COLUMNS: VOICED TO THE TURTLE #1
Andrea Riel-Lean
This was Andrea Riel-Lean’s first Voiced to the Turtle column, which appeared originally in South of Tuk #3. It was slightly [with heated debate!] edited for its first appearance; original comments have been retained, with some updates.
In the summer of 1964, I was nine years old, and it was the last summer in which my drunk and irresponsible father was alive -- but we had a most marvelous summer, getting into Dad's old rust bucket five minutes after school was out at the end of June and traveling through central and western Canada and USA, camping here and there, getting back home on Labour Day, in time for school again the next day. We spent the summer following our curiosity about our roots in aboriginal and Métis culture; specifically I and my elder brother were interested in tracking down the traces of our great-grand-uncle, Louis Riel. We eventually got as far as Montana, where Louis had lived in exile, deemed insane by those who refused to share his belief that he was the reincarnation of the biblical prophet Micah. Filled with that prophetic spirit, he returned to Canada to lead the Second Riel Rebellion, for which he was punished by becoming the only Father of Confederation to be hanged. But I'm starting the story ass-backwards.
In Montana, my brother formally became a brave by participating in the Sun Dance ceremony, which is still illegal in Canada. On the way back we came through
Saskatchewan, visiting the site of the only major American-style genocide incident in Canada's peaceful settlement of the west – BaToche, where 3,000 unarmed seniors, women and children were slaughtered by Canadian force, and then on to Manitoba, where Louis Riel, President of the Republic of Assiniboia, declared war on Canada. But I'm still telling it ass-backwards.
Although re-tracing Louis Riel's roots in the summer of 1964 was important and formative, it was not the highlight of my summer. That highlight was my first encounter with my Turtle Spirit Guide, standing on top of the Tortoise Mound, and absorbing everything! That was the moment I became a Sha-Woman. I will be talking about that throughout the years to come, sharing with you those intimate and personal thoughts which heretofore have been voiced only to the Turtle -- hence, the title I've chosen for this regular column. My experience was very similar to my fellow Kangaroos, K’lakokum and Hans', experiences: K’lakokum meeting his Ogopogo guide during the height of rheumatic fever when he was five, and Hans meeting his Wolf guide when he was seven. But I'm getting ahead of myself again.
The winner records history, and therefore all history is distorted and needs to be taken with a grain or two of salt. What is now the western half of Canada was originally given, in 1603, to The Company of Gentleman Adventurers Trading into the Hudson's Bay and Prince Rupert's Land. That company, now known simply as The Bay, still exists and is the oldest company in North America. It served as the vehicle for the introduction of English concepts of ownership and property rights to a society whose members believed that they were tenants-for-life on Manitou's gift, and did not own anything whatsoever in the English sense of ownership. Hence, my people signed documents giving it all away without ever understanding the import of those documents. The Company wanted our furs; they gave us trinkets in exchange, and established all the way to the west coast an efficient network of trading posts and forts, using the rivers to transport both furs and trinkets. Although the English governed this network, the actual workingmen were primarily French. The French men arrived in the west without women, saw that some of the Indian women were beautiful, and helped themselves into relationships which soon produced a new people: the Métis. The creation of this new people through the merging of French and Indian cugenes has been dealt with by my fellow Kangaroos, Norm and K’lakokum, elsewhere in published academic papers with tons of foot-notes and end-notes, so there's no need for me to elaborate here. Suffice it to say, that by the time that Confederation merged the eastern colonies into the new country of Canada in 1867, distinct Métis culture was well into its tenth generation, and centred around Red River, about 1,000 miles west of the new Canada.
The new Canada immediately adopted as the national motto the slogan from sea to sea, although it was in possession of less than one-third of the territory implied in the slogan. The new government began negotiations with the west coast Crown Colony of British Columbia and Vancouver Island to join Confederation --although, in a referendum, the Colony had voted overwhelmingly in favour of becoming an American State -- a wish vetoed by the British governor. This resulted in 1872 in an agreement that British Columbia would join Confederation if Canada built a publicly owned railroad to connect B.C. with the east, and that in perpetuity B.C. would benefit from lower passenger and freight rates on that railroad than the rates applied to any other province. [EDITOR: this promise in perpetuity was quietly set aside by the Trudeau Constitution in 1982, and the
railroad has been effectively privatized]. To acquire more than 2,000 miles of land between the new Canada and the B.C. Colony, the new government entered into negotiations with The Bay to acquire its holdings, reaching a settlement which led to a land transfer in 1870. The Métis, who lived on this land, were never consulted. The Métis were quite willing to see the departure of The Bay and its government, but they wanted to replace it with self-government, not rule by Canada. And so, on the day of the formal land transfer, the Métis declared their independence, founded the Republic of Assiniboia, and elected Louis Riel as Provisional President. The Republic sent an ultimatum to Canada prohibiting Canadians from entering the Republic's territory. When surveyors sent out by Canada immediately disregarded this, the Republic of
Assiniboia declared war on Canada, and defeated Canada at the Battle of Red River, (for the first and only war lost in Canadian history -- a much better record than our American neighbours, who have lost several). At the peace table, the Republic of Assiniboia agreed to join Confederation as the Province of Manitoba, the first Province to be officially bi-lingual and to grant aboriginal rights [EDITOR: These rights were subsequently set aside at the time of the Manitoba Schools Act controversy, when the federal government enforced a rarely-used constitutional power to veto provincial legislation. This power has been used 16 times in Canadian history -- once to quash French rights in Manitoba, once to quash French rights in Ontario, and fourteen times in 1935-1939 to quash Alberta legislation enacted by Bible Bill Aberhart before his murder terminated the debate.] [COLUMNIST'S NOTE TO EDITOR: Did I not say above that you and Norm had already written all the foot-notes required? Leave my column alone!!] Land acquired from The Bay was generously transferred to Métis actually dwelling on it, and surveying of the remainder began with a vengeance. The land was divided into rectangular sections consisting of 640 acres each, and once the railroad agreement was signed, one-quarter of this vast land was transferred to the railroad to finance construction. As construction proceeded from east to west, the railroad built thousands of spur lines into its quarter-sections, setting up tiny stations which became the nuclei of hundreds of hamlets, as chunks of railroad land were sold at very low prices to encourage settlement by future customers. The railroad built the west, in every sense of the word.
For thousands of years, the aboriginals and later the Métis had lived in harmony with the land, each clan [extended family] of Indians or Métis requiring about 25,000 acres of hunting and fishing territory to sustain life. This Lebensraum, determined by natural factors, and in steady state for thousands of years, was rapidly becoming diminished by the encroachment of the white man, who had long been out of harmony with nature. The railroad logarithmically accelerated the great destruction. Most of the Métis moved out of Manitoba into the then-North West Territories [what is now Saskatchewan and Alberta], but within 15 years, began to be crowded out again. Once again, they decided to fight back, and called Louis Riel back from his exile in Montana to lead them. But while the Métis army was preparing for battle outside BaToche, Canadian forces circled around them to massacre their unarmed wives and children and parents. O what great grief! The Métis surrendered and the leaders were executed. Louis Riel went from sainted Father of Confederation to despicable traitor in the space of less than 15 years. Such is the story of our progress. TO BE CONTINUED NEXT ISSUE, FOLKS; THANKS FOR DROPPING IN.
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