Part 1ENG4U English

Unit 4:The Novel: I Heard the Owl Call My Name

by Margaret Craven

Vocabulary used today to refer to the various groups of Aboriginal peoples in Canada

.(

  1. Métis

People of mixed First Nation and European ancestry who identify themselves as Métis, as distinct from First Nations people, Inuit or non-Aboriginal people. The Métis have a unique culture that draws on their diverse ancestral origins, such as Scottish, French, Ojibway and Cree.

  1. Inuit

An Aboriginal people in Northern Canada, who live in Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Northern Quebec and Northern Labrador. The word means "people" in the Inuit language - Inuktitut. The singular of Inuit is Inuk.

  1. First Nations

A term that came into common usage in the 1970s to replace the word "Indian," which some people found offensive. Although the term First Nation is widely used, no legal definition of it exists. Among its uses, the term "First Nations peoples" refers to the Indian peoples in Canada, both Status and non-Status. Some Indian peoples have also adopted the term "First Nation" to replace the word "band" in the name of their community.

Introduction

Almost every day, newspaper headlines, magazine stories, and TV and radio news bring some aspect of Canada's Native peoples to our attention. Since the armed confrontation at Oka, Quebec, which lasted throughout the summer of 1990, Canadians are listening seriously to Native groups concerned with preserving forests, protesting low-level jet flights over traditional hunting lands, negotiating land claim settlements with federal and provincial governments, or handling health and economic problems. Canada's Aboriginal peoples, the First Nations and the Inuit, are demanding that other Canadians respect past agreements and allow them greater independence in education, justice, health, and lifestyle.

In the next three lessons you will be studying a short novel, / Heard the Owl Call My Name, by Margaret Craven. It deals with the life of a group of Native people on the west coast of British Columbia and their experience of education, religion, and law. While the focus of our study will be on the novel itself—its setting, characters, and theme—we will also be examining some of the current issues involving Native peoples in Canada today. In doing so, we will look at some of the past policies of governments and churches that were misguided and harmful. As well, we shall look at some of the art and writing of the Native people.

Begin today keeping your eyes and ears open for programs or articles on Native issues in newspapers and on radio and TV. Some will be printed in your lesson book. In Lesson eighteen you will be asked to send in some of this material from your clippings file.

Assignment #1

Read the article "Struggling Against Stereotypes", by Thomas Walkom, then answer the questions that follow.

Struggling Against Stereotypes

By Thomas Walkom

Toronto Star

Louis Riche stumbles out of a broken-down shack in Labrador. He teaches trapping part-time and wants to cut a record.

Art Loring lives in a modern three-storey house in northwestern British Columbia. He plans to challenge both B.C.'s government and the province's lumber giants.

Bruce, also known as Stony, sometimes lives in the women's change hut in Toronto's GrangePark, just behind the elegant Art Gallery of Ontario. He drinks Chinese cooking wine and does not want to do much of anything.

The three come from different cultures, grew up speaking different languages and will probably face vastly different futures. They have only two things in common.

First, they are what the rest of the country call First Nations People, or Aboriginal Peoples of Canada.

Second, all three are—in their own ways— trying to break out of the pattern imposed on Aboriginal people in Canada.

Riche, an Innu, plays bass guitar and composes songs as part of a protest movement against NATO low-level military flying in Labrador. It is a protest that has galvanized Labrador's 1,500 Innu and—for the first time in 30 years—given them a sense of purpose.

Loring, a Gitksan, is a 34-year-old independent logging contractor. Last year, he quit, forfeited $80,000 already paid out on two log-skidding tractors, and began work on his project.

That project, if successful, would see the Gitksan's Eagle clan take over management of the forest on their traditional lands—lands which B.C. says belong to it and which the lumber giants want for themselves.

Bruce, an Ojibwa from Spanish River near Sudbury, is fresh out of jail, or as he calls it, "the Hamilton bucket". He is polite, articulate and knows the cooking wine he drinks (called Chinese Torture by its adherents) will eventually destroy his insides. He also doesn't care.

Bruce's protest has taken a very simple form. He is exiting life. Native people are four times as likely as the rest of Canadians to die from violence or poisoning and Bruce is well on his way. He is 28.

About 500,000 Canadians are classed as status Natives by the federal government. This gives them certain privileges, such as the right to live on remote, rocky reserves with no plumbing. They also need not pay cigarette taxes.

An estimated 400,000 to 500,000 more Canadians are Metis and so-called non-status Indians. In addition, there are about 32,000 Inuit, the people once called Eskimos.

To the rest of Canada, Natives have been, at best, invisible. They are the people most never have to think about—except to feel the occasional twinge of guilt.

