And here we are. Adam with one blue and 3 red ribbons for his dahlias and Joni with one blue ribbon and a “Best in Show” rosette for her blackberry pie at the Saanichton Fair. And here I am with a powerful sense of déjà vu. Or, perhaps, just a joyful trip down memory lane.
Amongst the most memorable things my father told me was that his favourite place in the world was in his greenhouse surrounded by his begonias. It wasn’t just begonias. Some of the earliest pictures I’ve seen of Father are of him with his prize disbud chrysanthemums. I grew up in greenhouses filled with carnations, cyclamen and flats and flats of marigolds and other annual bedding plants bound for Victoria’s gardens.
Don Snobelen was a man of flowers. For a while, I followed in his footsteps. I made thousands of his famous moss hanging baskets. When he stopped making the heavy, cumbersome baskets he brought me plants to augment the ones I grew in my own greenhouse.
But the flowers that bring back my fondest memories of Father are the gigantic poinsettias he brought me every Christmas. Religiously anti-Christmas, and anything that hinted of Christmas, he could not resist the glorious red “seasonal flower.” He knew what joy they brought me and my little family.
His last flower “crop” was his backyard of dahlias. A random mixed-bag of varieties. But when the flowers opened he knew every one of their faces by name. Father picked them. Mother bunched them along with cosmos, baby’s breath, snapdragons and … She displayed them on their roadside stand. Neighbours bought them. I often wondered if they knew the pleasure they gave to my aging parents.
Twice a day Mother went out to the stand to collect the quarters and dollar bills. I’m pretty sure it was the most enjoyable money my parents ever made. Her report of how good a day they had was directly hinged to the “take” in the jar.
While Father was a growing man, Mother was a cooking and baking woman. This is not to underestimate my mother’s broad-based skills and incredible intelligence, but Phyllis Snobelen was known for her delicious meals. Our table was always laden with good food and surrounded by people; family, friends and strangers. All were eager to eat. Father loved inviting people home for dinner…customers, hitchhikers, someone he met at a coffeeshop or on the street… Mother’s meals were simple and economical.
Her specialty was pies.
Phyllis Snobelen made the best pies. Berry pies. Cream pies. Apple pies. Beef pies. Turkey pies. At church meals people eyed over the pie table in search of a piece from one that was made by Auntie Phyl. Guests negotiated with each other over who got to eat the last piece of pie.
And, as you can imagine, Mother loved Father’s flowers and Father was the biggest fan of Mother pies.
After writing this far I’m a bit at a loss for words. I’m looking for something witty. Something important. Something profound. Yet many of the good things in life just are. They are simple. They aren’t about life’s lessons or what we can learn. They aren’t about improving the world. Or ourselves. They are a pie. Some dahlias. A big onion. A long scarlet runner bean. A country fair. Father received numerous ribbons at the Saanichton Fair for onions, beans, leeks, and dahlias. Many dahlias.
Joni’s Grandma Phyl never entered her pies in the fair but they would have been winners for sure
I took a long minute and looked into the eyes of my former self. The one who wore lipstick and had eyebrows. The young woman who had only one, very thin chin and wore a fine cedar hat.
She sparkled. She was firing on all cylinders. I remember. That self was eager, curious, brave. She was willing to say yes. She’d try something because she thought that given a long shot, if everything in the heavens aligned, she might be able to do it. She was ready to find out. She was game.
She raised her kids. Much of the time alone. And anyone else’s kids who needed a mom. She made macaroni and cheese. Not Kraft dinner. Those neighbourhood kids thought she was a gourmet cook.
She talked to them about politics, religion, history, ethics, responsibilities. She let them know when they were great and when they messed up.
Oh yes I remember that young woman. She worked too much and didn’t pay attention. To a lot of things. She said yes when no would have been a better choice. She pushed ahead when holding back would have made more sense. She didn’t sleep much or eat a lot. There was no time. She had to do the things she’d promised. She had to worry about the places where no would have been the right answer.
And then there was God to think about. Who the hell was He and what did he want from her? And if she was going to tell the kids about the meaning of life she had to figure it out first. And then there was the Indian reserve, where they lived. How the hell could such a thing happen in her country? And poverty? And racism? She needed to change the world. It was a big job.
What would you say to your younger self? It’s the writing prompt asked at every writing workshop. It’s also something most of us older selfs think about.
I’d say to my young self, “You did spectacularly some of the time. You did the best you could some of the time. You messed up some of the time. It’s all good. You did it with florescence and verve. You gave me an interesting story. What else is there?” I’d say, “Thanks for trying so hard.” And. I’d say, “I really like your hat.”
Another generation. The same questions. Maddy wearing a felt bowl.
Questions about country have been on our minds lately. What makes a group of people and a piece of land a country? Why the borders? Are they, as Trump says, artificially drawn lines?
