274_Rautenbach_EFWilson-Midlife-Reevaluation.mp3
otter.ai
19.04.2023
no
Speaker 1 0:00
So as I did last year, because this is part two, so if you weren't here last year, you just have to go home and turn on your computer or go to the library, go to computer, and going to Saltspring, archives att.com. And then look in the top right hand corner for the search window, which is just a little slot and you type in there, Wilson put my same, yes, Willie Wilson will do it. And I will come up. And you can listen to me and watch me for last year if you didn't, if you weren't. So that was part one. And this is part two. But as I did part one, I'm going to start with every meeting on Saltspring Island should start with this particular statement. I would first like to acknowledge that we are meeting today on the traditional land and unceded territory of indigenous cursings people. And in part, I'm especially doing that because what I'm talking about today, and when I talked about last year, with traditional Coast Salish people, plus or Canadian Indians as Reverend Wilson, First Nations people. I also need to first quote Mike Morris as I did last time, because it's very personal to have a Reverend Wilson in your family use his great grandfather and Mike lorises great grandson of Reverend Wilson. And what Mike had said previously, is this. I was always concerned that before you came to Salt Spring, my great grandfather had these Indian schools. And of course, you know, all the bad things you've heard about Indian schools through the years. And I thought my great grandfather wasn't one of those people. Well, he wasn't. So he likes quite quite the opposite. In fact, since last year, I would say there are many more researchers in in Akkad Demick institutions who have begun to recognize that Edward Francis Wilson was a remarkable fellow. And I'm, what I was doing last year, and this year is investigating the midlife crisis of that fellow, because Reverend Wilson started, you could just sort of simplify everything and say that he started the very first residential school at the request of shushing rock, and it was called the shame walk school. So, chiefs anymore wanted to have what he called a teaching with one, because he wanted the first in his own First Nations people to be educated, so that they would be on an equal footing with all the invaders. And he saw that the British Empire was very successful in its education.
Unknown Speaker 3:09
Because it was all over the world. And so he wanted
Speaker 1 3:14
and it chose Reverend Wilson from amongst many other candidates, he pinpointed him and asked him to start the school. That wasn't what Reverend Wilson had set himself up to do in life. He actually started out wanting to be a farmer, and then he got the machines bug, and then teach him walk, discovered him. So that's all part one that I'm going to repeat. So part two concentrates more on what Reverend Wilson wrote about First Nations, which I did mention last year, but it is, after all, almost more than 306 I can't remember 365.
Speaker 2 3:56
I can't necessarily remember what I said back then. So
Speaker 1 4:04
Reverend Wilson wrote about the rights of the First Nations and the residential schools. There we are, oh, yes, I should say first, the reason why I called it the Fair Play papers is because in 1891, a series of writings were published in Mr. Wilson's revenue versus magazines, he was he always was writing things and publishing. And he had magazines in which he got other people to write articles as well as himself. So he had this series written by anonymously with a pseudonym. And they did knock has definitely proved to the rest of the world but me in particular, because I really recognize Reverend Wilson style now. I know rather well and I also recognize his antiquated spelling. So if you see a spelling mistake on the screen, and it's a quote from Reverend Wilson know that that's what helps to prove that he is this remarkable man only known as fair play. So he wrote about the rights of First Nations and the residential school question. He had set up residential schools, he ran his and maybe started up many more than the first one, and ran them as the principal for 20 years. And he had a midlife crisis, where he just looked at it looked back on it lived amongst the Indians anyway, he had to wait. And he just knew it was the wrong way to do it. It was definitely not working. But he understood so much more than he had 20 years before. However, how someone as narrow minded and opinionated, everything wonderful about him, how he could switch from such a clear, narrow point of view, to recognizing that he had been wrong all that time was quite interesting to me. So here we are, to know that it was in 1885, that he switched over and on the wall over there, which you probably can't see. But it's, it's at the top you'll see one of his painting his parts of his journal, and I don't think it's in my slideshow. Unless it is, but it comes later. Okay, so that is the key to everything. And here he is, in the first picture. That's when he started Sherlock school. And the last picture is when he had his midlife crisis and everything actually had a nervous breakdown. And that's why he came here. He had a thorough physical, nervous breakdown. And his doctor said he just absolutely had to stop doing what he was doing, and go and have a rest somewhere else. So he came to Salt Spring Island and his idea of arrest were done, kill all of us. Friendly, energetic. And I'm very, very fond of him. That might not have been that easy to live with all the time. He was a beautiful artist. Okay, now for papers were published in the monthly magazine called The Canadian Indian, which Reverend Wilson had set up. They were written by Reverend Wilson, but under the pseudonym said, played in 1891 in March in April, in May, and in June, I will be reading excerpts from these papers. In part one. I acknowledged my indebtedness today that knock Oh, I may have this slide slightly up. That's Reverend Wilson in the midst of all his family before he came to salt. There's David knock. So I do want to acknowledge my indebtedness to David not as a researcher who's written extensively about Reverend Wilson, he has published incontrovertible evidence to prove that a remarkable anonymous author writing at 91, under the pseudonym and fan play was indeed Mike Morris's great grandfather. So it's benign. It's very own Reverend Edward Francis Wilson. Okay. Will it do it again, Frank? We hope it will. Okay. Because Frank's the one who makes these magic things happen. So that that's a page from one of his journals. And in the middle, you can see him with his full beard now. And his growing family. They had 11 children, one died when she was a baby and the other 10 became part of Saltspring islands. Original family tree. Many, many, many people are related to the Wilson family.
