Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past

by Tantoo Cardinal

  The wine grabbed reality, slopped it back and forth across the swaying room that blurred, and my wanders through Snauq were over for another day.

  The hallways intervene again; I head for my office, cubby really. I am a TA bucking for my masters degree. This is a prestigious institution with a prestigious MA program in Indigenous government. I am not a star student, nor a profound teaching assistant. Not much about me seems memorable. I pursue course after course. I comply day after day with research requirements, course requirements, marking requirements, and the odd seminar requirement, but nothing that I do, say, or write seems relevant. I feel absurdly obedient. The result of all this study seems oddly mundane. Did Khahtsahlano ever feel mundane as he trudged about speaking to one family head, then another, talking up the Allied Tribes with Andy Paull? Not likely; at the time he consciously opposed colonial authority. He too studied this new world but with a singular purpose in mind: recreating freedom in the context that I was to inherit. Maybe, while he spoke to his little sweetheart, enumerating each significant non-existent landmark, vegetable patch, berry field, elk warren, duck pond, and fish habitat that had been destroyed by the newcomers, he felt this way. To what end did he tell an eight-year-old of a past bounty that can never again be regained?

  Opening the envelope begins to take on the sensation of treasonous behaviour. I set it aside and wonder about the coursework I chose during my school years. I am Squamish, descended from Squamish chieftains—no, that is only partly true. I am descended from chieftains and I have plenty of Squamish relatives, but I married a Sto:loh, so really I am Sto:loh. Identity can be so confusing. For a long time the Tsleil Watuth spoke mainly Squamish—somehow they were considered part of the Squamish Band, despite the fact that they never did amalgamate. It turns out they spoke “Downriver Halkomelem” before the first smallpox killed them, and later many began speaking Squamish. Some have gone back to speaking Halkomelem while others still speak Squamish. I am not sure who we really are collectively and I wonder why I did not choose to study this territory, its history, and the identity changes that this history has wrought on us all. The office closes in on me. The walls crawl toward me, slow and easy, crowding me; I want to run, to reach for another bottle of wine, but this here is the university and I must prepare for class—and there is no wine here, no false relief. I have only my wit, my will, and my sober nightmare. I look up: the same picture of Khahtsahlano and his son that adorns my office wall hangs in my living room at home. I must be obsessed with him. Why have I not noticed this obsession before?

  I love this photo of him. I fell in love with the jackets of the two men, so much so that I learned to weave. I wanted to replicate that jacket. Khahtsahlano’s jacket was among the first to be made from sheep’s wool. His fathers was made of dog and mountain goat hair. Coast Salish women bred a beautiful dog with long and curly hair for this purpose. Every summer the mountain goats left their hillside homes to shed their fur on the lowlands of what is now to be the Sea to Sky Highway. They rubbed their bodies against long thorns, and all the women had to do was collect it, spin the dog and goat together, and weave the clothes. The settlers shot dogs and goats until our dogs were extinct and the goats were an endangered species. The object: force the Natives to purchase Hudsons Bay sheep’s wool blankets. The northerners switched to the black and red Hudson’s Bay blankets, but we carried on with our weaving, using sheep’s wool for a time; then when cash was scarce we shopped at local second-hand shops or we went without. Swanamia put a lot of love into those jackets. She took the time to trim them with fur, feathers, shells, and fringe. She loved those two men. Some of the women took to knitting the Cowichan sweaters so popular among non-Indigenous people, but I could not choose knitting over weaving. I fell in love with the zigzag weft, the lightning strikes of those jackets, and for a time got lost in the process of weaving until my back gave out.

  The injury inspired me to return to school to attend this university and to leave North Van. I took this old archive photo—photocopy, really—with me. Every now and then I speak to Khahtsahlano, promise him I will return.

  My class tutorial is about current events. I must read the letter—keep abreast of new events—and prepare to teach. I detach, open, and read the notice of the agreement. I am informed that this information is a courtesy; being Sto:loh, I have no real claim to the agreement, but because ancestry is so important, all descendants of False Creek are hereby informed …

  I look at the students and remember: this memory is for Chief George, Chief Khahtsahlano, and my Ta’ah, who never stopped dreaming of Snauq.

