A Lament for Confederation
+—Chief Dan George, 1967
++ How long have I known you, Oh Canada? A hundred years? Yes, a hundred + years. And many, many tides more. And today, when you celebrate your + hundred years, Oh Canada, I am sad for all the Indian people throughout + the land. +
+ ++ For I have known you when your forests were mine; when they gave me my + meat and my clothing. I have known you in your fruits and rivers where + your fish flashed and danced in the sun, where the waters said ‘come and + eat of my abundance.’ I have known you in the freedom of your winds. And + my spirit, like your winds, once roamed this good lands. +
+ +++ ++ But in long the hundred years since the white man came, I have seen + that freedom disappear just like the salmon going mysteriously out to + sea. +
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+ The white man’s strange customs I could not understand, pressed down + upon me until I could no longer breathe. +
+ ++ When I fought to protect my home and my land, I was called a savage. + When I neither understood nor welcomed this new way of life, I was + called lazy. When I tried to rule my people, I was stripped of my + authority. +
+ ++ My nation was ignored in your history textbooks – we were less important + in the history of Canada than the buffalo that ranged the plains. I was + ridiculed in your plays and motion pictures, and when I drank your + fire-water, I got drunk – very, very drunk. And I forgot. +
+ ++ Oh Canada, how can I celebrate with you this centenary, this hundred + years? Shall I thank you for the reserves that are left me of my + beautiful forests? Shall I thank you for the canned fish of my rivers? + Shall I thank you for the loss of my pride and authority, even among my + own people? For the lack of my will to fight back? No! I must forget + what is past and gone. +
+ ++ Oh God in heaven! Give me the courage of the olden chiefs. Let me + wrestle with my surroundings. Let me once again, as in the days of old, + dominate my environment. Let me humbly accept this new culture and + through it rise up and go on. +
+ ++ Oh god, like the thunderbird of old, I shall rise again out of the sea. + I shall grab the instruments of the white man’s success – his education, + his skills, and with these new tools I shall build my race into the + proudest segment of your society. And, before I follow the great chiefs + who have gone before us, I shall see these things come to pass. +
+ ++ I shall see our young braves and our chiefs sitting in the house of law + and government, ruling and being ruled by the knowledge and freedoms of + our great land. So shall we shatter the barriers of our isolation. So + shall the next hundred years be the greatest in the proud history of our + tribes and nations. +
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