Thank You Grandfather For Being You

Thank You Grandfather For Being You

On one occasion, when I first started doing the dumb Indian routine, a time for questions was provided. And some smart-ass… there is at least one in every audience… stood up and asked, “If you’re so dumb who writes your material for you?”

Well that question blew my mind. And the answer to it, which I was not able to give him, is that my material is written for me by my experience. By what has happened to me and by what continues to happen. It is in my blood and bones and in my head.

Everyone has a genius, just as everyone has a nose and two ears and a liver. But most of us are so screwed up that our genius seldom surfaces. Or is it that most flashes of genius are so brief and bright that we are hardly ever alert enough to catch them? In any case, I have found by really listening, that most people are so wise they don’t know what they’re saying. I do my best to remember these deep insights which emerge so casually from people – so frequently in the guise of nonsense. I accept and cherish the gifts my friends give me. Later, perhaps, under the right circumstances, some of that remembrance may be resurrected in me and caught on tape.

I also have a partner who writes and who prefers to remain anonymous. And my partner and I feel we have something special going for us. You see, neither of us has had the benefit of much formal education so we are pretty dumb. So dumb that there is only one thing that we know for sure. And that is… We don’t know what to do. The condition of the world has convinced us that nobody else knows what to do either. Which means that the essential difference between most other people and us is that they think they know what to do… and we know we don’t know what to do. Picture a whole world full of people who think they know what they are doing.

People are so rigorously trained to believe that they know what to do that many of them are also convinced that they also know what everyone else should do. Picture the Pentagon filled with people who have delusions of that kind. Think of people like that in Ottawa, in schools and in churches. There is a Latin term for that particular condition: status quo. Freely translated, it means: “The mess we are in”.

The importance of not knowing what to do is that it makes the way clear for things to happen. Happenings are no longer blocked by expertise. As I indicated, my partner and I enjoy an advantage in that we both dropped out of school at an early age. The result is neither of us has to fit the category of engineer or lawyer or sociologist or psychologist. We are both “nobodies”. And what that means is that people expect less of us because we are “unqualified”.

One of the depressing features of Western Society is that is it studded with organizations. The churches alone have spawned enough organization to keep everyone busy on committees for the next thousand years. And each of these organizations has a program committee. With the result that all young Indians who leave the reserve and attempt to enter mainstream society suddenly find themselves in demand as public speakers.

Indians are in. And once-upon-a-time I found myself speaking before dinner, speaking after dinner, speaking in the afternoon, attending seminars and appearing on panels. I was bushed. Nobody ever worked harder or got paid less than I did during my public speaking period. I know my listeners didn’t hear anything from all the talking I did. But I learned a whole lot. I learned, for example, that although I spoke as Wilf Peltier the audience heard an Indian.

Blocking any real communication between me and my listeners was a curtain which they made me fit behind and which was something called “Indian”. Next I was astonished to discover that although no Indian had ever asked me to speak for him, I had suddenly become an “Indian spokesman”. A little while later I was horrified to learn that although no Indian had asked me, I had also become an “Indian Leader”.

Lastly, I realized that most people didn’t hear me. Most of the people I met professed an interest in what they called the “Indian Problem”. And they came to hear me with their heads already programmed on the whole Indian bit. That’s when I gave up and retreated from the do-gooder scene. I was angry, frustrated, embittered and I felt pretty lonely. But after a while I began to laugh about it all… because it was really funny and, fortunately, I had friends to share my laughter with.

Indians don’t need any help from Whites. All they need is relief from them. Relief from White assumptions, White attitudes and White good intentions. Some of us seem to have found the relief we need in laughter. And that is how the whole monologue thing happened.
I hope I have found a way to share my relief with you. Laughter is a great teacher. You learn from it with your gut more than your head. And what you learn as you are laughing is that nothing should be taken seriously except, perhaps, food and drink. When the Western world learns the art of conquest by laughter, Peace will descend upon us and bless us. And we will accept the presence of Peace as naturally and easily as we now accept the blessing of sunlight.

History – I’m no historian… I’m not even educated, so of course, don’t know anything. But I can’t help having impressions. This is history according to Wilf Peltier. All the history you people know about America is what has been recorded by Europeans and descendants of Europeans in the last 400 years. But the history I am going to give you is what I have seen and heard from people who were here thousands of years before that.

It is my impression that the reason North America was discovered in the first place was that conditions were so bad in Europe that many of those people felt they just had to go somewhere. At that time there were thousands of thieves and robbers and misfits who were on the lam, and needed a place to hide out. So these malcontents and criminals were what we now call “the pioneers”.

