Stranger In A Native Land
By John Sobol

I didn't meet my first Indian until I was nearly thirty. By that time I had backpacked through twenty-five countries and driven countless thousands of miles back and forth across Canada. I had been educated in several states and provinces and had met people from all over the planet. But I had never knowingly exchanged a word with a man, woman or child of the First Nations of North America. I wouldn't have known an Indian if I tripped over one.

Back in 1989 I had been asked to perform at a benefit for the Mohawk Legal Defense Fund. Having closely followed — safely distanced by television — the remarkable insurgency taking place at Oka just minutes from my Montreal home, I was thrilled to be able to 'contribute'. No doubt the several Mohawks present were surprised by the sight of me, a serious young freak, barechested but for a ragged feathered vest, reciting obscure verses about "defense" and "the wolf". They sure as hell didn't speak to me.

The characteristics of my performance that night — a bleeding heart, vast ignorance and a patois of patronizing cliches — were a crystallization of systemic racism. By systemic I mean everyday. Everyday racism. That's the kind that is so pervasive, so insidious, so tolerated, that only by holding up a mirror and doing a whole lot of staring does it even begin to come into focus. But for all its elusiveness it's very much there. And the moment anyone who doesn't know any Indians tries to say something intelligent about them, like I did, it crops up. I've seen it time and time again. Mostly in myself. Because since then I've learned to use that mirror I was talking about. These words too are a mirror.
But one of the amazing things I discovered about staring into that mirror, once I'd got past sulking about how ugly I sometimes looked in it, and got past trying to only show my good side, and got past wanting to smash the damn thing, was how it eventually became somewhat transparent. More like a window. And eventually that window opened. And a fresh wind blew through. A wind that smelled of dirt, of rain, of leaves — of wisdom, history and blood.
This is the story of what I sw through that window. And in that mirror.

I got my first inkling of what it means to be an Indian when I met Dale, in 1991. But it was only an inkling. Dale lived in Montreal, was half-white, and was graduating in philosophy at McGill. Nothing unusual there. But then again, Dale had been in the Navy and had a six-year-old handicapped son. That was definitely different. He had been offered gold-plated scholarships to every law school in the country because of his ancestry but he hardly needed them as his LSAT scores were sky high. He was from Temagami, the site of a vicious long-running battle over land claimed by both the forestry companies and the native people living on it. Dale's people. He planned to become a constitutional lawyer.

But if Dale gave me a hint of a different reality, it wasn't until I moved out west that I came face to face with that reality, and with the yawning abyss separating it from mine. I had moved to Alberta to work at the Banff Centre for the Arts on a performance poetry project. There, over the next few years, I would have the opportunity to meet and and work with many of this country's most respected native artists and elders — an unexpected but welcome privilege.
Many of these encounters were easy and relaxed. Others were less so. A few, in fact, were disastrous. None, however, was as awful as the aftermath of a performance I helped organize in early 1994, featuring Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, a Saugeen Ojibway storyteller. She had been invited to speak at the Banff Centre's Walter Phillips Gallery as part of Monologue/Dialogue, a live art series of which I was a co-curator.

That February evening, Lenore Keeshig-Tobias told Trickster stories, which tend to be very earthy, filled with references to genitalia, shit, and general mischievousness. They're instructive and fun to listen to, and they seemed quite a contrast to the bespectacled, somewhat prissy-looking woman with the clear and measured voice telling them. Keeshig-Tobias spoke for two hours without pause. The predominantly white audience enjoyed the long and no doubt tiring performance, and showed their appreciation with enthusiastic applause at its conclusion.

My co-curator, Daina Augaitis, and I had decided, in keeping with the notion of promoting both monologues and dialogues, to encourage a question and answer session following the performance. And so, as Keeshig-Tobias sipped a glass of water, we opened the floor to questions. To this day I remain dumbfounded at what occurred.

A South-Asian man spoke up, identifying himself as a doctor from Calgary. He thanked Keeshig-Tobias for her stories, but then suddenly shifted gears and rebuked her, asking, "really, what are you on about?" He leaped wildly into a denunciation of "those black bastards" in India who refuse to embrace the modern world. "Oh, those stupid black bastards', he repeated and sat down.

