Taste of freedom changed everything

Page 4

I was watching one of our big chiefs on TV a few weeks ago face off against a young Native "radical." The chief was smugly dismissive in defending his own mature, patient and co-operative approach to resolving our problems. He was using words like "negotiation," "accommodation," "reconciliation" and "compromise." It saddened me that the chief has forgotten what we are fighting for. I offer this to all the Indian bureaucrats who are satisfied.

I remember my first taste of freedom, like drawing a breath of fresh air after being shut up in a cell. It was when I read a radical book called Custer Died for Your Sins, by Vine Deloria, Jr.

I was 12 years old on my first day off the reserve to start Grade 7 at Loyola High School in Montreal. Loyola was a century-old Jesuit school for boys and it was said to have tradition, which to me meant that it had a lot of old buildings and even more old men. Loyola's real antiquity consisted mainly in the priestly notions about God and country the boys were asked (sternly) to assimilate. History classes that first year were nothing, if not colorful. The stories were all about wars, full of yelping, hatchets and dripping scalps. They always began with fearsome tattooed savages skulking into Canada from Mohawk country - which had to be pretty close to hell from the sound of it - and always ended in fiery images of destruction with saintly priests martyred and good, godly Hurons aflame. Imagine an Iroquois boy trying to make sense of that: I was scared of myself! And as we were often told, "Mohawk means cannibal, in Algonquin."

Heathen Iroquois warriors had nearly destroyed European civilization in Canada. The Iroquois had rejected God, and nearly killed off His missionaries on the sacred soul-saving journey. The missionaries persevered and were defended by brave settlers and skilled French soldiers. The Iroquois had only gained humanity when they were touched by the grace of God, meaning when they were conquered and forced to render obeisance to the French Crown. Only through God's grace and the Crown did the Iroquois become civilized. Those were the lessons of Canadian history when I was going to school - substitute Indians for Iroquois and Protestant for Catholic and it's all the same story for any one of us schooled anywhere in North America. Sound familiar? And I almost started to believe them.

My liberation from the mythology of colonialism began when I started to read Custer Died for Your Sins in the school library. Those words, "Custer died for your sins," grabbed hold of me and would not let go. What insolence! I loved it. Here was someone speaking to me with an attitude and a voice from home. Reading the book through - I can still conjure the feeling 20 years later - the confused knot of identity in my stomach began to relax. The architecture of their dominance was exposed. They were still in control, but I wasn't fooled anymore. God and Crown and savages and civilization: it was all a lie. My heart soared and I saw my people and myself in a new way - with respect. It opened my mind and I was redeemed from that lonely place where I was an Iroquois child held captive by the Jesuits' history. I could never again accept what I was told about Iroquois or Indians. At school, all of my assignments from that point on were reviews of subversive books like Custer and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and reports on the strength, dignity and survival of Indian people. Before long, I had taken that one taste of freedom and turned my whole mind around. The bad dreams of being a scary Iroquois stopped, and I was proud to be the people who gave those thieving priests what they deserved!

We've come a long way toward achieving our liberation since the 1970s, but the need to free our minds from identities and ideas imposed on us by the white man remains the same. What I find still so compelling about Deloria and the other old and new Indian radicals is that you just know that they're no Aboriginalposers. They're proud. Their roots are Indian. They're fighting for what is ours. They are heroes and an inspiration because they never retreat into places where nothing real is at stake; they never say the "right things" to satisfy the white man. Always, they walk on dangerous ground and enter the enemy camp boldly. I would like to be able to express it in more positive terms, but I can't. Here's the truth: every time I read one of their books or hear them speak or see them on TV, I'm motivated for the big pay-back. I can't wait to enter the fray again, to challenge ignorance, to mock hypocrisy, to defeat a lie. I want to shout a wild-eyed "time to sing your death song!" to anyone who stands in my way. I feel good, just like my ancestors did, lighting up those bloody Black Robes and fanning freedom's flame.