Columbus Day a chance to celebrate

Page 5

Tansi, ahnee and hello.

It's the choices we make in life and the way we react to the consequences of those choices that determines the extent of our happiness. Learning that has taken the better part of these soon-to-be 37 years I've spent in this reality.

Indeed, it's been the way I've reacted to things that's charted my course. Never

the consummate navigator, I've sailed an awful lot of dark and barren seas since 1955.

As usual it was the overheard things in life that got me thinking this way. The dog and I were out for an afternoon stroll and happened to be passing a school yard full of children at play. It was a happy scene, one that rekindled memories of my own school yard days, and we stopped to watch and listen for a while.

As a small group of kids were chasing each other around and around the swing sets we could hear them chanting...."In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue..."

Needless to say, we smirked. Well, I shouldn't speak for the dog, but being prone to aboriginal attitudes as she is, I'm certain she smirked as well. It was strange to hear kids using the same couplet I'd used a couple decades back.

Back then it was simply a charming little ditty we used to remember a significant date in the world's history. These days it's an angry prod in the political sensibilities. The dog and I felt almost compelled to charge into the school yard and fill these poor unenlightened kids in on the rest of the verses.

You know, the verses that sing of the annihilation of peoples, the rape of resources, the lingering death of cultures, the price of Beothuk ears, the enforced sociological change from a hunter-gatherer life-style to a welfare mentality, the myth of treaties and the thousand-odd other legitimate complaints aboriginal people have with the established idea of North American history.

We wanted to burst across that school yard and scream...you can't discover anything when you're wandering around lost!

Wanted to tell them how the sand must have screamed under the weight of that booted foot that morning of Oct. 12, 1492 and how that same scream has echoed down through pages of history and resides today in a national referendum, the death of rain forests and the multitude agonies of a people.

Wanted to tell them that history is a tool. That when you justify one invasion you can justify a thousand others: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual invasions that rip and tear and claw at the very heart and soul of a people.

Wanted to tell that Columbus was just another pawn in a game where only the white pieces get to move.

But we didn't. They were only children and had no need for political ravings. We were just a man and a dog at the edge of a school yard and history was something to play at before they got to the crucial matter of chasing each other around those swings.

The dog wagged her tail, I shook my head and we wandered to ponder the world. Hers, the world of smell and sensation and mine, the world of thought and reaction. I couldn't help feeling that she was getting the better deal.

Two things happened quickly. First I laughed at my reaction.

Second, I remembered that today is the only history I can change. Then I laughed again.

It occurred to me how easily I fall into the trap of accentuating the negative. Sure, our history is filled with gross injustices and the pages of history books have seldom dealt with the real nature of settlement and yes, many of us have, and still do suffer at the hands of that historical perspective.

But we survived. We survived and we have flourished despite every transgression, every cultural trespass and every attempt at a subjugation and control. And we've survived our own negative reactions to those things as well. History has two sides after all.

We've survived. And what that 500 years tells me is that there exists an aboriginal heart that continues to beat despite the better attempts of outside influences to quiet it. An aboriginal heart tha outlived Columbus, Pizarro, Champlain and Cartier, and will most certainly outlive Brian Mulroney, Canada and history itself.

So the dog and I will celebrate Oct. 12th. We'll celebrate it as an indication of the strength of will, heart and spirit of aboriginal people everywhere Celebrate the courage that's enabled them to survive and flourish despite the heavy hand of history. Celebrate the vibrancy we see at powwows, gatherings and ceremonies everywhere.

When we charge across the school yard that day it will be to run and leap in celebration of an aboriginal heart that can transcend anything. And believe me, that's

a lot more fun than bemoaning something you can't change.

Until next time, Meegwetch.