The Lansdowne Letters: A Different Way of Thinking

When my family lived in Lansdowne House in 1961,
the Ojibwa of the region and other First Nations people
throughout Ontario were viewed as inferior to the white man.

A pervasive paternalism on the part of the church and the government
tainted relationships between white people and aboriginal people.
First Nations cultures, languages, customs, and lifestyles were derided,
and the native people experienced a cruel prejudice
that grew out of the white man's sense of superiority
and his misunderstanding of the First Nations peoples.

Sometimes, when I read my father's words about his experiences in the North
I cringe at his paternalistic tone toward the Ojibwa he lived among,
and other times I appreciate his empathy for them.




In his unpublished handbook for new teachers in Indian schools
in the Sioux Lookout Indian Agency,
my father wrote a brief overview of the history of the "bush Indians"
who lived in the vast wilderness of Northern Ontario
and of how their history shaped them very differently
from the white men who pushed into their lands.


My father wrote:
“The bush Indians are wonderful people.
They are cheerful, loyal, faithful, resourceful, and honest,
according to their own standards.
Their standards differ considerably from ours though, and therein lies
the cause of most of the friction between whites and Indians in the bush,
which gives rise to many of the charges that the Indians
are shiftless, unreliable and dishonest, rogues,
thinking only of the present and giving no thought to the future.

It is only natural that the Indian tends to live
only in the present, with no thought for the future.
For thousands of years the Indian led a very precarious existence
in which the future was something which very few Indians
were fortunate to experience to any great degree.

Infant and child mortality was exceedingly high,
and an Indian was very fortunate just to reach adulthood.
Up until very recent times, the percentage of Indian babies which survived
infancy and childhood and reached manhood was less than 25%.



Upon reaching adulthood, the Indian’s chance of longevity
decreased rapidly with every winter he successfully endured.
The winters were times of the most severe hardship and deprivations,
which took a dreadful toll of human lives, children and adults as well.

Summer was the only enjoyable period
in an otherwise very bleak existence.
The Indians loved summer, and still do.

Summer was the time for play,
for the renewing of old friendships,
and the forming of new ones.
It was also the time for courtship and marriage,
feasting and dancing.



True, there was the coming winter to prepare for, but other than
laying enough aside to assure survival at the subsistence level,
the Indian made no long-range plans for the future.

There was no need to.  Very few survived to old age,
and those who did were cared for by their relatives and children.
There were no cars to be bought, no mortgages to be paid off,
or no retirement plans or educational plans to be financed through savings.

With the coming of the Hudson’s Bay Company, even the necessity
of putting aside a small store of supplies for the winter was removed.
The Honourable Company encouraged the debt system.

The Indians were encouraged to get what they needed
for the winter on credit and to pay for it the next spring
out of the proceeds of their trapping endeavors.
They were also encouraged to spend any surplus
on enjoyment during the summer.




It speaks well for the inherent honesty of the Indian
that the Hudson’s Bay Company operating as it does
on the debt system was able to prosper and flourish.

It is small wonder that the Indian,
brought up in an environment like this for centuries,
has developed the philosophy of the grasshopper,
rather than the philosophy of the ant.

This debt system of the Hudson’s Bay Company has led to the development
of a system of values which is the direct opposite to that of the white man.

A white man’s success is judged by the amount
of worldly possessions he is able to accumulate.
The Indian’s success, on the other hand, is judged by the amount
of debt that he is allowed to contract at the Hudson’s Bay post.

The Indian who is granted $500.00 debt by the post Factor in the fall,
is considered by the other Indians to be five times as worthy
as the Indian who is only granted $100.00 worth of debt.

I wonder if the current practices of finance buying
and the phenomenal growth of small loan companies in recent years
is not an indication that the white man is gradually
coming around to the Indian point of view.



The Indian, even today, does not have a highly developed
sense of ownership and private property.
I guess this results from the centuries when there was
no such thing as private ownership, only tribal ownership.
This poorly developed sense of private ownership has led
to many accusations of dishonesty and theft against the Indians.

I had a hard time getting accustomed to this myself when I first came up north.
If I left a shovel, or a hammer, or a wrench outside,
chances are it would not be there when I went back after it.
I would usually find it around one of the shacks,
if I looked for it, for no effort would be made to conceal it.  

Why should they conceal it?  They were not stealing it,
only using it because they happened to need it, and it was available.
Obviously I did not need the article, for I left it unattended;
and they needed it, so they took it.  It was as simple as that.

This used to bug me, till I realized that actually
the Indians fully understood the arrangement to be reciprocal.
I was perfectly welcome to anything they had
without the formalities of asking for it.

There was from my point of view only one fly
in this otherwise idealistic ointment.
I had just about everything I needed,
while most of the Indians had hardly anything they needed.

There were three things which you just did not borrow
without asking permission first:
a man’s snowshoes, canoe and paddle, and gun."



My father recognized that many of the prejudicial labels
applied to First Nations people were the result of white people
not understanding aboriginal history or the culture that developed from it.

But as empathetic and compassionate as he was,
my father worked for the Educational Division of the Indian Affairs Branch,
and the primary goal of Indian education was the ultimate integration
of the Indian population into the white population.

The longer my father worked for the Indian Affairs Branch,
the more difficult it became for him to handle his dissonance
arising from implementing the Branch's educational goals
and observing the effects of the Branch's policies
on the Ojibwa, Cree, and Saulteaux throughout Northern Ontario.

This dissonance became one of the reasons
my father did not return to the north and the Branch
after a year's leave of absence due to a serious illness.



Till next time ~
Fundy Blue



On the Shore of the Annapolis Basin
Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada
July 24, 2016
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




Notes:

1.  Bush Indians:
     My father used this term to collectively describe all the First Nations people who lived in
     Northern Ontario, the largest groups of whom were Ojibwa and Cree.

2.  My father's unpublished handbook:
     The Northern School Teacher:  A Hand Book To Be Issued To All New Entrants To The Teaching
     Profession In The Indian Schools In The Sioux Lookout Indian Agency, 1966, pages 27-29.

3.  The Honourable Company:
     Sometimes my father and others referred to the Hudson's Bay Company as "The Honorable
     Company." It may come from the phrase "the Honourable Company of Merchants-Adventurers
     Trading into Hudson's Bay," the original source of which I have yet to track down.

4.  Post Factor:
    Historically "factors," mercantile fiduciaries or agents, received and sold goods on commission at
     Hudson's Bay posts or "factories" scattered throughout the vast region of rivers and streams
     draining into Hudson Bay.   Wikipedia





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