There’s a lot of work to be done

Robbie Dick Sr. is helping establish cultural programs and a Council of Elders with the help of his wife,

Elizabeth. He was Chief of Whapmagoostui between 1976 to 1985, then from ’87 to ’92.

He describes those years as “very educational and rewarding.” With his wealth of experience in the political arena and his background with the James Bay Agreement, no one can argue he can’t offer points of view which would help in our development as a nation.

But it’s his passionate love and concern for the ways and spiritual well-being of Cree people that becomes very apparent when listening to Robbie. “Everything we had was given by the Creator through his Creation. And if we have any respect for the Creator, we have to respect them and keep them because this was the gift we recieved,” he said.

I recently talked to Robbie and I originally wanted to ask him about the recent Cree Nation Gathering. Which is why my question about it half-way through the interview sticks out like a sore thumb.

The Nation: Where would you say we are as Cree people in terms of the political structure? Do people have enough of a say?

Robbie Dick Sr.: The way I look at it now, I’ve been involved since the beginning of this James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement process of establishing local government, according to what I would term as the white man’s way of doing things.

We have been led to believe and adapt to the white man’s culture more than our own culture, and as we go along, we get further and further away from our own traditional values, traditional beliefs especially, and the traditional way of doing things.

You can tell by talking with the Elders. Most of the time they cannot comprehend when you’re talking about politics and administration, and the native people, not just here in Whapmagoostui but all over the world, need to acquire and get back to their roots, to their traditional way of doing things—ceremonies and what have you.

Because of the fact that their life-view, their world-view is different than we’re led to believe by the western society, this has brought a twist amongst our people and has misled a lot of our people to abandon their ways. We have to go back to whatever we can revive.

When you look at the way our culture should be practiced, it has to go along with living off the land. It has to harmonize with nature. And when you look at our communities, they are not constructed that way. They are not oriented towards that objective—to be in harmony with nature.

Because the things we’re doing now, we’re doing it in the white man’s way, not taking to much into consideration, the balancing of our ways with nature. If we want to excavate for a house, we excavate for a house. There is one community in particular that wants to build their own hydro-dams.

And also the way we do things nowadays seems to be more or less not in conformity with our traditional values. Even hunting, fishing, trapping. For example, the trapper hunts for fur to make income—the white man income, the white man’s way of getting around.

In the old days, they only trapped what they needed and they used everything they needed. But because of the fur industry and the fur market and also the need for furs, which I’m sure is declining now, this has caused an overkill of animals in Cree territory with the influence of non-native harvesting in the territory.

Sometimes we tend to take more than we need, even us Crees. So this is something we fail to understand to some extent because we’re not abiding by the teachings of our traditional people, our traditional Elders, that we only take what we need and not more that what we need, and we use up everything.

That’s not always the case nowadays and sometimes hunting could be looked at as sport hunting instead of the traditional meaning of survival. A lot of the things we do now have affected us mentally, physically and spiritually when we look at the way we have been given to survive on this planet. We’ve been given everything. We have legs to walk on. We machines to do that for us. All the things we did for ourselves, like getting our water, our own wood, now we just flick a switch.

And we argue about how these things distract us from living in harmony with nature. And we are participating in it by using it. In our tradition that was not the case, so a lot of these things have to be retaught—re-educate ourselves and try to orient our organizations and our people and the way we do things towards that.

Reflect our culture in the things we do and say. We have to balance what we have. See what is not in conflict with our culture, and that we don’t contradict ourselves when we say we want to maintain and preserve our land and our culture.

So we have to analyze everything we do now because a lot of the things we have done or are doing today, I don’t think we’ll give up. We have acquired those things. But we have to know what it means to have these things and what it does to our native ego, our way of life, and what they mean for us and how we can have these things and still use these things in a less radical way towards nature.

There are a lot of ways we have to look at the way we do things nowadays because the non-native community around the world is looking at that too, as to how to live in harmony with Creation.

Because what’s happening right now is like raping the earth and destruction to our planet.

And what we do to the planet we do to ourselves. We have to see what we’re doing. Where are we going with all these things? What does it mean go back to the old ways of living, the way they did their ceremonies and why they did them and what was the meaning of these things and how to associate with these things and look at the way things are done right now, analyze that and reflect your culture, your heritage?

It’s not going back to the Stone Age, but rather to dean up your act, clean up your life. For example, a lot of people have a lot of problems, be it mental or physical. Why is that created that way? Because of negligence of our health, of our minds.

There are native teachings that can teach us how to live or how to act, how to behave and how to respect everything, and how to respect one’s self. And by this, you can balance out, you have to balance everything. Every aspect and element of our lives, of our culture.

That’s a lot of work to be done. A lot of people are hesitant also to go back and discuss some of these thing.. For example, spirituality. We have Christianity—a lot of us have already adapted right from birth, even our Elders have done that and they are very much influenced by what they learn about God through the Bible or through Christianity.

There was no knowledge of Christianity in our part of the world before the coming of the whiteman. We had our beliefs, we had our religious rituals, we had our ways of praying to the Creator. We had our ways of thanksgiving. We had ways of everything that we did. And that’s why we always lived in harmony with God’s Creation.

But since then, it left us wondering whether we are doing the right thing or not nowadays, whatever we do. There is a lot to be learned from this process. And I think it is only right. It is our right as native people to acquire that knowledge whichever way we can. To get back on track, not only as native people, but as human beings.

Maybe this goes back to the Cree Nation Gathering. I’m sure you’ve been involved in a lot of annual general assemblies and things like that. Do you feel this one was any different?

