White Seal Speaks

On March 12, 1862 the steamship Brother Jonathan arrived in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada from San Francisco.  It brought with it a most unwelcome guest, Smallpox.  When the disease began to appear in the locals, the government moved to inoculate as many people as possible. As many white people as possible, that is.  When native people camping near Victoria became ill, they were forced to leave and return to their villages.  There was no attempt to vaccinate them.  Between April and December of 1862, half of the indigenous population between Victoria and Alaska perished.  Later, more died.

Around the same time, the government started sending boats into the inlets where native villages lay.  They would tell the inhabitants that they had one hour to get their children ready to leave for residential schools run by the Catholic and Anglican churches. There the children lost their families, their names, their language, their culture, their religion and in many cases, their innocence and virginity.  All of this in the name of “civilizing the Indians” and bringing them to Jesus.  After my wife read this she said, “They didn’t lose it. It was stolen.”  A moving story was told to me by a man whose grandmother experienced this travesty.  When I said, “You should write down her stories,” he replied, “She says you have stolen everything else from us, you can’t steal our stories too.”

This history, and many more injustices, were on my mind when I first arrived at the Red Lion Inn in Victoria on a crisp fall morning to begin teaching a basic counseling skills course to some of the Salish people of Vancouver Island. Never in my life have I met a kinder, more welcoming group of students.  After all we had done to them, they still made me feel welcome.

The tribes, or bands, had horrible social issues.  Drug and alcohol abuse, family violence, sexual abuse and suicide were rampant. Each band had a social worker who had to deal with these problems.  Often the workers had no training and few resources and were overwhelmed and desperate for help.  From this need sprang the Camosun College Native Band Social Worker program.  I was chosen to teach several of the courses, beginning with Basic Counseling Skills, a week long all day program of instruction.

I remember unloading my station wagon that was packed with boxes of reprints and then carefully reviewing my presentation schedule complete with exercises and role plays before arriving at the classroom promptly at 9:00am. No one was there.  Around 9:30 people began to straggle in and at 10 I began.  At lunchtime I carried all my boxes back to the car unopened and returned them to the college.  It was clear to me this was nothing like any group I had ever taught before.  What did I have to offer these people?  The problems were horrendous and I was lost as to how to approach the topic in a way that made sense.  I should have known then that I would learn much more from them than they would learn from me.  In retrospect, teaching in that program was one of the highlights of my life.

The indigenous people of Canada like to be referred to as First Nations people and they do have their own nations.  Nothing was more moving than watching some of my former students graduating from University with degrees in social work wearing the beautiful beaded and buttoned capes of their people.  While other students were introduced by their name only, the names of First Nation students were followed by phases like, “From the Salish Nation” or “From the Haida Nation.”  It seems to me this communicates that, “Yes we are part of Canada but we are our own people.”  This, in spite of all we have done to try to destroy that identity.

My first lesson was about the First Nations concept of time.  At the end of the day I asked if we could start on time the next day.  

“What time?” one student asked.  

I said, “How about 9:30?”  

He said, “9:30 white man time or Indian time?”  

“What is the difference?” I asked curiously.  

“White man time, 9:30.  Indian time, see you for lunch.”

Everybody laughed and we decided that 10:00 white man time would suffice. One wonderful elderly lady said, “Yeah we got to go to the Bingo tonight so we can’t get up too early.” Everybody laughed again and then let me in on that well known First Nations disorder, Bingo Addiction.

The older lady then said, “Larry, you hear about the two Indian boys lost in the woods?”
“Nope,” I replied.
One says, “We are lost, do you think we should pray?”
The other says, “Sure but I never been to church.”
The first one says, “I have lots of times and I know what they say.”
“OK then, pray.”
The first one screws up his face and in the loudest voice says, “Under the B!”

For my first exercise I chose reflective listening, a style of listening that shows the other person that you hear them, understand them and have empathy.  My first attempt went something like this:

Ernie (a chief):  “You know about 5 years ago I quit drinkin’.  Me and my friend Paul was out on my fishin’ boat one night and we drunk up a storm.  Then next day I woke up and Paul was gone. Overboard in the night.  I still cry about it.”

Frankie (a wonderful young man who I will talk about later): “Ernie it sounds like you come here with a heavy heart.”

Never in all my years of teaching counseling skills had I seen people so naturally listen and speak from the heart.  I had nothing to teach them about this.

After a long discussion about what was troubling them most, I realized they were frustrated by their inability to stand up to the white bureaucrats who controlled their lives.  Assertiveness and outspokenness are not valued traits in their culture but are essential when dealing with government agencies and what they would call “European culture.”  They found the course useful and I will never forget the stories they shared with me as I learned who they were and what they needed from me.  Their kindness to and tolerance of me, a representative of a race of people who had treated them so badly and knew so little of their culture moved me deeply.  They invited me back to teach Child Development, the next course.  

One of the funniest stories was told by a woman from a village so remote you had to fly in or travel by boat to get there.  She said as the plane flew in it would pass over hot springs frequented by “white hippies” bathing nude in the pools. The people of her band called them the white seals and it was a local custom to report on any white seal sightings after landing.  Hence the title of this piece.

