By BILL CAMPBELL

The story goes that when Noah
Webster — of dictionary fame —
Caught his wife in the arms of
another man she hung her head
and exclaimed ‘‘Oh, Noah, I’m so
ashamed! ” To which he replied,
‘No, my dear, I’m ashamed —

 you’re surprised.”’

Which points up the import-
ance of key words, their use and
~ Misuse, and how they are often

Selected by those caught out in
wrong-doing to excuse their

_ actions, or shift the blame else
where.

And so it is, really, with this
much Overworked — word
inflation”. Perhaps the basic
thing to do on every possible
o¢casion is to emphasize that, in
Spite of the contrary, universal
Position taken by big business,
the inflation of our currency is
Not the Cause of our troubles but
foe of the major results. To vary
Tom this fundamental concept
One iota is to fall into the morass
of economic and political double-
talk with which we're being
Served up day after day.

Actually the situation is quite

Simple as to why inflation is
fre. Complications occur
alright, but only when those
Tesponsible try to place the
urden of guilt on others.

5 “ag Seem to be two aspects
_ .€ present mess. One lies in
ne business — holds the reins.

bi 4 Very large extent this means
Ig business — holdsthe reins.

€y've been running Canada
Tom all the positions of power.
h 5 Test of us, so far, haven't
ad a look-in. The second, and
peer. aspect is to do with how
ur national wealth is created.
ss enn quite simple in its origins,
th any Marxist knows. This is,

at the creation of all products,
Nd their auxiliary machinery,
Tansportation, research, etc.,

Tests on human labor power
alone.

If the wages paid to those who
Supply this labor power, (the
Workers of all kinds), are not as
4 whole less than the price the
Owners receive for the goods
Produced then the owners don’t
Make a profit. We know, of
Course, that they do, in fact,
make a very handsome profit.
0, since the purchasers, the
Wage earners, can never, as a
Whole, afford to buy all that is
Produced, this capitalist system
pent work very well at the
Est of times for-very long.

aren. as in Canada today,
along comes tremendous tech-
Pe

Labor and capital

—Fred Wright

nical advances giving huge per
man/hour production increases
— and consequent huge profit
increases— and the gap between
the price of goods and the
purchasing power of 90% of the
population suddenly gets much
wider still.

One doesn’t have to be a
Marxist, (though it helps quite a
lot!), to appreciate that the
proper long-term answer to the
above trouble is socialism.
However, if this is all that is said
and done in the concrete
situation Canada is faced with
today we’d just be helping to put
off that happy occasion. For
socialism, the real kind, where
only those who work own the
means of production, does not
come as a bolt from the blue.
(Though it may seem like one to
those few at the receiving end.)
It is born of the outcome of many
battles between the present
owners and the present working

people.

The importance of getting the
very widest exposure of the true
class causes of the present infla-
tion crisis, and urging working
people to insist on bringing the
real criminals to justice, is one
of these battles. The fact that the
area of conflict exists at the tap
root of capitalism proves its
prime importance.

Each person, every class,
fights, if at all, in their own self-
interest. To believe otherwise
lands one in an_ ineffective,
isolated, utopian dreamland.
Not least of the reasons why it is
to be expected that the working
class can and will insist that the
monopolists take the full blame
for our present financial crisis is
that, if not, they themselves will
be saddled with even more of the
resultant burdens than they
already have now.

BUILD THE P.T.

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WRITE TO PACIFIC TRIBUNE
193 EAST HASTINGS
VANCOUVER 4, B.C.

INDIAN YOUTH WRITES:

‘Give my people chance
to solve their problems’

By THEODORE COLLINS

Much needs to be done about
the present system of educating
Indians. On the whole Indians
lack the qualifications needed to
get a decent job and the
overwhelming majority of them
never complete high school.

The only way now for an Indian
to get an education is by allowing
himself to be virtually assimi-
lated into the white man’s
society. Otherwise he will have
to run an obstacle course,
overcome things that no white
child ever had to.

