Chief Dan George said, "When the white man came, we had the land and they had the bibles. Now they have the land and we have the bibles." One may read this statement and easily miss the sad truth found in the second sentence, which is the fact that we have continually imposed upon the Native peoples of Canada our non-Native culture and Christianity to the extent that they are left with not much more than the white man's culture and Christianity, or to borrow Chief Dan George's symbolism, our bibles.
In a recent article in the Globe and Mail, Lysiane Gagnon excoriates the band council of Kahnawake Mohawks for their decree that all non-natives must leave the reserve south of Montreal. Obviously, Lysiane Gagnon is the typical opportunistic, Western journalist: not so concerned with the truth and the sensitivities of others as much as with having her slanderous drivel published in a national newspaper. She joins the usual throng of disconsolate do-gooders who have wilfully cast off the initiative required for preserving their own Canadian identity, and so now, as a cheap counterpoise to their lethargic existence, chooses instead to calumniate the Mohawk nation for protecting theirs.
I see many parallels between the Mohawks' self-defence and preservation of their culture and their lands with that of the Jewish "settlers" of Israel and their self-defence and preservation of a culture and land-the habitation of which is a Torah-prescribed segment of their Torah observance. Just as the Mohawk tradition and culture pre-dates the religion of the Christian armies who invaded and wrested ownership of their land from them, so too Jewish culture and tradition pre-dates the religion of those Muslims who invaded Israel during the Islamic Arab invasion in the 7th century.
Just as the Muslims of the present day are demanding that Jews faithful to the laws and traditions of their ancestors repudiate those same laws and traditions, so too Canadian non-natives, primarily media types, have recently demanded that Mohawks repudiate the laws and traditions of their ancestors and acquiesce to the dictates of these effete journalists by allowing non-natives to intermarry with Mohawks and thereafter live within the bounds of Mohawk territorial dominion.
Mohawks have been forced to relinquish land, as when the Canadian government chose to build the St. Lawrence Seaway canal on Mohawk territory, a major construction project that consequently separated the residents of Kahnawake from the natural river shore. Likewise the Jews of Gaza have been forced from their homes and off their land by the Israeli government (at the behest of foreign governments half a world away) in order to allow Muslim fundamentalists to assume possession of those Jewish homes and Jewish land. Just as Mohawks are presently being told they cannot exist exclusively as Mohawks on Native land, so too Jewish settlers of the West Bank are being denied the right to exist exclusively as Jews on Jewish land.
There is no law written (at least not outside those written to accommodate Islam's conquest of Jewish land or the white man's imposition of his culture upon native populations) that prohibits Mohawk or Jew from living on their ancestral lands respectively; nor is there any law written that prohibits Mohawk or Jew from bringing up their children according to their ancient traditions and laws respectively. Of course, the recent Canadian media frenzy about Kahnawake Mohawks commanding a defence of their ancient identity has been propagated by certain journalists, primarily Lysiane Gagnon of the Globe and Mail, as a protest against Mohawk "racism," as though Mohawks endeavouring to enhance a Mohawk consciousness is somehow prejudice.
Natan Sharansky writes, "Identity can involve a person's connection with history. It can mean the desire to have children be part of this history, to educate them about a valued past so that it becomes part of their future." Another parallel shared by both Mohawk and Jew is the fact that their respective antagonists, whether Islamist or non-native, effete journalists like Lysiane Gagnon, refuse to publicly acknowledge the deeper history of both Mohawk and Jew. Perhaps these antagonists are avoiding these particular histories and the fact that their remembrance can prove beyond a doubt that neither Christianity nor Islam is in possession of laws and ethics that can equal or surpass those already taught to Mohawk and Jewish children.
Written by Michael Devolin,
Director, B'nai Elim Canada
Michael Devolin's column at Magic City