One of the reasons direct communication and assertive behavior was difficult was that much of the communication between them was indirect or spoken in metaphor.  Assertiveness, confrontation and in some cases even eye contact were considered rude.  This left them vulnerable to being steamrolled by the white authorities and was often confusing to a culture as direct as ours.  One of the best examples of this was the avoidance of eye contact as a sign of respect. Many of my students remembered being beaten because they would not look a nun or a teacher in the eyes for fear of appearing disrespectful.

Once we had to make an important decision.  We sat in a circle and I laid out the problem.  One of the students started by telling a story about his sister.  The next described a fishing trip. This went on as each told a story.  I became more and more confused and frustrated and was about to demand that we deal with the issue at hand when Chief Josephine said, “Well, I guess we have arrived at a decision.”

Stunned, I asked, “When did that happen and what was the decision?”  They all laughed and one of them said playfully, “Oh, you white people are so stupid.”

Somewhere in all that metaphor was a discussion and decision about the topic but I’ll be damned if I had any idea what it was.  

On another occasion I was teaching a course at the College and there was one First Nations student in the course.  I assigned a paper that required the students to describe how their parents had disciplined them as children and the effect it had on them.  The lone Salish student came to me and told me she couldn’t do the paper because she was not raised like that.  She explained that if a child misbehaved some adult or elder would take them aside and tell them a story, most likely with that pesky trickster Raven at the center.  It was up to the child to realize the meaning of the story and apply the moral to his or her own behavior.  So she wrote a beautiful paper relating stories she was told and how her behavior changed in response to the stories.

At the end of one course I taught, the students asked me when I would have their papers finished and grades submitted.  I said, “Well, you know, I have to go fishin’ with my brother up in Uclulet and then I have to go huntin’ with my dad. Also, my cousin wants me to help him clear some pasture….”

Amid howls of laughter, one of them said, “You really understand us don’t you?” I hoped I did.

Those courses and the education I received from those people prepared me for one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. After I had taught the courses, I received a phone call from one of the First Nations employees at the College.  She had relatives in the course and said to me, “Larry, my sister’s son is in terrible trouble and I know you understand our people. Could you help him?”

I agreed and soon met with the boy.  He was about 17 and what transpired between us is confidential but let me tell you he was in about as much trouble as you could imagine.  I can also say that my attempts to help him failed miserably. The rest of the story I can tell because it appeared in the local newspaper.  

At some point he got loaded up on drugs and alcohol and robbed a convenience store at a gas station.  He beat the attendant so badly he was in hospital for weeks.  After his arrest it looked as though he was on his way to adult prison. Soon after this happened I received a call from the chief of his mother’s tribe who asked me if I would write a letter to the judge pleading with him not to send the boy to prison but rather to turn him over the elders of the tribe. The judge agreed.

One of the issues he faced was the fact that his father was white and his mother was First Nations.  As a child he was beaten by the white kids for being First Nations and beaten by the First Nations kids for being white.  So this action by the elders solidified his identity as a First Nations person.  They told him, “You are one of us.”  

The boy was taken into the tribe and they began teaching him the old religion and the respect for nature and life in general that were so central to the culture. Then they placed him on a rural trap line for the winter where he had to practice the skills they had taught him and to survive on his own, completely sober.  At the end of this experience they held a Potlatch, a ceremony in the long house or big house in which gifts are given by the host to others in the tribe.  These were outlawed by the early white government as part of a heathen culture and only recently have been allowed as part of First Nations heritage.  Really, what good capitalist gives away what he owns to his neighbors?

In this case, however, the recipient of the gifts was the young man beaten by my client.  Each member of the tribe donated money to cover expenses and lost wages.  Then each member stood up and expressed the shame they felt after hearing of the treatment he had received from one of their own.  Then the young man who had beaten him stood up and expressed his shame and they embraced. The last I heard of this fine young man thirty years ago was that he was helping First Nations youth around the province in a program aimed at preventing drug and alcohol abuse.  

We often talk about shame as a bad thing.  In this case it served to solidify this boy’s identity as a member of the tribe and emphasized the fact that he belonged and was truly a member of a race and culture with values and expectations.  It gave him an identity not as a “half breed,” but as a proud First Nations young man whose behavior reflected on his brothers and sisters in the tribe. That may have been the most important letter I have ever written.  

Another moving experience happened during the first course I taught.  On Wednesday one of the younger members of the group, Frankie, approached me and said, “I like you Larry.  I want to explain to you what it is like to be an Indian.” 

He suggested we go over to the shopping center and buy a couple of hot dogs then he would tell me what he wanted to tell me.  There, in the midst of middle class white people going about their daily business I had one of the most moving experiences of my life.  

He began by saying, “I used to hate myself for being Indian.  Then I hated white people.  Now I don’t hate anybody.”

He talked about his life as a child and the difficulties of growing up First Nations in white culture.  At some point in his adolescence he entered a program that had the purpose of teaching young First Nations boys the old culture and the values that were so central to his people before we showed up.  It transformed him and he became the proud young man he was at that time with a purpose in life based on love and respect and not on hate.  I will be forever grateful for that experience. Sadly, Frankie died young but his memory lives on as an inspiration to those who want to live a purposeful life.  

At the end of that first week, I was overwhelmed with gratitude and aware that somehow these people had changed me.  But I was wondering if I had achieved anything of substance when Chief Ernie walked up to me, grabbed my hand and said, “Thank you Larry.  I think what you have taught me will really help me help my people.”  I only hoped the same was true for me.