This Is Brotherhood by Chief Dan George
This essay was written by Chief Dan George (1899-1981) a chief of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, a Coast Salish band. He was known as political and social activist, poet, author, musician and actor who was best known for his Academy Award nominated role as Old Lodge Skins in Little Big Man. This excerpt was recently posted by Leslie Masters on Facebook, but the original essay has appeared in a number of anthologies and comes straight from the heart.
In the course of my lifetime I have lived in two distinct cultures. I was born into a culture that lived in communal houses. My grandfather’s house was eighty feet long. It was called a smoke house, and it stood down by the beach along the inlet. All my grandfather’s sons and their families lived in this dwelling. Their sleeping apartments were separated by blankets made of bull rush weeds, but one open fire in the middle served the cooking needs of all. In houses like these, throughout the tribe, people learned to live with one another; learned to respect the rights of one another. And children shared the thoughts of the adult world and found themselves surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins who loved them and did not threaten them. My father was born in such a house and learned from infancy how to love people and be at home with them.
And beyond this acceptance of one another there was a deep respect for everything in nature that surrounded them. My father loved the earth and all its creatures. The earth was his second mother. The earth and everything it contained was a gift from See-see-am…and the way to thank this great spirit was to use his gifts with respect.
I remember, as a little boy, fishing with him up Indian River and I can still see him as the sun rose above the mountain top in the early morning…I can see him standing by the water’s edge with his arms raised above his head while he softly moaned…”Thank you, thank you.” It left a deep impression on my young mind.
And I shall never forget his disappointment when once he caught me gaffing for fish “just for the fun of it.” “My son” he said, “The Great Spirit gave you those fish to be your brothers, to feed you when you are hungry. You must respect them. You must not kill them just for the fun of it.”
This then was the culture I was born into and for some years the only one I really knew or tasted. This is why I find it hard to accept many of the things I see around me.
I see people living in smoke houses hundreds of times bigger than the one I knew. But the people in one apartment do not even know the people in the next and care less about them.
It is also difficult for me to understand the deep hate that exists among people. It is hard to understand a culture that justifies the killing of millions in past wars, and it at this very moment preparing bombs to kill even greater numbers. It is hard for me to understand a culture that spends more on wars and weapons to kill, than it does on education and welfare to help and develop.
It is hard for me to understand a culture that not only hates and fights his brothers but even attacks nature and abuses her. I see my white brothers going about blotting out nature from his cities. I see him strip the hills bare, leaving ugly wounds on the face of mountains. I see him tearing things from the bosom of mother earth as though she were a monster, who refused to share her treasures with him. I see him throw poison in the waters, indifferent to the life he kills there; and he chokes the air with deadly fumes.
My white brother does many things well for he is more clever than my people but I wonder if he has ever really learned to love at all. Perhaps he only loves the things that are outside and beyond him. And this is, of course, not love at all, for man must love all creation or he will love none of it. Man must love fully or he will become the lowest of the animals. It is the power to love that makes him the greatest of them all…for he alone of all animals is capable of love.
Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak and faint. Without love our self esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world. Instead we turn inwardly and begin to feed upon our own personalities and little by little we destroy ourselves.
You and I need the strength and joy that comes from knowing that we are loved. With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others.
There have been times when we all wanted so desperately to feel a reassuring hand upon us…there have been lonely times when we so wanted a strong arm around us…I cannot tell you how deeply I miss my wife’s presence when I return from a trip. Her love was my greatest joy, my strength, my greatest blessing.
I am afraid my culture has little to offer yours. But my culture did prize friendship and companionship. It did not look on privacy as a thing to be clung to, for privacy builds walls and walls promote distrust. My culture lived in a big family community, and from infancy people learned to live with others.
My culture did not prize the hoarding of private possessions, in fact, to hoard was a shameful thing to do among my people. The Indian looked on all things in nature as belonging to him and he expected to share them with others and to take only what he needed.
Everyone likes to give as well as receive. No one wishes only to receive all the time. We have taken something from your culture…I wish you had taken something from our culture…for there were some beautiful and good things in it.
Soon it will be too late to know my culture, for integration is upon us and soon we will have no values but yours. Already many of our young people have forgotten the old ways. And many have been shamed of their Indian ways by scorn and ridicule. My culture is like a wounded deer that has crawled away into the forest to bleed and die alone.
The only thing that can truly help us is genuine love. You must truly love, be patient with us and share with us. And we must love you—with a genuine love that forgives and forgets…a love that gives the terrible sufferings your culture brought ours when it swept over us like a wave crashing along a beach…with a love that forgets and lifts up its head and sees in your eyes an answering love of trust and acceptance.
This is brotherhood…anything less is not worthy of the name.
I have spoken.
