hair. Melanin is manufactured and supplied to the eyes and hair for the same purpose, to regulate sunlight and protect the cells (and the precious DNA) from the damaging effects of UV-B.
These facts will be illustrated by projecting onto the screen colour photos of six individuals, representing six unique cultures from six different latitudes, all progressing northwards from the equator. The six individuals and cultures are; Congolese, Sudanese, Arabian, Italian, French and Swedish.
As the photographs are displayed in relation to their latitudes (from the Congo north to Sweden – from the equator to the 60th parallel) it is easy to see that the individual’s skin tone progressively changes from extreme dark brown at the equator (lots of sunlight, lots of melanin), to extremely pale or light in Sweden (very little sunlight, very little melanin). The colour of the individual’s eyes also changes proportionately, from very dark brown (near the equator), to light blue, green and light brown (at the sixtieth parallel). And lastly, the hair – also containing melanin – is dark and very coarse for the Congolese and progressively changes to blond, auburn, red and very fine for the Swedes.
Skin color is not a trait by which to measure class, intelligence or whether one person is inferior or superior to another. Skin color is, in fact, a feature built right into the genetic makeup of the human body and designed by Mother Nature to allow the human subspecies to migrate and survive in a variety of different geographical regions, north and south of the equator.
To sum up, the top layer of skin (the Epidermis) contains the melanocyte cell, which, when instructed to do so by the brain, produces the dark brown chemical ‘melanin’ and injects it into the extreme uppermost layer, that layer being what we actually see when looking at a person’s skin. This uppermost layer is so thin, that it can only be seen as a cross-section through a powerful electron microscope. It is thinner than a piece of rice paper, thinner than the finest hair and yet this wafer-thin layer is designed to contain all the colour that a person exhibits. It is upon this thinnest and most superficial of human features that much of the brutality and degradation of racism is based.
Dr. Christina Williams, a surgeon and Fellow at the I.V.F Program of Vancouver General Hospital, upon hearing of Dennis’ approach to racism, remarked that over the past many years she has performed countless surgical operations on women of all ethnic backgrounds and all colours. She stated that during an operation, when the scalpel passes beyond the epidermis (which contains the melanin or colour), everything, including internal organs, veins, arteries, bones, fat, muscle tissue, and even blood looks indistinguishable, from one patient to the next, regardless of ethnicity.
To drive this point home, five photographs of actual human organs (hearts in this case) will be projected on to the screen. These five human organs were photographed during autopsies and came from the bodies of individuals from five different ethnic backgrounds with corresponding skin colors. The ethnic backgrounds are; Chinese, European, African, Persian and native American. The students are then asked to identify which organ belongs to which ethnic group. It is absolutely impossible to tell the difference.
This session ends with an open discussion on the science, logic and natural laws which govern and regulate the superficial characteristics of a multi-cultural world. When all these factors are combined, they help to prove that there are no such thing as ‘races’…that all human beings (like the roses) are in fact closely related members of one genetic family.
Session #5
The Allegory of the Christmas Tree
A Better Understanding of the Indigenous Spiritual Worldview
Understanding the subtitles and profundities of the Indigenous spiritual worldview is a vital part of this course overview. Healing and spirituality are inseparable parts of one whole. It is essential for Aboriginal youth to re-connect with and be proud of their spiritual roots. After many years touring in Canadian high schools and universities, Dennis has devised a simple and effective way to broach this rather abstract subject by using the most common of western icons…that being the Christmas tree.
(Note: The model of a typical Christmas tree is not presented or viewed in a religious or Christian context. The concept of a lighted, decorated tree in the middle of a dark wintry night predates Christianity by at least two thousand years…going all the way back to the early Celtic and Druid cultures).
When young children first approach a Christmas tree they are instantly captivated by the beauty of the multi-coloured lights glowing in the wintry darkness. They could be easily forgiven for assuming all the pretty lights are separate and independent of one another…the Christmas tree is designed to appear that way. It is the closest one can get to a perfect illusion. For hidden amongst the boughs and branches and out of view of the casual observer is a green electrical cord that runs through the entire tree and powers all the Christmas lights. (The green cord is connected to a power source or generator that is also hidden from view). So, to the young child, all the lights may appear to be separate and independent but those who know ‘what’s happening’ behind the scenes understand that all the Christmas lights are connected and patched into one single universal energy source…the green electrical cord. This is how the ‘Great Spirit’ works…the cosmos appears to be a profusion of separate and independent parts but ‘in reality’ all those seemingly separate parts are inter-connected to each other through an invisible field of universal energy…what Einstein referred to as the ‘unified field’ and what the Aboriginals identify as the ‘Great Spirit’. So the apparently chaotic and random universe is actually one cohesive and indivisible whole, one infinite and inter-connected ocean of energy.
Thus the term ‘all my relations’.
