Canadian First Nation Peoples, Gazing into Future, Paganism is Way Forward 4-Part Essay by Nilesh M Shukla

 Part 1 

The government of Canada has taken many steps to reassure and encourage communities of the First Nations. This has been widely acknowledged by the indigenous community. Any average Canadian, who may not be a member of the First Nations,is also sympathetic and happy to help out. This is indicative of a mature, emphatic and understanding society. It helps a violated and a disadvantaged community to feel wanted and move from despair to a future of hope, achievements and fulfilment. 

Indeed, some measures of hand holding, out-of-turn opportunities at education, employment, housing, business etc can and should be fine, until the First Nations gain enough confidence to feel that they no longer need. But in the long run, what seemed welcome at one stage has a potential to turn toxic and damaging. In the long run the handouts and freebies end up harming that very same community. However, going forward, The First Nations people would need to rediscover the unique life force that they once possessed before they were rudely disturbed upon arrival of not-so-friendly sailors, soldiers, settlers and merchants onboard modern ships from the other end of the Atlantic since the early sixteenth Century. 

The Canadian First Nations became the victims of the overseas settlers. A large number  of unsuspecting innocent First Nations people were mowed down by gunpowder and the rest were ‘eliminated’ using every other dark trick. Settlers proved to be insensitive and cruel exploiters. However what is different for the First Nations as compared to indigenous folks of  the world is that some of the Canadian indigenous communities have still survived somehow. In part, thanks to the European merchants who collaborated with them in harvesting fur and the lack of appetite of Europeans in acquiring the frozen inhospitable lands of Canada.

Therefore, the surviving First Nations could still tell us the tale that Vikings, Celts, Pagans, Heathens, Polytheists, Germanic Tribes etc in Europe could not. Those ancient Europeans had completely and totally perished along with their language, history, gods, rituals and culture. What has remained of them are some archaeological ruins in the form of Stonehenge, some artefacts in the museums and caricatured Santa Claus and Halloween. Probably the same fate awaited First Nations in Canada too. 

However, just when everything was about to be lost, the wheels of fortune turned and a few members of the First Nations could survive, albeit just a bit. As a consequence of general progress in transport, communications and education levels, the world over, and especially the renaissance in Europe gave birth to a whole new kind of thinking generation. They were liberal and open minded elites who did not share pride in an inherited aristocracy but in liberal art, culture and fresh thinking. This development saved some of the First Nations people.

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Part 2 

Come the nineteenth and twentieth century, some of the Europeans and Americans became a little disillusioned by what they saw happening in the name of religion in the churches around them. Apart from dogmatic dictates and the moral and financial corruption, they discovered the ugly history of systematic annihilation of Pagans, everywhere in the world. They saw how the innocent word ‘Pagan’ was made into a derogatory term and made to mean “Devil worshippers”. It was beyond them to reconcile the reverence for nature and for one's own ancestors with an evil term as “Devil-worship”. Europeans were cleverly gaslighting the divinity of paganism as devilishness. They soon discovered deceit and moral degradation of so-called ‘civilised’ under the cloak of their make-believe ‘love’ and ‘empathy’.  These modern men, whose conscience was stirred up, went ahead to discover roots and religions of the pagans. Many of those began their own churches with their own Pagan Gods, Deities, Symbols and rituals, taking cue from still-alive practices. This movement is still in a budding stage but surely, it has aroused a fresh thinking.

Not so much in the twentieth century, but currently in the twenty first century, these ‘new’ Pagan religions suddenly became more relevant as the world witnessed the consequences of thoughtless destruction and exploitation of nature, what is popularly known as “Global Warming” and “Climate Change”.

The First Nations of Canada, just like every other indigenous ancient people of the world, worshipped nature. The Rain, Shine, Spring, Sowing, Harvest, Forays into Seas, Solstices and Equinoxes were celebration times. The Earth, Lands, Mountains, Seas, Rivers, Ponds, Trees,Forests, Sun, Moon etc were respectfully considered their objects of reverence, they were gods, friends, brothers, sisters, mother or father. They spoke with respect to them and gratefully thanked them for the bounties they bestowed. The nature-deities responded kindly to them. So called shamans, interpreted them. Misuse of natural resources was immoral, an insult or a sin. 

The, Celts, Vikings, Germanic Pagans, Red Indians, Mayans, Incas, Slav Pagans, Russian Pagans, South-East-Asian Forest dwellers, etc. either disappeared completely or just barely survived, accepting what crumbs of bread were thrown to them by the conquerors and survived by submitting to them, even aping their tormentor’s customs and languages, hoping to garnish their reluctant sympathy. In Canada, the First Nations too were brutalised. It was beyond the trusting-type   innocent indigenous communities to even comprehend the minds of settlers who apparently had no mercy. It was physically impossible to defeat them using the elementary weaponry that they had. They were completely helpless.

They, who studied histories and anthropology of the First Nations in Canada wrote their impressions, some perhaps even inadvertently, with biases and languages that they had brought with them from Europe. Their biases and languages could not truely express the history, folklore, religious prayers and the spirituality behind invoking the nature-deities. However unfortunate as it is, we have to depend today on those ill-translated European-language “scholarly researched” documents and books. 