It was a disconcerting way to begin our session. I gestured towards a friendly looking woman in the hope that we'd get back on the right track. Fat chance. She informed us that she, "had enjoyed the stories but felt left out of them." Wow. What did she expect? I scratched my head. What was going on here? With each new speaker I kept hoping someone would say something compassionate or intelligent, but it wasn't to be. One woman became indignant because, as she said, Keeshig-Tobias was, "trying to make me feel guilty." Keeshig-Tobias quietly but firmly responded that nobody had forced the woman to come. Another woman rose, asking plaintively, "Is there anything I can do to help your people?"

By this time Keeshig-Tobias was getting a bit flustered and upset. Hadn't she just finished a generous two-hours worth of insight into her culture? Is this all she was getting in return? She replied that the best way to help was to stay out of the lives of Indians and to let them heal themselves. If you really want to help, she said, (or words to this effect) you'll be doing it on our terms, which means you'll get no thanks and less attention. We have more important things to look after -- ourselves. This seemed a fair response to me, but it didn't go down too well with some members of the audience. And it was here that things turned really nasty.

One woman stood up and began to angrily complain that her committment to Indians wasn't being recognized. She had lived near Morley, a Stoney Nation reserve, for 20 years, and she loved Indians. She loved everything about them. In fact, she went on, she loved them so much she wanted to be one. By this time I was dying. I desperately wanted to repair the damage being done but I simply didn't know how. I was afraid. I told myself that I was supposed to stay out of this; Indians knew how to deal with these morons. They wanted me to stay out, hadn't she just said so? And so, although I had the authority to stop what was happening, I didn't. And then the ranting woman said something that will remain graven in my memory til I die. She said:" I love Indians so much that if I see a drunken Indian lying by the side of the road, I'll stop and pick him up just so I can be next to an Indian."

Silence. And then Keeshig-Tobias running from the stage, holding back tears. Someone else finally standing up, a native woman in the audience, possibly Marjorie Beaucage or Joanne Cardinal-Schubert, and denouncing the venality of the audience. And me standing there poleaxed with shame. And I'm still ashamed.

What had happened? Lenore Keeshig-Tobias had opened a window. But the audience had seen only a mirror. And what was reflected in that mirror we learned all too well. What I also learned, when I later met with Keeshig-Tobias and several other native leaders to discuss the traumatic event, was that injustice is injustice no matter whom is victimized, and arresting injustice is always the proper course of action. I should have stepped in.

Although at this time – which was early 1993 - I had a pair of interesting contracts from The Banff Centre, the money wasn't enough to live on, and I had begun seeking other work. Toronto's ECW press was publishing short literary biographies, knock-offs really, and having published with them before I tried my luck. I submitted a long list of contemporary authors whose work I liked and whom I thought might make good subjects. To my surprise and satisfaction the editors plucked a name from my list and signed me to a contract. I was to write a biography of Tony Hillerman.

I mention this because that book was to become my nemesis, the ultimate mirror in which I would gruesomely poke
and prod my own moral infirmities. There were two reasons for this. The first is that I soon discovered that Hillerman under no circumstances wanted a book to be written about his life. This left me in a very difficult situation both morally and practically. The second reason, more germane to this tale, is that Hillerman is renowned for writing detective novels set on Navajo land, featuring Navajo characters and rituals. And although he has made great efforts to present a wholistic and sympathetic portrait of the people he writes about, Hillerman himself is not native. So here I was, a white guy getting paid to write a book about a famous white guy who had gotten rich writing about poverty-stricken fictional natives for white audiences. Yikes.

At first, however, I was much more concerned with the problem of how to research the damn thing than with the ethics of my relationship to native culture. It wasn't until after I had completed the manuscript that I began to have serious doubts about that aspect of the project. The Banff Centre had at that time just begun to invest in what has now become the most diverse and influential aboriginal culture program in Canada. I started seeing serious and important-looking native people walking around the campus deep in conversation. Two enormous tipis went up outside my office, and I heard about lengthy meetings held in them. And gradually, in the cafeteria or at parties, I began to meet some of these people. One memorable meeting was with a painter named Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun.

