The Poetry of Truth

Dedication

In profound gratitude for the healing power of loving connections

To my wife Dora, to our children and to our grandchildren

To our families and to our friends

Natika and Jeremy

Noah and Sam

Dhani and Caroline

Jahliana, Adina, Candace and Mosiyah

Janik et Jean-François

Himalaya et Caleb

When ancestral wisdom inspires the loving hearts of children to form a sacred circle of all nations

Let truth flow like an endless river of natural spring water as a gift of life to future generations

Cover design: Minnie Matoush and Janik Sunstrum

Website design and graphics: Jacko Otter

Editor-Publisher: Ewart Walters

Introduction

Ray Sunstrum’s passionate concern for human rights, distress over issues of overt and systemic racism and injustice, and celebration of the spirit of human dignity, are strongly expressed in this collection of stories and experiences. Here he explores many examples of contemporary manifestation of ugly zones of encounter between clichéd communities: the establishment and mainstream, the marginalized and downtrodden.

Hidden behind the discursive descriptions lie realities that modern societies must come to terms with: Visible Minorities are in fact now the majorities, but the legacy of centuries of colonization and oppression still rears its head. His calls for a transformation of relations are at times painfully shrill and acute; at the same time, he is also able to celebrate the irrepressible creativity of human potential.

He explores a range of stories about the painful impact of racism on individuals, families and communities, and his powerful expressions of frustration and urgency will require us all to engage directly with our own hearts and heads to ascertain how we can contribute to social transformation, and the animation of a culture of accommodation, justice and dignity for all. Through such an effort, he suggests, we shall find our pathways to both self-respect and inter-personal respect.

It is the deep desire for a culture of inclusion that inspires his writing, and we shall all find something to contemplate about the potential and dignity of the human spirit in this book.

Romola Thumbadoo

Co-ordinator

The Circle of All Nations

Foreword

Today is a cold, beautiful day of fresh fallen snow and blue skies with a few white clouds. The drive up the Gatineau Hills is a welcoming home to pay our tribute to our spirit names and clans. Today, I am very honoured to have crossed your path, my brother, Blue Thunderbird Man. As my memory fades, I can’t remember our first meeting. I am sure you will remind me as you always do. Foremost, I would like to say chi-meegwetch (many thanks) for helping me get up to the hills to honour my spirit name and clan. It has been a very enduring process for me. I am grateful to have a brother who acts so unselfishly, caring and motivated to continue our journey in celebration of ceremony.

Many thanks are shared by our connectedness to Mother Earth, and all her creation. I have learned so much about honouring ceremony, and the strength we receive of prayer, thankfulness of shared teachings.

I have come to admire the courage it takes to Speak Out against racism in all its forms, and manifestations in the public domain, namely, remembering the conference that connected like-minded people to share their stories, and to have your family be a huge part in opening those hidden doors of racism.

I especially enjoyed the visiting Elders who shared their teachings to the Elementary and Secondary students in Hull, which is now the City of Gatineau.

And, of course, my most cherished moments are the visitations we had with the late Grandfather William Commanda. No matter how busy our working lives have been, I am glad you always reminded me of our meeting with Grandfather and Romola.

As my tears fall onto these pages, it is with gratitude that I hold in my heart the events that came about because of all the work you have invested in bringing people together to hear our First Nations Elders speak and share their teachings.

I am happy and honoured to be an adopted sister to you. When I first met you, you reminded me of my oldest late brother who passed to the spirit world at the ripe age of thirty-six. Like you, he was open-minded, cared deeply about others, and was always mindful of the rights of the less privileged.

Through your writings in this book, I commend you for letting us into your connections to your spiritual elders, your personal trials and tribulations, and continuing to share our Medicine Wheel teachings of humility, generosity, love, respect, courage, wisdom … Keeping the circle strong.

Minnie Matoush

Flying Eagle Woman

Preface

In essence, The Poetry of Truth – La Poésie de la Vérité is the story of a Canadian of European background choosing to oppose racism openly, using his knowledge, his experience and social work skills in an attempt to protect his wife and children of non-European background from racist abuse. It documents some serious frustrations, some successes and some inadequacies encountered in his determined efforts to fulfill his responsibilities as a parent committed to the protection of his family. Sharing his experiences in both poetry and prose, he seeks to prepare a better world for his grandchildren while trying to help heal the racial divide in Canada. He refers to some of the struggles he encounters in his work while focusing on anti-racism education, human rights, intercultural understanding and racial harmony.

