"Nothing But the Whole Truth Will Do"

OHSWEKEN - I have been told by various people that they disagreed with my column about Christopher Columbus. Some of them rank the myth of the Great Discovery of America, right up there with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Like children, we native people are not supposed to question anything American historians have written about us.

I can understand how they feel because I used to feel that way myself. When I was young and just out of school, I was quite sure the world was exactly as described by my teachers. However, when I became a teacher myself and taught for a few years I began to have second thoughts. Things were not always the way the books said they were.

For example, when you read about the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, written by an English historian, it is quite different from the way a French historian writes about it. It makes you wonder if they are writing about the same battle.

When I eventually got around to looking closely at native history, I found that some of the things that the writers wrote were really off the mark. Some of it was not even close to what actually happened. It seems that American historians often write what people want to hear and leave out the parts they figure will be unpopular.

Other writers then repeat these stories and it becomes the "official" version. An honest writer who simply tells the truth and does not follow the "official" line may be attacked by other writers as a liar or may not even have his writing published.

In the past this also happened here in Canada. The general public often heard only one side of an issue. To make matters worse, people often like to hear only one side of an issue because it gives them the illusion that it is simple and easy to solve. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) do not like to be reminded that many of them are racists. The many commissions and investigations in the lat 10 years into specific cases have shown this beyond a doubt. For example, when Donald Marshall, the Micmac native, was proven to be innocent of murder, the judge, far from apologizing for the obvious miscarriage of justice, tried to say what had happened to Mr. Marshall was his own fault. It was a classic case of blaming the victim for what someone else did to him. There have been several similar examples in recent years of injustices to native people for apparently no other reason than that the authorities had a racist attitude. And the attitude, racist or otherwise, of the police, the judges, crown attorneys, etc. almost always reflects the attitude of the majority of the local people. Here in Ontario, the majority is usually White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

This is not to say that I believe all WASPs are racists. They obviously are not. And some who did have racist attitudes out of ignorance have realized it and are making a real effort to change.

Chancing an attitude is not easy. For example, I only recently began to realize my attitude toward women was a little chauvinistic. Or maybe a lot chauvinistic. Now that I'm aware of it, I will try to change for the better.