Author now embraces his past

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Most people are on the run from something in the past, something they wish could have been different. Few, however, are trying to escape their very being.

It's a tough concept for most people to comprehend, but Harold Eustache knows the anguish all too well. He spent more than 50 of his 67 years trying to deny who he was, but in the end he finally accepted his reality and found peace.

Eustache is Secwepemc, a member of the Shuswap Nation, and for most of his life he wished more than anything that he wasn't.

>From earliest childhood in the Simp'culcw, or North Thompson region, he developed a sense that being Native was not a good thing. He has a tough time explaining today why that was, though he admits part of it stemmed from the bigotry and prejudice he was subjected to from outside of his community.

Part of it also stemmed from the residential school system, which his older siblings were subjected to even though he didn't have to attend and so escaped the direct effects of what he today calls "attempted cultural genocide."

"I was running away from my heritage," Eustache admited when talking about his leaving home at the age of 17 to join the Canadian Navy. He spent the next 30-plus years searching for answers.

"It wasn't until about 10 years ago that I could look at myself in the mirror and accept who I was and be happy with that."

Coming to terms with that heritage has been a huge part of Eustache's life but in the end it was his heritage that helped him to accept himself.

Though he worked in a variety of jobs over the years-at a sawmill, in the forests, as a heavy-duty mechanic, as a ranch owner, as a taxi driver, and for the 15 years prior to retirement, as an employee with the department of National Defence-the two constants in his life was his culture and his Native language.

He began collecting the traditional stories of his youth and writing them down as part of counselling therapy he began in his fifties to help him overcome his feelings of self-denial.

"I had such a good counsellor," said Eustache. "She urged me to write down the stories I learned from my father and my mother. These were stories that were handed down to them by their parents."

After moving to Abbotsford from Kamloops in 1989 because of a work transfer, Eustache eventually decided to go back to school and in 2000 graduated with a teaching certificate in the Secwepemc language from Simon Fraser University.

After retirement he found a part-time position with the Native Education Centre in Vancouver as in-house Elder, a position he currently holds and one that allows him to help other Native people learn about their own culture.

After such a varied career and a long road travelled towards self-realization, Eustache is sharing his journey through a new novel comprised of traditional Shuswap stories.

Called Shuswap Journey, the book is about a group of young women and girls abducted by a neighboring tribe from over the Rocky Mountains. It is told through the eyes of one young girl in particular, the daughter of a chief who will not rest until he has her back. The stories are based on a traditional Shuswap legend.

Eustache said it's an important book in its own way for several reasons. The most obvious is that it serves to tell people, Native and non-Native, about the Secwepemc and how they lived. It also uses some of their language. Less obvious, unless you know the author's personal story, is the journey that it led Eustache himself on in an effort to find his own place in the world.

Both of those are important, but Eustache is also hoping the book will serve as a means of inspiring his people and other Native people to look at themselves and their past with pride because they had, and still have, well-developed languages and cultures that were thriving long before Europeans or others ever came upon what is today known as British Columbia.

"This is an opportunity for me to pass my heritage on t my children and grandchildren, and to others," Eustache said. "I'm hoping people will read this and see my use of our language and say 'It's OK, because he's OK with it.'"

The language is something to hang on to, Eustache said, because it's really all that his people have left of their traditional way of life. Indeed, the dedication at the start of Shuswap Journey reads in part, "To my Secwepemc language, the heart and soul of our culture."

"I want this book to create interest within the Shuswap Nation or anyone with a Native background. I want people to take pride in who we are and know it's all right to be Native.

"And I want non-Natives to realize we were the First Nations in Canada and to accept it. I want them to realize we were a sophisticated society with all that that entails."

Eustache said his book is a reflection of who he is and where he's at in his life now. It's written as he would tell the stories to others, though he admits it loses a bit because the visual aspects of story telling in the oral tradition are missing. Nevertheless, he's proud of what he's been able to accomplish with this work and has already started on his next book, which will be an exploration of his life growing up in the North Thompson region.

Was it worth the journey? Absolutely, said Eustache.

"It took me 50 years to even be able to accept my name in this fashion. It looks good in print today."