06/16/2020 @ 1:36 pm
“…we must love you—with a genuine love that forgives and forgets…a love that gives the terrible sufferings your culture brought ours…”
This essay is so full of submission, acquiescence,
subservience, and defeat, there’s little wonder why you are enamored of its content
White people want black people to forgive and forget that which white people refuse to acknowledge, and for which white people refuse to accept responsibility or accountability.
White people want to be pardoned without admitting guilt.
White people seek absolution from black people without confessing their sins against black people….
White people want all of that from black people without the ‘benefit’ of reservations or reparations…
The thoughts expressed here are the thoughts of an individual whose self worth and dignity have dissipated into the ether of genocide and oppression…
What he fails to realize is that as long as white people will not and cannot identify people of color as the human beings they perceive themselves to be, they will remain completely and totally incapable of ‘brotherhood’.
06/17/2020 @ 9:00 am
Correction re negligible errors in grammar, syntax, and punctuation.
.In my haste to post this comment, I overlooked the fact that Chief Dan George has been gone for nearly 40 years:
“…we must love you—with a genuine love that forgives and forgets…a love that gives the terrible sufferings your culture brought ours…”
This essay is full of submission, acquiescence,
subservience, and defeat. There’s little wonder why you are enamored of its content
White people want black people to forgive and forget that which white people refuse to acknowledge, and for which white people refuse to accept responsibility or accountability.
White people want to be pardoned without admitting guilt.
White people seek absolution from black people without confessing their sins against black people….
White people want all of that from black people without the ‘benefit’ of reservations or reparations…
The thoughts expressed here are the thoughts of an individual whose self worth and dignity had dissipated into the ether of genocide and oppression…
What he failed to realize is that as long as white people will not and cannot identify people of color as the human beings they perceive themselves to be, they will remain completely and totally incapable of ‘brotherhood’.
BTW
The silence in response to this comment is deafening.
06/18/2020 @ 8:34 pm
Why do you think that what Chief Dan George said applies to you? Or should?
Is there a reason you assume that Alan’s purpose in publishing this is to encourage Black acquiescence, subservience, and acceptance of defeat? From what I know of Alan, it would shock the living shit out of me if that were his intention – I don’t think he’d dream of approaching the minority experience like that. I could be wrong, I haven’t actually heard him say whether he thinks this piece fits the current situation.
06/19/2020 @ 5:07 pm
Slavery? Yes and no. Not really in the way you think of it BUT it’s still going on TODAY with Native American women and girls primarily, although there are also Native American boys enslaved today. Within the confines of these United States.
When I say “servitude” I MEAN that the government literally trained them to be servants and then TOOK the majority of their earnings to PAY FOR that training. That is in addition to their employers keeping a portion of their earnings to pay for their housing, food and clothing. So.. while it wasn’t slavery… it also wasn’t anything CLOSE to being being treated with dignity or as even a human being.
“Slavery” within the tribes was vastly different than slavery elsewhere. Prisoners captured in raids were required to work under guard for food. They were considered the lowest people on the social rungs of Indigenous society however they weren’t typically beaten or otherwise abused and as soon as their ransom was paid they were free to go unless they wished to stay.
06/17/2020 @ 10:13 am
“…My white brother does many things well for he is more clever than my people but I wonder if he has ever really learned to love at all…”
I had hoped that this post would go completely ignored. I found it doubly offensive. The first offensive aspect is that it appropriates another person’s work, from a culture that is fundamentally different (essentially nomadic), and suggests acquiescence to a culture based on property and wealth. Part of the problem is that the oppressed party in the modern paradigm were once property as part of the wealth of the oppressing party, which exacerbates their oppression. The oppressor must begin to see the oppressed people as not merely property, and part of their wealth, but human being in their own right. We do not seek to be set free into a property-less nomadic spirituality existence.
Secondly, “my white brother…” is not more “clever” than anyone. We come from the same sort of civilization. We attended the same schools. We maintain the same relationship with science, ethics, finance, etc. This is not about colliding civilizations where one must hold sway in a finite universe. This is about a single civilization which “my white brother” refuses to play by the rules that he carves into marble and purports to be principles.
Chief Dan George can be excused for the suggestion since it is authentically his. Coming from anyone else? Fiiiiiiiiiish!
06/17/2020 @ 12:17 pm
A good question might be:
Was the chief being sincere or was being sarcastic?
Or, does it matter?
06/19/2020 @ 2:40 pm
The Salish were not really “nomadic”. They built longhouses and they resided in one place as a family group with doing things like harvesting acorns and other grains, harvesting salt from the ocean, fishing, hunting, gathering tubers, gathering medicines, etc… but their villages didn’t move around like the villages of the Plains tribes.
