Hey, how ’bout them chaps your British schoolboys call Red Indians? As I write this, I am wearing my loyalties by displaying three badges: a Ukrainian flag, complete with gold ball at the top of the pole; a First Nations octopus, with an eye like a totem pole; a Roman legionary shield, respecting Europe’s heritage.
(From a farmer’s market in Edmonton, the Bill Reid Museum in Vancouver and the British Museum in London)
I suppose you guys, my cousins in Europe, are disapproving of how a provincial premier is advocating we get rid of the age-old Indian Act.
Which would inevitably mean ditching the Department of Crown-Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, (CIRNAC)—located in a white (yes, ironic) building, one that a native told me he wished would be dynamited down.
I realize you Europeans approve of government departments, complete with long names. Folks claim your northern Scandinavian nations are mostly socialist. And during my lifetime half of your countries were very governmental… while approving of everything remotely Russian. Except for Yugoslavia, communist but going it’s own way. And Albania, communist but looking to China.
Ain’t nothing sacredly fixed about culture: I notice your eastern nations have changed. Back in my day, you guys failed to become proud of being part of the Comintern. (Communist international) So much for “workers of the world unite.” So much for Equality. You guys failed in Yugoslavia to become “proud of being Yugoslavian.” So much for Fraternity. When communism started faltering, you started ethnic cleansing. Having ideals is nice, but your pendulum swung too far.
Your lesson? Assimilation won’t happen unless society sets an intention.
Now you have a European Union (EU) with too much liberty. In fact, you remind me of when Poland was economically “the sick man of Europe” because in the Polish parliament anyone could veto anything. This year, such a practice has meant Hungary vetoing EU assistance for any humanitarian aide to Ukraine. I might privately think you need a revolution, but I would politely leave things up to you. Even if I disapprove.
Just as you may disapprove of our relegating assimilation, and the Indian Act, to the dustbin of history.
Of course, your EU is not a monolith. Your right wing parties, like that one just elected in Germany, idealize Russia just as much as the White House does. Meanwhile, some EU leaders disagree with Russia and the US meeting for Ukraine peace talks. Not that the EU is against peace, exactly. Your leaders say, “Nothing about Ukraine, without Ukraine.”
Here in Canada, according to my Member of Parliament, some of us don’t believe in spending a single “dollar” on Ukraine but all of us can agree with your sentiment.
(We have no pennies).
Similarly, we are cognizant that the premier is an aboriginal himself, and therefore his “with us” ideals have credibility amongst Canadians. His opposition, naturally, would be the federal government, which favours big departments. But I don’t think he would face opposition from us racists.
Being Canadian myself, it’s Politically Correct for me to tell you: We are a racist nation when it comes to the American Indian. Luckily most of us, just like MAGA people, (Make America Great Again) are “low information” voters. It is MAGA’s low information, down in the US, that’s makes them gullible to everything the White House says, from an election being stolen, to border walls and tariffs all being paid for by foreigners. Likewise, up here, racists are so innocent as to how the Indian Act remains so good at implementing Canada’s racism.
I don’t mind you guys chuckling when I say that if that premier, without quoting Trump’s “fraud, waste and abuse,” advocates “saving money,” then the same racists who “don’t give a care” about Ukraine will support dismantling their best instrument for racism against Indigenous.
I’m sure you Europeans are aware of your human frailty as you balance assimilation versus freedom. Mostly, you think you are doing migrants a favour in granting them ghettos —which you call enclaves— with their own “separate but equal” schools —which you call the joy of instruction in their own religion/culture/language. —This while former Yugoslavian Muslim females remain “Burka and head covering” free— .
Are you setting your intention for liberty or racism? I ask because maybe, possibly, you will claim that only “outside agitators” would ever stir up students to rebel against their clergy and relatives to demand liberty to fraternize equally with fellow Europeans.
As I said, I wear a Roman shield. Romans made their conquered subjects walk “under the yoke,” a sort of lashed together high jump. Not here. The First Nations never did that to each other, nor did the White Men do so to the Red Men.
“Roman Britain” has a ring of romance, eh? If today the English language, unlike the German, is very devoid of built-in honorifics “to one’s betters” and lacking gender for wooden furniture, and absent of all those conjugations that make learning French so silly, then it’s because a lot of honourable tribes and clans, for their children’s future, strove to assimilate.
In my own time, a young pretty Black physician, a companion of Doctor Who, says “…we British…” My father experienced how this assimilation was partly done, language-wise, by finding it hard to get a job if one didn’t speak English. Harsh. That’s how you make an omelette, breaking eggs and breaking hearts.
Here in North America, assimilation-wise, legally, the US president must be born in the States. As for Canada, our first prime minister was born in Europe, in “Northern Britain,” and he was a drunkard. Maybe for him assimilation took a toll.
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
Calgary
October
2026
Afterthoughts:
Idealism note: I was reading a personal letter by my favourite Boy Scout, General Sir Robert Baden-Powell. He referred to Northern Britain. A footnote explained that was a term used by some for Scotland at the time.
Blog note: Writers use synonyms to lessen monotony. Today I used various synonyms for Red Men to symbolize racism.
In Canada, to keep folks from getting mixed up with Australia, the preferred term, chosen “with us,” is “Indigenous.”
For this piece, I did not consult any Europeans, Indigenous, US citizens, or Romans. Any errors are my own.
Say, the Canadian flag is officially described as white… with red bars and a centred red maple leaf.
“We” note: If one says “they,” then “they” have the right to say “you.” …
Somewhere down in the States today, a man had thought spending money on a flag was worth it. On his paint-peeling, sagging veranda, rests a proud, if thread-bare, “Stars and Stripes.”
Meanwhile, if one carried a bunch of free, brand new, bright polyester Canadian flags to a humble Indigenous Reservation, nobody would want one… I’m Serious. Not when “they,” including me and “our” federal government, impose an Indian Act “without us.”
Song note: Relevant to changed European culture, and learning to say “we,” not for one’s “estate” but for France “as a whole,” is a Lady Gaga revolutionary song that gives me an ear worm: Search engine history teachers (all one word) and French Revolution
