The White Guy

Little bit of a later post today. I had a "training" session all morning. It was Indigenous Awareness Training, which I could argue wasn't really training, but just telling people not to be douchebags. I was a little worried that it was going to be super boring. I've been in things like this before where they are trying to whip through it really quick and generally just saying "Indigenous people need you to say sorry" but not really saying anything else. I was pleasantly surprised with this one though.

The guy doing the training started the company over 20 years ago and said they basically took the Aboriginal 101 course from the University and cut it down to a 4ish hour presentation. He just talked about Indigenous history the whole time, making sure to add the stuff you didn't learn in high school. He is a Metis guy as well so we got lots of First Nations and Metis content. He mentioned Inuit, but by his own admission didn't know much about them and since their numbers are 2 digits in Saskatchewan, he skipped them. He had pretty good cred though. His Great, Great--mumble mumble--Grandfather served on a council for the Metis with his cousin, who led it. Some guy name Louis Riel. Now THAT'S family cred.

I knew the broad strokes of the history, there was nothing really surprising to me. Hearing someone who was obviously passionate about it and added stories from the community made it that much better. He also pointed out how much of the history is focused right here in Saskatchewan. We had so many more residential schools than the average, the Metis resistance ended here, many First Nations were killed around here for dealing with that, and a bunch of other stuff. The emptiness of the prairies were a good place to get out of the way until it was found that Canada kept coming.

I also find it a bit amusing that if you look in the US, their founding leader is a fucking icon. Here in Canada I think it is generally known and accepted that John A. MacDonald was a piece of shit. Even when I learnt about him, the whitewashing was contained to the fact that he was the first Prime Minister. I don't remember learning anything else about that man. I'm sure there are people that like him or would defend him, but I'd prefer to ignore the far right.

There were things I did learn, though. Like I didn't realize that there was a time when it was illegal for Indigenous people to use Band funds to hire lawyers, then it was illegal for someone to raise funds for them to use for lawyers, then it was just illegal for them to use lawyers. That's fucking bonkers. That's basically the government admitting they did something wrong and don't want to deal with it.

I suppose I should dust up on my Indigenous education a little more. I by no means am an expert. The funny thing was that we had probably a dozen people in the training. Three or four were people with some sort of First Nation ancestry and then there were a bunch of our employees that are immigrants from places like Nigeria, India, etc. So, I probably knew more of the history as it relates to Saskatchewan than them, but as the only 100% white guy in the meeting I kept my mouth shut. I don't know if I have any direct ancestors that hurt First Nations, since I think they came over later. but just by immigrating here I'm sure they didn't help. Everyone else in that room has ancestors that have been suppressed by the British Government.

But, I can't change that, and nobody is going to blame me directly for that. As long as I treat others with respect. Unlike John A. Macdonald. I do remember having a Louis Riel book on our bookshelf growing up so I always knew that name and what he did. He was always shown as a good guy but I think he's become more of a hero as I've grown up. I would be interested to read that book and see if it treats him well or poorly. Which Canadian figure do you want to read about?