I think of the issues faced by Canada’s Native peoples….and how this current government has treated First Nations….and then think again how almost all (if not all) governments have treated Canada’s Original peoples. Whether Provincial or Federal, governments should learn to listen to First Nations….to actually hear them….we have two ears and one mouth so should listen twice as much as we speak.
It was said that when the Europeans first came and ‘discovered’ North America that they had no eyes and no ears, since they didn’t see or hear. Maybe it is time to change that. Open up their eyes….and ears.
This was one of the reasons that Idle No More came to be….
From Facebook 9from Amber Sandy)….Mino Kanata Kiishikaat!.
I have often mentioned Art Solomon. Read Art’s poem ‘My Relations: O Canada’ from Eating Bitterness: A Vision Beyond Prison Walls:
In Deconstructing ‘Canada’: A Vision of Hope, David J. Bondy wrote about Art Solomon and this poem from Eating Bitterness: A Vision Beyond Prison Walls:
Arthur Solomon was a First Nations teacher and spiritual leader who lived in Northern Ontario, Canada. Living and teaching the lessons of Native spirituality, Solomon pursued a vision of change, hope and healing. In his lifetime, Solomon fought passionately for Anishinabe voices in Canada to be heard. In his poem, ‘My Relations: O Canada’, Solomon problematizes the very foundations of hegemonic culture, challenging the assumptions behind the Western notions of subjectivity and nation. Solomon destabilizes the concept of ‘Canada’ as a nation, as a unified whole, by articulating the absences upon which ‘Canada’ is predicated, particularly the absence/exclusion of Native American voices and perspectives. In locating and exposing these silences, Solomon is deconstructing ‘Canada’ by upsetting the system of binary logic upon which notions of nation and identity are based. Solomon makes it clear that Canada, as a nation, cannot progress and heal until it learns to listen to and respect the voices of Native culture….
….the demarcation of boundaries which, as Solomon shows, have excluded Native peoples from the dominant Euro-American conception of ‘Canada’. Solomon is engaged in a…deconstructive project….that….demonstrates that the position of the Native as silent Other is crucial to our Western hegemonic identity….For Natives to speak, to claim subjectivity, is a transgressive act that disrupts the ‘order of things’. Solomon is locating these silences and writing/speaking them into the forefront. He is exposing how ‘Canada’, as a historical and nationalistic construction, is predicated on the systematic exclusion of Native peoples and Native voices, achieved through the silencing processes of systemic racism. By politicizing these silences, Solomon is engaged in….opening up spaces for silenced voices to speak themselves out of silence.
Solomon makes it clear that the marginalization of Native voices is not the result of any casual oversight. He writes to ‘Canada’: ‘You have rejected/and refused,/the most colourful/the most fundamental/thread of all./You have refused to include the original/people of this land…’ (Solomon, Eating Bitterness). Solomon forcefully asserts that the absence of Native voices from the dominant conception of ‘Canada’ is a result of a deliberate and systematic omission, a continuation of the same colonial project inaugurated by the early European explorers….
….At the centre of his poem (both literally and thematically), Solomon begins a stanza with the phrase ‘O Canada’: these two words, uttered together, invoke an entire range of associations. The phrase ‘O Canada’, as a verbal sign, so to speak, signifies on many levels. Every weekday morning, millions of children in classrooms across Canada, children of various cultural and ethnic backgrounds, sing these words, which begin the Canadian national anthem, in praise of ‘our’ nation. There is such certainty evoked by the word ‘Canada’, particularly in the context of this anthem; there is no question as to what Canada is – Canada is simply Canada. It is, as the song goes on, ‘our home and native land’ (here Solomon is obviously intending the allusion to this verse and the double meaning of the phrase ‘native land’). This sense of ownership is suggested, and with such sureness: ‘our home’. In this context, ‘Canada’ is unproblematic, unified and coherent.
This is exactly where Solomon catches us. His second line of the stanza – ‘you are sick’ – undermines the sense of coherency and stability usually suggested by this image of Canada. Solomon problematizes ‘Canada’ by suggesting that, rather than unified and stable, it is a concept marked by certain fundamental absences and silences which threaten to destabilize its very constitution….The song ‘O Canada’, as a particular example, validates hegemonic culture by evoking dominant ideas about Canada and presenting it as an unproblematic whole. Solomon deconstructs this, challenging hegemonic ideology by suggesting that there is no unity. By interrogating the spaces of silence/violence at the heart of this concept, Solomon opens up ‘Canada’ to an important postcolonial investigation.