I knew nothing about Yuxweluptun when I met him at a party, although I now know, having since seen much of his work on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery, that he is one of the most talented and innovative painters in Canada. But I could see he was an impressive looking man; handsome, broad-shouldered, wearing a broad-brimmed black hat from which dangled several feathers. We talked for a while that night. Or he did. I mostly listened. Here's what I recall of our conversation.

"I'm a hunter you know. A great hunter among my people. You ever hunt?"
"No."
"Never?"
"No."
"OK, how would you hunt for a moose? Say you're in the bush and you've got a gun. And you see a moose on a hill about a mile away. And you've got to get close enough to kill him. Any idea?"
"Nope."
"You cover yourself in mud, first thing, to cover your smell. Then you've got to get close. Real close. I've gotten so close to a deer that it walked right past me on the other side of a bush and it never saw me. Three feet away."
"Wow." Pause. Then I ask, "If things ever got crazy, like they did at Oka, would you ever use those hunting skills to kill people?"

Yuxweluptun took a long look at me. "Shit, yes." He paused. "White people don't realize what'll happen if Indians ever get pushed into fighting back. I mean, I've been killing things my entire life. Since I was a boy I was taught how to kill, and taught that killing is OK. It's a part of life. And I'm a crack shot with a rifle. A marksman. And if I can get that close to a deer, think what I could do in a city. You know, in a war, they say 9 out of 10 soldiers are too afraid to even shoot their guns. But I'm a trained killer. And there are 100,000 others like me. Warriors, braves. And we're armed. If we started a guerilla war against you you'd never stop us. I mean if you had a gun and I had a gun, who do you think would get killed?"

I thought about it.

At another party I met Gary Farmer, a talented actor, writer and activist. I was well into my book at that time and knew that Farmer had recently acted in The Dark Wind, a movie based on the Hillerman novel starring Lou Diamond Phillips. (Strangely enough, by happenstance Lou Diamond Phillips was one of a dozen people in the audience when I recorded my first live CD at a club in Montreal back in 1990. I knew he was a movie star but didn't know he was native at the time.) I asked Farmer about Hillerman and told him about my book. He didn't criticize me for writing about Hillerman, but he did give me reason to question my assumption that the novelist's books were uniformly popular on the Navajo reserve. I had gotten that impression because my research had turned up a slew of awards and appreciations from Navajo communities and individuals presented to Hillerman over the years. True, I had wondered, still at this point somewhat naively, whether there might be some Navajos who weren't happy with his books.

But when I was doing research down in Four Corners country, I had been, to put it bluntly, too afraid to find out.
I've always been much more of a speculative rather than an investigative journalist. I always wrote what my daily newspaper editors derisively referred to as 'think pieces', like the one you're reading. Investigative journalism, where you bug people til they spill the beans, where you ask people tough questions in tight corners, was not my style. I preferred to be a fly on the wall. But down in Shiprock, in Tuba City, on Navajo land, that approach got me exactly nowhere. Yet at that time, preoccupied as I was by what I felt to be a more pressing moral dilemma, namely how to justify writing a book about a seemingly decent guy who just wanted me to leave him alone, I let those nagging concerns about authenticity, about stereotyping, about cultural appropriation, about power, about race — slip back into the shadows. It was yet another awful mistake.

Because while I came to the conclusion, which I still hold, that Hillerman is essentially a generous and honest man, I began to realize as I worked on the final proofs, just how remiss I had been in not at least acknowledging, let alone fighting through the political issues raised by his work. I realized that by whitewashing that aspect of his novels I was committing the ultimate colonial act. I was speaking for people whose actual feelings were unknown to me because I had never actually asked them.