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Part 3 

Current anthropologies, histories, geographies and folklores concerning the Canadian First Nations have indeed been written after a painstaking study of still surviving as well as long dead First Nation communities. 

Notwithstanding its immense value, a keen reader with an analytical eye, would not miss that none is seriously appreciative of the life force that kept the community alive and kicking for centuries before the arrival of ‘civilised’ Europeans. In addition, due to limitations of their language and biases inherent to their cultural, their ‘scholarship’ has given rise to make-belief anthropology, poorly translated prayers, watered-down importance of what is otherwise a worship that treasures nature, promotes vital relationships between people, family-members, reinforces belongingness to nature etc. That the people can actually ‘listen’ to or ‘talk’ to lakes, rivers, seas, mountains, trees, fish, birds etc was just a silly joke to them. Communicating with ancestors is just some mumbo-jumbo to them. Everything related to Pagan is myth, their living experience as superstition or silly. 

As hardly any account is written from a perspective of a practising Pagan, the current literature has given rise to a twisted understanding of the indigenous culture. The potential benefit the world was to accrue from the First Nations is lost in ‘civilising’ them. In fact there are many things that the First Nations can teach us, the so-called ‘modern men’. That, if encouraged, the First Nations can be an influential, powerful ally in our current conundrum of fight against Climate Disasters, Forest Fires, Flash Floods and melting of Glaciers in the North, is but overlooked.

Most of the available literature on the Canadian First Nations gives a sense of utter despondency. Yes, it does arouse sympathy for loss suffered by the First Nations as a community but, significantly, it does not evoke the respect that they deserve as a nature-loving, nature-worshipping, sensitive civilization. In addition to the despondency filled literature, another set of literature has recently come up that celebrates success of some members of the First Nations, who could ‘succeed’ by aping the ways of erstwhile tormentors. Thus, in a nutshell, even the newer genre of books encourages abandoning ancestral practices. 

The blame-game is usually an exercise in futility and even counter-productive. Therefore, those who wish to uplift the community may look at interesting options. Studies of factors that help the healthy development of societies suggest what is needed by  the one who wants not only to survive, but meaningfully progress and be happy and fulfilled.

Generous handouts or obligatory-courtesy-job and education is certainly needed in the beginning, but that is half the solution. What is really needed is a sense of purpose, an objective, before that person, not just ‘an’ objective but a ‘glorious’ one. It can not be synthetic but should be something organically inherent to them.

Is there a grand objective for the First Nations even possible? 

 

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Part 4 

There does exist a glorious objective as natural as what water is to a fish, hidden in plain sight, that could transform the First Nations society and maintain their unique identity.

It is simple, natural and it works. Return to the roots. Reclaim that potent ancestral nature worship, lead the green movement and embrace that profoundly far-reaching Paganism. 

The First Nations could perhaps take a path which some European and American brethren have taken. They began to develop an understanding of nature-worship of forefathers and became proud inheritors of ancestral Paganism.

Like a Phoenix, the Canadian First Nations could rise to a live and kicking community shored up by clasping ancestral wisdom. Recently, the Prime Minister of Greece, Mr. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, was spotted coining the term for it, The “Ancestral Intelligence” during Raisina Dialogues, an international platform of discussions, mimicking a more popular term “Artificial Intelligence”. No mainstream thinkers have given any consideration to rebuilding the indigenous culture based on the fundamentals of the innate culture of indigenous people.

The First Nations community, standing on their own feet, proudly facing the modern world can become a major contributor to the multi-cultural society of Canada instead of getting remembered in the literature as random creators of totem-poles, Inukshuks and  perhaps in the museums across the world with their artefacts as pieces days of bygone cultures or as pieces of decoration on the fireplaces of the homes of wealthy.

The current religious thought prevalent among the majority population is sworn against “Paganism”. Head-wind can be anticipated from them while reclaiming paganism. But they can not be faulted as they were roped into Paganism-hating-clubs, well before they even learnt to walk. They take it as their religious duty to destroy paganism and to ‘save’ the people from going to ‘hell’ and enduring ‘suffering’. Same is true for “Loyalists” elks.

Pride in going back to basics, going back to nature, reverently worshipping nature and the ancestors, could make a positive contribution to the First Nations psychology and wellbeing and consequently to the Canadian Society as a whole. Anthropologists, and other specialists in the matter of First Nations have defined the problems and solutions of the indigenous communities by “their” lens, “their” bias and in “their” language. A relook is necessary to understand the First Nations through their indigenous Pagan lens.

While European neo-paganism followers had to create their own new ways of rituals, the First Nations of Canada are lucky that they still know some of their rituals and therefore it is easier for them to reclaim their heritage. Indeed they can exchange notes with American and European new Pagans, such as Heathenry, Asatru, Wicca, Feraferia, Odinic Rite, Nova Roma, etc.or other Pagans of Orient, the still active and alive Hindus, Zoarastrians, Kurds, Droids etc. Pagan cultures have found profound learning from Nature. Nature knows only to give. It does not take. It gives everyone, the Sun does not discriminate between people. My Gods, treat everyone equally. Let's show some reverence.

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