Cowboys and Indians:

Canada’s aboriginal problems aren’t new. I was personally made aware of them one moonless night away back in the middle of the last century while stuck in the mud on the old #5 highway in Saskatchewan.

Following a rainy weekend, I was trying to get back to my rural school site on a Sunday night in May. The spring of ‘53 was particularly wet in our area, the gravel roads soggy and only marginally passable to wheeled traffic. 

The old highway, following the 90-degree survey lines of 1905, was yet to be grasped at both ends and snapped straight, parallel to the CN Railway running cross-country in a straight line from Winnipeg to Saskatoon and points west. It was still waiting to be paved in the years that followed.

At one particularly sloppy stretch between Canora and Mikado, the Pontiac slid into a set of deep ruts and bottomed out. About 100 yds ahead was another vehicle stuck on the other shoulder at the edge of the watery ditch.

My only choice was to walk to a nearby farm yard belonging to an acquaintance and ask for a tow out of the muddy patch, but it was past 10 pm and the lights in the farm house were out, a sure sign that the family was asleep. That would have to wait until morning.

A farm truck hummed into view, veered over to a different set of ruts and roared on by without easing up on the gas pedal. The driver was not about to reduce momentum to help anyone, which was probably a smart, if not exactly friendly, move on his part. 

The driver of the stuck vehicle up ahead got out and walked back. It was Ray, a family acquaintance from my childhood in the Elbow of the Assiniboine. 

Ray was an Indian from the Key reserve. He was a graduate of the Mission school at the northern edge of Kamsack and, contrary to popular mythology, was not known to voice any complaints about it. 

He joined the Canadian army at the onset of the war and participated in the liberation of Holland, helping to wipe the stubborn Nazis off the muddy Scheldt Estuary. In the process, he earned himself a chest full of citations for bravery above and beyond the call of duty. 

He was fortunate enough to return alive with all of his body parts intact and with the dream of investing his military credits in a modern dairy farm on the reserve. That much I knew of the man. 

After a short pow-wow we both agreed it would not be good ethics to awaken a sleeping farm family. It would be best to wait until morning and I offered him the use of the back seat in my car because he said he had five other men from the reserve in his car with him. They got as far as this mud hole on a return trip to Yorkton.

He walked back to the car and yanked a couple of fur robes out from under his passengers. He offered me one, climbed into the back seat and made himself comfortable in the other. 

We got to talking before sleep overtook us and he told me the sad tale of what happened to his dairy farm dream. 

“I got some pure bred Holstein breeding stock and set up the proper pasture and shelters for the cattle,” he said. “But it wasn’t long before those *&^%$# Indians began cutting the barbed wire and pulling up the fence posts. They turned the cattle loose to wander out all over the reserve. In less than a couple of years it got to the point where it became unprofitable for me to carry on.”

It was a sad tale and I asked Ray why any sane person would do such malicious damage.

“Sane person? Hey, we’re talking about those @*&^%$# Indians here,” he said. “They didn’t want to see me succeed in the white man’s world.”

Being unfamiliar with aboriginal politics, I could not understand how such an attitude might develop on a reserve and said so.

“I guess these guys were happy with their Indian status and were not about to risk making any changes to their way of life,” Ray continued. 

“So they did what they could to keep me from spoiling things for them. These guys are happy with their regular pogey which they get for doing nothing at all and that suits them fine. As they see it, last thing they need is an Indian neighbour showing some signs of initiative.”

It was about midnight when, warm in those comfortable fur robes, we were lulled to dreamland to the soothing chorus of frogs in nearby ponds and puddles. Secure in the knowledge that only a madman, a country school teacher or a carful of Indians would be crazy enough to use that muddy highway at night, we drifted off to sleep there in the middle of the road.

When we awakened in bright sunlight, farmer Phil was up and about and we got him to start up the old McCormick-Deering farm tractor and haul us out onto firmer gravel. The mud had chilled and stiffened enough during the night to provide reasonable traction. I paid for the tow and we were soon on our way. 

I got to my farm school cottage on time and was able to start the day in presentable shape after firing up the wood stove and heating a kettle of warm water to wash and shave. 

My lesson plans with 42 students in 10 grades would keep me busy until 4:00 pm. After that, I was free to think about what Ray had said and try to find some logic in it.

It was obvious that Ray’s attempt to establish a nutritional food source for the families in the Key reserve away back in the 1940s was killed by mindless home-grown activists of the day. It’s a 70-year-old story and, if you follow the news, paying particular attention to present day Indian activism, nothing has changed much. 

Today, in the white man’s world, that kind of behaviour is described as being pro active. Years of mindless sloganeering is selectively referred to by the hooded activists and amateur anarchists as affirmative action. 

Back in my youth, we had few delusions regarding such activity. We knew them as simple-minded s--t disturbers.