January 2, 2013

Maybe 2013 will be the year that Canadians realize how much our national character has been shaped by our aboriginal legacy.

Until that realization dawns on us, we will continue to think Canada's success in multiculturalism is something we just stumbled into and that our internationally-recognized skill in solving disputes through negotiation comes from something in the water we drink.

A good place to start in that appreciation is to realize that we are a Métis nation says writer and thinker John Ralston Saul.

By Métis nation he doesn't literally mean that we all have mixed blood but that our narrative roots, the story of Canada, began long before the constitution of Canada in 1867. We are a Métis nation because English, French and Native people shaped our traditions.

Before Canada was a country, it was a federation. Now 400 years old, ours is the oldest continuous federation in the world. But the legacy of that ancient federation remains vague in Canadian consciousness for two reasons.

The first is that our early history is oral, not written and that oral legacy has not been given much credence. Too often it's discounted as mere fables.

An example of that conceit is reflected in the parlour game where a dozen or so people sit in a circle. Someone starts the game by whispering in the ear of the person next to them, and that person whispers what they thought they heard into the ear of the next, and so on. By the time that the message gets back to the person who started, it's barely recognizable; evidence of the unreliability of the spoken word.

Those kinds of biases obscure the veracity of oral traditions which have recently been recognized as genuine and legal by the Supreme Court of Canada through the Delgamuukw decision. The Supreme Court overruled a lower B.C. court who proclaimed that "broad concepts embodied in oral tradition, did not conform to juridical definitions of truth."

What the lower court failed to realize is that oral history is valid because the preservation of it is vital to oral societies, no less than to written cultures. The transmission of history is no trivial matter and those who are responsible are solemnly charged with the duty of getting it right regardless of the means.

In fact, many of the distortions of Canada's history are from written sources, not oral. Much of Canada's early written history comes from written accounts of early explorers who were eager to please sponsors back home in Europe to keep the money flowing. Those early explorers who survived only by the kindness of their aboriginal hosts where not likely to tell the truth: that they were barely hanging on and that agricultural techniques that worked in the old world did not work here; that wonderful European technologies such as the wheel were useless here and that the aboriginal technology of the canoe was superior.

The second reason that our complete history remains vague is that for the last 150 years of our 400 year-old federation, native populations have been decimated. Now that those numbers are recovering, their contributions should be recognized; ideals such as egalitarianism, balance between individual and group, and a talent for negotiation in resolving disputes.

Now that bias against oral history has been removed by the courts, maybe 2013 will be the year in which the aboriginal contributions to our collective unconsciousness will be recognized by all Canadians.


David Charbonneau is the owner of Thompson Studio
He can be reached at dcharbonneau13@shaw.ca