Aug 27, 2007

The Buckskin Curtain

This weekend I went on a hike with my sweet friend Leah to Buntzen Lake. The journey was about 5-6 hours long. It was a nice opportunity to have quality time with Leah as well as be secluded from the noisy distractions of life. We started about nine in morning, on a cloudy day. My bag “broke” as well as my water bottle, the contents of it which made their presence known on my lower back. The trail we hiked is called Diez Vistas to signify to 10 amazing views we were suppose to see, I think we maybe found 7 of them, in which 3 were nice, and the rest were damaged by trees that were in the way. My friend Leah fell because she wanted to take a short cut, a elderly man told us to always be talking so that the bears and cougars wouldn’t eat us...(his way of staying safe was have cans attached to his backpack that clanked with each other to make a chime like noise, my way of keeping my self safe was by picking up to sticks and hitting them together, although Leah quickly got annoyed of this), we ate, took pictures, complained minimally, got rained on, ran a little bit, leah thought a tree bite her, I knew a mosquito bite me ( darn insects!) We got back to my car around 3pm perspiring and weary only to find that I absent mindedly left my lights on ( not sure why they were on to begin with ) so Leah bravely searched the parking lot for a helping hand ( 4 those cord thingy’s) and voila my car was brought back to life ! I like hiking; I wish I had brought a book though, hmm maybe next time.




Today while stuck in traffic I fell in love with this song;
“Calendar Girl"If I am lost for a day; try and find meBut if I don't come back, then I won't look behind me

All of the things that I thought were so easyJust got harder and harder each day
Calendar girl whose in love with the world Stay aliveCalendar Girl whose in love with the world Stay aliveI dreamed I was dying; as I so often doAnd when I awoke I was sure it was trueI ran to the window; threw my head to the skyAnd said whoever is up there, please don't let me dieBut I can't live forever, I can't always breathOne day I'll be sand on a beach by a seaThe pages keep turning, I'll mark off each day with a crossAnd I'll laugh about all that we've lostCalendar Girl who is lost to the worldStay AliveCalendar Girl who is lost to the world Stay Alive

Right now I am reading a text book for school ( yes I know school hasn’t started but what the heck) called The Unjust Society by Harold Cardinal which speaks about the governments relationship towards aboriginal people being that “ the only good Indian is a non-Indian”. I have been reading in awe what this author writes because it is the true of my life, for years I have been made to feel shame because of who I am, where I come from starting from my birth ( loss of status) to know where my friends are ignorant about the situation and complain about things they see as “ privileges” which in reality are pay offs ( try asking a native person who was stolen from there home and sent to a residential school) to keep peoples mouths shut.
“It sometimes seems to Indians that Canada shows more interest in preserving its rare whopping cranes than its Indians. And Canada, the Indian notes, does not ask its cranes to become Canada geese. It just wants to preserve them as whooping cranes, Indians hold no grudge against the big, beautiful, nearly extinct birds, but we would like to know how they managed their deal. Whooping cranes can remain whooping cranes, but Indians are to become brown white men, the contrast to our situation is an insult to out people”(2)
“As an ethnocentric society, the Canadian non-Indian society puts its own peer group at the centre of all things desirable and rates all other cultures accordingly. It is an assumption, quite often becoming a conviction, that the values, the ways of life, the whole culture of ones own group must be superior to those of others. Tell a person long enough and often enough that he is inferior and likely he will eventually accept the false image you thrust upon him’ (4) .

People get educated and start caring about people more then animals!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You know what we forgot to mention about the hike? The fact that we looped around a circle and came back to where we just were in the first view! hahhhh