The Christmas tree provides a simple metaphor that can be easily understood by both children and adults alike. That’s why a brightly lit and decorated Christmas tree – or at least a separate string of Christmas lights – needs to be included in this session. At one point in the workshop Dennis instructs an assistant to turn off all the lights (including the tree) and in the darkness he plugs in a 15 ft string of Christmas lights which is held at both ends by two volunteers. (This is also a delightful way of getting the student’s attention). He then stands behind the string of multi-coloured glowing lights and further explains the profound inter-relationship between the glowing lights and the green cord, as they apply to the students participating in this session. For example, each glowing bulb on the string is temporary and has a relatively short life span. Perishability was built right into their design and each light is destined to eventually burn out or ‘die’ and be absorbed back into the elements from whence it came. But the beauty of this simple metaphor is that the power source (or Great Spirit) running through the entire Christmas tree (and running through each temporary lightbulb as well) continues on unaffected, unchanged and constant. Human beings may be born one moment and pass away the next but the Great Spirit that generates – and is – their inner life-force never dies.
‘The energy that moves through the universe….moves though me’.
The under-laying message here is that while we are alive we all have this universal (divine) energy source surging through our bodies and filling us with ‘life’, allowing us to glow just like the lights on the Christmas tree. And that while we are alive we have the opportunity to make direct contact with and experience our inner life force (see ‘Vision Quest’ below). The invisible field of energy that moves though us and gives us life is our true nature and constitutes the real substance of who we are…all else is temporal and perishable. It is essential that native youth understand that they are not alone or isolated in this crazy world but do in fact carry within them a very powerful, beneficent and healing pretense…the Great Spirit. This understanding was at the core of Indigenous spirituality as practiced by their distant forbearers but has been wantonly desecrated by colonialism, institutional racism, the Church and the Residential schools. In our efforts to heal the aboriginal culture (and our aboriginal youth) it is vital that we re-kindle this ancient spiritual flame within our own individual selves.
‘Know thyself’….(Socrates)
The ancient ancestors of North American Indigenous societies, like many cultures throughout the world, discovered a way to connect with the Great Spirit within themselves. The methodology by which they achieved this connection was known as the ‘Vision Quest’ and involved various techniques including silence, solitude, fire and breath to bring the wandering, linear mind into the stillness of the present moment (the only time frame in which the Great Spirit – or divinity – exists) in preparation for the journey into self-realization. Through a lineage of powerful shamans and guides North American Indigenous societies came to understand that their bodies were temporary vessels that carried something very wondrous, very permanent and very divine within.
“To become less and less the colourful yet temporary glass bulbs…and to become more and more the universal energy that flows through the entire tree and powers every single Christmas light”
(Excerpt from ‘Allegory of the Christmas Tree’)
How Our Distant Ancestors Influence Our Lives Today
Using once more the string of glowing and colourful Christmas lights in the darkened room, Dennis will explain, in the simplest of terms, how ‘cellular memory’ works. Anyone who thinks they are alone, isolated and helpless in this world is missing out on another powerful source of strength and inspiration that they carry deep within themselves. Encoded within our DNA, in every living cell in our body are the memories of ancient principles and ethics that our distant ancestors lived by. Let us identify these as social and environmental ethics. If, over hundreds or thousands of generations, our ancestors lived in a general state of harmony and respect for nature (the trees, the animals, the water, the Earth), respect for community, respect for justice, respect for women and respect for the Great Spirit, then it is these ethical influences that are encoded within our genetic bloodline today. If our ancient ancestors lived for many generations in accordance with a set of principles that dictated no one should take more than they need and should walk with a gentle footprint upon the Earth, then it is these ethical standards that are also etched into our genetic code. The cellular ‘memory’ of time-enduring ethics was passed down (through our genes) from one generation to the next like family jewels. Aboriginal kids, like all human beings, are born with the memory of these ancient ethics buried deep within their own genes… within each living cell. This cellular memory of ancient ethics, of knowing right from wrong, good from bad can also be identified today as ‘conscience’.
The 15 ft string of Christmas lights helps to illustrate this simple truth. In the darkened room Dennis will again stand behind the glowing, multi-coloured lights and point out that the first light on the string represents us today (all the students and elders in the session) and that all the other lights along the string represent the many generations of ancestors who came before us. The Green electrical cord (in this example) represents the unbroken lineage of wisdom that was passed down from one generation to the next through the oral history and the ancestral bloodline (cellular memory). In the quietest moments these are the ‘voices’ and stirrings we hear and feel at the centre of our being. These voices and stirrings are the medium through which our ancestors communicate with and counsel us. If Aboriginal youth today can begin to grasp and understand the powerhouse of wisdom and goodness that exists within themselves then that understanding would certainly help them to realize that they are never alone, never isolated and never helpless.
Session #5 will conclude with and open forum on this most exciting topic.
Session #6
“To Be In the White Man’s World… but Not of It.”