01/14/2021 @ 5:43 pm
You are correct, the coastal tribes of the Pacific Northwest were not nomadic, certainly not in the manner that term is generally used. And why would they be? They had things pretty damn good right where they were, what with their temperate weather and plentiful food supply from the sea, streams and forests. Anyone interested in an examination of that culture, and how it differed from most other Native cultures, might read Nonzero: the Logic of Human Destiny, by Robert Wright.
06/17/2020 @ 3:31 pm
Yeah, that sentence struck me as an odd sentiment.
I do not see how an indigenous person from a Canadian tribe was ever “property.” Oppressed, yes, obviously, but as far as I know Canadian tribes were never forced into servitude. I am not even sure that American tribes were forced into servitude, although they were horribly oppressed and devastated by genocidal warfare, forced onto reservations and killed at random. Of course, some of that killing was done by black Buffalo soldiers, albeit under the command of white officers.
As far as expropriation is concerned, credit was given both to the original author and to the person who reposted it and since Bindle makes no money at all (don’t be misled by the ads.) I actually posted the article because I wanted to come back to it later to check the provenance of the article and to question some of the sentiments. I posted it so that I wouldn’t forget it.
06/17/2020 @ 7:29 pm
Alan, indigenous Americans were, by and large, not forced into slavery. Attempts to do so were unsuccessful since they were so close to home. They tended to escape, be uncontrollable, or died under the extreme treatment. Cases exist, but they were rare.
The reference to property applies to blacks from Africa. Africans were under a very different circumstance in their imprisonment. The property that I cite refers to a civilization where land and such things are owned rather than shared by roaming over it temporarily. I don’t mean to be condescending here, but you do know the difference between nomadic civilizations and those rooted to agriculture and ownership of the land, right?
In that vein, you do know the difference between technology in civilizations with latitudinal rivers, and the effect of climate on animal husbandry and agriculture, right? On this planet, techniques in, say, cultivation of grain, or domestication of animals works and is transferable along latitudes rather than longitudes. Climate is more similar east to west rather than north to south. As such, challenges were greater and civilizations more separate along longitudes than latitudes. The advance of certain agricultural technologies advanced in Europe because of geographical placement, and not being “more clever.” Where climate allowed, agriculture and land ownership based societies flourished. Where climate did not allow, civilizations remained more nomadic. When nomadic civilizations came in contact with technologically advanced civilizations, the nomads were crushed in a variety of ways. Native Americans are one example. I meant the concept of ownership broadly, not just the ownership of the people, ALTHOUGH…with the institution of slavery, that concept was a double burden.
06/17/2020 @ 7:45 pm
As far as expropriation, this is not about using the words. You did give the name of the original author. What I am referring to is the meaning or value of that philosophical perspective applied as an analogue to our current situation. (Whether or not it was applied as an analogue is my assumption, and maybe that was incorrect). I do not know your life story, but I know it is essentially modern American. Your worldview is roughly similar to the context within which modern oppression by dominant culture exists. Conversely, Chief Dan George’s worldview is from outside of that historical context. It is appropriate fo0r him philosophically or spiritually, but not for us outside of his worldview. Merely surrendering to the oppressor’s wishes out of some admirable obsequiousness does not have the same value within this civilization as it does without. The objection to the citation was philosophical, not ethical or legal.
If that is not clear, allow this. In the film, “Field of Dreams”, there is a moment where Ray Cansella meets Terence Mann at his apartment. Eventually Terence Mann attempts to expel Ray from his apartment by chasing him out with a baseball bat. Ray slips and thinks he is about to have his head bashed in and he says to Terence Mann, “you can’t hit me, you’re a pacifist”.
The main character used his assailant’s philosophy against him, saying that he can’t because something I know about you says so. While it is not completely analogous, it is close enough. One character attempts to regulate another by a philosophical argument with principles that are not his own. I maintain that one is regulated by one’s own philosophical choices, and not philosophical choices made for them.
06/19/2020 @ 2:23 pm
Yes. American tribes WERE pressed into servitude. That’s 100% of what the “Indian Boarding Schools” taught other than abuse. The US Government literally made it illegal for us to raise our own children, stole those children away, forced them to take names not their own, they were stripped of their religion and culture and prepared for a life of servitude BY the government.
06/18/2020 @ 8:15 pm
No, this piece does not address the current paradigm. It compares a loving culture to a technologically advanced one. I think the cleverness Chief Dan George is referring to is a cleverness to invent things and a cleverness of violence and conquest. This piece is primarily a critique of European values brought to North America. What I don’t get is why anyone reading this thinks it addresses the current paradigm or assumes that that’s the point.
Persecution of different minorities takes different forms. In my experience, comparing the persecution experiences of various groups is a fruitless exercise because they don’t look alike. They are not on a single continuum.