The raw statistics are merciless. Native infants are more than twice as likely to die before they are one year old. Native youth are five times as likely to commit suicide. Natives are twice as likely to die from respiratory diseases such as pneumonia.

Native housing tends to be overcrowded, without running water, central heating or indoor toilets. Twenty per cent of Native people over 40 are estimated to suffer from diabetes, and so on.

Phrases such as Canada's third world or Canada's shame come easily. We shake our heads sadly and then go on to something else.

For Native people, however, guilt and dismissal is not enough. If there was a common message I heard in a month of travelling to Native communities across the country, it was this: “we want some control over what we do; we are sick of being stereotyped, sick of playing bit parts in your mythologies”.

Natives are usually perceived in one of three ways: a) the drunk, b) the victim or c) the noble savage. Each is convenient; each is ultimately wrong. If Natives are mere drunks, then their misfortunes may be dismissed as self-inflected. If they are seen simply as victims, they are despised as pathetic.

And if they are noble savages -- this is perhaps the most dangerous myth of all, for it allows the rest of society to romanticize and ultimately disregard Natives.

If the Native is a king of pre-industrial man in mystic harmony with the land, then there is no real problem. All he needs are his traps, his bow and arrows and a few square miles of moose pasture.

Three myths. Like most, however, each contains some truth.

Native alcoholism, for instance, is serious. Some argue that it is statistically no greater than non-Native alcoholism – just more visible. And that may be true.

Nonetheless, in communities across Canada, alcoholism is singled out by Native leaders themselves as a desperate problem.

In Labrador, British Columbia, Manitoba and southwestern Ontario, alcohol is cited again and again. Alcoholism and its variants such as drug abuse, Lysol-drinking and gasoline-sniffing are blamed for family violence, crime and destitution.

In Toronto, Wilson Ashkewe, director of an alcohol treatment centre called Pedahbun Lodge, estimates that while the number of Native alcoholics may not be inordinately high, 80 per cent of Natives are affected in one way or another by alcohol.

And yes, Native people have been victimized—cheated of their land in the 19th century, cheated again of their livelihoods in the 20th century when hydro-electric, mining and forestry projects displaced many a second time.

From the 1920’s to the '60s, Native children were taken forcibly from their families and sent to residential schools. There, in some cases, they were beaten if they spoke their own languages.

As late as the 1980's Native children were again being taken from their homes, this time by well-meaning child welfare workers and exported to adoptive parents in the United States.

Journalist Geoffrey York has laid out much of this in his recent book, The Dispossessed. The title is apt. Natives have indeed been dispossessed—of their land, their culture, their livelihood, their very families.

The myth of the noble savage also contains some seeds of truth. Many Native communities want to return to traditional ways of dealing with the land (although those who do so point out that the land is neither particularly noble nor Natives uniquely savage).

This return to the land is, in part, what Louis Riche sings of in Labrador, in the songs which he and activist Greg Penashue have composed. The anti-NATO protests of the Innu are grounded in a cultural rediscovery—in this case, of the harsh bushland which, until 30 years ago, was their exclusive domain.

To Riche, the bush is like a cathedral. And the 7,500 sorties a year, by Dutch, West Ger¬ man and British jets which scream across the land—in some cases only a few metres above the tree tops—are sacrilege.

So there is some truth to the myths. However, what makes them insidious and ultimately wrong is that they are incomplete.

To talk of alcoholism alone does not answer the question why.

To talk of victimization alone does not provide a way out.

To merely laud a return to the land does not explain how. How will a traditional Native economy co-exist with industrial North America? How will it speak to the tens of thousands of Natives who live in cities?

Which brings up the more difficult question: what is the way out?

Or, as non-Natives are fond of asking: what do Natives want?

To other Canadians, Native leaders seem contradictory. On the one hand, they want to be left alone. They say the houses built on reserves by the federal Indian and Northern Affairs department are shoddy and inadequate; that the welfare provided by provincial and federal governments is debilitating; that bureaucrats should butt out.

On the other hand, they complain when government money is cut back.

They want self-government, but do not wish to be cut adrift. Just what do Natives want?

Van Napoleon, a Cree education counsellor with the Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en of B.C., answers that the question is wrong. To ask what Natives want is to treat them as just another immigrant lobby group making demands on taxpayers.

And that, say Natives, is exactly what they are not—immigrants. They are different for the simple reason that they were here first. This is their place.

Once that premise is accepted, the demands become less contradictory. Treaty rights— the right to be free of federal and provincial taxation, to hunt and fish when and wherever one pleases, to free education and housing — are not abstract and quaint but very real.

They are partial compensations for giving up half a continent. They are rent.