I am that Canadian whose White-privileged perspective on racism has evolved over time with travel and exposure to other cultures. The Poetry of Truth– La Poésie de la Vérité is my story. Working outside Canada as a young volunteer teacher suddenly awakened my awareness of the imposition of racism in a colony on the threshold of independence. Subsequently, on my return to my homeland, my interracial marriage opened my eyes quite a bit wider as I began to experience racial discrimination’s intrusive impact on family life. Both of these experiences led me to become ever more conscious of the oppressive nature of racism and, coincidentally, ever more conscious of the fact of its constant presence in colonial systems in and outside of Canada. So it was that I learnt to see more clearly, to better understand and to appreciate the value of justice and truth, and the need for reconciliation in race relations.

Our grandchildren’s ancestral roots include First Nations peoples of both North and South America. They are connected by the blood of their ancestors to the Anishinabeg (the Algonquin, the Carib, the Mi’kmaq and the Mohawk) to the peoples of Africa, of China, of Europe, and of India. The term Indian on the American continents refers to the mistake Columbus made, when he set out for India and unknowingly ended up elsewhere. It is not what people indigenous to these lands call themselves. In Algonquin Territory where we live, Indigenous Peoples call themselves Anishinabeg (the people); the singular form is Anishinabe.

My determination to denounce racism, to promote intercultural understanding, racial harmony and respect of human rights springs from that knowledge, those experiences and from the combined strength of the various ancestral roots of our family tree. It also springs from the experience of powerful resistance encountered when demanding our right to respect, without equivocation.

For centuries elite classes in European countries competed with one another to invade, conquer, dominate, enslave and otherwise exploit Indigenous Peoples elsewhere. They arrogantly, greedily and most aggressively set out to take unilateral control of the people, the land and the combined natural resources of Africa, the Americas, Australia, China, India and other lands. Racial discrimination was institutionalized on an international scale, and militarily reinforced, as a legal weapon of intimidation and control targeting Indigenous populations. It is still used for that purpose today.

If successful intercultural, interethnic, and interracial communications are more difficult today in Canada it is due, in part it seems, to conflicting narratives or European perspectives presented as fact, as reflected in the historical content of provincially controlled school text books. I realized this as a child when I compared the version I’d received in a Québec elementary school with that received by my Ontario cousins. Agreement on objective facts is non-existent due to long-standing unresolved conflict and the differing perspectives of the nations involved.

As a result, when questioning European occupiers about the abusive treatment of the Indigenous Peoples, getting an unbiased version of historical fact becomes much more complicated. Language difficulties seem to lessen significantly for various colonizers when it comes to the facts of colonization; suddenly those opposing conquerors appear to settle their differences temporarily. For example, both the French and the English occupiers fabricate a similar White-washed version of The First Nations centuries-long experience of violently abusive subjugation, with the exception that one group of colonizers claims that the other side mistreated the Indigenous Nations much worse than the opposing group.

This then raises the question of credibility, of course. Credibility is particularly pertinent, when considering that the Anishinabeg First Nations, Inuit and Métis’ experience of colonization is significantly excluded from the Canadian history curriculum and text books used in elementary and secondary schools, as though Indigenous Peoples had been summarily dismissed by colonial authorities as historically insignificant, or as though the fact of their existence was of no educational value to Canadian children.

Yet it is much worse than that! Until very recently, our history books, repeatedly approved by the provincial Ministries of Education in publicly funded elementary school systems, referred to Indigenous Peoples as Savages. This is a shameful part of the Canadian history of race relations that needs to be fully addressed on our pathway to reconciliation. Hiding our history of racism under a rug won’t solve the problems that the system of colonialism created; neither will name-calling.

A decision to permit racist words or expressions in school texts affects us all, in negative, hurtful and degrading manners for too many years to come.

If we are unsatisfied with the official answers we receive when we complain about racism, we need to come together to determine a variety of means to find just and reasonable, non-racist and non-violent ways to deal appropriately with the problems engendered by that most deadly combination of foreign control, racism and excessive greed that is known as colonization. We need to equip ourselves with the means to weed out much more effectively those who continue to abuse their authority in the exercise of power as racist-colonial masters or as misfits. Consequently, as Canadians, we need to free ourselves from racial words, expressions and behaviours in order to free ourselves from abusive race relations inherent in the colonial systems of government to which we have been exposed and enmeshed either as victims or as abusers, or as both.