The problem has been around since first contact: a fundamental clash of value systems. The progressive, post-colonial, European- based values of acquisition, possession, wealth accumulation, hoarding, profit motive and exclusive ownership and control of land and natural resources has greatly conflicted with the nature- centric, kin-centric, egalitarian and Earth-reverent values of the natives. The cross-contamination of European values has been the single greatest threat to, not only the purity of the Indigenous worldview, but to the very existence of the culture itself’. ‘Divisive…damn right it’s divisive. For what’s at stake here are the many thousands of Indigenous children (and adults) who take their own lives every year because they see no hope or future living in the whiteman’s world, adhering to the whiteman’s values.
Session #5 calls for nothing less than the rejection of destructive ‘western’ values and a return to the Aboriginal’s traditional, kin-centric and nature-centric ethos’. Europeans – in a broad historical sense – have a pernicious penchant for mass-producing and mass-distributing poisons. This penchant – though not exclusive – seems to run quite deep in their lineage, as if seared right into the culture’s DNA. Via the campaign to colonize and Christianize the planet, the Europeans spread their poisons to the far reaches of the globe. North American Indigenous societies – over the past five hundred years – have borne the brunt of those poisons. Even today, the poisons continue to invade and infect Indigenous communities, to hook and addict their children to all sorts of poisonous substances…and then leave the infected communities to watch their children die from overdose and suicide. Is it any wonder why there is so little trust in the white man’s ways?
The term ‘brutally honest’ was used earlier in this course outline…Session #6 will require this kind of honesty because it proposes a fundamental re-adjustment in the relationship between the Euro-Canadian mainstream and Canada’s Indigenous mosaic. A wise man once said; ”to be in this world…but not of it”. The ancient wisdom contained in these few simple words can be aptly applied to Canada’s strained relationship with its First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. The proposal mentioned above is predicated upon what Dennis views as the generally unhealthy and oftentimes destructive value system which underpins most European-based, post-colonial societal structures (Canada included). No doubt many will chafe at the notion that Canada’s value system might be less than stellar. Canadians generally suffer from a myopic view (blind spot) of their own racist colonial past and combined with a somewhat over-blown and unrealistic opinion of themselves and their stature in the world, it is understandable that some would be a bit ‘touchy’ with such a suggestion.
Implementation
‘To be in the white-man’s world…but not of it’
What would a fundamental re-adjustment in the relationship between Canada’s mainstream and Indigenous cultures look like? Actually, not much different than what it looks like today. Why? Because the fundamental re-adjustment needs to happen on ‘the inside’, not the outside. That’s where the Indigenous spiritual worldview, environmental and social ethics, respect, egalitarianism, etc., exist. These are intrinsic qualities, therefore very little needs to happen on the ‘outside’. Following that, no one is suggesting that Canada’s native peoples build a ten-foot wall around their culture, that they all isolate themselves in their remote communities and/or prohibit their children and band members from ever inter-mixing with the mainstream culture.
Actually, what is being suggested here is the exact opposite. That while in the midst of the frenetic, wealth-obsessed, materialistic mainstream culture, Indigenous communities Canada-wide (whether at the urban level or in remote northern locales) establish strong healing and cultural centres that (1) honour and celebrate the Indigenous spiritual worldview, that (2) honour and celebrate their traditional ways and the wisdom of their ancestors, that (3)honour and celebrate their connection to the land and their respect for the natural world, that (4) honour and celebrate their language, music, art and dances, and that (5) honour and celebrate their women, their elders and their two-spirited community. The key words here are ‘honour’ and ‘celebrate’…with an added measure of genuine ‘excitement’ thrown into the mix. From the youngest child to the oldest elder and everybody in between…being flat-out excited about being native is essential. Excitement is infectious, especially amongst our youth and needs to form the foundation of any cultural renaissance.
Instilling cultural pride, a genuine sense of excitement and a celebratory outlook in our youth is bound to have a lasting impact on them and can remain with them throughout their lives. Whether they are born and raised in remote communities (and later migrate to the big city) or if they are born and raised in the busy urban centres themselves, having strong healing and cultural centres can not only nurture cultural pride throughout their early years but continue to act as both anchor and rudder as they steer their way through the gamut of mind-numbing distractions and poisonous substances that most big western industrial cities offer. The reality is that some youth will succumb to the distractions and poisons but many others can draw strength from the foundation and the ‘anchor’ established through the healing centres. That’s what ‘being in the white-man’s world…but not of it’ means. For Canada’s Indigenous peoples – whether individuals or communities – to walk in the midst of the craziness, the post-colonial, industrial/technological maelstrom and, at the same time, be well-grounded in the wisdom, spiritual worldview and traditional ways of their ancestors.
