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

FAVORISER L’INTÉGRATION. POINT DE VUE MATRICENTRISTE

Indien sans terre mais avec plume 159 My song, “Singing Indian”, expresses that our universal song is a song of sadness, because it is little understood, therefore little respected, but it is also a song of pride because we are united. It is also a song of hope, because it is ancient and it is about Life.The word ‘Indian’means singing, praying, standing up for Life, for the truth of Life. In that deep sense, all of us are born with an Indian heart. Some regrettably lose it. Singing Indian Sing, my brother, sing, my sister, Sing the great Indian song of sadness, The beautiful song the Old Ones have sung, Sing it on down the times to the young, There’s no tree if you cut out the roots, There’s no life if you take out the truth, That’s our fate and that’s our fight, Who else will keep the flame alive? Sing, my brother, sing, my sister, … …There’s no life if we don’t sing the truth. I hear every Elder, Read the words of writers, See the mind of painters, Watch the dance of dancers: There’s only one song, There’s only one pain, The pain of Mother Earth, Song of her Indian child. In the soul of speakers, Of the music makers, In the heart of actors, Of every son and daughter, Canada and the First Nations 160 From ocean to ocean, From North to South, From Nation to Nation, There’s only one heart, There’s only one song, There’s only one dance, There’s only one prayer, There’s only one word, There’s only one pride, That pride is to feel United as children Of our Mother Earth And cry out together The love and the pain, For that is the song We’ll forever sing. Sing, my brother, sing, my sister, … … If we don’t sing the truth. IwillnowtellyouaboutwhereI’vebeen,whereIpresentlystandasanAboriginal academic and why I chose this title for my presentation. I remembered, when I first went to university, that my parents had once told me, when I was six years old and already beginning grade three, that I would one day need to write other books about Canadian history in order to help change the perceptions of non-Indians about our people,perceptions that had been created by the history books then utilized, and that had been and were still the root cause of the suffering, poverty and slow but sure disappearance of our people. Many years later, while beginning university studies, I told teachers of my goal to write the history of my people, and I was answered that the history of Indians had all been written down long ago, that it belonged in the past and that history could not be changed, or rewritten, especially if one had only had an oral tradition. I then remembered that some of my people had often said Indien sans terre mais avec plume 161 that the time would come when we could help the non-Indians by communicating to them our feeling about life and about historical truth.Elders said that newcomers were still very blinded by notions that they had brought over from Europe, notions that had not worked there—in fact, that had caused them to leave from there, and that had to do with disregarding the sources of life themselves and that had made them jeopardize their very future for the sake of acquiring material wealth. I later came to know that that way of thinking was named linear and was directly opposed to our own traditional circular thinking, which tells us that Life is but one great family of beings,each one of them to be acknowledged and respected,because the same Spirit of Life inhabits all beings equally. Life has spirit and Life is a great sacred Circle of reciprocal relations. The human being is only one among an infinite number of species of beings, and has not been created to dominate the Earth.Many circular-thinking people have now come to disbelieve that tenet, so fundamental in linear (patriarchal) religious traditions. I then realized that the time when our non-Indian relatives would be ready to listen to us too had not arrived,and as a temporary alternative to the study of history, I took up the study of languages for the next three years...