  Song rolled out as the women picked berries near what is now John Hendry Park. In between songs they told old stories, many risqué and hilarious. Laughter punctuated the air; beside them were the biggest trees in the world, sixteen feet in diameter and averaging four hundred feet in height. Other women at Snauq tended the drying racks and smoke shacks in the village. Inside them clams, sturgeons, oolichans, sockeye, spring salmon were being cured for winter stock. Men from Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil Watuth joined the men at Snauq to hunt and trap ducks, geese, grouse, deer, and elk. Elk is the prettiest of all red meats. You have to see it roasted and thinly sliced to appreciate its beauty and the taste—the taste is extraordinary. The camas fields bloomed bounteous at Snauq, and every spring the women culled the white ones in favour of the blue and hoed them. Children clutched at their long woven skirts. There is no difference between a white camas and a blue, except that the blue flowers are so much more gorgeous. It is the kind of blue that adorns the sky when it teases just before a good rain. Khahtsahlano’s father, Khahtsahlanogh, remembered those trees. On days when he carved out a new spoon, box, or bowl, he would stare sadly at the empty forest and resent the new houses in its place. Chief George, sweet and gentle Chief George—Chipkaym—chose Snauq for its proximity to the mills and because he was no stranger to the place.

  By 1907, the end of Chief Georges life, the trees had fallen, the villagers at Lumberman’s Arch were dead, and the settlers had transformed the Snauq supermarket into a garbage dump. The newcomers were so strange. On the one hand, they erected sawmills that in disciplined and orderly fashion transformed trees into boards for the world market quickly, efficiently, and impressively. On the other hand, they threw things away in massive quantities. The Squamish came to watch. Many like Paddy George bought teams of horses and culled timber from the backwoods like the white man—well, not exactly like them; Paddy could not bring himself to kill the young ones. “Space logging,” they call it now. But still some managed to eke out a living. Despite all the prohibition laws they found some freedom in the context they inherited.

  “The settlers were a dry riverbed possessing a thirst that was never slaked.” A film of tears filled Khahtsahlano’s eyes and his voice softened as he spoke. “After the trees came down, houses went up, more mills, hotels, shantytowns until we were vastly outnumbered and pressured to leave. B.C. was so white then. So many places were forbidden to Indians, dogs, Blacks, Jews, and Chinamans.” At one time Khahtsahlano could remember the names of the men that came, first a hundred, then a thousand; after that he stopped wanting to know who they were. “They were a strange lot—most of the men never brought womans to this place. The Yaletown men were CPR men, drifters, and squatters on the north shore of the creek. They helped drain one third of it, so that the railroad—the CPR—could build a station, but they didn’t bring womans,” he said as he stared longingly across the inlet at his beloved Snauq.

  The students lean on their desks, barely awake. Almost half of them are First Nations. I call myself to attention: I have totally lost my professional distance from the subject; my discipline, my pretension to objectivity writhes on the floor in front of me and I realize we are not the same people any more. I am not in a longhouse. I am not a speaker. I am a TA in a western institution. Suddenly the fluorescent lights offend, the dry perfect room temperature insults, and the very space mocks. A wave of pain passes through m
e, and I nearly lunge forward fighting it. Get a grip. This is what you wanted. Get a grip. This is what you slogged through tons of insulting documents for: Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Melville … alternatives to solve the Indian problem, assassination, enslavement … disease, integration, boarding school, removal … I am staggering under my own weight. My eyes bulge, my muscles pulse, my saliva trickles out the side of my mouth. I am not like Khahtsahlano. I am not like Ta’ah. I was brought up in the same tradition of change, of love of transformation, of appreciation for what is new, but I was not there when Snauq was a garden. Now it is a series of bridge ramparts, an emptied False Creek, emptied of Squamish people and occupied by industry, apartment dwellings, the Granville Island tourist centre, and the Science centre. I was not there when Squamish men formed unions like white men, built mills like white men, worked like white men, and finally—unlike white men—were outlawed from full participation. I can’t bear all this reality. I am soft like George but without whatever sweet thread of hope wove its way through his body to form some steely fabric.

