WHEN I WAS growing up, the striking differences between Native people and mainstream Canadians were often remarked upon. During the 1960s and 1970s there were tremendous strides forward in Native life. We gained the right to vote, the freedom to gather in public and to practise our spirituality, the right to retain a lawyer. But every inch closer we got to authentic citizenship seemed to widen the gap between us and our neighbours. These days, it can seem sometimes that not much has changed. Conversations with so-called liberal thinkers, and I count numerous friends among them, almost always arrive at the “us and them” barricade. The barriers erected by the Indian Act, the reserve system, treaty rights, land claims and fiduciary wardship only buttress their arguments. Native people are different. We’re separate. We’re a problem to be solved.
In my day-to-day life, I seldom feel like a problem. I work hard at maintaining my property, staying above the waterline of debt and taxes and enjoying the fruits of my labours at the end of the day. Sounds awfully normal to me.
The truth is, the lives of Native and non-Native people are more alike than not. As an Ojibway man, I have been marginalized, analyzed, criticized, ostracized, legitimized, politicized, socialized, dehumanized, downsized and Super-sized. One day, I will be eulogized. What ordinary Canadian can’t relate to that?
In my younger years, I was uneducated, untrained, unskilled and unemployed. In the time since, I’ve been displaced, disenfranchised, disinherited, disaffected, disappointed, disconsolate, disqualified, disrespected, disquieted, dishevelled, disingenuous, dishonest, disinterested and sometimes discombobulated.
Struggling with my identity, I’ve been misinterpreted, misfiled, misjudged, misunderstood and misguided. I’ve been misinformed, misdirected, mismatched, misstated and misused. Occasionally I’ve been mistrusted and misquoted. These days, I’m mostly misgoverned and misrepresented.
Like most Canadians, I have been overtaxed, overburdened, overextended, overdrawn, over the barrel and overwhelmed. By contrast, I’ve been underfunded, underappreciated, and under the gun. Like my neighbours I’ve tried to be low-key and low-maintenance, to stay low-cal, low-cholesterol, low-impact and low-risk. Most of us know what it’s like to be low-income. Like many others, I’m an ex-athlete, an ex-smoker, an ex-drunk and an ex-husband.
As a Canadian, I’ve had to be ethnic, multicultural, nationalistic and culturally specific all at the same time. I’ve learned to be open-minded, politically correct, gender sensitive, globally conscious and self-aware. I’ve had to embrace the New Age as I approach my old age. I’ve gone from the Good Book to Facebook, from fireside chats to cyberchat, and from being offloaded to downloaded in one lifetime.
I can be Googled these days. I can be faxed, text-messaged, Twittered, Skyped and video-conferenced. I have a website, poor eyesight, the gift of hindsight and the occasional insight. I’m a multi-tasking, formerly metro-sexual, techno-geek with an iPod. I surf the net, play with the remote, rip DVDs, burn music and tear it up on weekends.
We can spend time deliberating on our differences. But in so many ways our lexicon is the same. Let’s start talking to one another, using whatever it takes: metaphors and similes, tall tales and bad puns, honesty and tact. Let’s use language to unite us, not divide us. It’s really just as simple as that.