Up until recently the experience of living on an Indian reserve for most of my adult life has made me ambivalent about my country. But then, I have seen a very different side of Canada than most people see. My most enduring question has been, “Who gave them (federal government) the power to control every aspect of my life?” And while I am a very white and was once a very blond, blue-eyed women, when I married my Coast Salish husband I became, without my knowledge and without my permission, a Status Indian. Many people have described that as if it were something of a gift that was withheld from women who were more deserving of it. But it didn’t feel like a gift and it wasn’t meant as a gift. That’s a topic for another conversation. For now, I’m thinking about the bigger questions:
Who gave Canada the power over Indigenous people? Who gave Canada the rights to all the land within its borders that, yes, were artificially drawn?
It’s been 55 years since I first started looking for answers to these questions. Yesterday, Maddy, my 22-year-old granddaughter asked, “What the hell, Grandma, who gave the whole damn thing to Canada anyways? And after making such a bloody mess of everything to do with First Nations why do they still get to control it all?”
Blond and blue-eyed like her Grandma, she is also a Registered Status Indian and has had the unusual experience (for someone who looks like her) of living her whole life on an Indian reserve.
Maddy. Here’s what I’m thinking. So far.
Most people aren’t interested in the Doctrine of Discovery or the implications of the idea of terra nullius. Why would they be? These are edicts from three Popes in the 15th century that justified and set in stone the Europeans’ right to “discover,” “occupy,” and “possess” lands inhabited by Indigenous peoples. A declaration, a few signatures or wax seals and it was done. Done for five centuries. A brilliant move. I am sure that no one, not even the Popes, could have imagined just how brilliant.
With a pen, a few words and paper these Popes declared the land of the entire Americas unoccupied (terra nullius). Free for the taking.
It wasn’t that they didn’t know that there were people in those territories. In fact, Christopher Columbus gave a glowing report of the Indigenous people he met in the West Indies.
“They are neither lazy nor awkward; but, on the contrary, are of an excellent and acute understanding. Those who have sailed these seas give excellent accounts of everything…”
Columbus even reported that the “Indians” would have been easy converts.
So how did the Popes pull off the “empty land” premise for the takeover? The Romans knew how to militarily take over land. But the Popes were smarter than that. They used words. Just words on a few pieces of paper and the Catholic Church, on behalf of its followers, conducted the largest land takeover in the history of humankind. Words wiped out entire races of people.
The land was empty because the people who occupied it were declared to be not people. Done. Easy. Mind-blowing magic.
By simply declaring that the inhabitants were non-humans these invaders could then proclaim that the exceptional lands they had “discovered” were uninhabited. Within a hundred years the European claim on North America was helped along by plagues and wars that decimated the population by millions. Millions of “excellent” people who had “acute understanding.” The devastation left only a tiny fraction of the earlier number—the largest and most effective genocide the world has ever known.
We know the rest of the story. European North Americans believed the non-human story and developed a deep loathing of Indigenous people. So deep is this loathing that it has survived to this day. So deep is this loathing that for much of the 20th century (and before and after) many Indigenous people believed the same lies about their people and suffered from an equally deep self-loathing.
I call it Canada’s special racism. It’s different from the racism that is applied generally to brown-skinned people. When I asked Uncle Joac (my black-Brazilian adopted son) what it was like to be black boy in a very white high school—were the kids racist? “Sort of,” he said. “But they don’t treat me that bad. Nothing like how bad they treat First Nations kids.”
Why?
It’s not that Canadians still believe that Indians are not human. We’ve progressed beyond that. But our country has structurally embedded in our legal and social systems the belief that Indians are incapable, inadequate and generally unable to look after themselves. Children. Forever relegated to wards of the courts. Not not-human. Lower humans.
Then you ask, “Aren’t there cases in court where Canada still has to prove that it has a legitimate claim to the land. Wasn’t that settled? The immigrants obviously won? Maybe not fair and square. But pretty well every Canadian other than Indigenous people think, ‘It was done. It’s over now. This is the way it is, so this must be the way it was meant to be.’”
Yes. There are cases like Tsilhquot’in vs BC where the Supreme Court recognized the First Nation’s title to land in their territory. No. The land questions have not been settled. The Indian land thing just won’t go away. There have been some uncomfortable developments lately that are profoundly unsettling to comfortable Canadian settlers who take time to think about it.
In 2023 the Vatican repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery. They declared that Indians were, in fact, humans. Therefore, the land was not “terra nullius.” The very basis for Canadian sovereignty is a lie. Perhaps people can say, “It’s too late now. What difference does it make?” But it’s a lie nonetheless.
Canadian governments have stubbornly refused to formally repudiate the doctrines. However, reconciliation initiatives recognize that Indigenous peoples have a sovereign right to their territories and that European claims to the land are unjust. A bit of a workaround, but a worthwhile recognition nonetheless.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) contradicts the Doctrine of Discovery by asserting the right of Indigenous peoples to free, prior, and informed consent before any decisions that may affect their rights, lands, or territories. Not exactly giving the land back, but unsettling the power structure nonetheless.
