An apology

Come on in. I know it's raining but I've thrown back the skins to get as much clean new air into the den as possible. I love thunderstorms. The tend to get me all riled up, filled with the energy of the storm.

So I know I'm not a big fan of apologies. I find them useless for the most part. But there are some times when someone has to step up and say what has not been said and give a clear accounting of themselves. As such, I wish to clarify something about the debacle at the FNUC.

You see, we screwed up. By we I mean First Nations people. For far too long we have allowed our leaders to practice unfettered greed and personal power to our detriment. We sat by passively and allowed others to tell us what we should do and then did nothing ourselves. We were apparently satisfied with the status quo, hoping that someone would come along and fix it.

Well they did. They fixed it so we may end up losing a great institution. The provincial and federal governments came in and took away our funding because it was being abused. And they had good reason to.

So to the rest of Canada, since no one else will say it, I say we're sorry for fucking up. We're going to try to do better, and expect no one to recognize that until it is done. We fucked up and we're sorry.

On a related note, and possibly more sarcastic and inflamitory, I'd like to apologize for a few other things.

We are sorry, that as a people who have been subjected to a hundred years of genocide, that we are downtrodden and used to being abused to the point that we accept any abuse, even those from our own people.

We are sorry that as a part of that genocide you took our children, people who are now adults and in positions of leadership, and stole their identity. You made them into copies of your culture yet rejected from that structure so they had nothing to tie themselves to. They are forced into a mindset lacking any moral grounding and can do nothing but satisfy their own base needs.

We are sorry that as a part of this stealing of our culture and history we now have a generational gap that must be overcome and with the few elders left, our young men and women are having to relearn their culture and become proper members of their community.

We are sorry that Canada has to wait while we overcome the difficulties of repairing our culture after various acts of genocide. We respect that patience is not always there and as such we may just do things our way and make others wait while we figure this out for ourselves.

We are sorry that we cannot take your examples of civilization because all we have been introduced to are the elements that have tried to destroy us and as such we find your civilization questionable.

We are sorry that we have given Canada such a shameful history and black eye in the international community, one that Canada hides on a constant basis, by not laying down and dying under your efforts of genocide. We should have told you at the outset that adaptation and survival are the two biggest imperatives of our various cultures and histories and that eventually we would figure out how to get by despite Canada's attempt to destroy us.

And finally I, as an individual who identifies as a half breed, am very sorry that I must be the one to point out the mistakes on both sides. I know I don't get to stand with either side, instead I must stay out here with the rest of the outcasts, and try to get either side to listen. I leave you with a poem.

Song of the Breed
by Carroll Arnett/Gogisgi

Don't offend
the fullbloods,
don't offend
the whites,
stand there in
the middle
of the god-
damned road
and get hit.