In Manitoba a study was made
on the reasons for early school
leaving among Indians. A
sample of 503 Indians who had
left school early were questioned
and this was discovered:

35% had left because they had
to go to work;

15% had left because they
were too old;

12% had left because of
personal illness;

8% had no school available;

7% had completed all available
grades;

5% were removed from school
by their parents or by their
guardians.

Other reasons for leaving were
not liking resdential schools,
absence. of teachers, teachers

arriving late with no
replacement or with the nurse
filling in.

These statistics are revealing.
Most, though not all, of the
problems confronting an Indian
when he is trying to achieve an
education are _ pinpointed.
Working from this and with the
aid of general knowledge and
common sense, some
measurements seem obvious.

First, to vanquish a cause and
an effect in one blow, the Indian
will have to be given a higher
standard of living. This will have
to -be done by means of a
guaranteed annual income. After
the young Indian no longer needs
to leave school and go to work,
he may go about acquiring the
qualifications for more
rewarding and less menial work.
Then another generation of
poverty stricken natives will not
occur. :

Something must also be done
about bringing proper medical
care to the isolated areas where
Indians are to be found. It is true
that most of the illnesses from
which Indians suffer stem
directly from their economic
conditions, but still it will be a
long time before they are again a
healthy race.

The type of education that is
given to Indians and the method
that it is dispensed must be
changed. Because most native
children are not oriented
towards learning when they first
enter school, and because
everything they encounter there
is strange, they are
institutionally given two years in
grade one. This gives them the
disadvantage of being one year
older than most young people
when they enter the later grades.

If they happen to fail one year
they quite often feel so out of
place that they quit school and go
out to work. To prevent this

happening the Indian child must

have kindergarten and nursery
schools to attend in his own
village so he’ll not have to have
that second wasteful year of
grade one.

Residential schools must be
done away with. Children
attending them do not come in
contact enough with a home
environment and so are subject
to disorientation. Because of the
nature of the schools they cannot
fit either into their own society
or the white man’s. A child must
have the right te live at home

The author of this article-
is a 19-year old Native
Indian who lives in
Vancouver. He writes as a
youth who knows these
problems intimately.

when . he_ is
education.

The educational facilities that
are already to be found in native
communities must be improved. -
Teachers must be better paid,
offered better salaries, to induce
them to come into isolated areas
to teach. Then the best qualified
may be chosen out of the
applicants. Too often people are
given special certificates to
teach natives because those
better qualified wouldn’t take
the job. :

Teachers must be given a
special course in Indian culture,
history, and ways so that they
will better know how they may
serve the Indian community.
And then the courses that are
offered must be changed so that
the view of Indians given in the
history books is a more
comprehensive and fair one.

It does not make an Indian
child feel happy to discover in
his social studies text-book only
allusion to his ancestors
massacring Jesuit missionaries
or. pointing the way for
Alexander Mackenzie on his
travels west. It is as if there
were no people on the American
continent before John Cabot and
that people like Louis Riel never
existed.

receiving his

An educational system must
be created that allows an Indian
to identify, allows him to remain
an Indian and at the same time
enables him to function in the
white man’s society.

Most people wear off their will
to learn at an early age, and it
takes a proper environment to
allow it to remain. A white has it
all made up for him already, but
one has to be especially created
for the Indian. If an Indian-finds
something in school that
interests him, he will stay in
school. That is all that is needed.

Perhaps if this and all that I
have listed above is done, the
Indian will have a chance to sove”
the problems that confront him.
Otherwise he may disappear as a
race or merely continue in the
way he has, living in acute
poverty, with a life-span of
thirty-five, the victim of bigotry
and ignorance till the day of his
death. :

Telephone Co. available for
ordinary shareholders rose by

16 per cent during 1969, buf
the actual increase per share
earnings was only 7 per cent
because of an increase in the
shares outstanding.

J. Earnest Richardson,

BCT’s. president and chief
executive officer, said in an
interim report on Friday that
net earnings were $19,174,706
for the year as compared with
$16,915,046 in 1968.

NOT BAD. Above item in the daily
press shows that despite the long
strike in 1969, B.C. Tel had net
earnings of $19,174,706 in 1969,
compared to $16,915,000 in 1968.

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~ PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 13, 1970—Page 11

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