Indigenous indignities

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Dec 22

RE: Indigenous leaders, Hamilton councillors to meet on Monday.by Sebastian Bron  The Hamilton Spectator 12 Dec 22.

Hamilton’s councillors are well advised to stay away from this pow-wow.

Let’s start with the meeting setting and place: a tipi on Battlefield Park.  The Indians of the east lived in wigwams and longhouses, not in tipis.  Tipis were the housing of nomadic plains Indians, not the forest dwellers of the east, who were without access to the buffalo hides which form the outer wall of the structure.

Battlefield Park is famous as the place where a small force of British troops surprised and routed an American invading force.  Siting a tipi in the park is like putting a mosque in the Vatican.

The Indian organizers hope to provide an ‘education’ to the new councillors.  What makes this endeavor in condescension especially ridiculous is that, since no Indian can be said to represent any other, the Councillors will be educated in Mr. George’s highly personal opinion.

Mr. George claims to represent the “original caretakers” of the land, must be taken as false, since, notwithstanding that no Indian can be said to represent another, all the tribes who could claim to be the originals were wiped out centuries ago.  The last aboriginals who could claim to be ‘caretakers’, that is, exploiters; are the Mississaugas, who possessed the ‘Land between the Lakes” from 1650 (after the annihilation of the Hurons) to 1792 when it was purchased by the British Crown. The Crown has been the caretaker of the lands in question for longer than any extant aboriginal tribe.

Against lessons on aboriginal holistic medicines and healing and of sacred fires, Hamilton can set McMaster University Children’s Hospital, which is where aboriginals themselves take their children to be cured by European medicine-men.

Hamilton City Council did quite well in 1848 deficient in education in the ways of aboriginals, and, given the revolution of a century and three-quarters, the Council of today needs one even less.

Hamilton’s Councillors are accountable to the electorate, not to their “urban indigenous strategies,’ whatever that is.

The dignity of Hamilton requires their councillors to snub this exercise in aboriginal condescension.

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