Solomon, in deconstructing the Western conceptions of Native Americans as non-white Others….asserting that there exists a lack not within Native culture but rather at the very heart of the hegemonic Western culture that has denied the diverse voices of Native people. This ‘lack’ is central to what Solomon diagnoses as the pathology of Western colonial culture, a culture that is ‘sick’ because it has ignored the teachings and wisdom of Native Americans. He is thus problematizing and/or subverting the position of the dominant culture which represents itself as fully realized.
Solomon is also problematizing the constructed colonial identities of Natives by stressing the diversity of Native culture; in describing it as ‘colourful’ (Art Solomon, Eating Bitterness), he is suggesting its richness and diversity. Asserting the reality of a multiplicity of Native cultures and languages, Solomon again upsets the binary logic of oppositional identities which relies on the stereotypical conception of ‘Native’ as a monolithic category. By addressing this diversity, Solomon upsets the categories by which hegemonic culture seeks to contain and control Native culture.
Solomon is also engaged in this poem in deconstructing the Western idea of ‘progress’….Solomon rejects these Western colonial capitalist notions of progress, and suggests just the opposite:
You have refused to include the original
people of this land
and your tapestry
of life will never
be completed….
And when you stop destroying
the earth
and the people
of the earth
then your healing
can come.
Canada, as a nation, Solomon writes, cannot grow, cannot ‘progress’ and heal, until it learns to listen to and respect the voices and teachings of Native culture. Western ‘progress’, as a capitalist ideology based on the importance of commercial and territorial expansion and monetary gain, is central to the Western psyche. Solomon, by locating this ideology as the source of Western pathology, opens up the often unchallenged authority of Western culture to a series of questions and probings, and makes room for – indeed, suggests the need for – Native voices to be heard.
Solomon’s project in ‘My Relations: O Canada’ is central to the theoretical project of contemporary cultural studies and postcolonial theory. Solomon problematizes Canadian concepts of identity and nation by exposing the politics which inform our national identity. With his words, he is paving the way for a diverse nation to become accountable to those voices that have been silenced and marginalized. Solomon offers us a vision of hope, ultimately, that it is not too late for us to learn from Native culture – perhaps most importantly, to learn how to heal.
As well, I will add a few more words from Eating Bitterness: A Vision From Beyond The Prison Walls by Art Solomon (who worked so actively on behalf of Native peoples in the prisons):
“When Christopher Columbus landed in North America not one Native person was in prison, because there were no prisons. We had laws and order because law was written in the hearts and minds and souls of the people and when justice had to be applied it was tempered with mercy. The laws came from the ceremonies which were given by the spirit people, the invisible ones. As a people we were less than perfect as all other people are, but we had no prisons because we didn’t need them. We knew how to live and we also knew how not to live.”
Native people in Canada often find some of the words in ‘O Canada’ more than ironic….especially ‘our home and native land’….given the housing issues in most First Nation communities….and that this country of Canada was part of Turtle Island….truly was Native land.
Always one to believe in trying to see the positive side of things, I want to at least give voice to this discussion in a different format….so I am posting a few versions of ‘O Canada’….in Native tongues.
First a version from Asani, an Aboriginal womens a cappella group from Edmonton, Alberta. They present a stirring rendition of “O, Canada,” re-imagined to reflect the myriad peoples who call Canada their homeland. The group Asani hails from Alberta, Canada. They are: Debbie Houle, Sarah Pocklington, and Sherryl Sewepagahan. Here, Asani performs the Canadian National Anthem in the groups unique style:
There is this version sung at the 2010 Olympics Torch run November 7, 2009. O Canada – kā-kanātahk the National Anthem in Cree. Sung by Lac La Ronge Indian Band member, Aileen Searson. Elders, Veterans,Torch bearers, Chief Tammy Cook-Searson, Vice Chief Morley Watson and community members stood proudly listening to the National Anthem in Cree.
And Robbie sings Oh Canada in Ojibway:
11 Year old Kalolin Johnson performs at the closing ceremonies of the Jeux Du Canada Games, on February 27,2011. Kalolin Johnson performed the National Anthem in her native Language Mi’kmaq and also in English, and was accompanied by Anna Ludlow, Ryan MacNeil, and artists from the National Arts Program who performed their piece in French . The video footage was taken by the TSN network.
And the Red Bull Singers sing Oh Canada in a Round Dance version:
Native people sometimes wear what is called a Unity button….a button with the four colours of red, white, black and yellow on it….these colours represent the four sacred colours of the Medicine Wheel….the four races of man….and these colours all meet in the middle….so we need to learn to meet in the middle too….to actually find common ground….equal footing. On what is our home….and NATIVE land.