Canadian courts continue to use the Doctrine of Discovery to legitimate Crown claims, yet increasingly those claims are being challenged ie, the UN states: International human rights law … demand (s) that States rectify past wrongs caused by such doctrines, including the violation of the land rights of indigenous peoples, through law and policy reform, restitution and other forms of redress for the violation of their land rights. Not yet legally disrupting Canada’s claim to the land, but unnerving Canada’s certainty nonetheless.
Here, in W̱SÁNEĆ territory, your territory, Maddy, arguments about land seem almost pointless. Every square foot of W̱SÁNEĆ territory has been settled either with fee simple ownership, parks or Crown land that is burdened with resource extraction agreements.
The settler population tends to accept that Crown land can be rented to corporations for resources. They are also committed to the idea that parkland belongs to and is for the benefit of “everyone” for pleasure and recreation. And they are adamant that fee simple land is indisputably private. So, as you can see, they’ve got pretty much all the land on lockdown.
Then there is Indian reserve land, which many Canadians believe, contrary to what we know to be true, was “given” to the Indians by the Crown. And most Canadians think that should be the end of the story.
However, as you have just heard, the Church, the Crown and the Courts have all stated, in different ways, that Indians have sovereign rights to their territories. How can that be if Canada is a sovereign nation? We are finding out. First Nations’ sovereign rights are increasingly coming face-to-face with Canada’s sovereign right to all the land within its borders.
Many Canadian citizens are beginning to understand what that means. While there is no threat of an invasion, a takeover or disruption to fee simple ownership, UNDRIP and reconciliation initiatives will result in fundamental change. Within your lifetime, Maddy, you might see co-management of some parks and crown land. You can expect to see legitimate streams of income to First Nations from revenues generated in their territories. We are already seeing more meaningful government/First Nations consultation and maybe, collaboration. Hopefully, these changes will continue in a good way, honour the natural environment and not just be a way in for more resource extraction. Those are your challenges, my girl.
Your Grandpa and Grandma have worked on making change for most of their lives. Your mom and uncles and aunties are doing the same thing. You and your generation will keep up the good work. I know you will. I won’t live long enough to see the “outcomes.” But I have already seen incredible shifts. For the better. It’s complicated. Many people will resist. most people don’t get it and don’t see the value in answering our questions. But keep asking them, Maddy. Don’t despair.
If you ask Google if knitting is good for you it will tell you that knitting can help lower anxiety, increase self-worth, improve concentration, help with visual/spatial awareness, aid anger management, increase feelings of empowerment, and provide an activity that is self-soothing.
Google describes knitting a lot like taking a walk, which, it says, reduces stress and anxiety, enhances overall mental health, improves your mood, increases awareness, helps you feel connected, enhances self-expression, improves your cognitive function, is beneficial for cardiovascular health, manages weight and improves overall physical well-being.
I’m thinking that knitting interspersed with walking Piper should, as my father would have said, “fix whatever ails you.”
In her book The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times Michelle Obama writes about how knitting helped her get through some of the nasty, early, dark days of COVID, “In all my decades of staying busy, I had always presumed that my head was fully in charge of everything, including telling my hands what to do. …(K)nitting…reversed the flow. It buckled my churning brain into the back seat and allowed my hands to drive the car for a while. It detoured me away from my anxiety, just enough to provide some relief.”
A lot has been written over the past decade or so about the therapeutic value of knitting. Our grandmothers and great grandmothers would hardly believe how their essential work making socks and sweaters and mittens and their peaceful pastime creating doilies, table cloths and tea cozies has become such an obsession.
Previous generations of women had their own anxieties—pre vaccinations, childhood diseases were terrifying. Mothers watched children die from conditions we, for the most part, no longer worry about. The family economy, their own health, for many, their lack of autonomy, and, as they aged, losing a tooth and then another and another was cause enough to be anxious.
Although our grandmothers didn’t write books about the therapeutic characteristics of knitting, the afternoons they spent with their friends drinking tea, discussing life’s challenges and knitting would have been just as healing then, as they are now.
But these days. These bizarre, chaotic, disruptive, insane days of turmoil require knitting on a whole other level. Gentle yarn overs. Rhythmic click, click, clicking. Soft sensuous slide of cashmere. Harmonized, coordinated shades of muted pinks and blues and greens. Polite, mannerly circles of well-behaved women, need to step aside, need to be interrupted for a moment by a metaphorical clash of a cymbal. We need to, as it were, take the mic out of the stand and storm the stage…a bit like Mick or Elvis.
This weekend we had that moment. No gentle knitting. No soft matching yarns. No stitch-by-stitch instructions. No expensive wool.
We used old sheets and duvet covers from the bags of cast-offs in our basement or from the second-hand store. We ripped them up to make our yarn. We pulled off the frayed edges. We combined colours we had never imagined ever using, never mind putting them together with other colours we never imagined ever using. Then we knit these bizarre balls of string? Not quite. Yarn? Not really. Cotton? Not purely. Into bathmats.
Bathmats. That’s it. Women travelled to Saturna Island to rip up sheets to make bathmats. Why? Why not? And then there were all the other reasons for spending a sunny spring weekend on Saturna. Joni’s stories of her Coast Salish grandmothers hard work and knitting innovations. Good food. Whale watching. The peaceful bliss of birdsong, the cacophony of frogs and the stars. On our out-of-the-way island there is little to dim the lights in the night sky. There is no better place to immerse yourself in the wonder of the light show than on the patio, wrapped in a blanket, with a cup of hot tea.