‘An Indigenous oasis in the barren desert of western values’
It would not be fair to paint the whole of the mainstream with the same brush. There are many caring and consciousness Canadians within the mainstream who have not bought into the craziness…who live simple and respectable lives in balance with nature…many who are not caught up in the materialistic, money-driven frenzy…many who are not obsessed with buying and selling (and flipping) property and land as if they owned it…and many who genuinely support and advocate for justice and reconciliation for the crimes against humanity committed in this country over the past 150 years. That being said, it must also be acknowledged (sadly) that the above segment of the mainstream is a small minority which underscores the many challenges – particularly for our youth – when it comes to ‘being in the white-man’s world…but not of it’.
Session #7
Finding James and Elizabeth
Session #7 provides a poignant and personal account of Dennis’ journey to track down information on his grandparents who were both removed – as young toddlers – from their families and communities and placed in the Dunbow Indian Residential school around the turn of the (twentieth) century. First, some background information would be helpful in placing the following account into a wider context.
James Vital LeBlanc (Dennis’ grandfather) was of Métis ancestry, born in 1892 and raised in the Métis settlement just outside of Pincher Creek, Alberta. Leblanc was a prominent Métis name and clan, and James’ father Cornelius(Dennis’ great-grandfather) was an active member of the Red River Métis settlement (in what is now Winnipeg) around 1870 during the first Métis rebellion. James was five years old when he was taken from his family and shipped off to the Dunbow Residential school situated near High River, just south of Calgary.
Elizabeth Ann Musgrave (Dennis’ grandmother) was Native American, born and raised in Blackfoot country in the vicinity of Helena, Montana. It was traditional for the regional tribes to migrate north into what is now southern Alberta (for the summer months) and on one such journey, five year old Elizabeth was mistakenly picked up and sent to the Dunbow institution where she would later meet James, her future husband.
Dennis Lakusta was born in Edmonton in 1946…his father was of eastern European ancestry (Ukrainian) and his mother was Aboriginal, being the youngest daughter of James and Elizabeth. Dennis’ birth father abandoned his mother shortly after he was born. Dennis was taken away from his mother when he was nine months old, became a permanent ward of the Alberta government and was shunted through seventeen foster homes and religious institutions before quitting school at age sixteen. It was government policy (assimilation) to keep native children away from their family and culture during their wardship so Dennis was finally re-united with his mother’s side of the family in his late teens. His grandfather had passed away by that time but Dennis did enjoy meeting his grandmother for brief visits over the next year or so. Having established no deep, familial bond – especially during his youth – Dennis drifted away and lost touch with his family and through an acquaintance he learned that his grandmother had passed away in the early seventies.
After a youth spent in and out of foster homes, reform schools and religious institutions, Dennis quit school early and took off for the west coast. Being raised in a notoriously racist province, he tried, understandably, to distance himself from his native ancestry. But a lingering curiosity about his grand parents remained with him well into his middle years and in the mid-1990’s Dennis decided to put some time and effort into tracking down information on their history…especially their time spent at the Dunbow Indian Residential school.
His investigation began in the little town of High River, Alberta (just south of Calgary) near where the Indian school was built back in the early 1890’s. Dennis queried an assortment of townsfolk and merchants about the school but the responses he received back indicated only a vague recollection of its existence. A few people did remember that the institution burned down around 1920 and that any archival or historical records would be housed at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary.
A couple days later Dennis was in Calgary and phoned the Glenbow Museum and one of the archivists reiterated the fact that the Residential school had burned down in 1921 and most of the records had been destroyed by the fire. The archivist was very accommodating and suggested Dennis contact the Oblate’s head office in Edmonton. The Oblates were the Christian order – headed by Father Lacombe – who ran and administered the school. The next time Dennis was in Edmonton he tracked down the phone number for the Oblates and spoke to one of the nuns and mentioned his grandparents were residents of the Dunbow school. The nun sounded rather cool and suspicious about his inquiry. Her responses were short and abrupt, she said that the school had burned down and that she was not authorized to give out any information relating to the institution or the students. End of conversation.
Just when it seemed like Dennis’ little sleuthing adventure was running into a dead end, a friend suggested he try the Provincial Archives building located on 2nd avenue in west Edmonton. He phoned first and explained his situation and was told to come to the archives building because they had something that might be of interest to him. When he arrived at the building he was ushered into a small windowless room furnished with only a single table and one chair. The attendant checked to make sure Dennis didn’t have any concealed photographic equipment because the document he was about to view contained highly sensitive information. The attendant then brought in a large, heavy-looking ledger and placed it on the table and said it was the official register for the Dunbow Residential school that had somehow survived the fire in 1921.
Bingo!!