The discovery of America came as a surprise to my people. They weren’t expecting anyone to discover America right then. Columbus was not expecting to discover America either but that is another story. The reason all that came as a surprise was that my people didn’t even know they needed help.

Well I guess you know who really needed help – it was those pioneers. They were so incompetent… they couldn’t even feed themselves. If my people hadn’t looked after them and shown them how to grow corn and hunt and fish they would have all died. Well anyway, they didn’t all die, but they didn’t feel all that good either. In fact they felt worse than they did before they left Europe. Maybe what made them feel so bad was having to accept help from savages and heathens.

When you feel bad there are a lot of things you can do to try to feel right. Some people take castor oil. Some people take alcohol. Some people join service clubs. Some get a shampoo and a set. Some kick dogs. But those pioneers didn’t do any of those things. What they did was import black people from Africa. They did that because that made it possible for them to feel superior to the blacks.

They could feel that the blacks were sort of worse off than them and they could develop a whole industry around keeping them that way. So when they got in that position, where there were two entire races – Indians and Blacks – who were worse off than them – dumber, poorer and more miserable and hopeless, then, of course that made them feel a lot better.

But you know those pioneers and their descendants were still not satisfied. They just didn’t seem to be able to get feeling good enough. So, by and by they brought in some Chinese. And all those Chinese were brought in to build the railroad. They were called coolies. That is because in those days it was cool to travel by rail.

Then they brought in some Japanese. All this made them feel better and better. And this worked pretty good at first because the dumb Indians and Blacks and Chinese and Japanese were so impressed by the White man’s wealth and technical skill and knowledge and industry. But after a while these put-down minorities refused to stay put down. They began to make trouble and became what is called “problems”. So then the Whites had the Indian problem on their hands… and the black problem and so on.

Living alongside the White Man, they had got to know him pretty well, and the better they got to know him, the less they enjoyed feeling less than him. Finally, they decided nobody would want to feel lower or less than a white man, and many became filled with a strong desire to feel as good as the White Man. Later on this feeling became known as equality.

So all kinds of people began making speeches and campaigning and electing each other because that is how you get equality. It is called politics. But my people were so dumb they didn’t understand how to do politics. In fact we didn’t even have a word for that. They had been managing their affairs for thousands of years and all that time they didn’t even know that you can’t manage your affairs without government.

They didn’t know you have to have a parliament building, a place for government to happen in. Because if you don’t have a place like that , then it won’t happen. You have to fill those buildings with members of parliament by holding elections and campaigns for office.

Can you imagine how dumb we were! We didn’t even think to have a National Harbours Board – and we had all those canoes. We didn’t even know about collecting taxes – hell, we hadn’t even thought up money.

We were so dumb we didn’t even know that government is the triumph of the majority of the people over the minority. And that division of the community is the control of power.

Even our oldest and wisest counselors thought government had something to do with common good. We didn’t even know that it takes power to govern. We were so dumb, we thought all you needed in order to govern was… it embarrasses me to say it… wisdom and compassion.

My people were so dumb they didn’t even know that you have to have a united country. They didn’t realize that you can’t allow separatism. You have to be united politically and economically even though you don’t like each other. But we did have racial prejudice to contend with because over there… beyond those hills… there were people living over there who looked human but they weren’t the same because… well… they talked funny. And my people, didn’t realize you see, that what you have to do is go over there and teach those people to talk right, because if you don’t do that you’ve got separatism and you can’t allow that.

But that was only in the real early days. After Columbus, we learned… from White scholars… (those are people who study primitive societies)… that those people who talked funny were really distant relatives of ours. To us, that meant that they were relatively human. And I suppose they must have thought the same thing about us.

Another thing we learned from those scholars was that the name of our distant relatives was Sioux. Even their toughest and bravest warriors were all called by that girl’s name… Sioux. My people thought that was pretty funny. They laughed about that for over seven generations. Some of the old people are still laughing about that, even today. My people were very mixed up about Government. They thought that decisions affecting all the people should be made by the wisest and most experienced and bravest people in the community. As a result, their way of doing things got all the wise and experienced people in the positions of authority and management.

We just didn’t know that a proper democratic system should attract the most ambitious men in the community… the most egotistical… those who are most convinced they know what is the best for everyone and who want to run other people’s lives. And we still are learning about politics even today.

Just a few years ago the Conservatives decided to change their name to Progressive Conservative. Remember that? Well the people up in my community got a communication from Ottawa, announcing the change of name and they had a meeting about that. They wanted to try to understand what that really meant. One man thought progressive conservative must mean that the party is getting progressively more and more conservative. But hardly anyone agreed with this. After much discussion a consensus was reached that what it really meant was going forward while going backward. Which comes out as standing still. And of course, everyone knows that isn’t what it means at all.

