June 2007

Something is going to destroy the unnaturally old pine stands of the Canadian Rockies, be it fire or disease . . . . How strange: little insects that selectively and neatly kill only certain tree species, opening up the woods naturally, without removing nutrients or damaging the soil, are used as an excuse by humans to wreck an entire ecosystem.

That was originally written in 1985.
Ben Gadd
Jasper, Alberta

Dogma
Alison Gillmor (“It’s a Dog’s Life,” April) says doggie author Jon Katz “counsels us to be aware of what we’re asking of dogs and why we’re asking it.” When I ask anything of my dogs (two rescue schnauzers), they’re usually okay with it after I tell them why I am asking. A good explanation goes a lot further than “because I said so.”
Shelagh Rogers
Vancouver, British Columbia

Reserve Judgment
Peter MacDonald’s April letter in response to Larry Krotz’s (“Separate and Unequal,” February) awakened in me a memory, dormant for thirty-seven years, that may be germane to the issue of native education.

At the time, I was employed with the new Department of Development in Prince Edward Island, which had a mandate rooted in a federal-provincial agreement on social and economic development. Given the resources then available, I thought there might be an opportunity for me to bring some program assistance to the Mi’kmaq community on pei. I drove to Lennox Island Reserve to meet with a young woman activist, whose name I no longer remember, to discuss means for motivating children to take a greater interest in school.

“Why should native children stay in school? ” she asked. “They begin school with the Dick and Jane readers, learning about white kids doing things that native kids never do, in homes they never get to live in. Readers in the later grades are about white people’s achievements, which may have come at a cost to our own people.

“Then they are asked to learn arithmetic: ‘Find the area of a field,’ the book says, but there are no fields on many reserves. In geography, they must learn about strange countries and their capital cities, but countries and boundaries are not part of our experience. For us, it would be more useful to learn about streams, lakes, and rivers — our travel routes, where the fish are. And the history taught in school is white man’s history, in which our own people are shown as savages. The lessons are about wars among Europeans, about British kings and their generals, lessons even white kids don’t have any interest in.