ese

go ro

It’s time
for a new
Indian policy

es time Canada adopted new
policies toward her Native
Indian people, says Doug Wilk-
inson, publisher of Indian Time,
writing in the current issue un-
der his. Native Indian name,
Sohaney.

He suggests that Native Indian
Organizations should unite their
forces, seek the support of all
progressive organizations con-
cerned with their problems and
demand a Royal Commission on
indian Affairs. “Split effort does
not make for success,” he says.

Commenting on the failure of
the federal government to pro-
mote Native Indians to federal
posts, Wilkinson notes:

“Indian graduates from univer-
sity, trade school or other train-
ing are only half way, without
a job in a chosen field. . . . The
Tidian department does not fol-
low the policy of employing edu-
cated Indians in such positions
as agriculturalists on reserves,
technical advisers of various kinds,
demonstrators in modern meth-
ods of home-making and nursing,
and so on.

“Jobs for Indians remain on a
lower level, regardless of quali-

_ feations.

“The function of the depart-
ment is to look after the educat-
ed Indian and to educ others,
so that in a few years personnel
will be available to direct Indian
affairs.

“Here in- British Columbia I
have personally watched a few
agents — three that are really
conscientious and trusted by our
people.

“What happened?

“One was yanked out of his
agency and put behind a desk.
Another, who was building a fine
agency, new buildings, clean and
healthy, was put somewhere else.
The other thought Indians were
human beings and was rewarded
with a severe reprimand.

“Time for a change, eh?”

sole
_ Wilkinson contrasts the plight
of a Native Indian mother found

. dying by the roadside at Fort St.
' John last May and several simi-
i lar instances of Native Indians
: dying for want of medical atten-
. tien with the efforts made to

save the life of a baby by flying
‘a rare type blood, donated by
: Native Indians, from Alberta to
: California.

He quotes a daily press report

‘from Fort St. John, dated May

ine

10 this year:
“A dying Indian mother sat by

-the Alaska Highway for more
“than 12 hours, sheltering her six-

- tolled past.

day old baby as cars and trucks
When a truck final-

; ty stopped it was too late. Mrs.

Louis Wolf died shortly after ad-
mittance to Providence Hospital.
“Reports reaching this B.C. town

‘told how she set out on horse-
- back from Half Way River. She

headed for the highway where,
she had been told, she would be
able to get a ride for the baby and
herself to hospital.

“She rode 30 miles and inter-
sected the road near Mill 100,
where she sat down to wait.

“The story of the hours follow-
Song, with cars and trucks passing
and repassing, and the night pass-
ing on to dawn, is the story of

death hovering and coming near- -

e: and nearer.
“All through those hours no

’

car stépped. At eight o’clock in
the morning a truck stopped but
it was going the wrong way.
Twelve hours later, on his way
back, the driver saw the woman
still there. He took her to a hos-
pital where she died shortly after
admittance.

“Women’s organizations in St.
John are demanding an investiga-
ion.

“There is no doctor in the 250
miles between Fort St. John and
Fort Nelson.

“Hospital authorities say they
were told Mrs. Wolf had been ill,
but had refused to go to the hos-
pital to have her baby.”

Then Wilkinson asks
questions:

“Did the Indian agent do any-
ching? Who was to blame? Just
another squaw? No doctor with-
in 250 miles — is that fact the
answer?”

He also. cites a number of
deaths at Topley (southeast of
Smithers in northern B.C.) be-
cause medical attention* was not
evailable.

“Consider the following Indian

these

Return to Singapore |

By ERIC LAMBERT

a 10 years I was back in
*% Singapore; 10 years after the
‘iberation from the Japs.

The taxi took us through China-
town, the unspeakable squalor of
Lavender Street, and past the
cool. white immensity of Raffles
Hotel.

Along the palm-lined ‘boule-
vard into Mountbatten Road
and the way to Katong where I
had been quartered in 1945 —
frum my bitter recollections a
drab, Jap-ravaged village where
disease and despair, blackmarket,
and jubilation had uncertainly
mingled.

But when we came by the
smooth, new Coast Road (the
ditches now free of burnt-out
cars and bodies), I found a dif-
ferent Katong. :

It had seen alteration — not
change.

The hovels of the Chinese vil-
lagers were there still, but thrust
back off the road now, as if in
shame of their poverty. Now the
road was flanked by the modern-
istic, candy-colored, plant-decor-
ated palaces of Chinese million-
aires. ‘

More houses are going up.

On a-building site, the build-
er’s laborers were young, bare-
foot Chinese girls, who giggled
when I stopped the taxi to take
iheir photo.

Good luck to them! They
weren’t to know I wasn’t just an-
other tourist with a camera, but
someone who took the photo for
otner reasons; perhaps to show
their smiling, sweating faces to
the far less attractive hostesses
of Toorak.

One of them did not giggle.

Hér eyes were direct and dark.
They weren’t hostile, for all their
lack of welcome; rather as if
ihey held knowledge that she
didn’t expect me to share.

Perhaps they were the eyes of
Malaya. Perhaps they were ac-
cusing me. Perhaps her voice will

deaths through illness without
any medical help,” he writes:

+ “Family of Mark Michel:
Two-year-old son; another child
st birth; mother of Mark Michel.
Three deaths in one family.

+ “Mrs. Duncan Tom.