When you come to the Lodge you will have a ripped-sheet, knitted bathmat. You’ll find ripped-sheet, knitted doormats and ripped-sheet knitted bed shawls…everywhere. I might be wearing a ripped-sheet cape. Or, you might eat your breakfast on a ripped-sheet placemat (I haven’t made them yet).
This weekend we ate together and ripped sheets. We talked together and ripped sheets. We listened to each other and ripped sheets. And then we knit. Inside we knit. Outside we knit. Loudly we knit. Quietly we knit. We knit with an edge. Ours weren’t gentle stitches. Ripped-sheet yarn knitting is not elegant. It is not noble. It has attitude. Deliberateness. Determination.
Why did we do it? Not just because it is good for us for all the Google reasons. But because we need to. The simple over and under. The around and through. The ripping. The fraying. The thinking it out. The making it work. The work of making it. It helps us keep our balance.
And when women get together and recalibrate their equilibrium they go home and reestablish balance in their homes and workplaces. And when their homes and workplaces are rebalanced our world has a hope of refinding its balance. I know. I know that going from ripped-sheet bathmats to balance in the world is a stretch. But it’s also a start.
Each one is sufficiently bizarre and beautiful on its own. Together they take crazy to a whole other level.
At an outdoor event a few months ago the group leader interrupted himself and said, “I forgot to do a land acknowledgement. I’m so sorry. Who’s land is this?” One of the participants called out aggressively, “It’s God’s land.” The exchange was followed by a few awkward moments and then the event continued.
At the Lodge we put on many public events and as someone who is deeply committed to land acknowledgements I am aware of a growing resistance. The last time I introduced an event, when I began to say something about the land, a fellow sitting directly in front of me rolled his eyes and shook his head. It was an unmistakeable gesture to let me, and the people sitting near him, know that he was displeased.
I wonder. Are land acknowledgements here to stay? Or, will the Canadian public grow tired of the demonstrations of good will?
My understanding of land acknowledgements is that they are acts of reconciliation—an acknowledgement that Canada dispossessed the Indigenous population and claimed sovereignty over the land that makes up this country. The dispossession is a pretty straightforward part of Canadian history. But it has plagued Canada since before it became a country. And it’s not just history. While governments continue to vigilantly defend their sovereignty in the courts, Canadian jurisprudence invariably sides with First Nations peoples’ rights and title over their territories.
Because these battles take place largely out of sight and out of mind, at a sort of sub-strata level, very few Canadians witness them or take them seriously. Yet, while I don’t like to use war metaphors, Canada is in an ongoing and constant battle defending its claims and staving off a potential tsunami of First Nations land challenges. The combat zone is not on a battlefield it is in the courts at a legal cost that would likely rival mounting a military assault.
There have been some significant wins on the Indigenous side. The “doctrine of discovery” has now been thoroughly debunked and most of us agree the lands of North America were not “discovered.” “Terra nullius,” the idea that the continent was empty because there were no Christians, has also been soundly discredited. It’s a start.
Then there are land acknowledgements. A practice that I think got popularized in British Columbia, has spread across the country. People are also doing land acknowledgements in certain spaces in the US. It has been a massive project of consciousness building. Slowly, some of us, are getting some of it:
Way back, before history as we know it, the land was previously inhabited. The early inhabitants have continuously inhabited the places we call home. Settlers unsettled and continue to unsettle the people and the land. They made land about ownership. Land is not about ownership. Land is about respectfully dwelling. Land is about having respectful reciprocal relationships with the place where we dwell. Land is bigger, older and more powerful than human beings. Land was here before us. It is here with us. It will be here after us.
Wonder if we really believed the land acknowledgements? Wonder if human beings everywhere practiced land acknowledgements? In Israel and Palestine? In Ukraine and Russia? In the Amazon? In the United States?
Canadians have a chance to be leaders in forming a new, more respectful relationship to the land. Indigenous worldviews—their “old” land-based worldviews—have a lot to contribute to what could be a new worldview for all Canadians.
I hope we don’t lose our momentum. We don’t need to roll our eyes. Land acknowledgements are maturing and becoming more inclusive. They are not about putting settler peoples in their place or giving priority to Indigenous peoples. They are about land and about human—all human—relationships to the land. In the past. In the present. And in the future. Why not take a few minutes when we gather for our human celebrations to acknowledge that everything is not about us? Just a few moments to feel part of something bigger than us.
It’s my birthday. I am 70 years old. I am deeply shocked. Seriously. From the time I was born I was taught by my parents, my church and by every significant adult in my life, that I would not grow old. When I was a child I was told I would not reach adulthood. When I was an adult I was told I would not reach old age.
I was taught that I was in this world but not of this world. My life teachers convinced me that the world I saw, the one that appeared to be real, was temporary, as was my life as I knew it. I watched, with the rest of my family and friends, for the life we were living, to end, any day. It was exciting, in a way. Because the next world was going to be so much better.