A further content analysis would seem to indicate that the curriculum is solely concerned with presenting a false-but-positive image in order to elevate and maintain the elite European classes as legitimate rulers in Canada; it is, in reality, little more than propaganda seemingly conceived for the arrogant and greedy self-interests of the opportunistic colonizers. Thus, European-Christian occupiers seek to protect the material possessions garnered from Indigenous Peoples, hoarded for their White descendants for generations to come.

The Canadian government legalized its complicity with colonialism when it made the racist "Indian Act" the law of the land. Canadian law was approved in England. Solutions are often self-evident when a problem is well defined, clearly identified. So we have a very serious need to question elite educational officials about the purpose of racist expressions authorized by them for use in the classroom. Élites still have a stake, obviously, in passing along that racial system to yet another generation of Canadian children.

In other words, the colonial scholar’s truth (the history books as approved repeatedly by various provincial ministries of education) was deliberate untruth designed to be implanted in the minds of youth, designed strategically to maintain the mindset of this system of racial oppression. Thus, the conquerors (either English or French upper class) were put on a pedestal while the Indigenous People of the land we call Canada, the Anishinabeg, people of African origins and other people of colour were relegated to the bottom rungs to be trod upon, or to be put down repeatedly. At least that’s how it was when I went to school.

When the history of Canada was written, the facts about the invasion were White-washed so that the school curriculum content systematically presented a distorted version of the truth concerning colonized peoples. Thus, history books were designed to elevate the colonizer to a pedestal of power while diminishing respect for the original people of the land, (the Anishinabeg), displaced by European invaders. It is clear that the wording is deliberate racist abuse designed to facilitate the imposition of an elevated superior status for the foreign occupiers. This is a divide and conquer tactic to impose a foreign hierarchical class structure in the colony, to protect and preserve the public image of the colonizing European elite class. In such a state, respect for human rights does not exist; nor does respect for truth.

This state of affairs historically became known, and eventually normalized as unchangeable, simply the status quo in Canada. In the colonial system, lighter-skinned people exclusively occupy the elite or privileged class, relegating darker skinned peoples to the deprived lower echelons of colonial society. So it is that the upper class makes the rules and regulations to maintain and to protect that exclusive position of White privilege while imposing restrictive barriers limiting the lower classes to the confines of poverty. In this way, the elite classes control the lives and the real estate of Indigenous peoples, the content of the history books, the propaganda as well as the educational, social, political, commercial, economic, military and judicial systems geared to maintain the hierarchical form of race relations that is known as White supremacy.

Clearly, there is a choice that still needs to be made in Canada with respect to justice in race relations between colonial objectives with the imposition of the elite-class hierarchical system maintaining inequity and inequality and the goals of democracy: equality and equity.

And still, the intensity as well as the frequency of our children’s experiences with racism at school, and my experiences with some of my professional colleagues, astounded me, making me feel very frustrated and angry at times. However, the Medicine Wheel teachings at Kiche Anishinabe Kumik Elders Lodge and the teachings of Indigenous Elder William Commanda on forgiveness, both within the National Capital Region of Canada and my hometown, brought me gradually to a place of understanding and peace. An unexpected invitation to join an Aboriginal poetry circle gave me a path to follow. The Poetry of Truth – La Poésie de la Vérité is the fruit of my journey through thorns, blemishes and good medicine.

– Ray Sunstrum

Prologue

This is my recording and my analysis of official response to our daughter’s experience, when she courageously stood alone to challenge the imposition of racism at her high school. The Poetry of Truth – La Poésie de la Vérité is my way of informing others about Janik’s very determined opposition to the term tête de nègre (in English, niggerhead or negro-head) used by her teacher from a French grammar exercise book, Grévisse de la langue française, with which the students were working in class. School authorities reacted to our complaint by attempting a cover-up, labeling Janik as a trouble-maker; clearly a classic case of blaming the victim, isolating her from her classmates and friends while intensifying harassment consequent to her objection in an aggressive and obstinate attempt to dissuade her and her parents from pursuing our complaint. This is also an effort to understand and record the very offensive official harassment of a child by church and state authorities in modern society.