06/19/2020 @ 2:36 pm
Mrs R: Please clarify. Yes, I get your point about the Indian boarding schools taking children away from their families, stripping of their identities, but were indigenous people in North America ever actually enslaved en mass by white people in the same manner that they enslaved black people? I know that was the case in Spanish America. In Jamaica, for example, the Arawaks were worked to the verge of extinction, which was why the Spanish imported black slaves to the Island, to replace the Arawaks. I’ve actually been trying to find any culture that never embraced slavery at one time or another.
06/18/2020 @ 9:49 am
I get something completely different from this post than anything I’m reading here. If I were to paraphrase what I think Chief Dan George was saying:
You are more clever than we are in that you have the technology and military structure to beat us, but you have no values. Your victory will not bring you joy or peace. We can’t offer you anything you have enough sense to want, which is really sad, Soon you will obliterate our culture by converting our kids to your dominant culture and so you will squander and lose what we have to offer you. The only thing that can save us and at the same time make you human is brotherhood. If you want to save yourselves, embrace that, or you will be spiritually and ethically poor and sad forever. We will be lost and you will have gotten rid of that which could save you from your soulless culture and ethos. I don’t hate you because I don’t hate human beings. You should learn from me. It would do you good.
I just don’t agree with the takes I’m reading here on Chief Dan George’s acquiescence. What I read here is a mixture of physical acquiescence and spiritual pity.
06/19/2020 @ 2:46 pm
It never occurred to me to question the language in which it was originally written because I intercepted it third or forth hand. However, I would have guessed from the context that it was written in English because it was clearly addressed to the White Man. It’s rather like the strange happenstance that the New Testament was written in Greek by people whose mother tongues were presumably Hebrew and Aramaic. Why would Jews write to each other in Greek? So, from the tone and the context, Dan George seems to be addressing two groups, White people and perhaps younger generations of his own because the essay is a plea to protect and preserve the old knowledge, was it not? Or did I read it incorrectly?.
06/19/2020 @ 2:35 pm
Questions, questions…
Was the original published in English or in the language of the Salish? IF it was published in the Salish language WHO did the translation and WHAT was their agenda or bias in translating?
I can answer both questions from reading the essay in question. I can even tell you that the man was not being either sarcastic or ironic. How do I know? I’m Lakota… and to be brutally honest, I feel the same way on many subjects. But, I also have a much different perspective than many and come from a much different culture as well.
07/30/2020 @ 10:49 am
For some reason I went back through this thread and, aside from the treatment of Native Americans, I don’t get it at all. I read this and I don’t see this as glorifying acquiescence or even really advocating it. What the reference to cleverness indicates to me is that the author doesn’t respect cleverness but instead finds it useless and shallow if it doesn’t bring anything of value. Cleverness does not equate to wisdom, which is his point.
What the acquiescence is about is an acknowledgement that “we aren’t be able to stop you” which is probably accurate, but he’s also saying that his audience would be better off if they could be stopped because they are on a path that will harm themselves. Why do you think you are better off fighting with your surroundings? Why do you think you are better off in social isolation? Why do you value an enharmonious life? Why do you destroy a culture you can learn from? Why do you destroy an environment that nurtures you? What is the point of all that winning if that winning doesn’t win you anything worth having? Why do you approach our relationship as something to be won in the first place? This last question is what the “brother” stuff is all about.
Maybe I understand him because I”m in sales and I understand what he’s doing. Sales is all about explaining to someone what’s in it for them. This is how I always write. My father taught me a lesson in sales: Always admit the obvious. He didn’t need to tell me why. It makes you look reasonable and gains you credibility while costing you nothing.
It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to interpret this as what it would mean coming from a culture in a different position, understanding that not all subjugation is alike and so the positions of victimized populations are not necessarily analogous. This is a point I see missed all the time, particularly in the area of comparing persecution; I see people looking at persecution as if every persecuted population were on the same continuum and the sole question were a matter of degree. It isn’t. It isn’t at all. The nature of persecution changes like the nature of bigotry changes. How bigots view Blacks/Native Americans/Jews/Muslims is different and, as a result, what form their bigotry takes differs by case.
If a Black person wrote a post like this it would mean something completely different. It wouldn’t fit the nature of the interracial relationship. In a Black voice, a post like this would invite cringing. If, for example, we were to unearth a document like this written by Malcolm X we’d be devastated.
It’s one thing to read this post out of cultural and historical context. It’s quite another to accuse the guy posting this of doing so to champion acquiescence. I would be willing to bet that Alan posted this as a cultural critique of the dominant culture, which is of course what it is, albeit a little sugar-coated to get its audience to actually digest it. The idea that Alan posted this to advocate acquiescence is nonsensical because Alan doesn’t advocate acquiescence. Have you ever read Alan?