Today is Canada’s National Day for Truth & Reconciliation.  Its importance to us as Canadians can’t be overstated, as it’s essential for us to come to terms with our complicated past if we’re to continue on this road to building a society that’s truly in balance and harmony.  We believe we will get there, and we’ll be much stronger for it.  Progress has at times felt agonizingly slow, that’s true.  But we’ve come a long way, and the pace certainly seems to have quickened over the last handful of years. 

Truth.  The whole point of our residential school system was to remove indigenous children from any environment where their native culture, language and traditions could have any chance of influencing who they were as individuals, and would one day be.  It was to ‘kill the Indian in the child’, using whatever means necessary.  The term cultural genocide has been applied to this part of our history, and we think this a more-than-fair assessment.  In fact, many died as part of this forced assimilation, as attested to by the numerous unmarked graves we continue to find on former school properties.

(The reference to ‘Indians’ may seem odd to our non-North American readers, given that the distance to India from where Christopher Columbus landed is approximately 15,000 kms.  Nevertheless, that curious misnaming of an entire people has managed to stick around for quite a while.  Think of it as a crass example of how we, the colonizers, didn’t care one way or another who they were or what they preferred to call themselves.)

Historically, any attempt to integrate using coersion means that you’re going to remove from the individual any undesirable values that define him, and you’re going to replace those with something better.  Canadianize, Christianize, and civilize, in this case.  Perhaps owing to the fact that the old world was technologically ahead at that time, or the age old belief in having found the right god and needing to enlighten the savages. Whatever the case may be, we would replace it with something better.

We did not.  In fact we are prepared to go much further.  Let CCA’s position on this be perfectly clear. If our species is to have a sustainable future, which means any future at all, we have to instil in our culture some of the key elements that were already present on this continent prior to European arrival.

Ethically, the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island were far ahead in a number of areas.  The rights enjoyed by women, and the role they played in society, for example.  Or contrast the treatment of members of the tribe denoted as two-spirited with what the LGBTQ community still has to deal with today.  Consider that punitive measures proscribed by elders and tribal leaders actually sought to bring the offender back into the fold (and usually succeeded).  We’ve got a ways to go before our present day justice system comes anywhere close in terms of rehabilitation, as opposed to simply retribution.  What was their recidivism rate, and what is ours?

Then there’s our role vis-à-vis the environment.  Safe to say that the prevailing view of how we ought to interact with the world around us among the residents of pre-contact North America was light years ahead of those that would soon be introduced to the continent.  We’ll go further.  If we, as a species, right here and right now in 2022, don’t return to those values, we are done.  They had it right all along, and the rest of us need to get on board.  The world is not inexhaustible.  

Here’s an application of this way of thinking which is dear to our hearts, as it concerns our iconic Southern Resident Orcas.  How do we save them given that the salmon they depend on are in serious decline, and the whales are essentially starving?  The Lummi Nation are a tribe whose ancestral roots are the area on and around the Salish Sea.

A couple of years ago the Lummi proposed a pilot project in which fishers would ferry live salmon they catch into the orcas’ vicinity, when the whales were nearby.  Later, the hope was to establish forage pens in which they’d raise and release hatchery fish.  All in the expectation that they could give the orcas access to extra food. 

Don’t get hung up on whether you think such a plan is practical or comprehensive.  With such things the details tend to work themselves out, and if you have the right goal in mind, you’ll find a way to make it work eventually.  We all go through such a process, every day of our lives.  The point is to put your creativity to work for the right reasons. 

Compare the approach here to that in Taiji, Japan, where dolphins are routinely slaughtered precisely because they’re seen as competitors for rapidly dwindling fish stocks.  This is true in any number of other places around the world.  Can there be any doubt about where such a line of reasoning will eventually end up? 

For the Lummi, preventing individual whales from dying was the urgent and immediate goal.  But this was also a segue to a much larger-scale effort to improve the overall health of the entire Salish Sea.  The thinking is, if the sea is too unhealthy to support orcas, then it most certainly is too unhealthy to support the people who earn their living from fishing off the sea.  There is no competition with the orcas for the available fish.

We. Love. This.  This way of thinking about the world, and the role we play in it.  It’s not about us standing on top of the pyramid of life, masters of our domain.  It’s about understanding how we are just one part of an intricate web of life, and that we must respect every other part of it.  

“When we’re trying to save the killer whale, qwe ‘lhol mechen, we’re saving ourselves. There’s not a distinction. It’s saving both of us.”  

Ellie Kinley of the Lummi Nation

Native Americans had it right all along.  Their’s is a heritage in which they should take great pride, and Canada is indeed fortunate that this is a key part of our cultural fabric.

For The Orca’s Voice, 

Dakota, and the Canadian Cetacean Alliance Team