For my first almost-40 years I believed what I was taught. And although I no longer believe the teachings of my youth it seems like remnants of those beliefs are still hanging around like ghostly reminders.
The reasoning behind this belief was derived from my family and church’s interpretation of Bible prophecy. It went something like this: If we watched what happened in Israel we would be able to predict when Jesus would return to the earth and set up a “kingdom”, a “new dispensation” (I always loved the way that word sounded). In 1967 my family was excited with anticipation. Israel had just won the 6-day war. They had captured all of the “Holy Land.” It was now a Jewish land…all of it. I was in grade 7 and I remember coming home from school expecting to hear my parents tell me that Jesus had appeared. I knew that Jeremiah and Isaiah had said something important about the Jews return to the “land of Israel” and that what they said those thousands of years ago was true. I believed that the present world with schools and malls and Friday night skating would not be around long enough for me to graduate, have a family or ever, God promising, or in my wildest imagination, turn 70.
It’s been 30 years since the last time I sat in church and listened to an exhortation or a lecture enthusiastically predicting the “time of the end.” So, when I say I am deeply shocked that I am 70 years old I mean that while the supporting belief structure, the religious worldview, the specific doctrines and ideas I once agreed with have long since dissolved, some ghosts from the past still haunt me.
Perhaps the most haunting thing about thinking about my past and my present is that I’m watching people with similar time-of-the-end worldviews determinedly doing what they can to make it happen—to destroy and bring and end to “this world” as thoroughly as possible. They are teaching their children that they don’t have to respect or even tolerate “others,” they don’t need empathy and they don’t have to care for the planet because God is going to destroy “this world” and create “another world” that is going to be much better. Shocking? Unsettling?
Back to being 70. I’ve done plenty of personal work on accepting growing old. The gray hair, the weighty body, the saggy skin. I get that part. I embrace the natural, material process. I am mother to a 50-year-old, grandmother to a 27-year-old and to 7 other beautiful young people. I’ve done enough to warrant being 70. I celebrate almost every one of those things (there are a few things worth forgetting).
I am extremely grateful that I have been privileged enough to live this long. Friends are dying. So far I have avoided that fate. At least for now. I know. Seventy is not an achievement. It is a gift.
I am no longer annoyingly overly humble. I’ve lived for 70 years and I know some things. I also know there are a million other things I don’t know. It is satisfying to know that both knowing and not knowing are equally okay.
I am part of a generation. The largest generation the west has ever known. I’m not alone. Many of the early boomers have already passed. Compared to them I am still relatively “young.” So, I get it, I should not be even slightly surprised that I am 70.
Surprised or not. I am 70. I have had a super-charged, interesting and privileged life. I have lived on the outskirts of “the world.” It’s a feeling many of us share and a space I am happy to inhabit.
I am here. Perched on my particular tiny place on the planet. Still searching for what it means to be human. A female human. An old human. A loving, sharing, caring, empathetic, privileged, pale skinned, wrinkly pale skinned, a bit outspoken former super-Christian human. A human who birthed a huge, loving family of humans that protect and nurture me.
I am 70 and I am happy to have had the gift of health that has allowed me to reach such a wonderful age.
Thank you for sharing this birthday message with me. Thank you for muddling through it to the end…or to the not end…the end that goes on and on and on…
My mother told me to be nice. She told me I should think about others before myself. She said that something was not funny if everyone, especially the brunt of the joke, was not laughing. She said there were other people with worse problems than mine. She said be thankful for what I have…don’t focus on what I want. She said don’t call people names and don’t make fun of people who were “different,” which I took to mean things that were not white, educated, not-poor, healthy and able. She said don’t serve yourself more than you can eat. She also said don’t chew with your mouth open. I know I’m taking a bit of detour with the mouth open thing but I had to slip it in because it’s important.
Your mother probably told you similar things. If you are 70, like me, these were likely some of the teachings you grew up with. They weren’t political. They weren’t virtue signalling or dog whistling. They were not performative. They were imperative. No other sort of behaviour was tolerated in my house. Mother made sure of it.
In the early 1990s when political correctness became a “thing” I was in university. I learned quickly what could be said and what could not be said. Insulting people because of their race, gender, physical attributes, sexual orientation was “out.” It worked for me. Although many of my family and friends had many of these feelings, I had lived in an environment where outwardly showing bigoted and racist behaviours was unacceptable. I didn’t like bullies and big-mouths.
At this time, I lived on an Indian reserve and had had my fill of people mocking the people I lived with and loved because of their race, body size, poverty, education, etc. I thought “Just shut up” was a good motto. But I didn’t trust the new cleaned up society. Scratch the surface of the newly polite-spoken and I found the same old sentiments. I worried about the simmering resentments I felt in many conversations. I knew, one day, there would be a backlash.