Dennis was left alone in the room with the register and no set time limit. The register resembled a typical ledger with heavy wooden covers (front and back) with two large metal pins protruding from the left edge that held the book together. He opened the heavy wooden cover and, with much anticipation, began to slowly scan the first few pages. Every set of double pages was laid out like a typical school register with about seventeen or eighteen horizontal lines stretching across both pages from the far left edge to the right. And from left to right about fifteen vertical columns were arranged with headings pertaining to information on each Residential school student. The first column was reserved for the child’s name, the second their date of birth, the third their tribe of origin and so on and so forth, right through to the final column whose heading read ‘status upon leaving’.
Having only his grand parent’s first and last names (Christian names) Dennis began the daunting task of scanning through the pages looking for their names. It was daunting because there were so so many pages…the register must have covered most or all of the years that the institution was in operation. No one from the Provincial Archive’s staff bothered him so he spent an hour and a half (or so) of uninterrupted silence.
Ten to fifteen pages into his search, Dennis began to notice something strange and somewhat disconcerting. He would scan though all the names in the left column and, before he turned the page, he also quickly glanced at the far right column titled ‘status upon leaving’ and started noticing the word ‘deceased’ appearing perhaps two or three times down along the column’s eighteen entries. As he progressed further into the register he noticed the same word ‘deceased’ showing up more often, sometimes as often as seven or eight times along each column.
Needless to say, Dennis became quite distracted by the discovery and in the end he didn’t find his grand parent’s names, but has been haunted ever since by the words ‘deceased’, ‘deceased’, ‘deceased’ occurring so many times in the register. How and why could so many children have died in the Dunbow Indian Residential school? Was it from disease, suicide or other causes? Were the children’s parents and extended families notified of the deaths? Were the children’s remains returned to their communities? Where were the children buried?
Session #7 will finish with an open discussion that attempts to answer some of the above questions.
(Note: Dennis’ first book completed in 2009 and titled ‘The Honour Song Trilogy’ is an extensive examination of Canada’s Indian Residential school tragedy which includes the critical issues of (1) deceased and missing children, (2) mass burials and unmarked graves at Residential school sites, (3) the horrendous death toll now estimated in the tens of thousands which includes (4) the thousands of victims who left the schools and died as adults from suicide, homicide, spousal abuse, alcoholism, drug over-dose, obesity and morbid obesity, etc…all afflictions which are related to and can be traced back to the trauma experience in the Residential schools. ‘The Honour Song Trilogy’ can be accessed by following the links to the writing sub-site at www.dlakusta.org
Session #8
‘Personhood’ and a New Understanding of Genocide
“Yeah, shit happens, but don’t you think it’s time the natives finally got over it and moved on?”
(A sentiment heard far too often from mainstream Canadians when referring to the Indian Residential school experience)
In tandem with the evolution of western civilization came the development of a patently modern human phenomenon known today as genocide. The agricultural revolution, which fueled the accelerated growth of populations and the stratification of human societies (i.e. the elites in control of the masses) also touched off an explosion of synthetic and fundamentally poisonous ideas…ideas unprecedented in all of biological history. Ideas like greed, acquisition, hoarding and the lust for material wealth, land, property, gold, power, etc. that today have become the standards by which we define modern western industrial societies. Some of the lethal by-products of these synthetic standards and values (that evolved out of agrarianism) were expansionism, conquest, colonialism, globalization….and genocide. There are unique subtleties and nuances surrounding the meaning of the word ‘genocide’ and yet most English dictionaries tend to offer fairly rigid and inflexible interpretations of the term.
It is a simple question of semantics. For example, consider the two terms; genocide and cultural genocide (the latter term doesn’t even show up in standard dictionaries by the way). What do these words actually mean in relation to each other and to the world at large. The rigid, industrialized interpretation would more than likely define genocide as (for example) the campaign to exterminate the Jews during the Holocaust, the Rwandan tragedy or Spain’s brutal conquest of Meso-America. No argument on any of these accounts. But what about Canada’s Indian Residential schools? Would they not instead fall under the less-lethal category of ‘cultural’ genocide’? This is where the subtleties and nuances enter into the picture. The preceding subsection attempted to deconstruct and explain the basic characteristics of Aboriginal culture, i.e., language, diet, spirituality, sociology, music, dress, family, hunting practices, relationship to land, etc. If the intent of forced assimilation was to destroy the above-listed cultural characteristics (and thereby the culture) of Canada’s indigenous peoples then surely this would qualify the policies of the Canadian government and the Church as ‘cultural genocide’.
But here is where another more subtle dynamic needs to be considered. And that is the dynamic of ‘personhood’. There are qualities inherent within the human condition which exist at a deeper and more fundamental level… universal qualities that transcend ethnicity, territorial boundaries and cultural distinctions, and are as common to all as the breathing of air, the beating of a heart or the flowing of tears. These intrinsic qualities in fact constitute our humanity, our sentient foundation (the way we feel) and our personhood. They include our capacity to care, to hope, to aspire, to love…to feel compassion, peace, intimacy, joy and pride…our will to exist, our pursuit of happiness and an understanding of higher, extra-physical realities. These innate qualities represent the quintessence of personhood.