I don’t want to make excuses, but it is true we didn’t have any books to learn from. Some say that long before Columbus came, we did invent paper but no one thought to invent writing to go on the paper – let alone printing. So we used up all the paper for paper planes. And literacy was forgotten. I don’t know whether that is true. But if it is, it proves we invented the airplane long before the Wright Brothers.

Anyway, we thought knowing was inherent… just there, in your brains…like blood in veins or sight in eyes or hearing in ears.

We didn’t realize that knowing is all in books and that if you don’t know how to read and have no books your brain will just remain vacant and you will never know anything. We really were in a bad way. All we knew how to read was smoke, and animal footprints, and clouds… things like that.

We didn’t know either that before learning can take place, you have to have a place of learning to go on in. You can’t have learning going on just anywhere… all over the place.. you have to control that. So you have to have a place for that and people running that place… we know now that is called a school.

We also know now that you have to have certified teachers. You see, we were so dumb we didn’t understand there are some people who know everything – these are called teachers… and some people who don’t know anything – called students. I guess we thought learning could just happen somehow, like springtime just sort of happens, and the whole earth bursts into bloom.

One of the results of having no schools, or teachers, or blackboards, or desks – no system of education – was that no one had any degree. So we had no way of telling who was who. We had no way of knowing who was smart and who was dumb. And there was a further result of that, which was really serious. Everyone was automatically, sort of… well… equal.

Of course, Indian Affairs is doing all it can through providing educational opportunities to make it possible for us to achieve equality. We just didn’t know that first, we had to learn to feel unequal or inferior. Some of us are now beginning to understand how important this feeling of inferiority is. If you don’t feel inferior to anyone you haven’t found out where you are on the totem pole of high-rise relationships. You haven’t begun to feel dissatisfied with yourself, and your position in life. Man, you haven’t even got any ambition. And without that you just aren’t going to make any progress.

My people never knew or had any position in life except the face of the earth – stretching away from them in all directions forever. And they lived there laterally – on one level with each other and with all things. They looked up only to trees and eagles. Their position in life was under the sky and the sun. It has been difficult for my people to learn about inferiority and inequality.

So maybe it isn’t true to say we were dumb. We just seem to have always had everything turned wrong way around, so that whenever we went forward we were really going backward. How can you progress that way? Progress depends on being faced in the right direction. On knowing where you are going.

By reading our own footprints we could always tell where we had come from. But there were never any footprints into the future. In fact, we had no future. In our language, the closest word we had to future was sort of an arc or circle. Our going was part of the arc of a circle. So was our coming, we were so dumb we didn’t know progress only takes place straight ahead.

We walked in circles I guess. Our footprints out of yesterday were also footprints into tomorrow. All that was a pretty bad hangup because if your idea of life is that you just wander around… with your friends… and you are not really on tracks… going somewhere… you can’t have any goals and that means you’re not going to have any ambition either and you know what that means. That means you’re a bum… a good-for-nothing.

So you can see how much we had to learn. We had the wrong idea about everything. We had to learn everything all over again. One of the discouraging things is that we don’t seem to be able to learn very fast. Even though Indian Affairs spends over a 100 some million a year to educate us… putting up schools, providing a desk for each person to learn at, and books, and hiring teachers and everything like that… we still hardly know anything.

Maybe one of the reasons we have learned so slowly is that we have had to learn English or some other European language before education could begin. We found if we tried to learn, using our own language we ran out of words. In fact we just didn’t have the right words.

Like equality, for example… we didn’t have any word for that. We just had equality… but we didn’t know we had it.
And compassion. We had no word for that either. We just didn’t have any poor people… but we didn’t know we were rich.

We still experience equality, of course, even today. But this is equality, white style. We get just as much strontium 90 in our milk as anybody – and just as much smog in our air.

When Columbus arrived here, what he found was a lot of people who talked funny and lived on all this property… two continents of property. That’s a lot of property. But they were so dumb they didn’t even know they owned that. They didn’t have any titles for any of that. They had no fences.

They had no signs saying: “Private Property” or “Keep Out” or “Trespassers will be prosecuted”. Nobody knew whose property was which. It was probably the biggest real estate mess the world has ever seen.

But that’s what made it possible for Columbus to “discover” America for the King of Spain. Because if Columbus had been met with signs saying: “Private Property” or “Keep Out” – he would simply have turned around and gone back to Spain. He would have told King Phillip: “too bad. But America is not just inhabited, it is already owned”. And that’s the job those early pioneers took on straightening out that real estate mess for all the dumb people.