And there was. Pretty soon political correctness became trivialized, as if it wasn’t legitimate, as if it was an affront to free speech. And it was. At one time or another we were all rebuked. For using the wrong word. For being the wrong colour. Political correctness had gone too far. But people didn’t just want political correctness to loosen up a bit. They wanted the right to say whatever they wanted. Insults and hurts, be damned.
And then there was woke. Just another word that had been rumbling around in common western parlance, waiting, as it were, to step in to rescue political correctness. We got rid of the offensive “political” word and got groovy.
Woke was a much better word. It had black roots as well as others. But it simply meant “wake up,” “check it out” and “check yourself out.” It meant don’t be so self-centred. It’s not all about you. There are many critical, systemic, social injustices that needed attention. Those of us from the white, educated, not-poor, healthy and able part of society needed to step aside and give way to the “others” for a while. I thought it was a brilliant message. I was all in. It wasn’t my turn anymore.
But then woke turned all political-correct on us. Cultural humility–making room for other cultures. Acknowledging privilege. Got attacked. Got reworked. Not surprising. It really was a counter intuitive idea—that the privileged should not act privileged. Woke met “Wait a minute us white people are getting left out.” Real quick. We hardly had time to think about the “other” before we had to do an about face and think about ourselves again.
My sense was that the anti-woke movement did not like white and men being lumped together with privilege—we aren’t all privileged. Some of us are poor, working class and struggling just like Blacks, Indigenous, women, gays. Woke isn’t fair.
On a personal note, this movement hit me hard. My life had been spent in a community that wasn’t mine. I was an invader. Although my academic work was about my lived experience the topics that were not considered mine. “Who are you to talk about these things?” Although I had been taught many knitting techniques and encouraged to knit them by my Coast Salish mother-in-law and even though I created unique designs and techniques of my own I was reproached for my knitting. “Who told you, you could knit like that?” Even the stories I wrote about living in the “in-between” were marginalized. “Who is she to talk about those topics?” My experiences can be wrapped up in this moment. I had just finished my Phd dissertation…the first of its kind. It was new edgy stuff. Six years of study, 20 years of working in the field, 45 years of living the topic. A very woke person asked me if I could teach a First Nations person the content of my dissertation so that person could present it at a gathering (the next week). No. Just no.
So I get it. I’m pretty sure that I get it on a deeper and more personal level than most. Stepping aside when you are white, middle-class, educated, healthy and able is not something we are familiar with. And, as we have seen, it didn’t last long.
Okay, so my version of woke might not tell the whole or even the best story. I’ve got a pretty biased look at the topic. But the latest onslaught of viciousness against the “other” and by that I mean the traditional “other” in American society…the anti-everything that was meant to even the playing field, has awakened my woke.
Yes, I get it. Some parts of society have gone too far and are trying too hard to apply disingenuous rules on people. I think it’s true that sometimes it’s not fair (it has never been fair). But the response to woke, to DEI and to anything that hints of inclusion, etc has been so quick, so thorough and so vicious that I believe it has exposed its roots. The roots are so close to the surface we can all see what has been half-hid for most of my lifetime. The response is so obviously rooted (from my perspective) in old, white, male, Christian supremacy that rather than feel frustrated that woke has gone too far I am thinking it hasn’t gone far enough.
I am angry that my mother’s teachings are being belittled. I am fed-up with the leash being extended to let bad behaviour run wild.
And what difference does it make that I’m fed-up. In the public. In society. None. But in my family and my small circle of friends it makes a difference. They will not hear the end of it. Be nice. Stop thinking about yourself. You are not a victim—others have it so much worse than you. You are not as funny as you think you are. Don’t take more than you can eat. And don’t chew with your mouth open. Please. Please. Please. Don’t chew with your mouth open.
Valentine’s Day, like every Hallmark Day, is easy to disparage for all sorts of reasons. Simply that it has been so commercialized. That red hearts and cupids have been pasted on everything from cookies and chocolates to sweatshirts and underpants is enough to put you off the celebration. While I get over my distaste for the schmaltz I succumb and happily wish my sweetie “Happy Valentine’s Day.” I eat chocolates and enjoy flowers, if he remembers.
Not to be a downer but Valentine’s Day is forever etched in my memory as a day to remember the people without a sweetie or chocolates or flowers. Thanks to Mrs. Tomlinson.
She was my grade 3 teacher. For Valentine’s Day we made two large hearts and stapled them partly together making a folder. We decorated the front with our names in bold letters so they could be seen from our desks. Mrs. Tomlinson hung our art pieces in a row under the chalkboard, like Christmas stockings.
What was meant to be joyful turned out to be deeply uncomfortable.
As each student brought their Valentines cards to class they put them in the folders. This was long before mothers insisted that their kids brought cards for the whole class. We were selective. Our cards were only for our friends. People we wanted to be our friends. And people we didn’t want not to be our friends.
Everyone watched as each kid put their cards in the heart pockets. Some kids proudly announced who were the lucky ones to receive their cards. We watched certain kid’s pockets bulge. We watched other kid’s pockets remain almost empty.