The coercive and sometimes brutal treatment of 160,000 innocent and vulnerable children in Canada’s Indian Residential school system was an assault on, not only their culture, but their personhood as well. The many documented instances of psychological and sexual abuse, being screamed at, beaten and demeaned for being Aboriginal, the tragic death toll in the schools and the systemic vilification of their existence and validity as human beings present a strong argument for the inclusion of the term ‘genocide’ into the Residential school narrative. Why? Because the Canadian government and the Church’s campaign to ‘kill the Indian in the child’ actually went far beyond ‘Indian-ness’ and culture. It cut right through to the heart and core of the child’s personhood – that is where the real ‘killing’ occurred.
Whether the Church and the government were aware of the irreparable damage they were inflicting on the ‘humanity’ of the native children is debatable – their judgment was no doubt clouded by the notion of superiority, religious zealotry and lust for land – but what their mean-spirited campaign wound up doing, in essence, was the ‘snuffing out’ of the child’s ability to care, to hope, to aspire, to love, to feel (see above).
So when the survivors were finally released from the institutions they went back to their communities (and on into adulthood) as severely damaged goods – perhaps the term ‘zombies’ or ‘the walking dead’ might be appropriate. They tried to conduct their lives as ordinary grown-ups, doing what ordinary grown-ups do (i.e., forming relationships, raising families, care-giving, finding employment, looking after their communities, etc.) but something inside of them had died. In a real sense they were empty shells just going through the motions. The lights were on but nobody was home…so to speak.
The culture of abuse, intimidation and fear that became the hallmarks of Canada’s Indian schools was not the only factor contributing to the ‘killing’ of the Aboriginal’s sense of personhood. Other factors that compounded this human tragedy were the ravaging effects of alcohol, tobacco, drugs, allergic reactions to European foods, television, European diseases, systemic racism, etc.. When combined together, these factors help to account for today’s high suicide rates amongst Aboriginal youth (five to eleven times the national average depending on the region), the disproportionate numbers of Aboriginals in Canadian prisons, spousal abuse and family violence, the epidemic of morbid obesity and diabetes, alcohol and drug-related deaths, house fires, prostitution, sexual predation and the thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous woman.
This is why I am getting more and more comfortable with the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ when referring to Canada’s Indian Residential School system.
(Note: The preceding essay is an excerpt from ‘The Donor Song Trilogy – Part One’ which can be accessed through Dennis’ website: dlakusta.org
Session #9
Coming to Grips With Canada’s Genocidal Past:
White Washing the Truth from Canadian History Books
(Note: The two subjects covered in Session #9 may prove to be the most unpopular and perhaps repugnant to some students and to the Canadian population in general. The first subject deals with the irrefutable fact that Canada was an active participant in a global genocide that claimed the lives of tens of millions of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas alone. This is not a subject that people discuss over the dinner table, in coffee shops, at sporting events, in shopping malls or at City Hall…and yet it must be discussed if we are genuinely serious about healing this broken country. The second subject deals with the concerted efforts by successive governments to white wash and sanitize the Indigenous perspective and the Indigenous experience out of our history books).
When talking about Canadian history, Dennis likes to first clarify that the students attending these university lectures or high school presentations were not directly involved in or responsible for the creation of the Indian Residential schools, the reservation system or the Indian Act. They were not directly involved in or responsible for the European conquest, colonization or Christianization of Canada (or the rest of the planet). Neither were they directly involved in or responsible for the resulting genocide that occurred over the past five hundred years, a genocide that has claimed the lives of hundreds of millions of indigenous people all over the world. We are not talking about ancient history here…this massive and unprecedented crime against humanity has been an ongoing campaign for most of the past five hundred years, right up to the present day. By universal measurements, five hundred years would be viewed as a millisecond, perhaps the blink of an eye.
Direct Beneficiaries
No, the students in these sessions were not directly involved in this global tragedy and yet they (particularly those of European ancestry) are still inextricably linked – via the unerring laws of consequence and causality – to their history. Inescapably so. A more accurate way of re-phrasing this would be to say that Canadian students are the direct and distant descendants of European conquest, colonialism and the ensuing genocide that occurred. That the students have in fact become direct beneficiaries of the racist policies and events which helped shape and define Canada over the course of its brief history. These facts are not intended to lay a guilt trip on anyone…but to help students come to grips with the harsh realities of what it means to be a Canadian citizen living in a country that was – in its very recent history – an active participant in a global genocide.