And self-government? For many Natives that too a perfectly logical right. They did not agree to submit to alien sovereignty when they signed treaties with the British Crown, any more than Canada did when it signed the free-trade agreement with the United States.

More important, Natives across the country are saying that they must have some control over their own affairs if they are to solve their own problems.

"The old way failed," says Napoleon. "That was to meet problems like alcohol and sex abuse head on with specific programs and experts: drug counsellors, police, the courts. That hasn't worked.

To accomplish have control over their own affairs, the Gitksan and Wet's- uwet'en Natives are negotiating an agreement withOttawa to try to achieve limited self-government.

Indeed, self-government has become the new buzz phrase. Ottawa is negotiating actively with seven Native organizations to permit 29 bands discrete, if limited, powers of self-government. Last year, Ontario Attorney-General Ian Scott announced his province was willing to enter into a similar set of talks with the province's Natives.

Natives - the grim statistics

First Nations people in Canada…(

Live in Third World conditions:

  • First Nations living conditions or quality of life ranks 63rd, or amongst Third World conditions, according to an Indian and Northern Affairs Canada study that applied First Nations-specific statistics to the Human Development Index created by the United Nations.
  • Canada dropped from first to eighth as the best country in the world to live primarily due to housing and health conditions in First Nations communities.
  • The First Nations’ infant mortality rate is 1.5 times higher than the Canadian infant mortality rate.
  • A study by Indian Affairs (the “Community Well-being Index”) assessed quality of life in 4,685 Canadian communities based on education, labour force activity, income and housing. There was only one First Nation community in the Top 100. There were 92 First Nations in the Bottom 100. Half of all First Nations communities score in the lower range of the index compared with 3% of other Canadian communities.

Die earlier than other Canadians:

  • A First Nations man will die 7.4 years earlier than a non-Aboriginal Canadian. A First Nations woman will die 5.2 years earlier than her non-Aboriginal counterpart (life expectancy for First Nations citizens is estimated at 68.9 years for males and 76.6 years for females).

Face increased rates of suicide, diabetes, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS:

  • The First Nations suicide rate is more than twice the Canadian rate. Suicide is now among the leading causes of death among First Nations between the ages of 10 and 24, with the rate estimated to be five to six times higher than that of non-Aboriginal youth.
  • The prevalence of diabetes among First Nations is at least three times the national average, with high rates across all age groups.
  • Tuberculosis rates for First Nations populations on-reserve are 8 to 10 times higher than those for the Canadian population.
  • Aboriginal peoples make up only 5% of the total population in Canada but represent 16% of new HIV infections. Of these, 45% are women and 40% are under 30 years old. HIV/AIDS cases among Aboriginal peoples have increased steadily over the past decade.

Face a crisis in housing and living conditions:

  • Health Canada states that as of May 2003, 12% of First Nations communities had to boil their drinking water and approximately ¼ of water treatment systems on-reserve pose a high risk to human health.
  • Almost 25% of First Nations water infrastructures are at high risk of contamination.
  • Housing density is twice that of the general population. Nearly 1 in 4 First Nations adults live in crowded homes. 423,000 people live in 89,000 overcrowded, substandard and rapidly deteriorating housing units.
  • Almost half of the existing housing stock requires renovations.
  • 5,486 of the 88,485 houses on-reserve are without sewage service.
  • Mold contaminates almost half of First Nations households.
  • More than 100 First Nations communities are under a Boil Water Advisory for drinking water.
  • Core funding to support on-reserve housing has remained unchanged for 20 years.
  • Almost half of First Nations people residing off-reserve live in poor quality housing that is below standard. Most First Nations homes off-reserve are crowded.
  • First Nations have limited access to affordable housing: 73% are in core need, most are spending more than the standard of 30% of their income on rent.

Are not attaining education levels equal to other Canadians, even though most First Nations are under the age of 25 and represent the workforce of tomorrow:

  • There has been literally no progress over the last four years in closing the gap in high school graduation rates between First Nations and other Canadians. At the current rate, it will take 28 years for First Nations to catch-up to the non-Aboriginal population.
  • About 70% of First Nations students on-reserve will never complete high school. Graduation rates for the on-reserve population range from 28.9%-32.1% annually.
  • 10,000 First Nations students who are eligible and looking to attend post-secondary education are on waiting lists because of under-funding.
  • The number of post-secondary students has been declining in recent years. In 1998-99, participation rates of Registered Indians was at a high of 27,157 but dropped to 25,075 in 2002-03.
  • About 27% of the First Nations population between 15 and 44years of age hold a post-secondary certificate, diploma, or degree, compared with 46% of the Canadian population within the same age group.

Lack jobs and economic opportunities: