Chief Dan George

[Brian McAndrews]

I use the following essay written by Dan George with some of my classes. I ask them to agree or disagree with what George 'sees'. It always leads to some rich conversation.
Brian McAndrews

Chief Dan George, the son of a tribal chief, was born on July 24, 1899, on Burrard Reserve No.3 (Burrard Inlet) on Vancouver�s north shore (British Columbia, Canada) and given the native name of �Geswanouth Slahoot�(Thunder coming up over the land from the water)but known in English as Dan Slaholt.

Dan succeded his father as chief after he passed away. "Chief" Dan George was a real chief of the Squamish Band of Burrard Inlet, British Columbia from 1961 to 1963.

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By Dan George
This then was the culture I was born into and for some years the only one I really knew or tasted.  This is why I find it hard to accept many of the things I see around me.

I see people living in smoke houses hundreds of times bigger than the one I knew.  But the people in one apartment do not even know the people in the next and care less about them.

It is also difficult for me to understand the deep hate that exists among people.  It is hard to understand a culture that justifies the killing of millions in past wars and is at this very moment preparing bombs to kill even greater numbers.  It is hard for me to understand a culture that spends more on wars and weapons to kill, than it does on education and welfare to help and develop.

It is hard for me to understand a culture that not only hates and fights his brothers but even attacks nature and abuses her.  I see my white brothers going about blotting out nature from his cities.  I see him strip the hills bare, leaving ugly wounds on the face of mountains.  I see him tearing things from the bosom of mother earth as though she were a monster, who refused to share her treasures with him.  I see him throw poison in the waters, indifferent to the life he kills there; and he chokes the air with deadly fumes.

My white brother does many things well for he is more clever than my people but I wonder if he knows how to love well.  I wonder if he has ever really learned to love at all.  Perhaps he only loves the things that are his own but never learned to love the things that are outside and beyond him.  And this is, of course, not love at all, for man must love all creation or he will love none of it.  Man must love fully or he will become the lowest of the animals.  It is the power to love that makes him the greatest of them all . . . for he alone of all animals is capable of love.

Love is something you and I must have.  We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it.  We must have it because without it we become weak and faint.  Without love our self-esteem weakens.  Without it our courage fails.  Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world.  Instead we turn inwardly and begin to feed upon our own personalities and little by little we destroy ourselves.

You and I need the strength and joy that comes from knowing that we are loved.  With it we are creative.  With it we march tirelessly.  With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others.

There have been times when we all wanted so desperately to feel a re-assuring hand upon us. . . there have been lonely times when we so wanted a strong arm around us. . . I cannot tell you how deeply I miss my wife�s presence when I return from a trip.  Her love was my greatest joy, my strength, my greatest blessing.

I am afraid my culture has little to offer yours.  But my culture did prize friendship and companionship.  It did not look on privacy as a thing to be clung to, for privacy builds up walls and walls promote distrust.  My culture lived in big family communities, and from infancy people learned to live with others.

My culture did not price the hoarding of private possessions, in fact, to hoard was a shameful thing to do among my people.   The Indian looked on all things in nature as belonging to him and he expected to share them with others and to take only what he needed.

Everyone likes to give as well as receive.  No one wishes only to receive all the time.  We have taken much from your culture. . . I wish you had taken something from our culture. . . for there were some beautiful and good things in it.

Soon it will be too late to know my culture, for integration is upon us and soon we will have no values but yours.  Already many of our young people have forgotten the old ways.  And many have been shamed of their Indian ways by scorn and ridicule.  My culture is like a wounded deer that has crawled away into the forest to bleed and die alone.

The only thing that can truly help us is genuine love.  You must truly love us, be patient with us and share with us.  And we must love you  with a genuine love that forgives and forgets. . . a love that forgives the terrible sufferings your culture brought ours when it swept over us like a wave crashing along a beach. . . with a love that forgets and lifts up its heads and sees in your eyes an answering love of trust and acceptance.

This is brotherhood. . . anything less is not worthy of the name.

I have spoken.

Chief Dan George
�My Heart Soars� 1972