By Johnny Canoe (Doug Wilkinson)
(Courtesy of Indian Time Magazine)
Taken from The Real Americans, a book by A. Hyatt Verrill © 1954
This is the time of year when Christian people’s minds turn to commercials of all descriptions. First, they spend money they cannot afford buying presents for other Christians whom they dislike three hundred and sixty-four days of the year. Then their squaws cook food which makes them sick. They also buy huge quantities of firewater, sold to them by the government. They drive cars while drunk and are promptly arrested by the police whose job it is to maintain the laws made by the government and collect fines which go to one branch of government administration or another-civic, provincial, or federal. If you have no money you go to jail, which in your status of citizen you pay for out of you own pocket in devious forms of taxation. You buy your klootchman a few trinkets, you chop down a tree, buy electric lights and synthetic snow. You kiss under the mistletoe the person you would like to choke. You follow custom blindly. You won’t open and umbrella in the house, you won’t live in a Number 13 teepee, you fear Friday the thirteenth, and you will not pass under a ladder. Three people will not take a light from one match, your squaw goes and has her teacup read, you wear black when somebody dies, yet all depends on what he left you in his testament. Your churches do not agree, your women wear furs in summer and gauze in winter. You go hunting and kill more thatn you can eat; you have fine cattle, yet you eat horse; you call yourselves civilized while inventing weapons to destroy yourselves. You put you old people, your faterh and your mother, in a boardinghouse because they can do it on the old age pension, yet you forget your Number 4 Commandment.
Your newspapers are filled with sordid stories of your children stealing cars, housebreaking, and now using drugs. You are horrified at prostitution and brothels, yet by the simple act of divorce you are able to do the same thing legitimately. You elect a candidate to Parliament, you get dissatisfied at is highhandedness and you question his honesty, you you elect him again to represent you amid howls of a crooked ballot.
If you dislike anybody, you call him a Communist, yet you cannot see the actual Communist hiding under your bed. You have exchanged your principles for “keeping up with the Joneses,” you no longer are individual, you lack the courage of your convictions. You preach one thing and act the total opposite. The proof of this is two wars and an undeclared war.
You protect the health of your murderers to keep them in a perfect condition to hang. Your youth mut be physically fit to get shot at in war. You have exploited wherever you went. Now you are being kicked out of
You endow anthropology to snoop into Indian culture, and you pay through the nose to decorate your own family tree. You call yourselves democratic, yet you break you necks to be made and Indian chief or princess. You shove down our throats your way of life. You put laws on your books, yet you govern your lives by the taboos of prejudiced public opinion, which often is a complete contradiction of the law. You ridicule other cultures, yet you are internationally reputed to have non of you own, and you write books trying to prove that you have one.
You do research in food, and plan proper diets, yet the cost of living is so high that nobody can eat properly. You waste your national resources to such an extent that you have to appoint commissions at high salaries to look into the matter and excuse your excesses. You are your own downfall.
To an innocent little Indian off the Reserve, it is all very difficult!
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