Chief Dan George, who lived from 1899 to 1981, was a chief of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, as well as a poet, actor and activist. He was born Dan Slaholt but had his name changed to George in a residential school at age five. He performed this poem to a silenced crowd of 32,000 with at Empire Stadium in Vancouver in 1967. I’ve been meaning to share it since I first heard about it from his great grandson Sid Bobb at Big Medicine Studio in Nipissing First Nation outside of North Bay. It’s incredibly relevant today, fifty years into the ‘next hundred years’ since the centennial.
“Oh God in heaven! Give me back the courage of the olden chiefs. Let me wrestle with my surroundings. Let me again, as in the days of old, dominate my environment. Let me humbly accept this new culture and through it rise up and go on.
“Oh God! Like the thunderbird of old I shall rise again out of the sea; I shall grab the instruments of the white man’s success—his education, his skills—and with these new tools I shall build my race into the proudest segment of your society.
“Before I follow the great chiefs who have gone before us, oh Canada, I shall see these things come to pass. I shall see our young braves and our chiefs sitting in the houses of law and government, ruling and being ruled by the knowledge and freedoms of our great land.
“So shall we shatter the barriers of our isolation. So shall the next hundred years be the greatest in the proud history of our tribes and nations.”
In an article on CBC called Has anything changed? Revisiting Chief Dan George’s iconic ‘Lament for Confederation’, poet Janet Rogers wrote: “I look forward to hearing Chief Dan George’s Lament for Confederation read again and again during 2017. Let’s revisit this honest and accurate piece of writing penned by an Indigenous leader who all of Canada proudly recognized and embraced.”
She was four years old when Chief Dan George delivered his 1967 poem and has since become a well-known poet and spoken-word artist, which makes me think of the conclusion of one of the poems in his book, My Heart Soars, with Chief Dan George’s determination and vision for the future.
“From our children will come those braves,
who will carry the torches to the places
where our ancestors rest.
There we will bow our heads
and chant the song of their honor.”
Janet wrote a poem on decolonization that she mixed with an electric rock sound and shared as part of her role as Victoria’s poet laureate. I believe someone will be looking back on her poem fifty years from now, just as we look back on Chief Dan George today. I wonder what they will see.
Painting by William Neil Howell. Photos by James O’Mara.