Speaker 1 9:11
So there are 123456789 often just due to go those are the two youngest boys. No, it must be the two eldest are off and have left home. That's what's happening there that the eldest boy is running one of his visit his residential schools
Speaker 1 9:37
another academic, less well disposed to Reverend Wilson is cold shower in the wall. Nevertheless, in her paper to train the wild bird, she still writes that Wilson that was exceptional for his time. When in our first children, one of his earliest magazines, he recognize that most white people seem to think that The Indians are all one, it will be our work to show, see the signs of shoulder. That's how it used to be spelled all the time in England. But he carried it off because he believed in the good old ways and said it's fair play like that. So, it will be our work to show that they belong to a number of distinct nations and to endeavor to trace up their origin and early history. Sharon walls is totally against him. David Knox assessment of Reverend Wilson is a good guy. shanwa also writes that his writings during this period reveal an attitude of responsibility towards Aboriginal people, and a clear sense that their problems with a direct result of colonial interference with their culture. So this is even before his midlife crisis, and his turnaround.
Speaker 1 11:03
So that's the quotation that I have just said to him, you can look at that way, read a longer one. The hunting grounds of Shing walk and his ancestry had become the white man's fields. He wrote in a later issue of our first children, where smoke used to curl up from the wigwams. Stamp now the houses of Canadian Parliament upstrokes. By strange process known among Europeans as claiming in the name of the sovereign, the red man has been utterly dispossessed of his forefathers lands. They could have left Reverend Grossman style, blanking absolute spells anybody else's feelings. You said it like it was the thing. Yeah, she was absolutely right. And most of these unkind, did not want to know that. Sharon will does concede that with the same critical tone Wilson analyzed the 1885 uprisings.
Speaker 1 12:19
The 1885 uprisings in the northwest, this is the real rebellions and the Cree objections to the treaty process. Unlike most of his contemporaries, she writes, he acknowledged that native outbreak, native outrage had a valid basis and that the invasion of white settlers in the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway were together contributing to the disappearance of the Aboriginal means of subsistence, the buffalo they're actually pretty well wiped up by 1884. So 1885 is in part a result of that. Unlike most of his contemporaries, so his contemporaries didn't understand what he understood. This was something Wilson came to feel deeply about. So how did that come about? From whom did he learn that connection was there? The driftwood of the 12th of December 1968, contains a clue with be Hamilton's obituary that the last of Reverend Wilson's children, Kathleen, she was Mrs. Kathleen Scott. Oh, do I say yes, without scrolling down for you? So you don't have to listen to me. You can read it if you can. But in the middle there it says, Can I pause it? No, that's fine. In the middle there it says Reverend E. F. Wilson came to Saltspring in 1894. After many years of missionary work in Sioux Sainte Marie in Ontario. He was there during the Lilia rebellion in 1885. And he visited the Cree Indian rebel, Big Bear, leader of the frog Lake massacre. And poundmaker Another Cree rebel after they were caught and behind bars that's what be Hamilton of Isabella point wrote oops
Unknown Speaker 14:35
what's happening thank What did I do?
Speaker 1 14:48
Something interesting to be aware of in trying to get to where we
Speaker 1 14:59
are That's why it's jumped ahead families because I keep pressing. So it's actually supposed to be a victory for Kathleen, but it's all about her father. Reverend Wilson was very well known on that. Yes, okay. So that's in 1885. And it's up on the wall there. And on the wall is a lot more if we have time to stop myself from telling stories and explaining things and just get on a reading. So that's a page of Reverend Wilson's journal for 1885. And it you'll see a timeline in in which I have inserted what he has said that, and he mentioned that's where the red lettering mentions the names of the Indians that he met them. I believe that Reverend Wilson might have corrected be Hamilton's wording. Big Bear was indeed the leader of his people, and he had been for 20 years, but he was never the leader of any massacre. For a glimpse into the injustice of the trial, from the Indian Point of View, you can check the displays on the wall afterwards, I have to edit them out to be here till nightfall become autumn wrote that Big Bear was caught, far from being caught. Big Bear was widely in evading being captured and was only behind bars because he finally surrendered to save these people. They had him well chained up in case he changed his mind, which he had every reason to have done. And there he is, you can see the chain there. And it's attached to either it's in there to attach to a rock or concrete block. And that's in the text Reverend Wilson calls being heavily iron. Something interesting to be aware of, in Reverend Wilson visiting these two independent thinkers, leaders of their people, is that Reverend Wilson was completely fluent in a jib way. A jib way was the language of big best father. So Reverend Wilson and big bear would have been able to converse freely without a translator as go between Big Ben could have spoken his mind free of his usual distrust in the translator, when Reverend Wilson visited Big Bear behind bars, or I'm just going to tell you that if you were if you were south of the border right now, or you've come from there, you may well have heard of Big Bear, because he's his tribe when lived between the board across those borders, and so they know about Big Bear, and I've stolen a picture we should have all the lights up to see it from his in many films. I'm just really astonished. That actor looks exactly like him and I can see why they chosen to play the part.
Speaker 1 18:13
That's him having been not caught but surrendered. So that's how they traded him for.
Unknown Speaker 18:22
Like two I think they might get paid every
Speaker 1 18:26
two years very widely sell it. When Reverend Wilson visited Big Bear behind bars and heavily ironed as he put it with his ankles chained together and fastened to Ebola. The truth was an old man 60 years old, that is, and visibly crushed by the loss of his traditional lifestyle and desolate, disillusioned by this his failure to unite his people and achieve a better life for them. They had lost basically one way Reverend Wilson acknowledged that native outrage had a valid basis was in his understanding of the problem of the disappearance of the buffalo. We have support on the timeline, sorry. So that's the whole reality Benyon part and in the middle of it, Reverend Wilson set out for the Northwest actually to draw to draw picture and make a little bit of money, get away from home and all his midlife crisis is 40 years old right now. And he I think he went off for a bit of adventure, but I know he also was always cash strapped in every single way for all the schools and with his large family. So he would make money out of drawing important events, events, like a news photographer, and he would send them his drawings off to the London Gazette and other London illustrated news and things like that, and he would get fairly good money if they accepted his picture. So they did accept him. to pitch which I won't show because I showed it in part one. You can look into John webs on the yes on website. But so big bear had been trying. Big Bear had been trying to get across to the heedless government agents for some time that the buffalo were disappearing and why they were disappearing was the invasion of settlers coming here that Matey offspring living in slaughtering more than the Indians would have done. And the railroad completely messing everything up for the buffalo, but also making it much easier to shoot all the buffalo because they did it through the windows of the railway carriage. And say, Well, wait, they just vanished. Well, Big Bear had been trying this, so he may be trying to communicate it. So he may well have been the source of Reverend Wilson's knowledge and understanding of the Indian Point of View, regarding the buffalo, that the white settlers and the Canadian Pacific Railway were together contributing to the disappearance of this Aboriginal means of subsistence. Big Ben might have talked with his recent visits to many of his old friends, where he saw how poorly those the few agricultural projects were providing for the people. He visited his friends, because they had accepted on a reservation, he took his own tribe, and just evaded the police all the time, and tried negotiating with the Canadian government and getting nowhere, that when he visited them, his friends on their reservations that didn't make him think, well, I should do that too. Not for a long time. Actually, it's an appalling story. I have been researching it and my, my heart is broken about what they faced in ignorance and arrogance. And oh, it's awful. But I'm not here to tell you about that right now. Because then they might have talked to this recent visits, and how difficult it was to pitifully inadequate the reserves were, but also how few agricultural projects were providing for the people. The government had bought the land off them, not for money, but for the promise of being delivered monthly food packets and being taught how to farm how to settle in one place rather than behind together and farm and they promised them seeds, they have promised them equipment that promised them educators to come and teach them