And then…the much anticipated moment…we got to go up and retrieve our heart pockets. We were given time to spread the cards on our desks and read the names of the senders. We read the captions and searched for hidden meanings. Did “Be my best Valentine” mean I was her best friend? Even better than Julie?
I remember everyone counting their cards and the bravado of the ones with the most. Mrs. Tomlinson presided over the fun. She had brought heart shaped cookies with sprinkles for us all. And a card…making sure everyone had at least one card.
I was the kind of kid who got a decent number of cards. My heart pocket wasn’t bulging but nor was it empty. I was also the kind of kid who could not enjoy my stash when I could see that there were several humiliated kids who were trying to hide their one or two cards.
That Valentine’s Day was doubly uncomfortable for me because no one got a card from me. In spite of my pleading, my mother would not allow me to give out Valentines cards. I got a firm “No. We don’t join in on worldly celebrations.” It was against our religion.
As the kids, especially my friends, opened each card I cringed hoping they wouldn’t notice. They did. Of course they did.
I remember telling them “We don’t believe in Valentine’s Day.” It didn’t make sense to them. It didn’t make sense to me either. But there it was.
My memory of that day in Mrs. Tomlinson’s class is crystal clear. I also have a fuzzy memory that there was a Valentine’s Day later on when I did buy a plastic bag full of cards and give them out in class. Maybe grade 4 or 5. I’m thinking my mother relented. Maybe it was part of our religion that wasn’t etched in stone. Or maybe my sad story of my worst Valentine’s Day ever, softened her stance. But I find it odd that I can’t really remember.
Twenty-one percent of Canadians said they would support Trump in the last election. We all know some of those people. They were our friends and family. Many didn’t outwardly say they supported Trump. He was too crass, too dumb, too full of himself. But they supported a myriad of ideas that fell into the Trumpish camp. At first my sense was that they had a constellation of beliefs and values that, while I did not agree and could not totally understand them, were legitimate responses to the crazy world.
These friends and family seemed angry at everything COVID (anti vaxxing seemed to lead…to trigger the rest of the ideas), they seemed sure there was an underground force manipulating everything from the economy to international relations to our sleep patterns and the weather/climate, and on… They seemed to believe mainstream media was making stuff up and that their “alternative media” was telling corrective truths. They seemed annoyed that white people were getting discriminated against. They seemed suspicious of university educations, the police, the justice, healthcare and education systems, and more, and more. Once a conversation turned to one of these topics, the others were not far behind. Before you were finished there was a hint of them all.
It reminded me of when I was a fundamentalist Christian. We called our constellation of beliefs “First Principles.” You couldn’t believe one without the other. Our beliefs were like a network of veins, blood flowed through them all.
In conversation with these friends and family I often ended up defending the current system, as if I believed that capitalism, globalization and junk food were good for us. As if I believed everything I read in the newspaper, heard at university and saw on the news (at least the news I was watching). As if I believed our western, privileged justice system was fair, honest and good. As if I hadn’t spent most of my adult life (post church, that is) in some sort of protest against our western system and wishing for a revolution.
But theirs was such a completely different world view than mine, I felt like I had to constantly defend myself and in so doing I ended up defending things I had never defended before. I knew the revolution they had in mind would not bring about the systemic changes I thought were so, so, so necessary. I ended up using all my mental energy researching and debating each one of the ideas. I could not keep up so I started to quit the conversations before they got going.
I had been in a similar situation as them. In the church. I had an answer for everything. I had to. If one of my beliefs fell apart, the rest of them got shaky. So, I kept it up. I was right. “The world” was wrong. Although being right was tiring it was also life affirming. Being right never did a thing to improve the world but it made the world easier to bear. It was us against the world and there is a certain appeal to that.
But our tiny church would never have its crazy beliefs put to the test. The church would never have the power or position to see if its ideas worked or to see what would happen if wheels were put on what we believed.
Now here we are.
Their revolution is here. The whole constellation of ideas that made the Trump movement (or the anti-democratic movement) is being transformed into action. Not cautiously, slowly, one-thing-at-a-time, but slam-dunk, in-your-face, as fast as possible to throw everyone off their feet, scramble their brains, upset their stomachs, so everyone and everything is so off kilter that there is no effective respond. And if there is, they have that covered, responders will be arrested.
I think we are all a bit shocked when we shouldn’t be. Everything we see happening was promised. But even those of us who believed it would be bad didn’t really believe it. Not this bad.
The western system that made us all so complacent, so comfortable, so emboldened, so self-focused, is no longer there for us to depend on.
Now the revolution is here.
At the helm is a middle school yard bully who finally gets to be in charge and has one thing in mind—revenge. He hates that he’s chubby, weird looking, and not-that-bright. Now he’s going to take out everyone he blames for making him feel that way. He’s going to put us all in our place—beneath him—where he thinks we belong. Women, people of colour, people who are disabled, educated, gender diverse… Perhaps only very rich white men will be immune from his raids and ravages, because of his delusion that those are his people.
Nothing I have said here is new, helpful or even very interesting. We’ve heard it all before a dozen times. It’s just my morning meanderings. And, I suppose, my way of asking—is there still 21% of Canadians who support Trump? Now that his crazy talk has gotten real does it still sound good? Does the revolution look like what you thought. Is it going in the right direction?