  I awake surrounded by my students, their tears drip onto my cheeks. Oh my Gawd, they love me.

  “It’s OK, I just fainted.”

  “You were saying you were not like Khahtsahlano, like Ta’ah. Who are they?” The room opens up; the walls stop threatening. I know how Moses must have felt when he watched the sea part, the relief palpable, measurable, sweet, and welcome.

  “That’s just it. I thought I knew who I was. I know the dates. I know the events, but I don’t know who they were, and I can’t know who I am without knowing who they were, and I can’t say goodbye to Snauq and I need to say goodbye. Oh Gawd, help me.”

  “Well, I am not real sure that clears things up,” Terese responds, her blond hair hanging close to my face. Some of the students look like they want to laugh: a couple of First Nations students go ahead and chuckle.

  “Snauq is a village we just forfeited any claim to, and I must say goodbye.”

  “Doesn’t that require some sort of ceremony?” Hilda asks. She is Nu’chalnuth, and although they are a different nation from mine, the ceremonial requirements are close.

  “Yes,” I answer.

  “This is a cultural class—shouldn’t we go with you?”

  They lift me so tenderly I feel like a saint. This is the beginning of something. I need to know what is ending so that I can appreciate and identify with the beginning. Their apathetic stares have been replaced by a deep concern. Their apathy must have been a mask, a mask of professionalism, a mask covering fear, a mask to hide whatever dangers lurk in learning about the horrors of colonialism. The students must face themselves. I am their teacher. The goal of every adult among us is to face ourselves—our greatest enemy. I am responsible as their teacher to help them do that, but I am ill equipped. Still, Hilda is right. This is a cultural class and they ought to be there when I say goodbye. In some incomprehensible way it feels as though their presence would somehow ease the forfeiture and make it right.

  I reconjure the stretch of trees to the west and south of Snauq for the class, the wind whispering songs of future to the residents. The Oblates arrived singing Gregorian chants of false promise. The millwrights arrived singing chants of profit and we bit, hook, line, and sinker. How could we anticipate that we would be excluded if our success exceeded the success of the white man? How could we know that they came homeless, poor, unsafe, and unprotected? Yaletowners accepted their designation as “squatters.” This struck the Squamish at first as incredible. Chief George had no way of understanding squatting. It took some time for the younger men like Khahtsahlano to explain to Chief George the concept of “ownership” of the white man, the laws governing ownership, the business of property. Sometimes he resorted to English because the language did not suffice. “B.C. is Indian land, but the government regarded Snauq citizens as squatters until a reserve was established.” Andy Paull explained the law, its hypocrisy, and its strangeness to old Chief George. “Not all white man were granted land and not all were granted the same amounts. But those who did purchase or receive land grants were white. The minimum land grant to white men during pre-emption was three hundred acres; for us, it was a maximum of ten acres per family.”

  “What has this got to do with Snauq and, more important, with this class?” someone asks. I have been speaking aloud.

  “There is so much more to history than meets the eye. We need to know what happened, and what happened has nothing to do with the dates, the events, and the gentlemen involved, it has to do with impact.” A sole student, eyes lifted slightly skyward, lips pursed innocent and inviting, strokes my arm.

  They all pull their seats forward. “We need to finish this story.” They nod, as if for the first time they seem to know what’s going on. Even the white students nod, affirming that they too understand.