In retrospect, given the history of residential schools in Canada and the aggressive abuse therein of Canada’s First Nations families and children with the complicity of church and state authorities, what happened to our daughter in a Catholic school is not so surprising. Both our daughter’s experience and the residential school experiences were inflicted deliberately by the same malicious colonial forces.

Both were designed to devalue some people while at the same time resurrecting, propping up, protecting and maintaining the class-based, elite colonial system with Europeans (and their White descendants) in the dominant position, exercising the power of White privilege economically, socially, judicially, politically, religiously and unquestionably in Canada. The Anishinabeg nations and nations of African origin are traditionally the preferred targets of those engaging in racial exclusion, violence and discrimination, being relegated repeatedly to inferior positions in the socio-economic-political power structures of colonial society in the Americas, in Africa and elsewhere.

These preferred traditional targets are perhaps seen as the biggest threat to colonial forces. Perhaps because they know first-hand the destructive nature of the elite colonial powers, they pose a threat of exposing that truth to those of us who have learned for so very long to turn a blind eye to the violent abuse inherent in that system.

So much so that we have forgotten that we have the power to see and understand what is happening behind the scenes in the colony. Hidden behind the pomp and ceremony is found its White supremacist agenda, the authoritarian imposition of a European agenda which we are not allowed to question in a colony.

That inability or refusal (the denial response) to allow us to see or acknowledge the oppressive forces at work in modern, mainstream society greatly limits our ability to achieve reconciliation with peoples traditionally victimized by colonial injustice or racial discrimination in this democracy we call Canada. The term colonial democracy is, of course, an oxymoron; a colony is a racist dictatorship.

African wisdom suggests that to solve any problem, you first have to acknowledge that a problem exists, although denial of racism by Canadians of European extraction doesn’t allow that first step to occur.

The problem our child presented to us, which we acknowledged as parents, was not recognized as such by the school authorities. For them, denial was a choice. No problem, no solution to be found, no concern raised would be heard. Therefore, nothing would be done about it.

Truth has become a commodity in advertising, in administration, in the legal system, in education, in religion, in the Québec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission, and in Canadian judicial systems. So it is too with responsibility; the school accepted no responsibility for the use of a racist expression in class.

I met with the Principal of the school where our daughter was confronted with a racist expression. However Mr. José Novell had his answer ready when I confronted him with our concerns about the pedagogical use of that expression tête de nègre: "It’s a neutral expression, he said with a condescending air of authority. It just depends on the context."

As an answer from an educational official, that was a bit too hard to swallow. However, it was an answer that was obviously considered appropriate by the teacher Madame Isabel Nadon, the Principal, the religious organization that runs the school, the Québec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission (QHRYRC) and by the Superior Court of the province.

If a lie is repeated often enough, it is said that people will eventually come to believe it. Denial perverts truth as perpetrators seek to avoid responsibility. Just ask Judas. That appears to be true in this case as the law was laid down.

When our children were growing up, they warned their parents to read the labels before eating the food or drinking the water. Check the ingredients, they said, and if you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it. The drinking water we buy, they warned us, may once have been sewage which has been sanitized, bottled and sold for consumption. Don’t eat the meat they said because it is full of pesticides, herbicides and additives. Watch out for the bread; it’s full of them too. Truth, like the food and water our children warned us about, has been altered in this case.

So it is with labels such as tête de nègre and other racial expressions clearly in use in some Canadian institutions. Thus, labelling is also a psychological term used for categorizing people. It is to be avoided in education because it classifies students hierarchically, thus reinforcing the imposition of the European class system, which in Canada is colonialism, a safe harbour for racism. This particularly odious expression refers to the European colonial history of enslavement of people of African origins. The colonials also enslaved people Indigenous to the Americas, the Anishinabeg. Racist expressions are very abusive, referring to the European practice of converting people into commodities and religions during the colonial period so that they could be bought, sold and manipulated in the market place.

Racist labelling had its purpose in the colonial mentality, and still does in the educational system in Québec-Canada as we now know from experience. When I consulted a French teacher of Egyptian origin about the use of this expression in Janik’s class, she pointed to the words tête de or head of in English, drawing my attention to the fact that this part too, was very problematic. She said