Our Native Waterways
by Gilbert Bouchard
Ce texte a été publié en anglais et n'est pas disponible en français.
The authors chose a particularly first person approach. They flew across the country in McFarlane's Cessna 172, meeting and interviewing dozens of Native people to supplement the historical and documentary research.
"The rivers of Canada were the great transportation link for the Natives," says McFarlane, "but they also were given a great personality, colourful names by the Natives. They were a central part of daily life and religion. Today if you go to the great prairie towns and cities, you'll discover that most are not only built along rivers but were built on the sites of Natives summer camps. Rivers are the nation's arteries."
What not to expect when you read Ancient land, Ancient Sky - a traditional linear narrative.
"The idea of the book was to have lots of side trips and reach out." For example, in an effort to seamlessly juxtapose Native / Canadian history, past and present, the pair visited a huge number of direct descendants of notable historic Indian leaders, including a direct descendant of the legendary Big Bear, still living on the shores of Frog Lake, Big Bear's birth place and his final camp before being arrested in the wake of the Northwest Rebellion.
History, after all, is alive, not a static thing sitting in a complete form like a fossilized plant of fish skeleton in a shadow box. The lives of Native and non-native alike living in the shadows of our ancestors should be seen as just one more note in and on-going, immediate work of human culture.
Haimila and McFarlane discovered that concepts such as land, water, memory, language, people, and history aren't as plainly distinct and separate to Native culture as they are to the European mind.
In the book the authors recount how an anthropologist in the early '50s interviewed members of the Nitassinan tribe and discovered they could draw exceedingly accurate maps (better than the government maps of the day) encompassing 40,000 square miles and could, when asked, draw details of that area down to the last small lake and stream. An amazing story: the juncture of water, land, people and oral tradition.
Ancient Land, Ancient Sky also underlines the vital connection we all have to Canada's waterways. "It's a way of honouring what was here before and what we have to share.
"Its amazing what you see of the land when you fly over so much of it as we did," Haimila continues. First, flying over the prairies you see the great rivers and "their beauty, so majestic - winding across the prairie for a hundred miles before you."
Second, you see the damage, "the clear-cuts, the power lines, the dams, the cities, the smoke-stacks - sometimes it's like flying into the mouth of the beast - you see all the effects that people have had on the land."
"It's important to look at the balance," says McFarlane in agreement. "Right now all our efforts are going over to the economic side - everyone in the city seems to want to earn more and more money."
McFarlane sees the pitiful state of many southern Canadian rivers and the increasing pressure from Americans as two great threats, symbols of environmental crisis that may unite both Natives and non-Natives into common action to preserve Canada's waters and lands.
"Many non-Natives have lived in Canada long enough to have deep connections to the waters and lands and are especially horrified at the prospect of selling water, diverting rivers, and making an industry of our water. I know it's a part of globalism, but it's also part of a larger issue - it's the real issue for the future."
McFarlane is heartened by the recent successful protests at the World Trade Organization in Seattle and hopes they are just the beginning of a movement to unite all Canadians against the corporate agenda that's poised to destroy the nation. "The land and water is not just real estate, and it can't be broken up and sold."
My own family still maintains a small parcel of land a scant 200 yards from the Smoky River, where they retreat most nice weekends come summer.
I walk along the banks of the river as often and as far as I can when I visit my folks. The Smoky is a fast flowing river. Many times it's high, too clogged with debris for me to go too far, but I don't mind. The rawness of the river, the vitality of its flow, remind that the world can be beautiful, glorious in its harshness, and not always constructed on a human scale.
I walk along the bank and sit where my path ends. I listen to the water, the rustle of the game, the songs of the magpies and crows hovering about looking for water-borne carrion and use those moments think of my place in the grand scheme.
I think of my grandfather. I think of my father's Native friends - the ones he called "les anciens." I think of my grandfather's beloved horse King and the old deer racks that hung for decades in his living room. I think of all my grandfathers, grandmothers, and all their neighbors, Native and otherwise, and I think of all the rivers across the whole continent that carried me here to this not-so-final bank.
Of course one can't help but feel small (the same way you feel tiny standing on the edge of the valley a few dozen miles away, looking down at the junction of the Smoky and Peace Rivers); but that's not such a bad thing, is it? These moments come few and far between.
Before I know it, I can hear my name echoing down the river as mother or brother calls me in to eat and the walk is over, seemingly before it really began.
Gilbert Bouchard is an Edmonton poet, journalist, and broadcaster. Reprinted with kind permission of Legacy, Alberta's Cultural Heritage Magazine, Alberta's Cultural Heritage Magazine and Gilbert Bouchard.
