Up Ghost River
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8. Several forces gave rise to the eugenics movement: the rise of social Darwinism, scientific racism and increasing interest in genetics. Many countries, including Canada, convinced by the theories of prominent biologists such as Francis Galton and Charles Davenport, became interested in improving the intelligence and productivity of their citizenry by removing unwanted persons and persons deemed “racially inferior” from their gene pools. From 1928 to 1972, under the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta, the province sterilized approximately 2,800 people considered unfit for procreation, including mentally and physically challenged (“mental defectives”), persons “incapable of intelligent parenthood,” juvenile delinquents, Indians, Inuit and Métis. Aboriginals and residential school students were disproportionately targeted because these groups were more likely to be seen as mentally defective due to language and cultural differences. If a student was misbehaving, the principal, acting as the student’s official guardian, could recommend the student went before the Eugenics Board, which did an interview, often lasting five to ten minutes, to decide whether or not the child should be sterilized. Often, children were not told what was happening; instead they were told they were having their appendix out, or another operation—and would not realize they were infertile until adulthood. British Columbia passed a similar law in 1933 that was repealed in 1979. The number of people sterilized in B.C. remains uncertain since the records have been destroyed. The scope and details of Alberta’s law gained national exposure with the 1995 court case of Leilani Muir, who was sterilized without her consent or knowledge at Alberta’s Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives in 1959. She sued the provincial government and won. Since then 850 Albertans who were sterilized have been awarded $142 million in damages.
9. “Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy …”
(From Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Ogalala Sioux as told through John Neihardt, University of Nebraska Press, 1972.)
10. The Mishomis Book: The Voice of the Ojibway, Edward Benton-Banai, University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
11. A religious practice involving fasting and smoking a sacred pipe that helps people drop into higher place of consciousness so that they can communicate with the Spirit World.
12. Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press, 1959.
TEXT PERMISSIONS
“The History of Red” is reprinted by permission from The Book of Medicines (Coffee House Press, 1993). Copyright © 1993 by Linda Hogan.
Excerpt from Sitting Bull Remembers. Copyright © 2007 by Anne Turner. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
“How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” reprinted from The Summer of Black Widows by Sherman Alexie, copyright © 1996, by permission of Hanging Loose Press.
Excerpt reprinted from Black Elk Speaks: The Complete Edition by John G. Neihardt by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 2014 by the University of Nebraska Press. Original printings copyright 1932, 1959, 1972 by John G. Neihardt. © 1961 by the John G. Neihardt Trust.
“Dying Back, and: Out of Ashes, Peace Will Rise” by Marilou Awiakta. From Appalachian Heritage, Volume 16, Winter. Copyright © 1988 by the Appalachian Center at Berea College. Used by permission of the publisher.
IMAGE PERMISSIONS
Part One and Two openers: Metatawabin Productions and Research.
Insert: (1.1 and 1.5) Metatawabin Productions and Research; (1.6) Andrew Wesley; (1.7) Fort Albany, ON – Oblate Priest and girls in a canoe, Archives Deschâtelets; (1.8) Metatawabin Productions and Research; (1.9 to 1.12) Metatawabin Productions and Research; (1.16) Andrew Wesley; (1.16 and 1.18) Metatawabin Productions and Research; (1.19 to 1.23) Metatawabin Productions and Research.
Edmund Metatawabin, former Chief of Fort Albany First Nation, is a Cree writer, educator and activist. A residential school survivor, he has devoted himself to righting the wrongs of the past, and educating native youth in traditional knowledge. Metatawabin now lives in his self-made log house in Fort Albany, Ontario, off the reserve boundary, on land he refers to as “My Grandfathers’ Land.” He owns a local sawmill and also works as a consultant, speaker and researcher.
Alexandra Shimo is a former radio producer for the CBC and former editor at Maclean’s. An award-winning journalist, she is the author of The Environment Equation, which was published in twelve countries. She volunteers as a communications consultant for the non-profit Up With Women, which works with at-risk women, and with DreamCatcher Mentoring, which helps native youth. She lives in Toronto.