Author’s Note: For educators like myself who are trying to help young students process a reality-based and fact-based history of this country, there is nothing more frustrating than than dealing with the Canadian education system itself. Both as a student in my younger years and now as an educator later in life, I have seen and experienced the ‘system’ from both ends and my conclusion is that the mainstream education system – for most of the past one-hundred and fifty years – has intentionally and quite deceitfully white-washed and sanitized Canada’s First Peoples out of our history books and history lessons. They say that history is written by the winners, and in Canada’s case it is the same folks (successive federal governments), who tried to assimilate the Aboriginal experience and the Aboriginal culture out of existence, who have also been responsible for setting curriculum and writing our history books. If those successive governments were intent on destroying Canada’s Indigenous cultures, the last thing they would want to do is include any mention of them in our history books? What this all boils down to is that generations of students in Canada’s mainstream education system have been lied to and misled by the very people we entrust with education…namely, successive federal governments.
If the Aboriginal experience and the colourful history of Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples are deleted or intentionally omitted from Canadian history books, then those history books are an outright sham. Successive federal and provincial governments have in fact aided and abetted systemic racism in the general population by not including factual and positive information about Canada’s Indigenous Peoples into our student’s history books. A daunting challenge for educators like myself teaching in mainstream education is to introduce students to the fact that the sanitized history that has been fed to them by the ‘system’ is not the real history of Canada. This is not an easy task considering how ingrained lies, half-truths, omissions and misinformation can become after so many generations of indoctrination via the Canadian education system.
Just as challenging is the task of introducing a factual and reality-based accounting of who Canada’s Aboriginal people are…what makes them ‘tick’…what are their values, ethics, morals and laws…their Earth-reverent, nature-centric and Omni-theistic worldview…their arts, music, dances and cultural ceremonies…their respect for women, for their elders and the two-spirited members of their community.
Session #10
Youth Empowerment and Discovering the Warrior Within
Whether we are aware of it or not, each of us has been gifted with a bounty of intrinsic tools, strengths and qualities, all of which are designed to assist us in dealing with life’s many challenges. These tools are intangible and abstract by nature and can therefore be easily missed or overlooked as one navigates their way along the oftentimes confusing and precarious path that is life. Today’s healing circle will focus on these inner strengths and qualities in an attempt to familiarize troubled aboriginal youth with a number of powerful weapons they possess (and can utilize) in the ongoing battle raging both within themselves and without. So, let’s examine some of these tools in terms of empowering aboriginal youth.
* Cultural Pride and Self-esteem. These two powerful attributes manifest as inner ’feelings’ about one’s place in the cosmos. They are the source of our sense of ‘belonging’, of being an integral part of something more noble and greater than ourselves. In essence, a deep pride in who we are as aboriginal people, our cultural heritage, our connection to the land and to the Great Spirit. Today many aboriginal youths feel lost, hopeless and rudderless because of the absence of these fundamental ‘feelings’ in their lives. And, when you really think about it, how could it be any other way. For the past one hundred and fifty years Canada’s indigenous peoples have been told repeatedly by the mainstream culture (the Church, the governments, the media, the movie industry, the general public, etc.) that they are inferior, savages, in league with the devil, stupid, lazy, God-less, drunkards and welfare bums. Troubled aboriginal kids today bear the brunt and cumulative effects of a hundred and fifty years of this kind of abuse and mistreatment (which includes the psychological trauma caused by systemic sexual predation at the hands of the Church). No wonder suicide rates amongst todays aboriginal youth are measured in epidemic proportions.
Our young people are falling through the cracks at an alarming rate and that is why it is absolutely imperative that aboriginal communities (spear-headed by the elders) work to provide a healing and nurturing environment that promotes a real sense of cultural pride and identity for their children. The general state of our aboriginal youth today is directly indexed to the state of the communities that raised them, which puts the onus on all aboriginal communities to provide a healing environment for their youth…by healing themselves first. It should be noted (with much applause) that many First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities across Canada are proactively developing systems which promote healing, nurturing and transformative environments.
* The aboriginal youth’s power to choose can not be over-stated…its application, in the context of drug and alcohol abuse, family violence, depression, suicide, bullying, gangs, prostitution, criminal behaviour, etc. is obvious. But today’s workshop will focus more on the power to choose as it relates to our main theme which is ‘finding the way back home’. What needs to be made crystal clear to the young folks participating in these healing circles is that the ‘re-booting’ and re-igniting of their cultural flame can only happen if they (the aboriginal youth) choose to make it happen. These options cannot be forced upon them. If troubled and rudderless youths understand the benefits and are sincerely interested in having their cultural pride and self-esteem returned to them, then it is they who will need to make the first step in that direction…and that first step must begin with a conscious choice. There is no other way of skirting around this uncomfortable truth…the healing circle and the elders can offer wisdom, encouragement and alternatives but when the ‘rubber hits the road’ it is the native youth themselves who must become the masters of their own destiny. Such is the power of choice.
Ps. After each of these ‘powers’ are introduced, the students will be given the opportunity to express their personal views on how these powers affect their own lives.