agricultural waste, and they didn't follow through on it. So they're all starving, because they haven't got they're not allowed to leave that little reservation. And hunter gatherer as they usually would have done, and they were starving. Every time I looked at poundmaker, I see somebody who suffered from starvation in use, and never managed to get a good decent meal after that. He's got a big head and a very spindly bendy body. He's much younger than big bear. Big Bear is his mentor, but I haven't mentioned it yet. I did in part one, at great lengths are making up to the big bankers who would not have been pleased with me leaving him out. This impressive old man would have enthralled Reverend Wilson, above all, with his ideas of a single large reserve, instead of lots of little ones far apart from each other, a single large reserve for the sole use of the many separate bands, his particular nation to create a place where they could all gather together and enjoy their traditional pursuits, forming one large settlement amongst themselves, a collection of closely related bands. The government was not interested. So when Wilson began to write under his pseudonym, fair play, his first suggestion was that it was high time the Indian question was looked at from the Indian perspective. So he met big bed, and I met this very impressive company and the trades you want to know about panel making speeches, you have to go to the wallet read them there. I think I might be one. Yes, I will. Integrate great speech maker. And an absolute pacifist who just like Big Bear had surrendered to save His people. And they put him in chains. You can see it there. And they broke their spirit. The government broke these two minutes. Not by doing anything horrible to them, rather than chaining them and putting them in prison. So Reverend close and also visited poundmaker, again without need for translate for translator, because part of me but also spoke a jib way. These are two Cree chiefs. But they're interrelated with the Ojibwe. And they can speak a jib way fluently, because they're actually part of one nation going back firing. At his trial through an interpreter poundmaker said a few words in his own defense before sentencing. I am not guilty. Everything I couldn't do was done to prevent bloodshed. Had I wanted war, I would not be here now. I would be on the prairie. You did not catch me. I gave myself up. You have got me? Because I wanted peace. Say new love last. But that isn't to say that anyway. And you'll go down in history of saying it. Because these people are are all historians. They have witnesses who listen. And that's what they do for their life. It's their job is to remember what a person like maker would have said, and that's why we know exactly what he said from his imprisonment. Yes, so I'm just showing you that they got at the bottom here, August 17 218 poundmaker, whose real name is Petey qua Hannah, is tried on the charge of treason, found guilty and sentenced to only three years imprisonment. So the judge let him off in a way for not having carved one pair on anybody's head for having protected the prisoners that his warriors took in war and for surrendering. But still, it was treason, to have been taught to not to have not run away from his own tribe of whom he was the chief. September knights rails appeal is rejected September the 11th. Mr. He muskwa, which means big bear, and that's why it's called Big Bear, Mr. Hill muskwa is tried on a charge of treason found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison. Here is the surrender of poundmaker. Huge part of history that is probably in the history books, because of all the speech making that happened. And for me, above all, because when poundmaker finished making his speech sitting there, his wife came and made a speech to all of the European people on this side, but they wouldn't listen to her because she was a woman. And the Indians were shocked and horrified.
Speaker 2 27:55
And she, she she left quite confused herself.
Speaker 1 28:06
So they are convicted, and there they are, their lawyer to the splendid job. He's the guy on the right. And he explained to the judge the way that their Creek tribes had two chiefs. One is the political chief, the person who does all the strategies and thinking about the future and taking care of the tribe. And the others are not a chief, but the warrior Council, and the warrior cannot cancel is not answerable to the chief. He's not in charge of them. He's not the boss of men. So it was the warrior council that decided to defend themselves against attack, which is what happened with something like 365 troops in in full armor and with cannons and things like this marched on them, they sent 50 Braves out there and 50 of them run away. And they were going to chase after them. But poundmaker said, They came here to fight. They have thought leaves
Speaker 2 29:06
is a contemptuous but nevertheless, it's, it's a better way than going and slaughtering all it wants to fight. They got this, forget it. He's a pacifist.
Speaker 1 29:17
So and the one on the extreme left here is big bears son, who grows up to look identical to Big Bear very soon. Just in his teens, he looks like big bear. So and there's the ones that are holding onto their shoulders or two priests and the others that are like caught just regular court people. That's what that photographs are. But it's remarkable what's out there. So these are a few slides to show you guys trial. That's the scene that that Reverend Wilson drew the picture of that's poundmaker you can read it yourself. I'll leave it there for fit. Big Bear found his imprisonment just as confusing, as poundmaker had, it tried to stop the massacre at Frog lake from happening. It protected the prisoners from harm. He himself had done no wrong. And you can read more about these two in their trial by looking at the display on the wall over there. What I have learned if the nature and the actions and the outlook of these two has impressed me, Reverend Wilson went to visit but his fellow white men viewed as nothing but a couple of troublesome Cree Indian rebels who needed to be kept in chains rather than be trusted to keep their word.