  As I get ready to head for the ferry terminal, it dawns on me that no one in this country has to deal with ancestry in quite the way we must. The new immigrants of today come from independent countries, some wealthy, some poor, but all but a few have risen from under the yoke of colonialism. They have nations as origins. Their home countries belong to the United Nations or NATO or other such international organizations. We do not, and this court case indicates we never will. The United Nations is debating an “Indigenous right to self-government” declaration, but Indigenous people will never be able to acquire the place other nations hold. Canadians do not have to face that they are still classically colonized, that because settlement is a fait accompli, we can only negotiate the best real estate deal possible. Indigenous people must face this, while the eyes of our ancestors, who fought against colonial conquest and lost, glare down upon us.

  “This is an immigrant nation,” Prime Minister Chrétien said after the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York were felled. “We will continue to be an immigrant nation.” How do we deal with this, the non-immigrants who for more than a century were rendered foreigners, prohibited from participation? The money for Snauq will be put in trust. To access it, we must submit a plan of how we intend to spend it. The Squamish Nation gets to pick the trustees but, like our ancestors, we must have trustees independent of the nation. Our money is still one step removed from our control.

  This story is somehow connected to another story, more important than the one going on now. Surrender or dig up the hatchet. The Squamish Nation has chosen surrender. Which way will my journey take me? Do I dare remember Snauq as a Squamish, Musqueam, Tsleil Watuth supermarket? Do I dare desire the restoration of the grand trees to the left and in the rear of Snauq? Do I dare say goodbye?

  The ferry lunges from the berth. Students surround me. We are on a mission. We travel to Snauq, False Creek, and Vancouver to say goodbye. In one sense I have no choice; in another, I chose the people who made the deal. In our own cultural sensibility there is no choice. There are fifteen thousand non-Indigenous people living at Snauq, and we have never granted ourselves the right to remove people from their homes. We must say goodbye.

  In this goodbye we will remember Snauq before the draining of False Creek. We will honour the dead: the stanchions of fir, spruce, and cedar and the gardens of Snauq. We will dream of the new False Creek, the dry lands, the new parks, and the acres of grass and houses. We will accept what Granville Island has become and honour Patty Rivard, the First Nations woman who was the first to forge a successful business in the heart of it. We will struggle to appreciate the little ferries that cross the creek. We will salute Chief George—Chipkaym—and Khahtsahlanogh, who embraced the vision of this burgeoning new nation. I will pray for my personal inability to fully commit to that vision.

  The wind catches the tobacco as it floats to the water, lifts it, and as we watch it float, a lone Chinese woman crosses in front and smiles. I smile too. Li Ka Shing, a multibillionaire, rose as the owner and developer of False Creek. He is Chinese, and he didn’t live here when he bought it. I don’t know if he lives here now, but for
whatever reason I love the sound of his name. “Everything begins with song,” Ta’ah says. His name is a song. It rolls off the tongue, sweetens the palate before the sound hits the air. It is such an irony that the first “non-citizen immigrant residents” should now possess the power to determine the destiny of our beloved Snauq. I know it shouldn’t, but somehow it makes me happy, like knowing that Black Indians now people the Long Island Reservation in New York State.

  The Chinese were subjected to a head tax for decades. Until sixty years ago they were banned from living outside Chinatown, though I met Garrick Chu’s mother, who grew up at the Musqueam Reserve. Their economic activity was restricted to laundry businesses and tea houses. Once white men burned Chinatown to the ground. For decades Chinese men could not bring their families from China to Canada. Periodic riots in the previous century killed some of them and terrorized all of them. Underneath some parts of Chinatown they built underground tunnels to hide in as protection against marauding white citizens, who were never punished for killing Chinese. Like the Squamish, they endured quietly until assuming citizenship in 1948. For one of them to become the owner of this choice piece of real estate is sweet irony. “It was sold for a song by Premier Vander Zalm,” the court records read. That too is a piece of painful, yet poetic, justice. I want to attend the Chinese parade, celebrate Chinese New Year, not for Li Ka Shing but because one of life’s ironies has given me hope. Five thousand miles from here, a group of Mi’kmaq bought land in Newfoundland and gained reservation rights. Another irony. They thought they had killed them all, and 350 years later, there they were, purchasing the land and setting up a reservation. There is hope in irony.