Aborigine Experience

Just finished listening to Joseph Boyden and Richard Wagamese on CBC and it has me thinking about the aborigine experience in Canada. Having attended conferences at Cape Croker I’ve been immersed in the tales of children being wrenched from their homes and forced to attend residential schools where they were forbidden to speak their own languages or observe their native customs and often sexually abused. To an outsider it is hard to understand how soul-destroyingly destructive this was to an entire generation. The objective of Indian Affairs Policy in Canada was the utter obliteration of Native Culture and the people themselves. What was added to my knowledge base was the fact that ‘Indian’ children were seized from reserves and sold to adoption agencies in America.

Thomas King, another aboriginal author has quipped that the indigenous population of Canada had an immigration problem--US. Upon first encounter with European Settlers Native Populations suffered death rates of up to 90% of their peoples as soon as these interlopers got within 200 miles of their tribal lands from the diseases that were brought with them from the old country. The Beothuks of Newfoundland were utterly exterminated. A people who lived communally and had no sense of property rights or ownership of Mother Earth were ill-equipped to negotiate treaties with White Settlers. With no words in their language to conceive of lies or untruth they could not understand deception and connivance.

Land-hungry Europeans sought means to get rid of the Indian Problem and relegate them to the confines of Reserves where they would not get in the way of settlement. In a time when the only good Indian was a dead Indian policies aimed at extermination were the order of the day. Again, as an outsider to this process generations later I would ask how long do we have to apologize for the sins of the past and make reparations for those evils. Land claims settlement negotiations have dragged on for generations with little end in sight. Those on reserves have no ownership of the land on which their homes sit. It is difficult to have pride of place and invest in property you do not possess.

The Indian Affairs Commission should have been abolished long since but this agency pours millions into reserves yearly and the elected band councils who profit from this investment are loath to give up a good thing. Unfortunately these elected officials bypass the cultural traditions of hereditary chiefs in an often matrilineal society creating rifts within these societies. Cronyism and patronage are often rife on band councils and all that money poured into reserves often does little to benefit the average member. Politics is as corrupt and self-serving on band councils as it is in white society. Indian Affairs appears to be a self-perpetuating reality.

The policy of annihilation attempted to spread disease through trading unwashed blankets from tubercular hospitals and a trade in ‘fire water’. Aboriginal peoples seem prone to alcoholism, diabetes, and obesity only adding to the problems of over-crowding, lack of sanitation, and running water on reserves. In many ways government policy came close to succeeding but the human spirit and cultural pride have prevailed and a push to reclaim language and customs before the elders who preserve those memories die out is presently underway.

Among the problems encountered in settling land claims is a perception that an oral tradition is made up to suit the situation at hand. We tend to forget that until the time of David our Bible was an oral tradition and until the invention of the printing press few possessed expensive hand written texts. On the other hand those still on reserves are loath to give up tax-free status and the other perks afforded band members such as free education and support to those who manage to go on to higher education. Indian Affairs is a love-hate relationship.

Of Censorship and Free Speech

Since the advent of word-processors on computer authors are no longer faced with the laborious task of rewriting their texts by hand. This has simplified the process of editing but has also facilitated an epidemic of word bloat in books. In the last ten years I have read many books that would have benefited immensely by being reduced by at least 200 pages. Publishers no longer seem to edit books hence print editions are often rife with typos created in the publishing process and alas, by the author as well. With the arrival of self-publishing and e-Books the lack of grammar, syntax, and spell-checking has reached epidemic proportions and a new cadre of would-be authors raised in an era when self-expression was deemed more important than spelling and grammar have hit the scene. Worse yet, the latest phenomena are young writers who honed their craft typing text messages on smart phones. You may have read about college graduates who are functionally illiterate; well now they think they can write books.

I have written at least 75 book reviews for my own satisfaction in the last few years and recently began publishing them on Amazon. I have discovered the existence of a double-standard in that the behemoth will market books filled with expletives but will not accept reviews that contain those same profanities. Being a consenting adult I don’t usually pay attention to ratings and must confess I had not been aware that Amazon gave books ratings, certainly they place no blocks on anyone downloading any e-Book. I was taken aback when I discovered upon panning a poorly conceived book that authors read their own reviews and even respond. I had not to this point considered Amazon a discussion forum.

So to the concept of censorship. Does giving a book an “R” rating make it acceptable to write about teenage sex and swearing as if it is the norm? Do we want to legitimize such behaviour by making it seem acceptable? I would prefer not to find literary novels laced with expletives and find the idea of childhood profanity puerile and immature, an example of bad parenting. Violence and assault should not be made glamorous in novels, movies or games; it used to be called pornography but those standards seem to be changing rapidly in frightening ways especially on Pay TV and the Internet. This is not to say that there are topics that should not be confronted in writing books. It is not a matter of whether or if but how and why, of kind and degree. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin served as a catalyst for bringing down slavery in America; Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kamf promoted the Final Solution. Your opinion of these books will differ depending on your status as a card carrying member of the KKK, a Neo-Nazi Cult, a death camp survivor, or former slave. There’s a fine line between freedom of speech, censorship, and tyranny; liberty and the common good.