Speaker 1 30:50
But the fine minds and hearts that he met might well have provided the catalysts that he needed to become a clearer to welcome a clear and strong change in his own outlook. He was to ask in his fairplay papers, is there nothing, nothing whatever, in the history of this ancient people to merit our esteem? Were there no great minds among their noted chiefs? And yet he just met too.
Speaker 1 31:28
So those what happened to on the top right, I think I've got, yes, I have. The one on the left is Big Bear without his hair, they shaved him and they put him in civilized clothing, as they called it. They managed to put down making civilized clothing, but just the look in his eyes, and the angle of his nose, made them not touch his hair, not dare to touch his head. So he kept his hair. Both of them just faded away in prison. They were not made to be incarcerated in STEM school, stony mountain penitentiary, within six months, poundmaker was on his deathbed. And they said, they said, let him out of the prison, because they knew if either of those two died in the prison, they would have had an insurrection across the whole of the Northwest again. And then two, after two years, Big Bear was on his deathbed. And so they freed him to die, actually on pumping his reservation. So that's what happened to them. It wasn't a lovely story in the end, but it was great for me to know who it was that Devin had met. That's what he's, he's said both very depressed by now. And blaming themselves. That's what poundmaker looked like, just before they were released in this very sick and he, he was 44 years old when he died. And Big Bear was 62. So now we move on to the fairplay papers, which is what I promised you that I would do. My research over the year has led me to know these two Indians quite well. So first, I'll tell you about the residential schools. The Fair Play papers, this is this, the four papers that came up on the pseudonym affair claim written by Reverend Wilson came out in this magazine, which again, is really Wilson's magazine asks other people to submit articles to it. And it kicks off at the beginning. You probably can't see it there. But the very first article there is called The Future of Indians. And that's what the fifth play papers are called. And that is paper number three, because I couldn't find paper number one, to put up on the screen for you. I've read it all the way through. Davidson not because pointed out that after 1885, Reverend Wilson began preaching plans of social change almost completely at variance with his own previous career, and with the policies of both church and government. He no longer agreed with what he had been doing before. But neither church nor government would allow him to act on his change of heart, which arose from nasem Indian question from an Indian viewpoint. So he was going through absolute turmoil inside because he's continuing to run a residential school that he doesn't believe in anymore. So what did Reverend Wilson actually say and write about schooling nearly 125 years ago? simply asked questions. Oh, yeah, that's right. That one in the middle of AMC, Reverend Wilson and all around him or her, she walks students okay. They ask questions to engage the readers mind in thinking about the Indians. So I'm quoting now, the future of the Canadian Indian. Surely it's not fair to force the Indians, Indian to obliterate himself against his own will. Neither do I think it would be a good thing for our country. Like we not make the Indian happier, give him more respect for himself, and exact more respect for him from the white people, by placing his own affairs, both temporal and spiritual in his own hands. Would it be a menace to the peace of our country is the Indians of Ontario were permitted their own center of government, their own Ottawa, so to speak, their own Leftenant Governor and their own parliament. Now, I'm not sure that personally I haven't heard even cessations leading up to date going that far. But that's what Reverend Wilson felt they deserved. And he tried to speak about that to everybody. And what happened was that he got threatened. He had a nervous breakdown, because he wasn't getting anywhere. And he didn't get the bishopric that he was in line to get. So in doing that, he knew all right, Mike Korea's toasts. And in fact, because he had these opinions is why we had a nervous breakdown. And he came here because he couldn't do his work. And he lost the marketable man, last week incite. 125 years ago, he, I mean, in the, in the previous, in part one, I showed you what a total Victorian he was, what a narrow minded person he was, How arrogant he was, what a proper missionary was, all those things where you would not have really thought that he would think this way all by himself. No. I think he's wonderful, but always loved him anyway. Now, I think, wow. If only I did have all this relates to his relatives still here. I'd love to tell them, who they had a great great grandfather, great grandfather and grandpa. Wilson was proposing an Indian conference to hear the views of Aboriginal people themselves on such questions regarding their future when he finally quit and came here. Now, this is still school, we started out with the girls and boys together which the last photograph that I showed you, this is his girl school in the 1950s. This is a nice school. And they just looked like such a happy bunch. I thought I have to show that slide. Because I haven't repeated that when Mike Morris said that about his grandfather, then the group of customers would go back and visit Shinhwa to see what their great grandfather's reputation was. And they were welcomed with open arms is eventually there. So this is the 1950s. And this is when the first day of school when they had their own gloves, skirts, they've been girls and boys together. And they were really, really delighted this reference there. So it's nice to see happy photographs, because I'm not going to show you some miserable ones. I have to tell you that Cooper Island, I didn't look into it for a long time. I knew it was a residential school called Cooper Island industrial school. And I just hope that because I hadn't heard anything bad about it. That wasn't one of the bad schools, but it's one of the worst. There are a lot of worst, but it was one of the worst, truly bad. It had both nuns and priests there and both the nuns and the priests were doing sexual abuse and the reporting of it was impossible and just to help every story like that, but there was also physical and emotional and all the rest of it. It's it's it's getting better now because of the ban so Fontaine, but I'm going to leave my last