As I began to attend performances and lectures by native artists whose work testified to the vitalty of contemporary native culture, whose own articulate insights drove home the urgent need for Canadians to listen to native people themselves — to no longer accept the uninformed words of unwanted intermediaries — I shuddered, profoundly ashamed of my ignorance, my audacity, and my book. I was terrified of what would happen to me when it eventually hit bookstore shelves. It was too late to rewrite the contents, though I considered borrowing money to buy back the manuscript from the publisher. But no, it was out of my hands, and I had nightmares about my impending doom.

Yet in the meantime, I kept learning, and kept being amazed by the wisdom and strength, by the raw courage of the native people I was meeting. Among them was a woman named Jeannette Armstrong, whom I would describe as a poet, novelist, herbalist, spiritual leader, political activist and educator. I don't believe she would call herself any of those things because she doesn't see them as different activities. They are simply different aspects of who she is. Although she is graceful and gentle, someone whose temperament is by nature contemplative and artistic, she has spent her life fighting. For years she has put her life on the line against individual bigots, against governments, against armies, against corporations, and against scientists, fighting for the survival of her mind, her body, her language, her land, her heritage and her people. She is unquestionably the most heroic person I have ever met.

One day Jeannette Armstrong spoke to a group of poets I had assembled. She began by telling us about her reservation, near Penticton in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley. She herself is Okanagan. As I recall, Armstrong said: "I live on a reservation. Now you probably think a reservation is a bad thing. You probably think we are forced to stay on our reservation. But you're wrong. You have to understand, my reservation is a sanctuary. If it was possible I would never leave it. It's in my blood. The language I speak grew from the rocks and trees of my reservation. It's not a prison, it's my home. I'm trying to keep the rest of the world out." Her words were a revelation to us.

More recently, I heard Armstrong give a lecture in Vancouver, one of scores she delivers around the world annually. For the past several years she has been waging an extraordinary battle against the Human Genome Project, an attempt by a consortium of transnational corporations to extract (and patent!) human DNA taken under false pretences from every indigenous population on the planet. Her speech left the entire room in tears. Not only because of the mind-boggling information she was giving us, but because of the toll which the battle was clearly taking on her personally.

She spoke also of the indecency of testifying before a provincial environmental review panel, assessing the impact of a proposed ski resort on land adjacent to her reserve. "I have walked on those hills since I was a little girl," she said in a voice trembling with restrained passion. "My mother taught me about every plant, every bird, every track on those mountains. And she learned from her mother before her. I know where birds build their nests, where certain flowers grow, how the wind affects the snow. That land is my life. And yet my knowledge was dismissed as anecdotal -- irrelevant -- by scientists who have never even seen my land."

I met many other extraordinary native women in Banff. I discovered that women's voices carry far greater political weight among native people than they do in North American society at large. In Banff I also heard native women's voices lifted in song. Specifically, one night I asked for and was granted permission to attend an evening singing circle.
I was both the only man and the only non-native present that evening, which made me a bit nervous, but I had been told it was OK so I took a seat outside of the circle. I've long had a fascination with different singing traditions and I've listened to a lot of wild recordings, but I wasn't prepared for what I heard. Native songs — or chants, as they are often called by non-natives, though the pejorative distinction is bogus — are powerful waves of cascading rythmic cries, long undulating uluations repeated with variations of emphasis and timbre, choral exhortations that breathe and bark with surging intensity upon the back of the beaten drum. I sat back and let the sound wash over me, let myself be moved by the indomitable presence of these women whose songs evoked an ancient history.

The youngest member of the ensemble, which was made up of 15 women from different First Nations across North America, was the daughter of one of the circle's leaders. She was a startlingly beautiful girl on the cusp of womanhood and she projected the particular fearlessness of girls her age. At one point she and her mother, a powerful singer, stood on opposing sides of the circle and together led a woman's warrior song. I watched in awe as mother and daughter crackled like burning boughs, their eyes riveted on each other. The daughter sang with such intensity she seemed to be transported out of the room onto some mythical plain, where she stood calling her ancestors to battle. I listened, charred by the song's fire.

