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Chief Dan George, an excerpt from My Heart Soars
I am a native of North America.
In the course of my lifetime I have lived in two distinct
cultures. I was born into a culture that lived in communal
houses. My grandfather's house was eighty feet long. It was
called a smoke house, and it stood down by the beach along the
inlet. All my grandfather's sons and their families lived in
this large dwelling. Their sleeping apartments were separated
by blankets made of bull rush reeds, but one open fire in the
middle served the cooking needs of all. In houses like these,
throughout the tribe, people learned to live with one another;
learned to serve one another; learned to respect the rights of
one another. And the children shared the thoughts of the adult
world and found themselves surrounded by aunts and uncles and
cousins who loved them and did not threaten them. My father was
born in such a house and learned from infancy how to love people
and be at home with them.
An beyond this acceptance of one another there was a deep respect
for everything in nature that surrounded them. My father loved
the earth and all it's creatures. The earth was his second
mother. The earth and everything it contained was a gift from
See-see-am...and the way to thank this great spirit was to use
his gifts with respect.
I remember, as a little boy, fishing with him up Indian River
and I can still see him as the sun rose above the mountain top
in the early morning... I can see him standing by the water's
edge with his arms raised above his head while he softly
moaned...."Thank you, thank you". It left a deep impression on
my young mind.
And I shall never forget his disappointment when once he caught
me gaffing fish "just for the fun of it". "My Son" he said, "The
Great Spirit gave you those fish to be your brothers, to feed
you when you are hungry. You must respect them. You must not
kill them just for the fun of it."
This then was the culture I was born into and for some years the
only one I really knew or tasted. This is why I find it hard to
accept many of the things I see around me.
I see people living in smoke houses hundreds of times bigger
than the one I knew. But the people in one apartment do not
even know the people in the next and care less about them.
It is also difficult for me to understand the deep hate that
exists among people. It is hard to understand a culture that
justifies the killing of millions in past wars, and is at this
very moment preparing bombs to kill even greater numbers. It is
hard for me to understand a culture that spends more on wars and
weapons to kill, than it does on education and welfare to help
and develop.
It is hard for me to understand a culture that not only hates
and fights his brothers but even attacks nature and abuses her.
I see my white brothers going about blotting out nature from his
cities. I see his strip the hills bare, leaving ugly wounds on
the face of mountains. I see him tearing things from the bosom
of mother earth as though she were a monster, who refused to
share her treasures with him. I see him throw poison in the
waters, indifferent to the life he kills there; and he chokes
the air with deadly fumes.
My white brother does many things well for he is more clever
than my people but I wonder if he knows how to love well. I
wonder if he has ever really learned to love at all. Perhaps he
only loves the things that are his own but never learned to love
the things that are outside and beyond him. And this is, of
course, not love at all, for man must love all creation or he
will love none of it. Man must fully or he will become the
lowest of the animals. It is the power to love that makes him
the greatest of them all...for he alone of all animals is
capable of love.
Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because
our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we
become weak and faint. Without love our self esteem weakens.
Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer
look out confidently at the world. Instead we turn inwardly and
begin to feed upon our own personalities and little by little we
destroy ourselves.
You and I need the strength and joy that comes from knowing that
we are loved. With it we are creative. With it we march
tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, are we able to
sacrifice for others.
There have been times when we all wanted so desperately to feel
a reassuring hand upon us...there have been lonely times when we
so wanted a strong arm around us...I cannot tell you how deeply
I miss my wife's presence when I return from a trip. Her love
was my greatest joy, my strength, my greatest blessing.
I am afraid my culture has little to offer yours. But my
culture did prize friendship and companionship. It did not look
on privacy as a thing to be clung to, for privacy builds up
walls and walls promote distrust. My culture lived in big
family communities, and from infancy people learned to live with
others.
My culture did not prize the hoarding of private possessions, in
fact, to hoard was a shameful thing to do among my people. The
Indian looked on all things in nature as belonging to him and he
expected to share them with others and to take only what he
needed.
Everyone likes to give as well as receive. No one wishes only
to receive all the time. We have taken much from your
culture...I wish you had taken something from our culture...for
there were some beautiful and good things in it.
Soon it will be too late to know my culture, for integration is
upon us and soon we will have no values but yours. Already many
of our young people have forgotten the old ways. and many have
been shamed of their Indian ways by scorn and ridicule. My
culture is like a wounded deer that has crawled away into the
forest to bleed and die alone.
The only thing that can truly help us is genuine love. You must
truly love us, be patient with us and share with us. And we
must love you - with a genuine love that forgives and
forgets...a love that forgives the terrible sufferings your
culture brought ours when it swept over us like a wave crashing
along a beach...with a love that forgets and lifts up its heads
and sees in your eyes an answering love of trust and acceptance.
This is brotherhood...anything less is not worthy of the name.
I have spoken.
<ENDQUOTE>
Chief Dan George,
My Heart Soars (1974)
Published by Hancock House Publishers, Ltd
19313 Zero Ave
Surrey, B.C.
V4P 1M7
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