Chapter Three

Pre-Cyberspace Prophecies Now in Place: Light It Or Lose It. (7TH Fire)[1]

Part of the Native movement to self-determination today is contained in prophecies that call for a re-reckoning of the role of Natives in larger society. These prophecies can be seen as the philosophy or spiritual teaching behind Native self-determination. They are ancient and hard to date, but they arose with great strength in the early to mid-90s, as events such as Kahnesetake (Oka) in 1990 foreshadowed a resurgence of Native activism, and the arrival of a new generation to lead to the future, and into cyberspace.

There is a reclaiming of Native values in cyberspace, after 500 years of resistance to European views. The European (largely Christian) worldview labeled people as good or bad, and organized society into submissive and dominant (class system). "Bad" behavior (that is, not responding to authority) was to be punished. Within 30 years of first contact with the Jesuits around 1600, the Wendat (Huron) and Innu went from being a consensual, egalitarian people to a "hierarchical" and "self-policing" group that began meting punishment on its own children, women and men. "Women were especially singled out for surveillance and punishment on the grounds that they posed the greatest potential threat to the collective well-being," as they were now instruments of the Devil (Anderson 1991: 96-98).

Missionization began with the Migmag, Innu, Wendat and Iroquois in the 1600s, and spread to Algonquin and Ojibwe through the 1700s, reaching the Cree and Dene in the West and Cree in the North some 100 years later. In the 1800s, the Oblate missionaries and Protestant groups such as the Wesleyan Methodist Missionaries worked with the traders on a new North American colonizing imperative that took in the whole of the Great Lakes area as far North as James Bay (Devens 1992: 45-46), and continued into Western Canada.

Native Men, including medicine people trying to preserve their status, would adopt trappings of the Christian religious and economic system while the women more often "declined conversion and instead stressed the importance of older rituals and practices." Confrontations escalated as the women "scorned priests and converts alike for flouting tradition." Some Iroquois and Ojibwe women "had little patience for Christians who threatened eternal damnation to those who clung to heathen practices" (Devens 1992: 22); I can say the same is true today. Whether men or women complied with missionaries' efforts, however, the "evangelization of Huronia (and many other areas) was destined never to be completed. This mirrored the general picture in New France: "evangelism produced a few religious vocations among Amerindian women" (Dickason 1992: 127), and almost none among the men.[2]

European attitudes were shaped by social subjugation, class differences and male supremacy, and the European model of life imported by the Jesuits and other missionaries in Canada was strictly hierarchical and exclusive.[3] By contrast the Iroquois are a consensual society, with institutions designed to integrate knowledge and customs from other peoples. The Iroquois accepted the dances, customs and ceremonies of all of their member nations. The print version of the Great Law of the Iroquois states that: "The rites and festivals of each nation shall remain undisturbed..." (Parker 1991: 56).

The Iroquois also accepted the dreams, visions and beliefs of individuals, and promoted each individual's responsibility for one's own life and relations with the natural world. On a personal and social level, differences were recognized and celebrated. Unlike the Europeans, Natives "do not see history as a meaning that humans can confer on life; for them, the sense of life is, instead, the liberty of every being" (Sioui 1992: 23). This perspective was not entertained by the monarchies of Europe at the time of contact, but was adopted later on (in principle at least) by the founding fathers of democracy in the U.S.

Missionization was a powerful tool for colonization and assimilation, yet the erosion of tradition was not complete. Although surrounded by Christian institutions and teachings, Natives still kept their own spiritual leaders and individual beliefs, hidden from white eyes. While it has been argued that "White colonizers destroyed the Natives' political, economic, kinship and, in most cases, religious systems" (Frideres 2000: 4) (emphasis mine), the continuance of traditional teachings and Native worldview by many elders gave Native people the strength to survive this process.[4]

Dickason notes how in the late 1600s, "the Iroquois had managed to keep their confederacy intact in the face of disasters (war losses, disease, starvation and desertion to Catholic missions)[5] and despite the relentless pressures of European settlement." Iroquois society was changing, and the communal traditional Longhouse dwelling was abandoned for single family units. "Nevertheless, the Iroquois identity remained strong" (1992: 155), and the Longhouse teachings survived.

Europeans brought the Bible and other books, and a way of looking at the world through books as something separate from people. They brought the idea of a world with a beginning and end (like a book) and introduced linear and segmented thinking to a people who were used to seeing the whole of things. "For native peoples, human beings are at one with the universe and do not conceive of themselves as separate from Ônature' as we do within our own set of beliefs" (Beaudry 1992: 72-73).[6]

In her book Countering Colonization,Devens shows how the colonizing process also undermined Native social structure by reorganizing relationships between the sexes. The Jesuits promoted a male dominated nuclear family, which was unnatural to Natives who lived in extended family groups and who were used to women sharing in the socioeconomic and spiritual life of the group. Traditionally, women had public lives and councils - as did the men. The missionaries and traders favoured "the productive activities of native men" while often ignoring women altogether.[7] As the men moved from "subsistence hunters to fur traders" and capitalist conditions on reserves replaced natural migratory and social patterns including "communal relations," the extended family disintegrated (Devens 1992: 4; 28).[8]

Women were not fit to rule in the European Christian framework, and so the matrilineal and matrifocal (meaning the inclusion of women in the governing process) nature of Native society was also weakened. Karen Anderson discusses how, in the Jesuit Relations, women are classified either as "non-converts, who are lewd, unnatural seductresses" or "chaste, innocent women and girls who had embraced Christianity and who were now compliant and fearful" (Anderson 1991: 89). In either case, their traditional role as partner in the consensual governing circle was diminished. The inclusive (circular) nature of Native society was damaged.

Today, this history is well understood in Indian Country, and efforts to re-emphasize Native perspectives take up much of the time of traditional Natives. These perspectives can be seen in the following prophecies. They are helping to heal and strengthen within Native communities, and are an answer to the colonizers and the colonization process of the last 500 years ¾ and they are heard in cyberspace as well.

Next: 3.1 The Seventh Fire Prophecy

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