It was around that time that I was hired as production manager for a first nations performance art series curated by Deborah Piapot and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskweo. (The first time I met Deborah I commented on the unusual coconut-shaped purse she carried. "It's made from buffalo balls," she said with a straight face, waiting for me to say "wow", before she cracked up. Indians love to bullshit, I had learned.) The series consisted of three different collaborations, each involving three native artists. Among the most memorable of many memorable individuals in that series was a fellow named Boye Ladd.

Ladd is from Regina, Saskatchewan but he is part Winnebago and grew up in southern USA. His is a warrior culture and like all the men from his reserve he joined the army as soon as he was old enough, which happened to be during the Vietnam War. Ladd served two tours of duty and received numerous decorations, including the Purple Heart and a citation for exceptional bravery. He subsequently was elected to the national executive of the Vietnam Veteran's Association.

Ladd is also a hoop dancer, which is a native dancing tradition not unlike a macho version of rythmic gymnastics, in which the dancer manipulates as many hoops as he can with as much speed and grace as possible. It's an athletic dance requiring superb dexterity, stamina and agility. Ladd was a 4-time world champion hoop dancer. Nowadays he's one of the best-known MCs on the big-time powow circuit, logging over 150,000 miles a year in his customized van.
One thing he said I remember very clearly: "Canada is twenty years ahead of America in terms of Indian culture. But twenty years behind in terms of Indian politics."

But all this time, throughout that three-week event, I was at a peak of anxiety over the publication of my book, which had been released just a few weeks earlier. This was mid-1995 now, and I'd been carrying that grief with me a long time. I was waiting like a rotten log for my book to be discovered and for my life to crumble away. I expected to be crucified, probably in print – possibly by fist – by people whom I liked and respected. By people who had trusted me. It was as bad a feeling as I've ever known.

And yet to my everlasting amazement and gratitude, nobody ever mentioned the book. It got no reviews. I was thrilled. It disappeared without a trace. I was overjoyed. I guess it sells a few hundred copies a year in the states, but here in Canada nobody noticed it. And so I survived; along with my secret shame. And I moved to Vancouver, where I met more Indians, and learned a whole bunch of other things about them. Namely that the cultural genocide which white Canadians think happened a hundred or two hundred years ago, actually happened within living memory for many, if not most native communities.

Because as bad as things had been before, except in certain instances (like the Beothuk of Newfoundland, who were hunted to extermination) native culture had been deeply scarred, but had not been completely violated until recently in Canada. In fact, at the turn of this century, the members of many native nations carried on hunting, fishing, trapping, speaking their languages, practicing their religions — usually more or less out of sight of whites, who only interfered when they felt like it, which wasn't that often. But by mid-century, the residential schools were well-established and industrialization was making vast tracts of previously ignored land commercially exploitable, and roads and automobiles were opening up remote regions, and industry and pollution began destroying habitat on an unprecedented scale, and suddenly a people who had been pushed to the wall were pushed over it. Suddenly, the bottom dropped out and the genocide was in full effect.

We are living with that genocide today, with its swaths of suicides, with its dying languages, with its acid rain, with its flooded landscapes, with its orphaned children. But we are also living with a powerful movement to vanquish that genocidal mania. The artists I met are all on the front line of that struggle, as are countless other native people across the land. Many of them have scarred and pitted faces. Many of them have broken teeth. Some of them can't read. But they are there, fighting to reclaim their dignity and strength.

I grew up not knowing any of this. I lived for years in Montreal and Toronto, thinking myself knowledgeable about this country. In my ignorance I was depriving myself of contact with living cultures of stunning richness. And in so doing I was no different from the great majority of Canadians. It's a tragedy. For us and them. I imagine a future in which Canadians know the names of great contemporary native artists and elders, when we take guidance from them as the stewards of the earth we all care about, when native people hold real political power. But until that time, I believe what native people want most, what they are demanding, is understanding. Understanding that comes from self-knowledge, from attentive listening, and from looking hard into the mirror and not flinching at what is found there. Which is why I'm telling this story.

© john sobol 2003