Just when we thought society had moved beyond this ugly stuff comes word of what was meant to be a joke in a newsletter published by a branch of the Royal Canadian Legion in Cranbrook.
The joke dealt with the arrests of hunters who had killed aboriginal men. The punchline was about the hunters being arrested because they used beer for bait.
When Shirley Green, a Legion member who is part Ktunaxa and part Cree, complained about it, the joke was taken out and a bizarre explanation published instead, stating that one person had taken offence at it, but the joke had been considered good for a laugh. No apology was forthcoming. In fact, Legion branch president Edith LeClair complained to reporters: "Obviously, people can't take a joke."
Oh, it's a side-splitter all right. This "joke" has slurred the memory of the brave deeds performed by aboriginal soldiers in fighting for this nation, many who gave their lives.
To use one of the Legion's own favourite phrases, lest we forget:
There was Francis Pegahmagabow, an Ojibwa from Ontario, who saw service at Ypres, the Somme, Passchendaele and Amiens. According to the Department of National Defence's Directory of History and Heritage, Pegahmagabow was "credited with 378 kills, his record was amongst the most impressive of any Allied sniper on the Western Front. Amongst his many awards for bravery were the Military Medal and two Bars for his services - he was one of only 39 members of the CEF [Canadian Expeditionary Force] to achieve that distinction."
The directory reports that some 300 status Indians gave their lives during the First World War. Among them was Lt. James Moses of Ontario's Grand River reserve, whose plane was downed by anti-aircraft fire, and who wrote to his family just a few weeks before his death:
"We bombed the German troops from a very low height and had the pleasure of shooting hundreds of rounds into dense masses of them with my machine gun. They simply scattered and tumbled in all directions. Needless to say, we got it pretty hot and when we got back to the aerodrome found that our machine was pretty well shot up."
Then, there was the celebrated Delaronde family from Ontario's Nipigon reserve: Joseph, a private, was awarded the Military Medal for gallantry in action. Denis, later killed in action, was the first of his battalion to go into enemy trenches. Alexander, sent home and discharged after being wounded, nonetheless re-enlisted and rejoined the fray at the front lines.
Lest we forget the more than 500 aboriginal members of the 107th Battalion from Winnipeg, who fought at Lens, the 17 soldiers who enlisted from Alberta's Blood reserve, and the 20 from the Peguis band in Manitoba, and of whose ranks 11 were killed.
In the Second World War, there was Manitoba's Tommy Prince, who belonged to an elite squad of parachutists. Scouting behind enemy lines in Italy, he fixed broken telephone wires by pretending to be a farmer out in his field. He was awarded nine decorations for bravery, including the American Silver Star, the greatest number for any aboriginal serving in the Second World War.
Lest we also forget: Raymond Anderson, whom I had the privilege of visiting at his home in Sandy Hook, Man., years ago, was a M脙漏tis belonging to the First Canadian Parachute Battalion. He vividly described what it was like to be crouched in an aircraft in the drop zone in the night skies over France. It was very hot in the plane, and adrenalin was flowing through the paratroopers like electricity through wires, but Anderson was totally focused on the moment.
"I was 19 years old," he said, adding that's probably why he wasn't afraid - he was too young to know any better.
The directory quotes a M脙漏tis woman named Dorothy Asquith, who joined the RCAF Women's Auxiliary: "Discrimination? Everybody was so involved in what was happening with the war that nobody was involved in such pettiness."
Too bad the same can't be said for attitudes in 2012.