Unknown Speaker 39:58
touching something
Speaker 1 40:02
Now, I might guess I'm just going to quickly show you the next slide. There are so many photographs taken like this many, many different ones. This is Thomas Moore. So they would take a photograph of him in the clothes, he came to the scope. And then they would take photograph of him in the clothes they gave him at the school. And this is how they did their fundraising. Look how much of a difference we're making. We're taking the poor, middle, primitive, and we are making the poor little primitive, civilized. And nowadays, we know what that has done inside them in their hearts and their minds and their future and everything. Generations thereafter. So I decided in live collected a lot of that kind of slide, that I would just leave you with Thomas Moore's. That was in a second time. It doesn't seem to be here. We gave up on that. Yes, yes, it's not here. So these are Reverend Wilson's drawings of when he he went up traveling all the time, meeting in the US from from 1885, he just went to explore the whole of he went all the way down to New Mexico, all the way up to the Northwest Territories. And he wrote papers, scientific papers, and things like that. sparked by income making big bets off, can you be a jib way on around him, but that was all Materialien before. Now, I would like to read to you one. Extended argument sinful, as an example of is an attempt to come to an understanding of the feelings of the Indians that he was there to serve. Naturally, the parents wish to know how all our learning will fit their children to become better Indians, we wish to make them white men, and they desire them to become better Indians. They believe the native culture is best suited for themselves and having developed under it, and enjoyed it so long, they are not eager to give it up for an untried system, there is a danger of educating them away from their real life. That is a danger. The idea has been prevalent of late that the true way to deal with Indians. And indeed, the only method at all likely to be followed with success is to take their children while young, remove them altogether from their parents, keep them five or six years in a boarding school, teach them entirely in English, let them forget their own tongue and their old ways and customs and become, in fact, thoroughly anglicized. Now all the sudden, the white man's point of view seems to be very plausible, and indeed desirable. But how is it from the Indians point of view? So he went out asking the Indians? Or is it from the Indians point of view? It seems in himself to have nothing to say about it. How would we white people likely is another people more powerful than ourselves had possession of our country. And we were obliged to give our power to children to go to the schools as this more powerful people, knowing that they would take them from us for the very purpose of removing them from the old loves and the old associations, if we found out that they were most unwillingly allowed to come back to us for a short summer holidays. And when they came, we're dressed in the peculiar costumes about Congress. And we're talking their language instead of the Darrow tongue. And then if the time stipulated for their education was drawing to a close, and we were looking forward to welcoming them back to the old home, how would we feel if we were to be coolly told that provision had been made for them to go and live elsewhere? And that we were not very likely to ever see them again? What would we think of our Congress if they treated us this way? Took that persuasive language or anything else? They did, they argued in the law. It seems to me that the real trouble is that the Indian people are not willing to have their own nationality and laws and customs so entirely of face and swept away, as it seems to them. That is the white man's policy to do. I'm inclined to think that the forcing of their children away to school and pressing upon them of so called civilized habits and occupations, the meaning of them from the love of home and the love of their parents has had as much to do with the recent disaffection, rebellions. He's talking about, as has the limited supply of beef, and the poor quality of the flour. And Indian is a different being to a white man is history for centuries past has been of a character wholly different to that of the white man, his pleasures, his tastes, his habits, his laws are all at variance with those accepted by the white man. Is it all together just to treat the Indian in the way we are doing? Is it altogether fair to force upon them our own laws and customs as though there could be no question as to their superiority in every way, superiority of the laws is in every way, and that they must, of course, be just as suitable and applicable to the Indian as they are to ourselves. And in today's jargon, he would have said, how fair is that I just have two things to do. A few more pictures features and love the courting Indians. So if you could read that, that's, that's his tone of voice when you decided that you can't even be bothered to fundraise anymore. And it's wonderful to read that I'm not going to have to skip if you can read it. Go ahead. I'll just kick it off here. I make no fresh appeal for funds. But I asked you kindly to spare a few moments to read through carefully. And I hope sympathetically the following notes.
