While we try to move forward on Indigenous matters, some people are ignorant of history
Racism against Indigenous people in early 2020 prompted a reader to suggests re-running a 2015 column on the subject
(This op-ed appeared in the Feb. 21, 2020 edition of The Progress and is in fact an edited version of a column that ran in the June 4, 2015 Chilliwack Times. A reader suggested I re-run this after reaction to protests in support of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs in February 2020. Sadly, the message is indeed just as apt in 2025 as it was in 2020 as it was in 2020. I didn't identify who I was quoting in this op-ed in 2015 or in. 2020, but because he now holds elected office, I think it's time to name him. He is a great guy, I do like him, but he's somewhat ignorant issues such as this. Namely, Chilliwack school board trustee Richard Procee - PJH, Jan. 2, 2025)
“Oh no, here we go,” muttered the person blind to the colonial history of Canada now that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has issued its report on the dark past of residential schools in Canada.
“Why won’t those Indians just put the past behind them, get a job, and start contributing to society?”
That is what he said to me. There are certain subjects usually left alone by those who should know better.
“That was the past, get over it.”
These are not the opinions of some bygone era. These are attitudes held by some people here and now. Present and but a scratch below a thin layer of politeness that covers our daily discourse.
“Why won’t those Indians just put the past behind them, get a job, and start contributing to society?”
I write it again, because this it struck me as amazing. I was chatting someone who should know better. An educated, successful member of Chilliwack society. He used the term “Indians,” even. No, he wasn’t talking about people from India. I asked. When talking about our local Sto:lo population he said he prefers “Indian” over “native” or “aboriginal.”
And don’t even start him on the term “First Nations.”
“Don’t talk about Indians to this guy,” he joked as others joined us in the public setting where our conversation took place, his business. Laughs.
Apparently, I’ve learned, it is political correctness run amok when people suggest an objectively inaccurate term is just weird to use.
“You know where India is, right?” I asked.
No comment.
“OK, then, you do know the ‘Indians’ in this country have endured an attempted cultural genocide, right?”
Get over it, was the response.
Today many local Sto:lo folks are likely grappling with Justice Murray Sinclair’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, its 94 recommendations, something that invariably will dig up the terrible wounds of what was endured at residential schools by parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.
The ignorance and hatred that led to a cultural genocide, a government-church led systematic “killing the Indian in the child” is done. It’s gone from our churches, at least most of them. It’s gone from our cultural institutions. It’s gone from our government.
But the sentiment remains, if below the surface for some, that Indigenous people should just snub out the last remnants of that language, drop the cultural practices, forget the drumming and the hunting and the fishing and the rest of it, and just be more like us.
Why can’t you be more like us?
There is, among us mostly white settlers, a belligerent sense of entitlement, but even more so a disregard for any expression of culture from those who were here before us and our ancestors.
“Political correctness” is a false label for what is usually just correctness.
The gentleman I was talking to claims the term First Nations is politically correct “crap” and he refuses to use it. Fine, but it also just happens to be correct. These “nations” of human beings were in this place we call Canada before European settlers. They were here “first.”
It’s really time to get our colonial heads out of the sand, acknowledge the truth that some our ancestors took part in, or at least acquiesced to, very bad treatment of First Nations people. We do need to reconcile. This doesn’t meant saying “we are sorry you are upset.” This means more. Individuals, including the one quoted above (and as mentioned above now sits on the Chilliwack school board) need to learn some history. Learn how children were stolen from their parents as government policy.
“Cultural genocide is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group,”
This is big stuff, and it’s been buried for too long. What we should not do is let the ignorance of the “be more like us” sentiment carry on.
Those today who are blind to history and what went on with the Indian School Act need to open their eyes.
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Paul J. Henderson
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