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 Facilitator |
"When did you come and march with us?"
Let's face it, history has not been kind to either group, and neither could spare much time to march on each other's behalf. On the scale of losses, however, the First Nations had three continents under their possession up till 124 years ago, while the Jews were kicked off a postage stamp beside a desert 2,000 years ago. Who is the biggest loser? To me it's all sacred territory, the whole world.
As David Ahenakew left the courthouse of the pimple on the prairie and sidestepped tumbleweeds, stood across the street from the statue of Louis Riel, he faced reporters, and it ground to a halt. A lawyer of B'nai B’rith, possibly accidently starting another race war on the prairie, asked for a clarification of Ahenakew's political position regarding holocausts. According to reports, Steve Slimovitch, B'nai Brith lawyer, asked Ahenakew how he could approve of the killings of millions of people, and what did he want to say to the Jews. At that moment David gave up trying to reason his way back into the political arena, made his reply and departure.
Let's look back to the time around which the Cree became (suddenly) persona non grata in their own country. Why, it was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Up until then the Cree Nation thrived with British and French trading companies under the mercantile system, and, meanwhile, the Jews, uncomfortably ensconced in European ghettos, marginalized away from the mercantile system, persona non grata outside the gates of miserable poverty-stricken quarters, were allowed work only as servants and sellers of used clothing (indeed the selling of recycled goods strictly amongst themselves) and could obtain no access to higher (church-run) education, and conducted no political and few religious exercises outside (often hidden) synagogues.
When Ahenakew's family was shoved aside for the sake of somebody else's big chance, in the Europe of an emerging Industrial Revolution (was a period of pogroms in Russia and Ukraine, but generally elsewhere) Jews emerged under the Napoleonic inspired emancipation from their reservations, which were known in Europe as the Jewish Ghettos (found in every city and always poor, like most of the reservations hidden away around here).
Do the First Nations await emancipation from their ghettos? Is this the question for the previously emancipated lawyers of B'nai B'rith? My point being, Jews are familiar with forgiveness, and, by the way, several thousand people died today, yesterday, and tomorrow under withering AK-47 and AR-15 rifle fire in the Congo. TODAY, PEOPLE. Neither side has a monopoly on holocaust and never did, but we owe the 'word' and some of the intent to the fallen Hebrews of Europe. Genocide is inter-racial for everybody. (Now. according to Rwandans this could be changing.
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