Are Canadians going to embolden our own very weak strongman who can’t seem to grow up past his schoolyard-level Trudeau jealousy? In the name of what? The economy? Christian values?
This is the first in what will be a series of short pieces on First Nations housing. After a lifetime of living on a reserve (for over 30 years starting when I was a teenager), working in the on-reserve housing field as a Housing Manager, construction supervisor, policy analyst, workshop facilitator, curriculum developer and university instructor, working on various national and provincial First Nations housing committees and studying government on-reserve housing programs for a Phd, I am beginning to write a book on the topic, with my son Adam. My blogs are not necessarily finished thoughts. They are like sparks in the morning…that ignite after a few hours of studying…that turn into small fires…that I can’t put out until I write about them.
Not fully awake
Canada has just experienced an awakening: Government officials removed First Nations children from their homes and sent them to residential schools where they were often abused and sometimes even killed. Once we got over questioning the validity of the historical event Canada reluctantly admitted to the country’s disgraceful policies and practices. However, we are having a harder time acknowledging the far-reaching and deeply troubling implications the shared experience of residential schools had on First Nations people. We’d rather blame the uneducated for being uneducated, the depressed for being depressed, the unemployed for being unemployed than to accept what every expert says. There is a direct causal relationship between societal and individual dysfunction and the children’s experiences at residential schools.
Canada is now awakening to another nasty historical reality. During the 1960s and 1970s government officials removed more than 20,000 First Nations children from their homes and adopted them out to white families. To put a brighter light on the practice: many of the children were put in the hands of adoption agencies around the world (more than 25% were adopted outside of their home province) and sold to prospective parents for thousands of dollars. Flyers were distributed with pictures of cute, chubby-cheeked little First Nations kids advertising “A Child is Waiting.” Canada took part in human trafficking. The stories of this mass dislocation are beginning to be told while most Canadians don’t want to really listen.
Canada has yet to awaken to the current practice: Ministries of Child and Family are removing children from First Nations homes at a startling rate. According to the 2021 census in Canada, 53.8% of children in foster care are Indigenous, but account for only 7.7% of the child population. A higher percentage of First Nations children are in care today than were in residential schools. We have yet to fully comprehend the social consequences of this latest child removal scheme. We don’t yet have a long view. However, we know a few things. We know that between 25%-50% of youth exiting foster care experience precarious housing, along with high rates of unemployment, lack of permanent connections with family, disrupted education, and struggles with mental health.
Some Canadians ask “What is wrong with the Canadian government?” But from my experience most Canadians ask, what is wrong with those “Indians?” And while we fight that one out I have an answer. It’s not the whole answer but it’s a part of the answer few people want to consider—particularly government people.
There were several and varied reasons children were rounded up and sent to residential schools—isolation, deliberate disruption of culture, one aspect of a land grab, to be educated and/or indoctrinated, etc. But I want to look at one common justification Indian Agents used for taking children from their families.
Housing.
First Nations children living on reserves in the 20th century experienced the worst housing in the country. It is hard for Canadians to comprehend how unlivable and crowded those unlivable, crowded houses were. So, taking some of the children (often the oldest ones) out of the house seemed like one solution to the housing problem. Residential schools were seen as an improvement. There was more square footage of living space per child in the schools than in their houses on reserves. “Good” white homes are still seen as having better beds for First Nations kids or, at least, a bedroom all of their own.
Because of the nature of this claim, it can only be proved with anecdotal examples. There’s no statistical proof for how many children were taken specifically because of housing. However, one thing we all know to be true: If First Nations families were living in houses that met the Canadian standard, with space for all the children, with roofs that didn’t leak like sieves, with heating that kept the windows from freezing shut, with hot water for showers and laundry…houses that didn’t burn down at a rate 10Xs that of other Canadian houses…agents would have had a lot harder time ripping those kids from their homes and their families.
I’ve read hundreds of archival accounts of housing issues. Here’s one housing issue that started with a house fire. “Please help me get a house for my children, we are going to have to live in the woods this winter.” That turned into a residential school issue. “Six of my children were taken to the residential school 100 miles from our reserve.” That turned into a permanent adoption issue. “My youngest children have been taken by the ministry. I don’t know where they are.” That turned back into a housing issue. “They say I can get my children back if I get a house that they will approve of.”
It is records like this that make me certain that if First Nations housing was not, and has not historically been, so unconscionably unlivable First Nations families would not have been so ransacked.
Poor living conditions were also often used as part of the justification to scoop children in the 60s and 70s. It is still part of the reasoning for the current Ministry’s scoop. I know the justifications for dislocating and relocating First Nations children are more than housing. And as the generations unfold the whole problem appears to get increasingly complicated. But there is a common theme.
“They say I can get my children back if I get a house that they will approve of.”
“Why,” you ask, “Are Indigenous kids so overrepresented in the homeless population in every city and town in this country?” You can’t get to that answer without understanding housing on Indian reserves.
