Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past by Tantoo Cardinal Page A

practical.





B ASIL J OHNSTON

The Wampum Belt Tells Us …
    IMAGE CREDIT: © PETER HARHOLDT/CORBIS/MAGMA

CONTRIBUTOR ’ S NOTE
    I N 1968 I WAS INVITED to an Indian display mounted by the grade 5 students of Churchill Avenue Public School in North York, Toronto, as a grand finale to their five-week in-depth study of Indians. Students, parents, and teachers were justifiably proud of the exhibition.
    The entire library was one large, open gallery. It was a veritable feast of Native memorabilia. Against the walls were tables bearing an array of pictures, maps, and artifacts, both genuine and plastic. Posters and several large pictures of Indian chiefs and warriors adorned the walls. At one end of the library was a large canvas teepee; in front, a tripod made of saplings meant to represent an outdoor fireplace. Students, faces painted in warlike colours and wearing paper headdresses, mingled with the guests, whom they conducted about the exhibits while explaining what they knew of their respective First Nations. All of them wore nameplates of the tribes whom they represented: ALGONQUIN, IROQUOIS, SIOUX, HURON, OJIBWAY. In front of the teepee stood a grim-looking grade 5 chief, his arms folded. Like the rest of the Indians, he had his face painted in hostile colours. I went directly to him.
    â€œHow!” I said in greeting.
    The Blackfoot chief looked at me quizzically.
    â€œWhy so glum, Chief?” I asked. Before replying, the chief looked around to make sure that there were no teachers within hearing, and then whispered “I’m bored.”
    â€œHow so, Chief?”
    â€œSir! Don’t tell anybody, but I’m bored. I’m tired of Indians. You see, sir, I always wanted to be an Indian, and when we started this unit on Indians I thought I’d learn something. When we began this unit we had to choose a special project from social organization, hunting and fishing, food preparation, clothing, dwellings, and transportation. I chose dwellings”—and at this point the little chief exhaled in exasperation—“and that’s all me and my committee did for five weeks, sir! We studied and researched teepees, igloos, longhouses, lodges, wigwams. We read books, encyclopedias, went to the library, looked at pictures, and drew sketches. Then we had to make a teepee. Is that all there is to Indians, sir?”
    Two comments hit home. “Is that all there is?” and “I always wanted to be an Indian” affected me enormously and profoundly. Now, there is nothing particularly unusual about wanting to be an Indian. In fact, back in the 1960s a youngsters wish to be an Indian was as common as wanting to become a fireman, policeman, nurse, or actress. And children could not give a rational reason for wanting to be an Indian. It was the mystique, perhaps a romantic notion derived from a picture, that attracted wannabe Indians.
    That youngster had a dream, preposterous as it may seem to adults, worth pursuing because it represented something real. And dreams and visions are necessary to create and to accomplish. When his school offered a five-week in-depth unit on Indians, that boy looked forward to the program that would teach him all he wanted to know and needed to know that would enable him to turn his dream into reality and become a living, breathing Indian. But the course let him down. He learned about social organizations, subsistence, food, fashion, dwellings, and migration. But he uncovered nothing about the true nature of Indians. He was exasperated. Despite his disappointment, he still clung to hope. His question and tonepleaded for some assurance that “Indians” were so much more, and that it was still worthwhile to dream.
    His plea was reminiscent of another boys plea to Joe Jackson, one of the Chicago White Sox baseball players accused of deliberately losing games in the 1918 World Series, to “say it ain’t so, Joe.” Faith had to be