Unknown Speaker 46:47
It's all say we're desperate for money.
Speaker 1 46:50
Anyway, another writer that I discovered is our gene bomb and she's been in our archives and we know from British Columbia, the other side in British Columbia to actually Jean barman has written a Reverend Wilson in Indian education in Canada, that legacy. This is watching, has written in a series of four articles Reverend E. F. Wilson authored under the pseudonym fair play in the Canadian Indian in the spring of 1891. He contend educational policies designed to an Indianized Indian and make him in every sense, a white man. That's a quote from Reverend Wilson to Indianized the Indian and making in every sense, a white man continues to pretty well, Wilson all the way through the rest of her article. Why should we expect that Indians alone, the asked should be ready quietly to give up all old customs and traditions and language and adopt those as the aggressor on their soil. The change which we expect the Indian to make is far greater one than is required of immigrants to Canada, from Germany, Sweden, France, Italy, and said he's this is back to him now. And instead, he suggested that White North Americans should be prepared to accept an independent Indian community that should have its own government with its own less tenant governor and parliament. Wouldn't it would it not be pleasant person argued and even sent them to us to have living in our midst a contented well to do self respecting thriving community of Indians rather than the scattered remnants of the people who against their will have been forced to give up their old customs laws and traditions. Such a solution like Jean resembles a notion of biracial harmony as a means of conflict regulation between the races, which interestingly enough, also resembles the self government proposals of some contemporary Indian groups such as the Deming nation finally, affecting see what the time is time for questions. Okay. So some time went to poor brands go up quickly advertise that you can go on Google and YouTube and type in the word Cooper and the word came in and you will be taken to a wonderful what they call documentary movie made by students of the film school. Go find go find these films school and it is of the healing of the students. I mean, not because the island students, the students who came back to See the remains of the island and the school and everything that had traumatize them so badly. Phil Fontaine went to visit them before they went. Phil Fontaine is National Chief was the National Chief of Assembly of First Nations 1997 to 2009. In 2005, Phil Fontaine successfully negotiated the Indian residential schools Settlement Agreement, which will mean a financial contribution of more than 5 billion to survivors and programs for them healing programs focus on of which was to go and visit and see them documentary cost. But there's lots of work to be done. The IRS is a which includes a truth and reconciliation and Reconciliation Commission was ratified by the Federal Conservative government in May 2006. And this is what Phil Fontaine said, in just in case you don't know Phil Fontaine was in his influence was that as the head of the Sunday assassinations, he came out and told them and the world that he had been sexually abused at a residential school, that was the first time that any First Nations person, and probably at all really, in lots of ways, would do such a thing. So he did it very, very publicly. And he continued, ever after, to say what the difficulty was, and how to perfect the rest of his life. Still, it's affecting everything we learn at residential school, everything we heard about our community, and about our people was negative. The only way we were going to succeed was to become like them, to acquire their values, to accept their spiritual beliefs, their spirituality, to speak their language. And that's what the residential schools were all about. They were designed to assimilate our people into the mainstream. And they understood that the best way of doing that was to remove us from the influence of our family. That's why they put us away for 10 months of the year. That's why they denied us our language, our culture, of spirituality. And that was a terrific cost to our people. He's talking to his own people. That was at a terrific cost to our people. And we are still paying the price today. We are paying that price today. And we will continue to pay that price for some time to come. Unless, and I say unless our leaders decide that healing is so critical to the future of our people. And that healing means and that healing means coming face to face with the whole residential school experience. And having met Phil Fontaine, the wonderful writer, a poem called Monster, which I will not take more of your time. And I probably should at this point, that he is also on YouTube. And we have to type in there is Monster and something like First Nations or residential schools, and you'll probably hear him reading it. He went to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Everybody else is taking speeches and things. He's a poet. So he stood up there, and he did what you might call recite his poem. He poured out all of his fear and his anger and his misery and everything. And cotton and Boertie, sailings, good man at the head of the Reconciliation Commission says, I don't think any of us can go home tonight and say we haven't heard you. Thank you, Bill Fontaine helping him write his poem. And what I want to just say is, look, Reverend Wilson didn't want that to happen 125 years ago, and he was shut up 125 years ago, and he had a nervous breakdown 125 years ago, because that was beginning to be what was going to really be happening. So thank you, everyone, for trying. So if you have questions, hit these are the pictures of poop runs. Its massive. They came from so far away and they can I'm here today to Saltspring. And so it's been really enjoyed them because they played a brass band, well. There's the brass that they loved it.
