Histoires de Kanatha - Histories of Kanatha: Vues et contées - Seen and Told

CANADA’S PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE FROM A NATIVE CANADIAN PERSPECTIVE

91  Following a Wendat Feeling about History: The Sioui Case* First, I would like to greet and thank our Elders; secondly, Stan and Peggy Wilson, who have organized this conference for us. It’s a monumental undertaking which is also having monumental success. I would also like to thank the students, and all who have collaborated in making this possible. My clan name is a name of the Turtle Clan of my nation, the Wendat, the real name of the Huron People. My name, Wendaye: te, means ‘The one who carries an Island on his back’. I am pretty sure that Elder Tom Porter can understand the meaning of that word.1 My original language, which my nation no longer speaks, is, I would say, the same as Elder Porter’s, or very close to it. I speak many other languages but none of them is my native language. When * Allocution by Dr. Georges E. Sioui, March 17, 1995, at the conference “Autochtonous Scholars : Toward an Indigenous Research Model”, education conference held at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, March 15–18, 1995. 1 Tom Porter is an Elder of the Mohawk, or Kanienkha: ka nation. Following a Wendat Feeling about History 92 I hear Elder Porter speak, I hear my native language, and even though I don’t understand it, I’m sure my ancestors within me understand it. And when I hear the Cree and the Saulteaux and the Blackfoot and all the other Amerindian languages, I’m sure my ancestors understand those languages. I will just say a few words about the experience of Amerindian nations in the East, as compared to the West. What makes our feeling about history very distinct in the East from that of tribes in the West is that we were there when the first visitors arrived from Europe. We were there. We were not impressed, because they were weak, and they were sick and they were poor.They asked us for a little place to live. This very much conditioned our feeling about history. When they arrived here, when the invaders arrived here, in the West, they could show much more power, because they had taken so much from the land, they had removed so many of our peoples. So people here in the West had a reason to be more impressed. In the East, we—the Wendat, the Iroquois, the Mohawk, the Abenaki, the Mi’kmaq and all the eastern peoples—have this sense of our history: we refuse to be controlled, we refuse to be impressed by the value system of others who had to leave their land in the first place. We never had to leave and so we consistently refuse to be controlled and to be impressed , as I said, because we know the harm that was done to our people. We had great nations, we had great confederations of nations. Today, the Iroquois Confederacy represents what remains of large confederacies of Wendat,Neutral, Erie,Tobacco, Susquehanna peoples and an infinity of Algonkian nations with whom we traded before the Europeans came.The Iroquois were able to save the remnants of all of these destroyed nations and confederacies. The Iroquois are very representative of what we are today as Native peoples. I very much believe that we all suffered an unimaginable shock, an awesome destruction, and that today (I think that our ancestors and our Elders know that) we are giving one another the remaining strength that we still have, and I believe that together we will recompose a great Indian nation, which will not be Wendat, which will not be Cree, or Huron, or Iroquois entirely. It will be a great Indian Nation. It’s coming together right now. So just the thought of going through the exercise of tackling the dominant society’s educational models and coming out still alive, still able to speak from Pardonnez ma présence 93 the heart and speak as First Nations people,not destroyed in our spirits and our souls, is a very welcome one. It’s a sign that the times are changing.They’re not only changing: they have changed.There is a new trend that exists right here in the air of our land, here; nobody can do anything against this change: it is here already. We have suffered a very severe shock these past 50 years, but we are taking...