* Understanding the Basics of ‘Restorative Justice’ In recent times, the indigenous societies of North America have garnered world-wide acclaim for their understanding and practice of Restorative Justice. A basic understanding of this ancient philosophy can add greatly to the troubled aboriginal youth’s sense of personal empowerment. One of the philosophical tenets which underpin the practice of Restorative Justice holds that all human beings are fundamentally and intrinsically ‘good’. We are ‘up to our eyeballs’ in the invisible but beneficent presence of the ‘Great Spirit’ so how could we not be fundamentally and intrinsically good? But being human beings and having free will, we are also prone to making mistakes and enacting bad choices in our daily relationships with the planet and the people around us. Ancient indigenous societies were not immune to criminal behavior, human rights abuses, violence, assault and theft although the instances of these behaviors were meagre when compared to modern, advanced, ‘western’ industrial standards. If crime didn’t exist in Aboriginal societies there would have been no reason to create the Restorative Justice system.
The Restorative Justice system attempts to separate the criminal or abusive act – expressed in thoughts, words and deeds – from the person who committed the act (who is considered to be fundamentally ‘good’). The focus then becomes the act itself… what was the source and contributing factors that led to the act…what were the social, emotional and psychological conditions under which the act was perpetrated…was the offender aware of the human/environmental impacts of his actions. Essential to the success of the Restorative Justice system was the interfacing of the offender and the offended…this was key. These two individuals were brought together in the central lodge (usually with the victim and the offender’s relatives in attendance) and seated directly across from one another – face-to-face – where they would ‘discuss’ the offender’s act and its impact on the victim. The objective of these ‘face-to-face’ confrontations was not to punish the offenders but instead to heal them via the intensity of the confrontation itself. The offender had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide and being in such close proximity to the victim (and all the relatives) the offender had no other option than to take responsibility for his/her actions. Pretty hard to fake an apology under these conditions.
(Note: There are a number of reasons the American or ‘western’ justice system has failed, the main reason being the values that underpin western industrial societies as a whole which include; greed, hoarding and profit motive; the pursuit of material wealth, consumerism; dog-eat-dog; taking more than you need, etc. etc. It is this pervasive and destructive value system that has ‘manufactured’ the western criminal mind and the crime wave that now plagues modern industrial societies. In the United States alone there are approximately three and a half million human beings incarcerated in state and federal correctional facilities (that’s about one out of every one hundred US citizens) and the vast majority of those inmates are from the ranks of the poor and under-trodden masses who are ‘doing time’ for mostly property crimes, theft, homicide, breaking and entering, assault and drug offences, etc. Most of these crimes revolve around the pursuit of some form of material or monetary wealth. The western approach to this ever-growing problem is to build more and more prisons and penitentiaries where offenders are banished and isolated from society).
In contrast to the American or ‘western’ criminal justice system whose strategy is to banish and isolate offenders from society, the Aboriginal’s Restorative Justice system is designed to re-integrate the offender back into society A.S.A.P. Another detrimental aspect of the western justice system is that the offender is customarily represented, tried, judged and convicted by total strangers unfamiliar as to the offenders history and character. In aboriginal societies, the legal process was conducted by members of the community or village in which the offender resided thus providing a personal and familial understanding of the history and character of the accused.
* Other Tools. This workshop will also examine other inner qualities that aboriginal youth possess, which when used under the right conditions could mean the difference between life and death. Determination, self-trust, courage, patience, vision, hope, will, co-operation and intestinal fortitude are just some of the inner strengths these youngsters are born with. Once young warriors decide to take on the challenge of returning to their cultural roots they will need all the strengths they can muster for the ensuing battle.
Epilogue
(Note: The following is an excerpt from a larger essay titled; ‘Something About the Europeans’, a link to which is provided at the end of this course overview).
Recent studies, headed by Professor Alexander Koch of University College in London, have provided the most conclusive findings to date concerning the incomprehensible magnitude of the genocide which occurred in the Americas, due to European colonization. According to Professor Koch and his team’s extensive research, the population of indigenous peoples throughout the western hemisphere – circa 1492 – was estimated at around 60 million and in a little over one hundred years (by 1610) that population was reduced to a mere 6 million. During that brief time frame, the lives of some 50 million indigenous human beings were snuffed out, mainly due to disease, warfare and genocide. That first one hundred years or so also marked the arrival of the first wave of European settlers to plunder the New World…which largely accounts for the tragic death toll. But the genocide didn’t stop there…it continued on into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with the policies of outright extermination in the US and the (kinder, gentler) policies of assimilation in Canada.
Canadian students (and adults) need to know – deserve to know – the truth about what happened in this part of the world in terms of European expansionism and colonization. Our students (and adults) need to be ‘shocked’ and ‘stunned’ by the genocide that claimed the lives of 70-80 million Indigenous human beings…a genocide that we (Canada) played an active role in.
To view the essay titled ‘Something About the Europeans’, please click here.
Dennis Lakusta
September, 2022