‘Weep for your Brothers, Boy! Weep for your Brothers … ’

Te Ao Hou, 1970, Page 50

‘Weep for your Brothers, Boy! Weep for your Brothers … ’ by Peter Cresswell Peter Cresswell is a New Zealander. For the past four years, he has lived in Alberta, Canada, working in the small town of Pincher Creek (population 3,000). He became very interested in the Indian people on the nearby Peigan Reserve, and set out to learn as much as possible about their past culture, and their way of life. In August of 1968, he became the President of an organisation known as the Napi Friendship Association, working on a voluntary basis to improve White-Indian relations. In June of 1969, he became the first full-time director of the Association, and has since organised more than 30 programmes designed to create a mutual understanding. Mr Cresswell returned to New Zealand for a five-week holiday in December 1969, and during that time, investigated the possibilities of an Indian-Maori student exchange, tentatively planned for 1971. There is a folk ballad that begs mankind to understand and recognize the problems that it has nurtured in the last century — the problems that many people would prefer to turn away from, wanting neither to look at, nor to become involved with. Apathy has become a sign of the times. The silent majority are tired of Vietnam, of campus riots, of black power, and of the starving children in Biafra. The television has socked it to every North American home, and relentlessly the violence of the '60s has become a mundane, everyday thing to our jaded way of living. No one wants to hear of the Red Man's plight. He has neither the dynamics of the black people, nor the outspoken leaders of other protest groups. He lives closer to the poverty line than any other ethnic group in North America, and yet is constantly forgotten in the shuffle of power politics. The glory of western history was told with the blood of many Indians, and for protecting his rights and his land, he was termed ‘savage’. When the soldiers won a battle, it was a ‘victory’; when the red man was the victor, it was a ‘massacre’. History still brands the Indian as a thorn in the flesh of North American progress — history as it was recorded by the white man. In 1970, the Indians are still the forgotten people. They are the real North Americans, but to many they are just ‘lazy good-for-nothing drunken hoboes’. The Indians live mainly on Reservations. In Canada, the majority of Reservations are close to being depressed areas. There are few jobs, poor housing conditions, high infant mortality rates, poor communications and an atmosphere of abject depression. Not for them the shiny Cadillacs, or the latest in colour television sets. While western civilization hurries madly on its way to the stars, a race of people on our own continent sink deeper and deeper into forgotten limbo. For many, the bottle of wine is the means of escape — the means of hiding the fading pictures of a people who once had a strong culture and a great pride. The warrior in buckskin has become a grubby youth dressed in faded, patched blue jeans, staggering along some alien city's skid row. The hunter has become the labourer who handles the manual jobs that many white men scorn. The very word ‘Indian’ has become a dirty word. The statistics are staggering: The life expectancy of the Canadian Indian is 34 years; the national average is 62 years.

46 per cent of Indian families earn less than $1,000 a year; the national average is $6,142. 50 per cent of Indian children fail to reach Form 3, 61 per cent fail Form 4, 97 per cent fail to reach Form 6, and there are now only 150 in University across Canada. If they were admitted on a basis proportionate to white students, there would be 2,600. In Saskatchewan, where they comprise 3 per cent of the population, they comprise 80 per cent of the female prisoners in institutions (jail). Yet despite this degradation, the Gallup Poll revealed in 1968 that only one in three Canadians felt that our national attitude to the Indians required change. And despite these figures, the Department of Indian Affairs in Ottawa plans to phase itself out of existence in five years time. Few programmes keyed to aiding Indians alone are in existence. The attitude is one of ‘official’ non-discrimination treatment for the two races. Do special problems not require special treatment? This is the acute problem of Canada's Indian people today. It is a depressing picture, and one that is reflected in almost all of Western Canada's Indian communities. There are exceptions to the above, those who have made good against staggering odds. I wish that I could say that the successful, well-educated Indian was typical of his people. It would not be true. It may take yet another generation before education is totally accepted as being desirable by the Indian people, and repercussions are felt within the communities. The Napi Friendship Association is one of 27 centres across Canada designed to help the Indian people overcome some of the immediate problems. Many centres are in the cities and provide aid to Indian families from rural areas to relocate in the strange environment of the metropolis. Our Association, working with Indian people on their home reservation, handles a variety of different programmes all designed to promote communication and understanding between natives and non-natives. We do not believe that the Indian needs the white man to control his affairs, provide him with welfare, and make all the decisions for him. This has been the case for far too long. We do believe the Indian needs aid — encouragement and occasional assistance in controlling his own affairs, and in building today's Reservations into tomorrow's country townships. It needs understanding by the outside white folk that each Indian is an individual — and the judgement should not be made on any other basis. The Indian needs friendship — that which crumbles the race barrier, and unites the people with common interests. All this and more we can do, with no strings attached. To one who has looked at the racial harmony in New Zealand, the problems that are now facing red and white Canadians is one of gigantic proportions, without a solution in sight. To face the future with optimism is not easy to do, and yet with patience and work, the answers to problems may fall into place. We hope they do. We look forward to the day, when we can successfully phase ourselves out of existence. Twelve of the 16 Board Members for the Napi Friendship Association, pictured at a meeting on the Peigan Reserve, Alberta, Canada