That took a lot of courage because you can’t just start right in and do that. You can’t do that without also doing education and politics and religion and courts of law and police and armies and civil war and marriage and violence and pollution, and railways and highways… so people can get away from it all… and cities so people can come together in order to be apart… and all that costs a lot of money… so that was a big job those pioneers took on.

When Columbus arrived he saw this problem and knew he would have to go back to Spain and bring in some real estate men. So that’s what he did. When they arrived, the whole situation seemed so strange they had trouble deciding how to tackle the job. But the Indians solved that for them.

What happened was that after being cheated and enslaved and murdered and betrayed and otherwise insulted for a number of years some of my people began to suspect that the whites thought they were better that Indians. So one day some of the Indians asked about this and the real estate men said: “Yes”, that was so, that they were better because they were civilized. And the Indians said: “What does that mean? We don’t have any word for civilized”. And the whites said: “Well, what that means is that you are savages”.

But my people still didn’t understand and so they said: “But what does that really mean?” And the real estate men said: “That means you have no proper realization that human beings are not animals. In evidence of which – you do not dress properly, sometimes, indeed, you go about entirely naked. You do not instruct your children properly but let them grow up as if they were puppies. Above all, you are not Christians and are therefore, damned:. And my people said: “Oh”, and they went away.

But after a while they came back and asked the real estate men, “How can we get civilized?” So the white real estate men said: “That’s very easy”. Then they took my people away out in the bush… in the wilderness… and they surveyed out a little square of land and they said: “Now that’s your property. And when you have property, that is the beginning of becoming civilized. There are lots of other things you will have to do before you become civilized… like getting your babies baptized and getting educated and getting married and getting jobs… but at least you have now made a beginning”.

So my people moved onto their property and for a while, they felt pretty good about being property owners. Then the priests came on my people’s property and built churches, so they could get baptized and married, and schools so they could become educated, and houses for the teachers and priests to live in.

But when they didn’t even consult my people about putting up those buildings on our property, we became very confused about property. Then after awhile my people noticed that their property was very poor… rocky and barren. So they went once again to the real estate men, who were now living inside fences, on the bottomlands, by the rivers, and they asked about this.

“You are hunters”, the real estate men told them. “And we are farmers. We need good land. You do not. When you become civilized enough to be farmers like us, we will be glad to sell you some of this good bottomland”.

And my people said: “But we don’t have any of your money”. And the real estate men said: “Just bring us some beaver pelts”. And maybe this is how the fur trade got started. Anyway this is one of our legends.

It took us a long time to learn about civilization and we still have a lot to learn. For example: only recently we realized that in order to be civilized you had to have garbage. We always had a few little things around, but just scraps and bones… no cans or bottles or plastic… so we never knew that stuff was garbage. We thought that was dog food. Maybe we thought that because the dogs ate it. We didn’t know until very recently that dog food comes in tins and you buy it in a store.

The worse result of being so dumb about garbage was that we passed up the chance for a lot of employment… you know all that collection business… garbage men and garbage trucks and dump managers and city hall and all that. But then, that was really because we didn’t know you had to have jobs.

The result was that my people were all unemployed. So before Columbus, the entire North and South America economy operated on the principle of total unemployment. Think of what an easy life we could have if we had only thought of unemployment insurance.

We were so dumb that until recently, we didn’t know that before you can relieve yourself, you gotta have a sewer. For unknown generations… nobody knows how long… we went around relieving ourselves just anywhere – like animals, you might say. Now we are beginning to learn that you have to have a bathroom before you can go to the bathroom. That seems logical And the bathroom has to be connected to a sewer. And that sewer has to dump into the nearest river.

Another problem my people had was religion. My people were so dumb they didn’t even know you have to have something called religion in order to make out. They didn’t even have a word for that. They didn’t know about all that hierarchy of saints and intermediaries and bishops and priests. They were so dumb they believed mostly in themselves. That was a real bad hang up our people had.

It was a real tough job to try to unlearn all that. I guess if we had known about God soon enough that would have helped. If we had known He was around, we would have tried to find him I suppose, so our kids could relate to Him somehow. But now it seems too late. He doesn’t seem to be around anymore. Some people even say He died.

We were so dumb we didn’t know the difference between the Sabbath or those other six days. The result was that, for us, every day of the week was sacred. We didn’t know there was any difference.

But maybe that really didn’t matter all that much… because we didn’t even have any weeks. Just sunshine and darkness. The flow of time to meet appointments with warmth and cold. The flow of life… our lives through seasons of fullness and plenty… periods of leanness and hunger.