+ “Catherine Dennis: Choked
to death after hemorrhaging for
10 days on and off. Request was
made for a plane to take this In-
dian woman to hospital. Answer:
Ottawa must give permission to
ctarter a plane — she ‘had TB,
just a matter of time, anyway.”

*

By way of contrast, Wilkinson
cites the recent incident in which
rare blood donated by Canadian
Indians saved the life of a baby
in California.

“RH positive O type — RH
negative O type blood in the two
parents doomed a three-day-old
baby to death,” he reports.
“Blood of two Canadian Cree
Indian sisters was flown 1200
miles from Edmonton to Red-
wood City, California, by jet
plane for transfusions that saved
the baby’s life.

‘one day accuse her masters who

are much like my own masters.

I couldn*t even explain to her
we hada lot in common. If she
and I ever meet in a place like
Peking it shall be possible to do

50. «

C

I had no difficulty in finding

the house where my Malayan
friends had lived. The house
looked much the same.
’ I was hoping with all my heart
as I knocked at the door that
Alfred, the quiet, powerful boy
who had won a decoration — a
British decoration — for his fight
in the Malayan People’s Libera-
tion Army, would open it and I
would see his sudden illuminat-
ing smile and feel his hard,
friendly hand in mine again.

But the girl who came was a
stranger.

No, he didn’t live there any
msre. Where had he moved to?
She did not know.

I felt she was not speaking the
truth. Could she not give me
any idea? Did she know who
might be able to give me infor-
mation of his whereabouts? No,
nopody!

There was fear in her eyes. L
had recognized it now. I didn’t
press her. I went back down the
path, and felt like calling back
angrily:

“T am not a British policeman.”

But instead I got back into the

LM SOY ll

“At Fort St. John indifference
cf passersby took the life of an
Indian mother. Here, time and
money were given without stint
to save a small baby. What a dif-
ference!”

Calling for an investigation of
conditions at Topley, Wilkinson
concludes:

“The burial service over an In-
dian, dead from neglect, is not
enough expression of the Chris-
tian principles taught in the mis-
sion. churches.

taxi and disconsolately told the
taxi-driver to drive on to Changi.

Infamous Changi. Through sev-
eral road-blocks where the sol-
dier waved us by, over a hill,
and we reached the top of a long
rise and saw the towering grey
walls. Changi like Katong, had
altered but not changed.

It was still a jail.

There was still a guard with
a sun in the grey tower. There
was, it is true, a lawn in front
where it flanks the road. Its huge
entrance is now white.

I began to take photos of it,
then I walked down the hill a
iittle where there once stood the
rows of palm-front huts where
the Australians brought down
from the Death Railway to die
used to lie and hope for libera-
tion as they starved or their com-
rades tossed in delirium beside
them; from where they could
hear one of their number being
teaten to death; or see another
carried out to have his leg ampu-
tuted with instrwments that a
butcher back home would not
heve used’ to quarter a pig.

And the tiny village nearby

whose people once brought the
Australians food at the risk, and
sometimes the loss, of their lives.

None of them knew me now.
Surely one of them would re-
member me. But: I thought that
they would no doubt have other
things to remember now. I had

Hi peer N
Ter yyy as,
SSS

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: : nage Pag
LEP og WYfl a>
MUU lb 330)! MLE

GE 8
PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JULY 29, 1955 — PAV”

‘

x y

“Tt is not only the Indian agen

it is not only the department)

1 govern ;

ment. The Indians th

franchise and merit the is

expected by any citizen of BY
Columbia.

é : fy 1200
If a jet plane. can a 403

miles to save one baby, a) © 4).
that would probably pay one 1°.
tor. for months of practice,
were totalled up, why cann?
B.C. Indian enjoy medical 4
his times of crisis?”

t, the
id 10

forgotten this was ten years aie
Christian civilization had bee®
work again, for a decade. we

For all the disappointme? ith:
looked at Changi once agai? beer
cut bitterness; without ¢0?
ion.

00'
If ten years ago I had sts

there and in my horror a4? yike
tress wondered how a thin
Changi could be stopped * ow
ever happening again,
knew. “nord
There are _ ghosts.
makes them and they come right:
you, real as a body in 4
Australian ghosts came erik
Changi that morning in
liant sun, looking at mee they
iarly, and I believe, as }
trusted me. ney
Which -was surprising — ince
have been betrayed so oftel | py
1945. But not by us) 2\jo9-
humble people, struggling | qnd
ple, people who want eh gght

plenty and are not afral

for them. ck
So I was smiling as I got ba
into the taxi. ~ ise Hk
Jack, my mate from oe at
pressed surprise afterwat —
ihis. ; vil
Further along near chang us

iage a Coca Cola sign ine
that civilization a la Americ?
luomed over Malaya. e cet

That was when I becam” ad
tain the ghosts of Chan8! "(ca
be iaid. In that time ess,
Cola signs would be meamp
standing for nothing at 4 ap:

That morning, with t car’
proval of Jack, among ne jn 4
ed stone animals I bought ~
shop a white dove.

I will give the dove ¢
body, I don’t know who,
will be aman like ourse” |. of
determined that the &
war shall forever be laid ott et
© Eric Lambert is the 20' iian
two best-selling AUS", oy-
war novels, Twenty ver
sand. Thieves and The ,
erans,

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