Speaker 1 55:16
But every single one of those kids was probably something that you'll see on YouTube. You don't have to go through it. I'm just telling you, it's there. It's not easy to watch. Well, I shouldn't say that. That's so transparent. There's so wordless. And you just, I think the biggest thing that hits me is that I know that it's easy to think that people are making it up. It's easy to think they're jumping on the bandwagon, too. It's easy to think they're after money. These people are not after anything like money, they're not interested in us at all. In fact, they totally aren't so much not interested in Canada, reimbursing them, that they don't even think of it. They just need help from each other. And that's what they're trying to do. So any questions?
Speaker 1 56:17
Any record or indication of what was said or done. When he came up here with residential schools nearby. He was he came up here completely funded by the church. They underfunded by the church, he came out, because he was a missionary, and he was a reverend, when he was running those schools there, he got in trouble. But I think that he just knew that was 10 children. And his dry ice we love very much was not super strong person. I think that he just gave up on, you know, he had really, really tried to change, something that can't be changed. You know that, that that's how I started the Part one was given me this strengths to change what can be changed and the serenity to accept what cannot be changed. And I said, there wasn't one little bit of serenity in Reverend Wilson. He was all non serenity, basically. So he bought he did throughout his life was battled to change that which cannot be changed. And he was slaughtered all the time. So I think what he did when he came here, was to just go back to farming, because he had started his life out with the love of farming. And it really was a part of the farms Institute, and a part of this whole. This whole was built because Reverend Wilson was addressed and made it happen that time. The lots of people that energy, Reverend Wilson that way. He doesn't seem to have I mean, even in the journal, he doesn't seem to have any mention of what was really happening. I don't get this from external, it gives me clues that I have to go searching somewhere else. I know you would have gotten Trump he got in trouble here anyway. Because there's too outspoken you know, if his parishioners hadn't paid the fees to the magazine, you published that. He would just say, Oh, Bob rush number payment fees for this, you're getting it anyway. But it's not like I would appreciate you paying if you haven't paid and you are in arrears to the amount of three children. And it's and it's public, you know, because up to everyone all over the world, even actually, because it's a British Empire.
Speaker 2 58:43
So he would do that. And he get turned off by the bishops.
Speaker 1 58:48
And he gets his something cut. It wouldn't give him his full stipend if he wasn't being a proper Christian.
Speaker 3 58:57
Actually, this time in Salisbury is quite interesting, too. He had his own way of doing things. Before he got here. He had a wife when he got here. She was mentioned he was probably starting the first newspaper on Salisbury because he was quite a writer, as you can see from his journals and things. So he, when he got here, his church bulletin became more than church bulletin and became the committee. Just the sense of what everybody had done in that in the week or the month before he had written it. So we have some of those in the archives online. So he was a historian, extraordinaire, wherever he went. And just the tip of the iceberg. Emma zushi has tried to mention that when he was on salt spray his his children grew up here basically they married here and became part of the community and his roots are still very deep in in our area. So those are other programs, which we can do. He was probably one of the original founders of salt straining society in this way. He tape it through his religious and it's his personal beliefs, but he was very active in our communities no doubt about that. And Bob knows some of the offspring from from the river Wilson family and he named all the daughters knew they married and so on. So he was quite a quite an active even though he was a minister, he was a he was more than just the minister of the church. He was the organizer of the community, I guess,
Speaker 1 1:00:27
to every to every denomination, visit pretty well on behalf but probably because he didn't care what he said he was also the doctor. He was also a midwife. And, yeah,
Speaker 3 1:00:45
that is one of his journal. He writes down who was here he says there was four Portuguese 15 English people and 13, Scots and the list where they live on their farm. So we owe a lot to him from a historical context of the early Society of Saltspring. So thanks, that was really good. Thank you very much.