This one was very much different than the other ones I’ve ever attended because this one was one of its kind. From the last year and this year, at the meetings I’ve attended, there was an indication of the cultural stuff coming out or being spoken of by both the youth and the Elders. And I think our youth are willing to go back and understand a lot of these things they never understood before or never were taught about and they never learned. So they have that right.

And we have the people to do it. Because even if our local Cree Elders do not understand some of these things, for example, native spirituality, there are other native people across the country who can teach these things because they are teaching and speaking of these things, these teachings.

So we need to acquire the services of other people to help us because it is believed that the native people of this country, of this continent, were once one nation. And a lot of our ceremonies and our ways and our behaviours and our way of doing things are similar, no matter where we live in this country. And the ceremonies that might have been conducted might differ from region to region, but like I said that one time they were together.

And there are ways we can help one another go back to our culture, and a lot of the teachings that need to be done have to be done traditionally. And a lot of the questions, a lot of the answers we seek, can only be acquired through ceremonies. That was the case before. And that’s how the teachings were received, through sweat lodges, fastings and so forth.

So there are other things that only Elders or medicine people can do. But there’s a lot of work in between that needs to be organized and that needs to be done as soon as feasibly possible.

What’s the next step now from that Gathering?

One of the hardest things to comprehend for a lot of people, I guess, is that our culture differs from what we are used to today, the way we live, because it’s another culture, it’s another worldview. The way we do things and the way we live, it would contradict a lot of the things we have to live with today. And if we have to do things our one way, we’re going to have to alienate some of our organizations from the mainstream society because they’re not in conformity with one another.

For example, the government structures we’re used to are in conformity with the rest of society. But the traditional way of

governing was different altogether. I think you can learn it from the way the Iroquois Confederacy has been operating, and also the way they have done things and why they have done them in a certain way. And we were no different than they were. Except for the fact that we were not amalgamated in one place because we were always scattered.

The way we are organized right now, for example, the government has organized us into small communities.

This is their world-view, this is how they see people living. But us, they called us nomads. We were scattered. We were living off the land. We never stayed in one place. But they don’t seem to be able to comprehend that, to allow people to live that way, because we would take up too much territory and they don’t want to recognize the whole territory as our community.

But when we look at it from our traditional perspective, this is what it is.

Our community is the whole territory, not just what the government recognizes under their laws. So a lot of the things we have to live with are in conformity with the laws of this country that was established by the Europeans.

But before that, this was a different world.

Besides that, we were always in harmony with nature. We never destroyed the land. But now we are contributing to the destruction of the land too, and also the misuse of resources. This is what we have to learn, where we have gone wrong and how to correct the situation. That’s my understanding of the situation we’re in right now. People tend to talk about things they do not understand sometimes. There’s a lot of things I don’t understand. There are things I do understand. I’ve been involved with politics and administration since talking with the Elders and trying to understand their point of view and where they’re coming from.

Politics. There is no such word in the Cree language. There is no such thing as politics. Because in the white man’s culture, everything is segregated. Like politics is separate, business is separate, religion is separate, so on and so forth. Everything is segregated.

In our culture everything, was harmonized together. If you wanted to live in the way before the introduction of western society, whatever we did we gave thanks, we did our ceremonies. The Elders were always the keepers of the knowledge that was passed on from generation to generation.

When we did them, we always did them in compliance with harmonizing everything, not separately. For example, every day was kept holy—instead of recognizing one day a week as a holy day. With spirituality, sometimes people say these things are no good, but that’s what they were told by the newcomers not by their people.

A lot of things were outlawed, a lot of things were disallowed. The drum and stuff like that. And people believed this so. And that is what we have to learn. Everything we had was given by the Creator through his Creation. And if we have any respect for the Creator, we have to respect them and keep them because this was the gift we recieved.

That’s why we are different from these newcomers. What they did when they came here, they wanted to make us like them, so they can accept us. Not before. That’s the process we have been going through all this time. All native people went through this and they’re still going through it today.

I even heard the churches apologizing to native people for what they have done to contribute to the assimilation of native people. But they’re still ministering to us as they did before. This is not exactly apologizing, as far as I’m concerned. These are the things we need to understand, but we need to do it accordingly. We’re not going to do it in a radical fashion. We’re not going to criticize because that’s not allowed in our culture, if we understand our culture.

We will always have to do things in peace with one another and in respect with one another. We respect Christianity, we respect the Bible, we respect every religion we come across. But in turn, they have to learn and respect us and our spiritual beliefs. This is the way it should have been. But that’s not the way it was.

It’s the same with everything else. But they have to learn respect the word is respect. That is the very foundation of our culture. So when you look at everything, you have to do it with respect and caution and in honour of the Creator.

So what’s so wrong about that? There is a lot to be learned. You only learn these through ceremonies and going on vision quests, fasts. And talking with medicine people or the teachers who know these things.

So this is what we have to do. We have to walk the talk. It’s not an easy task, because some people have to change their world view. There are Elders waiting to be heard, who have the knowledge waiting to be asked. There are a lot of teachings to teach us. It doesn’t mean people have to quit school, quit their jobs, don’t become lawyers and stuff like that.

Because we are caught between two cultures. We can balance them We can maintain both, instead of just one. Mainly to maintain our culture—that should be our number one priority. When we eat chickens and pizzas, it doesn’t mean we want to be this and that, or Italian. The English and French, they’re driving around with Japanese cars. That doesn’t make them Japanese. Why shoud it make us any different?

We still take off our hats when we eat Japanese food…

But we don’t take off our shoes… (laughter) These are things we need to understand. I’m willingto help with the process. That’s what I’m doing right now. Akuuda…