Dancing with a Ghost: Exploring Indian Reality

Ronald R. Henry is director of the School of Translators and
Interpreters at Laurentian University.

The Assistant Crown Attorney for Kenora observes that the legal system
fails the Anishnabae because of the chasm separating them from
Euro-Canadian culture. The difference derives from the perspective that
“Kitchi-Manitou has given us a different understanding.” The
repercussions are felt in daily life and in court procedures. As a basis
for comprehension, four intertwined ethics are explored: “the ethic of
noninterference,” which underlies all decision-making; “the ethic
that anger not be shown,” which reflects also on grief, sorrow, and
forgiveness; “the ethic respecting praise and gratitude,” which
relates to learning and the need to do one’s best; and the notion that
“the time must be right,” the essential mental skill that sets all
knowledge into action.

In order to grasp the peculiar juncture in history with which Natives
are grappling, it is important to remember that the societies in which
they live in northwestern Ontario are recent fabrications. The
Anishnabae have been deprived of the self-sufficiency and self-respect
previously derived from problem-solving as a means of survival in the
bush. The wilderness may seem constraining, but it provided freedom from
interference while demanding a multitude of free choices. In the new
communities, however, choices—jobs, housing, school—are too often
made by others. Hence, self-government may be largely a matter of being
left alone, of putting an end to paternalistic interference.

For many, the integrated existence with the land, the family, and the
spirit world has been lost, and the compartmentalized Western way of
life may prevent them from becoming whole again. Yet they manage to
cope. Practices such as the pipe, sweetgrass, and sweat lodge are being
revived and integrated into the Native holistic approach to
rehabilitation, which emphasizes “making things right again” rather
than punishment.

Nobody can doubt that our justice system can be improved, and that the
Anishnabae are fated to contact with urban civilization. The ghost
summoned here by a sympathetic zhaganosh crown attorney calls for
greater self-determination in the area of crisis and punishment while
drawing on a unique vision of man.