We didn’t know that religion was singing hymns and hearing sermons and taking up collections, building churches, and running bingo games and sending missionaries to heathen countries.

We were very confused about church worship. So we did foolish things… like going out in the bush without anything to eat for two or three weeks. And then we had these strange dreams and heard voices and had visions. You see, we didn’t know those were hallucinations. Now we know what those are. And we know people like that need help, and have to be taken care of.

We were so dumb we didn’t know you have to be trained clergyman before you can practice religion. We had some other people who heard voices and had visions all the time but we didn’t know those people were insane and should be put away. Instead of that we sort of allowed them to be there. And you know what happened. Those crazy people became spiritual leaders in the community.

We didn’t know what religion was all about. We actually thought it was a joyous celebration of life. And all the time it was really a solemn commemoration of death. We didn’t know you had to have churches to do that in… and statues and crucifixes and replicas of death martyrs.

We were so dumb we didn’t know about original sin. We thought we were born pure and innocent. And so, we didn’t know about salvation either. Think of all those millions of Indians, before Columbus, who died in sin. There must be a real population problems in hell. We were so dumb we didn’t have any conscience. Hell, none of us was able to feel guilty. And if you don’t feel guilty how can you know what’s right? Man, you can see what that sort of dumbness leads to. You aren’t going to get into heaven – That’s for sure. If you don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong – where you’re going to get to is in jail. You see ignorance is no excuse.

So that is sort of a thumb-nail history of my people in their relations with European immigrants… or pioneers. If I had more time there are lots of other things I could tell you about. Like housing, for example. You know, my people made out with teepees. And we could talk about cities.

And identity. You know, that is pretty important. Knowing who you are. And maybe my people have never really been threatened by Whites except in the sense of who they are. Who am I?

Before the coming of Columbus, I had no trouble knowing who I was. I was one of the people, an Odawa. I suppose I knew that in much the same way that the beavers who lived near us knew they were beavers and the bears knew they were bears and the wolves knew they were wolves. And none of us animals got mixed up about that. We all just did our own thing. We learned a lot about how to live from other animals and maybe they learned some useful things from us.

After Columbus I begin to run into trouble about who I am. First, I was told I was an Indian. Then I learned I was a heathen and a savage. Then I began to hear about a lot of things that I “ought to” become That got me into a turmoil that was all about “becoming”.

Up to that time all I knew was, I am. I didn’t know it was possible to become anything different from what I am. I didn’t even know that if you don’t become somebody, you will always be nobody.

So I was told I ought to become baptized and I ought to become educated and I ought to be civilized and I ought to get married and I ought to learn a trade and get a job and a whole lot more “ought to’s” that were all supposed to have something to do with who I am.

As I pointed out, I still have a lot to learn. But one thing I don’t have to learn is: When people forget who they are, when they no longer know who they are, they begin creating a categorical identity – not only for themselves, but for everything and everyone else. Western Europeans and their transplanted American descendants have forgotten who they are. They forgot a long time ago. I don’t know who helped them forget. All I know is that their way of getting around this problem is by each person becoming a categorical somebody.

The way this works out is – what you do is who you are. So white adults are all plumbers, electricians, farmers, dentists, teachers or clergymen. All of them are really engineers of one kind or another. And I have great difficulty ever meeting any white people. All I usually meet is vocational components. Only occasionally do I meet a real, live, white person and that is always a real great experience for both of us.

I said I came to the city to see what I could learn. I guess I have to say that, in any final sense, what I have learned is not about Indians or Whites – but about human beings and human values. What I really learned is all about me. It is all out of my own experience. It is how I feel about being me in the world of today. And that is identity.

Who am I? People who know who they are have an inclusive identity. They leave nothing out and exclude no one. But people who have forgotten who they are, try to make up for their loss of identity or self by manufacturing and externalizing substitutes for human qualities.

When people no longer feel just – here – within themselves, court houses appear in the land; and codes of law and lawyers to interpret the laws and police to enforce the law.

And justice is lost in the confusion of the law industry.

When people no longer feel learned – school houses appear in every community; text books are printed and teachers are trained to interpret the textbooks – children become regulated and set in rivalry, against each other.

And wisdom is lost in the confusion of the education industry.

When people no longer feel reverent – churches appear everywhere. And arguments arise over the nature of the utmost… and people split up into a crazy quilt of cults called denominations.

And you and I become lost in the confusion of the religion industry. All that is called organization.

Think about it. Think about it as it applies to the great human exchanges – to survival – the means by which we sustain each other. Think about it as it applies to food. To shelter and to clothing.
To health;.
To love.
“Let us try to remember who we are.”
By Grandfather Wil